[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_01:
I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome back to the program Dr. Robin Jackson. Dr. Jackson is the founder of MindSteps and the host of School Leadership Reimagined, the podcast for school administrators, instructional coaches, and teacher leaders. She's the award-winning author of 11 books, including the bestselling Instructional Leader's Guide to Strategic Conversations with Teachers and and Never Underestimate Your Teachers, which was chosen as an ASCD member book. And we're here today to talk about her newest book, Stop Leading, Start Building.
[00:45]
Turn your school into a success story with the people and resources you already have.
[00:51] Announcer:
And now, our feature presentation.
[00:53] SPEAKER_01:
Robin, welcome back to Principal Center Radio.
[00:55] SPEAKER_00:
I always love coming to visit with you, so I'm excited to be here.
[00:58] SPEAKER_01:
I'm constantly telling people that you are the smartest person that I ever get to talk to on the podcast. So I'm very glad to have you back and to talk about the new book, which is based around an idea that you've been sharing for quite some time, the idea of buildership. What is buildership and how does that contrast with leadership? Because you say to stop leading and start building.
[01:19] SPEAKER_00:
So probably about 2009, I was reading a Harvard Business Review article by an economist named Amir Haig. And he started drawing the contrast between bosses and leaders and builders. And it really resonated with me because I thought that a lot of the challenges that I was trying to tackle in education at the time were really a function not of a particular person or a particular problem, but a function of a particular approach. And when he started kind of describing this idea of what it meant to be a builder, it took off. And one of the things that he said early on was that there's a common expression that bosses say, go, and leaders say, let's go. I'd heard it.
[02:03]
I'd repeated it myself. And I thought, that's such a great way of doing it and thinking about it. But the challenge with saying, let's go, is that you are positioned very near the people you're trying to lead. And so who's going out ahead? Who's figuring it out? Who's testing out the waters?
[02:20]
And so he suggested that while bosses say go and leaders say let's go, builders say come. And I love that because instead of trying to drag people towards a goal, you are inviting people to step into a reality, to a vision that has started to take shape. Instead of being in front and getting other people to follow you as a leader, You are inviting people to join you on building something that's bigger than the both of you. And so I think that's kind of the big difference and has been something that I've been playing around with ever since is that shifting in education from trying to drag our school towards our goal, trying, you know, the biggest question I always get asked is how do I get my teachers to? And, you know, that puts us in a position of always having to wait for somebody else to move forward before we can move forward. It puts us in a position of having our vision for our school being held hostage by policies or people or, you know, parents or lack of resources.
[03:22]
And when you stop leading and stop waiting for other people to follow you and you just move ahead and you start building. then you can start pursuing that vision and making it a reality right away. And the more you do that, and the more you invite other people to join you in building it, the better it becomes, the bigger it becomes. And so instead of dragging people towards your goal, you're inviting people to help you shape that vision for your school. And I just thought that that was what we needed in education.
[03:48] SPEAKER_01:
So what is it exactly that builders are building? Because I think we've all inherited expectations about what schools should be like, how schools should work. And of course, stepping into a leadership role in an existing school, the school that exists is certainly an alternative to the school that you're trying to build or the reality that you're trying to create. So understanding the idea of vision and envisioning things that we want to be different What is it that builders are building and kind of calling people to?
[04:19] SPEAKER_00:
So it starts with your vision. So one of the things that we teach is that a builder's vision involves some sort of successful outcome for 100% of their students. It's a promise that they're making to every child that comes to your school. So an example might be 100% of our students will be reading at or above grade level by second grade and will maintain that grade level or above grade level throughout their time here at our elementary school. Or 100% of our middle school students will pass algebra by eighth grade. Or 100% of our high school students will...
[04:54]
take at least one honors or AP class, successfully pass at least one honors or AP class or whatever it is. So you set that vision for 100% of your students. And then you realize very quickly that the school that you have right now is never going to get you there. So what does your school have to become in order to be a place where that vision is true for 100% of your students? And that's what you're building together. You're building that kind of school.
