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Descriptions of effective teaching often depict an idealized form of "perfect" instruction. Yet, pursuing perfection in teaching, which depends on children's behavior, is ultimately futile. To be effective, lessons and educators need to operate with about 75% efficiency. The remaining 25% can be impactful, but expecting it in every lesson, every day, is unrealistic. Perfection in teaching may be unattainable, but progress is not. Whether you are aiming for the 75% effectiveness mark or striving for continuous improvement, this podcast will guide you in that endeavor.
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 Joey Davis.
Joey is currently in his 38th year in education.
He began his career as a walk-on coach while attending college, later earning his degree in history from Cal State University Fullerton.
He spent 17 years in the classroom before moving into full-time administration.
He went on to earn his master's degree in educational technology from a SUSE Pacific University, followed by his administrative credential.
Joey is now in his 10th year as a principal and proudly serves the Brea Olin community as principal of Brea Olin High School.
On a personal note, Joey's been married to his wife Rachel, who also works in education as a school social worker.
They have two sons, ages 25 and 27, both of whom are college graduates and are just beginning their professional careers.
I think you're gonna find this one interesting.
Welcome to Better Teaching Only stuff that works.
Joey Davis: Thanks, Jean.
I'm really excited to be here.
It's my first time on a podcast, so hopefully I don't embarrass myself too much.
Gene Tavernetti: Oh, you're gonna be, you're gonna be great.
You know, I, I did read your introduction, but I kind of wanted to go a little bit a few more details in your journey to where you are now at principal at braille Linda High School.
So, what roles did you have coming through in your career?
Joey Davis: I've kind of meandered around a little bit, gene, but for the most part I've been in schools for over 40 years now.
I started out coaching lower levels basketball and softball, and then I did my student teaching.
And I got hired fresh outta student teaching charter Oak High School in Covina.
And I taught economics and was the varsity softball coach and varsity assistant basketball coach.
And then I went on after just a few years to Walnut High School and continued coaching both sports for the most part, kind of, I stopped
and started a little bit when I started, well, when my wife and I started to have kids, I don't wanna take too much credit for that.
And, after.
So I was at Walnut for 14 years total, but about 10 years in, they approached me to take a different role.
And so I was an instructional dean and Walnut has some different systems than any place else I've ever heard of.
But an instructional dean is basically an assistant principal over just curriculum.
And so I had special education applied arts and technology.
And so I, I had kind of some some smaller departments that I managed and so I managed the budget for them.
I worked with the teachers a lot.
I did all the observations.
I did all the teacher evaluations.
It was just a different system where the principal, there was one principal, one ap, it's a big high school.
And then at the time there were four instructional deans and we we kind of focused on the teachers and what what was going on in the classrooms.
After doing that for I think about four years, I moved on to, placentia, Yorba Linda Unified.
I was assistant principal of curriculum at Valencia High School.
They were starting off an IB program in both Walnut and Charter Oak had IB programs, so, I was somewhat involved in both of them.
And I had also somewhere in there gotten my master's degree in applied Arts and Technology.
And Valencia was creating a tech magnet at the same time.
So.
That was a great experience.
I loved my six years at Valencia.
But all good things come to an end.
I got recruited or told to go over to Y Belinda High School and be an AP over there.
They were hopefully grooming me to be a principal someday, is what they told me.
And I said, I'm not in a hurry, but you know, we don't make all the decisions in life.
Sometimes somebody else does.
And so I did that for a year and a half and in the middle of the next year I was approached by the superintendent and said, Hey, we're gonna.
We've got this new thing or two new things coming in CSP and the lcap, and they asked if I would come help manage those at the district level.
And I said, no, thanks.
I'm good.
And about two months later I moved offices again and I was at the district office doing that job.
After two years they could tell I wasn't loving it.
I really like the energy of a high school campus.
I've never worked anywhere else that I would really want to work.
And so, they approached me.
There was an opening at El Dorado midyear for principal, and I don't even think I paused.
I think I was like packing my office before I finished, before they finished answering the question.
I did call my wife and ask if she was okay with it, and she said reluctantly.
Yes.
Because, you know, being a high school principal is a big commitment.
And there were some other things that, you know, my, my son was actually a freshman at the high school at the time at El Dorado where I ended up.
