Rigor & Assessment in the Classroom

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Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

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Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center and Champion of High Performance Instructional Leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.

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I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome back to the podcast, Dr. Barbara Blackburn. Dr. Blackburn is the author of 18 books and a full-time consultant who works with schools around the world to help raise the level of rigor and motivation for professional educators and students alike. Dr. Blackburn has been named to the top 30 education gurus by Global Gurus for three years running now.

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And she's the author of the new book, Advocacy A to Z, which we're here to talk about today.

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And now, our feature presentation.

[00:48] SPEAKER_01:

Dr. Blackburn, welcome back to Principal Center Radio.

[00:50] SPEAKER_02:

Oh, I'm so excited to be here, particularly to talk about this book, because you said I had 18 books. It's always hard to pick a favorite, but this one is close, and I'm going to tell you why. I co-authored this with Ron Williamson. We always write leadership books together, but the lead author on this book is my dad, Robert Blackburn. So it's the first time I've ever written with my dad.

[01:14] SPEAKER_01:

Wow, what an experience.

[01:16] SPEAKER_02:

Yes, he's an expert in advocacy, has done that all his life. in the area of health education. And so when I wanted to write the book, I was like, we can take his expertise, apply it to schools, and it'll be a fabulous book for leaders.

[01:30] SPEAKER_01:

I love it. And I understand he was involved with the smoke-free schools movement in North Carolina. Is that right?

[01:35] SPEAKER_02:

He was. He was one of the folks who made that happen in North Carolina. Because prior to that, of course, North Carolina is a tobacco state, and you could smoke in schools, particularly high schools. So He was one of the folks the governor appointed to a task force, and they made that happen.

[01:50] SPEAKER_01:

Well, it's interesting to think about advocacy as one of those responsibilities of leaders because it's something that we always hear that we're supposed to do in our leadership training, that we're supposed to advocate for students and advocate for funding and advocate for equity and things like that. But in practice, it's tricky to advocate because there is, you know, sometimes a political nature or aspect to advocacy. We've got to be careful whose toes we step on. And it's not something that often we're taught how to do. So I'm very excited about this book and to read your recommendations about how principals can advocate. So what do you see as our fundamental responsibility?

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Why is advocacy something that we should be thinking about as educational leaders?

[02:31] SPEAKER_02:

Well, I think advocacy is something we do whether we want to or not. If you really look at what it is, you are promoting your perspective of an issue or a decision. And if your school board wants to shift the start time of schools to allow high school students to sleep later, if you don't advocate for a position, you're basically defaulting that issue to someone else. And you're saying, I don't care, which is in itself a position. So you're an advocate no matter what. It is part of your job.

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Now, I would say there is a difference between advocacy and political aspects such as lobbying. So lobbying can be a part of advocacy, but advocacy is so much more than that. Advocacy is a teacher sitting down with a parent who doesn't understand what their special needs child needs and advocating for what needs to happen in that classroom to that child. That's advocacy. And that has nothing to do with politics.

[03:45] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Kids need us to advocate for them regardless of the political issue of the moment. And I love your comment that we, you know, we can't not take a position on an issue. We can either do nothing and that is taking a position or we can advocate for something to change, for something to happen. Let's distinguish, if we could, then between advocacy and lobbying, because in some cases, you know, there is a lobbyist on behalf of our profession, you know, maybe the state principals association employs a lobbyist, or the director is kind of seen as primarily a lobbyist. And that's seen as kind of separate from what we do at the school level.

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So how do you distinguish that relationship between advocacy and lobbying?

[04:22] SPEAKER_02:

So when you're really doing lobbying, you are focusing on legislation. You are focusing on wanting some level of government, whether that is local, state, or national, to change some kind of law. It may be something that is restricted in terms of budget. Like for an association, there's a limit to how much they can spend on lobbying. So lobbying is always restricted. It is one aspect of advocacy, but it is more about petitioning and influencing legislators and government officials.

