Episode 265: A Textbook Isn’t a Curriculum with Emily Makelky

Darrin Peppard (00:00.758)

All right, everybody, welcome into the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. This is episode 265. And today's conversation is one that I've really been looking forward to for quite some time, because my guest today is someone I've had the chance to work with in the past and someone who has had a real impact on how I think about curriculum and alignment inside of schools. My guest on the show is Emily McKelkey.

from the Curriculum Leadership Institute, and we're going to dive into a topic that a lot of leaders wrestle with, what curriculum really is. Because far too often, we confuse curriculum with a resource. We buy a textbook, we buy a program, we put it on the shelf and say, great, we've adopted a curriculum. But that's not curriculum. You see, curriculum is the what. What are we teaching? Why are we teaching it?

And how do we make sure it actually aligns with the needs of our students and our communities? Now, Emily and I actually met years ago when I was still a high school principal in Wyoming, and we worked together on some curriculum alignment work. That experience shaped a lot of how I approached leadership later as superintendent, including partnering with Emily again to work with my district. So today, we're gonna talk about curriculum alignment

Teacher leadership and why empowering teachers to be leaders in curriculum development might be one of the most important things school leaders can do. Before we jump into that conversation, I want to take a moment and thank the sponsors who make this show possible.

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Darrin Peppard (02:25.441)

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students. Now let's be honest, schools everywhere are still working to close learning gaps that widened over the last several years. And one of the biggest challenges leaders face is finding reliable, high-quality tutoring support that actually aligns with what students are learning in the classroom. And that is exactly what HeyTutor does to help schools. HeyTutor partners directly with districts to provide high-impact tutoring solutions that support students where they need it the most.

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Definitely a partner worth exploring. Hit the link in the show notes or go to heytutor.com to check them out. That's heytutor.com. All right, let's get into today's conversation. And actually, let me say this before we get into the conversation. If you are like me and you just hit the 30 second forward, 30 second forward, 30 second forward to skip through the ads, please go back. In all seriousness, one of my favorite podcasts, I heard the host say that.

Darrin Peppard (04:52.737)

and it made me reflect. And I went back and I listened to their ads. I would ask that you please do that as well. The folks at HeyTutor and the folks at Digicoach are doing remarkable work. Go back, give them a listen. All right, now let's get into today's conversation. My guest again is Emily McKelkey from the Curriculum Leadership Institute. We're gonna talk about how leaders can move beyond simply adopting programs and actually start building curriculum systems that truly serve teachers and students.

Let's get into it. I'll see you on the other side.

Darrin Peppard (00:00.65)

All right, my friends, welcome back into the show. Today on the show, my guest is Emily McKelkey. And before I welcome Emily in, I gotta say this. Over the course of my career, I've had a couple of opportunities to work deeply in curriculum alignment and really unpacking what it is we're trying to accomplish with our students. And twice, I've had...

the great fortune of working with Emily and CLI, the company that she works with. She'll talk more about them here in a few minutes. So Emily is somebody I've known for quite some time, somebody I really think the world of and super excited to welcome her into the podcast. So Emily, welcome to Leaning Into Leadership.

Emily Makelky (00:44.536)

Thank you. Thank you so much, Darren. You know, I feel like I met you, I was thinking about it this morning and I, we met 13 years ago maybe when you were still, I know you were still a principal in Rock Springs. Yep. And, and here we are, you know, I see you every once in a while at conferences and it's like, no time went by. We're just buds. It's wonderful.

Darrin Peppard (00:58.316)

Yeah.

Darrin Peppard (01:06.54)

I know. Yeah, it is hard to think, think that it was 13 years ago that, that that's when it was. But, but you know, actually, yeah, I think it's been nine years since I left rock Springs. So, you know, that, that certainly makes some sense that, that's, that's how long it has been. So, so let's do this really quick. and we're going to continue by the way, folks, we're, we're going to wander down memory lane, I'm sure a few times through, through the course of this podcast episode, but

Emily Makelky (01:19.18)

Okay, yep.

Emily Makelky (01:24.544)

Okay.

Darrin Peppard (01:33.6)

Emily, for my listeners and my viewers on YouTube who have not yet had the pleasure of meeting you, tell them a little bit about you and about the work that you do and like, what are you all about?

