SEEing To Lead: Creating a World-Class Culture Through a Teacher-Centric Approach

[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 be joined today by my longtime friend, Jethro Jones. Jethro is a former principal who helps schools and districts find simple solutions to complex problems. Named a Digital Principal of the Year by NASSP, Jethro has served students as a teacher, district coach, media and distance learning specialist, and principal with experience at every level of public education. He's the host of the Transformative Principal podcast and the author of the new book, School X, How Principals Can Design a Transformative School Experience for Students, Teachers, Parents, and Themselves.

[00:50] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:52] SPEAKER_00:

Jethro, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:54] SPEAKER_01:

Hey, thank you, Justin. I'm really excited to be here.

[00:56] SPEAKER_00:

Well, tell us a little bit about what school experience means and what it means to design experiences in your school, because I think that's a powerful concept, but a new one for a lot of people.

[01:08] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, absolutely. I think most of your listeners have probably used an iPhone or an Android phone or a computer or something like that, and so they are familiar with the idea of how they interact with the apps and different things on their devices and what that feels like. And there's a whole area of study and work that's called user experience, which helps define what that experience is for people who are using those devices. And so I have a couple of friends who are in that field and we've been talking for the past several years about what that looks like. And I thought, what is the experience of students and teachers who come to my school as a principal? And that's where that idea came from of combining user experience with the school experience.

[01:55]

and trying to figure out how to make that all work together. And, you know, there are a lot of books out there about how to run a school and different things that you need to do. But there wasn't really one that was talking about designing it specifically for the people who attend and participate in your school. And that goes from the principal to the teachers, to the students, to the community and parents.

[02:17] SPEAKER_00:

Well, Jethro, what is the alternative or what would you say is kind of the default in our profession when we don't intentionally design experiences? How do we end up with the systems and the user experiences that we have if we have not yet taken the time to sit down and really design those experiences?

[02:34] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I think principles end up being one of usually fulfilling one of two different roles. They're either a manager, which means that they basically run around putting out fires, making sure nothing breaks, and ensuring that kids are able to come to school, go through the system, and very much a factory model. That's really the emphasis. The other kind of school leader is someone who is a leader, really, and they are They have a vision. They have a plan. They have a goal.

[03:06]

They're trying to get everybody on board toward that vision. And those two meet a certain need and are fine. I think that we should strive to be leaders. And what I think even more is that we should strive to be designers, which means that you take a look at what the system of the school is doing and how it works. And then you try to find ways to make it even better for the people that you're serving. So if you know a if somebody walks up to the front door of your school and they see a sign on the door that says, you know, do not allow anybody in through this door, this door must remain locked at all times.

[03:40]

Does that person really feel welcome in your school? I don't think they really do.

[03:46] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And so many of those signs that, you know, that we have posted around campus, you know, we're put up once upon a time to solve maybe one particular problem. And we don't necessarily take the time to think, you know, what is the cumulative impact of having this do not enter sign, this all visitors must sign in at the office, you know, all of these kind of negative framing signs for the visitor. And yeah, just so much happens accidentally and without that intentionality.

[04:12] SPEAKER_01:

Let me give another example about that particular piece, because when I went to one school where I was principal in the faculty room, there were all these cartoons and phrases and all these things put up and they were all sarcastic and demeaning in one way or another. And you can probably guess what the culture of that school was. It was incredibly toxic and people were stabbing each other in the back. They were rude to each other. And What we did is we took out all those signs and the teacher's lounge was this tiny little room where only four people could sit at once. We took out all those signs and we moved the teacher's lounge to a different part of the building, to an empty classroom.

[04:53]

We put in nice, comfortable seating. We put in comfy chairs. We put a TV in there. We did all these things to make that experience that the teachers had when they were at lunch or on a break to make that experience better for them. And it didn't completely solve all those problems, but it made it a lot easier for people to be positive, to think positive. The faculty room now had a window that had a nice view.

[05:16]

All those things were little things that made a big difference in the culture of the staff.

[05:22] SPEAKER_00:

So you've got the book organized into kind of different audiences or different stakeholder groups when it comes to experience design. Who are the big groups of stakeholders that you had in mind that you organized the book around?

[05:34] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so we divide it into four really easy groups. The first is yourself as the school leader. You need to have an experience for yourself that is positive and beneficial and works well. then we talked about the teachers and you know, you would think that we need to talk about the students in there first, but the reality is, is if you don't have a good experience, you're not going to have the time or energy to make a good experience for the students. If your teachers don't have a good experience, they're not going to have the time or energy to make a good experience for the students. So you've got to start with those that you can control first.

