Episode 277: Redefining Educator Professionalism with Dr. Nason Lollar

Darrin Peppard (00:00.722)

All right, my friends, welcome into episode 277 of the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. One of the biggest challenge in your school isn't student behavior, but adult behavior. Not in a negative way, but in the small everyday decisions that ultimately shape culture, safety, and trust. Because the truth is most breakdowns in schools don't come from big dramatic moments. They come from the little things.

It's a missed duty here. It's a conversation avoided there. Maybe it's even a message not clearly communicated. Over time, those things add up. That's why today's conversation matters so much. Now, before we jump into it, I want to take a moment and thank our amazing sponsor, HeyTutor. If you've ever felt the pressure of trying to meet student needs while also managing everything else on your plate, you are not alone.

One of the biggest challenges I hear from school leaders is this, we know what our students need, we just don't have the systems or the capacity to consistently deliver it. That's where HeyTutor comes in. They provide high dosage tutoring in both math and English language arts, both in person and online with trained tutors integrate directly into your school system. It's not another thing for your teachers to manage, it's a system of support that actually works alongside your team.

aligned to your standards, backed by data, and designed to make an impact. Because when we talk about professionalism, culture, and doing what's best for kids, we also have to make sure we have the right structures in place to support that work. To learn more, go to heytutor.com or hit the link down in the show notes. Once again, that's heytutor.com. Make sure you mention to him, you heard about him here on the Leaning Into Leadership podcast.

Okay friends, so here on this episode number 277, I've got a great conversation lined up with my friend, Dr. Nason Lawler. And Nason is principal of Germantown Middle School in Mississippi. He is the author of the five principles of educator professionalism. And I'll tell you right now, this conversation hits on something we don't talk often enough about in leadership, professionalism. Not as a checklist of don'ts, not a compliance document, but a direct

Darrin Peppard (02:20.172)

reflection of your culture. Now, Nason introduces a framework built around the word trust. And what I love about it is it gives leaders a way to define expectations without leading through fear or gotcha moments. Instead, it simply creates clarity. It builds alignment and it helps every adult in the building understand how they contribute to a culture of learning.

So if you've ever struggled with holding adults accountable without damaging relationships, defining expectations clearly, or even just building a culture where everyone is pulling in the same direction, this episode is gonna give you something you can use right away. Let's get to it with my friend, Nason Lawler. I'll see you on the other side.

Darrin Peppard (00:00.771)

Alright folks, welcome back into the show. My guest today on the show is Nason Lawler, principal from Mississippi. Nason, thanks so much for joining me here on the show.

Nason (00:10.722)

Hey Darren, thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here.

Darrin Peppard (00:14.287)

Yeah, for sure. I'm looking forward to this conversation and folks, what we're going to be talking about really is educator professionalism. We're going to talk a little bit about some of the stuff from Nason's book, The Five Principles of Educator Professionalism. Really, really great book. When I read through this book and when you and I had our first conversation, the thing that really resonated in my mind was when you go through

your master's program or your principal preparation program. There's all these different parts, things that you go through. And frankly, I don't think any of them really prepare you to be a principal, but no disrespect to you, literally any program out there, but until you sit in the chair, right, you're not ready. But the thing that always stands out to me, and I've said this countless times in keynotes and the principals I coach and all that kind of stuff is they never tell you.

that it's not the kids that'll get you. It's the adults. It's the adult behavior that just makes you shake your head. mean, kids do dumb things because they're kids. Adults, some of the things that they choose to do just make you shake your head a little bit. So that's what I want to talk about today. Before we do that though, I want to give you a chance just really quick, Nason, to let our audience know a little bit about you.

