The Ruckus Report
Quick take: Most school leaders are trained to lead like emotionless robots. But students aren’t spreadsheets and staff don’t need a boss with a checklist — they need a human being. Time to reject the premise that logic alone should run our schools.
Meet Your Fellow Ruckus Maker
Danny and Jethro are back riffing on the idea that Ruckus Makers Reject the Premise as they work on their first collaborative book. Catch older Reject the Premise content on the Better Leaders Better Schools and Transformative Principal podcast feeds.
In this episode, Jethro Jones challenges traditional education paradigms:
Key Insight #1: Emotions Are Your Leadership Superpower
- What’s broken: The robot principal mentality that emotions should be locked out of work
- The shift: Embrace emotional intelligence as the very thing that makes leadership work — connection
- Impact: Leaders build authentic relationships instead of being terminators hunting for data points
Key Insight #2: From Sage on Stage to Compass Among Us
- What’s broken: Teachers controlling every learning moment as the “sage on the stage”
- The shift: Become a “compass among us” — pointing to true north while students navigate their own path
- Impact: Students take ownership of learning while teachers focus on what computers can’t do: the human connection
Key Insight #3: Discipline Matrices Are BS
- What’s broken: One-size-fits-all discipline charts that treat every situation identically
- The shift: Use the smallest possible intervention that changes behavior — sometimes just a look
- Impact: Fewer office referrals, more authentic relationships, and students who actually learn from mistakes
Quotable Ruckus
“If AI can crushed everything else, what’s left is our emotions and our spirituality and the metaphysical stuff that makes us different than computers.”
– Jethro Jones
Your Do School Different Challenge
Ready to implement these ideas? Start here:
- Tomorrow: Check in with someone by asking “How are you?” instead of “How did your students do on that assessment?
- This Month: Replace one discipline matrix consequence with a restorative conversation
- This Semester: Audit your teaching staff — how many are still stuck in “sage on the stage” mode?
Get the full episode transcript: here
If education ain’t a bit disruptive, then what are your students really learning?
This show isn’t about doing school better.
It’s about Doing School Different — and joining a growing movement of bold, creative school leaders who reject legacy models and reimagine what’s possible.
Here are four ways we can help you on your Do School Different journey
Subscribe to the Free Newsletter
— An opportunity to Do School Different 3x a week. Tools, mindset shifts, and strategies that actually work: ruckusmakers.news
Read Ruckus Makers
— Exclusive content on Substack. Premium leadership insights, AI prompts and custom GPTs, new books before the bookshelf: ruckusmakers.media
Join The Ruckus Maker Club
Our private network + workshops, The Automatic School tools, AI Prompt Library, and more:
The Ruckus Maker
Apply to the Mastermind
— Weekly coaching, peer mentorship, and our proven leadership system (The Ruckus Maker Flywheel) to help you transform your campus:
Apply Now
The podcast is your starting point. The movement is just getting started.
Today’s RUCKUScast in Partnership with:
IXL: Meet your students where they are and take them where they need to go. Join over 1 million teachers who trust IXL to drive data-informed excellence in their classrooms.
🔍 Learn more here
ODP Business Solutions®: When 15,000 Chromebooks vanished overnight...
A district's $6.5M tech rollout was about to implode thanks to supply chain chaos. But while other vendors played the blame game, ODP Business Solutions® pulled off a near-impossible 7-week turnaround. Here's how they saved back-to-school.
🔍 Learn the full story here.
