Episode 195: Can I go to the bathroom and other asinine questions with Bobby Canosa-Carr

Darrin Peppard (: 00:01

All right, everybody. Welcome into the Leaning Into Leadership podcast episode 195. And I'm telling you what, today's episode is going to challenge the way you think about power, about permission, and about leadership in our schools. Now, before we dive into today's episode, I want to take a moment to share something I am incredibly excited about. My new book, Culture First Classrooms, Leadership

relationships and practices that transform schools is coming this March. It is co authored with the amazing Katie Kinder. Now this book is packed with insights from 23 incredible educators. Yes, that's right. 23. If you listen to the show regularly, you know that I've said a couple of times and even Katie and I said 21. Yeah, sorry, folks. The math wasn't math and Katie was an English teacher. was a science guy. The math wasn't math and

It's actually 23, that's right, two more contributors to this book than we had originally reported. 23 incredible educators who share their real world strategies, personal experiences, and the practical steps they use to build strong, thriving classroom and school cultures. Whether you're a principal, you're a teacher, a district leader, an aspiring educator, this book is designed to help you prioritize culture.

first, because we know that when students and staff feel valued, seen, and heard, that's when real learning and growth happens. Katie and I believe that strong relationships and intentional leadership are the foundation of every successful school. And we're sharing powerful stories and proven practices that can transform schools, transform classrooms, and transform districts. Now, over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing more details.

more sneak peeks and some exclusive pre-order opportunities. If you're ready to take your classroom, your school culture to the next level, this book is absolutely for you. You do not want to miss it. Stay tuned for more. Let's put culture first. Now let's get into today's conversation. I want to start by asking you a question. One that every single one of us has asked at some point in time. Can I go to the bathroom?

Darrin Peppard (: 02:30

Yeah, it sounds simple, right? But today's guest, Bobby Konosakar, argues that it's actually one of the more asinine questions that we ask in education. Questions that really reveal the deep-rooted power dynamics that leave students and teachers, and honestly, even school leaders at times, feeling disempowered. Bobby is a leadership coach, a former principal, he's a mindfulness teacher, and he is the author of the book, Can I Go to the Bathroom?

and other asinine questions we ask at school. He has spent his career turning schools around, mentoring leaders and helping educators rethink the traditional structures that hold us back. In this conversation, Bobby and I are going to dig into disempowerment of school leaders and how we can help them reclaim leadership in meaningful ways. We're going to talk about how the behaviors that we model as leaders directly shape our school culture.

whether we realize it or not. We're gonna talk about why we need to rethink teacher evaluation, professional development, student accountability to create some real change in our schools. And most importantly, we're gonna talk about how leaders can show up differently to empower the people that they serve. This one is filled with eye-opening insights and some really amazing practical takeaways. So buckle up, folks. It is time to lean in.

Let's get into it. It is time for my conversation with Bobby Kanosa Carr.

Darrin Peppard (: 00:01

All right, everybody. Welcome back into the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. I got to tell you today on the show, I'm going to open with a question that I never thought I would ask anybody here on the podcast. And I'm going to ask it of those of you who are listeners, not of my guest, because this will set up the introduction to my guest perfectly. Have you ever asked, can I go to the bathroom in a classroom? I would bet every single one of us as

as adults have a story that goes back to our time when we were when we were students. I was fresh in my mind is first grade Evansville Elementary, the little red and green stop signs that flipped over one for boys one for girls and that's what lets you know whether or not you could go to the bathroom. It is to quote my guest today, an acid I'm question.

And there are many other asinine questions apparently that we ask in education. so Bobby Knosa Carr, author of a new book, Can I Go to the Bathroom? and other asinine questions we ask in school rethinking culture of permission, punishment and powerlessness is my guest on the show. Bobby, thank you so much for joining me here on Leaning Into Leadership.

Bobby Canosa-Carr (: 01:26

Yeah, thanks for having me there and I'm happy to be here.

