What Is My Value Instructionally to the Teachers I Supervise?

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_00:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome back to the program for the third time, Baruti Kafele. Principal Kafele is one of the most sought-after school leadership experts in North America, a highly regarded urban educator in New Jersey for more than 20 years. He was named East Orange School District and Essex County Public Schools Teacher of the Year, and he was a finalist for New Jersey State Teacher of the Year. As a middle and high school principal, he led the transformation of four different New Jersey urban schools, and he's the author of 14 books, including The Assistant Principal 50, Is My School a Better School Because I Lead It?, and What Is My Value Instructionally to the Teachers I Supervise?, which we're here to talk about today.

[00:53] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:56] SPEAKER_00:

Principal Kafele, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:59] SPEAKER_01:

Great to be here. Thank you for having me.

[01:01] SPEAKER_00:

Excited to talk about the new book. I know you've been inspiring educators and audiences around the country and around the world for many years. And you've also been prompting us to reflect, to think critically about our work and about our roles. And in this new book, you shed light on our value as instructional leaders. Take us into kind of your big picture perspective definition of what it means to be an instructional leader and what our role is for the teachers we supervise?

[01:30] SPEAKER_01:

That's a very interesting question because a lot of times when we talk about instructional leadership, folks kind of hone in on the classroom visit, the pre-observation conference, the post-observation conference, and then the coaching that accompanies that. But what I've concluded over the years is that I can't do instructional leadership any real justice if I'm not more inclusive. And I have pretty much a 10 sentence definition of what it is to be an instructional leader because it's inclusive of so many different areas. But in a nutshell, for the sake of our discussion, Yes, that coaching relationship with a teacher. And in my case, relative to the title of the book, those teachers that one supervises, that teacher that reports to you.

[02:23]

What does that coaching relationship look like as in terms of the classroom? How often do you get into classrooms and how productive are those visits? How meaningful are those visits? Do those visits allow you to position yourself in a way that that post observation conversation, which I like that word conversation as opposed to. discussion or conference. It implies that we're really conversing with one another.

[02:51]

But does that conversation, coupled with your visit, lend itself toward that teacher making those incremental steps toward becoming that teacher that we know that teacher can become, that we know that those children need those teachers to be?

[03:08] SPEAKER_00:

Principal Kafele, I love what you said about those conversations and about how those interactions that we have with teachers can help us help teachers get a little bit better every day. What's your sense about how teachers typically perceive visits from instructional leaders? Because, you know, as you know, I'm a big advocate of principals getting into classrooms. And you have been for many years. And I feel like that sentiment that this is a good thing for us to be doing is not always shared by teachers. How do teachers see these efforts by instructional leaders in your experience?

[03:43] SPEAKER_01:

The key word is culture. And I can couple with that word leadership. But let me focus on the culture. With anything in life, in order for it to happen the way that we would want it to, the way that we conceptualized There's got to be a culture for it. And one of the examples I raise in the book and just in my trainings and speaking is that. I went to a Broadway play last summer, I guess it was in the Broadway play is in the middle of Times Square.

[04:14]

So Times Square, you know, it's just a lot going on in Times Square. So but inside the play, which is right there in the heart of Times Square, the behavior of the theater goers was not reflective of the behavior of the people going about in Times Square. And the reason is because within the theater, there's a culture to dictate the behavior without anybody saying, here's what we expect of you. It's just a culture that you know when you walk through the threshold of the door, you know what the decorum is in the building. Then soon after, within a week or two, I went to a basketball game at Madison Square Garden. 20,000 fans screaming and yelling.

[04:58]

The culture was very different from the theater. But yet it's right there in the same city a few blocks away. What's the difference? There's a different culture for a basketball game versus a play or even a concert within Madison Square Garden. So all of these different places and venues and events changed. They bring about a certain culture.

