The Instructional Change Agent: 48 Ways to Be the Leader Your School Needs

[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_02:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined today by Dr. Adam Drummond. Adam is the Director of Professional Learning at the International Center for Leadership and Education with a range of K-12 experience as a teacher and principal, Adam's servant leadership and passion for making change in the world have offered him the opportunity to work with students, teachers, and leaders across the country and internationally. And he is the author of the new book, The Instructional Change Agent, 48 Ways to Be the Leader Your School Needs, which we're here to talk about today.

[00:48] Announcer:

And now our feature presentation.

[00:50] SPEAKER_02:

So Adam, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:52] SPEAKER_01:

Thanks, Justin. It's great to be with you today and appreciate the opportunity to speak with your listeners.

[00:56] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I'm very excited to get into the book today because there is so much here and I'm reading my blurb in the intro. The book contains a gift of actionable field tested strategies for staying grounded in what students and teachers need so they can maximize their impact on learning. and hopefully i i got it kind of uh kind of right there kind of summarizing what people get in the book because there is so much here that is just uh fantastic and and practical adam to start things off tell us just a little bit about what you saw happening in the profession and what needs you saw out there that prompted you to write the instructional change agent great question justin so

[01:31] SPEAKER_01:

This has really been in my mind since I started being a principal in the mid-2000s. When I left my principalship program, I felt very academically prepared. And as I moved into a turnaround situation, I really wanted just those resources that were right at your fingertips. And those were hard to find. and wanting to create a solution for school leaders, whether they're brand new, new to a school or a veteran, where they could go to and just really quickly identify what are the struggles they're currently facing and how do I put some strategies in right away to help make a difference. And so that's really where the premise of the book came from.

[02:08]

And as I looked about what does it mean to be an instructional change agent in schools, really honed in on there's really four components that help you be successful. You know, four key areas around culture, instructional planning, learner engagement, and community partnerships. And so as I started working with schools and districts across the country, it really became this mission for myself just to find what are those ways that I'm seeing successful school leaders do and capture those in a way that becomes this ready to go resource for school leaders.

[02:39] SPEAKER_02:

Well, I appreciate that perspective and that kind of awareness that you're giving people and framing it that way, because I think so many people come out of their principal certification programs armed with best practices and ready to implement those best practices and don't really have a sense of how to read the school that they're entering and figure out. the lay of the land so that they can proceed with wisdom. And I'm so glad that you start the book with an examination of culture because we think about morale and some things that may be more visible from the outset. But you say in the book that there is something called a hidden culture in school. What is that?

[03:17] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, great, great question. So when we think about our school cultures that we go into, it's very quickly evident to be able to identify what is the student pulse What does that culture look like? And from the outside, what does that culture have from whether it's a community perspective or whether it's from a parent perspective, but really getting into understanding what is the culture that's happening in your school, not just what's visible, but that hidden culture. So sometimes it's identifying, you know, subgroups of folks who are meeting together and working together for the betterment of the school or maybe not for the betterment of the school and really honing in to find out what are the reasons why people do what they do. And are they really helping culture? Are they hindering culture?

[03:59]

Are they stagnating culture? And so we, as school leaders, we have to really dig in and go beyond just the surface and identify what are some of those hidden cultures that are really maybe jeopardizing the school culture from being as successful as it can be.

[04:14] SPEAKER_02:

So Adam, what are some specific ways that people can investigate that hidden culture? You know, knowing that there are things that are happening beneath the surface, what are, what are some practical strategies there?

[04:23] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, there's really a couple of different ways. And I think one of the most important ways is identifying for yourself who were the leaders in your school. And what are the different roles that they play? And so one of those ways that I put in the book early on is it's called play faculty squares. And what I'm asking you to do is really look at each of your teachers in your school and identify what are the typical faculty members that they may resonate in terms of a persona. So for example, we often have our pleasers, right?

[04:53]

The teachers that are going to do what you want them to do because they want to do the right thing and you've asked them to do it. Those are pretty easy to find. But then there's other folks like your door closers who are gonna sit in a faculty meeting or sit in professional learning, pay attention, listen, and then they're gonna close the door and do what they've always done. And looking and identifying who are those door closers that you can maybe access and talk with them about why they're doing what they're doing. It's looking at who are the pot starters, right? We need to be honest with ourselves that there are some folks who are probably working in our schools that are working against the vision and mission of the school.

