Gene Tavernetti: Welcome to Better Teaching, Only Stuff That Works, a podcast for teachers, instructional coaches, administrators, and anyone else who supports teachers in the classroom.
This show is a proud member of the BE Podcast Network shows that help you go beyond education.
Find all our shows@bepodcastnetwork.com.
I Am Gene Tavernetti the host for this podcast.
And my goal for this episode, like all episodes, is that you laugh at least once and that you leave with an actionable idea for better teaching.
A quick reminder, no cliches, no buzzwords.
Only stuff that works.
My guest today is Dr. Bob Nelson.
Bob is an assistant professor in the Kramon School of Education and Human Development in the Department of Educational Leadership.
He also currently serves as the founder and CEO of militant positivity, LLCA, speaking, consulting and podcasting educational organization.
In his professional career.
Prior to serving in higher education, Dr. Nelson served over seven and a half years as the superintendent for Fresno Unified, California's third largest school district, serving approximately 72,000 students.
Previously he served as Fresno Unified's chief of staff and held a wide range of educational positions including elementary teacher, resource teacher, technology specialist, vice principal and human resources, labor relations administrator.
In addition to serving in Fresno Unified, he was the superintendent of the Chiwan Unified School District representing the Sierra Foothill communities of Eastern Madera County from 2012 to 2015.
Additionally, Bob previously served as a lecturer in the Department of Counseling, rehab, and Special Education at Fresno State where he received his master's in educational administration and supervision.
Bob is also a graduate of the University of Southern California and recently completed his doctorate in organizational change and leadership from USC in May of 2018.
Bob is the father of seven children ranging in age from 30 years old to 10-year-old to in boys.
He's a huge advocate for foster children with special needs, adoption, and social media use and education specialties.
Community and cultural development, social media use in education, public sector, union negotiation, recruitment, talent management, staff selection, professional development, mediation, educational leadership, special education, foster education, child development, and I think you're gonna find a super podcast guest.
I think you're gonna like this one.
Bob, welcome to Better Teaching Only stuff that works.
It's an honor to be with you, Jean.
Thanks for having me on your podcast.
Well, I'm so excited to get to talk to you because we have a lot of teachers.
We have people who talk about teaching and learning, but.
There's a lot of people who think, well, why just don't we do this?
Why don't we do that?
And so a couple weeks ago I had somebody who works with board members, and now I wanted you to talk about, you know, why things do or don't happen, you know, at the superintendency level.
So I'm very excited to have you.
It's an honor to be here, I think.
Yeah.
I mean, the superintendent can have an outsized role.
It's interesting, you would think a superintendent would keep or lose their job on the basis of whether kids are learning, but that's not always the reason.
Like it has very little to do and much to do with the political reality of a school district, for sure.
Oh, yeah.
Well, you know, I wanna start by, by exploring a little bit your professional journey, because one of the things that, folks talk about a lot in when they get into the educational system and they wanna stay in the educational system, is that career ladder.
And you had a full career at Fresno Unified.
I think you hit.
Boy.
Yeah, I think you hit every, checked, every box.
I think.
Yeah.
I don't know that there's a traditional path to the superintendency gene, but I suppose mine is probably as traditional as could reasonably be expected.
I was the first internal candidate at Fresno to actually take the superintendency in about 30 years.
At the time, I assumed the role, which was back in 2017.
I started as a teacher in Fresno.
I actually started as a substitute teacher in Fresno in 1991, and then got a job.
Teaching elementary school I did that was a lead teacher, like a professional development leadership coach, or excuse me, teaching coach.
And then I was a vice principal.
I worked in human resources for a period of four years, which was really seminal and taught me a lot.
And then I actually left the district for a three year period.
We live in Eastern Madera County, so I went and took the superintendency of a little district called Chiwan Unified.
So 1200 student district, if you've ever heard of Mines High.
I was a superintendent there.
And then I. Applied to be the leader of human resources back in Fresno and did not actually get, that job came in second, like a finalist, but did not get it.
And as a kind of a offshoot of that, I became the chief of staff instead.
And then, so I was the chief of staff until the my predecessor.
Lot, you know, moved away from that position and then I guess I was like the least hated available choice at the time of the transition.
I wasn't the most beloved.
I was probably the least openly detested available choice and became the interim, and then spent quite a long time, actually seven and a half years in the superintendency in Fresno.
So three inch waniki, seven and a half in Fresno, so 10 and a half years in the superintendency.
From a longevity standpoint, that's a long time.
As a superintendent that, that's a long time for a superintendent.
I wanna go back and if you could expand on what the job is of the chief of staff, because there are many districts that don't have a chief of staff.
Yeah.
Fresno's large.
It's California's third largest district, and at the time I was, there was about 72, 70 3000 students.
So the chief of staff kind of runs.
It's a, there's a parallel like with the federal government and the chief of staff kind of, sets the policy guidelines and works as a member of the superintendent's cabinet to kind of make sure that, you know, requests get filtered through that individual and that they align with what the mission and vision of the superintendent is at that time.
And then, you know, to some degree, you serve as a superintendent's proxy in situations where the superintendent is not immediately available to do those things.
So you're kind of the person that.
You know, convenes the cabinet for the superintendent in their absence.
And so, you know, I mean, ideally you serve as a confidant to the superintendent.
You make sure that things are in alignment with what that person's vision, you know, goals and values are.
