Changing Adult Mindsets with AJ Crabill, Ep. 133 Instructional Coaching with Ms. B

Changing Adult Mindsets with AJ Crabill, Ep. 133 Instructional Coaching with Ms. B

Chrissy Beltran[00:00:00]:

Are you new to coaching? Starting out as a coach can be incredibly overwhelming, especially when you aren’t given much direction from your administration. That’s why I created the new coaches playbook. It includes a roadmap to help you start building your coaching foundation and a guide to seven podcast episodes in order that will give you the steps and ideas you need to build relationships, define your role, communicate with your admin, and make a plan to start coaching. I’m going to make an assumption, and you tell me if I’m wrong. You feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day. I know it’s true. There are always too many things to do and too little time. If you’re like me, your boss will walk down the hallway and shout, go home, Beltran. That’s why I am telling everyone about the forty hour work week with Angela Watson. Angela was a guest on this very podcast back in season one, and she shared her ideas for managing your time, teaching, and stuff to help you make the most of your time at work while making time for home too. But that was just the beginning. In her membership, the forty hour work week, Angela helps you focus on what matters to have a purposeful and productive work day and then go home. Angela helps teachers find, on average, eleven hours a week that they can take back for themselves while still being a great teacher. The best part is that Angela has a new membership especially for coaches. She partnered with my friend and coffee buddy, Nicole Turner of Simply Coaching, to create the forty hour work week for coaches. Check it out at buzzingwithmissb.com/40hourweek and get your time back. You’re listening to Buzzing with Miss b, the coaching podcast, where we believe that every teacher deserves a coach, and every coach does too. I’m Krissy Beltran, an instructional coach, resource creator, and coffee enthusiast, and and I’m your host. Stay tuned for practical tips and honest coaching talk that will help you coach with confidence. Hey, coach. The first couple months of season four of this podcast are all about the human side of coaching. We’re talking communication, mindset, resistance, and all of the things that come from working with human beings in education. If you haven’t listened to episode one thirty two with Becca Silver, definitely go check that out. It was all about growth mindset and coaching. And today, I’m gonna bring a little bit of a different perspective to these issues. I have a special guest. AJ is currently a conservator for the DeSoto ISD, which is a city in the DFW Metroplex. He’s been working with shifting mindsets in his district through a few big changes, and I would love to share this work with you today. Before we dig in, I wanna share a free webinar with you. This webinar is called Dare to Coach, and you can grab it at buzzingwithmissb.com/darewithacapitald.

Chrissy Beltran[00:02:53]:

This webinar is gonna help you get into classrooms where you have felt like you couldn’t get into them before. It’s going to help you realize what kind of an impact you can make on teachers and how you can support teachers and coach them right now without being one more thing on their very full plates. So check that out at buzzingwithmusv.com/daretocoach, and let’s get ready to welcome AJ. AJ, thank you so much for being here with us today.

AJ Crabill [00:03:21]:

Thank you for having me.

Chrissy Beltran[00:03:23]:

Would you be able to introduce yourself to our listeners and kind of talk a little bit about who you are, how you ended up doing the work that you’re doing, and what kind of work you’re focusing on right now?

AJ Crabill [00:03:32]:

Yeah. I think I’m a lot, probably like many of your listeners, just passionate about what’s possible for children and have found ways to try to be of service however I can be right now. What that looks like is supporting superintendents and school boards. They’re trying to create the conditions for improvements in student outcomes in the classroom. As most people are aware, like if there’s any magic in public education, it’s in the classroom. Like that’s where the amazingness between learners and educators happens. And so it becomes a question of, you know, what can we do to really bolster that interaction and make it more powerful? What can we do to build the capacity of the educator? And how can we create systems to build the sense of engagement of the learner, with the belief that when those two things come together, the engaged learning, the empowered educator, that that’s that’s where the magic happens. That’s where growth, and that’s where improvements in outcomes, really lives. And so that’s that’s what I get to do, all day every day, is work with school system leaders to try to really help them support and create systems at the at the district level that support improvements in student outcomes at the classroom level.

Chrissy Beltran[00:04:53]:

That is fantastic. And I love that perspective on the work that you do because it can seem like sometimes things feel like they get diluted whenever they start from the top, and then it takes so long to trickle down to the classrooms. So I’m really looking forward to hearing from you today about how we can use those those kinds of big shifts to shift mindsets all the way down to the classroom level. You know? That’s what we’re really interested in right now. And so I know I know you know how important it is to start with the adults because you have your belief statement. I’ve seen it plastered everywhere about you. Student outcomes don’t change until adult behaviors change. I love it. I love it. Can you talk a little bit about that and share why you chose that as a foundation for your work?

AJ Crabill [00:05:34]:

Well, one of the things I’m doing right now is I’m working with, three high schools in Ohio, specifically helping them make the transition from what I would describe as a fairly typical approach to discipline to a student led approach. And so the end result of this process will be that in these three high schools, when there are initial issues, with behavior, whether it’s before there’s a violation and there’s just conflict between students, or it’s escalated to the point there is some violation of the student code of conduct, that the first tier of intervention actually won’t be adults, it’ll be students. It’ll be a group of students who I’ve worked with and trained to be able to address those in a restorative manner. So the intention of this student led restorative practices initiative is that when the majority of the inevitable issues of student behavior come up in a school, That it’ll be the students, who are really taking on the first step of addressing that, freeing up the adults to focus on the other things that we really need them focused on. I don’t need teachers spending all of their learning period dealing with behavior, but we don’t have enough adults in the building to deal with this. And so this idea of a student led approach, to, behavior practices is really important to me. But even as much as it the student led approach to behavior is all about being student led, I’ve spent the entire first year of the project just training adults. We literally haven’t trained a single student yet. We’ll actually start training students next month. But we started last June, and we’ve been training every single month since then. Getting all the teachers and, principals and associate principals and the superintendent, school board members, social workers, counselors, everybody. Trying to get all the adults trained first. That’s because even if the vision is having a student led approach to discipline, even if the vision is having a student led approach to discipline, that’s not going to work if the adults aren’t on board first and if that first change hasn’t been made with the adults. If this is true with discipline matters, it’s true really everywhere, is that what we want for our students emerges from adult behavior in the buildings. And so whenever there is a particular set of things that we want for our students, it’s going to be significantly different than what they have now. We should be looking for what are the adult behavior changes that will help facilitate that. That work that I do in the classroom with teachers and students around discipline is really analogous to the work that I do with the adults in the boardroom with superintendents and board members. If there are things that they wanna see changed in their schools, they’ve gotta change their own adult behavior first to really create a safe space for the behaviors they want to

AJ Crabill [00:08:50]:

flourish in the classroom.

Chrissy Beltran[00:08:52]:

That’s such a fantastic point. We do keep doing the same things and wishing that something different would happen. Right? That there would be a different outcome. And, I feel like we are so entrenched inadvertently. We don’t don’t even realize it. We were taught in a certain way. We were educated in a certain way our whole lives, and then we become educators, and then we try to do replicate those same things.

AJ Crabill [00:09:13]:

And then reproduce the same thing.

Chrissy Beltran[00:09:15]:

Yes. Exactly. Yes. Even if it’s not making the change that we want, it’s what’s comfortable to us, and it feels natural and normal, so we stick to it. And it’s so difficult to change that mindset of the way that we do things. So what are some of the things that like, why what that are that are making it so hard for us to change these mindsets? Like, where are we where are we getting stuck? How How can we support people in making these big changes? Because we feel like, no. This is the way we’re supposed to do it even though we’re not getting the outcomes we want.

AJ Crabill [00:09:46]:

Yeah. Well, your insight that a mindset shift will be powerful and transformative is spot on. But part of the challenge is we don’t actually spend a lot of time in that domain. And so when I talk about the idea that student outcomes don’t change until adult behaviors change, it does require having a more rigorous belief around what drives changes in adult behavior. Mhmm. And as my team and I have really interrogated this week, we’ve identified three key drivers of adult behavior change. The first is knowledge. If I know more, I’m able to do more. If I don’t know anything if I don’t know English, that’s going to give rise to one set of behaviors around teaching English. Yes. Absolutely. I don’t even know English. Then my ability to teach English is going to be somewhat limited. So give me knowledge. Give me things, you know, that I now I know the language of English and my adult behaviors regarding how to teach English are almost certainly going to change now that I know it. So knowledge is a driver of adult behavior change. But it’s really of the three drivers we described as the smallest of the three. The next key driver of adult behavior change is skill. Where knowledge is what you know, skill is your capacity to be used, what you know, what is your fluency, your facility with the things that you know. If if I know all there is to know about English that will certainly give rise to some change in adult behavior. But give me some instructional strategies, give me some pedagogy, give me some ways of using the knowledge that I have about English and my adult behavior can change in even more powerful ways in the classroom. And so while knowledge is strong, skill makes knowledge even stronger. The more skilled I am, the more I can change my adult behaviors. And so the second key driver of adult behavior change describe the skill of, and it’s absolutely, necessary, but also absolutely insufficient to catalyze the the level of transformation that we often wanna see in our schools. For that, you need the third key driver, which is mindset, where knowledge is what you know, skill is what you can do with what you know. Mindset is something completely different. Mindset is about how do I see the world? How does the world around me occur? How do I make meaning of the things that are taking place in the world around me? If I have all the knowledge and all the skill about teaching English, but my mindset is that little AJ doesn’t actually want to learn. If that’s my mindset inside of the mindset little AJ doesn’t want to learn all my knowledge and skills doesn’t really matter because when I deploy that knowledge and skill and little AJ doesn’t get it on the very first try then inside of the mindset that little AJ

AJ Crabill [00:12:30]:

don’t want to learn I’ll be like well I told you these little brother, he ain’t gonna learn anyway. So so I’m done here. There’s nothing else for me to do. I put my knowledge and skill out of here. He didn’t pick it up. Obviously, he didn’t pick it up. Why? Because little AJ doesn’t wanna learn. And so inside of that mindset, it completely eradicates the potential locked away in my knowledge and skills. But as I have a shift in mindset, as I go from little AJ doesn’t wanna learn to, you know, little AJ does wanna learn, but there’s a there’s just a gulf between where he is and where he wants to be. And my job is to help provide a bridge over that gulf. Inside of that mindset, now that unleashes the potential of all my knowledge and skill. Part of the challenge that I would lift up for you, Chris, is that I think all too often, all of the supports that we provide, all of the professional that we provide isn’t actually in the domain of mindset. It’s in the domain of knowledge and skills. And so we think we just knowledge teachers to death, We just skill teachers to death, that that’s what’s missing. But often our people have plenty of knowledge and plenty of skill. But there is a shift in a way of viewing the world that could really be powerful and transformative. When we engage in PD that bypasses knowledge and skills, then we do so with a core assumption that the mindset is already fully in place. And if that’s the case, then the additional knowledge and skills may be helpful. But if the challenge is the way of seeing the world, needs to shift, then all the knowledge and skills of the world isn’t gonna help. And recognizing where my mindset is not as empowering of my practice as it could be. Like, that’s a real challenge that that involves self reflect this is where reflective practice comes in. This is where mindfulness, this is where metacognition, you know, all these habits of the mind come in. And the more that we support our educators in these areas, I think we free them up to be able to interrogate the sense of mindset. Okay. Where’s my mindset working, not working? Okay. I know I’m supposed to be collaborating with my grade level teachers, but where have I adopted a mindset about this particular teacher that is holding me back from being in collaboration with her, the collaborating of which could really unleash something great in my instructional practice this week? Like, if we as we help people wrestle, which is like the experience of being human, which is often left behind, in the onslaught of knowledge and skills, knowledge and skills, thousand skills. As we actually do provide support for educators in the domain of mindset, I believe that can be powerful.

