Leading with Vision: Creating Meaningful Change in Education

Resource Download

Enjoy this free download of the Better Feedback resource.

Justin 

Well, Susan, thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Susan 

Absolutely. So as I always ask our guests, can you start out by telling us a little bit about yourself and your journey into educational leadership?

Justin 

So, you I consider myself a teacher and principal at heart. I started as a middle school science teacher and did that for number of years and then moved into administration and became an elementary principal and really loved that work, fell in love with the work of instructional leadership and really got connected with other principals. And since about 2012, I’ve been supporting other principals in getting into classrooms, talking with teachers and striving to improve practice.

Susan 

That’s amazing. And you have a website, right, which I just explored a couple of days ago and I find it to be so helpful and such a great resource. When did you begin that?

Justin 

Yeah, boy, that began while I was a principal. I started publishing articles and resources that I thought would be helpful and the rest is history. It’s been probably 14 years now since that website went online and we’ve had lots and lots of people download our resources, read articles, listen to podcasts, and it’s been a lot of fun.

Susan 

Yeah, and that’s such a journey that I resonate with because that’s exactly how we started as well. And I think probably around the same year, 2011, 2012, a big year for bloggers. But that was great. So now your work focuses on helping school leaders build capacity for instructional leadership. So first of all, what does that mean? Because our show is listened to by both leaders and teachers. So I’d love for teachers to know exactly what you’re talking about when you say instructional leadership.

Can you start with that?

Justin 

Sure, so the way I understand instructional leadership is around making and implementing decisions in the service of student learning. And those decisions could be operational, they could be instructional. As educators, we have to make a lot of decisions just to get through the day and to improve as well. And I don’t believe that that work of instructional leadership is limited to just administrators. And I’m currently working on a book on teacher leadership and how we can more deliberately build teacher leadership and empower teacher leaders because the reality is that teachers know a lot from working with students, know, being on the front lines that principals don’t know. know, principals are a step removed and have to be informed about a lot of things. And if we can work together making those key decisions that instructional leadership involves, we’re going to be in a much better place.

Susan

Yeah, I 100 % agree having my own background in administration. feel like sometimes administrators that I’ve met, there have been some who are very open to that and some who are like, live the law and the law lives with me and this is how we’re gonna do things. so, especially in today’s schools, I don’t think that that’s a great approach. And so I love that you are empowering so many others to also take a look at their instructional leadership practice. What are some of the biggest challenges do you see facing those who are working in that area?

Justin 

Well, I think one is just workload and time, right? There’s just so much to do. Every year the profession gets more complicated, new expectations, new curriculum, new training, new priorities, new initiatives, new mandates. There’s always more and rarely is anything cut. And teachers face exactly the same issue that more and more is piled on. And time to do the things that are important but not urgent is always in short supply. We just never have time to do the things that we know are the most important because we’re always putting out fires, we’re always running around wearing out shoes. I always think it’s interesting to hear administrators talk about just how fast they go through shoes. And I think that’s a good metaphor for the demands of job. Yeah, so time is a big one. I also think there is a bit of an information problem that, as I mentioned, teachers have a lot of the most important information that administrators need to make decisions. And part of the solution there is to not make administrators make all the decisions, but actually involve teachers in making the decisions. But I also think there is a very real need for administrators to gain that information personally. And a top priority for me and a major focus of my work has been getting administrators into classrooms, which I think everyone would say is important to them. Everyone would agree that it’s important for administrators to be in classrooms because

That’s where the teaching happens, right? That’s where the learning happens. That’s what this is all about. And yet if you ask around, ask your teacher colleagues, ask your relatives who are teachers, how often does your administrator who supervise, know, technically supervises you get into your classroom, a lot of people will say never. I would say the most common number that I hear is once per year, but a of people will say never. It’s been five years, it’s been seven years, they’ve never come by. And that to me is just a huge missed opportunity, not because I think teachers need to be checked up on, not because I think teachers need every suggestion and tip that their administrators might offer them, but because to run a school effectively you need to know what’s going on in classrooms. And I’ll give kind of a silly example. One time we adopted a new curriculum and just as part of my regular practice of getting into classrooms, I stopped by a classroom and the teacher was using the old curriculum. And I said, what, how’s it going? What’s, you know, what’s kind of going on here?

