Episode 69: Principals’ Perspectives: Hiring Teachers, Staffing Shortages & Real Talk on School Leadership

Unscripted Co-Host Format

Principal JL 1:21

Have you ever had conversations with other educators from other districts, around the state, or maybe just around your area, or even around the nation? Well, this episode is inspired by those type of conversations where you just talk about different topics and the the things you're seeing, the struggles you're having, and how you do things and how you're learning from other people and what they do things, and taking those golden nuggets back to your school to figure out how you can apply the things that you have learned. Now, this episode is inspired by those types of conversations. This is the first episode that I've ever done with a co-host. And my co-host's name is Robert Hinchliffe. And if you heard of him before, you have. He's been on my episode in the past talking about his journey. But him and I just have this, you know, connection to where we just can take a topic and we can just riff on it for a while. And this episode is unscripted. We didn't create a script, we just had some topics, we just had a conversation about the things we're seeing in our schools, and the thing and just sharing our perspectives on things. So I want you guys to be able to also in these episodes is to be a part of them. If there are topics that you would like Robert and I to discuss and just to give our perspectives on, I really encourage you to write into the show. You can email me at principal. There's also a little link that said send a text link in the show notes that you can hit and it will send me your text or your questions that you would like. And I'd like to give you a shout out. So give me your name, where you're from, and I'd love to shout that out. And Robert and I will discuss the questions that you guys may have. And so I want to really put that out there. I really hope you guys enjoy this episode. So sit back and relax as Robert and I discuss various topics about educational leadership. Now let's get into the conversation. All right, everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the educational leadership podcast. Now, I'm excited because this is the first episode that I'm gonna have a co-host. And my co-host is Robert Hinchliffe.

Robert Hinchliffe 3:54

Robert, no pressure.

Principal JL 3:55

What's that? No pressure. No pressure, Robert. So we're gonna basically the idea of this is we got the talking and we are going to just give perspectives. Robert's gonna give his perspective. And if you follow him on TikTok, you know he likes to give his perspectives about a lot of things. So I would urge you to follow him and follow his work as well. Um, but he'll talk about elementary, I could talk about secondary. You know, he could be more you could talk about the urban, you know, being in Las Vegas. I'm in South Central Hastings, Nebraska. I talk about well, I'm like a suburbia, but I'm more rural than I am every anything when it comes down to it. Even though I live in a town about 25,000, it's still considered rule out here in Nebraska. So we could talk about a lot of things. And so, Robert, some things that have been on my mind is just hiring right now. Like for me, it's just been crazy. Like, I hired my first person in December, I hired some more in January. I've hired every month, and I'm in April, and right now I'm sitting about 13 new hires for next year at my high school, and I have about 75 teachers, so I'm gonna bring 13 new people in to fill some roles. Now I did have one position that I made an internal move because it was just it was just gonna work out and fit, but I was able to open up that job so I can actually have more candidates to hire in that position as well. But that took me four to six days just to convince my HR director just to please let me do this. And once I got him on board and he approved it, we were rocked and roll, and it's worked out really well for us. I've just noticed like we have, yeah, it sounds like 13 new hires for me. That's a lot, but at the same time, a lot of these are for really good reasons. I mean, I had to hire a new AD because my ADs retiring. I had to hire, you know, a new special education teacher because she's retiring. I had some people just move on to another position because it was closer to family, or you know, I had one person that has a girlfriend that lives in you know Omaha and they figured that was you know better to get closer to them than them to come here. So just a lot of movement, a lot of things that just happen that we just have to deal with. And it's almost like, what's gonna happen this week? What new hire am I gonna have to come up with or you know, and and put out a post about and then go through that? So that's kind of where I'm at. I'm like, man, where does it stop? You know, even today I was trying to hire a new FCS teacher. Tomorrow I'm gonna try to hire a Spanish teacher. Like, I'm interviewing weekly, and on top of that, I finished up my teacher evaluations doing all that too. So, I mean, we're just a busy time of the year. So, how's it going for you, Robert, when it comes to hiring people, internal trends? How's that look? You're in in Vegas.

Robert Hinchliffe 6:48

Yeah, you're you're not wrong. Like it's April 14th when we're recording this, and the busy season is upon us. Um, not only do we have evaluations, we also have right now we're doing state testing, and last week we had staff development day. But through all that, yeah, we have hiring. So for us, it's a little bit different. Uh, elementary, you know, I've always wondered in high school, you have to find people with certain licenses, such as the ability to speak Spanish and teach Spanish, right? Elementary is a little bit different. They either have a K2 license or a K8, um, is really how it lands out here in Vegas, unless you need a special endorsement for special ed or something of that nature. For me, it's been interesting this year. Really, this is kind of a year that we decide to shake some things up. So you you sound like you have an HR director that says go ahead and shake things up. Here, I have the ability to shake things up without getting anybody's approval. Essentially, all I have to do is make sure someone has a position that falls under their endorsement or their licensure. So if I want to move someone from kindergarten to fifth grade, I can do that without anybody approving it of any way, shape, or form. This year, the AP and I, Shauna, we decided it was a time to shake things up a little bit. So we made 15 internal transfers between second and fifth grade. And it went over like a turd in a punch bowl. I'm not gonna lie, you know, because you're messing with people's lives. And so-and-so has taught second grade for you know three years or whatever, and now they're in third grade, or so-and-so has taught fifth grade. Now you're moving to second grade. But ultimately, within all that movement, and like like you, I'm sure, it's to make the school better as a team and as a whole. You don't you don't take these decisions lightly. You're trying to make better teams and grade levels, you're trying to you know get people that can work together or people that have expertise. You need a fourth grade teacher. Well, this lady's taught fourth grade for many years, she can go there. For me, it's just really a big slide puzzle, is really what it comes down to. Just trying to slide people into positions and teams and grade levels that will work together and maximize the talents and the outcomes for the students. So for us, I lost one young lady who wanted to teach middle school. So this is the year she transferred to middle school, which is fine. For me, I don't really uh feel bad about that. The only time I get mad when people transfer is if they transfer to another elementary school. Because again, I feel like that's kind of a referendum upon myself as a leader. That never happens. So for me, we lost one person to middle school, but then we had to gain people, we gained a fifth, we gained a fourth, we were given another self-contained program, which is uh students with autism in third through fifth. So I had to find a teacher for that. I had to find another general resource teacher, and then I needed another fifth grade teacher to replace the one we lost. So for me, I've only had to find five people. And to be honest, in Vegas, I'm pretty lucky because there are so many teachers that have to transfer and or want to transfer. So I have plenty of people to to kind of sift through and find who I want. And all I really need once they, if they're elementary, they're pretty much good to go because of their licensure. So for me, things are a lot easier than it sounds like in rural Nebraska and secondary.