[05:21]
And that gets really exciting because instead of building a program, you don't get tied to a particular strategy. What you are focused on is a particular outcome. And so that gives you the freedom to be creative about what it is that you build. So a lot of times when you're starting, you don't know what you're building yet. You do know the outcome that you want for kids. And then you start trying to figure out and reverse engineer from that outcome.
[05:47]
If we want that outcome for kids, what... kind of school do we need to build? Who do we need to become in order for that outcome to be true for all of our students?
[05:57] SPEAKER_01:
Such a powerful question. And it reminds me of the Deming quote that says, your system is perfectly designed to produce the results that you're getting. And for a lot of us, we're not happy with the results we're getting. And we know the problem is the system that is producing those results. And we constantly are looking for ways to bring about change in that system. But often we don't start with where you said to start just a moment ago, which is an outcome for 100% of students.
[06:27]
And I think we hear something like that, 100% of students, and we almost mentally translate that into realistic language. Like, okay, Robin said 100%, but I know we're really talking about 77%. I'd be really happy if 77% of our kids were reading on grade level. Are you serious? Are you serious about 100%?
[06:48] SPEAKER_00:
Absolutely. And it's not just an idea. We've been teaching buildership for a while, and now we have builders who have hit 100%. And once you hit it once, then you start realizing that not only is it possible, but it's necessary. Like you see the difference, right? So for too long as educators, we've accepted this myth that you can't reach every child.
[07:11]
I don't think any of us went into education to get 77%. Like I think we all went into education because we wanted to make a difference in the lives of our children. And so when people come to me and they say, well, You know, we have kids who are coming to us so far behind, we're not going to get them to reading, you know, on grade level by second grade. So what do we do about that? And so, well, you're absolutely right. With the school that you have right now, with the system you have right now, you're never going to get there.
[07:40]
But can you imagine, can you allow yourself to imagine for a second what your school would have to look like for that to be true? You can't change their parents. You can't change their home situation. You can't change anything that happened to the children before they got there. What would have to happen once they get to you in order for that to be possible for that child? And when people can allow themselves to think that way, they begin to question all of their assumptions.
[08:07]
They begin to interrogate all of the systems that they've accepted as the only way. And they begin to start realizing that another reality is possible for their children. And I think that a lot of us at this point, when we say it can't work, it's because we are still thinking about how it can't work in the system we have. And you're absolutely right. So I never argue with people about, oh, yes, you can. No, the system you have is giving you the results that it's gonna give you.
[08:34]
But what happens if you change the system? That changes everything. And that unleashes the creativity. My biggest challenge is getting people to give themselves permission to think beyond the system that they currently have. And a lot of people never make that leap. And then they never experience those results.
[08:52]
The people who are seeing these results happen for 100% every single child in their school They're doing it. The hard work that they did first was allowing themselves to think beyond their current reality and dream about a better one and then doing the work to build that reality. And I think that's the big difference between leaders and builders. Leadership itself is an artifact of the system, right? Systems create leaders. So if you think like a leader, you're bound by the system in which you are leading.
[09:23]
When you think like a builder, though, you're not bound by your current reality. As a builder, your job is not to tend the existing system. Your job is to build a better system.
[09:34] SPEAKER_01:
You told a story a couple of weeks ago on your podcast, School Leadership Reimagined, which everyone should stop right now and subscribe to. About a time when you were teaching, I think 11th and 12th grade, and there was a term paper or like a senior project type paper, like a big paper that typically many, many, many students either flunked or just didn't really even try year after year. Tell us a little bit about that situation and how you took that 100% idea as the vision and as the starting point.
[10:06] SPEAKER_00:
So I taught 11th grade English and in 11th grade English in our district, that was the year you did the 10-page research paper. And the 10-page research paper took 12 of the 16 weeks of the whole second semester. So that meant that if you did not do that research paper, you failed second semester, 11th grade English. Now, what a lot of kids did is they did the math and they realized I could, you know, do this paper and just be tortured all 16 weeks, or I could fail and opt out. go to summer school for three weeks and get that credit. And so a lot of our students gave up, they were intimidated.
[10:38]
They'd never written a 10 page paper before. And every year we're trying to figure out how do we get every child to do that? Because for me, if they didn't do that paper, they would struggle in freshman English. College became less of an option for those kids because a lot of kids were flunking out of college the first semester because they couldn't The first thing you do in freshman English is a 10 page paper. So it had to be done. So we tried to figure out how do we get every kid to do that paper.