And so, that was a little bit of a interesting experience as well.
So, and then after eight and a half years at El Dorado I, decided I needed to start interviewing again, and I ended up here at Braille into high school, and I'm thrilled to be here.
It's actually where I started my journey.
I did my student teaching here 38 years ago, actually at the old high school, which they've since torn down and built a new one.
So, it's been a, an amazing ride.
I'm nearing the end, but I don't know where the end is or when it comes, but I'm I've loved it.
You know,
Gene Tavernetti: what I think is interesting about all your moves and tell me if I wasn't listening correctly, that somebody approached you and asked you to make a move.
It wasn't like, it wasn't like Joey's sitting in the classroom teaching his humanities courses as an I'm gonna make the leap.
Joey Davis: No, it was very much so.
I remember I was actually making copies at Walnut whenever that happened.
And the principal who I just admire greatly passed away a few years ago.
Dr. Ken Gunn came and tapped me on the shoulder and said, Hey, when you're done making copies, come to my office.
And that's the one where you get scared and you go, crap, what did I do?
What kid did I, what kid did I upset today?
Who did I, you know.
Who was I root?
I, you know, you just start thinking of all the things that can go wrong.
And I walked into his office and he said, sit down.
I wanna talk to you about your future.
And I'm like, my future, oh God, am I getting fired?
And you know, it's just all those irrational fears.
I, maybe I'm the only one who carries those around.
But and so yeah it was totally him approaching me.
And then a few years later when I started at Valencia, I was approached by, somebody I'd known from the other side of Walnut Diamond Bar.
And you know, so it's, yeah, there's been a lot of that.
I don't know, I don't know what that says.
If I'm just lucky or fortunate or, you know, somebody would probably call it the good old boys network.
But I think sometimes hard work pays off
Gene Tavernetti: well.
I think that's what a lot of people would say, that you do a good job, you get recognized.
I think that's one of the things about in education, it's, I don't think it happens frequently enough that you, people are recognized for hard work, but they certainly get recognized right away if something, somebody wants to make a change.
So just a quick question.
How big is the bra, Linda?
How many students do you have?
And
Joey Davis: the high school here is about 1,650 kids.
The district is 6,000.
We are the only high school in Brea.
There's a continuation school that's pretty small, one junior high and then six elementaries.
Gene Tavernetti: And how about aps?
Do you have
Joey Davis: I'm really fortunate.
You know, the 18 years I was at Placentia, Yorba Linda at Valencia, Yorba Linda at El Dorado.
It was two aps and a principle here.
We, I'm fortunate enough, we have three aps.
So it's a different model with a different setup, but I'm really fortunate and I work with some really good people.
Gene Tavernetti: Now, you said when you first went into administration, you were a dean and at that, in that role you were working with curriculum teachers, doing that.
How much do you get to do of that now in, in your current role?
Joey Davis: Probably less than I'd like less than you would imagine.
I mean, a lot of it is like delegation where I'm asking my aps to maybe take on some of these things.
We're bringing a dual language immersion program into the secondary world here in Brea right now, and so I've been really involved in those.
But as far as planning curriculum, you know, if I don't.
If I don't feel like I have something to offer, like dual language immersion I don't speak another language.
I'm, I was born and raised in the south.
I'm from Memphis, Tennessee.
We barely speak English where I come from.
And so, just having I don't feel like I have a lot to add is my own personal expertise.
And so, that's where we would bring in somebody like Kabe and let them be the experts.
But if you wanna talk social science or something like that.
Oh yeah I absolutely am gonna, you know, have 2 cents to throw in.
And so it, it just kind of depends on what it is and how how well I can lean into it.
Gene Tavernetti: Now, has that been the case?
Wherever you've been where you've been a principal?
Joey Davis: Well, in Placentia you didn't have a choice so much because I was the curriculum ap and so, I was essentially, you know, at all, all the high schools I was at when I was in ap, so both of them.
And so, it just depends on the structure.
I think.
So, you know, I've never taught math but I've been in a lot of math classrooms and some I could tell you were.
Much more effective than others.
Much more engaging.
And so, the challenge is how do you bring that to teachers?
I'm not gonna tell you how to teach it like what the steps are to solve the math problem, but I can help you understand like when you lost your class.
More not so much the discipline side, but just the engagement side.
