Cool Coffee 2 - Dr. Todd Dain - Shawnee Mission South HS

Dr. Todd Dain, principal of Shawnee Mission South High School and 2023 NASSP Principal of the Year, discusses school culture and the intentional efforts he makes to bring in new staff members at the start of the year. 

00:00 Introduction and Welcome to Cool Coffee

01:08 Dr. Todd Dain's Journey to Becoming a Principal

05:39 The Power of Building Relationships in Education

14:52 Onboarding New Staff Members: Understanding Student Backgrounds

18:29 Creating a Positive and Supportive School Culture

25:20 Being a New Principal: What to Be Tight On and What to Be Loose On

26:53 Shawnee Mission South High School: A Strong Culture of Diversity

27:57 Closing Remarks and Future of Cool Coffee

(FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW)

Connect with today's guest: ToddDain@smsd.org  

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The mission of the Kansas Principals Association, an organization committed to educational excellence and the lifelong success of all students, is to develop and support all principals through optimized learning, collaborative leadership, networking, and service.

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TRANSCRIPT

Rick Sola (00:02)
All right, good morning as it is here July 19th. I'm sitting here with Dr. Todd Dain of Shawnee Mission South High School, USD 512, home of the Raiders. And Dr. Dain, this is kind of the first of these podcasts. You are the guinea pig, as I was just sharing with you. I really appreciate you being here. Welcome to Cool Coffee.

Dr. Todd Dain (00:29)
Cool coffee, I love it. I'm excited to launch this thing and really just grow our network of school leaders here in Kansas.

Rick Sola (00:40)
Well, that is the goal and Cool Coffee has kind of a, I guess a double meaning. Hopefully it's a good podcast and something people want to listen to. I thought of Cool Coffee because so many times in our job, by the time we get to our coffee, it's cooled off a little bit. you brew it and you put it down and then things happen and you get back to it it's a little bit cool. So hopefully we'll have a lot of fun on this podcast.

I don't wanna take up too much of your time. I know you're super busy. You just got back in town. You're part of what I'd like to do as we talk to different principals across the state is I'm really interested in hearing everybody's road to the chair, you know, and it's so vast. And just in a quick nutshell, can you share just a little bit about your road to the chair you're in right now?

Dr. Todd Dain (01:35)
Yeah, absolutely it seems like it's been a long road now, but you know started out as a teacher obviously and and Was a teacher in Shawnee mission and began kind of exploring

my path towards my masters. And at the time I was teaching and coaching at Shawnee Mission West High School and my good friend and colleague, Steve Shelton said, hey, we need to get our masters. Let's get an administration. If we ever want to stop teaching and coaching, that gives us another option. so he got me to buy in and I did my masters and became part of the career advancement program in Shawnee Mission School District back in the 90s and went forward there and was an

football coach and then had an opportunity to become the head football coach at Shawnee Mission East High School and interestingly enough I was 26 -27 years old at the time and our superintendent Dr. Marsh Kaplan came to me and she said well Todd we're real excited that you're gonna be our head football coach at Shawnee Mission East but we really wanted you to be a principal and I said okay.

I appreciate that. She says, you sure you don't want to be a principal right now? And I said, Dr. Kaplan, I'm 26 years old. I still want to teach. I still want to coach. I still have a passion for those things and want to take an opportunity to complete my goals in that area. And she came right back to me and she says, well, just know that we won't ask again. And if you know Dr. Kaplan, that's just kind of the way she was.

And I dove into that and was the head football coach at Shawnee Mission East for three years. And then I had an opportunity to open Latham Northwest High School and was head football coach there. And later on became the head track coach at Latham Northwest as well and did that for 10 years. And Dr. Gwen Posse was our principal there. And I owe a lot of my career to Gwen and her leadership along the way. She's mentored a lot of leaders through the process for sure. And we got to a point and she kind of.

had an opportunity for me, she set me down, she said, Todd, what do you want to be when you grow up?

And I said, I know the plan is to become an administrator. And she created a position for me. And it was administrator and working with student services, maybe the AP coordinator driving all the assessments, working with the SIT team, driving the 504s and all the pieces with that. And my first reaction was like, Gwen, this is out of my wheelhouse. I don't know anything about these things. And she goes,

She looked at me in the eyes, she says, I'm preparing you to be a building principal. And it was the best thing for me because I learned all of those things in the fire. And that was an opportunity for me to grow. so from there, I became a assistant principal and activities director of Blue Valley Southwest High School. And I had an opportunity to learn from Scott Roberts, who's a dynamic leader in that school district and good friend and got a phone call.

