Jethro Jones: Welcome to Transformative Principle, where I help you stop putting out fires and start leading.
I am your host, Jethro Jones.
You can follow me on Twitter at Jethro Jones.
Uh, welcome.
Transformative principle.
I am very excited to be here today.
I'm your host, Jethro Jones.
You can find me on all the social networks at Jethro Jones and, uh.
I, I am in the middle of redoing my website from Jethro Jones dot com to Jethro dot site.
Uh, so that is new.
I haven't talked about that yet.
So this is like, you're getting the first, uh, thing about it.
And so that's pretty exciting.
Um.
I have today on the program Dr.
Na Lawler, who is, uh, the author of the book, the Five Principles of Educator Professionalism, uh, great book.
If you've heard my podcast, cyber Traps, you'll know that this, uh, goes right in line with that book or with that podcast.
And, um, NAS Nason started as a high school math and social studies teacher.
A basketball coach, and then he became a principal, uh, assistant principal for nine years and his second year as principal at the Madison Career and Technical Center in Madison, Mississippi.
Um, so Nathan, welcome.
Glad to have you here and excited to be chatting with you today.
I.
Dr. Nason Lollar: It's an honor to be here.
Thank you.
Jethro Jones: Well, I wanna start out by talking about the whole idea of educator professionalism and how it, uh, is eroding trust in our schools.
Like, what's going on and what has led to that.
I.
Dr. Nason Lollar: Well, I think it's a combination of factors.
I, uh.
As you just, uh, ran through my bio, um, I'm in year 25 as a public educator, and, um, the amount of change that's taken place in, uh, the span of my, just in my career is, uh, a little staggering when and, and not just in the case of technology, but in a lot of areas.
Um, but.
We have fallen into a situation where quite often, uh, there have been many fads that have come through the field of education.
We've changed courses quite often as to our priorities, uh, what is the purpose of what we're trying to do in a school.
And, um, in a lot of ways I see the erosion of trust as a pushback.
Uh, against our, uh, chasing, constantly chasing these fads that have really, uh, I, I guess would, uh, set up an appearance of us having a hard time keeping our eye on the ball of what's most important.
And I guess the, um, the thing that would culminate that, um, erosion and trust would obviously be the pandemic a few years ago.
Um.
We were dealing with quite a few problems in the field of education already that hinted at an issue in trust, lowered attendance, uh, discipline situations that were getting, uh, to be, uh, out of hand in some cases.
Um, and then the covid pandemic hits, and that really exacerbated all of those issues.
Uh, just amplified 'em so much.
Um.
So the movement, I guess, to try to rebuild trust in a way, and I see my book is that as well, uh, is sort of a pushback against those fads that have served to distract us a bit.
Um, not every parent, uh, has been the, uh, recipient of an egregious error by an educator.
Uh, there are obviously those that get trumpeted in the media a good bit, but, um.
Even if you're a school that hasn't committed a major area like error like that, uh, you're still dealing with parents that quite often have negative experiences in their background, uh, from their own past, uh, when they were students.
And so all of that adds in together to create a situation where.
Our approach to what we do at school, um, needs to focus on what is the best way to, to handle the, the job, which is extremely complex where we serve in the place of a parent.
And when you do that, that's where I end up falling on five principles that are common to schools across America, regardless of.
What population you're talking about, rural, urban, suburban, any of those areas.
There are common threads that every parent and every school community and every group of educators want a school to accomplish.
And that's, uh, I, that's where I think, uh, the trust conversation goes, uh, at least for us today.
Jethro Jones: Yeah, absolutely.
And, and so some of those, uh, fads that people are, uh, that you're talking about here, what are some of the big ones, um, that, that you've seen?
And we're not gonna go like an exhaustive list or
anything, but.
An idea of what you're talking about.
Dr. Nason Lollar: I think the, I think one of the biggest, um.
While there.
Yeah, I would say that there are many, but I think one of the biggest, there are, there are plenty of constructive aspects to how we use technology within schools, but I think every day that passes, we're getting further and further into an understanding of how many dangers are also prevalent within the technology that we use so often.
And without even going down the rabbit hole of inappropriate content and, um, dangerous actors who can be online, just the concept of screen time in itself is another thing that, um, that I feel like as educators, we need to be thinking about how that impacts children's brain development.
How does that impact their learning when.
The learning takes place on a screen literally throughout an entire day.
Um, that's just one.
Uh, and, and then, you know, we could go into different concepts as to what, what is a more constructive way to teach.
Uh, I, I see a parallel movement in along the lines of trying to rebuild trust, but direct instruction is making quite a comeback.