And so, yeah.
But it's also like, as you talked about, it tends to be something that's happens in larger districts, and it's not.
And, you know, in Chiwan Key, there was nothing like that.
I was the only certificate administrator in the district office at all.
There certainly weren't like layers of the bureaucracy, like the chief of staff role.
So just for a little bit of contrast, Fresno Unified around 72,000 students and Chiwan key.
How many students?
Approximately 1200.
1200. 106 elementary schools in Fresno and actually just like six schools overall in Swanke.
So small rural, really small rural Five member board, and then major Urban seven member board.
But you know, I think I, you know, in my retrospect, like they're probably as similar as they are dissimilar in a lot of ways.
You still have trustees who want good things for young people.
Certainly Fresno is a lot more political.
You have people getting elected to the board who see themselves as like city councilors or, you know, county supervisors in embryo, which adds a different layer of complexity and the politics of right and left.
But you know, you still have to, like, you're still a mayor of a small town.
You're still accountable for any things that may go wrong and your district, if you're a good leader, you stand in the gap and apologize for stuff you yourself would never do.
That part is exactly the same.
Yeah.
So thinking, again, thinking back going back to.
Like a career ladder.
I think what was interesting about reading your history is that many folks think, you know, who wanna become a superintendent.
It's like, well, I'm gonna start in a small district and then I'm gonna get some experience and then I'm gonna get to a bigger district.
But as I looked at what you had done in all the different capacities in Fresno Unified, in a large district.
God it, it made sense.
I mean, I mean, look what you were able to bring to a small district.
When I think that part was great.
I actually think the time I spent in human resources was really helpful because I'm an, honestly, 80, 85, 90% of your budget is grounded in people.
So kind of understanding how that works.
And I did labor negotiations as a portion of that work too, which served me well.
And obviously in California, that's something that you need to be able to manage is trying to have effectual and, you know, I wasn't without my shortcomings on that.
We darn near.
Came to a strike twice in Fresno Unified when I was at the superintendency.
We did not strike, but it was certainly tense.
And I think, yeah the piece of being like a professional developer, like in understanding what good pedagogy is from a teaching perspective, I think your superintendents that came through the business services office, I'm not throwing shade at that, but I think it's hard to gain traction with teachers if you haven't actually done their job ever.
And you know, people say, ah, you haven't taught in forever.
I mean, you're always fighting a battle of like credibility.
And I'm doing that too.
I don't know how long an ex superintendent maintains their juice.
Like I have no idea what that is.
But the reality of it is it's hard to opine on issues of teaching and learning if you've never sat in a classroom and done that work.
You know?
And it's not, and it's not the same doing it in higher ed as there is doing it in K 12.
Well, you know, the other thing that was interesting that people couldn't see me, but I was smiling, almost laughing when you were talking about the importance of the labor negotiations and that labor relations and all the HR stuff you have to deal with.
Because when I was getting my administrative credential, and I always say I was not, was I cannot say I was a good administrator in any sense of the word, but one thing that I learned when I was getting my credential.
Is that things that had to do with special ed.
And here's how I learned it.
I sat next to a school psych and we would be in a class about maybe, you know, how kids get into special ed.
Things were different back then but there still, there was a student study team and we'd go to this Neville and she would just lean over and whisper to me, that's wrong.
And then at the break she would educate me on that.
Then I got to double check because my wife was a special ed teacher and I would've never got the good information that you wanna get into trouble at a school site.
Right.
You know, screw up special ed for sure.
You wanna get into and you wanna get into trouble at the district.
Screw up labor relations.
That's exactly right.
Yeah.
And I think, you know, I share some similarities with you.
One of the things that, you know, I'm a father of a number of children, many of whom are adopted from foster care in Madera County, and the common thread is five of our seven kids have an IEP.
And so if I have an affinity group to speak of, it is the same as what you just described, right?
Special needs youth are a big part of my life and.
You know, some kids for whom they need a fair shake and they need an advocate for on behalf of them.
And so, yeah, like having a trusted insider who can give you like insights about whether what you're hearing is really real, really nothing replaces that.
I would argue too, like.
My administrative assistant as the superintendent was my sup, my predecessor's administrative assistant, then mine, and it is now my successors because she is loyal to the desk of the superintendency of Fresno Unified.
And it's the same type of thing, like her screen for what is fair, reasonable, and real is so great that people don't trifle with her like she's the real deal.
You don't mess with Maria.
Okay, so let's get back to advising these folks who want to become superintendents, and they're at a the, a small district.
You had all this experience in a large district, all of your experience in education in the large district prior to going to Swanke.
So what was different than you thought it would be as you took the reins there?
You know what's different there is you're fighting like Chianty is all horizontal.
You don't have, I mean, Fresno is very vertical.
You have columns of people in the org chart and those groups believe that their work is sacrosanct.
And there's not a lot of working across the white spaces in the organizational chart.
Chianty is entirely different.
You touch everything.
I mean, somebody gimme a hard time.
One of my chief business people called me the hotdog buns superintendent 'cause we didn't have hotdog buns and I had to take her from North Fork to Spring Valley.
So in a small district, you do what?
Ever is required.
And if that's delivering hotdog buns, okay, then that's your job and you have to do those things.
And so, which for me works really well.