Later on, said, Todd, we have a principal position open at Shawnee Mission South High School. We think that you would be a good candidate. You should apply.

And long story short, I did and interviewed and 10 years later I'm still here. So that's the pathway to my chair. And it's kind of unique because I was a teacher for nearly 20 years and coach for 20 years. And a lot of administrators don't spend that much time in the classroom. So I'd like to think that I still have a pretty good heart for what teachers feel and see every day in the classroom. sometimes

Rick Sola (05:10)
It's awesome.

Dr. Todd Dain (05:30)
building principals or working with folks at the district level, it seems like a lot of those folks forget what it's like to be a classroom teacher in the trenches.

Rick Sola (05:39)
Yeah, that's awesome. You mentioned early on your conversation. Tell me that name with your buddy that you're 26 or whatever. Like, let's go get a master's degree. and, know, I. OK, and I can really. I can relate to that so much of just having the opportunity like, well, let's go, we got to get a master's, let's go get it. Well, might as well be in something we can maybe apply and have a have later. And I like to think of

Dr. Todd Dain (05:50)
Yes, Steve Stilton. Steve Schilt. Yeah.

Rick Sola (06:09)
throughout our careers, we build little doors and you may use them, you may not, but certainly that makes a lot of sense. And it's always fun at that time to go through with someone through those programs when you're young and all that. You mentioned O and W football and just a quick personal connection between Dr. Dain and I, my very first job in education.

Dr. Todd Dain (06:22)
Yeah.

Rick Sola (06:35)
was the assistant baseball coach at Olathe Northwest. And that's how I, that's when I met you for the first time. And I still remember, I remember I told you, and this isn't like an earth shattering impact or, or not so much impact, but influence. But I still remember you were the football head football coach and going over there for, I think it was spring conditioning. And I'm, just as green as green could be in the education world. I had a coaching job before I got the teaching job and I'm over

And I remember you going through, you had all the guys in the weight room and you were teaching them exactly what your expectations for them in the weight room and specifically the collars on the bars. And you went through, it goes here, not here, boom, not here, boom. And it just, it kind of resonated or stuck with me because I'm like, it was very clear and concise. Your expectations were so crystal clear because I was kind of in a mindset, it's like,

Dr. Todd Dain (07:14)
yeah.

Rick Sola (07:31)
you know, clean up after yourselves and that's good. Well, no, it wouldn't have been good enough. But it got us stuck with me. It's like, know, how sometimes explicit we need to be. But it was fun. It was just very, very early in my career. you know, had some impactful moments with the early Mr. Dain at that point. So. So, you know, I know you've been super busy. been out of town.

Dr. Todd Dain (07:53)
Yeah.

Rick Sola (08:00)
and with with NASSP principle of the year from from them as well. But what were you doing in Nashville here just this week?

Dr. Todd Dain (08:13)
Yeah, so it's really been a year of lot of learning for me. I had an opportunity that really started with Kansas Principles Association and USA Kansas. Really got voluntold to do a lot of things and I went out of my comfort zone and said yes.

And I said yes two or three times and got involved at the state level and then had an opportunity to be honored with the 2023 Kansas Principal of the Year and that opened up some other doors for me. so I served the last year as USA Kansas President and learned a lot about state advocacy and the legislative platform there. And then continued to

get involved with NASSP, with the Principal of the Year Leadership Network and the recognition program with NASSP. then I was asked to apply for the NASSP board of directors. I applied and interviewed and just last week was announced as a new member of the NASSP board of directors. So it's been kind of a whirlwind learning a lot of these new.

opportunities and meeting a lot of people. And last week we were in Nashville for the NASSP, NAESP United Conference with over 4 ,000 principals from across the nation. And the board of directors was a big part of that piece and had an opportunity to share a couple of times and speak to an exciting audience. And those are opportunities that I relish. But the main thing is

You meet so many tremendous dynamic leaders from schools everywhere. And you learn so much from those connections. And all of the great ideas I think that I use, I stole from somebody else. And it's that network, it's the connection that has helped me the most in my journey.

