Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
So teachers want leaders who support themand value them and empower them. And
leaders set out to value and supportand empower their teachers. So why can't
that always happen? In this episode, I'm talking to Miriam Platynsky, author
of Lead Like a Teacher, StickAround. Welcome to the Leader of Learning
(00:23):
podcast. I'm your host, doctorDan Crinis, and this is where I
help educators grow their impact as instructionalleaders because my research and leadership experiences have
led me to understand that someone likeyou, regardless of your role or your
title, can have a tremendous impacton your organization. I chat with inspiring
(00:44):
guests who are truly making an impactas instructional leaders. Whether this is your
first time listening or you come backfor more, I hope you've subscribed to
this show on your preferred podcast appsso you don't miss any of the great
episodes, topics, or guests.Anyway, I'm so glad you've tuned in.
Now let's get started, all right, Leader of Learning, Welcome to
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episode one sixty. If you're justjoining us here for the first time,
thank you so much. If you'recoming back for more, well thank you
too. I really appreciate everyone listening, and I know that you're gonna love
this episode. I'll get to itin just a minute before I do just
some housekeeping first and foremost. We'regetting close to the end of the school
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year, and I think my listenersin the western and southern parts of the
country are really wrapping up their schoolyear right around now. If you're listening
to this in the end of May, I have a few more weeks here
where I am. We end upin the middle of June, but I
just want to wish everyone a verysuccessful and healthy and hopefully happy end of
(01:57):
their school year. It's been kindof a wild ride this year, but
we made it and we're just aboutthere. We see the light at the
end of the tunnelso congratulations for that. If you're one of my educator friends
that are listening right now, Ialso just want to remind you, and
I know I said this in thelast episode, but again, if you're
just joining us, I, inaddition to this podcast, do like to
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create a lot of other content,whether it's YouTube videos or I've been trying
to be better at blogging lately.But everything that we do here, including
some products and services that are forsale, let's say, like some publications
and online courses and even some coachingservices that I'm starting to offer. You
(02:44):
can find all that information in mynewsletter. So I would encourage you and
invite you to please go ahead andsign up for my newsletter. I don't
send it all the time, butI promise you I won't spam you or
anything like that, and be valuablecontent that will come to you about every
week or so. To sign up, head to Leader of Learning dot com
(03:07):
slash subscribe or Leader of Learning dotcom slash news. As always, those
links are in the show notes,So on any podcast app that you're listening
on right now, just head overto the show notes and click the link
to join my email newsletter. Nowonto this episode. When Miriam Platynsky reached
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out to me for an interview opportunity, I definitely said yes pretty quickly because
her book is called Lead Like aTeacher, and I feel like that speaks
to me and my mission here atLeader of Learning very much, and I
was really excited to talk to her, and I loved her sharing some of
her ideas about how leaders school leaderscan really bring their staffs and their organizations
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together and truly value and empower thevoices of all stakeholders, but especially those
teachers and staff members who have alot to offer and bring a lot to
the table. I can't wait foryou to listen. Coming up after these
messages is my interview with Miriam Platynsky. All right, welcome back, Leader
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of Learning. I'm excited to bringon Miriam Platynsky, who is an instructional
specialist with Montgomery County Public Schools inMaryland, where she has taught and led
for more than twenty years. Sheis a National Board Certified teacher and certified
administrator, and the author of afew different books. Here we have writing
their future selves, Teach More,Hoverless, and one that I think is
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most recent and one that I'm lookingforward to talking to her about lead like
a teacher. So Miriam, welcometo the show. And if there's anything
that you can offer the listeners inthe way of more about who you are
and where you are and what youdo, please go for it. Hi,
thanks for having me. I appreciateit. Yeah, so everything you
said it's correct. I have I'vebeen working in many different sort of job
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roles and positions and lenses in aschool dress in a school district for a
while. And the thing about wherewhere I sit is that I sit from
sort of in a strange middle groundbetween teaching and leading. So I've been
in classrooms, I've been on administrationteams, and where I wound up is
in more of a coaching role whereI work with leaders and teachers to try
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to help them figure out anything frominstructional ideas to professional development to school improvement
within curriculum instruction. So it's wearinga lot of hats on a different basis.