Gene Tavernetti: And you've, and that's based on your experience as a teacher, you,
Joey Davis: yeah.
My experience as a teacher and being an admin for 20 years.
Gene Tavernetti: So you've been in a couple districts and are the districts as principal, can you describe how districts are different?
Joey Davis: Well, I can try.
I mean, this is my second district.
I've been a principal in my fourth overall.
And the first one, charter Oak.
I was only there for three years when I was a baby.
I didn't know anything administration wise.
I didn't even know when to shut up for the most part.
So, the, at Walnut, it was each, there's two high schools and each of the schools was very much driven by its leader.
The principal at the time and Dr. Gunn had a really interesting philosophy.
He kind of felt like the more accolades we could bring to the school, the less intervention the school board or the district office could provide.
So, he would go out and make sure we applied for every blue ribbon, every distinguished school.
Any award that we could get, he would make sure we applied for, because then when the district would come in and say, well, you know, you really need to do X, Y, and Z, he'd say, really?
Look at the blue ribbon thing on the wall.
Look at the distinguished school award on that wall.
And that was kind of, his explanation of how things worked.
He did an amazing job.
I think he would say, and the teachers would agree of protecting the staff from all those things that the school board might think were really important initiatives.
And that's an interesting challenge.
And he had an interesting way to do it.
But he had been there forever.
I mean, he literally opened the school.
He was the first athletic director and football coach.
So, you know, it, it takes a certain amount of street cred to to do something like that.
But in Placentia, YBA, Linda you know, there's a balance to be held there.
I, the some principals certainly have more say so based on their experience and their value to the school and the school district.
But in general you know, when the when you're.
Like you were saying with me personally, when you as a school are tapped on the shoulder and said, you guys should probably think about doing this, then you frequently need to start thinking about doing it.
Gene Tavernetti: So that's an interesting description you talked about.
Again, I'm going to translate what I thought I heard you say is that you had a superintendent who was shield, I don't wanna say shielding you but pro kind of protecting you from the board.
Is that an accurate way to say that?
Joey Davis: Well, that was the principal shield shielding.
The staff, the teachers from the board.
And so that's a little different.
Dr. Gun was the principal.
Gene Tavernetti: Oh, that, okay.
Okay.
He was the principal.
Okay.
Joey Davis: Yeah.
Gene Tavernetti: And
Joey Davis: and I think in my time in Placentia going back to Dr. Dennis Smith and the, my early time there, there was a really there was a sense that there was a, some sort of a picket fence that was like one way
where you know, the, you shouldn't as a site administrator or a teacher, you shouldn't get a ever get a call from a school board member asking you a question about the school or about what was going on in the school.
It should come from the district.
And so Dr. Like I can go back to Dr. Smith and he's probably been a retired, I don't know, 10 years now.
But he definitely he and Dr. Doug Dein definitely had that philosophy of, you know, the school district does does the work.
The board provides the guidance to the school district, not to the schools.
And so it's an interesting philosophy.
And I, you know, I was able to flourish under it.
You know, as long as it was that way.
Yeah.
Gene Tavernetti: so you've been in the in schools long enough, 40 years to have lived through lots of initiatives.
People can't see your face.
But yeah.
You said you lived through lots of initiatives.
Okay.
So, have you as an administrator then you can have, even as a teacher, have you have initiatives been introduced where you just thought, this is crazy.
This isn't something that, that we're really gonna do.
Joey Davis: Yeah I, that has happened.
I think in general, I would say, Jean, that we're all suffering from initiative fatigue.
There's.
So many good ideas out there, but you can't implement them all at once.
But there are some bad ideas out there.
And I'll tell you that, and I can give you an easy example.
In my last school district we had a principal's meeting, I don't know, some Thursday morning or something like that, and the superintendent came in, he wasn't on the agenda.
But that's fine.
He's the superintendent.
He came in and sat down and he basically told us we we weren't gonna suspend students anymore.
And he said, you know, educationally, I don't think it's very sound.
And suspending students is not something I'll approve.
And or not something I would encourage and if you feel the need to suspend a student, you need to call me.
And we will discuss why you need to do that.
And I'll decide, meaning he would decide if we were allowed to suspend the student or not.
This was when the dashboard was just kind of coming out and we were then asked in this principal meeting.