Nason (01:34.914)

Yeah. Well, thanks again. I really appreciate the opportunity to chat for a few minutes. I have I'm in year 26 as an educator all in Mississippi.

public schools, spent 14 in the classroom teaching math, history, coached several different sports, baseball, cross country football, had a chance to move into the administration and took an assistant principal position at a high school in the Madison area here in Mississippi. Spent nine years as an AP and in a wonderful school community, learned so much.

from my team that I was so fortunate to serve with and a ton of dedicated professionals who were just so good at what they do in a classroom, in their support roles, all those. I spent the previous two years of my career as a CTE principal, which was an,

great experience because it opened my eyes to a field within our field that I had never spent any time in and probably learned more than anybody that was enrolled in that school or that worked in it for those two years, but it was wonderful to get that experience. recently this year, I'm new to Germantown Middle School, a sixth, seventh and eighth grade school, a little over a thousand students in Gluckstadt, Mississippi. And just very fortunate to

here again with tons of dedicated professionals who are just so devoted to serving the community and serving it really well. obviously the grad school was a big part of my life too. I spent many hours going through master's, specialist's and doctorate programs and that overarching theme like you talked about with

Nason (03:33.656)

things they teach you about in the educator admin prep programs. One of the things that I guess it just stuck in my mind really from probably 15 years ago of grad school was my first admin degree. I can remember scenario after scenario that would come up in those preparation classes and they were crafted and it seemed to be

a exercise where the instructor would want you to find a needle in a haystack basically. know, issues piled on top of issues that then you would have to try to prioritize and figure out what's the right way to handle the most important thing out of a plethora of issues going on in one incident. And as I got into my admin career, I realized through several different methods.

but talking through and winding up in conversations with the adults in the building was that these wild scenarios that just are really far flung, yes, they can happen and they do sometimes. But the things that really trip us up and can cause a division within a school community are more likely to be those day-to-day type actions where you're dealing with someone who

is on an assignment that they're supposed to cover every single day and they're on a duty assignment and then they've got to go copy tests. And so they're a few minutes late and wouldn't you know it, that's the day that in that middle school, boys get into a fight in a bathroom and it's not covered by the adults. It's those, those crazy scenarios where the day to day is just the mundane is really the areas where

Darrin Peppard (06:35.48)

Yeah. Yeah.

Nason (06:48.492)

we can get tripped up because we end up adding so many things to our plates that that one thing may get switched around on the priority level and then that timing factor can kick in and the kids, you know, that's the day where they find an issue and you wind up with a fight in a bathroom when you were supposed to be covering a supervision assignment and you're five minutes late. All of those issues to me,

are critical, but they happen so often. It's easy for us to lose the focus of just how critical some of those big issues are that we're supposed to meet as responsibilities for safety. I think that probably.

motivated me a lot as I wound up in those conversations with the folks I was working with. And the more I did professional development centered around that type of conduct conversation, the more I realized we need to find a way to make this conversation positive so that we're not only talking about it whenever the door's closed. We've got to have a witness.

And we're really, everyone in the room, the only objective is to get it over with and get out of there as soon as possible because it's so awkward. And I think a lot of that's where this idea of a trust framework comes from, that you can turn this into a positive conversational conduct, but it takes a lot of ground work on the front end, I guess, is probably where I'm coming from with that.

Darrin Peppard (08:25.325)

Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I think, you know, too, as I was going through the book, one of the things that they hit me, and I think you know this about me, I'm very much about building and maintaining that positive culture and climate. I think, and I know you are the same way, if we're not building that culture where everybody feels like they're part of something special and they understand what their role is, that...

That's when we start to see people just operating in silos and operating maybe without full understanding of expectation or maybe even being willing to take accountability for their own actions, right? But that, to me, that was like one of the very much an underlying and sometimes just a right straight out type of thing in the book of, is as much about building culture.

Nason (09:02.826)

Exactly. Exactly.

Darrin Peppard (09:16.425)

as it is about holding individuals to a standard or to an expectation or something like that. Let's go back to, you told me something the first time you and I had a conversation about this, long before obviously hitting the recording button, that there was some work, and you were starting to refer to it a little bit, but you started noticing the need for really pushing to the positive side of building

Nason (09:20.813)

Yes.

Darrin Peppard (09:46.733)

the obviously the trust framework comes from that. So just build on that story a little bit more.

Nason (09:53.198)

Yes. Oh, I'd be glad to. I'm glad that just a second ago before you went into that, you talked about the importance of culture. The backstory on how I have somehow found my way into trying to define one of the hardest terms that you can come up with because the job of being an educator is so complex.

defining professionalism has taken me a while. And I think culture is a big piece of that. I led professional development in my AP role at Germantown High School, where we took one entire year of our Mississippi's educator code of ethics.

which really functions as a code of ethics and a code of conduct at the same time. Dual purpose, two totally different types of documents, almost combined into one. It's a very helpful document for educators in our state, but the conduct side is really the only thing that gets pushed, particularly when you're talking about administrators speaking with their staff.

