leadership's messy and there's times when you have to do certain things you might not want to do, but all of us really believe that what we're doing each and every day for our school is the right thing. 

Welcome to the Classroom Narratives Healing and Education Podcast. The space for Education Meets Resilience. I'm Dr. Joey Weisler, and in each episode we dive deep into the personal stories of educators, students, leaders, and frontline advocates who are navigating the complexities within modern education.

Whether you're just starting your teaching journey or are a seasoned professional looking for inspiration, we'll explore how to foster meaningful change, prevent burnout, and build trauma-informed communities within our schools. Now, let's take a seat at the front of the classroom as we get started.

Today, I'm so excited to welcome Principal Robert Hinchcliffe, who is a successful principal, author, and speaker based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and he has been an elementary school administrator for over [00:01:00] 20 years.

His career accomplishments include leading various five star rated schools, schools that have received distinguished awards, and he's been selected to open Tyrone Thompson Elementary School in 2020. "More Than Just Principals" is his latest book and an excellent read, by the way, but he has multiple titles available, which include Start On the Sidewalk, How Systems Rock, Dream Themes, and More Than Just Teaching.

He's presented at various schools and conferences, bringing his energy and passion, so attendees leave feeling inspired to make a bigger impact in our profession, while being chosen as an epic educator of the year in 2025, he leads, quote unquote, "the model of what a public school can and should be," while working to fight the status quo daily as well.

And he aims to create an exciting school environment for both kids and for their families. Principal Hinchcliffe, welcome to the podcast. 

Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity. 

Thank you again for being here. So I had just finished reading "More Than Just Principals" and this [00:02:00] text is an anthology that combines the research and voices of, what's it, 15 different principles and what it means for them to become more than just leaders and Principal Hinchcliffe, you got this idea, you said when you were at a keynote for principals or a conference for principals and you're walking around thinking what really brought us here today?

What was the purpose of all these leaders coming out, to think about what it means for them to become more than who they are and how they serve their communities. And I emphasize that word serve because you call yourself a servant leader, which I think is a really humble title that shows that you were there for the people versus the people having to be there for you.

It does work both ways, but showing your transparency for the community is a wonderful depiction of what true leadership can become. So I wanna read a short passage from your text. You said on page seven, "my guess was that if I could survey many of the leaders who passed by me [00:03:00] at that moment, at that conference, they would all agree or should agree that student achievement is paramount to what we do.

Further, I would pray everyone in our profession works daily to raise good humans who will become productive members of society once they graduate, and expect that the same students would exhibit positive characteristics at all times, regardless of what grade level they're in. But after that, how many parallels would we find in real leadership?"

So I wanna start by talking about your text, "More Than Just Principals". In terms of what was your biggest takeaway from both researching and authoring that text and what got you started with it? 

So my biggest takeaway was that there are many different ways to the top of the mountain, but the view's kind of all the same.

So when you look at all 15 and myself are included, we're all different humans, we're all different types of, leaders per se. But we all are successful in what we do and one of the things I really wanted to do was to get different perspectives [00:04:00] from various parts of the country. So I've been blessed to know a few people that are principals in other areas, but then I just reached out for example, the first principal is Jamie Brader.

And I just emailed her and I said, would you like to be a part of this? And she said, absolutely. And then I was able to find other principals from other parts of the country as well as from big schools like mine or high schools or rural schools. And I really wanted to bring it together to showcase that you can be a principal in any part of the country, in any kind of school, but ultimately how you lead it will determine if it's successful or not.

One of the things I think that stuck out the most is that everyone has passion and everyone truly believes that we can accomplish great things. How they get there or what they do is different. Some do a lot more morale boosters or things of that nature. Some, I think probably are a little bit more controlling, but ultimately they all do it from a place of love and a place of belief that they [00:05:00] can be successful.

So that was really the eye-opening thing. The great thing also was that it also made me better, it made me more motivated to be more than what I currently do. That was really inspiring to me writing it was just learning about these people in other parts of the country doing great things and taking their ideas and trying to weave them into the way I do it.

What was also your takeaway from researching and also writing the text? So what did you learn about different principles while you were also writing about it as well? 

Yeah, like I was just saying, you know everybody has to have a a different concept.

I think just the main overall thing I learned was that leadership's messy and there's times when you have to do certain things you might not want to do, but all of them kept kids at the forefront of what they were trying to do.

And all of us in that book, really believe that what we're doing each and every day for our school is the right thing. 

And I love that you say that leadership can be messy, because I wanna ask that when you came into principalship, first of all, how did you find your way [00:06:00] into principalship? And now that you've been a part of it for so long, what does leadership mean to you?

I always knew I wanted to be a principal, so I've been very blessed. Some of the people in the book, they start out and they say, I did not know I wanted to be a principal, or, I did not envy this job. I did not want to go that route. Myself, however, this is what I've always wanted to do. I knew I wanted to be in education and I knew I wanted to be a teacher.

I've always been a leader per se, through sports. I grew up in a small town. Sports is big, Friday Night Lights type of thing. So I've always been blessed to have leadership opportunities, and be able to be kind of at the forefront of whatever system I'm in. But the way that it is really changed over the years from when I first became a principal in 2012 to now is I think you have to massage feelings a lot more these days.

Yeah. 

It's not the same in terms of a boss employee relationship. It's more taking into account the humans [00:07:00] and the human component of it, especially after the pandemic. In admin, you're managing personalities, that's what I call it.

Yeah. And that lets me to think about, so what do you then expect from your coworkers as in your co- administrators and even your teachers in order to help a building run effectively?

And what are some scenarios, as you've been mentioning as well, in which such functionings, even if they've been more experimental, have either worked really well or have needed significant realignment in the aftermath of their happening with lessons learned? 

