Cool Coffee w/ Kansas Principals

CC#77: Tragedy and the Role of Principal w/ Principal Tom Simmons - El Dorado MS

Content Warning: This episode discusses the topic of suicide and digital blackmail targeting teens. Listener discretion is advised.
988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline
Languages: English, Spanish
Hours: Available 24 hours
Call 988
Text 988
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Episode Summary
In this episode of Cool Coffee, host Rick Sola speaks with Tom Simmons, principal of El Dorado Middle School in USD 490, about the challenges faced by principals, particularly in the wake of a tragic event involving a student. Tom shares insights on navigating communication with the community, supporting students and staff, and the importance of mental health awareness. The discussion emphasizes the need for proactive measures in addressing issues like sextortion and suicide prevention, while also reflecting on the personal toll such events take on school leaders. Tom highlights the strength of the El Dorado community and the supportive environment fostered within the school.
Connect with Principal Simmons
tmsimmons@usd490.org
 
Chapters (timestamp does not account for intro--add 39 seconds)
00:00 Introduction to Tom Simmons and His Journey05:58 The Impact of a Tragic Event11:21 Navigating Communication and Community Response17:16 Support Systems for Students and Staff22:26 Reflections on Personal Well-being and Leadership28:59 Looking Ahead: Preventative Measures and Awareness35:34 Closing Thoughts and Community Strength
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
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. Read more about the KPA HERE.
 
YOUR input on Cool Coffee is NEEDED! Click HERE to share thoughts and interest for you or a colleague on being on the show!
Click for ALL Cool Coffee episodes!
Connect with Cool Coffee on...
Follow us on X: @KSPrincipals; @KPACoolCoffee
Facebook: KSPrincipals
Contact the host: X @MrRickSola, rfsola@olatheschools.org, or KPACoolCoffee@gmail.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
SHOW TRANSCRIPT (timestamp does not account for intro--add 39 seconds)
Content Warning: Please note this episode discusses the topic of suicide and digital blackmail targeting teens. Listener discretion is advised.
Rick Sola (00:01.77)Hello and welcome to Cool Coffee with Kansas principals. Today I'm joined by Mr. Tom Simmons, principal of El Dorado Middle School in El Dorado, Kansas. Welcome Tom.
Tom Simmons (00:13.518)Thank you, glad to be here.
Rick Sola (00:15.754)Yeah, I'm really excited to have you here and recently learned you guys are the Wildcats as well. So from one Wildcat to another welcome both at my school, but also I don't know if you're not a K-State Wildcat, I don't think, are you? you are, you are, okay. Well, there we go. Wildcat squared here for both of us.
Tom Simmons (00:28.204)I am.
Tom Simmons (00:33.166)I'm a chocker, I'm a wildcat, I'm a jet. I'm a multiple of those, but I probably hone in more to the wildcats. I've enjoyed my time there, so.
Rick Sola (00:42.262)Well, that's awesome. I hope our K-State Wildcats can get it done, get it going here this season. before we get going, just a quick plug out for the show. For all listeners, your feedback is important to us and we would love to hear from you. So please check the show notes for a way to leave feedback or even contact me directly with topics or guest ideas. Also, if you're so inclined, give us a like, give us a follow on your favorite podcast platform and help spread the word on the amazing principles.
we have right here in the state of Kansas. And I am really excited, Tom, to have you here today, just to learn more about you, learn more about El Dorado, but talk about a really important and just a really important topic that we'll get to here in a bit. But the show, we always kick off with just a road to the chair that you're in right now. So where did you come from to end up where you're at right now?
Tom Simmons (01:40.6)Well, I grew up in Western Kansas in Garden City. I'm probably be like a lot of principals. I didn't have that traditional route to this chair. I started out in athletic training. All my friends were football players, but they were
of the size needed to play football. It was the smallest kid in the school, so I got picked on a lot. So I became an athletic trainer and one of the coaches said, hey, you could you can be our trainer. I said, what's that? And they sent me off to Emporia State over the summers, learned how to tape ankles and then ended up getting some scholarships to Garden City Community College and then ended up working for K-State football and many sports at K-State through my time. And then ended up just meeting the right people and ended up working my way into the NFL and was an athletic trainer for the Philadelphia Eagles. And so
nice transition and you know, it's nice because people talk about how much Principals work I got there July 4th my first day off was Christmas and kind of working sunup to sundown lots of hours and so not that this is any easier But it's definitely a little bit at least I have a home I guess so I've been in education about 22 years This is my third year here at El Dorado Middle School as the principal this was my first principal job my wife has been a principal for years and then finally Talked to me and as they always joke to go to the dark side and so
joined this side a little bit. So I really enjoyed it. I love doing this.
Rick Sola (03:01.642)That is funny that the dark side reference is alive and well even here, you where I'm at too. And I remember getting into it and, know, Rick, you sure you're ready to go to the dark side, as I say. you know, but now there's a lot of, a lot of positive there. I bet there's a lot of parallels with you mentioned, I mean, just the hours of being a athletic trainer with the Eagles. But I imagine there's some parallels there with what you're doing now, at least in hours put in.
Tom Simmons (03:28.27)Absolutely, and what's nice to have that background is I have a student walk in here and say they want to be a professional athlete or they want to do something. Not that I was a professional athlete, but I got to see professional athletes and I know the work ethic it's going to take. And so I've had those conversations with kids sitting across my desk and they're like, well, I want to do this. Well, know, sitting in my office is not going to get you there. You're going to have to change your attitude. You're have to change your work ethic. And so having those real conversations helps. And, you know, it's nice because
Up here above my desk, have a picture of the team that I was a part of. And then I have a game ball that we earned for the year that I worked there. And I think I was taught a lot of experiential learning opportunities during that year that the guy didn't tell us a lot what to do. You had to learn it yourself. So in my years of teaching, I kind of taught that same way. And I'm trying to instill that in the teachers here too, that giving kids an opportunity to learn by trying and failing and failing forward is just an acronym I use a lot here that I want them to learn from that failure.
Rick Sola (04:24.278)What a unique perspective that you bring to the principal chair as far as really working with a group of athletes at the very top of their game, that game, being in the NFL and to be able to even have those conversations with kids. Like you said, maybe you weren't the NFL player yourself, but you saw those players and what it took to come in. So I'll put you on the spot. mean, the Chiefs are playing the Eagles this weekend. Is there one team over the other?
Tom Simmons (04:51.148)You know, it's, it's really hard because, you know, I grew up in Kansas, so I grew up a chiefs fan, but when you go to get a job in the NFL, you don't get to go, well, I want to be with the chiefs. And so I applied to the chiefs. I applied during that year, all 26 NFL teams and ended up at the Eagles and ended up being a great thing. it was funny cause last year Superbowl, they, my staff were all chiefs fans and over our music, they would play the red kingdom song and they were heckling me and they
I was gone for one of the days and I came back, my whole office was chiefs, everything. They had covered up my helmet, my game ball, my picture, they trashed it. And I relished in that for a few days when we came back after the win and I just left that up and then they came in and took it down because they were mad.
Rick Sola (05:29.114)well, I'm a strong Chiefs fan, but I can I can appreciate the humor in that. And I love the school culture aspect of that. That's that's so school culture there where you've got the for us, it's the KUK state rivalry out here. And but no, that's great. I think you have a case to to be had on the New Heights podcast with the Kelsey brothers.
Tom Simmons (05:52.59)There you go. That was before my time. had a, you know, I was back in 1988 and I had Reggie White, Randall Cunningham. We were two games from the Super Bowl and I was blessed to have been a part of a lot of games that, you know, I was part of what's called the Fog Bowl. We lost to the Chicago Bears in the fog in a game and just some games that, you know, not every game do you get to go back and you can go to YouTube and there's one of your games that was just a nostalgic, really kind of cool game that you were a part of. And so those are some fun times to think. And again, to be able to share those with the students to know that
It is capable or I have a young man that's not that great of an athlete. Have you thought about being a trainer or manager on a team? said that you can go a long ways with those things. It's not always about always being the greatest athlete.
Rick Sola (06:32.298)Yeah, no, that's really a great story. I bet students are probably really fascinated with that, especially throw up a few highlight reels of that time. You just named a few greats there. so we're recording this. It's Friday. It's September 12th here where I'm at. This is kind of we call it like Awareness Week Suicide Prevention Week. And so it's fitting to be having this conversation here with you today. And, you know, it's a topic that
Tom Simmons (06:41.973)Absolutely.
Rick Sola (07:01.682)is unfortunately, I think, just all the more relevant in our schools. And I myself have worked as a principal through some very challenging situations.
in the community and even in the school that I have been in and that I'm at and so forth. And that's really what brings you on here today is working through a really tough situation in your community right at the start of summer. so first, before we kind of get into that, I want to thank you for being willing to come on here because I think there's so much value to hearing from other principals who may have gone through any challenging situation.
but something so sensitive as suicide is one that I don't know that we ever feel fully equipped to handle. And so thank you in advance for being willing to come on here, but we'll just start with.
Back at the beginning of summer, you received a phone call. We'll just kind of start with that and then kind of move through the process that you, your community and so forth went through back in June.
Tom Simmons (08:17.164)Well, I'm a 12-month contract, so we work all year. It was one of those weird things where I was sick over the summer, so I had taken a sick day and I got a text message from my superintendent to give him a call about a situation with a student, which I thought was odd at the time. like, we're in summer. When I reached out to him, I was told that one of my students had had an accidental gun discharge, I think was the words that were used. And so then we were thinking a student was playing with a gun.
You know, kind of woke up from being sick to what do need to start planning? What do I need to start doing for the school? Reached out to a bunch of people around the building, my counselors and everything else. Over the summer we have summer waits, we have summer school, we have all these things, we have summer camps. So we knew those students were going to need some resources and some things set up. So immediately started to work towards planning those things, working with the superintendents, assistant superintendent, like I said, my counselors and lots of different people.
to organize that. The next day we had set up some grief counseling at our high school where most of our camps and summer weights program goes on. And we were there for our students to be able to come in and talk with the counselors, myself and other people. I guess I was surprised by how many parents wanted to talk to us about how to talk to their children. So if I've walked away from anything with this is that a lot of these parents do not know how to talk to their children.
it was spreading on social media and everything else, but they were asking, how do we talk to our kids about this sensitive subject? My student didn't want to come to the building and talk to you, so I came over. How do I go home and explain what's going on? And so that made it little bit more difficult. As the day kind of went on, the narrative kind of switched a little bit. We were called in by the chief of police to discuss kind of what was going on. And as the day went on, we found out more facts.
We found out that my student was a.
Tom Simmons (10:16.59)he got into a sextortion with some people online. He began chatting with someone and the family were blessed with that in the sense that they've been very open about this because they would not want this to happen to any other child. So they've been pretty open about the whole situation. But in that sextortion, unfortunately, the young man had sent some incriminating pictures out to this person. The horrifying part that probably kind of gives me chills a little bit is
That part of this extortion was 35 minutes, I think is what the mother talks about. So from start to finish of 35 minutes of them antagonizing him and making him feel uncomfortable before he took his life is just kind of an unfortunate situation. So that time span happened pretty quickly. Being able to work with the community and setting up resources and talking to kids and parents, that went on for quite a few days. So.
Rick Sola (11:10.974)Yeah, you know, going back a little bit, you reference social media and I would say with any really urgent and challenging situation where you know you've got to be proactive with communication and get communication out, what I have found, unfortunately, over and over is that social media and that word of mouth moves way faster than we're able to move.
How did you combat that and how did you feel you were able to get that communication out? Did you feel like it was timely in hindsight or how did you kind of balance that?
Tom Simmons (11:48.16)Well, we did balance it. think we did the best we could. Some of it was such an unknown, know, starting out from having one thing what we thought it was, and then just as the time went, the narrative kept changing to, ended up being this extortion, which changed the narrative and made it, I don't want to say easier for the parents to talk to their children, but it opened some avenues for parents to be able to talk to their children. I don't think we got ahead of the social media.
But we stayed ahead of what narrative we could. We spoke on what we could, spent a lot of time reviewing board policies and what we were going to be able to do in the after effects of this, knowing our board policy doesn't allow us to have memorials or other things or remembrances and some of those. And I know every district's a little bit different, but trying to get out in front of that a little bit so that we could plan for some things. here we are in September and this happened in midsummer, middle of summer. We're still dealing with that. I still have.
people reaching out constantly that want to do things that go against board policy. And we have to say, I'm sorry, I can't do that. That probably is the the hard part of this is that you know, it's what their heart is in the right place to want to do something, but then it breaks the board policy and we can't do that. you know, having a moment of silence at a football game, having a picture of them up, putting them on the back of T-shirts. We've had a little bit of, I've been hit up with a lot of different things and they have to say no. And then
I don't think they understand the reasoning by it because it's a sensitive topic. mean, it's hard to talk about here, but to bring those topics up, and it's not that it automatically makes somebody want to commit suicide, but it continues to bring things up. And I was talking to the counselor today and I asked him if he felt that this year was worse than the past few, and he said, by far. We've had a lot more kids either talking about it, we've had some other, you
nerve-racking things happen. He said he's had a lot more kids that are willing to talk about it, that they will come up and say, hey, I'm not feeling right today. I think I really need to talk to somebody. So there's kind of two sides to this. We've had a lot more people that are having those suicidal thoughts, but we've had a lot of people that now know that they can reach out to a counselor. So we're on the right track with doing those things.
Rick Sola (14:02.003)Yeah, I used the word balance a minute ago and that's how I have felt with it before balancing, providing information, providing supports and resources while also there are some kids that are kind of teetering a little bit anyway perhaps, even perhaps before this and then how they respond to it. Every student responds differently when they hear this, hear the information and so forth.
To go back to earlier, you said you received that phone call and just kind of processing through it, who were those first contacts that you felt you needed to make that time in June? And I know you're on contract. I'm not sure who others were off contract. Who were those first points of contact that needed to be looped in?
Tom Simmons (14:50.644)reached out to my assistant principal. We talked for quite a while about what was going on, reached out to my counselors, started to organize that. Again, I wasn't feeling the best, so it made it more difficult to kind of get your head wrapped around things. Had a pretty massive sinus infection, so I was trying to work through that, but it was kind of weird. You felt like you needed medication, but nothing really mattered. You kind of knew what you needed to do. That being said, reaching out to the superintendent, continuing trying to organize.
Kind of like what you said, trying to get ahead of some things. We knew we were having weights the next day. We knew we were having camps the next day. We knew we were having summer school. having people there, I went up to summer school and kind of walked around the room and you had some kids talking about where they going to the funeral, what was going on. And amazingly enough, it's a middle school. So you have another kid going, who died? And so it's kind of one of those weird things that some kids weren't even aware.
having us there and telling them to come down to we had at the lunchroom at our high school. It's a big area where people could gather. Once we started to get some students there, I think it helped them just kind of gather and just talk. So, you know, I spent quite a bit of time trying to get resources put together, different people. Didn't really get to use some of these people over the summer, but we have since used those resources. We have South Central Mental Health in our building.
that does case management with students. So that's been a great help to have them in the building to be able to talk to students. We have an organization that I don't know if you're familiar with called Spark Wheel. And Spark Wheel is an outside organization that, and you can kind of think of Spark Wheel maybe as a hub that brings all the right spokes together. They can bring you tutoring, mentoring, counseling, connecting families with community services. So if you need something, you know, your electricity gets shut off, your kid needs glasses and you don't have the funds. They're a great organization that they
They bring people in and help with that. So we've utilized them this year for being able to do that. They provide grade checks with students. So they have something a little bit different than what I get to do.
Rick Sola (16:57.797)Yeah, going back to the communication piece, know, some of it is social media and the chatter can go really quick, but it also takes off and it goes in directions that start potentially could start to get inaccurate information or assumptions or jumping to conclusions. And it's such a and then there's the challenge as well. You've got to be, you know, we're using the word sensitive, but there are certain things that.
Tom Simmons (17:14.264)Good job with that.
Rick Sola (17:24.711)ultimately they can't be shared or it's not appropriate or you're working with the families and there's all sorts of things to consider. And meanwhile, behind you, all these things are moving so fast and forward. just adds to that challenging situation. You talked about the memorials and think, how did, do you feel like your community kind of grew to understand?
the board policy that is in place and why. Because like I said, I've been there and I know those are really hard conversations when all people want to do in that moment is help and they feel like this is how I can help. And when they get a roadblock, that's challenging, that's tough.
Tom Simmons (18:09.166)I don't think everybody understands that sometimes it's not that I'm not wanting to do that. I've got a board policy that I have to follow. And one of the first things that happened is my, student was an eighth grader. And so they wanted to put his name and his football number on the back of the eighth grade promotion shirts. And I don't think they realized that maybe not every parent would want that on the back of the shirt. And so to get people to understand, I get what you're trying to do. It is honorable. It's a great honor to that student. However,
it's difficult because you're going to have to find the narrative that you're going to print shirts and you're have some that have it, some that don't. Now it makes this person look like they're not supporting that and back and forth. so having that, having just the board policies, understanding that we can't have a memorial, we can't do a moment of silence, we can't have, you know, or the coaches can't start that memorial or start that, you know, prayer at football or, you know, go out and have numbers printed so they can put it on their helmets. All those things were
things that we've been navigating, still navigating today.
Rick Sola (19:12.265)Well, I wanted to ask just about the start of the year, you talked about how you initially heard the information and how the story changed or updated as far as this being a sextortion related situation.
What have you done at the start of this school year where it still feels like we're fairly new in the year? And I know having had some conversations with you earlier that there were some just really intentional things that needed to be considered and thought through. How did the start of the year as far as this topic goes begin with at El Dorado?
Tom Simmons (19:53.25)Well, I want to back up just a little bit and something that you'd asked me how that day started or whatever. When I got back to school the next day, I was on my computer and I had put out some, I guess, a personal message on my Facebook, which I don't put out very much on my Facebook. And it was more for my family and my cousins, my nieces, my nephews, all these different people to kind of watch who you're chatting with, to be careful. Social media is kind of this place that sometimes parents go, they're fine. They're on roadblocks. fine. They're on.
And the more I've been around this, I realized some of these things that we think are fine are not. Anyway, I posted this out to social media and it got picked up by some different SROs and some different people. And a gentleman named Ben Tracy had reached out to me and he is a speaker who goes out and talks about sextortion, extortion, and just basically the bad things of social media. And he had ran across the United States last year to try to raise awareness of this. And probably the...
One of the heart wrenching things for me was that he had sent me an email asking him to come speak at my school, but I ignored that email. And so that kind of was one of those things. And him and I have had a conversation and he wasn't gearing that towards me because he said, I probably get a lot of crazy people that, know, hey, come talk to my school. And he goes, and this guy's running across the United States. And he said a lot of people didn't even think he would make it. That being said, we've been in contact with him trying to have him come speak at our school. He's gonna come in the spring.
He brings in lots of resources, different resources. In the meantime, working up to that, this next week we have a town hall meeting for our parents on the 24th. The FBI is gonna come and talk to our students about sextortion, extortion, internet safety, social media. We're gonna have that town hall meeting for the parents and then during the day, the high school, they're gonna come in and talk to our high school students in the morning. And then in the afternoon, they're gonna come talk to the middle school.
The FBI kind of feels like right now that El Dorado is kind of being targeted just a little bit. So they're wanting to kind of get ahead of this a little bit. And so they're going to talk about how to protect your children, what they do, what they do in that situation. they've done something that they feel like they can't get themselves out of, what do they do? And I was talking to one of my SROs at the high school last week and he was on
Tom Simmons (22:14.282)online with someone chatting that was trying to extort money out of them and they were chatting with them. And so it's not something that was like a one-time deal for us, which you would think. typical of any of the communities that anybody would listen to this, everybody's thinking, it's not going to happen in my town. And everybody that we've talked to said, well, nobody thought it would happen in El Dorado. And not only did it happen in El Dorado, it feels like it's continuing to happen because they continue to target our community and continue to target our students. And so that's that part of trying to get ahead of those things.
setting up these town hall meetings, having our counselors talk about who the trusted adults are, who can you talk to. I know you messed up, it might be embarrassing, but come talk to us and there's a way out of this.
Rick Sola (22:57.085)Yeah. What a, I mean, a very, very important mission that he's on and what a great resource to tap into. you, you, you, you reference that email you got that you didn't respond to and, know, you know, we get countless numbers of emails daily. But that's one thing that I have found, you know, several times in these situations. And that's part of
Tom Simmons (23:13.752)Thanks.
Rick Sola (23:22.097)I call it the kind of the wake of these situations, but is the second guessing that goes on with everybody and the what ifs and what if I had only fill in the blank. And as a building principle, I appreciate you sharing that out loud because I feel like that's a really a very real part of these tragic situations is everybody's questioning what they could have done. And as a building principle, as a leader, we're conditioned to lead and to be successful and to
Fixed problems and all those sayings and it's I don't know all the more weight that we get on our shoulders as a result of that so
Tom Simmons (24:00.266)Absolutely. You know, when he sent, when I saw it on social media, he had posted to somebody else that he had reached out to the school and they didn't respond. I'm like, what? So I went to my email and I did a search back through my Google email and all of a here this email pops up. And like I said, my heart kind of sank just a little bit like the what ifs kind of come up. know, my counselors are saying the same thing. What other things could we have done? Should we have done more? Could we have done more? And so I think a lot of that is going through my whole staff is, you know, what could we have done more?
I know the family probably feels the same way of what could we do to try to protect these students. So now moving forward, that's kind of that plan of having the town hall meeting, having Ben Tracy and some people come speak next in the spring, us making sure that we're available to students if they're struggling, if they need something. So as I've said, we've kind of had that uptick of kids who are either talking about suicide, having suicide thoughts, or just knowing that they need to go to talk to somebody about it is.
is kind of, there's good signs that I know that they feel like there's trusted adults here that they can come talk to.
Rick Sola (25:04.497)You just mentioned your staff and you know with this happening over the summer, how did you take care of your staff or how did you kind of reach out? mean that's a, know there could be staff all over the place at that point because they're on their summer vacation.
Tom Simmons (25:19.572)Absolutely. And so we reached out, you know, sent some text messages to the staff of what was going on. Our district sent out a message that did something that happened to a student. And again, with social media in the world, it spread pretty quickly. Once it came time for the funeral, so many of the staff members stepped up. And I think that was kind of eye opening for the family, just a little bit of how many people came to support the family during that time. Something I did not allude to is the family was reaching out to
ask for certain things. They wanted a football jersey. They wanted a wrestling jersey, a wrestling singlet, and some different things that they could have for him during that time. And so again, to navigate through that, it's not as simple as just going, hey, here's a jersey. We had to work through some policy situations. What can we do with this? And we made the decision even as football season started.
we've retired his number for a few years. Because we had a lot of kids stepping up going, hey, I really want to wear his number and represent him. Well, then who do you pick? And so we felt it was best to kind of retire his number for a few years. The other part that I really didn't talk about that's been a little bit more difficult to navigate is he has two brothers here. And so now when I'm doing this town hall meeting and I'm doing all of these different things, not only you're trying to help your staff, but you have
a couple of brothers here and so making certain that the family understands, making certain those students understand that we're trying to support them. And I think they have felt that way. Like I said, the family has been pretty open about this, that they never want this to happen to anybody else's family. But it still is, again, a sensitive topic that makes it even more sensitive when the brothers are here.
Rick Sola (27:06.975)Yeah. And I was kind of thinking as a follow-up to the taking care of staff, but just taking care of the family. And you really kind of nailed it with that, but you're working so closely with the family in really the worst time of their life and just the emotions that play into that. And like you said, there's policy, there's emotions, and there's all those things that are wrapped in there. How...
how do you take care of yourself as a principal at that point too? Because I use this phrase sometimes here, we're not robots and the emotions are very real. Oftentimes it's like that duck on a pond where we kind of present perhaps a certain way, but you're moving and there's things that are going in the back of your mind that you know you need to take care of. You need to communicate, you need to make a contact. How do you take care of yourself through all of this?
Tom Simmons (28:03.658)You know, I think we started this conversation about about me being an athletic trainer and I think that training helped me a bunch. Being presented in emergency situations, something goes on with somebody and you just you snap and you go and you take care of things. And I think that part has helped me. I'm probably not very good at taking care of myself, just like a lot of other principles. You know, I I take care what I need to take care of and I probably worry less about myself and worry more about others in that situation. I think.
reaching out to my counselors, because I know this was really hard on them and making sure that they felt like they were okay. And just even the staff, if staff, I talked about, and I probably didn't allude very good to that, but we had resources there for students, we had resources there for families, but we also had, if the staff needed to come in and talk, we had those resources available for them also. The following day, after all that happened, and I went back to work, the superintendent had asked me to reach out to the family and let them know.
what supports they needed from us. as you can imagine, that was a pretty difficult phone call. The family's divorced, unfortunately that made it two phone calls instead of one. So to call one family and they were very appreciative of everything we were trying to offer and we were just trying to offer what support we could. And that's when they started asking about jerseys and singlets and different things as they were making their plans. But that conversation's never easy for everyone. But again, it's part of the job when you sit in this chair to know in the end.
It's nice that you know you were trying to help that family. And I kind of waffled from your question, but I'm not good at taking care of myself, I guess in that sense.
Rick Sola (29:35.734)Well, you you're probably hitting the nail on the head for a lot of principals where, know, again, we're conditioned to be focused on our building, our kids, our staff and others. But, you know, there are times it's hard. You're going to bring that home. You know, you don't just shut the door and walk home and everything goes away. And so, yeah, I think that's an important piece. But I would agree with you. I don't I don't know that I would have an answer to.
How do you do that? In part, kind of speaking just for myself, the taking care of yourself is just keep moving forward, keep going and just, you know, in working through that. You kind of mentioned this or alluded to it as just the number of things that come up that aren't anticipated or unpredictable, like the football jersey you mentioned. It makes total sense, but I don't know that in the moment that that's going to be something that would immediately
come to mind as, but that's an important topic and that needs to be handled very sensitively and very, very thoughtfully with, you know, for the, for really the emotions of all those who are still around. And so I thought that was just a, just a one of many examples. Yeah.
Tom Simmons (30:49.824)Absolutely.
Tom Simmons (30:54.806)We were blessed in the sense that the jerseys that we had, we had a new set of jerseys coming through the next year, so we got new uniforms. So it wasn't as hard as of a thing to be able to do to say, okay, we can give you the jersey and the singlet the same way. We didn't have new uniforms, but to give them that singlet, we just made some exceptions and took care of things and made sure that family felt that the school supported them during that time of need.
Rick Sola (31:22.493)Have you had any, now that this is a kind of a conversation at the forefront, have you had any successes where you feel like some students have come forward and kind of feeling like, I'm glad we have put some of these things now in place to where it's kind of opened up, it's kind of taking the lid off things and yeah, maybe it's an embarrassing conversation or, but maybe it's steered a student toward making.
a positive decision rather than the ultimate decision.
Tom Simmons (31:53.41)I alluded to that earlier where I think we have quite a few students who had come to the counselors and even Spark Wheel and our South Central Mental Health. Those people I think are getting more of those kids coming to them and opening up a little bit because maybe not about extortion but just knowing that maybe they're not hitting down the right path and want to talk and say, hey, some of the choices I'm making aren't the greatest. I think I need somebody to talk to. And we've had quite a few of those situations. And again, they're not easy conversations for the kid. They're not easy conversations for the counselors.
conversations that definitely need to happen so that moving forward that we're making positive choices for our students in the building.
Rick Sola (32:30.069)Where do you feel have been, you you talked about having been Tracy in and really it sounds like a very intentional kind of plan of action, if you will, methodical of getting some information to families and students and as far as moving forward and, you know, I'm not sure when your start date was for the school year, but we're kind of at the beginning of the school year. But just like you said, you're still navigating through some things.
How do you how do you see that the next you know month or two or up to the holidays? Kind of going as far as some of the kind of routine Normal school year things that are going to present themselves like the football season and all the normal fall activities Maybe a performance and things like that
Tom Simmons (33:17.09)So again, some of those things were hard to navigate that first football game. I got to the football game, we had to be very upfront with our coaches. You couldn't have any memorials, you couldn't do certain things. Didn't really have a moment of prayer. If the students chose to do that, they could, but really try not to be involved in that because that looks like an adult trying to lead that. We did end up having some students, like I said, take a small sticker and put it on the helmet of his jersey number.
That's their choice, not against our board policy. So some of those things just kind of moving forward. The first assemblies, those first couple days, I think there was a lot of kids walking around kind of lost a little bit. And maybe you're reading into that a little bit. We didn't know, know, some of his friends were walking around and some of them had his name on their shirt and different things. So it brought attention to things and little by little, I think things have gotten into some normalcy to where it's not gone away. It's definitely still.
up front still talked about still all of those things but I think it's moving forward. think some of those things that we've put in place have made it little easier to know that there's a resource out there for the students to talk to.
Rick Sola (34:25.269)know, one thing I have found is, you know, that routine, the school routine, every school's got that routine. That provides a lot of comfort for a lot of kids too. And I think that is the hard balance when any tragic situation reaches a school.
There are some kids that they need that one-on-one perhaps with a counselor. They need some additional supports. There are some kids who that might not be what they need, but what they need is they need that normal school day and that reliability to be able to come to school and.
I don't know, I hate to use the word distracted, but to be able to go to school and that could be the consistent, reliable place. I think, you know, we have similar types of board policies and I think that's what those are rooted in is school's got to be that predictable place. And we work individually and intentionally with those who need more. But that can be really hard because like you said, hearts are in the right place, but it's emotional and we all want to help. And we all don't want this to happen ever again.
Tom Simmons (35:30.42)Absolutely. And I think what's hard is, you know, some of the questions that were being thrown at me, eighth grade promotion, that's at the end of the school year in May. And I've got that thrown at me three days after, you know, all of this tragedy happened. And I'm like, I don't really want to make this decision right now. But in their mind, it was the right decision. They wanted to get things moving and understand what they could and couldn't do. Where that gets a little bit awkward is that eighth grade promotion is not put on by our school district. It's put on by
family, so it's really not up for board policy, but my counselors, my building leadership team, myself, my assistant principal, we all sent our opinions, I guess, if you will, where we would like to have that, would we want the name on the back of the eighth grade promotion shirts. And basically we all talked about how research suggests that's probably not the best policy to do. And again, you have these families that aren't in our world. They don't live in
policies they don't live with the students and how that affects them. And so for them to kind of realize that, so I had to send a kind of an email to my PTO, or it's called PRIDE here, organization to let them know that I understand your wishes, but it's not that we're not being supported, but I don't think we can support that decision based on this research and based on this information. I don't know how well it was received. I think they understand it, but again, I think their hearts went in the right place, but it's a difficult thing to overcome.
Rick Sola (36:57.373)Yeah, well, there's there's so many things and I just want to wish you all the best as you move through the school year and as all those currently unknown or unanticipated things they they come up and they continue to and you know, certainly it's part of the role but it sounds like so many positive things are in place to really take care of your people.
the people, your students, your staff, the family involved in the community around you and you know, hopefully, you sometimes out of tragedy comes some really positive
you know, change or impact, and in this case, awareness. And having talked with you prior, you mentioned this even just on this, but the want for the parents to really be forthcoming and to help prevent this from happening to anybody else. you know, there's many layers here, but as far as the online effect and what led to this, and I have seen that in my community.
and it's an unfortunate reality for our kids and it's hidden because we don't necessarily see that. It's on their phones and just like you said, the window of time can be so quick because our kids, they're snap decision makers and they snap judgment and they just, they act.
Tom Simmons (38:29.198)I think what I learned from this is I didn't realize how many social media things that we thought, safe's probably not the right word, but that kids use and aren't that big a deal that, like I said, Roblox, Roblox they were talking about is a really bad one that extortionists and sex-tortionists and people for sex trafficking utilize because they know that's where kids are going to be and so they're going to befriend them there and start talking to them. And Snapchat and TikTok and all those, we kind of know those have their loopholes or whatever, but.
just some of the other online things and then speaking with Ben Tracy on the phone and just talking to different people, how many of those that it's kind of got to be terrifying for families to know that you really got to watch all those things. And so I can understand more and more every day why schools are wanting to go to a no cell phone bell to bell because that was one of my first concerns is what's going to happen if the child's sitting at lunch and they're dealing with this situation with a sex torsionist on the phone. Now it's during my school day.
how am I gonna navigate that? And that kind of terrifies me a little bit. so our policy is that our students get their cell phones at lunch. And so it makes it a little bit harder to navigate what they're doing during that time, because it's their cell phone. But I definitely am leaning more and more towards that avenue of being a bell to bell person to send no cell phones during the day. And I think it would eliminate that social media and all of the other drama that goes with that.
Rick Sola (39:52.392)Right. And it may promote more face to face interaction and, you know, technology just moves so fast. And, you know, there's so many apps. You mentioned roadblocks. I wrote that down. I had not ever heard of that before. I'm familiar with Snapchat and all the other ones. But, you know, it kind of goes back to what I mentioned earlier is I don't want to say we're not equipped, but things do move really quick. And I think it's important that
we as principals building leaders continue to have these conversations and be able to stay on top of things. And oftentimes a lot of that information will actually come from our school resource officers here where I'm at. They learn to learn of trends and things and they'll pass things forward, but it just moves so fast. So.
Tom Simmons (40:37.678)I'm a techno nerd, if you will, and I love technology. so even being a person that's older and liking technology, it's kind of fun. We had an instance today where we had a situation where something happened with her phone and she videoed something. And I'm like, can I see your phone? And she said, yeah, I deleted it. And I said, that's OK. And she didn't know there was a deleted folder where I could recover it and recovered what we needed. And it's just kind of funny to watch the kids go, how did he know how to do that? And so it's fun to have. And that wasn't something fantastic, but it's fun to watch them realize that there are people that know technology.
Rick Sola (41:00.979)Hahaha.
Tom Simmons (41:07.776)And they're just using it as a device to communicate with their friends and not sometimes always in the most positive way.
Rick Sola (41:13.459)Yeah, sometimes I think we give them too much credit that they know technology. think they know apps and I think they know ways to circumvent circumnavigate some of the things that, you know, to get around things. well, Tom, you know, this conversation, I just really appreciate you coming on because I think it is a topic that it reaches all schools. It impacts all communities. And, it's one that,
I mean, personally don't know a whole lot about, but I have heard even just like I said, where I'm at, what you're talking about is happening around here. it's, it's, you know, going back to many years ago, the whole stranger danger, it's this, this has to be a big part of our, our, you know, technological, you know, device responsibility lessons and things is we got to get
I think fairly direct with what is potentially out there. But also the other side of that is, you know, we all make mistakes and the mistakes are not final. Come talk to the people around you, the adults around you.
Tom Simmons (42:24.354)Very much so.
Rick Sola (42:26.269)So thank you for coming on and before we wrap up here, I know we have spent the time talking about a really important but heavy topic. But as you move forward through this year and you think about all the staff that you're working around you, I wanna give you an opportunity to brag on the El Dorado Wildcats and the people you get to work with every day.
Tom Simmons (42:48.332)You know, I took on this job three years ago and we have such a positive culture during this year of struggles. You know, the staff has stepped up and done an incredible.
job of just taking care of the students in need. You know, I have a supportive administrative staff. I have a supportive superintendent, assistant superintendent, and the staff there. The school board is greatly supportive. And so I think having that makes my job a lot easier. And so, you know, the Wildcats, we have a great building. We have great facilities. A lot of times when people come here to play basketball, kind of have this sunken gym. And so they walk in and they're just kind of in awe. My students get to play at BG Stadium here in town the same.
one that Butler Community College gets to play on. And so kind of a cool experience for all these kids. And so I think the Wildcats were doing a great job of taking care of students, taking care of staff, and like I said, just changing the culture and taking care of the community.
Rick Sola (43:41.599)Yeah. Well, very good. Well, all the best to you this school year. And you use that word experience. And I love that. I love that word as it relates to middle school, because I talk about like the experience that we get to provide for our kids every day. And you just you just mentioned several that are upcoming for your kids. And I hope it's just a great year moving ahead and all the best to you as you move forward. And once again, thanks for coming on the Cool Coffee Podcast to share this.
Tom Simmons (44:08.013)Thank you. Appreciate being here.
 

