Episode 198: A Great School Year Rarely Happens By Accident (Do These 3 Things On Purpose)

Welcome to the Private School Leader Podcast, where private school leaders learn how to thrive and not just survive as they serve and lead their schools. I strongly believe that it is possible to have a long and happy and fulfilling career as a private school leader, and my passion is to help you figure out exactly how to do just that. Right here on the Private School Leader Podcast, and I'm your host, Mark Micas. So in 1928, there was a Scottish scientist named Alexander Fleming, and he was on vacation, and he came back from vacation, and noticed that one of his Petri dishes had accidentally become contaminated with mold, and usually that meant throwing the Petri dish away and starting over. But Fleming noticed something unusual, and that was that the bacteria surrounding the mold had died, and bacteria farther away from the mold continued to grow. And so instead of just throwing it all out and figuring this was a failed experiment, he got curious as to what was going on in that mold, which is called penicillum nautatum, contained a natural substance that could kill harmful bacteria. And this scientist Alexander Fleming had just accidentally discovered penicillin, the world's first widely used antibiotic that years later, as it was mass produced, went on to save millions of lives, especially during World War II. And so some things are discovered by accident. And penicillin is a perfect example of that, and the microwave oven was discovered by accident. And the Post-it note was discovered when someone was trying to invent something completely different. And chocolate chip cookies happened because a woman named Ruth Wakefield ran out of baking chocolate, and so she improvised with chocolate chips. And there are a ton of things that have happened in the history of the world that happened completely by accident. But having a great school year is rarely something that happens by accident. And I believe that great school years happen on purpose. And so I thought about that and I thought, you know, if I could just boil it down to three things. Three things that if you do these three things well, you're going to have a great school year. What would they be? So I'm going to tell you those in a few minutes, but I just want to let you know that on today's episode of the private school leader podcast, we are going to discuss how a great school year rarely happens by accident. And so do these three things on purpose. And before we jump into that, if you're listening to this in real time, in early August, your teacher in service days are right around the corner. And you have a couple of problems that I want to help you solve. So problem number one is that you're really, really busy. And you have good intentions to have really good, meaningful PD for your teachers, but you're just too busy to plan it. And problem number two is that it's really difficult to find meaningful PD that is applicable to everybody on the faculty from the preschool teachers all the way to the eighth grade or even the high school teachers in your school. And then problem number three is that usually high quality professional development for your teachers is pretty expensive. So I can solve all three of those problems for you with the private school teacher academy. And private school teacher academy has four on demand video webinars with guided notes and discussion questions and a mini poster. And then it also has additional teacher resources. And four webinars, the five keys to having your best school year ever, which works really well during teacher in service, the differentiation playbook helping every student learn without burning yourself out, the six habits of an outstanding private school teacher, and then how to better support students who have mental health struggles. And so you could use one or two of these during teacher in service. And then most schools have a PD day in the fall and then have one maybe in like February. And so you can check some pretty big boxes and I can solve those problems for you. So if you are interested in learning more, just go to the private school leader dot com slash teacher. That's the private school leader dot com slash teacher to check out more about private school teacher academy. And then I like to give you a free gift every episode. And I haven't reminded you about this one in a long time. So this is going to be the first time most of you are hearing this. I have a 45 minute master class for you for free and it's called winning at school without losing at home. And this is a video webinar training with guided notes and it'll do exactly what the title says. It's going to help you be successful and organized and energized while you're at school, while still taking good care of yourself and your family at home. So if that sounds too good to be true, I want to show you that that's not too good to be true. So go to the private school leader dot com slash winning and grab access to your free master class called winning at school without losing at home. Again a free 45 minute master class webinar for you. Just as a gift to say thank you for listening to the podcast. You can get that for free at the private school leader dot com slash winning. So I told you that I want to share three things with you today that if you do these things well, the school year, you will very, very likely have a great school year. And I want you to stick around because after I talk about each of these three things, I'm also going to give you a bonus additional