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So it is very focused on the political piece. Now, advocacy. is focused on educating anyone, whether it is a child, an adult, a board member, a business partner, or perhaps a legislator. But it's about educating anyone about an issue. And there's not a limit because you're not caught up in the laws, the legal aspects of lobbying. And everything you do is not aimed at changing a law.

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What it's aimed at is just having some influence on the issue. And usually you've got multiple stakeholders. So if let's say that I am trying to get a business partnership where local businesses provide employees time off to come in and do mentoring of my African-American students. In order to make that happen, I've got to really influence a lot of different people's issues. First, I've got to get my internal stakeholders on board. I've got to get my teachers on board with it.

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I've to some degree got to get the students. I've definitely got to get their families on board that they don't feel like they're isolated. I've got to make sure that the rest of my leadership team is on board with this kind of an approach. I've got to make sure my district office isn't going to do anything to undercut me. So they've got to be on board. And then the school board probably has to be on board also.

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then I've got to get the businesses on board. I've got to get them to buy into the idea that this is important, that this is going to help them as businesses, and that it is worthwhile for them to allow their workers to take some time to be in the schools. So advocacy is so much broader than the state is looking at putting in a law that says companies have the option of giving people time off to work with schools. And then I'm just totally focused on working on that law. Does that make sense?

[07:02] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I appreciate the idea that there's not really a limit on our advocacy, that it's kind of something we can do all the time as we build relationships, as we advocate for certain things to happen. And then lobbying being a more tailored activity around specific legislation, working specifically with legislators. So thank you.

[07:19] SPEAKER_02:

And advocacy should really be just a natural part of what we do. If I'm a principal and I am walking around the school, it doesn't matter if I'm going to do an observation or if I'm just going down to say hello to somebody or if I'm going down to find a student. I'm just naturally observing what's going on in the school. And advocacy is that because advocacy is that everywhere you go, no matter what you do, you're sharing your perspective. And that is advocacy.

[07:47] SPEAKER_01:

Well, thinking about that constant need to advocate and to put the word out, I'm thinking about the role of the principal in particular and the role of superintendents and other leaders in putting out good news about the school, about the district. My friend Will Parker, author of Messaging Matters, makes the point that by default, the information that the news media is interested in is mostly negative. You know, people respond to negative news. So by default, that's what they're going to get unless we are very, very intentional about feeding them good news about what's going on in the school. So I wonder if we could talk a bit about PR and about an approach to putting out positive information, being attuned to positive information so that that's what people notice coming out of our school district. What are your thoughts on the PR aspect of advocacy?

[08:41] SPEAKER_02:

I think PR is a challenge, particularly in today's media saturated society. And I think it's a couple of reasons. I think the focus on negativity, but the fact that everything's immediate and sometimes a message gets out there before you have time to get your message out. So I think PR is a challenge. And, you know, let me say before we really go into this, that you're always need to be focused on sharing your message. So even if you're just having a conversation with a school board member, you need to have a clear message.

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With PR, you've got a more focused plan of exactly what you're going to do. And you need to have a plan. If you don't have a plan, you need to figure out when you're going to do that in the next couple of weeks. Because if you don't have a plan, there's no way that you're going to do anything other than whatever the media wants you to do. You're sort of tossed to the wind. So you do need to say, OK, this is what I want to accomplish.

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You know, I want the community to understand that. that we are student-focused, that we care about academics, that we care about the whole child. Whatever your issues are, you want to define those. And then you want to make sure you've got a plan for sharing those. So that, for example, let's say that one of my students won the spelling bee. And we're doing an interview about the spelling bee, and we're all excited about that.

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And I'm not going to take away from that. But at the end, I'm probably going to say, if I can make it work, is, You know what? We are so proud that Darrell won the spelling bee. But I also want you to know that we care about all aspects of our students. And Darrell also plays the drums for the band. And so he's more than just the spelling bee.

