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In Search of Catholic School Excellence
Exploring the programs, people, and practices making a difference in Catholic education. Join host Thomas Boles as we hear from principals, teachers, and innovators shaping the future of Catholic schools. Whether you're a leader looking for ideas or an advocate for Catholic education, this show is your guide to what’s working—and why it matters.
Be sure to check out the show notes, as each episode comes with a companion guide to help you implement the ideas discussed during the episodes.
Thomas Boles: Welcome to In Search of Catholic School Excellence, the show where we spotlight the program's, people, and practices making a real difference in Catholic education today.
If you're a school leader striving to build a community of faith, excellence, and innovation, you've come to the right place.
Each episode brings you ideas that are working, stories that inspire and new possibilities for your school's mission.
Let's explore what's working.
And what's possible.
Welcome back folks.
This week I'm joined by again, my co-host, Becky Wong, and this time we're talking about what makes your school different.
As we kind of went through and we're talking about the admissions and a lot of those other things, we kept coming back to this idea of like, yeah, there's.
There's certain things that we all need to do, and that's kind of what our episodes have been about, is like, this is the, what we're after this baseline that everybody should have.
But like, we gotta just take a step of and try to be something different.
I think too many folks and honestly I had this quote down before the Apple commercial or the, whatever it was, but you know, too many folks are selling vanilla right now.
When like we're actually.
Our schools are like a butter Scot Sunday, right?
Like, you should be celebrating, you gotta be celebrating what, who you are and what you are.
And so I think that would be so much better to be talking about that rather than just trying to stay even with the Joneses, right?
So today's episode's all about how do you make yourself different?
And so Becky, thanks again for joining me.
Becky: Thank you for.
Thomas Boles: I'm excited to jump right into this.
Let's start off with.
Becky: Sure.
Thomas Boles: What do you think the things are in general that schools can differentiate themselves on?
Or let's take a step back, take one step back.
What are the things that are the same about every school?
Regardless.
Becky: Oh, right.
With Catholic schools especially parents really just depend on us being, you know, academically rigorous.
You know, the best of the best.
So everyone's going to have, you know, their straight A students.
Everyone's going to be, you know, some superstar where, you know.
The students will be chosen for like the best high schools sports.
But what we really wanna see, it's like we're not just a school where, hey, we have a lot of basketball teams or gym is like beautiful, or we're not just, you know, participating in whatever contest or here's our Christmas program, but we want to shine.
And a lot of times.
We take for granted what seems normal to us might be very spectacular and different for other people.
So, it's a time to toot your own horn where you're like, oh, yeah, we always do that.
But to an outside family or people that's not in your usual community.
That could be extraordinary.
So definitely highlight those things.
And for sure start with your mission statement.
Start with your school philosophy.
What is it that you started with, like, how did the school start?
Talk about your history.
You know, it's funny you always mention the story about your wife and Costco and just seeing kids in the street, you know, somewhere in the street.
Like, what's your elevator pitch?
When you do approach a family and you are inviting them to your school, what do you say?
What are some of the great things that you have that 10 seconds to get someone's attention.
What would you say?
Thomas Boles: Yeah.
Yeah.
And typically you know, Kevin Walsh from Apple used to have this story about the.
This exact thing, right?
You t typically the schools will say, oh, we're a Catholic school, we have great education, we're a family, we're such a community, right?
And those are like three things that like that's your selling point.
And his response was like, well, the parents are gonna say, well, you're Catholic, but I could go to public school in C, c, D, so I covered check those boxes, right?
Great education.
It better be good.
I'm paying a whole lot for it.
Right?
And then the thirdly family and community, it's like, yeah, but then you ask me for money every week.
Like, you never talk to that uncle who asks you for money every week.
So why would you sell?
Like if we're basing everything that we're doing on those three categories, then.
Of course we should have those things.
But like, that's like the bare minimum, right?
That's the bare minimum.
What's different?
And I agree with you, you know, if your mission statement can't say it, and if you can't say it in a few seconds, what makes us different then you've got a problem.
And I think there's a lot of things, you know, the high schools will try to differentiate themselves on many different levels, but.
If they don't pick something, then it is really easy for our kids to go, well, I don't know if I really want to go there because I don't know what it's like.
Well, we never look at how that looks on us, right.
In our K through eight world, right?
Like, what are people gonna say?
Oh, that's a really nice school.
What makes that different?
Like, they're open at seven o'clock in the morning and I can pick up my kid up at six.