Internal Moves And Pushback

Principal JL 10:04

Yeah, like okay, so I'm kind of curious about that. So when you are moving people around, shifting around, and you're doing internal transfers, are you looking just internally in your district or is that internally in your building? Because what I'm thinking about is are your focus is I'm gonna bring people within the system that's already in the system, or when do you like bring people from the outside of your district and like how does that look? Because I'm really curious, because like for me, I'm content-based driven. Grade levels, nope, don't worry about it. We're content driven. So we're talking about you know what content you teach and what is your you know, certification or your endorsement in those areas. So I have to make sure those things fit, and then I have to check the Nebraska State licensing website and I look up their name and make sure they have what I need. But also I've done this to where you may not have the endorsement I need, but you're a math teacher. But guess what? You can take this thing called the praxis and get endorsed over the summer. And if you want this job, I would love to give it to you if you take this test, get endorsed so I can use you how I need to in the building. And so I've done that. I actually brought in a SPED teacher from another district and they became a science teacher for me because they worked SPED for 20 years and they were done with it. You know how much you know energy they have this year being that science teacher. And the good thing is, I don't have to worry about them differentiating instruction because they already know how being that SPED teacher for forever. So those are some just like little caveats, the things I have to think about when I'm shifting people. And when I shifted the PE teacher over to our construction teacher position, that person has a lot of outside experience, and all I had to do is take their resume, send it to the state of Nebraska, and I asked them, could we get this endorsement for this teacher? And they said, Yes, all they have to do is pay the money and we'll get them the endorsement. And I and I solved my problems right there. And I'm like going, great, we're finding clever ways to get people endorsed. And I like the idea that I can take some a teacher, and if they're not endorsed in that area, we can get them endorsed and still bring them on if they're a good teacher. So I'm still trying to hire quality teachers and put them in the spaces that they are strong in too. So, what does that look like for you? I've got kind of took off on that, but that that's just that's just what where my brain goes as a secondary high school teacher principal.

Robert Hinchliffe 12:50

Yeah, so it's a little bit different here in Vegas. You know, we're the fifth largest school district in the country, and we pretty much have an HR department that does a lot of that for us. People are not, there's two kind of ways to look at this. If it's it's a hard-to-fill position, such as you know, an autism classroom, then you can hire out of the district pretty much any time. But there's a time, there's a period from pretty much February to April where you're only really allowed to hire people within the district and transfer people from other schools. So when I say internal, what I mean by that is internal within the building. So we made 15 internal changes within the building with the people who were here. Then I had to hire three people from outside of the, or I guess it's four people from outside of the building to come into our school to fill our other positions. Those are technically within district internal transfers. And then because we had to hire a teacher for the for the self-contained program for autism, she could be hired from out of the district. So you kind of got to know all the ins and outs of everything and who you can hire and who you can't. But our HR department does a great job with with us in the fact that on our screen and in our system, we really can't see people until they've already kind of been proven to be able to be hired. It doesn't always work out like that. But ultimately, the list of candidates we have are the ones that are able to do the job. So I don't ever have to email the state and say, hey, I've got this person, can we do this? We don't really have to get into that at all, which is very, very helpful. Way, way different. I'm actually uh excited to hear that a state is willing to do that. I think that's amazing because I grew up in a small town in Washington state, and you said our construction teacher. And I was instantly like, we didn't have construction teachers back where I came from. But that's cool if you can find someone who just kind of retired from construction and they know the business, and then you can get them into your school just simply by having the state say, Yes, here's a probationary license and go from there. I think that's actually great. So kudos to Nebraska for that.

Principal JL 15:04

Yeah, no, it's it's like Nebraska's always trying to figure out how we can, you know, because everybody says, I mean, it's probably been this way the last six years, maybe seven years, that we're in a hiring shortage around nationwide. And for us, Nebraska's taking steps to where, like, if you and it cut, and I'm gonna say a caveat here, you have to have a teaching license to go sit for a test or to build your resume out if you have something that you can you know become endorsed in through just you know experience as well. So they'll look at like, can you pass the content test? Do you have experience in this area? That's really helpful in our skill technical sciences like you know, manufacturing, automotives, construction, you know, family consumer science. If you have experience, that's not necessarily going to an education school, they'll they'll honor that. And that's really good because then we're able to fill more positions and we're able to take somebody that may not have a teaching license, but if they have a bachelor's, we can get them a probationary, you know, based off of that, we can figure out what that looks like and get them through what we call a transition program or transitioning from you know whatever job they were doing into education itself. And that's them just learning, like teaching philosophies and how to manage a classroom, things that I could do already, right? But at the same time, the senators are working with the state about hey, can we take somebody instead of going through the transition program, they have a bachelor's, we give them a probationary, and they just learn from the school. Like the principals go in and and coach them up, and because we do anyway, so there's that thing that they're working through to possibly be able to make it easier for people to become teachers. I know some of the people that have been in education don't like those ideas, but man, when you're talking about bringing people in and trying to fill spots and trying to make sure you keep the programs you're trying to keep going, it's it's a huge win for us when it comes to that. And like here, I'm lucky I'm in a bigger populated area to where it's attractive for people to come. When I was a small rural school principal, it was harder to attract people. You had to use your benefit package, like, hey, we'll pay for all your benefits, come over here, you know. And so we had to do those type of recruitments when I was at a smaller district. I'm lucky I'm in a district I'm at because it is an attractive district for people to come to. And I get people applying just because of where our location is, and just the community itself is a great community. So that's where I'm at. How about you?