CC#76: Mr. Nicholas Owen - Southeast of Saline HS Principal

In this engaging conversation, Cool Coffee host, Rick Sola, interviews Nicholas Owen, the principal of Southeast of Saline High School, discussing various aspects of education, including the unique culture of his school, the importance of intentional professional development, and the strategies for fostering a safe environment for both students and staff to learn and grow. Nick shares insights from his journey in education, emphasizing the significance of mentoring, soft skills development, and the balance between work and family life. The discussion highlights the need for schools to adapt to the diverse post-secondary options available for students today.
Connect with Mr. Owen: nowen@usd306.org
X: @Owenn22
Cool Coffee w/ Mr. Don Epps (referenced in this show)
Chapters (timestamp does not account for intro)
00:00 Introduction to Southeast Saline High School02:39 Nick Owen's Journey in Education05:38 Intentionality in Professional Development08:23 Creating a Safe to Fail Culture11:02 Soft Skills Development and Mentoring16:58 Post-Secondary Options for Students22:33 Balancing Work and Family Life28:15 The Importance of Relationships in Education
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT BELOW
 
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. Read more about the KPA HERE.
 
YOUR input on Cool Coffee is NEEDED! Click HERE to share thoughts and interest for you or a colleague on being on the show!
Click for ALL Cool Coffee episodes!
Connect with Cool Coffee on...
Follow us on X: @KSPrincipals; @KPACoolCoffee
Facebook: KSPrincipals
Contact the host: X @MrRickSola, rfsola@olatheschools.org, or KPACoolCoffee@gmail.com
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT (AI generated)
Rick Sola (00:01.602)Hello, cool coffee listeners. I hope this podcast finds you well and moving along just swimmingly as the 25-26 school year is now firmly underway. I'm excited to be joined here today by Mr. Nicholas Owen, principal of Saline High School, USD 306, KPA Region 5 in Gypsum, Kansas. Welcome, Nicholas.
Nick (00:24.515)Wow, I appreciate it. Man, you taught me some things about that. I didn't even know the different histories and everything else, though. Appreciate the knowledge.
Rick Sola (00:28.332)Hahaha
So I didn't adjust my intro too much, but we were just talking about Saline High School. And I was asking about the vernacular of, I know you're really close to Salina, is it Southeast of Saline? I've seen that. Let's start with that. Can you just kind of explain how you would introduce yourself and kind of the vernacular of your high school that you're at?
Nick (00:54.265)Sure, mean generally I introduce myself as you know I'm southeast of Saline. I'm right outside of Salina because nobody knows where southeast Saline is. We're basically located in a field right off of K4 Highway. We are one of those schools that the bonus is if you follow all that funding talk we get funded for everyone because nobody's close to us so we bust them all. So we live, we're basically housed in the field. We have cows on one side of us.
So we do have some space and it's nice in that way. Like we're one of the few schools that have an actual cross-country course on our campus because you have the space, you have the room to be able to do stuff like that. So technically the closest town to us is Gypsum. It's a pretty small town and that's just kind of up the road about three miles or so. We serve Gypsum, we serve Assyria, which is another town just kind of down the road. We're kind of located between them. Assyria is probably about seven, eight miles away.
We also have some other tiny towns of like Kip and then just we have, we have like anything. have a lot of school students that come out of district from Salina who don't want to go into the largest schools. But yeah, it's funny because people are not used to Kansas will always say Selena and we're like, no, no, it's Salina. And then they'll be like, so it's Southeast of like I said, it's so saline and Salina. It's doesn't make a lot of sense, but you know,
Rick Sola (02:15.266)haha
Yeah.
Nick (02:19.789)I guess you can always tell who the people who are not from the area are.
Rick Sola (02:23.542)I was going to say, you know who's local and who's not. So how big is the high school you're at? How many students?
Nick (02:29.711)Man, just talked about that. Our high school-wise, we have 217. We have 98 in the junior high as well. So, you know, we're usually right around, right around the 6 to 700 range. We are also kind of unique in the fact that we're a K-12 building. So everybody, I mean, that's the, that's to me, that's the joy. I know not everybody might enjoy that, but I have a young one too, so.
It's pretty awesome that we're able to go to school every day and I'm able to see her and do certain things that I don't think other people in other schools maybe aren't able to do. I don't have to miss her parties because they're in the same building. I can walk down and peek in on her classroom and things like that. So we are a K-12 building too.
Rick Sola (03:14.26)Very good. So you're sitting there as principal here at the high school. Talk about your road to that chair, what you did prior and what led you to where you're at today.
Nick (03:24.601)You bet. So I spent 15 years. Well, once I got into education, I kind of went a different route for a little while. But once I got into education, I spent 15 years in the classroom as like a teacher, coach. was head soccer coach and I was head speech forensics coach at Salina Central High School, a 5A school. And the story basically goes, I was getting my, they had a leadership program, so was getting my master's degree. And the only reason I was getting that was
My wife convinced me to do it so we could move up on the salary scale. And I was like, all right, fine. but like anything, I learned a little bit about, you know, communication and differences between, know, at least my, my relationship between me and my wife and the way we communicate. And one day she came home and said, Hey, I can't work in this district forever. And I stupidly, as a dumb man, could that as, I better look for other jobs. So I opened it up and applied for another job and, actually got an interview right away. And you know,
Once I went through that interview process and everything, she looked at me, she goes, you know, I was meeting like some day, not like now. And I'm like, well, here we go. Um, so I, uh, I applied and got a job at Solomon, which is about 13 miles from Salina, um, headed to the East along I 70. Um, so closer towards you. Um, I went there for six years as their, uh, 712 principal. And then that evolved into principal and athletic director. Uh,
And so I did that for six years and then this opportunity came up and we thought it was a good move for me and my family. And so I've really been in this area of Salina my entire career. So I'm on year three at Southeast Saline. So, you know, we're in year 24 of education and I really haven't left, you know, a 15 mile radius. So that's kind of been my little journey of education.
Rick Sola (05:13.814)No, that's great. I always find interesting. Everybody's wrote it. And sometimes we're not on the admin track or even even think about it at the start of our careers. And then here we are. And so no, thank you for sharing that. Yeah. So we're yeah, we record. is August 26 recording. So we have started the school year. We're underway. But I know that the start of the year brings a lot of intentionality. And I know
Nick (05:22.669)Right. Yo.
Rick Sola (05:41.461)you had some intentionality at the start of your year and I learned because we have a mutual connection with that intentionality with Mr. Don Epps who came out to your school. And I think he was with you a day or two before he came out where I'm at. But I wanted to hear about your kind of the start of the year, but the intentionality behind that, everything that even includes Mr. Epps joining you.
Nick (06:08.931)You bet. You bet. So obviously that's kind of been a focus in the last few years of what we wanted as far as really listening to our teachers in regards to their PD. We did a lot of kind of some of the teachers get to choose their own, which is one of the things I think is a little unique. always basically one day of the summer they dedicate to a day of their own PD. So we come back a day later.
than with some of the other area schools because they're doing a day of PD on their own because the reality that we knew was they're learning and doing stuff in the summer anyway, whether that's books they're reading, whether that's, you know, other plans that they're doing, listening and talking to other people. So we're like, let's just grant them a day of PD for that. And then we've really been, I guess you would say intentional in the fact of like getting the information from our, from our PDC and just having them kind of take the lead on it.
I think before it was very admin driven, like this is what the PD is going to be. And we wanted that to be really teacher driven. So we really focused a little bit more about, you know, making sure we're getting surveys, making sure our, our PDC leaders are the ones that are driving this, not coming from admin. And the thing that we heard over and over again was we really would like to have a motivational speaker. We really like to have a motivational speaker. And you know how that is. It's like, that's a great thought, but we're not a big district. We're not going to bring in a $10, $20,000 public, you know,
motivational speaker. And then, you know, when you're financially looking at it from an admin perspective, you're like, I don't know, can we really justify this for an hour or whatever the case may be like? Yeah, it's going to get everyone excited. But is it really, you know, going to last throughout? Like, so we started really having those discussions and it's been in the back burner. Last year, we brought in a friend of mine who's a local administrator to kind of give that kind of feel. And that was positive. But I was at I don't even remember.
I think I was doing the bold leadership. That's what it was. I was doing the bold leadership and we were actually at Pleasanton. And one thing, least or another, you know, we're out to dinner and I'm talking with Don and he talks about wanting to do this, you know, thing. And I said, if you ever do it, I said, put Southeast Salina on first. We're going to do it. goes, all right, brother, you know, I'm going to be there. And you know how, you know, Don is. And so.
Rick Sola (08:22.935)Yeah.
Nick (08:26.831)And I kind of, forgot about it. And then probably about a month or two later, he announced out on the social media that, you know, he was going to do it. I mean, reached out to him again. He's like, you know, I'm going to be there. We're going to be there. So we made sure we worked all the details out. He came out. He got everybody fired up. mean, he don't have to come out and give a speech to get people fired up. can call you on the phone. He can catch you passing by. He's just one of those guys who's infectious. You know, he loves kids. loves public education and, you know, he was a good way for us or, know,
anyone to kind of get started. So he came out here. I also talked to a few of my local schools because he was already coming out here and asked them if you know they wanted him to come over. And so while he was out, he was able to go over to Minneapolis and which is 30 miles down the road and Concordia, which is about 45, 60 miles down the road. So he was able to come out and do some of our local schools. And like I said, he's a champ. He's a pretty awesome guy.
Rick Sola (09:21.346)Well, he was on the tour for sure because he left here where I'm at and had to drive past Wichita. He even told me, I don't know, I must have blacked out, I don't know how I made it there on time, wherever he was, Clearwater maybe, but he got out there and...
Nick (09:39.258)Yeah, Clearwater, Riverside, I don't remember which one it was, but it was one of those. I remember him telling me, he's like, you know, only in the way Don was, is he was like, well, there's a local guy, I think he's gonna fly me in his plane. And then he says, well, I don't know, because he just called me and said the plane's broken, but maybe he'll get it fixed in time. I looked at Don, and I was like, if the plane's broken, I don't think I'd take that risk, buddy. Like, I don't know.
Rick Sola (09:59.503)Yeah, that's I mean, I told him I said that's I'm glad you figure that out before you're in mid air. I mean, that's you know, that's a bad deal. No, first of all, so he I remember he had he had already been with you. And he came out like Rick, you got to have Nick Owens on your Nick Owen on your show and blah, blah, blah. But that was great. And I'm really excited to have you on because at USA, I did a little presentation on
Nick (10:07.756)Hahaha
Nick (10:20.216)I'm
Rick Sola (10:28.382)on podcasting in general, but also talked about cool coffee and had a survey for other administrators to just recommend different people for the show. Your name came up multiple times on that survey. And so I think it's awesome and I appreciate you being on here today. So you mentioned that I really like that kind of dedicated PD day for staff over the summer. And the assumption is, like all of our teachers do, they're
they are doing things throughout the summer. Is there anything that's like, I guess a follow-up to that? Like once you start, like hey, kind of a share out what you did or I hate to use the word accountability, but more of a, like I'd be really interested to know everybody's kind of, you whether you read a book or you found an article or you're doing something to implement into your classroom for the first time this year. What does that look like when they return?
Nick (11:20.335)Well, it's just like what you said. A lot of them, be honest with you, it might just be a book study that they kind of lead. So we had a group that this year, you know, you know, the popular book now is that anxious generation. They kind of just ran with that and they had like they basically had probably monthly sessions, I'd say three or four sessions throughout the summer where they would read, you know, however many chapters and they get together. And so obviously, when they met back, they discussed that. We have others that
You know, we're small school, what this does is it gives them a little bit of flexibility. So they may not have a lot of time when they report things back. Let's say my band instructor goes and visits some college university and sees how they do their band or talks with another professional. But they'll meet with me. One of the things I started when I got here was we basically go, make teachers create their very similar as they're seeing PDC goals. But I just tell them, whatever their three goals are for the year.
create whatever their three goals and then I want to meet with them and we meet whether they're on evaluation or not. When I first got here, it was like, well, these are the set teachers you're going to have to meet with. I was like, what about all the others? And they're like, well, there's no scheduled time. You have to if you want to. I'm like, well, I need to know what they need from me is more than anything. I need to know what they need from me and then we can hold each other accountable. You know, so I kind of went over, you know, every year I always tell my staff, here are my goals for the year.
So that where you can hold me accountable if I'm not doing that and the same thing And I don't feel like it's a gotcha or a catcher and I don't think my staff does either it's just you know being professional and making sure we're all holding each other accountable and you know, so we meet at the beginning and they kind of tell me about what their PD was over the summer how they're going to apply it or you know, sometimes just like anything you try something new and it was a bust and so we know that and and and it's just that
You want to make the staff make sure, I always tell them I want them to feel safe enough to fail. And so same thing we tell our kids and stuff like that, try something new. If it was a bust, it was a bust and we'll move on. But give them that comfort and then that's kind of how we roll with that.
Rick Sola (13:26.36)I really like that quote, safe enough to fail. I imagine, you know, over the times staff start to kind of feel, they feel that comfort level, but going back to like when you started and establishing a new relationship with the staff, how do you, how are you, I guess, going back to that intentionality, how are you intentional about establishing a safe to fail culture? Like, hey, you know, cause
I always kind of have to remind myself that especially with maybe newer educators or those new to building, some people get a little tense. like, that's the principle. It's like, hey, it's OK to fail. I would encourage that. You hear the saying, you're not failing. You're not learning or something like that. But how do you really kind of emphasize that to staff? Like, hey, it really is OK. We want you to try.
Nick (14:07.471)Right.
Nick (14:15.459)Well, probably. just I guess observation because they probably see me failing a lot. No, but I think the biggest thing is, is it's communicating. try and obviously I guess I'm a storyteller in some ways and I always try and tell them, you know, stories of where I've walked into classrooms and it has been a fail. And you know how in some ways this is just an opportunity for us to learn and grow. Being visible, being in their classrooms, that way they, you know, you can see things. And when you see something,
Rick Sola (14:21.155)haha
Nick (14:44.843)making sure it's not just you're passing through and I'm feeling that evaluation but like when I see something really cool or something different I'm making sure that I'm writing them a little note. But I'm a big person on like handwritten notes even though I have the worst handwriting ever. I think it matters especially it's real easy nowadays where you know an email can just get passed through and deleted because we get so darn many of them. So I try and get like a little note and it's funny because
When you walk through the classroom sometimes, you know, I got one veteran teacher, this is his 41st year teaching all in the same building. It's amazing. And you want to talk about feeling like, I don't know, like, I don't know. I guess the best way to say is that what you're doing matters is like, I walked in his classroom and one of the notes I gave him was like hung up on his board. Like it truly mattered to him. know I mean? Like something sometimes we think no big deal about like, whatever. I just wanted to make sure he knew that, you know,
Rick Sola (15:21.795)Yeah.
Nick (15:41.871)I liked what this was happening and things he was doing and those things matter to them. I mean, there's some, don't get me wrong, just like anyone, just like kids, there's probably something that wadded up and toss it away right away. And that's fine too. It still sent the message. But I think making sure when you see something like that, when you see they're trying something new, whether it's good or it's bad, embracing that. And like I said, sometimes when it does fail, I think the same thing, instead of making sure we focus on and be like, oh, that was bad, be like,
Rick Sola (15:51.246)Yeah.
Nick (16:08.963)You can still say that you're like, hey, I can see that didn't work. But hey, I appreciate you trying it. You know, it that's the only way we grow is trying new things. So embracing that concept.
Rick Sola (16:14.562)Yeah.
Rick Sola (16:18.776)What a great way to frame maybe a busted lesson or something, you know, as an encouraging way to keep going, keep trying, let me know how I can help. yeah, you kind of capture something that I feel like is just the story of education. The little things that you wrote that note and it's posted there on the wall, you probably totally forgot about the note at some point. You wrote it, but you just don't know the interactions you have with everybody from students to staff to parents.
Nick (16:38.703)you
Rick Sola (16:46.72)Every interaction matters and there's a gravity to the interactions we have, even when our head is somewhere else. There's like four fires that are going on that you know you got to get to. But those moments matter. And so I really like that you mentioned that and brought that up. One thing as we were setting this up and talking about, know that a priority for you is with your students soft skill development and
Nick (16:48.366)Yes.
Rick Sola (17:16.334)Kind of, I guess making aware of those post-secondary options for kids, because there's a lot of options that are post-secondary. It's not just college or whatever. So I was going have you speak to that a little bit and just what that looks like in your school as far as soft skill development with kids.
Nick (17:25.753)Thanks.
Nick (17:35.503)Well, I'll tell you there's there's two different things. One, I mean, we'll talk about with some of the soft skill stuff. One of the things that we're really focusing on, we're really implementing out full circle this year is where we're calling it Trojans together. But we have the ability, you know, we're K-12 building, as I told you. So not everybody has what, you know, that ability to do some of the things we're going to do. So we're basically doing a one-to-one mentoring program this year for every single kid in our school. And what I mean by that is
Well, I'm sorry, not kindergarten. They got enough stuff figuring out the routine of kindergarten. But once they get to first grade, first grade basically matched up with a seventh grader and then you kind of continue on until you get to sixth grade and seniors. And they're just matched off kind of a one to one. Obviously, sometimes numbers don't match up and you're two to one or whatever else. But what we want to do is create some sort of another buddy in the school so they got someone to talk to. And then what they do now is once a month, they're going to basically teach a character lesson.
Rick Sola (18:07.448)Ha
Nick (18:33.871)over some sort of whatever the character strong word of the month is or whatever else. Say it's respect or whatever the case may be. So our teachers took a day out of PD to not only set up these pairs in these groups but also to create the lessons. And so one day throughout the week the kids kind of learned those from the secondary teachers about here's what you're going to teach them, here's how you're going to go about it, here's the interactions here, it's all scripted kind of form so they feel comfortable.
And then the next week they kind of meet with their little buddy and they do that. So, and it's kind of structural again, the building basically for all intents and purposes, such down for about, you know, 40 minutes once a month, because that's what everybody's doing at the same time. So I think that's really, really important as far as something not everybody can do because, you know, we don't have to get a bus and rent and go out into the elementary school. We're here, they're here already. And I think it's important because sometimes when it comes to some of those soft skills, kids, we get, they,
Rick Sola (19:23.853)Yeah.
Nick (19:30.029)I feel like we talk to them too much. We talk at them instead of talk to them. I guess it's the best way to say is we're delivering these lessons that they've heard now for 12 years about what respect is and so on and so forth. And at some point it's time for us to stop talking to them and have them so with what it is. And I think when you give them that leadership opportunity, I'm a firm believer that every kid is going to be a good leader. And I had a lot of teachers that were like, well, what about this kid? know, he really struggles with, you he doesn't respect his teachers. He doesn't respect.
you know, and all these other ones. But it's different when you're putting that leadership role, when you have that thrust upon you that this kid's looking up to you. You know, you are now that person. I mean, we're also lucky. I'm not going to lie. We have great kids. We really do. It makes your job really, really easy when you got good kids. But I also feel like they rise to the challenge. They really do. And they see that, you know, this isn't something for me to mess around with because I got another little kid who's looking up to me.
and they take that responsibility. So that's been a really cool thing we do in regards to some of our soft skills. The other thing since I got here is we've really been a big focus on, when I first came, they were very, very proud of the fact of like the number of college hours that we teach within our building, which is amazing. I mean, for a small, you know, two-way football, three-way, every other sports school, we offer like,
I think it's 68 credit hours taught by our faculty for college credit. I mean, that's pretty impressive for a small school. But the thing about it is we had a lot of kids when you wouldn't have a clear IPS, they were walking out of here with a lot of college hours, but they had no clue what they wanted to do. So we've really tried to focus more about getting them figured out what they exactly want to do, putting more of an emphasis on kids going to, we have a local technical colleagues, you know, obviously with the Senate bill, you can get all that free.
Rick Sola (20:58.926)Wow.
Nick (21:21.869)So we send a lot of kids over to the technical school for half a day where they can get, learn their trade. We also, for those kids, because you have some kids that don't even want to do that, they want to go right out in the workforce. We have several local businesses that we set up internships, paid internships through the school day where kids will go out for half a day and work there and they'll come back here their senior year and take half a day of classes. And that's developed into careers for two of our kids last year who in two or three years are going to be making
more than me, but that's okay. I wouldn't want their job, they wouldn't want mine, but it works for them. And that's what we really try to focus on is doing what's right for whatever that kid is and trying to meet them where they're at.
Rick Sola (21:55.768)Let's go.
Rick Sola (22:06.646)Yeah, I really, really love that. And I feel like I don't know if the shift or a shift is the right way to say it, but I feel like maybe early in my education career, a lot of focus was on college and if appropriately so. But college is not the only option and it's not for everybody. Just like you said, whether it's a technical school or straight into the workforce, I love putting that in front of students in emphasizing that it's not.
Yeah, there's not just one way forward because really a really not very positive way forward is to get into college and get into a lot of student loan debt. And you end up like, I don't even want to do this. And then you're in you're stuck and then you got, know, and so you're being able to explore these things in high school and get a taste of it and maybe make some decisions one way the other. So so positive. And like you said, a lot of them get into professions that they start.
bank rolling pretty quick and doing really, really well.
Nick (23:08.515)Well, that's I always tell the kids like I really want and I tell parents this too and they kind of think I'm crazy but it kind of goes back to the same thing I talk about with teachers. I high school it's cheap to fail. It's the best way I say it like take a college class if you don't know if you're what you want to do and then if you fail a college class guess what it costs for us it's $50 a credit hour. Costs $150 to know that college is not for you instead of spending $20,000 for your first year and figuring out it wasn't for you and same way with I tell them internships try an internship if it doesn't work out.
Rick Sola (23:33.228)Yeah.
Nick (23:38.509)That's not going on your resume instead of having to put, you know, I worked at this job for two weeks and I hated it. Like, try these things. It's easy. It's cheap to fail in high school as opposed to when we get in the real world where it's a little harder.
Rick Sola (23:51.981)Yeah, usually it's in a discipline area, but I tell students all the time here at the middle school, you're at a great age to learn some, learn a lesson, you know, and because if you fast forward 10 years and you do the same thing, that could be a whole heap of trouble. It's the same thing with school. Being in high school, it's a great time to learn that, know what, actually being a vet isn't what I want to do because you go to go off to the university and figure that out. You're two years in and thousands of dollars later, you know, so, no, I love that.
Nick (24:00.611)Yes.
Nick (24:20.291)You're dead on. Dead on. I love how you talked about the discipline thing because it's so funny because, I mean, as I tell almost every single parent when they are so upset that their kid got in trouble, like, mean, kids are going to make mistakes. If kids didn't make a mistake, me and you wouldn't have jobs because there wouldn't be a need for us. know what mean? So kids are going to make a mistake. It's all about how we want to respond afterwards. That's the lesson is they're going to screw up. I screwed up. I mean, a lot. I still screw up.
Rick Sola (24:46.126)Well, and that kind of goes back to I love that you said Trojans together that one on one mentoring and you know, and I can imagine, you have you said you had some staff might say, well, what about this student or that you put a student in that position of leadership? Like you said, I think it's amazing what kids can do. And a lot of times I see it. We create leadership groups and you're kind of part of a group. it's it's easy to kind of get lost, even if you're in a leadership group. That one on one.
That puts you you're in the hot seat and what a great it's productive discomfort I'm sure for a lot of the kids you know to be in that leadership role and you're one on one and you've got this younger student who's looking up to you now. I know all those younger kids will always remember who their mentor is. So yeah I just I love that. You mentioned earlier you referenced you have a little one in the building and I wanted to just kind of get to that you know I think.
Nick (25:34.521)Absolutely.
Rick Sola (25:45.763)When I talk with people who are interested in being a principal or getting into administration, it often comes up about that work-life balance and either they're starting a family or they have a young family or whatever. Talk about how you balance the role. It's a demanding job, but also that role of being a dad as well.
Nick (26:08.845)Well, you know, it's just like anything. I learned early on, I guess the best way to say it is, you know, I was a coach, pretty successful coach. And at one point I was getting kind of recruited to another school and I was ready to take that job. I really was. And I remember I had like two or three kids just bawling, crying, like, you can't leave, you can't leave. And so, you know, I always kind of chose, I think I kind of dedicated too much to my students. And I know that sounds crazy to be here because
You give a life to education and people are like, can't give too much, but you can. And I chose to stay. And two years later when that kid graduates, we don't really talk to each other anymore. know what mean? Occasionally you see him, but you think about that like, man, I completely changed my path because these students really, quote unquote, needed me. And at that point I realized I think my focus and my priorities are wrong. And so I really kind of refocused on making sure I was going to be there.
you know, when my family needed me, because they're going to be the ones that are here long after. I finally get done in education and I retire, you know, my family is going to be one that's still around for many more years. So we're lucky we make it an incredible impact every single day. But we also have to remember it is a job. It's a job that makes a huge impact, but it is still a job. So we've got to make sure we make time for the people that are always going to be there for us, because sometimes we can feel used, I think, in this position.
Because so many people are coming at us in different ways and I don't want that to come across negative because I love what I do I really do But I do think it's very important to make sure and I tell my staff too I was like you're only going to be successful as if you're happy if you're miserable and that comes from whether you're you're you're you know for me if my wife is yelling at me because I'm not going to my kids of stuff or whatever else and I'm bringing that with me the next day at a school, know as opposed to if I left 30 minutes later
Rick Sola (28:02.126)Sure.
Nick (28:04.847)you know earlier than I wanted to or whatever else and I was able to take my daughter to practice. My family's a lot happier with me and I'm a lot happier coming back the next day. And I tease everybody. I'm like that paperwork that's on my desk, it'll be there tomorrow. So there's no sense I need to check it off.
Rick Sola (28:22.862)Yeah, now that is for sure. There's always, it'll be waiting for you tomorrow. And what advice would you give that new administrator that maybe you would mentor on anything, I guess, as a prospective administrator?
Nick (28:29.581)Yes.
Nick (28:40.601)I guess the best way to say it is find what makes you happy and then embrace those things, I guess is the best way to say it. know, if truly, and what I mean by that is what makes you happy long term? I think I got sucked in really early on as a young teacher and a coach that, you know, my entire life was wrapped up in those students. And all of my relationships was, you know, either the students or the students' parents and things like that. And then you realize like after they move on and they graduate, you're kind of sitting around like,
man, I've not done a good job of like creating relationships with my actual peers. Like I've been so driven to, you know, to coach and to win. And that was everything that it was that I didn't like, you know, I create relationships even with my assistant coaches and things like that. was, that just wasn't, that was not part of those relationships were not part of the plan because as silly as it was, I was so driven by winning that that didn't really necessarily help me win. kind of making, making sure you're
making time for those other relationships because there are going to be days when you're going to need that person. You know, you're going to need that person that's in, you know, my assistant principal. I need, I need that guy regularly. So it's incredibly beneficial to make sure I have that relationship with them. And I mean, what I mean by that is, you know, outside of work hours, we'll make sure we'll go try and grab something to eat or try and go do something because you want to have those relationships that, you know, have those people by your side that even after
he goes to another school or I go to another school, we still have that relationship with someone I can reach out to, I can talk to. So finding those people, building those relationships of those people around you.
Rick Sola (30:18.05)Yeah, no, I love that very, very real, take there and, just so authentic, you know, I agree. I think I have the best job I in, you know, in the district. love, I love what I do. I being a building principal. It's a grind though, you know, it can be a grind and it's a, it can be a roller coaster of things that, you know, it could be a slow week for whatever reason. All of sudden you have a month's worth of issues that pop up in two days, you know, and that's just.
Nick (30:35.277)Yes.
Nick (30:46.467)Yes.
Rick Sola (30:47.158)kind of the way the way it goes. to take care of your people and to be there for your people really, I really appreciate that that viewpoint and for sharing that out here on this podcast. And before we go here, just two quick hitters there. KPA is a KPA podcast. What is the KPA meant to you over the your time as an administrator?
Nick (31:10.957)What's been great, the big resource obviously that I use the KPA is, you know, the USA conference is the one that, you know, I probably get out to most. I don't really necessarily get out to the KPA conference during the school year as much because to be honest with you, especially in a small school, you always just feel so guilty of being away from school, even if it's a day or two. When it's the summer, you're like, yeah, I can get away from the office or whatever else. So USA has definitely been my outlet of that. And that's been huge.
and not only that, just having that resource of, as I talked about, there's a lot of people that are in the trenches every single day that, there's nothing that sometimes can make you feel better than when you hear about somebody else that might've just had a worse day than you even. So you can be there not only for an ear, you know, to be like, man, I'm sorry that happened to you. But then after you hang up that call, you're like, whoo, my day was not as bad as that guy's day or that girl's day or whatever the case may be. So.
Again, building those relationships with your other principals, I think is so, important. Whether it's just a local principal down the road or someone completely across the state. You know, like I talked with Don, mean, Don's on the other side of the state for me, but I'm still trying to give him a call and give him some positive things every once in a while because I know sometimes it's exhausting for a guy like that who we just look at and we expect him to constantly give the positivity to everybody. But, you know, at some point,
He's got to get it back too. you know, seeing that and making sure we're giving positive back to people.
Rick Sola (32:37.154)Yeah, no, that's great. And since you brought it up, KPA conference is November 5th and 6th, I believe this year. And certainly I'll put a plug in for it. is a great conference. You're right. It can feel kind of guilty at times to get away from the building. That conference in particular, I was at USA as well. Love that. It's a great conference. KPA, a little smaller of a conference, but just pinpointed on
Nick (32:46.478)Yeah.
Rick Sola (33:04.226)the principle and I love it. And it's just a great opportunity, like you said, to share. I hate to say misery loves company, but I know what that saying means. know how that, you know, what that means there when you have a rough time. But certainly we're in a position of we need each other because sometimes we need to be the ear and sometimes we need to be able to share. But hey, real quick here before the day gets started, brag on your people out there in Southeast Saline.
Nick (33:34.008)Well, I tell you what, we just have phenomenal, I mean, we just have phenomenal kids. I mean, we're very, very successful in pretty much everything we do.
I guess is the best way to say. We talked a little bit about, I think we've hung a state championship banner every single year since 2018. So not very many schools can say that they're not only they're just successful, but successful in multitude, cross-country teams, or track teams, or football teams, scholars' bowl team. I mean, it's not just athletics. It's academics. It's really everything. And I think it goes back to, it's not me. I promise you that. We have great kids.
phenomenal staff and we have staff that you know have been here there's little turnover because you know they really like it here like I told you we had we have a teacher right now who is in his 41st year all here we had one that retired last year who very very
upset about retiring, I think he spent 45 years in our district. So and the and year before that we lost someone who he was he was like high thirties in our district and he still comes back and does our plays. But we have phenomenal leaders. We have phenomenal teachers in our district. We have great, great parents and kids. They work hard. They do what's right. and they just want to get better in everything they do. And I think that starts starts at the top from our superintendent and our school board goes down
in our district or building leaderships and then obviously you know the people that really are doing the groundwork and that's the teachers. They're the ones that are putting in the hours and putting in the work. You know I might be you know the face or the focal point that people look at but I'm not the one that's I'm not I'm not pulling the sled I'm just directing and I'm driving it they're the one pulling it.
Rick Sola (35:18.498)Yeah, well that's awesome and loved hearing about your school and everything that's going on out there. And I gotta say, Don really pumped you up and he's like, yeah, Rick, gotta have them on. And I remember I looked, you talked about his social media presence, which is incredible. But I saw, I think that was the first time I saw like a picture of you was you in a boa with Don. And so.
Nick (35:35.139)Yes.
Nick (35:39.681)I'm
Rick Sola (35:42.728)I saw that and I'm like, I didn't end up having to wear the boa. I somehow avoided it that whole morning, but a lot of my staff did. So it was good times. Well, hey, I know the day is going to be getting started for you soon. So I really appreciate your time and looking forward to running into you, whether it's KPA or USA or somewhere else. But good luck to you on this school year ahead.
Nick (35:47.064)Wow.
Yes, yes.
Nick (36:07.087)Hey, I appreciate it. Thank you for all you do of getting positive words out and pumping up educators because we can't have enough of that. So I appreciate what you do, Rick.
Rick Sola (36:15.279)All right, thank you. Have a good day.
Nick (36:17.156)Take care.
 