[05:27]

identifying who are those folks and how do we start to then interact with them in a particular way and so this way really outlines nine different types of teachers that may be working in your schools and it's not about labeling who they are but it's really about once you know who they are how do I approach them from a leadership perspective in knowing how do I you know isolate those pot stirrers and really try to get at the heart of why are they acting the way that they're acting is it because they've not been heard in the past Is it because their belief system is very different than your belief system? Or is it that they're just frustrated with the teaching environment in which they're in at this moment? And so this is a really important way to not only identify who your folks are, but then more importantly, dig into the why. Why are they really those quiet leaders? Are they the false pleasers? And what is making them tick?

[06:18]

And how do I work with them in a setting so that I can either coach them up or in some cases, unfortunately, coach them out.

[06:25] SPEAKER_02:

Well, I love the simplicity and yet the capturing of the complexity that's represented in that faculty squares grid, because you've got it arranged as a three by three grid with the nine types of faculty members. And of course, this is one of those things that constantly evolves. And we might get new information that causes us to kind of mentally recategorize someone and start to interpret their behavior in a different light. But human behavior is so complicated and can be so overwhelming. that I think when we have those tools at our disposal to kind of just get a quick mental handle on what's really going on, and we can say, you know, why is this person coming to me with this issue? You know, what's their agenda here?

[07:03]

How do I communicate with them? How do I respond to them? I love that tool for just kind of simplifying the very confusing combinations of information that we can get from different staff members.

[07:15] SPEAKER_01:

For sure. And I think, you know, as you look at this tool, It also allows you to be really strategic in how we may implement initiatives or to really change the direction in which a school is operating. And I appreciate the fact that you said, you know, this is a very fluid resource for you because you're absolutely right. Teachers will change roles and categories based on the influence that you have, based on the influence of others. So it's just like we talk about with teachers, right? When we group students for flexible skills, We want to make sure we're constantly looking at the feedback and what we see in students so we can appropriately move them or recategorize them.

[07:54]

It's the same thing for teachers. You know, just because a teacher is a door closer right now doesn't mean three months from now with conversations with you that they don't become one of your rock star teachers that are really leading the pack in some cases. And so I think we need to be really careful of this is a tool for you to identify and then to strategize how do I work with folks to really uncover some of those hidden culture pieces and move your school leaders and your building together as a team.

[08:21] SPEAKER_02:

Let's talk a little bit about the student culture. You have three suggestions for us on getting a sense of and influencing the student culture in your building.

[08:28] SPEAKER_01:

You know, as we think about our student culture, there's really a lot of pieces that we can build around in understanding our students. And so one of the ways that I really encourage folks to spend their time is to, first and foremost, be a student in your school for the day. And that is probably, for me, one of the most rewarding and insightful professional learning opportunities you can have. And it's really simple. You create a professional day where you're not available. You're not available for emails.

[09:00]

You're not available for phone calls. You create that day almost as if you're not in the building and you pull up a school schedule and you follow that student from class period to class period so you can see what it's like to be a student in your own school. I think we have a perception of what we think school feels like and looks like to kids because we all have a small fraction of that piece of the pie. They go from first period to second period to third period and by the end of the third period, three teachers have three different perspectives of what school looks like. That student has one cumulative perspective. And as school leaders, we also have our own perspective.

[09:37]

And I think times we, we forget what it's like to be a student and to really go in and spend the day following a school schedule and watching what are your kids do in terms of learner engagement? Um, are they actively engaged? Are they getting lots of lecture? Are they getting lots of hands on opportunities? and really identify what are the strengths and what are the areas of concerns that you have as a school leader based on that experience.

[10:02] SPEAKER_02:

I love that so much. Really love the perspective taking and just getting a feel for the pace of the school day. I think so much that we miss when we just pop in for a few minutes here or there or sit in on a class for a formal observation. We don't walk with the student from one class to the next and see, okay, how do I get to my locker? Is there time to use the bathroom and go by the water fountain? All those little details that really shape how kids feel, how kids experience school, and then certainly the instructional culture, you know, the expectations, the messages that kids are picking up, just a wealth of research that could be done there, more valuable probably than any study out there that's been done on schools, just to take that student perspective.

[10:46] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. I mean, it's ground-level action research on your own culture for student success. And when we think about what does that look like, you know, imagine having seven different bosses and each boss has different expectations. That's exactly what many of our students face with. They are in a seven period day that they're going from one supervisor to another, and they're having these different expectations put upon them. And then they have to come home and decipher what is it that I'm being held accountable for in each of those classes.

