The Power of Care, Collaboration, and Justice in Educational Leadership

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And today we're going to deal with. The big question of how do you grow leaders from educators? And to answer that question, it's a great privilege to be interviewing Dr. Tara Topia, superintendent of the Tamil Pies Union High School District. Welcome to the show Dr. Topia.

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[00:00:39] CT: So tell us a little bit more about Tamil Pies Union High School District. It's one of the top in the state. In your opinion, what is it that makes it special?

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That they have set. We have some very specific targeted hiring practices to make sure that we are, engaging with people who will buy into our mission and vision. We also have strong community support and a healthy budget that allows us to pay staff fairly well and provide benefits. And what that begets is consistency and staffing, that allows us to build our collective capacity to serve kids.

We aren't always starting over with new staff. Staff turnover, as we know, can be very disruptive to student outcomes. So with consistent staff, we're able to build a community of learning and deepen our practices year over year. And with that, we have a lot of student centered decision making within our district.

So we are able to engage the same staff year after year over. learning partnerships how to maintain those and deepen those. And I think that stability has really improved our practices. And I know that we're fortunate to have that that we're in a really privileged position to have those things and it matters.

So that kind of support [: 00:02:00

[00:02:22] CT: Yeah, there's definitely some secret sauce. behind all of that. As you said, I think this is very much an anomaly amongst school districts today to have that level of stability, both in the staff and the student bodies. And so we're going to dive into that a little bit later, but for now, tell us a little bit about your own leadership philosophy.

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My values are care, collaboration, and justice. And [00:03:00] so my purpose is to improve the learning outcomes and learning environment for all students so students have as many options as they can have available to them when they graduate from here. Not all students may want to go to college, but I want them leaving here having that ability, whether they choose to do it immediately.

Five years, 10 years, 20 years down the road. That they have that solid foundation where they feel prepared. I also feel that in a job that involves people, which, education does that, we're going to make decisions that we can't always. Please everyone and almost always you're never going to please everyone and I, so because of that, I think making decisions based in my values is where I lead from, so someone may disagree with me, but if they know what my values are and they know that my decision making is coming from there and that I have that consistency, I think you can disagree, but still have respect for somebody.

Everyone's got a compelling [: 00:04:00

And so that's where I've always come from with my leadership.

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[00:04:30] Tara Taupier: I didn't initially want to be a superintendent. But I entered leadership because I wanted to learn about the other side of education, so to speak. I was interested in how I could support fellow teachers and students in a different way. I went back to get my doctorate.

re skills. I needed a bigger [: 00:05:00

And it was through that. Program in that process that I really started to dive a little more into leadership and look at, budgeting matters, how you allocate your resource matters, and I became more interested in this idea of and the leadership role, you can actually drive.

Some of the work of the district and the school, and you can set some of those, the mission and the vision and the values. And so it was through that process. And I touched a lot of rungs along the way. I was a teacher and then a teacher leader, and then I was an assistant principal and then a summer school principal.

And then I went on to the district office and served as director and then assistant superintendent. And it was at that point. That I was approached to apply for the superintendency. And like I said, I was like, first, I was like, no, I don't think that's the work I want to do because I come from a curriculum and instruction background.

e able to help drive a whole [: 00:06:00

[00:06:03] CT: That's a great story. So you're coming through your pedigree and curriculum instruction to then applying that in in your fingerprint as a leader. And superintendent throughout this journey, how did you develop these values? Were they always something that you valued from the beginning of your career or did you evolve them as you took on more and more leadership roles and applied them in practice?

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We didn't have those words back then. But they both supported me and pushed me to be better. And I, it was through that I realized and I also had some teachers that were really not caring. And I [00:07:00] felt how damaging that was. And so I think for the, the care is just such a human basis.

And I think sometimes in education, we put so much pressure on teachers to teach content and skills and curriculum. It's and so I go back to the ethos of medicine where it's no we teach students. We don't teach content. That these are human beings in front of us and like all human beings, they have things going on in their lives that are going to take priority sometimes over school.

And so it was, through really wanting to get to know my own students that I really developed a deep sense around that caring method and, collaboration is just, we don't do anything alone, and collaborating with students, collaborating with their parents, collaborating with other colleagues.

s and we're not sharing, our [: 00:08:00

We, I, there's so many great analogies, you go to the Apollo 13, right? Where they all come together to figure, solve the problem. And it's none of us singularly can solve this problem, but collectively we have a much better shot.

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And it sounds like that's very much rings true in your leadership

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[00:08:31] CT: How do you go about living this every day in a very deliberate way?

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And, only contacting people when you need something from them. But really having, seeing them as people, you know what, we [00:09:00] do have a I have a practice of every meeting we do it, a check in, that's something personal and it, we, sometimes they're funny, sometimes they're, touching, but, just having that one.

thing at every meeting that someone shares and you how much that actually builds a relationship among a team when you start to learn about each other and you see each other. For more than, the superintendent the person in charge of the budget that, I think that helps us to be a much stronger team.