CC75: Dr. Gail Holder - Mill Valley High School - De Soto USD 232

In this episode of Cool Coffee with Kansas Principals, Dr. Gail Holder, principal of Mill Valley High School, shares her journey to leadership, her philosophy on education, and the importance of community and culture in schools. She discusses her focus on professional development, school improvement goals, and strategies for sustaining momentum in education. Dr. Holder emphasizes the significance of belonging and collaboration among students and staff, and offers advice for new principals navigating their early years in leadership.
 
Connect with Dr. Gail Holder: GHolder@usd232.org
X: De Soto School District - USD 232
 
Chapters (timestamp does not account for intro)
00:00 Introduction and Background01:24 Journey to Leadership05:27 Leadership Philosophy and Experience11:06 Professional Development Focus16:25 School Improvement Goals22:31 Sustaining Momentum in Education26:36 Reflections on Five Years31:04 Advice for New Principals36:29 Community and Culture at Mill Valley
 
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. Read more about the KPA HERE.
 
YOUR Input on Cool Coffee is NEEDED! Click HERE to share thoughts and interest for you or a colleague on being on the show!
Click for ALL Cool Coffee episodes!
Connect with Cool Coffee on...
Follow us on X: @KSPrincipals; @KPACoolCoffee
Facebook: KSPrincipals
Contact the host: X @MrRickSola, rfsola@olatheschools.org, or KPACoolCoffee@gmail.com
 
Transcript (AI generated)
Rick Sola (00:01.56)Hello and welcome to another edition of Cool Coffee with Kansas Principals. Today I am here with the principal of Mill Valley High School in the DeSoto School District, USD 232, Dr. Gail Holder. Welcome, Gail.
Gail Holder (00:17.358)Well, well, well, thank you, Rick. I really appreciate the introduction. I thought you would do a little bit of a throwback to here is my sophomore English teacher, but I appreciate you keeping it above board and very professional.
Rick Sola (00:31.246)Well, I was going to, but now, yeah, yeah, in the post-production of this high production show that we've got going on here. No, actually, I was going to say, first of all, congrats on the doctor, because we do have a history here as far as going all the way back to my sophomore year in high school at Olathe South, and you were my ELA teacher. And so, just out of habit,
Gail Holder (00:32.686)We can weave that in later. How about that?
Gail Holder (00:43.875)Great.
Rick Sola (01:01.038)Every time I see it, it's, hi Mrs. Holder, hi Mrs. Holder. And so congrats on the doctorate, but then since then, I guess before we even get to that, because we could go into our history, but we kind of go back in both of our careers. But while we're on it, let's just start with a little bit of your road to the chair. You're sitting in Mill Valley. We were just talking before going live and how great.
It is a really good start, but what led you here to where you're at today?
Gail Holder (01:34.392)Such a great question. And so, you know, I got my administrative license back in 2005 and 2006, something like that. I had gone through the Pitt State program to get an admin and, you know, took the praxis, did all the things, but had really no desire to move into administration or that kind of leadership at that time. And so to be honest, I let my seven years or whatever the grace period is lapse and continue to coach.
and but during that coaching and teaching time I kind of started moving into some leadership or other roles within the district and in 2016 when my when my daughter graduated from Olathe South I also had Dr. Jessica Dane who asked me to come with her over to district office and work in teaching and learning and having had worked on getting my master's in curriculum and instruction I
I felt like, and I'd always been somebody who very much focused on the academic success of students, although I know how important being involved in other activities in athletics is. So I moved over to that position in 2016, moved over to the district office, and I served there for two years and learned a lot about leadership. But to be totally honest, as much as I love planning
professional development and believe so strongly in professional development for professionals and especially in the area of education. I was really missing the sort of lasting impact of being inside of a building and working with teachers every day and seeing the impact on student learning and you know the use of data and what we were doing with that. So I asked if there would be an opportunity for me to move back to a building and go into administration.
2018, I was afforded the opportunity to go to Olathe East as an assistant principal. My roles there were curriculum and instruction and activities director and loved that role, loved Olathe East. It was really fantastic. And then in January of 2020, one of my friends who I had taught with, was an assistant principal here at Mill Valley, texted me and said, hey, our principal is
Gail Holder (04:03.962)retiring, would you have any desire or would you like to even think about coming and interviewing for our principal position here at Mill Valley? And the rest is somewhat history. I accepted the position in February of 2020 here at Mill Valley. And of course, we all know what happened in March of 2020. And so I spent from March 2020 all the way through the summer on Zoom calls with over
170 staff members here at Mill Valley. had 15 minute Zooms with every teacher, secretary, custodian, para, just to have some time to get to know them quote face to face. I had planned to do it in person, but of course that got derailed by the pandemic. So just an incredible journey getting here. And I think starting my principalship in a space
where I was also managing and trying to navigate a pandemic was something that I don't know that I really signed up for, but I'm telling you, I wouldn't have done it any differently. The stretch was big to come into a new space, a new district, new leadership, all the things, and then on top of everything else, navigating what we were doing as it relates to education in the pandemic.
as well. I am so grateful and thankful. Every journey has been my favorite, I will say. So at this point in my life, I would say that this is my favorite stop in my education, in my professional journey has been having the opportunity to lead this absolutely incredible community.
Rick Sola (05:56.079)You know, I may have missed the how to lead through a pandemic course when I went through my Baker degree.
Gail Holder (06:03.513)Yeah, that one, I don't know. Maybe they, you know, yeah.
Rick Sola (06:07.214)But I had the same similar trajectory. I started at the same time and then it was the following school year and you probably can't see it, but it's like a twitch started to develop as you were talking about it. Yeah, what a crazy time and you know, going back a little bit, you referenced a late the East and being an activity director, you had a life.
Gail Holder (06:18.318)Thanks
Rick Sola (06:30.446)That was a big part. And for those who may not know, you're a legend around here when it comes to the dance team, drill team performance. And I bring that up specifically because I don't know if you at the time you thought about it as a...
probably a leadership position, but an administrative position, but I've worked very closely with different dance team coaches and it's a quasi administrative role. How did that prepare you for what you're doing now and kind of the road that you've had since then?
Gail Holder (07:07.426)what a great question. You know, I loved my work with Dance Team and basically I would agree it is quasi administrative, if you will, because you're dealing with kind of a small community and you know, and I know you remember this, Rick, and you you calling me Mrs. Holder, there's a part of me that has to stop when I call you Rick, because you know, you were Ricky, like that, and that's what I knew you as, but.
Rick Sola (07:30.292)You
Gail Holder (07:33.578)Anyway, you know, I had 80 girls. You know, I had anywhere from 60 to 80 girls on dance teams. So it's almost like a, you know, a small school building that you were managing. So you had those girls and then you had, you know, their parents and whatnot. But I think really the philosophy is the same. And I've carried it with me through my administrative career as well is, you know, you set the bar high, you set the expectations high,
lead with grace and humility, but with strength and conviction and people will rise to the occasion and I feel like I've done that whether it was at Olathe East or here at Mill Valley. I've tried to lead just like I did you know back when I was 24 years old coming in as a first-year dance team director at Olathe South High School was you know these are the expectations this is what the guide
lines are, but I'm going to meet you where you are every day and I'm going to love you through it. But at the end of the day, if you don't do the right thing, then there's going to be a deeper conversation. And I feel like that's just, it doesn't matter if you're in a classroom or you're coaching a team that is recognized, whether it's statewide or nationally, or you're leading a school building. I really believe those same kinds of guidelines work for you.
Rick Sola (09:02.284)Yeah, there's just so much overlap and I mean, there's hard decisions to make. There's there's personnel decisions that I mean, I know you had captains, you have placement on the floor, you know, routines and English. I, I am swimming in the deep end. You have no idea right now talking about dancing. But but no, I know there's so much that goes with that. Then, you know, there's potential for a parent.
Gail Holder (09:09.772)Yes. Yep. Look at you knowing all the things about the Golden Girls. Yes. Yes.
Gail Holder (09:20.748)You
Gail Holder (09:28.184)Yes. You bet.
Rick Sola (09:28.418)Concerned or upset or not to mention the building you're using lots of building you're coordinating between games and all sorts of things and
Gail Holder (09:35.394)Yes.
Rick Sola (09:37.719)Yeah, there's a direct correlation, I think, of what that was and what that's preparing for now. First of all, well, second, I guess a couple things. Well, you mentioned Ricky. I have so many people like, that's a really hard... For people, listeners of this show, was Ricky for a long time. I dropped the Y when I was writing emails home to parents and I felt weird having this serious email and then saying, you know, from Ricky Soler. So I dropped the Y, but it does
bother me. I've been called way worse. It's my name. It doesn't bother me at all. you also referenced Dr. Dayne, Dr. Jessica Dayne. And I tell you what, so in 2016, you said you made that transition. You're working with her. I became principal. I think it was that year, 2016, as my first year. And you talk about a dynamic duo, the two of you. And I mean that sincerely because as a first year principal, I mean, you're just kind of the
Gail Holder (10:14.648)less.
Gail Holder (10:29.134)you're kind.
Rick Sola (10:37.142)Yeah, the fire hose is on, but you guys were such a support for especially the professional development aspect of just kind of getting my head wrapped around so many things as part of our school improvement plan, our goals, and both of you were just awesome and really kind of a lifesaver for me those first couple of years. So I appreciate that, but.
Gail Holder (10:59.662)Oh, that's so kind of you to say. When we came into that position, there was professional development. But Jessica and I think the same way. The intentionality behind professional development has to be there. And there has to be sort of this linear vertical articulation to what it is your real goal is. So I'm glad you say that. whether you're saying it just for cool coffee or you're saying it in reality,
We'll never know the difference, but I do appreciate that. And I've tried to carry that. I know we'll probably talk about that here in a second. But I've carried that same sort of work and transferred it over to what we do here at Mill Valley.
Rick Sola (11:44.781)Yeah, no, I mean it sincerely because, you know, I think we all have our strengths and honestly, you know, I value PD and there's a lot that we do, but I lean on our learning services department and especially as a first year. And you mentioned some of this earlier with the
the confidence and the capability that both you and Jessica brought in. It was very comforting in many ways as a brand new principle because things move really quick. But kind of to that point,
Gail Holder (12:13.93)Thank you.
Rick Sola (12:18.806)You know, the professional learning that you have for this year, we're recording this, it's August 19th. So it's early, we've started school, you got through your pre-service, but I'm sure you've got a little bit of a direction with PD or an arc, if you will. Where do you see Mill Valley going this year? What's your points of emphasis?
Gail Holder (12:36.622)Yeah, no, I do. I'm a big one in the summer where I.
kind of push reset and I kind of slow everything down. And again, I try to be super intentional. I'm gonna start from our school improvement plan. When I first got here, know, I believe it or not, I spent a couple of years kind of not going full force. I tried to sit back, observe, see what's working and what's not working. And around year three, I decided when working with my department chairs collaboratively, I said, we've got to make this thing
so easy but so attainable. I need every single person to be able to articulate what are our building goals. So we made it as easy as ABC and it's academics, it's belonging, and it's collaboration. That's it. And of course underneath each one there's strategies and there's things like that but what I'm going to tell you is
You could ask any staff member in this building, what are your three building goals? And they could tell you. It might take them a minute, but they would go ABC, academics, belonging, collaboration. And we talk specifically this year under academics. Our focus this year is on high quality instruction and high quality instructional materials. So there's this emphasis this year on instruction. So academics is the focus of everything we do.
You know, we talk about, at Starbucks, they don't sit around talking about tennis shoes. They talk about, you know, they talk about coffee. They talk about customer service. They talk about all the things. And, you know, that's the work of our work. That's the business of our business. That's the talk of our talk as we talk academics. And then when we talk about belonging, we're talking, belonging sounds sort of fluffy and like, okay, well that just means that, you know, we want kids to be involved in athletics, activities, a club. But really, I've...
Gail Holder (14:35.126)I've worked with our staff to say, you know, belonging is bigger than just saying, all of our students are, you know, have some sort of connection to a club or whatever. What belonging really means is that every single student that walks into every single classroom in this building feels like they belong in that classroom. They belong there, they can learn there, they're safe there. We've talked about the things you put on your walls, the things that you come out of your mouth.
is everything intentional. And we kind of joke between this rivalry between K-State and KU. Everybody kind of does that in Kansas. But for some kids, they walk into a classroom that has K-State flags all over the wall, and they immediately go, I'm not safe here, because my parents bleed red. They're Jayhawk fans. And I'm using a light example. But I also want teachers to be very cognizant of
being, I know these are sort of the terms that we're afraid of, but being really culturally responsive to, what are you putting up in your classroom? You don't see my entire office, but there's not one place where I have one degree up on my wall. I don't have my degrees hanging on the wall. I have a small little plate back here in the back of my office that says Dr. Gail Holder. I don't have it sitting out there because here's what I'm going to tell you that
based on the parents that I have coming into my office, the kids that I, they don't care about any of that. And not only that, are they really comfortable coming in where I've got all of my degrees and they haven't maybe gone to college, they haven't maybe gotten that extra degree. Are they immediately either on the defensive or feeling less than? This space is very common ground. There's not one person that
hasn't been in my office that doesn't walk in and the first thing they say is, I love your office. I don't think it has anything to do with the decor. I think it has to do with when they come in my office, they immediately feel like I'm on a level playing field here. I'm not coming into a place where I feel intimidated because this person has this degree or sits in that chair. Because it means nothing to them because what we're going to really talk about is how they can
Gail Holder (17:02.252)we can support their student in a space of not having running water at their house. And even in a place like Mill Valley, we have those moments, right? How are we going to get food for their student in the morning? And how am I going to, you know, what are we going to do about their mental health? None of that matters. None of that stuff matters when we're really talking about the heart of what really makes this happen, which is students. So that's when I talk about belonging.
that's what I'm talking about. And then collaboration, of course, we have spent quite a lot, you know, quite a few years actually trying to get professional learning communities often running here in this district. And we finally, three years ago, pushed hard enough to get dedicated time on Wednesday morning, 45 minutes of a late start time where teachers can collaborate. And collaboration is all focused around
our first two goals, is academics and belonging. So regardless of those being three separate, they are all definitely.
They're definitely intertwined and they definitely intersect. And so even though you talk about them being these are our three goals, they really are all centered around the student.
Rick Sola (18:24.133)Right? No, that's great. ABC, that breaks it down pretty simple, I imagine, for staff. you referenced your office. And of course, I'm sitting over with right next to my head is my chief's flag. So I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah. I'm looking at this. But I find that interesting. so when someone comes into your office, like a student comes in, and what's in your office that kind of
Gail Holder (18:29.346)Yes.
Gail Holder (18:37.462)You're good. No, no judgment. No judgment at all.
Rick Sola (18:53.428)says you like, this is is Miss Holder, Dr. Holder's office. I mean, you know, how do they kind of see like what your passions are based on your office?
Gail Holder (19:04.366)OK, I love that you asked that question. First is the picture behind me. I've had this picture since I started in school leadership. I bought it when I went to Lathey East. For me, every day, it's the first thing I see when I walk in, and it sits behind me. I never really sit behind my desk when I'm talking to kids. I try to move around. And it basically just says, every day is new, and we get a fresh start every day. It's reflection and strength. So yes, we want to constantly reflect, but we also want
to do that reflection in the context of strength and knowing that, being flexible, being able to change is really important, but there's always those firm foundations. I'll say that over here, I don't know if you can see it, but over here I have a table. And it's very interesting because the table is a collage of a variety of different things. It's got Mickey Manil, it's got Charlie Chaplin, it's got Marilyn Monroe, it's got John F. Kennedy.
and it's this montage of pictures and it's a conversation table. I purchased it from a bed and breakfast when it went out of business. so students come in and this is where we sit when we talk and it immediately, they always say, I love this table. And they love the table because there's something on that table that speaks to them. And I will always say, which one do you like the best? And every student will pick something different. I really like this.
astronauts. I mean, it's got everything on there. I have my sign over here on my wall that says, this is my happy place. And students know when they walk in here, hey, I'm in a place that this person loves to be. In my corner, which you can't see, I can't turn the camera that far, but I've got a whole litany of plants. I've got greenery. got good, I call it good juju. I believe in the power of plants.
exuding that really good oxygen. Up here on my bookshelf, it says, make every moment count. And I change that every year. And kids will notice that, you changed that. that's a new one this year. And I'll tell you why I have make every moment count when we get to that.
Gail Holder (21:25.174)And I guess I'll finish my conversation if you're OK with that with my theme for the year, you are, you know, my idea for the year. So we have our school improvement plan. But our theme for the year is and I think one every year and I know you do too, because Reagan told me you pick a theme. But this year, our theme is momentum and.
Rick Sola (21:40.002)Hahaha
Rick Sola (21:44.813)nice. I like the logo. Yeah, yeah.
Gail Holder (21:46.734)In a grade, I had our graphic design teacher design the logo, and then it says turning moments into momentum. And so unbeknownst to me, my science teacher told me on the last day of PD that MV, mass plus velocity equals momentum. Who knew? It was today years old. So what I do is I have our leadership.
Rick Sola (22:07.778)Very cool.
Gail Holder (22:11.982)I get these printed, I've done it every year for five years. I have five years worth of themes that I've done. The kids come in and they sign them for each individual teacher. Then the day before, and then they go around and put them outside on their doors. And so the teachers have these on their doors. when a lot of them, when you go in their classroom, they have all the years that they've been here, they've kept them. So when I started it, I really didn't even think about, well this will be something that the teachers will keep.
It has become a thing and they like can't wait to know what's the theme for the year. What's the next thing we're gonna do? And then, so this year one of the other things we have is along with Momentum, we have cards that say thank you for being a Mill Valley Moment Maker. So these are ones that we give to staff and to kids that if they have created a moment that has caused Momentum to happen, then.
We, so admin has them, teachers have them, our counselors have them, so people are giving cards to each other when they recognize that somebody has done something to really spark what's, you know, a movement in some way. So, we started out the year with a professional development around instructional strategies. I had a guest speaker come in. She also talked about belonging and teacher well-being.
We did some choice sessions all around best practices for instruction. We had some sessions on data, how to create momentum with data, and then that will carry through as we go into our October PD as well.
Rick Sola (23:49.689)That's awesome. know, you're right. We have a theme every year. And I have five years worth of themes where I'm at as well. What I don't have is all the nice signatures and the postings all over the building and that sort of thing. So I'm like, why didn't we do that? But we do have some posters and I love the, I just love the tie in to the Mill Valley and the momentum and mass and volume. that you said? Mass and velocity.
Gail Holder (24:15.49)Mass and velocity. Mass and velocity equals momentum. Yep.
Rick Sola (24:20.204)And that's what I find, you know, coming up with themes is sometimes things just kind of, they kind of move into place. The next thing you know, you're like, boom, there it is. And so I love the momentum theme. I wish this is not a video podcast, but a really cool logo. It's August. And I always say it's, it's easy to, easier to have a lot of momentum, a lot of excitement, a lot of energy right now. How do you sustain momentum with your staff when it's like,
Gail Holder (24:26.488)They do. Yep.
Rick Sola (24:49.614)you know, October 28th, and we're grinding to Thanksgiving or whatever. What's something that might be intentional that you or your team does to really kind of like, we got to keep going, you know?
Gail Holder (25:05.422)Okay, before I answer that question, might I say you are like a really good interviewer. You know what you do? You take something I said and then you craft it into another question. So I think you're amazing at this. You are amazing at this. I want you to know that. No, you didn't. You know, I think Rick, and you know this, and this isn't anything magical or, you know.
Rick Sola (25:19.24)Well, you're very kind. I learned all of this in 1996 in my ELA class of Olathe South.
Gail Holder (25:33.858)bits of wisdom, but the words that our thoughts become our words, our words become our actions, right? And so I talk to staff a lot about in my weekly emails about, you know, the power of positivity. What is the narrative around your attitude or your approach to the work right now? And if it's feeling like this, the best thing you can do is start speaking.
differently, right? It's not I'm tired. It's I can't wait to get you know, get this next lesson created so that I can see what happens from here. And unfortunately, it feels like you are constantly with your foot on the gas a little bit. You know, you can tap the brakes every now and again. And I'm not talking about sort of toxic positivity. I'm not doing that. I'm not I'm not saying you need to have this, you know, sort of Pollyanna, you know,
high in the sky, everything is perfect. But I think what you also need to remember is that our students are coming to us every day, and this is the place that they feel the safest, where they belong. The work is so important. The learning that they're doing is the most important work that can absolutely happen in any profession. And so we are tasked with the...
the, whether it's the unfortunate or with the responsibility of being those people. All right. And so if you can't go to a place where you can sort of fake it a little bit and get to that place, then, then, you know, we let me, let me help you. Right. I think it also depends on what your leadership does. You know, I, I, I feel like I'm out of my office a lot, especially during passing periods.
I'm in classrooms, how's it going? And yeah, I I'm constantly in that space of being really positive. So for building leaders, mean, yeah, am I tired when I go home at night? You bet I am. But it's not because I've sat in my office all day. It's because not only is their responsibility to be their best self for their students, but it's my responsibility.
Gail Holder (27:50.516)I feel like to be my best self and positive regardless of what's going on in my circle so that I can pour into and feed, whether it's verbally, whether it's just by being there, whatever the case might be, our staff. I just feel like that's my responsibility to do that.
Rick Sola (28:10.19)Yeah, that's great. the whole lead by example piece, and I love the positive, know, and we talk a little, I talked a little bit about pre-service about, you know, kind of a little bit to that sustaining momentum, but the year can be a little bit of a coaster sometimes, and we all feel it kind of being there also for each other. We have a really tight staff. If you're down, find those that are up. But I love the speak differently, you know, think differently.
Gail Holder (28:35.426)Right.
Gail Holder (28:39.511)Always.
Rick Sola (28:40.144)And that's a really good way to do it. So right before we actually hit record here, you mentioned your five years and you spoke about this at beginning, but your five years in, what are the fruits of being five years in? Like what's that like? That's really a good position. You were saying how great things are going. And I'm sure it has a lot to do with the hard work you did out of COVID and into, and you mentioned that balancing of like, okay, the first couple of years you're assessing and then it's like, okay, let's.
Let's go. So you're five years in. How does it feel right now at Mill Valley?
Gail Holder (29:14.338)You know, it just feels so great. I mean, and I'm not just saying that. Like, it's not like I'm, you know, I'm saying that, but I'm thinking something else. I, you know, I've learned from some really, really great leaders who have, and I've taken note. I'm a great observer, and I try to take all of those things in. You know, I've adopted Todd Whitaker's, you know, philosophy of,
You know, every teacher, you should have the expectation that every teacher should be like your best teacher. And I've told staff that. That's what we all desire to be. Who would you, in your mind right now, who's the best teacher in this building? And are you standing shoulder to shoulder with that person? And if you're not, what can you do to get there? And it doesn't matter who the teacher is that you consider to be the best teacher, but are you standing shoulder to shoulder? What are those characteristics? And I think a little bit of this is,
feeling like, I don't want to say I've arrived, that's not it. You know, I had these big hopes and dreams about what it would feel like to be a building principal. And you know, I've got to be honest, it's not easy coming into a new community. know, this community didn't know me. I mean, it wasn't like I was taking over a high school in Olathe where I kind of had a little bit of street cred or people kind of knew me. I no one knew me. And so there had been two.
who had been principals at Mill Valley High School for 20 years, both of them 10 years each. And then here comes this gal who comes in a little bit with guns a blazing, like, all right, let's go. And it was rough. mean, I'm not gonna lie to you. It was not roses and whatnot. I I was stood a lot of criticism, a lot of criticism. But...
Unfortunately, what everybody didn't know is that was gas in my tank. that's not that I enjoy it, but I'm not going to let it beat me down because I always kept in the forefront that I know what it takes to create an environment that is best for kids. I know what that looks like, and I will not stop till I get there. And that's just kind of what I've kept in the.
Gail Holder (31:34.498)in the forefront. know one of the things you shared in the invite was this is what it was going to look like and one of the things was what was the best advice you got. And it's interesting because I'm combining it with watching The Kingdom and I don't know if you've watched it on Netflix yet, have you? Rick, you've got to watch it. Well, I've only watched the first two episodes. I'm kind of savoring it. But the second episode is fantastic and it's titled Don't Judge.
Rick Sola (31:51.532)Not yet. Not yet.
Gail Holder (32:03.756)So it's this beautiful moment where Andy Reid talks about that's his philosophy in working with players is, and I'm watching this on Sunday, this past Sunday, and I'm thinking, my gosh, that's what we do. That's what we do as educators, that's what I try to do as a leader, and ultimately the bottom line is that I won't give it away, but it's, I'm not judging anybody based on what they've done in the past. I take them where they are, where they, I meet them where they are, and I move forward from there.
And I thought about how often we do that. I put that in my newsletter this week. How often we do that. And we are tasked in doing that. Regardless of what a student did yesterday in your class or said to you or whatever, you're tasked with the next day when they walk in, it's a new day, meet them where they are, and you move forward from there. And don't judge them and don't hold it against them. And I loved that. I loved that so much. I feel like we've.
We've arrived in that place where staff understands that that's how we do business. We work with kids, we do what we have to do, we set the expectations high, we make sure that they have everything they need, and we move them forward and we get them across the stage. That is what our job is.
Rick Sola (33:16.13)And it sounds like too, you mentioned the safe place for kids, but the safe place for the staff members as well. Five years in and, you know, I was just sharing in a meeting the other day, know, conflict.
Gail Holder (33:22.21)Absolutely.
Rick Sola (33:27.862)conflict occurs. We want to be positive and productive with conflict as far as if we're having a BLT discussion or whatever, we need to be respectful, that sort of thing. you know, we're going to have different opinions. That's what's going to make us sharp and that's what's going to help us excel. And you mentioned the advice and just how rough it was early on. And I feel like I bet every principal who's, you know, gone through a first year, second year, knows exactly what you're talking about. There may be somebody listening that
is in their in that moment. They're in their first year. They're in their second year and they just feel like, man, I'm just taking bullets left and right and what advice would you give them?
Gail Holder (34:06.702)you
You know, think one of the, I mean, I'm going to say advice, but I'm going to say like what I did. I think one of the things I've learned to do in this position is to step back and own what I own, you know, and you're taking these bullets, you know, or emails or phone calls or whatever the case. And then, okay, what is it that I have done and I own and I can control? And what is it that is beyond my control? Do they just not like me because I'm new or because, you know, whatever the reason is,
Or is it something that I've actually done? And I think once you start sort of focusing, you know, bringing it from this huge problem to something really micro, okay, these are the things I can control. I need to be, I need to do this, I need to be like that. Okay, that's fine. But there's other things that are outside of your control and you've got to be able to compartmentalize that and you have to be able to release it and say, you know what, I'm going to stay the course.
I'm always going to have students at the forefront of every decision I make, every conversation I have, whether it's good, bad, or indifferent, students are always going to be at the forefront. And if you can get to that place, I think that's where you just say, I've got to hang in there. Because you will come through it on the other side, but it can be rough. And I'm telling you, I am a living example of how rough it was for the first two, probably two to three years. It was rough.
not with my staff. The staff like literally was open arms from the beginning. They could see my heart, my passion, but it wasn't quite as easy with other things.
Rick Sola (35:52.623)Sure. Yeah. And I'm sure that the support that you receive from district leadership too is helpful and you know, that empowerment like hang in there. And you referenced this is just a real quick, you referenced a newsletter. When do you send your newsletter out? What's your day of delivery for the newsletter, the weekly?
Gail Holder (35:57.804)Yeah. Very, wow.
Gail Holder (36:12.622)I'm didn't talk we talked about this didn't we I think we talked about it maybe at USA maybe just a little. OK. Yes, you've just been like when does she do it?
Rick Sola (36:17.038)Yeah, maybe. You can tell I've been bothered by this all summer. like no, I know I change because I changed my day this year. I changed my day. So so well, I'm curious what your day is. So well, so so my day was always.
Gail Holder (36:27.278)What is your day now? Well, I want to ask you first. I'm kidding. I'll end. What is your day? No, really.
Rick Sola (36:37.024)It's a terrible day. I'll admit that it was always Sunday morning. It was always in preparation for the following week. This is my my parent newsletter and I have an automated email that would go out in a text. Then it was always Sunday morning or Sunday noon ish. In part because a lot of times I got information Friday and late Friday that I would want to include and so and I just never felt prepared like I'm just going to.
I'm going to do it. I'm have it mostly ready. Send it out Friday or Sunday. I'm sending out Friday now, which is really for me getting me, you know, I have to rush and I don't feel as secure because I feel like I'm rushing through it. But when do you send yours out?
Gail Holder (37:18.342)So,
And I totally understand that. And I think probably you feeling like, or people are feeling like Sunday morning, now my whole Sunday is occupied with the words from the principal and whatever. So I have sent my family email, my community email, I sent it to both students and parents. I send it at 5 p.m. on Sunday, 5 p.m. And then my staff email, I try to send by four because what I do is I prep the,
Rick Sola (37:41.902)5 p.m. Sunday. Okay.
Gail Holder (37:49.674)of the community email and then I copy and paste that and put it into the staff email so they can see what I'm sending to the community. And I have an hour buffer so that I have a few people that wait, like they're on it. Like at four o'clock when that email sends, if I've got a correction, then I can go into the community email and correct it. So I've got staff that will sometimes say, hey, I think this date is wrong or that. Yep, you're right. Boom. But the thing is, I don't require my staff
Rick Sola (38:05.219)Yeah.
Gail Holder (38:19.628)to read the email on Sunday. They can read it Monday, but I have not had one staff meeting, one faculty meeting in this is six years. I don't have faculty meetings because I think probably in my career I sat through a lot of faculty meetings that could have been an email and so but what I do tell my staff is you know
Every bit of information that you will need for the week and the upcoming week and maybe looking ahead is all going to be in that Sunday email. And I don't want to ask people to have additional meetings. So I send mine on Sunday at 5. I'm going to tell you right now, if that email does not go out at 5, we just flipped over to a new platform. And the connection was weird and wonky. And people didn't get it until Monday. On Monday morning, parents were calling.
Where is the Sunday email at 5 o'clock? Wanting to know.
Rick Sola (39:17.75)Yeah, no, I remember we did talk about this because I was so intrigued by students receiving the kind of the general the general email. I really like that. No, that's great.
Gail Holder (39:24.482)Yes.
Gail Holder (39:28.384)And they read it, and they read it. I'm telling you, they have got, I mean, I don't know how many of our freshmen do, but I'm telling you, our kids read that email. They wanna know what the learning schedule is, they want announcements, they wanna see if their friends got a shout out in the congratulations section. And it's not Canva or whatever, some more, I don't do any of that.
Rick Sola (39:45.026)Yeah.
Gail Holder (39:52.266)It is literally an email. I do have a format, but it is literally an email and no fancy stuff at all.
Rick Sola (40:00.205)Yeah, no, that's great. Thanks for revisiting that conversation with me. Before we sign off here, and you've done a lot of this and it just sounds so great and it's really cool to hear so much more about your community, but this is an opportunity for those in Mill Valley listening, brag on them. What makes Mill Valley so great?
Gail Holder (40:05.679)sure, absolutely, yeah.
Gail Holder (40:26.478)Oh gosh, you know, I, I, I...
When, before I came here, people would say to me, know, it's a fantasy land over there, it's utopia, it's this, that, and the other. I mean, there's nothing truer. We have this incredible parent community that is so incredibly generous and kind and supportive, do anything for teachers, do anything for their students. And then I've got this staff, you know,
I tell them I hire the best, that's what we do here. And I'd rather leave a position open and I fill them and they fill me with all of this trust and support that we need. I think our kids are fantastic. Our kids, they say please and thank you. They clean up the lunchroom. One of our speeches at graduation talked about the special place that Mill Valley is and she gave an example of, I held a door in a classroom
you know, a couple weeks ago, and this has been at graduation, and every single student that walked out of the door said thank you to me for holding the door, you know, and so we live in a space where kids, again, they know that you say please and thank you, you appreciate your building, you have these kinds of things in place that create a community of learners that you can really focus on the learning. You're not really worried about
a lot of ancillary things. You are totally focused on student learning and it is just an absolute joy and privilege to just be a part of that as a building principal for sure.
Rick Sola (42:13.89)very cool. And I love the example and I love the door holding and I've used the analogy of quick trip. I tend to go there too often, but it's like the quick trip culture. There's something about it's a gas station and but when you go there people hold doors for each other. You always are welcomed when you come in. You know it's a culture thing and I love the culture that you've described there. It sounds really awesome.
Gail Holder (42:23.426)Yep, hurry back. Yep.
Gail Holder (42:37.676)You know what else is a good one? Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A, how can I serve or whatever they say. My pleasure. My pleasure, my pleasure. I mean, you're right. mean, culture is everything. Culture is everything. Trust is first, then culture. I trust culture, yeah.
Rick Sola (42:40.62)Yeah. Yeah.
My pleasure, yep.
Rick Sola (42:52.514)Yeah.
Yeah, I really, really have enjoyed talk with you. I feel like we talk for lots of other topics. I really appreciate your time and all the best to you on a great school year. And hopefully we'll run into each other again. I don't know if you'll be at KPA in November or USA again, or any other local deal, because we're not too far from each other.
Gail Holder (43:21.24)Right.
Rick Sola (43:22.188)But just thanks so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. And I hope there's a lot of listeners to this, because there's so many great things that you shared that's going on and that people, think, can steal for their own buildings. So thank you.
Gail Holder (43:34.51)Well, thanks Rick. I just want you to know I'm so proud of you. I just want you to know I'm proud of you, Rick. I mean it. I am very proud of you. You yourself are very incredible and you've made quite a name for yourself. So I couldn't be more proud of you.
Rick Sola (43:40.418)Well.
Rick Sola (43:48.367)You're very kind and I thank you for that. That's very, very nice. But I appreciate it and thanks again and we'll see you around at some point.
Gail Holder (43:59.478)Okay, sounds great. Thank you.
 