And she very, very sheepishly admitted that she had lost it. She had lost the curriculum. She lost the teacher’s guide. And of course, that was an easy problem to solve. We printed her a new one and she was, you know, back on track. But it’s those little things that if we’re not aware, you know, imagine if it had been a year and that class had not had the new curriculum, it would have been so easy to miss. if, even if I had come at a different time of day and not noticed, you know, that she had lost her curriculum, you know, those little things really add up in a school. And the more we’re in classrooms, the more we can avoid being blindsided by things like that.

Susan 

Yeah, I want to dive into this a little deeper because this is one of things that I really enjoy most about your work is this advocacy to be in the classrooms and not just to be observing, I think, which is a big piece. And I think you mentioned this, that teachers also get so anxious. I I know so many teachers who the minute that an administrator walks in the door, it’s like, my gosh, everybody sit down, be quiet, make sure that everything looks great. And they get nervous that there’s a judgment happening. But I will tell you that one of my

One of my best mentors was a principal who made sure that every week she was not only in the classroom, she was co-teaching with those teachers. She was sitting down working on units with teachers every week and then teaching that with the teachers so that not only she could observe, but also she could be a part and continue to refine her own teaching practice. And I think that builds so much awareness, empathy, an understanding of what the kids are like. Like, can you talk a little bit about how you also advocate for that kind of a practice and what you would recommend for those who are interested in doing that.

Justin 

Yeah, well, I will first say my co-author on mapping professional practice, Heather Bell Williams, has quite a lot of experience co-teaching and being a part of the teaching workforce in the school. So that firsthand experience, I think is not always the norm, but I think it can be very valuable. And even if that’s not the setup in your school, things like spending time in the classroom, filling in when a teacher needs to go to a doctor’s appointment instead of having a sub for an hour, little things like that can go a long way in giving you a sense of what the teacher experiences, what the student experiences, what the needs are. you know, just switching roles a little bit can, I think, bring a lot of perspective there. I think in terms of the issue of it feeling very high stakes for teachers, I think you’re absolutely right. People get nervous when their bosses show up. Principals get nervous when the superintendent shows up. Teachers get nervous when the principal shows up. But the best antidote for that, the best way to make people more comfortable with this whole process is to do it more often, right? The reason people are so nervous when their principal comes by is because they know this is probably it for the year. If my principal stops by with a clipboard today, this is it and I’m never gonna see them again in my classroom, so I’d better put on a good show. And it’s kind of like thinking about what makes a knife sharp, right? Like a knife is sharp because part of it is very, very, very narrow an observation feels very high stakes because it’s a very, very narrow slice of your practice. And I don’t really think that’s the best way to get a sense of someone’s practice is to just have a minimal amount of time and maximal stakes. I think we should probably do the opposite, which is a maximal amount of time, maximum number of samples, you know, and I would always have my students when they were designing science labs in our sixth and seventh grade classroom, you know,

Think about how are we going to replicate this? How are we going to get multiple data points to make sure that we got it right? Often we don’t do that in teacher observation. We say, OK, this is it. Now is your day. Sink or swim. And we just lose out on a lot of perspective that way. We lose out on a lot of information. So frequency of classroom visits is very, important to me.

Susan 

Yeah, it’s similar to standardized testing. We all know standardized testing only captures a glimpse of our students, right, not the whole picture. We know that formative assessments are so much better over time. And to just kind of replicating that as an administrator, as a leader is really helpful. Now, my question to you is how do they practically do that when you’ve identified that the biggest barrier, one of them, is time? And having sat in that chair, I know that that is true.

How do you advocate for those who want to make this the frequency more often and have it be more meaningful for teachers when you do go in? How do you make that happen in an everyday when you’re out fires?

Justin 

Yeah, great question. Well, let first tell you what I think is the wrong advice. The wrong advice is to say, well, just prioritize it. If this was important to you, you would get it done. And I don’t think that really reflects the reality in schools that, you know, that other stuff still needs to be dealt with. You know, if you get a kid sent to the office, if you get a parent coming in to the office who needs to see you right now, like you can’t just wish them away. You can’t just will that problem not to occur and say, sorry, instructional leadership is more important. The reality is you have to deal with all of it.