[11:17]

And it's, you know, it's, we have to get rid of that mindset of, oh, I went through that and I did okay. To really what's the most optimal learning environment for our kids. We have so much information right now around neuroscience and how students learn that we didn't have even 20, 10 years ago. And so we have to be really responsive as a school culture on what does that mean? What are the implications for classroom instruction with this body of research that we have now that's available to us? And part of that is spending time in your classrooms, not for the sake of accountability for observations and walkthroughs like you mentioned, but really in the heart and sake of I'm doing this for my students and I want my students to be successful and I need to see what they're experiencing every day.

[11:58] SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. And I think that's a great segue into the instructional culture and looking at the instructional practices that are in place, whether someone is maybe moving into a new school or maybe becoming the principal of the school where they already worked. Taking a deep look at instructional practice, going beyond the, what does it feel like to work here as an adult, as an employee? What does it really look like when we start to examine the instruction that's in place? I think that can be eye-opening as well. So in terms of some lenses for viewing instruction and kind of getting a sense of what teaching is looking like across the school, what are some strategies that you recommend for leaders who are coming into a new role?

[12:42] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think whether you're coming into that new role or you've been there for a few years, one of the ways that we need to identify how our instructional practices are happening is, again, talking with our students. And so one of the ways that I share with school leaders to really get into the nitty gritty of instruction is when you go in and you're in classrooms, whether they're five minutes or 25 minutes, is to talk with our students and ask them three simple questions. What are you learning? How do you know when you know it? And how does your teacher know you know it? And those three questions will tell you everything you need to know about instructional practices and planning that's happening in a classroom.

[13:24]

If a student can't tell you what they're learning, then the teacher has missed the mark in their delivery of instruction. They need to be able to tell them the why, the relevance of why this content's important. And kids need to be able to say, I know this content when I can do X or when I can demonstrate this, I know I'm meeting the expectations of my teachers. You know, so often we just, um, as we look at instruction, we really focus in on what the teacher is doing and we will often forget that the reality and reason for that instruction is really the student performance and how are our students performing. And so if we can take a different lens when we go into classrooms and really focus in on how are our students responding to instruction, we will start to plan very differently. And so those three questions, they're outlined in way 18 of the book, will transform how you interact in classrooms as a school leader.

[14:16]

And then in turn gives you great conversation to talk about with the teachers, whether it's before they teach and you're actually in an instructional planning session with them around their lesson design, Or it's an after the fact and say, hey, I have a few talking points I'd like to share with you about what I saw today. Let's set up five minutes, 10 minutes just to talk about what I heard from students and how does that now impact how you plan differently.

[14:38] SPEAKER_02:

And again, those questions were, was it, what are you learning?

[14:41] SPEAKER_01:

What are you learning? How do you know when you know it? How does your teacher know you know it?

[14:46] SPEAKER_02:

Because if students can't answer those questions, then it's going to be very hard for them to self-monitor and figure out how to succeed, isn't it?

[14:53] SPEAKER_01:

Oh, absolutely. And these questions are not secret, right? You need to share these with your teachers in a professional learning session when you talk about instruction and say, these are questions that I'm going to be asking students. I want you to ask students these questions. You want to be open and transparent with students and share, you know, when I come in and observe in classrooms or I'm walking through as a school leader, I'm part of the fabric of your classroom. You know, me walking in shouldn't stop instruction.

[15:18]

Um, and everybody turns and looks at the school leaders and right. You need to be in classrooms often enough that you're just another learner in that community. And so that when you go up and talk with students, they know that these are the type of questions they're asking. that you're going to ask them and that they're going to work on responding in a way that helps demonstrate their acuity to that information.

[15:39] SPEAKER_02:

And I think for anybody who's trying something new like that, maybe for the first time, there is going to be a little bit of discomfort the first time, you know, it is going to be a little bit awkward. But I love what you said about just like getting people used to that, getting students used to the idea that this is something you're interested in, this is something you're going to ask about. Once you're over that, you know, that initial hump, once you've broken that ice, it gets just incredibly interesting, doesn't it?

[16:01] SPEAKER_01:

It really does. And students become more in tune to their learning, too. You know, if they know that their teachers are expecting them to be able to communicate their learning in that way and that your school leader is expecting that, it really changes the conversation that you're having with kids about learning and about instruction.

