Welcome to Transformative Principle, where I help you stop putting
out fires and start leading.
I'm your host, Jethro Jones.
You can follow me on Twitter at Jethro Jones.
Okay.
Welcome to Transformative Principal.
I am your host, Jethro Jones.
You can find me on all the social networks at Jethro Jones.
Transformative Principal is a proud member of the BE Podcast Network
and it's where you go to get all your great educational podcasts.
And if you like education, if you're in education, we've got a show for you.
And if you're looking on our shows@bepodcastnetwork.com and you
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'cause everybody needs a good podcast.
And there are so many amazing stories out there that it's just a tragedy.
If we don't have a show for you, so let me know.
That's b podcast network.com.
Today on the show, I'm excited to have Patrick Rein.
He is a middle school, uh, teacher and he taught history and leadership
for 10 years and has been a district level instructional coach and
restorative justice specialist.
He's currently serving in a TOSA role and is doing some really cool stuff.
Outside of that, which is he's created a coherent instructional framework
that applies a Moneyball approach, leveraging data and analytics
on key performance indicators.
And he's written a book called Theory Can Only Take You So Far, which the
title of that just speaks to my heart.
And he developed a data collection app called Ed Changer Pro that
brings the system to life.
So Patrick, welcome to Transformative Principle.
Great to have you.
Yeah.
Thank you for having me, Jethro.
All right, so for those who aren't familiar, tell us about this Moneyball
approach and what that means, and then how you apply it in education.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Great start.
Um, I have, so I'm a baseball fan and one, a famous story in the history of baseball
is about the Oakland AEs franchise and their general manager, Billy Bean.
And Billy Bean is famous for managing that franchise, which is, comes from
a smaller market, which means they have, you know, smaller fan base,
smaller city, and smaller income.
They're required to compete with all of these higher income teams.
And so Billy Bean is tasked with trying to create a competitive
roster less money, um, which is something I connect with in education.
Um, you know, I. like often we hope to have more resources and more money,
and that help is just not coming.
so Billy Bean develops this system of data and analytics order to
create a better, more efficient, uh, system within baseball.
And so I guess the story is, there is a point in the movie where Billy's talking
to these traditional minded scouts.
The scouts are judging players on things like the shape of their jaw and how
they look these surface level qualities.
In fact, the the scene kind of ends when one scout says, we
can't pick up that player because his girlfriend's only a six.
He's got an ugly girlfriend, which to me, like.
Represents so much absurdity because that has nothing to do
with how you can play baseball.
And so my theory is, is that we are sometimes applying unintentionally
a similar approach to how we judge instruction and teachers.
Sometimes it's the teacher with the Pinterest classroom.
Sometimes it's the teacher that's popular with the kids.
Sometimes it's the teacher that's connected that has this reputation.
Um, and.
There is great instruction is so critical in schools, and so I've developed this
again with that, along with that idea of data and analytics and taking these
key performance indicators that Billy Bean used in his analysis of baseball.
Um, I've created this system where we do that for the classroom.
Yeah.
Well, and I, I love the idea of taking away the things we judge educators on that
don't mean anything, um, because there's a lot out there that we could judge them on.
And in a lot of situations, like I. It just doesn't matter.
And, and so we, let's get into those key performance indicators that you're
talking about because, um, I have my own perspective on these, but I want to hear
yours first and let's, let's talk about 'em, maybe see some unique things there.
Yeah, so background, I'll, I'll preface my ideas with, uh, I'm in a unique
position as a professional learning toso where I spend like a third of my
time in the classroom, often teaching, but sometimes observing teachers.
A third of my time working on building systems with principals and about a third
of my time at the district office and.
The best part of my job is I get to see all of the amazing things
that are happening in all corners of our school district, and
teachers really are incredible.
But then the other thing I see everywhere is this feeling of crisis.