So, you know, my, my, the ap, I don't like to say my, um, the AP Shauna.

Um, I call her my 49.99 because again we're equal, to the biggest degree is possible. And we have to be, we have to be a team at the same point in time I expect her to do two things. One is she has to come and tell me everything I should know or that I might need to know, good or bad.

Which means she has to be tough enough to come and tell me things I don't wanna hear. 

[00:08:00] Right. 

And also, I think as a future principal herself, I expect her to jump in and learn and take things on without being asked. And she's fantastic at that. Like when I was an AP, I just wanted to learn and grow because I knew I wanted to be a principal.

And, I don't know if you're ever really ready for it, but the only way that you can be the most ready is to just have experiences. That's what Shawna and I talk about. Mm-hmm. Uh, you know, if there's an angry parent or something in the parking lot or whatever, it's experiences and it's good for her to experience those because when I'm not here, she's gonna be the person in charge or at her school, wherever that may be.

But I think. Like looking at it for me, I trust people telling you I can't, and even then I'll give you a lot of, a lot of chances. But again, it goes back to managing personalities. Not everybody wants you just to be brutally honest with them. Some do. You have to know your [00:09:00] people.

So if I was to take the brutally honest approach to everybody, half of the staff would be crying. The other a third would be mad, and a quarter would be like, all right, well, at least he's telling me the truth. 

Yeah. 

I think you have to be really careful on ways that you try to approach things.

You have to look at it globally as we're all gonna move forward. They know, I expect that like we all have to get better. We all have to keep growing, but I also expect you to grow in your own way. I'm realistic in the fact that we're not all equal. One of my sayings is, you know, they can't all be like me or they can't all be like you.

I want everybody to develop and grow to be the best person they can be in the best areas they know how. And again, kind of coming back to control, I have to let go of some control there because they have to reflect enough to say, well, I need to grow in math instruction, or I need to grow in behavior, whatever.

It kind of takes away [00:10:00] from, my control in the fact that I have to be willing to let them kind of dictate their path. So bringing it back full circle, I expect people to be here for the kids to buy into the global mission, to be the model of what a public school can and should be,

but at the same point in time, I expect you to have enough intrinsic motivation to know the areas you need to grow in and to go search that out and find that and make that happen. 

Absolutely. And that reminds me of what you speak about in "More Than Just Teachers" And when I think back to, "More Than Just Principals" as well, I'm gonna read another quote from page seven.

You said, "what do all these administrators believe a great principal is made of? What actions do they feel should be mandatory for somebody leading the building? How many of them are actually viewed as effective leaders for their districts? And how many are rock stars changing schools while making a huge difference in their communities?

How many are more than just principals to the students, staff, and the community?" [00:11:00] So my question back onto you, as you also brainstormed your own research questions at the beginning of your text, is what answers did you ultimately come to in terms of what did you find makes one more than just a principal?

More to kids and staff? 

So I talked about in there too, I believe it was during 2020, I listed out about 50 actions that principals have to take that has nothing to do with instruction. Hmm. And within those 50, that's just procedural things, payroll, this, that, the other. Right. But I think in order to be more than just those things, it doesn't talk anything about building relationships, or dressing up as Buddy the elf.

Yes. Or, changing a tire in a parking lot or whatever it might be. In order to be an effective leader in a school, in my opinion, and I wanna emphasize that, my opinion is you have to be willing to do anything that you expect others to [00:12:00] do, or that you would want them to do for you. I often think of Eleanor Roosevelt, don't expect other people to do what you won't do.

So if I'm walking around campus and I see a piece of garbage, I expect myself to pick that up. Sadly, I know there's probably principals out there that would call the custodian to clean up that I don't believe that. It's a team game. It's team game. So when I look at being more than just a principal or you know, the people that are in there, that can be various and assorted things. For example, I quote unquote, am "more than" in the fact that I'm trying to make an impact nationwide through podcast or books or speaking. So would be like Rachel Edoho-Eket. She, she's, she's up there and she's a leader of Maryland's National Association of School Principals. You have those kind of people who are trying to be more than for the profession.

Then you have individuals like Adam Lane who's in there when he was a principal, he tried to be "more than" by [00:13:00] basically giving his high school students a job when they graduated to help them get going in life and to bring them back as part of his community. So "more than" can really be anything, but ultimately it's something that makes your campus or the community better.

And it would be really easy, to sit here and to write evals and to read emails, and just be a principal. It would be really, really easy. But I think when you look at being "more than", you're constantly thinking about the staff, you're constantly thinking about the students, and how can we make their lives better?

And one of the things that I think many of the principals in the book do is they explain how they are "more than", or what they do to be better. There's some that are coaches. That's a "more than", because you don't have to do that. There's just a lot of ways to go above and beyond.

And sadly, when I look at it, I don't know how many principals do that. I think we get, you know, and I don't have the [00:14:00] statistics, nor would I ever be able to, but how many principals are just sitting in their office doing nothing, letting their APs do everything? There's probably quite a few, and that, to me is sad.

Or how many aren't out in front of their building, greeting kids or walking around? Probably quite a few. And I think that has to change greatly. And I hope that anybody that reads this book will be inspired to be "more than" just like the people in it. 

My twin brother and I had a standing joke in high school, as did our peers, that the only time we ever heard our principal's voice on the PA,

was if if there was a schoolwide emergency, that was it. Otherwise it was always an AP. And then in thinking about that, what does accountability mean as a principal and how can the principal who goes on the PA for more than just the school emergency, really foster trust between students, parents, teachers, the communities through this system that many of us, quite frankly, feel is broken and a disservice to those involved in it?

