Transformative Principal

Tyrone Burton Passion Driven Schools
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[00:00:00] Welcome to Transformative Principle. I am so excited to be here with you today and excited to have Dr. Tyrone Burton on the program. Again. He was first on the show in 2021, which is, I can't believe it's already been three years. We talked about his book Reframing American Education, and today we're gonna talk about his new, certification of passion driven schools that he just finished with the Orange Township School District in New Jersey. And this is gonna be an exciting [00:01:00] conversation if you haven't listened to that previous episode, or you don't remember from three years ago. I get it. Tyrone is. Has been a school turnaround specialist and he has helped turnaround schools in Florida, Louisiana, Georgia, the Cayman Islands and Connecticut.

Jethro Jones: Also been a adjunct professor and teaching aspiring principles. And he's written two books more than a Notion, a Journey in Educational Leadership in the Age of Accountability and the Reframing of American Education, A Framework for Understanding American Education Post COVID-19. And I'm so excited to have you here again, Tyrone.

Thanks so much for being here.

Dr Tyrone Burton: Thank you for having me.

Jethro Jones: So my what, what's the big takeaway from our conversation today? What's the thing that if somebody's not sure if they should listen, what, why should they listen? I.

Dr Tyrone Burton: The big takeaway is that as educators. But not equipped to accept exhaustion. And most educators live in the world of chronic stress and chronic exhaustion. Our process teaches them how to cope [00:02:00] with and manage stress, which is needed, and the process is helping the to helping them to engage in intentional self-care for the adults in the building. That's why they're gonna enjoy this episode is Talk for real people in real time.

Jethro Jones: Sure. I think the other thing that I would add is that you give examples of how. Your particular approach of starting with helping adults have intentional self-care really leads to everybody else improving their self-care and doing better themselves as well. So I think that's, that's what we have to look forward to, to today.

And we're gonna get to my interview with Tyrone here in just a moment. (ad here)

​ So Tyrone, let's start with the idea of intentional self-care is not selfish. What? What does that mean?

Dr Tyrone Burton: Well, what that means is that particularly as educators, educators we work in a system that is [00:03:00] broken by design. And so as a result of that, we have broken teachers teaching broken students, often led by broken principals and school leaders. And a byproduct of that is that they really don't take care of themselves first. they put themselves on the back burner, which causes not just stress, but particular, a particular kind of stress called chronic stress. It's a kind of stress that causes heart attack, strokes, diabetes, high blood pressure, all the bad mal that that we get sometimes in the medical world. I've decided to do is make intentional self care for the adults in the building a priority. So much so until I made it, ~the, the, the,~ the capstone and foundation for my company and the preliminary work that we've done with schools in New Jersey has proven really good. In fact, of the uh, the byproducts is increased teacher attendance, increase teacher retention and increase teacher quality 'cause they feel good about themselves. So it gives them a strategy and instructions on how to [00:04:00] take care of themselves, teachers and school principal.

Jethro Jones: It's really important for all of the adults in the building to be focused on taking care of themselves as well. You said something before that says that our, our system is broken by design. What do you mean by that? Ty?

Dr Tyrone Burton: We have and no's, no secret. The American system, but have, and have nots and we have progressive school systems and essential school systems. Progressive school systems are those that engage in responsible behavior versus accountable behavior. That those systems that really make as a focus taking care of the adults as well as the children in the building. Most school systems are very essential. And the bottom line is test scores and accountability. And not that that's not important, but it often is at the expense of the, the healthcare of the adults in the building. As educators, we're trained to live in exuberance, but we aren't equipped to accept exhaustion. we [00:05:00] work at the point of exhaustion every day. And the research is really clear. Every school system in in America has an EAP office. The research is clear is in that the EAP offices, when they go there, they found that it was too much, too little, too late, and was very ineffective. system puts, that, puts intentional selfcare at the forefront and.

Jethro Jones: Okay, so, so let's talk about what you do and how you make it so that it's not too little, too late, that it's front loaded. Because I, I mean, I, every district I've been in has had an EAP program for us and I, despite whatever challenges I might've been going through, I never thought to call them, and I always thought that was such a great way for them to charge the district something.

That I know, I would recommend it to my employees also. And they never took advantage of it either. And it seemed like it was just a waste because by the time you think to reach out to that, it's too late. So what are you doing? And especially in this Orange Township School district to, [00:06:00] to make them take this approach differently.