And I think, and unintentionally, as we've tried to combat that feeling of
crisis and find relief, we keep looking at like individual initiatives or quick
fixes to try to solve the problem.
And my, foundational viewpoint is, is that we have to stop throwing shiny
objects and quick fixes at the problem and start building and maintaining systems.
And again, I've done that.
From an instructional practice perspective and created a classroom system and
just analyzed a ton of research and evidence and my own experience as a
teacher, and then also used AI a little bit, and I found consistent that the
practices of building community and relationships intentionally, planning
routines, teaching expectations, informed supervision, I call it.
Positive feedback, corrective feedback and opportunities to respond or rigorous
questioning are the most critical indicators of grade instruction.
And then I add the eighth practice of what would be considered like that
first wave of tier two in the classroom.
Um, teaching moves for targeted support.
Those practices make a classroom system.
Um, and the way that I phrase that is I use the quote systems equals hope.
And what that quote means to me is, is that as a teacher, I'm
gonna have hope when there's a logical next step in my work.
and so when you have that system implemented, say your class
feels contentious, it's a really clear, logical next step to build
community and relationships.
If your class feels chaotic, install routines.
If your class feels cold, then you wanna increase positive reinforcement.
So that system creates that po that logical next step.
that's something that's gonna give teachers hope.
I like that.
All right, so I was taking notes while you were talking.
Building community classroom routines, informed supervision
feedback, opportunities to respond, rigorous questioning, teaching
moves for targeted support.
Did I miss one?
Uh, teaching expectations,
Teaching expectations.
Okay.
Thank you.
in line with, with routines, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Alright, so, so that's good.
What I, what I really like about what you said is that these systems create
hope and so when, when you're struggling with something, then you can figure
out what the next thing is to do.
And you gave some good examples there.
So I want you to go into that a little bit more.
How do you know that these are the next right things?
Or do you have to learn that?
Do you have to be taught that?
Um, what's, what's the process for making sure that you, you know,
what the next right thing is?
'cause it's not really gonna give you hope.
If you are like, well, if you know there's, if it feels cold in here, then
I'm gonna, then I'm just gonna work on giving more opportunities to respond, or
I'm gonna have more rigorous questions.
Those are not necessarily going to fix that cold atmosphere in the classroom.
So how do you know what the right thing to do is?
Yeah, and that's a really, I mean, part of it is I think building
capacity in the system over time, and you start to recognize those things.
could answer that question in two ways.
I think.
I would say that it starts with, some people are really intuitive at making
those decisions and seeing those human elements in, in a classroom.
And honestly, generally, I was in a conversation with this, you know, state,
high level MTSS recently, and he said something that kind of floored me.
He said, your app because know, what I've learned is only 2% of
teachers really need to be evaluated.
98% of teachers need to be coached.
Um, and so a lot of people are really intuitive in making those decisions, but
what I, I would first answer that question is, is what we need to do is level
set and build capacity in instruction.
And I think the only way that we do that is start starting
to collect data on instruction.
So if I'm, I'll use the simplest possible example.
Uh, a lot of people are familiar with the idea that.
a four, approximately four to one positive to negative inter action ratio that's
thought of as optimal in a classroom.
And you hear between three and five to one for that number.
But that's something people are familiar with.
And I can, as a observer, just sit in a classroom and tally
P-P-P-N-P-P-N, and tell you as a teacher exactly what your ratio is.
And so by having that data collection, you start to see.
What optimal feels like, right?
If I collect data on you three times, and once you're one-to-one, and once
you're two to one, and once you're four to one, you can feel what four
to one feels like, but you also get to see how that impacts your students.
And so that kind of profound learning and growth that happens on that data
collection is, I think that's how we build capacity and maybe people who can't
so intuitively make those decisions.
I, I really appreciate that, and some people are intuitive
response because some people.
Get it.
And some people can walk into a classroom and set all those things up
in virtually no time at all because they are just so good at it, either
through practice or naturally.