Darrin Peppard (: 01:29

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's, think this is going to be a lot of fun because again, this is, we could probably just like dive into just all the asinine questions we ask. But I mean, certainly I'd like to, I'd like to go a little deeper than that. But, as you and I were just saying, before we hit the record button, folks seriously look up his book on Amazon because his book has a toilet on the cover.

Not everybody's gonna do that. And I think it's absolutely fantastic. And I was sharing that with you, Bobby, before we hit the record button. But let's do this before we dive too far into our conversation. I wanna give you a moment or two to just kind of orient the audience into who you are, share some of your journey, some of what led you to where you are right now in your education journey.

Bobby Canosa-Carr (: 02:19

Yeah, who I am right now at this point in my career is I am a leadership coach. And to me, that means something very different than what I think that means to most people out there in the education space. I think the word coach is one of the most misused terms in the education world because we conflate it with supervisor, trainer, teacher, all of these other things. So

How I'm trying to show up at this point in my career is as a coach, someone who is there to develop and nurture the talent that's in other people. How I got to this point, most of my career followed a fairly familiar trajectory to anyone who's in education leadership. I started out as a middle school English teacher in San Pedro, California, took on a whole bunch of other responsibilities as I was called to do.

coached basketball, coached track and field, was an instructional coach, spent a couple of years at Los Angeles Unified School District Central Office, was an assistant principal and a principal at a couple of different schools. And after about seven years in the principalship, I think it really clicked for me that principals need something different than what most of us in that role are getting.

one of the hardest jobs that any human being can ever be asked to do. And the types of support, and I'm gonna put support in air quotes there, because the types of support that I think most school systems, whether it's a public school district, charter network, an independent school system, most of those systems provide supports that don't feel very supportive. And so,

What led me to what I'm doing in my career now and what also led to my work on the book that I recently published was the realization that as a school principal, most people I encountered every day saw me as the most powerful person in their immediate world. And yet I felt completely disempowered. I felt like I was always asking someone's permission to do something. I felt like I was always following someone else's rules.

I was always about to be judged or evaluated by someone who didn't understand my work. And that feeling of disempowerment led me to want to show up as a principal leader in a way that empowers principals, that supports and believes in the innate competence of most of the people in that role. And that's also what led me to the seed that eventually grew into this book that you mentioned a few minutes ago.

Darrin Peppard (: 05:07

Yeah. So, so I'm curious, Bobby, those who listen to the podcast know, know my story. know that, year one and two as a principal, I really struggled. was nonstop firefighter. the disempowerment that you speak about really strikes a chord with me. And I tried as a superintendent to not do that to my, to my principles, but I probably at times did unintentionally.

What I'm curious about, you know, for me in that second year, that third year, I had a leadership coach. I had that person who did exactly what you're saying. And that's, that's honestly the same perspective that I take in my work as a leadership coach is what you're talking about is let's pull out every ounce of talent that's there and let this person be the most successful that they can be. The outside person can do that. It's really hard to do it from, the inside and

Bobby Canosa-Carr (: 06:05

Mm-hmm.

Darrin Peppard (: 06:06

I know

certainly you have a role right now that maybe we'll get to where you're doing some of that outside of the separate leadership coaching. But I'm curious a little bit more. I want to dig a little bit more into your journey to what helped you get to this clear vision, if you will, of right now as a building principal or back when you were a building principal, you felt like, I'm always asking for permission and so forth.

What was kind of that like, I don't know, that breaking the glass moment where did you work with a coach? Was it something else? I'm just really curious about what got you to that

Bobby Canosa-Carr (: 06:51

Yeah, I wish I had the opportunity at that point in my career to work with someone that showed up as a coach for me. Unfortunately, I got to work with a lot of great people. Don't get me wrong. None of them were a coach to me at that point. Since that time, I have gotten to work with some really transformational coaches. But I think when I was in the role as a principal,

I accidentally came upon some things that worked for the people on my team. And it was largely through my approach to my work, which is always experimental in nature. I tend to think of myself as a scientist. I'm always running little experiments. I have a hypothesis. What if instead of doing this, I try this other thing? Let me watch what happens as a result of it. And I came upon some ways of leading teams that

People started telling me this works for me. I started finding that people who had worked for me in one role when I moved on were reaching out to me saying, Bobby, can I come with you? Can I work with you again? Can I be on this team? Started having people say, what's next? What are we doing together next? How can we work together some more? And what I realized was some dynamics had formed that I don't take sole credit for. I don't think it was, I showed up as this great coach.