And then what I call my sidehustle as the writing thing with the
books and the articles. That's great. I mean, I've definitely been in
that middle level and not quite admin, but in leadership roles for a while
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myself. I've I've dabbled in administration, but at this point I'm a coach
as well, and I don't knowthat I do too much coaching of administrators,
but I know certainly how you feelabout how important it is, and
I do. I like the titleand I like the concept of this book,
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so lead like a teacher, andI was kind of reading up on
it a little bit before we startedrecording here a few minutes ago, and
it says in the description here,it says, far too often teachers and
administrators are adversaries within a school ora district and display a mutual distrust and
disrespect for others perspectives. And Iguess that's kind of where I wanted to
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start, is if you could,of course talk about the book, but
let's start with that distrust that happensbetween teachers and administrators. You know,
my audience is filled with both teachersand administrators. But I do like and
it's it's right above me here ifyou're watching on video, you know I
do like saying that I enjoy helpingeducators grow their impact as instructional leaders.
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And so's it'll be an interesting discussionhere because of the way my audience is
split between teachers and administrators. Butwhat would you say about that distrust?
So what I call it, andI started using this phrase when I was
writing this book, I call itthe empathy gap. And essentially, we're
all in schools doing jobs that looklike one thing on the surface, but
are really something else. So ifI'm a teacher looking an administrator, I
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assume they're doing a bunch of things, or maybe not doing a bunch of
things. The administrator might be makingthe same assumptions about teachers. The issue
is that in this is you know, this is the way I see it.
The longer a time and administrators outof the classroom, the less they
really have that same empathy for whatit's like to be a classroom teacher.
Especially, things have really been escalatingand changing a lot more quickly in the
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past three to five years for teachers. And the person who wrote one of
the four words this book, DamonMontelione, he taught a class when he
was a principal. He did thisin twenty nineteen high school principle and one
thing he writes about is how hewalked into a classroom everything was different,
and not just the technology, butthe way the kids were interacting. And
now pandemic that's really what we're callingit. I don't know if for a
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post pandemic or not, but youknow, kids are different, and we
keep talking about that and how weaccess learning and how we access the engagement.
So that's the teaching side of it, and then on the leading side
of it, people also have misconceptions. I remember one of the most hurtful
things that someone once said to mewas when I went into more of a
leadership role. They said, we'velost you to an office. And I
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remember thinking, that's not what I'mdoing at all, Like I'm that's not
my job and that's not how Iwork. But that's the perception. So
we have this thing where we windup being set up in a very adversarial
way when there's really just a lackof understanding and empathy about what the other
person might be doing. In morefunctional school spaces, that doesn't happen as
much, but a lot of thetime it becomes a default. Like I
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said, I have dabbled in acouple of administrative roles. Neither of them
lasted very long. And you know, I've shared the story with the listeners
of You Know my Audi in thepodcast before, but I'll tell you so
much of that personally for me wasbecause I really enjoy being that instructional leader
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that unfortunately I don't think school based, you know, school level administrators really
get to do at this point asoften as they would like. And it's
interesting, I don't know about you. Well, I read your bio.
It says you've been teaching twenty plusyears. I'm in year seventeen right now.
And I really think that around thetime that I started teaching was when
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people started hoping anyway or looking toschool leaders to be more instructional leaders.
I don't know about you. Idon't want to put words in your mouth,
but I feel like we're starting togo in the other direction again,
where at least in my experience,and this is very quickly, you know,
not quickly, but when we wereas we were returning to school I
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won't say coming out of the pendemic like you were saying, but returning
to schools full time in person,there was a lot of behaviors that we
needed to deal with. So inmy experience as a school administrator in that
era, it was very difficult toget into classrooms to be an instructional leader,
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to really be present and visible.I don't want to say I was
holding up in my office. Itwas actually the opposite. I felt like
I was running around the school likecrazy all day long. All of this
to say, how what are youseeing? And if you're seeing the same
thing where school administrators are having ahard time carrying that torch of being an
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instructional leader, is that part ofwhat you're suggesting when you say, lead
like a teacher. So, firstof all, guests with the behaviors,
we don't really know why yet.I feel like we're assigning a lot of
faulty causation or correlation. We're tryingto figure out why kids are acting out
so much more than they used to, and we all theories about why that
might be, but we don't knowfor sure, and we probably won't know
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for another twenty years or so.We've gathered more data and when we had
more perspective with what's happened for administrators, you know, and this is this
is really, as you say,what teachers misunderstand. Administrators want to go
into classrooms, they want to observeinstruction, they want to help with instruction.