[11:00]
And I remember the biggest barrier that we saw was that they were just intimidated by the 10 pages. And so I remember one year going to my students and say, okay, we're about to write a 10 page paper. They'd heard about it. They all started groaning. One kid said, just fail me now. And I said, why are you groaning?
[11:16]
He said, we've never written a 10 page paper before. I said, okay, have you written a two page paper? And he said, yeah, I mean, we've done that. We just turned one in. We did a two page paper, but 10 pages, I just can't do it. And I said, well, we're not writing a 10 page paper.
[11:30]
We're going to write five two page papers and just reframing the research paper that way. changed everything. And that's what we did. We literally, we broke the research paper into two pages at a time, not two pages of a bigger paper. Each paper was two pages and completed in and of itself. And they turned that in.
[11:50]
I graded them. They got feedback. They revised it. And then after that week, I returned the fifth paper to them. I sat down with them. We did one 45 minute lesson on writing transition paragraphs between the first paper and the second paper, the second and the third and so forth.
[12:07]
And at the end of that class, I said, congratulations, you all just wrote a 10 page paper. And you should have seen the look on those kids' faces. I still get goosebumps thinking about it because something that they thought was impossible, when we broke it down, when we recast it that way, it started to feel doable. More kids went to college that year than had ever gone to college. They would come back to me and they would say, you know those kids, they don't know how to write a 10-page paper. And they would brag about the fact that they had written a 10-page paper before.
[12:37]
They didn't. And they didn't realize they were doing it at the time. But once they did it, they realized that they could do it. And that 10 pages stopped being an obstacle for them. And I think the same thing is true for schools. A lot of times we get so overwhelmed by the bigness of our problems and we use the same lenses we've always used to look at our problems.
[12:57]
But as a builder, you're taking a step back and you're saying, what do we need to build? And when you look at it that way, it stops being 10 pages and it starts being something that's doable. And you just start chipping away at the challenge. And before long, you got to 100% and you have a new school in the process.
[13:14] SPEAKER_01:
So you're starting again with that goal of 100% and saying, what do we need to build in order to meet that goal? That seems like it's a little bit different from asking, what are our barriers and how can we attack each of those barriers? How can we break down each of those barriers or overcome the obstacles? Why is that a different question? Or how is that a different question then? Well, here's what's standing in our way.
[13:35]
Let's solve that problem and then solve, like we're good at solving problems. Why is this different?
[13:39] SPEAKER_00:
Because when we're solving problems, we're just chopping at problems that show up or rise up in front of us without really weighing whether or not that's a problem we should be solving. And when you think like a builder, the thing that drives your work is always your vision, your mission, your core values. Your vision is 100% of your students. Your mission is why are we trying to do this thing for 100% of our kids? And your core values is really about who do we have to be What has to be non-negotiable if we're going to ever reach that goal? If you start with that, then that gives context to your problems.
[14:13]
So as builders, we're looking at our biggest challenges too, but we're also looking at, you know, I give this illustration a lot about, we call it like I teach this whole section on figuring out which problems are the problems you need to be solving right now. And we call it finding your 150. And it's the idea that like if you were on an assembly line and you are trying to get to 300 cars a day and you go down the line at each station, you look at the max capacity of each station currently per day. Then, you know, you might have somebody, one station that's working at 175 cars a day, another one 275, another one 350, another one 150, another one 125, or I mean, sorry, 225 and so forth and so on. At the end of the day, the station that produces the least amount of cars gives you the capacity of the entire line.
[15:04]
And that example, the lowest producing station was a station that was only producing 150 cars a day. So as a builder, you're not looking at whatever challenge rises up. Some of them you're going to ignore. Because if I go down the line and I say, oh, wait a minute, I'm trying to get to 300 cars a day, but this person's only producing 175. And I spend all this time and energy trying to get that 175 up to 225. It still doesn't change the capacity of the line as long as I have somebody working at 150.