Among quite a few people, uh, I'm happy to see it.
My time in the classroom, uh, I was, that was promoted to me in my teacher training, not as a constant, as an only, uh, resource to use, but one that was very effective.
And, and quite a lot of areas we have gotten away from that in, in some ways.
Uh, variety always great, but um.
That, that's why the conversational trust, I feel like is so important because community school communities and parents hear quite often messages in the media, uh, and whenever those messages happen to, uh, reinforce a, a negative situation they may experience at their own school, uh, it makes it extremely difficult to win that parent back over.
And I feel like, uh, at the end result.
We want our parents to have confidence in us that we can prepare their children for a successful life.
Jethro Jones: Yeah, I think that's really important.
And so I see, uh, technology for sure could be a.
Um, uh, especially back when I was in the classroom, which was a long time ago now, uh, there was a lot of technology for technology's sake, and we're starting to see that now with AI coming back, uh, or coming into the picture that it's like AI for AI's sake.
And that's not what, that's not what schools are for.
You
know, schools for learning.
And if it helps the learning, then you should use it.
But if it doesn't, then it makes no sense for it to be there
Dr. Nason Lollar: agree.
Jethro Jones: I can see how people could accuse me of doing technology for technology's sake, but that is really not the case because I work hard to not make that the focus.
And it has to be practical.
It has to be something that's gonna add value.
And if it doesn't, then I gotta take a step back and not include it.
Another thing.
Um, and, and you talked a little bit about this idea of, of how parents had experiences when they were kids with education and how that made an impact.
And that's something that for sure, I think needs some, uh, some awareness by us, uh, as educators that we can say, I see where this parent could have had a bad experience and.
I'm not gonna perpetuate that and let me show them how it's going to be different, but that's not always easy to do.
So in one of the things that you talk about is that teaching and learning should always come first.
And so, uh, well, I wanna go through your, your five.
Uh.
Your five, uh, commitments here.
Uh, teaching and learning should always come first.
Remain vigilant to safety concerns, understand the power of communication, seek balance, and take ownership of our morale.
And, uh, I I would love to go into each one of those, but we don't have time to do that.
So I wanna focus on this.
Take ownership of our own morale.
What do you mean by that?
Let's talk about that a little bit.
Dr. Nason Lollar: Well, I think anyone who's spent any time in the classroom can sympathize with the difficulty of a tough day and how that can impact you.
Um, depending on the time of the year, you know, earlier in the year, we're always a little bit more motivated, uh, those, uh, situations that might come at us or the list that may get way too long.
At the end of the day, uh, there's a little bit more pep in our step to handle things like that, but there inevitable.
Inevitably we're going to get to a point, maybe it's in the spring, maybe it's late fall, where those things really start to weigh on you in when you're, um, in the classroom.
Obviously, you can hit on administrators as well.
Uh, morale is an issue that we're all responsible for and, uh.
One of the primary things that I talk about in this, uh, look at personal morale is a couple of things.
One, administrators, even though morale is a personal, uh, characteristic that we're all responsible for, administrators still share some of the responsibility for what the morale is in the building.
I don't know that that's a fair, uh, uh, impact on the role of an A principal, but I do think it's one that if they ignore it, they do so do so at their own peril because in a way we do need to take care of how our people go about interacting with each other on a daily basis.
Um, one of the things that I think is the biggest impact on morale is the concept of negatives versus negativity.
Uh, I, I think it's very common when you put hundreds, sometimes even thousands of people together in a school building for say, 180 days.
In a year, you're going to have problems arise.
There will be negatives.
There's no way to get around that.
The conversation on morale, in my opinion is what do you do when you find the negatives and if you dwell on them?
If you let those, those problems fester to a point where they continue on, they create their own other additional problems, then you are succumbing to negativity.
And if it's entertained, it will definitely take root.
And then once you have someone who embraces a negative mindset, I don't know that anybody would ever have that as a goal.
If you let it get to that point, then that, I think that's the best way to describe it, is embracing negativity.
Then they will immediately go and look for like-minded people who share some of those other negatives.
And Go ahead.
Jethro Jones: the goal, right?
It.
Dr. Nason Lollar: No.
Jethro Jones: That's not what somebody is trying to do, but it's easy to fall into that trap.
My, uh, assistant principals and I had this agreement that we would never talk badly about the people above us to each other.
And by putting that strict guardrail in place and putting that boundary in place, we could not have negativity.
Once we saw something that was negative, we had to take a problem solving mindset and approach to it.
