Unleashing Hidden Talent: Empowering Quiet Leaders in Education

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Unfortunately, what usually happens is that the plan you thought made sense before you got in the chair gets a lot more fuzzy. The more you learn about the situation that you're facing on the ground. It's no different in the K through 12 space. When you become a superintendent, there are a lot of paths that you can take, but how do you make sure that you're standing on a solid foundation first?

Today's conversation, we'll talk about how you can build that solid foundation using the principles of building high reliability schools. And we'll spend a lot of our time talking through how to build a school district on a solid foundation versus a district of schools. So who's going to take us through that transformation journey?

, Indiana, joining us today. [: 00:01:00

He spent 21 years as a school administrator, 18 as a junior and senior high school principal, three years as a superintendent in his current role, and he's followed the high reliability schools model for the past nine years. In addition to his career progression and his experience as superintendent Jim has been married. For forever has five kids. So he's playing his own defense at home. He's got two grandsons and a granddaughter on the way due in September.

So Jim you're used to not having any sleep. So thanks for hopping on the show and looking forward to the conversation.

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[00:01:46] Dr. Jim: I don't think. We've had a specific discussion of the high reliability schools framework and how that can be applied to set yourself up for a strong foundation. So I'm looking forward to that piece of the conversation, but before we [00:02:00] get into that, I think it's going to be important for you to set the stage a little bit.

What I'd like you to do is share with the listeners, some of the key moments in your career that helped shape your leadership philosophy

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That is where I first learned about it. In education. Every year there seems to be something new, the new shiny trinket. And you do that for a year and then you go to something else and you go to something else. And I really did not like that as talking with my fellow teachers, it was like, Oh, great.

years [: 00:03:00

This benefits students, this benefits teachers, parents, they know what to expect. It's best practices based off of research in, I've been very blessed when I was leading a building that we did accomplish all three levels and it really changed the culture and the education of the students.

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[00:03:55] Jim Jameson: the the first thing you do. This really is a [00:04:00] collaborative environment. I remember as a teacher I used to shut the door. That was my world, my domain, and really didn't talk best practices with other teachers. Man, I wish I could have changed that when I was teaching in the classroom. It would have made me a better educator.

This really That collaborative piece is so important. We cannot just look for our building principals and upper central office administrators to tell us what to do. That whole top down thing never works very well. You want to build teacher leaders in your schools and this really, that collaborative piece working together really set the tone for how we started to kick off this.

There were surveys that were done on the student level, teacher level, administrator, And we gathered that data and looked at what our strengths were and our weaknesses. And then we started putting in action steps to not only maintain what we're doing well, but also what we needed to improve upon. You

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What was your approach in terms of getting the school to the next level?

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And then, that's what sold. I guess you could say put the hook in the belly of the teachers. Look, you see it as a problem. We see it as a problem. Parents and students see it as a problem, man, we need to really get this addressed. And how are we going to do that? And it's like a game plan. You put together the game plan, the action steps that we're going to take, and we're all going to work at this together.

an hour early and we have an [: 00:06:00

So it wasn't just me driving this. It was me and the teachers working together to drive this initiative

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[00:06:32] Jim Jameson: Here in Rush County. We it's a very family oriented place. We. Still have a lot of two family, two parent homes, but like anywhere in America, divorce and stuff has happened in causes outside, but working together, this community is so ingrained into the schools and the schools are so ingrained in the community.

e ambulance. And come out to [: 00:07:00

So When we ask for community support and community input with these surveys really drives home that we are all in this together. We are all one big family. We should be looking out for one another and wanting the best for everybody. And that's an easy sell because the community, that was the way that was before I got here in introducing the high reliability.

And when I preach about this, our most prized possession, our students, our future, and why shouldn't we be? The most high reliability organization we can be and produce the greatest generation next.

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One of the things that I talked about in the beginning of the conversation was how it's important for leaders in general To be on a solid foundation before [00:08:00] you start, before they start moving forward with any initiatives that they might want to take on, you really have to spend time to understand the lay of the land.

So when you look at first taking over the big chair. And what you needed to do, what were some of the observations that you made and what were some of the adjustments that you had to make as a result of that new information that informed some of your assumptions before you got in the chair?

