Daniel Bauer is an unorthodox Ruckus Maker who has mentored thousands of school leaders through his Better Leaders Better Schools blog, books, podcasts, and powerful coaching experiences.
His new book, The Mastermind: Unlocking the Talent Within Every School Leader introduces a proprietary process called the ABCs of powerful professional development™ which is changing the landscape of how school leaders experience professional development.
Danny wastes no time about the harsh reality that 90% of school leaders who leave their school, leave the profession. The cost of retention is too high, which is why joining a community of dedicated professionals is paramount.
Listen to Danny explore the imposter syndrome, how it limits our abilities, why it kicks in, and how we can push past our self-defeating behaviors when we are a part of the right community.
Danny shares a quote: What’s ordinary for you is extraordinary for me. ~ Derek Sivers. Check out entrepreneur and founder of CD Baby, Derek Sivers, you won’t be disappointed.
A big part of the Mastermind process is the “hotseat” protocol. It’s where we challenge one another to do and be better. Listen to what Danny says about the collective IQ.
What is Danny looking forward to? Eventually, he wants to serve 1200+ leaders in his Mastermind. This is where the interview gets very tangible, since Danny tells about what he learned from The Strangest Secretby Earl Nightingale.
Teaching others is what leads to his growth because it helps to make the learning stick. He is always looking for something that stretches his thinking. Check out the AltMBA, an investment that he made in his own leadership.
Lastly, listen to what he says about “just cause.”
Let us know what you’re reading and who else you want us to bring on the show by contacting us at [email protected].
Innovation and 20% Time in Schools w/ Guest Don Wettrick
This is Season 1, Episode 9 of FocusED, and it features guest, Don Wettrick. It was originally recorded live for a studio audience in Delaware, provided as a professional development experience for Delaware teachers and leaders. Don’t miss what Don has to say about the future of schools, innovation, and project-based learning.
“This is as simple as doing relevant things and then taking it a little bit higher.”
~ Don Wettrick
Don Wettrick Brings Tons of Experience to FocusED Listeners
Don is known for his award-winning work as a middle school and high school teacher; educational and innovation consultant; and educational speaker.
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Thanks for listening to FocusED, an educational leadership podcast brought to you by TheSchoolHouse302 @ dereka206.sg-host.com.
FocusED is your educational leadership podcast where our mission is to dissect a particular focus for teachers and school leaders so that you can learn to lead better and grow faster in your school or district with more knowledge, better understanding, and clear direction on what to do next.
This episode was brought to you by GhostBed, a family-owned business of sleep experts with 20+ years of experience. With 30K+ 5-star reviews, you can’t go wrong with GhostBed. Their mattresses are handcrafted, and they come with a 101-night-at-home-sleep trial. For a limited time, you can get 30% by using our code — SH302 — at checkout. And, even if you tell someone about GhostBed, you can earn a $100 referral reward. Go to Ghostbed.com today and use SH302 at checkout.
Don’t tell me where your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money and I’ll tell you what they are. ~ James W. Frick
Is Education Underfunded?
This question is rhetorical. It’s a fun one to discuss for fireside chats and dinner table debates. On one side, we would argue that education is underfunded, making the case that teacher pay needs improvements and many schools need infrastructure repairs. On the other side, an argument might be made that such a large bureaucratic industrial complex has excess and waste where accountability should be improved, if not a systemic overhaul.
This post isn’t intended to address the concern with educational funding formulas, although we wrote about the need for teacher salary changes in our newest book. The point here, rather, is to help leaders with decision-making about the funds they do have, including the new installments of ESSER money. School leaders must be good stewards and understand how to turn available resources into transformational change.
The number one question that every leader must ask before spending any dollar in any school is this: how will this purchase build the capacity of the people to do the work in the future?
One argument that we do make regarding education and spending is that we don’t always do the best job with sustainability, especially when our funding streams have expiration dates. Quick fixes that promise to make a difference or mend a gap are attractive. These promises, coupled with our deep desire to make things better, get us into trouble when we want to buy something that we can’t afford and sustain over the long haul. It’s why schools fall into what we call the Lilypad Effect–long-term visions supported by short-term solutions, where we jump from one initiative to the other as resources become available or a change in administration is rampant. This only results in initiative-fatigue and disillusionment with leadership at the school, district, state, and federal level. Now, with the initiation of ESSER funds, we have great potential to improve our schools, but we need to be careful about how we spend the money. There are many lessons we learned from No Child Left Behind and the installments of money that many schools received.The number one way that you can make sure that your ESSER funds are sustainable is to use them to build capacity.
