Transformative Principal

jethro_2_04-23-2025_143737: Welcome to Transformative Principle, where I help you stop putting out fires and start leading.

I'm your host, Jethro Jones.

You can follow me on Twitter at Jethro Jones.

Jethro D. Jones: Welcome to Transformative Principal.

I am so excited to have Craig Randall back on the program.

He was originally on the show in episode, what was that, 3 86,

Craig Randall: Exactly.

Jethro D. Jones: Uh.

Craig Randall: I have no idea.

Jethro D. Jones: So talked about, uh, trust-based observations.

His book, uh, way back then that was over.

Four years ago.

Uh, and so a lot has happened since then.

Um, he now has his own podcast called 20 Minutes of Teaching Brilliance on the Road with Trust-based Observations.

And what's really cool about this podcast is he basically will watch a lesson, a 20 minute lesson, see somebody doing something cool, and then record a podcast interview with him about it.

Anything else you wanna say about that podcast?

Craig Randall: Uh, well, I, I wanna tell you how it started, actually.

I is.

So,

Jethro D. Jones: Yeah, let's do

Craig Randall: as maybe, you know, when you finish writing a book, everyone's like, what are you gonna write about next?

When are you gonna write about next?

And then.

When you haven't written a book, you don't know how hard it is, but once you've written a book, you're like, never.

But eventually you kind of get over that and, and so I'm on the road.

A lot of weeks of the year, and I'm pretty sure I observe more teachers through the lens of teacher observation than any human being on earth.

That's not hyperbole.

I really think that that's true and the 20 minute observations, as you know, and they're unannounced and of course you see the whole gamut from stuff that's not so great to stuff That's really amazing and.

I was in the UK, gosh, almost two years ago, and I was at this school and it was a fifth grade math class, and the teacher had all the kids on the floor and they all had their mini whiteboards.

So they're all doing the problems with her, which of course everyone actively involved is great, and they're going over the problems and the different ways kids were able to solve it and having kids come up to the board.

And so she does this with a couple of kids with the first problem, and then she says, so if you failed.

Tell me how you failed and I cringed, like thinking failed.

But then the most amazing thing happened.

All the kids started saying, oh, oh, can I tell you how I failed?

Can I tell you how I failed?

And they were so excited.

And instantly I knew something magical was going on because she had created failures opportunity.

And so we ended up having the reflective conversation afterwards and she believed in this so much that she had really trained the whole school and the whole school's culture was about that.

And then I thought, uh, wow.

I know it could be a book where you could have a yearly series and these teachers write about it and I just edit it.

And then we have a mutual friend, Mike Caldwell, who is great guy, and he comes with great ideas, but they always add extra work.

So I kind of love and hate Mike at the.

So I tell him the idea and he says, Craig, no, no, no.

You need to make it into a podcast.

So that's how it came to be.

20 minutes of Teaching Brilliance and we're on the road and I'll see 20 minutes where I'm like, oh my gosh, that's so amazing.

And so we get on and we kind of riff like you and I are doing now for 30 minutes about what they're doing.

That's really cool.

Hoping that other teachers can learn from it and grow their own practice.

Jethro D. Jones: Yeah, and, and people definitely can.

The podcast is doing well, and it is, it is valuable, and because I'm in this unique position where I get to see.

Uh, many different podcasts because of the B Podcast Network, and I get to see how, uh, different shows are doing.

It's been really interesting to see where different shows are performing compared to others.

And shows like yours, like Gene Tab, Brunetti's, uh, better teaching only stuff that works are doing really well because people want to improve and are looking for, more ways to support their own growth and development.

And that is really amazing and exciting when that happens.

And you get to see that.

Don't worry, we can edit out that dog barking.

Craig Randall: Sorry, I'm going upstairs now.

Jethro D. Jones: It's all good.

Um, so you, you mentioned the, the, the hurdle of.

writing and you have a book and you're like, man, I don't ever wanna do that again, even though I know I can do it.

So I've written two books and um, and I'm now working on my dissertation and I'm feeling that same big mountain in front of me that I know I gotta get done.

I know that I can do it.

But it's still overwhelming and frustrating to think like, Ugh, when am I gonna find the time?