Rick Sola (10:26)
Yeah, that's awesome. You know, last time I saw you was about a month and a half ago at the USA, Kansas. And, you know, this is my first year finishing my first year with KPA. And that's I have just enjoyed so much just the connecting with with principals from all over the state and having having those conversations where we're so similar and what we do every day. But it's so different in the scope. And it's just it's been awesome.

Dr. Todd Dain (10:54)
Yeah, and the one thing that I feel real strongly about, and I really just connected with NASSP, is that a lot of times building principles, especially principles in large districts like Olathe and Shawnee Mission, principles in large district oftentimes feel like what we do as educational leaders just stays in our building.

And that's the only thing we have to worry about. But the power is this, that I was really inspired over the last week, controversial week with everything that's happening in our world. But the reality is our schools are the most stable places in our society right now. And as building principals, we have the power to leverage that voice.

at a higher level. it's a difficult thing because, and my wife's a superintendent and I say this with as much affection as possible, but a lot of times principals are delegated to sit at the kids table.

and don't get to make decisions, and don't get to share their voice, and don't get to share their perspective. But the building principles are the ones that really make things happen. And NASSP is all about elevating that voice from the.

building principle to be able to change education and move education forward in our country. And I think that's an important message that a lot of principals that I talk to and I share opportunities with them and they say, Todd, that's above my pay grade. I'm here to tell you it's not. And building principles are the ones that make things happen and...

know, as building principals, we need to be trust willing with our teams. But I think it's also equally important that those superintendents are trust willing and willing to trust their building principals to share their platform and share their perspective.

Rick Sola (13:00)
Yeah, I like that. we talk a lot about how schools really are that place for kids. We don't know what they're coming from, from their home or whatnot. But school, it needs to be that predictable place and that place of safety and all those things. And that's a really good point. We are heading into election year and different things. And the emotions.

you know, all over both sides, all the things at home, it gets brought into our buildings and that's where our job is. It's so valuable, important, but it can also be a lot of fun in there too, in connecting with kids. So yeah, I love that you brought that up. You were down there and I know you presented your culture wins. And I've seen that, I saw that I think at KPA Conference back in November.

Loved it really, really good. And I know you've gone around talking a little bit just about your philosophy. And I mentioned earlier, it's July 19th. Not sure when it's going to get flipped out, but July 19th, we are staring down the start of the school year. There's a lot of preparation and I'm really interested as part of your culture wins. And I see so much activity from not just you, but so many of your staff members on Twitter. mean, there's just so many things going on and that's an intentional.

culture piece that you've got going on there. I don't know how many new staff members you have joining Shiny Mission South this year, but what does it look like to bring in the new staff? They don't know Shiny Mission South. Maybe they've been following you a little bit. And then how do you bring them into the Shiny Mission South culture and kind of do that for your newest educators?

Dr. Todd Dain (14:52)
Yeah, I think it begins with the hiring process and everyone's experiencing teacher shortage all over the place.

But I think it really begins in the hiring process. And the one thing that we are solid on through that process, every time we have a building interview with my team, we go through our process and the questions and the answers and our rubric and the tool. And at the end of that interview, when we escort our candidate out and we possibly give them a tour of the building, we come back as a team, as an interview team, and I ask the question.

Do you believe that this candidate loves kids?

And if the team says, yes, we believe they love kids, then we're moving forward with them. But if the team, if anybody on the team says, well, maybe, I think so maybe, then for us it's a no. And we move on to the next candidate or we find an in -building sub to get her done.

It really starts with that hiring process and making sure that the people that we bring to our culture are going to love kids, because that's what our culture is. It's about ensuring that every child will learn and every child will have multiple opportunities to demonstrate their learning. And that's the foundation of our culture and the relationship.

I was just up on our third floor. know not many of you maybe have been in our building, but we kind of have an academic tower with most of our core classrooms are in. on the third floor, I walked up to the third floor. And as I walked around the third floor, there's only three teachers out of 25 that I had not hired.

And so as a building principles and principles know, it's so crucial when you can bring in your people and the people that you select and sift through to help grow your culture. And then it just builds over itself. the one thing that we really strive on is the relationship between our adults and our young people. But as we bring in new teachers,

as we bring in new staff members, then it becomes imperative that we build those relationships together. Joe SanFilippo says, never underestimate the power of a staff that truly cares about one another.

