The Better Leaders Better Schools Podcast | The #1 Downloaded School Leadership Show

    Kristen Horton began her career in education at Navajo Mountain Community School as a teacher in a multi-age classroom. Dr. Horton has a commitment to supporting students and teachers through collective educator agency and relational capacity. Dr. Horton currently serves as principal of Continental Colony Elementary School and founder of L.E.A.D.S. She understands support for teachers will sustain her "why" every day, to increase life chances for students.   Joseph Hyun started his educator journey at UCSD when he signed up to tutor local high school students and discovered his passion for teaching math and commitment to fighting for social justice. Today Joseph serves as the Head of Partner Success at TeachFX, where he supports teachers in increasing equitable opportunities for their students to participate and engage in learning.     Show Highlights   TeachFX brings significant shifts in leadership for professional learning and coaching. Leadership strategies to support student learning and teacher growth. Purpose-driven curricula to save time and address learning gaps.  The most important principle when designing curriculum. Tips to encourage diverse forms of dialogue that deepen understanding and promote active participation. Avoid ineffective PD sessions that lack teacher agency by encouraging professional learning. Support teachers in increasing equitable opportunities for student engagement and participation. Transferring ownership to students, using these tools.        "The scariest place to be in is the same place as last year, grow."  -Dr Horton   Get the episode transcript here! Dr Horton's Resources & Contact Info:   Twitter Instagram Facebook     Read my latest book! Learn why the ABCs of powerful professional development™ work – Grow your skills by integrating more Authenticity, Belonging, and Challenge into your life and leadership.   Read Mastermind: Unlocking Talent Within Every School Leader today! Apply to the Mastermind The mastermind is changing the landscape of professional development for school leaders.    100% of our members agree that the mastermind is the #1 way they grow their leadership skills.   Apply to the mastermind today!   How We Serve Leaders   The School Leadership Scorecard™ Identify your highest leverage areas for growth this year in 10 -minutes or less.    https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/scorecard   Month-to-Month Principal Checklist As a principal with so much to do, you might be thinking, where do I even start?   When you download The Principal Checklist you'll get 12-months of general tasks that every campus need to do Space to write your campus specific items. Space to reflect and not what worked as well as a space of what didn't work Go to https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/principal-checklist to download now.   Ruckus Maker Mindset Tool™ The "secret" to peak performance is ot complicated.  It's a plan on how to optimize the five fundamentals found in The Ruckus Maker Mindset Tool™. https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/mindset   The Positive Spotlight Tool™ Energy flows to where attention goes! If you want to get more of what you want, when you want it as a school leader I have a tool for you…   Download The Positive Spotlight Tool™ for free here: https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/positive   The Ruckus Maker 8-Step Goal Setting Tool™ Are you ready to accomplish more? With less effort and in less time? When you download The Ruckus Maker 8-Step Goal Setting Tool™  I'll send you the tool and a short 8-minute coaching video that shows you how to work smarter, not harder…and create more value for your school campus.   Download The Ruckus Maker 8-Step Goal Setting Tool™  for free at https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/goals SHOW SPONSORS:   TEACHFX How much student talk happened today? When classrooms come alive with conversation, learning improves, students feel a sense of belonging, and teachers feel inspired.    The TeachFX instructional coaching app gives teachers powerful insights into their student talk, student engagement, and classroom conversation.    With TeachFX, teachers see how much student talk happened, the moments of students sharing their brilliance, and the questions that got students talking.Learn how to pilot TeachFX with your teachers. Visit: teachfx.com/betterleaders     Quest Food Management Services   Quest Food Management Services provides high-quality, scratch-made food in K-12 schools and universities across the country, prioritizing the health and wellness of students and elevating the cafeteria dining experience.  Quest offers a full-service approach to their school partners, bringing 40 years of expertise through every stage of program development and nurturing a true sense of community through interactive events such as student food committees. For more information about Quest Food Management Services, www.questfms.com     IXL IXL is the most widely used online learning and teaching platform for K to 12. Over 1 million teachers use IXL in their classrooms every day for one reason: They love it. Visit IXL.com to lead your school towards data-driven excellence today.   Copyright © 2024 Twelve Practices LLC      