Yeah, and I don't disagree with your statement. I think there's a [00:15:00] lot of broken parts to it. I think for me it's just being visible. Every morning there are, I think, eight people out in front, greeting kids, cheering on, we have music out front trying to create an atmosphere where kids and parents want to be here.

If you just ho hum in today's world, people don't like that. I mean, especially kids. So I think just the main thing I would say is be visible and be out there and try to do things that are engaging or exciting. You don't wanna a stale environment. Kids today cannot handle that.

You're facing YouTube. You're facing Instagram, you're up against TikTok. They don't have the stamina to sit in a sterile environment for 50 minutes or 80 minutes or all day. You have to be visible, you have to give high fives. You have to know the kids. I think also, one of the areas I would differ from a lot of admin is that it pretty much takes an act of Congress for me to suspend you or send you home.

Now, teachers might not like that [00:16:00] sometimes, but I think the walk of shame is much more powerful for certain kids and having to sit there and wonder what your classmates are thinking, and stuff of that nature. As to where other admin I know not very far from here, if you just so much as mess up, you're suspended five days.

And that just is what it is. That doesn't help in my opinion, because the students who are getting suspended, most likely need to be in school and we're just teaching them to basically, let their problems go or get out of there and then you come back, and everything's just a clean slate.

So I differ greatly from that. I think, again, just bringing it back, " more than" principals is knowing your kids, knowing your staff, knowing your campus, and adapting accordingly. You have to have a threshold. Everybody's got a threshold. If you assault a teacher, that's a threshold

many admin are not okay with. And that's understandable. But if a kid drops an F- [00:17:00] bomb, do they really need to be suspended for that? I don't think so. Time and place, young man, time and place. Don't say that at school. You don't say that in church or wherever you might be. Time and place. Again, we don't wanna have a kid miss school because they made a mistake.

They're kids. You find your threshold, and then you do your best to educate them while they're on campus. That's kind of my thing. But again, just "be more." Be more present, be more visible, and be" more than" just what your role and your office kind of entails. 

Thank you so much for that. And in thinking about, again, like the systemic flaws that we see, what are some flaws that leaders observe as well?

Like I think teachers would say that, for example, testing is a major flaw of our system and the bias it gives to some and others. But what are some flaws that principals feel are in the system? And as leaders, what are you attempting to do about it? Or are your hands just as tied as the teachers with that?

So I might, I might, I might turn some people off with this one, but I [00:18:00] really believe that programs or basils things of that nature are a detriment to our students. I am not a fan of a curriculum or a program that has kids go page by page by page. Mm-hmm. Personally, I do not believe every first grade student needs the exact same thing at the exact same time each and every day.

So principals out there, if you're making all of your first grade, teachers do page 42 on Monday, October 10th. You're hurting your kids. You're killing your teachers. Not literally, but you're, you're taking away all of their, well, you're taking away all of their independence and all of their joy and their fun.

See, I'm starting to move my hat 'cause I'm getting frustrated thinking about it. Um, we have to let teachers teach the kids in their class. And when you give them a book or a basil or a math series, I was just thinking about this today. Young Sheldon, [00:19:00] let's say young Sheldon sitting in a second grade classroom.

What do you think's gonna happen if he has to read the basal story on page 42 at a second grade level 

mm-hmm. 

That week, and what if he has to read it three or four times? Like, right. So one of the things that I really like, uh, Shauna AP and I, we wrote a book called Differentiating Differently. We believe that we need to give teachers the most resources possible to differentiate to the highest degree possible.

Yes, there are some lessons that have to be taught whole group, no doubt about it, but we don't need to spend 45 minutes on the whole group. The students who are really bright, they have it after one time. The students who struggle, they need a few more times. What are you doing for that student who's got it the first time?

Are you making them sit there and listen to it more? You're wasting their time. So when you look at a system that's flawed, I really think that's where it starts. I think we as educators or people who are training teachers, [00:20:00] we should do a much better job of teaching them to differentiate for the students in their classroom.

Also, I think one of the flawed systems, for better or worse, I think there's some positives to common core. I really do. I think it makes kids think they have to explain, they have to have number sense really, really well. But I think there's a whole bunch of standards that have nothing to do with life in there.

When you look at it, I know many kids, the school just doesn't work for usually young boys, to be honest. School doesn't work for them. They can't sit for that long. They have to get up. They have to be able to move. I know two young men that struggled in school and then got to high school in a magnet program for aviation, and they're gonna have a pilot's license

before they're 20. We have to find a way to differentiate not only in the classroom, but just for people somehow, that's a big ask, and that would be turning the [00:21:00] Titanic, but I think it starts with differentiating in the classroom to the highest degree possible. Now I can continue on this forever, Joey, but 

Yeah.

Um, now you're gonna, like you've mentioned testing, right? 

Yeah. 

My colleague, Dr. Brad Johnson, vehemently hates standardized testing. Him and I have had many, many conversations about this. He doesn't like it because the testing companies make it so that you miss so many so they can scale it in, and he says it's not standardized because in reality, they're adjusting the standard.

I can understand that. But I think somehow, some way we have to have some kind of assessment. Otherwise, how do we know if kids are growing to a certain degree? So when you say, oh, um, you know, you brought up testing, I don't think we can get rid of that somehow, I think we could dial it in better. But again, that would be turning the Titanic.

So for me, bringing it back kind of full circle, I think we need to [00:22:00] differentiate better. And if we do that, students will, I mean, that's one of the main things we try to do at Tyrone Thompson Elementary School. Students will grow in their own way and that will come through on the assessments in the end.

Absolutely. And I've had conversations with other educators such as Chris Mukiibi, who I'd love to put you in touch with as well. We talk about this idea of the cowboy teacher, where I fully believe in having course standards to be met. Like even now at the college level. I teach 10 university classes.