And so like.
For me, my first year teaching, there were a lot of things I needed to learn
how to do, but there were a lot of things that I just knew intuitively
needed to happen and nobody told me.
In fact, I was in alternative routes to licensure teacher, so I didn't take
any education classes before I got my first teaching job, not a single one.
However, I've been teaching, you know, my whole entire life since I was 12
years old in different ways, so I was.
Uh, there were a lot of things that I already knew, and so stepping
in, uh, I had, you know, probably 75% of the way there of being
a, a great teacher on day one.
And then I needed to learn some strategies beyond that.
But at this point, you know, I. It's, it's now my 20th year in education.
I can go into any classroom with any group of adults or children and be
able to command the space and set up expectations and, and establish
routines very quickly because I've just learned how to do those things
and that's not the case for everybody.
And that idea of, I need to talk to that person who said that 2% of teachers need
to be evaluated, 90 se 8% need to be.
Coach, that's, I think that's absolutely right because we also know
that like 98% of teachers pass their evaluations and it's just a hoop to
jump through, and it's a waste of everybody's time, and yet we keep doing
it because it's not really necessary.
What, what's going on with that?
Yeah.
I love that, that point you probably saw on my face point
Yeah.
the, our evaluation being a hoop to jump through
In our evaluation system, we, you know, it's 30 indicators with a rubric
with four different descriptors.
It's so complicated and teachers are so busy.
Most teachers I don't even think know what they say.
And I think, again, this system, so, I'll dive into what I really wanna
say is, is that, you know, I just think teachers are so incredible.
There are so many amazing teachers doing so amazing things.
And, um, having that evaluation system that's so complex versus this
simple system of eight objective.
Observable data points something that's gonna bring teachers efficacy.
And the way I want to say it is, is I use the quote often, repeating is
not the same as creating in my work.
And I think teachers are just so incredible.
And there's almost two injustices here.
One.
I don't think teachers have been presented that simple of a coherent system of here's
the eight practices that you need to do.
these 30 indicators that seem so much, and then they get overwhelmed.
But the other injustices is, I don't think they've ever aren't coached in this way.
That really acknowledges how incredible they are and that they
are the experts of the students.
this process of data collection, if I sit in the classroom and I tally students.
EEED for engaged, disengaged, engaged, disengaged.
And then I calculate after about three rounds of going through the class,
that 70% of students are engaged.
sit down next to that teacher and say, you have 70% of students engaged.
80 to 90 is the optimal ratio.
The RTI Triangle shows us that, right?
What are we gonna do about it?
some new activities.
Maybe it's as simple as choosing some new activities, or maybe we
need to install a new routine.
Maybe there needs to be some increase in positive feedback, but I can have
that coaching conversation where it's not me just stripping away all
of their creativity and personality and telling them what to do.
It's us sitting side by side and them making the decisions for their classroom
because they're the experts, because they are, um, teachers are incredible and they
deserve to be acknowledged such, I think.
Yeah, and they're professionals and, and it's crazy that we have.
This complex, convoluted, uh, impossible to manage, uh, expectation
about their, you know, evaluations.
Um, when the first district I was a principal in, we had 54 indicators
and like there's, they would say.
There's no way for you to do all 54 of these in a single observation,
but that doesn't make anybody feel like it, like that matters.
And the other part of it is that there's so much there that it
seems like it's intentionally designed to make it difficult for
them to notice and pay attention.
We as the principles, when we do these evaluations, we are doing them
on multiple teachers multiple times.
So we, we are familiar with the tool.
And, and what I like about your and other simple approaches, uh,
like, uh, Craig Randall, do you know his trust-based observations?
Uh, no, I've never heard of Craig
Okay.
He's, he's over in Tacoma, so he's, uh, he's a wash Tony also.
And, um, his trust-based observations is fantastic because it's,
it's all about building trust.