Sonya Thomlinson (Uchita) HHC, ERYT-500, C-IAYT was co-director and co-founder of Tandava Yoga and Trinity Yoga Centers in Kelowna and Vernon, British Columbia from 2003-2016.  An avid student of yoga and meditation since 1994, and teaching since 1998, Sonya leads trainings, retreats, workshops and classes throughout Western Canada and the US and works individually with those interested in dynamic health and healing. Jeff Thomlinson is formally the co-owner and director of Trinity Yoga Center, then Tandava Yoga in Kelowna, since 2003. Jeff began teaching yoga in 1991. For 10 years, he lived, studied and worked at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Stockbridge, MA, USA, the largest yoga teaching center in North America. This enabled him to study with international leaders in yoga and to assimilate leading teaching and practice techniques. Read the full bio on the show note page. Take a Breath Show Highlights: The story of starting Take a Breath Stress reduction for kids with yoga Get out of a stress response How breath practice calms our flight and fight response 100% of kids are stressed Don’t be a jerk … people can’t think or perform around you Rest before a test led to 20% increase in test scores The inherent stress beast Consequences of ignoring the stress epidemic BRAVE acronym Bring attention to stress so staff and students don’t feel alone in this Take a Breath Resources:   Take a Breath Website The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer   Join my hybrid group coaching & leadership development community Text BETTERMASTERMIND to 33444 Create winning cultures Focus on the essential Lead with courage & integrity    BECOME A PATRON OF THE SHOW FOR AS LITTLE AS $1/MONTH DID YOU LIKE THE SHOW?  iTunes SUBSCRIBE HERE! SHOW SOME LOVE: PLEASE LEAVE A 5-STAR RATING AND REVIEW Grab your FREE 15 Phrases of Effective School Leaders  Text PHRASES to 33444 or click the link above.   Website :: Facebook :: Insta :: Twitter :: LinkedIn   SHOW SPONSORS: SCHOOL SPIRIT VENDING Hassle-free, year-round fundraising for your school. With School Spirit Vending, we do all the work, you just cash the check Increase school spirit with custom stickers for your school and raise funds at the same time -no upfront costs, no volunteers, no selling Sick of the same old ways of raising money for your school? Let School Spirit Vending's hassle-free, year-round fundraising program supplement the other fundraisers you're already doing. SSV is also giving away the Top 10 School Fundraising Ideas for 2017. Download the guide here.     Copyright © 2017 Better Leaders Better Schools    

Delegating feels impossible when you run a school alone — until you turn what's stuck in your head into a playbook someone else can run. Delegation is the hardest skill for a principal running a school without an assistant principal — every checklist, process, and judgment call lives in one head, and that head is exhausted. Kati Cahill, Head of School at Humanex Academy, a small private school for neurodivergent students south of Denver, walks through how she's been using an AI thought partner to pull her admissions process and scheduling system out of her head and into playbooks her team can actually run. She also breaks down how the same backward-planning conversation turned her 90-day entry plan into four owned workstreams — communication, academics, culture, and operations — instead of a document that sits in a folder, and how she built a reusable "wins" template that turns a year of staff stories into an instant morale boost when energy dips. This one's a real look at what sustainable school leadership looks like when you're the entire admin team. ⌚️ Episode Timestamps 00:00 - Turning the systems in your head into playbooks 04:13 - Leading a school with no assistant principal 07:05 - A solo retreat that led to staying 13:36 - Inside the Mastermind hot seat and book study 21:16 - Using Digital Danny to stop overthinking 24:08 - Building a 90-day entry plan by department 33:38 - Turning staff wins into a shareable template 37:03 - Defining one belief to repeat all year 42:34 - Why Digital Danny stays open as a tab 48:00 - The takeaway on making the job sustainable 🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at myprincipalcoach.com 🚀 Whenever you are Ready, here's 3 Ways to Help you Do School Different: 📬 Weekly newsletter: https://ruckusmakers.news/subscribe 📚 Monthly mini-books: https://ruckusmakers.media 🧭 Map your next 90-days: https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/principals-entry-plan/ 🫶 Today's RuckusCast in Partnership With: IXL IXL's adaptive platform finds every student's knowledge gaps, adjusts difficulty as they learn, and gives you a dashboard showing exactly where growth is happening. 