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Season 3, Episode 10 - Leanna Mackelprang
151 Plays2 years ago
This week, Leanna Mackelprang provides her perspective from her position as an Assistant Principal at Shirley Barber Elementary School. She discusses her thoughts on differentiating for the "high" kids and whether or not she will ever be ready to step up into the lead role of principal.
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Transcript
Introduction of Guest, Leanne McElpring
00:00:11
Speaker
Hello and welcome. I have a guest today, and she is excited to be here. It is Leanne McElpring, the assistant principal at Barbara Elementary School. She is allegedly one of the biggest fans of the podcast, and I thank her for that. So Leanne, thank you for being here. Yeah. I'm excited to be here. I've been watching or listening to you since day one, and I am so excited. I'm fangirling out big time right now, so thank you for having me. That makes one person, at least, so that's good.
00:00:42
Speaker
What do you like about it? I've never had someone so excited. This is great. Well, we met a long time ago at a conference, and I just thought you were so cool then. And then I heard about you, and then I start following you on Instagram. I'm like, oh my gosh, she's so...
00:01:00
Speaker
So positive, he does so many great things for his staff. You're posting of 100 positives and all that. I tried to copy you at Barber. I've just always been your biggest fan, but I think you're onto something, Robert. I think you're just a very positive person is what it is. Well, maybe, but I still think you're onto something. Thank you. We'll try. Who are you a bigger fan of, me or Granger? Uh-oh.
00:01:26
Speaker
Well, I was kidding. If you aren't as big a fan as Leanna, her boss, Jeff Granger, was on here earlier. So that's why I asked her that. So there's really not a way to win that question right there. I know. I know him better than you. That's true. He's wonderful. I'm so lucky to work with him every day. He's wonderful, truly. You have to say that right now. He's like, I'll do this favor for you if you say one nice thing about me on the podcast.
00:01:55
Speaker
Well, there you go. There's your one nice thing. Aw, no, he's great.
Leanne's Inspiration and Career Journey
00:02:00
Speaker
What, okay, so give people your background. How'd you get started? How'd you get to where you're at? Yeah, well, I grew up in my mom's classroom. She was a third grade teacher at Bartlett Elementary way back when. And me and my sister both were like, we're going to be teachers. And it was, it was no question. That's what I wanted. Went to UNLV, got my teaching license. And, you know, I got to start working at Wallin where I spent 10 years, Shirley and Bill Wallin Elementary up in Anthem. Um,
00:02:29
Speaker
I loved it. I lived in my classroom. I had a really great principal. Mike O'Dowd was phenomenal, and he pushed us to be five-star blue ribbon, which, yeah, was amazing. It was amazing to be part of that. And then, actually, the person that inspired me to be a vice principal or to go into administration, her name's Katie Lombardo, and I know you know her. I do know Katie.
00:02:53
Speaker
Just incredible and you know, I was watching her go through admin and and she's like you should try it You're a runner Liana. You should go for it. And so I did and you know, it's been wonderful I got to be here at barber and I get to be in all these classrooms helping an entire school community instead of just my own kids and I love it I love your I mean, you're obviously very positive You know very excited passionate, which is great but this job that we do can
00:03:23
Speaker
Take that out of yourself. There's got to be so maybe tell people what your favorite part is.
00:03:29
Speaker
And then what your not favorite part is.
Involvement in Students' Lives
00:03:32
Speaker
Okay. Well, my absolute favorite part of being an administrator is to be in every kid's life. I mean, you get to walk around the lunchroom. They all know who you are. They all feel comfortable talking to you about the smallest things and the biggest things. And I love celebrating all of them to like student of the month dance parties and assemblies and just being part of everything. I love it. And I love being in teacher's classrooms and seeing what they're doing. It's,
00:03:56
Speaker
Like the instructional part of it, I wish I got to do more. Um, the hardest part, um, you know, you can't say nothing. There's gotta be something. Oh, there is, there is.
