This month marks a significant milestone for us at Leaders Building Leaders as we kick off our tenth year in business. Established in April 2014, I led the company's first retreat around the second week of July that year. We are proud of the impact we've made over the past decade and remain dedicated to empowering leaders and fostering excellence.

To celebrate, each week I am going to highlight one of our school's in our Empowered Executives: Inner Circle. The Inner Circle is a weekly virtual mastermind made up of public charter school principals, directors, and other administrators. They come together to share breakthroughs, gain advice, strategy and new perspectives from leaders in their positions. 

The first school I desire to highlight is The Expedition School (TES) in Hillsborough, North Carolina. When I wrote my book on high performing charter schools, the chapter on a Healthy School Culture Conducive for Learning, it was a school like TES that I modeled it...

I hope you are having a productive and restorative summer. 

As I…we ALL prepare for the upcoming school year, my teammate Lauren and I have been keeping track of where my focus goes in planning and preparation for the upcoming year. 

We wanted to share the top 10 from my list with you. 

If you have yet to get with yourself and your team and ask…

1. What went well this year?
2. What needs more focus next year?
3. What do we need to STOP doing to move forward? (Critical list!)
4. To accomplish our goals for the 2024-2025 year…what needs to be true about our behavior and actions as a team? As a staff?
5. Most import: Where do I need to grow as a leader to ensure one year from today we are in a much stronger position?

One of the BEST tools we have and I utilize often is our principal quarterly checklist.I look at it each month, and definitely each quarter to stay responsive to bigger issues. This checklist can be personalized to your school and shared as a team....

Ever see the movie, Planes, Trains and Automobiles with Steve Martin and John Candy?

I love the scene where they are heading down the highway and everyone is beeping at them and yelling...you're going the wrong way...

It's more funny to see it (watch it here) 2 minutes

The sad part is...this just happened to me the other day. 

I have a lot going on right now...my mind is cluttered with emotions and tasks at hand. 

I was trying to get back to my school when suddenly I realized, I was going the wrong way. Not the wrong way on a road (like the classic scene). The opposite direction of my school. 

This is probably why I constantly use my GPS on my phone. 

In order to get from one point to another I need to know:

1. Where I am.

2. Where I am going.

If I get off track, the GPS will adjust my route. 

Wouldn't that be great to have as a school leader?

Do you ever wonder.....

How to build a GPS for your school leadership. 

How to measure where you are and...

I’ve got two amazing kids!

I am extremely blessed as they are good human beings and are way more advanced than I was at 11 or 16. Maybe even at 30!

Sometimes they do stuff, like leave their dirty dishes around, the lights on, argue, say a word out loud they shouldn’t, give attitude, bad mouth others, whatever…anything that gets my wife or I on a different emotion.

I've realized that all of the nagging to get them to do something different is pointless.

Because people don’t do what people say. People do what people see. 

That is the Law of the Picture from John Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. 

I wish I had read a book or had a mentor like John Maxwell in my life in my twenties when I was a young teacher and baseball coach. I had a giant ego, a character that lacked integrity and humility, and a mouth to match. 

I recall making my JV Baseball team run and run and run when I heard them cursing or throwing equipment. Not 20...

I wanted to share a quick story and resource...

Two years ago I was hired as the interim executive of a well known bi-lingual, Montessori charter school 30 days before the first day of school. 

We hired a dozen staff in 30 days, some from out of the country, and had great inservice and day one experience for everyone...well, that's what I thought. 

I asked the mentors to schedule a new hire meeting about eight days in to check in with the new hires.

I came to the meeting late and just asked them to start with a simple, "What's going well?", "What can be improved?" icebreaker activity.

I walked into the room and was blown away about what was on the whiteboard.

What's Going Well?

What Can Be Improved...

If you couldn't read it here's just a few of the items on their list...

• I don't know where things are (toilet!)
• I don't know how to call the front office
• I don't have a key
• When is pay day?
• When is HR orientation?
• Do we have a staff handbook?

The list goes on....

...

My Mom died during surgery on February 3, 2015. I did not know she was having the surgery.

Fortunately, I happened to call her that afternoon. I had not heard her this excited in years. The new doctor finally believed her, about the pain she was in. He diagnosed her with poor circulation that was creating her loss of feeling in the legs and constant back pain. She had already had multiple surgeries on her back to this point, none of them working. But this time it was different. She had hope. Hope that this time it would work and she could spend time playing on the floor with her two grandchildren.

She never had that chance. 

When he repaired her arteries, they were too weak to carry her new blood flow. They exploded, and she died almost instantly on the table. 

I don’t share this to upset you or get your sympathy. I share this to remind you a few lessons I learned in life:

Sacrifice the right things: Go home. Be present. Call the people you love and tell them...

This question as a principal, Am I sure the students are all learning? Use to keep me up at night. 

However, then I learned that the best way to ensure students are learning is through daily classroom walkthroughs.

These walkthrough must be intentional and focused on making sure that students are not just learning but mastering the curriculum taught. 

That the atmosphere is affirming. 

That the students are engaged in the process.

That the teacher is aware of everything that is happening between the four walls of the classroom. 

While you are walking through each classroom, the validity of the information you receive through assessments and benchmarks will be affirmed. 

The first step in effective leadership is making a choice that is in harmony with our goals and desires.

I personally believe that the academic growth your students make, and the development of the teachers that lead them, will directly correlate to the effectiveness and the...

Just because there are not strong applicants does not mean you allow negative behavior to exist in your school. 

Here is an example.

Just recently I was on a coaching call with a leadership team when they began to describe the behavior of a staff member as being toxic to their culture. Just being mean, not following school expectations, making their teammates feel uncomfortable. 

When I asked them why are they still working there they shared, “well, there are not too many good candidates right now.” Then they justified it with, “Their scores are really good and We won’t be recommending them for renewal.”

I asked if they had ever had a toothache, a bad cavity or infection? 

“Oh yes,” they replied. 

“And when you went to the dentist did they say, well, it still chews just fine, let’s give it another six months and see how it’s doing then.” Or did he say, "This needs to be repaired immediately or the...