Emily Makelky (01:45.844)

Yeah, so, you know, I suppose as far as who am I, I, you know, started my career as a teacher. That wasn't my initial career. I thought I wanted to be a millionaire, honestly. And, but in my 20s, right, but I'm not there, you guys, even still 25 years later, I haven't achieved it. Anyway,

Darrin Peppard (02:05.365)

Not a bad goal.

Emily Makelky (02:14.551)

But yeah, I had worked for a county attorney in a very small town and I was responsible for the juvenile cases. at that time, I would go to court, I would take notes, I would kind of see what was going on with these kids and it just was really sad. so it kind of made me change my priorities in life from being a millionaire to trying to help.

you know, these kids and what could I do? How could I make the most impact? And so I figured, you know, teaching, I think is the most impactful thing that you can do for kids. So I kind of changed and became a teacher. I taught high school and when I was there, we actually, I'll tell you. So it was a very small school district.

I was hired or the job I applied for was to be the the curriculum. Sorry, I take that back. The computer applications teacher. And so I showed up, you know, two weeks before school started, got my got my classroom kind of all set and pretty got the bulletin boards going. And then finally I was like, OK, so what is it that I need to teach? So I pulled, you know, opened up the the filing cabinets and and was looking for just something about what is it that I

that I should be teaching. And what I found in there was really football plays. You know, I have replaced somebody that I think was a football coach. I didn't find anything in there about what am I supposed to be teaching. So no big deal. I didn't panic yet. I kind of skipped down to the principal's office and I said, hey, do you have anything in here about like, what am I supposed to be teaching? And, and, you know, because I had come from kind of the private sector, I was a business teacher, vocational teacher.

He just said, well, you're the professional. Teach what you feel is right. And I had gone from like, I'm going to change the world to like, dear Lord, what have I done? Like, I don't really know. At that time, I didn't even have a teaching degree. I didn't know the first thing about a learning target, you know? So anyway, in those first couple of years, we were using the Curriculum Leadership Institute, which is now where I work. And they helped us to...

Darrin Peppard (04:16.225)

Hahaha.

Emily Makelky (04:33.868)

to really identify what is it that we should be teaching. And when we talk about curriculum, we're talking about the what. What skills and knowledge piece and which is often confused. The term curriculum, I feel like is often confused with a resource. You adopt a curriculum, no, you adopt a resource to support your curriculum. yeah, so we had spent some time going through that, but what I loved

about our work with the Curriculum Leadership Institute was that it was really, I felt like I had, they helped me take a chaotic moment and streamline it and really organize it, figure out, okay, what am I teaching? How do I teach it? When do I teach it?

how do I know kids got it right? So kind of even those PLC things, all of those PLC pieces, but they brought a process. And so of course, as you can tell, I loved it. It was life-changing for me. And so then I became a consultant because that's really what I want to do for other teachers, other school districts is take that.

chaotic moment because as everyone that's listening knows, like when you're in school, it feels like chaos all the time. And so how do we kind of, I don't know, tighten that up? How do we make it a little less chaotic?

Darrin Peppard (05:57.174)

Yeah.

Darrin Peppard (06:01.025)

Yeah, I love that. And you you said something in there that I definitely want to chase. I'll come back to it in just a moment. But I think it's interesting. And I like how you share this that teaching wasn't necessarily where you thought you were going to be going. That wasn't necessarily your route. And for so many of us, that that wasn't the initial.

That wasn't the thing that got us into education. There's something that tapped us on the shoulder that said, hey, this is what you really should be doing. I'm curious really quick, and then I'm come back to this question I have. I mean, I know you live back in your home state of Vermont now, but you and I met in Wyoming. I know you met your husband in Wyoming. Was it the teaching job that brought you to Wyoming, or was it CLI?

Emily Makelky (06:49.216)

Not neither, neither. So I went out to Wyoming for adventure. When I was graduating, I actually went to a business school. I went to Bentley University back when it was still Bentley College around in Boston. And so my senior year, know, all of the grownups or, know, when you go to the networking events, everybody, their suggestion for my life and my future was

hey, go do something fun now because once you get in the corporate world, basically you're never going to have fun again. I was like, okay, so what do really want to do? And I thought that being a cowgirl sounded so fun. And so I just went online to, think the website was called coolworks.com or something like when I'm in my 21 year old self and like, and I found a

Darrin Peppard (07:23.5)

Yeah.

