Leading with Laser Focus: The Seven Steps to School Success

[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_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm thrilled to be joined today by Jim Sturdivant, author of You've Gotta Connect, Building Relationships That Lead to Engaged Students, Productive Classrooms, and Higher Achievement. Jim, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Hey, it's my pleasure to be here, Justin. Well, Jim, I'm really excited because you have done what very few people can do, and that is write an extraordinary book while remaining in the classroom full time. And I know a lot of people take a sabbatical or move into some other kind of role, and that's when they write a book. But you decided that you needed to write a book...

[00:53]

about what you are currently and continuing to do in the classroom to connect with your students and be just an incredibly effective teacher. Could you tell us a little bit about what drove you to put your experience into a book and share it with other people?

[01:10] SPEAKER_02:

Sure. Now, I'm one of these strange type teachers who actually enjoys having a student teacher. A lot of people cringe at the thought. I enjoy it. I I've had a few, and I've enjoyed all of them. So a few years back, I was given a young man called Charlie Raleigh, who actually teaches right across the hall from me right now.

[01:30]

He did such a good job. We hired him in our school. And he's a wonderful young guy from Otterbein University. I live in Sunbury, Ohio, which is only a few miles from Otterbein University. And Charlie's this really good-looking guy, and he played college football. And he came strolling into my class the first day, and immediately all the girls in class were like, whoa, this is a massive upgrade from Mr. Sturtevant.

[01:58]

And I had a lot of athletes in class, and they were drawn to Charlie. But, you know, I looked around the room, and I could see there was a handful of students, and I could read by their body language. that what they were thinking was, oh boy, we have another jock social studies teacher. So I pulled Charlie aside on the first day and I said, your mission is to bond with those kids that are pretty standoffish. Now he had the wherewithal to hear what I was saying and agreed with it and thought that that was a really good idea. What's more is he was just a real quick study.

[02:34]

Every suggestion I made to Charlie on connecting with kids, he just took it and ran with it. So student teachers have this nerve-wracking first day when their professor comes and actually watches them teach. And Charlie was like anybody else. He was kind of nervous. But he did a fantastic job. And so the lesson concluded, and the professor came up and talked to me.

[02:56]

And she says, I've got to ask you this question. She goes, I'm in hundreds of classrooms all the time. The atmosphere in this classroom is absolutely fantastic. I have to ask you, how did you create this? I can't believe that I wasn't prepared for that question. I don't know what happened that day.

[03:16]

I just kind of zoned out or whatever. But as soon as she asked the question, I just sputtered for 30 seconds. I mean, I had no coherent answer to that rather logical question. So Charlie's tenure ended. She went back to Otterbein. And I had to do some classwork to get recertified, so I called Otterbein up and I said, your professor asked me a question that I couldn't answer.

[03:43]

How about if I do an independent study with one of your professors and answer the question? How is it that I created this atmosphere in this class? How do you connect with students? Well, there's a lady by the name of Diane Ross who's a fabulous professor at Otterbein. She took me on, and over the course of the summer, we just researched this topic. At the end of the summer, I said, you know, I should turn this into a publisher.

[04:06]

And she really encouraged me to do that. And with some persistence, because I got a lot of no's, I finally was taken on by World Book. They used to do encyclopedias, and there's not a whole lot of market for that anymore, so now they're diversifying. And they took it on and it was just kind of a spur of the moment thing. It's like, hey, I didn't try to do that. It wasn't this bucket list thing.

[04:30] SPEAKER_01:

Well, let's get into the kind of framework that you have. And I know at the beginning of the book, you say it all begins with commitment. But I wanted to jump right into your second major framework. kind of idea in the book about accepting students. And I think this is a tough tension or kind of a difficult polarity for teachers to kind of manage in the sense that we want to hold our students accountable. We want to have high standards.

[04:56]

We want to have high expectations. But we also want to accept them as people. Could you talk about what that means to you? Sure.