Challenges with Parental Alignment
00:04:12
Speaker
I'm trying to, I think the hardest part is sometimes I feel.
00:04:20
Speaker
is the parents. And it's like I love, I love making relationships with these parents. But I feel like sometimes that's a big hurdle I have to cross of like, I'm trying to do what's best for the kid. And they're trying to do what they think is best for the kid. And it's not always meshing. And so I think that's sometimes my hardest and most difficult part of the job.
00:04:42
Speaker
And you taught at Wallen, which is completely opposite of Barber in social economics. The parents still, you still get the same problems as just different types of problems. 100%, 100%. You get more of them wanting to come to school and be a part of it. But being a part of it, they are also critiquing everything that they see. Because they want what's best, just like we do. We want what's best as well. And sometimes we're just...
00:05:12
Speaker
you know, we're fighting for the same thing, but we're not always speaking the same language, you know? Yeah, essentially, it comes down and you just have to find the compromise. But you know, you're, I think at Wallen, it's just a whole different game. I mean, you always have parents, you're always going to have people that are that are there. But do you find that? Well, I mean, do you find parents at Barber?
00:05:37
Speaker
I don't know how to say this, but they pick on different things, I guess I would say. What's important at Wallin isn't necessarily important at Barber. Yeah. You see both. It's funny because one of my biggest struggles is, and this always ends up being bad at first, and then you can kind of get the parent around.
00:05:56
Speaker
A lot of parents come in mama bear hot and they're like, my kid does no wrong. Everybody else is doing wrong to my child. And I get it. I mean, you send your kid off to school every day and you pray and hope and trust that these people are taking care of your child.
00:06:12
Speaker
walking in with that mentality and not like the responsibility taken on the child part, that's the struggle because I sit here and I preach it all day to the kids. Like it's okay to make a mistake. You made a mistake. We got to make it right. We got to apologize. We got to learn from it and move forward. And then you call the parent and they're like, no, this happened. And this is why they're doing this. And you know, and that part is I struggle with because I get it. I understand where you're coming from, but you know,
00:06:43
Speaker
responsibility needs to be taken on both ends. It's hard. It's a hard balance. Like you said, they just come in and they're their mom and they care about their kids or dad, either one. And how do you get them to see your side as the educator? It's a constant battle until they trust you. Once they trust you, I think it's easy. But getting that trust is definitely, definitely the hard part. So I've asked a lot of people this.
00:07:14
Speaker
I don't know that there is a right answer, but when you go from being a teacher to being an administrator, how difficult is it to sit back and basically wonder, why can't they do what I do? Or why can't they teach how I used to teach? How hard is that for you? That is hard. That is hard.
00:07:37
Speaker
I don't know, this job can become your life. Sometimes you have to set that boundary of this is just a job, but you're so important. You're so important to these kids every single day.
00:07:53
Speaker
I think sometimes it's hard for, I don't know, us to see the whole picture of it, like that these kids need you too, but also have time for yourself and also like your kids at home need you as well, like that balance of it. But yeah, it's hard. It's hard to be so passionate about something and then walk into the classroom and this person is so negative and they are just not, you know, they're just so frustrated or done. They've had it to here or they can't take it anymore.
00:08:22
Speaker
Have you found it hard, though, to see, like, when someone isn't teaching as well as you did? I assume I was never in your classroom, but I assume you see someone. So Shawna was on last week at Thompson and Shawna and I talk about all the time how she has a hard time being patient with people getting up to where she was. Have you found that difficult as the AP as well coming out of the classroom? Yeah, definitely. But I like
00:08:50
Speaker
I don't get to be in the classrooms that much. I swear I try, but it's like the behaviors that takes my whole day. Obviously, we have to do the evaluation process and all that, but I would love to do more of that, being in there and coaching them, but I totally know what you mean. It's like, hey, just try this, this, and this and it'll work, but sometimes people get stuck in their ways and they want to do what they've always done and they don't want to try that.