Emily Makelky (07:46.297)

position at a guest ranch in encampment Wyoming. And so I went out. was not a cowgirl. I pretended to be a cowgirl for sure, but I worked in the dining room. I wasn't even a wrangler. I think I tried to be in there like, you don't have any experience with horses? Like why would I hire you for that? Anyway, so yeah, so I went out for that. And then I think I did that for two years. And then I had friends that were moving to Jackson Hole and I said, well, shoot, I don't have any plans. I'll go to Jackson too.

Darrin Peppard (08:16.609)

Yeah.

Emily Makelky (08:17.031)

So, you know, nobody can actually afford to live in Jackson for very long. So was there for a year and then I moved down to Pinedale. But,

Darrin Peppard (08:21.226)

Right.

Yeah, there you go. I love that. I love that. there's certainly a lot to be said for finding the opportunity to chase an adventure and it ends up becoming the adventure of a lifetime. I love that. So here's what I want to go back to. So you said this, you talked about the difference between resource and curriculum. And I was telling you before we hit the record button when I had taken my superintendent role that

We needed a lot of work with curriculum and a big piece that I ran into and I had to correct others and you'll be proud of me because you were the one who taught me this. We were putting a book on display and saying, yep, that's the curriculum we're going to adopt. I think that's not a curriculum. That's just a resource. We have to understand a curriculum is everything that we do.

Emily Makelky (09:13.742)

Yeah.

Darrin Peppard (09:19.905)

But I'm not the one to profess on that, you are. So let's go deeper. Resource versus curriculum. Just take that and run.

Emily Makelky (09:27.032)

Yes, you know, and let me tell you a story. This is my story, okay, or my experience with this. And I think that this is something that probably a lot of teachers can resonate with or anybody that has taught. So, you know, I had applied to be the computer applications teacher.

But when I was talking to the principal that day and I asked, hey, what is it that I should be teaching? He also let me know that I wasn't just going to be teaching computer applications. I was also teaching Intro to Business, Accounting, Multimedia, Advanced Multimedia, and Yearbook. And I was like, I don't know any of book.

Darrin Peppard (10:02.1)

Yeah. and yearbook. There you go. Yeah.

Emily Makelky (10:07.914)

So that was really like the panic moment for me. Like I'm teaching multimedia. I don't even know what that word means. Like great. So anyway, the only textbook that I actually had was an intro to business textbook that had 28 chapters in it.

But in any given year I could only get through about 13 of those chapters and so if I was Expected, you know, let's say that the directive was I needed to teach that textbook with fidelity Well, shoot. Okay, so I start in chapter 1 and I can get to chapter 13 But what what if in chapter 17 was a chapter about personal finance? Am I supposed to not teach my kids about budgeting, you know or credit, you know and so

So I think that what is most important, yes, I wholeheartedly believe that you should buy resources. You should find something that supports what you need to teach. the step that I think that gets missed most often is let's figure out what must we teach? What are our needs before you go spend millions and millions of dollars adopting a resource?

Darrin Peppard (11:04.787)

Absolutely.

Emily Makelky (11:24.172)

So yeah, you know, and I do think when resources call themselves curriculum, there is a curriculum embedded in that book. Yes, like they do have perhaps the learning targets that they expect you to teach, but you know, that was their prerogative. And I think it's important for every school district to really determine

What are our priorities here? And I think that also kind of the cool thing about developing a local curriculum is that you can weave in kind of like your local voice. So when I lived in Wyoming, it's a huge energy. There's so much oil and gas there. It's all about energy. And so what we would try to do is say, okay, if our goal is to...

develop our students so that they can come back and contribute to Wyoming and be productive citizens in Wyoming. How can we weave in that piece about energy so that they can come back and they'll be successful in a job at least here in the state.