CC74: Mrs. Crystal Carothers - Principal - Caldwell Elementary PreK-5

In this episode of Cool Coffee w/ Kansas Principals, featured guest, Mrs. Crystal Carothers, principal of Caldwell Elementary School and KPA president for the 25-26 school year discusses her journey in education, her preparations for the new school year, the importance of networking and mentorship in the educational community. As the 2025-26 KPA president, Crystal shares her vision for her role in the year ahead. The conversation highlights the significance of community engagement and the collaborative spirit within Caldwell's educational environment.
Connect with Principal Carothers: ccarothers@usd360.com
Episode Chapters (timestamp does not account for CC intro)
00:00 Introduction to Caldwell Elementary and KPA Leadership02:39 Crystal Carothers' Journey in Education05:21 Preparing for the New School Year08:14 The Importance of Networking in Education11:08 Mentorship and Supporting New Administrators13:33 Crystal's Vision as KPA President16:22 Community Engagement and Back to School Events19:06 Celebrating Caldwell's Educational Community
 
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. Read more about the KPA HERE.
 
YOUR Input on Cool Coffee is NEEDED! Click HERE to share thoughts and interest for you or a colleague on being on the show!
Click for ALL Cool Coffee episodes!
Connect with Cool Coffee on...
Follow us on X: @KSPrincipals; @KPACoolCoffee
Facebook: KSPrincipals
Contact the host: X @MrRickSola, rfsola@olatheschools.org, or KPACoolCoffee@gmail.com
 
TRANSCRIPT (AI generated)
Rick Sola (00:01.55)Hello and welcome to another edition of Cool Coffee with Kansas principals. Today, I am here with Mrs. Carruthers from Caldwell Elementary School in Caldwell, Kansas, USD 360 and KPA president for the 25-26 school year, but we'll get into that here in a bit. Crystal, welcome.
Crystal Carothers (00:22.349)Thanks, glad to be here.
Rick Sola (00:24.69)It's great having you and we are just talking off the air if you will and Caldwell, for those who aren't familiar, where are you in Kansas?
Crystal Carothers (00:34.825)So we are pretty much one hour straight south of Wichita. We're on the Oklahoma border. Every year we even have a big tournament, basketball tournament, Border Queen. So yeah, definitely right on Oklahoma border.
Rick Sola (00:49.112)That's awesome. Is there a lot of crossover with your high schools in the area where you play the Oklahoma schools?
Crystal Carothers (00:55.001)We used to a long time ago, but we just don't anymore. mean we pretty much stay in our league and that's about it.
Rick Sola (01:02.69)Yeah. Well, as we get started here, and like I said, new KPA president, but we'll get to that. want to talk a little bit just about your road to the chair, your elementary principal in Caldwell, Kansas. Where did you start in education and what led you to Caldwell?
Crystal Carothers (01:21.219)So I started as a high school principal at Wichita South High School, which is a pretty intimidating job. Like a 21 year old walking into a high school being their art teacher was a lot. But what made it really amazing is because in a big school like that, you kind of have a whole department of other.
fine arts majors and things like that. And you just latch on to each other and it was just awesome. But the funny thing is, is that Carol Leedy, who is director of KPA, was actually my principal when I was there. So it was, it's just a fun connection. Like you always, that's the best thing about education. You just, never know who you're going to run into 10 years later. So, then go ahead.
Rick Sola (02:11.372)That is.
I was going to say that is absolutely just so true and what a cool connection going back to your first year in education and then here you are now working side by side with Kara. Yeah, that was a lesson that was kind of impressed upon me early on as an administrator is you just never know the connections that people have. And so, you know, all the more reason to speak positively and favorably. You just never know who you're who you're talking to. You said starting out Wichita South High
school, 21 years old, one of my earliest like, man, like, don't put me in this position, the kind of thing was I remember student teaching around the same age and students were inviting me to parties and I thought this is an awful, awful thing. no, and, you know, please, I'm trying to get my career off the ground. Did you, did you have it? Yeah. Did you have any kind of like, man, I am.
Crystal Carothers (02:56.683)I'm
Crystal Carothers (03:04.37)Yeah, stop asking.
Rick Sola (03:10.996)I am right out of college and these kids are three years younger and it's just challenging just because you're young and new and inexperienced.
Crystal Carothers (03:19.685)Um, well, I think being in the art field, like most of the students wanted to be there. So it was very, I don't know, it was more fun and like, they just wanted, they wanted to be in your class. Like, so they actually chose to be there. So they just, they did, we did a lot of fun things together and they, I think laughed along with me of the mistakes I made because they were pretty laid back. think most of the time.
Rick Sola (03:43.158)Yeah. Awesome. So which South High School and then from there, where'd you go?
Crystal Carothers (03:50.649)I actually went down to elementary and well middle school and I was kind of a assessment prep at Harper and then the fifth Harper Elementary and then the fifth and sixth grade math teacher job opened. So then I became a math teacher. So from an art teacher to a math teacher. But it was a lot of fun. So and then I was at Harper for about 10 years and then I got my admin and
came to Caldwell and this is my sixth year at Caldwell.
Rick Sola (04:22.968)said math and art, and I'm a social studies guy, and I'm thinking those are two wild worlds apart, because I feel closer to art than I do math. That was not my strength, but do you still feel equally as connected to math and art, or was art more your passion, and then how did that happen?
Crystal Carothers (04:24.621)you
Crystal Carothers (04:41.077)No, I actually love them both. was just, I don't know. I think they were so different. It would just, I just saw it as a challenge and I don't know. I just jumped for it.
Rick Sola (04:51.522)That's awesome. So we're sitting here at the start of the year. So we're recording this. It's actually July 30th. Crystal, when do your teachers report back to you?
Crystal Carothers (05:01.254)they come back the 11th.
Rick Sola (05:04.128)Okay, and so we're here where I'm at it's the fifth they actually come back but as you're gearing up for the year what's what's something you're intentional about right now as you prepare for teachers and then eventually students to come back?
Crystal Carothers (05:21.977)Well, we shuffled teachers around. So first, just making sure they have everything in their room, like all the curriculums coming in, all the, mean, we were literally unloading math boxes and then we got a new CKLA curriculum. So we were putting that all in their rooms. So first, making sure they have everything they need, especially our new teachers. And then honestly, we're really just gonna be intentional about, we sat down in a meeting today and just like that first staff meeting, like,
we're just we're just going to put it all out there and just make sure those routines are solid. I mean, we're an elementary and we just have to do it a million times and that's OK. But just like, are we actually doing the same thing the correct way? And that's really it was actually at USA. I sat in like a session and it was all about teach like a champion. And there's mixed feelings about teach like a champion. But we just I did a book study and pulled out kind of the
routines and the things that I loved about it and then that's just every staff meeting we're just going to go over a new one and hope that we're doing all the things we're supposed to for these kids so they know exactly what they need to do so that the learning part is easy for them. They don't have to worry about all the other things it's just you're in there to learn and you're not getting distracted by all the tiny things that go on in a classroom every day.
Rick Sola (06:47.766)Well, you mentioned USA Kansas and I was there with my team as well. A lot of great stuff, but I love that you came away with something not just to bring to your building, but also to kind of create an arc for your year as far as bringing something to each staff meeting with that. as we get into the start of the year, you talked about what your intentional about what's got you super excited here in the next few weeks.
Crystal Carothers (07:14.073)So this kind of goes into my crazy story. did our playground and you think it's silly, but we had turf for a while and it was just falling apart. So we kind of redid the playground and that's what I'm excited for the kids to see it because it's actually been closed all summer and we're such a small community. our playground is huge for our kids. So I'm excited for them to come back and get to see and play on the new equipment or just different things.
Rick Sola (07:43.48)What's the big new feature that you know they're gonna love?
Crystal Carothers (07:46.617)the tire swing because our tire swing was falling apart and it just I mean not falling apart it was just it needed to go so they and that's the thing that every recess there's a line for.
Rick Sola (07:59.318)Yeah, you said you're replacing turf though. So what's in its place now?
Crystal Carothers (08:02.573)Yes.
So we laid sod down.
Rick Sola (08:07.444)Okay, very good
Crystal Carothers (08:10.071)And we really filled a bigger area so they have a bigger grassy area to play. So their football games are going to be a little more intense now.
Rick Sola (08:19.778)Yeah. What's funny. So I'm not in the elementary school, our the district, I mean, we recently within the last several years, each we have multiple elementary schools, but they replaced pea gravel with
Crystal Carothers (08:32.283)man.
Rick Sola (08:33.698)Gosh, like kind of a synthetic type of deal. yeah, just funny things that you don't think about, at least where I'm sitting and the principals there was talking about the pea gravel that would end up in the buildings and all over and they're all over the asphalt that would connect to the playground. And so this big undertaking. it's like every area has got like its thing. Things just wear out. Well, very good. So, you mentioned the KPA president this year.
Crystal Carothers (08:50.359)Yeah.
Rick Sola (09:03.692)little bit about what the KPA has kind of been for you and your career and then ultimately it's led to you now this this year being the KPA president.
Crystal Carothers (09:15.501)I guess just those organizations, KPA, USA, they have just been a lifeline for me. I mean, I feel I'm pretty still new to being an admin. Like, I feel like I'll always learn something every year, like everybody, but this only being my sixth year, like to not have, like those conferences to go to and kind of learn from others and making connections with others and
hearing that I'm not the only one in that situation has really helped. And I just have to give kudos, especially to Carol Lady. She's just been honestly a godsend to me and me like knowing her from the past has definitely helped because we already have that trust built. But it really has been just a lifeline for me, like those organizations.
Rick Sola (10:04.28)So mentioned CARA, talk about the networking that has been kind of afforded to you through this. You know, some others across the state, like you said, you're in the Oklahoma border near there, not a large district or town, those connections and networking, what does that look like for you?
Crystal Carothers (10:23.521)Yeah, just, mean, honestly, just going to the conference that opened up networks like sitting in common sessions, you just sit by somebody and you're like, hey, are you elementary or, know, why are you here? And just having those, you know, I call them partner conversations or shoulder, shoulder partner conversations in elementary. But it's just, it's been so great. But then I go.
And I look at even just our board and I mean, you high school, middle school, like all different, all around the state. And I think really like stepping up and being on the board has even been even more so for me, because again, I'm like, I'm a leader in my building, but how else can I help other principals who I know are going through the same thing? So just that giving back piece.
Rick Sola (11:18.882)So you mentioned sixth year and you feel, you still feel kind of the newness of the job, but I bet you've also been in positions where you have become the mentor to a new administrator somewhere along the way. Have you had many of those opportunities where you find yourself, people asking you questions as the experienced administrator?
Crystal Carothers (11:43.045)I have like, just again, when you make that connection and they know, like, I'm also the title director. So, I went to like our first of the year title meeting and just sitting next to someone who's just jumping into that role. I'm just like, please call me. Like, I mean, you just give them your number, your email and just like, I've been there. Like it's a lot, like here's two things you need to start off with. So I think that like.
Like as educators, you just want to help everybody who's, especially if they're going through the same thing you just went through.
Rick Sola (12:18.414)Yeah, you kind of alluded to this by here, you know...
I've been a building principal for 10 years, 15 in administration, and there's still a lot of times where I feel new, even though that's not a new principalship. I don't know that six years would be new, but there's times it feels new. And I think you're kind of touching on like humility, basically, the willingness to acknowledge that there are things that come up that we don't know, or we want to phone a friend or get some input or need to stretch our brains in a different way. And I think that's really
a good thing, but I think that is something unique about our jobs is to be in something for years, but then you get something that's kind of, that's a new one or it's a new wrinkle. And so I love that. love hearing you say that because I think of just the humility to hear you talk about, know, I'm six years in, but I still feel new, which means you're probably asking questions. You're talking to mentors and that sort of thing. So love that.
Crystal Carothers (13:19.021)Yeah, we opened like last year we opened the day a new daycare like our community was so supportive and they passed a bond and we were able to build this new center with its preschool and daycare and so learning all of the daycare world is just it's a lot. But I mean just I mean we went on three different tours to other schools that are doing it and they were just so gracious and kind.
I will give a shout out to Rachel Darling House at Rose Hill. She was honestly a godsend in any question we had. So, and then at Belle Plain, they were super gracious. And I mean, that's why I'm saying in education, everyone wants to help. Everyone just wants to see you succeed. like, because I knew they just like if you were in the classroom, you want your students to succeed, you want others to succeed because it only makes us all better.
Rick Sola (14:13.614)And so now you're a year into that. And probably discovering new challenges and things, but that's great. And that's also the team aspect of the jobs that we do. So you are.
Crystal Carothers (14:15.671)Yeah. Yeah.
Rick Sola (14:26.446)You're now moving into the role of KPA president. What is that going to look like for you this year or as it relates to KPA? We've got the conference in November, which is fantastic, by the way, highly recommend. But what's it going to look like for you this year with this added role?
Crystal Carothers (14:45.741)I think it's just, I mean, yeah, I'm going to sit in that president role, but it's so, I mean, it's teamwork. It's going to be everybody hands on deck, like looking over the sessions again, making sure, you know, we have a variety, but I mean, it's everybody. might just help Kara Moore a little bit here and there, but it's like, just cause you're in the president role, it's, it's definitely a teamwork. mean,
being on the board, it's everybody.
Rick Sola (15:17.592)Right. Okay. So putting you on the spot as, as the KPA president and you have, I'm sure every principal in the state is listening to this podcast. I'm sure. But what, what message would you like to put out to principals who are at the start of a new year and for some who may be in their first, some who may be in their 30th in education, what's a message that you would like to share on behalf of KPA?
Crystal Carothers (15:28.611)No.
Crystal Carothers (15:46.519)I mean, definitely go to the conference. It'll be great. But also never get away from the classroom. If there's a day that is so crazy because of meetings or whatever and I haven't been in a classroom hardly, like those are my hardest days. Like I, if I'm not in a classroom, it's heartbreaking because I don't know what my staff are going through if I'm not there.
And then so when they bring it up or if they do have an issue, then I can always go in and help because I've actually seen it firsthand. Like the further you get away from the classroom, the further you get away from education.
Rick Sola (16:30.026)And of course, the, I don't know if credibility is the right word, but just staff appreciate that, getting into the classroom. You're in there with them, especially if you know of some challenges that may be going on behaviorally or whatever, and you're there to be able to observe and process with them afterwards, and certainly can go a long way. And kids love it.
Crystal Carothers (16:52.129)And if you can sub in a classroom, even better, because I've learned so much subbing. mean, we all went through some crazy stuff these past years, and sometimes you just don't have enough subs and just being in that classroom as the teacher and really seeing, you know, it's amazing. It's amazing to just step back in there sometimes.
Rick Sola (17:16.162)Yeah. Well, I shared it, think recently on this podcast by Subdited Elementary School, 45 minutes and my goodness, there's so much work that goes involved to the elementary teachers. Kudos to all of you and it was such a good experience. I love the interaction with the elementary kids. They're so quick to laugh, to fist bump, to want a hug, which I'm not used to. I'm gosh, sure.
Crystal Carothers (17:40.889)On the side.
Rick Sola (17:43.918)Yeah, but no, just a lot of great things going on. So kind of totally random, but we're at the start of the year and I'm looking at our calendar and always put the back to school nights on the calendar. I assume you have a back to school night of some sort. When is it? Do you have it on your calendar? OK.
Crystal Carothers (17:59.833)We do, we do, yeah.
It is August 12th in the evening. So and they just come in they do stations and then there are Pharmacy here in town again is so gracious like our community just gives and gives and they provide Supplies backpacks for every kid so the kid comes in, you know goes through some stations they go through our title station and
just gets to see some of the other resources in our town and the banks come and do different things. We have Canocla here in town, again a big business here. They're also gracious in just giveaways or things like that, but then they go and meet their teacher and put their supplies there. So literally when they come the first day of school, they have to walk in, their desk is ready, and the teacher just gets to greet them and they get to start their day.
Rick Sola (18:56.066)Yeah, that's awesome. you've got it scheduled even before students and ours is on the 14th, which is, think, the first full day of school. We have that discussion every year. Rick, why on the first day? I get it, but it's Thursday. The next day is a Friday. But there is always that conversation of.
Crystal Carothers (19:04.2)wow. I'm gonna be exhausted.
Rick Sola (19:18.158)you know, should we push it back later into August? Give us a couple weeks or not. And I was like, let's just do it. We're already moving. We're on adrenaline anyway. Let's get going. It's going to be great. And let's showcase what we're all about as the school, like right when the school year starts. Anyway, I was just curious on that. And I was looking at ours. And I'm also curious, as a former art teacher, do you bring that into your current role at all?
Crystal Carothers (19:46.273)I feel like the creativity side definitely. but I mean, I'm not, I'm not teaching any art classes, which is sad, but, we do, we, again, since we're one big building, our, K-5 students actually get art once a week and they get a computer class. And so we're able, those high school teachers will come and then teach our kids at least once a week. So we're pretty, pretty lucky for that.
Rick Sola (20:15.554)Yeah. Well, that's awesome. it's it's I always try to find ways to bring, you know, I guess like our own passions into the role where where it can fit. But, you know, I'm still thinking about the art and math correlation or the connection there. So before we close off here, we've talked a little bit, heard a little bit about your story and getting to Caldwell. This is a chance for.
Crystal Carothers (20:29.516)Hahaha
Rick Sola (20:41.514)Again, every principal was listening to this podcast. I'm certain of it. But brag on your people. Brag on Caldwell Elementary, your district, and all the people that you're with, for those who aren't familiar with Caldwell.
Crystal Carothers (20:55.307)So I just, mean, coming to a one a district was definitely different from, for me, but, it is just so community family based. it's awesome to be able to walk through the whole building and talk to the high school teachers or the middle school teacher. mean, it's, everyone does their part and pulls their weight. And if someone needs something, everyone tries to step up and help no matter if they're not another high school teacher. Like we have, you know,
counselors that will come down or our librarian is actually also our assistant principal and our librarian and our elementary counselor. So, I mean, you just pick a hat and throw it on and go for it. So our superintendent, Tracy Becker, she's amazing. She came from Stafford a few years ago to us. We had had Allen Jamison for many years and he was great. So I guess I just feel like
I've been so lucky to be in their presence and learning from all of them. So they're just awesome.
Rick Sola (22:02.978)Yeah, that's awesome. And some really, really great words on the people that you work with, you know, day in and day out. And I hope they hear this because those are, you know, huge compliments. you know, just like we've talked about and like you mentioned, like the community aspect of what we do and all the people we work with and around is vital to a successful school year for our students, which is where we're at right now. so, Crystal, I appreciate your
time because I know this is kind of the, I wouldn't even call it the calm before the storm. This is the storm before the storm. It's fun. Storm has a negative sound to it, but it's fun. There's a lot going on. So taking the time to sit down and do this, I really appreciate that. And I think that's it. We'll sign off. And I want to wish you a great start to the school year.
Crystal Carothers (22:57.729)You too! It'll be up and running anytime now.
Rick Sola (23:00.782)And we'll see you for sure in November at the KPA Conference.
Crystal Carothers (23:04.535)Definitely, we hope we see everyone there.
Rick Sola (23:07.008)Alright, hey, take care.
Crystal Carothers (23:08.769)You too. Bye.
 

CC#73: Mr. Rick Moulin - Superintendent - Bonner Springs-Edwardsville, USD 204

Summary
In this episode of Cool Coffee with Kansas Principals, Rick Sola interviews Rick Moulin, Superintendent of USD 204 Bonner Springs-Edwardsville. They discuss Moulin's extensive journey in education, his transition from teaching to administration, and the importance of consistency and connection in leadership. Moulin shares insights on "making new mistakes," the significance of behavior as communication, and his excitement for the upcoming school year, emphasizing the value of community engagement and the role of teachers in shaping students' futures.
Be sure to listen to Superintendent Moulin's own podcast, Talk 204 on major podcasting platforms like Apple, Amazon, and more. Check it out!
 
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. Read more about the KPA HERE.
 
YOUR Input on Cool Coffee is NEEDED! Click HERE to share thoughts and interest for you or a colleague on being on the show!
Click for ALL Cool Coffee episodes!
Connect with Cool Coffee on...
Follow us on X: @KSPrincipals; @KPACoolCoffee
Facebook: KSPrincipals
Contact the host: X @MrRickSola, rfsola@olatheschools.org, or KPACoolCoffee@gmail.com
 
This episode's chapters (timestamp does not account for show's 30 second intro)
00:00 Introduction and Background of Rick Moulin02:40 Rick's Journey in Education05:23 Transitioning from Teacher to Administrator08:03 Reflections on Leadership and Mistakes10:36 Staying Connected with Students12:55 The Importance of Consistency in Leadership15:33 Excitement for the Upcoming School Year18:25 Community Engagement and Podcasting21:55 Final Thoughts and Reflections
 