He said, I'm gonna go around each one of you and ask you how you feel about that.
And, you know, me, again, not being very bright, not being you know, the smartest guy in the world answered him.
And I said, well, I don't really think that makes sense.
You know, we we have a responsibility to maintain a safe campus for our students.
And you know, there are things that are required of us that would lead that, the certain disciplinary behaviors that a kid could do that would require us to suspend them from the class from the school for a certain period of time.
And I, you know, the school I was at had a program for emotionally disturbed students.
We already had an a TS program in place, an alternative to suspension program in place.
And so, I pushed back.
And I'll tell you that within a year I was told I really wasn't welcome here anymore.
And so, that's kind of, I don't know why they would never tell me why I wasn't welcome any anymore.
I'd been at the district 18 years and you know, had positive reviews throughout and got promoted and been at the district office and done all those things I listed earlier.
So that's the challenge of being a principal and having to work with a superintendent that maybe you don't have the level of trust in.
Whereas I think if I'd said that to some other principals, they would've said, well, or superintendents, excuse me.
They would've said, well, let's talk about that more.
And when I was done, he moved on to the next principal and.
Never mentioned it again.
So, you know, as I said, we had an ed and emotionally disturbed program.
We had about 20 kids in it.
And it, there's only so many things you can do discipline-wise with students who are misbehaving.
And to me, taking that out and saying we're not gonna do it almost under any circumstances, when we really worked hard to limit our suspensions already I didn't think made sense.
And so, I'm not afraid to push back.
Obviously I don't always pick the right times.
Maybe, I don't know.
Gene Tavernetti: Well, that's, if we could dive a little bit deeper into this, you know, start starting with the meeting.
We're usually only principal that expressed that view.
Joey Davis: I was the one who, I was the only one with a, an emotionally disturbed program on my campus.
So I was the only one who expressed it in that way.
Okay.
You know, I think most of us were like, well, we're already doing everything we can to limit our suspensions.
But if that's what you want, you know, we'll do that.
And you know, and I remember a situation probably three months later where a kid came up behind another kid and assaulted him.
That's the only way to describe it.
We had the whole thing on video.
He did it right underneath the surveillance camera.
And I had to call the superintendent and explained why the kid should be suspended, which to me, that's ridiculous.
That's an obvious suspension when you sneak out behind someone, punch 'em in the head, crawl on top of 'em, and start punching 'em in the face.
Totally unprovoked.
You know, there was nothing that led up to it that we could find.
So it, it's just it's, it was one of those things where I felt the need to defend my staff.
I can't put a kid who is going to be unsafe in a classroom with 35 other kids and a teacher.
And so, I felt the need to voice that, and I definitely voiced it the strongest.
Gene Tavernetti: So you, you were at this meeting, you were told that, and then did, you had to go back and tell your staff that this was the new.
Initiative?
Joey Davis: No, it wasn't so much as an in initiative as it was a rule or a policy.
Okay.
So, you know, we didn't go put out, put that out the next staff newsletter.
But I think people definitely could tell that we weren't making decisions as quickly as we had been.
And so it was frustrating to not be able to do this.
And like I said, we weren't doing it a lot to begin with.
We had multiple suspension program in place that we had been using for several years.
So,
Gene Tavernetti: Well, I can't imagine, I mean, that one that you just gave certainly impacts teachers, true.
And not only impacts teachers, even if I haven't had a kid even if I was a teacher and hadn't had recommended a kid on some discipline referral that I
expected it to be a suspension it's still, just knowing that kids were not gonna be suspended would have an impact psychologically on, on the teaching staff.
Joey Davis: Absolutely, but something that war directly impacts teaching.
You know, I remember again, same district.
We had a a very well-respected presenter come in, not named Jean Avernetta.
And she was there to talk about ELD and how to support our English learners.
And it was very top down.
And this was our back to school presentation and, I would say the teachers felt it was very condescending.
Like she was talking to a bunch of first year teachers when, yes, there were first year teachers in the room, but there were also 25, 30, 40 year veteran, well, maybe not a 40, 35 year veterans in the room.
And it just, it went over like a lead balloon and the teachers just resisted it.
I would go back and defend the initiative and say, the idea is that she's presenting aren't bad.
