

Transformative Principal
Jethro Jones
Jethro Jones interviews instructional leaders from around the nation to learn and teach what it takes to become a transformative principal. Episodes address topics like Response to Intervention (RTI), Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS), Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS), the latest advances in educational research, standards-based grading, and interviews with industry leaders like Bill Daggett, Rick Wormeli, Todd Whitaker and even people outside the education like Seth Godin, JeVon McCormick, Liz Wiseman, and more.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Oct 22, 2017 • 34min
Owning Vs. Leading with Dan Kelley Transformative Principal 197
Owning vs. leading Pushed change a little too fast. Get teachers to drive initiatives. Can’t own it. The teachers have to. Biggest change - using grades for compliance It takes a lot of time to have the conversations relating to grading. Using alternative ways of assessing kids. NASSP’s mission and goals as a national support organization. Non-profit boards are struggling to have members. Mentor told Dan he needed to join NASSP for the insurance. Have to change the member benefit. We need to be more than just insurance. Advocacy - need to have someone there to advocate for the needs of schools and principals. Opportunities for advancing leadership. McKinsey Management Program for School Leaders 19,000 members in NASSP. 100% of Rhode Island principals are involved in NASSP Grading and assessment is the biggest conversation. NASSP Conference in Chicago How to be a transformative principal? Expand your network and get out of the little silos that we are in. Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life! Join my group coaching program Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show. Buy Communication Cards Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com Download Paperless Principal. Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey
LinkedLeaders: You need support. Get just-in-time mentoring at LinkedLeaders.comWe’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 technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove 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.

Oct 15, 2017 • 27min
Telling the Story of Your School with Dan Kelley Transformative Principal 196
NASSP President Dan Kelley talks about school change and the need for NASSP to have a real impact in principals’ lives. Special education background. President of NASSP. Archaic way of teaching The role of the school needs to change. 5:45 minutes. Schools can become hubs. Changing schools structurally and philosophically. Get caught up in test scores and ranking. Great alternative to AP tests - early enrollment rather than AP. How to tell the story of the school? Start with where the parents are. Facebook, Blog, twitter Easy to use Money following students Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life! Join my group coaching program Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show. Buy Communication Cards Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com Download Paperless Principal. Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey
LinkedLeaders: You need support. Get just-in-time mentoring at LinkedLeaders.comWe’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 technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove 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.

Oct 12, 2017 • 27min
Now We're Talking with Justin Baeder Transformative Principal 1041
Justin Baeder, of the Principal Center As instructional leaders there is no better way to lead than to be in classrooms. It is tough to find time and make it into classrooms. Being in classrooms that much sounds ridiculous and impossible. Start small. Just show up. * #everyclassroom challenge, be in every classroom within a 5-day period. * Build up the practice over a period of cycles. * Just keep track of the order you visit people in, and visit them * Systems to keep track of visits. * Write the date you visit on their note card. * Repertoire - app for keeping track of visits. * The way we schedule to get into our classrooms is important. * The way of doing it must fit your style. * Buy the Book: Now We’re Talking Special Interview about writing a book. Get the interview here * How long it took. * What to get clear on. * How to determine what belongs in this book and doesn’t. * How to sell your idea to the readers and publishers.
LinkedLeaders: You need support. Get just-in-time mentoring at LinkedLeaders.comWe’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 technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove 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.

Oct 8, 2017 • 29min
Prevailing Not Relishing with Rebecca Coda and Rick Jetter Transformative Principal 195
Prevailing, Not Relishing with Rebecca Coda and Rick Jetter Transformative Principal 195 Proactive paranoia is good paranoia Call people to the carpet in a professional way. Rebecca Coda and Rick Jetter are the authors of Escaping the School Leaders Dunk Tank: How to Prevail When Others Want To See You Drown. How to prevail instead of getting bummed out. Depersonalize the situation. Some reason they have ego, fear, jealousy, etc. Didn’t start with you, started with someone or something else. Alignments - aligning to different people. How people gather allies. If you’ve got an army behind you. Moving on How to deal with politicking. Nonviolent communication Call people to the carpet in a professional way. 4 step process for nonviolent conversation. Script, rehearse, prepared for curveball reactions Said with care and patience. Don’t want to be alone without a witness. You’re not effective if you’re feeling this way. Teacher Bullies How to be a transformative principal? It comes down to being willing to do what is right. How to be a transformative principal? You’ve gotta try! Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life! Join my group coaching program Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show. Buy Communication Cards Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com Download Paperless Principal. Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey
LinkedLeaders: You need support. Get just-in-time mentoring at LinkedLeaders.comWe’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 technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove 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.