And so that's one of the things that is a part of our culture. And so we try to build that family atmosphere and that culture around what we believe here at China Mission South. it's all about relationships. And that's the one thing that I share over and over again.

That's an interview question. For those that may be listening out there, you know that's going to be an interview question when you interview for a principal job or assistant principal job or whatever it is. How do you build relationships? The answer to that question is you build relationships one at a time. And that's the only way to really build deep relationships, positive relationships with

Adults with adults and adults with young people is one at a time. And so we spend our onboarding time with new staff trying to leverage those relationships one at a time with one another.

Rick Sola (18:29)
When you're new staff and I'm sure ours started a few days earlier than everyone else, what are some of those intentional things that you do with them when they're, you know, maybe they're the 20 year educator you've gotten or maybe it's the, just graduated in May and here we go. What can they expect when they walk in the door for the first day at Shawnee Mission

Dr. Todd Dain (18:53)
Yeah, the very first day. We actually started this my very first year 10 years ago now. Wow, 10 years ago now at Shiny Mission South. I started this the very first day when we brought in new teachers.

specifically we rented a charter bus, charter school bus, and we took our new teachers on the bus and we drove them to every neighborhood in our attendance area. We drove them to every elementary school. We talked about the demographics and Shawnee Mission South is very unique. We have families in Leewood that live in four million dollar homes and then we have families on the west side of our attendance area that are homeless and we're over

30 % free and reduced students. have title elementary schools in our district. so the diversity is really significant. And so we put them on the charter bus. We do a driving tour of our attendance area. So our new teachers know all the neighborhoods in our attendance area. And so they have that mental picture. They have that understanding of the students that are going to walk through the door on the first day. And they understand where they live, where they come from, all those. I think that's an important piece. And then after we did

at Shawnee Mission South, the district kind of took that over the next year and started doing it with all the high schools and the high school attendance areas. And so that's what we'll do on the first day with new teachers. We'll have a charter bus with air conditioning and a microphone and we go around and all of the elementary principals join us and kind of talk about their schools and talk about their elementary neighborhoods and what that's all about. And that's an important piece for us. And then, you know, just with the new teachers.

Rick Sola (20:06)
Okay.

Dr. Todd Dain (20:30)
We do onboarding and spend a lot of time at the building level just on our culture and how we support one another and the expectations we have for young people, along with the nuts and bolts of how we do business.

We spend most of the time at the building on boarding with our new teachers and our culture. And then we also do, we do a luncheon with our building leadership team and our new teachers just together and try to connect with our building leaders.

and our new teachers to make sure that they're seen and heard and they know who those building leaders are in our BLT and that's how we start. And then, of course, when the rest of the teachers come back, we spend a lot of time trying to grow those relationships and connect new teachers with veterans along the way.

Rick Sola (21:26)
Yeah, that's awesome. I really like the charter bus idea and that can be so powerful. Yeah, but one of the one of my hopes with this podcast, aside from me personally, because I hope to steal a lot of ideas from talking with people, but is that these ideas are shared here in a medium that can be stolen from all over. You know, I mean, yeah, it's it's it's so basic, but to just take a tour and, you know, the high schools, they have such a vast attendance area like you mentioned.

Dr. Todd Dain (21:46)
That's me.

Rick Sola (21:55)
to be able to see that, know where your kids are coming from. You know, cause a lot of the people we hire, they're not from even Kansas City, know, or they're not from even, you know, Kansas, Missouri. And so, no, I love that. All right. We're going to wrap it up here real quick. I'm going to do some quick hitters, some real quick hitters here. And then I'm going to give you, you're going to, you're going to, you're going to wrap us up with a chance to brag on, your school and your, your district here. So what was the best advice you've ever gotten?

Dr. Todd Dain (22:15)
my best.

Rick Sola (22:25)
as an administrator, either as a principal, new administrator, current. Best advice.

Dr. Todd Dain (22:32)
Well, I think there's a lot of things that you could take away. There's some pieces of advice there. But the best advice is this. As a principal, and this is I tell my team, think fast, act slow.

Think fast, act slow.

