A Conversation About the Principal’s Desk

A Conversation About the Principal’s Desk

Daniel (00:02):
Can you imagine being a young musician, you are grinding, working hard, hitting all the shows, hitting the road, putting those records out, and you finally landed the big opening act opportunity back in the day, somebody big that you might have opened for would be Lenny Kravitz. But then Lenny listens to your music and says, “no, not for me.” And in that moment, he ruins your musical career. Now, if you’re a millennial, Lenny Kravitz, who’s that? Okay, maybe you’d like opening for Machine Gun Kelly or Lizzo in modern times. But this is exactly what Dr. David Franklin experienced. He was building his music career. He was opening for Lenny Kravitz until he wasn’t. And that’s where we start today’s conversation.Why is that relevant for a Ruckus Maker? Because you’re gonna have obstacles, challenges. You’re gonna have to do hard things and bounce back from lows as a school leader, especially if you’re a Ruckus Maker, which means you’re investing in your continuous growth, challenging the status quo, not maintaining in designing the future of school. Now, hey, it’s Danny, chief Ruckus Maker over at Better Leaders, Better Schools, and excited to bring this conversation to you with Dr. David Franklin. We’ll be in that main conversation after some messages from our show’s sponsors.

Daniel (01:38):
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Daniel (03:12):
Hey, Ruckus Makers. I’m joined today by Dr. David Franklin, who’s an award-winning school administrator, education professor, curriculum designer, author and presenter doctorate in education leadership from California State University East Bay, a master’s degree in Ed Technology from National University and holds a bachelor’s in Art and Music from University of California, San Diego. Dr. Franklin is the founder of the Principal’s Desk, an online community with a membership of over 215,000 educators from across the world. And just so if you search in Facebook, the Principal’s desk, this is a public group and I highly recommend you join. Dr. Franklin’s, also an adjunct professor of education for Colorado State University and a Marzano research fellow trained in high reliability schools, instructional rounds, collaborative teams, and PLCs. He has presented at National and International Education Conferences and is a sought after presenter in the areas of academic intervention, school leadership, creating a shared vision in creating common assessments and data analysis.

Daniel (04:22):
Dr. Franklin, welcome to the show. I’m tempted to ask you about how to develop a scared vision. I wanna open with like, not everybody has a story, but Lenny Kravitz ruined your music career. He did. And sorry to laugh about that, but it’s like, what? This is crazy. What’s the lessons learned from that experience?

Dr David (04:55):
Lessons learned. Well, first of all, it was a long time ago, so I am over it. I do hold a small grudge, and every time he is on the radio or tv I do, I let my kids know. I’m like, that’s the guy. They don’t know who he is. They don’t get it. But like, I know, I do. But, lessons learned from that. We were putting all of our eggs in that basket, to be honest with you. We were gonna do an opening spot for Lenny Kravitz, and we were all set to go. And in literally the 11th hour, Lenny personally thought that we weren’t a good match for his musical vibe and he replaced us with an artist. Her name is Jill Scott and Jill Scott is like a Grammy award-winning singer. She’s amazing and my band was not like her at all. We were a hard rock band. We didn’t get the gig and I ended up going back to education and Jill Scott won some Grammys.

Daniel (05:52):
Always have a backup plan as maybe the lessons learned there. For sure. Always have a backup plan. And, if the honest reality is that tough things are gonna happen to you as a school leader. Especially if you identify, like, I call my listeners Ruckus Makers. That means they’re consistently developing themselves and investing in their growth. They’re challenging the status quo and that will ruffle feathers at times in designing the future of school now. They’re evolving education, so they’re gonna put themselves in situations where it’s difficult at times. When you reflect back, I know it’s been many years, and now you have a better perspective of it, but what helped with getting over it. I’m sure it was devastating at the time.

