Are you ready for valuable insights from Dr. Carrie Hepburn from Compass PD?
Imagine a world where your professional workload doesn't feel like a crushing burden! This episode focuses on the demanding duties of educators and offers a fresh perspective on maintaining a sustainable workload. Hear Dr. Hepburn's enlightening account of a curriculum team's exercise that aimed at understanding the impact of changes and expectations on elementary teachers. She emphasizes the importance of deep, multifaceted learning in a world overloaded with resources and technology. Remember, 'blue sky thinking' is not just a jargon; it's a space where your imagination runs free to dream about the future of learning.
The episode encourages listeners to reflect during winter break, set realistic goals, and take control of different aspects of their lives. As the year ends and winter break looms, we encourage you to catch your breath and reflect on your journey. We suggest two transformative reads - "Atomic Habits" and "The Four Disciplines of Execution" that can help shape your habits and bring clarity to your goals.
As the episode ends, we leave you with a warm wish for a restful winter break and a gentle nudge to keep the flame for education burning brightly.
Are you ready for valuable insights from Dr. Carrie Hepburn from Compass PD?
Imagine a world where your professional workload doesn't feel like a crushing burden! This episode focuses on the demanding duties of educators and offers a fresh perspective on maintaining a sustainable workload. Hear Dr. Hepburn's enlightening account of a curriculum team's exercise that aimed at understanding the impact of changes and expectations on elementary teachers. She emphasizes the importance of deep, multifaceted learning in a world overloaded with resources and technology. Remember, 'blue sky thinking' is not just a jargon; it's a space where your imagination runs free to dream about the future of learning.
The episode encourages listeners to reflect during winter break, set realistic goals, and take control of different aspects of their lives. As the year ends and winter break looms, we encourage you to catch your breath and reflect on your journey. We suggest two transformative reads - "Atomic Habits" and "The Four Disciplines of Execution" that can help shape your habits and bring clarity to your goals.
As the episode ends, we leave you with a warm wish for a restful winter break and a gentle nudge to keep the flame for education burning brightly.
Hello, hello, hello. Dr Keri Hepburn, here from Compass PD, I am welcoming you right now to our December Leadership Podcast. I hope this message finds you well as you get ready to approach your winter break. I don't know what it's like where you are, but today in the Midwest it's 30 degrees. We're really starting winter and just like trying to get ready for all of the things that happened at the end of the year before we start the brand new year and as I kick this off, I was thinking I wanted to share with you some exciting news. Recently, several members of our team went on a retreat, and we did this because we've been working in a lot of different organizations, a lot of different districts across the United States over the last few years, and this year and last year we noticed that there was a really big need in high school English classes, like a lack of resources, a lack of knowledge of how to get kids really excited, motivated, engaged in their reading and writing at the high school level, and so I am pleased to announce that we are in the process of officially publishing some high school English language arts units. It won't be a curriculum, because we believe in districts writing their own curriculum, but they would be units that districts could purchase or teachers could purchase to support their curriculum, to help them bring their standards to life, increasing student motivation and engagement in the classroom. So I wanted to just like give you that announcement. They won't be ready until the end of this school year, but if you're interested, reach out, let us know and we can talk about it.
Speaker 1:I was thinking, as we approach the winter break, it's a time when leaders are gearing up to enjoy a well-deserved rest. It's really an important time for us to take for rest and try to take some time for reflection. In the midst of the holiday chaos, finding time for deep reflection, creative work and goal setting is really essential. And I think it's just natural because, as we think about ending the break of the break of a year, which is 2023, even though it's not the end of a school year, it's still mid starting a new year, 2024. It's just natural for us to think about, like what's next? What do we want to do? And so it's a nice time for us, as leaders, to think about what do we want to do in the next five or six months that we have kids in our schools, that we have kids in our buildings, and so I want to encourage you to be sure to take that break, take that rest, enjoy the people. But sometimes, after a while, I start to get like ugh. I'm ready to start thinking about, dreaming, like what do I want to do next year? What do I want to accomplish? And so in education, we kind of dream in two phases, one being okay, we have six, five to six months left with kids. So dreaming about what's that going to look like? And then dreaming about like what are we going to do the following year, 24, 25? So I want to encourage you to do that.
Speaker 1:During this break, I encourage you to indulge in a couple of my favorite reads. One is Atomic Habits by James Clear and the other one is the Four Disciplines of Execution by Sean Covey, chris McChesney and Jim Holling. Atomic Habits is awesome. It explores building lasting habits, including, like one of my favorite habits of habit stacking. It's one of those types of books that you can put into action immediately and when you think about the types of habits that you want to build, it helps you kind of like create a hierarchy of those, the ones that are going to make the best, most lasting impact, the kind of habits that can last a lifetime. So I highly recommend Atomic Habits. If you are on masterclass, masterclass is really a great indulgence for you as a leader to purchase. It's online masterclass. They bring in experts in different topics and they teach you how to do different things, and James Clear has a habit masterclass on there. It's about an hour and a half long and that, paired with the book, I promise you it will be impactful in your life. The other book, the Four DX, or the Four Disciplines of Execution, is from the Covey organization, sean Covey being one of the authors, and this is another kind of book that makes a big impact on yourself and on an organization.