They're actually quite sound, but the delivery was what caused the problem.
And I think as administrators sometimes we have great ideas but it's the implementation that, that is lacking.
Gene Tavernetti: I think I was at that meeting, well, that's your staff meeting, but I was at the district meeting with the leadership, that.
Presenter's first.
Name doesn't start with a K does it?
Joey Davis: Oh, it does.
Gene Tavernetti: Okay.
I was there.
Alright.
I re I remembered that and I remember I could tell you I sat, I remember who I sat with.
And we had a conversation the back saying, this is not gonna be good.
This is not good.
This is not gonna happen the way that they think it is.
It is gonna happen.
Yeah.
So,
Joey Davis: and I don't know if you'd agree with me though, but I think, you know, the ideas what she was presenting was, were fine.
They were all very sound and
Gene Tavernetti: yes,
Joey Davis: technically you would like first year teacher, you would absolutely have them do that.
But teaching to a group of veterans she was just came off very condescending, I think.
Yeah.
Gene Tavernetti: I know that there are things that, when you're a principal, You're mid-level management and you have folks telling you this is what you're gonna do and you have to be a good soldier, I guess is the only way to put it.
Have you had to do that?
Have you had to do that and your staff know that you're not behind this initiative?
Have you ever had that?
Joey Davis: Oh, absolutely.
I mean that the ELD example I gave, you know, the staff knew exactly, you know, where it came from.
It was very top down and again, very well intended.
I think you know, our English learners in California are still, you know, struggling in many ways.
There's pockets of excellence and pockets of really struggling.
But I just think that, yeah, those conversations need to be held like in advance.
Like you, you don't do that thing, those kind of things to people.
You do them with people ideally.
And so yeah I've absolutely had to go into that.
And you know, I think as a principal you get to choose how it's presented.
And when I can, I will try to, so like, break it to, like, if we have a leadership team on campus like department chairs.
And so I'll work with them to, okay, how can we implement this and try to get them on board before breaking it to the whole staff.
And so I've seen it done different ways.
I'm not saying I've done it perfectly every time but sometimes if you can.
Soften it a little bit.
You know, the district may say, well, we want this done.
You know, I remember a superintendent just a few years ago who I respect and think he's amazing.
He told the principals, he wanted us to absorb every teacher every week.
And that is an awesome goal.
But that's not how my week rolls out very often.
And even with, you know, 80 teachers and four administrators on the campus, that's 20 a week.
That's a lot.
Not impossible, but it's not gonna happen every week.
And that was what he wanted.
And he wanted us to, you know, document that.
And so, you know, I, when I went back to my leadership team, my admin and the department chairs, I was like, listen, we're really being encouraged to get out in the classrooms more so we're gonna get out in the classrooms more.
I didn't ever say.
Every teacher every week, because one, I don't think that's a promise we could keep.
And two I didn't think they would appreciate it very much.
At some point it becomes, well, what are you watching us for?
What, why are you coming out?
We, they realize, you know, t admin, observing teachers as part of the job.
But every week that seems a little like maybe somebody doesn't trust us.
Gene Tavernetti: So how did that go?
How did you come close to the 20 a week or,
Joey Davis: oh, gosh, no.
Okay.
I mean, you know, if we got
Gene Tavernetti: yeah.
Joey Davis: 15 or so, I'd be happy.
And I think if you could talk to the people I worked with, they would tell you.
I like to observe classes.
I really enjoy it.
And you know, I.
The, I think the last year I kept track I think we did about 400 as a, as an admin team in a year, which is a lot.
And not just me, there's three of us.
Remember this was my previous school, not here.
And so, you know, we were really trying to get into every teacher's classroom.
But every week was just, you know, there were too many meetings for one thing.
It's hard to be in a classroom when you're at a four hour principal meeting on a Thursday morning or whatever day of the week is I didn't get any of that on Thursdays when there were principal meetings.
So, yeah, there, there has to be some give and take and some flexibility.
So I, yeah, I mean, I think I've.
Showing people that I like being in the classroom and I'm more than willing, anytime anybody invites me, I'm going to change my schedule to the best of my ability to come sit in and watch your crazy new lesson or do watch whatever you want me to.
But yeah, that 1, 1, 1, every teacher every week was a lot.
And I don't know how that rolls out in elementary school.