[06:08]

You can control yourself and you can support your teachers. And then we go to students. After that, we add in the community, which includes parents, community business members, things like that. And so we break it up into those four different sections.

[06:21] SPEAKER_00:

A lot of people would say that maybe it feels selfish to them to start with kind of designing your own experience or your own kind of ideal experience of your job. And I think, you know, so many people come into this profession with a strong servant leader mindset that really makes even that question seem like a difficult one to even consider. What's the value to other people of considering yourself and your own experience as a leader as kind of one of the first design challenges to tackle?

[06:49] SPEAKER_01:

Well, really, it comes down to this idea of being able to have things work as good as they possibly can. And so if you're starting with yourself, if you're running around putting out fires all the time, you're never going to have time to stop and think about the problems that exist. So for example, in one of the schools I was at, when I got there, my job was to do supervision at lunch. And I love spending time with kids. I love chatting with them and all that, and that's great. But when I did that, I found that I didn't get to spend time with teachers and I didn't get to give them feedback and talk with them and see how they were doing.

[07:29]

And all my time was spent just managing the lunchroom, which was not a good experience for me. Not to mention, there were some other issues with our lunchroom where kids weren't getting lunches because nobody was waiting in line for the whole time. And so what I had to do first before I could address the kids not getting their lunches is I had to make it so that I was able to spend lunch in a way that was meaningful. And so I started, I had other people assigned to work in the cafeteria so they could do supervision. And then I spent that time eating lunch with the teachers intentionally because I needed to understand them. I was new to the school.

[08:09]

They need to understand me because I was new to the school. And so we're able to have these these conversations. Once I was able to see what their big issues were, then I could start addressing some other things. Once I took the time to make sure that I was doing a good job, I could address their issues and the student issues. So in this process of of designing this experience, I recognize that the kids who weren't getting their lunches weren't getting them for a very specific reason. They didn't want to wait in line for the lunch and then the line would end and the lunch ladies would clean up really fast because they were super efficient at what they did.

[08:45]

And so we went in there and thought the issue was that the lunch ladies were just cleaning up too fast. What we actually found was that it was taking too long for the kids to get their food, not because of what the lunch ladies were doing, but because of the checkout process of entering their student number into the computer. So our first idea was, well, let's just force the kids to stay in line. That didn't work because then we spent all of our time forcing them to stay in line and it still took 20 minutes for everybody to get their lunch. And each person took them 45 seconds to actually get their lunch, which doesn't seem like a lot of time. But when you think about a kid standing in line and waiting for 45 seconds for each kid to go through, that turned out to be a lot.

[09:26]

And what we found was we needed two computers at the end for kids to enter their numbers. And once we did that, we got the time from 45 seconds down per student to 11 seconds per student. And everybody was done in the lunchroom within 10 minutes. Everybody had their food. That made it better for everybody. But I didn't know that that was a problem until I spent lunch with the teachers.

[09:50]

And they said, hey, why do our kids always come to class hungry saying they didn't get lunch? I know we have plenty of food. But had I not taken the time to meet with them and hear their concerns and then see what was going on with the kids, I don't know that I would have ever been able to solve that problem.

[10:07] SPEAKER_00:

Well, I love the way, Jethro, that you realized that the position that had been designed for you of being expected to spend time in the lunchroom every day was something that you had a choice to either accept as a default or take an intentional opportunity to make a decision for yourself and kind of redesign that so that you could spend time with teachers and put in place the systems that needed to be designed, really. I'm reminded of the Deming quote, that your system is perfectly designed to produce the results you're getting. And I love the process that you went through to figure out why is it taking our kids this entire lunch period to get through the line? Because once we do that kind of analysis and kind of zoom in and understand the problem, Solving it often is pretty straightforward, like you said, with adding another keypad and so forth.

[10:59] SPEAKER_01:

Well, and what I would add to that, Justin, is that it is very much a lot of educators feel like they need to be martyrs and they need to sacrifice themselves at the altar of education. And I really don't think that that is the case because what they need to do is when you are happy and fulfilled at work, you make other people happy and fulfilled in their experience as well. And so instead of saying, oh, this work is so hard, I've got so much to do. Like, let's take homework, for example, in grading. My first year teaching, I thought that's what you did. You give a lot of homework and then you grade it all.

