Transformative Principal

Jethro Jones: 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.

Okay.

All right.

Welcome to Transformative Principal.

I'm your host, Jethro Jones.

You can find me on all the social networks at Jethro Jones.

Transformative Principal is a proud member of the BE Podcast Network, which has some of the greatest educational podcasts out there.

You can find all of our shows@bepodcastnetwork.com.

We got something for just about everybody, and if we have something or we don't have something in you, I. Want to have something, let me know and let's talk about it and we'll make a podcast.

I love helping people make new podcasts and there's enough stuff out there that we could make things for everybody.

So if you're interested, let me know.

At Jethro Jones on our social media, uh, today I'm excited to have Derek Mitchell on the program.

He's the CEO of Partners in School Innovation and Under.

Derek's leadership of partners.

The organization has adapted to a dynamic educational landscape and grown to address an expanding need for equity centered school improvement.

He's done a ton of stuff.

We're not gonna get into all that.

You can read the bio at Transformative Principal dot org.

Derek, welcome to Transformative Principal.

Great to have you.

Derek Mitchell: Thank you.

Thank you, Jeff Row.

It's wonderful to be here and uh, I've had a chance to experience some of your earlier work.

Very exciting.

Very, very proud to have this opportunity.

Appreciate you.

Jethro Jones: Th thank you.

And, uh, the, this connection happened because, uh, will Parker had you on the show And Will Parker's a dear friend of mine, the Principal Matters podcast.

Derek Mitchell: Yeah.

Jethro Jones: so I would encourage everybody to go listen to that show also because it's good.

And, and Derek said some good stuff on there that we're probably not gonna get to today 'cause we're taking a different.

Uh, a different tack today.

Uh, so what we're gonna talk about today is some of our hopes coming out of the pandemic, and it's been a, just a second.

I'm gonna mute you there, Steven.

There we go.

All right.

He's muted.

So we're good now.

Um,

what we're gonna talk about today is about some of the hopes that we had coming outta the pandemic and how that would happen.

It's been.

O over five years since the pandemic started.

And so, Derek, let's start by just talking about what were some of the hopes you had after the pandemic of how people would act and interact and, and do school?

What, what did you hope for?

Derek Mitchell: Yeah.

Uh, thanks for that question.

Uh, Jeff, I, I have to say that, uh, uh, I remain very disappointed at our society's response, um, to the pandemic overall.

Um, and the, you know, shattered hopes that I had for how we would respond, um, and treat our public school system coming out of the pandemic.

Uh, for some reason, I guess I was naive in thinking that.

the role that schools play would be, uh, deeply and more powerfully respected.

Um, coming out after the pandemic because we got a much more thoughtful appreciation for how teachers are, can innovate to better meet the needs of kids.

how community communities around the schools can mobilize, um, and be adaptive, um, and responsive to a variety of both, you know, low Maslow and high Maslow needs.

Um, and overall the role that schools play in our economy.

uh, in our country, I mean, our schools are the places where every other career is, is born.

Jethro Jones: Yeah.

Derek Mitchell: and, and I thought that after having a period of time where we didn't have access in the traditional ways, um, folks would lean in more powerfully and more thoughtfully and say, oh my God, we have to do better by our teachers and our leaders.

Um, than we have in the past.

And frankly, that's simply not what's happened.

There's higher degrees of disrespect, uh, much less appreciation for our public school system and frankly, a lot of, of disengagement

Jethro Jones: Mm-hmm.

Derek Mitchell: and importance, uh, of schooling.

Um.

Jethro Jones: Yeah.

Well, and, and one of those things, uh, that you're talking about is this idea of the school being a community center and a place for everybody
in the community to be able to go and, and have support and that your kids go through and, and then they bring you into the school also.

And, and that definitely hasn't.

Hasn't happened.

And it, um, it coinciding with that are the fears around, um, school shootings and things where now schools are becoming hardened locations and, and by necessity that makes them less welcoming and less inviting places.

And so I, I moved down to Spokane, Washington where I live now, uh, in, uh, June of 2020.

And.

It was in the middle of the pandemic.

Uh, we homeschooled our kids for that next year.

'cause the, the schools were all closed and they were all doing virtual school.

And I knew that would be terrible with my kids not having any connection.

And then when they opened back up, I, I'd been in the school system and all the previous places we'd lived, so I was connected.

And then when I went back and tried to engage with the schools, I felt like I was blocked out.

