Rewarding the Positive

Rewarding the Positive

Hey, thanks for hitting play. Do you feel like a square peg trying to fit into the round hole of education? If so, you’re in the right place. I’m Danny Bauer, and this is the better leaders, Better Schools podcast, the original Ruckus Maker podcast for visionary leaders who want to do school different and make a legendary impact on their campus. Thanks to Ruckus Makers just like you, this show ranks in the top 0.5% of over 3 million worldwide podcasts. In today’s show, I speak with Adam Stolzer, who is the Burwell junior Senior high school principal located in Burwell, Nebraska. Adam is an educational leader who makes a ruckus with his mobile office, Longhorn support days and helping facilitate bringing out student passion. Adam takes great pride in leaving a daily legacy of being a model of support for students. And in our conversation, we talk on topics like what Longhorn support days are all about. Get this, students do well and they get days off. We’re going to talk about the power of purple. And for Adam, listen. He was a teacher. Or listen, a lot of principals were teachers, but he was a teacher on the campus where he’s a principal. And so we talk about what that experience was like moving from the classroom to the principal’s office. Once again, thank you so much for listening. And we’ll be right back after a quick message from our show sponsors. Hey Ruckus Maker, I’ll make this quick. If you’re listening to this message right now, you’re missing out.

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04:21
Adam
Thanks for having me in. This is a humbling experience, and I’m excited to talk about education and how we’re making a ruckus.

04:28
Danny
I love that. Let’s start off with the days off that kids get at your campus. I guess they’re doing things right and so they get some extra time off, which creates another opportunity.  I’ll let you take it from here.

04:46
Adam
It was something that we have battled, and I think it’s a thing across the country with chronic absenteeism and is the old school way of punishment, punishment with detentions and spending time and all of that, is that really what motivates kids that’s still the same, or is there a different way? And taking that mindset of kind of the elementary world, being a high school principal with that elementary world of, if you want more good, talk about the good thanks for standing in line quietly. Thank you for getting your colored pencils out and ready to go or whatever it is. We reward kids for getting to school on time, getting good grades, staying out of the office, doing what you expect a student to do. But incentivizing it that if you meet our five requirements that you get another day off of school. And if you don’t make those requirements, you are here. And we try to see it not as a punishment. You have to come to school a day, but you’re expected to anyway. But you get a little bit more one on one support now. Are you missing school and having low grades? Is that the correlation? Is it, or you just need a little bit more support and all of that?  We felt that it was a way to reward the behavior that we want, to try to get more of that behavior, which is our first year implementing it. And through three quarters, every quarter we’ve gotten better. And we’re on track to better than the third quarter here in the last quarter.  I’m excited about that. But it’s also been really good for our students to have that extra time that they need. And we’re differentiating a different way to maybe tailor those students that need just a little bit more support.

06:35
Danny
Yeah. How are you defining better? If you’ve been improving the last three quarters, does that mean more kids are eligible for the day off and less are having to come in, or is it something else?

06:46
Adam
I think that’s the one that everybody looks to where from quarter one to quarter three, we’re down five kids. And some people listening to this might be, well, five kids. That’s not a lot. Well, in a school for us, we have 124 kids, seven through twelve.  Five kids are significant. Quite a move the needle quite a bit. But we’ve also seen our tardis have gone down, our unexcused absences have gone down, and we’ve had less students receive DS and F’s at the quarter and semester benchmarks. Because part of the incentive is to. If you don’t have any DS or f, that’s one of the criterias for not coming. So we’ve really decreased in those areas. I think the biggest ones that we’ve decreased on have been the Tardis and the D’s and F’s. But it’s also something that kids are excited about where, hey, we don’t want to. We don’t want to come to school that day. We want to have a free day off. And especially now, as we get towards May, where it’s the last week of school and it’s 80 degrees outside, like, I’d rather go fishing to be outside with my friends than sitting at school.

07:51
Danny
So that’s great. You’ve seen the improvements and that kind of thing. What was the community and sort of talk to me about, like, parents and staff members in terms of mindset and, like, because there’s a bit of a shift, I think just hearing what you’re saying, as a teacher, I’d be excited to work with a smaller group of kids who needed the intervention. I could really give them 100% focus.  I think that’s a huge win. Tell me, how did parents and how did staff respond to the change?