Licenses Endorsements And Creative Staffing

Robert Hinchliffe 17:57

You know, to be fair, Las Vegas might have programs like that. Being elementary school is just so much different than secondary. You know, it just really is. We're just K, K5, yeah, pre-K a little bit there, but it's a fascinating difference. I know for a fact that middle school and high school math teachers are difficult to come by. It's just elementary is just different, especially in the suburban, urban setting, to where I don't have to kind of worry about that. I'm also quite blessed because you know, people want to come to our school, people see it online, and so it really recruits itself in a way. And and so I really don't have a shortage of people. In fact, one young lady that I hired this year emailed me in October and she was like, I'm ready to make the jump. And so already I got someone before I even know I got a position for her. And I have people like that. It's just, it's just, you know, to be honest, as you've kind of pointed out, it's just different situations and different systems that kind of make it easier or different. I know in my hometown, which is you know, a thousand, probably 1,200 kids or 1,200 people, sorry, in Washington, it's hard to recruit teachers back there. And but I mean, jobs don't open up very often either. But but you know, it's hard to get someone to move to a small, small town in Washington or Nevada or or Nebraska. You know, there's rural cities in Nebraska that probably struggle because they're far away from everything, and and it's probably a real challenge to get people to come teach there.

Principal JL 19:25

Yeah, a lot of them have to end up doing some sort of distant learning, remote teacher, you know, maybe getting a some sort of online, like, okay, the district next to you that's 20 miles away has a Spanish teacher. We don't. Hey, can we have our kids remote in to your classroom these times and we'll match our schedule to your schedule to satisfy those courses and those things like that? So I've seen that in smaller schools as well.

Robert Hinchliffe 19:58

If you do that though, don't you still have to find a person to be in the room with the students that has a license?

Principal JL 20:05

Yeah, not necessarily a teacher. You could put a pair in there as long as you have an adult.

Robert Hinchliffe 20:10

Okay, interesting, a little different here.

Principal JL 20:12

Uh you know, you need you need teaching by can you put a yeah, you you need to have somebody, you have to have at least an adult in there on that case. But the teacher that's the online remote teacher is the teacher of record. Okay, so they're the teacher, and so you have the pair in there to help support that teacher even though they're remote. So that's kind of how you can get around that.

Robert Hinchliffe 20:36

You make such a good point because I think you know, with the perspective of suburbia and urban suburbia, is there's a fear out there in education that that's kind of where it's going to go, to where you can just have everything online and one person teaching, and you only have to put a pair of professional in a room. And hypothetically, you could have, you know, however many 20, 30 classrooms zoom into one teacher. And I think there's a little bit of a fear about that in some ways, but out in rural communities, that's really the way to go sometimes.

Principal JL 21:10

Yeah, and it and it's it's happened more than you'd like to happen, and they don't want to do that, but they're also trying to figure out how to give their students the most opportunities they can. Um, because when you start like at a high school level, like I never want to cut a program. And if I'm cutting programs, I'm cutting opportunities my students have to be engaged in those types of content and career readiness opportunities that they don't get anywhere else. And so, like at a high school level, we're thinking about how are we getting these kids ready to become adults? What avenues, what pathways, what you know classes can these kids take to get them ready. Like we partner with Central Community College and the hospital here in town, where we bring CNA classes to our school to where kids can be certified as a you know, certified nurse assistant, and they can get that in one semester, and then they they can be off working. We also have phobotomy class that we partner with them on. We do automotive class, the kids can get 12 automotive college credits before they even leave our building. Like our dual enrollment opportunities are crazy. Like my assistant principal's daughter, I think, has like 42 college credits and she's getting ready to graduate, right? Like, it's like you these kids have a lot of opportunities to play ahead of the game, and so I have to balance like when I lose somebody, can I have somebody fill those dual enrollment requirements too? Yeah, so those are other little caveats that you have to think about when hiring. Yeah, do they have a master's? Because if they have a master's, then I can do this.

Robert Hinchliffe 22:56

I I'm you know, I I'm very I'm very elementary, and I don't I don't I don't do well with middle schoolers, and honestly, credits and all that stuff just seems confusing to me. So I'll go ahead and I'll stick to just the K5. Uh, we're gonna differentiate basic with our specials. But it's it's great to see though, people, you know, and again, you have to be creative, I feel like, in a rural setting or a rural area in order to provide the best education you can for life. It's just different than when I was young. You know, we had the basics and and and here now, like you said, with construction or phlebotomy. All those things. I love that the communities are trying to find ways to give students opportunities to know what they want to do in life. And I think it's great. And we have some of those in Vegas, magnets and things of that nature. But out in the rural communities, I just think it's great that they're creative like that.

Principal JL 23:55

Yeah, we have to. And we do a lot of like community partnerships. We have a work-based learning program where kids can go out in their senior year and do a paid internship in a career choice that they are really interested in. And we've actually been able to get some kids really like, I really want to become a teacher now because I had this experience. And so, you know, that's part of grow our own initiative as well. And um, we're always looking to add things and how can we grow our workforce within our community? But how do we partner with our community partners to give our kids the best experiences as possible? And I and I live in a community, we have three high schools. We have a Catholic high school, we have what I call the public rural school or the private rules public school, private public school is what we call it. It's just a joke we have with them because my community is landlocked, my school's landlocked, so we can't we can't grow, we have a finite amount of money, and so the school district that's our our actual rural school district landlocks us, and so they take all the other money for their school, and so you know, with them, I mean they could, you know, they get a lot of option enrollment, so they can, you know, kind of restrict their enrollment where they can, you know, and deny people, and you know, it's a whole thing, and we don't want to get into it. They're great people, I know them, they're great people out there, but we do like to tease them about it because we do share kids, we share them back and forth, and we'll call each other and go, hey, tell me about this kid. Should I let them into my school? Nope, okay, I'll let you keep them, you know, stuff like that.

Remote Teaching For Rural Access

Robert Hinchliffe 25:35

Like I've been at both sides. I've been at my last school. It was, you know, we have zones in Vegas. You have a school zone, and my last school was landlocked, like you said. The zone was the zone, and then every year it was 500, it was 493 kids about, and that just was what it was, and it was consistent and stable. And now my school out here, it's changed every year. And next year we're going back up, and we're on um basically we're on open enrollment uh school choice, which is called a COSA out here. So now we're gonna get tons of people that want to come back in, and that's the challenge for us because if we end up with, let's just say, an extra 50 kids we didn't plan on, we don't have the teachers where we don't get to hire the teachers until basically October. And it's a constant challenge every year when you're not landlocked and you don't have as very close to a specific number of kids because you're guessing so much. I'm guessing that I need six fifth grade teachers next year, but that puts them all at about 32 kids each. Well, if 20 other fifth graders show up, now you're all at 37 kids each. And things start to get really tight. And the thing that people don't understand, I think, is that not only you know, not only do the classrooms get tight, but that affects specials in elementary too. So you have 37 kids in art, but then we have some push-in for our self-contained classes, and it gets it gets to be quite a challenge when you don't have a specific number of kids every year close to it, and you have to kind of manage that. That's the fun part to me is managing all that stuff. But I I miss the days sometimes of being consistent as well.