TRANSCRIPT OF THE SHOW (generated by AI)
Rick Sola (00:01.813)Hello and welcome to another edition of Cool Coffee with Kansas principals. Today I am here with the superintendent of USD 204 Bonner Springs Edwardsville, Mr. Rick Mullen. Welcome to the show, Rick.
Rick Moulin (00:17.262)Thank you, I appreciate you having me.
Rick Sola (00:19.083)Yeah, it's awesome to have you here. And I actually had one of your colleagues in the spring, Dr. Steven Archer was on the show talking a little bit of PBIS back spring of 25. So good to have Bonner Springs back here again. And I could start with you like I did with him and ask if you have any insight on whether the Chiefs are going to end up in your backyard out there.
Rick Moulin (00:43.31)I wish I knew the answer to that, but I think a great name for the Chiefs would be the Bonner Springs Chiefs. We would take them here in Bonner Springs for sure. yeah, I don't know that the Chiefs will make it over to the Kansas side, but wherever they, whether they stay at Arrowhead or come over to Kansas, I'm a big fan, so I'll continue to be a fan.
Rick Sola (01:05.951)Yeah, yeah, I thought for sure we'd have an answer by now. So when I talked to Stephen about it, I thought it was coming up. But we'll find out soon enough, as long as they stay in the area. But hey, appreciate you being on here. So we're recording this. It's July 22. So kind of a busy time of year for all of us in education. I can imagine as superintendent, there's a lot that you've been working on all summer. But I always like to start with just a
kind of a basic road to the chair that you're currently sitting in and your road in education. And so I'll turn it over and have you fill us in from day one in education to where you are today.
Rick Moulin (01:47.118)Well yeah, thank you for asking. This is actually my 30th year in Bonner Springs, Edgarsville School District. I'm getting ready to start my second year as superintendent. So I started off in 1996, 1997. I was a high school English teacher.
I did that for a while and then I became a high school guidance counselor. And then after I was a guidance counselor, I became the high school assistant principal at Bonner Springs. I was the middle school principal in Bonner Springs for a few years. And then I became the high school principal. Did that for about five years and then became the assistant superintendent. And then this last year I became superintendent. The other unique piece of this is I'm also a Bonner Springs high school graduate. And so I graduated from Bonner Springs high school in 1990.
And there's no place I'd rather be than right here in the Bonner Springs-Everettville School District. It's the reason that I'm in the situation I'm in today is because I had great teachers growing up, a great school system, and being the first kid in my family to ever go to college and graduate from college, I owe everything to the teachers and the staff of USD 204.
Rick Sola (02:55.499)That's awesome. First of all, what a compliment back to the district that was such an important part of your life and upbringing. But I bet that's really neat for the community to know that their superintendent is a product of their own system.
Rick Moulin (03:11.404)Yeah, sometimes there's a lot of pressure because nobody wants to fail, but nobody wants to fail in their own hometown either. So there is some pressure with being a hometown superintendent, but there's a lot of pride. like I said, we've got phenomenal kids in our district.
outstanding teachers and support staff and so I'm just lucky to be surrounded by such great people and to get to do this job. So very thankful to be in Bonner Springs, Eddersville.
Rick Sola (03:47.263)So you went from a middle school principal to a high school principal. If you had to go back to one of those only and maybe taking the school out of it, the levels, where did you find the most enjoyment or kind of your insight on both middle and high school? Because you're kind of two different beasts, but they're very similar in some ways as well.
Rick Moulin (04:10.87)Yeah, so when I became the middle school principal,
my entire career other than when I student taught was high school. And so I learned a lot being a middle school principal. And one of the things that I think was very eye opening for me is I remember when I was a high school assistant principal and teacher, and I'm sure it's the same in every district, but there would be times where teachers would think, well, you know what? They're not teaching kids how to write in middle school.
And so I remember when I became the middle school principal, I'm like, we're going to make sure we're writing. Kids are learning how to write. And I get down to middle school and they're writing, kids are writing all the time. And I remember sitting in a PLC one day and one of the teachers said, well, I don't think in elementary they're doing X, Y, or Z. And I said, hey, hold on one second. Do you know when I was at the high school, they used to think that we didn't teach kids how to write. But now that I'm here,
I see kids writing all the time and not only that but we've got great teachers and so we can't assume that we're not doing certain things at the elementary school because chances are at the high school there's probably college professors that are sitting around saying well in high school they just teach them this but the bottom line is I think
I think it's a very rewarding job. Middle school was awesome because, you know, the age of the student, they're learning who they are.
Rick Moulin (05:43.38)I really loved also being the high school principal because at that point kids are starting to make plans for what's next in life and it was just an honor to be part of that and to help guide kids and help develop programs to where kids could actually explore different career opportunities and things of that nature. to answer your question, I don't know, I love them both. I I love middle school and I love high school.
Rick Sola (06:06.987)Yeah. Yeah, I have only been a middle school administrator, but I taught freshmen when I was teaching and loved them both. And I can see the rewards on both sides. is some it is funny. You mentioned the the next level always kind of looks down upon whether they're not getting this done at whatever level. And then you're right. It probably carries on up to college. Well, those schools aren't really getting ready for like we're working on it. And you'd always say it's a
We're planting a lot of seeds and they come to fruition at some point. just takes some time sometimes.
Rick Moulin (06:41.902)You know one thing I do at home? I pretend like I'm not very good at making the bed, because I hate making the bed, right? And guess what? My wife ends up making the bed because she doesn't think I can do it. Kids are the same way. And so when kids get into a classroom, they're going to try to, get away is not the right word, but they're going to do what they can to...
to maybe get out of doing something they don't want to do. Kids may not want to write, right? But it doesn't mean they don't know how. It just means that we have to put the procedures in place. We have to put the expectations in. And we just have to make them do it.
Rick Sola (07:23.659)Yeah, and they're not always wanting to be there. that a lot of times they just do what they need to do to keep either parents off their back or teachers off, whatever, you know, and just kind of, I'll just kind of get by. then, and that's what's needed. You know, when I was at the high school, it's neat to see when they start to kind of form a direction of where they want to go and that passion starts to ignite and then you see them thrive, you know. So you were a teacher for many years and then.
Rick Moulin (07:31.875)Yeah.
Rick Sola (07:51.689)got into administration. Did you always know you wanted to go into administration?
Rick Moulin (07:56.48)No, I never wanted any part of being an administrator until I decided I wanted to. So I remember being a teacher and...
trying to think about what was next. And I actually start taking classes because I wanted to start working towards my master's. And after I took my first administration class, I decided this isn't for me. I don't want to do this. And so I reflected and I actually became a counselor instead. So I got my master's degree in counseling. And at that time, as a classroom teacher, I had kids that would talk to me about, you know, personal issues they were having all the time. And it felt good to listen and to help guide kids and things like that. And so I thought,
I don't want to be a principal. I don't want to be an assistant principal. I want to be a counselor. So I did that for several years and as I was doing that job once again I did some self-reflection and thought you know really want to make even more of an impact and how could I do that and so I decided maybe I could be an assistant principal but never never really thought about being the lead principal until I became the assistant principal and after I did the assistant principal role for a couple years I thought you know maybe I do want to be the principal.
And because I could have even more influence on kids and the trajectory of kids' lives and things of that nature. so it just kind of, it honestly just happened over time. So.
Rick Sola (09:21.365)Yeah, that's actually kind of a good analogy to what we were just talking about as far as kids kind of get along with them when they discover something just like you did. You discovered, hey, maybe I do want to do this. And if someone was trying to teach you to be a principal way before you were ready, you may have just kind of gone through the motions. OK, check some boxes. But then it kind of clicked for you. then so now you're in the superintendent chair. You're going into year two.
Is there anything that, know, hopefully we have lots of principals listening, but there's a lot of principals that are aspiring to take that next step. As you go into year two now as a superintendent, is there anything that you look back on like, not going to do that again, or I want to make sure I do this again, or any reflection on that?
Rick Moulin (10:10.754)Yeah, there's a, you know, I think part of being successful at any role in a school district is you have to always reflect. And it took me a while to figure that out. You know, I always tell kids and teachers and anybody who will listen that, that you want to make new mistakes. Because if you're making the same mistakes over and over, you're not learning and you're not growing. Early on in my career, I remember, you know, for example, we'd have a freshman orientation when I was a high school assistant.
principal and the next year we'd have another freshman orientation and there were times where the same types of
things would happen that would cause a little frustration or didn't go as smoothly as I thought. But if you wait a whole year to think about it, you forget. And so early on in my career, I learned that I keep a calendar. And on that calendar, as we go through certain events or certain situations, I make a note on the changes we're going to make for the following year. Usually it's something simple, but I'm not going to remember it a year later. So it's important to reflect.
And so in this role, it's the same thing. We're not perfect, I'm not perfect, and nobody is. But the goal is to try to do the best job I can and to be as supportive of our kids and our teachers. And if I do make mistakes, I hope that there are new mistakes because I'm learning.
Rick Sola (11:39.305)Yeah, gosh, I wrote that down. really like that quote, make new mistakes. It's simple, but there's a lot to kind of grab hold of there. And I feel so similar in that I always get most frustrated with myself if I make a mistake for the second time. Like, you knew better than that. Come on. But to make new mistakes also implies effort and growth. And that's how we grow through those mistakes. I really like that.
And a great strategy as far as a calendar goes, keeping just a calendar, because we are a profession of kind of annual events. We're in registration right now. We'll get the back to school night. We're going to have, you know, it just kind of cycles. So that's fantastic. You know, one thing, as I kind of think back on, I don't know if you felt the same way, but as you go from being a teacher
Rick Moulin (12:17.848)Yeah.
Rick Sola (12:35.455)To this day, my biggest challenge of transition was from teaching to the assistant principalship. I felt like it was a new career. And one thing that really was a struggle early on was I felt like, my gosh, the relationships and connections I have with kids as a teacher, I can't match that as assistant principal. Then you discover, it looks different and there's new ways to do that. As you've gone from the AP to the principal, now to the superintendent,
What does it look like as superintendent to stay connected with kids from this chair?
Rick Moulin (13:11.01)Well, I think it's the same advice that I give our principals is that for me to be successful, for our principals to be successful, we have to be where the kids are. And so I remember, you know, going back to your question, I'm going to backtrack for a little bit here. I remember being an assistant principal and having the same feeling that you just described and being an assistant principal is a hard job because number one, you know, a lot of times you're dealing with behaviors.
Number two, you want to support the teachers. And number three, you're dealing with angry parents or sometimes parents that are upset. But I think the moment that everything shifted for me is I remember working with a kid and the kid was in trouble for some reason. And the old me at the time in my mind would be thinking about the consequence right out of the gate. And so as the kids tell me what happened,
I was thinking about, the consequence of this kid's gonna get ISS or detention or whatever the case may be. But one day it just clicked. And as the kid was talking to me, I stopped thinking about the consequence and I listened and I reflected. And then as I was talking to the kid, I said something along the lines of, hey, you're gonna be in a similar situation down the road. How are you gonna handle this differently? Let's think about it now while you're not mad.
Because when you are mad, you're just going to react the same way. So let's think about it. And the kids still got the same consequence. And I just remember at that point, the conversation with the parent went much smoother. The kid.
liked and respected me because I took time to listen and help him reflect. And then when I called that parent, it was, hey, we've got a plan for how he's going to handle this situation in the future. This is what he says he's going to do if he gets into a similar situation down the road, and we're going to help him do that. And behavior oftentimes is a form of communication. And once we take notice of that, we can actually figure out what's going on.
Rick Moulin (15:21.078)in this situation and how can we help the student learn from it and grow from it because a consequence is a consequence and students need consequences for behavior but they also have to learn and grow from it and so that was a big step for me once I figured that out. And now in this role as superintendent, like I said, I want to be where the kids are so I visit our elementary schools quite a bit.
And that was very eye-opening for me because I'd always been a high school principal, a middle school principal. I love our elementary schools. I go into the elementary school and the kids are so excited to see it. I've done some guest teaching for some different lessons. I've read to classes from time to time. But really, I try to just interact with kids in the lunchrooms when I go to the schools and just touch base.
I'm a guest speaker in some of our secondary classes, different things of that nature. You can never lose sight of the reason we're all here. We're here because our kids need us, and they need us to be the best we can be every day. And you don't know.
what's going on in your district if you're not where the kids are. It's hard for you to make decisions that impact kids if you're not around the kids. So I just make it a priority to visit schools and classrooms weekly.
Rick Sola (16:50.887)Yeah, that's great. you'll be in a being a product of Bonner Springs as you go around the buildings. Do ever get students come up and say, hey, my parents went to school with you or whatever, anything like that, any connections?
Rick Moulin (17:02.784)yeah, I've got a makes me feel old because.
I've got students who, you know, I had their parents and they'll tell me about it and they'll share stories about when their parents were in school and you know, the, and I don't know if you have the same experience, but you know, there'll be times where a former student will, I'll see a former student somewhere, whether it's grocery store or Walmart, whatever it is. And a lot of times a former student will say, remember that time I got in trouble? And honestly, I don't remember. I mean, I do not remember most
situations of kids get in trouble. What I do remember are the relationships, I remember you know the the qualities of the student that I enjoyed and so the things that stick with kids we just have to understand that we make a huge impact on kids even when we don't realize it.
So I see kids all the time and I see the kids parents and you know there'll be a time where I'll be in a classroom and the kid will say hey my mom said that she had you as an English teacher and I'll say something if it's appropriate at the time I'll say hey let's do a quick picture you can share you know put it on you know we'll share it with your mom or whatever and so we'll do a picture and you different things like that. Funny thing is I was in lunchroom one day with a bunch of kindergartners and this little kindergarten girl
When I came into her classroom like the week before and the teacher introduced me and the little girl and she says, does anybody know who this is? And this little girl raises her hand and said, he's friends with my grandma. And I go, I am friends with your grandma. And so anyways, we're in the lunchroom and I said, hey, let's take a picture.
Rick Sola (18:44.767)You
Rick Moulin (18:50.638)we'll share it with your grandma." And she's like, okay. So we take a picture and the kid next to her, can you take a picture with me for my grandma? Sure. And so the next thing you know, I'm taking, you know, I took like 10 or 12 pictures of kids because they wanted it for their grandma. And of course I don't know their grandma to send them, but I took the pictures anyway. It was kind of fun.
Rick Sola (19:07.018)Yeah.
Rick Sola (19:11.125)That's awesome. I gotta imagine going to elementary school just kind of reassuring and just kind of feel good and you know, go in there and they give hugs and you know, I very rarely do I need to go to an elementary every once in while. Usually I'm working with fifth graders, but I filled in for a second grade teacher covering a class and it was incredible. First of all, it's a hard job. There's a lot going on in that second grade. I was only there for 45 minutes and it felt like three hours and it
Rick Moulin (19:33.912)Hey, you're not kidding.
Rick Sola (19:40.617)You know, I'm juggling plates and I'm like, my gosh, but there's a magic in elementary schools, I think, that's just really, really neat.
Rick Moulin (19:48.338)It's so impressive to watch elementary teachers in action. And I made a joke with our kindergarten teacher one day. I would love teaching to kindergarten for like 30 minutes because man, they have so much structure and routines and all the things and those aren't necessarily my strengths. But man, we've got some amazing teachers.
Rick Sola (20:11.413)Yeah, you kind of hit on this, you know, and maybe you have some new principles, but like I said, hopefully there's a lot of principles listening to this and we're at the start of a year, especially those new principles. What advice would you give them as they're about to start, perhaps either in a new position or an administration for the first year? What advice would you give them coming from a superintendent?
Rick Moulin (20:35.374)I think for principals or administrators or even teachers, anybody in the profession to be successful, you have to be consistent. You have to be the same person every day. so, Todd Whitaker, I don't know if you've read his book, but basically he talks about if you've had one bad day, you might as well have.
know, bad days every day because people don't know what to expect. So you can't treat people nice four days out of five. You gotta be the same person every day because people appreciate consistency. And so there are gonna be some challenges that you face and you're the person that everybody looks at to determine how they're gonna react. I remember when I was the high school principal, there was a post on Facebook
of a parent complaining that their kid only got four tater tots for lunch. And this picture's on the, and I didn't look at Facebook, but people would often.
bring stuff to me and say, hey, did you know this was going on? So I remember coming in the office one day and my secretary comes up to me and says, hey Rick, have you seen Facebook? And I said, no, what's going on? She said, look at this. And there's this picture of a lunch tray with four tater tots on it. And we're getting slammed for having four tater tots or for not giving enough food at lunch and all this stuff. And I looked at our secretary and I said, Renee, we've worked too hard. We are not going down over tater tots.
And she laughed and I laughed and we moved on. I did end up calling the kid in and say, hey, if you ever have an issue at lunch, you just need to let me know. And what's ironic is the kid said, that wasn't even my lunch. I don't know why my mom did that. And so we kind of had a little, but I did. I said, hey, if you got an issue, if you feel like you're having an issue at lunch, all you got to do is let somebody know. anyway, but.
Rick Sola (22:11.135)haha
Rick Moulin (22:38.034)The secretary was going to react and so was the office, was going to react however I reacted. So if I got mad, they were going to be mad. But I made light of the situation even though in my head I'm like, why would somebody do that? But you know, so you got to be the same person every day.
Rick Sola (22:55.615)Yeah, I really like that. Do you find it a challenge sometime on the internal struggle? Because inside you're like, are you kidding me? Tater tots? This is, you know, but on the outside you have to project, you know, differently.
Rick Moulin (23:06.83)The times in my career where I've let my emotions take over, it just causes more work. Because then you have to backtrack and you have to do all the, and so, so you, you know, you try not to take things personal, even though it's hard and you try to be consistent and you advocate for kids. We had a, you know, situation where we had a parent, a parent teacher conferences one time.
And one of the teachers came up to me and said, hey, this parent's here and they're not very happy. I said, OK. So I went into the cafeteria and she was sitting with the teacher. And I'm sitting at the table with the teacher, the student, and the parent. And the parent starts saying something like, keep in mind for the audience listening, my name is Rick Mullen, right? And this parent looks at the teacher and says, another thing.
I cannot stand Mr. Mullen. And I'm like, she's talking about me to me and doesn't know it. And she's talking about how she doesn't like me because this, that, and the other. I listened and I turned and looked at her son and said, hey, let's figure out how we can get on track. What are some things we can do to help? And after that, she looks at me and says, my goodness, thank you so much. What's your name again? And I wanted so bad to make up a name, but I told her, hey, I'm Rick Mullen. And she was very embarrassed. Later on, the teacher joked that.
Rick Sola (24:10.699)Ha
Rick Sola (24:25.611)haha
Rick Moulin (24:33.292)I was trying to kick her under the table, but my legs weren't long enough. And so, but once again, it's really easy to take things personal, but most of the time it's the position that somebody's attacking and not the person. And so if you can look in the mirror every night and know that you're doing the best you can for the kids in your school, then you should be able to sleep at night. And what you're doing is important.
Rick Sola (24:36.427)Hahaha
Rick Sola (25:01.693)Yeah, that's a funny situation to envision, having that conversation. I bet the student was just mortified, probably realizing what was going on, the teacher. But no, you're absolutely right. there is that internal, and that's something that I've gotten better with as you just get into position of things you've got to kind of keep inside, or you have your team that you may share some things a little more candidly with.
Rick Moulin (25:11.438)You
Rick Sola (25:30.869)There's a saying, a good principal friend of mine say, something to do with when the principal sneezes, everyone catches a cold or something like that. And there's a lot of truth to that. So hey, we're about to start a new school year. What's got you really excited about 25, 26?
Rick Moulin (25:37.792)Yeah. Yep.
Rick Moulin (25:47.082)I'm excited to see our kids continue to grow and develop. As I told you before, we've got such good teachers in USD 204 and the classroom teacher makes all the difference. Because, you know, whether you like it or not, every kid only gets to be a first grader once, a second grader once, and we got to do the best we can to maximize kids' potential.
Our former superintendent, Dan Brungart, used to say, they walk across the stage one at a time. And so we've worked really hard over the last several years to put kids in position to where they can be successful in whatever it is that's next in life. So some of our kids are going to go to college. We want to make sure that those kids are ready. If they're going to a technical school, we providing the skills necessary for them to be successful?
job force, the military, whatever it is, our job is to get kids ready for what's next. And we've really taken some great steps towards that. Another thing I'm really excited about is we have a team that's been working with the University of Kansas. We were one of the inaugural teams to start looking at AI through the University of Kansas. And so our teachers have started implementing a little bit of AI.
And we're going to continue to grow that this year, led by a group of our teachers and teaching kids the proper way to utilize artificial intelligence and how to be successful with that. You know, there's so many things that I'm excited about. If I could, I'd like to give a plug. I have a podcast that I just started this past year. It's called Brave Talk.
Rick Sola (27:33.291)Absolutely, yeah.
Rick Moulin (27:39.862)or Talk204, excuse me, Talk204. And so you can catch that podcast wherever you listen to your podcast. We're gonna have our first episode of the new season, I believe come out next Friday. So we're excited about that as well. But I'm just excited to see our kids and our teachers and summer goes fast, but you also miss the people you work with every day because you don't see them for a little while.
Rick Sola (28:10.581)Yeah, that's great. We're starting to have slowly some teachers come back in the building. And just what you said, it's really great to see everybody. You spend all year together, get to know people, and it's like a family. So I will link your show into the show notes here, the Talk 204. And that's really awesome. I actually clicked on a few and heard. you had a, I think it was maybe your most recent one, but you had a senior on your show talking about some things.
Rick Moulin (28:37.614)Yeah.
Rick Sola (28:40.149)That's a lot of fun. So have you enjoyed it? Got it off topic real quick. But have you enjoyed doing the podcast?
Rick Moulin (28:46.316)Yeah, I've really enjoyed it. was something that I kind of wanted to do. then Jada Houston, who was the guest on the last podcast, it was kind of part of her senior project to help come up with the title of the show, the theme, and all those different things. She works with our communications coordinator. But it's fun to talk to students and staff members and community members about things that are happening in our district and just to build those connections.
The school district is a big part of the community and so we want to make sure that we're building good partnerships.
Rick Sola (29:23.317)Yeah, no, that's awesome. And what a cool thing for her to be a part of something that's continuing on beyond her years in Bonner. So real quick, you've done a lot of this, but 30 seconds, a quick brag out on just Bonner Springs, Edwardsville, everything. And really, you've done this whole show. There's so many really rich things going on in Bonner Springs, but a quick brag out to your people.
Rick Moulin (29:47.726)I tell you what, our kids, I'd put them up against kids anywhere. They work hard, they're respectful. We have our challenges just like everywhere else. But the nice thing about being in Bonner Springs, Editorsville is our kids and our community respects teachers. They value education and it's just great to be part of. The second thing I'll tell you, and I've said this a few times now, but literally,
It's just magical walking into some of our classrooms in USD 204 to see our teachers in action and connecting with kids and you know kids that may struggle to see the light bulb go off and it's because of the great work of our teachers and our support staff and we've got a great team at our central office as well and really at the end of the day I think we're headed in the right direction.
our focus as a district is all of us are here because kids need us. And so we don't hire people just to hire people. Our kids and our buildings need us. And if you're in a support role, you understand that that support role is needed because it helps kids in the classroom. So I always use even like payroll as an example. If people aren't getting their paychecks, their focus on that instead of teaching kids. And so we have to make sure that
We're doing everything we can to help our teachers and our staff be successful. And it's just a great place to work and live.
Rick Sola (31:23.913)Yeah, that's really awesome, really great perspective. And as busy as it is right now, I really appreciate you taking the time to come on here. And just so many different sound bites. I wrote several down that make new mistakes. But I really like your behavior equals communication. We were talking about earlier, then like you said, the focus on if you're not getting your paycheck, that's where the focus is going to be. It's detracting from the classroom. And then, course, what's going to stick with me too is we're not going down on tater tots.
Rick Moulin (31:54.05)Yeah, that was a funny situation. Like I said, you have to be consistent. You have to be the same person every day because the people around you are watching, the kids are watching, and they're going to respond how the leader responds. And that same thing in the classroom. Kids are going to respond the way the classroom teacher responds.
Rick Sola (32:18.207)Yeah, 100%. Well, Rick, thank you again so much. And all the best to you as you start your second year out there as the head up in Bonner. And we'll look forward to a great school year ahead. Thank you so much.
Rick Moulin (32:32.866)Yeah, thank you for having me.
 

CC#72: Message from the Host (Summer Break)

Thank you, listeners! Please take a minute to leave provide some input for the Cool Coffee podcast to consider moving forward. You suggestions for guests and topics will help make Cool Coffee what you want as we move into season 2. Thank you for your time and for listening!
Click HERE to provide input--2 minutes or less!
See all Cool Coffee w/ Kansas Principals episodes HERE!
Connect with Cool Coffee on...
Follow us on X: @KSPrincipals; @KPACoolCoffee
Facebook: KSPrincipals
Contact the host: @MrRickSola, rfsola@olatheschools.org, or KPACoolCoffee@gmail.com
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.
Read more about the KPA HERE.