And I try to lead that way. I try to, when I'm approached by the unions or that, that I first see them as people, and that what they're asking for or what they're upset about is something that's important to them. And we can disagree without losing our humanity.

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Do you find yourself having, especially when it comes to the justice element, having to. Pull yourself out of that humanity a little bit and look at things extremely objectively and say, all right, what's going on, what's really going on here.

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But that doesn't mean I don't see you, I have a saying that I use and I'm like, being heard and being agreed with are two different things, right? So I heard you. But I may not have agreed that's the priority for the district. It doesn't mean I didn't hear you. It doesn't mean I didn't see your humanity.

y feel like a loss. And so I [: 00:11:00

I should say I can't meet everyone's want. I try to meet everyone's need. I can't meet what everybody wants all the time. So we do like to say you will get everything you need and some of the things that you want.

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[00:11:23] Tara Taupier: Right.

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[00:11:31] Tara Taupier: As a leadership challenge, I think some of the hardest has been having to deal with people who I may have liked personally, but they have done things or engaged in education ways that I couldn't support, that idea of having to lean on my values, and even though this is a person I may like, they may not have been serving the students well or serving the district well.

g place, I care about people [: 00:12:00

I also know. I'm coming from a place where I feel it's best for students. So I'm okay with that. I think that is challenging. And as I said, just being in a position where you can't meet the wants of everybody and people don't often distinguish between what they want and what they need.

And often that, that can be challenging because people can be, with a public position, people can be very aggressive. People can be very angry. They can be very public about it. And sometimes it can be hard to make sure that, I'm getting my message out among all the noise, so it can be hard, cause people, as we know, glom onto information and suddenly you've got Some misinformation out there that it's really hard to retract or correct.

like the primary work, like [: 00:13:00

It's part of the job. And so it's also not my favorite part of the job. So those are times where I'm like, Those are leadership challenges because it may not be what I want to spend my time on, but I know I have to do those things. And I think COVID was a really good example of. The balance of the needs and the wants,.

And not everybody had the same thing, . Some people felt they needed to be back in school. Some people felt they needed to stay home. Some people felt that, we should never come back . It was a really challenging position to be in. I, we had a wonderful public health organization here in Marin.

ople were going to be really [: 00:14:00

[00:14:00] CT: Yeah, I think that resonates a lot. And it, I think one thing that seems to be a common thread across all the different leadership challenges that you mentioned is this almost like the heart and mind for the students that you have? That's almost like your North star, like how you navigate Potentially situations that might have two of your values in conflict or how you feel about a certain thing versus what you need to do.

It seems like the guiding thread through all of this is very much that heart for the students. And I think as a leader, that's something that's really important. And it's great that you have, how do you look for this and encourage it and nurture this within your staff and the leaders under you that you're trying to grow?

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We're going to stay focused on what's best for kids and then, we try to make sure that all of our initiatives and all of our focus that we're working on collectively as a leadership team are centered on that, right? That we are doing this because it's good for kids. And sometimes, another example of that is the master schedule, there'll be conflict because teachers might want to teach a certain time or, and they want to teach specific classes and we'll say, but that's not what's going to work fast for the kids in the schedule, so that's not how the decision is going to be made.

And so I think one is that regularly reinforcing our why. And having, literally having it printed on all of our agendas making sure, and it sounds silly, but no, we're going to continually come back to why we're doing what we're doing. And then when we're meeting as an academic leadership team and something comes up and we say okay, how does that, and it feels like a distraction or it's like something else.

let's, we're going to apply [: 00:16:00

And to what extent? And if the answer isn't always kids will be helped. Students will be served, then that's the wrong decision.

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[00:16:30] Tara Taupier: I do it with my academic leadership team. We meet regularly. We have a series of teams. We have our cabinet, we have our academic leadership. We have our expanded leadership. And we meet regularly and we do with the help of some outside organizations, we've really engaged in what is called public learning, where we grapple with.

the decision making process [: 00:17:00

And I think it also helps us be very in alignment. Thank you. With how we're making decisions and how we're running the schools in the district.

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[00:17:29] Tara Taupier: we have a lot of Support. We do have teacher leadership programs and we build those sort of leadership skills into those programs and everything from agenda building, facilitating, having difficult conversations. And so we really try to build that in. And so a lot of our internal administration, people come from internally to administration are coming from those sort of threads.

make sure that we have more [: 00:18:00

And so that it's not their direct supervisor who's doing that, but it's somebody who they can be like, I don't know what I'm doing, and so I think creating those spaces where like jobs can come together, they can share some of the challenges, some of the successes and also just have a space where they can build their capacity without feeling like they're being judged or evaluated on it.