[16:18] SPEAKER_02:

Well, let's talk a little bit more about getting into the details of teaching and learning with teachers. When it comes to our work with teachers, obviously I think we share a strong belief in the importance of getting into classrooms regularly. When it comes to other opportunities to interact with teachers, maybe when they're working together in teams, what are some of the highlights that you focus on in the book?

[16:42] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, great question. So one of the pieces that I really focus in with school leaders and it's way 16 in the book if you do have that but it's really about planning with the end in mind and and rolling your sleeves up as a school leader and working alongside your teachers to really help them backwards plan instruction. And whether it, you know, you've seen it, whether it's an understanding by design or you're doing pre and post assessments and you're utilizing that data to drive instruction, it's really about changing the mindset of teachers thinking that I'm not teaching, you know, day to day or week to week, but I really do have a common goal. And at the end of that goal, this is what I want students to be able to do. And then I'm going to backwards plan how do I make that happen for teachers so that they can be successful, so that the students can be successful. And one of the pieces that I highly recommend, whether you're in an elementary school and you're working in grade levels or you're working in departments, is to really structure a half day of professional learning for teachers, whether it's once a quarter, once a semester, however you want to start.

[17:43]

And it's really about instructional planning. And so you're spending that half day with teachers. and as i mentioned rolling your sleeves up and working alongside them and asking questions around their teaching and learning processes and practices and really asking them to dig deeply into how are they delivering instruction it's one thing to know your content but it's another to determine how am i going to deliver that in a way that helps students be challenged through rigor and building in that relevance for them to be able to see why they need to learn this content and i think sometimes school leaders feel like especially at the secondary level, you know, if they, if their background in teaching and learning was math and they're now a high school principal that they don't have necessarily the value to add to a language arts team or to a social studies team or to a related arts team. And what we know is that great strategies are great strategies.

[18:36]

You know, John Hattie talks about his high yield strategies and making sure that these are the ones that we see will help students be successful. And so how do we as school leaders take those strategies that we see are highly effective and share those with with with our teachers, regardless of discipline? And so I think it's important that as school leaders, we spend that time in instructional planning with teachers. You get to see them in a different lens. And quite frankly, a lot of our evaluation tools, if we need to go there, show that that first component is often around planning of instruction. And we don't get to see that a lot unless we formalize that for our school leaders and teachers to collaborate together.

[19:18] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, planning has been one of those things, like it doesn't seem glamorous. It doesn't seem like a, you know, an earth shattering use of time. But I mean, how much of student success can we directly attribute to the quality of planning that teachers do, right? Like as an investment, I mean, just a huge payoff.

[19:37] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And, you know, if I were superintendent of the world, you know, I always say that I would rather spend and change it so that I'm not spending 45 minutes doing an evaluation watching instruction, but that I'm spending 45 minutes on the beginning end of instruction before it's even been delivered. I think that that's a proactive way in which we can give feedback to teachers, you know, as opposed to a lot of the laws we have across the country right now around evaluations and walkthroughs that we're spending time in classrooms as we watch instruction. And not that there isn't a place for that, but I think we put so much emphasis there and it's after the fact. It's almost too late. If I'm going to coach a teacher, I want to be able to coach them on the front end as their planning instruction as opposed to, well, this is what I just saw.

[20:21]

So the next time you do this, you might consider X, Y, or Z.

[20:25] SPEAKER_02:

And I'm also struck by the importance of curriculum and how the choices that teachers are making often are driven invisibly to us by the curriculum that they're using. And I recall many conversations that I'd have with teachers where I would say, so tell me about why you did this, why you included that in the lesson. And it was always a little bit embarrassing to hear back the answer. Well, that's what our curriculum is. says. Of course I'm doing that, Justin.

[20:51]

I'm using the adopted curriculum. So just building my own understanding of what the curriculum was like, what its strengths and weaknesses were, where we maybe needed to deviate from that curriculum in order to meet our students' needs. That was huge learning for me. And it was something that teachers were immediately able to point out to me, like, hey, this is you know, this is a problem with the curriculum or this is where the curriculum is strong, but it's difficult to teach this particular part. And as a source of information for me for making school-wide decisions, I just found that incredibly valuable.