How am I gonna make this work?

But you just gotta do it.

And so, uh, any advice for me on that front while I'm thinking about that piece?

Craig Randall: Man riding is hard.

Like even, even when you know it, even when it's like.

I somehow accidentally developed trust-based observations and so like it was just taking it from my mind to paper.

But man, it's hard, but especially when you're like putting date, like with your dissertation, you have to combine research into your writing in a smooth way that's a little more academic than my writing.

But I think combining your own words with research is hard.

It's super hard.

And so I'm not sure it's about.

It's doing it every day.

And, and, and it's like when I wrote the trust based observations, it was, I went to a coffee shop Monday through Friday and I went, I, I couldn't write eight hours a day, but I would go from about noon to five, noon to six, and I went every and some days I'd get a paragraph, and some days I'd get three pages and, and, and, and, but I went every day.

And, and I really, really think that.

That really factor and something that I've discovered recently, and I think I've always known it, but like we process when we're into sleep, our, our mind is resetting and it processes and do you ever wake up at three or four and you've got that idea?

Jethro D. Jones: Yeah.

Craig Randall: get that.

And I've had that and oh my God, I can't tell you how many times, probably thousands of times in my life I'm like, oh, I'll remember that when I wake up.

Gone.

And so one of the things that I've gotten way, way better at is now I, if it's three 30 or sometimes I can just speak it into my phone real quick and remember it, but then sometimes the, the motor just starts spinning and now I've just.

Get up and now I've been trying to find a way I'm not as great as as I want, but like I find like five to 8:00 AM for me and it's just maybe my own bio clock.

Like I find that is when I'm most on fire.

Um, yeah.

Jethro D. Jones: Yeah.

So I, I'm glad you mentioned that because one of the things that I've done, uh, so I'll tell you how I wrote my other books, uh, which is not typical, but, but it worked for me is, um, I've had many times where the idea comes and I wake up at.

One or two or three in the morning, and then I just go start writing and my wife is like, what happened?

Where'd you go?

I just had this thing and I needed

Craig Randall: The source was driving me.

Jethro D. Jones: that's right.

So the, the way that I wrote my books is that I condensed it down into these.

Weekend retreats where I would spend, uh, five or six days, uh, broken up and I would crank out 10 to 20,000 words per day.

And I just, like, I just said, this is all I'm doing, and I would just do it.

And, and on my first book, I really just, I had the ideas and I'd been thinking about a long time, my second book.

I spent a lot of time planning and preparing, so I had like outlines of what I knew I needed to write about and different points that I wanted to hit.

And then I just banged it out and I, I found a journal the other day where I wrote down what my goals were for my writing and it was, it was really fascinating 'cause I was like.

My goal was to write 10,000 words today, and I got 11,000

Craig Randall: You kidding me?

Jethro D. Jones: yeah, it was crazy.

And I was all by myself and, and at one point the internet went out, so I couldn't do anything else.

I had no distractions.

It was the best thing ever.

Yes.

Yeah.

Oh, it was so good.

Craig Randall: Wow.

Jethro D. Jones: anyway,

Craig Randall: Well then you know what the point too is though, is that like everyone's process is gonna be a little bit different,

Jethro D. Jones: Exactly.

Craig Randall: do know this, if you don't do something or record that idea in the middle of the night, you'll lose it.

And, and so often it's gold and sometimes it's lost gold.

And, and so that one, I know for sure whatever your style is, but man writing is,

Jethro D. Jones: Yeah.

Craig Randall: I mean, I love it when you're in that zone and you like.

All of a sudden you look up and it's been 40 minutes and sometimes it's just been refining one paragraph, but you are like so in it like the rest of the world didn't even exist.

Like that's kind of a cool thing that that flow state or whatever that they talk about.

Yeah,

Jethro D. Jones: It, it really is.

so let's talk a little bit about how trust-based observations has evolved

Craig Randall: man.

Jethro D. Jones: Because you wrote the book, you got it out there, and now you've spent the last four years talking about it all the

Craig Randall: Training.

Jethro D. Jones: implementing it, training, training other people to train others, like, so what, what have been the big changes, the evolution that you've seen?

Craig Randall: So look, it was before it was.