Dr Tyrone Burton: Well, first of all, lemme say this, it starts with the superintendent. is a very progressive guy who has a mindset to to care for his employees and make intentional self-care for his employees, prima. And with that concept in mind the two principles that he chose initially for this process. Were principals that had very open minds regarding the process, so they engaged in, in it themselves. What we, we have a process that has six frames. The first frame is the SEL frame, which we call social emotional literacy and intelligence for the adults, which includes a inventory. I, I like using true colors. it includes a training model for. How to handle and cope. How to cope with and manage stress. Two different skills. Cope with stress is one skillset. Managing stress is a completely different skillset. We teach them how to engage in effective team building, not just fun and games, but a really effective team [00:07:00] building and how to engage in conflict navigation. that's just for the adults. That's the whole entire SEL frame. We couple that with leadership training and leadership training, they're taught that there are five levels of leading, and in those levels there are different leadership styles. We teach them those different leadership styles. We teach them the five levels.

They take an assessment to find out what level they're on, and then we show them how to. get results at, at the mid level, which is, which is the production level. The level above it is people, people development. And then we have passing driven, but you can get by with just the production level and have a pretty good school. we couple that with the instructional frame, the curriculum frame. 'cause what stresses teachers is teaching. So we have a frame, we have two frames devoted to just helping teachers learn how to teach because we're stress principals don't stress teachers. What stress? Most principals, the number one thing is staffing.

If you teach teachers how to teach and teach 'em, teach 'em how to control stress, they more than likely stay at the school and [00:08:00] remain there very happily. And they take fewer sick days. The other other frames are the parent parental involvement frame. We do parental involvement workshops for the schools that they requested, and we teach parents how to work cooperative with the school as well as their children. And last one is a comprehensive school review. We do school review. Over our six frame to see where we need to target in the context of these frames. So it's a complete process that we utilize to work with those schools, and the results have been very, very, very good. So much so until he's adding two more schools this year.

So the process is working and we have the data to prove it.

Jethro Jones: Yeah, so let's talk about that data because so often we think data and education is about the test scores, but there's a lot more data that we can have access to. What kind of data are you showing as a result of this work? I.

Dr Tyrone Burton: Well, the first thing is, is the mindset. We use data to make informed decisions versus data to drive everything. The worst thing we did in education was allow data to drive things. We have a [00:09:00] totally different mindset. We use data to make informed decisions. One of the things that one of the things that we use for the SEL piece, we have a dashboard based upon the research that was done by A-F-T-N-E-A, any SSP, all the operator organizations regarding stress for teachers and principles. And we have a nine, we have a, what we call a wellness survey, and staff takes it. Every two weeks, sometimes once a month, nine questions. And in that dashboard, we can tell how teachers are actually feeling. and based upon that, we, we build, we have schools build an action plan to, to engage teachers and principals on how to have healthy relationships at work. Once a quarter, they take a more inclusive survey called the educated survey, which looks at three areas and it basically tells, tell us, tells us how. Which is what teachers and principals believe in climate, which is how they act that way we make adjustments along the way and make a big adjustments big, make big, big adjustments [00:10:00] once a quarter. And again, that's built into a, the action plan such that we can, we can measure what's going on every month.

Jethro Jones: I think those are really powerful. Examples of getting the pulse of what teachers are experiencing and feeling rather than, rather than, what's, what's the word I'm looking for? Just assuming based on lagging indicators, like asking what is it exactly going on. I wanted to go back 'cause I, I thought of something else.

You talked about these psychometric surveys, like True Colors or 16 Personalities, disc, all, there's a whole bunch of different ones. Does it matter which one you use or is it good enough that you're being reflect self-reflective about who you are, what you do, why you do things?

Dr Tyrone Burton: I would now I've taken disc, I've taken the EY Myers test. I've taken the one with the different shapes, square, square, and circle [00:11:00] triangle. And I've taken true colors of those. I've found true colors to be the most. Comprehensive. And in the training I do a correlation between True and the rest of them. and I found it to be the easiest to do. And it gives you a really complete picture and it goes back to childhood. You know, the, the, the information you get really gives them a, a good snapshot of why they do what they do. Now, there's some others you can use, but I found that to be the one that, that gets me my best bang for buck.

Jethro Jones: So the, the, the question that I'm really asking is how, how valuable is the assessing yourself and reflecting on who you are and what you do, and why you do it? Compared to the actual results that you get from a test, is the, is the value more in the conversations that you're able to have the way you interact with each other?

Or is the value in this really good tool that that does [00:12:00] tell you about what's going on with you?

