Episode 181: The Power of Educational Systems with Kurtis Hewson

Dr. Darrin Peppard

All right, my friends, welcome into episode 181 of the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. Man, it is an absolute Arctic blast cutting through America's heartland right now. It is so very cold here in Omaha, Nebraska today. I don't think we're going to break 20 degrees. I really don't. And I'm not okay with it. I don't know about you, but I'm not a fan of the cold weather. I am just totally fine.

with it being nice and warm, run the air conditioner, that kind of thing. I don't mind a little bit of snow, maybe around Christmas time, and I know we're getting close to that, but holy cow, the brutal cold temperatures. That is just not my thing, just not my jam at all. But that is not what episode 181 is all about. That is not about doing a weather forecast from Omaha, Nebraska for you, but rather, it's about talking about systems in our schools.

And in order to talk a little deeper about systems, I invited a guest back onto the show, Curtis Husson, who you might remember from episode 137. Curtis developed, along with his wife Lorna, something called the Collaborative Response System. And really it's about how we surround our students with the supports they need to achieve at the levels that we believe they can achieve.

And in this conversation, Curtis and I certainly talk a little bit more about collaborative response. But more importantly, we talk about why systems are so important for school leaders and how you go about being intentional creating those systems to ensure that your time is managed well to ensure that instruction is managed well and to ensure that we're not leaving students to chance, meaning dealing with

the school information system lottery of whether or not they get quality educational processes happening in their classrooms. By developing systems, we take that out of the equation. This is a really great conversation. I really enjoyed having Curtis back on the show. I know you're going to enjoy this particular conversation. So relax, enjoy, and I'll see you on the other side.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 00:01

So today on the show, I want to talk about systems. I want to talk about processes. I want to talk about things that we do intentionally to lead to a specific outcome. And there are a variety of these things we can talk about. can talk about real simple systems, or we can talk about systems that genuinely impact teaching and learning. That's where I want to go today. And my guest on the show today is a familiar face.

Curtis Hewson, who was a guest here on the Leaning Into Leadership podcast back on episode 137, joins us. Curtis, thank you so much for jumping back in on the show.

Kurtis Hewson (: 00:39

Thanks so much Darren, real pleasure to be able to engage in conversation with you once again.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 00:45

Yeah, absolutely. So I will link episode 137 in the show notes so people can check it out. But let's, let's just give them a really quick overview who Curtis is, what, what you're all about, what the work is that you do. And then we let's dive into this conversation.

Kurtis Hewson (: 01:01

Yeah, so educator now, I think I'm in year 27 in this amazing profession and from classroom teacher to school administrator, taught at the post-secondary level and now I work with schools and school jurisdictions around what we refer to as collaborative response and it was something that had early, early Genesis work from a school that I was leading in Southern Alberta, Canada where

we're located here now. But it all of a sudden became a framework that other schools began to appreciate. We had people reaching out asking to come and visit what it was that we were doing. I got requests out to share and it took on a life of its own to the place that I'm at now where I have the honor and privilege of working with a lot of school and

school division leaders on implementing what we've come to know as collaborative response and how we can respond to the needs of all students in a really effective way and you're bang on with the creation of highly intentional systems, structures and processes.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 02:09

Well, I know.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think I think that's that's the thing that, you know, certainly brought us together kind of some some very like minded thinking in terms of how do we best support those that we're supposed to support. And in my case, typically, it's really leaning in and supporting the leaders in your case. First and foremost, it was around working with your teachers to ensure that they were meeting every kid where they were and how they could be the most effective.

as classroom teachers to get the most out of teaching and learning in your classroom. So let's maybe just orient everybody a little bit more in the collaborative response framework. Maybe kind of, I know you and Lorna wrote book about this, and that's where Jigsaw Learning comes from, your business, but maybe let's just talk a little bit more.

Because I'll be honest with you a lot of the listeners will be listeners here in the United States and I might be thinking well is that just the Canadian version of a PLC and I know it's more than that so let's let's take it and run from there.