So I take the approach that prioritizing is not enough and that what we need to do is streamline the process of getting into classrooms and not make it a big deal. And I find a lot of people overcomplicate it. And sometimes district administrators are somewhat to blame for that because they want it to be a consistent rigorous process. They want it to be valuable. So they add a lot of steps. They add a lot of paperwork and principles end up not just needing to get into classrooms, but also to write something up and to meet with the teacher and to write something else up after they meet with the teacher. And there’s all this typing and cleaning up and filing of reports and filling out of forms. And if you know getting into classrooms is going to entail all that paperwork, logically, what are you going to do? How are you going to think about that? You’re gonna think, well, I’m gonna do this the bare minimum, or I’m gonna try, but probably I’m not really gonna get to it. And I think that’s the reality in almost every school is that it’s such a big burden paperwork-wise and time-wise that people mainly just avoid it and only do the bare minimum. But on the other hand, when you streamline it, it actually becomes fun, right? If you stop by a classroom for a few minutes and enjoy seeing a lesson, like unless you don’t like learning, it’s usually fun to be in classrooms. Unless something is really, really bad, it’s fun to be in classrooms. And finding the joy in it, keeping it light, not seeing it as a chance to criticize someone, I think that’s part of the avoidance too. I think a lot about the resistance that people face, both the internal and the external resistance.

And think a lot of the internal resistance that we feel as administrators comes from the fact that like, I’m have to go in here and criticize this person. And I don’t really wanna do that today. I have other things to do. So if we let go of that, if we let go of a lot of the paperwork and say, you know what, I’m just gonna be present. I’m just gonna pay attention. And I’m just going to be there for that teacher. We can talk about some stuff if there’s some stuff to talk about. But it’s also okay if there’s not that much to talk about. If it’s just a nice lesson and everything’s going fine and it’s not a high-stakes situation, I’m not going to feel the pressure to say, here’s what you need to do differently. And I think teachers have mixed feelings about that kind of feedback anyway. Like sometimes it’s not right. Sometimes that’s not something I need to do differently. You’re off base. You never come to my classroom. You have no idea what I need to do differently. So you can keep that to yourself. Thank you very much. And sometimes it’s helpful, right? Sometimes we do get it right. But the need to get it right every time I think is a barrier. So I think we can let that go and just say, well.

We’ll have some suggestions if we have suggestions, but that’s not an expectation.

Susan

Yeah, I love that. It’s building the culture of teamwork, of collaboration, and knowing that you’re both on the same side, which is so often missing in a lot of conversations that I’m in with teachers or administrators. And I think that’s part of what you talk about in your book, Mapping Professional Practice, when you talk about instructional frameworks that are supporting teacher growth. Can you share a little bit about what those frameworks look like and how schools can use them to really create lasting change like what you’re talking about.

Justin 

Sure. So Heather Bell Williams, my co-author and I put together this book to help teams of educators develop common expectations. So in terms of the format, if you look at a teacher evaluation framework like Danielson, you’ve got domains and components and levels of performance. And we took that same idea and said, what if we apply that to much more specific practices and say, here’s how we do things in our school or here’s how we do things in our department. Here’s how we approach this specific practice. We can actually create a roadmap for growth in that practice that teachers can look at and say, yes, that reflects what good practice looks like. That reflects the developmental pathway that I went through starting at the very beginning where I had no idea what I was doing through that clunky middle stage where I’m kind of trying it, but it’s not really working very well, all the way through to the third stage, which is what we call fluent practice and possibly even beyond to exemplary. So it’s not intended to be used for teacher evaluation, but this format of an instructional framework is designed to help people talk about and think about and triangulate on practice and grow in specific practices. And it’s a somewhat challenging process to develop those frameworks. And certainly we gained an appreciation for the work that’s gone into, say, the Danielson framework and other similar frameworks. But we also believe that this is something very doable so that as a school or as a department, teams of educators can say, this is what practice looks like in our school and this is how

If we’re going to bring somebody new in, this is how we’re going to help them get up to speed and deliver excellence every day.

Susan

So now I’m curious, are these frameworks, are they things that you guys developed or are these things that kind of give an outline that schools can then use to develop and customize for their building and their folks?

Justin 

So the book is intended to teach the process. And of course, we included a lot of examples in order to model the process and illustrate different features of frameworks. But we very much intend for it to be something that people make their own. Certainly people are welcome to adapt our frameworks. But I think there’s real value in going through that process of developing your own. And part of that is scope, also figuring out how big a framework do we want to make. We don’t want to make a comprehensive teacher evaluation framework. But we would, in our school this year, like to focus on our questioning strategies. So you could break questioning strategies down into a couple of different categories and really get specific about what you mean because often you can use a term like that and everybody will have their own definition. Everyone will have different priorities and it’s very valuable to align on practice like that.