Dr Tyrone Burton: Yeah, the, the value is in three things. One, helping them understand themselves, them understand others, and helping them to appreciate the differences. I like to use that tool better than the other tools to get that done. The other two probably can get it done. I like this one to get it done more than the other two, the conversation with them is to help them understand themselves, understand others, and appreciate the differences, is a conversation that we want to have and they have to do all three. Most folk come to work every day that they know their name, they know their address funnel, but they really don't know why they do what they do. They don't know what habits they have, and until you really know yourself. understand yourself. You really can't do b, b help kids wholly because you wanna hold yourself. My first training, I told 'em, tell 'em we, we even discuss what position they have in. Like, I don't care what position they have. The first training session is about making them whole as people. And once they become whole as people, [00:13:00] then we can work on some instruction because we mend them as people first.

Jethro Jones: Yeah. And, and I really appreciate this idea of, of working through having a way to look at yourself and others around you and see them as whole people. And all too often I think we make the mistake of. Assuming that people are a certain way and thinking we know the reason why, when we really need to get to know someone, and, and the value I find, especially in these different psychometric things, is that it gives you something else to point to and talk about rather than everything being so personal.

So if you can, if you can see through one of these analyses that you are not very detail oriented, like I'm not, and instead of somebody saying, Jethro, you are not detail oriented, which could be frustrating or offensive to me. They can point at this and say, oh, interesting. This shows that you're not very detail oriented.

Do you find that [00:14:00] to be true? That's a totally different conversation than somebody coming straight at me attacking me. It's somebody next to me. Talking through something that's going on, and when I had a secretary or a co-teacher or someone who understood those things about me, they could then say, oh, I know this is not what you're great at, so let me help you in this situation.

Let me do this piece because. I know that this is gonna be really difficult for you and I'm happy to take this off, or, or an assistant principal for that matter. That when I had people that I worked with like that, oh man, Tyrone, it just made the world so much better because they saw where they could help.

And then I was like, well, how can I help them? When they came up against something that I knew I could do better than I would offer to help them because they had offered to help me, and those kinds of relationships made it so that. We, we weren't acting [00:15:00] in frustration all the time. We weren't working at the point of exhaustion anymore.

What are some of the stories that you've seen come out of Orange Township School District where where they got the designation of being passion driven schools? What have you seen in this last year with them?

Dr Tyrone Burton: Teachers c came towards much more happier, much more productive much more able to cope with the, the daily routines with stress taking 'em fewer sick days. being more responsible about what they're doing in the classroom and, and, and being responsible to themselves first, having a better overall general. character. More camaraderie, easy working, working, working, relationship with colleagues. better relationship with parents and knowing themselves has helped me better, better instructors because they can quickly identify, even though the students in some cases have not taken the inventory, they can pretty much tell what students, not just learning style, but their own personality type by teaching them. [00:16:00] So it is made learning an easier process. and incidentally we did a sort of doc documentary, we did those when we celebrate those schools. And the, the, the, the comments that the teachers and the principals had were just amazing, how it really changed their lives. We have testimonials of teachers who were really having a tough time, were struggling. But now they understand themselves. It's made work so, so much easier, so much more productive for them. So it, it's, it's been a game changer for those two schools.

(ad here) And, and so what has it done for students when the teacher. Teachers have gotten to this point where they're acting more appropriately, feeling better and being overall better teachers and, and workers and everything.

Dr Tyrone Burton: Students are much more relaxed. Remember students, most students, particularly young students, are very em. feel what adults are going through and they can How adults are feeling. And so because the teachers are much more relaxed and [00:17:00] and they know how to handle stress better, it makes the overall classroom situation much more productive. And the way we know that is in the instructional frame, we, we work with teachers on student work analysis, how to analyze student work, and they've seen an increase in how student work has been more productive. And we can quantify that by by, by the work we've done with them in the instructional area.

Jethro Jones: That's awesome. So, as, as you think about this, what, what's the vision that you see for schools that can be designated as passion driven schools?

Dr Tyrone Burton: Wow. That is such a good question. You know, Jeff, my dream, my dream is for I said, well, dream and what I'm, what I'm working towards, I actually am working with Dr. Carlos Lee out of LSU in Baton Rouge. And he is doing empirical work with the, based upon the work that we're doing doing research. Because one of my goals is to, is to make this a platform in education, to build an audience for that. So he, [00:18:00] his job in my company is to write in professional journals and articles and, and present on the work that we're doing. And the ultimate goal is to have legislation whereby SEL for adults become law just like it is for children. You know, right now it's just, if you get it fine, if not fine. 'cause we have EAP. And the truth is most educators come to work every day and are down a slow death.