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And so you see how that gets my message about the whole child across. But if I don't plan for that, it's not going to happen. So I really do have to figure out what my message is going to be. and always have examples in my pocket. Now, the other thing I'm going to do is network with whoever is considered my local media. That could be TV station.

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That could be a print newspaper. That could be an online newspaper. Frankly, that could be a mommy blog that's very popular. You know, so I'm going to network with those people and build a relationship with them, because if I build a relationship, it's harder for them just to always be slamming me with the negative. because they know who I am. I'm going to invite them in the school.

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I'm going to want them to be a part of what we're doing so they feel like they're a partner. And then I want to feed them information. You know, again, depending on the media source, they're always on deadline and they're always looking for good content. And so they may not use it every time, but if I can provide them good content, not just here's what we're doing right. I could provide content such as five tips for balancing, helping your child balance technology at home. And then at the bottom, we write about something we're doing in the school.

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And so I'm giving them content that they value, but I'm also promoting us in a positive manner. And so by providing the content where I can, again, I'm building up a reputation as an influencer, as someone who is very positive, and as someone who can help them do their job.

[12:07] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I love that focus on providing content, and they may not use that content right away, but it's a solution to a problem that they routinely have of needing to fill space, needing to have a story to publish. And if that's a positive story, that's fabulous. And I wanted to go back to something that you said at the beginning of talking about PR, which is this idea of having goals. And it's easy to gloss over the importance of that, but I think if we're honest about what our goals are, sometimes, or if we were to kind of pull people nationally and say, what are your goals for PR, you know, by default, our goals are, you know, don't be crucified in the media, you know, don't have a scandal, their negativity avoidance goals, rather than messaging, you know, positive messaging goals. So I really appreciate your statement there that we do need to have a message that we need to stick with, you know, something that we are proactively trying to communicate.

[12:56] SPEAKER_02:

And that's also true, Justin. Let's just say that you've got an interview. Somebody is coming to the schools and they're doing five minutes with you on the shooting in Parkland. So now they're coming to your school to interview you about whether or not you think teachers should have guns. You need to plan out what you're going to say, because if you get up there and try to do that on the fly, That's not going to work. And what's going to happen is you're going to talk for three minutes.

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They're going to find that one little sound bite that sounds really good. And that's what they're going to go with. And that may not represent how you're feeling at all. So you need to plan at least have an outline going into everything. any media contact at all, you've got to have an idea of what you're going to say. And hopefully you've had a chance to prepare and practice.

[13:43] SPEAKER_01:

Well, let's segue then into social media because you were talking about mommy blogs and how the influencers in your community may not be a traditional print newspaper. You know, in a lot of communities, we don't have traditional newspapers or traditional media. to the same extent anymore. And social media is increasingly how people communicate, how people get their news, how people spread news. So let's talk about advocacy through social media. What are some of our starting points for being effective advocates for our schools when it comes to social media?

[14:12] SPEAKER_02:

Well, I think the first thing is you've got to consider why it's important to even use social media for your advocacy efforts. And I certainly talk to people who say, you know, we don't have time for that. We've got our school website. People can come there. Yeah, that's just not how today's world works anymore. And social media also does some things differently.

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For example, it really does build relationships. People view their time on Facebook or Twitter as building a relationship with you. And they feel like it's about them, not as much about you. And with a website, certainly there's important information there, but it's just very cold and people feel like I just come there to get information. So with social media, it's an opportunity for you to communicate, which is particularly important in case there is some kind of crisis situation that comes up. For example, one of the reasons to pay attention to social media is they're already talking about the schools.

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It's the old fashioned people go to the baseball game and they sit down there and talk about what's going on with teachers. Social media is the new baseball field with that. And if they aren't happy about something and it can be as simple as, you know, Maria's mother thinks that her teacher is meaner than Marissa's teacher. And, you know, they're talking about that. That's getting out there. And so whatever you want to do to highlight your school, doing it on social media is really important because a lot of parents and family members are reading social media much more so than the traditional forms of media and certainly more than going to your website.