[05:05] SPEAKER_02:

You know something? I hope you can indulge me when I tell you a story here. I devoted an entire chapter to the book to this concept of acceptance. And I think it's a main barrier. I think it's the main barrier to connecting with students. Simply stated, teachers must accept their students, which is surprisingly a very tall order for many.

[05:27]

So here we go. I've been teaching for 30 years. And this occurred clear back at the dawn of my teaching career. For the first time in my life, I was confronted with a group of students who were nothing like me. None seemed to be the least bit interested in the subject I was teaching, which is ninth grade civics, which probably nobody's interested in. But I was determined to build a relationship with these kids.

[05:52]

So I was as alien to them as they were to me. And I tried to bond with them how I'd forged other relationships in my life, I really extended myself. So I'd ask them about their weekends, what they had for dinner last night, their favorite NBA team, what's the last movie they saw, who they're attracted to. I just came on really strong. And what was just shocking to me is they had no interest in bonding with me. It was really sad.

[06:23]

And in fact, it was downright cold. So not only were they cold, they'd also do things to undermine what I was trying to do in class. They had this really annoying tactic that they would do. So I'm teaching a class in social studies. Whatever question I would ask them, they would answer, Hitler. And they knew it was the wrong answer.

[06:46]

They would say it just to rattle my cage. And I learned this, it was like the first week, and we were talking about civil rights, and I asked the question, who was the African-American woman who refused to give up her seat on the bus in Alabama? The student chimes up, Hitler. Now, he knew it was the wrong answer. What's more, every kid in the class knew it was the wrong answer. They start to crack up, and I just got really, really frustrated.

[07:12]

So, like I said, this was early in my career, and I was convinced, I can't reach these kids. I'm not succeeding with these kids. Well, it was a long September, and it drifted on into October, and I remember one Monday morning, it was a dreary Monday morning, students come filing into class, they had zero enthusiasm for the whole enterprise, so I had to pair up and work on an activity, but it became clear pretty quickly that they were more interested in socializing with each other than they were the activity. And there was a couple kids, there was a couple guys, a couple young guys right beside my desk who were really pretty loud. Now, part of me wanted to say, hey guys, you're not going to want to do this later. Let's get a start on this.

[07:57]

But Justin, something told me to shut up and listen to their conversation so what I do is I pulled some papers out on the desk and I just pretended like I was working but what I was really doing was listening to them and in five minutes I got more education about education than I think I got in my years in college now I'm sitting here and I'm listening to this and it just had a huge impact on me it was a massive paradigm shifter it made sense Here I am, I'm an adult, and I'm trying to work my way into these kids' lives. It was a rational act on their part to be standoffish. I came to a conclusion pretty quickly. The problem in that class wasn't my students, it was me and my ego and my expectations and my limited perspective and my insatiable desire for affirmation.

[08:54]

I was the problem. Now, from that point forward, I relaxed some. And, you know, your students are kind of like a mirror image of you. When you relax some, they relax some, which was really interesting. Now, I realized that building a relationship with these kids was going to take time, much longer than I anticipated. But I also knew, hey, I'm a friendly guy, and with patience, I could win them over.

[09:24]

But it was going to be on their timetable. And I had all year to do it. It was a massive eureka moment. I accepted my students. I stopped pressing and allowed things to develop naturally. So that's one of the big things that happened with me and acceptance.

[09:39]

And let me just finish what happened. It was interesting. A few days later, I had my big eureka moment. I asked my class, who was the first African-American baseball player to join the major leagues in 1947? I think we talked about civil rights the whole year. So guess what some kids said?

[09:57]

Adolf Hitler. But this time something different happened. Instead of getting angry, I started laughing. I mean, all I could see in my mind was Adolf Hitler in a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball uniform. And the kids in class just kind of sat back and thought, oh, wow, man, uptight Mr. Sturdivant is laughing at himself.