I think I learned from watching the people around me and studying. If I have this type of a conversation, how does the person behave over the course of the next week? A lot of the training that I received as a principal was very traditional in the, let's observe what's happening, let's identify the gap, let's...

find out what we want to tell the person to do differently and let's sandwich it in between some things that sound nice to make the critique more palatable. And I just found when I would have those types of conversations with people and I would watch them for a week afterwards, I wasn't seeing that it was having the positive impact that I wanted. And so I started wondering why am I continuing to do this just because other people have trained me to do this?

And I think I really accidentally happened upon different lines of inquiry. think I started exploring different psychological approaches, different things that I would see in friends who work as therapists, even incorporating little, you know, bits and pieces of cognitive behavioral therapy and dialogue based therapy and some of these things that I'm certainly not trained in and I'm not an expert in.

but I'm just that curious kind of person that's going to ask, what are you doing? How are you getting people to shift their behaviors? And managed to, over the course of my career, come upon some things that work and also continue to embrace failing and trying things that don't work and learning from that as well.

Darrin Peppard (: 09:56

I think that's great. think ultimately, I mean, it's great if you have the opportunity to work with a coach, but certainly that feedback that you got from other members of your team who wanted to continue to work with you in different capacities. Obviously, that's really powerful feedback that does help you discover, know, or at least reflect a little bit and say, okay, this is why that worked so well.

I think that makes such a big difference. It's a big part of why I think it's really critical for leaders to do a lot of that self-reflecting. I call it balcony level leadership and get up on the balcony, take a look and see, you know, kind of see what's going on and be intentional about that. Because sometimes we don't necessarily get that kind of feedback from somebody. We need to be really intentional to go and find.

What is it that's really making a difference? What is it that's that is changing behavior in adults? And that takes me to something that you had said when you and I had our first conversation, you hit on two things that I thought were just absolutely fantastic. And I want to get to both of them as a part of our conversation. I definitely want to talk about the book because I think there's some awesome things there. But before we do that, I want to one of them is something that you just talked on.

And that's the disempowerment in education. And before I go there though, you said something along the lines, really connecting the dots. And school leaders, want you to really listen to this piece right here. We have to be really intentional to connect the dots between adult behaviors and how ultimately those behaviors.

show up in our classrooms in terms of how our adults and our students interact. Now, Bobby, I'm going to do my best to set you up on this, but I want you to really run with this piece right here because I think that it's absolute gold. And so often we overlook the adult behaviors and we go right to the student behaviors, but the adult behaviors, those are the game changers. So I want you to talk a bit more about that.

Bobby Canosa-Carr (: 12:19

Yeah, I am so excited to talk about this. I am passionate about modeling. I just think that's how people learn. And I think it's obvious that we learn to do things by watching other people. This shows up in our culture in so many ways. You we talk all the time about the difference between doing what I say and doing what I do. And we just know naturally people absorb things by doing what we do.

Look at language acquisition, how easy it is to learn your first language just by absorbing the language that is being used around you, and how hard it is to learn another language when somebody is in a classroom setting explicitly trying to teach you another language. I think that really comes in in terms of behaviors as well. I wish I could cite the specific study, but years ago I read something and I'm gonna get this wrong, but what I remember of it was,

that there was a study at one point conducted on honesty and integrity. children were given a lesson on honesty and integrity and then taken to a movie theater where the age to get a cheaper child's ticket was just below how old they were. And they tested to see whether or not the child lied to get the cheaper rate. And they tested the impact of an explicit lesson on integrity and found almost no impact.