Darrin Peppard (12:41.298)

Absolutely. Well, I think that's, I think that's super important. And one of the things that I think I valued most with working with you guys was being able to think about what is our local context? What is important to us as opposed to just let's buy this mathematics curriculum or this English language arts curriculum as they like to call them. And then of course you, you, you've already thrown it out there. You,

Emily Makelky (13:05.881)

Yeah.

Darrin Peppard (13:10.988)

put out the dreaded F word, let's teach it with fidelity. And in a lot of cases, that's where some of those local complaints will come is, you why are we teaching this piece or why are we talking about this when it may go very contra to the culture of that particular community or of that state? I'd like to go maybe just a touch further here and maybe this gets more into

like standard alignment or teacher voice even here with what are some of the best strategies that leaders can use that are facilitating this? Maybe they haven't reached out to CLI and brought you in to do this work. They're on their own trying to figure out how do we make this something that our community can be proud of, that our teachers can support and that really impact our students.

What are maybe a couple of strategies to kind of start digging into that?

Emily Makelky (14:13.7)

Yeah, you know, I think one thing that I've been thinking a lot about lately, and maybe it's because, you know, I'm a mom of pretty young kids, but is kind of the idea of routines, embedding routines, a system, if you will, into your curriculum work. So I think

you know, as far as like the CLI model for school improvement is what we call it, but it's basically a framework for addressing or developing curriculum or local curriculum and then aligning your instruction assessments to that as well. And so I think when you're looking for that local voice,

developing a committee, of course, rather than asking all of your teachers to sit on that. If you've ever done any sort of committee work, you've probably felt kind of the pain of having a room of 50 people in there and trying to make a decision amongst 50 people. It just doesn't work. It's just too much. So kind of taking a representative group, we call it the subject area committee, but

asking for, hey I need two maybe three representatives from each grade level and having somebody represent your electives those types of things. But they will be kind of that or or be the representative for all of the teachers. So let's say fifth grade you know there are maybe two or three people depending on how big your school district is. Maybe it's larger if you're in a giant school district somewhere like Dallas you know you're gonna have a much bigger committee. But they will be kind of that representative and

and they'll be the spokesperson if you will, like, hey, this is what we're talking about. We also go through kind of the very first step, I suppose, is, hey, let's gather information about what is currently being taught here.

Emily Makelky (16:12.534)

And that is a survey really that goes out to all of the teachers and says, hey, we value what you've been doing. We're not coming in here to overhaul and say, this is what you must now be doing without actually finding out what have you been doing? You we want to hold on to the great things. We want to know what it is that you value. And so that's where we kind of get that opportunity or give that opportunity, I'm sorry, to find out what is it that you're teaching. And specifically though,

Teachers kind of like to say, I teach the standards. And it's just that one sentence. I teach the standards. Well, what we actually want to find out is what

how are you interpreting that standard? What is it that you're teaching that you think really is that standard or meets that standard? Because a lot of the aha moment is, those teachers really think that they're teaching the standards, but they're actually not quite achieving at the level that they need to be. I feel like I'm going off. I'll bring it back to the local voice.

Darrin Peppard (17:12.683)

Yeah.

Emily Makelky (17:15.88)

So anyway, I was talking about the subject area committee at the center of all of the work that we do and what I would absolutely encourage all districts to do, whether you use CLI or not, is developing what we call the Curriculum Coordinating Council. And really, it's just kind of this decision-making council or governing council, if you will, who monitors curriculum and assessment work.

talks about what issues are we having here and then also problem solves those. And I think there is an opportunity to have a parent representation on that. If you can get a school board member to volunteer some more time, you know, to hop on that committee, that's another great place that you can kind of get that voice as well. Did that answer?

Darrin Peppard (18:01.279)

Yeah, no, I really appreciate that. And I think, you know, certainly getting as many voices represented as possible without having an overwhelming number is certainly very, very important. And you said something there that I'd like to maybe chase after a little bit more, and that's simply developing systems.