🔎 Over 1 million teachers use it — get started at https://ixl.com/leaders ODP Business Solutions ODP Business Solutions has supplied schools for 30 years — converting dead computer labs into STEAM centers, stocking multiple campuses, upgrading whiteboards to interactive displays — all from a single supplier through cooperative contracts. 🔎 Learn more at https://odpbusiness.com/education Orchard Orchard gives every student a personalized career action plan and scores readiness across 8 dimensions — a number you can take to your board. 🔎 See how it works at https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/ Kids First Education Kids First Education builds professional learning around your district's priorities, your data, and your classrooms — not pulled off a shelf — and 98% of educators walk out ready to use what they learned. 🔎 Partner with them at https://kidsfirst.llc/leaders  

Currently in his eleventh year of school administration and his twenty-fifth in education, Bill Renner has run the full course through the Ruckus Maker system — the Mastermind, one-on-one coaching, and now Digital Danny. A middle school principal transitioning back to his first love, elementary, he's spent this year applying what each stage taught him about slowing down instead of reaching for the fastest answer in the room. He's also working on a book, currently titled Lead with Heart, Build with Purpose, and Serve with Joy, drawn from his own journals. School principal Bill Renner has used every tier of the Ruckus Maker system — the Mastermind, one-on-one coaching, and now Digital Danny. In this episode, he breaks down why fast answers from AI chatbots are quietly making leaders worse, and what changed when he learned to slow down before changing anything at a brand-new school. 💟 What You'll Learn Why treating AI like an answer machine can quietly make you a worse decision-maker. How to slow down and ask better questions before changing anything at a new school. Why giving your staff a "permission slip" to slow down changes how they show up. How to actually measure whether you're leading with joy instead of guessing at it. What separates the Mastermind, 1-on-1 coaching, and Digital Danny — and when to use each. 🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules 🧠 Key Insight #1: Why Instant AI Answers Lead to Mediocre School Leadership Decisions What's broken: Principals turn to AI chatbots for fast answers and start believing every idea the tool hands back is brilliant. The shift: A tool that asks better questions instead of supplying instant answers forces principals to actually reason through a decision first. Impact: Plans get executed with more ownership and better results because the leader has genuinely thought them through, not just accepted the first answer. 🧠 Key Insight #2: Why New Principals Should Ask Before They Change Anything What's broken: Experienced principals arrive at a new school with solutions already picked out, based on what worked somewhere else. The shift: Slow down and ask staff what they're proud of and where they feel stuck before changing a single thing. Impact: Staff spoke more openly once the notepad and devices disappeared, surfacing context a rushed transition would have missed entirely. 🧠 Key Insight #3: Why Giving Staff a "Permission Slip" Changes How They Show Up What's broken: Administrators push staff with deadlines and demands, expecting speed and compliance by default. The shift: Give staff explicit permission to slow down or push back — the same kind of permission a parent signs off on for a school trip. Impact: The room visibly relaxed, and staff started extending that same permission to each other. BILL QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST "There has to be more to this leadership thing than just survival." — Bill Renner "Leaders, they don't need to prove that they have every answer. We just need to be willing to reflect, ask different questions, and continue to grow." — Bill Renner "Every day isn't joyful, but every day has joy." — Bill Renner "I gave them permission to slow things down. In this fast-paced society, we're all interconnected one way or another." — Bill Renner "When I go to Digital Danny, I'm doing deep work — breaking things down to get to the raw of what exactly am I doing and why am I doing it." — Bill Renner 