Speaker 1:The Four DX model delves into setting wildly important goals and achieving success in organizations with a focus on goal setting. So do you see how I'm doing that? Atomic Habits is going to help you like habit stack and then goal setting. You know in order. You're going to use those habits to help you reach your goals right, and I'm not sure if you know this, but research tells us that organizations that set and create cadence of accountability on two to three goals typically reach those two to three goals, where organizations that four to six goals. Even with the cadence of accountability, they typically only reach one to two of those goals. So the more goals we set, the less that we achieve. So when we set seven or more goals, typically that organization achieved zero goals. So I have to tell you, friends, like I've been in districts across the nation and based on leaders calendars and the amount of meetings that they have, I am fairly certain that many education organizations have more than seven goals for their school year. I think when you sit down and you read both of these books together, if you have time, do the master class. I really recommend it. There are some really nice PDFs that go with those books. They can really set you up for success coming into the 2024 year. Check those out and just building on that.
Speaker 1:Speaking of goal setting, do you remember our discussion back in July? So July, august, september, october I kept talking to you about four important things. I wanted you to get in control of your calendar. I wanted you to think about communication. I wanted you to think about your budget and I wanted you to think about data. Well, one of those big goals getting your calendar under control. I want you to take time over winter break to revisit your schedule. I want you to consider how you can carve out dedicated time for crucial work, for important work, for deep thinking kind of work.
Speaker 1:The number of meetings and committees that we have in our schools and our districts often hinder us making progress, so it's really worth reflecting on whether the workload is truly sustainable and if you have the capacity to do the amount of things that we're asking people to do. Talk about burnout. When I look at our calendars, when I look at committees and meetings, that alone will burn somebody out. So I want to just encourage you to make some space for meaningful thinking and learning right now. And I talked to you about that because recently I engaged in a fascinating exercise with a curriculum team.
Speaker 1:I called it creating a portrait of a teacher, like literally. I just made that up. That's not necessarily like a legit thing, but I made it up and this exercise was so eye-opening for this district. So basically what we did was we took a piece of anchor chart paper and I made an outline of like a person, okay, and so we decided to take some time and focus on the elementary teachers in this particular instance. Around the person, in one color of marker, we listed out all of the different contents that an elementary teacher talked. Then, in a different color, we wrote out all of the resources the teachers used to teach those content each of those contents. Then, in a different color, I said let's talk about any big district changes or initiatives that have impacted these elementary teachers. And then I said, in a different color, we listed out the different expectations, or committee expectations, that elementary teachers had Talk about brightening. I really really felt for the leaders, but it really helped us understand where we were as an organization, considering the current reality.
Speaker 1:As we did this, what we noticed was that the elementary teachers had received 17 new resources, two changes in the way that they instructed students. So they went from a basil to workshop model in one area and then the other area. They went from not teaching it to teaching it, and then the district had made a decision that they were moving to MTSS and the teachers needed to start teaching social-emotional learning and they were on their second resource in social-emotional learning. And then the district had decided to start doing PLCs, which were brand new for the teachers. All of those changes had happened between 2020 and 2023.
Speaker 1:So a common trend that we're seeing nationwide is that districts are grappling with either resource or technology overload, and what I want to tell you is that it's time for us to start thinking about breaking this feedback loop, this cycle that we're seeing like we have a pain and so we buy something that doesn't work, and so we're in pain and so we buy something else. And we do it again and again, and again, and really what we need to do is like pause and focus on some deep, multifaceted learning. It takes 50 hours of learning on a single topic in order to see transference into the classroom and for it to impact student achievement. This is much like being an athlete. So I want you to think about yourself when you were an athlete, if you were, or your kids. So if you have kids and they're athletes as well In a sport, what you'll notice is, at practice, you learn as an entire team for a little bit of that time, and that's basically on some foundational knowledge, right, and then the team kind of breaks up into groups for more in-depth learning on their specific position or the type of offense or defense that they'll be running, right, and then after that, they're going.
Speaker 1:Those positions are going to receive more one-on-one coaching, where the coach is explicitly building on what that athlete's doing right then in that position or in that play and giving them one tip of how they can improve and get better. That same approach is what we should be using in education. So that should be happening for us as leaders, it should be happening for our principals, it should be happening for our teachers and for our students. Research supports that. Research supports foundational learning, small group learning, one-to-one modeling and coaching learning and creating that cadence of accountability within that to see transference in the classroom, to see transference ultimately leading to impacting student achievement. So we have to start thinking more about how we can learn and build and sustain, versus cramming in as much as possible.
Speaker 1:Like this district, what they saw was like everything needed to change At that particular time. There were funds coming in from ESSER, funds that they had. So it was like let's change everything because right now nothing's working. So we're going to change everything and get all the things we need and then, when something didn't work, we buy something else, or buy something else and buy something else, and what I'm going to ask you to do is just like pause and take some space that is needed to do some learning on those two or three goals total. That's it versus all of the things. It's going to feel counterintuitive, but it will lead to a bigger impact, it will lead to less stress, it will lead to building an organization that creates opportunities for people to thrive.
Speaker 1:So, as I wrap up, I want to encourage you to take this winter break and take this time that you need for rest, for family, for friends and for fun, and then, once you have a little bit of space and some breathing room, dive into a couple of those recommended books and engage in some of that blue sky thinking which I had talked with you about quite some time ago. Like blue sky is where you just dream, like there's nothing that's stopping you. There's no ceiling. There's nothing stopping you. If you had all of the time, all of the money, dream about what learning looks like in your organization. I'm wishing you a wonderful winter break and a merry holiday season Until next time. This is Dr Hepburn signing off. Take care and stay inspired. Compass PD community. Have a great day.