I'll have my syllabus. By the time you complete this course, you will know objectives A, B, C, D, and E and you will master those by demonstrating this. What really turned me off as a K 12 educator was now having to standardize myself in order to meet those core standards, like you said, because every guess it must've been Wednesday morning.

We would have common planning as educators in our building where all the eighth grade teachers had to look at their lesson for the week and make them be exactly the [00:23:00] same. And Joey couldn't go away and teach Elie Weisel's Holocaust memoir Night by talking about, for example, and they love this, even the college, they love this, the Sneetches by Dr.

Seuss and looking at the star, looking at symbolism, talking about hate and injustice. How does it come to be? Why Elie Wiesel be silent for 20 years before actually writing his text? What does the word silence mean in his stories as well? I couldn't do that because I had to just teach the regular vocab and look at the authors purpose and miss the whole point of human feeling in the Holocaust based memoir, because that's not what my colleagues were doing that week.

You, you hit the nail on the head, right? Your skillset was different than your colleagues. In today's world, which Shauna and I talk about in our book, "Differentiating Differently", it's so easy to have chat gTP differentiate for you. 

Mm-hmm. 

Now it takes time. Differentiation takes time. That's why people don't do it.

It's not that they don't want to, it takes time. [00:24:00] If I got a book and all 25 kids have the book and I can just do that, right? But to actually sit and think about what each student needs or each group of students' needs and then find the resources or make them for that group, that takes time. But ultimately, the ROI on that is so much more.

For example, if you have a basal in kindergarten, or let's go fourth grade. Uh, that's what I taught. And you're reading about mountains in Nevada. Okay, that's boring. But if I can teach you the same standards using a article about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey,

which one do you think they're gonna pay attention to more? And then you play some Taylor music, or you show a video of Travis, you've got them then, right? But if you're gonna show 'em boring pictures of mountains in Nevada, that's really, really hard. And I think we have to give teachers the flexibility to be able to do that.

As long as you're teaching the standards. This is what I say, as long as you're teaching the standards and you're not gonna get me on the news or in jail, or hurt [00:25:00] yourself or hurt anybody, I don't care how you teach it. Why would I? Use your strengths and your passions to teach the standards to these kids Now, I think also going back to the principalship and coming back to control superintendents who may be listening, give your principals the flexibility to be themselves, to run the school the way they want, and the results will follow.

And if they don't. That's where you start your coaching or that's where you start your supervision. But when you try to pigeonhole every principal into this box, that's just a recipe for disaster in my opinion. And I think that's led to a lot of the problems in our profession, is we're trying to just make cookie cutter schools that follow this curriculum because we know it hits the standard.

I'm anti that. 

I think about that quite a bit because at that same kind of streamline there, so very much like the mountains, the first essay I had to give my students for eighth grade in late September, early October, was about volcanoes. And at the time [00:26:00] I was like, I cannot believe I just graduated with my master's degree to sit here and grade 137 essays about volcanoes.

They were bored. I was bored. And I can't tell you what we learned. And I said, what if, go ahead. 

Yeah, no, no, but I was gonna say, what was the main standard you were trying to teach? 

Couldn't even tell you. 

Okay. Now if, if it's, you know, I mean, if you're trying to, if it's just an explanatory. That was 

explanatory.

Argumentation. Yeah. 

Okay. Well give them the topic. Let them choose the topic to explain. 

Exactly. 

Right. And then I'm into it. Why do we care what they're explaining? As long as it's not causing issues. Ah, I can go on forever on this. 

I, I went down to admin and I said, I even wrote up a whole rubric and proposed it to them.

I said, what if I had them do a brief in-house research project? Right. Introduce 'em to our school databases. Show them where the library is, have them think about a passion or a topic that they really want to explore. Ask that curious "what- if" question and have them just look into it, talk about music, I can play Moana's how far you'll [00:27:00] go and thinking about how we can actually use language to change a world.

And they just said it won't be a good idea. They said, first of all, they're not ready for it. And second of all, that's not how i-Ready works. They're very driven into i-Ready. And when they get that state assessment in April or May, it's going to be very standard and ask them all the same questions. So let's practice with that now.

Yeah. I mean, I, and that's, you know, we use iReady here, but again, I think my job is to give them resources so the teachers have the ability to look at that iReady passage to think, no, that's not the one I need right now. Mm-hmm. And go find one. Um, you know, find one that's approved and appropriate.

Again, it comes back to, why do we care? If they can at the end of the assignment, write an explanatory essay, you've done your job. 

Exactly. 'cause that's the standard. We don't have to standardize ourselves as educators to meet that core standard. And you mentioned being pigeonholed as well [00:28:00] at the leadership level across districts and communities because of, for example, superintendents or those that are even above,

and I wonder, because maybe I didn't realize this as much as I thought. Are principals also aligned in the same way that sometimes teachers feel aligned? And are you comfortable giving us some insight on that? And what advice would you have to a first year or starting principal in terms of trying to work through that?

So I think, you know, being in Clark County, which is the fifth largest school district, I think they would like to align us to some degree, which I can accept. 

Mm-hmm. 

I can accept in some ways budget, staffing to some degree. But again, it comes down to control. And, and I think they would like to, this might not be the right word, but, you know, principals that probably need a little bit more help, they'd probably like to have systems in place to help them, but at the same point in time, people that don't need help, there's some great colleagues of mine that you just gotta get [00:29:00] outta their way. And they're gonna do great things.