This is what you know ideally whatto do either day. That's it's
it's the most empowering and the mostenriching thing and the most rewarding. The
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problem is you're so busy playing triageand putting out fire after fire. You
might have an observation schedule and thena fight breaks out in the hallway and
you're done. So what I proposein this book is to figure out ways
to create different systems around some ofthe structures that get taken away when administrators
are overburdened. So you know,you mentioned getting into classrooms. So with
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observation or with coaching, or withco teaching, how can the administrator move
into a space and a teacher moveout of it, or how can people
in the building support each other.I talked to a really amazing principle a
couple of years ago, and shetakes every teacher in the building who's trying
to become the ministry, who's learningto be a leader, and she uses
them to do things because they're interningor they're also in a space where they
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want to learn and do more onthe leadership side, while she goes into
the classroom and teachers for two classes. So you just have to think a
little bit more creatively about how peopleare being allocated and how their expertise is
being elevated. And that's really whatthis book is about. Can you find
ways to use teachers more than you'reusing them, Because nine times out of
ten, you walk into a conferenceroom where leaders are talking about instruction and
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there aren't teachers there. That's agreat point in one of the things that
I was reading about the book,I'm going to see if I can find
it again, was that you havenine key aspects of leadership that where you
offer some creative solutions to some ofthese challenges. I don't know that we'll
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be able to get into all nine, but what does that mean? What
are some of those solutions that wehave up our sleeve? So what I
did was I spent half of thebook talking about what I call micro elements
of leadership and the other half ourmacro. So if we think about the
really age old analogy of forest fortrees, generally speaking in again I'm generalizing,
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teachers are more details oriented because theyare in classrooms where they are working
on these very specific moves for specifickids all day long. And so that's
the part of the school that theysee. They see their classrooms, makes
sense. Sometimes they see their teams, but that's usually where it stops.
For administrators or leaders, they're lookingat a whole school picture. So it's
more that they're looking at the wholeforest, not just the trees. So
that's the micro to the macro.So in the micro chapters, and you
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know, I'm looking at the headingsright now hiring for success, So how
do you get the team that youwant. Instructional coaching, observing evaluations.
Those are some of the things thatare much more micro intensive and that teachers
can have a much more active role. And then for leadership, how to
prevent fires, collaborative communication, twoway listening, leading by exam. So
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these are bigger ideas, bigger picturethings. But again, how do you
pull that perspective in even when youthink that the focus is too broad,
because it's not so. If you'rethinking of an overall professional development initiative for
your school and you're busy bringing inexperts, or maybe you the leaders,
are the experts giving the training,wouldn't it be possibly better to have teachers
who work in whatever it is you'redoing the pdon help to develop and deliver
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a lot of this training, andthat way their colleagues will appreciate it more,
it will be more inclusive of everybody'sperspectives, those kinds of thoughts.
You know, I've thought that fora while that and I think it's I
want to say it's Brian Aspinall,who I'm connected with through Codebreaker and follow
him on social media. I thinkone of the things he says more famously
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than others is some of the bestprofessional development happens by the teacher down the
hall, and I agree with that, and throughout career I have tried to
lead learning walks and get teachers outof the classroom to visit other teachers because
I think it really it really letsyou see what other people are doing,
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and it gives you kind of thatbroader perspective of you know, there are
more things happening out there than justwhat's happening in your classroom. So I
guess what I'm I was thinking aboutthis the other day too, as I'm
starting to I think, grow moreas what they call an entrepreneur, I
was thinking like if and I'm notreally one, like a consultant to try
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and offer up my services to gospeak and provide PD and other districts.