This is something that I've run into both in my work as a principal and as a superintendent, but then also my work now working with so many schools and districts across the country that the focus on curriculum, and I really think, I'm gonna bird walk for a second, I really think a big part of why the lack of systems or the patchwork quilt, if you will, when it comes to curriculum,

think a lot of that comes from a lot of leadership turnover. A simple example, when I came in as the superintendent in the district where you and I work together, we took the steps of let's find out what is everybody teaching. And my curriculum person, Laura, went and did kind of an audit. And we focused just on language arts as an example. And two unit building.

grades K through five. So, 10 or 12 total teachers. We had like 19 resources we were using for English language arts. No wonder our scores were a mess. But it wasn't necessarily on the teachers. That was multiple administrators, lots of turnover and a lack of systems.

I know much of the work you do is all around building systems. You've already talked about it with that, that, you know, the curriculum coordinating council with, with the subject area committee. Those are certainly important pieces. What are some other really important systems? And you know, I'm driving here at least at one in particular that I think very highly of that are important that leaders should be thinking about. These are the types of systems we should be building around our curriculum process.

Emily Makelky (20:22.436)

Well, you know, I think all of the work that we do, kind of the intent is that it will lead to collaboration, right? Teacher collaboration. Call it whatever acronym you want to. But kind of the idea is that we want you to have tools in place so that you can regularly monitor what you're doing, you know, what your neighbors are doing.

or not your neighbors, but your fellow teachers are doing to just improve. And I think the thing about developing a system is that it kind of creates a sense of calm or it helps to make people feel more comfortable because they know what to expect. So thinking about, this year we are giving our curriculum

an overhaul. Perhaps we have literally never written a local curriculum ever. So it's going to be a heavy lift. Okay, that's scary. Got it. but then after that you develop kind of this long range plan. Okay. So after, you know, five more years or depending on what your, maybe your state standard cycle is, maybe it's nine years down the road. Great. but perhaps then you revisit it and you have an idea of what it looks like. However, along the way, whether it's in your collaborative work,

you're kind of looking and seeing, does this curriculum still work? I have my target. Now, how did my instruction work? Did this assessment completely align? know, looking at it and you know, like I kind of hate throwing out the word data because I feel like that's one of those words that teachers now are like, good God, please don't talk to me about data anymore because they don't necessarily know how to use it or nobody's really using it effectively. But.

Darrin Peppard (22:05.93)

Yeah.

Darrin Peppard (22:14.003)

Right.

Emily Makelky (22:14.668)

That really is the idea is that you've got these tools to look at what's working and what isn't working and then make adjustments as you go. Really hoping or kind of keeping the idea in there that like it's okay that you didn't do it right the first time. Nobody does, you know, or it's rare that you will, but as long as you're trying to improve and get better, like that's really the focus.

Darrin Peppard (22:41.02)

Absolutely. So hearing you say that takes me back. One of the districts I work with very recently was having a conversation with one of the administrators. They're just kind of starting into some of their curriculum work as well. And one of the struggles the principal was having was as they're doing some collaborative work around different pieces, the team, and in this case, I'm pretty sure it was social studies.

they had gone through and they had identified their priority standards and some of those things, unpacking their standards and apparently they're not very happy with how they did them, but one of the things that was said was, no, we put so much work into that, we're not doing anything to change that. So your perspective there of look at it like it's a work in progress, be okay with continuing to modify it, I think is really important.

The other thing too that I heard you say was, you know, okay, this year, you know, we've got to find a way to adopt a local curriculum. And if I'm in a district or, you know, let's say I'm a brand new superintendent or I'm a brand new curriculum director, I've just kind of gotten my feet under me in this new place that I am. And I'm discovering that we need a major overhaul to mathematics, but we also need a major overhaul to English language arts.

We really need to focus on modern language. We also have a real struggle in social studies, right? Right, on and on and on. How do you, prioritize and two, how do you set up a system that's fair so that not everybody's running to the front of the line saying, no, but we need to look at PE and health. wait, wait, wait, we need to look at, fill in the blank. How do you prioritize and develop a system around that?

Emily Makelky (24:10.167)

Yeah.

Emily Makelky (24:18.436)

Mm-hmm.

Emily Makelky (24:27.086)

Yeah.

Emily Makelky (24:31.68)

Yeah, well we have something that's called a long range plan and actually for anybody that's interested and wants a free template or free resource, if you go to our website, we've got a free resource right there and you can even honestly sign up for a free session with a consultant that will help you figure out how to go through it.