I learned what I learned from, from my professor at Western Washington University, my mentor, my dear friend, Warren Owler.

And, and it evolved from that.

Not even necessarily, not even necessarily.

I didn't know I was creating anything.

It just, I was just working on it and just kept changing and growing and changing and growing.

And, and then about 16, 17, somebody said, you need to protect your work.

And that's when I finally started to realize, oh, maybe there was something more here.

And it evolved and evolved and evolved.

So before though, it was just me practicing it with my teachers one or two times I had an assistant principal with me, so I was just, all I had was my own schema.

And so then you get out there every week and your training school leaders on it, training principals on it, and you learn things every single week like.

I always say like one of the things with trust-based observations is like, I wanna contrast maybe a coaching model where when you're doing an instructional coaching model, oftentimes when that coach is working with the teacher, it's like, what do you wanna work on?

And I think what we really talk about is that we all have blind spots though.

So if we leave it just to that model.

They might not choose the thing that could have the biggest impact on improved teaching and learning.

And so one of the things that I'm able to say, which I think adds more value to the importance of that is that every single week, every single week when I'm training, I learn something new that modifies.

Trust-based observations in a little way.

Somebody like Mike Caldwell, our, our, our, our good friend, he, he, when we trained him, we have an area of the form called working memory.

It's about cognitive load capacity and we timestamp it and then we would list what the activity was.

And there's a timestamp column on the right hand side.

And then you list with the little reflection of processing activity is we also have something called the learning principles pyramid, which is a variant of that old fashioned.

Percentage that you retain of information, but we'd modernize it to be much more accurate.

And Mike said, Craig, why don't you put those eight areas that are on that up in that section too.

So you're labeling what kind of work is going on in there and like, this is just one example, but adding that section to that has made an enormous difference because now what we do at the pyramid, at the bottom.

We cumulatively add the activities, the ones that are the active, we call it the power trio.

And if you spend more than half the time, 11 or more minutes in that, 'cause research shows when you're doing active.

Learning, you're gonna retain and learn the most and learn with most depth when it's 11 or more.

Rewrite the total minutes to highlight, look, you've spent this much time outta 20 minutes in there.

Like that idea never would've happened on my own.

And I'm the guy that developed it.

I have blind spots, right?

So I learn every week with blind spots.

And it makes trust-based observation so much better.

And, and like that's just one example.

Jethro D. Jones: Yeah, so I, I think that that's a really good example because it's, it's evolving.

The form and the process also, but doesn't necessarily require new training

Craig Randall: Not that part.

I mean, I'll, I'll send updated versions of the form and, and I'll explain it or say we can jump on a zoom and, and, and do it.

That yeah, that part doesn't cause new training at all.

But like, but here's another thing that's evolved is so like the training is super intent.

It's 40 hours.

Onsite at your school, practicing with your teachers 12 to 14 times over the course of the week, and it's in line with research on mastery that says you need to practice something six or seven times to really master it.

It's because we want it to be so when we leave, you're only gonna get better at it.

Jim Knight recently put out something on, on workshops and and professional development.

He said like these one-off things like this, that we go to a conference in an hour like.

We oftentimes don't remember and it needs to be continuing.

And so because we feel like we're living that, we're really proud of that.

But at the end of the week, we talk about the other pieces that aren't the actual observation piece.

So there's two big pieces with that.

There's more than that, but two that we talk about.

One is in year two.

For the nine areas of pedagogy, we tap into our in-house experts to have monthly professional development led by in-house experts, and the teachers get to choose one of those areas to work towards mastering in that year.

So we're giving them support in that.

We ask a follow-up question about that.

And the other area is we don't offer suggestions.

There's exceptions like with new teachers who are struggling with professional, with classroom management, but we don't offer suggestions until the fourth visit because we haven't built up enough trust.

And it takes time to fill that, that jar with Trus marbles and we find the fourth time works.

And so we talk about that on Friday afternoons.

But they're, so what, what I didn't realize at first is they're so overloaded with what I've been doing, what we've been doing together for the 40 weeks, they're really doing a five credit semester class in, in, in, in, in one week, is that they were not really implementing that.

Asking permission to offer a suggestion piece.

