Schools of Excellence: The No. 1 ECE & Private School Leadership Podcast

You hired the director. You hired the admin. Maybe you even hired the regional. So why are you still the one lying awake thinking about the classroom that isn't staffed?A lot of you are hiring right now. Teachers, admin, maybe a whole new layer of leadership. Before you make that next hire, I want to have a conversation with you about what you are actually handing off.It started in my kitchen. My 11-year-old daughter asked to bake with her 8-year-old brother, and I said yes, as long as the whole kitchen got cleaned up afterward. Fifteen minutes later there were bowls everywhere and ingredients all over the counter. When I asked her about it, she told me, completely sincerely, "But Mommy, I already cleaned seven things." I didn't ask for seven things. I asked for a clean counter.That moment has stuck with me, because it's how so many of our schools run. Everyone did something. Emails were sent, candidates were called, the spreadsheet got updated. And the counter is still dirty. The classroom still isn't staffed. The family who toured still didn't enroll. And somebody has to notice. If you own a school, you already know who that somebody is.In this episode, I share a conversation with a school owner I was onboarding recently who wanted her school to stop depending on her without disappearing from it. We talk about the difference between task distribution and true ownership, why your team can't read the standards living in your head, and what to do the moment your director walks in and says, "We're short two teachers." Are you hiring helpers when what you really need is owners? Let's find out.What You'll LearnWhy hiring more people doesn't bring relief when you transfer labor but not ownershipThe difference between task distribution and real ownership (and why most of what we call delegation is the first one)Why "hiring" is a task and "an appropriately staffed building" is an outcomeThe invisible agreement you make when you hire a helper instead of an ownerWhy your team keeps missing a standard that only exists in your headWhat to say when a problem lands on your desk so ownership doesn't boomerang back to youThe four-part ownership infrastructure: Standard, Ownership, Rhythm, ResponseThe one question to ask before your next hire: What needs to become true in this school without me?Connect With Us:Chanie's book, This Can't Be Normal: https://thiscantbenormal.com Join Schools of Excellence on Substack: https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/

You can have a leadership team, directors, job descriptions, titles, and processes. And somehow the school still works because you're the one underneath it all, noticing, anticipating, remembering, and asking the next question.From the outside, it looks like you've built something that runs. From the inside, you're the invisible operating system.In this episode, I sit down with Kris Saburn, an executive director who has spent 35 years in childcare. Kris has a center director, an administrative specialist, and a teacher mentor on her leadership team. On paper, she has plenty of help. And for years, she was still running in survival mode.What You'll LearnWhy a full leadership team doesn't automatically mean a school that runs without youThe open door policy myth that keeps directors working 60-hour weeksWhy so many women in leadership give to everyone except themselves, and what it takes to receive careThe difference between being lonely at the top and drowning in plain sightWhy questions build more leadership capacity than answers ever willHow constant updates can be a form of soothing your own anxietyWhy trust is built through evidence your body experiences, not through pep talksThe skills Kris built that help her face licensing citations and hard conversations without losing sleepWhat happens when you only seek support in a crisisConnect With UsChanie's book, This Can't Be Normal: https://thiscantbenormal.comJoin Schools of Excellence on Substack: https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/

I don't bring guests onto this show very often. Most weeks it's just you and me, working through leadership, one honest conversation at a time. But every so often I want to hand you a different voice, because getting to witness yourself in someone else's story is powerful in a way I can't always create alone.This week that voice is Kate Young. Kate and I have been friends for a while, along with her cousin Carrie, and we've done a lot together in the childcare space through our ongoing "Childcare Conversations." She's spent the last 30 years in early childhood education, she's a mom of four, and she's here to talk about her new book, Authority Without Apology.The book is about the women who are holding down entire industries — including ours — and getting zero recognition for it. Kate told me flat out: accomplished women don't need more credentials. We need to be seen for the job we're already doing. Once you see that gap, she said, you can't unsee it.We went deep. We talked about the financial cost of never stepping into your authority, and the quieter, invisible costs underneath it — confidence, identity, the years you lose being "somebody's spouse" instead of yourself. Kate told me about her own mother, who legally owned four businesses and still couldn't call herself a business owner well into her eighties. She told me about the moment, in her forties, when a stranger recognized her by her own name — and the "wrong turn" she took right after.This conversation got real fast. Grab your headphones for this one.What You'll Learn:Why Kate believes accomplished women don't need more credentials — they need to be seen for the job they're already doingThe story of Kate's mother, who owned four grocery stores and still wouldn't call herself a business ownerWhat happened when a stranger recognized Kate by her own name — and why she now calls it the turning point she got wrongThe real financial cost of staying invisible in your own life and leadership (and why it compounds over decades)Why you don't have to be an expert in something to be the right person for the jobHow Kate found meaning in the years she "lost" by reframing them as a gift to the people who needed her mostConnect With Us:Kate’s book, Authority Without Apology: https://katewoodwardyoung.me/books/authority-without-apology Chanie's book, This Can't Be Normal: https://thiscantbenormal.com Join This Can't Be Normal on Substack: https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/