They provide lunch, right?
Like, my kid's gonna be safe all day.
Like we're talking about the basic level of competency.
Now, don't get me wrong, we love our schools and we know they're great, but that's like, we need to be able to show why we're great.
And I think that's where we're going at.
So if you have in your mission statement or the history, some sort of charism, you know, like I've worked in Legian schools.
Pretty much my whole life grew up as a Ian kid.
So like I understand the Ian world.
I bring that every day to work, right?
So that Ian Ness is very unique to those schools.
And you should walk into a Ian school and feel that deal the same way you would walk into, you know, a Jesuit high school or college and feel like, oh, that's Jesuit, or it's Dominican, or it's the.
The daughter's a charity or whatever it might be.
Like, you should feel that charism is one of those things, but also it's, you know, it's the makeup of the community.
Maybe you're in a certain neighborhood, maybe you're of, you've got certain talents on your faculty.
What do you see as some of those other things that kind of can make a little bit of a difference?
Becky: when I first taught at St. Mary's, what was great about it is, like you said, just think of the charism and just the history of the school.
Like every time I did a lesson plan, I always think back, like, or our principal required us to.
Even, you know, annotate or mark down, like, how is this part of our school, right?
Learning expectations.
Well, I'll be using multiple colors and saying, Hey, this is, you know, social justice, or this is like Catholic identity.
So I. Everything about your school's mission and philosophy is ingrained in all of us.
Whether you're a teacher and you're doing lesson plans or you're a student learning I know when it came around time to wasc, we were training those kids.
I was training our class like, Hey, what's our school wide learning expectation?
What's the learning objective?
So instead of just rehearsing.
We live it.
Even the students know it.
You know, anytime the principal comes in and they're just doing informal observation, they'll always say to a student it's like, oh, hey, what are you learning?
Oh, how is this related to the school-wide learning expectation?
So, you know, when it is ingrained in all of us, or we practice and understand, you know, the school's mission and philosophy, then the whole culture of the school itself.
It just emanates from all of us where this is normal.
We're not acting.
It's genuine.
Thomas Boles: Right.
Yeah that's such a good point.
I mean, and the SLE is like, how many of the kids really know them?
Just going back to like my very first wasc, they had printed them out and they taped them to the desks so the kids learned them, and so like, they could talk about it.
They also did we had done, I shouldn't say we, I assisted our vice principal at that time in creating videos for all the sles, so the kids created videos and like, that's how they became, you know, known.
And then they could talk about it.
But if the kids, as you say.
You're trying to teach 'em to do something that's so in unnatural.
Like if this is fake, like we, everyone knows it's fake, but if you can find a way for them to actually live it right?
And to be able to say that and like that comes up in your morning assembly or that comes up in your notes for the community, then it's a whole lot easier.
And that should jump off the page.
You know, going back to we were talking about, you know, this family atmosphere.
We had Theresa Rothstein on the.
Podcast in the first couple episodes.
And she was awesome.
We, you could feel, you could actually feel that family element when you walked into school.
That's unique.
But they were living their mission, their culture, like you could feel that now how do we get that same kind of thing in all of our schools?
And it's not like it's not happening, it's just we need to highlight those things and not.
You know, hide them.
You know?
And in fact, now I'm just thinking about like all of our previous episodes.
First episode we have we have Abby Herget from Saint Peter and Paul, and there our programs amazing.
And it's like, that should be highlighted 10,000 times over, right?
And so that's I think one of the things that I think the schools need to do is recognize what are we doing that's really awesome and let's highlight those things because.
We want the families to know that like, we're gonna take care of business, there's gonna be a good education, we're gonna take care of your kids.
There's gonna be a faith presence here.
We, but we're also gonna do these things really well, and that doesn't mean we're not doing everything else really well, right?
It doesn't mean that if you're a STEM school, you're bad at.
Arts or that if you're an art school, you're bad at stem, you can be good at both things, or you can definitely be better than competent, better than average.
I mean, Catholic schools in general are gonna be better than average, but there's gotta be at least one thing, at least one, if not several, that the school does really well, and those things should be highlighted without a detriment to everything else.
Becky: And there's like simple things the school can do or you can do is I know when I walk into a school.
A lot or not a lot actually.
Have their sles printed up, put as a poster right at the front door.
I know during WASC we create posters for every single classroom where we have a think poster, you know, so to say STM students can think, you know, and it, I know some schools think of other acronyms like smart or, you know, fire.
