The Better Leaders Better Schools Podcast | The #1 Downloaded School Leadership Show

Freshmen fall behind because no one teaches the hidden curriculum. One school taught it and hit 99% credit sufficiency.Freshman year predicts graduation, yet most ninth graders walk in without knowing what a GPA, a transcript, or credit sufficiency means. That's the hidden curriculum, and Estella Evans Hamilton decided to stop hiding it.

At a 6A Oklahoma City high school with up to 1,300 freshmen, she built G-SAP Life: a 10-minute monthly routine where every student checks their GPA, sets a goal one letter grade higher, writes a plan, and tracks attendance.

Credit sufficiency jumped from roughly 65% to 85% in one year. Two years after the pandemic, it hit 99%.The real shift is ownership: students who know where they stand every month instead of finding out in April they're repeating ninth grade.

🧔🏻‍♂️THINK THROUGH YOUR NEXT LEADERSHIP MOVE:

https://myprincipalcoach.com — your AI-powered principal coach, available 24/7.

⌚️ TIMESTAMPS:

• 00:00 - How 99% of 1,300 freshmen stayed on track
• 04:12 - The freshman who loved his grandpa
• 05:47 - Why the pandemic proved the system worked
• 09:12 - The heartbreak behind G-SAP Life
• 13:12 - Teaching students systems from first grade up
• 18:25 - The credit sufficiency wall at lunch
• 19:41 - Why posting results is about more than recognition
• 23:06 - Academic wellness and the monthly folder
• 26:01 - Why no student plans to fail
• 32:15 - The five questions students answer monthly
• 34:50 - Taking the sting out of parent conferences
• 37:36 - Starting the GPA conversation before ninth grade
• 39:17 - Dream school principles and final takeaway

🫶 CONNECT WITH ESTELLA EVANS HAMILTON:

• Website: https://www.g-saplife.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eehgsaplife/
• Full episode transcript: here

🚵‍♀️ WHENEVER YOU ARE READY, HERE'S 3 WAYS TO HELP YOU DO SCHOOL DIFFERENT:

• 📬 Weekly newsletter: https://ruckusmakers.news/subscribe
• 📚 Monthly mini-books: https://ruckusmakers.media
• 🧭 Map your next 90-days: https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/principals-entry-plan/

🤝 TODAY'S RUCKUSCAST IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: IXL:

IXL's adaptive platform finds every student's knowledge gaps, adjusts difficulty as they learn, and gives you a dashboard showing exactly where growth is happening. 🔎 Over 1 million teachers use it — get started at https://ixl.com/leaders

ODP BUSINESS SOLUTIONS:

ODP Business Solutions has supplied schools for 30 years — converting dead computer labs into STEAM centers, stocking multiple campuses, upgrading whiteboards to interactive displays — all from a single supplier through cooperative contracts. 🔎 Learn more at https://odpbusiness.com/education

ORCHARD:

Orchard gives every student a personalized career action plan and scores readiness across 8 dimensions — a number you can take to your board. 🔎 See how it works at https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/

KIDS FIRST EDUCATION:

Kids First Education builds professional learning around your district's priorities, your data, and your classrooms — not pulled off a shelf — and 98% of educators walk out ready to use what they learned. 🔎 Partner with them at https://kidsfirst.llc/leaders

Tough conversations fail when principals soften the message so much it can't be heard. Here's what clear, kind feedback sounds like.

Tough conversations with teachers, staff, and caregivers are the part of school leadership nobody trains you for, so most principals avoid them or soften them until nothing changes. Superintendent Erika Bare and leadership coach Tiffany Burns, co-authors of A School Leader's Playbook for Tough Conversations, break down how to prepare, why the feedback sandwich fails, and what to do when a teacher on an improvement plan still isn't improving.

You'll get their caregiver framework (care, facts, the why, next steps, care again), the 10-second purpose check that keeps you on track when the other person goes off script, and how to answer excuses with data instead of debate. Plus why rescuing a struggling teacher from their own realization is the least kind thing you can do.

Clear is kind. Avoidance isn't.

THINK THROUGH YOUR NEXT LEADERSHIP MOVE

https://myprincipalcoach.com — your AI-powered principal coach, available 24/7.

⌚️ TIMESTAMPS:

• 00:00 - Danny's prepared conversation that still backfired
• 10:21 - Why principals avoid tough conversations
• 14:04 - Coaching up vs coaching out with dignity
• 17:32 - Why the feedback sandwich fails
• 21:13 - Learning hard conversations through practice
• 25:04 - Reflecting after a hard conversation
• 34:29 - Common mistakes leaders make in tough talks
• 37:13 - Framing hard news for caregivers
• 41:18 - Coaching a veteran teacher mailing it in
• 43:44 - Next steps when improvement plans stall
• 45:11 - The you seem miserable conversation
• 48:20 - Lack of will vs lack of skill
• 52:31 - Answering defensive teachers with data
• 54:31 - Yes, struggling teachers can turn it around

🔗 CONNECT WITH ERIKA BARE & TIFFANY BURNS:

• Website: https://www.connectingthroughconversation.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiffany-burns-90a50a274/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erika-bare-6a72a6215/

📆 WHENEVER YOU ARE READY, HERE'S 3 WAYS TO HELP YOU DO SCHOOL DIFFERENT:

• 📬 Weekly newsletter: https://ruckusmakers.news/subscribe
• 📚 Monthly mini-books: https://ruckusmakers.media
• 🧭 Map your next 90-days: https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/principals-entry-plan/

🤝 TODAY'S RUCKUSCAST IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: IXL:

IXL's adaptive platform finds every student's knowledge gaps, adjusts difficulty as they learn, and gives you a dashboard showing exactly where growth is happening. 🔎 Over 1 million teachers use it — get started at https://ixl.com/leaders

ODP BUSINESS SOLUTIONS:

ODP Business Solutions has supplied schools for 30 years — converting dead computer labs into STEAM centers, stocking multiple campuses, upgrading whiteboards to interactive displays — all from a single supplier through cooperative contracts. 🔎 Learn more at https://odpbusiness.com/education

ORCHARD:

Orchard gives every student a personalized career action plan and scores readiness across 8 dimensions — a number you can take to your board. 🔎 See how it works at https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/

KIDS FIRST EDUCATION:

Kids First Education builds professional learning around your district's priorities, your data, and your classrooms — not pulled off a shelf — and 98% of educators walk out ready to use what they learned. 🔎 Partner with them at https://kidsfirst.llc/leaders

Your school learning environment is never neutral. Most classrooms were built for headcount, not belonging — here's how to fix that.School learning environment design decides whether kids feel welcome or walled off, and many campuses share a blueprint with prisons: one long hallway, identical rooms, desks facing forward, fluorescent light.

Victoria Veneziano of MeTEOR Education spent 10 years in the classroom without once thinking about any of it. Then she moved into teen mental health work and couldn't unsee it.Her case is simple. Kids and adults need two things from a space: to have fun and to feel safe — and you can't get one without the other.

That means choice, movement, natural light, fewer posters on the walls, and checking all five senses for overload.It also means intentional play with your staff, built up in small steps, with permission to pass. Every decision either helps or hinders the learning. Ruckus Makers who Do School Different design for it on purpose.

THINK THROUGH YOUR NEXT LEADERSHIP MOVE:

https://myprincipalcoach.com — your AI-powered principal coach, available 24/7.

⌚️ TIMESTAMPS:

• 00:00 - Why schools were built like prisons
• 05:08 - The classroom factor teachers never get taught
• 07:36 - What improv teaches about welcoming spaces
• 10:53 - Rows, seats, and the power dynamic
• 12:37 - A campus experience worth showing up for
• 14:26 - Why fun and safety are the same need
• 15:45 - Student choice without a furniture budget
• 25:47 - Biophilic design and cognitive chaos
• 28:02 - Audit all five senses for overload
• 29:36 - Bringing nature into the classroom
• 31:08 - Cafeterias as loud as a passing train
• 33:37 - Why always-serious leaders feel unsafe
• 36:55 - How forced play creates mistrust
• 40:21 - Permission to pass builds full participation

CONNECT WITH VICTORIA VENEZIANO:

• 👩🏻‍💻 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/victoria-veneziano/
• 🌎 Websites: http://www.meteoreducation.com/, http://www.mindfulmovementwithvictoria.com/

WHENEVER YOU ARE READY, HERE'S 3 WAYS TO HELP YOU DO SCHOOL DIFFERENT:

• 📬 Weekly newsletter: https://ruckusmakers.news/subscribe
• 📚 Monthly mini-books: https://ruckusmakers.media
• 🧭 Map your next 90-days: https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/principals-entry-plan/

TODAY'S RUCKUSCAST IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: IXL:

IXL's adaptive platform finds every student's knowledge gaps, adjusts difficulty as they learn, and gives you a dashboard showing exactly where growth is happening. 🔎 Over 1 million teachers use it — get started at https://ixl.com/leaders

ODP BUSINESS SOLUTIONS:

ODP Business Solutions has supplied schools for 30 years — converting dead computer labs into STEAM centers, stocking multiple campuses, upgrading whiteboards to interactive displays — all from a single supplier through cooperative contracts. 🔎 Learn more at https://odpbusiness.com/education

ORCHARD:

Orchard gives every student a personalized career action plan and scores readiness across 8 dimensions — a number you can take to your board. 🔎 See how it works at https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/

KIDS FIRST EDUCATION:

Kids First Education builds professional learning around your district's priorities, your data, and your classrooms — not pulled off a shelf — and 98% of educators walk out ready to use what they learned. 🔎 Partner with them at https://kidsfirst.llc/leaders

Disengaged students aren't a content problem. Teens aren't a problem to be solved — they need someone to teach them how to think about themselves.

Youth life coaching gives disengaged students what curriculum can't: a growth mindset, a self-image they define for themselves, relationship skills, and a purpose for this season of life. James McLamb of Generation Youth Coaching has spent a decade certifying youth life coaches, and his model starts where Danny's leadership frameworks do — with the person, not the program.

When Generation Youth asked 2,500 teens to name their generation's biggest problem, 86.4% described a self-image issue. Nobody said "self-image." They said "I feel like a failure" and "I can't measure up." James explains why SMART goals describe the destination but never give kids the route, how schools in Long Island, Minnesota, and Virginia carve two hours out of a teacher's week for coaching, and why we pay trainers to make athletes faster when fewer than 2% earn a scholarship.