And honestly, I. Cut my teeth around using social media as a means to communicate with the local community because you have to kind of tell your own story.
You don't have redundancy in the communication division.
I had a really good thing in Chiwan that maybe I didn't fully understand.
And sometimes if you spend your entire life in one district, you get the false impression that's the only way that school happens.
And I think what I really learned is like.
There's a lot of different ways school happens and a lot of people view the things that are being done or they approach those situations differently.
So I have zero regrets on, you know, stepping out of the major urban district, which kind of I cut my teeth in to go to another system and to learn how things were functional there.
The best part about wanky is mostly your board was parents and grandparents who wanted really good things for kids.
And honestly, Jean.
Their ACC claim to fame.
Like if I didn't screw up the Ag program, like I was fine.
Four or fifth of them had ag interests as, and so as long as Minette and Waniki had strong FFA and four H and I, you know, was supportive of that, I seemed to be in good standing.
That was a major priority for that community.
And just understanding, you know, what people want for their kids, I think is nine tenths of it.
Like, are you talking to the people and are you with them enough to know what they wanna see happen for their young people?
So did you know that was a priority when you went there?
Did they make it know that?
No, I had very little clue, you know, honestly, like, well, my own kids went through that thing and then they ended up raising goats and the whole big got the blue corduroy jacket and the whole like, like we, that became our life.
But I didn't really know, I mean, I had not had much experience with any of that prior to assuming that role.
So, but that, I mean, you know, if you know anything about FFA, that's a subculture all its own too.
And ag teachers are worthy of their hire man.
They can almost fetch any price 'cause they work so far beyond the beaten track.
But it was really good for my kid.
I mean, you know, and there's a lot of ways.
That FFA encourages young people to speak well and to understand Robert's rules of order, a lot of different things.
It's more than just, you know, animal raising.
But yeah, I had no idea that was such a priority.
And mine has prided itself on doing things that are kind of a little bit outside of the norm.
It was a new school that was kind of like charting its own path.
There's a mainline high school and then a charter school embedded in the same school campus.
And so they did some things innovatively and so, you know.
It wa and being in a small district, honestly, there was more anonymity in being the superintendent in Fresno, even though I might be on the cover of the Fresno B or NA BBC 30.
It was actually easier on my wife and our family than it was living, working, and being subsumed in the same community, which was really hard in Swanke.
I mean, you know, I had dealing with issues of like expulsion of a kid at church on Mother's Day.
Those are hard things, right?
Yeah.
No, the small community, if you haven't been involved in one it's very different.
So, you brought a lot of you brought a lot of experience that, that helped you when you went to Chewy.
How about now when you moved back, what did you learn as a superintendent of a small district when you became superintendent of the large district?
I think in Swanke you're left.
There's so few people.
You're left to, the obligation of a leader is that you really have to give other people assignments or you know, you have to share the vision and then you have to let them flounder, succeed, and you have to give them all the credit.
And that's equally true in Fresno.
So trying to.
Build a cabinet in a big district, which is people that didn't look like, talk, like, sound like, live like, or have my shared lived experiences.
So they pushed my thinking on every decision that was made and then you let them take their credit for the good things that were happening.
I'm super proud of the fact, like I have, like I was trying to count it up the other day.
I have like six or seven people that served on my cabinet who are all superintendents in the valley in their own right now and have all been very successful.
I do believe like.
That's one thing as a leader, you're not really much of a leader unless you're building other leaders who can succeed.
And so I have a lot of people doing that work at a level that's probably better than anything I ever touched.
And so.
You know, not getting in the way of people learning that you can give them.
And you know, I mean people have to be accountable for the stuff that you provide them.
But you know, in closed doors you have really tense conversations about what you think is best for the young people that you serve.
And then outwardly, you present a united front and you let people strive and you give them the credit when they do chiwan, you know, you had to do that of necessity and Fresno you needed to do that.
'cause it's, in my opinion, it was just a better way of leading.
Interesting.
So, you know, I went talk to a superintendent.
He was kind of grooming me.
He wanted me to become a superintendent and he made my head just big enough to think like, yeah, that's something that, that's great.
That's something that I wanted to do.
It's never too late.
Gene Taber, and this could be, I mean, when they're, the need is great.
That's great.
No.
It's too late, buddy.
Okay.
So, but one of the things he said that I'll never forget, he goes, I always wanted to be a superintendent.
He said, and I was so excited.
I got to work on my first day and I sat on my desk and I asked myself, what am I supposed to do now?
And I'm just wondering, you know, you talked about some people who were in your cabinet who you weren't mentoring per se, but they went out and probably just because of what you were modeling but you work with aspiring superintendents as well, but what?
Do you say to them about what the job actually is versus what the perception might be?
So I do think you have to serve as a, I mean, you represent, you're the visual representation of the district, whether you like it or not, and you can never take that mentality and that.
You can't take that.
You know that mantra away, right?
The reality of it is a superintendent's pretty well funded job for a taxpayer funded perspective, but it's not really a job.
It's more of a way of living.
Like you're still the superintendent in Target in the frozen food section.
You think you're there to buy Uncrustables, but you're actually the superintendent of whatever institution, and so you just can't remove that mantle.
You just can't ever take it off.
So you have to, and your family inherits that.
Reality as well.
So you have to play the visual role and you have to be comfortable speaking publicly and you have to be comfortable with people thinking you're full of it and you have to be a leader to the degree that you know you're gonna alienate people.