Through that process and, and what, what we need more of is respect for teachers
as professionals and an opportunity for them to know exactly what good
teaching looks like and, and how they can be great teachers and not have it
be so complex that it's like, it it some proprietary formula that determines.
What your score number is based on all these ev uh, observations and,
and data points that is so opaque.
You don't know really what's going on.
But what you're saying is, here's engagement.
And my word for that is enrollment.
Kids can be engaged, but that doesn't mean that they're enrolled.
Like you can be engaged in activity but not be paying attention to it
or not care about the end result.
Enrolled means you are choosing to be part of that.
Uh, activity and you're choosing to, to fully engage in it yourself rather
than, you know, kids can be engaged in cool math games.com, but that doesn't
mean that they're learning anything.
Yeah.
and so that, that type of approach of here's what it looks like to
be a good teacher, here's some clear data points that say that.
Those are important.
'cause that also gives clarity.
The systems give hope, but those systems and expectations also give
clarity about what good looks like.
But if it's 30 things, it doesn't, it's too much.
If it's eight things, I, I think that's a little bit more manageable.
And I would even argue that you could probably get it down to
maybe even five and, and that would be much more manageable.
But that's work that I'll leave you to do, Patrick.
Yeah.
No, thank you.
I agree.
Um.
And I mean, the two response I would say is I, I love that point that you made as
far as just the overwhelm nature of those evaluation systems from 54 30 indicators.
Either one is a lot.
And it kind of brings me back to that original point where that idea of like
quick fixes and shiny objects that are gonna solve the problem, like what ends
up happening in education generally from what I see is, is that, and again, I
think generally with the best intentions.
Everybody's trying to make things better for kids, but everybody's got a different
initiative, so there's eight initiatives coming at teachers and then there's, you
know, we try 'em for six months and they work or don't, and something comes down
the pipe that's next, it creates that constant feeling of initiative fatigue.
Um, and so that's kind of the premise again of my work is, is like.
We can't continue to try to solve all of our problems in
education with initiatives.
We have to start building and maintaining systems.
Mm-hmm.
could probably, um, combine intentional routines and teaching expectations and
corrective and positive interactions to just feedback and make it more like five.
Um, but either way, like that's a system and it's there whether it's five or
eight, and we have to really at some point start building and maintaining systems.
Um, I. Education has changed a lot in the last 10 years and it's gonna
continue to change faster and we're not gonna be, in fact, I'd say we're
already behind on the inclusionary practices and AI changes that are coming.
Oh
Um, if we don't start building and maintaining systems now, things
are gonna continue to get harder.
Yeah, absolutely.
So on the initiative thing, I have a podcast episode that I'm gonna put in the
show notes where we did 34 initiatives in three years at my middle school
and there was no initiative fatigue.
And here's how we dealt with that.
We said the here's our goal and here's where we're going.
This is our vision.
And if you as a teacher think you can do something to help us
move toward that vision, we will adopt that as an initiative.
But we're only going to adopt initiatives.
Once I, the principal have set the vision, we're only gonna adopt
initiatives that teachers bring forward.
So the district's not gonna have a mandate that they're gonna add in later
and say, this is what we're all gonna do now we have a vision and we're gonna.
Init we're gonna put into place those things that you teachers are coming
up with that we need to implement to do, to do the vision for our school.
And we had, uh, happy teachers.
We had effective teachers, we had, uh, students who were growing two to
five grade levels in our remediation classes in math and language arts.
Um, and these were all because of the efforts that the teachers were saying,
this is what we need to do our work.
And, and whenever somebody brings up initiative fatigue, I have to
tell that story because it doesn't have to be that way, you know?
And, and that's the key.
You can make changes within your schools.
Yeah.
Well, what I hear you saying there is to be honest and using that
word initiative, but I hear you actually saying you built the system.
That is right.
of these components, right?
That's what I hear you saying and
Yep.
um, 'cause initiatives required.