Principal JL 28:00

Yeah, that's something to that, right? We kind of like I can always see like what our numbers are coming. We get like a report every month about what our numbers are, and my numbers fluctuate. Like we have around a thousand students, so my numbers can be as low as I've seen it as low as 943 in a month, and I've seen it as high as 1,053 in a month. And so I will be somewhere in that range. And for us, it's nice being that size of a high school because we're on the like for Nebraska, we have four classifications. We have class A, B, C, and D. Now we have more within those C and D classifications. I won't get into all that headache, but like for us, we are the second highest classification in the state. So we're just we're we're just small enough that we're not class A, because we'll we would not be very competitive there at times. We could in some things, but not everything. And then we are we are you know high enough to be a fairly good size B school to where we're a lot more competitive because of our size and you know, and the things that we do. And now we do go in cycles with that too, with being competitive in different things as well. Sometimes we're in an upswing, sometimes we're in a downswing. It just depends on our kids and you know what we have for talent when it comes to that. But Nebraska has school choice. If you don't like the school you're in, you just opt into the school next to it.

Robert Hinchliffe 29:26

Well, but yeah, that's or go private, it's up to you. If uh you know, if if if you know, if if you decided, Mr. Lyndon, that you were gonna just you know, just basically drive everybody out, and the other school then magically a hundred kids decided they wanted to go there, that creates a problem on the other side as well, because they're not prepared for that extra hundred kids. So school choice, school choice is fabulous if you look at it from different angles. As a parent, it's probably great. You get to, you know, you get to choose the school you want to go to. Oh, you know, Hastings High has a construction program. I'm into that. I want to go there. From a from a parent perspective, it's probably great. From admin, it gets a little sticky because if all of a sudden you got a hundred new kids knocking on your doorstep because the school next to you isn't good, you don't have the personnel for that. And you and depending on when it is in Las Vegas, you wouldn't get the money for it. So it's it's a fascinating thing. School choice is good, but it's also bad there as well.

Career Pathways That Keep Programs Alive

Principal JL 30:30

Like Nebraska, they want to start doing these vouchers, and the people in Nebraska said no to school vouchers, like we're not gonna do the vouchers, but our governor is still trying to be like he's trying to sneak it into things, and everybody's like, nope, don't do that, because we're in a unicamera, so everything's out in the open. You can't sneak anything if you're paying attention, and so the governor keeps trying to sneak in school choice initiatives, even though was it 68% of the state said no to school choice. And my thing is it's more school vouchers than anything, it's not really school choice because I've always said you have school choice. If you don't like the district, you and you can always move to another district, even though that district may be 20 miles down the road, you can do that if you want to, or you can opt in. And we have kids that opt in to our school from around the surrounding communities because of the programs we have. Like I have kids like you have this program, my school I don't that I'm at right now, doesn't so I want to opt in for that opportunity, and we allow them to do that, but we also have to start thinking about what's our enrollment numbers because we don't want to overdo the option enrollment to a point to where we're stuck at a classification that we don't want to be at. So yeah, yeah, you can kind of restrict it a little bit, but when you're a public school, you have what you have and you kind of deal with it.

Robert Hinchliffe 31:55

But it's a struggle too, because you're like me, where it's if my program is gonna get that kid to come to school and love school, then by goodness, come on over. Let's go, let's get you in there. And that's my philosophy is if 100 parents want to bring their kids to Thompson because that's gonna get their kids to love school, then by goodness, we're we'll figure it out. We'll get you here and we'll figure it out. And and that, but that's a struggle. It's just you know, you care and you want the kids to love school. I was gonna ask, with your programs, that has to help with like chronic absenteeism and things like that, because if they're bought in and they want to do those programs, they'll be at school. Elementary is different, of course. I don't have those programs. Now I have clubs and and things of that nature, but you know, we have to we have to work on chronic absenteeism by making it a place they want to come and make it fun and exciting and and all the things, you have the programs to pull them in. So the programs surely have to help with attendance.

Principal JL 32:56

Yeah, it does. I would say if we get a kid locked into some sort of program or some sort of niche that, and that's the nice thing about my school is we have a lot of things that kids can get, they can become a part of. And the other caveat that I will also say is we do have a fairly decent amount of low socioeconomic students and families within our school district. So we used to be about 64, we're actually down to about 54. So there could be a lot of reasons for that. One, the families aren't filling out the paperwork. Two, we actually had a reduction. I don't know which one it actually is, but we do service a pretty good amount of free and reduce students with low social economics. A lot of them's one-parent homes where the parents are working. They, you know, I mean, like we have kids that have to work to help their family make ends meet within. So that's a struggle sometimes because they would like to maybe be a part of something, but hey, they have to go and help provide for their family. Yeah, and so maybe school is not their number one thing. Now we do have an alternative learning placement for kids to kind of help with those things. So those kids that go over there, their real focus is to graduate and so they can go become a productive member of society. And so, with that, we have these different things to help with that, but we still battle the chronic apteism. The kids wanting to be at school, so we still work on what is our school culture? How do we have what how do kids feel about coming to school? What are the things we do to promote our culture, to hype the kids, and just know that they're welcomed here. And one of the biggest like shifts we did my first year here was instead of asking kids, where have you been, it's you know, how have you been? And we're glad to see you. Welcome back to bring in that welcoming environment, like mindset. Because the last thing a kid wants to hear after they just had a you know a rough go at whatever they're doing, they come back in and they're getting berated because they haven't been in school for three or four days because they've been dealing with something outside. Like we don't know what they're going through. And so we still have that in small town rural Nebraska schools where we battle some of those things that you will see in a suburban or urban school. And I'm not lost on that because I taught in Omaha for three years, and so I know what it's like to see a suburban, urban school and the challenges they have. And we still see it out here in south central Nebraska sometimes. And so we still work on like you we want you here, we want you to feel good, and all these programs. But yeah, we know if a kid is connected to the school outside of just coming to school for academics, they are gonna be way more successful and their attendance is gonna be so much better because they have something bigger than themselves to come for. And that's our biggest takeaway. The biggest thing we try to do is get kids involved and not be involved.

