Jethro Jones: Welcome to transformative principle where you
learn how to be a leader and not just a manager of a to-do list.
I'm your host Jethro Jones.
You can find me on Twitter at Jethro Jones.
I love doing the mastermind with principals every single week.
It is so rewarding and invigorating to hear.
People overcome their challenges day in and day out.
I want to share some of the things that people have found most
useful to them as they've been participating in the mastermind.
Here's a couple, I really appreciated the reminder of the
need for essential learnings.
Even though I feel isolated and alone, I recognize that I have
a group here where I'm not alone and we're all in this together.
Another one.
Figuring out hiring what's most useful having conversations with people
about topics that we still need to address, even if the timing's not
right, doing the mastermind is awesome.
And you would love it if you were a part of it as well, go to Jethro
jones.com/mastermind, and let's schedule a chat to talk about whether
or not the mastermind's right for you.
That's Jethro jones.com/mastermind.
This week's episode.
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So we've talked about the first two mistakes that instructional leaders make.
The first one was focusing too much on student outcomes.
And the second one was staying out of teachers with.
Staying out teachers' way, man.
I'm just stumbling.
Pardon me?
So what is the third mistake that instructional leaders often
Amber Dembowski: make?
Yeah, this one is going to be short and sweet and I think most instructional
leaders would agree with me.
It's the mistake is just staying busy because staying busy.
Isn't the same as being productive in your day.
And one of my favorite visuals, when coming to prioritizing our time as.
Management matrix, you know, there's yes, isn't that awesome.
So there's four quadrants, just real quickly quadrant one are the
things that are important and urgent.
So those might be deadlines that are coming up, or maybe
a crisis that was unexpected.
Quadrant two is really where the rubber hits the road, but it's often overlooked.
So that's, what's important, but not urgent.
And I'll come back to that in just a second, but quadrant three
are the not important, but urgent things that come up in the day.
So that could be an angry parents wanting to talk to you.
And not just that, it's not important, but it's not impacting teaching alarming.
Let's say.
And then quadrant four are the not important and not urgent.
And so that an example of that might be, you know, taking to answering emails,
let's say, so what we really want to, where we want us to focus our time is
quadrant two and we need to find ways to.
And that quadrants, but what makes it hard is quadrant two is not coming and knocking
at our door or her calling our phone or popping into our email because quadrant
two is all about the teaching and learning that's happening every single day.
Like it's in the way are six teachers with no subs to fill the job.
Like I said, the angry parents or the student behaviors, those are
things that we can't ignore and they come at us loud and clear.
So we just have to be really intentional with our time and really do a self audit
of as our calendar and our day being.
Low yield tasks or high yield tasks.
Um, high yields to me are things that are positively
impacting teaching and learning.
And that's what we need to continue to do, continue to audit our time.
Jethro Jones: Yeah, absolutely.
And you know, one of the things that I've worked with principals.
Multiple times is this idea of creating, uh, an ideal week and saying,
here's how I want to spend my time.
And then making sure that those other things get scheduled in so
that you, you know, like, yes, there's going to be emergencies.
Yes.
There's going to be things that are urgent that you need to deal with,
but not everything is that way.
And having a time dedicated.
To doing those things that are not urgent during the week is really important.
So you can get that@jasperjones.com slash ideal week.
And I share that, and I believe that you have something along those lines as well.
Don't you do a Monday mindset or something like that?
Amber Dembowski: Yes.
I have a Monday mindset podcast.
And it's more about it does talk about managing your time, but it is more about
being mindful in your day that we want to be performing at a peak capacity, then
truly we need to have a healthy mind.
And so the Monday mindset is shared out.
Uh, every Monday for those who subscribe, uh, through apple or through iHeartRadio.
However, if, if people head over to my website at www that Amber then bow ski,
that com they can also subscribe there.
When they subscribe through my website, they get my podcast Sunday and they
also get a planner that goes along with it so that they can personalize.
Um, what was talked about in the, in the mindset.
Jethro Jones: Yeah, very good.
So make sure you check that out.
And there's a link to that also in the show notes for this episode, if
you just tap on the, the cover art, which is a beautiful picture that
my wife designed, or if you swipe left or right, you should be able to
get to that link and check that out.