teaching a student about integrity before sending them to the movie theater and giving them an opportunity to lie. Almost no impact. But then they ran another group where they had the adult with the student model for the student without even mentioning it, telling the truth about their age. And I think it was in relation to like getting the discount for a senior citizen ticket or something like that. And the modeling of integrity.

and just this voiceover of, I wish I could get that senior citizen price, but I can't. I'm a couple of years off. That had an enormous impact on the child's likelihood that they would lie in the future. And so to bring this back to the question that you asked, Darren, I think that the way that our school leaders show up for the people on their staff,

influences the behavior of teachers and other school staff far more than professional development does. And then I think the way that those teachers behave influences the behavior of students far more than the actual lessons do. And so when it comes to issues of empowerment in schools,

Our system is set up so that those on a higher level of the hierarchy are always trying to force other people to behave in certain ways.

And then we don't like it when they imitate those behaviors. I've seen so many principals show up with an authoritarian stance and top-down leadership and then go into classrooms and wonder, why are my teachers being jerks to kids? Why are my teachers not creating safe spaces? Why are my teachers not leaning into social emotional learning in the classroom? it's obvious.

Because that's not going to happen unless you're leaning in that direction in professional development and your faculty meetings and so on. And I would say you can trace that all the way up the chain of command as far as you want to go through district offices, charter network offices, through legislators at whatever state and federal government, throughout the system. Someone has to break the cycle of that negative power dynamic.

if we ever expect teachers to create classrooms where kids feel safe and feel nurtured and feel like they're able to bring their whole selves.

Darrin Peppard (: 16:22

I love that so much. You know, I've said it, I've said it countless times. If you want to change the culture in your school, consider changing the way you it. Right. And the same thing is true in your classroom. If you're not, if you're not in love with the culture in your classroom, consider changing the way that you lead that. I think there's a really, really big lesson there for let's just, let's just stay on school leaders for right now.

And you said, and you said it in a way that I love, you said it how you show up. Let's talk a little bit more about school level leaders and some of the ways they can choose to show up the right way to help model those behaviors. Maybe just share a couple of things that come to mind with that specific piece.

Bobby Canosa-Carr (: 17:21

Yeah, I'll actually dig into something that I wrote about a lot in one of the chapters of the book. Every chapter of the book asks a different asinine question. And one of those asinine questions that gets asked all the time in schools is, what's my grade? Right? Kids are constantly, what's my grade? What did I get? Are you done grading that essay yet? And I talk about how that question permeates our system, particularly in regard to teacher evaluation. And that's the connection back to the school leader piece.

If school leaders show up in relation to teacher evaluation from a standpoint of I'm bringing my clipboard into your classroom, I'm documenting my notes, I'm trying to catch what you're doing wrong, I'm trying to come up with how to tell you to do something different. That's a perfect example of an infectious behavior that's then going to translate down into the classroom experience, right? I don't think many leaders

today want to see classrooms where teachers are just showing up with the clipboard trying to catch students making mistakes. I think most school leaders want their schools to move away from that gatekeeper mentality of I'm going to see how intellectually adept you are, give you a grade based on it, and make decisions about whether or not you should have access to a certain career or a certain university. But we're not going to shift that in our classrooms unless we shift that

in relation to, to use that phrase again, how we show up for our teachers. And so I would always push a school leader to when serving in that supervisory function in relation to a teacher, think about how do you want that teacher to show up for their kids? And ideally we want everyone to show up as someone who is a guide, someone who is a support, someone who's earning trust.

and someone who's genuinely cheering for the success of every single person. And so that would be one push that I would make to school leaders is asking how can you show up as the best cheerleader for every single staff member on your campus? How can you show in every word that you say, every email that you send, every interaction that you have, how can you show that you are actually

deeply invested in the success of that person rather than what we sometimes see, which is leaders who are more deeply invested in separating out the good teachers and the bad teachers, determining who are we bringing back? Who do we not want to bring back? Who do I want to put into a position of leadership and who do I not? Because when we show up as leaders in ways that tries to separate and judge and evaluate and critique and all of those things,

Guess what? Our teachers absorb that no matter what we tell them in professional development, they absorb that and will often treat the students in their classrooms in exactly the same.