thing to do that kind of wraps it all together. I'll give you that bonus at the end of the episode. So what are these three things that if you do them and do them well, you're going to have a great school year. Well number one. Number one is clear expectations. Number two is autonomy with accountability. And number three is servant leadership. So I really want you to tune in here and listen, I'm going to break this down for you. And if you do these three things clear expectations, autonomy with accountability. And then you use the servant leadership model, the that style of leadership. You are very, very, very likely to have a really, really good school year. So let's start with clear expectations. You've heard me talk about how important this is before. But I want you to see it through this lens. The clearer that you are now, and if you're listening to this in real time, you know, we're in August and it's around the beginning of a school year. It's maybe right before your school year has begun. The clearer you are now with your teachers and staff, the fewer fires you'll have to put out later. The clearer you are now, the fewer problems you're going to have later. And I think one of the biggest mistakes that we make as leaders is assuming that because we said something that it has been understood. One of the biggest mistakes that I think we make is assuming that because we said something that it has been understood. And if it's understood, then of course, it'll be remembered. And then everyone the teachers and the staff will do what they're supposed to do. But you know enough to know that that's a dangerous assumption because people need clarity. Your team needs clarity, your teachers, your staff. They need clarity. And I want you to think back. I know most of you that are listening, you started off in the classroom and then kind of worked your way up into a leadership position. Some of you are still in the classroom a couple of periods a day or more. And I want you to think about when you were in the classroom, when you were a teacher full time, you gave your students very clear expectations, the learning target, the, you know, for this lesson on a broader scale, what are our class expectations for the school year? What are our classroom procedures? And then we're going to rehearse them until they become routines. And so all of those things that you did in the classroom, those are still needed for your teachers and for your staff. And so there's three ways that I think, and these are things that already exist in your organization. But I think that there are three documents that can tremendously help your teacher, staff, and your parents to be all on the same page to be super clear. And if you have clear expectations up front, then it's going to be a better school year. and then also number two, autonomy with accountability is going to be possible. So these three things that I'm referring to are your employee handbook, your family handbook, and the job descriptions for your teachers and staff. And so with the employee handbook, you know, you've heard me talk about, I think it was about four or five episodes ago, I did an episode called Revise Your, do your employee handbook revisions based on your best teacher or not your worst teacher. And maybe we're a little late in the game when you're hearing this about revising your employee handbook or your family handbook. I'm not really, you know, talking so much about that now as I am about, okay, so this exists. But we don't want to think of our employee handbook as like a legal document where we can play a game of Gacha. We want to make sure that this is more of like a, we use it regardless of the condition it's in, you know, best case scenario you've revised it and you've, you know, you're really happy with it, but it also could be that it sounds like a legal document. It reads like a legal document. Okay, well, that's a job for next spring is to revise it. I'll link that episode in the show notes at the private school leader dot com slash episode one nine eight, the one I was referring to from a few weeks ago. But I just really believe that your employee handbook it answers questions before people ask them or you can refer them to the handbook. It creates consistency across the board because people are supposed to be doing the same thing almost all of them with certain things, whether that's arrival or or the way that they how soon they have to get back to a parent or professional attire or, you know, a complaint procedure or whatever the case might be, you know, putting in for a personal day. That we have to have clarity around what they're supposed to do. And the same is true with the family handbook. And this one is true for teachers and parents because not only is it important for your teachers and staff, but especially your teachers to know what the family handbook says, because we're going to hold students accountable to that and the family handbook is shared with the parents. Of course, the employee handbook is not. And so we're assuming and I'll come back to that in a moment, we're assuming that parents have read the handbook. And so we have to make darn sure that our teachers know exactly what we're supposed to do in that handbook because you've been in the position before I've been in the position before where a teacher does a thing. And they didn't really follow the handbook. And then we're stuck in a really difficult spot because we want to back up our teachers, but it's really harder and possible to back them up when they're doing stuff that's not in the