Now.
I mean, I had that uniquely gene in that I was the superintendent of the pandemic of the a hundred biggest districts in America.
There were only.
Four of us that actually served two years on both sides of the pandemic.
'cause that was just a meat grinder and you couldn't do anything that, you know, universally, people lauded.
People were just mad about everything every day, all the time.
And so you just learn, okay, like you're gonna make people mad.
And that's all right.
You do what you believe to be in the best interest of kids, and then you just, you know, every night you wake up and you try to do it again.
Nobody would argue that what we did in the pandemic was the best possible thing for kids, but we did the best we could with what we had at the time we had it.
Yeah.
And so you encourage people to do that and to not.
And I guess I have some different perspective now.
I mean, the moment I stepped outta the seat like some three weeks later, most of the stuff that I perseverated about Gene didn't matter a whole lot.
The system ground on and it moved ahead.
And while I might have some delusion of grandeur, like, oh my gosh, I played such a big role.
The system just moved right on ahead the moment I vacated the space.
And so, that level of perspective is really good.
So I try to teach future superintendents like, okay, like I know it's hard and it can be very difficult, and it's very emotionally fraught, but I'm just telling you in the long run, not everything that you're perseverating on is gonna matter all that much.
And it's okay if people don't love every decision you make.
In fact, show me somebody who's universally lauded and I'll show you a leader that's probably not doing anything of significance in the universe whatsoever, like leaders.
If you alienate people by virtue of saying, I'm gonna help this person, you've alienated that one without meaning to, and it really has nothing to do with you.
I think you provided a nice segue to talk about militant positivity.
You talked about being in the rooms and have to have tough conversation, and then we all go out.
So tell us a little bit about, about milit actually hashtag militant positivity.
Is that correct?
Yeah.
I mean, generally it started as a hashtag and I don't know that I put that on the front cover of the book, but I, you know.
To some degree militant positivity is like a commitment to just stand with kids as a leader, even when things are difficult.
I mean, honestly like.
Most adults that you interact with and the superintendency are on a little bit of their own hustle.
They're trying to represent the members that brought them there, or they're trying to represent the constituency that brought them there.
And somebody on the inside has to make sure that we acknowledge that children should never have to absorb the cowardice of adults or the chaos that adults can create, or political machinations or political ambition.
'Cause when.
People like stir up unrest or they create political drama or they manufacture division.
Kids are the ones that end up paying the price for that.
I mean, there's just no question as schools have been the place where, the politics of right and left.
That came to roost I think when we became the enforcement arm of Pandemic Health policy.
But we don't stand militant.
Positivity is not engaging in the noise or the ego or the theater.
It's just saying, Hey, we're gonna stand with kids, and you gotta have a backbone on that.
And there's also this like fake binary gene that you either have to be nice or you have to be firm as though those are on some continuum.
Like you either have to choose having a backbone or being kind.
And I'm here to tell you that.
Sometime the kindest thing you can do is to have a backbone, right?
I mean, sometimes you have to like be willing to stand in the gap.
We didn't talk about this, and I don't expect you to be an expert on this.
No, I take it back.
I do expect you to be an expert.
I'm gonna ask a question.
The fact that you used the term militant positivity, I think was that a conscious choice?
You know, to get away from toxic positivity and to, yeah.
I mean, I think contrast, yeah, talk.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
I think people talk about toxic positivity, which, you know, for your listeners is like, and people have accused me of that.
Like, why do you pretend things are great when they're really lousy?
Militant is very different.
Like militant positivity is, I acknowledge things are lousy.
Like I, you know, I'm not.
A fool.
I don't, you know, I don't say something as red, one as blue.
However, I also acknowledge that kids expect me to get up every day and to date, the sun keeps rising the following morning.
So like punching out because I believe this thing is too hard or too complex or not engaged enough.
Like kids still need people to get up the next morning and to keep going.
So.
Middle of positivity is way more about, it's not about being Pollyanna, it's about being resilience and just getting yourself back up out of space the next morning and going toward people.
And I think, you know.
I mean, to some degree I have a little bit of fight in me Gene.
I think every superintendent needs to have a little bit of the dog in them.
Like you have to be kind of down for the fight.
You have to be willing to tangle a little bit.
I mean lovingly, but you have to be not afraid to mix it up a little bit for on behalf of kids that you serve.
But I do think like just the willingness to not just be beaten.
Because kids don't get to pick who the adults are in their system.
They don't get to pick the institutions they attend.
Generally, they go where they live.
They don't get to choose the strategic priorities of the district generally in which they are in.
And so they require having adults on the inside who are acting or at least trying to act on their behalf every day that they possibly can.
You know, you talked about you know, people accusing you of, you know, this is phony.
This I worked with a principal probably at least 15 years as through several different school.
Every time he'd go to a new school, he'd bring me in to work with his staff, and he was always positive and in, and I'll really like this guy.
And in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, you can't be that positive.
This can't be, this can't.
Every time I see you.
Then we were working together and he goes, come on, excuse me, gene I gotta, I have a problem.
I have to talk to this one staff member.
So I waited and he was in there for a few minutes and then the staff member came out.
With, I mean, absolutely.
You could tell it had not been a good experience for this person, and he came out and he hitched up his pants and said, okay, let's go.