[05:17]

So going to the question in a school, of course, a teacher is going to cringe when you and I walk into the room. Of course, a teacher may feel uncomfortable if you and I walk into a room, feel a little anxiety, because if there's no culture for instructional leadership, if there's no culture for my presence in the room, then it's not necessarily welcome. So first and foremost, there's got to be a conversation with administration and staff ongoing about creating this culture where our visits are only helpful. It is not a gotcha, but it's a I got you. It's that we're collaboratively toward helping you with whatever those deficiencies may be, whatever those challenges may be, toward ensuring that, as I frequently would say, young Principal Kafele has a better opportunity for success because young Principal Kafele was a five-year high school student.

[06:21]

Young Principal Kafele failed everything. But young Principal Kafele graduated from undergrad school summa cum laude. So obviously, therefore, there was something in him, but he could have been written off. So there's young Principal Kafele probably in every classroom in America. And if that teacher doesn't have the skill set to be able to connect with that youngster, to help that youngster to see the greatness within him or her, toward ultimately being able to live one's dreams. Then I got to look at the instructional leadership.

[06:56]

I got to look at that collegial relationship between teacher and administrator and ask, where was the breakdown? It matters that culture of instructional leadership's got to be there so that that teacher welcomes my presence into the room because it's going to be a win-win for everybody.

[07:13] SPEAKER_00:

And so often it is a new experience for teachers to be visited by their instructional leader. You know, often people say I'm getting into classrooms and people are just not used to it because my predecessor didn't do this at all. You know, was not in classrooms, was not an instructional leader, was not talking with them about their practice. Talk to us a little bit about how we react to what we see, because I think part of opening that classroom door can be opening a can of worms sometimes. Sometimes we see things that we feel an urgency around fixing that may not be a quick fix. So how do you think about those issues where we get into classrooms and we see some things that need some serious attention?

[07:56] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, well, you know, we go at it. You know, let me give you this analogy that I use rather frequently. It's also in the book. It's a high school. It's a Friday night high school football game. And the team, the players, they're putting on their pads, they're putting on their uniforms.

[08:13]

And once they're finished and it's getting to be game time, the coach, the head coach reels them in and says, all right, fellas, come on in. And he gives them that pep talk. You know, it could be upbeat. It could be low key. It could be right in the middle, whatever it is. But he gives them those final words before the team walks out onto the field.

[08:32]

And or marches out onto the field. And then as he finishes, he says to them, let's get this win. And they proceed to march out onto the field. But before they can get six feet away from him, he said, wait a minute, come back. I forgot something. And they're looking at him puzzled.

[08:50]

And he says, fellas, I forgot to tell you, if you need me or my assistant coaches throughout the course of the game, Come back in the locker room and get our attention. Let us know what the issues are and then we'll go on back out there and win this game. So in other words, what I'm saying, here's a team and there are no coaches on the sidelines. It's just players on the field competing. The coaches are in the locker room. And I typically ask people, did you ever see that before?

[09:22]

And they'll say no. I said, but there's a place where it happens every day. It's called school where the coaches, the quote unquote coaches are on the sidelines, meaning not in the game. Right. So the coach walks into this classroom and sees this, as you were saying, this stuff that may require a wealth of attention. But that school that has that culture of instructional leadership, that's probably not going to happen because you're not going to go into a room and be shocked.

[09:54]

because you're already living in classrooms and having a focus on instructional leadership, you're holding yourself accountable. So you walk into a classroom and you see this stuff that needs so much attention. That becomes a reflection on who you've been thus far as instructional leader. Right. For it to fester out of control like that. Now, if we're talking about the first week of school and this is a brand new teacher from either outside or from the university, whatever it is, then obviously there could be some issues because I'm walking in there for the first time this school year.

[10:30]

But if I'm walking in there in January and I'm like, oh, my God, look at all this going on. But what does that say about my instructional leadership? If school started in August or September, I walk into your room in January, February, and it's complete chaos. That's on me. Right. Because I haven't been the coach that I need to be toward taking my team to the Super Bowl, the NBA finals, the World Series or the Stanley Cup.