handbook. So, you know, your parents, they need the clarity, they can read it, you know, ahead of time, et cetera. Okay, that brings me back to assuming that your employees have read the employee handbook that your teachers have read the family handbook that the parents are going to read the family handbook. Here's the thing. I think the biggest line America is click here to say, I agree that I've read the terms and conditions of whatever, okay, whatever it is that you just clicked on. I've done it, you've done it. We haven't read the all the legal use of 14 page PDF, okay. Teachers, they are professionals. This is an organization. It's an educational organization, but it's also a business. And so we're going to tell them, this is my suggestion is that, you know, in a welcome back email or, you know, I don't think that you should, in my opinion, I don't think you should spend a lot of time on the employee handbook during in service. I think it's an email with a link to the employee handbook, a link to the family handbook and link to a Google form. And on that Google form, it just says the, you know, person enters their name teacher enters name or staff member. I have read and understand the employee handbook click here. I've read and understand the family handbook. And that that has to be clicked before the first day of school. I'm a big believer in that. And so you might say, well, yeah, but they're not going to read it if we don't go over it like sentence by sentence during in service. If they say they read it, you can hold them accountable to what they've said that they read. And you don't have to have your best teachers roll their eyes because we know that we're really going over the handbook. With everybody for the sake of just a few teachers who probably aren't going to change their behavior because of the handbook anyways, they're going to change their behavior because of the courageous conversations that you're going to have when they don't follow the handbook. So I'll get off my soapbox about that. But and then the third part of clear expectations is a job description. Every person in your school, every employee in your school should know exactly what success looks like. You know, you've seen the motivational saying you miss 100% of the shots that you don't take. I've seen where they'll have a basketball backboard and there'll be no rim on it and there'll be something about, you know, you got to have a goal to shoot for kind of a thing. Well, your teachers are the same. You know, like so for example, if I visited your school and I went in and talked to some of your teachers individually. And I said, well, what are the three most important things that your principal or your had a school expects from you this year? Would it be the same answer across the board from most of the teachers or would it be like all over the place or would there be a lot of I don't know? And I'm not saying that we're going to fix this overnight, but we should have clarity among the faculty and among the staff on what they're supposed to do. What do we expect them to do? And so this is again, just to stimulate your thought, but the the family handbook, the employee handbook, the job descriptions, you know, maybe they need revisions, maybe they need an overhaul, that's something that, you know, at this point in the summer is probably a next spring kind of thing. But for now, you have what you have. And so you can use those for the clarity of expectations. And then we get into accountability in a moment. But the last thing I want to add is, you know, I coach a lot of leaders all over the country. And what I've seen when they talked to me about teachers or staff who are coming up short, it's rarely because they that that employee doesn't care. But a lot of the times, it's because they weren't clear on what they are supposed to do. And because we're all being too nice. You know, I'm going to do an episode on nice guy syndrome slash nice gal syndrome. I think a lot of us are nice people, most of us. And we kind of shrink in that moment when it comes to holding people accountable. So just I'm not saying that we're going to fix that overnight either. But what I am saying is if we want to have a great school year, it has to start with clear expectations. Okay, so that was number one. And so we're not going to micromanage, but we're also not going to disappear. You know, let me give you those two extremes. Micromanaging, that's not autonomy with accountability. You know, autonomy, we know what that word means, just this idea of that they have some freedom that they have some ability, some flexibility to do to deliver the curriculum the way that they want to. You know, and autonomy with accountability. It's worked really well for me over the course of my career. It's worked really well for most of my coaching clients. If you have clear expectations, and then you're a visible leader and you're popping in, you're in the hallway, you know, I'm not saying all the time, but we all have a desire. Let's face it, we all the desire to do better at being a visible leader. But if we trust our people and we empower our people and we want to give them ownership, we don't have to micromanage how they deliver the curriculum. You know, so if it's six grade social studies and they're learning about Mesopotamia or ancient Egypt or whatever, or if it's pre algebra and they're learning about adding and subtracting positive and negative integers, we don't have to micromanage how they're learning it. We just have to hold our teachers accountable that they are learning it, that they