[15:33]
And so what builders do is we're still looking, we still have to remove obstacles and challenges, but we're always looking for that 150. What is the thing, where is the bottleneck that is getting in the way of our achieving this for 100% of our students? That's the challenge you're working on first. And all the other things that feel like challenges, we know that even if you were to work on them, it's not going to change the outcome. So we're going to be very disciplined about focusing on one challenge at a time, and it's always going to be our 150. And if we can figure out how to improve that 150, you improve the capacity of the entire line.
[16:10]
And that's why builders... see success after success from one, you know, builders kind of look, they're solving challenges in 90 day cycles approximately. So instead of, you know, setting one goal for the end of the year, we're always looking every 90 days and say, okay, where's our 150? And then we spend the next 90 days removing that, increasing the capacity of that 150.
[16:31]
And as we do that, we're going from one success to the next success. And that's how you can see that exponential growth year over year, because you're working on the right challenges.
[16:40] SPEAKER_01:
I wanted to repeat something that you said there that was powerful that we have to not miss. And that is that you said we could solve a lot of problems that wouldn't change the outcome if they're not our main constraint. So I'm thinking about a principal that I talked to recently who is newly in a school that is struggling with a lot of different things. There are instructional strategies that are kind of lacking. There are maybe classroom management skills. There are staffing issues.
[17:06]
There are lots and lots and lots of different challenges. And it seems like all of them need to be solved at once. But there is one that the principal shared with me that really jumped out at me. These kids are not being asked to do grade level work. They're being asked to do work that is, you know, high schoolers being asked to do middle school standards or upper elementary standards. And I don't know that there's any instructional strategy or classroom management strategy that could fix that.
[17:34]
So is that an example of a, you know, of a 150? Or how do we know when we found the right kind of one thing? Because there are so many candidates, right, for the one thing.
[17:45] SPEAKER_00:
So we have a tool we call the builder's blueprint. And it's something that I stole from business that helped businesses kind of diagnose where their 150 was at the time. So I took it, I saw businesses were using it, and I adjusted it for education. And at the top of that blueprint is your vision, mission, and core values. And the first filter we apply to all problems is Is this a problem that is impeding our progress towards our vision? Is this something that is taking our work off mission?
[18:17]
So we've lost our why somewhere along the way. Or is this a problem that keeps us out of alignment with our core values? So the first filter is if the problem doesn't affect our vision, mission, and core values, it's not really a problem. We got to keep looking. There's another root cause to it, right? So that's the first line.
[18:34]
So what we do is we have people write down your vision, mission, and core values, and then we look at all of the challenges that we're facing, and we start out by kind of generalizing. These challenges, what's the biggest threat right now? Is it that we're not making progress towards that vision for 100% of our kids? is it that we're making progress, but we're not doing it in a way that aligns with our mission. So we're off mission. A lot of people are saying we want 100% of our kids reading at above grade level, but our mission says we're doing that because we want to give kids more options and help them make better choices.
[19:05]
But in pursuing that 100%, we're limiting their options. We're just getting rote memorization. We're chasing test scores. So In that case, we're off mission. So that's our real problem. Or is our work out of alignment with our core values?
[19:19]
Are we pursuing our work in a way that's creating toxicity in our culture? Are we pursuing our work in a way that is turning parents into villains and setting ourselves up as saviors or doing things that kind of get us out of doing the work the right way? So that's the first question you're going to ask. Then you're going to start looking at data, and you're not looking at all your data. You're looking at your data to see whether or not your instinct about is it our vision, mission, or core values that's kind of out of whack right now. What's the data telling you?
[19:48]
And that helps you look at the data and ask the data some very specific questions so you're not just kind of drowning in data. And so then you look at that, and a lot of times you'll see that the data refines what your instincts were telling you at the beginning. Then the next question is, okay, we can only provide whatever happens, anything that happens in our school that threatens our vision, mission, and core values, it has an instructional answer. That's really the only thing that we can do. So this is where the work that I've been doing comes full circle because I started out, you know, one of my first books was talking about seven principles of effective instruction. And I honestly believe that any classroom challenge can be solved by looking at and doubling down on one of those principles.
[20:28]
So in your principles case. If her instincts about on grade level work were true, then the next thing is, why is that a problem? And it's typically a problem because we can't reach our vision for 100% of our kids if they're not doing on grade level work. So the first step is, OK, I would say, OK, so my real problem right now is located in my vision. That gives my problem context. The reason I want you to do on grade level work is because that's the only way we're going to get to 100% of our kids.