Darrin Peppard (24:51.528)

We will put links to that in the show notes for you folks.

Emily Makelky (24:54.848)

Love it. but yeah, so developing kind of a long range plan, we like to think of it as, you know what, let's look 10 years out. Because I really think it's important and you and I had talked about this before, but to go slow to go fast. Yes, we know that...

there are issues or there are likely going to be issues in all of your content areas. And if you've never done curriculum work systematically like this before, then chances are you've got eight or nine content areas that need to go through the process. But what happens if you don't kind of prioritize and identify which content areas are going in which year, then you've got your elementary teachers.

who teach five core subjects that now have to overhaul their curriculum and relearn everything all in the same year. And I promise you, you will have a max as exodus of elementary teachers if you decide to go that way. So I do think, you know, there are some different things that you can look at as far as prioritizing which core content area goes first, you know, your state standards and whatever requirements or accountability.

needs to happen. That's obviously very important. I would say also looking at your data, what there's the d word, but what what are your scores showing? Where where are you most struggling? You know, there's a lot obviously going on right now with science of reading and really prioritizing literacy.

So typically when we move into a school district, we do a lot of work with math or ELA first off, although I'll tell you my favorite content area to start with is actually social studies. And the reason is because social studies is relatively broad. know, standards for math tend to be pretty precise and there's a lot of them. So there isn't a ton of wiggle room.

Emily Makelky (26:58.816)

in math. Kind of same thing with ELA, although there's there's kind of a shift from having a whole lot of standards now to like some states, Wyoming, you know, and actually North Carolina also is narrowing down the number of their standards significantly. But the thing about social studies is you still have core teachers, so elementary teachers are still teaching that and they kind of see how the process

goes for really identifying what needs to be taught, know, adding that criteria as far as it's written from the student's perspective. It's written in measurable terms. There's an end result, you know, those kinds of things. But social studies, I think when you're trying to get your school district on board, I just feel like social studies is a really great one to start with if you can. If not, if you have to start with, you know, math or ELA, I get it. But

But yeah, so kind of, and then also looking at your resource adoption cycle. If you've got a resource adoption coming up, then of course I would say hold off on buying the resource until you've written or developed your local curriculum first.

Darrin Peppard (28:15.688)

Yeah, absolutely. Now they're very solid advice there. I love that so, so very much, man. I could just keep chasing after more and more pieces that you share. I know you and I are going to be in North Carolina together. You mentioned North Carolina. We'll be at NCMLE together late in March. Looking forward to that. But man, our time has just absolutely flown by. So at this point, Emily, I'm going to ask you the same question I ask everybody here on the podcast. This is the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. So how are you leaning into leadership right now?

Emily Makelky (28:32.152)

Yeah.

Emily Makelky (28:45.73)

You know, I knew that you were going to ask me that question when I went for my walk at lunch. And the thing that I really want to talk about is how or want to say is how are we

empower. I'm going to use the word empower which again I feel like is kind of a jargony education word but when you are working with a school district how often do you see in their mission statement the word empower? Empower our students to blah blah blah blah. So how how we are leaning into leadership I would say is that we are empowering teachers to be curriculum leaders right? They're not just receiving a resource

and saying, okay, open it up to page one, but instead they're being able to be experts in curriculum or experts, least in their content and say, no, here we are. I know my community of students. know this school district and I know that this is what we need to teach here. I don't know, what do you think? What do you think about that answer?

Darrin Peppard (29:48.19)

I think that's fantastic. I love that. I think the more we can do, honestly, to empower our teachers and to honor their experience, their knowledge, their local connection, their ability to bring what we say is important to life with our kids is absolutely imperative. And I think a lot of times, sometimes in leadership, that gets overlooked.

Emily Makelky (30:17.646)

Mm-hmm.

Darrin Peppard (30:17.713)

And in the decision-making processes with resource adoptions, with the development of curriculum, those types of things, I've seen a lot of places that they don't leverage the teacher voice, the teacher experience, and the teacher knowledge. And so I think that's an exceptional answer. And I'm going to tell you this, Emily, people are definitely going to want to get connected with you and with CLI.

We'll certainly put some stuff in their show notes, but what are some of the best ways for them to get in touch with you?