[10:20]

And before you knew it, every kid in the class was laughing. It was the first time. In five weeks since school started that we all were on the same page and we were laughing together. It was a huge breakthrough. Not to tell you, by Thanksgiving, I was pretty darn cordial with those kids. And man, by January, I had them.

[10:39]

I had them. That experience is my proudest achievement. But my relationship with those kids taught me more about this stuff than anything. And you know, there's a lot to learn from my evolution. In my case, my ego and my perspective were major obstacles Many educators would do well to recognize these barriers to acceptance.

[11:01] SPEAKER_01:

So when you have students come in with all of the stuff that students bring with them, what does acceptance look like on a day-to-day basis? When a student walks in the door, how do they feel your acceptance of them?

[11:15] SPEAKER_02:

It is totally in your power. It is totally in your control. I'm sorry I'm not going to give you a short answer, but it's an important answer. When I present to groups, and you may have seen this in the book as well, I ask the audience to do something. I ask them to make a list of everything about their students or this generation that they find distasteful. And I found that people...

[11:46]

rattle off this list pretty easily. I know I did. I can think up a lot of things about this generation that I find distasteful. But that one I challenge them to do is I challenge them to go through that list and highlight or circle everything that in all honesty they have very little control over. And what I do is I sit back and I watch with great interest as their long list becomes an extremely short list. And so what you have to do with all those things that teachers often complain about is you've got to get rid of it, man.

[12:23]

You've got to trash it. You've got to get rid of those things that are creating ridiculous barriers between you and your students. I mean, do you really have the ability to control a kid's cell phone addiction? I mean, that's a really annoying thing in class these days. You know, I have students for 45 minutes a day. I am not going to cure their cell phone addiction in that time period.

[12:46]

Now, obviously, I can have rules and consequences and all that, but what's in your control and what's not? And if you're getting upset over things that aren't in your control, you're creating ridiculous barriers between you and your students. And I have to be honest, I see teachers do it all the time. Let me lay a quote on you. This is a wonderful quote. And I'm not saying it's easy to deal with young people today.

[13:06]

They are challenging. Check this out. I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on the frivolous youth of today. For certainly all youth are reckless beyond words. When I was a boy, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders. But the present youth are exceedingly wise and impatient of restraint.

[13:27]

Now, you know, your administrative audience, they see irony coming down the road. This is from 700 BCE, ancient Greece. The author is Hesiod, and he wrote this 200 years before Athens' golden age. So something else you have to do is you have to understand that there's really nothing new in being frustrated with teenagers. And I think when you do that, it takes some pressure off you. One of the things I did with my kids in the class that was so tough to connect with that was kind of fun, really fun, is when you take your ego out of it, which is really important, you start to observe interactions with students almost from afar, almost from a third-person situation.

[14:10]

And then you can just, you know, it almost becomes fun. It becomes like a fun game. Like, why did that person respond that way? Hmm, that's interesting. And once you take your ego out, that's very important, too.

[14:21] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, absolutely. Now I want to turn the focus to ourselves as adults and as educators. What are some of the things that you've identified, both verbal and nonverbal, that we do that affect our ability to connect with students? Because I think we all have this kind of, you know, the idea of the Johari window, that you have things you're aware of. and things that you're not aware of and things that other people are aware of about you and things they're not aware of. What are some of the barriers that you've identified to that connection, both verbal and nonverbal?

[14:51] SPEAKER_02:

Sure. There's one verbal that I'm going to give you and then one nonverbal. The verbal one is sarcasm. You can create a very negative atmosphere in your class very quickly if you're sarcastic with students. Now, the thing about sarcasm is it's a vice. And like all vices, it feels good at the time, but the after effects are unsavory.

[15:15]

Now, I'm not going to sit here and claim that I have never been sarcastic with a student. I mean, that would be a ridiculous statement. But boy, I'll tell you what, I'm very determined not to be. And whenever I do it, I apologize immediately. And I think a lot of teachers think this is no big deal. I one time observed a colleague.