CC#71: Retirement Reflections w/ Retiring Principals

In this episode of Cool Coffee, retiring principals Greg Oborny and JJ Libal, of USD 233 in Olathe, share their experiences and insights from their long careers in education. They discuss the importance of building relationships, the challenges of critical conversations, and the best advice they received throughout their journeys. The conversation emphasizes the need for visibility, integrity, and humor in leadership, while also preparing new administrators for the emotional and practical challenges they will face. Ultimately, the focus remains on the students and the impact educators can have on their lives. In this conversation, two experienced principals reflect on their careers, discussing the challenges and rewards of leadership in education. They share insights on the importance of giving, transitioning leadership, and the cherished memories that define their journeys. As they prepare for retirement, they express gratitude for their experiences and look forward to new adventures while emphasizing the human element of their roles.
See below for more on this episode, to connect with the host, and learn more about the KPA and the Cool Coffee Podcast.
--------------------------------------------
Chapters (timestamps do not account for intro music)
00:00 Introduction to the Principals' Journey04:53 Lessons from Early Administration12:12 The Best Advice for New Administrators19:40 Navigating the Challenges of Leadership25:53 The Principalship: Giving and Growing27:00 Transitioning Leadership: Leaving a Legacy31:57 Cherished Memories: Celebrating the Journey37:52 Future Endeavors: Embracing Change43:08 Reflections and Gratitude: The Human Element of Leadership
---------------------------------------
We want to hear from you--take 2 minutes (or less) and click HERE to contribute!
YOUR FEEDBACK ON COOL COFFEE IS APPRECIATED! 
Leave show suggestions, guest recommendations, questions HERE!
Connect with Cool Coffee on...
Follow us on X: @KSPrincipals; @KPACoolCoffee
Facebook: KSPrincipals
Contact the host: @MrRickSola, rfsola@olatheschools.org, or KPACoolCoffee@gmail.com
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.
Read more about the KPA HERE.
---------------------------------------
FULL TRANSCRIPT (AI generated)
Rick Sola (00:01.076)All right. Hello. Welcome to Cool Coffee, another edition, a special edition. And we will, we'll just call this a Princi-pals segment because I've got two of my own Princi-pals and I've got to give credit where credit's due. I did not come up with that. That was a former principal friend of mine, Justin Howe, who I've mentioned on this show before. He had the idea of Principals and he is a former principal now in the HR world. So I try not to bring him up too often.
But anyway, so we have some principals here with Mr. JJ Libal and Mr. Greg Oborny, and I'll let them introduce themselves here in a little bit, but they are both retiring principals after long, very successful careers in the chair. And so this is going to be a podcast where some shared wisdom will be given to the millions of listeners of Cool Coffee. And we will start by just doing a quick
introduction. I'll let you introduce yourself. Greg O. Let's hear about you.
Grego (01:05.146)All right, well, I'm Greg Oborny. I've been with the Olathe District Schools for 39 years. I started my career as a first grade teacher, then was an instructional reading coach, was principal at Northview Elementary for four years, and then have been at the last 25 years. I opened Regency Place and have been here and now am going to live life outside the principalship. Yeah, crazy. Turn 60. What happens?
There's life. That's me.
Rick Sola (01:38.008)Perfect. And we'll get more into it. And I should have started with this. And this is not any indication of the company that we have on this show, but this has always been able to maintain a family-friendly rating of podcast. And so I know you're retiring and you're both going out the door, but just for the record, we're a family-friendly show. And I'm kind of joking. I'm not setting you guys up at all. But JJ.
a quick road to the chair that you are about to vacate.
J.J. (02:12.948)Sure, JJ Libal, I'm the retiring principal at Santa Fe Trail Middle School, the best middle school in Olathe, no offense, Rick Sola. But it is, right, right. Yeah, 19 years in Olathe School District, really 15 years as an administrator, all in Olathe. Started off, I'm a farm kid from Southeast Nebraska, and I've taught, my previous career, I've taught in
Rick Sola (02:22.926)I take a little, but go ahead.
J.J. (02:41.968)small 1A schools. First teaching job I was the entire social studies department for the high school to urban setting in KCK and then to Olathe. And I was in Olathe as a teacher for four years before I moved over to the assistant principal role at a couple of different middle schools including Santa Fe Trail where I'm at now and retiring after nine years at Santa Fe Trail as a principal.
Rick Sola (03:09.42)Well, full disclosure, like I said, this is a, we'll call it princi-pals, but JJ and I go back to our coaching days. We coached against each other, each other. were both basketball coaches or social studies teachers together at different schools, but same, same grade level. So we go way back. And then Greg, Greg, I've gotten to know him more in the more recent years. And I think my only regret is I didn't connect with you sooner.
Greg and so but it's it's awesome to be able to connect with you on here
Grego (03:41.736)middle school principals are such a elite group. You know, I've always been so intimidated and we elementary principals, you know, are not really worthy to be amongst the middle school and secondary folks. But once I finally gained, you know, entry into the secret club with the handshake and all, I have just been so honored and have lots of new insights into your middle school principal ways.
Rick Sola (04:09.89)Well, I think the barrier that you broke and it's it's apropos that you're wearing a quarter zip right now because once you were a quarter zip at one point and we said, you know what? think he he could he could be part of the middle school club that in a polo, right? Dry fit. Yeah, OK.
Grego (04:22.536)Yeah, it was dry fit, dry fit. Elementary folks aren't always into dry fit, but I've learned your ways and now. Comfort, extreme comfort.
Rick Sola (04:31.722)Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's perfect. Well, I'm going to have you both go back and kind of go back to the deep memories of early in your educational career to your first year as an administrator. And just for the record here, first year for you, Greg, in administration, what year would that have been?
Grego (04:53.682)Probably like 95.
Rick Sola (04:55.638)Okay, and then JJ.
J.J. (04:58.181)in 2010.
Rick Sola (05:00.238)2010. Okay. What was the first hard lesson that you learned as an administrator?
J.J. (05:10.204)You know, I think for, go ahead, Greg. Okay, so I think, you know, one of the things that I was not as adept at early on was crucial conversations, hard conversations, critical conversation, whatever you wanna call those. You know, I think that...
Grego (05:10.408)I remember, you go JJ.
J.J. (05:33.652)That was something that I did not understand as well in the beginning and how to do those well and did some work and some reading on that and some practice with that. I think that that was something that I think you have to learn, especially if you're coming from the classroom and if you're gonna be working in the same building as an administrator that you had taught.
understanding that relationships change. They change and you know now you're the boss, you're the supervisor and you know.
you're looked at a little bit differently at that point. And I would say even between, and you know, at the elementary world with Greg, I mean, I will say this, like nobody works harder than elementary principals, elementary teachers, because it's you, right? You're the one. You're the one in that classroom, you're the one in that building. you know, there's even a different relationship that I would see as being the assistant principal to the principal chair with staff. So I would say that was a lesson that I, or something that I got better at,
wish I'd learned a little bit earlier.
Grego (06:45.096)Right on track, perfect on those critical conversations that just comes with experience, I think, and you have several of them and you botch them and then you master it. I remember the first time I thought that as a principal, I could make a directive and ask people to do something and just assume they would do it. That was really early on. I had asked my new staff, said, everybody's going to do
classroom newsletter. Now I'd like for you to do it weekly, but I understand that monthly may be more up some of your alley as we get used to this, but it's going to promote home and school communication and this is just something you've never done and it's going to be great. And the SPED people said, no we don't do that.
That's going to be a with IEPs. Nope, we can't. And I said, well, let's talk about then perhaps the objectives that you're working on with content in all of your IEP sessions. No, we're not going to do it. And I went, but yeah. OK.
And so after that, thought, hmm, I'm going to have to learn how to throw things out there, get a response from people, get critical mass, and get feedback and buy-in because saying, we are going to do this, doesn't work.
Rick Sola (08:24.056)Did you, at what point did you pull out the I am the principal card? Did that ever come out? I've always heard that if that's something that has to be said, then there's a lot that's lost at that point.
Grego (08:39.524)I was scared to say that after that moment and thought I'm just going to have to be craftier and smarter in conveying that thought but helping people realize that they're coming up with the idea and the initiative of which we need to do.
Rick Sola (08:59.043)Yeah.
J.J. (08:59.22)Just to add on that, Greg, I think you bring up a great point. I mean, I think we've all been in that situation. One thing that I found about three or four years ago, think, actually was around COVID when we were all online and looking for professional learning and all those things was a decision-making matrix.
And actually I got kind of a hard time from my staff because they would give me a hard time. Okay, is this a level one? Is this a level two? Is this a level five decision? And make fun of me for it. But then that actually kind of told me that they were paying attention to it. And that kind of helped some because I could say, know, like Greg, I love that term critical mass. Wish I would have heard that a few years ago. Thanks for just sharing that with me now, Greg. Could have used that a while back. But no, I think the idea of the same, yeah.
Grego (09:44.52)you
It's vintage.
J.J. (09:49.47)Timing, my timing is always impeccable. But I think that that is important because there are times where you have to put on that boss hat. But you don't wanna do that every day. There are times where I call it the boss hat. said, hey, this one's a level one. It's a boss hat, right? Like I'm gonna make this decision. But I often call things, hey, going into this decision, it's a level two. And so that means I'm making the decision, but I'm going to get input from you first.
And so if there are any complaints or concerns after that, I can say, well, you knew how the decision was going to be made before I made the decision. so, you know, I understand you're giving your feedback that way, you know? And so I think that helped me a little bit, but I agree with Greg. You know, can't pull that boss card out all the time, right? You have to figure out other ways.
Rick Sola (10:42.157)Yeah.
So for the record, I hope a little bit of facetiousness came across in that comment. The I am the principal. I kind of go back to the old Center at Life skit with Will Ferrell where he's sitting around the table and getting frustrated because no one's listening and he's like, I drive a Dodge Stratus. I'm in charge of 23 people. I'm a big deal. Yeah, I don't think that's a sign that things are going really well when we have to do that. But you know, some really good stuff there. And yeah, to go back to those early
years and I do think that that's a real challenge early on especially all throughout the principalship but early on especially because Greg alluded to it earlier. We learn from getting burned. We get better at it. But in those early years we don't have the experience to draw on or the foundation or the confidence is probably a big part of that as well to be able just like you said you're like, yeah, I don't know.
But that's a really uncomfortable place to live in. And that's really where our early principals live on the daily. I mean, I remember that. I see both of you shaking your head. think that's really just kind of a reality. So you've kind of gotten through all that. At some point along the way, you received what you probably would coin as the best advice you ever got as an administrator. What advice did you receive?
perhaps early on that you just felt like, just like JJ just said, man, I wish I had known that earlier. But you hear something from all the mentors and all the people that we work around that are so great. Greg, we'll start with you. Best advice that you received early on in your principalships.
Grego (12:33.128)Well, we talk about it every day at school now, especially starting the year. It's the power of building relationships. You know, we want teachers to build relationships with students and have that rapport and have authentic and real connections. And when we do that, students, there's lots of teaching and learning. They make progress and it's good all around. And I think people definitely have to be real.
principals have to be real with their staff and you've got to have relationships. I had one teacher say, Greg, I don't know what it is, but suddenly you do these Jedi mind tricks and you know, here we're all doing student led conferences and you know, it's just, it's that trust. They trust you, you trust them and you have relationships. And like when, when JJ said those,
critical conversations, that's when you have faith in yourself that you can do those things and they can come from a place of, if I were you, I would want to know. I use that phrase a lot. If I were you, I'd really want to know. So let's talk about it. And then you have that relationship built and the rapport, and then you work through those things.
Rick Sola (13:47.522)Mm-hmm.
Rick Sola (13:58.446)Yeah, and you always hope that those conversations are coming after you've built all those relationships and you've got so many deposits. Greg, as far as, you know, 39 years in education, Intentional steps that you have. mean, you're a very natural people person. The things that you do in your building to really kind of just always keep the relationship fire going with your staff. What are one or two of those things that you do?
Grego (14:09.8)Correct.
Grego (14:29.522)think we have to have humor. Yesterday at the elementary principals, was talking about the principals handbook, which is this made up entity that I use on my morning show with students about, you know, students and the principals handbook, because you only get the handbook after you go to principal school. And it's the knowledge of all the principals that have come before you. And whenever you have a question, principals go to the principal handbook. And you know,
We had a big snow last night students and in the principal handbook it says on page 1429, remind students to leave snow where nature intended it on the ground. And of course I got a principal handbook from my staff on my last day. I think humor has to be part of it. And you know another thing is just the integrity.
I we all know what we're supposed to do. That little voice that tells you what is the right thing to do. And when there's contentious conversations, parents, students, and we are attacked, I always just tell myself, what is the right thing to do? I really want to say this. I really want to make this point and have the last word. That's not the right thing. What does integrity tell you you need to do? So that's my guiding principle, integrity, humor.
and build your relationships and the rest of Scarborough's Rope and the Seal of Literacy and learning objectives, learning intentions, teacher clarity, those things will fall into place after you have those big pillars of what we just talked about.
Rick Sola (16:17.1)No, I love that. And I love the principal handbook. That might be something I need to steal and just kind of reference, especially to kids. love the, well, now you know, I've got the handbook here. no, that's really great there. JJ, best advice.
Grego (16:28.712)You
J.J. (16:35.42)Yeah, I think two things. One, I heard from an assistant principal when I was teaching that I worked with. And I really didn't think about it until I obviously became a principal. But there are very few emergencies in education. obviously,
You know, we had bad weather last night. That's right. An emergency takes shelter. But other than that, there are very few emergencies. There's why I know that one thing that I learned when I made a decision too quickly.
and didn't take to 48 hours, usually did not go as well. And I know that can be frustrating to staff sometimes because they want an answer right now. But I try to remind myself there are very few things in education that can't wait 24 to 48 hours. Like Greg said, before you respond to that email, before you say something, give yourself push pause, I guess would be the shorter version of that. Number two would be visibility.
And I would say I credit Mike Wolgast for that, who I worked with at Pioneer Trail. And I really didn't understand that until I became a principal. But I heard just to a tell here, Mike, tell me all the time, be visible. And so many of parents may not make it into the building, but they see you out there at the crosswalk. In my case, they saw me weed eating because that's what I like to do. And they thought it was just for the school, but it was also for me because it part of my therapy.
But that means so much to staff and to students and to parents, right? That they are visible. We see you at every game. We see you at every concert. Not that you have to attend all those things the entire time, but when you're there, and I would add one thing to that, active visibility. So when you're there, you fist bumping parents? Hello, nice to see you again. Thanks for coming tonight. How's it? So being actively visible and being...
J.J. (18:32.424)and then really pushing pause on things that do not need a decision right now.
Rick Sola (18:39.446)Yeah, no, that's great. I love that active visibility piece because sometimes it, don't know, we can be visible, but there's a million things rattling through our brains. And so it's easy to not be engaged with whatever it is. It could be just a supervision of a, concert or basketball game, to be, to be active, I love that. as, yeah, as we transition still along the line of advice, but
thinking to someone who may come to you, you hey, JJ Gregg, I'm starting my very first principalship or I'm starting my very first role in administration. You have years and wealth of wisdom, which is a lot of experience. What would you want to impart or what advice would you want to give to someone who is asking you in June before August for some advice?
J.J. (19:40.958)Greg, I'll let you start on that one. I'm still thinking about it.
Rick Sola (19:42.21)Hahaha.
Grego (19:45.052)Well, I'm going to be totally blunt and family friendly on this response. But when someone comes to me and says they're interested in the Principalship Administration, my first question to them is, are you sure you want to come to the dark side? And they'll go, what? And I say, yes, this is the Darth Vader dark side. You have.
great highs in this job, but there are some lows and the depths that will rock your health, your mental health, your physical health, your family life, and you've got to be prepared to work on balance and know that the work is never done. You will never be good enough.
There's always going to be someone that's unhappy with the decision you've made or you haven't met their needs. Your needs are going to be secondary to your staff, your students, your community. You will not get to show true emotions because you're going to be a leader. And it's going to take over your entire life. And
It's just the best thing ever at times. And it is awful at times. And you've got to have thick skin. So you better get yourself a good moisturizer, some sunscreen, and be prepared because it will impact every aspect of your life. And you probably will earn about $15 an hour when it's all said and done with the amount of time
Rick Sola (21:18.702)You
Grego (21:34.854)that it takes in your existence. Are you ready to come to the dark side?
They look at me and often go, thanks Mr. O, I'll think about this. To me it's the truth though.
Rick Sola (21:52.62)Yeah. But you know, wrapped up in all of that, all the challenges you said, but it's the best and there's so much to love about it. And I've said on this show before many times, just how I do think the principalship is the best job in education. There's just so many things with it. It doesn't mean it's easy. If it feels easy, we're probably not doing it the right way.
J.J. (22:18.132)and
Rick Sola (22:19.264)And I love that you shared all that because I think anybody who's listening to this can probably relate pretty deeply with all of that. But it's also encouraging as a reminder of what it is that we're doing. And Greg, I bet you've had former students now, I 39 years in education, I mean, they're well into adulthood. There's probably some grandkids that are coming through. The profound impact that you've had and what better legacy is there than to positively impact.
kids and families. But there's a sacrifice that comes with it. that's great advice. JJ.
J.J. (22:57.3)It's always about the kids for me, you know, and love what Greg said there. You know, decisions that you make that are best for kids are not always going to be what's most convenient for adults. And so I think you have to keep that in mind because one thing that I would tell a new administrator coming in is that you will not...
I cannot prepare you for the number of adult things that you will deal with, with dealing with adults as much or more that you deal with kids. Because you have to remember that you're taking on everything else too. Anything that is personal and going on in their lives, a divorce, a breakup, a...
you know, passing, that all comes to you as the principle too, right? For you to handle. You know, everybody else is, you know, things that are, the burdens that they're carrying too can come to you quite often. So, but I would say the focus still has to be on the kids and we are here. They are our clients. I say all the time, you know, we have the best kids and we have to believe that. And so,
What I would say is, is, you know, keep the focus where it needs to be and that's ultimately on the kids that we serve. And it's, and now you're doing that as a principal for an entire building, but there are going to be some decisions that you make that's going to be what's best for a kid, maybe even on an individual discipline situation where the teacher wants one thing, the parent wants something, and you have to, you have to do what's best for the kid in that situation. And that teacher may not be feel supported.
for whatever reason. So you have to be able to do that, but understand that that's why you were put in that chair. You were put in that chair because you are a leader, because somebody saw something in you to lead an entire building. And so, you get the opportunity to make that decision. And some of those things can be very life-changing as well for students. just, I mentioned this the other day in our, is get a praise box, find something that you can put notes in.
J.J. (25:08.389)of praise over the years and then get those out. Put them on an album, find those things because those are gonna be important later on. You know, from whether it be from staff or students or parents. So that would be my advice.
Grego (25:23.27)Recently, I told a teacher, and this was like May 15th, and this was in the principal's handbook that they gave me, I had a bit of a melodramatic moment. And I was talking to this teacher and I said, good grief. I'm just like Shell Silverstein's The Giving Tree. I give, I give, I give, I've got no branches. I give, and now I'm simply just a stump. That's all I am. I'm just a stump. There's nothing left of me.
Rick Sola (25:47.625)Ha ha ha.
Grego (25:53.004)And of course we laughed and I thought that really is the principalship. We give, we give, we give. And then suddenly there's just nothing left but a stump. But you know what, over summer, you grow back into this great, big, powerful Kansas cottonwood tree and then throughout the year, you know, you're losing everything, Shel Feverstein.
Rick Sola (26:18.347)Yeah.
Grego (26:20.732)but it always comes back and it feels so good when you do give and it comes back and you still have that capacity to give.
Rick Sola (26:30.734)That's a great analogy. love it. There's a theme wrapped in there somewhere. I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate that into a school wide theme. Maybe that's a little dark of a theme. I don't know. That's maybe a little melancholy or something. no, everything that you both just said is just so great. to be able to capture that here and like I said, hope people will hear this because there's so much there, especially those who are getting into the profession.
Grego (26:39.368)You
.
Rick Sola (27:00.716)Or maybe they're just finishing their first or second year where you really feel beat down and you talk about thick skin. It takes a little time to really get comfortable with that because you're building that confidence and all that. You know, I know a big part of, especially for both of you, because you care so much about your communities, the school that you're stepping away from. I know there's a lot of prep that is and has gone into.
leaving in a good place for the person who's stepping into your chair. Just talk briefly about what are some of those things that you made sure to do to ensure that your community in the building is really left in the best possible place for that person.
J.J. (27:49.428)You know, I'm glad you talked about that. was just talking with Leah, Dr. Cogswell, will be taking the principalship at Santa Fe Trail. And it's funny how things kind of come across like Twitter or whatever happens to be just at the right time. But I just, it was about, you know, basically about transition. And it talked about how, you know, are you building something that is strong only when you're there or also when you're out of the room?
And can you be a cheerleader for what happens next? And is there momentum to move forward? And I think that that is really, really good. It's really hard. I I found it hard, right, to kind of step away and say, okay, I won't be here or I'm not involved in planning and decision making for next year at this point. And that's not easy, but what you have to realize is that it's not about you.
first of all, and you have to, it's really about the kids and moving forward and, you know, sometimes change is good. And so, you know, I would just say that, understand that, you know, your legacy is about what moves forward in that situation, not necessarily about what was left behind in that situation. So that's kind of how I've looked at these last, you know, couple of months as it's gotten closer to the end.
Grego (29:11.912)Well, JJ, I'm glad that you have you expressed that it has been hard, especially with a new person. I have felt that immensely and then told myself this shouldn't be hard. But after 25 years, I opened the building, I've hired everybody. I've planted bushes like you. I've I've trimmed every. My DNA is all over this building.
Rick Sola (29:12.354)Great.
Grego (29:36.284)with sweat, blood, tears, and my life. And so giving that up to a new leader has really been challenging for me, because this has been my life, my passion, Regency Place. But I love the successor, Tricia Putoff, and...
I've really worked hard to make sure that she has every success possible. Everything is going to be done for her. I've got files ready. She's going to come into this clean office, which is not right now. And the year is pretty much planned for her. And then she gets to take that and do what she wants to. And I will be totally supportive of whatever comes up. I've tried to include her in all of our end of the year events so that everybody knows that we are aligned and good friends. The community knows that we're good friends.
which adds comfort to the transition. And strangely enough, I received a picture from a former staff member taken probably back in 2007. This is me.
Rick Sola (30:45.207)See that, yeah.
Grego (30:45.896)Eilish Man Bag that was, you know, very popular in those 2000s. And here's Tricia, who was friends with people in my building and we were at a staff function. And we're both talking, laughing, jamming, dancing. Who would have known that in 2025, she would be taking over the love of my life and I'm gonna be okay with it.
Rick Sola (31:12.728)Yeah, what a great picture to have that unearthed at this point and that's pretty cool. I'm assuming she's seen this, right?
Grego (31:16.156)Yeah
Grego (31:22.76)Oh yes, yes. We, we...
Rick Sola (31:25.088)Is it gonna be put up in the building? It really should.
Grego (31:30.408)Well, it's a family friendly building, Rick, with family friendly language and imagery. And probably this was at a favorite watering hole back in the mid 2000s that's probably no longer in existence. And I'm thinking that perhaps another PLC opportunity for the community to us getting along might be more appropriate.
J.J. (31:36.424)Hahaha.
Rick Sola (31:41.1)Yes.
Rick Sola (31:56.27)That is an answer only someone with years of principal experience could provide. That's fantastic. You know, I'll say the last couple of months, maybe it's the last several weeks or maybe it's the last year. Talk about or just share what's been your favorite memory.
Grego (32:04.008).
Rick Sola (32:20.074)over the kind of, I guess, just the home stretch. And so wherever you want to put that, but as part of your retirement, you you both have alluded to some of, and I've seen pictures on, on Twitter of some really great things and your communities, they love you. But what's been one of your, favorite memories of, cause I've heard it so many times before and Greg, actually you said this at the district retirement that, you know,
You find that you hear so many great things when you retire. It's unfortunate that we don't hear those things until we retire. But what's been your favorite memory over the last couple months?
J.J. (32:56.338)For me, really, I told my staff, made it very clear, and like Greg talked about to a directive that people don't follow, I made it very clear, I thought, that I didn't want anything. just want to walk away, right? Well, you know.
that didn't happen, but you know, it was great. So I think one of the favorite memories I have is the, we do a spring show at the end of the year and Rick would know what that's all about, your cheerleaders and drill team and you know, put on a performance and they had gotten from my wife a list of like some of my favorite rock songs, cause it was a rock and roll theme and they did a montage of those songs, tribute and then.
I got out there and was dancing with them, had the Brett Michaels wig on, that kind of thing out there, you know, because it was us dressing up for the event, and that was really special. And that brought goosebumps, and still does, I have goosebumps right now thinking about that, and a tear, you I think that will always be.
Rick Sola (33:51.351)Yeah.
J.J. (34:06.592)you know, an amazing thing. And the fact that the kids took the time to do that and that the sponsors to put that together, choreograph something and have it go off, that was amazing. And so that's one that I will always take forward. And then I think just the number of cards and emails and things that I've gotten, you know, that I've received has been tremendous from the community. They see it. You may not always hear it all the time, but they do recognize
and appreciate the work that goes in and taking care of their children.
Grego (34:43.57)JJ, I was like you, I was thinking, okay, let's keep the celebrations minimal, but at some point I didn't have control over it and they weren't listening and I just had to lean in and go with it. And that was really tough for me to be the center of attention and have all this thrown at you that really is so validating for you as a person, as professional, and as your career.
Rick Sola (34:43.586)JJ,
Grego (35:14.332)But after you kind of get used to it and you open yourself up to it, it really does help bring, I think, some closure to our careers and the power and legacy that we've left with this district. Again, I will say, I had a moment where a former parent called me.
I saw the name on the phone and I had an immediate, it's the last time I talked to this parent eight years ago. In June was a knockdown drag-out, not kind conversation at all about some critiques that things weren't brought up and it wasn't positive. You know, I held my own and I saw that name and thought, my, well that parent had called
and wanted to share that the boys were doing exceptional, going to college, had one graduating this year, and that their best years were at Regency Place. And he just wanted to let me know that. And he remembered the last time we had visited. And he had thought about calling since then, but this just felt like the right time. And I thought, another example, do the right thing.
Rick Sola (36:32.962)Wow.
Grego (36:37.362)You don't always have to get the last word, Mr. O'Borne. And that does come around. And that disgruntled parent that...
Extended the olive branch eight years later With something I really remember as much as I do cards and everything here that doing the right thing and Being a human being is so much what this job is all about and we lose sight of it It's hard because there are so many pressures and we're trying to be effective all the time and you just want to get this done but relationships and being human
That's how you get it done.
Rick Sola (37:22.444)Yeah, that's awesome. What a gift too, because you know that's something that I think so much in education we we don't see the fruition. Things come to fruition that we may have planted and to be able to have that eight years later. What a nice gesture on on their part and that you remember that so so clearly. You know, like I said, I have seen and heard of and then of course our district celebration. So many great things on on your behalf and in.
It's just great, greatest to see that two very deserving principles and for the record, going to miss you both greatly at our district meetings and just connecting with you. But I also know that you're the kind of people that are just a phone call away and you'd be willing to talk about anything, but just two of the best. I want to leave this with just quickly your plans now for the future, because I know
August is going to have a different feel. And JJ, I know you've got a little bit of an educational road ahead of you still, but I know it's going to feel much different. I say August. It's really like your summer is going to feel very different. So what are those plans here in the upcoming school year?
J.J. (38:39.654)And so I will be in charge of in-school suspension at a middle school in Park Hill School District and be an hourly employee and looking forward to that. I coach girls basketball. I think this is a good transition before my ultimate goal is to get back in the classroom.
as a social studies teacher. And so I'm looking for this transition time and had an opportunity yesterday to go work with some of the kids at a basketball camp. And it was so much fun to be back in the gym, knock off some of that coaching rust and learn and like, well, this is different than how I taught it 20 years ago, but that's okay. Let's learn more. And so I'm super excited about that, you know, and,
being able to work with kids and try to make a difference, difference individually with students. Take some of things that I've learned and put in place at CNFA Trail. And then eventually though I want to get back into the classroom. That's where my heart is and continue to coach.
Grego (39:45.82)JJ, I admire you so much for, you know, continuing having your feet and dabbling in education. That's great. I'm honestly scared to do that for fear that this school for 25 years has been the love of my life. And I would feel like I'm cheating if I were to do something else, you know?
Rick, you're so in tune. I am not looking forward to August because I know I'm going to be having, you know, I should be posting class lists. I should be doing this. So I plan to be out of town in Cape Cod during August to be entirely away from that so that I'm not going to be too focused. But look forward to...
having a life outside of school, which I really haven't. All these years I've been so school focused. As I've told my staff when I announced this, Regency Place will learn to survive and thrive without Mr. O, and Mr. O needs to learn how to thrive and survive without Regency Place.
So that is my goal is learning how to thrive and survive without the school schedule and being effective and Mr. Snap, which by the way, this doesn't work at home.
Rick Sola (41:08.706)Hahaha.
Grego (41:10.96)Snaps don't work.
Rick Sola (41:14.222)I don't think they would work at my home either.
J.J. (41:17.204)I just tried that on this call and got a dirty look. So I'm just saying, you know, yeah, it wasn't for my dogs either. It was like, you know, so yeah, there you go. I like that.
Grego (41:17.476)Hahaha!
Grego (41:33.616)It's a big adventure. I really don't know what to expect. And I guess we work all of our lives to get to this point. And I have faith that it's all going to work out and be great.
J.J. (41:48.306)Yeah, I would just echo there, Greg, because I mean, it's a little bit grieving, right? I mean, there's a little, even though it's so hard and there's so much and, you know, and, you know, I hated a countdown, you know, a countdown of days. I just, didn't like countdowns, you know, but it is a little bit of a grieving process because when it becomes such a part of who you are and what you do, it's your identity.
You know, right? And so now that has to change. And so I agree with you 100%. It will feel different when you've done this your entire life. And for me, that's all I've known, because my parents were educators, right? And so I have not known anything but going to school and doing school things since, you know, since I was a little kid. So.
Rick Sola (42:38.966)Well, really profound there and just really awesome to hear. just everything as I'm thinking about just this whole talk, everything that has really been talked about this whole cool coffee podcast is created to celebrate the principalship. And I can't think of any better way than to hear two amazing principals reflect on their career and share some advice and talk about next steps. There's just so much about the principalship that
is hard and challenging but so rewarding and I hope nothing but the best for both of you as you embark on a summer that will be entirely different than it has been for many, many years. And Greg, figure out that watering hole that picture was taken into and then when you come back from Cape Cod in September, October or whenever, let's all get together and...
And we'll just, you can catch up and hear about things and perhaps be reminded that, no, that's been a really good couple months that I've had not having to worry about all this stuff.
Grego (43:45.393)You
might even bring back that man bag and treat you both to a healthy beverage.
Rick Sola (43:53.378)Yeah, there you go. There you go. That sounds perfect. I'd be totally up for that. And guys, thank you so much. And as a testament to both of you, trying to schedule this, it was incredible because we're in summer and I know Greg tomorrow is actually the last official day of contract, but like it was dancing around commitments because you're still meeting, you're still working, you're still doing things for your building. This has not been checkout mode for the last few weeks or whatever.
You're working, you would talk about working bell to bell, you guys are working bell to bell. So thanks for all that you've done for education, for your communities, for your people. And thank you for coming on to this show here today.
Grego (44:35.846)Rick, your listening skills, your hosting skills, your paraphrasing skills are remarkable. I mean, this is like late night TV with your host skills. Seriously. So I'm gonna give you some positive snaps.
Rick Sola (44:54.414)Well, thank you very much. I thought I was sensing a little teetering on pandering or sarcasm or something, but no, thank you. Thank you so much. It's been awesome.
J.J. (44:55.522)You
Grego (44:56.381)your town.
Grego (45:04.68)It's genuine. Genuine.
J.J. (45:07.028)Well, I will echo that because Rick, you and I go way back and Rick likes to give me a hard time, but we are also big planes, trains, automobiles, fans and brothers in Seinfeld in that. And so I, you know, I will just say that you do a great job with this, right? And I'm not saying that in some sarcastic Seinfeld way, like.
Rick Sola (45:17.058)Ha ha ha.
Rick Sola (45:29.166)Well, you're.
J.J. (45:32.34)or anything like that. You do a great job with this. And in all seriousness, the fact that you're highlighting, because I think people can forget about the role of the principal sometimes, right? And not understand that we're human too. And you're bringing that human element to this. And so thank you for doing that. I hope that you keep doing this, because this is great.
Rick Sola (45:56.77)Well, you're very kind. And we made it through this whole talk. And there was not one single Seinfeld quote or reference the entire time. That's pretty remarkable. there you go. Well, guys, thank you so much. Have an awesome rest of the day, weekend ahead, and an awesome summer to you.
Grego (45:56.968)Agreed.
J.J. (46:06.718)We'll make up for that. We'll make up for that at that watering hole.
Grego (46:11.186)True.
Grego (46:18.888)All right, thank you.
J.J. (46:19.38)All right, thank you.
 

CC#70: Debriefing the 2025 USA-Kansas Conference

In this episode of Cool Coffee with Kansas Principals, host Rick Sola welcomes back familiar guests, as well as a couple new guests, to reflect on the recent USA Kansas Conference (2025). The conversation highlights key takeaways from the conference, including the importance of networking, effective leadership strategies, and the role of student leadership in shaping school culture. The principals share their insights on effective delegation, the challenges of leadership, and the significance of taking time to recharge during the summer.
Chapters (timestamps do not account for intro)
00:00 Introduction and Guest Introductions01:33 Reflections on USA Kansas Conference09:10 Keynote Highlights and Takeaways15:10 Effective Delegation and Leadership21:21 Working with Top Principals26:01 Summer Plans and Unplugging32:15 Final Thoughts and Networking Opportunities
Connect with this episode's guests:
Dr. Todd Dain -- Shawnee Mission South Principal (X: @SMSouthTDain)
Mr. Mark Mahoney -- Shawnee Mission South Athletic Director (X: @SMSRaidersAD)
Mrs. Kelly Whittaker -- Ottawa High School Principal (X: @kelwhitt217)
Dr. Johnny Lewis-- Ottawa High School Assistant Principal
---------------------------------------
We want to hear from you--take 2 minutes (or less) and click HERE to contribute!
YOUR FEEDBACK ON COOL COFFEE IS APPRECIATED! 
Leave show suggestions, guest recommendations, questions HERE!
Connect with Cool Coffee on...
Follow us on X: @KSPrincipals; @KPACoolCoffee
Facebook: KSPrincipals
Contact the host: @MrRickSola, rfsola@olatheschools.org, or KPACoolCoffee@gmail.com
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.
Read more about the KPA HERE.
 