Congress set aside approximately $13.2 billion of the $30.75 billion allotted to the Education Stabilization Fund through the Coronavirus Aid Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act for the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER Fund). Signed into law on March 20, 2021, the Department awarded these grants to State educational agencies (SEAs) for the purpose of providing local educational agencies (LEAs), including charter schools that are LEAs, with emergency relief funds to address the impact that COVID-19 has had, and continues to have, on elementary and secondary schools across the Nation.
You can get a state-by-state breakdown of the funding allocations from the National Conference of State Legislatures and a popular example of how funds are being distributed and reported upon can be found at the California Department of Education website. The bottom line is that the money is provided through a grant program, and as far as anyone can tell, the dollars run out after they’re spent over the next two year period.
We Did Your School Funding Homework for You
At this point, you might be scratching your temple. Asking yourself: how do I build capacity for the sake of sustainability? It’s a great question. It’s why we break down school funding–all school funding–into three primary spending buckets. It doesn’t matter from which budget you’re spending, you should think of your pot of money in these three ways:
Spend Your Money By Paying Your People
If you ask us what the best money spent on teaching and learning in schools is, we’ll always say “people” first. Whether it’s paying someone to run your after school programs or overtime for custodians to do a deeper clearing in the summer, your money is well spent on people. Here’s a tip: for the sake of sustainability, think about your people as builders. Even if you can’t buy a program in perpetuity, you can buy people on timesheets to build something (a program or resource) that can outlast any contractor you might be able to afford for the short term.
Spend Your Money on Resources for Your People
One of the number one things that people cite as the reason they’re grumpy at work is that they don’t have the resources necessary to do their jobs well. If you’ve ever been in classroom where the teacher hung showerboard on the walls because she wanted white boards but the school couldn’t afford them, then you know what we’re talking about. It’s too common of a problem in education, but if you start to think about your budget as having only these three levers, you’ll put more money in this bucket then you might have before. Here’s a tip: when we say “resources,” we’re not necessarily talking about learning resources but the actual physical resources that teachers need to be at their best.
Spend Your Money on Professional Learning Experiences for Your People
When budgets get tight, the first line item that districts look to cut is professional learning experiences. Bad idea and unnecessary. When budgets are tight, the best place to invest is in your people. In learning cultures, professional learning never gets cut; it might become creative, but it’s set as a core value rather than just a spending item. Growing people is the responsibility of the leader and that should always be a top priority. Professional learning experiences likely have the highest ROI for retention, capacity-building, and sustaining a positive school culture than any other item we can list. Here’s a tip: conduct a professional learning survey to find out the areas and aspects of each person’s role where they want to grow and become stronger in the next 3-5 years.
The Top Five Ways to Spend Your ESSER Funds
All five of the following resources are investments in people so that your ESSER funds, even after they run out, are sustainable through the new and improved skills that staff will gain from implementation. Note: we are not currently sponsored nor do we accept direct payment from any of these sources. We believe in them as good decisions for where to spend money in education.
Enroll Yourself or a School Leader Who You Support in a Mastermind Program
When leaders get better, everyone they serve benefits. That’s the core tenet of Danny Bauer’s Mastermind in terms of a theory of action. Mastermind groups have been a way to sharpen skills through the use of like-minded yet diverse collection of leaders for centuries. These groups meet on a recurring and regular basis to learn from one another and present problems of practice that we either all have in common or that one or more people have already solved for themselves. Danny, who wrote Better Leaders Better Schools also just released Mastermind, which explains the ample rewards of being in a Mastermind.
Consider using COVID19 relief funds to join a Mastermind group for professional learning for either yourself as a principal or a leader you support (principal or assistant principal). You can typically pay off a Mastermind in one chunk for the year versus a monthly fee so these funds, even though they expire, are a good way to invest in leadership. Making a leadership investment is sustainable, versus buying a program that you can’t afford when the money runs out, because your leadership growth will not expire. There are other groups besides Better Leaders Better Schools, but we like Danny’s model as an example of a Mastermind that we know works for school leaders.
Support Teachers and Students as They Return to In-Person Instruction with Organized Binder
Organized Binder is a proven system that equips educators with a protocol to create predictable learning routines. From goal setting to retrieval practice, OB helps both teachers and students get and stay organized. OB is a tactile resource that supports all kinds of learning needs, including career and technical education, students with disabilities, core instruction, and the overall success of any student. We like it because it supports the research regarding cognitive science and self-efficacy (among other features), and it builds habits and routines that are transferable in any aspect of life where you need to use organization skills.