[15:34]

And the student did not have their assignment. And instead of just accepting that or trying to find out why or whatever, the colleague had a flippant remark. It's like, well, that's really going to help us compete in the global economy. That was totally unnecessary. Now, the kid, he's like, game on, man. If we're going to start doing sarcasm back and forth, I'm ready.

[15:56]

And so he had a sarcastic response back to him. But what's really damaging there is that teacher probably reinforced a lot of securities the kid already had. You take away that cocky exterior, that kid's probably pretty insecure, and here the teacher is reinforcing that. So on the verbal side, one thing that you can do, I mean, aside from just being a nice person and being welcoming, which hopefully we've all internalized, is you can really do a lot if you just get rid of sarcasm. And administrators can do this too in faculty meetings and not realize it, and it's devastating to relationships. So the other part is, and something that I just love, is I love this concept of nonverbal communication.

[16:44]

And teachers can do a lot with this. And what's funny about nonverbal communication is the students really find it interesting too. So what you can do as a teacher and a student is you can work on this together. Because the kids look at you all the time. It might not seem that they're paying attention, but they really do. And so you can find all kinds of interesting tendencies uh... with your students and help them with their body language and in the process you will develop a lot of connections here's a great example let's say that one of the kids in your class i mean i teach high school this isn't appropriate for younger grades but let's say they have a crush on somebody and they're trying to figure out if that person uh... the feeling's mutual so the next time they go up and interact with this person they just need to look down at their feet

[17:37]

If their feet are pointed right at them, that shows that they are focused on the conversation. If the feet are pointed in the other direction, that means that person wants to hit the bricks.

[17:46] SPEAKER_01:

But leading economic indicators.

[17:48] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, you got it, man. Very good, sir. And so you can do a lot of these things. And I'll tell you something. When you get adept at reading body language, you start looking at kids. And you can tell a lot before anything is spoken.

[18:03]

And, you know, for instance, if a kid has a, if you have any type of confrontation with a kid, if you get adept at reading their body language, you then know how to proceed. It's very important. It's extremely important.

[18:15] SPEAKER_01:

Well, Jim, obviously it's inspiring to listen to you talking about how you connect with your students. But for our audience of school administrators, what is it that we can do to help every teacher connect more with students? Because I think we all can identify people within our buildings who are kind of naturals at this. But one of the points that I really appreciated from your book was that these are learned behaviors. These are skills learned. that every teacher can and must develop.

[18:44]

So where do you recommend that we start with that? How can we make connecting with students more of a priority in our schools and more of a reality in our schools?

[18:52] SPEAKER_02:

Well, it's interesting. There's a famous author by the name of John Hattie who wrote a book called Visible Learning. I'm sure many people in your audience are familiar with it, and many probably read it. And it was interesting. When I put this book out, a local superintendent read it and was very enthusiastic about it, called me and said, you need to become familiar with John Hattie. So I read John Hattie's book, and the whole point of John Hattie's book is in the middle of it, there's 138 influences on student learning.

[19:22]

And number one is self-evaluation. Students do really well when they're allowed to evaluate their own work. Number 138 is student mobility. A kid that moves into your class on October 1st is gone on November 1st. That's devastating to that child's education. So, man, I was really interested.

[19:41]

Where would student-teacher relationships fall? Number 11. Out of 138, number 11. So that really gave me tremendous affirmation on what I was doing. And it's not just John Hattie. It's not just me.

[19:57]

The state of Ohio has a resident education program. And they put relationships with students right up in the first area of focus. And I'm just going to quote briefly from the Ohio Department of Education website. They're calling on resident educators to build relationships with students by establishing and maintaining rapport, valuing each student as an individual, while avoiding the use of biased stereotypes and generalizations. Now, one pushback I get a lot when I talk about this is, You know, Jim, I mean, you're either born with the ability to connect with kids or you aren't. I mean, some people have it, some people don't.