And understandably so, those are the things that we're not supposed to do. I was so, I guess I can remember being pleasantly surprised the more I dug into that code, the more that code of ethics side where it was, I would see the values behind where these code of conduct rules were coming from was so much more positive than the

Standard Four about educator-student relationships that has all this laundry list of things that could get you put in jail and, you know, in your career, all of those nightmare scenarios, and realized how much ground we could cover.

Nason (11:51.214)

on the 4.1 of that same standard that talks about nurturing student abilities and how you're a mentor and a coach for these students to create an environment where they're comfortable learning. After walking through that PD with my staff and then actually following it up with a book study PD the next year with a mutual friend of ours, Jimmy Casas,

had such a wonderful experience leading the cultureized book study, something clicked in my head where I realized, you know, there is no resource for anybody on professional conduct outside of whatever that hard document you have in your state or your district handbook of the rules of things you shouldn't do. And then as an anecdotal...

In addition to all of that, you know, the day to day where you're sitting down in the office and talking to the adults in the building, not always conversations where they've messed up, but just the reminder that...

it would be great if we had something that could point to school culture and help us minimize some of these lapses that we deal with because we're human. I mean, we're all going to make mistakes from time to time. And so I think that's all of that kind of tumbled together in my mind to arrive at this definition for professionalism. And that definition is to link conduct to culture.

I define professionalism as an educator's contribution, their personal contribution to their school's culture of learning. And I think when you can link that to an individual contribution to culture, that opens the door to so many more positive conversations. And if we can keep ourselves occupied with those positive, like the five aspects of that framework,

Nason (13:54.434)

then there's just so much good that can come from it. And it also highlights the good that's already going on in our buildings without having to go through the do not do X, do not do Y, and never do it, you know. So hopefully that gives administrators a positive conversation starter that they can use to support their staff.

Darrin Peppard (14:16.449)

Yeah, and I think I appreciate all of that. I would take it a step further and say it definitely does what you just said. It definitely serves as a conversation starter, but I also think in many ways that it can serve as, you know, the trust framework almost as like, here are the things that we hold important in our school, those core values.

Nason (14:43.598)

Yes.

Darrin Peppard (14:44.899)

And especially early career leaders, that's one of the things that they struggle with is how do I express what I truly care about and what I truly need to see, but do it in a way where, again, it's not a here's my list of non-negotiables or here's my, I can't stand that phrase, or here's my thou shalt nots or whatever, right? So here's what I'd like to do actually is,

Nason (15:10.072)

Yes.

Darrin Peppard (15:15.331)

for everybody who's listening, watching on YouTube, let's go through the trust framework. And if you'll give me the space to do this, I wanna take them one by one. I'm gonna say, know, T and explain and say what that is, but then I want you to just kind of run with that just a little bit. We'll go through each of the five because I just think, I think they do exactly what you said. And then what I said to build on that, it's this is an opportunity maybe that.

Nason (15:25.954)

Yeah, I would say.

Nason (15:30.798)

Yeah.

Darrin Peppard (15:44.255)

especially that younger, less experienced, maybe is a better phrase, school leader can say, okay, this gives me something to lean into as here's some core principles for us. T in trust, teaching and learning always come first. And I love that you led with this.

Nason (15:53.517)

Yeah.

Nason (16:04.204)

obvious, right? It should be. No, there is, I guess, a sort of a priority to the order of the trust. I think they're all invaluable to a successful school community. But teaching and learning is the reason why we're in this building in the first place. And so I think it's an obvious lead for a framework like this because

Darrin Peppard (16:07.491)

Should be.

Nason (16:31.95)

Teaching and learning together both have to happen. And so there are certain checkpoints within that. Obviously, any educator, any teacher, they're going to have content specifics that would go into this as well. But I think there are a lot of commonalities within all schools, all types of schools, professional learning.

has to be a priority if you're gonna have a strong culture of learning. Collaboration has to be a priority if you're gonna have a strong culture of learning within your school. How to select and use the appropriate data to make decisions about teaching, to make decisions about how you lead the school, to make decisions about everything, because we live in a culture, a world of data today, so being able to select the proper data to do that.

and how you work together with it. All of those factor into that. What makes teaching and learning the most important thing that we do? Talk a little bit about lesson plans in there. Everybody's got a different opinion on lesson plans. Every administrator has a different opinion on them. One of the key features within that framework is that there are guiding principles that are that.

hard boundary everyone needs to follow. And so each aspect of that framework has a guiding principles for that specific principle of professionalism. So for teaching and learning being a priority, there are a lot of parts of that aspect of professionalism that are going to be answered by your district leadership.