[10:59]

It matters.

[11:00] SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. And in a lot of cases, you know, we realize that acutely in a new job, right, in a new role where perhaps that culture has not been built, that predecessor was not in classrooms frequently, and there's some work to do. Talk to us a little bit about the role of instructional coaches, which I know you touch on in the book, because There's certainly a sense in which we see ourselves as administrators, as coaches, but there's also a defined role for an instructional coach and a relationship between a principal and instructional coach. Talk to us about your thinking on that.

[11:30] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's interesting. There are conferences that I'll speak at, instructional coaching conferences. So these are the instructional coaches, not the administrators. They may be present, but it's for them. So I'll do a keynote, right? So that's me talking.

[11:44]

But then we'll do a breakout session. And I'll give them an opportunity to address the keynote in terms of my content. And I mean, when I'm in those rooms with instructional coaches in a breakout session, I'm lucky if I can get five minutes of my presentation in if I want to listen to all of their concerns. that they're raising about their reality back at the school. So what happens in particularly when an instructional coach is working in a unionized school district, that person has so many challenges because you find that the teacher, I don't wanna give you the whole list, but the teacher may think, Why do I need you when we're in the same bargaining unit? What do you have to offer to me to help me to become that much more proficient?

[12:32]

And on and on. So I say to the leadership, Your relationship with your instructional coaches is key because you can't just hire this person to be an instructional coach. Now they have this title and say to them, now go coach. Because if there's no culture, going back to what I said before, if there's no culture for the instructional coach to be effective, then that person probably will not be effective. unless they're just some teachers in the building who just acquiesce for the good of the organization of the school. But outside of that, I don't want someone just to acquiesce because it's proper decorum.

[13:15]

I want them to welcome this coach who I want to be able to convince is qualified to do this work. And now I've got another person, another set of eyes who can come into my room, but also another person who can assist me with some areas where I need assistance. And I don't feel threatened by the fact that you and I may be in the same bargaining union in a unionized district, but I see you as somebody who can help me. But that administrator slash instructional coach relationship is key. And I know that there's a lot of places where that instructional coach gets that position, has that title, and now they're told go out and do the job. And it just can't work that way.

[13:59]

That collegial relationship between that principal or AP and coach, it matters exponentially.

[14:07] SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. So there's culture, there's relationship. Talk to us a little bit about what you see as the division of labor, because as you mentioned, instructional coaches typically are on a teacher contract. They're not in that evaluative role or not an officially evaluative role towards teachers. And sometimes we're kind of playing tag team with instructional coaches where The instructional coach is only there to help the teacher improve, but we're also there in case the teacher does not improve. Talk to us about how you think about that.

[14:40] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. See, you know, I liken that to the relationship between the counselor and the student. That counselor can never be used as a disciplinary. Right. And when that counselor is misutilized as a disciplinarian, it undermines that dynamic, that relationship between the counselor and the student in terms of the reason that the counselor exists in the school. Well, if I'm going to utilize my instructional coach.

[15:10]

as a quasi administrator and teacher realizes that, then that relationship can't work the way that was structured to work. It'll look like my relationship to the teacher, because even though I want to be that coach, the teacher is never going to lose sight of the fact that I'm the principal. So that's going to be there as much as I'm going to do different things to remove it. I'll have those conversations, for example, in the classroom as opposed to my office. I'll take off the tie. I'll sit in a chair that is a student's chair that is lower than the teacher's chair just to Give the teacher some feeling of power and confidence with me sitting down in a lower space.

[15:54]

Right. So so doing all the things I can do to put the teacher at ease in this relationship, because I don't want you to see me in a principal mindset. I want you to see me as a coach, as somebody who's here to assist in the process of getting you to where you want to be. So with that instructional coach, it works the same way. And see that the instructional coach may be dynamite with content, but that person may not have the skill sets that's required to be able to engage a teacher in an ongoing collaborative relationship. So that's something that's got to be trained.