have well-managed classrooms from a classroom management standpoint. And that they are doing engaged engaging teaching that they're not just, you know, standing at the front like a stage, sage on a stage and preaching at the kids from behind up a podium. Okay. So yeah, we have all kinds of different goals that are broader and bigger and deeper than what I just said. But I think that if all or most of our teachers were doing what I just said, well-managed classrooms teaching engage teaching that leads to mastery of the content. I think we'd all sign up for that, okay? And so too much control makes our teachers feel suffocated and many of them that come from the public school already know what it's like to feel suffocated. You know, I supervised a teacher who had taught for eight years in another state. And when she came to me, she was a middle school math teacher. She told me that her boss, her principal, building principal told her if it's not on the state exam, the standardized state exam, I don't wanna see you teaching it. And then they would post the scores on the state exam. They would post those in the lobby of the school. And so some teachers know what it's like to be micromanaged and to feel suffocated. And the other extreme is to give them just too much freedom. Never check in, never know what's going on. And then they're doing whatever and you kinda don't know what they're doing and then they feel disconnected. You're not really giving them feedback. And so that brings us back to clear expectations. Like if you give them the destination, let them choose how they get there. And then you're a visible leader, you're a coach. You know, this idea of autonomy with accountability, there's a lot of overlap of the then diagram of like a coaching style of leadership. You know, give them the goal. You know, give them feedback. Our teachers deserve feedback. If someone's doing a great job, we need to tell them that they're doing a great job. If someone isn't and they need to be coached up, then we need to coach them up and the earlier in the year, the better. Because if we're visible and we're out there and we know what's going on, especially early in the year. And we've given them clear expectations and now we're into this autonomy with accountability mode. And we're making small course corrections in September and October that can prevent major problems in January and February. And so the last thing on accountability, it should never feel like a game of gacha. It should feel like support and feedback. Okay, so we've talked so far about how a great school year rarely happens by accident. And that we're gonna do three things on purpose. Number one, clear expectations, number two, autonomy with accountability. And then number three is servant leadership. And if you've listened to more than one or two episodes of this podcast, you've heard me talk about servant leadership. And maybe if I didn't name it, you've heard me talk about some of the characteristics of servant leadership. And so I just want to remind you that it's this idea of putting the success of others ahead of your own success and your own status, your own power, your own personal agenda. Servant leadership is the opposite of positional leadership. We've all had that boss that was a lousy boss. Maybe you have to think back to your teen years or your college years or whenever, but we've all had that boss that was a positional leader that was a do it because I said so leader, that was a top down autocratic command and control leader. Servant leadership is the opposite of that. It's the how can I help you succeed kind of leader? It's the no task is beneath me kind of leader. It's like I'm here to help you be successful. I'm here to serve you. It's not about how big my office is. It's not about a reserve parking space. It's not about status, power, position. It's about making sure my people have what they need and making sure that they know that I care about them as human beings and that I'm leading with integrity and honesty and that I'll do anything for them to help them have success. That's servant leadership. And we don't, great leaders, I believe they don't lead from above, they don't lead from behind their desk. I feel like great leaders lead from alongside. So try this on for size. When it comes to servant leadership, we're not leading from above down. We're leading kind of alongside and we're helping to remove some obstacles while we help people grow, we help people heal, we help them flourish and grow into the potential that they have. And this brings us full circle back to when you're in the classroom. What were we always trying to do? We were trying to help those students close the gap between potential and performance. Their potential is way up here, but their performance is down here. And so then we're constantly thinking about how can I help close that gap for this kid and this child and this kid over here? That's what we're doing in the classroom and that's what you're going to do as a leader. And so you've heard me say at the end of every episode, serve first lead second, make a difference. Servant leadership is leading second, it's serving first. And if I had to pick two things that I think are the most important characteristics of a servant leader, number one is integrity and number two is emotional intelligence. And if you lead with integrity and you tell the truth and you keep your promises and you make ethical decisions. And if you lead with emotional intelligence and you show empathy and you listen and don't interrupt and you try to build people