I mean, and so I knew right then he was being authentic, you know, it was just like you described, I gotta take care of business and stuff were going on and everybody else, I can't bring everybody else down because I'm having a kind of a bad day.
One thing I think we know, right?
Leaders set the weather in the organization that they're in.
Like sometimes people won't say hi to somebody 'cause they're afraid that they're gonna unload on them.
I mean, I think as a leader you owe it to your people to at least be emotionally within a narrower range.
So they kind of know what to expect.
It creates a safer environment, but I think you need to be like straight up too, and you need to talk about your own frailties and your shortcomings, and you need to be really public about them.
If you want people to fail in your organization and not be afraid.
That they're gonna just get chastised or beaten down.
You have to be pretty vulnerable with your own shortcomings too.
But yeah, I, you know, hopefully Gene, I don't know, I can't really control what the historical significance of around me is ever gonna be like.
I just can't control that.
But I hope people will say, right, like what you see is what you get with that guy.
Like he's pretty authentic, like you, you know, I mean, I feel, I hope that's the message is that people think.
That guy shoots you straight.
He may say crazy stuff or like he may tell you what he thinks, but generally there's not a lot of pretense there.
I mean, that's one advantage, like tell the truth all the time.
So you never have to remember what it is You said.
Just always tell the truth, you know?
I think one of the things interesting about, superintendents, and you've talked about this, so kind of going back a little bit is that many people who get super tendencies are very good communicators, very good rah guys or women, very positive.
They present themselves well in an interview and then boom.
I mean, you know what's the average length of a superintendent's, yeah.
In a major urban, it's only 30 months.
So imagine that one year of like learning where things are, one year of like creating your own strategic plan.
Six months later you're out on your ear.
That's where like, that's what I'm out to accomplish is stability.
And leadership is critical.
Yeah.
It's not a long tenured role.
I remember talking to a fellow who I was, who I had known for a long time, and he became, a principal, he became administrator, became a principal, and then he became a superintendent.
And I went to go visit him.
He was in a nearby nearby district, a small district, and he just kind of looked at me and he says, gene.
I've been here for 18 months and nobody's wanted to fire me yet.
That's pretty good.
I mean, the expectation was, but you know what, he was one of those guys.
He was so polished.
What do you.
You not only train, you train super to people to be district leaders and then aspiring superintendents.
Do you talk about communication styles at all with the folks?
We do.
I ex, I teach in the doctoral program here at Fresno State, and I teach a executive leadership class, and some of the activities we have are just about, I mean, to some degree you have to be comfortable on camera.
You have to acknowledge that.
The media is gonna interview you.
They're gonna take 40 minutes of footage and they're gonna use the 15 seconds.
That makes you sound like a complete nut or imbu.
Right.
So you just have to be mindful about everything that comes and you know, I mean, I give advice that I myself, desperately need to take.
Yeah.
Because I still like, I've not mastered the concept of just 'cause it comes in your head, doesn't mean it needs to come out your mouth, but it is a practiced strategy and you know it.
From podcasting, right?
There's a practice strategy about engaging the listener and trying to make sure that people feel like they're not, you know, I mean, that's about authenticity too, right?
People don't wanna feel like they're being conned.
So how can you, and feeling comfortable, I mean, at one, one advantage I have is I'm a little bit of a, I mean, I am kind of chaos personified.
I'm pretty A DHD.
Everybody who knows me would be able to tell you that right away, and I'm pretty comfortable with that.
And so, but talking about.
You can't divorce yourself from the fact that you are the visual representation of the system like you, and you can't take that off and give it to another member of your organization as a superintendent, you acknowledge like, I'm gonna be willing to stand in this space that is part of like.
It's a way of living and not a job.
So once you take, like if you don't want that level of scrutiny, one, you could be released any given Wednesday.
So if safety and security is your number one priority, the superintendency main and really good people hit the cutting room floor regularly in the superintendency.
And that is not a fatal thing.
But if you can't handle.
Standing up for your principles and then maybe seeing the door as a result of the standing up.
Like that may not be it for you either.
So you just have to know, like going in.
Those are things but you cannot push away the responsibility to speak to your community.
You have to be able to speak in a way that they are gonna, you know, it's kind of funny, like I was the voice on the auto dialer for 10 years, so I'll be talking and like people at McDonald's, I know that voice like.
Anyway, it's a little ironic that I would be known from 10 years of the auto dialer, but that is in some ways in Fresno how people know me Well, when you work with in the doctoral program or anytime, I know that you do outside work also, you know, consulting with folks, with superintendents.
You know, one of the things that I see as healthy, when you begin a job, you have to have a level of competence so that I can do it.
Then get into it and realize, Ooh, wow, there's a lot to this, and have a little humility and there's kind of like a curve, you know, to get from that.
What are some things that in the beginning, superintendents or the folks you work with may have thought was gonna be easy and then it was a lot more difficult than they thought?
Well, I think what you just described is one of the.
Penultimate things for a superintendent.
Just the acknowledgement that you're gonna be confronted with stuff that you didn't even know you didn't know before you get into the job.
And then what do you do with that once it surfaces for you that you knew nothing about?
I mean.
There's a lot of parallels.
Gene, with my arrival in higher ed, like I was fairly convinced that because teaching was at the center, that higher education would be a lot like the K 12 environment, and it could not be more dissimilar.
