The Power of One: Book (mine) | S2E4

In this episode of Tools for Success, Cathy Tooley shares the Power of One book, and the story behind why she wrote it. After losing her job in November 2014, Cathy found herself at a turning point and felt called to write what educators often cannot say out loud. She pulls back the curtain on what is really happening in schools, from school board politics and policy pressure to the overwhelming reality teachers carry today, far beyond teaching content.

This conversation is a mindset shift and a wake up call. You will walk away with a deeper understanding of the education system, the hidden weight educators hold, and why one book can change how you see truth, leadership, and purpose. Cathy also shares how writing from pain led her into a stronger faith journey, and how books can be a bridge that moves people closer to Jesus and toward real transformation.

Step into growth and purpose! Discover my books and resources designed to help you lead, learn, and live with impact.

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//About

Cathy Tooley is the Founder & CEO of Tools for Success and a seasoned educator with over 40 years in K–12 classrooms and school leadership. From high school teacher to principal, Cathy has dedicated her life to supporting educators. In 2014, she launched Tools for Success to provide real, in-person instructional coaching—not just “PD in a box.” She’s the author of The Education System Is Broken, a national speaker, and a fierce advocate for teachers. Through this podcast, she’s spotlighting the ripple effect of great teaching.
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Transcript

Setting The Stage: Power Of One

Cathy Tooley 0:00

I want you to understand that this book Cathy Tooley wrote. This book the Lord wrote. And there's a difference. And I say that because this book came from a place of pain and brokenness, and a want and a desire for you to see differently. This book comes from a place of abundance and gratitude and a knowledge that our Lord takes us from this

The Book That Sparked A Mission

Cathy Tooley 0:33

to this every single day. So I wrote this book because this book, through this pain, through this journey, brought me into a relationship with Jesus Christ that this book is intended for. Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of my podcast. So this one series that we are doing is called The Power of One. And so mine today, I really thought so much about this and prayed a lot over this. And this, my power of one is the power of one book. The power of one book. I know all of you watching this have that book that you've read that really was pivotal for you, or might have been more than one book, but I want you to conjure that up in your mind for just a minute. That book and that story. And I want you to ask yourself this question while you listen to this podcast. Why was that book so important? What is it I heard in that book that made a difference for me? Because, see, I think that's the intention of books. I think the intentions of books are to change our way of thinking. They're to interrupt what we believe to be true and to offer a different way of thinking about something that we might not have seen before. So let me tell you the story of my one book, which I'm gonna let you in on a little bit of a secret. It's really about more than one book, but we're gonna really focus on one book and then caveat a couple. So it begins back in um the spring of 2014. I found myself unemployed in um November of 2014, and I had built my life. Those of you that have been following my podcast know that I was a teacher for 20 years and then a principal for another 10. When I was let go from my position on November 14th, 2014, schools are really funny little birds, right? Like we have these open

Losing A Job, Finding A Voice

Cathy Tooley 2:45

windows where we hire people, that's called the summer, and then when school starts, that book slams shut. That doesn't mean that you can't possibly get a school in education or a job in education, but not likely, not likely. The vast majority of positions that are hired are hired over the summer. So in November, um that door was shut, locked, turned the key, moved on. You're probably not getting a position. And that's when I found myself unemployed. And when I first went home, I felt this book on my heart. I have always felt this book on my heart, and I'm gonna tell you why. I at that time had been an educator for 30 years. I had spent, as I said, 20 years in a classroom and 10 years at a principalship, and I'd watch story after story after story after story on the media or in print, and I'd read it and they would talk about what was happening in schools. You know, why schools were successful or this, or why they were not successful there, or this news story about our schools, or this trash talking news story about our schools. And I used to think when I watched those, man, if you really knew what was going on, you just got egg on your face. Yeah, that's not true. That's just not true. Um, or I would hear this story about uh this principal that had gotten fired and what happened, or the story of why they got fired, and I thought, that's only the story you know. You don't know the real story. Or I would watch another news story or read another um um newspaper article about this teacher and how they didn't teach this, or they did teach that, or this book that they had students read, or this book that they didn't have students read, and I'd think, that's not the whole story. And then especially, this is where it really happened a lot. I would be sitting on that field with my kids playing football or in show choir, and I would listen to parents tell a story that they heard about that teacher or that assistant principal or that principal, and I would sit there and bite my tongue and think, that's not the story. That's the story you think is true, but that's not the truth because that educator can't tell you the truth. And I remember feeling that. For 30 years I felt that. So fast forward to November 14th of 2014. Once I got past the stunned, if any of you have ever been let go from