What's the priority in an observation for me to meet as an administrator walks in to evaluate me? Well that could be different from district to district So talking through that in terms of how we view our role How do I meet the expectations of my role and then how do do that in a way that?

Nason (18:37.91)

reaches every student in the classroom? How do we meet our expectation for equity? How do we reach every kid in every desk? Those are what we talk about in that first principle of educator professionalism. Teaching and learning is the longest chapter as well because of that, because there's so many aspects to what we do.

Darrin Peppard (19:03.202)

Yeah, absolutely. But it's an extremely important chapter. a few of the things that you said in there, think, well, so much of what you said in there is really important. the aspect of not just focusing on teaching and learning, being student to teacher, but that that learning of the adult is just so, so very important as well. Loved that so much. The R in trust, remain vigilant.

to safety concerns.

Nason (19:35.052)

Yes. So, another feature of this book, I talked about scenarios early on in our conversation and in each of these chapters, there is a scenario that's going to capture some of the more run of the mill.

type scenarios that can happen in any given school on any given day. And so I think the scenario for remain vigilant to school safety does a really good job of highlighting how every single person in the building shares a responsibility for that. This particular scenario stars a custodian who is vigilant because he's always got his ears open.

He knows kids, he understands those kids. He's a member of the community. He probably knows a lot of them by name, but he overhears things and he makes note and he's very observant. And so when he goes to close a prompt door, he ends up saving the day because he puts two and two together and a lot of other people in the building didn't. And I think that highlights we obviously, when we talk about safety,

There's no end to the nightmare scenarios that can come up in conversations like this. I don't think that's the only aspect of school safety we should pay attention to. We obviously do own our safety protocols within our buildings. there are, unfortunately for you, I did use the word non-negotiable here when I was in this chapter, but it's only related to the safety though, because I would agree with you that word.

Darrin Peppard (21:10.636)

I'll allow it.

Nason (21:17.41)

could be a bit overused, but I don't think we have the opportunity to interpret anything in a safety protocol. But I do feel like school safety, it entails a lot of stuff. We want kids to be comfortable in a classroom, willing to take chances and take a risk.

and let other people know that they may not understand something. That's how learning is going to take place. So that means the environment's got to be safe, bullying, fights, how we report things, as our role as mandatory reporter. All of those things factor into school safety. It's not just a, quote, lock-down protocol, although that is huge. But one of the biggest points that I make

in the chapter on school safety is that at heart, every educator in America has to have an understanding that no one, not a single one of us is immune to any of these lapses at any time. And to me, that's how the word vigilance is appropriate for this principle because we, you know,

We may have our tactics that we can do to keep a school safe, but our ability to be disciplined in what that protocol is, is generally the most effective thing that we can do as educators to keep a school safe.

Darrin Peppard (22:51.778)

Yeah, I appreciate the scenarios in each of them. And actually this one was my favorite. And one, because it wasn't about a classroom teacher, it wasn't about an administrator, it was a custodian. it actually, I like how you kind of broke down that this chapter is not just about active shooter, it's so much more. Actually the custodian scenario, even though this isn't what it was about, it got me thinking back to...

Nason (22:57.474)

Yes.

Darrin Peppard (23:21.89)

even just being vigilant about little things like slips, trips, and falls and, you know, the walking the building as an administrator, not just to get from one place to the other, but that you're paying attention to little things here and there. I mean, I did a, you know, I would love to say every week, but typically it ended up being about every other week walk of the building with my custodian, with my lead custodian.

And we didn't do the whole building every time. It was, you know, let's meet in this part of the building or let's go, you know, hey, let's go for a walk over here. And sometimes it was outside with the grounds, but I just, really appreciated how you really focused safety on all of the aspects of safety, not just the one that we all think about, the nightmare scenario like you talked about.