[20:58]
Here's some data, and it's usually going to be observational data that shows that the work that we're doing is not on grade level. So that kind of supports this, you know, this hunch that I have. Now, how do we fix it? So it's going to be one of the seven principles. And in that case, it's probably going to be principle two. Principle one is start where your students are.
[21:15]
Principle two is know where your students are going. So then you're going to start looking at why are teachers doing below grade level work? Is it that they don't really understand the standards or is it a different principle, which is about expect to get the students there? They don't believe they can get students on grade level. So they're giving them below grade level work from an expectations point. So you're going to dig a little deeper to figure out.
[21:36]
What's driving the current behavior and how do we solve it? If they don't know, then you're going to spend the next 90 days making sure they know what those standards and understand those standards. If it's about expectations, you're going to spend the next 90 days working on their expectations more of themselves than of the students so that they can figure out and become, they feel like they have agency. They feel like they can help students achieve on grade level work. So that's what you have to figure that out. And then the last step is, okay, if that's what I want teachers to do, What do I need to do?
[22:04]
And there are only four things you can do to impact teacher behavior. It's either going to be feedback, support, accountability, or culture. So I'm looking at my teacher's current will and skill around that principle, principle to they don't understand what on-grade level work is. So what's their will and skill around that? And then based on that, I decide whether or not I'm going to double down on giving them the right feedback, or is it that they need support, or is it that they need to become more accountable, or is it that we have some problems in our culture that are keeping us from doing this thing that we feel like we need to do? By the time you're done, that blueprint, that That deep dive thinking creates this narrative.
[22:42]
If I want students to X, then teachers need to do Y. And if I want teachers to do Y, I need to do Z. And so that blueprint gives you that pathway towards, okay, this is what we're going to focus on for the next 90 days. And the goal is that at the end of the 90 days, I've changed the data and I've got us on track again towards our vision. And if you think about every problem that way, it not only helps you solve the right problem, but it helps you solve the right problem in the right way and for the right reasons. And at the end of that, you can see tangible progress towards your goal.
[23:15]
And that's why you can get to 100% in three years, because if you're doing that in a disciplined way, you're just knocking out problems and they never come back. You're not putting Band-Aids on them. You're solving them and you're getting better and better and better every iteration.
[23:28] SPEAKER_01:
So Robin, in the book, you identify four primary levers for bringing about those improvements around purpose, people, pathway, and plan. Take us into those, if you would.
[23:40] SPEAKER_00:
The four disciplines of buildership are feedback, support, accountability, and culture. The purpose, people, pathway, plan, those are, I don't know what I'm calling them yet. Some people call them pedals because that's what it looks like on the model, but it's really this, that's the process of buildership. That when you are trying to move your school forward, you work through those four things, the four levers that you can pull if you want to get your school to 100% success. So the purpose part is that first step is that you need to establish a clear purpose. And your purpose is your vision, mission, and core value.
[24:16]
You can't do anything until you have that clarity around that purpose. The next step is then you need to get people committed to that purpose. And how do you get people committed? And that's really about moving the will and skill of your staff. And there are four disciplines you can use to do that. It's either going to be feedback, support, accountability, or culture.
[24:35]
And so you're trying to figure out which one of those levers do you need to pull in order to get people committed. Once you have a clear purpose, once you have people committed to that purpose, the next thing is, okay, so now how do we get there? What's our pathway look like? And that's kind of the process that I just explained to you. You're going to figure out what your pathway is. You're going to look at your purpose again.
[24:53]
You're going to figure out where you're off purpose. Is it vision, mission, or core values? Then you're going to look at your data and then to try to confirm that. Then you're going to come up with what instructional lever do you need to pull? And then what do you need to be doing to support that? And all of that creates that pathway for how you're going to go forward.
[25:11]
And then the plan is, okay, we know what our pathway is. So now how do we execute? How do we make this improvement? How do we solve this problem? And coming up with a plan that, you know, we're good planners, right? But coming up with a plan that takes into account this idea of new level, new devil is really important.