Dr David (06:39):
Oh my goodness. You have no idea how we were so upset.I think we recognized after the dust settled that it wasn’t the right match. It really wasn’t. We probably shouldn’t have been selected in the first place. We went back. I joked a minute ago that I went straight into education after that. I was already the teacher at that point. We didn’t give up our dream when that happened. But we went back and we kept plugging along. We kept trying, we kept recording another record after that. Obviously, my musical days did end as 99.9% of us do. But we didn’t let it affect us moving forward here. We did our very best to say, “Hey just wasn’t for us. Let’s go on to the next thing.” We had some great memories after that as well. And I look back and the fact that Lenny Kravitz even listened to any of our music was amazing. I’ll take that as a win.

Daniel (07:24):
Absolutely. Obviously, let’s pull on the music thread a little bit more. I believe you’ve approached in the past. School leadership is a musician. What does that mean to you?

Daniel (07:43):
I think we all have our soundtrack. I actually often ask school leaders when you’re driving to work or driving home or you’re in your office, what are you listening to? And for me, again, I’m a hard rock heavy metal guy, which freaks some people out. But there’s an energy to it and it kind of gets me going. I’m not an angry person at all, but like, there is a release that happens with it. I’d like to think about that rhythm and that tempo as you walk through schools and walk through classrooms, you know what’s happening. What’s that almost like a soundtrack, like if this was a movie. What’s playing in the background of your school? Is it classical music? Is that like a Mozart concerto? Or is it you know Benny Goodman on clarinet? Or are we talking about Metallica, what is it? And so this gets people to kind of recognize what’s the vibe here? And it can shift around time for different things. But it’s important to have that soundtrack as a pulse to your school.

Daniel (08:07):
Absolutely. Who are some of those bands that you enjoy listening to when it comes to hard rock or heavy metal? I’ve always been a huge Metallica fan.

Dr David (08:50):
I think most people are huge Metallica fans, but I ran the gamut. Ozzy Osborne, I kinda like a little bit of the classic Ozzy Osborne and get into that Guns N Roses. I’m a kid of the eighties, so I played that music for my students, my own kids and my staff. Again, it’s that soundtrack and that’s important. Music’s important. I try to infuse it into everything that I do.

Daniel (09:20):
I have a few different workout playlists. Some are more like a dance club vibe. Some are hip hop. I think the one that you would appreciate when it comes to metal and that kind of thing, that workout playlist is filled with bands like Panera, Ministry and White Zombie.

Dr David (09:47):
I will say like last night I was working on a writing project and I was listening to two different things. I had my Toad The Wet Sprocket, so I was a little on the mellow side. But then, yeah, then some Dr. Dre going on after that too. I needed to pick it up. Old school, Dr. Dre, and hey whatever works for you in that moment it gets you going. Absolutely.

Daniel (10:08):
Let’s go back to your first principalship and the staff was complaining about the challenging environment. The clock was ticking and they said Dr. Franklin, we need to change things up. What were they talking about?

Dr David (10:21):
That first school that was a principal had a lot of longstanding issues. It was in a lower socioeconomic area. There were some gang issues, some violence issues. We had primarily English language learners. Parents weren’t coming from college educated backgrounds. They were coming from horrible conditions in different countries and settling in our community. One of my teachers had been there for long enough where they did see the population and the needs of the school change over decades. What was working 20, 30 years ago wasn’t working anymore, but they kept trying to do the same things. We had some very deep conversations about who our students are. Our students are not the same students as they were 20 years ago. These are very different students with very different needs. How are we meeting their needs? I wasn’t getting a lot back from them and I thought that was very eye-opening. I said, okay, let’s focus on the kids. Let’s focus on what they need and let’s start brainstorming, coming up with a new vision and mission for the school. The main thing that we focused on which was a big pain point for my teachers with classroom management and discipline. We were literally getting hundreds of students a year in the office. It was very frustrating and it came back to what’s going on in the classroom. Is that culturally relevant pedagogy? Are we properly managing a class with engaging instruction? We started to work on that round and it really started to help. But this was a long process and I took a lot of lumps. There was a lot of blood, sweat, and tears left all over that school from all of us. But it needed to be done. I was maybe the right person at the right time to kind of mix it up a little bit. I was your Ruckus Maker. I definitely ruffled feathers for sure.

Daniel (12:14):
And not every educator gets this, but I think it’s important to focus on culture before you get to academics. And in your view and your experience, why is it important to start there?