And a lot of times when we as administrators get into hiccups, we act too quickly. We respond too quickly to certain scenarios. And it's important to think quickly, process it, go through the decision -making model, work with our team, and then act slowly through the process and be intentional about how we respond.

Rick Sola (23:12)
That's awesome. And I found that to be harder early on because you want to you want to know everything you got to. You're going to project your confidence and that you want confidence. OK, I got an answer right now. Well, sometimes if I did that, I made it. I just made a bigger mess on the back end of things. All right, this might be an easy one, but but I just was made aware of this. a movie is being made about your life. Who's going to play you?

Dr. Todd Dain (23:27)
Correct.

John Cena.

Rick Sola (23:41)
That was brought up at USA Kansas. I never even connected it. And now, now that's all, that's all I can think of. But, but awesome. Yeah. Very good. And Todd, you, you filled out the questionnaire that we, we featured here last year. So I know the answer to this, this question, I think, but what restaurant would you recommend to someone visiting your town, Kansas City

Dr. Todd Dain (24:07)
yeah, so you know when I was in Nashville and meeting new principals from across the country, that's the question they asked me. Hey, if we come to Kansas City, where should we go to eat? I said, well, there's a lot of barbecue places. You can't go wrong with any of the barbecue places. for me, where we're located, we, Q39.

Rick Sola (24:22)
Yeah, Q39. So quick, quick story is that the Royals game a few weeks ago, right in front of me, sat a family from San Diego. They were doing a stadium tour and they asked me, where should we go eat? And I was kind of put on the spot like here I'm a Kansas City and I'm going to represent. was like, well, you've got to go barbecue. And just like you said, you probably can't go wrong. But I mentioned Q39. I mentioned Jack Stack for kind of that downtown experience of barbecue. And then I was thinking.

all the others, Joe's and just everything. And at the end of that, I just hope I represented Kansas City well. I hope they they're not going to make a bad pick, but but definitely high on everyone's There might be I'm hoping this podcast listenership will grow beyond the tens and maybe maybe get bigger. But there might be some first year administrators or someone about to head

Dr. Todd Dain (25:13)
Yeah.

Rick Sola (25:19)
What advice would you give them? And I know I just asked you that, so maybe it's to think fast, act slow. But what would you give them right now, July 19th? Some advice.

Dr. Todd Dain (25:31)
Yeah, think two quick things. Number one, it's all relationships. Don't make any changes. Don't make any changes your first year. It's all relationships. I say that and I did not follow that advice, but it's really about relationships and that's the end all be all. But the other thing I think as a new building principle, and it's different than being an assistant principal. As a new building principal, you have to decide going into it, what are you going to be tight on?

and what are you going to be loose on? And young administrators and new administrators are often those overachievers. Principles are often the overachiever mentality. I think sometimes young or new administrators get into problems when they try to do everything and they try to micromanage everything. And so you can't...

micromanage everything and you can't be tight on everything. But you have to make a decision on what are you going to be tight on and it needs to be just a few things that you're going to be tight on because you can't be tight on everything.

Rick Sola (26:42)
Yeah, that's great. Hey, I know you got to run. I want to give you a chance. Bragg on your school. Tell everybody who's listening. What's so great about Shiny Mission

Dr. Todd Dain (26:53)
I'd say number one, it's our culture and our diversity. Hands down, if you ask students why they moved to Shawnee Mission South area or why they transferred to Shawnee Mission South, they would say that they love the diversity and the culture at Shawnee Mission South High School, and that's number one. I could talk about the state championship that we just won. I could talk about the national debate championship that we just won, but that's all product of our culture.

Rick Sola (27:19)
Hey, Dr. Dain, I really appreciate your time. Please say hi to the other Dr. Dain. we go way back. Say hi to your kids for me as well. we go back a little bit. But thank you so much for your time here being on the kickoff of this Cool Coffee podcast. I look forward to seeing you again. And have a good start to the school year too.

Dr. Todd Dain (27:27)
Yep, she's smart.

YouTube, brother, it's so awesome to connect with you and I love learning from you and hopefully we can grow our principles network and cool coffee will take off.

Rick Sola (27:57)
Yeah, absolutely. Hey, thanks a lot. We'll talk to you soon. All right.

Dr. Todd Dain (28:01)
All right, take care.