[25:31]
Because a lot of times we set plans and then we just keep sticking to the plan no matter what the circumstances are. Or those circumstances throw our plans off altogether. But the way that builders plan is that we recognize that at every stage of our planning process, we have to keep coming back to looking at, okay, we've done this piece. Is it working? If not, how do we adjust? So that we can actually see our plans all the way through regardless of the circumstances.
[25:56]
Because every time you make progress, you hit new problems. So this whole idea of new level, new devil has to be built into your plan. You have to recognize that every change process has that. And you have to create a plan that's flexible enough that you can weather those challenges and still hit your goal at the end. And so you're constantly cycling through those four levers of buildership in order to be able to move your school forward and reach your goal in three years.
[26:25] SPEAKER_01:
One of the most interesting statements that you make right on the cover of the book really is that this is possible with the people that we have. And in chapter two in particular, you talk about having an entire staff of master teachers without having to get rid of anyone. What does that mean? How is that possible? And where do I sign up?
[26:44] SPEAKER_00:
So that's probably one of the most controversial things that I've said. And I've been saying this since Never Work Harder Than Your Students, that any teacher can become a master teacher with the right kind of support and practice. There's nothing else that I can say that is more polarizing. And the reason is because we've all had experiences with really, really bad teachers, people that we don't believe should be in education. So how can you achieve that success for 100% of your students with the people you already have? Sometimes it becomes this lightning rod of debate.
[27:17]
But I've seen it happen, and I really believe it can happen. And the difference is this. Our job as builders, part of our job, and this is the people component, is that we are constantly tending the will and the skill of our staff. And in the same way that we believe all children can achieve, all children can learn, we have to take that same energy into the work that we're doing with our staff, that all of our staff members can reach mastery. And I've been talking about it as an idea for years. And recently I sat down and I started looking at teacher evaluation instruments.
[27:50]
So, you know, there is this mythology out there that teachers can visit, but they can't live in the highest level of their teacher evaluation instrument. And yet, if you read the description of that highest level, whether it's distinguished or accomplished or, you know, highly effective or whatever it is for your district. If you read that description, that's what we want in every single classroom. So when we say that teachers can visit but they can't live there, what we're saying is that what we believe is the ideal, that every child deserves that kind of teacher, it's not something that we believe is actually possible. And I take issue with that. I think that that's what we should be striving for as a school.
[28:26]
So the idea that any teacher can become a master teacher, let's break it down the same way we broke down that research paper. If I have a teacher who's at the lowest level, a teacher evaluation instrument, the difference between the lowest level and the next level is usually very small. So usually at the lowest level, ineffective, whatever that is for your district, it's something that is missing. At the next level, which is developing or something like that, They have it. They're just not doing it well. And then the next level is they're doing it well.
[28:58]
They're just not doing it perfectly or with complete excellence or taking it above and beyond. And the highest level is they're doing it well. They're taking it above and beyond. They're doing it on an individual basis for kids. So if you look at the every teacher evaluation instrument kind of follows that same kind of rhythm, which means that if I can get somebody who isn't doing something to do it, even if they're doing it imperfectly, they're no longer in that lowest level. And if I could do that in a year, then that teacher has moved one level and one domain in one year.
[29:28]
Then the next year, I can take them from doing the thing that they weren't doing a year before. They're doing it now, but they're doing it imperfectly. If I can take them from doing it incomplete and consistently and imperfectly and get them to refine that skill the next year, now they're at level three. They're at that proficient, effective, whatever level, whatever you call it in your district. And then the following year, if I can take them and help them refine that skill and start to do it on an individual student basis, start to do it in ways that kind of go above and beyond, if that's the work that I'm doing with that teacher, they're at a master teacher and it took three years. OK, so if you really think about it that way, rather than looking at somebody where they're like, how are they ever going to become a master teacher?
[30:11]
I don't ever think that. I look at the teacher where he or she is and I say, how can I get that teacher to the next level this school year? And if you do that for every teacher in your building, then every teacher in your building grows one level higher. in one domain, in one year or less. So in three years, even the worst teacher in your building can be at least visiting that highest level on your teacher evaluation instrument. And in four years, they can be living there.