Oct 1, 2017 • 23min
Escaping the Dunk Tank with Rick Jetter and Rebecca Coda Transformative Principal 194
Proactive paranoia is good paranoia. Rebecca Coda and Rick Jetter are the authors of Escaping the School Leaders Dunk Tank: How to Prevail When Others Want To See You Drown. How to tell if you are being sabotaged. Proactive paranoia - inner voice where you know it is not right, but you It comes down to relationships. You notice the behavior changes. Exclusion. Emotional triggers that lead to tactics. Emotional driving forces - jealousy, skepticism, holding accountable. Leaving out information or leaving people out. What do we do when to handle it? Explicitly confront or leave it alone? Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life! Join my group coaching program Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show. Buy Communication Cards Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com Download Paperless Principal. Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey
LinkedLeaders: You need support. Get just-in-time mentoring at LinkedLeaders.comWe’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 technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove 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.

Sep 26, 2017 • 13min
End College and Career Readiness with Jethro Jones Transformative Principal 1040
I have always felt so uninspired by the term “College and Career Ready!” It seems so empty George Martinez - chief of staff for anchorage mayor spoke at the African American Student Leadership conference The term he used was Path to Passion. That is much more inspiring. Why passion? Because we all need something more than a JOB! We need our own personal mission statements. Much of what I believe comes from my spiritual approach I am a child of god. If I believe that I am a child of God, that must mean that I believe others are children of God as well. It makes it so much easier to be kind and nice to people. It also makes it easier to have high expectations of people. Because they truly are more than they can ever believe. I Discovered my passion at about 16 years old. I learned that I had skills in teaching others, and leading others. I could have chosen many other professions besides teaching and education, but because of my not-so-great educational experiences, I knew I could impact kids in a powerful way. So, that’s what I do. I inspire teachers and leaders to be their best. That’s why I do this podcast. Because I am living out my purpose for my life. This is more than just me sitting in front of a microphone in my basement! The mastermind is more than just me hanging out with some really cool leaders. The TLS is more than just a Leadership Summit. These are extensions of me fulfilling a purpose. An educator could not have told me at sixteen that I would be doing this now. But a visionary man helped me understand way back when I was 16, that right now, I am exactly where I need to be and that I am doing exactly what I need to be doing! The real challenging part of understanding our passion is that it is admittedly pretty frufru as someone recently said. I don’t think you’ll be able to find a guru that says “Find a deadend job, and stick with it until you retire, when you can finally do what you want.” I think about some of the recent college grads that I know that are basically doing anything because they need money. I understand that, I’ve been there, but I was very much aware that that was not going to be my future. They’re using the time after college to figure out what they love. How tragic for them. In this day and age, with technology, I have a hard time believing that someone cannot make money from living their passion. A career is something old people talk about. To the younger generation, it is just life. But again, it is challenging, especially for educators, to inspire kids with an unknown. We like clear, specific answers. We don’t know what to do when we can’t predict the future. Which is funny, because we can’t. So, how do we reconcile this? We understand that we can’t possibly know what the future holds for kids, and inspire them to find what they can do all day and love for their whole lives. Some might say they love playing call of duty all day, but most of them don’t. Most of them prefer that to boring drudgery of getting college and career ready. Let’s inspire them to something more noble than a JOB and help them find a fulfilled life by finding their purpose for being here.
LinkedLeaders: You need support. Get just-in-time mentoring at LinkedLeaders.comWe’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 technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove 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.