[21:25] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. You know, we take the standards that we have and then we overlay a textbook resource that is aligned and meets the needs of those standards. But what we have to often remember is that teacher feedback and that teacher observation. You know, the textbook resources, which there's great ones out there that are very valuable, but they're written for the masses. They're not written for the 25 kids necessarily that may be in your classroom makeup of your students. And so we need to make sure that we're giving teachers that flexibility and freedom of still planning instruction and bringing those resources in like those textbook resources that are powerful, but then being able to have that flexibility to supplement when we need to supplement to ensure that we're really helping build the schema of our students and close some of those gaps that may exist or extend some if we have high ability students that already know

[22:16]

a particular concept or topic, being able to pull in a different resource to extend their learning and thinking.

[22:21] SPEAKER_02:

So Adam, earlier we were talking about some of your experience as a kind of turnaround principal. And I know a lot of administrators find themselves in a situation where good things are happening in their school, they're proud of the work, their faculty is doing to improve, but there are still perceptions in the community and challenges with the school's reputation in the community and really a need for instructional leaders to kind of cast a vision with parents, with the public, build trust, and convey a sense of momentum. What are some of your strategies in the instructional change agent for engaging the community and really putting the word out in the community?

[23:00] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's a really great question. You know, I think It's especially important right now with the state of education that we're in across the country that there is a feeling that a lot of our public school educators feel like they're under attacked or they're being micromanaged. And so there is this perception of school versus what is the reality that's happening in the school. And one of the things that I found very, very quickly as a turnaround leader was that I had great things happening in the school that I didn't have anything to do with. There was already good things that were happening, but what we failed to do was to market and publicize those great things that were happening, right? We have let ourselves become accountable and defined by the state assessment And while that state assessment has some merit into the grand scheme of how a school performs, there's so many other things that come into that play.

[23:54]

And so we have to be the ones who are writing the press releases and sending out the images and having an active social media account to be able to share the whole story for our school and really help create a different expectation when the community thinks about our school. And so one of those ways is really, quite frankly, is to put emphasis and time and be in your public relations coordinator for your school. And when you see great things happening, writing up that press release, sending it to your newspaper or putting it out on social media and ensuring that families are going there and seeing those great things that are happening. We have to be our own storyteller because if we don't write that story, somebody else is, and they're using it with very limited information, AKA accountability scores. And so, you know, as a school leader, it was really important to me that my school community, not only the parents and families that we served, but the larger community saw the amazing things that were happening and the transformations that were occurring in the school.

[24:54]

And so as we continue to develop those relationships, one of the other pieces that I think is important that I talk about in the book is getting involved beyond your own school. And trust me, school leaders, just like teachers are incredibly busy working 60 to 70 hours a week. But I do believe there is a certain element of the school leadership that requires you to be out in the community and working on behalf of your school. And so that may mean joining an organization or two that is one that you're passionate about and one that is important to you. So, for example, when I was a school principal, I had a large amount of students that took advantage of the Boys and Girls Club here in our community. And so when the opportunity presented itself, I joined the board of directors.

[25:38]

Um, I did that for two reasons. One, I believed in the mission of the boys and girls club and the work that was happening, but two, I wanted to be able to now have an additional 20 members who I worked alongside on a board to hear about my school, hear about the great things that were happening, develop those partnerships. So when I needed something that I wanted to implement in my school that I didn't have the funding for, I had another set of resources, or if I wanted volunteers, I could ask those folks to also say, hey, I have this great event coming up. I'm looking for a couple hours. Do you know of anybody? And so we have to be able to put ourselves outside of the four walls of our school, because if we're not telling our story, somebody else is.

[26:14] SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. Absolutely. That, you know, if there's a vacuum of information about the school, then yeah, absolutely. People fill that in with whatever's available, including assumptions, if nothing is available.

[26:25] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And perception is reality. And if we don't change the perception of families and parents and community members, then that is their given reality. And so we need to make sure that they're getting an accurate reality from what we all see in our schools that are happening every single day.

[26:40] SPEAKER_02:

Well, I'm noticing that we've both been on Twitter for the better part of a decade, and I'm thinking about that role of communicating, of being out in the community, of telling the stories from within the school so that the larger community is aware of what's going on and the great things that are happening. And so much of how we do that these days was not taught to us when we were in school, when we were getting our initial principal certification. So it's great to see people figuring out how to do that. But one of the things I really appreciate about your book, Adam, is that you have such actionable strategies that people don't have to invent everything on their own. People can just flip to, say, section four of your book where you talk about...