Organized Binder is a wonderful use of ESSER, ELO (if in CA), Title 1, and CTE funds. For reasons that include learning loss, when students return to school, parents will thank you if every student has an Organized Binder for each of their classes.
Enroll Your New Teachers in a New Teacher Mastermind
For similar reasons as we mentioned above, enrolling new teachers into a Mastermind has tons of benefits. There may not be any more vulnerable group than teachers who started their careers just before, during, or right after the pandemic hit. Any teacher new to the profession was already susceptible to burnout, but being a new teacher during a crisis is a crisis. The solution is a new teacher Mastermind group where they won’t suffer from isolation and fear of not being good enough.
We like the Teacher Off Duty model because we’ve seen it work. It’s all about getting new teachers together in a support group to solve problems and lean on one another when the going gets tough. We consider this a retention strategy as well as an acceleration strategy for new teachers’ skills. Whatever you do, consider using ESSER funds to support new teachers; they need our help, and we simply cannot afford to lose teachers over the next few years.
Purchase TeachFX for Your Schools to Improve Student Discourse
TeachFX is a great resource for any size school or budget because their pricing isn’t fixed (meaning they’ll work with you on your specific needs), and they don’t just provide a tool; they offer professional development. If you don’t know about TeachFX, the simple explanation is that they invented a technology that tracks the percentages of classroom time dedicated to student versus teacher talk. In other words, the software, when used by a teacher, generates data regarding how much time students get to talk throughout a lesson. Used for everything from reflecting on the types of questions teachers are asking to the equity of the demographics of the learners who are doing most of the talking, we can’t say enough about the benefits of implementing TeachFX.
ESSER funds are a perfect way to get started with TeachFX and getting kids talking in the classroom is going to be even harder after the pandemic when they may come back with a hint of shyness and in a time when teachers might feel like they need to “cover” so much unlearned content. TeachFX can give your staff the data to slow down, ask the right questions, provide needed think-time, and let the kids handle the rest. Let’s all work to give our students the voice they deserve in every classroom. If your school or district is talking about SEL and equity, like so many are around the country, take a look at this tool.
Build a Brain-Based Teaching and Learning Library of Resources for Teachers
We don’t believe that there is enough emphasis in education–from teacher prep to professional learning–on the concepts being studied by cognitive and neuro scientists. For students to truly retain what they’ve learned, teachers need to implement the strategies that the brain research indicates have the highest effect sizes on memory. With that said, schools shouldn’t wait to begin exploring the science by building a library of resources for teachers. “Learning loss” isn’t just mitigated by extra time programs and online platforms. A stronger, better equipped, teacher for every student when they return is a great place to invest.
We recommend only the books that we curate from the lists we have in our own libraries. There are three titles that we believe all schools should be reading to support teacher development.
Make It Stick by Peter Brown, Henry Roediger, and Mark McDaniel
All three are fantastic books for educators. We listed them from most practical to most scientific. They all dive deep into the science of learning, but Powerful Teaching is very teacher-friendly, Why Don’t Students Like School? will challenge your conventions, and Make It Stick explains very complex research in a digestible way. Read them for different reasons, but read all three.
The Next Big Thing with School Funding
Consider multi-year contracts. Because ESSER funds are frontloaded and then expire, for the sake of sustainability, consider multi-year contracts for support and services. For example, you can buy slots for Mastermind groups and if you don’t use them, you can save them for future dates. You can also buy someone a Mastermind experience and pay for 24 months rather than 12. For a teacher who plans to use a class set of Organized Binder, consider buying 3 years worth of the materials. TeachFX can be purchased on a multi-year contract. Finally, and especially in this case, anywhere you plan to work with a trainer or consultant, consider stretching the contact out to gain access to their host of implementation strategies over a period of years rather than months. Sustainability is an issue in education because we think of money and spending in terms of fiscal years; it’s time for that to change and ESSER is the best place to start.
Stay tuned for more nuggets of wisdom, podcasts, books to read, and the best resources for leading better and growing faster in schools. Follow us at dereka206.sg-host.com to join thousands of leaders who get our content each month. Send this to a friend.
As always, let us know what you think of this with a like, a follow, or a comment. Find us on Twitter, YouTube, iTunes, Facebook, & SoundCloud. And, again, if you want one simple model for leading better and growing faster per month, follow this blog by entering your email at the top right of the screen.
TheSchoolHouse302 is about getting to simple by maximizing effective research-based strategies that empower individuals to lead better and grow faster.