08:25
Adam
Full transparency. That’s a great question. I’m glad you brought it up, because right away there were a few community members that had gone to maybe a school board member or had talked to the superintendent. Why are we rewarding people for doing what we ask of them? If I show up to work every day, do my job, are you giving me a raise? We don’t. But maybe you get a Christmas bonus out of work or something I don’t know. There was a little bit of community pushback. I set the stage for the staff the previous school year before they left. Would you be in favor of this? What do you support? And we learned really quickly in the first quarter, we had some people who were here that were straight A students. I just. I don’t get to school on time. I like to sleep in, get my Starbucks or whatever, and. But those kids are now eliminated because I have all a’s. I have everything turned in. What do you want me to do on this day? Well, you’re just here today, so we’re gonna do some different activities to do some stuff.  I think our staff has actually really grown to like them throughout the end of the quarters so they can really meet the kids where they’re at. Help those kids also have a little bit of time to catch up if they don’t have kids in class. But so outside of a handful of community parents of that aspect of it, I think it’s been really well received. We’ve been asked, are we doing it again? We want to continue this. It was a leap, it was a change. It was against a curve, but it’s been something that’s really worked out well.

09:56
Danny
I love to say that Ruckus Makers do school different, and that’s about making shifts from the old, traditional, and often broken ways of educating to new, different, and creative. And this is an example of a Ruckus Maker doing school different. You ran it as an experiment. It’s been working well for three quarters. We will assume it’ll work even better for the fourth, and then you continue to build upon that success. But anything that’s dropping tardiness and absenteeism and getting more kids successful in school around the performance side of things. That’s a great thing. And Ruckus Makers also reject the premise. So one of the premises is, you do something wrong or whatever, you’re punished. Let me not just take it for truth. Let me really think about it. And as you mentioned, sort of setting up this story, you wanted more of the positive, so you’re rewarding the positive. And I’ll tell you, when I learned that shift in classroom management and I started really focusing on all the kids that came on time, had their materials just meeting expectations and the agreements, shining a spotlight on those, right. I. More kids were doing the good stuff, because what they really wanted was my attention as the teacher. Last thing I’ll say, this is just for the Ruckus Maker listening. If you go to betterleadersbetterschools.com/resources, there’s a tool I have called the positive spotlight tool. And what Adam’s doing here, highlighting the positive to get more of it, that’s what the tool does. And there’s five steps to it. And I’ll just tease it out there. It’s free. Go grab it from the website. There’s a training video. And basically, if you want to get more of what you want, when you want it, use the tool. That’s what it does. All right, let’s talk about the power of purple. What’s that all about?

11:47
Adam
The power of purple, again, is kind of building off of that is, too often we let the 299 good things happen in our day. We let the one bad thing dictate our mood, the positive. And so the power of purple, for me, has tried to and for our school, has tried to be a way to focus on the 299 good and not the one bad. Where we have passion, we have uniqueness, we have reflecting, we have pride, legacy and evolve. The letter for an acronym of Purple, our school colors are purple. And I wanted something to be my guiding force as what I believed education should be as a principal in my second year, we started it my first year. But as I went to that school, leadership, I wanted to be that. But just for us to focus on those positives, be passionate about kids, celebrate kids, leave a legacy of that. We’re here to build kids up, promote them, not the constant, oh, my gosh, they’re just always writing to me, I’m five minutes late or I didn’t turn this in. We want kids to do that. We want to build those skills. But can we do it passionately? Can we do it where we’re leaving the positive outcome with that. Another thing we’ve started to do is kind of do attendance drawings on Fridays where if you have perfect attendance that week you get a candy bar and a pop where food motivates high school kids who don’t like that’ll motivate like the little thing. $2 at dollar general will get you some desired outcomes.

13:24
Adam
The power of purple has just been when the bad days get bad, like that’s what you can focus on. And when you want to see your school grow and not be okay with the status quo and we can evolve like we have the power of purple to help guide us and give us a common vision that everybody talks about, sees and lives. The school board president’s exit in his back to school message this year wasn’t prompt, wasn’t anything like that. But it’s that systemic change that we can all believe in.

13:52
Danny
That’s great. And you’re doing things right when people start using your language, your way of seeing the world and that kind of thing. Kudos to you on that. That’s certainly a win. I hope you celebrated it.  P’s passion. How do teachers share their passion with students and learn about the things that students are passionate about?

14:13
Adam
When I took the principal job two years ago, I had some kind of preseason meetings. I was a coach and a teacher beforehand and I took it from my mentor, Mister Maynard. He did the same thing when meeting with staff before the school year. But one of my first questions was what is your passion? And I challenge them to bring that out when they teach. Because when you bring out your passion, talk about your passion, you get a little bit more energy, your endorphins get going. You do that. So if you.

14:44
Danny
And can you give an example of what that looks like maybe one of the teachers and what their passion is.