[16:29]

So what I talk about in that chapter in the book. is the training of your instructional coach and the communication skillset and all those kinds of things toward increasing the probability that you can forge that relationship with teacher and be productive as a coach at the same time. It was who benefits? Young Principal Kefele sitting in that classroom.

[16:50] SPEAKER_00:

So you talk in an earlier chapter about your instructional leadership wake-up call. Take us into that a little bit, if you would.

[16:58] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I went through an internship with the assistant superintendent for human resources and he became my boss when I became a principal two years later. And who's a lifelong friend now. He just wrote me yesterday and we're talking a long time ago. So he told me we were sitting in a meeting. And he said to me one, because he would come to the school for my internship. He would come to the school about two, three days a week, every week.

[17:24]

And we sit in the conference room and he'd give me all sorts of things to read, such as policy manuals and union contracts and so forth. So one day he said to me, he said, Kafele. Always remember that the purpose of your supervision of teachers, the primary purpose of your supervision of teachers is student achievement and their continued improvement of instruction. Now, I was getting ready to become an assistant principal, so I heard him. I memorized it, but it went in one ear and out the other. I in my mind, I'm urban.

[17:58]

I see how the assistant principals are functioning in my school and I see how they function in other places I visited. So in my mind, I'm going to be a full time disciplinary, although I didn't want to be that. I wanted to take my skill set from teaching. I was teacher of the year, the school level, the district level, the county level in New Jersey state finalists. I wanted to take that into my leadership. but here I was a full-time disciplinary from eight to three every day.

[18:23]

So then I become principal a year later, but I don't have the skillset to be a principal. I just was hungry to get the job and position myself to get it, but I'm still functioning as that manager. So my test scores come out that spring and they decreased. They were already low and it got lower. And he called me into his office, middle of school day, he called me, come on down to my office. I got in the car, drove to his office, and he put the test scores on the desk, and he said, what happened?

[18:55]

I said, Doc, you know how hard I work. You know I'm putting in 80 to 90 hours a week because I'm doing eight hours on Saturday, eight hours on Sunday in the building. I said, and you live in East RG. That's the city. You see my car. You know I'm there.

[19:09]

He said, no, I'm not questioning how hard you work. I see it. He said, I'm questioning how smart you work. And that stung me. It stung me for about two weeks. I stayed mad.

[19:20]

I said, this man insulted me for two weeks. But then once I settled down, I said, you know, he was right. I'm not working smart. I'm just working hard. And at that point, that's where I was able to make my transition in terms of instructional leadership via a shift in the culture of the school and a shift in how I approached my work. But that was my wake up call.

[19:49]

And I needed that, but I didn't know it in real time. And I think, let me just add this. I think that a lot of us probably need the same wake up call because, you know, I work with principals. I meet hundreds of them. And so many of them tell me, you know, I'm with you, Kafele. You're right, Kafele.

[20:05]

But I don't have the time to be this, what you're asking me to be. So they need that wake up call.

[20:13] SPEAKER_00:

And what do you think he meant by working smarter? Like, was he saying that there were higher leverage things you could be doing with your time? Or how did you interpret that?

[20:24] SPEAKER_01:

In other words, he's saying that I got my hands and feet in too many things, you know, and my justification for that was I was a first year principal and I need to learn all I can about the school. But the school, you know, the district was low performing. They certainly didn't want a state takeover because that was happening to other districts in New Jersey. So, you know, I understand him putting pressure on me. But his words were right. I was not delegating.

[20:51]

I was not empowering other people around me. I wasn't tapping into the skill sets of other people around me that woke me up. And I saw that, man, I got people in these classrooms, particularly people who are aspiring administrators that I'm not threatened by. And I'm not tapping into those folks. So I started tapping into others. And then I also rediscovered.