Emily Makelky (30:48.502)

You know, honestly, if you go to our website, cliweb.org, you can do a lot. I mean, you can reach out to any of us. I monitor our info at cliweb.org. So if you just kind of say, hey, I want to contact, I'm going to be the one that calls you. And then of course we've got our socials. All of those are on cliweb.org. So I would say kind of the easiest thing to do is go to our website and check us out.

Darrin Peppard (31:18.875)

Absolutely, and I would tell you too folks you've got to go to the website just simply too and then somehow find a way to get a sticker I'm in the throes of packing or I would share one of my I have five or six of the curriculum ninja stickers and you definitely want We're gonna check this out. Yeah, here we go for those of you on YouTube You're gonna get to see the curriculum ninja sticker It's worth it

Emily Makelky (31:18.943)

It's in.

Emily Makelky (31:33.452)

I got one right here. on.

Emily Makelky (31:42.392)

gosh, I it.

Darrin Peppard (31:44.999)

Hey, if you're in North Carolina, make sure you go to NCMLE so you can get a Curriculum Ninja sticker. There we go, look at that. Love that so very much. Yeah, that is perfect, I love it. All right, hey, Emily, thanks so much for joining me here on the show. This was an absolute blast. It's always so much fun to catch up with you, my friend.

Emily Makelky (32:02.072)

Thank you so much for having me. It is a pleasure.

All right, what an incredible conversation there with Emily McKelkey. I just genuinely had such a wonderful time hanging out with her. What's really cool, Emily and I will both be at the NCMLE conference in Charlotte at the end of March, at the end of this month. Really excited to see Emily in person. Folks, I'm telling you, if you are looking for somebody to support you in that curriculum alignment work, it gets absolutely no better than.

the Curriculum Leadership Institute. So make sure you go check them out. We've got links down in the show notes. Emily has given you some free resources. So make sure you go and check those things out. And now it's time for a pep talk. You know, I've been waffling a little bit on the pep talk for this week. And I think the thing I want to talk about here relates to something that I wrote about in the blog this week.

I was having a conversation with a leader earlier this week and one of the things that they shared with me was how their boss has a tendency, their supervisor, to be very reactionary and very impatient. And sometimes it's a real challenge to work with those reactionary and impatient leaders.

Darrin Peppard (06:46.325)

What I told that individual, and I think one of the pieces of advice I would give everybody here, and I do want to give you an actionable step with this, is make sure that you're taking that pause and taking a step back and thinking, are the things that they're coming at with me, that because of me, or is it some type of an insecurity with that other individual? Oftentimes what happens is leaders will rise through the ranks and they'll get to a place where they're not as confident in their own abilities.

as they were in a different role. And what they tend to do is over-correct and become impatient or feel like they need to jump in or feel like they're going to micromanage the other members within the group simply because they're maybe lacking a little bit of confidence or simply lacking the knowledge they need to be successful in the role that they're currently in.

My suggestion to the leader I had the conversation with, my suggestion to you if you're dealing with this type of situation, is actually be curious with that individual. Don't get angry, don't fire back, but maybe just ask a couple real good questions about what it is that they're really asking of you. In the case of the individual I was talking with, it was every single time there's an issue and this is somebody that's in a corporate space, every time there seems to be an issue, it's,

How do we cut cost? How do we cut cost? How do we cut cost? And in this person's role, their job is to go out and procure more leads and to close more of those leads. But what their boss keeps thinking is, how do we take other things off your plate? How do we take things off your plate? And the truth is, instead of cutting costs, what they need to do is really focus on how do we grow more revenue and trying to, you know,

cut that person down or slow that person down in the work that they're doing is not ultimately the answer. So if you have that person who's impatient, that person who tends to maybe be very reactionary, take a pause, ask them a couple of questions, see if you can get them to open up a little bit, and maybe, just maybe, you'll find the thing in there that's really what they're struggling with. Hey, that's what I got for you this week, folks.

Darrin Peppard (09:06.584)

Thanks so much for listening to me here on the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. As always, make sure you rate, subscribe, and review, and then share this show with somebody else who might also enjoy Leaning Into Leadership. Have a road to awesome week.