00:09:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's hard. You know, if you get if you get people who are, you know, just kind of burnout, tired, over everything you throw in this year, the district. Totally. And that makes the world a difference, truly. Yeah. So your struggle is, you're trying to get people to teach as well as you did.
00:09:38
Speaker
assuming that you were great, which I do. And then you're trying to motivate them and push them and then they're like, I don't want to do this. It's not passionate right now. And then if you throw parents in there who are mean to them or students who are tough, it's a tough job. Yeah, absolutely.
00:09:57
Speaker
And it could consume your whole life. You're laying in bed at night thinking about all the ways you need to do this, this and this to try to help this kid. And, you know, it's hard. It's for sure hard. Do you find that I don't know how much extra work you do at night? Of course, you always thinking. But I found lately, I feel like especially the past few years, the paperwork and the amount of other stuff is getting worse.
Balancing Fun and Academics
00:10:21
Speaker
And so I find myself working more at home. Yeah, you found that as as AP.
00:10:25
Speaker
Absolutely. Absolutely. I can't get all the paperwork done in a day. Like my Friday, I did back to back to back behavior all day long. And then I didn't get to put anything in infinite campus. I was just with kids all day long, back to back to back, and then lunch duty for two hours. But Friday was Rock Your School Day, so you didn't get to have fun?
00:10:47
Speaker
Oh, I, I tried. I tried to have fun. We just, it was a full moon. I think, I don't know. I was waiting to see her out. Ours is this Friday. Oh, I can't wait. What are you dressing as?
00:11:02
Speaker
Are you going to keep it a secret? Yeah, I gotta keep it a secret in case anyone in case any parents listen. I have no kids listen. But anyways, it'll be cool. We got it all planned out. But do you find it hard to balance the fun versus the academic?
00:11:21
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. There's not enough time in the day, you know? And even our whole model, work hard, be kind, have fun. It's like we preach this all day. We're going to work so hard in class so we can have these fun times.
00:11:34
Speaker
We don't have enough time. Do you find if you I don't know how many you know what schools you follow or you know friends that you have. Do you feel like I feel like it's a hard balance between doing fun things like rock your school day or room transformations or whatever. And then
00:11:52
Speaker
Making sure that it is still rigorous and that you're still learning things It's you know, you can have like we have a house system. We have rock your school day. We have Fat-head assemblies. We got a lot and you're taking days from the teachers for those activities But yet they're still expected to perform right? Do you do you see that struggle as well? Totally and do you have do you have like clubs after school? We do we have a lot of clubs we have I mean
00:12:21
Speaker
That's awesome. I hope that like with those extra opportunities too that kids get you know this just extra little but you know there's some kids that can't come can't make it you know right but it is hard it's definitely hard to balance that for sure it is what do you
00:12:40
Speaker
If you can make one change just in the assistant principal role, you're usually, habitually, you're responsible for testing and bullying. But if you could change the AP role somehow, what might you suggest to anybody that has any power? That's a really good question.
Workload as Assistant Principal
00:13:01
Speaker
Or do you just like it the way it is? You're completely good with your role and your thing.
00:13:06
Speaker
It's just a lot. It's a lot for one person. I was so grateful. I always say, Jeff bought me Scott Rivera by another AP because I don't know how I did it before. There's just too much to do in a day. I mean, sometimes me and Rivera don't even see each other. We're like ships passing because we are behavior this, that, running around everywhere.
00:13:29
Speaker
I just feel like the workload is too much. And I don't know how you did it. You did it without an AP, didn't you? Yeah, I did. How? How did you do that? You walk fast and you prioritize a lot. Gee. So those sort of things. And then the paperwork part too, I get the purpose of it. If I ever got sued, this paperwork would be there for me. It's important to have, but it takes hours.