Nason (24:09.304)

So there and one thing I'll say to that one thanks for mentioning that there were plenty of times as I was going through drafts of this book where I wondered why I had chosen professionalism to write about because as I was crafting this framework, I wanted it to apply to everyone that has a hand in education. So that's all the support staff. It's central office.

It's all admin. There's the specialist. There's the coaches, obviously the classroom teachers.

They all have a different role to play, but all of their roles center around this framework in some way. Being able to quantify that in a way that could be applicable to everybody was not the easiest job. that there were plenty of times where I struggled with why did I choose this? It's too hard. Those jobs are too complex. And I finally, think one of the biggest steps in being able to actually finish the book was

the idea that I don't need to go more specific. It needs to be simpler, not necessarily easy, but simpler. And when you're looking at safety, I don't know if there's a more simple concept or one that's more difficult to meet when you're talking about remaining vigilant safety, because you know, everything we do is every day is, is important in that regard. So, yeah, I appreciate saying that.

Darrin Peppard (25:38.432)

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no, yeah, 100%. Okay, so let's keep the ball rolling here. So the you in trust is understand the power of communication. Love this because, man, communication is such a huge piece and it's, well, I'm not gonna say all this, because I know you're going to, because I've read this. So let's talk communication.

Nason (25:48.705)

Yes.

Nason (25:57.134)

So I mentioned that it was a, the framework basically goes in an order of priority, but it's really hard to distinguish the one, the one A and the one AA because I really feel like communication.

you can make a really good case that that's the most important thing we do every day because teaching and learning and safety are built on how we communicate. And if you really do boil it down into what we do in our work in schools, again, regardless of what your role is, all we do is literally talk to people all day. And so,

You've got official communication that I mean we've got to document what we do a thousand different ways depending on your role That paperwork looks different But we've got the unofficial communication how you communicate through your attitude Which might be even bigger and then the part that we all could stand to learn to do better. How do we listen? If we can't do that, well

well, we're really wasting a lot of people's time. And so I think all three of those factor in together because we all stress so much as school leaders over accountability models and graduation rates and all of those things that we try to quantify to show that our school is doing the job that we want it to do.

But at the end of the day, our school community is going to judge us by how well we do those three aspects of communication. I certainly want my school to attain the highest rating possible. And I know everyone shares that goal. But if the parents that surround my school and send their kids into my building,

Nason (27:51.947)

can't really understand the messaging that we're putting out or when they don't feel listened to when they come in to meet with a teacher or a principal. I don't know that they'll care so much about whatever that accountability rating is but they will every time care on how that communication aspect works.

And so that's why I say you could make a good case that communication is absolutely as important as the teaching and learning and the safety aspect. The different scenarios in this chapter are more personal for me.

And hopefully, not necessarily because my stories are so good, but I know that every single person who has spent time in a school can also point to mentors and colleagues and friends who have shared similar type of positive, uplifting communication outlets.

in their lives too that really meant a lot to their development. And so hopefully it helps jogs people's memories of why they're doing what they're doing as well.

Darrin Peppard (29:05.503)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I, you know, I love that, that you hit all three of those because I, I really feel like, and again, if you're an early career leader listening right now, a key piece right here and, and Nason hit it really well, but one of the most overlooked, but most important aspects of communication is that listening part.

It's one thing to have the written communication or the oral communication or you're pushing things out on social media or your parent square or whatever you're using. yeah, people want to feel like they've been listened to. Most of your angry parents who come charging in the door, the number one thing they really want, they probably don't know it, but what they really want is to be heard. And yeah, you got to listen.

Nason (29:45.144)

Yeah.

Nason (29:52.044)

Yeah, I would have to say I would have to say on that note, my just personally, my career as an administrator got a lot better when I learned how to properly apologize because now you don't want to do it too often, but.

When you listen and you really hear that message and the desires and a lot of times that is apparent that you're talking to in that type of conversation, they feel seen and heard when you can do that properly.

for, you know, depending on how that situation works out. But I felt like that was a big part. maybe COVID burned that into me, with all that time on the phone. but that's, that's a big aspect of it. The listening, I don't know that we'll ever get to the level that we hope to, to get when it comes to listening well. But I would say that being able to take bad news in a good way is probably one of the more important, aspects of school leadership that

I don't remember that being in any of my books or lessons in any of that grad school, but that's another one that in the room when you're dealing with a tough situation, that's sometimes the only way you'll get out of that room.