Chrissy Beltran[00:15:09]:

I have loved everything that you just said. I love it all because it is so we do get so caught up in these knowledge and skills. And granted, like you said, that’s like a foundation. If teachers don’t have that, they’re not going to be able to to move into the next phase. But I just I love that because you’re right. So much PD is spent on, do you know how to teach this? Do you know the you know? I was I’m thinking about grammar, and I was just having a conversation with a friend of mine about the teaching of grammar. And so many teachers resort to, like, passages where kids find errors, which we know doesn’t teach anything. That’s an assignment. Right? And so we were talking about they were like, why are they stuck here? I said, well, they don’t understand how grammar works. Right? They don’t they’re not comfortable with teaching grammar. They don’t themselves have the background knowledge of why is this a complete sentence or an incomplete. What’s the difference between a complex compound? That’s a lot to learn. That as adults, we don’t really use it unless you’re teaching it. You know? Yeah. So but kids need to know that to have the foundation. But then so they can learn this they can learn the knowledge of grammar. They can understand how it works. They can they can have they can have the skill set. They can be able to apply it in a lesson. But if they don’t believe that that is the way that kids are gonna learn and that kids can learn that way, then it’s not gonna matter all of those things that we do. We’re getting stuck there because they’re still gonna revert to their passages because they’re gonna say this is what it works, and this is how kids learn it.

AJ Crabill [00:16:27]:

This is how I learned it when I was a kid.

Chrissy Beltran[00:16:29]:

Right. And they well, I turned out fine, which that’s a whole other

AJ Crabill [00:16:32]:

That’s not a knowledge or skill gap. That’s a mindset gap.

Chrissy Beltran[00:16:36]:

Yes. That makes so much sense. And and you’re right. We do we get stuck there every single time. I mean, it but we see that happen in across across contents, across whether we’re talking about your academics, and even whenever we’re talking about the way schools function in terms of, like, admin, how they see teachers, how leadership works with with their faculty. We get stuck at all levels in with mindset. So what are some of as you’re as you’re working with your your all these different groups of people that you’re working with, what are some of the main mindset shifts that you’re trying to work on right now, and where are people getting stuck? What are you seeing happen?

AJ Crabill [00:17:13]:

One of the things, that’s so there’s not surprisingly, based on this conversation, a large part of my, book that’s coming out is around mindset and how, as those of us working in public education, you know, what are practices that allow us to really deepen into that area and and live out the full strengths of our commitment to children. One of the ones that I speak to, one of the stories that I share, is a story about a Hungarian, physician name, Semmelweis. Ignaz Semmelweis. And he was a physician back in the eighteen hundreds. He, was a administrator over these hospital wards that were birthing children. But there are two different wards. There was one ward that was led by midwives, by women, and one ward that was led by physicians in training. It was a physician school. So you had midwives who were training to be midwives, you had physicians who were trained to be physicians, with two different wards that were both birthing children. And what he noticed is he was looking at the data because he kind of fashioned himself as kind of this contemporary scientist physician. So he wanted to interrogate the data, figure out what can we learn from the data. As he’s looking at the data, he noticed that the mortality rate in the physician ward was significantly higher than the mortality rate in the maternity in the in the midwife ward. He’s like, well, this is odd. And so like any good scientist, he goes to work trying to figure this out. Why is the mortality rate so much higher in the physician ward than in the midwife ward? They’re both birthing children. You’d think it’d be about the same. So maybe, you know, it has something to do with the difference of the population. He kinda looks at, you know, which moms or birth no. That that that didn’t seem to be it. He looks for you know what? I noticed that priest, come through the halls where the midwives work and bless the patients. So maybe there’s a sense of faith and a sense of hopefulness that’s permeating the midwives war that’s not the physician. So he invites the priest to come over, you know, and they start walking through the ward and blessing the patients, you know, the physician’s ward as well. That changes nothing. So he goes through all these experiments trying to figure out and he just he’s totally stumped. He can’t figure it out. And then through happenstance, unfortunately, one of his colleagues passes. And he notices his colleague who passed has a lot of the exact same symptoms of these women who are giving birth. And he started to go, wait a minute. Why would this gentleman have the same symptoms of moms who’ve given birth? Why are they why it looks like they both died to the same thing? And that’s when he starts to develop a revolutionary theory. The one difference

AJ Crabill [00:20:26]:

he hadn’t accounted for is that the physician’s ward, part of their physician’s training is working on cadavers because they’re also studying surgery, something that midwives are not. And so the physicians, they’re working with cadavers and then leaving that and going into the maternity ward and delivering babies. And so his theory is maybe there’s something getting on their hands. And so to test this, he rolled out this protocol of having them, to sanitize their hands. And in doing so, the mortality rates begin to plummet. This is one of the first to know discoveries of the value of sanitation and, searchable, you know, practice. And so as he discovers this, he he then starts to have the midwives say, well, why don’t you try this as well? And they do it. So their mortality goes down as well. And all of a sudden, we have this new low normalized level mortality across both wards, that’s brought about by hand sanitation. Similar wise, he’s he now is preaching the gospel of of this. He has this theory. He has the data to back it up, and he goes out to the other doctors of the day and says we should all be doing this. Any guess how the doctors responded?