Darrin Peppard (: 20:28

Again, like you said earlier, it comes down to what we model, not what we say, but what we do and how we show up. again, that's one of my favorite. One of my favorite phrases too, is how we choose to show up. I love that you went there. You know what I want to do? I want to do this. I've got the table of the contents of the book up in front of me right now. And we don't have time to like go through the whole thing. Plus I want people to go buy the book because it's just wonderful. So, but you just hit

What would be chapter number three? What's my grade? So I'm going to go, I'm really curious about this one. So you're good if I just pick one more chapter and just ask you the question and let you run with it.

Bobby Canosa-Carr (: 21:10

Yeah,

let's do it.

Darrin Peppard (: 21:14

All right. Okay. So I want to go with, with chapter number six. What's for lunch. I think that's, I think this is going to be a lot of fun. Let's go.

Bobby Canosa-Carr (: 21:25

So I went a very different direction with that chapter than most people expect. And I start out by saying I could write an entire book on the school lunch system in American public schools. But that's another book. So what that chapter actually focuses on is what are we serving in other ways? And so particularly digging into issues of curriculum, not just for students, but also for adults.

Darrin Peppard (: 21:37

yeah.

Bobby Canosa-Carr (: 21:55

What are we giving people? So when we decide what type of professional development we are serving to our teachers, what are we doing? Are we outsourcing that to some sort of consultant to make it easier on ourselves? Are we just paying some major international textbook company to come in and do that for us? Are we copying out and just saying, figure it out yourselves. I'm going to be in my office responding to emails. What is it that we're serving to people?

And of course, every chapter goes through the school leader experience, the teacher experience, and the student experience. And so I talk a lot about what we're serving to our kids as well. And I make the parallel between the sort of pre-packaged styrofoam quality lunches that we serve in the lunchroom and the pre-packaged styrofoam quality curriculum we often serve to students in the classroom.

that feels absolutely devoid of any nutritional value. And that chapter really digs into this idea where in so many schools, we get obsessed with the idea of delivering a guaranteed viable curriculum. And we start focus on pacing plans and assessment systems, which can all be good things. Like I'm not against having a high quality curriculum. But when it becomes sterile and when it

becomes something that is not responsive to the human beings in the classroom, I think we lose something. And so when I think about that term that gets used a lot in the education space, guaranteed viable curriculum, I don't interpret that as I'm going to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to a major textbook company to deliver that to me. I think how do we actually look deeply at the human beings in our classrooms?

partner with them, partner with their families, partner with the community, figure out what they need to be served in order for them to actually want to come to the table, want to eat, want to consume the curriculum, want to engage deeply in it and benefit from it. And I think that that needs to be the same across the board because every teacher will complain to you about disengagement of students in their classroom.

Every principal will complain to you about the disengagement of teachers in professional development. And Darren, you've been a principal too, so I imagine you've been in spaces like I have where the superintendent is complaining about the engagement of the principals in that space. I remember at one point when I was a principal in a big school district that. An area superintendent actually established a bad kids table at the front of the room because it was large district. So many principles there.

Darrin Peppard (: 24:31

Yep. Absolutely. Yeah.

Bobby Canosa-Carr (: 24:48

And there were five of us that came into principal PD one time and were told, you all have assigned seating at the front table of the classroom. And it was so interesting because it was the principals of the high schools that served the most historically disenfranchised and marginalized communities that had all been put at this bad kids table. And there was no coincidence there.

Darrin Peppard (: 25:15

Yeah.