Darrin Peppard (31:13.853)

Absolutely. Listen to understand, don't listen to respond. Okay, so let's keep it moving here. Let's go to S, which is just seek.

Nason (31:23.702)

Yes, you will hear a lot of people talk badly about that word balance and I will become frustrated myself with it at times. This chapter to me would not have been a principle of educator professionalism for my parents generation as educators.

And I don't say that to make light of the work they did. I know it was extremely hard. I knew full well how hard it was because I would hear them. My dad was a principal. Before that he taught. My mom was a teacher. But the...

The culture that we're in today, if you can't properly take care of yourself, I think balance is a way to think of professional conduct that helps you finish that sentence of taking care of others if you take care of yourself. Change is one of the few constants in our business and being able to handle it properly.

I think it's a big part of that seeking personal balance. Some of it's mental, to be fair, how our mindset manages that change. I think it's important for how we think about it. It's also important when we see that first resistance pop up in our head to realize most of our job is built on change that happened at some point previous to us. And so if we're going to get to the good from it, sometimes we do have to fight through some difficult times as a growing pain.

bit of personal conversation in there about self care. I'm not a fan of a lot of the self care literature that's out there today or the conversations that take place because a lot of it seems like escapism and not very healthy. So how to take stock of yourself to really analyze, am I taking care of myself? And if I'm not, or I'm having a hard time mentally, emotionally, spiritually, whatever, how can I break that down to assess what do I really need to confront?

Nason (33:27.664)

Obviously technology is a big part of this too and how we manage that. think that's probably a pretty common conversation these days, thankfully.

But it's all also it's not a psychology book, so there are plenty of professionals and I'm also I've got to mention that I'm thankful and mentioned this in this chapter that the employee assistance programs where there are professionals that most school districts are setting up processes for their employees to take advantage of the stigma is going away from that. Thank goodness that's a really important aspect to it too. I think all those things wrap up together so that you you are able to maintain.

yourself over the long haul because the the times that we live in your audience will not need me to tell them they already know well how hard it can be for educators today so the proper mindset going into this work I think is another thing that makes it valuable as an aspect of professionalism

Darrin Peppard (34:36.628)

Yeah, absolutely. And I like how you approach that in there. that, one, you didn't stay away from the word balance, but the way that you approached balance, I think, was really important. And then the final T in trust is take ownership of our morale.

Nason (34:56.908)

Yeah, so as a school leadership audience, I know that your audience is as well versed in school morale, teacher morale, and as school leaders, we're in trouble if we do not concern ourselves with the morale within our building.

But I don't think we can take full responsibility for it either. We certainly can't ignore it. But the morale conversation really does come around to everyone. Everyone has to confront their own mindset and morale.

I think there's a really good conversation for us to have in terms of being able to hash out and understand the definition between school culture, the habits, which I would say fit the conduct aspect of what we're talking about in this book, but there's also a climate aspect. And I think that morale is your personal climate within the school. So.

I think both of those things wrap in together to achieve a good morale.

because you want to be effective at what you do, but you also want to enjoy the place you work at. One of the biggest things that comes up in this chapter is the fact that if we can't tell the truth within our school buildings with each other as professionals, then not only are we lying to ourselves, but each time that takes place, we hurt the culture and the climate together and you can set that thing up. if that decision happens enough,

Nason (36:40.75)

then it becomes a runaway train that no one can stop. So one of the biggest aspects of that is being able to understand the difference between a negative, which is guaranteed to happen when you put a thousand or more people together in a building for 180 days, and negativity. So those negatives we can confront. We've got to be honest about the causes of them. And we can't let them sit because if we do, that means someone, it's

at someone's expense. Negativity is what sets in if we allow it. And so if we ignore those negatives enough, and if we just try to tell our leaders what they want to hear in hopes of pleasing them in the moment or ending a conversation to get back to what it was that I wanted to do, that's where the status quo can become a safety blanket.

and can really damage a school. And so you want to be careful because you can't go in with a sledgehammer every day with a negative all the time.

But how we handle the truth and how we handle the negatives and really digging down to the root causes of some of these problems that we're dealing with, we've to be honest with each other and how we confront those things. And if we ignore them, we do it at the danger of our school community.