THINK THROUGH YOUR NEXT LEADERSHIP MOVE:

https://myprincipalcoach.com — your AI-powered principal coach, available 24/7.

⌚️ TIMESTAMPS:

• 00:00 - Why content alone won't move students
• 05:48 - "You've given me my son back"
• 08:39 - What youth life coaching actually is
• 11:57 - Why mindset comes before everything else
• 16:43 - What 2,500 teens named their biggest problem
• 20:27 - Why SMART goals fail young people
• 24:52 - How schools build coaching into the day
• 27:00 - The 2% athlete scholarship reality
• 28:09 - "What if the problem is me?
• 35:41 - The superintendent who makes leaders refill
• 39:18 - Failure is an event, not a person
• 41:40 - Teens are not a problem to solve

🔗 CONNECT WITH JAMES MCLAMB:

🌎 Websites: http://generation-youth.com/, http://generationziglar.com/

🔸 Substack: https://jamesmclambauthor.substack.com/,

🔗 LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-mclamb-74a72746/

🌠 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/generation__youth/

WHENEVER YOU ARE READY, HERE'S 3 WAYS TO HELP YOU DO SCHOOL DIFFERENT:

• 📬 Weekly newsletter: https://ruckusmakers.news/subscribe
• 📚 Monthly mini-books: https://ruckusmakers.media
• 🧭 Map your next 90-days: https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/principals-entry-plan/

🫶 Today's RuckusCast in Partnership With: IXL:

IXL's adaptive platform finds every student's knowledge gaps, adjusts difficulty as they learn, and gives you a dashboard showing exactly where growth is happening. 🔎 Over 1 million teachers use it — get started at https://ixl.com/leaders

ODP Business Solutions:

ODP Business Solutions has supplied schools for 30 years — converting dead computer labs into STEAM centers, stocking multiple campuses, upgrading whiteboards to interactive displays — all from a single supplier through cooperative contracts. 🔎 Learn more at https://odpbusiness.com/education

Orchard:

Orchard gives every student a personalized career action plan and scores readiness across 8 dimensions — a number you can take to your board. 🔎 See how it works at https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/

Kids First Education:

Kids First Education builds professional learning around your district's priorities, your data, and your classrooms — not pulled off a shelf — and 98% of educators walk out ready to use what they learned. 🔎 Partner with them at https://kidsfirst.llc/leaders

School leadership isn't the education business. It's the relationship business, and every interaction launches, deepens, or restores one.

Principal leadership and school culture come down to relationships, says Ron Johnson, the executive who built the Apple Store and the Genius Bar for Steve Jobs, and too many schools are running it on fear instead of love.

Steve told him not to use the word love in Silicon Valley, so Apple called it "enriching lives." Same idea. It became the operating principle for 60,000 employees across nearly 400 stores.

Ron brings that playbook to campus. He interviewed all 400 store managers personally, so every employee was one degree from him. He'd be at the front door every morning if he ran your school. He calls power dynamics an artificial construct, and he's blunt about the rest: nobody performs well under fear. Not staff. Not students.

Plus the four-word mission test, how to tell when a classroom has gone tired, and the two words Ron would put on every school marquee.

🧔🏻‍♂️ THINK THROUGH YOUR NEXT LEADERSHIP MOVE:

https://myprincipalcoach.com — your AI-powered principal coach, available 24/7.

⌚️ TIMESTAMPS:

• 00:00 - Why schools have a fear problem
• 06:40 - Steve Jobs said don't use love
• 08:26 - Launch, deepen, restore every relationship
• 10:03 - The principal who always asked about his kids
• 12:02 - The four-word mission test
• 14:03 - Staying one degree from 60,000 employees
• 17:51 - Why principals belong at the front door
• 21:55 - Power dynamics are an artificial construct
• 25:09 - Love or fear: leadership's two choices
• 33:37 - What the Genius Bar teaches schools
• 36:57 - Is your classroom starting to feel tired
• 39:48 - Choose kindness and the kindest kid
• 42:11 - Three principles for a dream campus
• 44:14 - How to remove fear from school

🔗 CONNECT WITH RON JOHNSON:

• 🌎 Website: https://ronjohnsonshopsdifferent.com/
• 💚 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shopdifferent/

💟 WHENEVER YOU ARE READY, HERE'S 3 WAYS TO HELP YOU DO SCHOOL DIFFERENT:

• 📬 Weekly newsletter: https://ruckusmakers.news/subscribe
• 📚 Monthly mini-books: https://ruckusmakers.media
• 🧭 Map your next 90-days: https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/principals-entry-plan/

🫶 TODAY'S RUCKUSCAST IN PARTNERSHIP WITH:

IXL IXL's adaptive platform finds every student's knowledge gaps, adjusts difficulty as they learn, and gives you a dashboard showing exactly where growth is happening. 🔎 Over 1 million teachers use it — get started at https://ixl.com/leaders

ODP BUSINESS SOLUTIONS ODP Business Solutions has supplied schools for 30 years — converting dead computer labs into STEAM centers, stocking multiple campuses, upgrading whiteboards to interactive displays — all from a single supplier through cooperative contracts. 🔎 Learn more at https://odpbusiness.com/education

ORCHARD Orchard gives every student a personalized career action plan and scores readiness across 8 dimensions — a number you can take to your board. 🔎 See how it works at https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/

KIDS FIRST EDUCATION Kids First Education builds professional learning around your district's priorities, your data, and your classrooms — not pulled off a shelf — and 98% of educators walk out ready to use what they learned. 🔎 Partner with them at https://kidsfirst.llc/leaders

Selfmentorship is the leadership skill no one teaches principals. Stop waiting for a coach and learn to close your own leadership gaps.

Selfmentorship is the leadership skill most principals and school leaders were never taught: turning your own experience into growth instead of waiting for a coach, a program, or a PD day to develop you. Co-host Dan Watt puts Danny Bauer in the hot seat to unpack ten years of Better Leaders Better Schools and the category that will shape the next ten.

Danny breaks down his Harada chart (Sudoku for goals), why OKRs beat SMART goals, and the three-step play of create it, give it away, fire yourself. Then the reveal: a Digital Danny super user with 910 conversations named what Danny had been building for a decade. The lesson for your campus is to find your super users and describe your work in their words, not yours.

THINK THROUGH YOUR NEXT LEADERSHIP MOVE:

https://myprincipalcoach.com — your AI-powered principal coach, available 24/7.

⌚️ TIMESTAMPS:

• 00:00 - Why nobody teaches self-mentorship
• 05:34 - Danny's North Star for 2026
• 08:01 - The Harada method as Sudoku for goals
• 10:12 - Why OKRs beat SMART goals
• 13:05 - Infinite networking for school leaders
• 17:22 - Create it, give it away, fire yourself
• 22:27 - What Do School Different really means
• 24:20 - Why Ruckus Maker events break the PD mold
• 31:48 - The category nobody else teaches
• 33:48 - Find the super user on your campus
• 35:09 - Use their words, not yours
• 38:29 - Clarity in under 10 minutes
• 41:08 - The fundamentals behind peak performance

WHENEVER YOU ARE READY, HERE'S 3 WAYS TO HELP YOU DO SCHOOL DIFFERENT:

📬 Weekly newsletter: https://ruckusmakers.news/subscribe 📚 Monthly mini-books: https://ruckusmakers.media 🧭 Map your next 90-days: https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/principals-entry-plan/

TODAY'S RUCKUSCAST IN PARTNERSHIP WITH:

IXL IXL's adaptive platform finds every student's knowledge gaps, adjusts difficulty as they learn, and gives you a dashboard showing exactly where growth is happening. 🔎 Over 1 million teachers use it — get started at https://ixl.com/leaders

ODP BUSINESS SOLUTIONS ODP Business Solutions has supplied schools for 30 years — converting dead computer labs into STEAM centers, stocking multiple campuses, upgrading whiteboards to interactive displays — all from a single supplier through cooperative contracts. 🔎 Learn more at https://odpbusiness.com/education

ORCHARD Orchard gives every student a personalized career action plan and scores readiness across 8 dimensions — a number you can take to your board. 🔎 See how it works at https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/

KIDS FIRST EDUCATION Kids First Education builds professional learning around your district's priorities, your data, and your classrooms — not pulled off a shelf — and 98% of educators walk out ready to use what they learned. 🔎 Partner with them at https://kidsfirst.llc/leaders

Relationship-building in secondary schools has a reputation problem. Content-focused teachers stacked with seven or eight periods a day treat connection as a nice-to-have they don't have time for. John Whalen and Doug Overton, co-founders of Ed Tomorrow, argue the opposite: teachers who invest a minute or two in connection get instructional time back, because bought-in students need less behavior management.

Whalen and Overton left stable school leadership jobs to build The First Five, a free daily email that gives teachers grade-banded ways to build connection, care, and character into the first minutes of class. They break down why kids buy into a teacher before they buy into the content, how to get a hesitant secondary staff to try it, and what they'd build if they started a school from scratch.

THINK THROUGH YOUR NEXT LEADERSHIP MOVE

https://myprincipalcoach.com — your AI-powered principal coach, available 24/7.

⌚️ TIMESTAMPS

• 00:00 - Why secondary teachers resist relationship building
• 04:11 - John and Doug introduce Ed Tomorrow
• 06:19 - The phone call that led to a cross-country move
• 09:15 - How COVID sparked the First Five
• 12:45 - Winning kid buy-in starts with relevancy
• 14:00 - Why kids buy into you before your content
• 17:01 - Meeting hesitant teachers where they are
• 23:58 - Why middle school is the hardest band to serve
• 33:07 - How the First Five actually works
• 34:34 - The three Cs behind every First Five resource
• 38:56 - The message they'd put on every school marquee
• 41:44 - Three guiding principles for building a dream school
• 47:04 - The one thing to remember before you start a ruckus

CONNECT WITH JOHN WHALEN AND DOUG OVERTON

• Website: edtomorrow.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/edtomorrow/100083061286304
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ed.tomorrow
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/edtomorrow
• Quick sign-up Form: https://www.edtomorrow.com/signup/

WHENEVER YOU ARE READY, HERE'S 3 WAYS TO HELP YOU DO SCHOOL DIFFERENT:

• 📬 Weekly newsletter: https://ruckusmakers.news/subscribe
• 📚 Monthly mini-books: https://ruckusmakers.media
• 🧭 Map your next 90-days: https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/principals-entry-plan/

TODAY'S RUCKUSCAST IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

IXL

IXL's adaptive platform finds every student's knowledge gaps, adjusts difficulty as they learn, and gives you a dashboard showing exactly where growth is happening. 🔎 Over 1 million teachers use it — get started at https://ixl.com/leaders

ODP BUSINESS SOLUTIONS:

ODP Business Solutions has supplied schools for 30 years — converting dead computer labs into STEAM centers, stocking multiple campuses, upgrading whiteboards to interactive displays — all from a single supplier through cooperative contracts. 🔎 Learn more at https://odpbusiness.com/education

ORCHARD

Orchard gives every student a personalized career action plan and scores readiness across 8 dimensions — a number you can take to your board. See how it works at https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/

KIDS FIRST EDUCATION

Kids First Education builds professional learning around your district's priorities, your data, and your classrooms — not pulled off a shelf — and 98% of educators walk out ready to use what they learned.