Why Educators Stay Silent

Cathy Tooley 5:20

a position, I think you go through at least, or at least I did, 24 to 48 hours of let me just get my feet back underneath me. What does that mean? I don't have a job. Um, and I knew I was meant to start my company, and that's a whole different podcast, which we've done on a different time. Go back and watch it. But I really sat one day after I'd packed up my office, my husband had gone to work, my kids were all out of the house and grown in, and I thought, I want to write a book. I want to write a book. I want to write a book about our education system to tell people what I've wanted to say for 30 years. Man, I don't know how to write a book. I don't know anything about writing a book. How does one write a book? Because when I think of authors, I think of, you know, really popular, famous, multimillion dollar rich people. And I'm thinking, who wants to hear my story? I'm just an educator who's just was just a teacher and was just a principal. And I thought, I wonder if people will even want to hear it. And so I lived at that time. I was starting to be very heavy on the word, and Romans 12, 21 says, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. And I decided that the reason that this book had never been written is because of two reasons. One, we don't really ask educators what we think, what they think. We tell them what they think. We tell them what our their our views are of what they should think, we tell them what we believe they should be thinking based upon what we're thinking, or we tell them what they should be thinking basing upon what the college tells them that they were supposed to go think. We don't really ask them to think. And the second reason is if they said what I typed in these pages, they would be without a job. That's a fact. If any teacher in a building with a contract with a school district or township wrote what I wrote, they would be let go. Now, in the world we live in, they wouldn't politically correctly be let go directly because of the book, but it would be directly because of the book. And then I thought, okay. I felt empowered that I was given a choice, that the Lord literally had me sitting in, you know, that proverbial why in the road, right? In another two years, I could have collected my retirement, um, you know, missed the chicken noodle dinner that every retiree educator gets, and just, you know, go away. Go away, take my money, you know, live a

Pulling Back The Curtains

Cathy Tooley 8:10

mediocre life, um, which I had been doing for many, many years. In, and what I meant by that is financially, because as we all know, we pay our teachers disgustingly. Um, just it's yeah, that's a whole separate podcast for a different date. But, and I could leave the education world that I knew as a disillusioned, disheartened, disgruntled educator, like so many do before. But I felt in my heart that the Lord was calling me to different. And I thought I could either do that or I could empower and educate and enlighten. And so I wrote this book back in the spring of 2014. And I want to talk about the power of this one book. But I want you to hear me say this before I say another word out of my mouth. This is the power of the educators who didn't dare write this book. This is the power of the incredible people that are sitting right now in classrooms and in principal's chairs and in assistant principals' chairs and in superintendents' chairs and any other title you want to give them that didn't dare write this book because most of you listening to this podcast wouldn't accept it. So when I started to write this book, I spent a lot of time in prayer. And I asked the Lord, why am I writing it to start with? What's the point? Like, like any good book, what's the point? And I will tell you what my point is. I am tired, as are so many of my fellow educators, of listening to your narratives of what's happening in our classrooms, to listening to your skewed, what your fed versions of a truth, to listening to what you think is true based on one teacher's story or one news story that you saw. I was exhausted of it. And I promise you that there are people on the other side of this podcast who are educators that are saying this. Say it, girl. Say it louder. And so I pray that the goal of this

Broken Systems And Board Politics

Cathy Tooley 10:40

podcast is not a gotcha, it's not a what you think, it's a you want to know the truth, how about going to the source? Why don't you listen to what the educators are saying who live there? So I prayed a lot. I prayed a lot. There's a reason that when you get into my book, I call this, I don't call them chapters, I call them curtains. There's a reason I do that. Because, like a theater, you know, when you know when you've gone to a really good play, and it's like, oh my gosh, that was so good. And then they close the curtain, right? And then you wait for that moment that they pull that curtain back and show you the next scene. That's exactly what this book is. So I had a very, very dear friend, she's still a friend of mine today, um, Wendy Myers and Dr. Jill J. When I took a job at a school where they were in leadership roles, they used to come to my office and we had a running joke, and they would say this, okay, curtain number 765 that we didn't tell you, or you would have never taken the job. And it was a running joke about us, that it was something that they knew that if I knew, they were afraid I wouldn't take the job. And I'm gonna tell you, some of those curtains, I'm not sure I would have. But it made me think about when I wrote this book. I wrote this book so that I could pull back the curtains for you that are reading it, so that you can really understand from an educator standpoint. I don't claim to be every educator, I claim to be an educator, an intelligent educator with a voice who loves the education field. And so the subtitle of this book is what I think is the most important, and that is Strategies to Rebuilding Hope's Life and Futures. Because I believe our education system is broken. It is. I want to highlight just a couple of chapters and a couple of um real intentional pieces for me. Um, and then you get to do what you want with a book. I have an entire chapter where I talk about our school boards. Um school boards that are running our schools are made up of lovely, intelligent, wonderful people who most of them know about a school because they have been in a school, their children go to a school, or they drive by a school. That's pretty much it. Rarely on a school board is an educator. I'm not saying that they don't exist, but I'm saying