[11:35]

And then I quickly realized that grading work is awful. Why would I ever want to subject myself to that? I don't. And so I quickly said, well, homework doesn't need to happen because I'm the one who's in charge of that. So I don't want to grade it at all. So I'm not going to continue giving out homework like that.

[11:54]

And once I made that change, I enjoyed school more and my students enjoyed it more because I was able to see that it's not just about, you know, filling out worksheets and then turn them in. It's about actual learning. So I shifted my approach to how do I know that my kids are actually learning? And that's all that I cared about. And that made life easier in a lot of ways. But we don't have to do things just because they've always been done.

[12:19]

And we don't have to do things that are awful because that's what's always been done. So we can change it up and we can do things that actually help and make things better for everybody and not just ourselves. But once we start making things better for ourselves, we see that we can make things better for others as well.

[12:36] SPEAKER_00:

Well, let's talk about teachers next. How can we design systems and design experiences that will meet the needs of teachers after we've kind of figured out how to make things work for ourselves as leaders?

[12:47] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so teachers is an interesting experience because they have an idea of what makes a teacher a teacher. And they don't necessarily want to step out of that role sometimes. So they think that a good teacher does these different types of things. And I've found for me the most beneficial way to approach this is to use personality profiles to help me communicate with my teachers in an effective way. You've said many times, Justin, that when you're giving feedback in instruction, that if you can look at a document together, then it changes the conversation because you're not accusing or directing something at that person. You're both focused on a third point.

[13:31]

And I know you have a better way to describe that, of course, but there's a power that comes from sitting side by side and looking at something even if it's about that person and and figuring out how how to make that work and so i use the disc personality profile and i try to find what about my teachers makes them tick so that i can then do things that will help them be better. So one quick example about that. I had this amazing teacher in Kodiak named Diane Grupp, and she was just a fantastic teacher, fantastic human being, always dedicated, going above and beyond all the time. So I said, she'd be a great person to be on a leadership team. so i put her on the leadership team for the first six months guess what she did absolutely nothing she never talked in the meetings and i was so frustrated because i knew she had good ideas and i knew she could add value but she would never talk and she'd come and talk to me after the meeting and tell me all these things and i think why aren't you saying this in the meetings we need your voice in these meetings because

[14:38]

You have good ideas. And she said, well, you know, I just I don't like talking in meetings. And I was like, but you talk in other meetings, you lead your math department and you can you can do this. And as you wouldn't do it. And, you know, we talked a couple more times. Finally, I found out that she needed time to think about things.

[14:58]

She was very focused on the details. And when she had time, then she could contribute. So what I started doing is I started giving her the agenda two or three days early and saying, these are the things that we're gonna talk about, and here's my stance on it. And I would take that time to have a conversation with her. as soon as i started doing that justin she blossomed because it wasn't that she didn't like talking in meetings or that she didn't have ideas it's that she needed processing time and had i not done a personality profile with her and figured that out i don't know when i would have learned that about her because it just it wasn't apparent and she wasn't aware that that was what the issue was either So I gave her advance notice and told her what we would be talking about. Totally changed who she was.

[15:43]

So the other thing I do with teachers is we have communication cards, which I use and I put them up on my wall. And they're basically sentence starters so that teachers can have difficult conversations without... feeling like they're having a difficult conversation. So they take this card off my wall and it says I have a personal problem or I need to vent or whatever else.

[16:05]

And the most important thing is that card tells me how to respond to them. And so they can control me so that I'm not the mean, intimidating, scary principal. But I can when they give me the card, I can act in the way that they need me to act so that they're not feeling like they, you know, have to do things in a different way or anything like that.

[16:27] SPEAKER_00:

Tell me a little bit more about the communication card. So people are giving you a card at the outset of a conversation.

[16:33] SPEAKER_01:

Yep. And giving me the card basically says, here's how I want you to act about this. So if they have a card that says, I just need to vent, then my job is not to provide any solutions, which is what I am very much wanting to do all the time, because that's what I love doing. But my job is to listen and not try to solve anything. And so if they say, so what do you think I should do? Then I say, I don't have an opinion because you're just venting.

[16:59]

If you want to grab the I need help solving a problem card and we can work on this together, I'd be happy to do that. I think the most powerful one is the storyline card. Have you ever had a boss where they give you a look and you're like, oh, man, I'm busted? You make all these assumptions about why, right? Exactly. Yep.

