This second interview with Bob Sonju is really great. You will enjoy every minute of it! We talk about the following:

• How to deal with cynical stakeholders.
• Why people need to be ready to change to make things better.
• How to make a good school even better.
• Why you wake up with panic attacks in the middle of the night as a transformative principal.
• The best time to change education was 20 years ago, the second best time to change education is today!
• The excuses we make to not make changes.
• There is no such thing as an optimal time to make changes, but we need to have a sense of urgency.
• The state of Utah lost 19% of students (that didn’t graduate with a diploma). That is 1 in 5 kids! Unacceptable!
• If you don’t find a better way… You fall back to how you did it before. We need to focus on using research-based best practices to help our students.
• The importance of the Professional Learning Communities and Response to Intervention.
• We don’t need to find new things, we just need to get good at PLCs and RTI.
• There is no quick fix for schools.
• We need to remove the things that
• A super quick overview of PLCs and RTI in case you aren’t familiar with them. Based mostly on the work of DuFour and Eaker in Learning by Doing
• What a principal can do to be a transformative principal today: Identify the research that drives your day-to-day work and recognize the sense of urgency we have to ensure that learning is not optional.
• What he has in his office or a story: Simplify and focus. Story about teacher telling him that he is right in pushing forward.
• How to get ahold of him (He is not on the Twitter, but he is willing to help you by giving his email address. Bob [dot] sonju at wash.k12.ut.us)

Web Site

Transformative Principal on Stitcher

Refer A Principal

Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey

Sponsor: Sanebox

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.