Mm-hmm. I think there's definitely a desire by some principles to pigeonhole the people into being what they want. Again, bringing it back to control. If I know that you're doing this and you're not deviating from it, I don't have to worry about you causing me any problems of which I might have to then deal with. Rather than, "hey, I trust you,

just make sure you do these four things. I don't care how you do it." I think that just goes a whole different way. You know growing up playing sports, I attribute sports a lot to kind of my mentality. And you might have a play drawn up, but if the defense knows what's coming, you gotta move and, and you gotta figure it out. Again,

here's the concept, how you make the play is up to you. Like, imagine if we told Patrick Mahomes, you cannot scramble. You do, this is all, sorry, football lingo for those people I [00:30:00] apologize. You get to do a three step drop and throw the ball. That's all you do. Three step drop, throw the ball, no scrambling, no improvising, no audibles.

That's what you do. He's not gonna be near as successful because you're not letting him use his talents to make the team successful. Mm-hmm. Guidelines are good. Guidelines are good. Know your guidelines, but let the people work within the guidelines. And that's, that's my thing. I think, again, bring it back,

they would like to keep us tighter, but you'll get greater results if you just let people be themselves a little bit. 

Agreed. I definitely agreed having guidelines to the game, if you will, but I also would assert that nobody knows our students and our communities better than the people serving the front lines to that.

And like our teachers in our classrooms, we know our students, we work with their personalities all the time, and even in your text, you mention the need to constantly adjust because of day-to-day occurrences that happen in the classrooms and [00:31:00] working through that to meet the standards, but doing so in a way that is still open and flexible. 

Every day is an adjustment.

Like I show up and I have my list of things. Mm-hmm. I might get through one, I might get through 20. But every day is an adjustment. You might have a parent that, uh, coming back from break, we might have a parent that comes in and wants me to tell me about a family tragedy or, you know, you have a serious bullying thing that the AP now has to deal with because that's her priority and now I gotta go do this.

Every day is an adjustment. You might have some kids coming back from break that did not have a good break, and they really just need someone to talk to. Okay, well, that's gonna come first before me or what's on my list. Everything is an adjustment and I think being more than just a principal, you're able to do that.

Principals who are gonna stick to their list and this is the way it is, and again, I think that's a struggle for the people under their purview. You have to be able to adjust and adapt in order to make your campus more than a building. 

So then, [00:32:00] what advice would you have for principals working with first year teachers as a way to establish trust? Because I, to read about some of the backstory that Robert and I had in our pre-chat and my first year teaching, there was quite a bit of mistrust between me and my leadership because I was a brand new teacher, and I wanted to be somebody who spoke up for the sake of the students.

And there was a lot of conflict in terms of how they assumed I was carrying out curriculum using this, I guess you can call it touchy feely Social and Emotional Learning, which in 2019 was a little bit ahead of its time. But I had learned it by spending a semester being in Parkland, in the aftermath of Parkland.

So I'm using all the skills that I had gained, they told me that the five finger breathing exercises that took 90 seconds that I took over from the year before, they told me in this new school, that it was a waste of time. That every second that I spent quote unquote chilling was useless. And all these little strategies that I was working to help the headspace of students [00:33:00] was seen as really counterproductive.

And that diminished my credibility for anything else I tried to do as an eighth grade ELA teacher. So what advice would you have for principals in just working with first year teachers who are new but curious and just want to be trusted? 

Well, I think you just hit the, the nail on the head. They want to be trusted, um, but they have to earn it, right?

Yeah. 

You know, so much of it is you can walk into a classroom and you could pretty much tell how things are going. But I think, my advice or with the teachers that are, you know, that are brand new that, that we hire is, I expect you to come with a certain skillset, know how your day's gonna go,

Have resources that you can use, talk to your colleagues, ask questions, for Pete's sakes, don't just sit in your room and drown, ask questions, right? But for me, I think you have to remember that they're brand new. And when you were a brand new teacher, principal, me, uh, I didn't know everything.

I mean, I struggled greatly. And it's a struggle. [00:34:00] There's a great graph that you can find on Google. Which is, uh, basically, um, a year of being a new teacher and you start out 

Ellen Moir Yeah. Anticipation to survival. Yep. 

Yes. You know, I think you have to be realistic that that is the norm of a new teacher's year.

And how you get them through that dip will determine how well they're gonna do in the future. How much they're gonna trust you, how much they're gonna rely on you. If you go in, you know, and the teacher's anticipate I'm gonna change the world, and then by October they're on the slide. Mm-hmm. Because the honeymoon period's over and you just start blasting them or writing them up, or, you know, being in their business all the time, it's not gonna help them per se.

But if you go in and you can identify one area they're struggling in, and that's the one area we're gonna work on right now. And you get that one down and you say, listen, it's hard, it's gonna be hard. Focus on this. Now you get that one down a few [00:35:00] weeks later, you add another one on and you just ease the dip as much as possible.

I think that's really what I try to do with anybody that's new on campus. Some people's dips are way further. Some people take longer to learn that you need to have some kind of structure in place to reward kids in a positive way. Or, you need to have some kind of plan with consequences.

The one that's really, really hard is to teach people that in order to change a behavior, you have to do four positives to one negative. Mm-hmm. 

Yes. 

So, you know, new teachers, they just wanna call out the negative all the time. But if you're not praising the kids, sitting next to them doing the right thing,

you're not getting your ratio up or giving them a model to see from. That's really, really hard. It's hard for new teachers for some reason, to be very specific with praise. They wanna just say, good job. Rather than, oh my goodness, I love how you just [00:36:00] broke down and decomposed that problem. Mm-hmm. The more specific with praise you can be.

So again, I think you're just, as an instructional leader, when I walk into a new teacher's classroom, I'm starting to think what's the one area that we can work on in order to minimize the dip of the first year? That can be many things. It might be something sadly as, uh, you need to show up on time.