00:13:56
Speaker
Yeah, I was talking to my supervisor today, and I was telling her like, I hate paperwork. Yeah. And we kind of concluded that the vast majority of it has no ROI. But it's just all compliance. And that just drives me crazy because it's not what it, the job isn't what it used to be. No. You used to be able to help people a lot more instead of doing all this stuff. But you keep talking about behaviors.
00:14:24
Speaker
In your opinion, why are there more behaviors than back when we started? That's a good question, too. Well, I mean, I ask good questions. It's just all speculation. That's okay.
Impact of the Pandemic on Students
00:14:40
Speaker
It's your opinion. That's a higher order, higher order Bloomsburg there. So your opinion? I don't know. Maybe. I don't know.
00:14:47
Speaker
See, I have nothing to compare this to. So I have my own classroom, and then I got hired in the midst of COVID. And so this is all I've ever known. And it's been pretty consistent for the past three years that I've been an assistant principal. But I don't know if it has to do with COVID and not getting our kids out as much when they were younger to socialize or
00:15:10
Speaker
or if it's the economic stuff and parents having to work multiple jobs and not being able to spend as much time with their kids and leaving them to their own devices of just watching YouTube and TikTok and all that stuff. But a majority of the kids that come in my office, I know are doing things that they saw on YouTube or they're saying things that they've heard on TikTok and it's like,
00:15:35
Speaker
I'm fighting a battle I can't win because I can't take those things away from them when they get home. Do you have any kind of, this might be just something that you and Jeff have said, but where do you draw the line on, say, knock it off, get back to class versus I'm calling your parents?
00:15:57
Speaker
I struggle day to day with things that I deem as ultra important. You know, it's, it's harder now because there's so much. I mean, if you wanted to, if you want to send kids home for saying a bad word on the playground, you could do it all day, every day. Totally, totally. So as, as you know, as you look at your job, or at barber, where do you all kind of draw the line?
00:16:22
Speaker
That's funny you asked that because I think this is one of my biggest struggles when I first started is like, so Jeff Granger is a Dean. So it's like cut and dry as a Dean. You mess up, you go home, right? Like that's not, so.
00:16:37
Speaker
when I first got here, it was like, you try to understand where they're coming from, what made them do that. And then you start to feel like, oh, you know, like, they're, that's just, they're gonna do better next time. Like, this is why they did it, you know, so I think I struggle with this a little bit. But Rivera and I kind of got to the understanding of if they
00:16:57
Speaker
are not habitually in trouble. We'll let those little things slide. Maybe we do a quick little restorative justice with my awesome counselor or something, but we let it consequence moving on maybe something little here at school, like, I don't know, missing recess, which I know that's not a big no-no, but it doesn't happen often.
00:17:16
Speaker
But then the big thing is the kids who are getting in trouble all the time are really struggling with behavior. That's when we take it to that next level. And also, we have this thing where if kids don't tell us the truth, then when we always tell them, we're going to double your consequence because now you've wasted my time and I have to go do this, this, and this. If you just owned it, we could have just fixed it and moved on.
00:17:40
Speaker
I had a fifth grader once, sorry, who used to literally come up to me and just be like, Ms. Mack, I just punched somebody in the face. I'm like, okay, let's go figure it out. I love that because I can work with that. I can fix that. But if kids are denying, denying, denying, they're not taking accountability and I'm trying to make them do that and it's just harder. Yeah, I hate when I have to hunt people down and go with our house system and the Thompson 10 plus one.
00:18:09
Speaker
being
Importance of Life Skills in Curriculum
00:18:10
Speaker
honest, exhibiting honesty is one of them. So if they do that, then I'll just give them a house point right then. And so then I'm reinforcing being honest, but then okay, now we got to deal with now going to deal with the actual I have a question for you. Go ahead.
00:18:24
Speaker
So I think one of the biggest bummers about school nowadays is that this is not explicitly taught. There is not a class on honesty and integrity and perseverance and all these things that we find valued, right? I mean, we get creative and try to find ways to teach it in other places, but how do you teach it at your school?
