[00:01] SPEAKER_00:
Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.
[00:06] Announcer:
Here's your host, director of the Principal Center and champion of high-performance instructional leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.
[00:15] SPEAKER_02:
I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined today by my friend, Dr. Bill Ziegler. Dr. Ziegler is an award-winning high school principal, author, and speaker who was recognized as the 2016 Pennsylvania Principal of the Year and the 2015 National Association of Secondary School Principals Digital Principal Award winner. He's the co-author of Future Focused Leaders, Relate, Innovate, and Invigorate for Real Educational Change, which we're here to talk about today.
[00:44] Announcer:
And now, our feature presentation.
[00:46] SPEAKER_02:
Bill, welcome to Principal Center Radio.
[00:47] SPEAKER_01:
Thanks so much, Justin. It's a pleasure to be on your show.
[00:50] SPEAKER_02:
So I've got to ask Bill, what was it that prompted you to write this book as a high school principal working with the middle school principal in your district as co-author? What kind of led to the development of that unique publishing relationship?
[01:03] SPEAKER_01:
What led us to work together was, first of all, the friendship that we have and the connection of working in the same district with a similar mindset and vision. But we also saw a strong need with school leaders nationwide on the ability to relate, innovate, and invigorate for real sustainable change in schools. And what we think is that school leaders are hungry for practical strategies that they can easily implement into their school. And a lot of the literature out there today is research-based, and this is research-based. But this is also practical. I love what Michael Fullen said about the book.
[01:35]
I've come to the conclusion that the best ideas go from practice to theory. And if you believe this future focus leaders is for you. So we really wanted to take that practice and theory, mix it together for a tool guide for school leaders as they prepare students for an unknown future.
[01:49] SPEAKER_02:
Very cool. I think that's such a great approach to start with someone that you actually work with in your school district and that vision that you share. So as you worked with Dave on the book, what were some of the big pieces that you wanted to share with readers from your practice? As you said, Michael Follin says, going from practice to theory. What were some of those big elements that stood out to you first?
[02:10] SPEAKER_01:
Well, the first one was that we believe that relationships are at the core of what we do as school leaders. And as a result, we put that as the first component. We did three, relate, innovate, and invigorate. And with relate, how to use relationships and build rich, sustaining relationships that can really strengthen student achievement. relationships with the student, the teacher, the parents, and the community. We talk about how to partner with your community and build relationships with businesses and corporations that can help fund programs, can help showcase your school.
[02:42]
And we do a lot around like communication and branding, but it's really about how do we leverage relationships to strengthen student achievement. And then the second one is innovate, right? So innovation, we believe we need to design schools that kids want to run toward, not away from. And to do that, we need to get students creating, designing, producing. Really, the teachers need to become the facilitator of knowledge. And students really are the ones producing and creating.
[03:08]
And then finally, invigorate. Just really returning all educators to the call of really wanting to make a difference in the lives of students. We provide practical strategies that we've used in our own school that is being used in other schools throughout the country.
[03:22] SPEAKER_02:
Well, Bill, I know we can all agree that relationships are one of the most crucial elements of leadership. You know, if we're going to be leaders, it's not just that we have the position. It's not just that we have the authority, but it's really that we have professional relationships with the people that we work with. And in our program, the Instructional Leadership Challenge, I've tried to get people involved. into classrooms, to get administrators into classrooms, but not to just collect data, not just to observe and provide feedback, but really to relate, to start conversations. So I'm wondering, what are some of the big conversations that stand out to you in your career as an educator that have really sparked a change in your thinking or led to a new idea, or as we get into in the book, in innovation?
[04:09]
What are some of the conversations that really impacted you professionally or impacted Dave as you worked on this book and the ideas that led up to it?
[04:17] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, I think the one thing that really compelled us to write a chapter or a whole unit on relationships is that we had a principal coach that coached both Dave and I. And these chapters really are influenced by the work of that principal coach. And he did something called conversational leadership. The principal coach told us that the conversation is the learning. And he talked about how we need to use conversational skills to increase our leadership style. So we embedded these practices into the book.
[04:48]
Things like listening for understanding. How often do we talk to a teacher and we're not listening for understanding. We're trying to jump to the next thing. That the teacher is doing or we try to solve that problem right away rather than listening, doing a check for understanding, making sure that we are hearing what they want, using phrases like tell me more to draw more out of a teacher and really speaking from the heart. And then lastly, I love one of the things he talks about. And we shared this here in the book.