[17:17]

So you make all these assumptions. You tell yourself a story in your mind. You have a storyline of what they are saying. And that leads to you thinking that you're in trouble when often you're not. So the storyline card, people take it and they say, I have a storyline. Here's what I think is happening.

[17:31]

And they explain to me everything that they think I did wrong or whatever. And I am not allowed. And I say this to my teachers. I am not allowed to be upset when you give me the storyline card. You can say anything you want. You can call me names.

[17:44]

You can say I'm a jerk. It doesn't matter. I'm not allowed to get upset because it's your storyline and that's what you're experiencing. And then I will tell you honestly and truthfully what is going on. Now, people have used that card probably 100 times, at least in my career, maybe two times. They were actually right that I was upset with them and I hadn't said it appropriately.

[18:07]

And so then I have the opportunity to say, you know what? Yes. I was upset with you. Here's what you did wrong. Here's why we can't do that anymore. And instead of it being you're in trouble, it's a I was afraid I was in trouble.

[18:19]

And now you've confirmed or what happens way more than not is you're not in trouble at all. You didn't do anything wrong. You just interpreted that and put it on yourself. So those things that that take the stress away from teachers are are super important. As well, because they make it possible for people to to overcome their fears, their anxieties, things that we all have and struggle with. And they can move on with their lives and not feel bogged down by by the pressure of pleasing a supervisor that, you know, they feel like they can never please.

[18:53] SPEAKER_00:

I love the distinction between roles, which we're kind of cast into in the school environment, and personality profiles or types. And I think so often we tell ourselves a story assuming that the other person is like us. And I can think of so many situations where if I had had those cards when I was a principal, Someone comes in and they have all these assumptions, you know, if they can, you know, tell me what, you know, what they need from me in that moment, you know, I tend to be the kind of, you know, jump right in and solve the problem kind of person. But yeah, somebody just needs to, as every married person knows, if the...

[19:30]

If your job is to listen, but you think it's your job to fix the situation, that is not going to go as well as it could if we had that common understanding. Do you have those cards available for people to order on your website?

[19:42] SPEAKER_01:

Yes, I do. JethroJones.com slash communication cards.

[19:46] SPEAKER_00:

Well, let's talk about the student experience and how we can design the experience that our students have from the very first moment they register or walk in the door through the day-to-day.

[19:58] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, you know, and this is the part where if you love Marzano or Hattie, you're probably going to hate this book because I think data and research is important. But at the same time, you have to recognize that the kids who are in front of you are their own individuals and they are not like whatever the research says they are or aren't. And I think that we are in education right now leaning too far over to the research and data piece and not paying enough attention to the kids who are right in front of us. And if anything taught us that, it was the coronavirus situation that happened where schools were suddenly closed and we bailed so quickly on all the things that we've made so many decisions on in the past standardized testing benchmarks all that kind of stuff we just tossed it out the window like it was nothing those decisions happened very very fast and i think that that you know betrays the the value that we truly put on those things

[20:58]

We have real human beings in front of us that we are trying to help shape to become successful adults, whatever that looks like. And these kids come from everywhere. from every country in the world and from every race and ethnic background and socioeconomic background. And the first and foremost, they are humans. They are children who deserve our respect and deserve the opportunity to be the best that they can be. And, you know, so many of our discipline policies are punitive and not supportive of their growth.

[21:38]

And there's just there's so much in this that I really want to just boil it down to that one thing. These kids are human beings, first and foremost, no matter what else is going on in their life. And I want to share a quick story that illustrates that. There was an African-American student at my school who was, he had the biggest heart. He was also the biggest kid in the school. And so he was also the loudest kid in the school.

[22:02]

And anytime that there was a problem, if he was anywhere close, he was involved in it. And that kid definitely should have been suspended numerous times and possibly expelled because he was always at the center of whatever issue was happening. why this is so important to treat these kids as human beings. Every time something happened, we started at ground zero, totally fresh. Tell me what happened. Tell me what your experience was, why you were doing that, why you were involved.

[22:32]

You shouldn't have even been involved, had nothing to do with you. Like I had these conversations probably every other day with this student. until finally on the second to last day of school i kid you not justin this boy got in a fight and the policy is you know basically if you get in a fight last week of school you're out for the rest of the year and this kid he came to me and he was different and i didn't know why or what was different about him but i knew there was something different when we started talking because he wasn't his typical defensive defiant self he was he was breathing heavily and he was his eyes were going wild and i was like what is going on with you So I said, tell me what happened. And he said, Mr. Jones, I will never forget this till the day I die. Mr. Jones, I was scared and I didn't know what to do.