Like they didn't want me to be there.

They didn't want me to be part of it.

And.

And so there's society that is let down our schools, but schools have also let down, uh, the rest of us in, in making it less welcoming and less inviting.

And, and there are a whole bunch of issues that go along with this.

What, how would you react to some of that?

Derek Mitchell: Yeah, I, I totally understand and, and, and agree with that perspective there.

Uh, partners works with dozens of schools around the country right now, and the most effective leaders have figured out a way.

Um, to, to think about their school as something more than just what happens inside the walls of that building.

Jethro Jones: Mm-hmm.

Derek Mitchell: Right?

Um, they figured out how to robustly partner with parents.

I. How to thoughtfully create relationships and partnerships with industry around the school businesses in close proximity to it.

Um, the public engagement around the community itself.

Everything from crosswalk management to, you know, to, uh, strategic partnerships with, with, uh, uh, different stores nearby.

Um, and, and it hinges on a couple of things that you alluded to.

First, this, this idea of the school as a, as a central space for a robust set of services, offerings, and community.

Will I. Because

Jethro Jones: Mm-hmm.

Derek Mitchell: place can be that, it should be the place where we, our children spend most of their waking hours, I mean, the schools are, are, are the center places for our hopes for our kids and their futures.

And so it's natural that they become the place where, where we focus a lot of our attention.

Um, but as you, as you described.

There are so many different needs that we're expecting schools to meet now that weren't always traditionally a part of what schooling was.

This idea that schools are, are these hardened spaces, um, to be more protective against different types of intrusions.

Um, those of us who grew up in our inner cities have experienced that pretty much.

As a basic way of doing schooling.

You know, everything from metal detectors to armed guards, the, the, you know, the whole nine yards.

and so and so you can do those things and also have a, a school that is embracing of community, that is respectful of parents and the partnership that you must have with them in order for their students to learn and thrive.

Uh, it's

Jethro Jones: Yeah.

Derek Mitchell: school is properly prepared to do that.

Jethro Jones: Yeah.

E exactly.

And I really appreciate how you, a couple times you said that schools partner with parents, not ask parents to partner with them.

Because the reality is, is that our students, their first teachers are their parents and their last teachers are their parents.

And regardless of the efforts we put in at school.

We are not going to out teach the culture that they have at home.

And so we have to understand that we have to work with the parents and, and partner with them, and, and that's important because a lot of people see it the other way, that we need to get parents to partner with us.

But just in the language we use and you used it too, we need to partner with parents rather than the other way around.

I so appreciate that you said that and expanding the school beyond the four walls, can you give a couple examples of how people are, schools are doing that right now, that you're working with?

Derek Mitchell: Certainly.

So, uh, there's a brilliant middle school in Los Angeles.

Um.

That is tackling like a lot of our middle schools, this chronic truancy epidemic that's happened as a result of the pandemic.

Um, typically about in between 30 and 40% of middle schoolers are chronically truant.

This means they're missing a. to 15 days of school, without excuse, right?

Um, that was, it was never that much before, but it's become a kind of a, a of a epidemic in our, in our schools.

Um, this principals, uh, tried a number of the ways that we typically try to reengage students calling their households, you know, um, connecting with other adults who we know, know the child, uh, trying to figure out where they are because in many cases.

You know, they just relocated and moved around, um, no longer living where they were before, et cetera.

And that didn't have much, much of a stake.

And instead, this principal, uh, did what really smart school leaders do.

Um, she asked the students, she asked them, why aren't many of you coming to school?

And they gave her a whole host of answers.

Um, and she identified a couple of those answers and, and, and developed strategies to kind of mitigate the problems that were or talked about.

And in our work at Partners, we would never have thought of these things as, as potential solutions to a chronic truancy problem, but because she listened to students.

Um, the two strategies she put in place first is she partnered with a local laundromat to put a laundry center in the school.

And it sounds crazy when you think about it.

Um, why would there be a laundry center in the school, but a quarter of her students are housing insecure.

And when you're housing insecure, you're not gonna have clean clothes all the time.

If you're not gonna have clean clothes and you're a middle school student, you know, you're probably gonna find reasons not to show up in school, right?

Because, uh, middle school is a hard place to be when you, when you can't be Stalin and profile, right?

Um, and so she created this opportunity for kids to actually clean and dry their, their clothes before and after school, and the attendance popped.

Because of that.

second strategy, which I also would never have thought is she, she put a room in the school where, uh, young women for the school can get their hair done an hour before school starts.