[05:17]
Suspend judgment and hold space for difference. Don't rush to that conclusion. Don't make a judgment very quickly. And don't be certain right off the bat. Hold space for that, allowing the conversation to take place. And these are some of the things that we embedded into the book, but also the sections on relationships.
[05:37]
They talk about leveraging partnerships with corporations. They talk about communicating with the entire community. And they give you practical tools that you can do to do just that. The other piece that I really like about it is we featured 20 school leaders throughout the book. In each of the chapters, we share a story by Dr. Sine Bell from Morton Ranch Junior High School.
[05:59]
And she talks about her school and what she's doing on how to connect with her students and get feedback from her students in a relational, conversational way. Each chapter begins and ends with one of these school leaders that are from all walks of life, from big schools, small schools, rural schools, suburban, urban, wealthy schools, poor schools, high economically disadvantaged schools, I mean, it's a whole gamut of schools and school leaders that are out there right now in the field practicing what they do, giving us some real life strategies that we can use it. Be honest with you, Justin, when I read him and I was doing this, I'm like, that's a great idea. I want to embed that into my school.
[06:37] SPEAKER_02:
And I think what's so powerful about conversation is that it gives us both the opportunity to build relationships, as you said, and as well as to listen. And I think often we frame that backwards, right? We frame what we're doing when we're out in the hallway, when we're greeting parents, when we're going to the basketball game, we frame that as visibility. We say, well, I have to be visible in my school community. And I'm always thinking, you know, it's not that we are visible. People don't really care that much if we are visible.
[07:06]
We're visible just naturally in doing what we do. What really matters is that other people are becoming visible to us, that things that are happening in our school are becoming visible to us. And not only are we building relationships, but we're also gaining insight. information. And I think that connects well to the incredibly important responsibility that we have as leaders of telling our school story, of making what we're seeing visible to other people, visible to parents who might just have very little information about what's going on at school based on what their kids tell them or what they read in the paper. What are some of your strategies for that communication, for telling the story of your school to the broader community?
[07:49] SPEAKER_01:
Chapter two provides a variety of tools that school leaders can use immediately to really build that conversation with their community. Some of them, for example, we talk about how to leverage social media, how to use social media to showcase your school and to tell your school story. Twitter takeover day. Allow a student to take over their school's Twitter account and showcase what's going on in the life of the school from the student's perspective. And we talk about how to do just that. We also talk about teacher Twitter takeover day and in how my school we we gave the Twitter account over to a teacher one day and they did it.
[08:24]
We gave it over to a student, giving the different perspectives. And then we also talked about how. One school uses Instagram to get their message out and how they showcase their art gallery through Instagram. And then Remind, by far, Justin, the best communication tool out there for school leaders is Remind. And we provide step-by-step guidelines on how school leaders can use Remind, which used to be a one-way text messaging service. It is so much more than that now.
[08:54]
And we provide tools on how school leaders can use it to engage their teachers, their students, and their parents.
[09:00] SPEAKER_02:
Fabulous. Yeah, I'm hearing great things about Remind. My daughter's school uses it and just a great way to keep people informed at a granular level, whether we're talking about individual classrooms or the whole school. But I love those strategies because it takes time. communication from being one more thing, like one more hat that you have to wear, one more platform to post to, and really creates some neat opportunities. And I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about the Twitter takeover.
[09:27]
So you said you have teachers or individual students post to the school's Twitter account for the day, right?
[09:32] SPEAKER_01:
We do. So what we do is it's very structured. We pick a kid that is on Twitter, that's savvy with Twitter, and one that has posted a lot, that we trust, one student that we trust. We meet with the student. We meet with the student's parents. They sign a contract that they're going to be on there.
[09:48]
We change the password for one day. The student then gets on the account. We give them a school device to use and they tweet out about their day and they're they're taking pictures of their lunch. They're talking about what they're learning in geometry class. They're talking about what they're learning in English class. And they're also taking school life photos like in the hallways while they're going to lunch, while they're on the bus or, you know, and It's really a cool way for our students to get an inside look and our community more so to get an inside look at what our school is.
[10:18]
And then we decided to do it with teachers also. So we have teachers that take over our Twitter account. and do the same thing. They talk about what they're teaching, what they're learning, how their students are doing.