🔎 Partner with them at https://kidsfirst.llc/leaders

Teacher burnout won't be fixed with more grit. When resilience becomes the plan, schools stop redesigning the work that's draining staff.

Teacher burnout and staff wellbeing get the headlines, but school leaders are missing two quieter problems: toxic resilience and bore out. Steph Hawkins, founder of Well Well Well, brings two decades of leadership across the UK and internationally, plus postgraduate work in applied positive psychology.

She explains how "just dig deeper" became the bridge between unrealistic demands and human capability, and why it lets schools skip the real work.

She breaks wellbeing into three layers (individual, leadership, organizational) and shows why middle leaders, the connective tissue of every school, have more agency than they think.

You'll get the science of recognition that actually lands, why an overused strength starts to drain you, and how appreciative inquiry beats fixing weaknesses in school improvement planning.Depletion isn't a mark of dedication. Design for people and performance follows.

THINK THROUGH YOUR NEXT LEADERSHIP MOVE:

https://myprincipalcoach.com — your AI-powered principal coach, available 24/7.

⌚️ TIMESTAMPS:

• 00:00 - Toxic resilience and unrealistic demands
• 03:58 - Bore out, burnout's overlooked twin
• 07:36 - The three layers of staff wellbeing
• 10:08 - Why toxic resilience blocks system change
• 12:17 - Middle leaders as the school's connective tissue
• 14:25 - Staff recognition that actually lands
• 18:30 - When your strengths start to drain you
• 21:28 - Appreciative inquiry for school improvement
• 22:58 - How opposite strengths create team conflict
• 31:22 - Work design exposes hidden strain
• 33:47 - The connections every new educator needs
• 36:35 - Marquee message and dream school principles

🔗 CONNECT WITH STEPH HAWKINS:

🌎 Website: https://www.wellwellwell.work/

👩🏻‍💻 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steph-hawkins-mapp/

🫶 WHENEVER YOU ARE READY, HERE'S 3 WAYS TO HELP YOU DO SCHOOL DIFFERENT:

📬 Weekly newsletter: https://ruckusmakers.news/subscribe

📚 Monthly mini-books: https://ruckusmakers.media

🧭 Map your next 90-days: https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/principals-entry-plan/

🤝 TODAY'S RUCKUSCAST IN PARTNERSHIP WITH:

IXL: IXL's adaptive platform finds every student's knowledge gaps, adjusts difficulty as they learn, and gives you a dashboard showing exactly where growth is happening. 🔎 Over 1 million teachers use it — get started at https://ixl.com/leaders

ODP BUSINESS SOLUTIONS: ODP Business Solutions has supplied schools for 30 years — converting dead computer labs into STEAM centers, stocking multiple campuses, upgrading whiteboards to interactive displays — all from a single supplier through cooperative contracts. 🔎 Learn more at https://odpbusiness.com/education

ORCHARD: Orchard gives every student a personalized career action plan and scores readiness across 8 dimensions — a number you can take to your board. 🔎 See how it works at https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/

KIDS FIRST EDUCATION: Kids First Education builds professional learning around your district's priorities, your data, and your classrooms — not pulled off a shelf — and 98% of educators walk out ready to use what they learned. 🔎 Partner with them at https://kidsfirst.llc/leaders

Leads education and innovation at Big Bad Boo Studios, where she builds multicultural animated content that helps kids navigate conflict, identity, and belonging. Rachael Thrash has spent 25 years designing curriculum and student leadership systems in international and public schools, from Helsinki to Portland, Maine. Her book, Let the Learners Lead, gives school leaders a field-tested toolkit for turning students from passengers into co-owners of their school culture.

Most classroom management strategies treat student behaviour as something adults control, not something students share responsibility for. Rachael Thrash, author of Let the Learners Lead, spent 25 years testing what happens when schools flip that assumption — inviting quiet, disconnected, and overlooked students into real leadership instead of asking them to earn it first. The results reshape how you think about culture, norms, and who actually gets to lead in your building.

💟 What You'll Learn

• How to identify and invite the students your leadership programs usually overlook.
• Why revisiting classroom and student leadership norms all year — not just in week one — protects culture.
• How to build an authentic audience for student work so learning doesn't end at a grade.
• Why peer acknowledgment does more for student engagement than teacher praise.
• How the same student-voice protocols that work with kids also fix disengaged faculty.

🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules 🩵 Key Insight #1: Student Leadership Programs Recruit the Wrong Students

• What's broken: Most student leadership retreats and councils only pull in kids who've already proven themselves as leaders.
• The shift: Rachael intentionally invites students who haven't participated much, because they're the ones with the sharpest observations about what isn't working.
• Impact: A withdrawn ninth grader who'd never spoken up built a BIPOC listening circle and presented on student leadership at international conferences within two years.

🚀 Key Insight #2: Classroom Norms Set in Week One Don't Survive the Year

• What's broken: Teachers build classroom norms during the first week of school, when every student is on their best behavior, then never revisit them.
• The shift: Norms have to be revisited regularly — when something goes wrong, the conversation returns to "how is this contributing to our classroom," not a rule violation.
• Impact: Teachers who build in regular norm check-ins see students take ownership of classroom culture instead of waiting to be corrected.

🧠 Key Insight #3: Peer Acknowledgment Beats Teacher Praise

• What's broken: Schools treat teacher approval as the primary motivator for good behavior and engagement, especially as students hit adolescence.
• The shift: Coaching students to recognize and acknowledge each other's contributions builds a stronger, more durable motivator than adult praise alone.
• Impact: Students who get peer recognition repeat the behavior that earned it — without an adult having to prompt them.

🤩 RACHAEL THRASH QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST

"If you're looking at me to regulate your behavior, then you're not taking responsibility for yourself."

— Rachael Thrash

"If the supermarket line breaks into chaos, it's because each one of those people let it happen."

— Rachael Thrash

"Teacher acknowledgement is great. Peer acknowledgement is the holy grail."

— Rachael Thrash

"Who's the treasurer, who's the secretary — who cares is what I'm saying. What I care about is how you're treating each other and what we're doing collectively in this space."

— Rachael Thrash

"I am an AI optimist because I think that it's finally showing us that drill and kill is the most ridiculous thing ever."

— Rachael Thrash

"Every learner shapes this community. It has unique potential, and when each one of us contributes, we can create something beautiful."

— Rachael Thrash

🏃‍♀️Your Do School Different Challenge

Ready to implement? Start here:

• Tomorrow: Pull aside one student who has never volunteered for a leadership role and ask what isn't working at school.
• This Month: Rebuild one faculty or student leadership meeting around a real question — "what would make this better for everyone?" — instead of a status update.
• This Semester: Set a recurring check-in to revisit your classroom and student leadership norms instead of leaving them posted and forgotten from week one.

🕰️ Episode Timestamps

• 00:00 - Why managing students differs from mobilizing them
• 05:11 - The quiet student who became a campus leader
• 10:23 - What the World Happiness Report reveals about isolation
• 11:58 - Helping English learners find voice through soccer
• 14:53 - Applying student leadership tools to disconnected teachers
• 17:02 - Using cartoons to teach kids digital citizenship
• 24:58 - Why classroom norms need revisiting all year
• 27:25 - Why peer acknowledgment beats teacher praise
• 33:41 - Giving student work a real audience
• 37:57 - Why AI makes memorization obsolete in schools
• 40:00 - Shared responsibility over classroom control
• 42:48 - Three principles for building a dream campus
• 45:20 - The one thing every Ruckus Maker should remember

Connect With Rachael Thrash

📝 Read Transcript: here

🌎 Website: http://Bigbadboo.com/education

🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachael-thrash-9688091b/

📚 Book Page: https://www.routledge.com/Let-the-Learners-Lead-Empowering-Student-Voice-to-Co-Create-School-Culture/Thrash/p/book/9781041155713

🎧 Listen & Subscribe

Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide

Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at http://myprincipalcoach.com

🫶 Today's Ruckuscast in Partnership With IXL

IXL's adaptive platform finds every student's knowledge gaps, adjusts difficulty as they learn, and gives you a dashboard showing exactly where growth is happening. Over 1 million teachers use it 💟 Get started at https://ixl.com/leaders

ODP Business Solutions

ODP Business Solutions has supplied schools for 30 years — converting dead computer labs into STEAM centers, stocking multiple campuses, upgrading whiteboards to interactive displays — all from a single supplier through cooperative contracts. 💟 Learn more at https://odpbusiness.com/education

Orchard

Orchard gives every student a personalized career action plan and scores readiness across 8 dimensions — a number you can take to your board. 💟 See how it works at https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/

Kids First Education

Kids First Education builds professional learning around your district's priorities, your data, and your classrooms — not pulled off a shelf — and 98% of educators walk out ready to use what they learned. 💟 Partner with them at https://kidsfirst.llc/leaders

Creativity in schools isn't about talent, it's a system. Budget cuts and constraints make your team more creative, not less.Creativity in schools gets treated like an elective — something reserved for art class and cut the moment budgets tighten.

Creativity researcher and author Susan Riley joins the show to make the case that creativity is a trainable system every school leader can build, not a talent some people have and others don't. Susan breaks creativity into four branches — creative skills, creative application, creative thinking, and creative expression — and explains why most schools only ever touch one or two of them.

She also unpacks why AI is raising the stakes on creative and critical thinking, how daily habits build creative capacity over time, and why a constraint like a 20% budget cut can sharpen a team's creative response instead of shutting it down. If you're a school leader trying to build a campus experience that doesn't run on autopilot, this conversation gives you a framework and a set of practices to start with tomorrow.