But I was thinking, like,it's got to be way cheaper, a
lot less expensive for districts to havetheir own staff, their own teachers lead
in ways that you know, theythey things that they know about, tool
technology, tools that they know,instructional methods that they do really well.
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And I think that's what you're gettingat here, But like, how can
we how can school leaders do that? You know, I think what you
said was they don't necessarily think specificenough or small enough. They're kind of
going broad and they think, oh, we got to bring in an expert.
But it's like, how do werecognize and value and then use the
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talent that we have already on thestaff. I think a lot of it
does have to do with finding waysto get into classrooms so you know what
people are doing, because if youdon't know what teachers in your school are
doing, you can't possibly proceed tothe next step of having them become part
of the leadership. But you know, I'll just give an example. Schools
have asked me in the past tocome in and do things like discourse walk
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throughs. Let's go through and seehow much kids are talking to each other,
how much language they're producing, Andwe go in for a day and
we observe and fill out a sheet, and then you know, maybe the
staff receives a follow up training baseand what the findings were. All this
is very familiar methodology, and tome, my thing is, let's let's
go into classrooms for gathering data tosee who's doing really effective student to student
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discourse and who is elevating conversation andquestioning and critical thinking in their classrooms.
And then let's have the teachers whoare doing that work with the rest of
the staff to develop ideas. Becauseif you walk through a building and most
people are sitting there quietly, butyou have people who are finding ways to
make it work, they should besharing their strategies at that point. As
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an instructional coach or a specialist orwhatever it is that I do, I
can't have as much power in presentingstrategies as someone who's been doing it.
You can go in and you canfill them doing it. They can say,
hey, I did this yesterday andit was great. That has so
much more power than I did thishowever many years ago when it was great
or in theory, this is supposedto work. And I'm not saying that
it's always like that with leaders.Some leaders are really good, and I
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think a lot of them do thisat modeling what it is they want staff
to do. So if you're havinga training on a specific topic, if
you're training on station rotations, maybethe meeting is set up as stating verstation
rotations, and that's fantastic. Ithink just a lot of the time we
have a standard deliver model that isn'treally inspiring anybody. I hear that a
lot, like, you know,a lot of teachers out there say,
hey, my admin, especially inteacher evaluations, want us to be engaging
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and you know student center. Butyet we go to these faculty meetings and
professional development sessions and we're just it'sjust all lecture and you know, PowerPoint
slides. This podcast is a proudmember of the Teach Better podcast Network,
Better Today, Better Tomorrow, andthe podcast to get you there. Explore
more podcasts at www dot Teach Betterpodcast network dot com. Now let's get
(18:37):
back to the episode. One ofthe things that I really do enjoy doing,
and again it kind of goes backto my why of helping educators grow
as instructional leaders is aiding. Iguess in that transition from teacher to school
leader, and I guess school leadercan mean many different things, like I
think you and I are school leaders, but we are not administered traders were
(19:00):
coaches of sorts. But so Ido I guess when I ask you this
question, I do really mean administrators, people who actually are aspiring to be
school administrators right as they come outof the classroom. What do you think
is most important for them to remember? Because I think in a lot of
ways, it would be very easyfor someone to think that your book is
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written for people who have been anadministrator for a while. Like you said,
you know, the longer they're init, the further the more distanced
they are from being in the classroom. What about someone who's like pretty fresh
out of the classroom. It's thebig, biggest to remember that we're all
there for the same reason, whichis to have a positive impact on student
growth. Everyone the building should wantthat, and we're all trying to achieve
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it from different vantage points and withdifferent areas, not different levels, different
areas of expertise. So nobody inthat building is more important than anybody else.
And I think I would I woulddefinitely remind newer leaders of that because
sometimes you get really excited to relavebeast, like, oh look at me,
now here I am, and youforget very quickly that people are watching
you, somewhat warily to see whatyou're going to do and to see what
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you can fix and how you're goingto serve. And you know, leadership
is a service position. It's it'show can we provision help support partner with
teachers to make sure that students aregetting what they need. And that's again
toward that student achievements. So youjust keep your focus on what's best for
the kids and really be transparent aboutthat, then you're going to be okay.