We couldn't sit there and complain about the IT director did this, or the curriculum director did this, or the superintendent did this.
We had to say.
Here's the fact about what happened and here's what we need to do going forward.
This incident happened.
How do we move forward and deal with this thing that is derailing our plans or frustrating to us or making things difficult?
That was a, a very strong choice that Damon and I.
Together and committed to, and then held each other accountable to that later when the temptation arose.
And there were plenty of times to do that.
And I'm just so grateful to Damon for saying that from the very beginning, we're have this negativity and we're gonna deal with the negatives in a solution focused way.
And that was such a good example to me, and I'm so grateful for that.
Dr. Nason Lollar: Yeah, so that was not easy for you guys to do as a team, but it's really important to me that you bring that point up because good schools that have strong cultures, they have negatives in those schools as well.
The difference is what do you do when you find the negative, and that's where.
Honestly, I feel like that's where the, uh, the conversation on morale fits, so importantly into the, uh, conversation on the erosion of trust.
Because once you find the negative, it's a big decision point in the life of a school.
You can either let it continue on, status quo can remain.
Or you can get down to the root cause of it and somewhere down there where that problem is living, you're gonna find out the truth.
And if you can deal with the truth properly, take bad news in a good way and be able to do everything you possibly can to overcome those negatives.
I think that's one of the key characteristics of a really strong culture of learning at a school.
And that's one of the things that we hope to.
Um, uh, that we would aspire to, uh, in our morale.
We we're not perfect and we're not gonna have a great day every day, but we can address problems in a way that our attitude helps us overcome more often than not.
Jethro Jones: Yeah.
So what's a specific strategy that you would give to someone who.
Uh, is seeing a, a lot of negatives and is falling into this trap of negativity.
How would you help them come out of that?
What action steps should they take to come out of that?
Dr. Nason Lollar: So the, the first thing as a rule, just a personal rule, and I, again, we're all human, so we're gonna make mistakes from time to time, but the.
Ability to, to keep a train of thought and stay focused so that you don't entertain negativity.
Um, looking for problems is a pretty easy proposition in a school.
Like I said, we have so many people interacting in so many different ways on a daily basis.
First strategy, I would say, is to do everything possible, not to look for the negatives.
You'll come across some, it's eventually going to happen, but I would go back to the importance of strong collaboration.
I.
The process of trying to stay away from negativity.
Uh, there's a favorite quote of mine.
I've used it in things that I've written for years now, and I include it in this project as well, is that isolation is the enemy of improvement.
And you may have heard that, uh, Richard Elmore, um, a education, uh, thought leader from years ago, uh, published that one.
And it's always been a favorite one that I've kept up in my office.
Um, isolation breeds so many problems within our field.
It, it does prohibit improvement, but I feel like isolation also helps those negative thoughts stay in our minds.
And when we're connected with our colleagues in a positive work relationship, I think that's probably one of the strongest ways to defeat.
And I, um, I would say that that collaboration is piece is also another really, uh, good characteristic that you see in strong cultures as well.
Jethro Jones: Yeah, absolutely.
Um, the other piece about isolation being the enemy of improvement is that, uh.
Hiding things.
And shame also is, is in that same ballpark.
And so if you make a mistake and you try to hide it, or somebody makes a mistake and they try to hide it, then uh, you destroy trust there as well.
And, somebody said light is the best disinfectant, and you put light on something and then you can see like, oh.
This isn't actually that big a deal, and so many times out of pride or whatever, we have hidden things that really should just come to light and talk about it and get it out there.
And we can move on pretty easily if we know what's happening, and then we can make a plan.
But if we're hiding it and trying to make sure nobody sees it, then we're like, oh, that's, that's, not a good place to be.
Dr. Nason Lollar: Completely agree.
Jethro Jones: Yeah.
So the last question that I would.
I like to ask you is, what is one thing that a principal can do this week to be a Transformative Principal like you?
Dr. Nason Lollar: Well, uh, one thing that, uh, has come to, uh, surface for me.
I would say that I, I did not come across this through research for any writing that I would do.
This is for my own practice.
I was an assistant principal for nine years, and now in my second year as a lead principal, um.
And the principal on teaching and learning.
Coming first for any educator at any role, um, I don't know if there's any way particularly for an A school administrator to build credibility in their own instructional leadership than to go all in on professional development.
The ability to plan.
Effective professional development that includes the needs of teachers, that includes their voice and what decisions get made that, um, seeks their input.
Um, is one thing that I would suggest that was a game changer for me as an assistant principal who spent 14 years in the classroom.