Joe & T.J. This episode was brought to you by GhostBed, a family-owned business of sleep experts with 20+ years of experience. With 30K+ 5-star reviews, you can’t go wrong with GhostBed. Their mattresses are handcrafted, and they come with a 101-night-at-home-sleep trial. For a limited time, you can get 30% by using our code — SH302 — at checkout. And, even if you tell someone about GhostBed, you can earn a $100 referral reward. Go to Ghostbed.com today and use SH302 at checkout.
We live in a time that has been deemed the “information age.” Some argue that in the 21st Century we can be exposed to more information in one week than those who lived in the 17th Century would be exposed to in their entire lives. In many ways that makes our mere existence more challenging as we look to lead our schools effectively. We need discrete skills that enable us to process and filter an abundance of information. Knowing how to discern and weed through all of the channels in order to make sound decisions is a marquee skill of any effective principal. That skill needs to be coupled with another critical and complementary skill, which is knowing how to apply that knowledge in actionable and strategic ways.
Who is John Dewey and How Did He Impact the World?
Effective principal leaders know how to synthesize information and apply it to the unique needs of their schools.
This is what brought us back to the work of John Dewey this month. We wanted to study the claims that Dewey might have made about teaching and learning during COVID19. And, we explore this in our 302 Thoughts this month.
Taking what we’ve learned and experienced from the pandemic, we sought to embark on a tried and true classroom practice: problem based learning. We focus on the good that can come from such a tumultuous time in education. We wanted to add an abstract element to spark creativity, so we did our best to filter our ideas through the powerful lens of the great educational reformer, John Dewey.
Critical Ideas from our 302 Thoughts: Student-Centered Learning
Students and teachers need support in multiple ways and beyond just learning in the classroom. As humans we are confronted with challenges that stifle and limit teaching and learning. Great principals need to understand, recognize, and build support for students and teachers.
A Creative Way to Support Students
Affinity Groups
A Creative Way to Support Teachers
Faculty-led before or after school wellness classes (such as yoga).
Engagement is everything. Students need to be engaged in the classroom and teachers need to be engaged in their departments and the school as a whole.
A Creative Way to Engage Students
Require students to create questions, not answers, on what is being learned. Stoke their creativity.
A Creative Way to Engage Teachers
Ask them to specifically identify the professional learning experiences that they want.
Opportunities are found in the right mindset. Going through the last year and not learning from all of our trials would be an injustice to our school system.
A Creative Way to Provide Opportunities for Students
Continue to employ the various instructional tools and supports that helped students learn (stay tuned for our ESSER focused blog next month).
A Creative Way to Provide Opportunities for Teachers
Create ad hoc groups to determine the aspects of hybrid and remote learning that should not be discontinued.
Ultimately, it is up to us to decide if we will learn from the great thinkers and reformers of the past and capitalize on the opportunities of today, no matter what form they take. COVID19 was completely unexpected, and it certainly upended our educational system. Let’s take advantage of what we accomplished and the lessons we learned thus far.
We hope you like this month’s 302 Thoughts as we continue to discuss leadership and the impact that you can have on your community. Next month, we go live with our first ever open audience 302 Thoughts; we hope to see you there.
Stay tuned for more nuggets of wisdom, podcasts, books to read, reflection sessions, and the best resources for leading better and growing faster in schools. Follow us at dereka206.sg-host.com to join thousands of leaders who get our content each month. Send this to a friend.
As always, let us know what you think of this with a like, a follow, or a comment. Find us on Twitter, YouTube, iTunes, Facebook, & SoundCloud. And, again, if you want one simple model for leading better and growing faster per month, follow this blog by entering your email at the top right of the screen.
TheSchoolHouse302 is about getting to simple by maximizing effective research-based strategies that empower individuals to lead better and grow faster.
This episode was brought to you by GhostBed, a family-owned business of sleep experts with 20+ years of experience. With 30K+ 5-star reviews, you can’t go wrong with GhostBed. Their mattresses are handcrafted, and they come with a 101-night-at-home-sleep trial. For a limited time, you can get 30% by using our code — SH302 — at checkout. And, even if you tell someone about GhostBed, you can earn a $100 referral reward. Go to Ghostbed.com today and use SH302 at checkout.
Speaking the Language of Our Teachers w/ Guest Pete Hall
This is Season 1, Episode 8 of FocusED, and it features guest, Pete Hall. It was originally recorded live for a studio audience in Delaware, provided as a professional development experience for Delaware teachers and leaders. Don’t miss what Pete has to say about building capacity within the teaching ranks. This is a must listen for all educators.