So those are right, so there's, it's catchy and it's great.
So why not broadcast and post it everywhere so that students can refer to it again?
There is, like you said, it's not natural for them to say, oh yeah, let me think about it.
But if it's, there's a poster in the room, and this is something we practice at the beginning of each lesson, like, oh, what part of our sles is this lesson related to?
Then it becomes almost like tradition.
It's, you know, habit.
Thomas Boles: Another easy way to do that is, you know, every school has their PE T-shirt custom printed, right with the school logo.
And just print that on the back or have that on the front, right?
Like, here's our school, this is our sles.
Right?
And that just, it's like I always talked about myself and like what I've been learning and what I'm doing.
I call it brainwashing, right?
And so it's like I, I could be watching the news and make myself feel terrible, or I could be filling up my brain with the good stuff for the outcomes that I want.
So like, this is the kind of brainwashing, I don't wanna say that Catholic schools are brainwashing the kids, but.
Like, we should be trying to enforce these positive things.
Right.
And if we're talking about them all the time, then that's awesome.
And ideally our sles are gonna be different at each place.
'cause you have a different character, you have different staff members you have different talents.
And so it should be different enough that those things stick out.
Becky: And what's great about having different talents in.
People in your community is, you know, highlight those things where you know, like you, you're really musically talented.
I believe you play multiple instruments.
We should highlight that.
We have a principal who can sing and play the piano.
We should highlight that and she leads the choir.
Those are great things that it's surprising how, you know, it's almost like a talent show feature, those things.
And a lot of times where you can even incorporate that into your history where your.
Your philosophy, mission statements, you know, sles, those are things you really should highlight and people just take it for granted.
In my school, one of our preschool teachers, she's really good.
A penis where every Christmas show she would play all the music live for us, and it's like spectacular wherever we just see her as a teacher, but all of a sudden, you know, she's like a concert penis for us.
So we're like, whoa, where did that come from?
These are things we really need to highlight.
Thomas Boles: Plus you.
You know, when the principal or the teachers, whoever's doing these things, when they're doing those things that they love, they're lighting up in such a way, right?
That they're at their best selves.
Imagine if you have everybody operating at their best selves all the time, like that's what makes the school awesome, right?
It's the people, and the people are doing these great things, but it also allows you to get buy-in because if you're allowing teachers.
To seek out their joys within the frame of your sles, within the frame of your mission, then you really taking advantage of the talent that you have there and highlighting it, they're gonna buy into to what you're doing because that's who they are, right?
It's not like I, I've seen this a lot where a school will go see another school and be like, Ooh, I really like what they did there.
Let's try that, our place.
And they try to cram it down to everyone's throat for like two weeks and then it dies, right?
Because it's not true.
Becky: not passionate about it.
Thomas Boles: Yeah, you've gotta get buy-in.
And maybe that's something that you have to develop over time.
You know, especially a new principal coming to a place might have to kind of feel out where, like what is the deal here?
And what is this faculty, especially you have a new faculty.
What is this?
What is this faculty?
Where are we headed?
What's our goal here?
Because once you can identify that and you get that identity, that culture, you can really run with it.
Everybody's in there is natural buying.
You don't have to trick anybody, you don't have to bribe anybody with good coffee.
Becky: Yeah, don't be afraid to change just because we're historically this type of school.
We're a sports school, we're a drama school, we're a STEM school.
When you do bring in talent or when faculty or even students.
Start showing, you know, those hidden talents, you know, incorporate that into your school community.
And like you said and in several podcasts where someone is a great artist, now all of a sudden you have this great art program.
Oh wait, we have parents who are architects, they're engineers or tradespeople.
You incorporate that into your school.
It's like you invite that and that's how you build community.
Or other things we could look at are events, school events.
And you know, when you talk about vanilla, it's like, oh, everybody has, you know, their Christmas program.
Everybody has their, you know, spring show.
From starting at St. Mary's, what was really cool is that historically in the schools started in like 1890s St.
Mary's had a drum and ll core.
And fun fact, they actually played at JFK's inauguration in 1961.
Is that crazy?
I'm like, I didn't know that.
And just when you're talking to people about what makes your school special, well, not everybody's gonna have like a team or you know, a marching band that's like world famous, but.
Just that, you know, it's part of the culture and what I really felt that was special 'cause I grew up going to church at St. Mary's is that, hey, I'm part of that as a teacher now.
You know, every Chinese New Year we're part of the parade.
It's televised.