Or it could be something that, you know, we have some great first year teachers. Okay. Like they've already got praise down, they've already got this down. We're gonna start to move into differentiation already. But again, going back to being adaptable, you have to adapt to your people. And help them kind of grow in their own ways.

So bringing it back, you know, my advice is just to know that they're not all robots, they're not all built the same, they didn't have the same training, and to go in and try to help them with the basics and what basic that is, is kind of up to you and your observation. 

Absolutely. And I know that one of my other struggles was [00:37:00] that two things.

First of all, I entered in the survival phase. I never had an anticipation phase. I started at survival, but at the same time, I still wanted to get the entire pie in order instantly. I had no patience for slices and chunks and scaffolding with my own learning. I just wanted to get to know the entire process all at once in my first semester.

And those two things really, really tugged against me. Yeah. What would you say for teachers like that? 

You know, and I'd be realistic with them. I had one teacher I remember, you know you do the evaluation. And I'll have them self evaluate and out here in Nevada we give 1, 2, 3, 4.

Mm-hmm. And 

four is the highest. And they ran themselves all fours. And I would say, okay, there's no room 

for growth. 

Yeah. Well I would say, who do you think is the best teacher on campus? And they would tell me someone, I would say, they don't even come close to this. And so when you put it into the perspective of that, you know, you'll get there.

You're not gonna be great for a while. Like the teacher you just named is in year [00:38:00] six, whatever it might be, but I think you have to just get them realistic in the fact that you're gonna be great. It takes time. This job's not easy. If it was easy, we wouldn't have a teacher shortage. And be realistic with them and say, look, this year I want you to get this down and this down and this down. But I think too, you can expect results for sure, the kids should learn. But I think you have to be realistic with your expectations of someone. And just again, differentiating for them, but also reminding them, this is not an easy job. It takes time to be great. 

I think I could have used more patience in that first year because I was told that it takes five years to become an effective teacher,

that sounded like a lifetime, but now that I'm in year eight, year one, didn't feel that long ago. And I wish I had more patience in reflecting upon that. And at the same time, because of what had happened in Parkland the year before. 

Mm-hmm. 

My focus was on what I call Maslow before Bloom. Brian Pearlman.

Mm-hmm. Yep. And [00:39:00] I'll always remember that even in the faculty meeting, we had a K-8 school, the principal had all the K-8 faculty members, November, couple months in, and he said, we all know that Joey from eighth grade is very Maslow over Bloom. Let's use it as a counter example because we don't want to be like that.

Yeah. See 

that would drive me crazy. Everybody can learn something from everybody. And what if hypothetically, at the end of the year, Joey's kids grew much more than Suzy's kids, right? Because he cared about them as humans. 

Mm-hmm. 

Like, and there's a great book by Brad Johnson, again called 212 Room 212

Yeah. 

Um, fabulous read for any new teacher. Fabulous. Because you're gonna go through those, right? And you're gonna learn from other people. But at the same point in time, your journey is your journey. And I think as an admin, you have to accept that to some degree. Again, as long as you are not hurting kids or doing anything [00:40:00] nefarious, right?

But that's all part of growing. I look at it as you had the skillset that is hard to teach some people. Okay? Now I know that you understand that you have to take care of the human first. Let's build on that. Some people just think I need test scores and they can't connect. You had a skillset I think would be very valuable to middle school people.

But, bringing it back, as long as the kids are growing academically. Ultimately that's our test. Right. Ultimately, whether we like it or not, the test scores at the end of the year are what we're judged on. Whether it's here or in Florida or wherever. And I think as a principal, you want to show growth and you want to be successful academically, but at the same point in time, in some cases, if I was a principal at Parkland the year after that happened, I wouldn't care twice about test scores.

I would be all [00:41:00] about making sure that kids feel safe at school. 

Mm-hmm. 

I could care less about academics. I want you to feel safe at school. We'll do the academics within that when we can. But for the young lady that just had a breakdown because she's sitting in a certain room, 

mm-hmm. 

I don't care about your academics.

Right then. So many principals cannot see the forest through the trees. 

Mm-hmm. 

And that's a challenge that I think many had to look in the mirror and understand. 

And I think about, for example, some of our Hollywood tropes. I mean, there is a major Hollywood depiction on administrative resistance, and one of my favorites is the story of Ron Clark.

And Ron Clark founded to the Ron Clark Academy in Georgia. And there is an excellent biopic, I think a TV movie, portrayed by Matthew Perry in 2007, and one of my favorite, I show it every semester of my classes. And in the film, Clark clearly uses this idea of Maslow Over Bloom, and as we've emphasized in this conversation, [00:42:00] relationships- first to get to know his students.

And one of my favorite lines is when he's teaching in this Harlem, it was actually Inner- Harlem Elementary School, where his principal comes in and says to him, I'm gonna keep my job based upon the scores that your students receive, and your kids are at the bottom of the barrel. Can you stop acting like a 12-year-old and help them out?

And Clark is like, oh, I'm sorry. You have your expectations down here? Well mine are up here all the way at the top. And they will succeed, and I will prove you wrong. And these students are actually just outside the office door when this conversation's going on. They're like, what? I'm not gonna pass. What?

What do they mean I'm not gonna pass? They heard the whole thing. And by being present for these students by making house calls, tutoring on weekends, he even goes to one of his students' house, which I thought that was definitely being more than just the teacher, went to her house and cooked her dinner so she could focus on her homework, instead of babysitting her siblings.

I mean, that was above and beyond. We see this whole Maslow over bloom trope proceed, but we also, in addition to that, see a ton of resistance at the leadership [00:43:00] level in these different types of films. So when we talk about how pop culture sees leadership, for example, through Dead Poet Society, the Ron Clark Story, Freedom Writers, Dangerous Minds, Joe Clark, what does pop culture see from Hollywood that is accurate and what needs to be adjusted to correct the image that we know?