THINK THROUGH YOUR NEXT LEADERSHIP MOVE:

https://myprincipalcoach.com — your AI-powered principal coach, available 24/7.

⌚️ TIMESTAMPS:

• 00:00 - How schools kill creativity while fearing AI
• 05:40 - The Super Soaker story on unplanned creativity
• 06:56 - Can creativity actually be trained
• 09:10 - Susan's morning habit for daily creativity
• 12:16 - How creativity differs for teachers versus leaders
• 14:57 - The four branches of creativity explained
• 18:34 - Why creativity is the human edge over AI
• 22:46 - Creative moments versus creative systems
• 31:42 - The Dr. Seuss story on creative constraints
• 35:39 - Improv games that build hard fun
• 39:27 - Designing environments that support creativity
• 42:52 - The see-think-wonder walk exercise
• 45:26 - Three principles for building your dream school

🔗 CONNECT WITH SUSAN RILEY:

🌎 Website: https://susanmriley.com

• Facebook: http://facebook.com/artsintedu
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/artsintedu
• LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/susanmriley81

WHENEVER YOU ARE READY, HERE'S 3 WAYS TO HELP YOU DO SCHOOL DIFFERENT:

• 📬 Weekly newsletter: https://ruckusmakers.news/subscribe
• 📚 Monthly mini-books: https://ruckusmakers.media
• 🧭 Map your next 90-days: https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/principals-entry-plan/

💟 TODAY'S RUCKUSCAST IN PARTNERSHIP WITH:

IXL: IXL's adaptive platform finds every student's knowledge gaps, adjusts difficulty as they learn, and gives you a dashboard showing exactly where growth is happening. 🔎Over 1 million teachers use it — get started at https://ixl.com/leaders

ODP BUSINESS SOLUTIONS: ODP Business Solutions has supplied schools for 30 years — converting dead computer labs into STEAM centers, stocking multiple campuses, upgrading whiteboards to interactive displays — all from a single supplier through cooperative contracts. 🔎 Learn more at https://odpbusiness.com/education

ORCHARD: Orchard gives every student a personalized career action plan and scores readiness across 8 dimensions — a number you can take to your board. 🔎 See how it works at https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/

KIDS FIRST EDUCATION: Kids First Education builds professional learning around your district's priorities, your data, and your classrooms — not pulled off a shelf — and 98% of educators walk out ready to use what they learned. 🔎 Partner with them at https://kidsfirst.llc/leaders

Delegating feels impossible when you run a school alone — until you turn what's stuck in your head into a playbook someone else can run. Delegation is the hardest skill for a principal running a school without an assistant principal — every checklist, process, and judgment call lives in one head, and that head is exhausted.

Kati Cahill, Head of School at Humanex Academy, a small private school for neurodivergent students south of Denver, walks through how she's been using an AI thought partner to pull her admissions process and scheduling system out of her head and into playbooks her team can actually run.

She also breaks down how the same backward-planning conversation turned her 90-day entry plan into four owned workstreams — communication, academics, culture, and operations — instead of a document that sits in a folder, and how she built a reusable "wins" template that turns a year of staff stories into an instant morale boost when energy dips. This one's a real look at what sustainable school leadership looks like when you're the entire admin team.

⌚️ Episode Timestamps

• 00:00 - Turning the systems in your head into playbooks
• 04:13 - Leading a school with no assistant principal
• 07:05 - A solo retreat that led to staying
• 13:36 - Inside the Mastermind hot seat and book study
• 21:16 - Using Digital Danny to stop overthinking
• 24:08 - Building a 90-day entry plan by department
• 33:38 - Turning staff wins into a shareable template
• 37:03 - Defining one belief to repeat all year
• 42:34 - Why Digital Danny stays open as a tab
• 48:00 - The takeaway on making the job sustainable

🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide

Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at http://myprincipalcoach.com

🚀 Whenever you are Ready, here's 3 Ways to Help you Do School Different:

📬 Weekly newsletter: https://ruckusmakers.news/subscribe

📚 Monthly mini-books: https://ruckusmakers.media

🧭 Map your next 90-days: https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/principals-entry-plan/

🫶 Today's RuckusCast in Partnership With: IXL

IXL's adaptive platform finds every student's knowledge gaps, adjusts difficulty as they learn, and gives you a dashboard showing exactly where growth is happening. 🔎 Over 1 million teachers use it — get started at https://ixl.com/leaders

ODP Business Solutions

ODP Business Solutions has supplied schools for 30 years — converting dead computer labs into STEAM centers, stocking multiple campuses, upgrading whiteboards to interactive displays — all from a single supplier through cooperative contracts. 🔎 Learn more at https://odpbusiness.com/education

Orchard

Orchard gives every student a personalized career action plan and scores readiness across 8 dimensions — a number you can take to your board. 🔎 See how it works at https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/

Kids First Education

Kids First Education builds professional learning around your district's priorities, your data, and your classrooms — not pulled off a shelf — and 98% of educators walk out ready to use what they learned. 🔎 Partner with them at https://kidsfirst.llc/leaders

Currently in his eleventh year of school administration and his twenty-fifth in education, Bill Renner has run the full course through the Ruckus Maker system — the Mastermind, one-on-one coaching, and now Digital Danny.

A middle school principal transitioning back to his first love, elementary, he's spent this year applying what each stage taught him about slowing down instead of reaching for the fastest answer in the room. He's also working on a book, currently titled Lead with Heart, Build with Purpose, and Serve with Joy, drawn from his own journals.

School principal Bill Renner has used every tier of the Ruckus Maker system — the Mastermind, one-on-one coaching, and now Digital Danny. In this episode, he breaks down why fast answers from AI chatbots are quietly making leaders worse, and what changed when he learned to slow down before changing anything at a brand-new school.

💟 What You'll Learn

• Why treating AI like an answer machine can quietly make you a worse decision-maker.
• How to slow down and ask better questions before changing anything at a new school.
• Why giving your staff a "permission slip" to slow down changes how they show up.
• How to actually measure whether you're leading with joy instead of guessing at it.
• What separates the Mastermind, 1-on-1 coaching, and Digital Danny — and when to use each.

🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules 🧠 Key Insight #1: Why Instant AI Answers Lead to Mediocre School Leadership Decisions

• What's broken: Principals turn to AI chatbots for fast answers and start believing every idea the tool hands back is brilliant.
• The shift: A tool that asks better questions instead of supplying instant answers forces principals to actually reason through a decision first.
• Impact: Plans get executed with more ownership and better results because the leader has genuinely thought them through, not just accepted the first answer.

🧠 Key Insight #2: Why New Principals Should Ask Before They Change Anything

• What's broken: Experienced principals arrive at a new school with solutions already picked out, based on what worked somewhere else.
• The shift: Slow down and ask staff what they're proud of and where they feel stuck before changing a single thing.
• Impact: Staff spoke more openly once the notepad and devices disappeared, surfacing context a rushed transition would have missed entirely.

🧠 Key Insight #3: Why Giving Staff a "Permission Slip" Changes How They Show Up

• What's broken: Administrators push staff with deadlines and demands, expecting speed and compliance by default.
• The shift: Give staff explicit permission to slow down or push back — the same kind of permission a parent signs off on for a school trip.
• Impact: The room visibly relaxed, and staff started extending that same permission to each other.

BILL QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST

"There has to be more to this leadership thing than just survival."

— Bill Renner

"Leaders, they don't need to prove that they have every answer. We just need to be willing to reflect, ask different questions, and continue to grow."

— Bill Renner

"Every day isn't joyful, but every day has joy."

— Bill Renner

"I gave them permission to slow things down. In this fast-paced society, we're all interconnected one way or another."

— Bill Renner

"When I go to Digital Danny, I'm doing deep work — breaking things down to get to the raw of what exactly am I doing and why am I doing it."

— Bill Renner

🫶 Your Do School Different Challenge

Ready to implement? Start here:

• Tomorrow: Ask one staff member the question Bill used at his new school — "What's something we should never change here?"
• This Month: Give your staff one explicit "permission slip," written or spoken, to slow down or say no to something on their plate.
• This Semester: Build a weekly three-things-that-went-well journal, like Bill's, into your own routine to measure joy instead of guessing at it.

⌚️ Episode Timestamps

• 00:00 - Why 32 suspensions in one day killed his joy
• 04:33 - From hemming and hawing to joining the Mastermind
• 11:19 - Comparing Mastermind, 1-on-1 coaching, and Digital Danny
• 16:14 - The real difference between coaching and consulting
• 18:33 - The permission slip story that changed his staff meetings
• 22:41 - Using Digital Danny to plan a return to elementary school
• 24:58 - Why Digital Danny told him to slow down first
• 28:29 - Why arriving with curiosity beats arriving with answers
• 36:10 - Why ChatGPT makes you feel like a genius
• 37:52 - Digital Danny vs ChatGPT: heart surgeon or primary care doctor
• 44:19 - The leadership book inspired by a fellow Mastermind member
• 47:05 - How to actually measure joy as a principal
• 51:25 - The one thing every Ruckus Maker should remember

🔗 Link to the Transcript: Here

🎧 Listen & Subscribe

Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide

Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at http://myprincipalcoach.com

🫶 Today's RuckusCast in Partnership With: IXL

IXL's adaptive platform finds every student's knowledge gaps, adjusts difficulty as they learn, and gives you a dashboard showing exactly where growth is happening. 🔎 Over 1 million teachers use it — get started at https://ixl.com/leaders

ODP Business Solutions

ODP Business Solutions has supplied schools for 30 years — converting dead computer labs into STEAM centers, stocking multiple campuses, upgrading whiteboards to interactive displays — all from a single supplier through cooperative contracts. 🔎 Learn more at https://odpbusiness.com/education

Orchard

Orchard gives every student a personalized career action plan and scores readiness across 8 dimensions — a number you can take to your board. 🔎 See how it works at https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/

Kids First Education

Kids First Education builds professional learning around your district's priorities, your data, and your classrooms — not pulled off a shelf — and 98% of educators walk out ready to use what they learned. 🔎 Partner with them at https://kidsfirst.llc/leaders

Student behavior changed when the adults did: 25 discipline calls a day dropped to about one. Here's the adult-first work behind it.

School discipline problems don't start with the kids. Sarah spent years answering 20 to 25 walkie calls a day for escalated students. Tokens, red-light-green-light charts, taking away recess — external systems trying to fix an internal issue. Then she started doing the work on herself first. Ten days into opening a brand-new school this fall, she hasn't answered 12 calls total.