You coach her. You remind her. You give her grace, adjust the deadline, understand her season, and hope this is finally the time it sticks. Then you're back on the ride again.I was on a coaching call recently with a group of owners, and I asked them to think about someone on their team who isn't delivering predictably, reliably, and consistently. Not the obvious underperformer, the one everyone already knows isn't working out. I mean the person you're actually invested in. The one you keep coaching. The one you keep training. The one you keep giving another shot.I call this the teacup ride. You coach, you explain, you remind, you accommodate. Round and round you go. They give you a little bit of progress, just enough crumbs to keep you hopeful, and then somehow you're right back where you started, wondering why they can't meet the standard predictably, reliably, and consistently.In this episode, I break down why “did I coach her enough” is the wrong question to be asking, why infrastructure exists to give you evidence instead of just making your school run smoothly, and the two questions that finally reveal whether you're dealing with a skill gap or a willingness gap. Because you cannot supply willingness in another human being, and pretending you can is costing you a lot more than you realize.What You'll LearnWhy “did you coach her enough” is the wrong question when someone keeps missing the standardThe difference between a skill gap and a willingness gap, and the two questions that tell you which one you're facingWhy infrastructure exists to give you evidence of reality, not just to make your school run smoothlyWhat it actually costs you when you keep supplying your own capacity to cover someone else's roleHow to build a predictable response to a missed standard instead of reacting based on your mood in the momentWhy “one more chance” often protects the leader's hope more than it protects the outcomeConnect With Us:Chanie's book, This Can't Be Normal: https://thiscantbenormal.com Join This Can't Be Normal on Substack: https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/

How many things in your life look functional only because you've become exceptionally good at compensating for what isn't? That's the question I can't stop asking, and it's the reason I started This Can't Be Normal, a new thinking space on Substack.This episode is a little different. I'm not teaching a framework or walking you through five steps. Instead, I'm pulling back the curtain on why I started writing publicly about the questions I don't have answers to yet, questions about responsibility, caretaking, competence, and what we've all quietly agreed to normalize.It started with a moment in Lake Tahoe, on vacation, when I suddenly noticed how automatically I take on responsibility that nobody actually assigned to me. That noticing turned into an article, then another, and eventually into a whole new space for thinking out loud instead of teaching from the front of the room.If you've ever felt like the person everyone relies on, the one who catches everything before it falls, this episode is your invitation to pause and ask a different kind of question.In this episode, you'll learn:Why Chanie started This Can't Be Normal, and how it's different from the podcast, coaching, or her bookThe moment in Lake Tahoe that made her question how automatically she takes on responsibilityWhy being a highly competent, capable leader can make it easy to compensate for things that shouldn't require so much of youThe difference between wanting an answer and wanting to be witnessed in a questionWhy the same "operating system" that shows up in your leadership also shows up in your marriage and parentingThe question Chanie wants every leader to sit with: what have you become so good at tolerating that you've stopped asking whether it should be normal?Mentioned in this episode:This Can't Be Normal on Substack: https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/ Article: "The Cost of Being the Caretaker" — https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/p/the-cost-of-being-the-caretaker Connect With Us:Join This Can't Be Normal on Substack: https://chaniewilschanski.substack.com/