Um, so going back to Ron Clark, have you ever been to the Ron Clark Academy? 

That's my dream to go there. 

Okay. I've been there and I send every teacher there and some support staff when I can. I've taken a lot of the stuff from him.

'cause we can learn from everybody's style. Ron has extremely high expectations and he's brutally honest. 

Mm-hmm. 

That's not so much my personality, but I can still learn from him. Right. But what you get, what I tell everybody when they go is I want you to just understand when you walk around the corner, the feeling you get is that everybody's here for kids.

And this is a fun place to be. And I've [00:44:00] really modeled Thompson in a lot of ways after RCA. Because you want it to be a place where kids can go, but they have to grow as well. The difference, respectfully to Ron, is that he's a private school and if a teacher's not cutting it, it's a lot easier to make it happen.

But at the same point in time, those people that work there know what they're signing up for. They know the expectations. And I think bringing it back to your question, Hollywood or you know, the world, they want to view bosses in a bad way. And it doesn't matter, you know, it doesn't matter if it's education or whatever.

Like if you think of, uh, for some reason Beverly Hills Cop popped in there, you know, the Sergeant was me, you know, bad. Like just, you're the, you're the antagonist. And I'm not all bosses need to be that way. I don't believe. So the problem as I see it, is there's not enough promotion of the people who are not like that.

Mm-hmm. And even [00:45:00] Ava Coleman from Abbott Elementary. 

Right. But now it's a fine line. We have a great school here. The kids love being here. Nobody transfers laterally to other elementary schools unless, unless they're making a good business decision for them. 

Mm-hmm. 

Uh, you can read between the lines. But at the same point in time, it's a constant juggling act for me, because I want them to have fun and I want you to enjoy teaching.

But again, there's these rules we have to follow. 

Yeah. 

Or these expectations we have. And bringing it back even further, someone wants someone to blame for their issues or their problems. If a teacher here isn't performing, sadly they'll blame someone or something

rather than looking in the mirror. Again, generalizing greatly, how many educators out there will look in the mirror and think, what could I have done better, rather than this kid was chronically absent, this one didn't have [00:46:00] any good parenting. This one, only cares about sports. Those are factors, a hundred percent.

Those are factors. But how can you adjust to those factors? How can you look at yourself and think, okay, well I know Joey likes to play sports. If Joey gets an A, I'm gonna go play basketball with him for five minutes. 

Mm-hmm. 

Whatever it might be. Right? I think it's just so much easier for Hollywood or for the people to paint bosses or principals as the antagonist, probably because in the past that's how we've been viewed. And, it's a fine line because if you are the protagonist and you're the fun one and you make it fun, people remember that.

But I have a great saying that I got from Church is, a thousand positives times one criticism equals one criticism. Yeah. So for all the good things that you do, if you have to tell a teacher, I don't like that you did that, they're gonna focus on the negative. 

Mm-hmm. 

Again, I think it's just so more [00:47:00] prevalent and prominent to be the antagonist in people's story rather than the protagonist in education. It's not always like that. I mean, I have, you know, education is, a daily balance because my job, is to get you, the teacher, to be outta your comfort zone so you'll grow, but at the same point in time, not too far out, so that you hate me and you want to transfer and you don't like being there. At the same point in time,

you might like me today, but then tomorrow I'm your worst nightmare. 

Mm-hmm. 

And that could be grade levels, that could be departments. But again, it's easy to make me the antagonist because my job really is to be that. Is to push you into your uncomfortable zone, is to make you better, is to make you reflect on the things you did

poorly. Where people might be going wrong is they don't give enough praise to the people throughout the process. 

Yeah. People that push others outta their comfort zones [00:48:00] are normally seen as a threat to the people that they're trying to assist. 

Yeah. If you're not bought into the global mission or you don't trust me that I am just trying to make you better. I'm just trying to make you better.

You know, Michael Jordan in, uh, The Last Dance, his coach was Doug Collins and Doug said, my job is to coach you and coach you hard. That's Michael Jordan! 

Yep. 

But Doug also knew that's how you're gonna make Michael elite. Our job is to coach you and push you into spaces you don't want to do. But at the same point in time,

so, I kind of have a saying too. I got lots of sayings, um, my job's to kind of hold you over the cliff as far as I can before I gotta pull you back so you feel safe. 

Yeah. 

It's a weird dynamic being a principal in today's world. 

And you, you comment on that as well in terms of just like how schools create their own atmosphere.

Something else that you mentioned towards the beginning of your text was, some educators want nothing to do with conflict or drama. Yet within that group, many [00:49:00] do end up causing drama. And when I think about how student climate is just as conducive as teacher climate who lead by example, and then the principals and the administrators who also lead by that example, how can that be managed and mitigated?

It's a challenge. Because, well, we talked about earlier about grit and perseverance, right? 

Yeah. 

And people, one thing I've learned is I can't change your personality. So one of the interview questions I usually will ask is, when was the last time that someone from your school won an award?

And what did you do when they did? Because I need you to celebrate and understand that success for one, is success for the entire school. 

Mm-hmm. 

Sadly, what I think we see in schools, my wife experienced this because she or her teaching partner would win a lot of awards or recognition, and everybody in their grade level would be like, Ugh, another one?

You know, why them? Every year, one of the worst things, [00:50:00] I mean this, I mean this with all. All respects, but one of the worst things I have to do is pick a quote teacher of the year. 

Yeah, 

okay. I'll do it. Because it's a responsibility for the district and that's great that we're celebrating. But what you're ultimately doing is picking 50 losers.

