Welcome to the Better Leaders Better Schools podcast. This is a weekly show for ruckus makers — What is a ruckus maker? A leader who has found freedom from the status quo. A leader looking to escape the old routine. A leader who never, ever gives up.
In this episode, Danny speaks with Chanie Wilschanski, early childhood strategist and school leadership coach (a return guest!) about owning and leveraging the ripple effect as a school leader. Chanie shares how everything a leader does, from the way they answer emails to the way they deal with interruptions, sets the tone for the entire school. She provides practical tips and strategies designed to help you make the most of your impact as a high-performing leader.
Key Talking Points
- The key to making successful change as a school leader
- Why shifting responsibility to yourself as a leader will change your school
- Understanding how a higher-performing mindset works and how to develop one yourself
- Prepping your mindset for the challenging environment you are facing
- Picking the right routines to create the right environment
- Handling interruptions and emergencies
- Finding time and energy to focus on the most important task of the moment
Key Milestones of the Episodes
[6:48] Understanding the “School of Excellence” concept
[9:00] The importance of environments in shifting your perspective
[10:54] Getting into a high-performance mindset
[18:22] Habits and routines of a high-performing leader
[28:14] Dealing with the constant interruptions
[38:00] Favorite book
Key Quotes
“The answer to that question is ‘What do I need to do so that this happens?”
“The school culture and whatever you want to have in your school is an effect of the leader’s daily behaviors, routines, and habits.”
“We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.” (Jim Rohn)
“Everytime you walk into a school building, it is a performance.”
“What adjective do you want to show up as?”
“As a school leader, we have to look at the game film.”
“The average director (in a study of early childhood educators) spends four hours a day fielding interruptions.”
“A teacher’s emergency is not yours.”
“The school leader who is always available isn’t listening.”
Key Resources
Atomic Habits
We hope you enjoy the podcast. All the highlights, resources, and next steps can be found below. Listen to the full episode here and learn more at betterleadersbetterschools.com
Tip of the Week
Dr. Kelly Crane, expert coach at BLBS shares a tip about an app called Scanner Pro. Scanner Pro is the best app for quickly scanning and saving a digital version of a paper document. Scan any papers, ranging from a receipt to multi-page documents. Scanner Pro will automatically detect borders, correcting distortion and geometry. Share, email, fax and upload your perfect scans. Use OCR to convert any scan into a text. It is a free app-go to your app store or https://readdle.com/scannerpro.
Show Some Love
ORGANIZED BINDER
- Organized Binder is an evidence-based RTI2 Tier 1 universal level solution
- Focuses on improving executive functioning and noncognitive skills
- Is in direct alignment with the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework
- Is an integral component for ensuring Least Restrictive Environments (LRE)
You can learn more and improve your student’s success at https://organizedbinder.com/
Teach FX
- Empowers teachers with feedback on student engagement
- A fitbit for teachers that measures student engagement
- Research shows that the more students speak in class, the more they learn, and the better they perform on standardized tests.
- Use your phone or laptop to analyze your class, and the app’s artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm tracks your talk ratio automatically, with no extra work from you or an instructional coach.
- The idea is to give teachers a useful barometer of student engagement you can check every day!
You can learn more and improve your student’s success at https://teachfx.com/
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