[23:17]

So after 178 days of me coaching and trying to get this kid to process his emotions, he finally did it on the 178th day. And he said, I was scared and I didn't know what to do. Uh, we had a disagreement. I got my friend to walk away. He followed us and started talking to us again. And he started coming at my friend.

[23:39]

So I stepped in between them and pushed him away and I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to fight him. I knew that's not what I should do. The first time ever, this kid finally admitted what he was really feeling. And it took us all year to get to that point. But because I treated him like a human being, every single interaction we had, He was finally able to trust me that very last day.

[24:00]

And so for him, that was a huge success. He finally admitted that he was scared and didn't know what to do and all the pain and frustration and the, you know, giving him extra chances. That was all worth it in that moment because he knew he could, I knew that he knew he could finally trust me and could tell me what he was really feeling. here's the kicker i saw him about a year and a half later and uh i was at his school his high school where he was and um needed i was carrying some stuff inside and he came up and he said hey mr jones do you need help carrying that in i said i sure do and of course he had a detention that day lunch detention he got there right at lunchtime And for us to be able to have that positive experience again after all that time when he was still in trouble and knew he was going to walk into school and be in trouble again was an amazing experience because he knew that he was a human being who mattered.

[24:59]

And that's what all of our kids need, no matter who they are or what they're doing. They need to know that they're a human being who matters.

[25:05] SPEAKER_00:

Jethro, who do you think school is designed for student-wise? Because, you know, I think most of us who end up as educators and as administrators were probably, you know, pretty at home in school and felt like it was designed for us. And often, you know, when we see kids struggling, we see kids, you know, running into difficulties or, you know, struggling with, just the, you know, the motivation to, you know, to be and succeed in that environment. Who is it designed for and what do we need to think about in terms of designing for the students we have?

[25:38] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, the truth is, is that school is designed for the adults. I mean, that's all there is to it. It's not even designed for kids. It is everything is set up to make life easier for the adults, not for the kids. Grades totally makes it easier for the adults to keep track of who's doing what and whatnot. Homework, totally easier for the adults.

[25:57]

I mean, can you imagine working at a job where you've been there all day long and five minutes before it's time to go home, your boss says, oh, hey, I have something I need you to do. It's going to take you two hours tonight and it's due tomorrow. And if you don't turn in, then you're going to have major repercussions. And the only way that I can give you repercussions for us adults, that would probably be you'll get docked and pay for a student. That's your grade will be docked. And there's no way that human beings as adults would stand for that.

[26:29]

In fact, what they do when that kind of stuff happens is they unionize and say, you can't treat us this way. And yet we do that every single day to kids in sometimes up to seven different classes. So, you know, it's just ridiculous how the system is really designed for the ease and comfort of adults. And what we need to do is really make it designed for the kids. And sometimes that means that work is harder for us as adults. and things aren't quite as easy.

[26:57]

But when we design it for the kids, we see increased engagement, we see increased activity, we see increased desire to be better, to turn into the kind of human beings we want them to turn into. And all those things do exist. And I've seen those in my school, in multiple schools. And that's what's written in the book is all these experiences where these kids have done amazing things that we would have never expected them to be able to do. Real quick story about that. We set up a program called Synergy at my school and we had the kids.

[27:30]

Their goal was to do something that makes the world a better place. They got to define better world and something. And so they defined all those things. And had we set out with this project to get kids to pass off 32 standards, learn how to collaborate and communicate with other people outside the school, we never would have been able to design what some of these kids did. But they did it and they passed off a ton of standards. They learned a whole bunch and they learned things that we don't even test or grade for, but that make them the kind of people that we want them to be.

[28:04]

And this one group of girls, they they created this thing where they did this project to serve a neighboring school and they were only serving girls. And I said, well, we want to serve boys. And I said, I know the boys that you're going to attract. It's not going to be a good idea. You should not do this. but it's your choice, but I don't think you should do it.

[28:22]

And I told them that multiple times. They said, well, we think it's important to serve boys too. So we're going to bring some boys in. They brought the boys in after a week. They knew this was not going to work. So then they said, Mr. Jones, how do we fire these boys that we just brought in?

[28:37]

And for a seventh grade girl to ask, how do I fire this boy that I'm trying to impress is a really big deal. But they knew that those boys were not helping make the world better for those kids that they were trying to serve, and they knew they couldn't be part of it. And so we don't teach how to fire people in school, but those girls certainly learned it, and it was a beneficial lesson for them to learn.