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Because it's one thing you come in and start making a bunch of changes, it's not going to be very well received. There was what we call some very low lying fruit that we witnessed and started really addressing. And, but most of the time, you got to sometimes go slow to go [00:09:00] fast. And what we were doing is we had some changes in admin hired this hired people with the same vision.

And when I would interview people, I, 1 of the questions was, what's your vision for the district as a superintendent? And I would tell them and. Then once we got into hiring them and having more conversations as they've come on board, they're like, I wanted to come work for you because of this vision of how you see things and how you're going to action step stuff in and collaborate with people.

It is a great vision. It's not, does everybody on board yet? No. When we talk about getting everybody on the bus and going in the right direction there's always going to be people with resistance. Change is hard. Not a lot of people like to do change. They've been doing it this way forever. It's always worked.

Why would we want to change now? And mine is we have been good. Let's go to greatness and okay, let's do this. And I'm not going to add more to your plate. I'm just saying we need to tweak a few things and man, we can go from good to greatness really quick and really easy.

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And you went through a listening tour of sorts to talk to a whole bunch of people across all of the different stakeholders that are involved in the district. How did you standardize that process so that you were getting meaningful information from those conversations that you could start building your strategy from?

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And then as I'm leading this next round of administrators who have come in and don't know anything [00:11:00] about the HRS framework and I start talking about this, it has its own vocabulary. And you start talking with the same tone, the same voice, the same message, the message gets bigger and bigger. And then they start talking and it just grows in that when we talk about what we need to do to improve our schools, they are all sharing the same vision in the same message to everybody involved.

And it's just It's amazing to watch it work and to see it in action. And then when you start, go back and talk to other people, the same people you talked to a few weeks ago, and they're using that language, then that, then it's starting to really take a hold and take effect.

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[00:11:50] Jim Jameson: It's basically broken down into three levels. There are actually five levels, but the first three are the main stakeholders of the HRS. If you can get [00:12:00] those first three, it is really going to transform your school. The first one is a safe and collaborative environment. That's level one. And, if you don't feel safe at school, Then you're not gonna, you're not going to perform well as a student, as a teacher.

We want our schools to be the safe. We don't ever want to be Columbine again, learn from those mistakes. And part of that level one in the questions that are asked in the surveys, do you feel safe at school? Is, are there doors? Are there film on the windows? Is there a raptor, check in point?

All of those go into a safe and collaborative environment. Then the second piece is that collaborative piece that we've talked about in the PLC process. Do teachers have a voice? Do students have a voice? At the end of the day, it's their school. It's the student school. They should have a voice in what goes on now That doesn't mean we do everything they want to do.

of the day agree to disagree [: 00:13:00

Discipline went way down, attendance went up. When they're there to learn, and they're safe, and they feel comfortable, and they know they have a voice, and they are respected, my teachers were respected. Really changing that culture piece is huge in level one. There's always areas that we can continue to get better, and you keep striving and you keep pushing, but that is the number one piece.

The second level is effective teaching in every classroom. This one was one that I thought was going to take us a really long time. We came up with what we call the core four. And those were the four things that were going to happen in every classroom. And then we did our non negotiables. What was not going to happen in every classroom.

onal development days to get [: 00:14:00

And we printed them out and we put them in every classroom. I would go in and do observations or just pop into a classroom and the teachers would constantly refer to those core four and non negotiables. They were reminding students, it became the culture of what we're going to have in every classroom and it really transformed the school.

And then the last one is a guaranteed and viable curriculum. Everybody has state standardized tests and are we teaching the right standards? To those students and then pacing them out throughout the year so that when it comes for that state standardized testing time, we have covered the material, the time to teach in that time frame, and it's those are living documents, each class is different.

that in. That's the teachers [: 00:15:00

[00:15:01] Dr. Jim: When you talk about those three elements, there's two other ones that we didn't get into, but when you're looking at a five pillar framework, to me. Anything with five moving pieces is gonna have a degree of complexity to it, and you're probably gonna have to attack all of them at the same time.

What is the typical timeline for a transformation effort that is based on this framework? What's the timeline for impact to be seen?

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But we have also leadership team and teachers have attended the HRS summit and has a lot of breakout sessions. We have talked about it slowly, really to implement really the first [00:16:00] level or first two levels is really three to five years for it to really take hold. So right now this is year three.