14:51
Adam
Were an ag based community and so we have a lot of teachers who are passionate and have that experience with raising cattle and ranching and they bring that up where they can relate topics and they can connect the dots that hey, we’re doing a project this and then the students also can relate to that and now they can connect the dots. Or like right now we have kids that stayed in Byron through our FFA future farmers of America. And what that what they’re doing is they’re doing a research based project that they got to pick and connect the classroom with their age education. But it’s all stuff that they can relate to because it’s stuff that they had to pick and how to choose and it’s what their interest in. Or like our science fair where we have that group of boys that just want to blow something up because that’s what they want to do as sophomores in high school. But we don’t tie their hands behind their back. We let them explore what they want to explore because they’re interested. They get more out of it. Orwe had some kids who got some mice and what would happen if they got energy drinks and all this other stuff, but they were exploring stuff that they wanted to rather than this is what you have to learn instead of here’s the tools to learn. Now go find something to learn within these parameters.

16:12
Danny
I think you alluded to being a teacher on the campus. Talk to us about that shift, especially in a smaller, I would guess, tight knit community. And here you are, a teacher now, your principal. How was that transition for you? How’s the campus evolved?

16:29
Adam
It was a challenge just because you’re in a new role and the relationships and trust that you had beforehand, now you have to rebuild differently. And the trust and their respect, the respect’s there by position, but to a certain baseline level. And then the respect and trust that you get from staff has to be built day in and day out. I think it’s still something that I am working on where they knew me for seven years as a teacher, but now they need to know me in a new role. But I also think the uniqueness part of it was that you were here for seven years, so you kind of understand some of the things that we need to do or things that we’ve wanted to do.

17:12
Adam
You’ve seen the teacher’s perspective,  Burwell, and so how can we adjust and change those things? So I think it’s been able to have really honest conversations because there was a baseline relationship as opposed to someone new coming in where you have to build the relationship up and then go like, we had a little bit of a head start on that and that’s, our staff’s been awesome. I mean, most of the staff is older than I am, and, but the trust and the communication that we have is there at a very high level. Communication can always be better. The relationship can always grow and evolve, but it’s been very smooth. And part of that was the opportunities that Mister Maynard put ahead before when he was the principal and moved to Superintendent some of the leadership opportunities and just a clear, sought out transition plan. What was there that helped to facilitate that?

18:04
Danny
This is a good spot to take a quick break and get some messages in from our sponsors. And when we come back, we’d love to touch on how tough conversations lead to growth. As a school leader, time is your greatest resource and there is a real sense of urgency when it comes to getting students what they need right now. That’s why I love the IXL universal screener. In 20 minutes or less, you can identify students in need of intervention. And ixls adaptive platform makes differentiating instruction easy. As students learn, IXL adjusts to the right level of difficulty for each individual kid. Get started [email protected]/Leaders. Here’s a few reasons I love quest food management services. Quest provides high quality scratch made food in k twelve schools and universities across the country. Quest provides solutions for school cafeterias of every size, including multi station dining halls, cafes and coffee shops, marketplace grab and go catering and events, satellite programming and more. The quest food philosophy is to prioritize the health and wellness of students by cultivating chef crafted recipes containing high quality ingredients and using scratch made cooking techniques and responsible product sourcing. Learn more about Quest food management [email protected] or follow questfood on social media. That’s quest fms.com. All right, and we’re back with Adam Stallzer, and we are talking about the ruckus he’s making at Burwell Junior and senior high school. We’re having a blast with that. And now I want to touch on tough conversations and you believe they lead to growth. Tell us a bit about that. Maybe bring us into one of those conversations you might have had to facilitate.

20:10
Adam
Power purple to e is evolved. So grow, change, become better. And unless we can have honest conversations with ourselves, with our staff, with our peers, colleagues, I don’t think that evolution is there. And eventually, if you don’t have tough conversations, you get stuck in a status quo because everybody’s just comfortable. And if you want to grow, you want to learn something new, you have to get uncomfortable. Like, that’s just, if you’re learning a new skill, you have to get uncomfortable doing it because there’s that learning curve that happened. I think they’re paramount for success. I think it is leaving a legacy that you want to leave. You need to have those uncomfortable conversations. And for me recently, just on a professional level, it was kind of a tough couple weeks for me where I had to have a tough conversation with people around me just, and not tough that it was bad to talk about, but I had to make myself vulnerable. I had to be honest with myself and admit some things and open up on some things that maybe I didn’t want to open up and be vulnerable about, but I had to be to grow. Otherwise it wasn’t going to be good there. I think conversations with teachers just happened. Where can they grow? How can you support them not coming in a negative way and again focusing on the bad, but say you’re doing, how can you help them grow and progress and become better? Having those tough conversations. And I think when you have a culture of communication and open dialogue all the time that those naturally just happen where you can have genuine honest conversations and even where people are asking for feedback of, hey, how can I grow or how can I do this differently? Just recently we had a teacher that was like, hey, I only have so many days left with the seniors and I quite frankly don’t know what to do. I’m like, well, you have 20 years of experience. I appreciate that you’re asking me for advice. And it was a great conversation. She wanted help, I wanted to provide help, I wouldn’t. It was just, it was a great conversation and we talked about it back and forth, either text or in the hallways for like 3 hours. We came up with a great idea for our seniors to create lessons to teach to the elementary kids and that was. It was awesome. Was it a tough conversation for me and her? No, but it might have been tough for her to come and ask a principal for help, like admitting, hey, I want a little bit of help. But there’s that culture of open communication, non judgmental, where we growth, evolve our mindset.