And that makes us special because we're part of the community and the culture in that part of the city where, oh.
They're very recognizable, you know, and it's sad that the school closed about almost 10 years ago, but I read that last year.
They put the drum of Belcorp back together and it's great because there's so much history in that and that it brings community, people recognize it.
It just brings joy.
Thomas Boles: Yeah, that's such an easy way to, to distinguish yourself.
I mean, the school really should be digging roots into your community, right?
You shouldn't be fighting that.
You know, Saint Peter, Paul North Beach is, you know, an Italian community that's fully embraced.
You know, they're even teaching Italian.
In school through a grant.
So like that, embrace your community.
That's who you are.
Like you don't have to fight that because that's in your neighborhood.
That's who you are.
So if you can, you know, involve yourself in the community and really be a part of that is just another way to, I mean, get you noticed.
I mean, talk about marketing.
You don't have to do, you don't have to do marketing if marketing's already happening naturally, like your program is marketing itself.
Becky: Oh, definite.
And again, don't feel like you have to have like a world famous, whatever it is to me, you know, world famous, you know, team or whatever.
But I always thought that as a teacher at St. Mary's, we're such a small community.
But everybody was involved.
One thing I really liked, and as we highlight teachers, is that our second grade teacher Mrs.
Buford.
Every year we had stone soup.
She put on a play with our second graders who will go visit her classroom's really small.
So she'll have like several shows throughout the day, like sign up and we'll cram two or three classes together and we'll watch our second graders, their production of Stone Soup every year.
It's like, I look so, so much forward to it.
It's like.
There's no like singing or dancing, but the fact that, you know, it's it's a tradition every year, so it's things you look forward to and it's like highlighting our teachers' talent and our students' talents.
Thomas Boles: Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I love that idea of like, you know, in sixth grade we do this.
In fourth grade we do this.
Right.
And each one of 'em has a special thing.
I mean, going back to what we were talking about, parent engagement in a previous episode, you know, having in the olden days before Zoom, where you'd have your
in-person meetings, you know, having the third grade come up and do like a poem at the end of the meeting or the beginning of the meeting or whatever it might be.
Like you have, you involve those people, but they know that like, in this class, I'm gonna learn this thing and we're gonna do this experience.
You know, it might be an eighth grade play or it might be you know, fourth grade recital.
Or it might be the music.
You know, music gets really big and those middle grades, you know, whatever it might be like to have those traditions that slowly over time, you don't even have to name those things, but they do stand out to people.
They notice that like, oh wow, we do a lot of arts here, or we do a lot of music here, or.
But we have a lot of science things, not just one science fair year, but we have like science stuff all the time.
I think those things stick out and I think, you know, I'm gonna quote Tim Ell from Notre Dame High School in Salinas.
He said that if you really tell your parents what you believe in when you spend the money, right?
So if you spend a lot of money on your athletic fields, or you spend a lot of money on the parking lot, or you spend a lot of money on, you know, like the trash cans or
something like that, you show the parents what it is you value when you spend your money on the science lab or you spend your money on the library or reading program.
That's also telling people what you value.
So, you know, that makes a big difference.
I know like in COVID we had to spend all this money on air purifiers, but like, can we stop buying air purifiers now?
Yeah.
All this other stuff, right?
Can we buy, can, if we're gonna spend money let's put that towards the thing.
The thing that we're doing well that we're chasing, or the thing that might be second or third that we need to elevate a little bit.
But you know, that's a, I love that quote from him because it is true where you spend your money is put your money where your mouth
is, or put your, you know, if where you put your money is where you're putting your emphasis, and you might say one thing, right?
And I know this is true with a lot of places, like we're trying to project this image or whatever, and then our actions don't necessarily follow that, right?
Or you come up with like a theme for the year and it's like, well, I don't see how that theme connects to anything that's been happening.
Becky: And it just happens in that one year is isolated and then we forget about it.
Thomas Boles: right.
But it is the, it's the actions.
It's the regular actions.
It's the events, it's the programs.
It's those things that actually are showing how you are different, not what you say is different.
Right.
You got the banners around the city, you've got posters around your school.
You got the new tagline, whatever it is, but like.
You know, do you know what the tagline is?
Do you believe in it?
You know, do your kids know that tagline?
Do they believe in it?
Do your parents naturally pull that tagline out of their back pocket when they're talking to other families?
Like, you know, that's what you want.
You want this, you want it to be felt before it's heard.
Becky: It's consistent and it's authentic.