00:18:45
Speaker
So we do we try to do it through what we have our house system. And we have what's called the Thompson 10 plus one. So there's essentially 10 ways that you can earn a house point. And within that, there's, there's things that revolve around growth mindset or being a successful human.
00:19:02
Speaker
Many years ago, I went to a conference in New Orleans, and I listened to a guy named Ross Green, and he was talking about the seven ways to raise successful adults. And one of them was teach them to be honest, you know, teach them to show up on time, all those things. So I was like, okay, this is great. How do I get this into a school? And then a week later, I was at Ron Clark Academy, and I was walking down a hallway and then a TV that had house points.
00:19:31
Speaker
And I was like, that's it. Yeah. So then we took, we started the house system at Smith. And within that you earn your house points by being honest or other ways that you're successful. And it's just adapted over time.
00:19:47
Speaker
It works well because the way we have the house system set up is when at the end of the semester, the winner gets to go on the field trip. So they get some intrinsic value out of it. But it's just ultimately reinforcing those skills over and over and over again that that works. I've actually thought about.
00:20:05
Speaker
As we get bigger, I've thought about having a special that basically teaches SEL and teaches life skills and all that. And I might go that way in the future, but it's really, really hard. And I think with society kind of moving the way it is, it's even more difficult to get them to take responsibility for their actions and things of that nature.
00:20:27
Speaker
And I just feel like these things are so important, even for the kids to be ready to learn any academics, because if this isn't turmoil, if they're being awful to each other, and, you know, it's sad hearing kids say things like, you know, I had to shave my, you know, my, my hair on my arms because kids were making fun of my arm hair. And I'm like, no.
00:20:47
Speaker
Who don't do that? Why are we doing this? That's not okay. It's sad that the society is getting to where social pressures, it's probably already been there from when we were younger, but now you can see things online and they take all of that so literally. I know. If you have arm hair, you're here. Yes, pumping, yeah.
00:21:11
Speaker
So we're fighting the, we're fighting the social media, which makes our job way more difficult. Oh my gosh, I know. You, um, you, I don't know, it was years ago. I did a podcast with Abby back in the day where I was talking about not slowing the high kids down. Yes. And you text me and you're like, this is my favorite episode ever.
00:21:36
Speaker
Sorry, it was probably really late, too. It's okay. It's okay.
Challenges in Student Differentiation
00:21:40
Speaker
I always appreciate the feedback. Now, I have had some teachers who do not like that statement. Why do you like it and agree with it?
00:21:51
Speaker
Well, I just feel like we're doing them such a disservice. You know, you've got, let's just, kindergartner, okay? You've got this kindergartner walking into kindergarten, knowing his letter names and letter sounds, but we are making that child sit through instruction of letter name and letter sound when they already have that mastered. It's just, you know, and then this is the behaviors that we start to see with those kids too, because they're bored. And you know, it's hard. I totally understand where teachers are coming from.
00:22:21
Speaker
Now I not only have to create one lesson, but I need to create a lesson for my high kids, a lesson for my on grade level kids, a lesson for my below. And then I have to implement that in the classroom all while keeping the others busy. It's so hard, but it's so important. It's so important. It is. And some people, I think people under, well,
00:22:44
Speaker
I think some people understand what I'm getting at or what you're saying, and it is just really difficult to plan for all of that. But then you look at the way the district's going now with HMH or Envisioned, and it's so opposite of what I believe and what I believe you believe, and it's really, really frustrating.