Chrissy Beltran[00:21:42]:

Yeah. I can imagine. It it’s shocking, but my brother has told me this story. And, and, yeah, it’s surprising how they responded, certainly.

AJ Crabill [00:21:50]:

Absolutely not. We that we absolutely rejected it. And and not just partially rejected. So thoroughly rejected that eventually they run him out of town. It destroys his career, destroys his marriage. He winds up getting institutionalized and dies alone in an institution at the hands of injuries, received by the guards. It was only until years later, when Louis Pasteur comes out with a more modern theory of germ transmission, that people fully understood the wisdom that he had to offer. And then the practice of sanitation became more widespread. The challenge for these doctors was not a knowledge, gap. When they were given the knowledge, it was not a skill gap. They were given the skill. They didn’t deploy either. And the reason was mindset. They they absolutely fundamentally refused to accept that it’s my behavior that might be harming my patients. Completely unwilling to accept it. If Semmelweis was here today, he might even go so far as to say, patient outcomes don’t change until doctor behaviors change.

Chrissy Beltran[00:23:06]:

Mhmm. Yeah.

AJ Crabill [00:23:08]:

But but in recognizing that that’s not a it’s not a knowledge and skills gap. Like, he filled that and still the behavior didn’t change. It was a mindset gap. And so I share that story, with educators who suggest that one of the first steps in really growing in the domain of mindset is really being willing to self reflect and look at what are the ways that my choices, my adult behaviors may have made it harder for my students to be successful. Not because I’m waking up trying to figure out how can I prevent little AJ from reading today? Yeah. But just with with the openness, you know, that Ignacio and Wise might encourage, that with this willingness to interrogate, maybe it’s something in my behavior that I haven’t noticed. Just the willingness to do that is the key is a key access, to mindset shift. My willingness to consider that my adult behavior might actually be making it harder for my students to be successful. And if I’m willing to have that conversation with myself, and if you really wanna be powerful, if I’m willing to have that conversation with my with my team, like, let’s sit around, let’s have let’s reflect on what in my behavior might be making it harder for my students to be successful. Not in a judgmental way, not in a you’re you’re you’re a good teacher, bad teacher, right, wrong, but just in a in the curiosity that a scientist might have around how do we make more powerful my intention, how do we make it come alive with my practice? You know, this willingness to review and analyze what in my behavior may have made it harder for students to be successful. And then how how have I been benefiting from that behavior? But how is this not necessarily worked out for my students? And so I I’ve had the privilege of leading a lot of educators and principals, as well as superintendents and school board members through this conversation. Really, this this symbolizing practice of looking at my own behaviors and asking these calibrated questions around, you know, where are my impacts not living up to my intentions? And where is that working out for me? But it’s not working out for my students. So that’s one, strategy that I often offer to folks is a way of really getting clear about you wanna be like Ignacio and the ones about about this. You don’t wanna be like the doctors who rejected, the knowledge and skills because it was incompatible with their mindset. You wanna be like the doctor who said, you know what? I will I’m prepared to look anywhere I have to look to cause improvements in student outcomes.

Chrissy Beltran[00:25:40]:

That’s so profound. And I feel like what you’re talking about is a huge cultural shift because we can be very defensive as teachers, as as educators, because we feel like we’re doing the best we can. Right? But then that’s

AJ Crabill [00:25:53]:

It’s definitely not about working harder. It’s definitely not about doing working harder is not the answer. I don’t know people who work harder than you.

Chrissy Beltran[00:26:01]:

Yeah. Yeah. I think yeah. That’s totally right. And I think that’s what people feel like with what else can I do? You know? But that’s not what we’re saying. It’s not about doing more. It’s about changing something and approaching something differently. So how do you actually build this culture to support teachers and leadership in these changes? Because this is a huge cultural shift Yeah. About, like, self reflection and and really questioning.

AJ Crabill [00:26:24]:

Great building level leadership can do this. And and I think we’ve all probably experienced at some point in careers that building leader who could create a psychologically safe work environment, even in the context of a school system that seemed kinda cray cray. And so I think great building leaders can do this. But I personally don’t want the well-being of all our children hinging solely on, do we have a rock star principal who can protect the culture they’re building from, you know, the viscousitudes of foolishness around them? What I’d rather have is school systems that are actually making it a safer space, and making it more likely that schools are engaged in these type of conversations, engaged in this type of work. And so that’s why part of my belief is that, you know, what happens in the boardroom echoes in the classroom. If I want a culture of continuous improvement in the classroom, then I’ve got to be willing to catalyze that by demonstrating a culture of continuous improvement in the boardroom. If I want, teachers who feel safe to self reflect in the classroom, that means as superintendent and board members, we’ve got to be willing to self reflect in public in the boardroom. Like we’ve got to be willing to be vulnerable publicly so that we create a psychologically safe place for educators to be vulnerable privately. And so this idea that these two domains are radically disconnected and there is no influence one or the other, I I I don’t think the evidence suggests that. I I think it’s absolutely possible that when our leaders show the type of mindfulness, and the type of willingness to interrogate mindset in public at a board meeting, willing to take the risk of not looking good, willing to take the risk of being vulnerable. But I think when leaders are willing to do that at the, senior leadership level in a school system, I think it absolutely goes a long way to create a safe space for educators to to engage in that with their colleagues. You know, in in that in that context, because I’d sit coming from a different direction. One of the things I hate is when I see school board meetings where either the superintendent or the board are spending all their time blaming teachers or blaming parents or blaming children. All we’re doing is creating a incredibly unsafe, hostile and toxic work environment for teachers when we behave that way. And what it does is it creates this this fearfulness where folks feel like, well, now I have to be on the defensive. And if there are any weaknesses in my practice that might be holding my children back unintentionally, well, I can’t talk about those now because then people will be like, we told you it was those equal teachers. And so it creates this real nastiness and children lose inside of that and teachers lose inside of that.