Um, there are.
Quite a few tough crowds in the professional development room whenever you have any type of faculty meeting or if even it's a, a full day of professional development.
And I knew that when I went into my administrative career because quite often I was in that tough crowd and I was a teacher for 14 years.
So I knew the attitudes that I could face, I knew the encouragement.
I could also see within a good faculty.
But, uh, I, I certainly did not start off in a place where I was comfortable delivering good, meaningful professional development.
And so as I progressed on that track, my first thought was my effort to plan professional development means that I've got to bring in the best resources that that will wow the teachers.
And teach them something they've never seen.
And, uh, I, I think I was trying to shoot way too far ahead of where I needed to be.
Um, I was very fortunate to work with teachers who were rock stars in their own right and true professionals.
And all they wanted, just like every other teacher, was something that they could take, that they could use in their classroom.
And one of the biggest, uh, eye openers for me.
The times, whenever I would open the floor to get their opinions and take advantage of their experience.
And I don't know that I've ever led a professional development session where the, uh, resource that I brought in for the teachers, I.
Could outdo their experience.
Uh, they, they defeated every time.
And, um, being able to go in and, uh, lead professional development from a place of honesty, um, where you're just trying to help the teachers learn something that they can take away that will help them in their classrooms and include them in the planning and in the, uh.
Delivering of the professional development, I would say is, has been one of the biggest, uh, blessings to me as an administrator, uh, to learn from so many teachers in my role.
Jethro Jones: Yeah.
Well, and I really love what you said there about nothing you bring in can, cannot do the experience of the teachers.
Like that's a, a statement of humility and self-awareness that I.
We don't have, you know, all the, we don't always have the, the magic bullet that's gonna fix everything or, or anything like that.
But what we do have are people who are committed to doing great stuff with kids, and let's lean on that.
Um, I, I, I appreciate that.
So, so that was a, that was a big answer for a small question of what, what could.
This week.
So what would you say would be the action item for this week?
Like what should they do to get better at leading effective professional development?
What, what can they do this to, to help with that?
Dr. Nason Lollar: Well, one aspect of that, I'll go back to one of the things I mentioned in that previous answer, and that's, um, including teacher voice and what you do at its heart.
That is a extremely simple concept, but it is sometimes so hard for us to put into practice because it is essentially just us listening, and that's how we communicate empathy.
If we can listen to teachers.
To their problems, to their needs, to, uh, their desires for what they want to do for their students, how they can do that and what in what ways we can help.
I think that doesn't have to take place in a professional development setting.
It certainly could and I would encourage it, but it can also happen in the hallway.
Um.
In passing, you know, you can, um, you can address a teacher's needs in any, any conversation or any format, but I think we've gotta do that by listening and taking, and again, uh, trusting them.
As professionals and, um, and joining them in this work together instead of, uh, just trying to be the administrator.
A true instructional leader is gonna bring teachers in and listen to their needs and do everything they can to support 'em.
So I, to drill down even further, to your point, a simpler answer would be to listen.
Jethro Jones: Yeah.
Yep.
Uh, listen and, and, and figure out a way to take what they're saying and, and provide some, but I, I really appreciate that.
Um, so once again, the book is called Five Principles.
Of educator professionalism, rebuilding trust in schools.
Uh, how would you like people to reach out to you and connect with you, Nathan?
Dr. Nason Lollar: Probably the easiest way would be on X.
Uh, I'm at Nas Lawler.
Uh, my first name, last name, just altogether there at Nas Lawler.
I do have a Facebook group, uh, personal development.
And that's there too.
Uh, I have been blogging for about five years now, and, uh, many of those thoughts helped me, um, uh, kind of combine, uh, ideas into this principle, uh, these principles of.
Professionalism, but I, I continue to blog and, and write about.
Sometimes it's professionalism, but sometimes just, you know, whatever the mood strikes me, uh, that's the fun of blogging.
And so anything I post, I'm gonna put on X or on that Facebook group.
And then, uh.
That, that's probably the easiest way.
Uh, direct message would be great.
I'd love to chat.
I'm always open to talking about professionalism.
Um, I'm, I'm passionate about educator conduct.
I think that is the key to strong school cultures, and I don't know that we can improve schools until we improve our conduct.
Jethro Jones: I, I'm right there with you.
Um, well, uh, Nathan, I appreciate your time.
Thank you for being here.
And thank you for, uh, all the work that you do.
Thanks for being part of Transformative principle on the B Podcast Network.
Dr. Nason Lollar: Thanks, Jethro.
I really appreciate it.