22:50
Danny
Have you done anything intentionally? Maybe you have, maybe you haven’t. Bit Shifting from teacher to principal and creating an environment where people could come to you. Do you know, when you reflect on it, is there anything intentional you tried to do to make that happen?

23:06
Adam
Last year, walkthroughs were present in my building having those. But this year I have tried to ditch the office and go to the mobile desk in the mobile office. And that has been just proximity is king. Accessibility is king. Where if you’re out in the hallway and about and you’re in your school and living and breathing in it is something where people find you find things that you need to have and more conversations happen because you’re aware the teaching and learning is happening, as opposed into the office where the paperwork is happening and we’re in the teaching and learning business. That’s where we need to be. So the mobile desk has been awesome. I like it. I mean, yes, I still have to have an office, but it’s more of a place just to collect my piles of stuff to do later and all of that. So that’s been really good for, I think, our school and for me to be there for my teachers and students.

24:01
Danny
Those mobile offices are certainly popular within our industry.  I love that they ask you the same questions I asked all my guests at the end here, starting off with the marquee question. Adam, if you’d put a message on all marquees around the world for a single day, what would your message be?

24:19
Adam
I’m going to kind of take a twist. Not chase your dreams, but chase your ideas. Sometimes I often get called that I’m the ideal monkey. And not every idea that you have and that you chase is going to amount to something, but it may lead to a new idea. And just don’t be afraid to chase your ideas and talk about your ideas like our Longbourn support day or like mobile desk or something that you think is crazy that’s going to make a ruckus. Just chase your ideas and see where they take you because you never know where they’re going to go.

24:55
Danny
Jeff, how about building your dream school? Adam, if you didn’t have any limitations in terms of resources, the only limitation was your ability to imagine what would be the three guiding principles building this.

25:08
Adam
Dream school outside of being heavily caffeinated. You know, that I really think, and I think it may be all as one, I would really want to expose our kids to as many different opportunities, walks of life as we could. Where they get to expose them to many different walks, get them hands on learning. And even if it’s out of the classroom and not not sitting behind a textbook or that hands on exposing them and trying to create as many unique opportunities as there can where you can connect multiple things together for that learning. And I just think the more that we can get the real world hands on, especially like Burwellwe’re an hour and a half to the closest Walmart where getting them out, exposing them to different walks of life, different opportunities, there’s a lot more to do than just the jobs that are in our place. So just getting them hands on, involved and exposed would just be the biggest thing that I would want.

26:16
Danny
So we covered a lot of ground today, Adam. Of everything we discussed, what’s the one thing you want a Ruckus Maker to remember?

26:23
Adam
You can’t teach passion, and you can’t fake passion. Be passionate about what you are and let your light shine. My favorite quote is to light yourself on fire with passion. So people come around, come from miles around to watch you burn. No matter what you’re passionate about, be on fire with it. Be about it every single day. And good things are gonna happen.

26:45
Danny
Power purple thanks for listening to the better leaders, better Schools podcast Ruckus Maker. How would you like to lead with confidence, swap exhaustion for energy, turn your critics into cheerleaders, and so much more? The Ruckus Maker Mastermind is a world class leadership program designed for growth minded school leaders just like you. Go to betterleadersbetterschools.com mastermind. Learn more about our program and fill out the application. We’ll be in touch within 48 hours to talk about how we can help you be even more effective. And by the way, we have cohorts that are diverse and mixed up. We also have cohorts just for women in leadership and a BIPOC only cohort as well. When you’re ready to level up, go to betterleadersbetterschools.com mastermind and fill out the application. Thanks again for listening to the show. Bye for now and go make a ruckus.