Who would've thought that not having your hair right.

Would be a reason for young people to not come to school.

But with social media the way it is now and students constantly taking photographs of each other and, and putting each other on blast in,
in the social sphere, um, not having your hair right could be a real problem, uh, for young, uh, young ladies in the school specifically.

And so she created this opportunity where work together with one another, um, by partnering with a salon that's down the street.

she now has a, a, a, a pop-up salon in the school, uh, three mornings of every mornings of the week.

And the, her attendance problems dropped by 50%, so she had 52% of the students chronically joined at the start of last year.

It's down to 20% now.

Jethro Jones: Yeah, that's.

Derek Mitchell: all only strategies you can do if you're in, if you're open to the kind of innovative solutions that students themselves can come up with.

But then you are also able to partner robustly with resources that are right, literally right on the other side of the wall in some cases,

Jethro Jones: Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, and what I love about this is that people outside of schools see the value and benefit of working with a school for several different reasons, not the least of which.

Is that especially if these kids are truant from school and they're out causing trouble in the neighborhood, then they, one can get to know these kids and see who they are and maybe find a way to build some common ground with them.

But then if, if they bring those services into the school, then that's, that's the place where they can have some of these things, uh, happen and, and not be, you know, bound to only what's happening outside of this or inside of the school versus outside.

It's not this.

Uh, fight between them anymore.

Um, I'll, I'll put a link in the show notes to my TEDx, talk about what we did to deal with our absenteeism and, and truancy and, and all that.

And, you know, there's so many different ways to do it and all that it takes, and I hope that you'll, you'll gimme some insight into this.

All it takes is stopping.

Looking at the problem and really trying to design a solution to that problem that you're facing.

What worked there may not work at your school.

That's okay.

There is something that can work.

What would you add to that, Derek?

Derek Mitchell: I, I would say, uh, once you stop, then you listen,

Jethro Jones: Mm-hmm.

Derek Mitchell: right?

You, you listen to your, to your broader community.

And in the case of this principal, she listened to her students, um, and, and the staff at the school.

Um, we school leaders we're often called upon to know everything, and it's not possible.

It's not possible that any one person can know everything.

Um, but instead, you know, the, the wisdom lies in community more often than not.

And the solution set that's gonna be, you know, uh, responsive to your individual problems, uh, are more likely to emerge if you're actually engaging the, the folks who are closest to that challenge to that problem.

It's a, it's a core principle of improvement science, by the way, to just engage the, the, those who are closest to the problem, to crafting potential solutions to it.

Jethro Jones: Yeah.

And, and that is definitely something that, uh, I've learned from interviewing so many people, um, and turning my schools around the same kind of thing.

The people who are there know what the problem is.

A lot of times they don't have the support to make any changes and somebody else is preventing them from making those changes.

And other times they just don't have the courage to make those changes.

And they think if they do it, they're gonna get slapped down or, or told to shut up and you can't make this change.

When in reality they can solve the problem very quickly because they know exactly what the issue is and, but they may not be able to articulate it even, but they know some things to do to solve it.

Derek Mitchell: So in our work we talk about, um, there really being three reasons why adults may not do what they need to do for kids to learn more powerfully and adaptively.

we talk about it being about skills.

So really having the actual technical skills to accomplish the thing that you need to accomplish.

Whatever those skills are.

If it's a teacher, it's the pedagogical skills.

If it's a leader, it's the leadership skills.

Um, we talk about the will, whether you really want to do it.

Sometimes doing hard things require you to actually behave differently yourself as a leader, as a teacher.

And adults just don't want They don't want to do what that thing is.

They may not believe it's the right thing.

They may not have enough, you know, energy to bring to the problem at this particular point in time.

They may think it's so much like so many things we tried before.

So why would it work in this context in this time when it didn't work another time, but whatever the reason, the will to actually change is that second thing.

And the third is having a plan, having a way forward knowing what to do, right?

Um, and so some combination of those three things are often the barriers for, for folks on the ground in schools to do what they need to, to deliver for kids.

And they're all surmountable, right?

You build will by developing community.

Leveraging peers, um, you know, go to the teacher that that teacher really likes and say, Hey, how can we help Susie understand how to better 1, 2, 3, and a, B, c?

I mean, you know, it's not, not rocket science.

Um, having a plan is really the responsibility of leadership, Sometimes it's an articulation issue.