Dr David (12:27):
You have to build that, first of all, you have to build that trust with your community. And it goes with teachers, it goes with students, it goes with parents. Here. I’m very cautious, when I work with principals now on having them come in and just bulldoze the place from an instructional standpoint. because that’s not what we needed got us. You gotta have that cultural foundation up front here. And what I learned very early on at that school in particular is that there really wasn’t a unifying culture at that school. And if there was, it was very negative. We had to change how people perceived our school from the inside out. And those are some very challenging, challenging conversations about personal beliefs. Either unconscious or conscious bias that was happening at that school. We had some teachers leave over it and I had the opportunity to bring some teachers in, which was refreshing for the school. But this was very challenging. I don’t think we talked that much about instruction until at least year two. Because I had to create that team. They had to trust me. And same thing with the parents.

Dr David (13:29):
I was this outsider coming in and I was also very young at the time. I was 28. I was this young kid and who was I? Actually at that time I was the youngest person who worked at the school and I was the principal. Parents and teachers were looking at me going, I have kids your age. And they did. I had to develop that trust, those relationships first, so that when I did have to have those strong conversations, we had already had, we had a relationship that was there. Again, it went better than it would’ve been if I just came in and bulldozed them down because nothing good comes from that.

Daniel (14:04):
Talk a bit more to the Ruckus Maker. Watching and listening about that experience being on the younger side as a principal. I got a principal position and every principal before me had a cowboy hat, a mustache, and was mid forties, past fifties. I was a Midwestern dude from the North coming down to Texas, I had a wonderful experience. But there were some mismatches potentially culturally, plus the age, plus the beard, and plus the tattoos. There were some things that I dealt with. But this show is not about me. It’s about you. We have ambitious listeners and leaders. What would you tell them because they’re probably struggling with the same thing.

Dr David (14:48):
You know the age piece is gonna happen. People are gonna look at you like you’re a baby. And I got that. I got that for many years. It’s something you just have to accept that it’s gonna happen. Don’t let that get you down. Lead with your expertise. You were hired there for a reason. I was hired there for the reason that I came in. I had to change things up. I didn’t come with a lot of baggage. And that’s how I kind of framed it. It wasn’t coming with any spirit here as far as school leadership goes. I also wasn’t coming with baggage. I got to look at everything with fresh eyes. And that was really important from the school perspective as well when changing that culture. Because again, I stepped foot on my campus and I could tell something was off and it was just that gut feeling that I had. I was able to use that, hey, like I’m not from this area. I moved across California for this role. Wasn’t from the area, wasn’t from the community. I could sense, hey, something’s not right. But there’s gonna be those teachers that want to kind of make an example of you saying “Enough, I don’t have to listen to this young guy. He’s not gonna be around for a while”. And you’re also gonna have those veteran teachers too that are going, I want to do things differently and maybe this is the opportunity. I also got really good at that too. Tap into those veteran teachers who they need that spark back. And if you can light that spark again, those are your champions. I got very good at not being the mouthpiece and I had some of my veteran teachers who were just kinda stuck in a rut. I said, I need you to go and talk to your friends. And they did. And that’s how we got things moving along here. It was less about me, more about let’s build this community back again. We gotta get the school, the school I was at used to be a really amazing school and it just deteriorated over the years. Let’s get that back, let’s get that fun back. because there were teachers that were there at that time. That desire was there, but it wasn’t necessarily gonna come from me because I wasn’t there. It gotta come internally.

Daniel (16:24):
Yeah. I call that the ripple effect. And it was great that you didn’t wanna be the mouthpiece or out in front right. You honored the veterans experience and tapped into that and brought them on board because through them you were able to influence. They had much stronger relational capital than you at the time. because they had built the relationships and so that’s certainly a pro move. Speaking of pro moves, we’re gonna have a quick break here for some messages from our sponsors. But I wanna talk to you David after the break about how you grew school to 98.5% attendance, which is tremendous in what we can learn from that experience. I’m sure everybody listening and watching would love to have a school like that or better.