That's when people remember it, you know, and they care.
Thomas Boles: Bingo.
We episode consistent.
Becky: But let's think about what matters to parents.
What are some things that parents care about, you know, you might care about, we all should like the library program or the reading
program, but what do you see as what parents look for in a Catholic school that makes that attracts parents, that makes the school special?
Thomas Boles: as we talked before there's a certain baseline, right?
And we want to take a step above that, right?
So.
Becky: Yes.
Thomas Boles: We're already satisfied the fact that there's gonna be a good education, well-rounded, right?
We're all of our schools are using the same curriculum.
We pretty much all have the same calendar.
We're pulling all from the same teacher pool, right?
Like, we have a lot of things that are the same.
So when you take a step up, it's, you know, I think about looking at, thinking about my own son in our own situation, you know, he.
He started out as a very shy watcher and he's become a leader, and that's not necessarily just because we have spent the energy on him.
The partnership that we have with the school allows for him to become.
This young man that we love, of course we love, but he's become a leader now.
And so to me, okay, well I'm at a Catholic school.
I want those opportunities for leadership.
I wanna see, you know, we're a Catholic family who actually goes to mass every week.
I want to, I wanna see, you know, that there's a Catholic identity.
Like I can feel that too.
And it's not just a picture of Mary on the wall.
Yeah.
Right.
And service, I mean, service is, I understand that, you know, families don't wanna necessarily pay so that their kid can work.
But like that, you know, public service is a human thing, right?
Like, we should be pushing that.
So those are opportunities, like every school is gonna have sports.
They might be good, they might be bad, but that just depends on who the kids are, right?
So like, I'm not like gonna like move my son around so he can play better sports.
Right?
That doesn't make any sense.
The things that matter are going to be the things that are gonna make him the best version of him.
And so those are the things that I think are really important.
What kind of opportunities do you have outside of the regular stuff?
We talked with Mary McKeever about the Smarts Program at their school St.
Phillips in San Francisco.
And, you know, they took classes that were, you know, once a week and kind of.
You know, just plugging along and thinking about, well, how can we improve this?
Right?
And so they made something beautiful outta that.
And I think that's a great example of how can we take things and we just take it up a step.
And if we think about our school as, you know, like we, we want to get to a hundred percent, like a hundred percent awesome.
And maybe we, right now we're only at like, you know, 42%.
Awesome.
Well how do we get one more percent this year?
You know, what's the one thing we can do to make, and I think that's.
As we, we get into it later about steps that you can take to do these things, I just think how can you get closer to that vision of what it is?
And I think those things are going to be the things that make our kids awesome citizens, wonderful Catholics competent students.
They can speak well, right?
They can talk to other people.
They can they can advocate for themselves.
And they're competent in all those things.
And I think that's what really would stick out to me.
And I know that's all very vague and generic but like that's how you chase it.
Becky: yeah.
It reminds me of the story you always tell me about when you were teaching the school itself.
You know, every student is expected to be able to give a presentation.
You always say this to me, wouldn't it be great, you know, if we give our students or class, here's 10 minutes.
You know, prepare for whatever, public speaking engagement or whatever it is.
Prepare your slides.
You got 10 minutes, go.
And I didn't do the 10 minute thing, or I didn't do the 15 minute thing.
But as part of my ELA program, it wasn't in the book, but I knew that I was a really shy student at, I hated public speaking and.
I was like, wait, I know in high school they're gonna need to stand in front of class and start talking.
So I had my fifth graders practice we're just doing whatever essay, but how can we turn it so that they can present in class and it won't make them super nervous or just to train them like, Hey, these are just steps.
This is how you prepare.
And also, you know, how do you work with.
Other students.
And I made this write and I just made it up.
I was like, okay, well, we're gonna do a debate now.
It's a, it's that persuasive essay that you always have to write, but I converted into like a debate, like, here's a topic.
You know, prepare for this.
You're a pro, you're a con side.
You don't have to agree with the pro or con side, but you need to defend it.
So.
A lot of that is should be a part of your school community and just and showcase those things.
Because you know, when families look at schools, they don't realize like, oh yeah, I need my child to be a leader.
That's not the first thing they think about.
They're thinking, oh, is it, does it have a nice playground?
Or the teacher's nice?
You know,
can they make friends,
Thomas Boles: that's our basic level of needs and you know, we're hoping that all of our schools are providing that right.
But it is that, it's that next level of what is unique about our schools.