[21:15]

that I have a lot of people in the building who will just run through a brick wall for me, like the wall behind you, so to speak. And I had to start tapping into folks. As I started tapping into others, it ultimately allowed me, as I became seasoned in this work called school leadership, that I became a full time instructional leader. So I do my morning message to the school and be finished by 830. And if it was done over the PA system, then my secretary would be sitting literally right outside my office was her desk. And I would go to her and I would say, Mrs. Kennedy, I will see you this afternoon between one and two.

[21:54]

If you need me, just give me a call on the radio or text me as we got into the texting mode of communication. So meaning that. The things I used to do, say, from 8 to 1, 830 to one or two had nothing to do with instruction. Now, from 830 to one or two, I'll be doing that work, you know, so I had to grow. I know a lot of us are not going to be able to engage in instructional leadership for that length of time over their careers. But if you've really got a culture in your school.

[22:23]

where it is a culture of instructional leadership. The children are familiar with the culture of instructional leadership, but I didn't leave them out. If they see me in the classroom, they know why I'm in there. Not the specificity that the teacher would understand, but they understand that my role in there has something to do with them learning. I don't want to undermine the teacher's authority, so we're not getting deep with it, but I have whole assemblies with my students and make sure that they're aware. This is why you see me.

[22:49]

I don't want them guessing. And then I have the whole parent meetings. And parents, I don't mind having a conversation with you in the morning about whatever. But when we do it during instructional time, Do know you are keeping me away from being an instructional leader. I'm now trapped in my office having this lengthy conversation with you that I'd rather have at a different time of the day so that I can be that leader myself and my administrative team. I know I gave you a longer answer, but I guess I want to be thorough.

[23:21] SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. Well, I'm glad you brought up the administrative team. And we talked a little bit about when you were interning and then preparing to become an assistant principal. And I'm glad you mentioned that your internship supervisor was the director of human resources. And I'll often tell people, you know, superintendents. don't hire assistant principals, they hire future principals.

[23:43]

And that proved to be true in very short order. In your case, you're very quickly moved up into the principal position. So thinking about your administrative team, if you're a principal who has instructional coaches, we've already talked about, but if you have assistant principals, the reality is the volume of discipline may make that a full-time job, may make it two, three, four people's full-time job to keep up with discipline. And as principal, you do want to protect your time to be an instructional leader, to be in classrooms. But at the same time, you don't want your assistant principals who might have themselves been teachers of the year to to be full-time disciplinarians for 20 years and never have that experience never have that training that they need to become principals and to be that instructional leader for the building how do you manage all of that how do you consider all of those issues about you know the teamwork the delegation but also the development of assistant principals as instructional leaders

[24:37] SPEAKER_01:

Right before the pandemic, I started writing The Assistant Principal 50 and released it in the heart of the pandemic. And ASCD couldn't print enough of those books. They just, it's the biggest selling book I ever wrote because I wrote a blog post in 2018 called The Assistant Principalship, the most misunderstood and underutilized position in all of education. And of the zillion blog posts that I've written on my personal blog page, as opposed to the ones for organizations, that is the one that went viral. I said, wow, this thing resonated with all these APs and probably principals, too. So I quickly turned it into a book.

[25:25]

And I'm saying all that to say this as a principal. It's a bad reflection on your leadership when you've got this valuable person or persons on your staff, your administrative team called assistant principals, and they have been reduced, relegated to lunch duty people, assist disciplinarians, bus duty. All those things have to be done. But if this person is going to one day become a principal, then there's so much more that they need to know. And in this case, as instructional leaders, because if they supervise, I always say this, if they supervise at least one teacher, let's say that an assistant principal has 15 teachers under them in an elementary school. Some places it may be more.

[26:15]

In my case, it was more. It was 25. So let's say you've got these teachers under you. But you never have an opportunity to see them teach with the exception of evaluation season in the fall and evaluation season in the spring. And now you're going to probably rate them as somewhere satisfactory or above because you have no paperwork on them. You have no documentation.