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It's when we start using phrases likeoh, I've taught so I know
or you know. You're trying todisplay that you have something and really it's
a lot of talking and not alot of listening. So instead of explaining
yourself to people or explaining who youare or what your position is, just
listen to them more. That's probablya good place to start. Can you
expand on that a little bit?When you say listen to them more?
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How do school leaders do that?Because I think, again, you know,
when you're putting out fires all dayand maybe you're not getting into classrooms
as much, they might wonder whencan I or how can I really listen
more and hear from teachers more.So I've put a lot of ideas and
strategies, some of which I gleanfrom the wisdom of others, into the
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book, and one really simple thingto do. Maybe it's not so simple,
but it is just in terms ofits execution, is instead of working
in an office, to move yourworkstation into a teacher team room or a
department room some space like that whereyou're sitting among teachers, and to do
it often enough that people aren't like, oh, here there comes the principle.
If it becomes a normal thing,you can normalize being among teachers or
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standing in the hallway more having morecasual conversations but very scheduled and intentional conversations
in your mind with people about whatare you doing today? Oh, I'd
really like to see that. Sojust the visibility really helps too with creating
that. I think a lot ofthe time there's just no access. I
mean, some principles offices, it'slike you're trying to get into see the
president, you're making up ointments,and you're you know, going through assistance
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and so forth, and you can'treally have that access. So if you
open that up, it makes ahuge difference. And if you're willing to
listen to people as well. Ithink also from elementary to secondary, secondary
schools are so much bigger that administratorsbecome less accessible. So again figuring out
how to put yourself back in thereand then you'll hear things, and people
will get more comfortable the more theysee you expressing themselves. And the other
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thing is, you know, andthis is again oversimplifying something that goes on
much longer in the book, butwe tend to surround ourselves with people who
agree with us. And we dothat because we do a lot of talking
and not a whole lot of Sowhen someone expresses something that a leader doesn't
like, very often, it becomesan unsafe thing to do. So not
saying a whole lot is talking less, and it's the same. It's the
same strategy I recommend for teaching talkless. I like that a lot.
(22:51):
One of the things that I wasthinking, especially earlier in our conversation when
you were talking about sort of thosenegative leadership traits. And I may or
may not be asking for a friendwhen I ask you this, do you
have I'm sure you do. Doyou have thoughts around leaders micromanaging too much?
(23:11):
I mean, it's you know,listening more and talking less is great,
but what about the ones who seemto just want to kind of have
their hand and everything and leave verylittle room for teachers to kind of step
up in that leadership way or kind. It's so funny that you say that,
because I've I've had By the way, can you still hear me?
(23:34):
Yeah, just cut out for asecond. Okay, Um, we have
leaders who too that I've always wonderedif it comes to a place of sort
of deep more deeper, deeper seatedinsecurity, like if I don't, if
I don't manage and control every aspectof what's happening in this school or with
this teacher, then it's all goingto fall apart. So very much like
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we would say, if we wanta student centered or learning center environment our
classrooms, we also want that havemore autonomy within the school. And the
way to do that is to really, you know, what's the priority.
What are we trying to achieve?Set goals, set outcomes that everyone agrees
on and that are clear, andthen see if they can meet them,
show them how to meet them,and then step back and if people are
(24:17):
not doing what they said they coulddo or would do when some time has
gone by, I understand stepping in, but the content micromanagement drives almost everybody
out of the job because all itconveys really is a lack of trust.