Now I think, you know, I appreciate you bringing up the story about the public speaking because I think that's also one thing that I think every school could do, right?
And it may or may not be, and something that we're gonna brag about, but.
It's an outcome that we like.
And, you know, when, especially we're about to get into this time of the high schools starting to pitch to the eighth graders and things like that, when they come to the school, they always show this video of what, you know, what makes our school great, right?
And all the high schools do this thing and it's like a four minute video.
And it's like,
Becky: It's an aerial view of the school, you know, with a
Thomas Boles: Right.
They got all this cool stuff going on, but part of that is like we are, and they can name like we are these five things, right?
And I think these are our sles in general, but I've always challenged schools when we've had these kind of conversations.
Why, how come we don't have a video that says when our kid graduates, this is who they are, right?
This is the kid who's walking out in the world, and I would love to be able to say, this school has these five traits.
This kid is gonna be awesome at these five things, and then let's match.
Let's, maybe we're not there yet, but that's what we want to be.
Well, let's build towards that.
And if we really are that, then let's celebrate that thing.
But the high schools do a really good job of articulating who they think or who they want us to think they are.
We do a, generally do a terrible job of articulating who we are and what makes us special.
And I think that's kind of like the whole deal here.
You know, the, whether, you know, there's no right or wrong answer, but all of these things need to be considered.
And the chances are there's at least two or three things that your school's really good at that you should just polish up a little bit.
Right?
And make it known.
Make it known that you're awesome at that.
Because I think that's what's gonna sell.
You don't even have to, of course you have to put it into your marketing, but you don't even have to sell it when it really is who you are.
Becky: And develop a five year plan.
It doesn't all have to happen in this one year just because was
Thomas Boles: Definitely not.
Becky: It's something to aspire to.
You know, it's like, what's your five year plan?
Who's getting involved?
You know, like you said, get buy-in.
Like, what do we wanna be?
What don't we wanna be?
So like, how do we set ourselves apart?
Thomas Boles: So let's, that's good.
Let's roll with that.
So let's talk about, so let's just say we have principals listening to us now and they're thinking, you know what, this is kind of murky for our school right now.
What can I do?
You already.
You put out that we should look at our mission statement.
Does that mission statement make any sense?
Maybe we need to change it, but start there.
Look at our history.
I think those are two good things.
So mission and history.
Say where do we come from?
I think Then third we've already talked about assessing like who your staff is, like what things are going well right now.
Let's start with low hanging fruit, right?
So what's going well right now?
How do we then, and we've just talked about how do we then highlight those things?
So what would you say is like the next step for a principal, they've kind of done this maybe they have a little cleanup to do to kind of get that polished back to like, okay, this is who we are, this is who we want to be.
Our sles say exactly who we are, who we want to be.
Our kids know that what's next?
Becky: before you move next, move on to the next step.
I would say get your faculty involved.
It's odd, but I thought it was fun to work with other faculty members to develop our sles or even change it.
It could be the same acronym, but we, what we did, and again, this is like pre WASC in preparation of was, we're like, oh wait, we have our SLE, but do our younger students understand it?
So then we had our lower grade teachers develop a lower grade version of what.
SLE means it didn't change.
We just change.
Or we change it so that our younger or even our kindergartner could understand what it is.
Because a lot of times the SE is like this big long sentence, but we just simplify it, you know?
It's like, oh, leader, instead of saying like, describing it.
Thomas Boles: And that's probably great for the the kids, the adults, like the community.
Like, let's just go with the K two version because that's what's gonna be awesome, right?
Like, that's gonna make it so clear.
And if you're clear about it, then you can celebrate it.
Becky: Oh, absolutely.
And besides getting the faculty and staff involved, get students involved, you know, or student leaders whether it's, you know, an academic group or just, you know, your class president or whatnot.
Get parents involved?
Do you have an advisory board?
How can they get involved?
Because many minds, many ideas.
Thomas Boles: You made me think I was at the Faith Formation Conference a few weeks ago, depending on when people are listening to this early November and.
There was a bunch of students there and they were acting as docents to help people find the rooms and whatever.
And, you know, I was standing around at my little booth and I stopped the kids and I said, Hey what do you love about your school?
What makes it great?
And initially they're like, oh, you know, we have a big yard.
It's pretty cool.
All my friends are here.
I was like, but why are they here?
Why are they here?
You know, like, what makes your school awesome?
And then one kid kind of paused and he said, you know, I feel really welcome here.
I feel safe here.