[20:33]

I mean, it's the extrovert, introvert, you know, it's that concept. But you know what? I've been at this for 30 years. I've seen how I've improved as a connector. This did not, I was not born with this. I had to learn what not to do and what to do through pain often.

[20:55]

And it's kind of interesting, like I'm one of those extroverted type guys. I'm like a Walmart greeter, game show host, back slapper, you know, high fiver. I'm one of those type guys. But we have a teacher in our building by the name of Jeannie Collette who is in our guidance office now. And she is none of those things. She's an introvert.

[21:19]

She's calm. She's cerebral. She is quiet. And when she first came to our school as a science teacher 10 years ago, I'm looking at her thinking, oh my gosh, I think she's going to struggle. How is she going to corral these high school kids? And she's a very attractive woman who's pretty small in stature.

[21:39]

And I'll be honest with you, I think the first couple of years were pretty tough. But what I saw in Jeannie was amazing. Over the decade she was in the classroom, She learned what to do with students. By the time she went into guidance, she was the most popular person on our staff. I'm really proud of her. I talk about her wherever I go.

[21:56]

Now, as far as your audience and what administrators can do, stated simply, they need to take connection with students seriously because most people don't talk about it. It's just something you're supposed to just kind of know how to do or just magically figure out. You need to take it seriously. And if you believe in what John Addy says, it's incredibly important. One thing that gives me a little cred on talking about this is my roommate, the lovely Mrs. Sturdemont, just happens to be a middle school principal.

[22:29]

So we have these interesting conversations all the time. The reality for most administrators, and I should know, is they have to get test scores higher. It's not a choice. And this is dangerous because if we're not careful, we'll dehumanize our students and turn them into data points. My view, we've become so focused on the manufacturing process of learning, we've lost sight of the child. Now, don't get me wrong.

[22:51]

I mean, I agree that pedagogy and content are extremely important. Data is important. And after all, the public is demanding accountability. But let's not forget, education is a people business. And the people whom we're tasked to get results from are only children. So I think that it's essential that we don't lose this focus.

[23:15]

So for your audience, I would say you, administrators, prior to presenting to your staff the next big thing in learning, ask yourself, am I including strategies to help my teachers bond with their students? If you do this, what you might find is magically your building's test scores might really improve. And it might just be from that better connection with students.

[23:39] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. So the book is You've Got to Connect, Building Relationships that Lead to Engaged Students, Productive Classrooms, and Higher Achievement. Jim, thank you so much for joining us on Principal Center Radio.

[23:51] SPEAKER_02:

Oh, it was my pleasure. I absolutely loved it.

[23:54] SPEAKER_00:

And now, Justin Bader on high-performance instructional leadership.

[23:59] SPEAKER_01:

So high-performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation with Jim Sturdivant? I have to say I was incredibly excited to speak with Jim after reading his book and seeing the specific activities and exercises he includes in the book to reflect on our own practice as educators in terms of how we connect collectively. with students and as a school leader i want to challenge you to look for that connection skill when you're hiring and if you've hired someone and you think they don't have that skill work on building it as jim said it is something that is learned it is something that can be taught i would encourage you to check out jim's book and look at the activities that he includes in the book for doing that work of reflection and figuring out how to better connect but when you're hiring when you're looking for a new team member to bring on board in your school one of the things you want to look for is that student focus is that ability to appreciate who students are to accept who students are and to have a commitment to doing whatever they need without having that kind of filter of judgment and thinking okay well these are the students i'm going to serve

[25:07]

And those are the students I'm not going to serve because they're not bringing the right things to the table. You want to look for teachers who have the mindset that all students are our responsibility, that all students are our students. And we as adults, we as educators are going to do whatever it takes to connect with them. So look for that when you're hiring, look for that when you're thinking about how you want to build your team. And when you don't see enough of that going on, put it on the agenda, make it part of your professional development.

[25:37] Announcer:

Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.