Robert Hinchliffe 36:06

Yeah, you make such a good point. Elementary people, yeah, out there, anybody that listens, I think that's such a critical thing. Like whenever a kid's late, I'll tell them, I'm glad you're here, buddy. Because in elementary school, it's not the kids' fault. 99% of the time. If they're late, if they're absent or whatever. So, you know, I think that's just a shift of just like it's not the kids' fault. Look at things, look at things through their eyes. Do you think a kid wants to be late and wants to get yelled at and wants to be berated for they don't? You know, it's not their fault, mom didn't get them up or dad works late or whatever it might be. So again, I think that's a great perspective to have is look at through their kids' eyes. And then also I was wondering, is there this again my elementary mind? I've always said for yeah, I I know valedictoria, valedictorian salutatorian, but what about like the the kid that's just proficient in life? At a graduation, I would love to see a student who has worked nights and weekends to help his family or his siblings. I want to hear from that kid at graduation or something like that. Because that kid's going places, that kid knows how to work hard and knows how to help people. And I think sometimes, not to not to uh knock salutatorians or validatories down, but that's sometimes school comes so easy to some kids. But that kid that's worked his tail off, let's listen to him sometimes and let's find out what's going on and to make school better for those students.

School Choice And Enrollment Whiplash

Principal JL 37:38

It's kind of interesting you say that because this is how we work graduation speeches here at Hastings High. So we don't do like Valor Victorian, we do the Greek method system to where you have to hit a certain GPA percentage, or like you know, you have to be between 3.5 to 3.75 to get this chord, from 3.75 to 3.99 to get this chord, anything 4.0 and up, you get this core. So we have three levels, and so we have so many kids that graduate with some sort of academic honors, like we'll have probably almost half our kids have some sort of academic chord, right? Now, with that, they get recognized by wearing a cord at graduation, which is cool. But we also, when we are doing a graduation speeches, it's not necessarily the kids that have the highest GPA in their class speaking. One of our speakers is actually the president of our Stuco. Every year, the president will speak. That's at graduation, that's an automatic, you're locked in, you're doing a graduation speech. And so from there, we actually put out, we're actually going through the process right now. Every each department in the school gets to nominate kids in their department. So, what we'll do is look at, you know, so when you're talking about that construction kit, you're talking about that kid in manufacturing, those kids in that department have an opportunity to be nominated, and a lot of times they get nominated in other departments as well. So that makes it easiest for to triangulate which kids are going to speak. Now, the kids get asked to speak, they do not have to, but if they would like to, they're more than welcome to. If not, we just go to the next kid. And so we have about six kids that will speak at graduation, and they can be from you know, somebody that's you know really high on academics, but we also look at character, we look at how hard they work. It also could be that kid that may not, you know, be the you know, highest GPA, but they work real hard and they have gone through tests and trials, and those speeches are some of our best ones. Like when you get to hear these kids speak and they go through their experience and get to share that, it's just really neat to see how it all comes. And every year I've done graduation here, we've those kids have done an awesome job with their graduation speeches, and we're it's not the top six GPA kids get a speak. No, it's all a process that our teachers get to nominate students, and then we as a leadership team will come together and select it based off the nominations that our teachers give. And so it's a really cool process we do, and we limit at six because we want to keep it under an hour and a half, and we tell the kids you got like five minutes, like we your speech has to be five minutes or less. Because if you think about that's 30 minutes right there, if you have six kids. Uh but I think so. So that's kind of how we do that process when we do graduation.

Robert Hinchliffe 41:45

I think you should be proud of that. I think anybody listening should really reflect upon that because you know, like in Vegas now it's different. There's 800 kids graduating and they got to have them out in two hours. So usually what happens is the you know, the top the top TPA students will share a speech together and all read a few lines and and go for it because they don't have the time with so many kids. But I think there's definitely something to be said about recognizing students who have overcome obstacles to be there, and and so they can feel that as well. I struggle, you know, at elementary school, we don't do it at Thompson, we don't really do honor roll because there's some students that are gonna get A's just by walking in the door. But I want to know about the kid that has growth mindset and grit and perseverance that is struggling but works their tail off to get an a C or a B. That's cool, you know. I think we should recognize those kids more. Those those kids are gonna be able to handle life when it throws a curveball at them. So often, you know, we do growth mindset, but not not not all schools do. But you have that kid that's just had never had a trial or a tribulation in elementary school, and then they get a B in middle school, it's the end of the world. You know, they don't they don't know how to handle it. So I think you know, we have to recognize kids that have some grit and some perseverance more somehow just to just to get it on everybody's radar.

Principal JL 43:08

Yeah, for me, not at this high school that I'm at, because we do one state assessment a year for each grade level so we can satisfy pool rule 10, the rule 10 upstate of Nebraska. So every freshman, sophomore, and senior junior have to have some sort of national assessment done. So we usually do our freshmen and sophomores in the fall and we do our juniors. So when it comes to having the assessment grain that you're going through, I don't miss it. I don't have to do that anymore. I used to, though, as a rural principal when I was a 7, 12 principal, where we had to do the INSCAS testing. That's our state set assessment for our seventh grade, eighth graders, but our freshmen, sophomores, and juniors and seniors still had to take it, even though we still had to do the ACT. So one thing that we started doing at when I was the superintendent, sorry, principal at that district, we would have an academic pep rally and talk and reward kids for growth. And so we would honor the kids, you grew this much over the year. Here's a certificate. And some kids, that was like the best thing ever, right? Because that kid that's not that straight A student, they struggle with school, but they grew, we're so excited to get that, and they were so proud to have that. So at a rural school where I was at small, I was able to do that. The system that I'm in now with the high school, I would love to be able to do that. We just don't have the setup like I used to, or I probably would be doing something like that. So I really love the fact honoring kids' growth because and we do it in front of everybody. Seventh graders, line up, you grew, you grew, you grew, you grew by these amount of points in these areas. Great job, you know. And it was such an honor for those kids to get that. And you'd have parents like your tears and you know, and things like that. So it was a really great thing that we did, and I would encourage people to think about like a maybe an academic pep rally if you can. One thing I thought of you talked about earlier about people like going, hey, we really like the school culture you have, and they want to be a part of that, and so you get people naturally gravitate towards your school. For me, social media has been a big help because when I came here, the social media footprint wasn't there. Now I'm lucky now I have a digital content creator that does that stuff, so I don't have to worry about it. So we have a pretty good social media presence for our school, which we show all the great things that are happening, not just sports, but activities and what's going on in the classroom. I've had teachers this year in interview say, I want to be a part of this school because I saw this online. Do you have some of that for your school? Do you have like a social media presence that promotes the things you do and that kind of draws people in? Have you seen some of that work out for you?