AJ Crabill [00:29:22]:

And so if we can flip the script on that and we can really create a safe space for senior leadership to have a vulnerable conversation in public about their behavior that’s been working and not working and where they need to make pivots. Not looking at anybody else, just looking at themselves. We can create a safe space for that. Then all of a sudden now principals have a safe space and be like, well, hold on. There’s some stuff I can change as well. It’s you know, I’m I’m open to that. And the teacher like, well, hold on. Hold on. Now that you all mentioned it, there’s some stuff that I can do as well. Then it creates this cascade of psychological safety throughout our organization. So is it possible that you have a building leader that can create this on our own? Absolutely. We see it all over the country, unfortunately. My passion is for how can we create that as a norm, in senior leadership so that our principals and teachers don’t have to work so hard to generate us a a safe, nurturing, loving working environment in which teachers can be the best version of themselves.

Chrissy Beltran[00:30:19]:

That’s so great. And, yeah, I mean, it makes me so happy to hear people doing this work at very high levels because you’re right. It does happen here and there in little bubbles, but we owe it to our kids and teachers that that is that becomes the norm, that that is the way

AJ Crabill [00:30:31]:

it works for the time. That’s that’s exactly true.

Chrissy Beltran[00:30:34]:

Yeah. Yeah. I love and I like that you talk about going first. We have to go first. As coaches, as leadership, as

AJ Crabill [00:30:39]:

That’s right.

Chrissy Beltran[00:30:40]:

Admin, as board members, we have to be the model of this is the way that we can function together. I’m going to become vulnerable so that you know that you can also become vulnerable. And then if

AJ Crabill [00:30:51]:

you’re gonna lead, then lead.

Chrissy Beltran[00:30:53]:

Yes. Yes. I used to have a principal who said that he was a servant leader. He was like, I’m gonna do whatever needs to be done. I’m gonna lead by example to say this is how this is how we function at this school. We do what we need to do to do what’s best for kids. And I remember a parent told me once, the first time I I saw your prince your new principal, I didn’t know he was a principal because he was sweeping up the floor in front of the office. So he was like, I had no idea that’s who it was. I just well, I said, you know, good morning. He said, good morning. You know, welcome to school. And and I didn’t even realize because there was something happened. He was the only one that was a he was, you know, the one convenient to do it, so he just very quickly took care of this and that. And, so he didn’t have

AJ Crabill [00:31:33]:

no idea. I’ve always told, I’ve always told my principals, look. Anything you need, just let me know. I’m gonna come through. I’m gonna do it. And so I had this is not my current school district and my last school district. I had a principal, reach out. I was like, hey. I’m really struggling, and and it was a I’m sorry. Middle school principal. I’m really struggling. You know, we’re kind of short handed today. Do you have any time you can come through? You said we can call you anytime. I was like, yeah. No problem. I’ll come through. What do you need? And then the phone gets quiet. I need somebody to cover lunch. Like, right? Middle school lunch. Like, the best

Chrissy Beltran[00:32:09]:

afternoon of the

AJ Crabill [00:32:10]:

whole district. And so there I am. I spend, you know, I think about three hours as a large middle school basically pushing a trash can around the lunch room. Yeah. I think that the middle school is, you know, and so students are like, are you a new teacher here? Like, no. No. No. Just just helping out for today. Just, you know, principal asked me to come by and so, yeah, go ahead and toss your trash in and go ahead, get ready to go to your next class. But that’s that’s that’s what that was what was needed in that moment.

Chrissy Beltran[00:32:39]:

Right.

AJ Crabill [00:32:40]:

And and and I think there there’s a couple of things worth noting here. One is that, I think there does need to be the sense of safety that if somebody’s gonna be in a position of leadership that you should be able to call them and put them to work. And two, that that work needs to fit with your needs, not their sense of self glory.

Chrissy Beltran[00:33:04]:

Yeah. Yeah. And we do sometimes see people rise up who are, like, to higher, higher levels who don’t have that kind of servant attitude of, you know, I’m going to do what needs to be done.

AJ Crabill [00:33:15]:

You can’t just show up in the building when it’s time to read the third graders. And don’t get me wrong. I love, love, love reading the third graders. Like, that’s fun. I do all the voices. It’s great. It’s a it’s a whole thing. But you can’t just show up when it feels good for you getting to show up the way that you want to. If you’re gonna lead, you need to show up the way folks need you, you know, in the times when it’s not as glamorous. And I think a willingness to do that increases the likelihood. Like there are few things that frustrate me more than if I see principals who I feel like are hiding out in their offices. You know what I’m talking about? But I but I feel like if we have central office, central administrators and superintendents who hide out in their offices, then we have principals who hide out in their offices. If we have, you know, senior leaders who show up at the building and are of service and whatever way they’re called to be of service, then I think it increases the likelihood that the principal show up in classrooms and are of service in whatever way it needs to be of service. Like, I don’t want principals only visiting classrooms to do formal observations.

Chrissy Beltran[00:34:14]:

Right.