Susan 

Absolutely, and I think it also helps people know what done looks like like you know I think we often miss that especially when it’s taught coming to we don’t miss it when it comes to our kids But we miss it when it comes to what does what does done look like in our school? And we’ve mastered those things or we’re really implementing them well, so I think that’s really helpful Thank you for creating that that Speaking of things that you created

You went on to found Repertoire, right, which is a professional writing app for instructional leaders. So talk to me about this tool. Like, what does it do and how does it help instructional leaders?

Justin

Yeah, so it’s primarily a note taking and as you noted, a writing app. And we started with classroom walkthroughs and formal observations being the main thing that people would use it for. Being able to quickly take notes. I have always liked to capture direct quotes. What is the teacher saying? What are the students saying? And then low inference description. What is everybody saying and doing? What’s actually happening in the lesson? And the efficiency there really matters because if you can type things up quickly, if it can be time stamped, if you can reuse key phrases, and that’s one of the main features of repertoire, then you can both capture more in less time and you can devote more of your attention to paying attention, to being involved in the lesson in some way. So I don’t think principals have to hunch behind a laptop and just blast away at the keyboard for the whole period. I think that’s somewhat of a missed opportunity. But at the same time, we want to have good, accurate documentation of what happened so that we actually have something meaningful to talk about. And I think the alternative is either not taking very good notes or taking notes that are kind of a mixture of commentary and fact. And often principals don’t like to share that type of note with the teacher because, you know, it’s not really, you know, it’s not really evidence in the sense of here’s what actually happened in your lesson. It’s here are my unprocessed thoughts about what happened. And I kind of want to clean them up first.

And that leads to that cycle of avoidance, like, I can’t really show you my notes. Let me clean them up first. And then that never happens. And we don’t engage in the process. So I wanted it to be easy for people to take good notes, to write quickly. And in recent years, we’ve added templates and chat GPT and lots of things to help people do any kind of writing faster. And one of the main themes that runs through the app is reusing things that you’ve written. Things don’t have to be unique every time you say them. This is very cyclical profession where we deal with the same things over and over again and We want to be present and authentic for the people in front of us We want to tailor our message to the situation and to the person but that doesn’t mean we need to do everything from scratch So I’m a big believer in templates and having your kind of personal repertoire of language that you use in a variety of different occasions To say what you need to say. So that’s where the name comes from repertoire is your personal writing Repertoire of phrases and things that you say

Susan 

Yeah, that’s, mean, that would have been so helpful when I still have observations to be able to have a tool like that. Does it use any kind of like recording in terms of voice memo? Like sometimes when I would observe, I’d put on a voice memo so that I could capture the quotes later. If I needed to, I could go back and reference them to get the exact quote, but that I could help pay attention. Does it include any kind of recording device like that?

Justin 

I mean, you could do that on your device if you wanted to turn on the microphone, you could record and transcribe lots of different ways. We’ve chosen to focus on text in order to keep it a writing tool and to encourage people to actually think about what they’re choosing to document because you can’t pay attention to everything, but what you pay attention to is a big part of how you exercise professional judgment, right? Like you could have two cameras, you could have 10 cameras, you could have 30 cameras.

And you’re still going to have to make choices about what to pay attention to. And I think one of the best guides for what to pay attention to is your teacher evaluation criteria. So one of the things that we include in the app is your criteria so that you can pin them on the screen. You can search through them. can you can think, OK, what do I need to be keeping in mind or looking for? And I don’t like the term look fors because it can be kind of simplistic. But, you know, what do I need to be thinking about even if it’s not something directly observable in the classroom, right? Like not everything that we need to have in mind is an observable behavior. Sometimes we need to think about, you know, what’s the vibe in here? How does it feel? And those aren’t necessarily checklist things. They’re things that we just have to kind of pay attention to holistically. So I think that’s kind of the best way to do it is to exercise your judgment while you’re observing and you can’t write down everything, but you don’t need to either. That’s okay. Kind of how I look at it.

Susan

Yeah, yeah. When you were talking about the tool, you mentioned kind of advancing it through things like ChatGBT and all of that. And it trickled me to think that you also mentioned streamlining and how important streamlining is. This is just a, might totally be off base, but I’m curious, there, as AI has evolved the last couple of years, has there been any use for that that you’ve seen that can help in that streamlining process for instructional leaders?