Jill Molli has taught Conscious Discipline for 25 years, and she names the leap most principals never make. They'll regulate themselves for a kindergartner. They won't do it for the teacher who yells in the hallway but posts good test scores. Sarah Sicht did it with teachers, parents, and her own superiors. At her previous school, a 100% free-and-reduced-lunch building, that produced zero teacher turnover and a move from the bottom 10% of the state to the top 10% of Title I schools with the same kids and no redistricting.

Jill also breaks down SAFE, the four-domain framework Conscious Discipline built by studying principals like Sarah: Sustained leadership, Adult regulation, Foster community, Engaged classroom. It's the spine of the Elevate conference, where Danny is keynoting the S.

REGISTER FOR ELEVATE

Elevate is Conscious Discipline's conference in Orlando this October. Sessions are labeled by S.A.F.E. domain, so you go straight to what your campus needs. Danny, Jill, and Sarah will all be there.

Sign yourself up, sign the team up: https://elevateteacherconference.com/

⌚️ TIMESTAMPS

•

00:00 - From 25 walkie calls a day to one

•

04:12 - What Sarah believed about kids before Conscious Discipline

•

07:09 - Willingness beats waiting for a reason to change

•

09:11 - Hurt doesn't only show up in Title I schools

•

10:32 - Building the soil with a brand-new staff

•

14:39 - The hardest part is doing it with adults

•

17:49 - Why leading alone gets hard

•

23:24 - What COVID taught Sarah about connection

•

26:55 - Lowest 10% to top 10% with the same kids

•

28:32 - The two questions every staff member asks

•

36:17 - Where the SAFE framework came from

•

38:32 - Breaking down the SAFE framework

•

46:09 - The one thing: it's adult first

Leading the Alliance for Decision Education's work to make decision science part of core curriculum are David Samuelson, the organization's Executive Director, and Mary Call Blanusa, its Director of Public Policy. Samuelson spent his career leading digital transformation at national associations before turning to teaching students and school leaders the skills to navigate uncertainty — the same skills, he says, that make a good sailor in unpredictable water.

Blanusa brings two decades of education policy and philanthropy experience, including co-designing decision-making courses with state systems like the Tennessee Board of Regents. Together they're building the research, courses, and district partnerships that treat decision making as a teachable skill, not an innate trait.

A principal ignored a direct order from central office — and made the right call anyway. This post breaks down the decision-making process that got him there: how to turn gut feelings into percentages, separate good decisions from good outcomes, and keep your judgment sharp as AI takes over more of the thinking for you.

🧲 What You'll Learn

• How to turn vague words like "maybe" and "highly likely" into percentages your whole team agrees on.
• Why judging decisions by their outcomes alone will wreck your team's confidence in a good process.
• The weight-and-rate framework David and Danny used to decide whether to defy a district directive.
• Why decision-making skills now show up explicitly in 41% of job postings nationally.
• What "don't give your agency to an agent" means for how you use AI in your building.

🖊️ Breaking Down the Old Rules 👀 Key Insight #1: Why Vague Language Kills Good Decision Making

• What's broken: Leaders use words like "maybe" and "highly likely" as if they mean the same thing to everyone in the room.
• The shift: Assign an actual percentage to the word — "highly likely" might be 95% to one person and 80% to another — so the team is agreeing on a number, not a vibe.
• Impact: A goal like "highly likely to graduate 95% of students" only works as a shared commitment once everyone has agreed on what "highly likely" actually means.

💟 Key Insight #2: How to Separate Decision Quality From Outcomes

• What's broken: Principals get judged — and judge themselves — on how a decision turned out, not on how it was made.
• The shift: Evaluate the process (the options you considered, the criteria you weighted, the probabilities you assigned) as a separate question from whether things happened to work out.
• Impact: A slow, evidence-based call — like keeping two struggling teachers in place with more support instead of transferring them — can be the right decision even before you know how it ends.

💡 Key Insight #3: Why AI Makes Decision-Making Skills Non-Negotiable

• What's broken: Schools are handing students and staff more AI tools without teaching the judgment to question what those tools produce.
• The shift: Treat decision making and media literacy as explicit, teachable skills — how to ask AI for the counterfactual, spot a confirming answer, and decide what to hand off to an agent versus what to keep for yourself.
• Impact: Decision-making skills already appear explicitly in 41% of job postings nationally, and hiring managers treat them as table stakes even where they aren't listed.

🎧 DAVID & MARY QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST

"Don't give your agency to an agent. Keep your agency and choose what you want to give an agent to do. And that is empowering."

— David Samuelson

"Your life depends on your decisions."

— Mary Call Blanusa

"The process used correctly is always going to be better than the process not used at all."

— David Samuelson

"The quality and success that you experience in life comes down to two things: luck and the quality of your decisions. You can't change luck, but you can always improve the quality of your decisions."

— Mary Call Blanusa

"Stop and think. When in doubt, stop and think with curiosity."

— David Samuelson

🚵‍♀️ Your Do School Different Challenge

Ready to implement? Start here:

• Tomorrow: Run the words-to-probabilities exercise at your next leadership meeting — have each person put a number on "highly likely," "maybe," and "unlikely," then compare answers out loud.
• This Month: Take one decision you've been circling and run it through the weight-and-rate process — name your top three criteria, like academics, culture, and training, and score each option against them.
• This Semester: Build a shared, written definition of "what's best for kids" with your leadership team so the phrase can't be used as a one-person trump card.

⌚️ Episode Timestamps

• 00:00 - The decision to defy central office
• 03:26 - David's sailing certification built decision agency
• 07:13 - Why decision paralysis freezes school leaders
• 10:47 - The science behind high-stakes decision making
• 14:48 - The words-to-probabilities exercise explained
• 18:12 - Why best for kids needs a shared definition
• 19:43 - Weight and rate your decision criteria
• 23:31 - Kahneman's System 1 vs System 2 thinking
• 25:10 - Annie Duke on process versus outcome
• 33:24 - Why AI makes decision skills more urgent
• 39:01 - Inside the Alliance's district partnership model
• 44:45 - Closing lightning round with David and Mary

💻 Connect With Alliance for Decision Education

🌎 Website: https://alliancefordecisioneducation.org/

💟 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AllDecisionEd

👩🏻‍💻 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alldecisioned/

👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/alldecisioned/posts/?feedView=all

📝 Read Transcript here

• Report: Decision Skills in the Workforce
• New course on Decision Making: https://alliancefordecisioneducation.org/on-demand-learning-course/
• Weight and Rate tool and instructions
• Decision Skills in the Workforce" report highlights (Mary referenced the report during the interview)
• Probability worksheet here.

🎧 Listen & Subscribe

Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide

Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at http://myprincipalcoach.com

🫶 Today's Ruckuscast Partners IXL

IXL's adaptive platform finds every student's knowledge gaps, adjusts difficulty as they learn, and gives you a dashboard showing exactly where growth is happening. Over 1 million teachers use it 🔎 Get started at https://ixl.com/leaders

ODP Business Solutions

ODP Business Solutions has supplied schools for 30 years — converting dead computer labs into STEAM centers, stocking multiple campuses, upgrading whiteboards to interactive displays — all from a single supplier through cooperative contracts. 🔎 Learn more at https://odpbusiness.com/education

Orchard

Orchard gives every student a personalized career action plan and scores readiness across 8 dimensions — a number you can take to your board. 🔎 See how it works at https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/

Kids First Education

Kids First Education builds professional learning around your district's priorities, your data, and your classrooms — not pulled off a shelf — and 98% of educators walk out ready to use what they learned. 🔎 Partner with them at https://kidsfirst.llc/leaders

Over two decades in Memphis-area schools will teach you how to spot a leader who's still growing. Fred Holmes — known inside the Ruckus Maker Mastermind as the Velvet Hammer — started as a science teacher in Shelby County Schools, moved through teacher leadership and an assistant principalship, ran his own building as principal in Arkansas, and is now back in Memphis Shelby County Schools as a Professional Learning Communities coach, building leadership capacity district-wide. He's been a Ruckus Maker since the Mastermind's earliest days, joining during his first principalship and never missing a Wednesday since. Find him inside the Ruckus Maker community at http://betterleadersbetterschools.com

Most AI tools will give you a confident answer whether or not it's actually true. Fred Holmes, a longtime Ruckus Maker and Memphis-area school leader, breaks down why he trusts his AI coach for principals — Digital Danny, built exclusively for school leadership — with his highest-stakes conversations, and why a decade-old peer Mastermind still shapes how he leads today.

🖊️ What You'll Learn

• Why generic AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini can't replace a coach trained specifically for school leadership.
• How Fred rehearses high-stakes conversations with his AI coach before he has them in real life.
• The four jobs a real AI coach for principals should actually do.
• Why Fred still shows up to the same Wednesday Mastermind after nearly a decade.
• How to use your commute to get mentally ready to lead, instead of scrolling.

🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules 🫶 Key Insight #1: Why Generic AI Tools Fail as an AI Coach for Principals

• What's broken: Tools like ChatGPT and Gemini answer every question with total confidence — even when they don't actually know — because they're trained on everyone's data instead of built for school leadership.
• The shift: An AI coach for principals should be trained exclusively on real school leadership coaching, refuse to train on your private conversations, and say "I don't know" instead of guessing.
• Impact: Fred trusts it enough to bring real, sensitive workplace situations to it — the kind he'd never run through a general AI tool.

🧲 Key Insight #2: How to Rehearse a High-Stakes Conversation Before You Have It

• What's broken: Principals walk into tough conversations — an underperforming direct report, a political conflict with a supervisor, a hard parent call — without a sounding board, and the wrong tone can make everything worse.
• The shift: Fred talks through the exact conversation with his AI coach first, testing language and thinking through the other person's perspective before he ever says a word out loud.
• Impact: He shows up calm and confident, because he's already rehearsed the hardest part before it happens.

🚀 Key Insight #3: Why an AI Coach Still Can't Replace a Weekly Peer Mastermind

• What's broken: Isolated leaders assume an always-on AI tool is enough support — but the loneliness of leadership doesn't disappear because there's an app on your phone.
• The shift: Fred pairs his AI coach with a live, weekly Mastermind of peer principals, using one as a thought partner and the other as human accountability.
• Impact: Nearly a decade later, he still hasn't missed a Wednesday.

💡 FRED HOLMES QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST

"It's refreshing, it's renewing, it's empowering. It's where the loneliness of leadership disappears."