Mm-hmm. 

Okay. And then you're making people feel inferior to this person in some way. How they handle it personally is up to them, but some people cannot handle that. You know, if I pick a teacher of the year that has no kids, does all these things, has nothing taking up their time outside of school,

well, the first thing that all the teachers who have kids are gonna say is, well, I don't have time to do all that. 

Yeah. 

Rather than, Hey, that's great. Congratulations way to maximize your time and your effort and your ability to help the school. A lot of educators cannot see the global top down mission [00:51:00] of a school.

And that's very, very, very frustrating. We have on campus this year we have the Navada State Teacher of the year. She's a music teacher and she's great. She's high energy, she's high octane. A lot of people look at her and think, I can't do things that way. 

Yeah, 

okay, that's great, but let's cheer from the sidelines.

You know, like, that's great. Go out. You go. And so often I think in education, I call it the teeter-totter. You're pushing people down to push yourself up. 

Yes. 

You know, we gotta stop that. We gotta take the escalator or the elevator. We all gotta rise.

But that's hard to do. It's hard for human nature to do that. If someone continually gets awards, and then what happens is if someone gets an award, but you know that they really don't deserve it 'cause they do X, Y, and Z and you know that, but they're just the principal's pet or they're just the person, whatever.

You get into all that drama and all that mean girl or mean guy stuff, and that's [00:52:00] hard to navigate. But I think as a principal you just have to let not let it get too far out. I'm not gonna chase down all the drama. Some people do. Some people they hear something and boom, you're in the office and we're gonna address it now.

I ain't got time for that. If you wanna live in misery out there, fine. If it gets in my office, I'll deal with it. You know, if it becomes a detriment to the school, that's where we gotta take a look. But if you're just a bad human who's causing problems, what's gonna end up happening is the team and the other teachers are going to gravitate away from you, and you're gonna get really, really isolated and basically you're gonna cause your own problems.

So I tend, like Ron Clark, he has a great thing, there's a great YouTube video, runners, walkers, joggers and Riders. I support the joggers and the runners because we're moving. We're going. Mm-hmm. You wanna sit on the bus, and basically slow us down, that's fine. But nobody's gonna sit in the back of the bus with you and talk to you and help you.

We're gonna run and we're [00:53:00] gonna go. If you wanna sit in the back of the bus and cause drama, that's fine. But this group of people, we're gonna move the bus. Stick to the runners, stick to the joggers, get things done, move your business forward, and the drama and the people, they'll kind of take care of themselves.

Amazing advice. Thank you so much for that.

And this has been such an awesome conversation.

Thank you so much, again, for participating in this. Oh, my pleasure. As we come to the end of our dialogue, are there any questions that I haven't asked you today that you wanted to still speak about? Things that you wish we had a chance to converse with earlier or just some general final takeaways for our listeners for today? 

I think that the main purpose of the book or the podcast is just to make a positive impact. We, in education, eat our own all the time. You know, like if you look on social media, there's plenty of negatives out there all the time. You know, one of my favorites is the person that will say, oh, only 92 days till summer vacation.

Mm-hmm. 

Well, you're telling all of the future generations that you hate it so much that [00:54:00] you can't wait for those 92 days to go by. Shauna and I wrote a book. I, I keep plugging myself, but I, I apologize, but, you know, Stop Eating Our Own. Yes. We have to stop eating our own.

When you post something negative about the job, your ripple effect is huge because people are watching to see if they maybe want to be a teacher, and when they see people complaining about it all the time, it deters them. Teaching's a hard job. It's almost mental warfare.

Yeah. Each day. If you let it be that. And I don't think, again, you signed up for it, you know, what you're getting into, I think most of the times. But it doesn't mean you have to be negative about the profession. There's plenty of days when a parent's mad or when an adult is messing up. I'm not gonna go post on TikTok and be like, oh, this adult didn't show up again on time today.

Goodness gracious teachers out there, why can't you do that? Mm-hmm. You know, like we, we've gotta change the mindset. We've gotta change the perspective of our profession, because it is [00:55:00] really an important time to change it for the better. 

Absolutely. I've never seen value in that public shaming that we take place in.

I learned this lesson many years ago, during COVID actually. I was upset because the counselor had to be off campus for a meeting, and this is right coming back from the pandemic when kids needed people on campus. We didn't have subs.

People were being quarantined for 10 days. And I was upset because you're taking someone off campus that I really need on campus, and I always calculate the costs of what I'm doing. 

Mm-hmm. 

And I posted on Twitter during the day, something about taking people off campus right now is a really bad idea.

We need them on campus. And of course that didn't go over well with some people. And that's fine. Everybody is entitled their perspective. But what I learned was is that negatives online just feed more negativity. 

[00:56:00] Yes. 

And you're never gonna change someone's mindset by arguing with them on social media. 

Mm-hmm. 

You're just not. You have to change it with them through actions and celebrations. So we in education have to remember that posting these things online is just detrimental. I think a lot of people do it because everybody likes the negative.

So back in the day, I would get many more likes and hearts for the negatives than I ever were for the positives. And that mindset kind of drives me crazy. 

Mm-hmm. 

We, in education, if you see something positive, like it. Like it, use it, retweet it, repost it. We have to celebrate the good things.

Definitely. And when we talk about celebrating good things, my biggest takeaway from "More Than Just Principals" is knowing that greatness is not a grandeur noun. It is just the act of being physically present while offering the best that we can give each very unique and customized day for the students and [00:57:00] the staff and the community that we serve.

So Robert, thank you so much for being with us today, and we appreciate all your insight here in the Classroom Narratives podcast. 

My pleasure. It was a great conversation. It's amazing how fast an hour and a half can go. Yes. 

Thank you again.