'cause that's the other piece on the fourth visit.

And we do it with that piece.

I'm just gonna tell a little bit more about that because I think it's important is, is like oftentimes as principles, we will say, Hey, I want you to get better at that, and just leave it like that.

Or we'll say, and here's an article, or maybe best case scenario, I'll send you to a workshop.

But like what I always say to that is like there's a huge hypocrisy between what we expect teachers to do as students, and we do as principals with leaders, and so.

Jethro D. Jones: Yes, I talk about that all the

Craig Randall: Exactly.

So we want it to be close to the same.

And the example I always use is we would never say to a third grader, Hey, Jethro, those multiplication facts need work.

Here's a, here's a multiplication table.

I'll see you in a month.

Right?

We would never do that, but that's kind of what we tend to do.

And so now what we do, our lens is always, which one of those nine areas would have the biggest impact on improved teaching and learning?

If I helped that teacher in that area.

So let's just say it was that working memory section where they wanted to add the reflection and processing activities.

So we always say we want you to ask permission to offer suggestions because when you ask, they're not being told and they're way more receptive.

But then we'll open up.

One of the things about our observation form, Jethro and anybody can go to the website and and click to get that, by the way, is that it has hyperlinks.

For each one of the nine areas that has actionable articles and book recommendations.

So we pick out an article that maybe had, there's one article that has 78 different activities that could be these reflection processing activities.

And then we're gonna say to the teacher, after we ask permission to work on this area, and they always say yes, say like, if you're gonna choose six or eight of these that really resonate with you, that you could do as the two minute processing activities with your kids, what would they be?

And then we're gonna say, okay, so if you were gonna just practice this with one of your sections or lessons or preps, which one would it be?

Let's pull up that lesson.

Okay.

So let's say there're 10th graders in their cognitive load capacities, 10 minutes.

Where do you think there's natural breaks in there?

Where?

Where, where we could add those reflection processing activities.

So at these six or eight that you highlighted, which one would you wanna do here?

Which one there?

And then we say.

Great.

So let's do this tomorrow.

There's four ways we can do it.

One, I can model it.

Two, we can co-teach it.

Three, you can do it, and I can give you feedback, either directed feedback in the moment or wait till afterwards or four, you can do it on your own and tell me about it later.

But if you do it on your own and it doesn't go the way you want sometimes called that implementation dip.

You gotta come get me 'cause you know I'm gonna be back in a month.

And then we go the next day and we observe them again or do whichever one of the ones they want me to do.

Then we have another reflective conversation where we ask three questions.

How to go with the new strategy.

What would you like to keep working on?

And this is the most important one.

What can I do to support you to make sure that it's built into your practice by the next time night?

I see you down month, down the road.

So we tell our trainees that on Friday afternoon, but they're so overloaded with what we've been practicing all week.

It's not manifesting.

So another example of a change is now we've added a part two training.

We come back in for two or three days because you don't need to build mastery of doing it over and over again, but you wanna practice a couple times and we go and do that.

Like that's another example of like how trust-based observations has evolved over the four years of where I just didn't know ahead of time.

And we just learn and keep changing.

Jethro D. Jones: Yeah, that's, that's really fascinating and it's, it's good that it is built from the beginning to be fluid and.

and that it's not like, well, you know, we did the research on it and this is the only way to do it and it has to be done with fidelity.

And if it's not, then you know, you can kiss any gains goodbye, which drives me nuts.

So what I'm curious about though is what has not evolved?

What did you start with where you're like, man, that was so solid.

I am I, I was seeing the future when I wrote that, and what hasn't changed that you think is still incredibly valuable.

Craig Randall: Well, I'm not gonna give myself that much credit for see future, but, but I would say that the nine areas on the form and the learning principles like the, just the it's core practice areas, so those haven't changed at all.

But I think the other thing really is that it is about.

Relational trust.

Like the research from the trust in schools people says that relational trust is central to academic improvement.

Without that piece being there, it doesn't really matter what we do.

We're not gonna see improvement.

I. Which is why the traditional models, when you rate pedagogy don't work because that erodes trust.

And, and, and it actually, I, I've read a lot more research on how it causes harm.