[29:01] SPEAKER_00:

Let's circle back to community then, because we started with talking about the kind of the signs that people encounter on the doors as they walk up to the school. But how can we design the school experience for our broader community and parents?

[29:14] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think this piece is really important. You've got to stop judging parents. Too often in school, we judge parents for whatever reason. We think they don't care. We think they're not engaged. Whatever the case is, it's just not worth it.

[29:28]

So we've got to stop. And if we can start there and not judge parents at all and just accept them for who they are, then like students, they're going to be more engaged, more concerned, more involved, and want to be a part of our school.

[29:43] SPEAKER_00:

What are some big opportunities that you see for schools to improve the design of that experience for community members?

[29:52] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think the most important thing we can do is we can recognize our role as a principal with families and the community is to be the chief communicator for our school. And so during this coronavirus stuff, we're planning on how to go back to school. States are making plans, districts are making plans, but school leaders are the ones who are actually gonna be the ones talking to families face-to-face or on the phone or in video conferences. but they're the frontline communicators and saying, this is what's going on. They've got to take that responsibility seriously. And even if you don't have a good solid plan and you're not totally prepared for that, you can at least say, I don't know.

[30:34]

And it's okay to say, I don't know. And so in the midst of whatever situations are happening, your community needs to hear from you and they need to hear from you on a regular basis. So whatever that is going to be, that could be every day. You could send a message on social media. That could be every week you send a newsletter. Every month you do a robocall or whatever it looks like.

[30:56]

You've got to be the one who is the chief communicator. And there are so many ways to do that. I've just been evaluating this new tool where you have direct communication with families. It's called School Chat, and it's really, really cool because it allows you to have a text conversation and you can send videos and take polls and all these different kinds of things that really help people feel like you have a personal connection to them. I think that is so important. They need to know that you're a real human being and they need to know that you care about them and their community.

[31:28]

So I would say being really focused on communication is going to be really important.

[31:32] SPEAKER_00:

I love that role of the chief communicator and designing that communication experience because, you know, I think we've all probably experienced as parents or as former students ourselves, that a lot of the communication that comes home is single purpose, you know, turn in your field trip form or turn in your whatever, or if you want to apply to be part of the whatever program. you know, here's the deadline. And it ends up becoming this kind of not very intentional one-off kind of stream of, you know, warnings and deadlines and things like that. And I love the intentionality that comes from saying, you know, if I'm the chief communicator for this organization, what do I want it to look like for our parents? What do I want them to take away from our communications?

[32:12] SPEAKER_01:

And if you can do that, Justin, then you are able to be an ally with them. You know, we talk about partnering with parents and having parent engagement. And the reality is, like, why would someone want to be engaged in your school? And if you can give them a reason to want to be engaged, then you're going to get those results. But if you just want them to turn in forms to donate when you need money, those kinds of things, you're not going to be very successful. Rob Carroll, who was the principal of South Heights Elementary in Kentucky, was so good at this and he had this huge event every Christmas where they would bring in all these donations from community members and then kids could go buy gifts for their families.

[32:59]

Title I school in the middle of Kentucky, very low socioeconomic status, and they would give these kids blazer bucks and they would go buy all these different things. really powerful experience for them because they didn't just say, hey, donate so that we can get gifts for kids. They created this whole idea around we want the kids to go choose the gifts for their siblings. So we need a lot of stuff and we need you to donate it. And then you don't feel like you're just, OK, here's another donation to the school and let me just keep giving and giving and giving. But you get involved in this idea of helping kids make choices for their families, which then changes it from being you know, a drudgery or I have to do this or I'm obligated to do this to look at this cool thing that I get to be a part of.

[33:46]

And so you've got to take whatever you're doing with your school and your community and find ways to make it special, make it unique, make it memorable and meaningful so that people will want to be engaged in that in that opportunity.

[33:59] SPEAKER_00:

So the book is School X, how principals can design a transformative school experience for students, teachers, parents, and themselves. And Jethro, if people want to learn more about your work or get in touch with you, where's the best place for them to find you online?

[34:12] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So if you want to get a free chapter of the book, you can just go to schoolx.me slash radio or Principal Center Radio. That's schoolx.me slash radio. And then my website is jethrojones.com and we can connect there whenever you like.

[34:30]

Love to chat with you.

[34:31] SPEAKER_00:

Jethro, thanks so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure.

[34:35] Announcer:

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