You have to install new ideas into schools to keep up.
But doing it in a way that's sustainable and it fits coherently within, into
a system, um, is the mindset shift.
I think that needs to happen.
But
Yeah.
I don't know.
Would you agree with that or what are
Yeah.
point?
totally.
I mean, that's, that's the whole thing is we, we set up systems where.
If you, if you felt like something needed to be done, you could bring that forward
and we could make a school-wide change, but it had to come from the teachers.
Uh, or, or there were systemic things that needed to happen
that, that I had to initiate.
Uh, for example, one of those things was we need, uh, we have too many kids
who are below grade level, and so we need to adjust how we do language arts.
So for example, we had 90 minute blocks of language arts.
I'm a language arts teacher.
I love it.
I, I, I could like sit around, talk about books and reading
and writing all day long.
However, we had a lot of kids who were struggling even in that
system with all that extra time.
So we said we're gonna reduce the required time for ELA to 45 to a
45 minute period for everybody.
And then anybody who needs extra help is gonna get targeted additional
support in, in an additional period.
And so, because we had it set up, we had the teachers, we had the.
The things in place we need to make a system-wide change, but we could do
that within our, our arena of influence and make it work for our students,
which was very beneficial for for them.
And that's where we saw huge gains because I. Taking away that 90 minute block of
language arts also gave students who needed math support additional help.
And that's where we saw kids go from a, uh, second grade math proficiency
level to grade level math proficiency in a semester, which was incredible.
I almost didn't even believe it when I saw it.
And I was like, there's no way that these kids could grow this much.
And yet they did because they got very targeted, specific support.
In the areas that they needed.
And a huge part of that had nothing to do with teaching.
And it was a ton of mindset work for those students.
They had been told they were dumb in math their whole lives, and this teacher
spent a lot of time telling them that they could, that they could learn how
to do math, that it wasn't impossible.
Whereas all their previous teachers had been saying, you're just an idiot.
You can't do this.
Not by using those words, but by the actions they took.
So anyway, that, that, uh.
That time at that school was really amazing and incredible.
We did a lot of cool things.
So, uh, check out that link.
People who are listening, initiative fatigue is what the link is.
Um, and then I wanna talk a little bit about your app before we close,
because it's one thing to say, here's all this good great stuff
that we can, we can talk about.
But you actually made an app to make it easier to keep track of all this stuff.
Tell us about that.
Yeah, so how the app works specifically is, again, I have and created
data points, um, based on a ton of research and evidence, like I said.
little bit of help from AI for all of those eight practices.
And so each one has what I, what I call like games.
You open the app and you can click on each practice and it brings you into a game.
'cause they're kinda like little games.
When you, sitting in a classroom and you're tapping P or N, it kind of
feels like you're playing a game.
Or one of them is, is like student to teacher talk time.
The data point is that, um.
70% of class should be student talk.
30% of class should be teacher talk.
So you're sitting and toggling back and forth between
student talk and teacher talk.
Um, they're kind of little games and they're kind of fun to play.
But then again, really they're data monitoring tools.
And so you go into a classroom, you open the app, you pick a practice.
These make great 10 minute observations.
Again, positive, negative interactions, students being engaged
for one routine, whatever that is.
you collect the data as an observer.
Or teachers can do this on their own, right?
Like a teacher could sit there and track their interactions
or if students are engaged.
And after the observation, it brings you to a screen that gives you your data.
And then when you hit okay, it brings you, it pops up your email it sends
the teacher an email with their data.
And would I have like three high quality resources for each practice.
so the teacher then can do some learning.
So if I'm monitoring your, um, let's, I'll do my favorite one for you, Jethro.
I'm monitoring your informed supervision.
And so how that's set up is, is I come in the app I tap on a grid
to create a map of your classroom.
then when I hit, okay, the map pops up, but now it's touchable and I can drag my
finger around your supervision patterns.
you stop and interact with a student, I can tap positive, negative, or
PN or O for opportunity to respond.