Justin 

I think if we use it carefully, yes. I think we want to avoid delegating too much to AI. And I think we’re now in a kind of a weird position where people are doing the writing with AI and then AI is reading the writing and summarizing it for the reader. So we have this whole layer in between that’s just getting kind of weird. But one of the things I found it very helpful for is revision. If you have a particular word count because you’re applying for a grant, if you have a particular tone you’re going for, your words can be revised pretty easily with a little bit of help. And what we’ve found to be especially useful is giving chat GPT lots of context, like, hey, my name is Justin. I’m a 44 year old elementary principal, and I tend to write in a casual but professional style. Can you revise this down to 500 words for me? And with that kind of it can do a great job.

If I just say it, write a recommendation letter for a teacher, it’s going to be terrible generic slop. That’s not going to be helpful to the teacher. So we really have to provide good input to get good output from these tools. And that’s what we’ve tried to do in our integration is make it possible to give good input that reflects you. Because I think the big danger here is that people feel disrespected and not paid attention to when we just crank out bad writing with AI, which is absolutely possible.

Susan 

Yes. Understood. Understood. I was just curious, just because, you know, every day I turn on something and AI has done something different that, you know, gets now capable of something that it wasn’t capable of the day before. So I’m always curious to see how different leaders, different teachers are using it in different situations. But I definitely think you’re right. It requires a lot of nuance and finesse to get it to respond in a way that would be helpful for what you’re actually looking for. Now, I also know that you host Principal Center Radio. So you’ve sat on this side of the chair quite a bit. And so in your interviews with other educators, has there been one that has stood out to you that you can share a story about?

Justin 

Yeah, I’ve had so many delightful conversations on Principal Center Radio. We’ve had about 450 guests and we typically focus on books. So people have really done a lot of deep thinking about the issue prior to us talking about it. And I’ve just learned so much that way. I will share one particular book that has really shaped my thinking over the past few years. And that is Natalie Wexler’s The Knowledge Gap. And I’ve just learned so much. Are you familiar with her work?

Susan 

Yes, it’s a classic. mean, like, it’s great.

Justin

It’s just shaped so much of my understanding about how kids learn to read, how knowledge builds on knowledge, how gaps form and how gaps can be closed in terms of kids’ knowledge. So Natalie is one of my favorite guests because her great work.

Susan 

Wonderful, Yeah, absolutely. Well, before we end, I always like to kind of ask my guests, and we have guests from all over in lots of different fields. I’m curious how you feel creativity impacts instructional leadership and how it can help us move forward and grow in that area.

Justin 

Hmm. Yeah, well, I think, you know, everybody gets into education with some sort of creative ambition, right? Nobody says I want to become an educator so I can read straight from the teacher’s guide and do exactly what it says. And I think one of the best outlets for that creativity is how can I meet my students’ needs? Because they’re going to be different than what’s in the textbook. They’re going to be different than what you learned in your principal preparation courses. And I think we’re always responsible for the actual kids that are in front of us. And that creates some kind of unique challenges. And we always have to act with the best interests of those particular kids in mind. And lots of stories come to mind. You deal with families and all their messiness, and teachers in the ups and downs of their own lives. So I think if I could highlight one aspect of creativity it would be the problem solving that administrators do. And I think for people who go into administration, that is a lot of the fun of it is the problem solving and the, you know, the always being needed to, know, maybe, maybe right now I need to stop a toilet from running and that’s how I can best serve my school right now because it’s going to be really disruptive if we can’t get this, this water shut off. but then there’s also the, you know, the scheduling, the curriculum, the assessment, the, the practicalities, the, the recess, how do we, know, how do we help kids get along at recess? All of that problem solving, I think can be very, very rewarding. And certainly for me, that was a lot of the fun of being an administrator is just the problem solving. And then the teamwork, you know, this is a team effort where we’re solving problems together and the answers are usually in the room with us.

Susan 

Yeah, absolutely. And as somebody who focuses on creativity, can tell you for sure, it is a collaborative sport. It is not. It is impacted greatly by that. So thank you so much for joining us today. Before we go, how can our audience connect with you and your work?

Justin 

Well, thank you, Susan. Probably the best place for people to go is principalcenter.com. You can sign up to get new podcast episodes every Monday. We’ll send you an email when one of those goes up. You can go to principalcenter.com slash follow if you want to find your preferred social media platforms. We’ve got links to all of them there and we’d love to hear from you.

Susan 

Fantastic, we will put all of those links in our show notes so people can easily find you as well. Justin, thank you so much for your time today and for sharing such incredible knowledge with us. I learned a lot, so thank you.

Justin 

Well, thank you, Susan. It’s been a pleasure and a privilege.

PrincipalCenter.com

PrincipalCenter.com/follow