It's the launch year. We've laid that foundation. We've got the vocabulary out and now it's time to really start implementing what we have been learning these last two years in, in getting this off the ground.

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[00:16:47] Jim Jameson: I totally understand your question. You're right. Why would I put my neck out on the line? After year three, I want that extension. And you're just now really launching in year three. I've seen it work. And if we're really doing what's best for kids, which [00:17:00] then is best for teachers, best for parents, and the community that you serve, I have seen this transform and take off and really go in the positive direction that the school that I led was a high reliability organization.

We have done that here. We have seen some things. We have implemented already some great success stories here at Rush County. Just even this morning, my principal and I were with the Economic Development Corporation. They had their Monthly meeting and my principal is just going crazy with all the things that he has implemented and changed and how we were 13th of 13 area schools and now we're in the upper third just in one year of implementing things in it And it's just an adjustment of focus In looking at key elements and how we can get better.

over the material. You can't [: 00:18:00

That's why I said three to five years. That's what worked well for me.

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That created the time horizon for you to go ahead and implement this within the district Give us a line of sight into that

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And so much so that the board made a [00:19:00] resolution to adopt the high reliability practices, whether I was here or not, it's going to live on. This is something that the board has committed and has put it into a policy. And that has shown me, that gave me great confidence that the board was the one that wanted to create a policy that high reliability schools would be at Rush County, whether I was here or not, it's going to live on.

I'm hopefully I'm here for a long time, that's part of the game of superintendents.

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So really appreciate you walking through that. So now you've worked through implementing or at least working through setting the foundation for this to launch. When you're actually going into [00:20:00] launch mode, how did you break that down into a plan of action across all the important things that are happening in your district?

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You've done the quick data. You've done the action steps. Mine as a district leader is a little different because I need the old train the train, coach the coach. That's what I'm doing. I am teaching and coaching my administrators and then they take it back to their buildings. Every building's different.

It's made up a different dynamic, different kids and how it's implemented. Yeah. And I am here as a resource blessed that better than what I had, because my superintendent knew a little bit about HRS when I was a building principal and I could ask him a few questions, but he really didn't know.

provide the answers for you. [: 00:21:00

[00:21:02] Dr. Jim: When you look at this framework and you're putting into it into place, it has a long time horizon and you've built this internal resourcing where you have experts in particular areas within your district.

How did you take that down even further into? How you're developing your cabinet and your leadership team, how your leadership team is developing their educators. What does that look like in the context of building high reliability schools?

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People like to be empowered, people like to [00:22:00] have a voice in this, with this framework, that is what ensures. People have a voice in a framework. I had a council of teachers that started off with some department chairs and stuff and it grew into at any time we was set once one Wednesday a month after our PLC time.

And we called, we were the cougars for change, and it was a time for teachers to come and tell, Hey, this is what's going on. What can we do about this? Share, sharing ideas really got it when it was a molehill instead of a mountain. We didn't want it to become a big thing and everybody had a voice and the voices were always heard.

I think that's one thing a good leader will always listen. And take into consideration what people are saying and try to make everybody's life a little bit easier and evaluate what they're saying and what they're doing and what they'd like to see happen. And I've learned that through the high reliability schools.

e're refocusing what we did. [: 00:23:00

We're going to stay with this framework and we're going to work it. And you can just see the relief off the teachers like, okay, we're, this is what we're going to focus on and work on. And we're going to do it slowly. And we're going to do it right. And that's really carried a lot of validation with everybody.

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[00:23:50] Jim Jameson: That's why I have sleepless nights, but to be honest, You try to spread it out. There's, you can, we always know there's always one or two teachers that do everything and [00:24:00] then they get burnt out. Why not empower someone else and not spread that workload out amongst the masses and then make them become the expert in that.

And, I would go and talk to a teacher and say, Hey, I really, I got this idea or this was what brought to me and you're, you came to mind. Can you help me do this? Are you okay with that? You talk to me, ask him an honest question. If you can't, that's fine. No, no harm, no foul.

But I just really think this, you would be really good at this. Can you take this and own it? And then present to the rest of the staff. Oh, they feel. Hey, yeah, great. Thank you for thinking of me and come back and you own this and you, you bring it to the next PLC and do a presentation. And if he needs to be, in 2 weeks, that's fine.

what i'm trying to implement [: 00:25:00

That

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[00:25:35] Jim Jameson: is the culture that you want to try to build and you hit it dead on. Those people are high performance people. They're great teachers, but they feel like they don't have voices. They call, we call them the in betweeners. They're in between, they're back and forth. And recognizing that as a building leader, going and talking to them one on one in their classroom, on their turf, And you know what?