Like I just had no idea how dissimilar it was and like.
Our dean is going through a search process.
Someone's like, Hey, you're gonna be the dean.
Like, you have a lot of C-level experience and that's kind of laughable in higher ed.
'cause I'm an assistant professor, which is to say I'm two rungs below the dean.
No amount of C-level experience on the higher ed side matters, one wit here because I don't have a full professorship.
And so that never would've done on me that like, like I would be a novice in a, in an environment that I really didn't understand very clearly.
And so I think I. I think every superintendent gets into that seat and they're confronted with a bunch of stuff that they did not know that they didn't know.
I think just being okay with that and acknowledging it publicly, like, I have much to learn in this, and then finding trust, like the key thing is.
Right.
Can we just agree like, not all the leaders are represented on the org chart?
You have to find trust like your school psychologist exemplar that you gave.
I gotta find people in the organization whom I trust to shoot me totally straight about what's happening here so that I can get a clear sense of what it is I'm seeing and then I can make better decisions about it.
But that can be hard as a new person, like when you don't know anybody and you don't really know.
Who to trust to put yourself out there.
'cause you know, everybody sees the superintendent through a lens like they're a vehicle to accomplish something, or they're a barrier standing in my way, or they're irrelevant.
I do what I want and regardless of them.
But the key thing is how can you build relationships quickly that will provide you, you know, critical insights so that you are making decisions on the basis of what's real and not what you perceive.
Because the truth of it is the higher you go on the org chart, the less truth you hear.
People tell you some sanitized version of reality, but it's not necessarily representative of what's real.
Well, something that I think is real is you have to listen to the board members and.
What kind of advice do you give?
You know, because I know I, I have a friend who was actually a partner initially in, in, in my business, and he said the first time he was a superintendent, his first superintendent's job, he had a trustee who would call him and be on the phone every night for hours.
He just didn't know he, he was too new to just say, you know what, no, this is not acceptable.
I'm, you know, what kind of advice do you give not board relations, but personal interpersonal with board folks for sure.
I think that's probably the.
That may well be, that skill may well be the crux of like longevity in the superintendency.
Like for me, I think first and foremost, like you, this sounds a little negative, but you would never confuse the board members who are your supervisor as an as a superintendent with your friends, right?
You would be ffr, you should always be friendly, you should always be amicable, but never lose sight of the fact.
That generally they're there because they got, many times board members run on a platform of everything is broke, and I'm the person you need to bring in here to fix everything that's broke here, so you know that's potentially one of the things you're dealing with.
And then.
Many times they are not educators by profession, which is fine.
They have a, you know, as community members, they have a vested interest in what's happening with the kids, but you have some obligation to educate them on what it is their core work is.
A board member does three things.
They hire and fire the superintendent, they manage the budget, and they set policy.
Now on a practical note.
I met with all of my board members monthly.
Both in both settings, and I learned in Fresno it's a great idea to meet with them over a meal because I do think like anytime you're having food with people, it just changes the interaction pattern a little bit.
It's a little more amicable and friendly, and you can, you know, share pleasantries, find out about their family, and then talk about kind the brass tack things.
You need to be with them on the issues that are of significance to you so that when you go to the like.
The board meeting ought to be reflective of the sweat equity you put into your conversations with the board before you get in public in the public's meeting.
If the board member has a real issue with something that you are pushing as a priority of the district, there ought to be ample opportunity for discussion around that before you go out there publicly and either put them on blast or you, they put you on blast because you weren't.
You didn't have the ability to talk about it ahead of time.
So I think anything you can do, and, you know, like not every vote went my way.
Probably 98% of them did.
But you know, invariably, and you know, and you shouldn't expect unanimity from your board.
Like that's an overestimation.
They're not a rubber stamp of your wills or wishes.
But you need to be able to communicate clearly what your desires are, and you need to really listen for what they are out to accomplish.
And to some degree, it's a Venn diagram of what are their interests and do those things represent what's good for kids?
And where those circles intersect.
That's the direction you travel, but you have to be with them enough like.
Calling you every night is not on the list of available choices, right?
I mean, like there has to be some boundaries in terms of the interaction patterns between the board and the superintendent.
Speaking about you know, your communications, you know, with the board members and being able to speak individually, there's a very different dynamic versus, you know, we know sitting up on the dais and even though nobody wants to say e even without television, cameras sitting up on the desk means you're gonna, you're gonna behave differently.
Were there trustees who did not want to have those one-on-ones because they were saving it up?
For sure.
I mean, I think, yes, I still would.
Put myself out there in that way.
But, oh no, there were people that were wanting to score political points and I mean, I had, and in Fresno we're very unique.
I mean, Fresno Unified, it spans you know, for California, it is California, so nobody would argue that this is a progressive state.
But Fresno is in remarkably purple, right?
I had everything from the extreme.
Right to the extreme left and everywhere in between on the same board.
And so you do have people that are gonna like trigger the gotcha.
The ones that I appreciated the most are the ones who would say to me privately, gene, I'm gonna punch you in the face tonight.
Here's where it's gonna happen.
Here's what you can reasonably expect.
And then invariably they would step into that space and they would do exactly what they said, which was punch me in the face on something.
Right?
I mean, that was, that's kind of the best you could hope for.
I mean, you know, not that I really want to be punched in the face.