Sometimes it's just a, a, a, a question of not believing in the strategy.

But the point is, if you have a way forward that you believe can deliver for kids and families, it's your responsibility to communicate that
thoughtfully, to engage others, to build deep understanding of it, and to then hold folks accountable, you know, to to, to moving along that path.

Um, and then skill building is a core part of what every school's supposed to be about.

Not just the skill of the kids, the skill of the adults too, right?

Um, creating the systems where they're learning all the time.

You know how to better get better and better at whatever it is they're trying to do.

Right?

Jethro Jones: Yeah.

Derek Mitchell: work at Partners is often about helping leaders craft the plan, develop the will of the other adults, um, and build the skills to execute against, um, the plans that they're attempt to do.

And if the main thing is you may have chosen the wrong strategy.

That happens.

what we wanna do is help you fail faster so that you realize, oh, we gotta change course, right?

Um, and so you've failed enough, fast enough to go, this isn't gonna get us where we need to go.

So you feel okay letting go of that piece and picking up something that will, will help you get further along, uh, on your journey, right?

Jethro Jones: Yeah.

And, and

Derek Mitchell: right?

Jethro Jones: exactly.

I, I love your point about schools are supposed to be about learning and, and that's for everybody involved and often they're not.

And that's one of my big frustrations is that we had an opportunity to learn a lot during the pandemic and I feel like we didn't learn anything as schools and, and that's very frustrating for me because it was such a great opportunity to just.

Like throw a bunch of stuff out.

The reason why we have this truancy issue now is that we told kids school doesn't matter.

When the pandemic happened, we froze all their grades.

We canceled graduations, we canceled all the tests, and we said this was all made up.

And the problem is, is that kids said, oh, it's all made up.

Uh, okay.

Then I guess it's all made up.

And then, and then we came back to school and they're like, wait a minute.

You, you told us this was made up.

Why should I believe anything you say now?

And we had an opportunity to reframe and change how we did things, and we could have done it.

And some schools have, but a lot of schools just wanted to go back to the way things were instead of learning from it and growing from it.

They, they didn't want to do that.

And, and I find that that very challenging.

Derek Mitchell: Yeah.

To some,

Jethro Jones: And I, I love what you said.

Derek Mitchell: Yeah,

Jethro Jones: ahead.

Derek Mitchell: some degree.

Um, the innovations that grew out of the pandemic happened around schooling, not within schooling.

Right.

It was, it was the, the parents who were frustrated that schools wouldn't reopen.

And so they created their own pod schools that are in some cases now more effective at, at their students' learning than the original schools used to be.

And so now schools want kids back, but parents have a better solution that they're implementing themselves for their, for their, for their clusters of kids.

Um, and so what I, I also thought, um, that.

The pandemic was an opportunity to do incredible innovations, right, um, in how schools should function.

I, I, I rarely bemoan, um, career choices of my own, but I had, I had had an opportunity to, to go inside and lead a school district just before the pandemic, and I didn't take that opportunity.

Um, and I kick myself now because I'm like, man, you could have been leading one of these systems at a time when you had more resources than you can spend, and every reason in the world to do things a different way, right?

Um, uh, but we forget that was what was also happening was people were dying, right?

People were deathly ill, you know, in large, large numbers.

Um, and there was a great deal of fear.

I. Right.

Teachers were afraid to be in classrooms, you know, uh, kids and parents were afraid to have strangers over.

I mean, there was a lot of fear at the same time.

Um, and so you had fear, you had all these other different opportunities to innovate.

You had all these resources poured in, you know, from the federal government.

Um, and uh, and yeah, I agree that our response was so challenging, particularly in the use of technology.

I mean, anyone who's been in the school reform work for any hot minute of time would tell you that to suddenly expect every teacher to master a technology based way of
learning without any training or support, or to show up in the, you know, to a household, uh, where folks can't frying toilet paper with laptops and stay here, I mean,

Jethro Jones: I know.

Derek Mitchell: you those are nonphysical things to do.

what we did right.

In, in,

Jethro Jones: Yeah,

Derek Mitchell: Uh,

Jethro Jones: I,

Derek Mitchell: you know, it, it was a learning journey for everybody along the way, I

Jethro Jones: yeah.

Derek Mitchell: Um, and

Jethro Jones: And, and so we need.

Yeah, we need to have grace and compassion also, but we still need to continue to move forward and continue to improve.