Like, I'm really happy at this school.
I was like, okay, well that's good.
What makes you feel that way?
He's like, well, I think the kids are nice.
Like we've got good people here.
My teachers, I feel like my teachers care about me.
And I was like, man, this is a seventh grader who's given me this thing.
Like, I wanted to define their teacher.
Like, where's your teacher?
I gotta high five.
Your teacher.
That is awesome.
Shout out to St. Matt's.
'cause it was a St. Matt's student who was.
Who was telling me the story and I was like, it took a little time to get to it.
But I think it's so valuable if you ask your own students like, you're not gonna get graded on this.
There's no wrong answer.
What do you think we're good at?
And if they talk about, oh, we're really bad at reading and but we're awesome at sports, or, we're really bad at sports, we're awesome at reading.
Whatever it is that comes out, like that's gonna kind of highlight to you.
You know, going back to this, the idea of a S Legian school.
If I was at a Sesion school and I asked the kid, who's Don Bosco, and they go, I don't know.
I'd be like whoa.
We've like, we've totally failed here.
Right?
And that would never happen at a s Legian school.
But the point being is if you do have the opportunity to ask your kids.
Ask the students, you know, and ask the little ones too, you know, because they'll, they're gonna be so honest with you, you know, and I think that's really, it's a really valuable opportunity.
Go talk to your parents and like, let's have those town councils of those open forums and like, what is it you would say to somebody else?
Like, please, like, let's be honest.
I, we really need to know.
'cause you get that feedback that's so valuable.
Becky: That's a great next step, just getting feedback.
A lot of times it's hard to hear.
You just want, you know, five stars on Yelp.
Five stars are in great school.
But guess what?
We'll always remember the negative feedbacks.
Let's do something about it.
You know, just it's hard.
We wanna be that great school, but when we do get, you know, negative feedback, those are things that are more telling in like, oh, and it's almost even great that someone.
You know, is brave enough or decide to tell you, Hey, we don't like this.
Or then it gives you an opportunity to fix or improve.
When everyone just tells you like, oh, your school's great, then you think your school's great.
But you're wondering, wait, why?
Why is your kindergarten class only have you know 10 kids?
It's not because you know of all just the great things you're doing, but what else can you do?
And it's tough to hear, but just to get that or even put out a survey, just ask like, oh, hey, what are the programs that are working?
What are some programs that we need to work on?
Thomas Boles: Yeah, and I think it's to your point from a couple minutes ago, like this is not about like, let's go get money and spend a bunch of money.
Like this is just a. About nuts and bolts in most cases.
Right.
And just refocusing what it is that we're doing.
We don't have to spend a ton of money.
You don't have to go out and buy like, you know, I know like the.
You know, we had the coding thing for a while and because we're tech folks, we can talk about all this other stuff, you know, and then we're getting into robotics and then like you're just chasing these things all the time.
But if that's not really who you are, that's okay.
You don't have to go and buy the thing in order for you to get people to come in.
But what you have to do is you have to be convinced yourself that you love this place, that this place is awesome, and you have to be able to communicate that this place is awesome.
And if you can do those two things.
It doesn't matter if you have nothing.
You have zero techno, you have no technology.
You could have no facilities.
You could have a one room with like 30 kids in it.
And if those kids feel like they're taking care of, they're loved, they're learning, they're having fun, like those things will come through.
I know it's too simple just to say that, but I really do think that we take all that stuff for granted in chasing.
Whatever else, or like buying Facebook ads or, you know, whatever it is that we think we're doing to get the next family.
But it's actually, it's really much simpler than that.
You know, take care of those things that we need to take care of in house and let's highlight the things that we're doing well and keep doing them well.
Becky: Oh, definitely, and again, tell people about it.
It seems ordinary to you because it's like, you know, just business as usual, but do showcase, you know, all the great things and the great people in your community.
Thomas Boles: All right, so we're just getting about time here.
Do you have any final thoughts, last little reminders you want to tell all the folks who might be thinking, you know, I really wanna make a change.
I'm gonna have some time over the break to think about some of this stuff and we're starting WASC in a little while and like we actually want to have the goals in WASC be real goals and not just temporary goals.
Becky: Well, I would say just say, just think about what do you really love about your school.
If you just had that 10 seconds with just a stranger on the street, or a parent that comes in for a school tour, what's that one thing you would tell them?
About your school or about your teachers, or about your students, just ask yourself that.