I really [: 00:26:00

That's retention of teachers. That keeps people wanting working for you in the district because they feel empowered and valued.

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[00:26:44] Jim Jameson: teacher morale. You're going to have the teachers. I had each building principal go and speak to their teachers individually at the end of the year end of the year wrap up session and we discussed this and 1 on 1. Between them and the principal, they were like, thank you for doing this. Thank [00:27:00] you for starting this.

Thank you for, we've been dying to have something like this in place, a mechanism, a tool that we can look at, engage off of, and move forward with. You're going to have your people who are going to drag you down that don't want to change. We call them the guardians. Don't be doing that. Don't be listening to him.

We'll outlast him. It'll go away. It always does. And we keep trying to diminish their voices and know we are doing this and we're going to stick with it. That's just reality. I'm going to put the cards on the table of a guy. You're going to have those challenges and you have to stay with this and With this process and this program and belief that it is, there are so many teachers that are thankful here, as we've said in the first two years, thank you for giving us this framework.

ere we really ramp it up and [: 00:28:00

[00:28:01] Dr. Jim: So you said something there that caught my attention, which was you're always going to have the people that are in your organization that. Are willing to at least try to wait you out. Now this is just another flash in the pan thing that's going to be gone when this guy leaves or this gal leaves. What were the things that you did to get those people on board? And how did you do it?

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I realized that, and then I started strategically putting teachers in certain groups to spread it out. Their voices, they started slowly to get on board, because their voice, their naysayer voice, Got diminished a little bit because if you're sitting at a table with your peers and you're supposed to do this topic Of what we're covering today And you're just negative nelly I've actually seen [00:29:00] teachers like turn their backs to them like shut them out if you're not going to be part of this and be positive Then we're not going to listen to you or really you really don't think this is what's best for kids you know those voices and stuff and it's slowly and surely like I said, there's your three to five year time frame They started to get on board And then that's that was.

Amazing to sit back and watch that and observe that.

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[00:29:48] Jim Jameson: My biggest piece of advice to anybody who is interested in the high reliability schools is to go just type in high reliability schools and you will see schools maybe in your state maybe close to [00:30:00] you that have started to implement this, that got the certification, reach out to the those principals.

If you get to see Bob Marzano, Phil Warwick Mario Acosta, and you can go. See them listen to them speak or even do a podcast with them. I think they have podcasts I think they have they're on Twitter or X now and you can reach out to them It's amazing that you know a little school here in East Central, Indiana and dr Acosta who's one of the big hitters in the organization I just met him last Thursday.

He was speaking and we went to a conference and he walks up to me, Hey, Jim, how you doing? And it's wow, man you travel 165 days a year, speaking at people all throughout the United States and you know my name and you know where I'm from. That's pretty cool. These people are very personal.

the end of January. It's an [: 00:31:00

Mine was always, you start with the level one and you focus on level one before you go to level two. Too many times people want to go pick. Pick certain pieces of all three or five levels and that's not going to work You have to start with the foundation of level one and build up from there House is only as strong as this foundation and you got to have that collaborative and safe piece in there first

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[00:31:31] Jim Jameson: If you will look us up on the web, Rush County schools, I'll be more than happy to provide any information and share my experience in any conversations. Firm believer in this process. And because I've seen it work and I've seen the impact is made on students and that's why our most prized possession is.

I've seen the impact and it's just been tremendous.

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I think there's a tendency for leaders to want to see change happen fast. And I think that's a mistake. Because if you try to run too fast to things, you're probably on a sloppy foundation, and you can tip over whatever you're trying to do. So I think that was an important element of the conversation that I want to highlight.

so that you can get the best [: 00:33:00

So obviously when you're looking at the change management side of it, you want to make sure that you're. Always working to bring those people over to your side, but you can't let them unionize and sit together and poison the well of what you're trying to do. So I thought those were three really important points that that you brought out that I felt it was worth mentioning for those of you who have been listening to the conversation.

ll have another great leader [: 00:34:00