[26:42]

So you can't tell them that they underperform. Right. You can't tell them that they were deficient because there was never a time for you to coach them or even to see what they do. So you got to go ahead and reward them. So when you reward them, young principal is in that classroom and now you have rewarded somebody that never connected. Right.

[27:04]

That never was able to help him to tap into his greatness and bring it out, unleash it so that he can go on and perform in whatever it is he's going to do with his life. So I'm saying to a principal in this regard. You can't allow your assistant principal to be that. So not only are you instructional leader in the other aspects of the work, but you are also a trainer of that administrative team that you have. Right. Because ultimately, they've got to be an asset to that school when we talk about academic performance.

[27:36] SPEAKER_00:

Well, Principal Kefale, one thing I wanted to make sure to ask about, because I know this is something you've been open about in recent years, is thinking about one's health. Thinking back on your journey in the past couple of years, what would you tell your younger self as a new principal, as a younger principal who was going, as you said, 80, 90 hours a week? How do you think about just the sustainability of the job in your own health?

[28:01] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, you know, to the folks on here, particularly the ones of you who are younger, in this work. Two things. I want to talk about the health, but I want to couch it with something else. Retirement. Now, when I was in my twenties as a teacher and people are bugging me about retirement, I didn't want to hear it. 401k, et cetera.

[28:20]

When I was in my 30s as an administrator, didn't want to hear my 40s. The same rep was coming to my school, didn't want to hear. And finally, the age of 50, I said, you know something? I have slept on this thing. I need I don't have any retirement savings. And she said to me, well, I've been trying to get you to do it for the past 30 years.

[28:37]

So we had to do it. So I'm saying that to say this. Two things that I neglected throughout my career. Retirement, number one, health, number two. So typically when I talk about health, I don't talk about it always in isolation. I like to put it in the context of the two things because those are the two things.

[28:54]

When you're young, you're not thinking about health because you think you're a machine. When you're young, you're not thinking about retirement because you think you're going to be young for the rest of your life. But it catches up to you. So I'm saying that to say I'm not going to get into the retirement thing. I think I said enough there. So if you're one that's not planning for retirement, you may want to start when you get back to work.

[29:13]

Right. But health, you know, in my mind and literally I said to myself, when anybody stopped me about the way I was eating, I said, I'm a machine. I'm not worried about that. And that was my language. And so I'm eating, you know, I'm eating fast food, breakfast, lunch, snack. Pre-dinner, my wife cooked, but before I got home, I was so addicted to the fries at a certain restaurant, which I won't name.

[29:39]

And it was like a magnet and it just pulled me right. There's like right around a few blocks away from me. And I know my dinner was being prepared by my wife, but I stopped and got the fries and the large ones and the soda and then went on home and ate dinner. So I was gaining all this weight, but I didn't it didn't matter. I just went to the suit store and bought bigger suits. So then when I left my principalship in 2011, then it got worse.

[30:02]

It got more intense in terms of the way I was eating. So what I just said a minute ago now double it. Right. So I'm just living in these fast food restaurants. Suits are getting bigger. So I went from 46 to 52 in terms of suits, a jacket size.

[30:18]

And my weight went from, say, 230s to 260. But again, I'm just buying bigger suits. I'm not thinking much of it. But then ultimately, on May 1st, 2015, doing a keynote at the University of Miami, I on a Friday night from six to seven, 60 minute keynote. And then I'm on a flight to make it to a wedding the next day of a family member. I never got to the wedding.

[30:38]

I never saw the wedding because I had a heart attack on the stage and I finished the speech because I didn't know what it was. So 20 minutes in here comes all this pain and sweat and blurred vision and stumbling in terms of me pacing the floor. And I finished because I didn't know what it was. It was excruciating. But after I finished, it got worse. I told the audience that I think I'm dying because I was doing a Q&A and I couldn't go anymore.

[31:06]

It was over. So imagine 200 people running to the stage when you say that. What are they going to do for me once they get to the stage? Nothing. But there was a medical practitioner. I don't want to call him a doctor.