[10:30] SPEAKER_02:
That is fabulous. And I think we want to share that inside perspective with parents, but it just occurred to me when you were describing how students are doing that, often we as principals don't have the inside perspective, right? We have the principal's perspective and we need to seek out and get that student perspective. And I think I've heard in the past of principals shadowing a student for a day, just kind of going to classes with a kid, which I think is powerful in its own way, but certainly not something we can do on a very consistent basis. But I love that ability to get that inside view and to share with the broader community what's happening, the good things that are happening day to day. When it comes to figuring out those kind of pockets of innovation or the really incredible things that are happening in our schools, what are some of the ways that you recommend in the book that leaders can tap into those and kind of find the spark of innovation that's there and really make that grow, really make that spread?
[11:25] SPEAKER_01:
The first thing is to get a team. Don't do it alone. Whether you're a principal of a school of one or you have a team of assistants, Build a team and then get on social media, get on Twitter, follow some great chats, you know, get connected to some school leaders. In our book, we list 20 school leaders that every school leader should follow. And we have their Twitter handle. And it's a powerful way as a school leader to get professional learning for myself and to grow myself.
[11:53]
Without a doubt, in my opinion, I grow more through my social media professional learning network than anything else. I go to a conference, you spend a ton of money, you come back, you forget the ideas because you get overwhelmed with what's going on in school. But Twitter and some professional learning by following others gets me grounded, connected, and helps me to build on that innovation and take it to the next level.
[12:14] SPEAKER_02:
So again, you have a three-part framework of relate, innovate, and invigorate. What does invigorate mean? Where does invigorate come from?
[12:23] SPEAKER_01:
So invigorate's all about inspiring people to action, getting back to that reaction of wanting to really make a difference in the lives of every student. And what we realize is that school leaders, ourselves included, we get tired, we get worn out, and sometimes it can be a very lonely job. And that's where we work to invigorate school leaders and empower them to get excited, to get passionate, and to inspire their teachers, their students, and their parents to really, truly make a difference in the lives of every single student in their school. So with Invigorate, we provide principals with strategies that they can use to to really change culture. And that's what it's about, right? So culture changes in education, I think, by the school leader.
[13:05]
And the school leader, you can walk into a building and see quickly what the school culture is like. And I think it's representative of the school leader. And one of the things we point out in this invigorate is we talk about the difference, the changing demographics in schools today, and how we need to realize that we need to work to reach all students no matter what, regardless of where they come from, who they are, color of their skin, the money in their bank account, the number of family members they have, whether they have a family. It doesn't matter. What we need to do is we need to be challenged and inspired to really make a difference in the lives of every single student. We give this example from Dr. Kenneth Ginsberg.
[13:45]
He's a pediatrician in Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He came to our school. He's in CHOP, which is real close by. It's called the DOT Project. He recommends having your faculty Put the roster of every student in their school on their faculty wall with little dots or a marker, maybe like a Sharpie. And if you can talk about a kid in that school, maybe their struggles, their joys, what they're involved in, what they like to do, something about them.
[14:13]
Put a dot next to their name. And then what happens is you realize as a school which kids don't have dots next to their names. They're the ones that we need to make connections with. And it's a powerful reminder that we need to include all students in the school. So we talk about that. We provide some examples on how to do that.
[14:32]
And, uh, It's just a great activity. And it's really about making it personal and creating personalized learning environments.
[14:40] SPEAKER_02:
And I think that's a great kind of summary term, you know, invigorate. I hear this a lot from secondary school administrators, principals and assistant principals of the middle school and high school level who seem to be very frustrated with. that proportion of their staff who seems to very much need to be invigorated, if you know what I mean. I think every school has people who maybe have not kept pace with changing times, with new instructional strategies, with the need to meet the needs of all students. We hear from certain people that, you know, oh, we wish students could be the way they used to be. Or back in my day, you know, we didn't have to do X, Y, Z on behalf of our students.
[15:21]
And I think that can be very frustrating to administrators when we feel like we have people who do not really want to be invigorated, right? Who want to keep doing things the way they've always done them and really resist that type of change. What are some of the strategies that you recommend in the book for that kind of invigorating process, especially with staff who might be a little bit resistant to changing their practice?
[15:43] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, we understand that, that some staff may be resistant. And what we've really done is we've worked to provide principals with some practical strategies, such as establishing faculty norms, on how we're gonna treat students, how we're gonna address students and talking to them. Every teacher's gonna be out at their door greeting students and welcoming them to their class. These are norms that are expected throughout the building, and they are modeled by the school leader. So we set the norms, we model them as the school leader, we celebrate successes that we see, And then we encourage small steps on certain things. But the norms, we need instant response and instant feedback.