Did you positively reinforce?
Correct them a question?
I do that for 10 minutes it sends you the map, it sends you the interactions
you had with your students, then it also sends you a webinar of me
talking about a 10 minute webinar of me talking about informed supervision.
Like the first resource, which is like how to strategically make those interactions.
When I approach a student, do I positively reinforce correct or ask them a question?
And then the third resource is this tiered framework.
So that's like if you're a refined teacher and you kind of know how
to make those decisions, but that the tiered framework provides like
six or seven deeper resources.
Then it also provides these, these three resources that I've created, like a one
pager that explains a project, a tier one, like teaching moves, and then a tier two,
like teaching moves for targeted support.
Um, so those are the three resources.
The webinar, like a First Steps for Refinement, and then a framework that
has tiered resources that anyone can find something to support their practice.
Um.
each of the practices have those games can play, send the data
to the teacher with resources.
So again, that acknowledges them as experts.
They can go through the resources and decide they want to adjust
based on the data that they got.
That's great.
So now, uh, when the principal's sitting in the back of the room,
he's just playing games on his iPad.
Had, uh, that's, that's good.
Um, no, I, a I actually really like that because I personally, I used observations
as a game, uh, when I was doing it.
And it was a, you know, how many, how many things on this 50 to four
point checklist, can I mark off and can I, can I get 'em all, you know?
And, and I would make it a game because for me that was the only way to.
To survive doing it.
But I like this, uh, intentionality in making it more like a game so that
it's actually a fun thing to do and it's not tedious and, um, and not,
uh, not boring for the teacher or the principal who's in there observing.
Yeah.
Thank you.
It's good.
Um, so I, I gotta introduce you to, uh, um, Ben at Classroom Mosaic, uh,
who does a lot of stuff with, uh.
Principal and teacher observations.
Um, 'cause I think you two would, uh, you'd, you'd
probably hit it off pretty well.
So I'll, I'll make that connection after we're done here.
That that'll be good.
Yeah.
Love that.
Thank you so much.
Yeah.
So, uh, my last question is, uh, I asked this at the end of every interview.
What is one thing that a principal can do this week to be a Transformative
leader like you, Patrick.
Man, that's a tough, I think, you know, there's so many things.
Um, and it does really, I think it all comes back down to, uh, it
all comes down to relationships.
I've kind of two things I wanna say, but it all comes down to relationships.
Um, taking the time to connect with your teachers, be there to support them.
That's such a big thing to say, right?
Because how do you do that?
But, um, finding a way to stop by and connect with the teacher every
day, or making sure when there's student behavior issues that
the teacher doesn't feel alone.
Or ways, you know, to build teacher practice.
So they have increased efficacy.
Um.
And I guess I'll, I'll say to that is, is that a quote I use a lot is,
is self-care is working in a system that you feel confident in, right?
The story I tell is, is like during COVID, systems were a mess.
And you like, how I responded was I bought a pool table and me and my
buddies played pool till three in the morning often, that was our self-care.
But guess what?
We woke up the next day, tired.
And struggling and we still had all of our work to do.
Right.
But, um, when you feel confident in the system, so as a teacher, when I
feel confident that I can instruct my classroom, um, what teachers really want.
That's real self-care for teachers.
It's not going to get a massage after school.
Teachers care so much about their, they care desperately about their kids.
They just wanna be better teachers.
So supporting them in that too.
Very good.
Well, this, this was awesome.
Um, you can connect with, uh, Patrick and.
The show notes, I have a link to his LinkedIn, A link to his book
Theory can only take you so far.
And a link to the app Ed Changer Pro, which you can, uh, get yourself
and try it out and see how it goes.
Um, Patrick, thanks so much for being part of Transformative Principle today.
Yeah.
Thank you so much for having me, Jethro.
Appreciate you.