And actually this is the most frightening to me besides increasing teacher dissatisfaction, is it decreases teachers sense of efficacy.

So like, I'm really lucky Hadie endorsed trust-based observations and says.

TBO as we call it, is collective teacher efficacy in action.

How can I do collective teacher efficacy in action when the way I'm doing observations is lowering self-efficacy?

So to your point, we have to work to build trust, and it sounds counterintuitive to have that reflective conversation to an observation.

Be the place that you do it.

But when you transform, the way you do it, when you make it about sharing strengths, when you make it, about asking them questions about practice that says, I value you and what you have to say, like the core of what trust-based observations is in terms of.

That and that it takes time and we have to diligently, continually work on that.

'cause relationships only get better or worse.

And so that is the core.

And without that all the other stuff that we're talking about, it'd just be like the others and not improving practice.

Jethro D. Jones: Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Oh, that's good.

You know, I, you, you talked about trust as either growing or dying or something like that.

You said something like that.

Um, of the aspects of my dissertation that I'm working on is how.

Organic skills are developed through the work that I do with principals, through my

Craig Randall: Yeah.

Jethro D. Jones: and or I'm, I'm calling them organic skills because they are, uh, they're skills that are either growing or, or dying and they're not like these, uh, these mechanistic skills where they are.

Specific like you can or can't do this.

And I would say like knowing how to teach these nine areas of pedagogy is the mechanistic

Craig Randall: Yeah,

Jethro D. Jones: of

Craig Randall: I mean we,

Jethro D. Jones: how to do it or you

Craig Randall: yeah, sure.

Jethro D. Jones: Yeah.

So, but then the organic skill is knowing when to choose which one of those.

Uh, pedagogical approach is going to be best for your class, for your individual student.

But then that development of trust is also an organic skill that you have to work on continually, and that it doesn't, like, you don't get to a point where you're like, okay, I trust that person, and then you never have to work on it again.

That just, that doesn't happen.

And the closest we get to that is something like, you know, uh, my, my spouse or my kids.

Or my parents where we've been together for our whole entire lives.

And so I know that I can, that I can trust them to a certain extent, but even then, like sometimes there's falling out and stuff like that.

So it's not like it's, it's perfect and it, it's always growing and evolving and it's so hard to put your finger on it.

But when it's there, you can really tell.

And when it's not, you can really tell And.

And one of the things that, for the whole point of this is I had a, when I was a principal myself, I was doing the Danielson, uh, observation

Craig Randall: Yeah.

Jethro D. Jones: And it, you know, everybody gets raided with a number.

And one of my teachers, when she retired, she said, sincerely so and so, and then she put her number.

Uh, in her retirement letter, which was, which was such a kick to the stomach, that that's how she perceived.

I saw her as just a number and I can't say she was wrong, like I sucked at that time.

And so

Craig Randall: It also, those,

Jethro D. Jones: position.

Craig Randall: models create deficit thinking against your own best intentions.

They do.

Wow.

Wow.

I've, I've, go ahead.

Jethro D. Jones: Well, I was just gonna say, and what that taught me was, I've gotta do this differently.

And that's why when I read trust-based observations, I was like, well, this is what it is.

This is the way to do it, because you've got to build these, these feelings of trust first, and then you can say whatever you want because the trust is there and you can, you can say like, this is an area where you need to improve without it destroying them because they're like, oh, you care about me, you trust me.

You ask for permission.

I'm asking for this feedback.

Therefore, we're all good.

Craig Randall: You know, it, it's really interesting.

We wait till the fourth visit, uh, to offer suggestions, and I'll tell you how it first happened, and it's backed up by Brene Brown's research, which I'll talk about in a second too.

But my very first year as an assistant principal, I started doing, I. I didn't know trust-based observations, but what I'd learned in my supervision class, which is basically the, the basics of trust-based observations, and I had teachers, my very first year old and new say, oh, you're the best principal I ever had, and I didn't know.

Anything about what I was doing as a principal, except I knew how to do trust-based observation, what is now trust-based observations.

And teachers so appreciated having strengths shared with them.

It was so foreign to what they were doing.

They so appreciated that we started by asking them what they thought about what they were doing instead of telling that that's what they said.