Bobby Canosa-Carr (: 25:15

It was

that all of us were responding with disengagement in principal PD to professional development that didn't meet the needs of ourselves as school leaders and wouldn't translate into meeting the needs of our students at our schools. And yet the easy label was to just say disengaged. But the real question was what's for lunch? What's being served? And that trickles down. And when we don't at the principal level or at the superintendent level,

paid really deliberate attention to what types of learning experiences we're serving to the people that we lead, the result we're going to get is going back to the same thing. It's modeling. These things get absorbed. And I actually believe that negligence in relation to providing high quality, nutrient rich learning experiences for our school leaders translates both directly and indirectly into

the exact same phenomenon in our classrooms, which leads to our students getting these empty learning experiences that don't resonate and don't meet their needs.

Darrin Peppard (: 26:26

Yeah, man, that is just so powerful. mean, you first off, I'm glad I chose that particular chapter for you to talk.

man, you just, you're, you're striking so many chords. I'm taking me back to my principal and assistant principal days where so often the professional development for us as leaders wasn't for us as leaders. was be in the professional development that your teachers are going to get so that you know how to hold them accountable to it. And I'm not saying that isn't important. If, if I am asked to, if I am tasked with

Bobby Canosa-Carr (: 26:55

Mm.

Darrin Peppard (: 27:06

holding my staff accountable to a particular curriculum or a particular instructional strategy that the district says, we're going to do this. Cooperative learning, that was one of the ones that we did. And I love cooperative learning. But the training that we went through was the training for the teachers. I need that.

But I always felt as a building leader, that's why I do what I do, to be honest with you. And I think it's why you do what you do. I felt like as a building leader, give me professional development that is going to help me be a better leader. That's what professional development for leaders should be about. Not just here's what your teachers are doing so you know how to go hold them accountable or know what to expect to see in their classrooms. Yeah, it's important, but.

Man, if you want to invest in your leaders, invest in your leaders in ways that helps them grow and be better school leaders. And I could bang on that drum for hours, but I'm just going to push that back to you for a second if you want to run a little bit further with that thought. Cause if I, if I start going now, I'm just going to keep going on that. So I'm going to throw it back to you.

Bobby Canosa-Carr (: 28:28

Yeah, I 100 % agree. I think that ties into the work that both of us do around coaching, right? Because coaching is professional learning, but it's inherently responsive rather than prepackaged. And I also think, you mentioned how so much professional development is geared towards school leaders is to prepare them to hold teachers accountable. Sure, it's important to be able to hold teachers accountable, but

Holding teachers accountable becomes a smaller percentage of your job when you're actually leading effectively. Because if you are leading effectively, that accountability thing is no longer necessary because people are actually seeing the sense of urgency. They are feeling like they are on the team. They're deeply invested in the work. And then it's just a matter of supporting them and figuring out the how. But that accountability often comes like,

When I find myself feeling the need to hold folks accountable, it's usually because I didn't actually give people what they needed upfront, which is often the leadership piece, the motivation, the connection to the sense of urgency.

Darrin Peppard (: 29:43

Yeah. my gosh, you are just so spot on folks. If you're not watching the YouTube version of this, I was just like, go on Arsenio hall, like this bump over here, with, with Bobby, a hundred percent spot on. No question about that. man, I'll tell you what, this is, this is amazing. Our time has just flown by. I love this conversation. we're at that point, here on the show, Bobby, where I'm going to ask you the same question. I ask everybody else on the leading into leadership podcast.

Bobby Canosa-Carr (: 29:50

Hahaha.

Darrin Peppard (: 30:11

How are you? I you've already given us a bunch here, but what are some other ways that you're leaning into leadership right now?

Bobby Canosa-Carr (: 30:18

think the number one way is I'm forcing myself to ask questions when I want to give answers. It is so tough because in this climate where so many of us feel powerless and the system is set up to make us feel inadequate and I really believe our school systems nurture a sense of imposter syndrome. All of us are under pressure to provide answers and to prove our worth and to prove our value.

and I've been leaning into leadership by forcing myself whenever I noticed that urge coming up, like I need to give the answer. I need to have the solution. I need to be able to tell someone what to do. Whenever I think that's going to somehow inflate myself, make myself feel worthwhile or look more worthwhile to someone else. I'm really trying to hold myself back and say, what question can I ask instead? because it's through asking the right questions that people are

really going to be able to get invested in whatever change they're going to need to embrace as a result of your interaction with them.