Yeah, that's a great point.No, I was just I was just
saying, back to your point ontrust, I really do think that that
is everything basically, or at leastit's the foundational I've talked about this,
(24:41):
I have a whole online course aboutit. It's the foundation right of school
culture. I guess I would say, because to your point in leadership,
without it, you might have thosethose settings where there's a lot of micro
management, you might have those settingswhere there's that and you know we set
(25:03):
it before in the description of yourbook, there's that distrust, that that
kind of tainted relationship between teacher andadministrator that is frankly, for lack of
better term, kind of poisonous tothe school. I guess as we start
to wrap up here, UM,we've talked a little bit about having administrators
and leaders be more visible, UM, try to be better at at listening
(25:27):
and speaking less and try to involveteachers more. Is there anything else that,
let me ask it this way,Let's say there is already kind of
a culture of that distrust, andare there are there band aids or are
there like bandages that we could puton, Like, what are some ways
(25:48):
that maybe can help turnaround situations whereit's already really strained, like strained relationships.
Yeah, So usually I go behind, you know, start with the
technical fix, which is the band, and then do the adaptive change.
But in a case like this,I feel like you kind of need to
start with adaptive change because anything thatsurface levels teachers are going to see and
not be okay with. So tothat end, I'm a big believer in
(26:12):
what I call feedback on feedback,which is you ask people for their thoughts,
you genuinely want to know, it'snot a rid game, and then
you respond within days and let themknow what the result of their feedback was.
So you said you wanted this moreso we had a staff meeting and
you said we needed more time tohave training on this platform. So next
(26:36):
month, as a result, we'regoing to have someone come in or we're
not. But here's why. Soeither you know, you communicate that an
email, you can communicate that verbal, You follow up with the people who
you need to follow up with,and you close what I call the feedback
hole. You actually create a systemthat works and transparently is addressing what people
need. Because if you're not doingthat, and we collect so many surveys
(26:59):
in education, like endless, endlessGoogle forms, and they can be a
wonderful tool, but they're not agreat tool if they wind up in somebody's
drive somewhere and never get looked atagain. And I feel like that's what
usually happens. So one thing youcan do really quickly is start getting honest
feedback for things you can change,not things are trying to pretend you can't
but can't, and then go fromthere and work with people's That's just one
(27:22):
strategy. I really like, that'sgreat before we do, and I wanted
to make sure that my listeners knowhow to find your publications and find you
and reach out to you if necessary. I think this is a great conversation,
and I really do you know.This is kind of again like because
I think the positions that you andI are in and have been throughout our
(27:44):
careers. But I really do thinkthe concept of leading like a teacher is
really important. That's why I wasexcited to talk to you tonight. I'm
excited to read the book. Ihaven't yet, but I'm I'm thinking I'm
going to go out and get acopy. So where can my listeners get
their copies and where can they findyou? So the books are available everywhere
books are sold, so you knowAmazon Prime is fantastic. But there's also
my publisher's page. I'm published withww Nortin, so my books aren't there.
(28:07):
I have two out which I teachmore horver lesson this one, Lead
like a Teacher and then Writing theirFuture Selves is coming out on the fall,
and anyone can find me in twoplaces. My website is my first
and last name dot com, sothat's Miriam Plotynski dot com. And the
only social I'm really good at isby good I mean I check it is
Twitter, which is at mirplo mcps, so that's a good one too.
(28:30):
So through my contact page on thewebsite or through Twitter, I will get
back to you, I promise.I'm very good about that. Excellent And
for the listeners out there, youcan always check the show notes for each
of my episodes two where I willhave links to the books and especially Lead
Like a Teacher, so that'll bea Leader of Learning dot com slash episode
(28:52):
one sixty Leader of Learning dot ComSlash episode one sixty will be information about
this episode Miriam and the book books. Mariam, thank you so much for
your time and really appreciate connecting likethis and keep up the great work.
Like I said, I really digthis topic of lead like a teacher,
so thanks, thank you. Iappreciate a chance to talk about it more.
(29:15):
Well that's it for this episode.Thank you so much for listening.
If you haven't done so yet,don't forget to subscribe to this show on
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(29:36):
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(29:59):
me or this show, and toaccess the great content that I share,
please visit my website at Leader ofLearning dot com. That's where you can
find my online courses, YouTube channel, blog, how to connect with me
on social media, and even waysthat you can support the show. Like
donating or purchasing Leader of Learning merchandise. Thanks again, and remember no matter
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who you are or where you are, you are a leader of learning.