AJ Crabill [00:34:15]:

Even though even though I know some principals weren’t even doing that. So maybe that’s a step forward for me. But, but, you know, I I was doing a walk through with one of my principals once. It was in October, and we walked into, elementary classroom. It was probably third, fourth grade. And one of the students, and I’m standing right next to the principal, one of the students, who is clearly the assigned breeder, you know, walks up, and says and looks right at me and says, welcome to our classroom. Are you the principal?

Chrissy Beltran[00:34:54]:

Oh my gosh.

AJ Crabill [00:34:57]:

Right?

Chrissy Beltran[00:34:58]:

Oh my gosh.

AJ Crabill [00:35:00]:

Right? This is October.

Chrissy Beltran[00:35:03]:

Holy cow. That’s

AJ Crabill [00:35:04]:

And I’m standing right next to the principal. She looks me dead in my face. You see all this, you know, adorable student who’s doing her she’s doing her job. Uh-huh. She’s doing her job. She was like, oh, welcome to our classroom. Are are you the principal? I was like, no, ma’am. Let me introduce you. Apparently, for the class, you’re principal. Wow. So there so there are extreme examples. So maybe them being in the classroom, just that one time, I’ll take it. But what I really want is I want a culture where principals know that our job is to be, you know, is to be of service. Is it the job of, you know, is to is the job of being instructional leaders to be of service to, to the teachers, who you happen to be responsible for serving. But I think the likelihood of that very much hinges on does the central administration team understand that their job is to be of service. And I think the likelihood of that hinges on to the board members. Do we understand that our job is to be of service? I mean, and so again, this I said it before, you know what? My sense of these things, what happens in the boardroom that goes in the classroom.

Chrissy Beltran[00:36:16]:

Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. It all trickles down eventually, and you do see the culture. If the culture of a district is not about supporting teachers and kids, then the the schools, like, they’re a lot less likely to be about supporting teachers and kids because there’s no Yeah. No model. There’s no ramifications. There’s no consequences for not being that way. Right. Yeah. So what are some of the big things that you’re working on right now to support mindset shifts? Like, anything that any big projects you’ve got that you wanna share about, I’d love to hear about them because if you’re if you’re trying to support a big shift in the way people think, it must be important work is is my thinking.

AJ Crabill [00:36:50]:

Well, certainly there’s an example I gave earlier about Yeah. Trying to reimagine, how we address behavior at the high school level. One of the reasons I’m such a proponent of this student led approach, to restorative practices is because I I had this epiphany one day. I was here thinking about it and I think, why is it that if a teacher knows that what is most needed in the moment is that they need to sit down with these two students and help them kind of get reconnected and work their way through the drama. But it’s gonna take, you know, an hour and a half to do that. Why doesn’t the teacher should not do that? Well, obvious, why the teacher doesn’t do that? Because they got class company up in fifteen minutes. The teacher wants to do that, but the teacher just doesn’t have time. And frankly, we’re never gonna buy enough. We’re not gonna have enough money to pay for enough, you know, auxiliary staff, interventionists to come in and have that hour and a half conversation that needs to happen. That’s that is that is a fundamental problem that we have is that there that often in many of our schools, the needs of students, behaviorally exceed the time constraints of adults. And that’s when it occurred to me. Well, wait a minute. Are there any other humans in the building who could be called into action, you know, to serve in these ways? And what really catalyzes for me is, we did a analysis once of about five years of our behavior data and trying to see what type of patterns emerged. And one of the patterns that jumped out of us big time was when we had a four tier, behavior system. So there’s, you know, tier one infractions, two, two, three. So, you know, little AJ pushed somebody, yelled at somebody, pushed somebody, punched somebody, brought a weapon, you know, four tiers of behavior. What we found when we looked over about a five year range, we found almost literally just one. And if I told you that story, you’d be like, yeah, that doesn’t count either. So we essentially found no examples over four year period of a tier four infraction that wasn’t preceded by a tier one, two, or three infraction.

Chrissy Beltran[00:39:09]:

Okay.

AJ Crabill [00:39:10]:

And that’s when it became clear, if you really wanna minimize tier three, tier four infractions, your access to that is to address tier one and tier two infractions. So this situation of getting to the students when they’re in conflict in their, you know, approaching that tier one level, this isn’t trivial. If we can solve it there, then we help, forestall the escalation of potential tier three, tier four problems.

Chrissy Beltran[00:39:36]:

Mhmm. And

AJ Crabill [00:39:37]:

so that’s the combination of that insight that the way to avoid tier four issues is to address tier one issues. And the insight that we aren’t addressing tier one issues the way our teachers would prefer to because we just aren’t giving them the time to. And then think about, are there any other human in this building who could help us take the time necessary to address the tier one issues? And that’s where my passion for student led restorative practices, emerged. It’s can we train a group of students in the building to in to be that first tier of intervention so that when AJ does something to violate one of the rules or is in, hostile conflict of some sort, that it’s a group of students who deal with that and take the time necessary to address it and work through it, try to create the context in which little AJ is held accountable for repairing whatever harm they’ve created. That if all that can be managed by a team of students, not only does little AJ get the support, you know, that that I need, but those students who are leading that are learning some powerful life skills around how to work through behavior dysfunction. The biggest issue that I’ve run across with doing this type of work, though, is that this is a really hard shift for adults. It is a really hard shift. And so the part of the reason we’ve been training adults this entire time, just now getting around to training students, is just to really prepare them for this idea that you have grown up as an adult in a retributive discipline framework that is essentially the copy and paste of criminal justice in the community. We just use a criminal justice in the schools model. You’ve grown up inside of that. And and to shift from that toward a more restorative mindset of, okay, it’s not about who did what wrong and how do we punish them. It’s about what who created what harm and how do we hold them accountable for repairing the harm that they created. How how do we treat this like a learning experience? Who knew it was a school? How do we treat this like a learning experience rather than a punitive experience?