Darrin Peppard (: 31:27

There you go, right there. love that. Be curious, not judgmental. I think that's such a huge piece right there. So Bobby, people are going to want to check out the book. They're going to want to get in contact with you. They're going to follow you on social media. How do they do all of that?

Bobby Canosa-Carr (: 31:44

Yeah, absolutely. The book is available now on Amazon. Can I go to the bathroom and other asinine questions we ask in school? My website is enlightened coaching dot US on that website. There's a link to be able to contact me. I would love to hear from you. One of the things that folks will notice as they read through the books, I say the most important pages of the book are blank. It's actually built as a reflection exercise, and so there are a lot of spaces for folks to journal in those books.

And I invite folks also to reach out to me through the website and let me know what they're coming up with as a result of some of the questions that are in the books. So I would love to hear from everyone in your audience, Darren. So please reach out to me.

Darrin Peppard (: 32:29

Yeah, outstanding stuff. All right. Hey, I really appreciate it. Bobby, thanks for coming and spending some time with me here on the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. And yeah, we'll have to do this again, man. This was great.

Bobby Canosa-Carr (: 32:42

Anytime. Thanks, Darren.

Darrin Peppard (: 00:01

All right, folks, once again, a big thank you to Bobby Knose, a car for joining me here on the leaning into leadership podcast. That was just a fantastic conversation. And that's honestly one I could have just kept going. There was so much good stuff there. And Bobby and I certainly see eye to eye on so many things in terms of what really matters in leadership. again, thank you to Bobby. Folks, if you didn't get any of any of those show links, get down in the show notes, hit the links.

go get a copy of this book and check out Bobby with the work that he does. Now it's time for a pep talk. Today on the pep talk, I want to go right at something that Bobby talked about in the latter part of the show. When he was talking about how he is leaning into leadership, he talked about just really leaning into asking good questions. And I know I've talked about it here on the show before. I talk about it a lot when I work with school leaders.

specifically about how we go into classrooms looking to give feedback. But what he talked about really took me to that Walt Whitman quote. And if you're a Ted Lasso fan, you'll remember the dart scene. Ted absolutely channels the Walt Whitman quote, be curious, not judgmental. The reason I'm bringing that up in the pep talk today, we are certainly at that point in time. We're here at the beginning of March.

This is when you're real heavy into teacher evaluation and some of those summative conversations and those types of things. And I would really encourage each and every one of you to remember to lead with curiosity. Be willing, like Bobby Talk, to ask more questions. Don't think you have to solve everybody's problem. Don't think you have to go into a classroom looking for what teachers are doing wrong or

trying to find one thing you can say to help them get better. Instead, just simply be curious. Try to find as many great questions as you can possibly find to lead into a conversation because those conversations, that's where the true learning, that's where the true growing really takes place for your teachers. So really lean into that. Look for the opportunity to ask great questions.

Darrin Peppard (: 02:25

so that you can get yourself into those incredible conversations with them. When you have those conversations, man, it is amazing what happens to the culture of your school, what happens to the culture within the organization, and what happens in the classrooms, because your teachers are gonna take that same philosophy back into their classrooms. Thank you folks so much for listening to me here on the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. I appreciate each and every week.

how many of you continue to show up day after day after day, week after week. If you haven't yet, please, whatever podcast platform you are listening on, jump down there, give us a five-star review and give us some feedback. I love not only reading those things and hearing that feedback. mean, it's really inspiring to hear, but just as importantly, that's what helps to drive the algorithm and gets the Leaning Into Leadership podcast in front of that many more people.

Stay tuned for more on Culture First Classrooms, my book with Katie Kinder coming in March. It is March. Holy cow. It's coming very soon, folks. I cannot wait. Again, thank you for joining me here on the Leading Into Leadership podcast. Get out there. Have a road to awesome week.