Now, I want to talk about this idea of budgeting your time appropriately,
because it's, it's so important.
And so one of the things that I did is I.
Tuesday afternoons from after lunch until the end of the day, we're set aside for
doing district stuff, whatever that was.
And so if there was, you know, a project that the district needed,
or there was something that I'd follow up on or training for
state testing or whatever that.
That would fall into that slot.
And so I made sure that that slot always was saved for that purpose.
And if I didn't have any district stuff to do, it was really easy to, to
just not do anything then and do the other things that needed to be done.
But if I ever had something, I would always say, I'm just
going to set that aside until.
That day at that time, and then I can do it.
What other tips do you have for managing your time so that you're not being pulled
about in every different direction?
Amber Dembowski: Well, I like to schedule the things that are important first.
And so the things to me that are important are kind of squeezing myself
into the teacher's day, not in an awkward or take over kind of way,
but more in a curious and supportive.
So that looks like, you know, getting into the classroom during
instruction so that I can really see what's important and what's not.
So I like to schedule those into my calendar every Sunday for the following
week and truly I consider it a success.
And this is what the people that I consult and work with.
Um, if you can get into at least nine classrooms, 10 minutes.
And each classroom a week, uh, that's truly a success.
And within that time, you can certainly pull out pieces of feedback that
you can provide the teachers during that time, which is actually kind of
transitions well into my next mistake that I shared through the AFCD article.
Um, it talks a lot about
Jethro Jones: feedback.
Amber Dembowski: Yeah.
So mistake four is always seeking out ways to critique, which
really falls back on our feedback.
And so when we provide teachers feedback, we need to recognize what
is the purpose of that feedback?
Are we providing the feedback to help, to fix.
And just on my recent Monday mindset podcast, I shared about this exact topic.
Helping means that we want to make something easier for others or assist
them, but helping isn't perceived as a relationship between equals.
So helping implies that the teacher doesn't know as much as you or
me and that they're weaker or.
Now, and if we, if we approach things from the perspective of fixing things,
then that means you're approaching the teacher as they're broken.
And even though this type of feedback as well, intentioned,
the teachers may begin to question you and may begin to believe that.
You know, we don't think they're doing a good job.
So there is a time and a place for this type of feedback.
I would say, you know, a conversation following evaluations or a formal
observation, or maybe during a coaching cycle type conversation.
But if you're providing this kind of feedback during weekly
walkthroughs, like the attendance.
Visits that I was just talking about.
It can be more damaging than helpful.
And I just want to give you an example, one classic way that instructional
leaders are unintentionally approaching teaching from a help or fix mentality
as through their glow and grow feedback.
Have you heard of that?
The glow and grow?
Yes.
So.
Pointing out something positive that they observed and then they'll end
with something for the teacher to consider, or maybe an area to grow.
And the instructional coach or administrator thinks that
they're doing their job by providing this type of feedback.
But in this situation, what they don't realize is they're
approaching it from a stance of any.
So, you know, something like, I know more than you or from a
stance of brokenness, like your instruction isn't strong enough yet.
So you'll get a lot more bang for your buck by approaching feedback,
through the lens of serving.
And when your objective is to help or fix your focusing on your expertise or
assessing and responding to needs and women you serve, you're approaching
it completely different because you see the wholeness of the teacher
and you trust that they're working hard, that they're doing their best,
and that they have a lot of goodness and talent to offer the classroom.
So when we serve others, we strengthen others and serving requires us
to know that our humanity is more powerful than our expertise.
So in the, in the feedback example, serving looks like leaving a note
of feedback, pointing out the great teaching and learning that's
happening, and then stopping there.
There's no need to point out an area of growth or something considered
to consider in that moment.
It's just a different, that challenge is some people's thinking for sure.
Jethro Jones: Yeah, it sure does.
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Uh, my approach to evaluation has, and, and observations and all that
has, and giving feedback has really changed over the past few years.
As I've seen that every time I try.
Too.
And I haven't put it in the terms you're using to help or fix it has
ended up souring the relationship.
And every time I have focused on serving, it has improved the relationship.
And I'm just cycling back through my teachers right now, and staff
members that I've worked with.
And what I'm seeing is all the people who grew under my leadership.
I was focused on serving them and all the people who either got worse or
we had bad relationships with it was because I was helping or fixing them.