Kurtis Hewson (: 03:25

Okay, so I want to start where we were at at this school that I had come had the privilege to join as the principal and Here's what what was immediately evident in this school a it was a school with great teachers great adults Things were happening for kids. This was not a school that needed to be fixed or was broken in any way whatsoever we had

success that was happening for students, but there were a few things that were coming to the surface that had us have to start thinking differently about how we were organizing ourselves. The first is that every person in that building would have said we want success for all students, but that's not how we were operating. We were operating on a success for most. and we hadn't really put strong systems in place to be able to attend to that.

portion of our population that were not having success and we had no good response for it. The second was we had some really strong structures in place for students that were complex or high risk and it was a blessing and a curse. Blessing is that yeah, we were supporting those students well, I think, but the curse was because there was nothing in the middle, we were pushing a lot of students to that level.

We were putting individualized program plans and codes and all sorts of things onto students that really didn't need that level of support, but it was because it's all we had. And the third is we had great teachers doing good things, but in isolated pockets throughout the school. I like to refer to it now upon reflection as isolated islands of excellence. Everyone was in their own little pocket and it didn't mean that we didn't get along.

We helped and supported one another, but we did not have effective ways to leverage the centuries of teaching experience that we had in that building. So that was the genesis and has evolved to a point now when we talk about collaborative response, we think about three foundational components. And in our visual graphic, it's actually three puzzle pieces that connect together because it's highly, highly connected. The first component is collaborative structures and processes.

We set up layers of teams within our school where the PLC is one of the layers, but there's multiple layers that we establish. And I can talk through what that looks like. The second piece is data and evidence so that we have data and evidence that are informing those conversations. And then the third is our continuum of supports that we develop, is really becoming the intellectual bank of

What are our best strategies, practices, ideas, interventions? When we say a student is struggling, do we have a mechanism to be able to say, what do we do in that case? That becomes very much established and, for lack of a better word, institutionalized within our building of it's, this is just how we go about responding to needs of students. And it's clearly documented and you've talked all the time, Darren, about.

clarity and intentionality that is a huge part of all of this is how do we create high degrees of clarity, intentionality and alignment between all of these things.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 07:04

Well, I think one of the best words I loved in there, obviously I love the word clarity, you know that, but hearing you talk about that alignment piece, that when we think about the islands of excellence, typically they're being successful in spite of the systems that are in the school, not because of the systems that are in the school.

Kurtis Hewson (: 07:32

Exactly.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 07:33

And certainly, you know, you all of us in our schools have highly talented individuals. But when we work as individuals, we're never going to get to where every single kid has the opportunity to not only have great access to incredible teaching and learning, but where they have equal access. You know, it shouldn't be, you know, we've

We've talked about this forever in our profession. You know, it shouldn't be the school information system lottery where, I got that teacher. Cool. I'm going to get a great education. This one I did not. But having that alignment, I think is so essential for whether it's across grade levels, it's throughout the entire school or even within the entire school system. And I know, I know we're going to talk about kind of how this has scaffolded.

hear a little bit later in our conversation. But I just want to have you go a little bit deeper with that alignment piece because I just think that is such an important element.

Kurtis Hewson (: 08:35

Hmm.

All right, well, I'm gonna try and break it down in as condensed as much as I can, but I am going to share with you a resource that we have, an overview of collaborative response article that talks a little bit further if that would be of value for the show notes. So when we think about the alignment, I'm gonna share one example within this. Within our continuum of supports, we talk about four tiers. And I know in most response to intervention,

multi-tiered system support structures. We talk about three and we didn't create one more tier on top. What we did is took universal and broke it apart into two. And essentially what we wanted to see is rather than tiering the kids, we're going to tier the supports through these four tiers. Tier one being what are the things that we agree to do across the school in every classroom for every student.