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT (AI generated)
Rick Sola (00:01.932)Hello and welcome to Cool Coffee with Kansas Principals in what will be our last official full feature episode of the 24-25 school year. We'll relaunch again in August. But we have some guests here today and it's appropriate to have a couple of these guests because they are friends of the show, been on here multiple times. And one of them was our very first full feature with Dr. Todd Dane, who is joined also by his assistant principal, Mr. Mark Mahoney.
Welcome, Todd Mark.
Todd (00:34.456)Thanks for having us guys. Good morning. Happy to be here.
Rick Sola (00:38.144)And then also on the other side, we have also frequent guests on the show. Mrs. Kelly Whitaker joined by her assistant principal, Dr. Johnny Lewis of Ottawa, Kansas. I should have mentioned Shawnee Mission South. I think we know that, but for Todd Dane and Mark Mahoney, but then Kelly and Johnny from Ottawa High School. Guys, thanks for joining.
Kelly Whittaker (00:58.799)Thanks for having us on this gloomy Tuesday morning.
Rick Sola (01:04.31)Well, the last time I recorded was with Brittenhart and the power literally was going out on us and it was much worse. So this, this isn't quite as bad, but we'll take it. So summer is in progress. We all just connected last week, just less than a week ago, we were at USA Kansas, which is what really this episode is really featuring is just the USA Kansas conference, which brought a lot of really good material and content.
I know there were some presentations that we were even a part of. But want to hear a little bit and share out kind of bragging on the conference, but debriefing the conference a little bit. And so we'll just jump right into it and kind of get into some of the more meaningful sessions. And we've got five of us here talking, so it can kind of just go free flowing. But I'll just open it straight up with.
You know, when you think back to USA Kansas 2025, the 54th annual conference, what was the number one takeaway for you? And maybe we'll start on the shiny mission Southside, either Mark or Todd, as you left USA Kansas.
Todd (02:20.408)Well, I'll tell you what, I the thing for me every time, I think it's the same. It doesn't mean that this year didn't shine, but every year for me, it's just the ability to network, to connect, and learn from colleagues across the state, and get great ideas. I, you know, there's some...
really exciting sessions that we attended. But I think just getting ideas from others and sharing those ideas has been the most impactful for me. And as a first time guest there, one thing that I took away was.
was so well organized, it was very detailed. With the ability to go to a session and then be able to unwind with a group of people and talk to them about what's going on in their buildings and share different ideas was super impactful for me and something I can take into the summer and the next school year.
Rick Sola (03:18.252)Kelly, Johnny, as you come back to Ottawa, and I know you're meeting Kelly, we're talking kind of before we hit record here that your 12 month contract, you're working all summer. A lot of those ideas that you get from conferences like this kind of percolate and then they develop and then they come to fruition in August. What was something that you walked out of the conference with?
Kelly Whittaker (03:41.313)I walked out, so there was a student leadership group, was shared by Jerry Johnson, he's the high school principal at Holcomb High School out there in western Kansas, and I really enjoyed listening to him and Joe Coles talk about how Jerry has taken leadership, student leadership groups with his juniors and seniors and really just transformed the culture within his building and more importantly built the capacity through his students to be leaders. He made a comment that we always talk about and kind of grumble.
about how our kids don't know how to be leaders, but we don't teach them how to. And I probably am the queen of saying that around my building. So I was really excited to listen to him share a little bit about his journey and his story. And I've already emailed him and looking forward to connect with him and pick his brain a little bit about what that really looks like and how it might transition to a building that's about three times the size as he is. So just kind of curious on what that could look like for us.
I think for me, I left there feeling really hopeful about the state of education in Kansas and just some of the positive things that are happening there. Last session where we just kind of heard lots of good news about education in Kansas was good for me to hear and see and made me grateful. One of the sessions that I loved, I went to a session on our behaviors and our kind of emotional regulation impacts student regulation and so it was
talking about how to help teachers get emotionally regulated when they're dealing with students who are dysregulated. And so two minutes into that session, I was texting one of our teachers who's really passionate about that same kind of thing. And we're ordering books and planning professional development around ways we can help our teachers center themselves when students become dysregulated or tap out and find some help and just identifying some triggers and some skills that they need to help.
regulate themselves when they're in those moments. So that was just kind of some good nuts and bolts things that I took with me.
Rick Sola (05:40.12)Kelly, you had mentioned seeing Jerry Johnson from Holcomb High School. I was in that session. I didn't realize you were in there, but exactly what you said is what I wrote down to come back to is how often we have leadership groups in our eighth grade, at every grade, but our eighth grade, we have some leaders. We want to have them be influential students. And I really asked myself, how do we teach them to be a leader?
other than say, you're a leader and here's some activities we're going to have you facilitate. How do we actually instruct them on what leadership means? How to be a leader at a middle school? That really stuck out to me and I really appreciated that session from Jerry and Joe. Johnny, you just mentioned you were connecting with your teachers. I guess a question for all of you.
Are you intentional about or do you or just kind of as you go to these conferences do you reach out to your teachers and kind of make it very publicly known what you got out of these conferences? Is that something that you try to do when you go away to these conferences?
Kelly Whittaker (06:56.291)think when it's applicable, absolutely. Anytime that we hear a good idea or something we could bring back to whether it's our building leadership team, maybe a small group of teachers that could lead some future professional development, we always are processing and trying to do that when we feel like it's right. Not that you're going to try to emulate somebody else and you want to be just like they are, but if someone's got a great idea and we know that that's a gap or a point of struggle in our building.
And how can we take that information and build some capacity through our team to do some great things for our students as well and learn from their expertise in that area.
Todd (07:34.394)Yeah, I would echo that and that when we go to the conference and bring back an idea or even just
sometimes you just bring back a question, right? And I oftentimes go back to my building leadership team with a question that I have from a conference and how can we apply this here at Shawnee Mission South or how can we make this relevant for kids? And I think one of the most prevalent pieces that we're focused on is making school relevant for teenagers in 2026.
Right? We have to continually evolve and make school relevant for young people. And the traditional high school, the traditional college-bound path and everything else that we all think about school is rapidly changing and evolving. And we have to continue to evolve and meet the needs of our learners. so those are the questions that I bring back to our building leadership team, oftentimes with different ideas and solutions from other principals, and then using that to fit what
we need here.
Rick Sola (08:41.08)It's been brought up already a couple times, just the conversation that you have with other principals. You know, we all connected in this room last week at Wichita, not during sessions, but during in-between times or after times. And there's so much valuable PD, PLC, principal PLC that occurs kind of informally at these conferences. That's so great. I'm going to throw out a
I guess a subject from the conference last week and it just will just do reactions here. Let's talk keynotes.
Kelly Whittaker (09:21.078)yeah!
Rick Sola (09:22.008)Yeah, oh yeah. There were a few. We'll just start it off where the conference started. How would we, you know, just, we're debriefing the conference. Let's debrief the keynotes. Who wants to launch into that one?
Todd (09:44.27)Yeah, so I, you know, I I was so excited to have coach with us and share that story of of his of you know his team and young man that made all those shots and I think. That's not a new story to me, but I think it's good to.
Kelly Whittaker (09:50.659)the parade story.
Todd (10:05.366)remind ourselves why we do this and what we're all about. if the answer to our why isn't kids.
then we're in the wrong business. so I always get excited and emotional whenever we bring it back to students with special needs and that hits home with my family and what we live with. So it's always powerful to me that it comes back to our why and why we get excited and fired up about this thing that we do in schools.
And I'll take a note from Johnny, I called a couple coaches Friday morning, getting ready for this week and camps and summer weights and just try to get the enthusiasm I took from kids and how powerful they are and what we mean to kids. How far it goes just by loving kids and telling how much we appreciate them and kind of just puts a little fire in your belly. And I wanted to share that message with some of our new teachers and some of our veteran teachers that are getting ready to interact with kids.
in the school but not really a school setting this summer and want to get them kind of excited about the summer and next year.
Kelly Whittaker (11:20.215)And Rick, I always enjoy listening to Anthony McDaniel and Jessica Bernard, the two lawyers that presented at the end. mean, they weren't really a keynote, but they were a main breakout session for everybody. And I always enjoy going to their sessions because they talk about really tough and scary topics and they do it in a manner of which one, we can all understand. Two, they always make it very applicable to our everyday lives as educators and administrators.
And they just do it in a light-hearted but serious manner. So I really enjoyed kind of having that breakout at the end where they got to talk to everybody at the conference that last morning.
Rick Sola (11:59.648)Yeah, the team that I was with, had several from our district and there were some other lawyer sessions specifically with AI and how it's being used and how it can be used from a parent to type up a message, questioning, challenging perhaps some of the things, decisions that are made and so forth. And you can ask AI to kind of beef it up and make it sound like it's written from a lawyer and how AI is getting used in that way.
just kind of that frontier of AI. But certainly, anytime we hear from attorneys and people who are dealing with this, it's certainly applicable. You said scary. It can be when we think about that. I'll bring up the first keynote, the drummer, Mr. Schulman. I'm going to bring it up because two reasons. One, I got to be featured during that
that speech because I was selected and I received a drumstick at the end of it. you know, there are different things presented, but there was something in particular that stuck out and I wrote it down. And just kind of in a nutshell, Mr. Shulman is a career drummer and has worked with really the biggest names in the music industry all throughout his career. He showed a clip from Pink and I'm not sure if you remember, he actually showed several, but there was one
Todd (12:57.294)you
Rick Sola (13:25.932)where she gives him credit for the work he does, but for being the most positive person in the room all the time. And he explained that it dawned on him at that moment that he wasn't asked to be on all these different groups, whether it was Billy Idol or Pink or Cher or whoever, because he was the best drummer, that it hit him that it was what he brought to the table.
as a person and beyond that. And I just thought that was really a really good kind of aha for him, I'm sure. But just some insight on, you know, the things that we bring to the table, kind of the old adage, like you don't have to be the smartest person in the room. But how we present and carry ourselves is really important. And so I really did appreciate that message that was shared in that first keynote. And then
Kelly Whittaker (14:08.527)Mm-hmm.
Rick Sola (14:21.24)kind of Todd to your point, the coach that came in. I've heard that story before. I've seen the video before. But oh my gosh, you talk about emotional. And I actually got a book from him afterwards. he just, I mean, there was a long line, but he just sat and kind of talked and just a very genuine guy. So some really, really strong keynotes and presenters that were brought into USA Kansas for sure. Any other sessions? I just want to kind of, you know,
be able to share out as part of, you know, that's something we do here in the building I'm at is we just, we sit down and talk about, okay, you went to this, okay, talk about it, let's share out. Is there any other, are there any other sessions that you attended that kind of for the good, not just for those in this room, but those who might be listening to this podcast that's worth sharing out?
Todd (15:10.412)Yeah, you know, for what it's worth, I...
I want to give a shout out to Zach Murray and his team at Chanute High School. I thought they did a really nice job of sharing some of the changes that they put in place there, really to be very intentional about their purpose in navigating student leadership and student behaviors. Specifically, I love the idea of what they've done with their freshman introduction class, their freshman orientation course that they created for all
freshman that's required for them as an elective and that's one of those things that you talk to them afterwards and say hey how did you do this and who can teach this and where's the curriculum from and you just want to steal ideas and I've stolen a lot of ideas from other people I steal from Kelly all the time but that's one of those things that I thought was really a big takeaway for me and what they've done at Chanute and hopefully we can find a way to make that work here in Shawnee Mission.
Rick Sola (16:12.48)Awesome.
Kelly Whittaker (16:13.967)I went to one by this guy named Todd Daines, that was pretty good, it was on delegation and what I appreciated about that, we got to reflect on it afterward and one of the things I appreciate about Kelly is that she's really reflective and so after we were, you know, part of that session she was able to kind of be vulnerable and ask some questions about how she delegates and like asking me questions about how I perceive the way she delegates and just being reflective about it. So I think that was good for
Todd (16:18.222)You
Kelly Whittaker (16:43.981)to just think about how we work with our team and work with people in the building. So helpful stuff.
Rick Sola (16:51.584)So we got the presenter himself right here, Dr. Dane, in a nutshell. Can you share a little bit about that delegation that you talked about in your session?
Todd (17:02.508)Yeah, you know, a little bit we focused on how to build capacity in your team and specifically the delegation triangle. it's actually a piece from Model and Edix and
how to how to rotate that delegation triangle where you can release some of that control and a lot of times I think building principles struggle letting go struggle with letting go of control and most most building principles got that way got to that position by out working out hustling out studying their peers and as a building principle that
model doesn't necessarily work. Because you can burn out very, very quickly by trying to do it all. And you really have to be trust willing to trust your team, to trust your administrative team, your office team, your teachers, to build some of that leadership capacity in them to make sure that you maximize your opportunities there in the building. it's just really about how you can
leverage that delegation model and let go of a lot of the responsibilities and share that, share that leadership capacity and in the end empower your whole team.
Rick Sola (18:27.232)Yeah, I'm curious, what would you say, Dr. Dane, as far as, you sometimes I see that, you you mentioned that burnout and, you because it's hard to delegate and sometimes it gets challenging to delegate when you feel like you've been burned by delegating before. It's almost like, I always feel like sometimes micromanaging is bred from
Todd (18:46.018)Yeah. yeah.
Rick Sola (18:53.962)inept or if someone not following through is like, I'm just going to do it. How do you recover from that or what would be your thoughts on that?
Todd (19:02.562)Yeah, I take it all kind of with a grain of salt. And when I have conversations with principals, sometimes I'll say, why don't you delegate that to your athletic director? Or why don't you give that to an associate principal to do? And sometimes their response is, well, I would, but they'll screw it up. And I said, sometimes the best thing to do is to let them screw it up, and then
use that as a learning opportunity to help teach them through the process. And anytime we navigate one of those scenarios here, I always take the blame, right? So I shoulder the blame for any of those mistakes or errors or missteps and understand that it's my responsibility. And then ultimately, it is my responsibility because I didn't do...
I didn't do my job in making sure that I detailed everything in the delegation process. I didn't give them enough information on the front end. I didn't do enough check-ins. I didn't follow through with the reflection and the details at the end. So I think there's a process to effectively delegate. I've been on the end where I've delegated and I didn't give enough background and I didn't give enough structure. And then I had to
correct my approach as the delegator to make sure that those team members know exactly what the expectation is on the back end and why we have to do things a certain way or what the parameters are. So again, I do think as principals sometimes we're shy about delegating because we have been burned and
I've the one thing that I've learned. I've been the principal here for 10 years now and in that 10 years I've had 14 different associate principals and I've gotten better at delegating. I've gotten better at training them.
Todd (21:00.994)But it's a process where I also know when I have new ones come in, I've got to allow them to make mistakes because that's when they learn too. And I got to keep giving them opportunities to grow in the process. that's one of my objectives as a principal is to help grow my team, to get them where they want to be.
Rick Sola (21:21.59)Right, now that's really great and thanks for going into that a little further and I think that's something we all can relate to certainly. Question for Mark and Johnny, what is it like working with the principals of the year?
Kelly Whittaker (21:37.207)you
Todd (21:39.15)It's great. I've known Todd for 20 years. I come from a place where I know exactly what he wants and what he needs and his work ethic. So it actually makes my job very, very easy. He has an expectation. I know that if it's not met, he'll tell me. And that's OK, because that's how we grow and get better. And I'm constantly growing.
Kelly Whittaker (21:59.054)Yeah.
Todd (22:04.002)That's what was so great about the conference was to talk to other people that live in your world to kind of bounce ideas off of them, see how they learn from their mistakes and how to help me grow as an assistant principal in AD.
But it's an honor to work with Todd and our team. there's never a dull moment at school. And it's not work to me. I enjoy it. I'd like to go back to the conference because we're under construction right now. And it's real now. We're back to work. But it's pleasure.
Rick Sola (22:35.031)Ha ha ha.
Rick Sola (22:38.634)Awesome.
Kelly Whittaker (22:40.655)I kind of ditto what Mark said. I really appreciate that the expectations are very clear. The bar is high.
And if you don't meet it, there's going to be a direct conversation about it. Not a mean one, but a helpful, reflective one. And I really appreciate that. I appreciate receiving feedback if I'm not doing well and also hearing when I'm doing well. And I get both of those things and I really appreciate that. I think one of the gifts that Kelly has that I really, that helps me want to come in to work with her every day, she does a great job of bringing our focus back to what is best for students in this moment and kind of putting aside.
listening to all the different sides of things, then to kind of pull us together and say what's best for kids in this moment. And you know, that's my own why every day. And so it makes me want to get up and come here every day and it's inspiring. And I also just want to mention that I have a couple of times when we were recruiting teachers this spring and we knew they were a little close on which school they were going to go to. Kelly has never mentioned it, but I have said, hey, just so you know, you got a job offer from the Kansas principal of the year. you know, any
Todd (23:49.198)you
Rick Sola (23:49.44)You
Kelly Whittaker (23:50.603)thing we can do to try and get them, you know, I'll do it. So, but I do think it's reflective of this is a place where we take what we do seriously and good things are happening here. So it's a, it is a selling point when we're talking to prospective new staff. So I've tried to use that as well.
Rick Sola (24:07.544)Well, those are both really nice answers for both of you. was like, you you put that out there and we're streaming, like, who knows what they're going to say? Like, I mean, I didn't know if we'd be 10 minutes in and like, another thing, you know. No, obviously two top notch principals and that I was admiring the rings that come with it at the conference. And so I wanted to bring that up, but obviously two top notch principals.
Todd (24:19.63)you
Rick Sola (24:35.82)But also having talked with Kelly and Todd, I know they speak often and very highly of their team, which is both of you. Mark, we had a chance to talk quite a bit at the conference. It was good to catch up with you. both shared a district in our past, but haven't really chatted very much. that's really the value. I think some of the biggest value of these conferences is just that networking and talking. Mark, you mentioned
wanting to go back to the conference and because of the construction kind of made my mind go to November, we have the KPA conference, which is a mini version of this and it's extremely powerful as well. And so just an early plug for that coming up. But yeah, the networking is just just an incredible piece and a lot to be to be brought back to our buildings. And I think all of our buildings are going to be better for those who attended this conference. So
A very critical piece, I think, in our world is really kind of at that time where we're at right now, which is summer. The pace is a little different. We're about to break for summer, if you will. At the same time, personally, I have found summer sometimes doesn't lend itself to that mental break because you're gearing up so rapidly and quickly for the upcoming year. But it is important to do so. So from each of you, just quickly,
What is it that you're gonna do to really kind of be intentional about allowing yourself time to unplug, recharge, because we hear that often, but I don't know how often we allow ourselves to do that, but what's something that you're gonna be doing this summer just to kind of let yourself get away?
Kelly Whittaker (26:19.065)for me as a high school administrator. Our evenings are very busy and so we're constantly go, go, go, go, go during the nine months of the school year. And so my favorite thing to do just in the summer is that when I leave work, I can actually leave work and very rarely in the summer must I finish a task before tomorrow morning in order to walk in and feel good about where I am. So I tend to use my evenings more just to be with my family, to work out, to just kind of...
relax and unwind. One fun thing I am doing this summer, I bought my mother tickets to see Caitlin Clark play in Indianapolis. so I'm going to be, hopefully she gets her little hamstring healed so I can go and watch her play in Indianapolis with my mom. But that's just kind of what I try to do is connect with my family and do those things that we just don't have time for during the school year, especially as a secondary administrator, because we are at work all the time and at activities in the evenings and on the weekends.
Rick Sola (26:54.487)Wow.
Kelly Whittaker (27:15.439)I wouldn't trade it for the world, it's important to take advantage of that down time and that slower pace.
Rick Sola (27:21.889)Absolutely.
Kelly Whittaker (27:22.851)Yeah, kind of the same thing. have a almost, he'll be six actually next week. I have an almost six year old and then a 13 year old daughter. And so, you know, they, they miss me on those nights when I'm doing ball games and things. So just a lot of extra time with my kids, time at the pool. My daughter is a huge fan of the band, My Chemical Romance. So in August, they're doing a reunion towards first time they've toured in a long time. So in August I'm taking, Kelly's actually letting me miss.
one of those first days in August when teachers are back so that can do this. We're flying to New York to watch My Chemical Romance at Citi Field and my daughter is so excited that she and I get to do that together. So she's like super pumped. like talks about it every day. We've been planning it since that was her Christmas gift. So we've been planning it for a while. So yeah.
Rick Sola (28:11.254)That's awesome. And that's kind of going back. mean, they're a little bit of a throwback band at this point. There we go.
Kelly Whittaker (28:17.219)Yeah, she's old school. She's a cool kid. She's cooler than her dad at this point.
Rick Sola (28:22.008)That's awesome. We'll enjoy that. What a special time with her. How about Shawnee Mission South over there?
Todd (28:31.822)I'm super excited both my kids walked down the hill and are college graduates about three weeks ago. It's not gonna be relaxing cuz they're back home in the last four or five years, but we're super excited to have them home. And I'm a lot like Kelly at four o'clock for the most part. I don't take phone calls and don't have games to rush to so I gotta be back home with a.
dogs and my family and looking forward to just pool and relax and hopefully just try to unwind. But it never shuts off, but it's a little bit slower now.
Kelly Whittaker (29:05.967)Mm-hmm.
Todd (29:08.27)Yeah, I would say the same. I you know, I I leave work and I go home to my my real boss, the doctor Dane and I orders from her and but our kids are grown now and so it's actually a time where we can spend a little more time together as a couple and just unwind a little bit. I am going to spend a week in Seattle. So super excited about that with any SSP and illuminate. So we're going to go to Seattle and celebrate Kelly Whitaker and the POI is of 2025. And then I'm going to
Rick Sola (29:13.889)You
Kelly Whittaker (29:34.639)Woohoo!
Todd (29:38.176)be presenting at the United Conference there after that piece. So I'm excited to present again at the national level and
went to Seattle last fall and. Spent some time with the Superintendent there from Tacoma and he said that it basically rains every day in Seattle, August through May, but June and July is nice, so I'm looking forward to seeing Seattle in July.
Rick Sola (30:03.96)You
Rick Sola (30:10.006)That's awesome. And that kind of Kelly, we brought up the principle of the year, but kind of in a nutshell, the next steps for you with that you're headed to Seattle. What does that look like?
Kelly Whittaker (30:20.055)Yeah, I get to go to Seattle. I don't really know what it fully looks like because I've not experienced it before. Todd has been able to, but I get to go to Seattle to connect and network with other principals of the year from, principal of the years from other states. I've already been on some podcasts and been able to do a lot of really cool networking with them. So I've kind of gotten to meet some of them ahead of the experience. And there'll be some learning. There's a really cool gala, fancy dinner that we get to go to and you get honored.
They will select the national principal of the year at that banquet. And then I'm not, unfortunately, don't get to stay for the full conference because I'm going home to watch Katelyn Clark play. So going back to Indiana for that. then November 5th and 6th at our conference, we'll get recognized and honored one more time. I have told Carol Letty this multiple times. I think every principal should have the luxury of being a principal of the year at some point in time.
Rick Sola (31:00.216)Hmm.
Kelly Whittaker (31:15.695)You can take full advantage of it or not. The networking opportunities that have been afforded to me from the moment that I was named the 2025 Kansas Principal of the Year to right now have been honestly humbling. And I'm getting to meet and learn from some of the best administrators across the country and just very grateful for that process. I am a super reflective human. And so my team might get annoyed by all these great principals and leaders that I'm meeting and just trying to.
get ideas from them about how we can continue to make Ottawa High School a better place for kids.
Rick Sola (31:48.652)That's great. Well, and what you get from them, bring it back to us and we'll just keep paying it forward, passing it forward. so to all four of you, thanks for joining today. I know it's summer, so it can be a slower pace, but there's no shortage of things to do and to take some time out of your day to jump on here with me. I do appreciate that. And I look forward to catching you all here again soon.
wherever that may be across the summer, whether it's the KPA conference in November, but hopefully sooner than that. Any other final thoughts before we go?
Kelly Whittaker (32:22.351)Just hope to see all the listeners at the KPA conference in Wichita November 5th and 6th. It's a great opportunity. It's a networking. That is really where I feel like my journey as an administrator in Kansas took off. I went by myself. I didn't know anybody, got connected, met some people, got involved in the KPA Board of Directors and here we are today. So cannot encourage that moment for other administrators more. Just need to be there on November 5th and 6th.
Todd (32:53.176)Same, I had the same experience. The first time I went I didn't know anybody. And then I ran into Kelly and look out.
Kelly Whittaker (33:00.399)you
Rick Sola (33:02.296)Well, 100 % because I still feel fairly new, but same deal. And I've said it on here before, but just joining, obviously doing some of this now, but it's all the connections that we've made. I have had texts with both Todd and Kelly on a candidate, either coming to or going to me or going to them or whatever. So that's just one example. But then the things that we learn from each other are just priceless. And it just helps.
Kelly Whittaker (33:28.249)So.
Rick Sola (33:30.552)and having that network, it's comforting too, because there's some challenging moments and we know that and anyway, before we...
Kelly Whittaker (33:37.511)Rick and I think great friendships come from it and in our line of work it's lonely sometimes. We can't always have a lot of friends within our buildings just because of the nature of the work we do and so just being able to go a couple times a year and reach out to people and stay connected whether that's on social media or via text message or the occasional phone call like to me that fills my bucket because it gets lonely sometimes when you're an administrator because you just don't have a confidant.
to be able to problem solve. so the networking, the friendships, the learning, the reflective moments, I just can't encourage people to join Kansas Principles Association more.
Rick Sola (34:16.93)Well guys, thank you once again. I appreciate you and all that you do. Look forward to connecting here sometime soon and hearing about how great your summer was. Otherwise, have a good summer and we'll see you around.
Kelly Whittaker (34:27.363)You too. Thank you, Rick. Thank you for everything you do. Thank you.
Todd (34:29.836)Thank you.
 

CC#69: Principal Chat w/ Dr. Britton Hart of KASB

On this episode of Cool Coffee w/ Kansas Principals, Dr. Britton Hart, Assistant Executive Director of Leadership with KASB, shares his journey through education, highlighting the importance of servant leadership, humility, and teamwork. He discusses the challenges and responsibilities of being an administrator, the significance of building relationships, and offers valuable advice for aspiring leaders in education. The conversation also touches on the end-of-year reflections and the collaborative efforts needed to support students and staff in the educational landscape.
A Principal Chat with 2016 Kansas Principal of the Year and current KASB leadership
Dr. Britton Hart
Assistant Executive Director of Leadership with KASB
Contact Dr. Hart (email)
X: @DrBrittonHart
Chapters (timestamps do not account for Cool Coffee intro)
00:00 Introduction to Leadership in Education02:06 Britton Hart's Journey in Education08:31 The Role of a Servant Leader14:07 The Importance of Humility in Leadership17:19 Advice for Aspiring Administrators19:35 End of Year Reflections in Education22:21 The Value of Teamwork and Collaboration
---------------------------------------
We want to hear from you--take 2 minutes (or less) and click HERE to contribute!
YOUR FEEDBACK ON COOL COFFEE IS APPRECIATED! 
Leave show suggestions, guest recommendations, questions HERE!
Connect with Cool Coffee on...
Follow us on X: @KSPrincipals; @KPACoolCoffee
Facebook: KSPrincipals
Contact the host: @MrRickSola, rfsola@olatheschools.org, or KPACoolCoffee@gmail.com
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.
Read more about the KPA HERE.
 
FULL TRANSCRIPT (generated by AI--timestamps don't account for CC intro)
Rick Sola (00:01.612)All right, hello and welcome to Cool Coffee with Kansas Principles. I'm here with Dr. Britton Hart, Assistant Executive Director of Leadership for KASB, but also the 2016 Kansas Principle of the Year. Did I get the year right? All right.
Britton Hart (00:15.798)You did, you did. That just means I'm getting old.
Rick Sola (00:19.106)Kansas principal of year by at the time the Kansas Association of Secondary School Principals, Britton, welcome.
Britton Hart (00:27.97)Yeah, welcome to, yeah, thanks for having me. I did this years and years ago when Trevor Kurtzen was doing it. And so I enjoy talking about principles with principles and in that service role still.
Rick Sola (00:41.27)Yeah, I've had Trevor on here and he and I actually spoke before this even got started because I knew he had done this and, know, okay, Trevor, tell me, tell me your thoughts and secrets and all this thing. So, but yeah, it's been a lot of fun. And really the timing of this is I think apropos with USA Kansas coming up and a lot of our state educational leaders will be under one roof at the conference. And so really excited to
to go there here just a week away and really just continue to build upon those connections that I really think all of these organizations are really positive about. And it's really a major perk of the KPA, USA Kansas and KASB. do you see that? My power just went out. We're live. I'm still recording, but power just went out and it just came back on.
Britton Hart (01:29.954)you just left.
Rick Sola (01:38.452)well, we're back. We're back. But it's not really a live show, but it's a one-take show. So you just kind of get what you get here. But yeah, a little bit of context on that. We just had a torrential downpour at dismissal, which is now about an hour ago. But I just got in and soaked. And I appreciate Britton for being patient, because it was something else. Britton, as we.
Britton Hart (01:45.166)Yeah, no worries.
Rick Sola (02:06.452)As we get started here, your road in education goes all the way back to the classroom and up to and through the principal chair to where you're at now. But we'd love to hear about your road to your current position.
Britton Hart (02:19.874)Yeah, I'd give a shout out prayers to Grinnell and those folks there and superintendent, teachers and staff. I know they're, they're finishing up their year, but had a, had a tornado and obviously similar to hopefully you guys won't have any tornadic weather, but maybe just rain. Ironically enough, I started my teaching career in Olathe. I was teacher and coach at Olathe North, really enjoyed my time there and still have many ties and Mr. Herman and I are still.
been friends ever since and just a great district and a great school. Started teaching in 2000, I guess, so this is my 25th year in education and technology education teacher, track coach, had a couple of sponsorships, but really loved the kids there and loved the love students to be honest. That's why I got into the field and still love students. And that three daughters has come up through.
our system. My last one is still in school. It's going to be a middle schooler next year. so a little bit, a little bit bittersweet, but also a little nerve wracking to be a middle school parent. But that's been good. I transitioned from teaching at Alisa to a building level assistant principal, athletic director. I always thought I wanted to be an athletic director. And it's one of those jobs is you
you want to do it and you're excited to do it. And then when you actually get into it and you understand what the role is, there's a whole bunch of responsibilities. And really to be fair, that's where our parents and our students live and thrive and breathe there. Sometimes too much. Maybe, maybe need a little clearer focus on academics sometimes, but a lot of things move in parts and enjoyed that at Prairie View, which is just south of Lewisburg there. Left there after two years and went back, went to Emporia.
In a similar role, much larger district. I grew up around Emporia. I'm an Osage City grad and so I was a little bit closer to home. My mother-in-law and father-in-law were there and obviously still connected with Osage quite a bit. served many roles at Emporia, was assistant principal, athletic director, did career in tech, did SPED, did a lot of different things outside of just athletics.
Britton Hart (04:42.026)I became the principal in 14 maybe and was in that role for five years and then really wasn't looking to leave. My former boss, Dr. Jordan and Dr. Heim both were at the Kansas Association of School Boards and I can remember we were talking about can you come up and visit about a position and you know naively I kind of said well I'm not even sure what the School Board Association does.
Rick Sola (05:01.538)you
Britton Hart (05:09.902)I was really well connected in the principal association, was president elect that year. You know, just was in my mind living a dream, You know, I my own kids in my building and was enjoying seeing them every day and doing really good things from an academic and a culture standpoint and an employee high. And we decided to get our graduation rate up over 90 % at that point.
Rick Sola (05:20.663)Yeah.
Britton Hart (05:37.838)Just a lot of great things going on. And as you know, Rick, you hit that range in between that two to four years and some of the fruits of your labor, the change starts to kind of take hold. And so we did a lot of good things that I think really impacted students. And I'd like to think that while those things are still in place, but you started to get that excitement that everybody kind of going down the same path. And so when I talk to...
with Dr. Jordan and Dr. Mechel. Brian was gonna transition into a deputy role and like we'd like for you to work with, we primarily work with superintendents and boards. And so we, the ability to get into a board is through typically through your superintendent. And so like Dr. Yeager, for example, when I work with the Olathe board, typically he's the one that I coordinate with and then your board president, et cetera. And so.
The transition I've kept though between USA Kansas, I sit on the KPA board with Kara still as a liaison. We know most superintendents come through your role and so we think that's really valuable to make that connection. Not necessarily work day to day with principals like USA or KPA does, but have an awareness of who are some of these individuals that are up and comers that are going to be our next future superintendent leaders.
our job is to try to get the best people, kind like yourself, in those roles in front of the school board. School boards don't do that, you know, very often we hope. And so they don't have practice at how to hire superintendents, so we provide that service and think that's a very valuable process and also a really important process, not just for the students, but staff and the community that they may be leading. And so that's kind of a short pedigree of kind of where I started and where I'm currently at.
Rick Sola (07:33.026)Yeah, I appreciate the breakdown of the KASB and I hate to just say this out loud, but I wasn't entirely sure. Just like you said, when they approached you and kind of not knowing the ins and outs and it's not something I'm super familiar with. And of course we're on the same board with KPA and we've talked and come across each other multiple times, but very fascinating. One thing you mentioned early on is you talked about the
Yeah, you wanted to be an AD and there's some hidden roles and you didn't, you you see some things that go on from outside, like, I want to be an AD. And then you get in there and like, look at all these little things that you also have to do. I wonder how much of administration is that, you know, I kind of wonder about those, those incoming administrators or those who are pursuing degrees through the university. And then when you get into that role, it's, wow, this, this is part of it, you know.
Britton Hart (08:13.506)Yep.
Britton Hart (08:31.224)You know, I've seen over my years, that there's individuals that go into administration and they go into it with like a servant mindset. I kind of consider myself a servant leader. That's what we do at KSP. If you call tomorrow and you need help, we're going to try to help you in some way, right? I think a good administrator, whether you're an assistant or even the executive leader like the superintendent,
those people going into it with that mindset. It's kind like if I walked in your building and there was trash laying on the floor, would you pick it up? It's just one of those mindsets where you just do whatever it takes to get the job done, and you do it at a high level, and you model those, what I like to think of as high quality leadership skills, and you model those things, and other people, in most cases, will follow.
What I see is a gap though, and my colleagues at USA and I talk about this frequently, that sometimes people go into those roles and they don't have the right mindset. It's not that their mindset's bad, it's just not one that's maybe conducive to thriving in that role. And when they sit in that chair, they get in that seat, kind of my earlier description, I didn't know I had to do all those things. And I didn't sign up for that. And so that can be a little bit problematic. And so same way as I take
those experiences and as we start to help with superintendents get placed or we help train superintendents or grow them, giving them those kind of information, giving them an opportunity to talk about those things ahead of time so that they can make sure that when they do fit into that role, just like your role that you're in, you want it to be a good fit for you and your family and you want it to be a good fit for the school and the staff there as well. And sometimes I see that a little bit as problematic. The younger the administrator
gets, at times you don't have that foundational knowledge going from teacher to principal or principal to soup. And at times that can be devastating not having some of that experience. And so you can overcome it, but also it's helpful to have quality experience in the classroom, quality experience in the principalship before you maybe take that next step to ensure your success.
Rick Sola (10:45.174)Yeah, I was a seventh or eighth year educator when I made that jump to administration and I've worked with some colleagues and friends that have made that jump 20, 25 years in and they just have, they have that foundation. There's a bigger foundation there. And I recognize that, especially in hindsight, I'm in my 15th year administration now, but in hindsight, you know, some of those things, they come at you fast and furious and oftentimes early on.
It is kind of a first time or a not as common situation that you are dealing with or that you've had to deal with before. This will be a shameless plug here, but you mentioned the modeling of picking up trash in the hall and things like that. That was actually brought up. We had a panel episode with interviewing and we had several principals on there about just the interview process and walking around the building. And that was brought up as far as when you're walking the building and there's a little piece of trash on the floor, if that candidate
picks up that trash. That's definitely in the wind column there for that.
Britton Hart (11:45.794)Yeah.
Britton Hart (11:49.592)the year.
You know, I always look for also, you know, as we talk about this, I look for somebody that, you know, gravitates toward kids. And so when you're on an interview, do they naturally talk to students? Do they naturally, you know, kind of gravitate toward staff? Or are they really just kind of really formal? And so it's interesting how leaders, everybody is watching, right? And so how do we carry ourselves through adversity? How do we carry ourselves through times of celebration? But those are things that I think are so
important with the experience that you build over time. But another shameless plug though is high thrive on networking and the people that are connected in the field.
You don't have to be the smartest person in the building. You don't have to be the smartest person in the room. What you need to be, though, is a connector. You need to establish those relationships. I'm going to learn so much more from you, Rick, than you're ever going to learn from me. And with that mindset, I think you grow yourself. We're lifelong learners. It's not really an old cliche. It's the truth. And how do we surround ourselves by people that are better than us?
And I've always been really fortunate to have good teams and be on good teams. But I never felt like I was the best on those teams. I felt like I was way below everybody else. And I learned from those people. And thus, I feel like that's a...
Britton Hart (13:15.586)gratitude or an opportunity for success there because you try to find the best people that share the same values and you can do anything I think in this business that will impact learning and that's to me the cornerstone of our jobs.
Rick Sola (13:32.118)Yeah, I think you're tapping into humility a little bit when you talk about just being a connector, but you're not the smartest person in the room. You don't have to be being able to listen. And I think humility is such a piece of leadership and being in a building. And so I love to hear all that. And I kind of think of like the authenticity or being genuine that just resonates across the board, whether it's teachers or students or parents.
It only helps with situations, especially challenging situations.
Britton Hart (14:07.054)Yeah, mean, I mean, I'm gonna say majority cases, nine and a half out of 10 times when somebody came in, student, staff, parent, board member, superintendent, even that were upset with me or upset at a situation that I was helping deal with, all that, most of the time, they wanna be heard and they want their opinion to be valued. Doesn't mean you agree with them, it just means that, hey, Rick, I heard what you said, I'm sorry you're dealing with that.
versus automatically getting your guns up and trying to protect yourself or the situation. And those are things that, be fair, I think you learn along the way. And that servant mindset and that humility you're describing, I think those things all kind of mesh into the leader and the person you become.
But it takes practice. I'm going to screw up again tomorrow, but hopefully the next day I won't make the same mess up, right? And so that's how we get better, I think, as people. And it's certainly a great lesson for students to learn, because this world is hard. And you're to have a lot of failures. I heard a great thing, and it's a former colleague of mine. Most people go after success, and they think,
happiness is driven by the amount of success you have. And he said, which I thought was really spot on, happiness drives your success. Success doesn't drive your happiness. And so in this big bad world, there's going to be some great things. There are going to be a lot of bad things too. But if you can kind of have a mindset or kind of a mentality of, I'm going to be happy through these situations, good, bad, or indifferent, that will drive your success. And I thought that was really good.
Rick Sola (15:50.594)That's great. Sorry, my phone just went off with the severe weather. It's fine. Everything's fine here. No, I love that. And I was writing that down as you were talking. you still there? OK.
Britton Hart (16:02.883)yeah, I'm still here. I I coughed just a little bit. I didn't want to cough in your ear there.
Rick Sola (16:07.232)No, no, you're good. There's so much going on right now. I don't know if a listener might think I'm on the top of a ship or something, but there's a lot happening behind me. But that happiness driving success, that's pretty profound, really. especially, one of the things I love to do is work with aspiring administrators and having the conversations that...
kind of talking through a thought process and kind of like to your point, I always say there's a million ways to do lots of things and I'm not saying I've got it 100 % right, but this is the thought process behind that. But I think some of it, you know, are we chasing success or are we chasing happiness and then what drives what? I just, really like that. You know, as you sit now and you're several years out of the building, but as you work with principals and if you were asked,
Britton Hart (17:00.942)Thanks
Rick Sola (17:01.108)you know, by an aspiring administrator or maybe even a sitting principal for some advice in something, especially now that you can kind of see it, you know, maybe from a different distance, maybe a little more clarity. What advice would you give to an aspiring administrator or maybe a newer administrator?
Britton Hart (17:19.832)You know, I like that question. It reminds me of too, as we're talking about interviewing people, is when you ask someone, why do you want to become a principal? Why do want to leave the classroom?
I think that's always very telling to say, well, I want to help more kids or I want to impact more learning versus, hey, I want to have more free time or I want to make more money. And we know those things are not true because as you get into this role, your responsibility goes up, just like your phone's buzzing, you got wet sitting outside waiting for the parents to pick their kids up. And so that responsibility just continues to get bigger. But the thing that I think, the advice that I think is so valuable
is when things are going well, you give credit to your staff and your students. And when things are going poorly, you take ownership and you take responsibilities to make those things better. And those things...
As a young administrator, if you can pick up on those things early on, you're gonna be great in this business. But if it's about you and it's about you trying to find, hey, that was my idea or hey, this is my building, drives me crazy when I hear somebody talking about their building and they say, this is my building. No, it's not my building, it's our building. It's a kid's building. The only reason we're here is because we got students coming through that door. And so how do you set the culture of your building?
Kind of like Todd Dane does. mean, he's a culture dude. But it starts, think, with culture. And it starts with that understanding of we're getting into this to help each individual student. And we're getting into this for the benefit of someone else and not for myself. And I think that's such a, for young administrator, you want to know what you're getting into. And I think that kind of helps kind of guide. Are you doing it for the right reasons? And is it going to be a good fit for you?
Rick Sola (19:17.452)us back to that servant mindset, which carries through so many phases of a building, all phases, honestly, because really everything could become your job to some degree, everything will come across your desk.
Britton Hart (19:30.039)Yeah.
Rick Sola (19:35.062)So it's May and I know what it's like in the building. You know what it's like in the building, but what's May like for where you're at, at KASB?
Britton Hart (19:45.506)Well, that's an interesting question. So I live with a teacher. My wife is a teacher. And so you can appreciate everybody trying to end up the year and stressful.
I think my role, what I experience on a day-to-day basis is emails and phone calls with similar things just at a different level from board members and superintendents. And they're like, you know, they're stressed too. They need a little bit of a break, just like you need a break. And they need a little bit of downtime to be able to reflect because right now there's just not a lot of downtime. And the pressure that...
I experience as a principal is very similar to what our board members.
feel, what our superintendents feel, it is this constant demand of their time, their opinion, their everything. And anymore, it feels like the polarization of those demands are coming from different angles, just like you're experiencing sitting in your chair. And it just gets old dealing with that and it gets difficult to deal with that. And so I feel like at times, I don't mean counselor like people need counseling, but I feel like
I'm a listener. I'm like, hey, tell me what are next steps that you might try. Tell me some things that you're thinking about, or how did it go when you implemented that, and trying to help coach people through those tough situations, because you can't own that for them. All you can do is equip them with and instill them with some responsibility of power and some leadership that they can do it. And that's, hope, why they call, and I hope they keep calling, because they feel like I value.
Britton Hart (21:24.972)their role and it's respected. Each role is important no matter if you're a teacher or a school board member or parent. Those are all important. And so how do we work together to build a coalition that best supports students?
Rick Sola (21:41.9)Yeah, I love that. You can't just pick up the phone and call everybody about certain things that come across. In fact, it's very limited on who you can really talk to, especially if you're just kind of ground down. this time of year, mean, we see it with staff and teachers and students. And there are tough things that come up that really wear you down. But I love that role of how you articulated it. You're there sometimes just to listen and
Sometimes people just need that because you can't, there's just not everybody to call for certain things. So, no, that's great. Before we go, USA Kansas, we'll see you out there next week.
Britton Hart (22:12.344)Yeah.
Britton Hart (22:21.464)you
Britton Hart (22:26.184)Yeah, yeah, so I saw they're almost at 1000 registrants, which is exciting. And so yeah, I plan on being there. I'm out of town Wednesday, but I'm presenting on Thursday and then then we got meeting with superintendents, I believe on Friday. So yeah, excited to see some former colleagues and some people that that I haven't seen for a while. It's like once a year, get the band back together. And so I was looking forward to going so.
Rick Sola (22:51.542)Yeah, it's a great timing too. We're all wrapped up or wrapping up for the most part, and it's just nice to connect. I remember talking with you last year at this. It had been a while since I had been, but having gone last year. And I'm also presenting on Thursday. So just looking forward to learning from others and sharing a little bit myself. And it'll be great to connect with you. Hey, real quick before we take off here.
Bragging on your people. We always finish with a big brag on the people you work with and K-A-S-B and brag on your people.
Britton Hart (23:29.998)We have 11 people that make up our leadership department. We go all the way west to Garden City and Goodland and all the way east to Shawnee Mission and Olathe. so.
We got retired superintendents, we got a couple recovering principals, we got a few people that been in the HR world. We even got a board member that make up our team and then our coordinator. But just got dynamite experience and I value when we get into a space together.
It makes you smile because you're proud to be a part of that group. And like I said earlier, it's about surrounding yourself by people that are better than you. And if you have that ability and that comfort in your own leadership style.
Boy, to me, if you have a dynamic team, you can accomplish anything. And to me, that's a huge role of the role that you and I play, because you want to put the right people on the right seats, just like Jim Collins would say. And so I feel lucky to work alongside them each day. And I hope they would say the same about me if roles were reversed. So yeah, I feel fortunate to be there and certainly feel fortunate to serve school districts in the role I do. I think it's a, I always call it the ripple effect.
Rick Sola (24:39.106)Yeah.
Britton Hart (24:47.6)out there but it's an awful big pond and that's something that's motivating to me to get up every day and do a good job for Kansas kids because there's a lot of them that need our help.
Rick Sola (25:01.25)Well, that's a great analogy. And again, thank you for the time. I know there was a delay on getting this started today and it's busy, but really look forward to connecting with you and so many others at USA Kansas. yeah, we'll see you here very soon.
Britton Hart (25:17.39)Well, hey, I appreciate the opportunity, Rick, and appreciate your leadership, what you're doing. I will tell you, I have to go back and look. I can remember Gene Haddock and I, we added the communications position on that board when I was.
a new young principal and it was all about just starting a Twitter account. And so you've taken it so much farther than we started for sure. And I think it's important to tell our message and it's certainly important to make it louder than everything else out there. Because what you're doing and what the leaders across Kansas are doing, just like our teachers, is so important. And unfortunately right now we're not getting the support from some of our other colleagues across the state, you know, and we got to stick together during times like this for sure.
Thank
Rick Sola (26:05.184)Well, I appreciate that. And truly, I mentioned Trevor earlier, you brought him up. He and I talked a lot and he broke the ice on this and really that's what this is all about. It's just celebrating the awesome things that are going on across the whole state. And there are so many and that's part of what next week will be about. I hope to get a list of others so they can share everything that's going on. There's a lot to celebrate and it should be celebrated. but thank you so much.
Britton Hart (26:31.774)Absolutely.
Rick Sola (26:34.658)Dr. Hart, have good rest of the week and we'll see you next week.
Britton Hart (26:39.094)Hey, thank you much. travels. We look forward to seeing you. Yep, take care.
 