00:23:10
Speaker
So one of the things that drives me nuts, and second grade knows this, I walk in, they should know it, I've said it before, I walk in and they have a whole group following this lesson. It could be K1 or 2, just like you just said. Well, if there's a kid that's reading a sixth grade level, do they really need to sit through that lesson on
00:23:31
Speaker
on the, no. So then I think, oh, okay, we're slowing the high kids down again. We're wasting their time. I often want to, I can't do this, but I would like to have a staff development day where I say, okay, everybody, today we're gonna set up Instagram accounts. The people who are already Instafamous are gonna be like, why are we doing this? And the people who don't have it will be like, okay. And I'm just gonna go step by step. Okay, one, go to instagram.com.
00:24:00
Speaker
and try to make them understand that way. Hey, that's really cool.
00:24:05
Speaker
Cause you have the tech savvy people who already have an Instagram be like whizzes and the other is like, you know. Yeah, but I'm not gonna let them have their phones. I'm going to do like a direct construction lesson on it where they have to sit through and watch me log on and make sure that you don't have the caps on. I can't, I hate to get that explicit with it, but I don't understand why people
00:24:34
Speaker
can't get the concept. Does that make sense? I completely understand why they don't do it because it's a lot of work and it takes a lot of planning. But I don't understand why they can't grasp that concept. I know. I mean, maybe it's the like, what if there was an explicit time to teach that? I mean, because, you know, a wall and I come from literally homogeneous grouping across the board. So it was like 30 minute of heterogeneous reading. The rest was power hour. So switching between groups.
00:25:03
Speaker
And then math was completely homogeneous. And we did this all the way from kindergarten on, you know, but, you know, we're starting a little bit of that here. And, um, my teacher walked to read. Yeah, it was called walk to read. And my teachers are incredible, like incredible. But I do, I get pushed back because it's like,
00:25:25
Speaker
you come from a different kind of school. So it may have worked up there, but it's not going to work here. Or like, when do we have the time to do this, this, this, and this? And I get it. I get it. But yeah, I wonder often your walk to read or we call IE blocks. Some teachers do IE blocks, intervention enrichment.
00:25:51
Speaker
I think one of the challenge of that is I'm giving my kids to a colleague that I don't trust. Yes. And I get that. That's hard. I get that. We've all had that. We've all had a great little colleague. You're like, ah, keep my kids. I think I can do that. Right. You just hurt her. I know. That's true. That's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah. So it's just fascinating to me. Again, I understand the work component. But then we also have things like ExactPath. So hypothetically, if the kid doesn't need OR or make sure they don't need OR,
00:26:20
Speaker
Okay, Leanna, you don't need OR, go to exact bath. Right. So then you're not slowing them down, but for some reason, maybe it's control, maybe it's classroom management, but they don't want to let the kids go.
00:26:34
Speaker
I mean, at the end of the day, their grade book is going to reflect, you know, I get that part of it too. Like if Sally is failing and reading and half of her time is spent with so and so, it's not all on me, it's only, you know, but that's where that mentality of like all these kids are our kids.
00:26:51
Speaker
every single kid in this grade level is my kid. I agree with you. We agree on a lot of things. I just don't know how we can get everybody else. I know. We struggle with this. I've struggled with every school with this because you can get
00:27:07
Speaker
can get the vast majority of people swimming in the right direction, but sometimes they want to swim over here alone. They're trying to go in the right way, but they're not really going with the group. It's a constant struggle. You're like, I use the Golden Knights all the time. They're all going for the same thing. They're all trying to do the same thing. So why can't we in education do that? But then you go to the flip side. Okay. Well, we're all going to go in the same direction with HMH.
00:27:37
Speaker
Which, why are we covering eight standards in one unit though? So my guess, my guess is they have found that many people aren't covering more than one at a time. Therefore, they're not getting through all of them in a year. And that is therefore causing scores to be low. That's my guess.
00:28:00
Speaker
Now you also get the people that would say, well, you can't just teach in isolation and then just forget about it. So the program has then spiral, spiral back and put more in there. I can understand that. My problem is I just don't like, I don't like the pacing of it. I feel like it's just really slow from what I've seen.