So when we developed our literacy continuum of supports, Tier 1 was the eight things that we said we all agree to do this because it has real impact for students. Then Tier 2 became what are the things we could do for some students some of the time in some classrooms, but still under the direction of the classroom teacher. So essentially for us, Tier 1 and 2 might resemble

what would be referred to as tier one in most traditional tiered response structures. But we were trying to get really clear on what are the things we will see across every room and then what are the differentiated strategies we could be trying and getting crystal clear on that. Then tier three became that supports someone other than the classroom teacher is responsible for, but still within the school.

and tier four were the supports provided by someone external to the school. So getting really clear on that and then we start to align layers of team with this. So we talk about four layers of team. The first layer being what we call collaborative planning, but most schools would refer to this as their PLC structures. And the reason we kept it fairly broad is it doesn't really matter if your school is engaged

deeply in PLC work or Simon Brakespear's sprint model or examination of student work through other different structures or systems. Essentially, we want opportunities where teachers are collaborating and planning, but really around what are the big rocks that we all agree that we are working on. Then we have another layer of team that we refer to as the collaborative team meeting, which is

very specific in the way it's structured so that we are talking about what are the strategies we could be employing when we're identifying students. Our third layer of team becomes our school support team which in most schools that have strong response to intervention structures they have this team or in a large high school they might have several teams at that layer of basically what do we do for students who are being referred that need support beyond the classroom.

And then there's always going to be times where we're going to meet in what we refer to as case consults, but essentially where one kid is on the agenda and we might bring external partners in. So that was a really broad overview of some of the alignment and connection that we see.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 12:17

That's okay.

Yeah, no, that's okay, Because I think, you know, that's that's not something we want to glaze over. We want to make sure that we do, you know, hit all of the details that that that you hit there. Because when we when we tend to just rush into something or just say, you know, that's good enough. That's when that's when we find that the systems the systems don't work. Right. And

I think that's part of the genesis of my question specific to PLC. And I won't ask you to chase, know, hey, you know, what is a PLC? What is a PLC? Not because we that that in and of itself could be probably a two hour episode, but we see, I'm sure in your work, I know in my work, we see all incarnations of a PLC.

Kurtis Hewson (: 13:03

Yes.

100%.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 13:13

So what I like about the collaborative framework is that it's giving very clear definition. I think the way you said it was, it is very tightly structured so that it isn't simply just another department meeting, just another grade level meeting where we're planning the picnic or we're planning the end of quarter celebration or something. We're very specific about student work, about student outcomes.

about Intended Learning Targets, that type of thing. maybe just put one fine little point on that to kind of wrap that.

Kurtis Hewson (: 13:55

I'm sorry, it was cutting out just a little bit on me. Darren, can you repeat that question?

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 13:58

okay. Yeah, yeah, hang on. Let me notate that here.

Kurtis Hewson (: 14:06

My apologies.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 14:09

that's okay. It could be me. It very well could be me. I don't know. You've been a little pixelated, but it could be my Wi-Fi, not yours. Who knows? So that's what's nice about this software is it, you know, it records on both sides and then uploads, so we should be fine. okay. Let's see. So I can't remember how I said that.

Kurtis Hewson (: 14:15

Yeah, it is on this end too.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 14:34

Let's see. Yeah, yeah, it was just maybe just a little bit deeper on. okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'll lead you in with this and I'll figure out how to splice it together.

Kurtis Hewson (: 14:34

Reacting just to go a little bit further connection on the PLC.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 14:49

Again, we we want we really want that highly structured piece. So the meeting isn't the let's plan the fourth grade picnic, or let's plan the end of quarter celebration. It's not a glorified department meeting. It's very highly structured. So just maybe just put a fine point on that to kind of wrap that piece up.

Kurtis Hewson (: 15:10

You bet. And I think I can do that through just a little bit of a story of coming into this school where all of this work, where the genesis of this was. Our teams or our grade levels had time built into their schedule where one period, once a week, they would meet to engage in their PLC. And for those that are listening, I'm air quoting right now because they called it a PLC.

but it varied tremendously from team to team. Some teams had really clear outcomes they were trying to accomplish and use that time wisely. Other teams were using it to plan the school-wide bake sale. Another team would use it to make a bulletin board out in the hallway. And another team would say, well, we're not meeting this week because we all have marking that we need to do. So widely variant. And so we put in really sound.