I'm not, I didn't relish all of that, but I think like people that can have with you, you know, you can't really expect unanimity from amongst your board members.
You're not all there on the same mission, on the same issue with the wide array of things that come.
I mean, you know, Fresno's a one point.
$7 billion budget.
That's a lot of stuff that's gonna happen in $1.7 billion.
The idea that you're gonna agree on all of it is just massively oversimplified.
And so, you know, can you create an environment where people kind of know what the rules engagement are?
If you tell me you're gonna punch me in the face, then I know how to react and I can respond in, in kind.
And I, but truthfully, like from the superintendent's perspective, you'd never see me browbeat, or, I mean, for the most part, I may or may have lost my temper, I guess maybe once or twice.
But, your job, in my opinion as the chief executive is to always present as sensible.
Right?
I mean, I think like at minimum you have to like appear, you have to be the adult.
I'll constantly take the role of the adult in the space.
Well, I don't know if I talked to you about this before when we met and chatted briefly, but I had worked in Fresno Unified at a magnet school and.
I truly believe that the future of education is going to be a lot, you know, a diverse number of schools.
We won't have a school system necessarily.
We'll have a system of schools that will be, they will have some sort of identity that, that moves them forward.
And when I was at this magnet school there was one or two champions that had been there from the beginning.
And I will tell you that working in this large district, it was difficult.
It was a fight sometimes to get.
You know, people to realize, no, we are serving more people.
We are serving people by having this identity, and we need you to support it.
We, you know, we need to, I don't wanna say we need to bend the rules a little bit but there needs to be some consideration for this school has been successful.
We need to keep the things.
That make it successful going, was that a, you know, a pressure that, that you felt, or, I don't even say a pressure, but was it a discussion about those schools?
For sure.
I think honestly, like the key thing is how do you provide as much as you can for as many people as you can over the course of time?
And I think like allowing wide ranging variety in that.
Like not every community wants exactly the same thing for its young people.
So I think offering an array of choice, like you never saw me.
Fight charters.
I just didn't do that.
I think good charters in our system, like a university high or like the work that's happening at like Kepler now, or like good charters make us better as a district.
And then same thing like in our own internal organizations where that's design science or carts, sorry, our.
Fresno Unified.
I am not no.
I've not divorced myself entirely.
Yeah.
Boarded, bred, borned bred there, right?
Yeah.
I mean, the reality of it is like having some options for folks I think is really healthy and good, and I think we can learn a lot.
And honestly, your best principles.
I kind of know how to navigate that.
They know how to meet the district obligations where we're asking every school to kind of conform to some mentality, but they're always putting their own individual school spin on it, and they're always respectful of the professionalism of the people that work in that space.
Navigating that, that's maybe the charm of the principalship.
Principal is a hard job because everybody's come, like both sides are coming at you.
You know, parents are going through you to get to the district, and the district is going through you to get to parents.
And so the door, everything kind of revolves or goes through the door of the principalship.
But an effective principle is able to recognize the experience that their long-termers have and give gravitas to that and give value to the institutional.
You know, knowledge that they have while also trying to find a way to make sure that, you know, we're lockstep with our colleagues too, so that we have common language around making things better for kids.
But it's a little bit of, I mean, you know, it's not perfect if we had it all dialed in, we would've, you know, manifested.
I read an article today, people are really interested in the Mississippi Miracle and how can we recreate what happened in Mississippi?
But unless you're willing to do everything Mississippi did, which is that you're not gonna.
Like, you're gonna hold back kids who are not met the grade.
Like, unless you're willing to do that, you're not gonna have a miracle.
I'm gonna tell you, okay, we're gonna go off track a little bit since you brought up the Mississippi Miracle because I had someone on to talk about that and she was telling me about it, and this just didn't sound good to me.
This, you know, you didn't get your reading score, so we're gonna hold you back in third grade.
And I said, that's a tough one.
What if it's only reading?
What if, I mean, there are a lot of things that go on.
There's a maturity leap, you know, whatever.
And her answer was and this came from Mississippi.
I mean, she didn't make this up, but what they would tell parents is, oh, we understand.
They would have given them the assessment results for a long period of time.
So it wasn't a surprise, but the thing that really got to me is they said, we're gonna give you our best teacher.
He's gonna have the best teacher next year.
And I'm, if I'm a parent, I'm thinking, what the hell happened in the prior years?
Right.
Why didn't you give him the best?
So my, my concern with folks looking at the Mississippi Miracle, it's like anything, Bob, you've been around when we had the Sanger Miracle.
And there was everybody, what did they call it?
EDU tourism.
Everybody's gotta go see what's happening, right.
You know, there.
Well, guess what?
It's not all happening.
And what you see many times they'll go back and they will do some superficial part of it, but not the essence that made it good.
Right.
So that's what I That's exactly right.
Yep.
I agree.
Yeah.
It's not about, it's.
Anyway I do think, you know, kudos to them for finding a solution that works for them.
I mean, you just leave it there, right?
And you're thankful for that.
And dear God, can we find a solution that works for us?
Well, there's Bob being positive and me being not that helpful.
That's real though.
That's, I don't know, like, I don't know where your belief system is on that, but I do believe that actually.
Well, but I, you know, I could talk to you about this forever.
Do you have any questions for me?
You know I do.
Obviously this is the Better Teaching podcast.