[16:23]
We need instant action on those. Because as a building, as a school, this is what we believe. We believe that every student should be greeted at the door, the classroom door with a smile, a teacher saying hello, and making that personal connection. Those are things we can't go short on. And so we talk about establishing school norms, celebrating success, and really embedding modeling for the principal, but also modeling getting some key teacher leaders that come in and do mentoring. And we talk about what we call courageous conversations, how to have those courageous conversations with someone who may not be following the faculty norms, who may not be doing what they need to do, or may not be given the positive school spirit that they need to be given towards students.
[17:09]
So we talk about courageous conversations, And developing teacher leaders that can hopefully mentor some of those teachers that need to come on. And then finally, collaborative leadership. Expand your territory on who's on the leadership team on your school. The more you can get on, the more people you can get in there, the better off it's going to be. The other piece is give it time. Realize that they're people.
[17:32]
Realize that they have feelings. Support them. Encourage them. I love what Todd Whitaker says. Treat your worst teacher like your best teacher. And it's really about not changing your attitude toward that teacher, but treating them with respect and dignity.
[17:46] SPEAKER_02:
Absolutely. And I think we all want people to have good attitudes, and yet we can't make people have the attitude that we want them to have. Attitude is kind of a personal thing. But we can set norms, as you said. So I thought that was a great thing to highlight. You know, we can set the expectation that regardless of how you feel about it, you know, we are all going to greet students at the door.
[18:06]
You know, we are going to do certain things in order to create a certain experience for our students. And we're not going to leave that up to just the, you know, the whims of the individual because we want this to be the way our students experience school. And the other piece that I wanted to highlight that you hit on is modeling. As a leader, setting the tone. As teacher leaders, highlighting that tone that they are modeling for peers who might struggle with that more. And I think to your point about Todd Whitaker's statement that we should make decisions or you know treat people as if they were the best people you know I think that's such a great way of solving that problem of having people who you know may not have the attitude we want you know if you treat someone like they are fantastic that's really hard to deal with if you choose to deliberately not be fantastic and people can can kind of make their own decision of either you know I'm going to
[18:58]
have the attitude that I need to have to really thrive in this environment or go do something else with my life. And, you know, over time, as you said, you know, we give it time and over time we end up with the people who are on board with that vision.
[19:10] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, I so agree. Another piece we like to do is focus on that individual strengths because everybody, regardless of the resistant or not, they have a strength. What's their strength? expose it and just develop and nurture that. Because a lot of times when someone is working on their strengths, their joy comes out and their passion comes out through that.
[19:29] SPEAKER_02:
Well, Bill, as you communicated with many people across our profession in working on this book, what were some of your favorite stories that you've included from your colleagues in the book?
[19:39] SPEAKER_01:
Some of my favorite stories, probably Darren Elwin's probably one of them. He he has his students creating and designing furniture that they're going to actually use in the school. They go and they get like recycled, discarded materials and they build their own furniture that they're going to use in their school lobby or school classrooms. And I just think that's a great way to get students creating and designing. Nancy Alvarez in Texas. I love what Nancy's doing.
[20:07]
Nancy works in a primary school, which is it's got a thousand primary students in it. Pre-K. Imagine that three, four, five year olds, a thousand of them. And she works in a highly populated Hispanic area. And what she I love how she integrates everything she does in English and Spanish. And she does that in a way that really connects with the community and brings the community together.
[20:34]
And I love how Ryan Maxwell in Washington State, his school is 99 percent Hispanic. It's a high poverty school. And it was a school just years back with riddled with crime and gang violence. He has really worked with his leadership team to flip that school around to be a high performing school. highly successful. Ryan was just the Washington State Principal of the Year.
[21:00]
And what I love about Ryan was that he set expectations, he laid out a plan, and then his team and his teachers carried them out. And I think it talks to the collaboration piece of it. I love Brad Gustafson's energy from Minnesota. Brad's phenomenal on what he's doing to really get students creating in a positive culture and And finally, I think one that just resonates is Carrie Jackson from Texas. Carrie, in her school leadership at the middle school level, has transformed her school culture in a way that just gets students excited about coming to school. I mean, they have pep rallies on the first day of school about coming to school.
[21:36]
I mean, she's just pumped up and fired about making a difference in the lives of students every day. You know, Justin, the readers can read through these stories. There's 20 school-featured throughout this and the school leaders. And the stories are ones that every single school leader can relate to at one point or another and something that they can take away be inspired by and be challenged by to make a difference in their school.