PLC structures where we're going to examine data. We're going to identify goals based on this and then we're going to utilize our time to work on accomplishing those goals and what we were finding is it was really having an impact on not just the learning and student success but on the quality of instruction and teaching that was happening as well, but as great as that work was

there was still students who struggled and we needed a mechanism to be able to continue to build upon what it was that we could do. So I think getting really, really clear at that PLC level of what is it intent and then being able to see, you know, there's a gap now where there's some students who aren't seeing that success, but it's not that we need to refer them.

for additional support or anything yet, there could be some things we could do at the classroom level, which brought in that second layer of team.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 17:15

Yeah, no, I love that. really do. So, so I'm curious as, as I'm listening to you talk about that and, you know, kind of reflecting on my own journey of working to develop PLCs and that type of thing as a, as a building level leader. And now in my role as a leadership coaching consultant, and I know you do this work too. So this is kind of where I'm, I want to go with this question. How different is it?

for you and what are what are some of the things that you kind of lean into as that outside person. So now you come in, you're working with a school, you're not the principal, you're not the person who's going to stand in front of that staff and say, now this is how we have to do this. What are some of the things that as you work with schools as you work with school divisions, that you're either

doing to support the leader or maybe that you're doing to support the teachers that clearly feels way different than when you were the principal.

Kurtis Hewson (: 18:20

So I think one of the first steps and again this is bigger than just collaborative response and it comes to what you've discussed around solid coaching. It's really trying to determine what do you already have in place and where would it fit within this collaborative response framework. We're not talking about blowing up your school. Every school

that I've been in within the last decade has elements of what we talk about around this collaborative response work, whether there's solid PLC structures already in place or they have a really strong referral system for getting additional supports for students. We start to talk about what already connects and then where's there a gap. And one of our first starting places is we have a meeting structure that's very unique to collaborative response, which

is a really powerful solutions oriented and action focused process and we call it our collaborative team meeting. The idea is that if we have PLCs that are meeting on a regular basis, we want to infuse in a meeting that happens every three to five weeks approximately. It could be in the same teams that you're in your PLCs in or we have seen schools that start to mix up their people for this

Collaborative team meeting and Darren here's what the process looks like we start with a everybody comes ready for the conversation They have students already determined we use what we call pre meeting organizers so that not a second is wasted in this conversation and we start in with reviewing our norms pick one that will practice today and then we start with celebrations and when you say I'd like to bring up Curtis my celebration is he's

finally starting to master some of the skills we've been teaching over the last three weeks. Now as a facilitator, we're going to say that's awesome. What did you do that led to that success? Because we're trying to reinforce the successes we're having. You might share a strategy that others in the room would benefit from hearing. That's great. We always take some time to share the celebrations and then we move into a key issue process and this is what it looks like.

We say, all right Darren, who's a student you've brought? And as quickly as possible, what is a key issue you're experiencing? And this is where the data and evidence starts to become huge because we start to say, don't bring your most complex student or a student that has multiple variables impacting them. When we utilize our data to color code students, that might indicate that this is a red student. For instance, if we're using just a simple

red yellow green type strategy. We want to be able to surface kids who are close that are yellow and the data helps us to do that and then we identify a key issue. So let's say that I've brought Curtis and my key issue is staying focused when working independently in class. Okay now we might ask a couple clarifying questions just to make sure we really understand that key issue but then we go

write to the other teachers and say does anyone else have a student with this same concern? Just names, no stories. And then we turn our attention to, right, what could we do to help a student remain focused when working independently? And we start brainstorming and people start sharing what if. What if we tried this? I wonder if here's something I've done in my classroom and you hear that and go, ooh, I do something like that, but I've tweaked it a little bit. And then we come back and say, all right,

Darren, for Curtis, what's one thing that you want to try? One thing that you want to take away from this and you say, you know, I really like Lorna's idea. I think I'm going to try that. And of course we're going to ask, do you need help with that? you might you need a little bit of assistance? But we find schools when they're doing this over and over and over again, they start to develop huge degrees of vulnerability, psychological safety, and all of a sudden,

I start stretching, I start trying things that are outside of my normal toolkit because I'm hearing what's working for other people. it's again, through these layering of team that we just start or that we continually leverage and build the collective capacity of everybody in our building over and over and over again.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 23:05

You know, one of the biggest things I'm hearing there that I think the structure lends itself to and does so well with is that that keeps the judgment of the teacher taken away. It's not about, you know, I'm struggling with this. We're talking about, we're talking about the end user. We're talking about a student. This is, this is something that