Chronic Absenteeism And Culture Shifts

Robert Hinchliffe 46:09

Yeah, definitely. If you, you know, if you follow Tyrone Thompson ES on Facebook or Instagram, you'll see all a lot of the great things. I wish I had a digital content creator. And but what I have is one of the best strategists ever that does so so much for the school. The problem is, you know, is that she has another job as well. So next year I want to work on this and just get better at it. But ultimately, yeah, social media is your best, you know, your best medium for getting your name out there. People find things, people see things, and I think it's great. I think teachers too, you know, when they're applying, they look up the school and they try to see what's going on. To be fair, though, I think sometimes, I could be wrong. I think sometimes teachers look up our social media and they get scared and they think, I don't want to do all that. Because it's a lot. I mean, it's a lot. We do a lot with the house system, we do a lot with different schedules. We have a lot of different programs. We've got clubs. We've got sports. We've got garden committee. I mean, we've got as much as I think we can really do. And I think sometimes it gets a little intimidating. I don't know if you find this too, but even when people look up all the things, and I tell people when you when you interview, I'm like, listen, we are not normal. We do things differently. We got a lot going on. And I'll tell them that, and I don't think they really believe me. And what happens is about October, they'll get the deer in the headlights look and they'll think, holy moly, this is a lot. Once they get through the first year, everything's okay. But I think people are often amazed at how much we do, and we put it on social media as well. But until you get here and do it, it's a whole different thing. I have this thing I call do one of my speaking sessions where I have a shirt and a picture. The student teachers about four years ago, I had a talk with them and I said, Are you committed or are you interested? Because there's two different things there. You can be committed to Thompson and do all the things, or you can just be interested in it. And then you get here and you're like, oh, this is a lot. So what I find is that a lot of people are very interested in Thompson and all we do. But when they get here, they find out they have to be committed. And if they aren't, it starts to get really overwhelming because every week we got something going on, or we got this going on. And so social media, it's great because it gets people interested. But then the question is, is are they committed?

Principal JL 48:43

That's a great perspective. That's really great to look at that way. And my thing is, is like for me, when I hire people, I want people that want to be here. I want people that want to be at Hastings High because they believe in what we're doing and they want to be a part of something. And I always say, be a part of something bigger in yourself. You can find that here at Hastings High. You know, one thing that we talk about with candidates is we have a lot of support. Our administration across the board, not just me, but my assistant principals, my ADs, my dean, so we support our teachers and they know it. And this community knows it, the parents know it. We will support our teachers because we need to support them so they can do their job. And then when they are supported, they feel good about what they're doing, man, they're gonna teach the heck out of those kids, right? And we have systems and we have processes, we have things in place when it comes to behavior, when it comes to PLCs, when it comes to the BIS process, the PBIS stuff, like all the things that we have. People don't realize all the things that we do until they go through the interview process with us and they go, Holy crap, that could be a lot. And it can be challenging, but I always give them, no matter if the teacher has taught 30 years or if they're a brand new, you know, you know, student teacher never taught besides student teaching, everybody gets a guide teacher at my school because you're not gonna know how my school runs when you get in here. You may know the content, you may know how to teach, but you need somebody to help you through the systems and the processes and the things we do. So because it's a lot and it could become overwhelming. And so we have a checklist that our guide teacher will go through, but we give them time, we give them the ability to meet with each other and to you know go through those things. It's not like you have to go through them all at once, but you have a go-to person in the building. And so I do that, like I said, I brought in a teacher that had you know 15 years of experience. They still had a guide teacher, like you're gonna have somebody because there's so much going on in our building, and you just need to have that co-go-to person. Not saying us principals can't help you, you just need that that connection, that staff member that can help you out. And I always put them with an experienced staff members that know what they're doing, so that's always an important piece too. But but yeah, the collaborate, the amount of collaboration and things we do, nobody's on an island here. Everybody's working together, we're a team because our overall objective is to get kids ready for their futures, whatever that future is.

Graduation Recognition Beyond Top GPA

Robert Hinchliffe 51:21

Yeah, I kind of have a I mean, I'm the same a little bit different. Here in elementary, um, we have strategists and they're placed there for a reason. The strategists there are there to help you strategize on how you're going to overcome these things. My job is to give them everything they need to be successful. That's that's my number one job for any any staff member. What do you need to be successful? I will buy it or I will find it or I will help you find it. But at the same point in time, you have to be a self-starter. I can't hold your hand, I can't run around and put out all the fires and all the drama that you might create. I just I don't have time. So you have to be a self-starter. And I think elementary might be different. My wife teaches middle school and she says middle school is way different. But elementary, you know, we have we have a little bit of drama. We got some things that happen. You know, you have you have six people in the grade level, they're not always gonna get along. If they do, that's great. But ultimately, you know, you have a strategist to help you out through this, and then if it gets in my door, of course, then I'll help. But at the same point in time, I don't know. I mean, I mean, I know you know about Ron Clark and you know, Ron Clark Academy, probably, I assume, right? Yeah, my theory is kind of a lot like Ron's in some ways, which is you've got the runners and the joggers, and then you got the walkers and the riders, and the runners and the joggers are the ones that move your system. I'm gonna support the runners and the and the joggers as much as possible because they're the ones that are making the bus move. The walkers and the riders, you're slowing us down. This is Ron's analogy, and I just love it. If you're riding the bus, you're just slowing the system down. I don't have time for that. I'm gonna go to the people that are making the bus move and help them and put people in place to help them. So, you know, when you come to Thompson, I'll even, people who are new here, I'll usually show them the video of Ron Clark explaining this and be like, you gotta be a runner or a jogger. And if you can't do that, then at least clap from the sidelines and cheer for the people doing it. And, you know, sometimes it doesn't work out. And sometimes people, as I say, some people make a wise business decision for themselves and they choose to go to a different school. But ultimately, you know, we want to be a part of this system, this thing that's bigger. At Thompson, we say it's not a school, it's an experience. And so ultimately that's the goal is to be a model of what a public school can and should be. And some people get a little bit of an imposter syndrome or they just can't keep up and it makes it difficult. But ultimately, you know, Hasting sounds like Thompson and the fact that you come here, we're gonna help you as much as possible, but we want to be something bigger than just a normal school.