Darrin Peppard (38:10.676)

Yeah, I really value what you just outlined there, negatives versus negativity and how not addressing that ultimately does lead to that negativity. I think that's really, really powerful. But before we make the turn for home here, and I ask you the last question here on the podcast, the same one I ask everybody, I want to ask just maybe one more question just in general about this work.

If there's one thing that you share with school leaders that you hope school leaders take away when they read this book, what might that be?

Nason (38:52.664)

think the thing that's come up the most often, I have had the opportunity to talk to groups about the book. Very fortunate to have quite a few schools and district leadership teams take on the book as a book study. But the idea around supporting your staff past a sign-in sheet.

I can't claim any wonderful actions in this area because I, like so many, would do the July talk over the staff handbook. Got to do this, got to do this, got to do this. Make sure you sign the sign out finance sheet before you leave so I've got you on file.

If I take that sign-in sheet, throw it in my desk, and the only purpose it has is to sit in that file until some event occurs where I can go pull it back out and say, well, you did this, but it says here that you were in my training when I covered this, and I told you not to do X.

If that is my only purpose for covering the basics and the expectations around what we do as a school, I don't feel like I'm supporting my people enough as a school leader.

So again, to mention a mutual friend of ours, Jimmy, he's talked a lot about this and I've used it a good bit too. But the gotcha game only serves to set up more of the hard conversations if we're a school leader who wants our people to be successful. So instead of telling people we're playing a gotcha game,

Nason (40:41.236)

our actions and how we plan professional development, how we have conversations with people after an observation. Everything we do when we're talking to someone that works with us in a school, we've got to center that talk around how can I support you and essentially tell them I've got you, I've got your back. I feel like that part has resonated really well.

Fair or not, when we sign up to be an administrator, we sign on to take responsibility for the conduct of every single person that walks onto our campus every day. It's a sobering thought. But to be able to prepare our people to focus on what's most important.

I'm sure there's plenty of books written that talk about how the fads and other things that come along in our business can distract us sometimes from what is most important. And I guess I might have to also share one of the best compliments I've gotten on the book was from a middle school principal in, I believe it was in Oak Grove, Mississippi.

who described the book as a Boy Scout handbook for educators. for him to...

for him to term it that way and verbalize it that way, it told me that it covered all the bases that he felt were essential for his people in his school building. And I really do think that's probably one of the biggest takeaways from it. I know that somebody could probably come up with a sixth principle that might be really important, but my position on it is you could go to Alaska or Florida

Nason (42:34.582)

Mississippi, New York, anywhere, anywhere in between. And you would find, if you could find educators that would serve in the place of parents and just do their level best to meet these five principles, you're gonna have a school community that's on the same page where everybody's pulling in the same direction. I'd be proud to send my child to a school like that. I know.

you know, every other parent I know that I know would say the same thing. And I feel like that's at heart, that's the best I think this book could accomplish. And if it does, I'm excited about that.

Darrin Peppard (43:16.464)

I think that's spectacular. I really do. I think, I mean, that's an absolutely wonderful aspirational place. really is. And I would also be proud to send my kid to a school that would live up to those five keys. So let's do this. Our time has really flown by and this is the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. And, Nason, I always ask this question of everybody here on the show, right? As we start to wrap up.

How are you leaning into leadership right now?

Nason (43:48.44)

So right now, the words right now for me really encompass this year because it's my first year at a new school, my first year to work in a middle school in my entire career.

the biggest school obviously and the first time I'm in this type of role because I've been in a support role. The CTE principal role is a lot smaller. So one of the things that I would say to, as you say, lean into leadership, the word acknowledgement has really impacted me a lot.

It has come to me as I realize a lot of folks that have invested in me and also been really nice to speak well of me, be supportive in a lot of different rooms where I wasn't present. That for them to acknowledge me that way, it's had an impact on me so much so that I have learned to do a better job of acknowledging others.

One of the key pieces of that is that just personal, authentic acknowledgement of the things that people do a good job of in our schools. I see that as one of my top jobs. So many of the people that work in my building, I'd say we're right at close to 100%. They don't necessarily need a principal with their thumb, with his thumb on them all the time, but they certainly do, particularly.

when the days get tough, it doesn't hurt to get an acknowledgement. I really appreciate what you do for your colleagues on a daily basis. That has shown up for me. I guess this may be a personal preference, but one of the things that I see as one of my most important purchases this year as a principal has been several really big boxes of Germantown Middle School stationary.