Chrissy Beltran[00:41:54]:

Yeah.

AJ Crabill [00:41:55]:

But that is a radical shift in mindset, that it involves people having a willingness to to see things in a different way. But fortunately, in these three hospitals we’re working in, like, folks are taking it to the, you know, very quickly. But there are there are some folks in each of the buildings who are like, I don’t know. This this is just so different from what I experienced, So different, from my journey that I don’t know is this is this reasonable, is it trustworthy? These students don’t have the skill set that I have. So why would they be able to deploy, you know, be trusted with your discipline matters effectively? And so that that is an example of that’s example of a significant where the barrier I don’t consider a knowledge of skills barrier. I consider it a mindset barrier. So that’s that’s one example of the work that I’m doing that is really deeply involved with how do we reach people where they’re at. That’s deeply grounded in their experience, grounded in their identity, grounded in their own practice. Maybe I’ve been in practice for fifteen years. I’ve been doing it this way for fifteen years. That has a grounding effect on my mindset, my way of viewing the world. And that we’ve got to be, we’ve got to create ways to give educators opportunity to unpack that and, and truly interrogate what is my existing mindset and how did how did I develop the mindset that I currently have? Is this the only mindset I could have around this thing? Or does it just happen to be the one that I developed based on my experiences and my belief system? And, and to really create a safe space for people to question that and interrogate that and figure out, okay, now that I’ve kind of held this up and really examining this mindset, now I can start asking different questions. Is this mindset really creating the results that I want? And where it is, then let’s certainly hold on to it more quickly. But but where it’s not, where the mindset that I have, I can’t actually point to results this is getting. In that moment, am I willing to consider something else? Am I willing to consider a different way of viewing the world? And again, in as much as this is critical work to do at the classroom level, the building level, it’s functionally identical to the work that I do with school boards, which was to ask, you know, watch the average school board meeting and you think, do these people ever talk about children? Do they ever talk about learning? You could be forgiven for missing that this was actually a school meeting. Sounds like it could be any corporation in America. But but we are a mission driven organization and school board members are here to be about the greatness of children. But often, you know, the the

AJ Crabill [00:44:35]:

inherited knowledge, skills and mindset are simply aren’t aligned with that. And so it’s the same process with them thinking through the culture of governance as it is working with teachers thinking through the culture of behavior.

Chrissy Beltran[00:44:49]:

That is so fantastic. And I feel like I’ve had to go through a lot of that the last few years. I’m a parent of young children. I have a one year old and a five year old. And I have had to do so much, like, deconstructing and kind of building up, well, how do I want my children to be raised? And it’s the same thing. It’s changing the mindset of how I think you best shape people into becoming people, you know, like, as adults. So what do we want for them as adults? Well, then how what is the best way for me to help them become that? Because the way that I was raised, you know, no no, blaming on my parents. They did the best that they had with the tools that they had. And and but I have better tools. I have more tools. Yeah. And I have information literally at my fingertips all day long about what we can do differently to raise kids. But shifting the mindset is absolutely hard. It’s so hard because that’s where all your habits are all built in. Altogether, it’s like this big ball of what you kind of have experienced. And so you’re, like, trying to dig in there to to make changes. And so it’s that’s that’s admirable work you’re doing, and I hope that you see some really good results with that over time.

AJ Crabill [00:45:48]:

Like I’m I’m I’m really excited about it. We’ve got an amazing group of teachers who are just leading the rally. And and, of course, that makes all the difference. We’ve got a bunch of teachers who are leading like, we I’ve got a few in my mind’s eye. Like, they’re not out here taking no for an answer. It’s like, no. We this is what our students need. We all know this is what our students need. Now it’s just a matter of how we’re gonna make this happen. And I mean, those I’m I’m just so blessed to work with, you know, a team of folks who are on fire for what’s possible for children and are willing to be disruptive of their own mindset and their own comfort zone in order to reach for it.

Chrissy Beltran[00:46:22]:

That’s amazing. Well, congratulations on finding those people because that’s

AJ Crabill [00:46:26]:

how it’s about. Indeed. Indeed.

Chrissy Beltran[00:46:29]:

Thank you so much for everything that you’ve shared. I have one more question. It’s a light one. I’ve just started doing this this season, because people were like, maybe we can learn about some fun things. And so, I just wanna ask, what is your favorite thing right now? Is there something that you’re really loving? It could be a book, TV show, product, podcast, whatever. Any activity. Anything that you’re getting a lot of joy out right joy out of right now.

AJ Crabill [00:46:56]:

Okay. So this will be a little bit odd, but but it’s also, like, super spot on for, I suspect most of your listeners is, and I’m not affiliated with this company. So this is not like a paid advertisement or anything. But one of the things that I learned about as we were trying to struggle through this pandemic responses, it was really on my heart for how do we continue to make sure that teachers get the quality of coaching they need, so that they can continuously improve in their practice. Like I think it’s awful when I visit with teachers, just like, yeah. So when’s the last time that you received coaching that you felt really inspired you where you were able to have somebody observe your instructional practice and then sit down with you and work through some of your challenges and give you that type of feedback that most effective teachers crave. And then I’ll, you know, like just breaks my heart when it’s like, oh, well, you know, we, all of our instructional coaches have had to take classrooms because we’ve had a shortage. And so I haven’t had anybody to override instruction. And so I was trying to solve for that. And I ran across there’s probably several companies that do that, but I ran across one particular company whose product I really like where they where the teacher can set up their phone or camera or whatever. They can record, you know, the classroom. They can record a few different titles if they want. And then, you know, press a couple of buttons in the app. It uploads to, this platform, and then the coaches could go in and and leave notes that are directly assigned to specific, time slots within, the instructions. So it’s like, oh, well, here, you know, ten minutes in, you know, little AJ, raises his hand and has his hand up for five minutes, and never got called on. And then after that, he completely stopped engaging for the rest of for the next hour. And, you know, did did you notice that? Oh, wow. You know, I I didn’t notice that. Yeah. I I remember we had his hand up, but he’s I I didn’t know what he wanted, and so I just kind of I got busy someplace else, but I didn’t notice that after I didn’t answer his hand for five minutes, that he completely disconnected from the lesson. That he was connected before and I hadn’t got disconnected after that. Like, things like that that you you have to be there. Like to me the best coaching somebody actually has to see what you’re doing and then and as close to real time as possible not a month later not a not even a week later but probably the same day say hey, I was watching did you see this little part? Yo. What were you trying in that? Did that work out

AJ Crabill [00:49:28]:

for you? Okay. Have you tried this to this? Which of those? Do you think it would? Okay. Got it. And so you just we’re just kind of iterative practice, low stakes. This is not evaluative. This this is not about being good or bad or right or wrong. This is just about continuous improvements. I’m gonna be 1% better every day for the children that I serve. And so I found, you know, a particular, platform that does this really well. And so I’ve had the joy of deploying a few different contexts to figure out, can this help accelerate the quality, the quality, quantity, and timeliness of coaching, that people need to get better. And I’ve had good luck with it. So that’s something new that I’ve just did. Yeah. I’m I’ve I’ve never really associated technology and coaching like this. But being able to, have this context where folks receive the coaching, that they need, but just in a different way. So I’m not I haven’t had a chance to live with it for years now. You know, this is my first year playing with it, but that’s something that I’d encourage people to look into. If you can’t be there in real time in the classroom providing the coaching, could you leverage an app like like this where people would record it? The the the other thing that’s really important about this particular app is that, is that the teacher is in full control of who does and doesn’t see their video and who does and doesn’t comment, can leave time stamp comments on it. And so that’s really important to me because I want again, I want the teacher to feel safe. And so maybe they maybe there’s a master teacher and say, hey, I want you to look at my video and can you give me some feedback or comments? So maybe it is an instructional coach or somebody else. You know, but tools like that, really I’d like there’s gotta be ways to leverage the technology to really help teachers be great. And that’s that’s one example I saw recently done experimenting with and, and just encourage other people if you if you play with it and you find something great, email me. Let me know.

Chrissy Beltran[00:51:22]:

Yeah. Which app was it that you that you’ve used?

AJ Crabill [00:51:25]:

So the one that I’ve used called Sibme, s I v for me. I was thinking believing me.

Chrissy Beltran[00:51:31]:

Yeah. I was wondering if you’re with Sibme because I have them on the podcast, Kory Camp from Sibme back in the first season. And I’m actually

AJ Crabill [00:51:36]:

Oh, I didn’t know that. I missed that.

Chrissy Beltran[00:51:38]:

Yeah. Yeah. She talked about how to use video in your coaching. It’s one of my favorite episodes because it was so informative.

AJ Crabill [00:51:44]:

I had to go back and listen to that one.

Chrissy Beltran[00:51:45]:

Yeah. You should check it out. It’s actually really very good. She gave so much information. Like, it was really detailed. So I I I love that. Yeah. They’re they’re fantastic. Sydney is great. So thank you so much for sharing about that. And how can people find you online or in the real world to learn more about what you’re doing?

AJ Crabill [00:52:06]:

If folks wanna learn more about, the work, they can shoot me an email. It’s just ajajcrabill dot com. Just ajajcrabill dot com. Or they can go to effectiveschoolboards.com and see some of the things that we’re doing with really trying to help school boards, be the best version of themselves, on behalf of the educators that they serve.

Chrissy Beltran[00:52:32]:

Well, thank you so much for doing this work, and thank you so much for being here today with us.

AJ Crabill [00:52:36]:

It’s a pleasure to join you for the podcast. Thanks for what you’re doing. I love listening and look forward to hearing more.

Chrissy Beltran[00:52:42]:

That was excellent. I just loved the information that AJ Crabill shared today. And I would love for you to check out the show notes. You can grab any of the links that he mentioned at www.buzzingwith missb.com/episode130four. I also want you to grab that webinar, dare to coach. That’s buzzing with missb.com/darewithacapitald. And, I wanna share with you what’s coming up next week. I’m actually talking with Allison Peterson about building relationships with resistant teachers. So we’ve talked a little bit about big changes, adult mindsets, our mindset, and we’re gonna start looking at how we can build relationships with teachers who are not excited about us in environments that aren’t super great for relationship building. I’m really looking forward to this topic because I I get a lot of requests for it. And so, because we all see it in our, in our roles, we’re going to share some actionable steps that you can use to change it. So definitely check us out next week in episode 134. You know what? Actually I made a mistake. Those show notes for this episode are going to be at episode 133, buzzingwithmissb.com/episode130three. You can check them out there. And until next week, happy coaching. Thank you for listening to Buzzing with Miss b, the coaching podcast. Want more coaching ideas? Check me out at buzzingwithmissb.com and on Instagram at buzzing with miss b. If you love the show, share it with a coach who would love it too, or leave me a review on iTunes. It’s free, and it helps others find this show. Happy coaching.