[27:25]

influencing the community perception and getting feedback from families and bringing families into the school to get a sense of what things are really like. Those strategies are just so ready to go. And I wonder if we might close by talking about some ways that you envision both individual school administrators and districts, people who are at the district level who supervise principals and want to support their principals in being successful, how you envision them using this book.

[27:54] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's a great question. I appreciate you asking that. So, you know, I've already had the opportunity to go out and work with school districts and a large scope and a small scope and individual school leaders as well. And what I know in the research that I've done and seen through working with schools and districts across the country, school leaders are craving for that ready to use resource that you just mentioned and talked about. And so one of the ways that I was really, um, diligent in the book is if there was a resource or something that i talked about making sure that the reader had a copy of that right whether it's in the back of the book or it's a digital file and so there is a companion website that goes with the book where you can download all of the resources that i talk about in a pdf or in a word doc if you want to revise it and make it your own so to speak and so when i work with school districts and school leaders it's really about how do i help ensure that your school leader is really being an instructional change agent and

[28:52]

We can focus on culture as a leader or we can focus on instruction or maybe learner engagement is a concern for us or like we just talked about with community partnerships. But a true instructional change agent is operating at high levels of efficacy in all four of those areas. And so when I work with schools and districts, it's first about how do we identify what are the strengths and challenges that you have as a district? And then as we look at our leadership, what is it that can be specifically helpful to them? So, for example, I worked with a school district in West Virginia and partnered with them prior to my arrival of the school and had them really give their school leaders a quick assessment around which of these areas is the most concerning to you or where you need the most support. And then that's where we focus our time.

[29:38]

This book can be read, you know, cover to cover, or I can jump into just the instructional planning piece. And so we can build that out. You know, I'm going to a school district here in the beginning of December and working with all of their assistant principals. And the whole premise behind working with their assistant principals is they have not had enough opportunity to be in that instructional leadership capacity. And can you give us some ways in which they can start to you know, become more familiar with that and take some leadership on. And I worked with another district who is doing a, literally a chapter by chapter book study and they wanted to do a Twitter chat, um, with me.

[30:14]

And so we, we scheduled a Twitter chat where we talked about some challenges that they're currently facing. And so this book is a, has a lot of different entry points for folks. Um, it can be our own individual resource that I'm using as a principal in my own school, or if I'm an assistant superintendent or a superintendent and I really want to have a book study, I can build that out. And for districts that are doing book studies, I do have a companion study guide that goes with the book so that they have a resource in which they can be successful as well.

[30:42] SPEAKER_02:

I love that. And just the range of strategies. Of course, the book is The Instructional Change Agent, 48 Ways to Be the Leader Your School Needs. So I'm thinking about a district or perhaps a principal preparation program that says, pick what solves the problem for you, pick what meets a need in your school, try it, and then report back. And you could do a gallery walk. You could share examples of how that strategy went when it was used in your school.

[31:10]

But I think what it comes down to in every case is that as leaders, we need to gather information. We need to get a sense of what we're dealing with. Leaders, to make decisions, whether it's about instruction, whether it's about operations, whether it's about culture, we need firsthand information. And of course, again, we definitely share the perspective that getting into classrooms is central to that. But I just love the practical and specific strategies you share for getting that information and then being able to act accordingly to make the decisions that we need to make to bring about improvement.

[31:43] SPEAKER_01:

Thanks. I appreciate that. You know, that was really the ultimate goal is that as folks picked up this book, that they found something that was going to create an immediate success for them. And even the structure of the book gives them the how, the what, what do you do if this isn't working? Or what do I do next now that I've implemented this? And it really, I wanted to be just ready to go resource that could help make the lives of school leaders just a little bit easier.

[32:09] SPEAKER_02:

So the book is The Instructional Change Agent, 48 Ways to Be the Leader Your School Needs. So Adam, if people want to follow you on Twitter or find you on the web or get in touch with you, what are some of the best places for them to do that?

[32:21] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so Twitter, I'm on there as Adam D Drummond. And so you can certainly find me there. I also work for the International Center for Leadership and Education. It's leadered.com. And so there's resources there and ways to connect as well.

[32:39]

So those are two of the easiest ways. I'm also on LinkedIn. And you can find me underneath my name, Adam D. Drummond.

[32:46] SPEAKER_02:

Well, thanks so much. Great to speak with you today.

[32:48] SPEAKER_01:

Great. Thanks, Justin. Have a great day.

[32:49] Announcer:

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