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And so you want to build that atmosphere so that they feel like you're a part of what's going on. So then instead of just complaining about something, maybe they will ask you something.

[15:59] SPEAKER_01:

And I think one of the really nice things about social media, especially Twitter and Facebook, if we're able to use student photos, you know, is people love to see themselves represented. And I think attitudes about this are changing very quickly. You know, a few years ago, everyone was paranoid. that we couldn't possibly photograph anybody or anything and put it online. And I've just been amazed at how fast that's turned. Obviously, there are kids that we still need to be careful with who have confidentiality requirements in place for very good reasons or for their own preferences.

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But By and large, this is a landscape that has changed and it's what we need to do. We need to get the word out. We need to get the visuals out about what's happening in our schools so that people have that empathy. I really think what we're doing through that kind of advocacy is we're recruiting more advocates in our community so that we're not the only ones, right?

[16:52] SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. And that's the goal of advocacy is to build more advocates for your position. You want to get other people to do things so that you're not having to do all the work. So, for example, with Twitter, I was looking, we have a list of 11 ways your schools can use Twitter. And this is just a starter list, but it's tweeting photos and bios of new teachers. Well, I sure would throughout the year do that for all teachers.

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Sharing information about new programs, posting sports scores and results, sharing the daily lunch menu, posting changes to the schedule, announcing upcoming meetings, sharing information about the programs. Tweeting a school photo a day. I mean, that's not even all of them. But, you know, if I can get every teacher to tweet one time a day about something going on in their classroom, boy, I've got a very active Twitter feed. And what happens is the message gets out that this is a school that has a lot of positive things going on.

[17:45] SPEAKER_01:

Well, one of the things, Barbara, that I think is so powerful about social media and about building that goodwill and building those relationships is that they're there before we need something. I was thinking about a bond issue or a levy or a kind of a tax hike kind of issue that schools are often putting before their communities for a vote. And When a community is being asked to pay more taxes to support the school or to support the teachers or to support students, whatever, it strikes me that the time to have built those relationships is before the ask is being made. And I'm thinking about some challenges that we faced recently. locally around raising money for schools to increase teacher salaries. And of course, you always have people saying, well, I'm not getting a raise.

[18:29]

Why should teachers get a raise and things like that? So putting together some of the big ideas from advocacy A to Z, what advice do you have for school leaders, superintendents, principals who maybe are not trying to get a bond levy passed right now, but are thinking toward their next step? vote and thinking, how can we build relationships? How can we advocate so that when that bond issue does come up, people aren't just thinking, well, I don't want to pay more taxes. They're thinking about our kids. They're thinking about the positives that we've been sharing.

[19:01]

Let's put some of these things together. What can we do to advocate with a view toward eventually gaining more support from our community?

[19:07] SPEAKER_02:

Justin, I think that's a great question because it is a real critical issue. Most of the time when we start looking at funding, people get all caught up in, How does it affect me in terms of my money versus focusing on what it's going to do? And one of the things that this reminds me of, because you were talking about making sure, you know, that we're sort of investing ahead of time. I have a friend and he actually uses this to talk about parent relationships. But I think it's very true in this situation. He says that when you want something, it's like a bank.

[19:41]

You need to make a deposit before you make a withdrawal. And I think sometimes we want to make the withdrawal. We just expect people to trust us and give us what we want. And it's not that they don't necessarily trust us, but they don't have enough buy-in. So we've really got to build that. And it does mean having a very positive profile in the community just from a general standpoint so that people feel like you've got a good school.