00:28:21
Speaker
and I don't like programs. I mean, I've made that very clear. I think we need to teach teachers to use whatever they need to teach the standards and then make them better at spiraling back or hitting different topics when they're teaching. If you're doing a read aloud and you have covered character traits, just throw something in there real quickly, even though you might be doing setting. Right. That makes sense.
00:28:50
Speaker
It just doesn't match our grade book, right? So each standard is explicitly separate in the grade book. So you can't assess kids on eight standards and then put it in the, so that doesn't mesh. And then. Well, they're fine too. They're fine too. Like if you assess, um, maybe a standard that has two problems and they get only one, right. Then the fifties going into the grade book and it's tanking the rest of the grades because of the way it's weighted. Right.
00:29:17
Speaker
Or I remember going through trainings when I first started, we were using the basal verbatim. And then we moved to this whole standard-based instruction. This analogy, they kept saying, we want them to dig deep, right? Not be surface level. We want them to be masters on the standard. How can you do that, though, if we just sprinkle it in? I mean, they may become masters. And what? Mastery by the end of the year? Fine. But how do we measure that?
00:29:47
Speaker
if we're just sprinkling in. Another challenge. Another challenge. Teaching's hard. It is. Teaching's hard. There's so much. And then you have me saying, don't slow the high kids down. Do this, do that. They do. It's a fun time. What do you have them do in the classroom to meet the needs of the high kids? So that's the struggle for a lot of them. So I had this debate with a teacher at Thompson a lot. She believes that third grade, she'll know what I'm talking about.
00:30:17
Speaker
They just need to go deep, deep, deep. They got to be able to do third grade and third grade well. Well, okay. Understandable. But what if they do fifth grade, like what if they're past third grade and they know everything? Well, then that's, you know, you can't slow them down that way. So it's really just difficult because as a third grade teacher at the end of the year, they got to pass the third grade aspect. Right.
00:30:39
Speaker
But when you throw a map in there, they got to grow everybody. Right. So third, fourth and fifth have that that conundrum about what do I do? What do I do? And they have to balance using the exact path or we have accelerated reader reading Trailblazers to challenge the high kids in order to fill in the gaps up here. Then you also hope that they can use
00:31:04
Speaker
use like Bloom's vocabulary or use different things such as, you know, for this group, you go write a different ending to the story. Right.
00:31:13
Speaker
Or when I was in fourth grade, I would have the students that knew it and I would say, you're gonna go build a city. You need to have this many vertices, this many squares. This one needs to have an area of 25, go. And you would just let them do their thing. But again, that takes time, effort, planning. And I think in today's world, teachers are just so burned out with everything else that is difficult. It is.
00:31:40
Speaker
It is. And you can, I just, you know, the, I, the kids that were in my high group, they were not masters of anything until they were able to teach it to somebody else. You can even take those standards and make them like become the teacher of that standard. And you're still within the grade level, you know, you're just pushing them a little further. Like you said, applying it to something else. Now you have to build something. Yeah. It's just, it's just hard to let that. It's so easy to say, everybody do this worksheet.
00:32:10
Speaker
Yeah. Everyone do this worksheet. Yeah. That's true. When do you, um, I don't know if when, cause I don't, do you have aspirations of being a principal? Do you want to get in the pool? Uh, and if not, why not? Well,
00:32:29
Speaker
I am I always tell Jeff this like I want to be a master at this position like never gonna be ready. You just no matter how much you understand you're never gonna be ready. He said the same thing but I just like you know how I don't know I hate to admit this but sometimes you were like about to walk into a situation and you get a little bit of that anxiety all the time.
00:32:52
Speaker
I don't want that anymore. I just want to be so confident in knowing what I'm going to do with that. I hate to tell you this, but you're always going to have it. John and I, we've been talking lately about how I don't like when I have that feeling of how this is going to go. I don't know what to do. I don't like it, but I mean, this is like year 18 of this stuff and I still get that. Do you? That makes me feel better. Yeah. Okay, good. Yeah, because you just never know how things are going to turn out. You think you do, but what if?