And so I didn't get feedback at first.

For a lesser reason.

And then the real reason, the lesser reason was I knew even seeing them as much as I was once every three to four weeks, that was still 1% of the time.

So what if I offered a suggestion on something ever good at, but I hadn't seen yet?

I knew that would be bad, just intuitively.

But the real reason Jethro was I, I had these teachers say these really, really nice things about me, and I was afraid if I started offering suggestions, they wouldn't.

Me anymore.

And so, uh, the third and fourth round through at this school, well over half the teachers at the end of the reflective conversation said some version of, okay, okay, okay, but what can I get better at?

And, and I didn't know until way, way later when I realized I had something because we'd waited.

We trust had built, and Brene Brown talks about vulnerability, risk taking and trust, and the connection between them.

She says Vulnerability is not a bad thing in and of itself.

I looked to kind of like the amygdala.

It, it kind of tells us if something's wrong, so if our sense of vulnerability is too high, that maybe means something's off.

And so she says The way we lower vulnerability to get people to take risks is by building trust.

And so really I think what's happening during those first three, four times that we're talking about now that we've waited is, and she gets this analogy of.

You think of a jar and every action you take is putting a marble in the jar.

And the tr uh, the reflective conversation is all about all these highly specific actions that we take and strengths that we share that are marble, marble, marble in the jar.

And what we think happens is by the end of the fourth visit, that jar's full.

Some people it takes a little longer because maybe they've had traumatic experiences before, but that's how that whole piece has come together related to trust, relational trust and relationships.

And when that's there, exactly like you're saying, they want to grow, but they feel safe now and they know.

And Joe Throw, I think I've told you this before, but it's been a while, we tell the teachers literally.

Here's the goal of trust-based observations.

It's for anybody in our building that does observations to build enough trust with each one of you so that any one of us can come into your class, observe you, see you trying something new, and even though it's highly unlikely, have that thing you're trying be a train wreck.

But as opposed to that traditional observations that Danielson, that Marzano that whatever.

'cause they're all basically the same if you rate pedagogy where you'd be freaking out thinking, oh my God, this can't be happening to me today.

You won't be worried with trust based observations when we're in there or when we leave.

Because you know, the next day when I come into your classroom, the first thing I'm gonna say is, Jethro, I love that you were trying something new.

It's not always gonna work the way we, the way we plan high five or fist bump, and then we just say, because when we created those conditions, what's gonna happen?

You'll persist in taking risks.

So will every teacher in our building, and that means we're gonna grow individually, collectively, and do our most important job, improve teaching and learning.

And that's what this is all about.

It's not rocket science.

Jethro D. Jones: Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

And, and I, I saw that myself when I. not knowing about trust-based observations.

Uh, had a teacher say, I'm doing something brand new.

Do you wanna do my evaluation observation today?

And I was like, yeah, let's do it.

And, but that's not what people usually say to me, teacher.

And she was like, well, you know, I know you're gonna help me and help me be better, and I. I know that the, the final score on that doesn't really matter.

What matters is what I do in the classroom every day.

And, and that was, that was really powerful to me to see that, that it is possible.

Well, Craig, this has been awesome chatting with you.

Thank you again for being here.

Uh, 20 minutes of Teaching Brilliance on the road with trust-based observations is his podcast.

You can find the show, you can find a link to it in the show notes.

At Transformative Principal dot org, you can also hear his latest uh, episode with me, which was four years ago.

But here's the other cool thing we didn't even get to talk about is somebody did a dissertation.

On trust-based observations.

Valerie Debu, I said her name poorly 'cause I don't speak French.

And she corrected me on the podcast.

I said it right once when she was

Craig Randall: Yes.

Jethro D. Jones: but you can go check that out Also, that is in the show notes as well at Transformative Principal dot org.

And while you're there, sign up for my newsletter.

I'm doing some really cool stuff with that and I'd love to have you.

Thanks so much.

And Craig, thanks for being part of Transformative principle.

Craig Randall: Jethro, thanks so much.

And I just have to say really quickly, wow, what an honor to have somebody do a dissertation on your work.

So million.

Jethro D. Jones: Yeah.

Awesome.

Thank you.

We'll see it.