Jethro Jones: And that's so tragic because they don't have to. Know.

Dr Tyrone Burton: No, they don't. They don't. They don't. And, and, and, and the truth is, it is not just, this is not just started, covid exacerbated it, but it's been going on for a long time and we have just been going along and get along because that's the way it's always

Jethro Jones: Yeah.

Dr Tyrone Burton: And, you know, the definition of, of the sand doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.

Well, now we have a different paradigm. You know, COVID pulls a scab off or off a, a gushing wound. so this, this process has been born and initially, you know, we got grant money to do it [00:19:00] with, with the pilot. The pilot went really, really well. Our process is a two year process. One schools go through their two year process and they're successful.

Then they get the designation of passion driven schools, and they become our model schools. So when we bring schools on, schools would go to them to see what the process is like, done perfectly, you know, and my vision is to have schools all over the country. Schools where the intentional self-care in the building is prima for the adults, it makes learning better student achievement goes up.

It's a win-win situation for everyone.

Jethro Jones: And we didn't talk about it, but you did mention that you have a frame around parent involvement. So let's talk about that a little bit and how, how do you, how do you see the parents getting more involved, being more, the same page, one of the things that I believe very deeply is that education is the responsibility of the parents.

And we as schools step in to help. And a lot of schools take the opposite approach that we sometimes partner with parents. And I think that's [00:20:00] that's a shameful way to approach it, that. We, we should prioritize being their partners rather than trying to get them to buy into what we are doing because really they're ultimately responsible for their students.

And it was, it was funny, I was having a discussion about this and one of the, the educators that I was talking to said, well, parents don't have accountability when their kids aren't doing what they're supposed to. And I was like, man. Changing your family tree and having the repercussions for a lifetime.

You don't think that that is accountability for parents? That definitely is. And there's no parent out there who doesn't want their kid to be more successful than them unless they're a psychopath and, and they do exist, but they're very, very rare. Everybody wants what's best for their own kids. And so how does this help with the parent involvement and the parent communication and interaction?

Dr Tyrone Burton: You know, being a former principal, I can tell you and I can identify with a lot of what you [00:21:00] said. the, the, the problem is that as principals sometimes we're so busy about the. The running of school to include testing to include the, the, the, the care for the adults, the building and including safety, all those kind of things that we don't have time to effectively parents.

And that's, that's the bottom line. It's educating parents. So, because we know principals don't have sometimes time to wanna do it adequately. at their requests, we do workshops for them. one, one of the other schools I did a, a parent workshop at the parents were so excited because for the first time they understood their role as parents.

They understood their, they understood their children better, and one of those parents actually became a school leader and. We're gonna be working at her school next year. 'cause she loved the process such because she understood her child. She was much more relaxed as a parent [00:22:00] and she worked with the school much more fluently.

So it was a game changer, a a game changer for the parents as well. This really is, and I'm not just sitting 'cause we do it, but it really is a win-win situation. We just need more traction. We just need more. More people to, to understand the process and understand how easy it is to do this and how valid it is for the educators and the students in the building.

Yes, everybody is a win-win.

Jethro Jones: Yeah, so how do people get in touch with you, Tyrone, and learn more about this?

Dr Tyrone Burton: Go to my website, www dot passion driven leadership at org. My email address t burton at passion. Leadership org and call me three four four three nine four nine. Real easy to get easy.

Jethro Jones: Very good. Okay. Well, Tyrone, thank you so much for being on Transformative principle today. It was great to talk to you again and great to see the progress that you're making since we last talked. So thank you very much for [00:23:00] being here.

Dr Tyrone Burton: It's always my pleasure, sir. I enjoy talking to you. You ask very thoughtful questions and very, you ask questions that really make sense, common sense, and in this age of common sense leaving, you're one of the few people that really. Have common sense and they really want the best for the boys and girls and the teachers in the building.

Jethro Jones: Great. Thank you so much. ~Okay, so now we're gonna do the introduction. Oh, sorry.~

Dr Tyrone Burton: ~Okay?~

Jethro Jones: ~That's all right. Figure that now we'll do the introduction and basically I'm just gonna say what talk about our previous episode from 2021. Crazy. It's been three years already. Can you believe that? And, and then we'll, we'll do the intro.~

~Okay.~

Dr Tyrone Burton: ~Okay.~

Jethro Jones: ~Alright. ~