Nason (45:53.928)

And so every person that works on our campus got a card at Christmas just talking about how important they were to the mission. Everybody that signed a contract to return gets a card from me telling them how excited I am that I'll get to work with them again next year. If I can get fired up about some guy coming back to play football at Mississippi State for another year and I'll never meet him.

How excited should I be that I get a phenomenal math teacher back to lead the department again next year? An ELA teacher who's gone through a lot of tough things this year and her family is a rock star and she's ready to step up again and lead among her colleagues and students. So I'd have to say my lean into leadership is to try to do a better job of acknowledging the people that I serve with.

and hopefully help them understand just how good of a job they're doing in these tough days that we go through sometimes.

Darrin Peppard (47:02.843)

I love that so much and it just builds on the theme of culture and climate and acknowledgement. Just all of those things go together so, so very well. So, Nason, people are going to want to get in touch with you. They're going to want to, you know, get connected in any way, shape or form. They're going to want to grab a copy of this book. For those of you on YouTube, you can see it. Those of you who are listening, I just held up a copy of the book. So you'll have to go click on the link we'll put in the show notes so you can check it out.

so you can see what it looks like and then go get a copy. how do people get in touch with you?

Nason (47:36.77)

So I still write a good bit about professional topics. Sometimes it's an extension of a chapter within the book.

or it may be something that I'm writing about that's maybe the next project I'm working on. I'm going to post all of those in three different places. I have my own blog, nasenloller.wordpress.com. It's easy. You can put that link in there too, if you'd like. I have a Facebook page with my name, nasenloller, author, and on X, at nasenloller, just all lowercase, my first name, last name.

There are not a lot of people that want to talk about conduct because it's got a bad rap, you know. Self-discipline is a little bit of a hard sell, but I'm still going to revolve around that theme a good bit with what I put out there. And hopefully...

offer folks something to help them reflect and think a little bit about what it is that they're doing, why they're there, and how they can get better. And if I can do that, then I've really accomplished something as a writer.

Darrin Peppard (48:49.051)

Absolutely. Man, I appreciate this so much. It's been such a great conversation. I'm glad we got a chance to get reconnected. Thanks so much for joining me here on Leaning Into Leadership.

Nason (48:53.486)

Thank you.

Nason (48:57.838)

Well, thank you, Darren. I really appreciate what you do. I'm a, this is awesome because I'm a big fan of your podcast because I learn a ton of stuff from it every day. So to get a chance to talk with you here is just really awesome. Thank you so much.

Darrin Peppard (49:17.184)

Absolutely.

Okay folks, fantastic conversation there with Nason. Make sure you get down there in the show notes, get connected with him.

His is just such a unique perspective on this and such a positive outlook on how we maintain the culture of our organization, but doing it with that standard of professionalism. It's fantastic stuff. Again, get down on the show notes and make sure you get connected with Nason. And now it's time for a pep talk. So this week on the pep talk, I want to just build a little bit with what Nason talked about. You know, so much.

of the things that we run into as challenges as leaders, specifically when we talk about adult behavior, are things that if we are courageous, if we are willing to have the conversations that need to be had, oftentimes they get taken care of well before they become real problems. So my challenge for you this week is to just maybe think about what might be one conversation that you have been putting off.

or something that you know you need to address, but maybe you're a little fearful or you're a little bit hesitant. Let's use that word to step into that conversation. Using what you learned from like Nason today in the podcast, go lean into that conversation because anything that you don't address certainly negatively impacts your culture and negatively impacts trust and ultimately negatively impacts

Darrin Peppard (04:40.576)

student outcomes. That's what I've got for you this week, folks. Thanks so much for joining me here on the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. As always, make sure you rate, review, and subscribe. Share this episode with somebody else who might truly appreciate what Nason brought to the table today. Every time you do those things, folks, it just continues to drive that algorithm and continues to drive more and more people in front of the Leaning Into Leadership podcast so they get that opportunity to learn from all of us.

as well. Get out there folks and have a road to awesome week.