Daniel (17:32):
All right. Well today’s show is sponsored by Harvard’s certificate in School Management and Leadership. Learn how to successfully navigate change, shape your school’s success and empower your teams through this program. Get an online PD that fits your schedule. Courses include leading change, leading school strategy and innovation. Leading people in leading learning. You can learn more and apply today at BetterLeadersBetterschools.com/harvard. Today’s show is also sponsored by Organized Binder, a program which gives students daily exposure to goal setting, reflective learning time and task management, study strategies, organizational skills, and more Organized Binder. Color coded system is implemented by the teacher through a parallel process with students, helping them create a predictable and dependable classroom routine. Learn more and improve your student’s executive [email protected]. When classrooms come alive with conversation teachers and students both thrive. Last year. Teachers using Teach FX increase their student talk by an average of 40%. Can an app really do that? Even trying something like embracing extra wait time to create space for student talk can feel like a risk. But with Teach FX, teachers see the power of those practices in their own classroom level data. It’s like having a personal instructional coach on your phone, tablet, or laptop. Best of all, Ruckus Makers can start a free pilot with their teachers today. Go to teachfx.com/better leaders to learn how and get started. That’s right. Go to teachfx.com/betterleaders and start your free pilot with Teach FX today.

Daniel (19:22):
I would love to just make a quick invitation to anybody watching or listening. I’m hosting my next live event. It’s in Denver this July, and I’m teaching a brand new framework called the Leadership Optimization Compass. The guiding question that’s driving the whole event is what would be possible on your campus if you were consistently operating at your best. You can learn more at BetterLeadersBetter schools.com/denver2023. And we’re back with Dr. David Franklin who has been here talking about all sorts of really interesting stuff like how Lenny Kravitz ruined his music career and lessons learned as a young first time principal. David has also started the Principal’s Desk, which there’s two outside of my small private group. There’s two Facebook groups I like to play in. And this one’s awesome. I highly encourage you to join and if you just search on Facebook Principal’s Desk, there’s all over 200,000. I think David told me 216,000 as of today. Anyways, search that in the search bar, you know, request admittance and Dr. Franklin will get you in. We’re back in. I talked about how you grew a school to 98, 5% attendance. People would love to have a school like that or better. What did you learn? What was the secret in terms of getting such great attendance at your school?

Dr David (20:54):
Being relentless. Kids can’t learn unless they’re in school. Granted that conversations changed a little bit over the last couple years because kids were learning at home remotely. But fundamentally, kids can’t learn unless they’re in their seats. You could have the best teachers, the best curriculum and content and the most innovative teaching methods. None of that will make a difference if that child is not there in class. I started to see this happening where I was bringing on new staff members who were again, like innovative and they were energizing the kids who were loving them, but I was missing a lot of kids. Our attendance was down in the low nineties and I had many kids every year that were tripping that truancy rate, which was 10% and they were failing. They were not succeeding. We initiated this very intense attendance campaign and a lot of it was phone calls from the school, phone calls and letters. Every time a kid was absent, automatic phone calls would go out. I would also place personal phone calls to some of our most absent kids to explain to their parents like, we really need them there now, if they were sick, we said, okay, please keep ’em home. We want them to feel better. But what we found is that in a lot of cases, kids were not coming to school because they didn’t have a ride or their parents had to take the car early or they had to stay home and watch a sick brother or sister because if the parent didn’t go to school, there was no or go to work. There was no food on the table that night. We started to pinpoint what’s the root cause of these kids not coming to school. And so if it was a transportation issue, we got them free bus passes or we hooked them up with a carpool with another student’s family. We help families figure out how to fix their cars. IWe got local mechanics to fix cars for next to nothing to get families up and running again. The other thing we did was home visits. I can’t say enough about them. I worked again in a very challenging part of town in San Jose, California. A lot of our families spoke Spanish at home. Now I speak very little. I can understand a little and it was much better when I was working there though. But I would bring my community liaison with me and she was fluent in Spanish and she also had relationships with the families. She lived in the community. We were coming over not to bring the hammer down on these families, but say, Hey, what do we do? How can we help you here? I would say 95% of the time when we knocked on that door, families were so happy that we were there and they were like, come on in. Like, can I get you something to eat? We did. I ate lunch most of the time in the houses of our families because they’re just so welcoming and they knew why we were there. It was to help and we started seeing kids come to school more and more. On the flip side of that, we did have some families who were very challenging for us. I brought this up in the Facebook group many times and there are some people that get a little hesitant with it, but let me kind of go through it here. We did have a very strong relationship with our local police department. We did have SROs on campus. For a more challenging family, I would have our officer come out with us.