[31:18]

A medical practitioner was in the audience. He diagnosed me with a heart attack. Called EMS. They got me to the hospital, put a stent in my artery, my main artery. The LAD was clogged 100 percent. They called it the widow maker.

[31:33]

So they got the stent into the artery. When I woke up the next morning, they said type two diabetes came with the heart attack. So I learned that this heart attack was preventable. My only exercise was walking my halls and walking up and down the stairs. So I kind of chuckle, not in a humorous way. But when I hear people say to me, administrators, you got my steps in 10,000.

[31:59]

I'm like, it's better than nothing. But that ain't the exercise that doctors are recommending. Right. He didn't say to me the steps I take on the stage because I pace back and forth. I pace those rooms. He said, no, you got to be on a treadmill.

[32:11]

right you got to be outside and put in the miles right so i fought him i'm like i don't have time for that i'm a speaker i'm on the road all year i get in late flight delays canceling i get in the rooms midnight and one o'clock and all that and then i got to get up at five and six o'clock the next day to do a six hour presentation and he asked me the simple question do you want to live That's all. You want to live? I say, yeah. He said, OK, well, you have to find a way to do what I just recommended. Well, I have for the past. This is year 10 now, 2025.

[32:40]

When I finish this, I'm going outside because I really don't love the gym. I like outside even when it's 20 degrees. I do my miles outdoors. And when it's too cold, then I go to the gym in the winter. But outside of that, I'm here or when I'm in the hotels, I'm in the gym. But the bottom line, for the sake of the audience, is getting that work in.

[33:00]

Don't wait for the bad thing to happen. The diabetes preventable. I was drinking between 10 to 12 Coca-Cola's or Pepsi's a day. Right. That was my coffee. I didn't like coffee at the time.

[33:12]

I still don't. But when it's an emergency, I drink it. But I haven't had a sip of soda since I had the heart attack. Right. A lot of the sweets I used to eat, all of them. Like I was a junkie for donuts at a certain place, which I won't name.

[33:24]

But I used to eat about six of those a day. I haven't had a donut ever since. You know, I had to go cold turkey because I want to live. I want to live to continue to do this work and live to be here for my family. And friends. So I'll say to the leaders out there, don't take it for granted.

[33:38]

If you didn't hear anything else I said about instructional leadership, hear this. Your body is not a machine and you don't know when your day may come. So do all the things you have to do to keep yourself healthy. Eat right and exercise. I'll say it again. Eat right and exercise.

[33:53]

Don't make the excuses I made. And if you got that smartwatch and it's saying 10,000 steps, don't think you good because you're not. Right. You got to do that sustained cardio work. See, if them 10 steps don't have you sweating, see, the work might have you sweating, but the 10,000 steps may not, right? You got to do the work that makes your heart start beating.

[34:12]

You got to do the work that makes you sweat. That's when you know you're getting in the good cardio work, not them 10,000 steps, man. That's just a consolation prize, man. My wife hates when I say that. She tells me to stop saying it, but I told her I'm not going to stop saying it because I've never done 10,000 steps and I worked up a sweat.

[34:28] SPEAKER_00:

Well, Principal Kapele, I know you've built a sizable audience on Facebook and on social media with your Saturday Academy. Tell us a little bit about that and where else people can find you online for ongoing insight and inspiration.

[34:42] SPEAKER_01:

That Academy is something else because I created it. We were home. Everybody was home. Stay at home. May.

[34:50] SPEAKER_00:

May.

[34:50] SPEAKER_01:

2020, you know, outside of people. Matter of fact, no, this was before George Floyd. So the people weren't out in the streets protesting and rallying yet. So I'm home. I'm doing presentations every day. It was incredible once I figured out how to use Zoom.

[35:06]

the volume of work I did, I've never worked that hard in my life, right? Because I was doing on average five presentations a day because of time zone. So I'm getting up and starting at eight and my day was ending between eight and nine, 10 o'clock at night, go to bed, start it all over every day, five days a week. But then for some reason, which I still can't figure out, I guess it's just from my maker, something said, but you need to do something on Saturday. And you need to talk to assistant principals. Now, of course, the assistant principal 50 was just coming out, but it wasn't for that reason.