I mean, I guess it depends where I was, most of the elementaries just had one principal, one administrator on the site with 25 or 30 teachers.
And so I, I don't think it's any better for them.
Gene Tavernetti: You know, many teachers that I've talked to think that their principal, their site administration should push back a lot harder.
These directives or initiatives from the district office?
What's your thoughts about that?
Joey Davis: Well, I think I. Sometimes trust is broken between administrators on campus and teachers.
And that's a really unfortunate thing.
But I don't think rotating through principals more often is going to help that.
And as a principal, I can tell you, if you push back too hard against the wrong superintendent, you will not be there much longer.
We don't have tenure.
As site administrators, we we can be put back in the classroom if we've worked there long enough.
But so we, you know, like you said, we're middle managers.
There's no union defending or supporting us either.
And so, we have to walk a very fine line between what the district office is asking and what.
What we're putting in place.
And so, you know, when a superintendent or assistant superintendent or director, whatever level comes up with this great idea sometimes on rare
occasions, I think that what is happening is they're feathering their own cap, trying to get to that next level patting their resume, so to speak.
I implemented this, I implemented that.
And, I guess that's great for them if that, if they really want to move on.
As somebody who was perfectly happy being an assistant principal at Vacia High 20 years ago, and I'd probably still be there today again if somebody hadn't moved me along somewhere else.
I, it's a challenge.
For the, for those of us who are happy to be in one place, because we're the ones building the relationships.
And so much of what we do is, and, you know, this is relationships relationships with amazing, you know, assistant superintendents or directors.
And I, you know, I don't wanna drop like a bunch of names that nobody's gonna know, but I can just tell you for me, people like Candy Play, he was just amazing.
And I know Jean knows Candy and so, but you know, she was supportive.
She would listen.
I never once felt talked down to, but if you go talk to like five teachers, you could probably find one that would say.
You know, would have something different to say.
And that's because when you serve as an assistant superintendent or director, you still have bosses.
You're still in some ways middle management.
You've got a school board and the general public and the superintendent telling you, you know, this would be good for that school or that would be good for this school, or whatever.
And so.
You can't be the one who says no all the time.
You just, you won't last.
And so you have to strike that balance between you know, picking your battles, I guess, kinda like with having a kid.
Gene Tavernetti: Yeah.
Well, just to go back to what you said about, you know, no unions, no tenure, no nothing.
I mean, you really, people have a lot to lose personally.
Not just professionally, but a lot personally.
And I don't even think it's about courage to do it.
I don't even think it's about having well, I'm just gonna leave it at courage.
It is.
It could impact you saying no to somebody.
All of a sudden you're on the street.
Joey Davis: Yeah, I mean, here I am two years ago I was 58 years old.
I was in my 36th year, I think, maybe 35th year.
I don't know.
I've lost track.
I'm gonna say 35th year in education, full time.
And I'm out on, I'm out on edjoin, you know, looking for jobs.
I'm applying here, there and everywhere.
And, you know, I've got a wife, I've got two kids.
They're both grown, but you know, one's still living with me.
And so, you know, I don't wanna have to move.
And in all that tumult that happened in Placentia or Belinda, a lot of people lost their jobs.
And you know, they're still recovering from that.
They're still looking, you know, they may have found the next job, but maybe it was a step backwards.
And so they're now looking for the next job, whatever it may be.
And so, it's a, it is a fine balance and you know, I, and I don't wanna give everybody a negative image 'cause you know, I've worked with an amazing number of positive people who would.
I don't think would ever do that to someone just for having a simple disagreement over an initiative a plan to implement something in, in schools, in a district.
But at the same time it could impact their job and their livelihood as well.
So, you know, I can't fault them for that.
If that's coming from the top and they don't feel like they have a choice they've gotta do what's right for them too.
So, I mean, the hard part to me is there's so many.
Things out there now that we could be implementing in education, but we can't implement them all at once.
There's no, there's just no way.
There aren't enough of us.
And so, and teachers are the ones who bear probably, you know, the biggest brunt of it with looking at, you know, I've got this administrator asked me to do this, and this administrator asked me to do that.
You know, they want, you know, kids put away their cell phones.
They want every kid to be engaged.
They want kids to be up and talking and moving around the room.
They want, you know.