00:33:20
Speaker
what if? And then, you know, you get a really serious situation where, you know, maybe it's a child protective thing or, you know, weapon thing and you're like, Oh, I don't know. What do I do? So I don't think that ever goes away. So you guys take that excuse away. So what else is holding you back from? Well, part of me is like, we're so I'm like, you're 13. So like, we're,
00:33:48
Speaker
Where else do I, I mean, I guess I become a principal and then what I'm a principal for 17 years. Like, well, are you, are you have, you know, a sparkling record and you take over and become an assistant soup
Future Aspirations and Need for Educators
00:34:00
Speaker
and help everybody else at a bigger level? I don't know. I mean, I'm open to it. I'm not totally against it. I just, I've, I keep feeling like I want to handle more stuff and have more experience and no more.
00:34:16
Speaker
I'm trying to learn all the front office stuff too as much as I can. There's so many things. You have to be a million and one people in one day.
00:34:26
Speaker
therapist, mom, like everything in one day. But I think that's where you have to trust your people. I mean, there's certainly things that I don't know, but I trust Shauna or the ladies in the office. And if I don't, then I call you or Jeff or other people. Yeah, you have your people to call. Yeah, because you forget things. I mean, once a year, I feel like I ask you how to put something in the infinite campus.
00:34:52
Speaker
I love it. Other than the fact that you don't think you know everything, what else is holding you back?
00:35:03
Speaker
You know, you talked about this in the last podcast with Shana, but I am terrified of like the scary things that could happen at a school, you know, and it being all on you and it is all I mean, now anyway, like, it's not like it's all on him. It's all of us, especially with AP is being in charge of the safety stuff. But that stuff scares me. You know, my kids are still little. So that may be part of it. I think that one works. I mean, that's a decent one because you don't want to
00:35:32
Speaker
Um, you don't want to take away from them as well. Yeah. And when you're principle, I probably, uh, I don't want to say that there's more work. I think it's just different work in a lot of ways. Um, you have to be on call all the time, huh? Like, well, yeah, but
00:35:51
Speaker
Yeah, but I mean, I just think you just, again, it comes back to just trusting the people that do it. That's where I get frustrated is when I trust people to just do stuff. And then, then something goes haywire. And I'm like, ah, why? You're like, why? Right, right. Yeah. All right, last question. All right, so I ask this people all the time. Overall, when you look at the district of the state, if you could change one thing about education, what would you change? Oh, my goodness.
00:36:23
Speaker
That is a good question. One thing I would change. I just want quality people here for the kids and a lot of them. I want a lot of them. I want to make a difference by having enough people here to do all of these things that these kids need.
00:36:45
Speaker
Yeah, so like you're no different than a lot of us is. If there was people lined up that were good, I think it would make things better. You have, you know, if you could just, if you knew that you lost a teacher, but oh, great teacher is just right there, they'd be hired. Right. That would make things different. I know. And you, you recently lost a teacher, right? Was one moved somewhere else? And like now you have to go through the whole process of finding someone or just a long-term sub sits in there, you know? Yeah.
00:37:14
Speaker
And hopefully you have a long term stuff that you know is really good, but if sometimes you don't, and it's just, and it's that adds a whole nother element to my job. Cause now I'm like having to, you know, make sure that this person is doing what they're supposed to be doing too. And, and you know, I just, and along with that, teachers need to be paid what they're, what they earn as well. And they need to feel valued as well so that they, I can ask them to do these things and it's not so,
00:37:43
Speaker
you know, so like I'm asking for so much, you know? Right, so. Well, I appreciate you being one of the most loyal, biggest fans of the podcast. I am! And everything else, and hopefully you'll come back on sometime, but even though you agree with me, in the end. It's all about perspective. All right, MacBook Frank, thanks so much, and I'll have you back on sometime. Thank you.