— Fred Holmes

"I already know where this is going. He's going to say, put it on the calendar."

— Fred Holmes

"Digital Danny just cuts through that noise, gives the signal."

— Fred Holmes

"I have this calmness and this peace. But also I have the confidence because I had that conversation."

— Fred Holmes

"If you're getting better, then your school is going to get better."

— Fred Holmes

♟Your Do School Different Challenge

Ready to implement? Start here:

• Tomorrow: Open your AI coach — or a blank doc if you don't have one yet — and talk through the one high-stakes conversation you've been avoiding this week.
• This Month: Build a 10-minute reflection or coaching routine into your commute instead of starting your day on your phone.
• This Semester: Find or start a weekly peer Mastermind where other leaders push you the way Fred's Wednesday group pushes him.

⌚️ Episode Timestamps

• 00:00 - Why Fred never misses a Wednesday Mastermind
• 04:57 - Fred's journey to Memphis PLC coach
• 06:16 - Why Digital Danny was a level up
• 08:31 - The four jobs Digital Danny does for principals
• 11:01 - How Fred uses Digital Danny every morning
• 14:40 - Using Digital Danny before tough conversations
• 18:17 - What surprised Fred most about the tool
• 22:00 - Why Fred trusts Digital Danny over ChatGPT
• 25:18 - Inside the private Ruckus Maker Club
• 33:16 - The legacy behind the Ruckus Makers community
• 34:29 - How Fred found Mastermind through Google
• 37:53 - Fred's parting advice to Ruckus Makers

🔗 Connect With Fred Holmes

📝 Read trascript here

🌍 Website: https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/

🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frederick-holmes-carpediem/

🎧 Listen & Subscribe

Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide

Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at http://myprincipalcoach.com

Today's Ruckuscast Partners

Orchard gives every student an actual career-readiness score — a real number you can hand your board instead of a vague hope. It's built by a founder who watched his own dad drift through a career he hated and decided kids deserve better than that. 🔎 See what Orchard built at BetterLeadersOrchardCareers.com

ODP Business Solutions has spent 30 years turning ordinary campuses into learning environments students actually want to be in — furniture, tech integration, and sustainable builds, all from a single supplier so procurement isn't a nightmare. They helped Belago Academy build collaborative spaces so engaging students forgot to check their phones. 🔎 Start at http://ODPbusiness.com/education

IXL's universal screener identifies which students need intervention in 20 minutes or less, then its adaptive platform adjusts to the right difficulty for every single student automatically. Over a million teachers already trust it to make differentiated instruction possible without adding hours to their week. 🔎 Get started at http://IXL.com/leaders

Kids First Education exists to put the reason you became a leader — the kids — back at the center of your job, with coaching and support built specifically for school and district leaders. 98% of educators who work with them say they left ready to use what they learned that same week. Learn more at KidsFirstLLC.com/leaders

Dr. Naphtali Hoff trains school leaders and teachers to perform at their best without running themselves into the ground. A former educator and school leader himself, Dr. Hoff now coaches and trains school leaders on management, productivity, and delegation across the country.

He's the author of three books, and his newest, Becoming the Delegating School Boss, is the one most relevant here — it helps school leaders clear their plates and empower their teams.

Dr. Naphtali Hoff joins the Ruckuscast to break down why so many principals resist letting go, and what it actually takes to build a team you can trust.

Every principal has felt it: the sense that if they left the building for a day, something would fall apart. That's not a compliment — it's a delegation problem, and it's quietly running good leaders into the ground. This episode breaks down why school leaders won't let go, and the exact framework for handing off real work without losing control of it.

🤯 What You'll Learn

• Why most delegation "excuses" are unexamined fears, not facts, and how to name yours honestly.
• How to use the Eisenhower matrix to sort your task list into do, defer, delegate, and delete.
• Why chasing perfection instead of excellence is quietly costing you time and staff trust.
• How Ken Blanchard's ABCD trust model tells you who's actually ready to take something off your plate.
• The one low-risk, low-stakes task every principal should delegate first.

🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules 📚 Key Insight #1: Why School Leaders Treat Delegation Excuses Like Facts

• What's broken: Principals tell themselves "I don't have the time to train someone" and treat it as an immovable truth instead of an excuse.
• The shift: Naphtali Hoff reframes these as excuses, not myths — challenges to work through, not facts to accept.
• Impact: Leaders who name the excuse for what it is stop waiting for the "right" moment and start handing off real work now.

💡 Key Insight #2: The Eisenhower Matrix Every Principal Needs for Delegation

• What's broken: Without a system, urgent tasks crowd out important ones, and everything ends up back on the principal's desk.
• The shift: Sort every task into do, defer, delegate, or delete — and treat quadrant three as your standing delegation list.
• Impact: Principals free up hours each week for the visioning and instructional leadership work only they can do.

🧲 Key Insight #3: Why Perfection Is Costing Principals Trust, Not Building It

• What's broken: Leaders hold their team to a personal standard of perfection that almost no one else shares or notices.
• The shift: Aim for excellence, hand off the outcome, and let go of controlling every small detail along the way.
• Impact: Staff step up faster, and the principal gets back the hours they were burning on edits nobody asked for.

🧠 NAPHTALI HOFF QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST

"Excellence really should be the goal, because perfection is the enemy of progress."

— Naphtali Hoff

"Delegating is not abdicating."

— Naphtali Hoff

"Their standard of good enough is probably a lot lower than your standard of excellence."

— Naphtali Hoff

"If I leave the building, there's going to be chaos unfolding. That means I have not done a very good job in delegating."

— Naphtali Hoff

"You have to realize what is it that I'm uniquely gifted at and capable of, and what can I empower other people to do?"

— Naphtali Hoff

🧩 Your Do School Different Challenge

Ready to implement? Start here:

• Tomorrow: Pick one recurring task — a newsletter, a weekly email, an observation schedule — and hand it off with a clear outcome instead of a script.
• This Month: Run a two-week activity log of everything you do, then sort each task into do, defer, delegate, or delete.
• This Semester: Move one staff member through Blanchard's four stages — directing, coaching, supporting, delegating — until a real piece of your job is permanently theirs.

⏳ Episode Timestamps

• 00:00 - The warning sign you're the campus bottleneck
• 03:02 - Naphtali's delegation disaster as a new headmaster
• 06:17 - The excuses school leaders use to avoid delegating
• 08:12 - Why excellence beats perfection in delegation
• 09:49 - Building trust with the ABCD model
• 13:50 - Using the Eisenhower matrix to audit your tasks
• 16:49 - Ruthlessly cutting energy-draining tasks each quarter
• 22:03 - What leaders should never delegate away
• 23:23 - Situational leadership and the four stages of delegating
• 25:00 - How to choose who to delegate to
• 27:30 - The first low-risk delegation win to try
• 33:30 - Keeping delegation sustainable when it gets hard

🫶 Connect With Naphtali Hoff

🌍 Websites: http://impactfulcoaching.com

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/naphtali.hoff
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/impactfulcoach
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/naphtalihoff/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/naphtalihoff/

📚 Books: Becoming the New Boss, Becoming the Productive Boss,

🎧 Listen & Subscribe

Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide

Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at http://myprincipalcoach.com

🤝 Today's Ruckuscast Partners

Most kids "think about" their future. They take a quiz, grab a brochure, and name three careers they saw on TV. That's not a plan. Orchard helps every student build a real, personalized career action plan, with an AI buddy named Orchie guiding the way. Explore careers. Compare paths. Take the next step this week. 🔎 Show your students what's possible → https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/

For 30 years, ODP Business Solutions has helped schools swap tired classrooms for spaces students actually want to walk into. Smart boards, flexible furniture that turns any room into a collaboration zone, and tech integrations that bring lessons to life — all from one supplier, with easy access to cooperative contracts so procurement doesn't slow you down. Innovative school leaders use them to simplify ordering and streamline budgeting while staying compliant. 🔎 Visit http://ODPbusiness.com/education to redesign your learning spaces.

Teachers who say "I taught it, they should have learned it" are missing the diagnostic data to actually close the gap. IXL automatically identifies each student's knowledge gaps and builds a personalized growth plan around them, so teachers walk into class knowing exactly what students know and don't. The platform adjusts difficulty in real time as students learn, making differentiation automatic instead of another task on your plate. 🔎 Get started at http://ixl.com/leaders

Kids First Education was founded by career educators, not consultants, and it shows in how they work. They partner with PreK-12 districts to deliver instructional coaching, leadership development, and curriculum support built on collaboration, reflective planning, and shared problem-solving — not theory. Whether you lead one building or an entire district, their team meets yours where it is. 🔎 See how they can support your school at http://kidsfirstllc.com

She studies why anti-racist professional development in schools so often fails to change how teachers actually treat students — and what works instead. Dr Abby C. Emerson is an assistant professor of Childhood Education at Hunter College, CUNY, where her research spans anti-racist and abolitionist teacher education, restorative justice, and the critique of whiteness in educational spaces.

She's been named National Association for Multicultural Education's Critical Teacher of the Year, and this fall she releases her book, From Anti-Racism to Professional Learning for Liberating Schools, with Harvard Education Press.

Most schools running anti-racist professional development hit the same wall: teachers learn the theory, reflect on their own bias, update a unit — and the discipline data doesn't move. Dr. Abby C. Emerson studied schools across New York City to find out why, and she found the fix isn't another workshop. It's handing the mic to students.

📚 What You'll Learn

• Why the three most common anti-racist PD strategies rarely change discipline outcomes
• How one high school's student-led equity committee exposed teacher bias that surveys never could
• Why "call-out culture" undermines anti-racist work faster than it builds it
• How to communicate proactively with parents before backlash starts
• Why breaking curriculum change into small, sequenced steps outperforms sweeping overhauls

🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules 🧠 Key Insight #1: Why Anti-Racist Professional Development Doesn't Change Discipline Data

• What's broken: Schools run PD on structural racism, individual reflection, and curriculum revision, then assume the culture has shifted.
• The shift: Track whether discipline outcomes actually move — not whether teachers can articulate the theory.
• Impact: Educators reported updating their curriculum while the same students kept getting pulled out of class for the same behavior, because the PD never reached school-wide policy.

🧠 Key Insight #2: The Student Voice Committee That Exposed Teacher Bias

• What's broken: Adult-only equity committees rely on surveys and self-report — data teachers can rationalize away.
• The shift: One high school trained students on its equity committee to collect, analyze, and present discipline data directly to staff, with no teacher in the room.
• Impact: Teachers only reversed their denial when white students said out loud that Black classmates were being punished for the exact same behavior they weren't.