A big piece of that is it can be very lonely to go from, the teaching staff into an administration job, suddenly you feel that you're like, particularly, even as you climb up, as your principal, as your assistant, soup, as your soup, you're one of one in that job.

helps mitigate some of that [: 00:19:00

[00:19:11] CT: we spoke a little bit about a, almost like a morning process when you're transitioning from one role to another. And it sounds almost like you're the way that you're thinking about in approaching it is to take this morning process and turn it more into A bit of a transformation or like a chrysalis where they go through this and come out to stretch that metaphor as a new as a new being almost and having to learn that and you're providing them at every level.

The kind of mutual support to, to overcome that sense of being alone and learning from each other's each other's journey. The other thing that I picked up there that I really liked was that it seems that you're investing in some of this, even before they take on a formal leadership role. You, you wanna prepare them for that ahead of time.

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Like here's a little taste of what it could be like, that for everybody. Not everybody wants to run a meeting, not everybody wants to be responsible for that.

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I think it's really important. I think in education, it's really easy to get drawn off the [00:21:00] mark of like, why we're here. There's a lot put on school districts and teachers and, there's a lot that we're supposed to solve for society right now. I think ultimately we, like I said, having that why and making sure everyone across the organization knows that why, and knows that all of the professional development you're doing, the meetings you're having are all serving that why, you should be able to say, okay, so we're talking about, this particular topic, because it's about improving student achievement and the learning and culture here.

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We've got, we've got to address this problem that came up or we've got to fix the buildings. How does fixing the buildings improve student outcomes? How is that? That conversation also needs to be about how it's going to serve [00:22:00] student outcomes, because if it's not, then that's not a priority.

We shouldn't be working on it. And so I think having that, and then, having that consistency at every level of leadership so that it does reach the classroom and that our classroom teachers know that why, and hopefully our learning skills to improve their own practice. I believe we're all lifelong learners.

We can always improve. Nobody's arrived. As being an educator I hope I keep learning, every day in my job. And so I think that, and that is what's also helpful if you have consistent staff and leadership that you're not like, you're not reteaching this to new people every time. Of course, you're going to onboard some new people every year, but it's not like a complete turnover where you're starting over.

And so hopefully you have, teachers and leaders in place that as we onboard new people say this is what we're doing and this is why we do it. And then it just becomes part of what the system holds,

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[00:23:00] Tara Taupier: My hope.

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I think what you're saying it you've boiled it down to becoming crystal clear and almost like dead simple. Just how is this helping this how is this helping our kids? And having everyone think through that every time they make a decision. I'm gonna switch gears a little bit and talk about I mean we can't help it living in this day and age, but.

We're surrounded by technological progress and especially in California this, the pace of technology advancement is sometimes breakneck. It just keeps going. So for you and for the district, what role does technology data and AI play, play in your leadership? If any.

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Everything's about improving student learning and, environment. So what data are we collecting around that, and we are able now to collect a lot of data very quickly, and that's really helpful, and we can disaggregate it. So who is being served? Who isn't? How do we support those kids?

What else are we going to try? And also we regularly survey our students. So we also get that sort of social emotional data. Are they feeling a sense of belonging, cause that's really important to learning. And as far as that kind of data it's great. I also think there's the role of teaching kids how to look at data, cause we also know data can be manipulated.

then there's the, and, using [: 00:25:00

It's it has some real implications on their lives. They're engaged in it at a time when their frontal lobes aren't fully developed, so they don't have the necessary capacity to understand like this is forever, and, I'm grateful I didn't grow up in an era where they were capturing everything I did on Instagram and it's out there for posterity.

But it's there and kids need to know that and students need to know that. No, that's. There are ways that social media can connect people that weren't able to have connection before. That is beautiful. And there's also ways that it is really damaging, . I don't think it's necessarily one or the other.

t are the aspects of AI that [: 00:26:00

Why did that provide more clarity? That could be an amazing exercise for kids to do right. That they could actually learn certain aspects, of literacy and things through that. But it takes us, they need to have that foundation. I don't think fighting. Technology is ever going to work, .

Like it's, it doesn't, we need to, kids need to learn it. They're not going to, I don't think they're ever going to live in a world without it. So I think there's appropriate parameters and I think there are ways in which we can embrace it when necessary, I think that it's really important that we help kids to develop a healthy sort of working relationship with technology.

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[00:27:02] Tara Taupier: The advice I would give them is that you need to seek a leadership role in an organization that, that matches your values. I like to say to when I talk to prospective, leaders is that when you interview, you're interviewing the data.

The district or the school, as much as they're interviewing you, right? Because you're going to give so much of yourself to this job, that it should be working with an organization that aligns to your values. I think it can, it's such a draining job to be fighting a culture at the same time.

I, it could be admirable, but as a single person, I think finding, really thinking about where you want to put your time and energy and who you want to serve. Is a really big part of making the job sustainable.

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engagerocket. co slash. Education is part of a special series with leadership within education and their journeys to become leaders. you so much, everyone.