[30:36]
And so my goal as a building administrator is to get everybody growing one level in one domain in one year or less. And the how, it doesn't, it's not, once you think about it that way, the how doesn't feel that complex because instead of trying to magically turn a struggling teacher into a master teacher in one year, I want that struggling teacher to be a little less of a struggling teacher each year. I just wanted to move up one level in a domain. That's doable. And that gives you focus. And if you did that, if you focused on every teacher moving to one level in one domain in one year or less, you will have a staff full of master teachers in three years.
[31:12] SPEAKER_01:
See, I told you, I told you you should subscribe to Robin's podcast. And if you haven't done that yet, go to schoolleadershipreimagined.com, right?
[31:20] SPEAKER_00:
That's it.
[31:21] SPEAKER_01:
I love it. So talk to us just a little bit. I know we're about to run out of time, but talk to us just a little bit about Builder's Lab, because I know for a lot of schools, what you mentioned as the kind of the starting point, the mission, the vision, the values, that's where the work needs to happen first. What do you do with school leaders at Builder's Lab and what can people expect?
[31:41] SPEAKER_00:
So Builders Lab is a great way to kind of absorb the entire model. So at Builders Lab, we start out by helping you assess where your school is currently. You know, what are you thinking about? Where is your school with regard to being able to get to your vision in three years or less? And then the next thing we do is we say, okay, what is your vision? Where do you want to be in three years?
[32:02]
And that's really where the work is. So a lot of what we do in Builders Lab is helping people figure out that vision. And most of it is they know it already, but they're afraid to say it aloud. They don't believe that they can actually say that aloud because then I'm now accountable to it, right? Or this is what I really want. I just can't figure out how to make it happen.
[32:23]
So we do that work at Builders Lab and then we help them figure out what is their pathway? What's their first 150 that they need to knock down? And how do you do that in 90 days? So with Builders Lab, it's not just a three-day intensive where we do all this work and then we send you off on your own. The goal is to figure out where do you want to be in three years? What's your biggest obstacle for the next 90 days?
[32:43]
And then we work with you for 90 days after Builder's Lab is over to help you knock down that big obstacle that we identified at Builder's Lab to help you go through the entire process. And then after that, you can then continue to repeat that process until you reach your goal. And what's beautiful about Builders Lab is now we're getting all these success stories. People who were in Builders Lab three years ago are telling the story now. They're talking about how they were able to achieve their vision for their school for 100% of their kids and how they're working on their next vision statement now. So that's what's really fun about it is that after three years of teaching this model, we're starting to see those success stories come in.
[33:21] SPEAKER_01:
So the book is Stop Leading, Start Building. Turn your school into a success story with the people and resources you already have. Robin Jackson, if people want to learn more about the book or about your workshops or the podcast, what are some of the places they can go online to learn more?
[33:36] SPEAKER_00:
We have a lot of resources from the book for free at buildershipuniversity.com. And if you go there or go to buildershipuniversity.com slash book, you can get a lot of free resources from the book. We have a new school success path assessment that we are building that should be out in a couple of weeks where you can answer a few questions about where your school is currently. And we send you an entire assessment about what it will take to get your school to your vision, to hit your goals in three, in the next three years.
[34:07]
We also have a couple of extras from the book there too. So that may be a great place to get started. We also have a little masterclass, like a mini class that you can take that breaks down this entire model. So if you don't want to take the time to read the book, but you want to learn more about the model. buildershipuniversity.com slash book is a great place to get access to all of that.
[34:28] SPEAKER_01:
Perfect. And then the podcast is School Leadership Reimagined. You're coming up on, I think, almost 100 episodes at the time we're recording this.
[34:36] SPEAKER_00:
I know. I can't believe it.
[34:38] SPEAKER_01:
And one thing to know about the podcast, this is one of the very few podcasts that I listen to pretty consistently, that it's just you. It is pure Robin Jackson sharing direct strategy, just like you've been doing today on Principal Center Radio. Is that right? That's it. So go to the source, get the good stuff. Robin, thank you so much for joining me.
[34:56]
It's been a pleasure.
[34:57] SPEAKER_00:
I love talking to you, Justin. So thanks for having me back.
[35:00] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.