[35:45]

It just I said, man, I'm home. I'm sitting literally right where I'm sitting. And I said, I have a platform. Let me promote this for two weeks and say I'm going to talk to assistant principals. So I said, I'm going to call this the Virtual AP Leadership Academy. That first day, about 5,000 people watched.

[36:04]

It was incredible. We don't get that kind of number now in terms of peak time, but it was incredible. So I said to the folks, I'm going to do this for 18 weeks, meaning the first Saturday in May until the last Saturday in August, and then we're done. We'll never see this again. And I said, it's going to be for 30 minutes. Well, that first one I did like 50 minutes, right?

[36:27]

My mother watches all of them. She's seen all my sessions and she said, you know, you can't do this in 30 minutes. I said, I'm going to try the next week. And that one was longer, went up to an hour. So then they averaged an hour. I went solo for 52 Saturdays, just me for an hour and change talking about the contents of the assistant principal 50.

[36:45]

Oh, and by the way, when week 18 came, I was supposed to stop. But when I saw the thousands that were tuning in, I said, how do I stop this? I can't stop it. So we kept it going. By then we were doing it on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. So then I kept it going, and now I started bringing in guests my second year.

[37:04]

So after my second year, we bringing in guests after guests after guests. Here we are now, this Saturday, we will be doing week number 245 consecutive episodes. I have not missed one Saturday in 245 sessions. This academy is my baby. We rebranded it because the volume of APs who said they would come to either write me or see me on the road, they would say, Principal Caffele, I used to watch you faithfully, but I don't watch. It was amazing the volume of people who would say this.

[37:38]

I stopped watching. I said, why? They said, because I'm a principal now. I said, but it's more relevant for you now than ever. I said, okay. So I sat down in a convention center one day.

[37:49]

And I rebranded it to the AP in New Principles Academy. And I defined new principles as five years. But folks who were in it for five years, they said, well, it's relevant to me. And I'm in it seven years. I'm in it 10 years. So it's really for everybody.

[38:03]

But I just want to keep that new principles there because I want new principles in particular. I'm targeting them with APs. But again, 245 consecutive Saturdays, that speaks to this word, commitment. I mean, when I'm on vacation...

[38:17]

Like a lot of times my vacations are either in the Caribbean or Las Vegas. Those are like my wife and I, that's, you know, we don't, we don't go a lot of far places. That's where we go. I do these when I'm on vacation. If I'm in Vegas, we do this. I'm getting, so it's different time zone.

[38:32]

I got to get up real early when we're on the islands. A lot of times they charge us for stronger wifi. They'll charge us for a meeting room. If I don't like the room, like, like I had Zaretta Hammond, I'm sure you know her name. I had you as my guest when I was in Cancun last year, and they charged me $1,000 for 10 gigabytes of Wi-Fi, and they charged me $300 for the room. I paid $1,300 to interview Zaretta Hammond.

[38:58]

And I didn't mind paying the $1,300 because I had to do that session. I wasn't going to say I'm not going to do it this week. I just did it, and God blessed me and probably gave it back to me many fold. So we good. So how did you see it? The best place is YouTube.

[39:12]

Just go to YouTube at AP and New Principles Academy, and you can binge watch all 244. Now sessions will be 45 when we get to Saturday. By the time you hear this 245, so 245 sessions, you can binge watch them all. And I'm sure you're going to recognize a lot of the guests. My Matt Bader will be on there at some point as well. I just have to schedule it.

[39:37]

We'll make it happen.

[39:38] SPEAKER_00:

All right. Thank you so much. We'll put the links in the show notes. So the book is What Is My Value Instructionally to the Teachers I Supervise. Principal Kefele, thank you so much for joining me again on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure.

[39:50] Announcer:

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