🫶 Your Do School Different Challenge Ready to implement? Start here: Tomorrow: Ask one staff member the question Bill used at his new school — "What's something we should never change here?" This Month: Give your staff one explicit "permission slip," written or spoken, to slow down or say no to something on their plate. This Semester: Build a weekly three-things-that-went-well journal, like Bill's, into your own routine to measure joy instead of guessing at it. ⌚️ Episode Timestamps 00:00 - Why 32 suspensions in one day killed his joy 04:33 - From hemming and hawing to joining the Mastermind 11:19 - Comparing Mastermind, 1-on-1 coaching, and Digital Danny 16:14 - The real difference between coaching and consulting 18:33 - The permission slip story that changed his staff meetings 22:41 - Using Digital Danny to plan a return to elementary school 24:58 - Why Digital Danny told him to slow down first 28:29 - Why arriving with curiosity beats arriving with answers 36:10 - Why ChatGPT makes you feel like a genius 37:52 - Digital Danny vs ChatGPT: heart surgeon or primary care doctor 44:19 - The leadership book inspired by a fellow Mastermind member 47:05 - How to actually measure joy as a principal 51:25 - The one thing every Ruckus Maker should remember 🔗 Link to the Transcript: Here 🎧 Listen & Subscribe Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show. 🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at myprincipalcoach.com 🫶 Today's RuckusCast in Partnership With: IXL IXL's adaptive platform finds every student's knowledge gaps, adjusts difficulty as they learn, and gives you a dashboard showing exactly where growth is happening. 🔎 Over 1 million teachers use it — get started at https://ixl.com/leaders ODP Business Solutions ODP Business Solutions has supplied schools for 30 years — converting dead computer labs into STEAM centers, stocking multiple campuses, upgrading whiteboards to interactive displays — all from a single supplier through cooperative contracts. 🔎 Learn more at https://odpbusiness.com/education Orchard Orchard gives every student a personalized career action plan and scores readiness across 8 dimensions — a number you can take to your board. 🔎 See how it works at https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/ Kids First Education Kids First Education builds professional learning around your district's priorities, your data, and your classrooms — not pulled off a shelf — and 98% of educators walk out ready to use what they learned. 🔎 Partner with them at https://kidsfirst.llc/leaders

Student behavior changed when the adults did: 25 discipline calls a day dropped to about one. Here's the adult-first work behind it. School discipline problems don't start with the kids. Sarah spent years answering 20 to 25 walkie calls a day for escalated students. Tokens, red-light-green-light charts, taking away recess — external systems trying to fix an internal issue. Then she started doing the work on herself first. Ten days into opening a brand-new school this fall, she hasn't answered 12 calls total. Jill Molli has taught Conscious Discipline for 25 years, and she names the leap most principals never make. They'll regulate themselves for a kindergartner. They won't do it for the teacher who yells in the hallway but posts good test scores. Sarah Sicht did it with teachers, parents, and her own superiors. At her previous school, a 100% free-and-reduced-lunch building, that produced zero teacher turnover and a move from the bottom 10% of the state to the top 10% of Title I schools with the same kids and no redistricting. Jill also breaks down SAFE, the four-domain framework Conscious Discipline built by studying principals like Sarah: Sustained leadership, Adult regulation, Foster community, Engaged classroom. It's the spine of the Elevate conference, where Danny is keynoting the S.   REGISTER FOR ELEVATE Elevate is Conscious Discipline's conference in Orlando this October. Sessions are labeled by S.A.F.E. domain, so you go straight to what your campus needs. Danny, Jill, and Sarah will all be there.    Sign yourself up, sign the team up: https://elevateteacherconference.com/ ⌚️ TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - From 25 walkie calls a day to one 04:12 - What Sarah believed about kids before Conscious Discipline 07:09 - Willingness beats waiting for a reason to change 09:11 - Hurt doesn't only show up in Title I schools 10:32 - Building the soil with a brand-new staff 14:39 - The hardest part is doing it with adults 17:49 - Why leading alone gets hard 23:24 - What COVID taught Sarah about connection 26:55 - Lowest 10% to top 10% with the same kids 28:32 - The two questions every staff member asks 36:17 - Where the SAFE framework came from 38:32 - Breaking down the SAFE framework 46:09 - The one thing: it's adult first