If you can't think of that, work with your faculty, work with your staff, and like you said, ask your students.
They're the most honest people.
They will tell you like, oh, hopefully they don't say I love lunch, or I love, I hope they say something like, oh, I love my teacher.
I love my classmates.
You know, I love coming to school.
It reminds me of a time when this is right.
This is during COVID.
We had a student that was late every single day.
Once we opened, I believe it was in October.
He still came in late, but he was so happy.
He goes, thank goodness we're open.
He was making him crazy that he was still staying home with his mom.
Thomas Boles: Oh yeah I think you have so many of those kids.
I mean, you have kids who.
You know, they don't necessarily do well in school.
You know, they're, they might be late all the time.
Like whatever it is.
Like, you know, and in the picture perfect world of what we think a good student is, you know, they don't fit in that deal.
But then you open up on the weekend to do something, they're there, you open up in the summer to do something.
They're there.
Like, they just want to be there.
If you have families and kids who want to be there, I think you're winning.
Right?
And I think that's definitely the key.
I would say for me, I hope I didn't cut you off.
Becky: Oh no, I was gonna ask you the same thing.
What?
What's your one thing?
Thomas Boles: what I think is so important is number one, stop looking at everybody else.
Don't compete with anybody else.
I want you to think about yourself.
Draw a line in the sand and say, this is who we are.
This is who we are.
We're gonna continually think and improve, be consistent in who we are, and we're just gonna keep getting better because you can keep working on something.
And as long as you have that directional point, you know, going north or whatever it is, you have a target you're chasing.
It's really easy to get everything else in a row because now you've got this like focus.
So forget everybody else.
Focus on your own community.
Work on improving and being consistent.
With what it is that you decide is your thing and be proud of that.
Don't be everything to everybody.
Be great at something and take a stand.
If you are the school who is awesome at fine arts or performing arts, be that school.
If you are the number one STEM school in the state, be that school if you are.
The most diverse learning needs or supporting school around be that school, right?
Whatever it is you choose to be or whatever it is you already are, embrace it and be consistent with it.
And I think you can't win.
I mean, you can't lose.
Becky: Oh yes.
It's just gonna make you miserable when you're looking at other schools and you're like, oh, I wanna do that.
But you're constantly chasing it.
But when you're yourself, you're authentic.
People believe you.
They know it's genuine,
Thomas Boles: I think, yeah, and you, if you're chasing somebody else, you don't know why.
You think you know why they're doing well.
But you don't really know why they're doing well, and you might end up, you know, going down the wrong path because you are chasing something that's not real.
So be yourself and be that always.
Becky: But don't forget, check her podcast.
What's really, if you like this episode, the other episodes I really recommend is one on admissions.
I really enjoyed the one that you the podcast you recorded with Mary McKeever and Reinventing Enrichment Classes and Her Smarts Program.
And don't forget the first episode, the Sunrise Art Show with St.
At St. Peter's and Paul's.
That was fantastic.
Thomas Boles: Yeah, I really enjoyed both those conversations and the answers that they gave in regards to why their programs are doing well is they were great answers.
And I think they have the opportunity to take those things and say, this is why we're different.
You know, that may not be the main thing, but it could be very well could be.
And so those are great examples of how to make yourself different, even if it's just one program that you've really keyed in on.
It's definitely a good way to make things are, make sure that things are in the right direction.
Becky: And lastly, remember to check out the show notes.
Thomas Boles: Yes.
Check out the show notes.
So, one of the joys of our podcast is that every episode comes with a companion guide.
So all these things that we've been talking about in the episode, there is a free download that you can get to start thinking about the concepts in the episode.
So all the things that we talked about today are gonna be in that guide.
And help you to kind of make that decision.
You can download that for free.
You know, think about it with your faculties and staff and work with it if you need some help.
We're always here to discuss more about this with you, but I just want to make sure that you take action.
'cause that's the most important thing.
We can have all these wonderful conversations and never do anything, but we really want you to take action.
So make sure you check out the show notes, download that free PDF, and make your school as awesome as it can be, it already is awesome, but let's just polish, polish that up and let the world know how great we are.
Becky: Oh yeah, and this is great.
First step to look at the show notes, like where do you start?
Look at the show notes.
It's a nice list for you to just go, oh, okay.
These are the questions you should ask.
Thomas Boles: Yep, definitely.
Well, Becky, thanks again for another fun conversation and folks, we'll see you next time on the show.
See
Becky: Thank you.
Thomas Boles: you later.
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