[20:10]

People feel like they're happy that their kids go there. I know that one of the things that comes up sometimes that is just enormously frustrating is you've got a really good school that's doing a lot of great things. But on the state report card, because of a standardized test, maybe they get labeled, you know, a C or D or I've even been in schools that were labeled failing and. You know, that doesn't mean they didn't need improvements, but they certainly were not awful schools. And if you talk to the parents and the kids, they loved the school. So in that kind of a situation, you've got to really make sure you're highlighting the positives, because if you don't, you get a year down the road and there's a levy and people are going to go, no, no, no.

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Remember, that's a failing school. We don't want to support that. So you've got to make sure that overall you keep up a focus on what's happening positively in your school. So that just needs to go all the time. Now, part of that is you've got to make sure that everybody who's involved in the school is doing that. So your parents, you want to make sure that they're saying positive things.

[21:15]

And it doesn't mean that they're not going to grumble every once in a while about something, but you generally want them saying positive things about the school. And I really saw that up front and personal. When I was teaching, I taught in a county school system. that also had two city school districts that were pulled out of it. And both of the city school districts had an extra tax. They paid their teachers more.

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There were a lot of different things that they had that we did not have. So after years of really trying to build the groundwork, the county decided to put in for a tax increase. And the money was going to go to schools, partly for a teacher salary increase, but also for some other things. And it lost. And it partly lost because of people like Diane. Diane was at my school.

[22:04]

She was an assistant to the media coordinator. And she went around all the time with the bond saying, you shouldn't vote for this because it's going to give a teacher salary to Mrs. So-and-so. And let me tell you all the bad stuff she does. And she purposely picked out every negative she could find about every teacher, honed in on the fact that this was going to be salary increases. and bad mouth us all over the place.

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And she was a huge influencer in the area. And I'm not saying she's the only reason it didn't pass, but people like her were one reason. And so when we think about positive, we also have to think about our internal stakeholders.

[22:42] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And I think in larger school districts, you know, I was a principal in Seattle Public Schools and we had a department that was tasked with communication and getting good news out and having relationships with the media. But I appreciate what you said, that this is everybody's job. We all need to be working as a team, even if we don't have any dedicated staff whose responsibilities focus solely on communication. Communicating good news, advocating, is everyone's job. So thank you so much for your insights.

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And thank you for the practical tips. I mean, this is a book that I would say is almost every other page has a table or a chart or a list of tips for it's impossible to flip a few pages and not see some very practical tools. So the book is Advocacy from A to Z. If people want to get in touch with you online, where is the best place for them to connect with you?

[23:31] SPEAKER_02:

The best place is my website, www.barbarablackburnonline.com, or you can Google Barbara Blackburn and Rigger, and it'll take you right there. And there's all kinds of free resources on the website. So Make sure you go and visit. There's a section just for leaders.

[23:50]

So plenty of things. And you have copyright permission to use all of them.

[23:54] SPEAKER_01:

Dr. Barbara Blackburn, thank you so much for joining me again on Principal Center Radio.

[23:57] SPEAKER_02:

Thank you so much.

[23:59] SPEAKER_01:

And now, Justin Bader on high performance instructional leadership. So high performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation with Dr. Barbara Blackburn about advocacy? One of the big takeaways for me is the reality that we are constantly advocates. There is no time in our day when we clock into the advocacy role and then clock out and go do something else. I mean, this is a 24-7, 365 responsibility of school leaders and really of all educators.

[24:30]

Whether it is a policy discussion that's taking place nationally, whether it's a bond issue that's taking place locally, whether it is a reform discussion that's happening in our profession, we have got to be advocates for what we believe in and what we believe is best for students and i want to highlight one of dr blackburn's recommendations that we be prepared with talking points that we can stay on message when someone asks us hey what do you think about this new policy or hey what do you think about this new teacher evaluation law we have got to be very careful to make sure that the message that we're delivering is the message that we want people to take away and not just kind of our off-the-cuff comments So a little bit of intentionality can go a long way in making you a more effective advocate. And I want to encourage you to check out Dr. Blackburn's book, Advocacy from A to Z.

[25:21] Announcer:

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