[22:00] SPEAKER_02:
I love it. And we've had Brad Gustafson on the show talking about his book, Renegade Leadership. So that's great to hear that you connected and incorporated his story into your book as well. You know, it almost, Bill, strikes me kind of like the greeting card industry. What an opportunity we have now to learn from each other. I don't know if you've ever been in the greeting card aisle and somebody's got a birthday coming up or you've got a holiday or an anniversary coming up.
[22:24]
And you don't have to think totally from scratch about exactly what you want to say. You can find ideas in those cards that represent what you want to say. It might not be completely original once you find that card that you're looking for, but we don't have to start from scratch. when it comes to innovative ideas to meet our students' needs. And I think that's one of the greatest things about the time that we live in, the fact that we can connect on Twitter, the fact that we can share ideas through books, that we can actually meet the authors of those books at conferences and things like that. And I know you and I have run into each other at conferences and And I think we live in just an incredible time for that, you know, where we're not starting from the blank page, but we really have the opportunity to beg, borrow, and steal from each other.
[23:10]
You know, that's something that we talk about as teachers a lot, you know, don't reinvent the wheel, get materials from anyone you can. And I think as leaders, that becomes even more important to connect. to share ideas and to build on the exciting ideas that are taking place across the profession. Well, Bill, and I know as we've connected on Twitter over the years, I know you're a very big digital person and to go from being a digital principal nominee into writing a hard copy book. What were some of the things that you did to kind of innovate on that front of integrating the print and the digital?
[23:47] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, Justin, I was very passionate about making this book much more than just paper with print on it. So we did two things. One is we use the Erasmus app. Erasmus is augmented reality and it brings the cover of the book and the back cover to life with a lot with a video that that readers can see, connect with and learn more about the book. The second thing is we did a digital simulation. We partnered with Ed Leadership Sims and Ken Spiro to embed a digital simulation.
[24:16]
We give you the link. You go to our website. You can use this sim to work with your team on problem solving. So it's a digital simulation where you work through as a leadership team or as a school leader on solving a real life problem right before you. And depending on how you answer, it adjusts and make adjustments for throughout the simulation. So check it out, a RASMA app and the SIM in Future Focused Leaders.
[24:41] SPEAKER_02:
So Bill, the book is Future Focused Leaders, Relate, Innovate, and Invigorate for Real Educational Change by Bill Ziegler and Dave Ramage. And Bill, if people want to get in touch with you online, what are some places that they can connect with you?
[24:54] SPEAKER_01:
The best way to connect is through chaselearning.org. That's chaselearning.org. Or you can follow me on Twitter at Dr. Bill Ziegler.
[25:02]
That's D-R-B-I-L-L-Z-I-E-G-L-E-R. But check me out at chaselearning.org. You can get the book there. You can see the work that we do with consulting with school districts and a number of other things.
[25:14] SPEAKER_02:
Well, Bill, thanks so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio.
[25:16] SPEAKER_01:
Thanks so much, Justin. It's been an honor.
[25:19] SPEAKER_00:
And now, Justin Bader on high-performance instructional leadership.
[25:23] SPEAKER_02:
So high-performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation with Dr. Bill Ziegler? One thing that really stands out to me is just the amazing time that we live in. The opportunities that we have to connect over Twitter, to build relationships, to meet people face-to-face at conferences that we've already known online for years. and that was my experience getting to know bill we had connected online and then ultimately met at a conference and i think there is just an amazing opportunity that previous generations of leaders simply did not have to network to share ideas to not only innovate but to build on other people's innovations and i want to encourage you to check out bill's book future focused leaders because there is simply No better shortcut to learning about those innovations and to figuring out what could connect with your school community, what you could try, rather than reinventing the wheel, rather than starting from scratch.
[26:19]
There are just some amazing things going on in our profession. I think there's never been a more exciting time. to be a school leader. So again, the book is Future Focused Leaders, Relate, Innovate, and Invigorate for Real Educational Change. And I would like to hear from you. How did it go?
[26:35]
If you try some of these ideas, if you try letting a student take over your Twitter account for the day, let Bill know. Let me know. You can find us on Twitter. I'm at eduleadership on Twitter. And just let me know how it goes in your school. I also want to refer you to a couple of previous episodes that you'll find on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.
[26:56]
You'll find Brad Gustafson's interview about renegade leadership. And you'll also find William Parker's interview about his book, Messaging Matters, how school leaders can inspire teachers, motivate students, and reach communities. And William tells a pretty incredible story of something his students were doing in the bathroom that he just had to share with the school community. So check that out at principalcenter.com slash radio.
[27:20] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.