🧠 Key Insight #3: Why Call-Out Culture Kills Anti-Racist Progress

• What's broken: PD that turns into "gotcha" policing — correcting language, catching mistakes in real time — makes people defensive and shuts the conversation down.
• The shift: Build the relationship first: one-on-one conversations, patience, and space for staff to say when they don't feel great about the PD.
• Impact: Principals who built trust before pushing change kept staff in the work, instead of losing them to resistance or resignation.

🗣️ DR. ABBY C. EMERSON QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST

"Racism is not just about a couple bad apples, but that racism is a systemic structural piece that impacts all of us."

— Dr. Abby C. Emerson

"Education and teaching can be used as a tool to really challenge inequality in all its forms."

— Dr. Abby C. Emerson

"That relationship piece is more important than calling people out."

— Dr. Abby C. Emerson

"That sort of policing of each other was ultimately really detrimental."

— Dr. Abby C. Emerson

"I really tried to get ahead of the conversation so families knew it was coming home."

— Dr. Abby C. Emerson

🧗‍♂️ Your Do School Different Challenge

Ready to implement? Start here:

• Tomorrow: Schedule one 15-minute conversation with a teacher who's pushed back on equity work, and just listen before you respond.
• This Month: Pull last semester's discipline data broken out by race and share it with your leadership team before your next PD session.
• This Semester: Launch a student equity or student voice committee that collects and presents its own data directly to staff.

⌚️ Episode Timestamps

• 00:00 - Cold open: the data that shocked teachers
• 02:47 - Introducing Dr. C. Abby Emerson
• 04:04 - The PD disaster that sparked her research
• 06:24 - Why teacher time is too precious to waste
• 09:35 - Three patterns in anti-racist PD across NYC schools
• 12:11 - How teachers respond to learning structural racism
• 16:31 - Why call-out culture backfires in PD
• 18:08 - Facing political backlash after 2020
• 23:37 - The hardest work: individual self-reflection
• 26:25 - Curriculum revision, one unit at a time
• 29:47 - Two critiques: discipline gaps and individualized PD
• 37:55 - How a student voice committee changed a school
• 42:47 - Rapid-fire: marquee message and dream school principles

🤝 Connect With Dr. Abby C. Emerson

👩🏻‍💻 Website: https://www.abbyemerson.com/

🔗 LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/abby-emerson-edd-4a387a55

📕 Book: (From Antiracism to Abolition: Professional Learning for Liberating Schools - https://hep.gse.harvard.edu/9798895571170/from-antiracism-to-abolition/ )

🎧 Listen & Subscribe

Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide

Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at http://myprincipalcoach.com

🫶 Today's RuckusCast Partners

Most kids "think about" their future. They take a quiz, grab a brochure, and name three careers they saw on TV. That's not a plan. Orchard helps every student build a real, personalized career action plan, with an AI buddy named Orchie guiding the way. Explore careers. Compare paths. Take the next step this week. 🔎 Show your students what's possible → https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/

ODP Business Solutions has been a trusted partner for schools for 30 years, handling everything from pencils to projectors so your team stops scrambling for supplies every August. They'll help you turn a tired computer lab into a STEAM innovation center, keep multiple campuses stocked and stocked sustainably, or upgrade from whiteboards to interactive displays — all through one supplier with access to cooperative contracts that simplify ordering and keep budgets compliant. 🔎 Visit http://ODPbusiness.com/education to learn more.

IXL helps over 1 million teachers differentiate instruction in 20 minutes or less using real-time, data-informed insight — and gives Ruckus Makers a dashboard to track student progress and growth at every level, with reports you can customize to what matters most to your school. It's how data-informed decisions actually get made at scale, not just talked about. 🔎 Get started at http://ixl.com/leaders

Kids First Education was founded by career educators and partners with Pre-K through 12 districts and schools to deliver instructional coaching, leadership development, and curriculum support built on collaboration and reflective planning. Whether you lead a single building or an entire district, they meet your team where they are with a relentless focus on what's best for kids. 🔎 Learn more at http://kidsfirst.llc

Building AI tools that replace one-size-fits-all personality tests with real career plans is what got Corey Kossack into K12 education. He's the founder and CEO of Orchard, an AI-powered career counseling platform for schools, and Aspireship, an employee upskilling platform — work born from watching his own father cycle in and out of a job he hated for years.

Kossack has spent his career helping people who want to help themselves climb toward ambitious goals, and Orchard is the result: an AI career counselor named Orchie, paired with real interviews from working professionals across hundreds of occupations. For Ruckus Makers wrestling with overworked counselors and an outdated career-readiness playbook, that's the credential that matters.

Most schools still run career readiness on a conveyor belt: next grade, next test, college, then hope for the best. Corey Kossack argues that model was built for a workforce AI has already started dismantling — and he's built a system for what comes after it. This is the episode for any Ruckus Maker rethinking what career readiness actually means right now.

🧐 What You'll Learn

• Why the "conveyor belt" model of career prep breaks down the moment AI starts reshaping entire job categories
• The four stages of school transformation — conveyor belt, simulation, mentor, and venture mode — and what each looks like in practice
• Why personality tests give students false certainty instead of real career readiness
• How AI tools like Orchard's Orchie can support overworked counselors instead of replacing them
• What it actually takes to build career connections into daily instruction instead of treating it as an extra

🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules 📚 Key Insight #1: The Conveyor Belt Career Readiness Model Is Broken

• What's broken: Schools push students through a fixed path — next grade, next test, college, career — built for a stable workforce that no longer exists.
• The shift: Replace single-path thinking with a system built on exploration, mentorship, and venture (real-world doing) woven into the curriculum instead of bolted onto it.
• Impact: Students leave school with an actual plan and multiple explored pathways, instead of a deterministic label like "you're an engineer."

📚 Key Insight #2: Personality Tests Give False Certainty, Not Career Readiness

• What's broken: Traditional interest inventories are deterministic — one survey tells a student exactly what they'll be, and it's often wrong.
• The shift: AI-driven exploration lets students search by criteria — "an innovative tech career for creative people" — instead of getting boxed into a single job title.
• Impact: Students can compare pay, pathways, and requirements across a dozen careers at once instead of fixating on one narrow "good job."

🚀 Key Insight #3: AI Career Coaching Should Back Up Counselors, Not Replace Them

• What's broken: School counselors are overworked and can't possibly know the full breadth of occupations that exist today, especially as AI reshapes the job market in real time.
• The shift: Tools like Orchard's Orchie generate a personalized student action plan in under 20 seconds, freeing counselors to focus on relationship and guidance instead of research.
• Impact: Counselors gain a resource that scales their impact instead of one more task piled onto an already impossible list.

✍️ COREY KOSSACK QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST

"If you're using the conveyor belt method at your school to prepare kids for the future, you are failing your students."

— Corey Kossack

"That conveyor belt method was built to produce a stable workforce. A workforce that's now gone."

— Corey Kossack

"Your students don't need to take a personality test telling them what they will one day be."

— Corey Kossack

"Don't fall into your future. Climb to it."

— Corey Kossack

"Why do we put it all on counselors? Why does it all have to be on counselors?"

— Corey Kossack

"How would you possibly expect a counselor to know all of these things?"

— Corey Kossack

"College is not the destination. It is a step in the journey."

— Corey Kossack

🚵‍♀️ Your Do School Different Challenge

Ready to implement? Start here:

• Tomorrow: Pull up the episode's example of an overlooked career — like clinical operations for pharma trials — and share it with one counselor or teacher today.
• This Month: Sit down with your counseling team and map where your current career-advising process relies on a single deterministic test instead of open-ended exploration.
• This Semester: Build at least one explicit career connection into a core academic course, so students see how the subject maps to real occupations as part of the curriculum, not an add-on.

⌚️Episode Timestamps

• 00:00 - The conveyor belt method is failing students
• 03:26 - Corey's origin story: why his dad hated his job
• 06:15 - Why AI urgency is reshaping career readiness now
• 08:51 - A marketing team goes from five reports to zero
• 09:58 - Trades, GTM engineers, and chasing "the one thing"
• 12:27 - Why no one fully understands real career options
• 15:35 - The problem with deterministic personality tests
• 18:10 - Conveyor belt, simulation, mentor, and venture mode
• 28:54 - Inside Orchard: meeting Orchie, the AI career counselor
• 33:24 - Comparing pay and pathways across a dozen careers
• 35:58 - Building a personalized action plan in under 20 seconds
• 42:46 - Why this supports counselors instead of replacing them
• 44:29 - Corey's marquee message and dream campus principles

🎧 Connect With Corey Kossack

• Website: https://corey@orchard.careers/, aspireship.com
• Follow on social: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreykossack/

🎧 Listen & Subscribe

Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide

Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at http://myprincipalcoach.com

🤝 Today's RuckusCast Partners

Most kids "think about" their future. They take a quiz, grab a brochure, and name three careers they saw on TV. That's not a plan.

Orchard helps every student build a real, personalized career action plan, with an AI buddy named Orchie guiding the way. Explore careers. Compare paths. Take the next step this week.

🔎 Show your students what's possible → https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/

ODP Business Solutions has spent 30 years helping school districts build learning environments students actually want to be in. They helped Belago Academy replace disengaged classrooms with collaborative spaces, tech integration, and flexible furniture that changed how kids learn — not just where they sit. You get it all from one supplier, which means simpler ordering, easier budgeting, and access to cooperative contracts that keep you compliant. 🔎 Visit http://ODPbusiness.com/education to see what they can build for your campus.

IXL's universal screener identifies which students need intervention in 20 minutes or less — no guesswork, no wasted class time. Its adaptive learning platform, used by more than 1 million teachers, automatically adjusts to each student's exact level, so differentiation stops being a heavy lift. 🔎 Get started at http://IXL.com/leaders

Kids First Education was founded by career educators who partner with Pre-K through 12 schools and districts to deliver instructional coaching, leadership development, and curriculum support built on real classroom experience. Their approach runs on collaboration, reflective planning, and shared problem-solving — all pointed at one outcome: better decisions for kids. Whether you lead one building or an entire district, they meet your team where it is. 🔎 Learn more at http://kidsfirst.llc

Phil Brown trains educators to build the kind of learning moments a curriculum can't schedule. As an experiential and adventure education trainer at High 5 Adventure Learning Center, he's guided everyone from Iraqi high schoolers working through conflict resolution to NHL players from the Boston Bruins and Calgary Flames through experiences designed to stretch — not break — them.