Whatever the thing is that your district is currently asking for, and there's probably some great research behind it to say why this is good for kids.
And so it, it's hard to know how to choose sometimes.
And so, you gotta pick your battles.
You
Gene Tavernetti: gotta pick your battles.
And like I said, you know what are you, is this the hill you're gonna die on?
And it sounded like, it sounds like your story, you didn't even realize it was that big of a hill that you were gonna, going to stick up for.
I mean, you know, keeping your campus safe, gonna go back to, you know, keeping your campus safe and suspensions.
Who would've thought that would've, you know, really irked somebody?
Joey Davis: Yeah that's not a real controversial thing usually.
Gene Tavernetti: Yeah.
Interesting.
But you're happy now, you're happy at your position now?
Joey Davis: Absolutely.
I'm thrilled to be here.
I have an amazingly supportive superintendent, assistant superintendents, the school board.
It's a Brea is a great place.
And if you ever get a chance, stop by.
We got a beautiful high school up here.
We overlook all of Orange County.
I can literally, most days I can see Catalina and so it's a beautiful place.
Gene Tavernetti: Wow.
That sounds great.
Well, Joey, I have I could talk to you all day, but do you have any questions for me?
Joey Davis: Yeah I actually do I wanted to talk to you.
You've been around education for a while.
You're not a young guy, no offense.
But the how do you as a, like an educational consultant from that side of the business, how do you help schools or how do you deal with all the initiatives that.
You know, schools may come to you and say, Hey, we're interested in this or this.
How do you help them manage their expectations and their investment because, you know, all of these take a little bit of money at least.
Gene Tavernetti: Well, you know, it's what a timely question.
Because we're working with a district right now.
one of the things that, that we always do in working anywhere, is to visit all the classrooms so that we understand what's going on in the schools and then talk to district administrators about things.
And so we were brought in with specific purpose to to help with instruction to tighten up instruction.
And when we were doing our walkthroughs we found out that there teachers were using, I don't know, I think we were like 15 different technology platforms that teachers were using.
We saw that there were, they had two other consulting groups in the district, and we just wanted to know what are these guys doing?
Because and they weren't sure.
They weren't sure what they were doing.
So, what we wanna do is not because we wanna control the whole process, but we wanna be sure that when we are working with a staff, when we're working with teachers, they're absolutely clear that this is the, this is what we're doing now.
It's not.
You know, it, it's not partly this, partly that it's, we're gonna do this, we're gonna get good at it, and then we can make further decisions.
But it's a big thing of just getting, you know, what is it that, the fifth point on the compass, you know, where are we now?
And understanding as much as we can administrators, site administrators, teachers, district administrators so that when we have any sort of advice to move forward, we know what we're talking about.
We never come in, here's the canned program, here's the canned program.
You guys need to do this.
And because otherwise it, we're not like, we're just like anybody else.
It's just another initiative.
So, so making sure that we know what's going on so that when we talk to them, we're pretty clear that our data is gonna be, is gonna be valid, reliable data.
Joey Davis: Well, yeah, that makes a lot of sense because, you know, like I said, there, there are so many initiatives in schools these
days and we're all, you know, the next one is gonna be, you know, we have to have a new cell phone law by July 1st, at least in California.
You know, we just climbed can't start school till after eight 30 hill here a few years ago.
And so, you know.
We haven't, nobody stopped to see, to say, you know, was that effective?
Did that help anything?
And so, I'm glad to see you doing that.
And I would say if I could like, give advice to people moving up in the world of education, you know, take the time to get to know where you're at before you start trying to change too much.
Because yeah, there you may see some things you wanna just jump on and change right away.
But you may also burn some bridges.
And it really is all about relationships and how you establish those relationships with people.
How you build those with the people on the ground are gonna matter in, in the long run, whether you're there or not.
And
Gene Tavernetti: that's what, and I think that's the goal of every leader, right?
To put things in place so that when you're gone, the good things stay in place and they're so embedded.
That somebody can't come in and push you over very quickly.
Joey Davis: Yep.
Gene Tavernetti: Joy, it has been joy and glad getting to, to talk to you again and we will, maybe we'll see each other soon.
Joey Davis: All right, gene, thank you very much.
I enjoy being here.
Gene Tavernetti: Great.
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