CC#68: PBIS w/ Dr. Steve Archer of Delaware Ridge Elementary School

In this episode of Cool Coffee with Kansas Principals, Dr. Steve Archer, principal of Delaware Ridge Elementary School, shares his extensive experience in education and his insights on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS). He discusses the transition from middle school to elementary education, the importance of building relationships with students, and the challenges of implementing PBIS. Dr. Archer emphasizes the need for a supportive school culture and the role of positive reinforcement in shaping student behavior. He also offers advice for educators looking to implement PBIS in their schools and highlights the welcoming community at Delaware Ridge.
Dr. Steve Archer
Delaware Ridge Elementary School
Bonner Springs-Edwardsville USD 204
Connect with Dr. Archer: archers@usd204.net
Chapters (AI generated--times do not account for intro)
00:00 Introduction to PBIS and Dr. Steve Archer06:30 Transitioning from Middle School to Elementary Education12:30 Understanding PBIS: History and Implementation18:28 Challenges and Misconceptions of PBIS24:41 Building Relationships Through PBIS30:22 Advice for Implementing PBIS in Schools34:21 The Community and Culture at Delaware Ridge Elementary
---------------------------------------
We want to hear from you--take 2 minutes (or less) and click HERE to contribute!
YOUR FEEDBACK ON COOL COFFEE IS APPRECIATED! 
Leave show suggestions, guest recommendations, questions HERE!
Connect with Cool Coffee on...
Follow us on X: @KSPrincipals; @KPACoolCoffee
Facebook: KSPrincipals
Contact the host: @MrRickSola, rfsola@olatheschools.org, or KPACoolCoffee@gmail.com
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.
Read more about the KPA HERE.
-----------------------------------------------
FULL TRANSCRIPT (AI generated)
Rick Sola (00:01.686)Hello and welcome to Cool Coffee with Kansas principals. I'm here today with Dr. Steve Archer, principal of Delaware Ridge Elementary School in Bonner Springs, Edwardsville, USD 204. Welcome, Steve.
Steve Archer (00:15.278)Thank you, Rick. It's great to be here.
Rick Sola (00:17.824)Yeah, I am excited to have you on here in part because you're going to be presenting at USA Kansas here in just about a month. And you're going to be talking about a topic that I have really found myself enjoying and getting into, and that is PBIS. And we'll get into that in just a bit. But once again, at the end of a long day, I just want to say thank you for coming on. And it's a Tuesday here. It's April 29th.
no shortage of things occurring in our schools and on our calendars. So to add this, I really appreciate it.
Steve Archer (00:55.086)Well, you know all about that full calendar, so I appreciate your time as well.
Rick Sola (01:01.28)Yeah, well, it is also a fun time of year and we'll just start off here, first question, probably what everyone wants to know is are the Chiefs going to be moving out to your neck of the woods in Bonner or KCK or?
Steve Archer (01:15.458)You know what, my primary concern is keeping them in the Kansas City area. And as long as we can do that, I'm gonna be a happy Chiefs fan.
Rick Sola (01:20.724)Okay.
Rick Sola (01:25.068)Yeah, it's funny because I was looking up, I wanted to see exactly where Delaware Ridge was. I was like, oh my gosh, you're really close to the speedway. And I know there's been rumblings of the chiefs. at least as of this recording, we don't really have any information. well, Steve, we'll start with where I like to start is just kind of a it's more or less a, I guess, introduction of yourself, but really your road to the chair of to Delaware Ridge Elementary School.
Steve Archer (01:53.55)Sure. Well, Rick, my road has been a very long one. This is actually my 36th year in education. I started in middle school, and if you told me all those years ago that I'd be an elementary principal, I wouldn't have believed it because I started as a middle school teacher.
did that for seven years, then between a couple of districts was a middle school assistant principal for a while, and then had a great opportunity to become an elementary principal. So I had worked up to that point in the Kansas City, Missouri school district, Raytown school district, and then went to Park Hill for the last 16 years in Missouri, then was able to retire from the Missouri system, but
I love working in school and so I couldn't imagine actually retiring. So I was very, very fortunate to see the opening here in Bonner and when I came here I could just tell it was a very special place and a place that I would want to take my next step. So I was delighted when they called me and offered me the position. So that's how I ended up here at DRE.
Rick Sola (03:05.451)That's great. I'm sorry, you've been you've been DRE, okay, that'll be helpful for me here, but you've been there how many years? Your first year in Kansas, okay.
Steve Archer (03:13.698)This is my first year in Kansas, I just retired from Missouri at the end of the last school year and immediately started here.
Rick Sola (03:23.818)wow, well welcome to the Kansas side of things and you know maybe the Chiefs will after all follow you over to Kansas so how about that?
Steve Archer (03:26.83)Thank
Steve Archer (03:31.086)Well, you know, I am a native Kansan. I actually grew up on the Kansas side of things. you know, one thing I've learned over time is we're a really great community regardless of which side of the state line it is. And so I feel very fortunate to have been able to grow up in Kansas City and then have a really great education career here too.
Rick Sola (03:53.452)Well, it's really interesting being on the Kansas side. hear so often, and I have a lot of, have a really close principal friend who's retiring this year, and you just never know. Often we see the other direction. Our principals here, our educators here, we're going over to Missouri. And so to hear it conversely, that would actually make it kind of an interesting topic for this show. All the same, but no, well, very good. So.
Steve Archer (04:05.346)Thank you.
Rick Sola (04:19.818)You know, I'm 21 years into education. I've been in middle school all but one of those years. I had one year where I was teaching freshmen at the high school. We had a transition here where I'm at. What's the biggest adjustment from middle school to elementary that you would say?
Steve Archer (04:38.254)Well, you know, with middle school there's typically just the three year span. And so you get like those 11, 12, 13 year old kiddos in elementary. And of course my school also has a pre-k classroom now. And so we have everything from four to 11 year olds here. so...
What I love about elementary is we just get to see kids grow up over time and get to see them develop skills and develop their personalities. so that is a really big difference. But I guess a similarity between the two is.
Kids just need adults who care about them, you know? And whether they're little or whether they're middle school, and even though I haven't taught in high school, I know they do too. And so it's just that common thread that goes all the way through. But definitely differences between middle school and elementary would be a lot around supervision, I would say, you know, making sure that...
As I recall in middle school, would have passing periods and kids would come and go as they needed to. And here at the elementary level, it's much more controlled by the teacher and making sure that we keep track of the classes all throughout the building as well.
Rick Sola (06:00.928)Yeah, well, absolutely. kind of it's really a pretty natural segue. You just mentioned the importance of, you know, kids at all levels. Those relationships are so important. And certainly there's differences in logistics in a day and what that looks like at the three different levels of school. Some may argue that middle school, the three years of middle school feels like five years of growth, but certainly a lot of lot of growth and lot of
Steve Archer (06:25.368)Thanks
Rick Sola (06:30.988)But it's a good segue to PBIS and again, really intrigued and why I wanted to have you on. So you're gonna be presenting on this at USA Kansas here in about a month and those who may listen to this podcast are likely to attend. And so what I was really intrigued of, I was reading the description of your presentation is the reference to 15 years in PBIS.
Steve Archer (06:59.916)Yes.
Rick Sola (07:00.894)And so as a school, we were mentioning before we kind of went live here, but as a school that I'm at, we're in our third year of implementation, that conversation of longevity and keeping it going and, you know, it's constant involvement. Seeing 15 years is really, really intriguing, but I think a good place to start really would be kind of your history with PBIS. I know you're a big fan of it, a proponent of it. And so, you know, just, guess, starting off with
with your history, how did that start with PBIS and what was that hook that kind of led you now 15 years in?
Steve Archer (07:38.808)You know, at the time I was in Missouri and my school had really good kids and we just expected them to come in and do what we expected them to do. And they did for the most part. Some kiddos struggled a bit with the expectations, but a lot of them just came in and did the right thing.
And when I became aware of PBIS, one of the things that really struck me is we're not recognizing the awesomeness that these kids bring into our building every day. And you know, everybody likes a good out of boy, out of girl every once in a while, even if we're doing the right thing. And so just that acknowledgement and again, going back to the relationship piece, you,
those positives draw staff and students together and build those relationships when
I notice a student being respectful or responsible or safe. That's a really great way for me to let them know you make our school a better place to be. And so that was very appealing to me that we got a chance to thank these students who were doing the right thing and sometimes seemed a bit unseen. It also struck me that as we were doing that, we would be able to catch some of the kiddos who maybe didn't always make the best choices, but if we
caught them at the right moment, we could positively reinforce those things that we were going after so that we would get more of that with in a positive way rather than really focusing on the negatives.
Rick Sola (09:26.666)So pushback, challenges out of the chute, especially starting up a program. It's one thing to have it and tweak it and adjust it, but starting it up, what were some of those initial challenges maybe amongst staff and whether a community or kids and that sort of thing?
Steve Archer (09:47.086)Yeah, I think that is a reality. I had parents who said, why are you rewarding kids? They should be doing these things. And that surprised me because it was their children I was rewarding. So that was a little bit of a surprise and that wasn't a big voice, but it was definitely a conversation that we had to have. My take on that is I get positively reinforced a couple of times a month.
in the form of a paycheck that goes into my account. I love what I'm doing. I love doing the right thing. But it's great to get positively reinforced with that paycheck. Our kiddos obviously are not getting monetarily paid, but we all like having those things that we know we've earned.
From a staff standpoint, I think we sometimes have a lot of work to do to reframe some of our thinking around behavior because a lot of us grew up with the good kid, bad kid binary kind of thinking and with PBIS and with several of the models, it's more of looking at teaching that behavior and that it's our responsibility to teach
behavior just like it's our responsibility to teach any of the content that students come in contact with over the course of a day. And so I know for me,
Certainly I've changed my philosophy of behavior over the years. so I think with any of the staff members, we just have to be patient but also persistent in helping shift that narrative to it's our responsibility to teach behavior just like we teach content.
Rick Sola (11:36.16)Yeah, there's a really good quote and I'm going to totally butcher it so I won't even try to, but the essence is, you know, if someone's misbehaving, we teach this or it, I think you know where I'm going. I am not articulating it well, but the main point is when a student acts out, we, and then fill in the blank with it's a consequence of some sort, which, you know, to that point, I'm curious of your experience with it is, you know, one of the misnomers that
Steve Archer (11:45.73)Yes. I know exactly. Yes.
Rick Sola (12:05.74)I remember when we went through the development and we continue as our district works with this, there are consequences still part of PBIS. And I think there's this, maybe if we're not totally informed on PBS, we think, well, it's a token reward system for things that we should be doing anyway and kids can never get in trouble. But that's not accurate.
Steve Archer (12:30.286)It's really not. I work in a real life elementary school. I dealt with discipline today and there were consequences. However, consequences don't always mean a negative thing. It just simply means the outcome of the behavior.
And so I think that's one thing is to stop just assuming the consequences are negative. But then also, you know, in the vein of conscious discipline, there's a lot of focus on natural consequences and logical consequences. The more we can look at the consequences that we have in place.
and determine are they natural or are they logical and are we keeping them close to the behavior? You know, I think the closer we can get to the behavior and shaping the behavior...
We simply have to decide, are we wanting to our vengeance for a perceived wrong that a child has done, or are we wanting to teach them for the future? Are we wanting a short term, aha, I got them, or are we wanting a long term, I taught that child, and I helped them see a more productive way to do things. And I think the more we can look at the child's future and helping them develop those more
appropriate skills and that sort of thing, the less we worry about getting kids. That having been said, we do still have to have an orderly environment. There's a principle of BIST that says the classroom has to be as good or better when you're here, or you can't be here. And so sometimes I say that to kids, you know, your classroom needs to be as good or better when you're present. Did you make it as good or better? If not, what do we need to do to fix that?
Steve Archer (14:21.364)And so I do think that idea of there are no consequences with any discipline model can be a real misrepresentation. But at the same time, we need to do our own soul searching as the adults and decide, are we trying to get long term gain that benefits the child or are we just trying to get vengeance for some perceived wrong because they inconvenienced us today.
Rick Sola (14:49.502)It's a really good, first of all, that's a really good quote. I wrote it down. If you're good or it's a good or better when you're present or, you know, you know, there's certainly a mind shift and, you know, we're a few years in and, and I think we have a lot of things really positive in place and that we're kind of adjusting and evolving and reassessing. But it's interesting too, there's a mind shift for students. And I have had situations where I've had students in my office or I've been out at a
Steve Archer (14:56.13)video.
Rick Sola (15:18.102)football game and I've had to address a behavior and I've had the conversation, I've had the necessary consequences if you will, and they've responded the way I would hope and ask and eye contact, nodding, understand. And I'd give them a, we have tokens, I would give them a token and it's like, wait, I'm supposed to be in a fist bump to conclude it. And I said, look, you're not getting a token because you just, you know, did.
Action A over there, that's not what this is about. But when I called you over, you came over. We were able to have a conversation. We talked about our program, our values here in the building, which I'm gonna ask you about if you have one of the acronyms that often go along with PBIS. Because it's really all about, we have expected behaviors. And when a student provides expected behaviors, especially in a situation where they've maybe made a bad choice,
It's a mind shift perhaps, but it's not inappropriate to say, I appreciate that. Because the alternative is they could have run the other direction or they could have cussed me out or they could have done this or that. We were able to have a good conversation, address the situation, and hopefully it doesn't happen again.
Steve Archer (16:36.53)If you do need to address something again, how much more likely are they to partner with you the next time? Or how much more when they're tempted to do something, are they to think, you know what, maybe I don't do that? And so again, you're teaching for the long term rather than trying to catch them doing wrong. And that's really what PBIS is all about.
Rick Sola (16:59.062)Yeah, and really what you just mentioned there is I think why I like it so much is it encourages and promotes that interaction that can be very positive, even surrounding a hard or challenging situation or a poor choice. And it does, it builds those relationships, which goes back to the very start of this conversation. But it does not ignore or dismiss behavior, if anything.
It's an active program to correct it. So I was going to ask you, I referenced we use tokens here. What is your form of currency at Delaware Ridge?
Steve Archer (17:36.898)Yeah, we use the PBIS rewards app and so we have no physical tokens. All of ours is electronic. I will say it is a much more efficient system than when.
We started 15 years ago in my previous school and we had slips of paper and there were people who hand counted them to see you know how many have been handed out. I can open that app and very quickly tell you how many have been rewarded this month, how many for each category, each grade level, lots of very specific reports that I can get so that then we can move forward based on the data.
that we have. So it does make it a lot more efficient for us.
Rick Sola (18:28.332)Do students always know when they receive, I'm going say token, when they receive that recognition or does it just kind of appear in their bank or how do they know?
Steve Archer (18:39.97)No, they should know because really the token or the item, that is only part of it. I know when I catch a class in the hall, and this happens a lot and I'm very proud of it, but when I catch them in the hall and I stop them, you know, a lot of times I'll say...
I saw you before I heard you because you were so quiet and appropriate in the hallway and to me that says you were being respectful.
you were being responsible for your own behavior and you were helping keep our school safe. So you know what? I'm going to recognize you with not one, not two, but three points because you did all those things. so then they do know and a lot of times there's a place to put a comment. And if I'm recognizing the whole class, I'll enter that comment that says your class did a great job in the hall. And so then they know they're going to get those added. I will also say in the
classroom, one of the things that has been a benefit to teachers is they can recognize students with or without saying anything, but there you can turn the tone on or off with PBIS rewards. And you know I kid and say it's positively Pavlovian because as soon as they hear that tone
You can just see the shift in the body language and in the focus on the work and things like that because they know the teacher is noticing and they're looking for students to be that respectful, responsible, and safe student.
Rick Sola (20:22.848)Great. So your students, they have a device and the app is loaded on their device as well? Or is it a... Okay.
Steve Archer (20:27.946)No, the students don't, the teacher does. And so they can just use the app and they'll hear the teacher's phone ding. Or sometimes the teacher will walk through the room and say, Steve, I see you working really hard. I'm going to give you a point for being responsible or that kind of thing.
Rick Sola (20:49.6)We went round and round. That's why I'm curious because we talked a lot about tokens or electronic, and we ultimately leaned on tokens, and it has some challenges with that. The data collection isn't quite there as far as what you're describing. We landed on tokens for that kind of personal interaction, but it presents some challenges with every year we got to get the tokens back. There's always loss, and we got to repurchase, and there's a cost to the tokens themselves.
Steve Archer (21:07.309)Yes.
Rick Sola (21:19.692)You mentioned respect and responsible. What are your letters or posters look like?
Steve Archer (21:25.976)Yeah, so we had a building pledge before we started PBIS here in this building. This is the first year of our PBIS implementation here at Delaware Ridge. So we simply changed some of the wording. We didn't, you know, throw out the baby with the bath water and it says, I am somebody.
The me I see is the me I will be. I can be respectful, responsible, and safe. I can succeed. So that's the pledge that our students say every morning after they say the Pledge of Allegiance.
Rick Sola (22:00.716)Very good. And how about tier two? Have you had much work with that as you're building currently implementing tier two using the tier two model?
Steve Archer (22:10.574)we are, we do have some students who are part of our check-in and check-out. It's, you know, we're working toward developing those tier two and tier three interventions.
This year my main goal has been making sure that we have a solid tier one implementation, we have begun, you know, there are just some students who need that additional support of like a check-in, check-out and things like that. And so we do have that in place as well.
Rick Sola (22:42.956)We have found a lot of success with moving to tier two. We did a similar approach that first year. It was really all about tier one, trying to reach fidelity. Our kids, they know our values, ROCs is what we call it. then we, by getting into tier two, I feel like that's where, I think that's where a lot of value in PBIS is. That's where, you know, cause not every student is, know, tier one's not gonna just
be there forever. It's there for everyone, but it's not going to always fix a need or provide support. And that tier two has, you mentioned the check-in, check-out. We've had a lot of success stories with that. Most of the time, once the kids are in there and they get out, they don't go back in. Sometimes we have had a student or two that we reintroduced, check-in, check-out, but it's always successful while they're there. We're at the point of
Steve Archer (23:17.422)That's right.
Rick Sola (23:41.824)we're kind of broadening even from that part of the PBIS process, but very exciting. And when you have those success stories with students with challenging behavior, it's fulfilling, especially middle school.
Steve Archer (23:56.59)Absolutely. Yes, I remember those days. But you know, if we can build skills at the elementary that kids can carry with them into middle school, what kind of, I mean, that's a huge gift, not only to them, but to that middle school. To not just...
limp through and send them on, but to really help them develop skills that will help them grow as students and as people so that they can just use those in a variety of aspects of their lives. And again, it goes back to relationship, particularly with a check-in, check-out, or a check-in, connect. It's the relationship that really makes the difference there.
Rick Sola (24:41.558)So after this episode, and perhaps you'll have several principals in your session at USA Kansas, and someone's really intrigued, and they're like, I really want to take this to my building. What would be a piece of advice you would give to the upstart of the program at a building that hasn't had it before?
Steve Archer (25:03.374)It's definitely a team sport, if you will. This is not a principal thing. It is a building approach. Also, it is a framework. I came from a building that had implemented PBIS for 15 years. There are things that fit at Delaware Ridge. There are things that do not fit yet at Delaware Ridge. And to come into this building and
and expect all of those things to transfer would have been a mistake. So I definitely think you need to get, I think first of all, would do my research and find out about the premise behind PBIS. This is not a passing fancy. It's been around for a long time and it is an approach that has
the research and the evidence behind it. But then you also have to let your staff in on that.
and make sure that they understand that this isn't going to be the flavor of the year. This is going to be an approach that we take that we're going to build from the ground up in a way that makes sense for our building so that we can develop those positive relationships with kids. And what we're looking to do is teach behavior for every area of our building, classroom, assemblies, restrooms.
lunch, all of those things and really get all of that lined out with staff before the kids ever walk in the door.
Rick Sola (26:43.232)You know, one thing that I was really excited about when I started here, when we started PBIS, we have some neighboring shops and restaurants and things. you know, unfortunately not always were we the best representatives of, you know, after school and hanging out. And we tried to extend, we did extend our program across the street a little bit.
And we had a couple businesses that were willing to give out tokens and hang some posters and just show, of support it. try to, kind of to your point, from the elementary to the middle, I try to advertise this isn't just a Chisholm Trail thing or a school thing. We're talking about respect and ownership and that's a life thing. And so these are skills that you work on now, you hopefully sharpen. And sometimes we see that
two steps back in the process. That's where they're at in their lives, there's a lot of just kind of fulfillment with this program that has really been energizing even now that we're three years in, four years after the build of it.
Steve Archer (28:00.322)you're seeing good outcomes from that. I love that idea of a business partnership. I've not worked in a school that had a business close enough to do that sort of thing and so I
excited about hearing to hear that because what a great way to expand that out. know we've worked to add some things for our bus riders because it's very hard for a know one driver on a bus of all the students to take care of all their responsibilities to drive kids safely and to focus on that positive reinforcement. But we've come up with
with a little bit of a different approach. It's still in the spirit of PBIS though, and so that's a piece that I'll be sharing at the conference, just to talk about our initial successes with that.
Rick Sola (28:58.486)Well, and kind of to that point, that's what I really like about the program too, is it's customizable. Like you mentioned, what worked at your previous school either doesn't right now or it's not a good fit for whatever reason. And PBIS is a framework, like you mentioned earlier as well, but you can make it your own to fit your population and your community, is what I love about it. You referenced your presentation and...
teaser what what can people expect if they're going to be sitting in your USA Kansas conference here in a month.
Steve Archer (29:36.558)I think one of the things that I hope people will take away are several things, definitely it's a framework. And I am not a purist when it comes to behavior models because what they'll probably hear, what I know they'll hear is PBIS.
but they will also hear echoes of conscious discipline and they'll also hear pieces of this that we've brought into our work here at Delaware Ridge. And for me, it's about finding those positives that work within your school, but still being true to the spirit behind PBIS.
I think always keeping that teaching focus and finding out how you do that. And I'll just share how we did it or how we do it here and what we found works here. I mentioned partnering with our bus drivers who, you know, that's a very challenging job sometimes, particularly at the end of the day when the kids are kind of done and they're ready to be home. That can be a big challenge. And then another piece that I'll be sharing is how we
share some positives with parents as well. So we use some different approaches for that too, so that parents see that, you know, we care about your kid. We are glad they're here and we want you to know that they're a positive part of our learning community and that we don't take that for granted.
Rick Sola (31:14.048)Yeah, it'll be a great session and if anyone's listening to this prior to, definitely stop in. And I knew a little bit about PBIS where I'm at. We had a rollout probably 10 years prior as a district. I would say we've made a lot of adjustments and improvement and we've recast it and it's kind of the full, jumping in with both feet and it's been really, really positive. So looking forward to that. Steve, you're a year one principal in Kansas.
And KPA, it's a KPA podcast. What has KPA meant to you in the seven months, eight months that you've been with us?
Steve Archer (31:53.314)Well, I will say I've enjoyed the episodes of this particular podcast that I've been able to listen to and learn and just to get excited about some of the work that's happening in Kansas that I didn't know about before, you know, and so I'm really looking forward to going to the conference, going to sessions and continuing to learn because, you know, we work in education. We should continue to learn regardless of how long we've, we've,
been in education so I'm really looking forward to learning at the conference coming up.
Rick Sola (32:25.804)Have you been to the USA Conference, attended it before?
Steve Archer (32:27.662)I have not. I've always gone on the Missouri side to our MAESP conference.
Rick Sola (32:33.996)It's a great conference. I would also put a plug in, there's actually a KPA conference in November. So keep an eye out for that. It's a little smaller than USA Kansas, but it's in the same location, or it's in Wichita, but really, really strong conference and just great opportunities to network and learn from each other. Just fantastic. well, Steve, I'm gonna have us end on, you mentioned Delaware Ridge or DRE.
Bragg on your people here that you've gotten to know over the last several months.
Steve Archer (33:02.476)Yes.
Steve Archer (33:07.724)You know, I believe that some, most of the time you can really get the heart of the building by walking into the office. And when I walked into the school, it was very welcoming and I could go into details on that. But the bottom line is there was a tone in the office that welcomed me. And that has proven to be true across our building.
I say of the people who work here, they don't work here because they don't have other choices. They work here because they want to be here and they love our kids and
they love each other. it really is a wonderful learning community. And there are times that I will overhear people just laughing together or problem solving together or that kind of thing. And I just smile to myself and I'm just like, really? This is where I ended up. And so it's a very, very special school and a very special district.
I am surprised I didn't know more about this district before I came here, but I'm very grateful to be at Delaware Ridge now.
Rick Sola (34:21.472)Great, really nice words and just very neat to be able to come over and like you said, retire from one state on over here to another and to join a community that's so welcoming. And you're right, you can certainly feel a lot when you just walk into an office of a school. what an important message. Awesome for them to hear that. I hope they hear this, to hear you say that. But important for everyone to hear that because the office...
Oftentimes they're the ones that are interacting with the community, not us. Most of our parents are dropping lunches off or making phone calls. So, excellent.
Steve Archer (34:54.286)absolutely.
Steve Archer (34:59.64)That's right. Yes, and my front office, they're just some of the best of the best about that. Welcoming our families. Teachers come and they need something. They're more than willing to help with that. Somebody needs to step away from the office. Somebody else comes in and helps. That front office is such a hub of our building.
There are a lot of fun times that we have there, but then we also know how to take care of business. again, DRE is a special place. I feel very fortunate to be here.
Rick Sola (35:32.822)Great, well, thank you for your time. At the end of a busy day, a long day, and I look forward to, I'll meet you in person, hopefully, out here in Wichita in a few weeks. It's getting that close, so.
Steve Archer (35:45.004)It is getting close. Alright, thanks so much, Rick.
Rick Sola (35:47.98)Alright, thank you Steve.