I have a student who's struggling with this. Hey, does anybody else have those? yeah, okay. Several of us do. Now let's, let's put some ideas on the table. Now what's one step you might try and can we help you? So I think it really puts puts that, that onus on where we're coming together to solve problems as opposed to, I think in so many ways, so often when they're not done well,

Kurtis Hewson (: 23:56

Yeah.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 24:03

the PLC and the reason the PLC devolves. One of the reasons the PLC devolves is exactly that is I don't want to be judged in front of my peers. That's that's not what I'm here for, right as a classroom teacher. But it also comes back to the alignment piece. You know, I think it really comes back to alignment. Like, how do we collectively help you with this one kid, you know, and ultimately, we're going to help each other through through that work. You go ahead.

Kurtis Hewson (: 24:30

And you know.

I think it's interesting too with what you share there is through this collaborative team meeting process, we then start to see the what we call collaborative planning, but in most schools they're referring to it as their PLC structures. We find that that becomes even stronger, that these start to work in parallel to one another. And all of a sudden we come back into our PLCs and start envisioning innovation.

innovative ways that we could go about attempting to respond to needs that we're seeing in our students.

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 25:13

Yeah, that's outstanding. Now you were sharing before, before we hit the record button, full transparency folks, I just recorded on Curtis's podcast right before we recording this episode. So we've been hanging out together for a couple of hours now. so in our time between recordings, we were talking about the collaborative response framework and you had kind of shared how you were starting to see it now move to where schools are thinking this way. And even

school divisions or here in the states, we would say school districts are thinking this way. Talk a little bit about that. Like, like, what does that look like? And how do you think the leaders in those spaces have gotten to that place?

Kurtis Hewson (: 25:57

Yeah, so this has been really exciting work here for us because I always understood and envisioned this work as a school-wide framework of how do we structure our schools to effectively respond to the needs of students. And what we're now starting to see is school districts that start replicating the process to respond to the needs of schools. So let me just give you a real quick

snapshot of what this looks like. So at the school level, we would use our data and evidence that we have to start to colour code our students. And we understand that when we come to our collaborative team meeting, we're not taking, we're not surfacing the student that is furthest away from where we want them to be. We're bringing up students who are close and all it might take is a subtle adjustment in the classroom. Now we're not saying we'll ignore our reds, for instance, we have other layers of team.

that are there to respond. what this does is it allows us that we're not talking about Curtis in every conversation that's happening in the school. There's a place and a time for that conversation to happen. Then we start at the school division level is let's do the exact same thing, determine what are our priorities and could we color code our schools based on where they are currently at? Not as an evaluation, not as a...

assessment but rather to help guide our supports and then we're going to have the same conversation that the schools are having about students but we're going to do it about schools so this is what it looks like as a division leader i can say at simpson elementary a key issue i'm seeing is the principal is having trouble getting into classrooms they they just don't have the time to get into classrooms

And then from the system leaders around the table, we say, is there any other school where we're seeing this? And then we go, all right, what could we do to help support? Maybe we could set this person up with a mentor. Maybe one of us could come in and talk to him. Maybe we could get some additional coaching support. Maybe we're going to come in and get somebody to share what they've done to structure their time. We have a school where we have a leader who does this really well.

What if we created an opportunity for this person to go visit that school? And then we come back and say, all right, for Simpson Elementary, what's one thing we could try? And again, it's about how do we structure and support the system? And in school districts where we're seeing this, it's become hugely valuable that not only are we expecting schools to be engaging in the framework, we are at the same time. And of course, there's going to be struggles through this process.

If you're putting good systems in place, there's always going to be points of difficulty within it. But now we've got system leaders saying, yeah, we're experiencing some of those struggles too, and here's what we've done to work through that. It becomes a really, really valuable process. And I think just builds such an incredible culture of collaboration and high, high, high degrees of collective efficacy of, yeah, this is an issue. So what could we do?

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 29:23

Yeah, that's super, super powerful stuff. And I love that. And I think that's when you start to see something that is working effectively at one level, and then you start to apply it as a leader and say, Hey, I can, I can take the, the basic premise, I can take the systems, I can take the ideas, the concepts that are a part of this, and apply that to what my needs are, and what the needs of my, my charge are.