“We need to bring back the concepts of civics and gymnastics at the core of what we do in education.” ~ Pete Hall
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Pete Hall Brings Tons of Experience to FocusED Listeners
After a teaching career that spanned preK-8 over three states, Pete served 12 years as a principal in three Title I schools, one of which was the only Title I school in the State of Nevada to earn a “High Achieving” designation; another earned accolades from the Washington State Office of the Superintendent for its growth and achievement; and the other earned a Career & Life Readiness Award from the State of Washington.
For his tenacious and courageous leadership, Pete was honored with Nevada’s Martin Luther King Jr Award (2005), was appointed to the Governor’s Commission on Excellence in Education (in Nevada, 2005), and was selected to sit on the National Education Association’s Great Public Schools Indicators Advisory Panel (2010-2011). He holds a National Principal Mentor Certificate from NAESP and supports leadership development from the organizational level to the individual level.
He now works as a personal consultant/mentor/motivational coach for school leaders, teachers, professional athletes, weekend golfers, stand-up comedians, firefighters, business executives, custodians, and more. He is currently working on his 10th book, Strive: How ordinary people can live extraordinary lives.
Thanks for listening to FocusED, an educational leadership podcast brought to you by TheSchoolHouse302 @ dereka206.sg-host.com.
FocusED is your educational leadership podcast where our mission is to dissect a particular focus for teachers and school leaders so that you can learn to lead better and grow faster in your school or district with more knowledge, better understanding, and clear direction on what to do next.
This episode was brought to you by GhostBed, a family-owned business of sleep experts with 20+ years of experience. With 30K+ 5-star reviews, you can’t go wrong with GhostBed. Their mattresses are handcrafted, and they come with a 101-night-at-home-sleep trial. For a limited time, you can get 30% by using our code — SH302 — at checkout. And, even if you tell someone about GhostBed, you can earn a $100 referral reward. Go to Ghostbed.com today and use SH302 at checkout.
As a former elementary and secondary educator, keynote speaker, author, consultant and mom, LaVonna bridges her passion for how the brain learns with education and shows every individual how to S.H.I.N.E. through their mindset and social-emotional well-being so achievement soars for all.
She has a Bachelor’s and two Master’s Degrees, taught at the elementary and secondary levels, author of 8 books (about to be 9), and has worked with educators in the U.S./Canada, Europe, South America and the Middle East. She is the founder of the Ignite Your S.H.I.N.E.® framework and creator of brain-powered learning. To elevate educators further, LaVonna teaches educators how to get into educational consulting – part-time or full-time – through her Prime to S.H.I.N.E. consulting course and membership site.
She will leave you inspired, remembering why you got into education, and how to create substantial change in your classroom, district or organization that is sustainable. She is here to serve you, so you can effectively serve your students through the lens of brain research, social-emotional needs and psychological safety.
Key Thoughts from Our Interview with LaVonna Roth
LaVonna discussed how the pandemic didn’t come with a manual and how we should be careful with the language we use, such as lost year, lost learning.
“We need to take a step back and understand what just happened over the last year and a half. We need to survive to thrive, and we need space to transition.”
Don’t miss the key strategies she provides for when students return. This reminded us of Dan Sullivan’s book, Who Not How. LaVonna clearly establishes who should be at the table.
Lavonna talked about how educators need to have age appropriate conversations. Check out her free SEL resources.
LaVonna uses a structured way to look at situations, and she asks very specific questions: “What was the lesson, benefit, or takeaway?”
Don’t miss LaVonna’s personal hacks for self-care. Become aware of your thoughts. Check out, also, a great book on this topic, Chatter, by Ethan Kross.
LaVonna wants to slow down a bit…listen to what she says about it. It reminded us of Essentialism.
LaVonna combines learning with self-care to continue to grow as a leader. You’ll want to hear this.
Her final segment was powerful, vulnerable, and relatable for those of us who struggle with imposter-syndrome and the value we seek to add.
Let us know what you’re reading and who else you want us to bring on the show by contacting us at [email protected].
PS — Sign up for our next Masterclass in Candid and Compassionate Feedback and our first ever Masterclass in Building a Winning Team.
This episode was brought to you by GhostBed, a family-owned business of sleep experts with 20+ years of experience. With 30K+ 5-star reviews, you can’t go wrong with GhostBed. Their mattresses are handcrafted, and they come with a 101-night-at-home-sleep trial. For a limited time, you can get 30% by using our code — SH302 — at checkout. And, even if you tell someone about GhostBed, you can earn a $100 referral reward. Go to Ghostbed.com today and use SH302 at checkout.
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7 Mindshifts for School Leaders: Finding New Ways to Think About Old Problems. 