Sep 24, 2017 • 24min
Elephants Fighting with Naphtali Hoff Transformative Principal 193
Naphtali Hoff is an executive coach, organizational consultant, trainer, writer & speaker. How to come back from making a mistake. Think big picture. If you don’t create the right foundation, then you will spend far less time helping kids than When elephants fight, it’s the grass that gets trampled. - Rick Lavoie Where you can support the vision Everything flows from the foundation. We make decisions based on the emotional connection. Trust shields you from other problems. How to be a transformative principal? Continue to invest in yourself. You can’t give what you don’t have. email: nhoff@impactfulcoaching.com becomingthenewboss.com 212-4706139 Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life! Join my group coaching program Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show. Buy Communication Cards Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com Download Paperless Principal. Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey
LinkedLeaders: You need support. Get just-in-time mentoring at LinkedLeaders.comWe’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 technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove 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.

Sep 17, 2017 • 25min
Becoming the New Boss with Naphtali Hoff Transformative Principal 192
Naphtali Hoff is an executive coach, organizational consultant, trainer, writer & speaker. Teacher and school leader. Support principals in a way that he had been supported. Get his book, “Becoming the New Boss” Leadership vs. Management You need to manage processes. Leadership is another dimension. What is your priority and what is your main focus? You can delegate management. Leadership is getting people moving in a direction Leadership belongs to everyone in the building. Be a good listener, especially at the beginning. Good leaders are listeners. Demonstrate a willingness to listen and accept a culture. Find ways to make low-stakes, high-success wins. Rick Lavoie, earning chips. Need to go through change strategically. Consensus vs. agreement Data should drive the process. Initiating the process is good, but don’t go down the path if you’re not going to make the actual change. Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life! Join my group coaching program Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show. Buy Communication Cards Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com Download Paperless Principal. Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey
LinkedLeaders: You need support. Get just-in-time mentoring at LinkedLeaders.comWe’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 technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove 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.

Sep 10, 2017 • 27min
Job-Embedded PD with Connie Hamilton Transformtaive Principal 191
Part time curriculum director in a rural school district and part time consultant. How to stay on top of so many content areas. Framework for quality curriculum Instructional priorities. Looking at research and finding what’s current. Best practices Nearly all PD was sit and get. Spiraling themes of professional development. Able to provide effective supports Gradual release of responsibility. I do, we do, y’all do, you do. Practice feedback reflection That’s what we’ve always done. Peer observation isn’t always received very well. Timeline of job-embedded PD. August 1/2 day with 60 teachers as a pilot on classroom questioning Cohorts of 4-6 teachers in each cohort - meet for 1/2 day with that cohort. Host teacher presents lesson. Facilitator asks questions. Review of data points that people collected after observing a lesson. Scripting - What did the teacher say, what did the kids say? Share data, review host teacher’s goals and visit a new one each month. Don’t invite administrators to take part in the process Walkthroughs at the end of the year. Leadership team looks for strengths and growths for that teacher. Need to make sure your professional development is making it to the classroom. Effective to have a coach position be able to support the group. Give principals patterns in aggregated data. Principals engage in final conversation in the year. How to be a transformative principal? Be intentional about supporting teacher’s growth. Are you feeling like you are always behind at school? Do you feel like you need about 2 more hours each day to accomplish everything? Here’s how I help principals work manageable hours: Create your ideal week, so that you can leave work at work and enjoy your life! Join my group coaching program Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show. Buy Communication Cards Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com Download Paperless Principal. Web Site Transformative Principal on Stitcher Refer A Principal Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey
LinkedLeaders: You need support. Get just-in-time mentoring at LinkedLeaders.comWe’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 technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove 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.

Sep 6, 2017 • 18min
What I Wish I Knew as A First Year Principal with Jethro and Friends Transformative Principal Special
I asked a bunch of awesome leaders one simple question: What did you wish you knew when you first became a principal? Here are their answers!
LinkedLeaders: You need support. Get just-in-time mentoring at LinkedLeaders.comWe’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 technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove 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.