I think that's just super powerful leadership. just really love that. So Curtis man, our time has just flown by as I knew it would. So we are, we're certainly at that point in the show where I'll ask you the same thing I ask everybody. And I know I've asked you this before, but I'll ask you again to give us an updated version of what it is right now. Curtis, you're doing to lean into leadership.

Kurtis Hewson (: 30:13

You know, it's interesting because with our organization Jigsaw Learning and really it's myself, my wife, and we have a few team members that are with us and it organically grew. It wasn't an intentional endeavor, but when we were getting all these requests from schools to come and share what does this look like, it prompted the need to go in a different direction. I think one of the things that's been really powerful is now utilizing

some of those same structures and processes within our own organization, which is not a school. We're a educational consulting business, a team, but we're adopting a lot of the same meeting structures. We come into those same conversations with right now, here's a key issue that I'm dealing with. What could we do around it? I think being able to understand that when we create strong

systems for people to collaborate it's Everyone in the organization whether that's a school a business a school district It just makes us stronger. So I think that's what I've been really working on is essentially Walking the talk of this is stuff that I work with on school leaders on a day-to-day basis Are we practicing it in our our own life, which has been super super valuable?

Dr. Darrin Peppard (: 31:41

Yeah, no, I love it. think that's awesome stuff. man, I'm so glad we got another opportunity to sit down, have a conversation, to hit a record button on it so that everybody got a chance to listen in. So Curtis, thank you so much for joining me here on the Leaning Into Leadership podcast.

Kurtis Hewson (: 31:57

Thanks, always a pleasure Darrin.

Dr. Darrin Peppard

All right, outstanding conversation there with Kurtis Hewson. Again, I really appreciate him coming on and being a guest here with us on the Leading Into Leadership podcast. All of Kurtis's information is down there in the show notes. I also linked the show that Curtis was on previously, episode 137. So you'll want to make sure you get that, get that listened to again and make sure that you connect with Curtis. Check out his book, All of the Great Things That Are Down There in the Show Notes. And now,

It's time for a pep talk. In today's pep talk, I want to talk a little more about systems, but I want to talk about them in a little bit different way. Earlier this week, I was compelled. I was inspired by a post that I read on social media about leadership coaching. And it was very much a positive post about leadership coaching and about why leadership coaching was important. But then another individual shared a blog post that they had written.

about their experience working with a coach and I thought you know that's really wonderful I love that and every one of us who's worked with a leadership coach has an experience. Mine is what led me to being a leadership coach I work with the school leaders around the country that I do. Because I worked with a leadership coach and so I wrote a I think a really good blog about my experience there and I'll put that in the show notes as well so you can go check that out.

But one of the pieces that really stands out to me that I learned from my leadership coach was developing systems. And that's what I want to talk about on the pep talk today. I was not a systems thinker. I really did not understand that at all. And I know I've talked about it a few times on here, but it was my coach who really pushed me to think about what systems really are.

and how it is that we're putting them in place to ensure that number one, as a leader, I'm able to be focusing on those high leverage leadership activities. And two, so that the how we do things around here makes sense. It's something that everybody can have access to and that everybody understands how we do what we do.

Dr. Darrin Peppard

When we talk about building systems around instruction, which is what I love about the conversation today with Curtis, when we talk about building those systems, that's when we're really getting deep into the instructional leadership work that we need to be doing. So leaders trust me on this one. If you're not developing systems, if you're not taking the time to look at the systems that you have in place, that's when you really need to

lean into that work, reach out to a leadership coach. If it's me, wonderful. I would love to work with you. I would love to work with your school and your district. But if it's not me, folks, there are some amazing leadership coaches out there. Give them the opportunity to help you work on getting the systems in place you need to set your school up for success. It is absolutely one of the most important things that you will do.

is ensuring that you have quality systems in place to manage and take care of all the things that go into leading a school. That's what I got for you this week, folks. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I know we've got a special midweek December episode coming up soon with Todd and Dominic cannot wait for that episode. That's some other wonderful educators coming on the podcast, folks, we are

we are really diving back into bringing educators into the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. And I'm super stoked about that. Thank you so much for joining me here on Leaning Into Leadership. Get out there and have a road to awesome..