Principal JL 54:00

And I think that's the thing that we we where we strive for, right? And you know, I'm lucky that I have a great school board, my school board supports us, and you know, the kind of the crazy thing is is I have school board members that have children the same age as me, and we see each other on a weekend, but I try not to sock shop. That I'm like, hey, I'm out with my family. Like, like I was talking to you, you know, you know, maybe a week or two ago when we're setting up this in this this session here, was you know, hey, I got club volleyball going, my daughter's on cheer. And so like I was busy almost every weekend doing something to when when it came down to just my daughter's, you know, her her things that she's got going on as well. And I think that's something that we try to do. I know you have what five kids, if I remember right?

Robert Hinchliffe 54:49

Yeah, five daughters, two in college, uh three are in high school. Yeah. But you you you bring up something too. So I mean, you got a lot of things to juggle too. Yeah, you bring up something with the school board. I don't, you know, and small, I have a friend that's in South Dakota, he's a superintendent. And when he was a principal, he, you know, he's in a small town, you're gonna run into the school board a lot as the principal, and you're gonna see them, and you might you might even be in the same establishment with them and at the table next to us. And you have to kind of think about that. You know, if you if you make the school board member mad, there's a good chance that you might drive by them or something. In a town of two and a half million people, I don't see the school board very often, so I don't really have to worry about that. Another interesting dynamic of the of the rural and urban perspective there. And I I can't even, I mean, I could tell you who the school board member for our area is, but I I've never seen her in public. And that's not not necessarily a good thing or or a bad thing, but something you and you know, your people in the small towns, especially you know that the school board member's student is in your school and and all of that dynamic, there's a lot more political pull there, probably.

Social Media Recruiting And Commitment

Principal JL 56:06

Yeah, and it's it's good, it's bad. It's I mean, it's not really bad. It's just you know, they get like firsthand experience as you as a leader because their kids going home and saying things. Now, I've been lucky so far, the kids go home and say nice things about me. So far, so good. We'll just leave it at that. But overall, no, and and the people will realize with me, I am pretty, you know, across the board. I'm gonna be what I could equitable fair, whatever you want to call it. I don't care who you are, you're gonna follow the expectations. We have the systems in place, and if you don't, you'll get consequences, good or bad. And I don't care if you are a school board member's kid, the superintendent's kid, my own kid, you know, things like that. Like I have to do, like I have to, you know, when I'm doing my job, I have to be able to say we have systems in place, we have things that we do, and we gotta be tight on that because I can't make exceptions just because of who you are. And I think that's important too. But at the same time, building relationships with those people is really important because they in the in a sense, they can, you know, they they have a little weight, more weight than you'd like them to sometimes. But you know, you gotta make sure you're doing the your job the best of your ability so they keep you around. I joke around and say, I'm here until you guys decide to fire me. I say, you know, I'm not going anywhere. I love what I do, and for the most part, you know, it's it's worked out well, you know, wherever I've been. Yeah, that's a little copy. When you're in a smaller district, even smaller than the one I'm in, it's even more like you're gonna see them, you're gonna interact with them outside of the school. I mean, it's not, and you're gonna be having school board meetings every month with them. So you get to know them pretty well in our school sizes as well. And as we're a larger district, and I'm getting to know the nine school board members we have at a decent rate. Maybe not as much, I don't have as much as I did before, but you know, there are a lot of good people out there, a lot of good school board members out there that that they basically know that they want what's best for the kids, and they just want you to have the freedom to do your job and they want to support you. And that's been my experience with the school boards I've had, and so I've been blessed in that. Now I've heard that's not the case everywhere, and I've been lucky um in my career so far is to have good people in those positions when it comes to that. So there you go. Perspective from the rural school on that. So we're sitting here April, mid-April. I'm like going, crap, graduations around the corner. I've sent out some emails telling the seniors this is your last day. These are the processes, these are the things you're gonna do. Here's the checklist that you have to accomplish before you can graduate, and before you can walk, and before you do all these things. So I'm getting ready to go into one of the most high stress times of my school year. Instead of a state assessment, that's what's gonna be stressing me out for the next month. What is the next month, month and a half of school look like for you?

Robert Hinchliffe 59:25

I am so thankful that I do not have to worry about students getting enough credits to graduate or things like that. I don't, again, I don't want to be involved in that at all. That's that's not my thing. Elementary is just different, at least at my school. I know I'm different than a lot of other schools. Right now, for the next two weeks, we're doing state testing. That's number one, and that just shuts the building down pretty much. We do S BACs out here, and that's just what it is. We get done with that on April 22nd. I have my calendar up right here. I'm looking at it. On April 23rd, it's take your child to work day. On April 24th, we have what's called S BAC picnic. So we have a great big celebration. Yay, we're done. We do raffles and things like this for the kids that that did great. And then, amazingly enough, out in Vegas, the following week, we have what's called map testing. So we have to do map MWEA. That eats up another week. And then teacher appreciation week comes. So I'm blessed. I have people that plan that and do a great job. I basically just say, What do you need? But you know, that's that's the first week in May. Uh oh, by the way, we have a fifth grade trip to Disney and a fourth grade field trip on May 1st and uh this and a that. But following that, a teacher appreciation week, we have career week. It just goes on and on, you know, and within that, we have fire drills and staff kid breakfast and five house, one family night. So we have that's basically our end of the year festival. You have all that. We have what's called a million word club celebration. So any students that read a million words this year, they get to take a field trip and go to the sphere and see the Wizard of Oz. That's a big deal. And then we have field day and house field trips and kindergraduation and fifth grade graduation. That's all pretty much May. It's just all of those things, and and it's amazing how we just pack so much into May. I don't know why. We're all tired, we're all exhausted, but it's what we do. So, really between now and honestly, the end of the year, I'm pretty much day to day, week to week, what's on the calendar. But again, I'm very blessed to have people in places that just really take care of things as well. I don't have to worry, I just pretty much have to assist where I'm able to.