up, if you lead with humility and not arrogance or conceit, then you're a servant leader. And being a servant leader, in my opinion, is way more difficult than being a position leader. If you're a position leader and you just say, I'm the boss, you have to do it because I'm the boss and because I said so. That's easier than all the things I just said. Servant leadership takes a tremendous amount of effort. But I want you to think about that positional boss that you had back in the day, whenever it was. You don't want to work for that person. You only did it because you had to and you only did it because you wanted the paycheck so that you could pay your rent or whatever, right? You don't want your teachers to only be working for the paycheck. And so high expectations, high support, being approachable and available and visible, all of those things go into being a servant leader. I did two episodes on this way back when I did, it was episode five and episode six. I did a two-parter on servant leadership. I'll link those in the show notes as well. If you want to do a deeper dive on that, but servant leadership. And so I told you I'd give you a bonus. If you can do the things that we're talking about this year, have clear expectations, have autonomy with accountability, display servant leadership, the thing I would wrap all that up in is self-care. Because everything we've talked about today takes a lot of effort, but everything we've talked about today falls apart if you're exhausted and burn out and overwhelmed. Because you're not going to be visible, you're going to be in your office completely overwhelmed. You're not going to be able to serve others because you're just in survival mode. And it is easier said than done to take care of yourself. I think one of the biggest myths for us as school leaders is, well, I'll take care of myself after things settle down. But they never settle down. Think of a school year when you're like, well, I'll start taking care of myself after I get through, you know, teacher and service. All right, well, I'll start taking care of myself after we get the school year started and we have back to school night. Well, I'll take care of myself after we get to Thanksgiving. And then we run it back year after year and our body pays the price. I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know. Sometimes it's really hard to engage in self-care because we're so tired at the end of the day. But I'm going to link episode eight in the show notes at theprivateschoolliter.com/epsod198. Episode eight is called How to Overcome Burnout with Boundaries. Everything that you need to know about how to take care of yourself as a private school leader is in episode eight. But to just cherry pick a few things, sleep, water, moving your body, even if that's getting up and moving around campus, eating real food, smile, laugh, spend time with people who fill up your emotional tank, your emotional energy tank. You know these things. I'm not trying to say that they're easy. I'm just trying to say that if we want to have a great school year and if we want to have the energy to have clear expectations with our faculty and staff and to lead with autonomy with accountability and to display servant leadership That if we want to have the energy to do that we're gonna have to engage in some self-care So those are the big takeaways from today's episode clear expectations autonomy with accountability and servant leadership can Help you intentionally have a great year not have a great year by accident and just hope for the best And so I like to give a call to action at the end of every episode and so sometime in the next week I would encourage you to take a blank piece of paper and Just write number one number two number three and just take 15 minutes sometime in the next week and just jot down One action that you can take Towards clear expectations one action you can take toward accountability autonomy with accountability and one action You can take towards servant leadership three actions 15 minutes of blank piece of paper sometime in the next week So just a quick reminder that Winning at school without losing at home is a free video training webinar for you and you can check that out the private school leader calm slash winning I want to teach you how to win at school without losing at home So just check that out private school leader calm slash winning that's free and then One final reminder that private school teacher academy Can be a game changer for you this year not only an in service but throughout the year to Develop your teachers strong teachers make strong schools You can go to private school your calm slash teacher to check that out and I would love to hear from you if you get value from the podcast Just shoot me an email at mark. O dot. Minkus at gmail.com and let me know a strategy that you're using or Maybe your biggest pain point your biggest struggle your biggest win. I'd love to hear from you mark. O dot. Minkus at gmail.com And then if you get value from any episode if you would please just share the link to the podcast with another leader that you know Or a rising leader at your school. I would truly appreciate it and I've been your host mark Minkus I want to say how much I appreciate you and all the amazing hard work that you do for those lucky kids and lucky teachers at your school Thank you for taking some of that precious time to join me here today And I'll see you next time right here on the private school leader podcast and until then always remember to serve first Lead second and make a difference