Policies That Paralyze Teachers

Cathy Tooley 13:20

rarely. That would be like me deciding that I could go run the local hospital or run the local uh plumbing, big successful plumbing firm. I don't know anything about a plumbing. I mean, I just know that pipes run, and when I turn on water, it happens. I would offer no value to them. And sadly, some of our school board members get on a school board because they have an axe to grind with an administrator. And some of you watching this podcast had axe to grind with me. And so school boards are being run by good, well-intentioned people who are screwing up our schools. Because then it becomes political to the school board. Which leads me to a next couple chapters that I talk about the policies that are being made at both the state and local level that are absolutely paralyzing our teachers. They're paralyzing them. They're taking away any ability to do what they know how to do best. Which leads me to another chapter of the administrators themselves. Do you know the only way to make any decent money in education, if you want to stay in a building, is to get out of the very classroom that you went to school to become a teacher to do? That's the only way you make any real money. You have to get out of the classroom and become at least an assistant principal or a dean. You make money by moving up. And I know some of you are like, well, that's the way school, man, that's the way the world works. You work, you know, you work up the corporate ladder. No, I I'm working up a corporate ladder in the same building. How is that success? And most of us went to school to become teachers, but yet we've taught them if you really want to make money, you need to become principals. Well, do you the math? A building needs one principal and 200 teachers. So it makes no sense to me. And so I spent a lot of time in this book talking about the roles of administrators and what we've done to them. And then I really want to hold for just a second. There's a chapter, I think it's titled The Spinning, Cracking, Overwhelming Plates of Our

The Cost Of Leaving The Classroom

Cathy Tooley 15:20

Teachers. I remember when I very, very first started teaching. No, there were not dinosaurs when I first started teaching. But I remember when I started teaching, the first thing that really mattered was that I ready, ready, it's gonna be profound. I taught my content. I was a Spanish and an English teacher. So my job was to effectively convey Spanish in my Spanish classes and English in my English classes. I know it sounds profound, but that's not the plate of our teachers today. Our teachers are social workers. Our teachers have to clothe children. Our teachers are being trained in gang violence and safety. Shoot, now we're talking about arming our teachers. They're social workers, they're they're cafeteria workers, they're bus drivers, their maintenance. My daughter-in-law told me just the other day that because of the budget cuts, we've eliminated they're eliminating custodians in our building, and she now has to clean her own room every day. Wash her own board, clean her own room, take her own trash out. I don't say that any teacher believes they're beneath that. But at some point, there's only so many hours in a day. Where do you expect her to find that time? I remember really being greeted with some of the realities of the social work that I should know, that I didn't go to college and get a major for, and thinking, I'm not equipped. I'm not equipped. I don't know how to talk to this child who whose mother or father just did the things did to them that they just described to me. Or I don't I don't have the schooling. I don't have the knowledge. I don't I don't

Teachers’ Spinning Plates

Cathy Tooley 17:10

know how I'm supposed to help them with this boyfriend that's or girlfriend that's taking them down a path. I don't I didn't do drugs. I don't know anything about alcoholism or drug addiction or what that looks like in the family. I don't know anything about diversity. I wasn't trained in diversity. I was raised in a lily white community. I didn't go to school for any of this, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. And that was 30, 40 years ago. Our teachers today are living in that world. They have to spend time every single year on making sure. Do you know that even through the pandemic, our schools continued to feed our children? When did that become our job? And I'm not saying it was a bad thing. I didn't, you didn't. So for those of you who want to send the nasty email, I didn't say that we didn't shouldn't do it. I just said that those minutes go away from our educators. Somebody had to organize those meals. I remember as a school administrator and a teacher, I kept a whole closet of snacks because my kids came to my building hungry. I didn't argue about pencils or pens or paper, I just had it because they didn't have it. I didn't think about shoes. I just bought them at Goodwill on sale and kept them in my closet. But I didn't go to college for that. And I know some of you are saying, well, you know what, that's just the reality of our world now. You know what? We have to learn to just help everybody in. And I'm not arguing that teachers aren't the most giving human beings out there. My point is that where do you want me to still teach Spanish and English? Where do you still want me to convey that message? Where do you still want me to teach my content? When I spent 25 minutes a day on a gang violence incident that happened last night. Where do you want me to do that? And so I wrote this book because I lived in that pain, and I think of the pain we coach teachers as a company every single day, and what I look at is their pain. I look at in their pain because they themselves know I'm not effectively being the person that I was called to be because I'm being forced to do what I didn't go to school to do. You know, I know social workers. We had social workers in our building. Great people. Great people. Because they went to college and got a degree and knew how to do that. And they were really, really good with our kids. Really, really good with our kids. I didn't go to college to get that degree. I read an entire chapter on our parents. If you are a parent, Parent watching this video, you are either a partner with us or an albatross that's pulling us away from what we need to be doing because of your personal agenda. I sometimes just have to get off of social media. I have to. When I