And I really like those, those three reasons you mentioned of why adults don't do what they should to help kids learn the skills, the will and the plan.

And if any one of those is missing, then it, it becomes exponentially more difficult.

So if you're not sure if you've got all those, then you better check and, and make sure.

So we've, we've talked about a lot of, yeah, please go ahead.

Derek Mitchell: is treat a skill problem like a will problem.

Jethro Jones: Yes.

Oh yeah.

Derek Mitchell: like a way problem.

I

Jethro Jones: Yep,

Derek Mitchell: you know, it's deeply disrespectful for teachers to be told, you know, uh, to try to build skills they already have.

Jethro Jones: yep.

Derek Mitchell: what are you doing?

This is a waste of my time.

Right.

Jethro Jones: Yeah.

Derek Mitchell: the same with, you know, really trying to build will with folks who the problem isn't will, they just don't understand what you're asking them to do.

Jethro Jones: Yep.

Derek Mitchell: Um, so you also have to adjust your pedagogy, your adult learning.

To where the challenge is, right?

Jethro Jones: Mm-hmm.

Derek Mitchell: everybody like they're all having the same challenge, which is almost always not the truth.

Jethro Jones: Yeah.

Derek Mitchell: Right.

Jethro Jones: Uh, so this has been a great conversation.

Really appreciate you coming on Transformative principle and talking.

Derek, my last question I ask everybody is, what is one thing that a principal can do this week to be a Transformative leader like you?

Derek Mitchell: Um, what comes to mind right now for me, the one thing that I think our, our, our building leaders should do, is manage their time more strategically.

Right.

Uh, what I suggest for building leaders is to do two things that will make their lives vastly, uh, better, um, and enable 'em to be more effective.

The first is to plan space between things.

So zero back to back meetings, zero zippo.

Not a none, not a single one.

and, and they always look at me like I'm crazy when I say it.

but the ones who are able to make this happen for themselves, they get it.

And I explained it to them by saying, listen, in every meeting you're in with others, you're making promises, right?

You're deciding on courses of action.

You're, you're, you're thinking about new strategies, new tactics, new tools, new processes, new relationships, but, and you have no time to execute on what it is you're promising and thinking about if you back to back yourself.

I. So force into every, every schedule, 30 minutes between everything and I mean everything, And if you have to travel, make it longer.

that way you really do, uh, have the time to deliver against what it is.

You're talking to all these folks in all these, these, these situations about.

And the second is to schedule blocks of time where you're in classrooms without fail.

I. Right.

Um, just literally make it a, you know, there's a Tuesday block and a Wednesday block and a Friday block that there's nothing else happens in that time.

But you being out there inspecting what you expect community with the other adults to help kids learn, knowing the students and their needs, um, uh, uh, being really present.

'cause there's nothing communicates respect better than proximity.

Jethro Jones: Y Yeah.

And, and on that piece of being in the classrooms, a lot of people think that means that you're there doing observations and giving feedback to teachers,

Derek Mitchell: Mm-hmm.

Jethro Jones: that's not the only reason to be in the classroom.

The, the more important reason in my mind is to talk with your teachers and understand where they're at and how they see the vision of where the school's going and whether or not we're living up to it.

Because the cool thing is, is that.

You don't have to do as many observations when you know that the teachers are doing the vision of the school.

And so the observation, sure, they're important, but let's be honest, teachers don't want feedback from their principal all the time.

What they want is a conversation that's ongoing, and sometimes there's feedback.

Sometimes it's, Hey, gimme an idea about this.

Other times it's, it's something else entirely.

But the thing is.

It can be so much more than just go in and do observations.

At the beginning of my career, I thought I needed to just do observations.

By the end, I was doing very little observations because that wasn't where the important work was happening, and I wasn't, that wasn't the best use of my time.

So these are two very good suggestions.

Plan space between meetings and scheduled blocks of time in classrooms, not only to observe.

Um, if people wanna connect with you more, what's the best way to do that, Derek?

Derek Mitchell: best way is to email me, um, at dMitchell@partnersinschools.org.

Um, and you can find, you know, the partners work on our website to searching partners in school Innovation.

Jethro Jones: Excellent.

Very good.

Well, I've got links to that in the show note, so please feel free to check that out at Transformative principle.org.

Thank you so much for being here, Derek, it was great to have you on the show today.

Derek Mitchell: It's wonderful to be here.

Thank you for what you do.

Jethro, for all the leaders and teachers who are learning what they can from this podcast.