You've spent a lot of your time like cutting through the chaff wheat from the chaff, and so I guess I would ask.
From your perspective, I'm helping young people.
One of the things I do is I teach new newly desired sorry, existing teachers that want to take on a vice principalship for the very first time, and they're placed in this space where they're leaving the classroom for the first time and they're kind of.
Seeing things at a hundred thousand foot vision for the first time, and they're having tasked with like, I can't move the needle on the virtue of my own skills and abilities as a teacher, I now have to move it through the skills and abilities of other adults.
So I guess for them and on their behalf.
What are some of the biggest mistakes schools make when they confuse this idea of good intention with good instruction?
Like what?
What advice would you have me give to them in terms of what constitutes legitimate good instruction and what maybe just falls in the, you know, the category of good intention?
Well, I don't know if you're just, you know, returning the favor because I talked about militant positivity but I truly believe that, and this is the work I've been doing since 2003, is that there are many teachers who don't know how to instruct well.
You know, and I think one of the things I may talk about, probably not with you, but maybe somebody else in the more in the credential teacher credentialing department, is that the things that they're learning not necessarily are the most important things that they need to know.
And when they talk about instruction, they talk about it, but they're not trained.
You know, there's not a training, there's not a practice, there's not a modeling.
And even with the, even with the what's it called when you do your first student teaching and you have a supervisor and Oh, your initial student teaching?
Yeah.
There's just, there just isn't, you know, there just isn't that and I'm not saying it because teachers are bad.
I'm saying it because the system failed them.
You know, we would go into, do training and and we've always trained in explicit instruction, and they would say, why didn't I learn this at the university?
I say, tell your friends, you know, to go talk to somebody, you know, so I think the, if we're getting back to the vice principal, there's number one, you have to know instruction, vice principal.
Chances are there were a lot of reasons you were selected as vice principal.
Probably not the top of the list is because you were the best teacher.
I, I, you know, not necessarily that's, I think you're probably right.
Yeah.
That doesn't mean you're, you can't be, but I just don't think that's top of the list.
So, the other thing that I believe is, gosh, I used to be embarrassed about talking about my books.
So you gotta buy Teach Fast, which is about explicit instruction to me, that's baseline.
Every teacher needs to have that baseline.
And the same thing.
Now, if you are gonna go help with instruction, then as a vice principal, you should also have that baseline knowledge and then read my second book, maximizing the Impact of Coaching Cycles, because it talks about all the things that we do wrong.
And one of those things is that, oh, now I'm vice principal.
Now I'm gonna go help teachers.
That's a whole different skill.
Teaching and assisting teachers is a whole different skill.
No question.
And it and it's one of those things, you don't have a second chance to make a first good first impression.
So you better be prepared and it's better to shut up.
Then and just wait till you have more to talk about or how to talk about it better or something.
But don't be overconfident in going in and thinking, I'm gonna change this teacher.
And no that's not gonna happen.
That's great.
Thank you for that.
Sage.
One may, maybe the other thing, like when you go into a classroom for five minutes, how do you know if real learning is likely happening there?
What would be your kind of benchmark?
You know, I try to talk, people, out, people, you know, the schools that I work with or if anybody asks me, I try to talk 'em out of going in and doing five minute observations to determine if kids are learning or 10 minutes.
I tell them, go in and do that.
Five minutes to get to know the teacher.
Get to know, because you go in and instead of worrying about did the kids learn in this five minutes?
See who that teacher is.
Go infrequently go in for five minutes at a different time because you know what, you could have seen, it could have been the worst day of that teacher's life for sure.
No question.
Yeah.
And so you need enough data.
To be able to talk to teachers on an individual basis, because that's one of the things that teachers are so upset about with regards to pd, oh, this doesn't apply to me.
Oh, you're gonna come in and tell me how to teach.
You don't even know me.
All of those things are very valid and so, i'm telling, I'm giving this advice as if that's what I did when I was a vp, but of course I didn't.
I Of course I didn't.
Well, I'll tell them I agree with you.
And we are equally yoked in the idea that nothing replaces relationships in terms of building school culture.
No question.
Alright Bob, where could folks find you on if they're looking for you on the internets?
Yeah, I mean obviously I'm on LinkedIn and social media.
Facebook or you can look@militantpositivity.com.
I need to kind of update that website.
But the book Militant positivity is available on Amazon and a couple different formats and or you can find me at Bob.
Militant positivity.com.
Like that's probably the easiest way to reach me.
You can send me an email there.
Happy to help with anybody who's on this journey of trying to, you know, help leaders become resilient and acknowledge that somebody has to speak foreign on behalf of the kids that we serve.
And you have the opportunity to do that in a way that is not driven by the meme generation.
It doesn't have to be hateful or mean-spirited.
You can do it in a way with an open heart and still have a firm spine.
Great lost words.
Thank you so much for being a guest.
My distinct pleasure, gene.
Thanks for having me on your podcast.
You got it.
Gene Tavernetti: If you're enjoying these podcasts, tell a friend.
Also, please leave a 5 star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
You can follow me on BlueSky at gTabernetti, on Twitter, x at gTabernetti, and you can learn more about me and the work I do at my website, BlueSky.
Tesscg.
com, that's T E S S C G dot com, where you will also find information about ordering my books, Teach Fast, Focus Adaptable Structure Teaching, and Maximizing the Impact of Coaching Cycles.