Feeding Kids And Filling Closets

Cathy Tooley 20:20

watch the next person flaying their school. And I often think, I bet the school doesn't know this. I bet you never went and had a meeting with the teacher. I bet you never had a meeting with the principal or even went above their head and went to the superintendent. I used to say to my superintendent sometimes when he would call me and say, I had a parent that just came over to my office and they're complaining about insert whatever they're complaining about. And parents have a right to complain about their schools. And I would say to him, Huh, they didn't come to me. You missed a step. Or I would be on the phone with a parent and they would just lambast a teacher. Lambast them. And I would say, Have you talked to that teacher? Well, I'm not going to. All right, well, I'm going to set up a meeting where the three of us could be in a room. Well, I'm not talking to them. Aren't they the very person you're upset with? And as social media becomes even more prevalent, we are losing the ability to speak to each other. And so I pray that this book shows you what your silence is costing, what your social media blasts are costing. And then, this is where I'm going to kind of part because I told you there was kind of two books, and even though it's the power of a book, I'm really going to mention onto the power of another book. And that is this. So I decided in November 2014 that I could leave that and become part of the problem, become part of the solution. So the first thing I did was write my book and start my company. And now we are 10 years later. This company has been successful for 10 years by the grace of God. By the grace of God, we're making a difference in schools all over the United States. And, you know, as the Lord does, and those of you that have listened to any of my podcasts know my faith is quite strong. The Lord never, I always think, you know, wouldn't it be nice if the Lord just said, you know what, Kat, that's good enough. You've done enough. You have, you have gone as far as I need you to go, but not our Lord, not our abundant Lord. And so when this podcast was getting going, the Lord said, I want you to write another book. And I thought, well, there's no point in that. This book has been okay. I mean, it's done all right. Um, but it never met the audience that I prayed it would because I knew it could be such a game changer. But I was obedient, wrote it, got a publisher, did all those kind of things. And the Lord took me away, and and for 48 hours I locked myself away in a condo down in Florida, and I wrote another book. And this one, this one. I I want you to understand that this book Cathy Tooley wrote. This book the

Parents: Partner Or Albatross

Cathy Tooley 23:00

Lord wrote. And there's a difference. And I say that because this book came from a place of pain and brokenness, and a want and a desire for you to see differently. This book comes from a place of abundance and gratitude, and a knowledge that our Lord takes us from this to this every single day. So I wrote this book, which is a Bible study, and two others, which are, depending on when this podcast airs are either out yet or yet to come out, because this book, through this pain, through this journey, brought me into a relationship with Jesus Christ that this book is intended for. And so as I wrap this up, because I don't want this podcast to feel like, well, that was a merciless plug for her book. No, ladies and gentlemen, it was not merciless. I'm holding them up so you can see them. If it was merciless, I would have been way less obvious. That's not the intention of this podcast. The intention of this podcast is this. I want you to know that a book, one book, can and I believe will change the trajectory of your relationship with Jesus Christ. I believe that a book, one book, whether it be mine or any other, can and will connect you to Jesus in a way that you have never been connected before and that I have never seen the likes of in my life. And that while I'm a little bit more seasoned in my life now, I pray that any of you watching this podcast today, whether it's my book or another book, seek a book that will bring you closer to Jesus. And to any of you that care anything about our education system, my prayer is that you read my book. Not because I need to make another sale, though I'm not going to complain about that. But

From Pain To Purposeful Writing

Cathy Tooley 25:20

you read my book to seek to understand the very people that you think you know so much about. Because I think the power of a book is not what we read in the pages, but what we take out of those pages into our life. So thank you for listening to this podcast today. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to write and giving me an opportunity to perhaps give you an opportunity to read it. I hope you read them. I really do. I really do. And I'll see you next time. God bless everybody.