He also serves on the board of the Association for Experiential Education and hosts the podcast Vertical Playpen, where he digs deeper into the theory and practice behind this work.

Most principals have sat through a lesson that went exactly as planned and taught nobody anything. Phil Brown has the opposite story: a day where nothing went as planned, and it became the most important teaching moment of his career. This episode is about what happened in between — and why experiential education, not another curriculum map, might be the fix your campus actually needs.

🫶 What You'll Learn

• Why following student curiosity can outperform even the best-designed lesson plan
• How the comfort zone, stretch zone, and panic zone model applies to staff and students alike
• Why "connection before content" isn't a soft skill — it's the fastest path to real learning
• What Kolb's experiential learning cycle looks like in a real classroom
• Why experiential education has a marketing problem, not a results problem

🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules ✅ Key Insight #1: Why Rigid Lesson Plans Kill Real Learning

• What's broken: Principals and teachers design lessons with locked agendas, tight timelines, and predetermined outcomes — then treat any deviation as a distraction.
• The shift: Follow the student's natural curiosity, even when it means abandoning the plan entirely.
• Impact: Phil scrapped an entire day's ropes-course curriculum to follow a student's question about a pine cone — and it became the most connective, most talked-about day of the entire program.

📚 Key Insight #2: Why Connection Before Content Changes Classroom Outcomes

• What's broken: Educators rush into curriculum before earning trust, assuming content delivery is the job and connection is a nice-to-have.
• The shift: Build genuine connection first. Content moves faster once trust exists.
• Impact: Groups who bond before instruction absorb content faster and take more risks, because they trust the adult guiding them enough to be honest when something's too much.

🚀 Key Insight #3: The Comfort Zone, Stretch Zone, and Panic Zone Every Leader Should Know

• What's broken: Educators assume "pushing kids out of their comfort zone" is automatically good — and push straight into panic without realizing it.
• The shift: Real growth happens in the stretch zone, not the panic zone. The goal is productive struggle, not overwhelm.
• Impact: Students who trust their leader will self-advocate the moment they're nearing panic — instead of shutting down or disengaging silently.

🗣️ PHIL BROWN QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST

"Find the pine cone. That just really means to be open to students' natural curiosity and follow it."

— Phil Brown

"Connection before content."

— Phil Brown

"It's the same thing with that supervisor who says, my door is always open — you know full well that door is not open."

— Phil Brown

"When in doubt, give them your heart."

— Phil Brown

"The only thing that you learn when you panic is, hell no, I don't want to do it again."

— Phil Brown

"Your aim is not to be childish, but be childlike."

— Phil Brown

🚵‍♀️ Your Do School Different Challenge

Ready to implement? Start here:

• Tomorrow: The next time a student or teacher asks an off-topic question, stop and follow it for five minutes instead of redirecting back to your agenda.
• This Month: Build one intentional "connection before content" activity into your next staff meeting, before any agenda item gets introduced.
• This Semester: Pick one entrenched schedule block — a 42-minute period, a PD day — and redesign it around Kolb's cycle: experience, reflect, apply, act, instead of a fixed lesson plan.

⌚️ Episode Timestamps

• 00:00 - Why rigid lesson plans block real learning
• 05:01 - Bringing Sunni and Shiite teens to Vermont
• 07:25 - Planning ropes courses the students didn't need
• 08:49 - The pine cone question that changed everything
• 12:20 - Using Ubuntu cards to build connection
• 14:20 - Why connection must come before content
• 15:23 - Kolb's experiential learning cycle explained
• 20:13 - The three components that make it adventure
• 26:37 - Comfort zone stretch zone and panic zone
• 29:34 - Why trust determines how far students stretch
• 35:59 - Why schools were built for the industrial age
• 38:11 - Selling experiential education to administrators
• 44:38 - Phil's message for every school marquee
• 47:47 - Find the pine cone the final takeaway

🔗 Connect With Phil Brown

👩🏻‍💻 Website: https://high5adventure.org/ , https://www.aee.org/

👉 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/phil-brown-high5

🎧 Listen & Subscribe

Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide

Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at http://myprincipalcoach.com

Today's RuckusCast Partners

Still scrambling for supplies like it's 1999? ODP Business Solutions has been the trusted supply partner for schools for 30 years — from restocking eight campuses with sustainable, scalable solutions to redesigning a tired computer lab into a full STEAM innovation center. Everything comes from one supplier, which means simpler ordering, streamlined budgeting, and easy access to cooperative contracts.

🔎 Visit http://ODPbusiness.com/education to see what they can build for your district.

IXL isn't just a teacher tool — it's a leadership dashboard. Ruckus Makers use IXL to put a finger on the pulse of student performance, drilling down to individual growth and customizing reports around what matters most to their goals.

🔎 Get started at http://ixl.com/leaders

Kids First Education was founded by career educators who partner with Pre-K through 12 schools and districts to deliver instructional coaching, leadership development, and curriculum support built on collaboration and real classroom data — not theory. Whether you lead a single building or an entire system, they meet your team where it is.

🔎 Learn more at http://kidsfirst.llc

META DESCRIPTION: Experiential education beats lesson plans. Learn how connection-before-content and stretch zones drive real student engagement.

Jenny Curtin partners with schools and districts across New England on behalf of the Barr Foundation, where she helps build and scale Transformative Learning Experiences — rigorous, project-based units developed with partner Springpoint that pull students out of the classroom and into courtrooms, communities, and real business ventures.

Her work runs on a philanthropic value most funders don't practice: taking the long view, and staying with schools through the slow, unglamorous work of actual change.

A student named Buddha dropped out of high school after years of disconnected, irrelevant coursework — and became his graduation class speaker after enrolling somewhere that taught differently. Jenny Curtin of the Barr Foundation joins the show to explain the model behind that turnaround, and why most school transformation efforts stall before they ever reach a kid like him.

🫶 What You'll Learn

• Why "taking the long view" beats chasing the next quick fix in school reform
• How to design school changes around your most marginalized students first
• What a Transformative Learning Experience unit actually looks like in practice
• Why community with other school leaders is what sustains multi-year change efforts

🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules 🧠 Key Insight #1: Why School Transformation Requires Slowing Down First

• What's broken: Schools chase quick fixes and bolt-on programs instead of questioning their actual purpose and vision.
• The shift: Leaders take the long view — slowing down to investigate vision, gather empathy interviews, and study other school models before acting.
• Impact: Change becomes sustainable enough to survive leadership turnover instead of collapsing the moment its champion leaves.

🧠 Key Insight #2: Why Centering Marginalized Students Redesigns the Whole School

• What's broken: Most school redesign starts from the average student and treats the most marginalized students as an afterthought.
• The shift: Design at the margins first — build for the students least served by the current system, then let that design benefit everyone.
• Impact: A school that centred a disconnected, disengaged dropout re-enrolled him — and he graduated as class speaker.

🧠 Key Insight #3: Why Project-Based Learning Beats Traditional Coursework

• What's broken: Traditional coursework asks students to check a box for a diploma without connecting it to their real lives.
• The shift: Transformative Learning Experiences put students in real courtrooms for moot trials, real neighbourhoods for gentrification photography projects, and real business plans built with math skills.
• Impact: Students report a deeper sense of their own potential, and even early-adopter teachers say the model shifted what they believe is possible for kids.

🎧 JENNY CURTIN QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST

"The silver bullets that are always coming on the scene for education are a trap." — Jenny Curtin

"We're not interested in people just adding more decorations onto an existing cake." — Jenny Curtin

"If we aren't ever designing at those margins of who isn't being served well, we're never going to get to those young people." — Jenny Curtin

"There's like many different, beautiful high school models that can exist that do not have to look all the same." — Jenny Curtin

"We're not interested in making marginal changes to make things marginally better for young people." — Jenny Curtin

✍️ Your Do School Different Challenge

Ready to implement? Start here:

• Tomorrow: Pull up your school's current improvement plan and circle every initiative that's a bolt-on program rather than a rebuilt foundation.
• This Month: Shadow three students who are least served by your current model and document what they actually need.
• This Semester: Pilot one project-based, community-connected unit — like a moot court trial or a local-issue investigation — with a single grade or department.

🚀 Episode Timestamps

• 00:00 - Why there are no quick fixes in education
• 03:28 - Buddha's story: from dropout to class speaker
• 08:18 - Why the system wasn't built to serve every student
• 10:38 - Centering the most marginalized students first
• 12:10 - The cake analogy: stop decorating, start re-baking
• 14:35 - What taking the long view actually means
• 19:33 - Why school leaders need community, not isolation
• 26:09 - Inside Transformative Learning Experiences: Students in the Law
• 28:31 - Taking learning beyond the school walls
• 30:40 - How project-based learning shifts staff mindset
• 33:26 - How high-impact leaders sustain change over years
• 37:23 - Jenny's marquee message and three principles for a dream school

💌 Connect With Jenny Curtin

Website: https://www.barrfoundation.org/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennycurtin/

🎧 Listen & Subscribe

Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide

Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at http://myprincipalcoach.com

🫶 Today's RuckusCast Partners

ODP Business Solutions has been the behind-the-scenes partner for schools for three decades — not just competitive pricing, but negotiated cooperative contracts that stretch every dollar. They helped Baldwin School District overhaul its entire campus without blowing the budget, combining smart design with smarter purchasing. From essential supplies to cutting-edge tech to flexible furniture, it's one supplier instead of ten separate headaches. Visit http://ODPbusiness.com/education to see what they can do for your district.

Frontline Education's 2026 K12 Lens Report makes one thing clear: retention, not just hiring, is what determines staffing stability. Districts running structured, automated professional growth software report easier hiring nearly half the time — compared to just 30% of districts without it. If you're building a campus where great educators actually want to stay, this report is your blueprint. Get it free at http://FrontlineEducation.com/leaders

IXL kills the guesswork in lesson planning — teachers get ready-made, standards-aligned lessons built for exactly what their textbooks already cover. Add daily insight into student performance and teachers can adjust instruction before a gap becomes a pattern. Your teachers get the tool, your students get the growth. Start at http://IXL.com/leaders

META DESCRIPTION: Barr Foundation's Jenny Curtin on why real high school transformation starts with slowing down, not adding another program.