Dr David (24:23):
Now our officers also spoke Spanish, which was very helpful, but they were not going to, again, to put the hammer down. But having a police officer there is a little bit more, we’re raising the bar a little bit here, but they could also speak to the parent about the dangers of school truancy and what they see as far as adults who they get to interact on a daily basis with. Did they graduate from high school and what was those people’s trajectory when they were younger? And that also helped as well, just having that other perspective as well here. So it was kind of this wraparound approach and we were just relentless with it. It was just a daily thing with us. We went from about 91% up to 98.5% in one year.

Daniel (25:11):
I used to post out to our families grade level attendance rate on a weekly basis. I was amazed. It was tremendous because kids were then getting to school, we saw our academic rates go up as well. We saw disciplinary rates go down because students were at school, they were engaged, they weren’t coming in after being gone for four days and not knowing what’s going on. It was a game changer definitely for that school.

Daniel (25:40):
I’m curious, were these visits often announced? Unannounced?

Dr David (25:45):
We would call ahead. We would call ahead. It was never unannounced unless we couldn’t get ahold of the parent. And that wasn’t just like, oh, we called and they didn’t pick up. This was maybe a couple days where we hadn’t heard from the child, we hadn’t heard from the parent. Oddly enough, it was almost like a welfare check, but no, we would always call ahead, let them know. And there were a lot of times when the parent would say to us, please come over so my kid will not come to school. I cannot get him or her out of their room. Please come. Again, like families were absolutely wonderful with it. Again, we framed it not as, Hey, we got your kid’s not at school. It was, what can we do to help? And that subtle difference is this meant the world to our community. Again, kids started coming to school.

Daniel (26:31):
The framing is foundational, especially to express your heart of why you wanna visit and the importance of having the kid in school and if you’re gonna be involved, you know the police as well, framing that and calling ahead is incredibly important. Thanks for sharing that and how you grew the school to 98 and a half percent attendance. David, you have a new podcast and obviously I love podcasts. It’s changed my life. I’ve had this one for the last seven years and if you can believe it, I have never missed a Wednesday since September 2nd, 2015. But the new show, correct me if I’m wrong, I think that’s called the Principal’s Desk as well. Can you tell the Ruckus Makers watching or listening why’d you start this podcast and what’s it all about?

Dr David (27:20):
In starting the principal’s desk Facebook group and everything. We’re up to 215,000 educators from around the world. I’ve had the opportunity just like you to meet just some amazing people and wanted to turn their stories into a podcast. I’m enjoying learning from them. I bet everyone could learn something from them. So that’s why I started it. I’m definitely not a professional podcaster by any means, but it’s definitely been fun and interesting just to meet people from different walks of life and education and to learn from them and grow from them. It’d be great if your listeners would check it out. pick up on all the different streaming services. It’s just a principal’s desk.

Daniel (28:06):
Definitely check it out. So you’re doing good work over there. I wanna ask you to be authentic and vulnerable for a moment. I know when you launched the show, you told me you thought, can I do this? Can you tell me more about that question? Can I do this and your mental approach to starting the show?

Dr David (28:23):
Podcasting is very new to me. Still very new to me. I listened to a lot on a podcast, but thought of doing one was very intimidating for me, just from just the technical side and then also just the prep side that goes with the amount of work that goes into a podcast. I now super a lot more because so much work goes into it that no one ever sees. And I guess if there’s anyone out there that is thinking about it, do what I did and just you dive in and you do it and you get better each and every one. And I talk to the folks that come onto my podcast, I ask them afterwards, how was it for you? What, would you do it again? And they’ve all said yes, by the way, but I’ve gotten some really great feedback from them as well as what they would like. Maybe we would help them out a little bit more or something that I could do. Be open, you’re not gonna break anything. You’re not gonna end the world’s not gonna end if it’s not successful, but go ahead and try it. I think as educators we always have to have that kind of mindset of I’m gonna try this and if it doesn’t work, but I’m not gonna let my fear of failure hold me back from doing.