And, and the way that you phrase that is really good.
My approach now to evaluation observations is, is simply to,
to ask questions that are either.
How can I help you do better?
Like, what do you need?
What support do you need?
What resources do you need?
What things can I take off your plate?
Or what do you think needs to improve?
I now recognize, and I'm embarrassed to admit this to all my former teachers.
I apologize.
I now recognize that I do not have all the answers and that's awful for me
to admit, because I feel like I should have had all the answers my whole life.
And I just don't, you know, and, and so unfortunately, as a principal, I thought
that I needed to, or I thought that I was supposed to, and really what I need
to be doing is, is serving them because when you serve them, they grow way more.
Then you can imagine.
And so, so one of the things that I'm trying to figure out is how to
create a totally service oriented evaluation that takes out the
score that you assign takes out.
The rating of teachers takes out all that other stuff so that you can just focus
on serving that person and helping them become the best that they possibly can.
Amber Dembowski: Well, and, you know, there has been more
and more research on this.
Gallup found that when employees are given primarily positive feedback.
So what we're talking about with the serving them, that when they're given
primarily positive feedback, but 98% of them will be highly engaged in.
And when we provide that glow and grow type feedback, but you
know, it's somewhat critical.
Only 66% of them will be engaged in their work when they
receive that type of feedback.
I just recently read a book titled, um, let's see, nine lies about
work written by Marcus Buckingham.
And he has done a lot of research in this area as well.
And his research is more about employees.
Aren't looking for feedback, they're looking for attention.
And so when we're noticing the good things that they're doing every
single day, they're going to become intrinsically motivated to do better
rather than being told they need to do
Jethro Jones: better.
That is, I totally believe that.
And so like, when you think about how this, how this actually applies to, to
what we're doing, I had a teacher who, when we implemented a Marzano evaluation
framework, she started getting ranked lowly because she wasn't doing the things
that Marzano said were good, but she'd been teaching for like, 20 years and had
been taking 10 years in the middle to be a instructional coach in the district,
and then came back to the classroom.
And by all accounts that she was measuring, she was a great teacher.
And then I came in and started ranking her low because honestly she wasn't doing,
she may have been a great teacher 15 years ago, but she wasn't doing the things that.
Our good teaching in our district.
And, and that, that situation turned her into my mortal enemy and she was
like, she would do anything she could to undermine and take me out of the new.
For good reason, because I was treating her like a, not like a child, but
like a dog, you know, it was awful.
And I look back now and I'm like, what in the world was I thinking,
like, if I would have had a serve service minded approach to that, then
I would have been much better off.
And unfortunately the, the evaluation systems that we use, they do not
teach you to be service minded.
They teach you to be critical to find something wrong that the person has.
And then to make sure that they know about it and to never let them forget it.
And so this teacher in a final act of defiance, At the end of her year, when
she was retiring, she signed set a staff email at the end and signed it with her
name and then her score from, uh, the evaluations that I had given her and
just like totally just drove that point home and said, You're awful Jethro.
Sure.
Amber Dembowski: Yes.
Live and learn.
And we make so many mistakes along the way, but as long as we're reflective
about them and make adjustments for the future, that's, that's truly the point.
But your, your story, there is such a great example of, of my mission
because I've fallen into this.
Same traps.
It's the, it's the policies and the expectations and all of that.
That's put out there and the pressure that really takes the
humanity away from education.
And I'm just trying to bring it back.
I think it's so important to be bringing back that humanity.
Jethro Jones: Yeah, I think so.
So, uh, Amber, this has been a wonderful conversation.
I have loved talking with you.
My final question is what is one thing that a principal can do this week to
be a transformative principal like you?
Amber Dembowski: Oh, the one thing that you can do this week is to
take time, to recognize each of the teachers for the talents that they're
bringing to their classroom and really bring that to the forefront
of the teacher so that they know.
You see the greatness in them, because once they know that you see it, they're
going to want to show you more of
Jethro Jones: it.
Yeah.
Hmm.
That is good.
I do want to remind everybody to go to Amber demboski.com and check out her site
and her podcast and any other connections you want to make before we sign it.
Amber Dembowski: No, I think that's great.
I've enjoyed my
Jethro Jones: death row.
Okay.
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