Support Systems For New Staff

Principal JL 1:01:48

And I would say, even though like we have the things we have coming up, because we still have prom, we have graduation, we have, you know, like we're done with the like we don't have to worry about the testing. Like in Nebraska, we utilize NWA at the elementary middle school, but I don't use it at the high school, even though we could. But our NSCAS testing is actually was designed by NWA. So we actually have our own NWA for the state of Nebraska. So they actually built out our platform for those things. But yeah, for us, it's just trying to keep it like right now, it's like you have fines to pay, you have you know, like giving information out now. One thing that we started doing like a year and a half ago is we started sending out monthly bills to to to families so they understand like you have this bill, you need to start paying on it. Guess what? If it's not zero by graduation, you ain't walking. See, another thing I can that's a stressful time because when you have to tell people no, yeah, tell people no, you can't walk, and that's you know, that's a hard thing to do on that. But for the most part, I will work with families, I'll come up with payment plans, I will do whatever I can to help them. But you gotta help meet me halfway on some of this stuff when it comes down to that. So, yeah, but I have a great team of people. Like, we actually had our graduation meeting on March 24th. That was the day we ended up testing our juniors for ACT, and so that afternoon we sat down and we started listing out all the things we need to do to get ready for graduation on March 24th, and now we're halfway through April and we're starting to hit the things on that list. Like this needs to do, this needs to happen, these things are going on, and then on top of that, we have, like I said, prom. That's another undertaking. Now we have great people that take care of stuff. Um, I have a great administrative assistant, I have great you know, assistant principals and people that we all know our job and we know what we got to do. But in the end of the day, I have to kind of oversee everything, manage it, make sure if something, if there's something going awry, I have to come in. We got to figure out a solution, we move on and we move forward. So it's just a lot, and we'll get through it. Like our last day was kids after graduation. With graduation's May 17th, our last day for students is May 21st. Our last day with teachers is May 22nd. I don't know what your guys' year look like, but we start, you know, August 13th and we end like May 22nd every year. What is your what is your look like for for the end?

Robert Hinchliffe 1:04:44

Yeah, we're pretty much the same. We end the last day with kids is May 22nd. So, you know, we're pretty similar in Nebraska, which surprised me back home in Washington State. They start late, they start after Labor Day, so it's a little different there. But uh yeah, we we pretty much have off May 22nd to well the teachers have to the teachers are supposed to come back after Memorial Day on May 26th, but there'll probably be some sick days taken there. But pretty much from the end of May until August, they come back August 6th of this year, they're off. And but you know, also just going back to it, you have a great team of people, and that just makes so much everything so much easier, really. If you just it comes back to one of my things, just trust the people, just let the people that want to create this stuff and do this stuff go. I'm very blessed with fifth grade. We have a fifth grade graduation. There's a teacher that's just gonna make a video and she's just gonna put the program together. And you know, you just you just have to trust your people, and but then be there to oversee it and help them if they got any questions, you got to deal with it. But yeah, from now, from now till the end of school, it's just go, go, go. I'm sure most schools are probably like that, or I hope they are, because that's when the memories are made. You know, you don't remember being in high school taking a taking a test on something, yeah. But you remember, you know, your your prom or graduation or things of that nature. So this is the time when you make the memories that be memorable.

Principal JL 1:06:09

Well, Robert, we've talked a lot of things. We're hour into the show here, you know. Overall, I really appreciate the time that you that we spent together, you know, just kind of just talking about what it's like to be a principal and all the things we got going on. And I'm really excited to have this adventure with you and have these perspectives, have these type of conversations to share with people because I think it's gonna be helpful down the road because someone's gonna listen to this and go, wow, that's you know, really interesting. I never thought of those things. So hopefully we inspired you in some way today. Hopefully, you found a little nugget that you can use in your own principalship or leadership journey yourself. So, Robert, is there anything you'd like to say before we go?

Robert Hinchliffe 1:06:54

Yeah, no, that's the whole goal is just inspire people. I say anybody that listened, if you have a question or you have a topic you want you want us to cover and see where we land on it, we'd we gladly do that. If there's one thing I'm not shy about, it's giving my perspective. Perspective is just a fancy word for opinion in reality. So anybody that wants to tell us what they want a perspective on, then then we can do that. So um it's but yeah, it's always good. You know, you and I just kind of we just kind of flow and we can talk about whatever, and and uh it's gonna be good just to to bounce things off with someone from from uh Nebraska and and just see what people want to hear about.

End-Of-Year Crunch And Listener Prompts

Principal JL 1:07:33

You bet. No, yeah, and you guys are listening out there. Please just you can email me at the dot principal.jl at gmail.com. Um you can also there's a little send a text, you can also send it through that. That will be in the show notes as well. So you can connect with us, give us your questions, give us something that you guys are struggling with, and we'll come back on and we'll talk about the person. We'll also give you a shout out. How about that? We'll give you a shout out, give us your name, where are you from, you know, we'll give you a shout-out and we'll talk about maybe some things that you guys are wanting to know more about or just curious about what how we land or how we fall or how what our perspectives is on that. And I'm gonna promote Robert here a little bit. He's got some great books out there. I'll probably put them down in the show notes. So I'm gonna help him out with that. You know, he's got some really I mean, you got a lot of great things out there. You know, I'll probably just put your website down because that'll probably be the best way to go find all the different things you do, and you know, and then you know, because you you do other things, you know, you're a great principal, but you're out there leading the charge and helping people become even better leaders by you know speaking and you know and sharing your knowledge with other people out there. So I'll make sure people connect with you as well on those avenues as well. So, well, Robert, it's great having you on, and I can't wait to do this again.

Robert Hinchliffe 1:08:57

Yeah, man, it's always fun, always a pleasure to talk to you and try to inspire more people across the country of the world.

Principal JL 1:09:03

I hope you enjoyed the episode with Robert tonight. If this episode resonates with you, please share with someone who needs to hear it. Please subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss another episode like this one. Also, if you would like for us to discuss any type of topic about education, about educational leadership, and wanting us to give us your our perspectives on your situation, please write into the show and please give us your name. I'd love to give you a shout out. So all you have to do is email me at the.jl at gmail.com, or you just have to click the little send text message on the show notes, and it will send me a message directly to me, and you could just let me know what topic you would like Robert and I to discuss next. So hopefully you guys enjoyed it. Until next time, in order to be the change, you must be curious and 1% better.