Daniel (29:35):
I call that taking the leap before you’re ready, you jump in and if you’re waiting to know it, all this kind of stuff before you start, that’s just, we all know that’s analysis paralysis and that’s where you’re just sitting in the zone of ideas but not action. You’re never gonna change the world thinking about changing it. The last three questions are always the same for every guest, and I’d love to go through those with you, basically. Number one, if you could put one message on all schools, Marques, around the world for a single day, what would your message be, David?

Dr David (30:07):
I’ve been thinking about this ever since I saw the question. That’s the thing. I stress so much about putting things on my marquees just for one school and I’ve thought about all of them. Probably we’re better together. I think that would be, I think that would be the message. I’ll speak just to education, but you can definitely put this out from the whole world right now, we’re a very divided world right now. There’s so many different competing factors in everything. When I think about education, I think about kids, young kids, they don’t understand this. They’re just, they wanna be friends with everyone and they wanna learn and they wanna experience different things. We’ve just put so much pressure and politics and different things on waiting down on schools and kids and you know what, let’s just work together on this. Let’s have open dialogues, open communication, and we’re gonna be better together. Let’s figure out this future so that this next generation can take over and do and do it better than we have.

Daniel (31:09):
If you’re building your Dreams school, David, and you had no constraint in terms of resources, your only limitation was your imagination, how would you build that school? What would be the three guiding principles?

Dr David (31:21):
I always get back to people, process, and product. It’s the people. That’s foundational. I think for any organization, especially schools. I want the right people and I don’t want the same type of people. I want different types of people in there that all can work with kids in different ways, but I want people who have that practical life experience as well,who can also take the content. And when kids ask, why do I have to learn this? Oh, I’ll show you and here’s the thing. I want that to be it. And that goes into the process piece as well. I want it to be real life scenarios, very project-based learning where these kids aren’t just sitting doing worksheets. They’re actively building and creating and designing their own learning. And then we get into a product of things. I want, again, taking that idea further, I want students to show us how, what they’ve learned in their own way. I was not a good student. I got good grades because I did a lot of extra credit, but I was not the best student. I was a horrible test taker. And if I could just have done things my way and had to be a little bit more personalized for me, I would’ve done a whole lot better. I would’ve learned a whole lot more and I would’ve had to play catch up for years and years. People, process, product is what I would focus on.

Daniel (32:38):
Great. And we covered a lot of ground today, David. Of everything we spoke about, what’s the one thing you want a Ruckus Maker to remember?

Dr David (32:47):
I think Ruckus Makers need a flock. They need to stick together. Education can be very lonely, especially for school leaders. I remember sitting in my office many late afternoons feeling very down, very defeated, looking for new careers. And when I was doing it, there wasn’t, social media wasn’t, didn’t exist yet. And so there weren’t a lot of places for me to find other people who thought like me. If they’re not in your district or across the street or across town, go online, find a group of people that you can connect with for mental health, but then also just personal and professional growth as well. Stick together. There’s gonna be some good times, there’s gonna be some bad times, but keep pushing forward here because you guys are the ones that are gonna be making the change in the world for this next generation coming up. And there’s a lot at stake, but there’s a lot of great people out there that are going to do that. Great work.

Daniel (33:44):
Thanks for listening to The Better Leaders, Better Schools podcast Ruckus Maker. If you have a question or would like to connect my email, [email protected] or hit me up on Twitter at @Alienearbud. If the Better Leaders, better Schools Podcast is helping you grow as a school leader, then please help us serve more Ruckus Makers like you. You can subscribe, leave an honest rating and review or share on social media with your biggest takeaway from the episode, extra credit for tagging me on Twitter at alien earbud, and using the hashtag #BLBS. Level up your leadership at BetterLeadersBetterschools.com and talk to you next time. Until then, “class dismissed.”