The Leader’s Algorithm, with Pablo Muñoz

In this episode, Pablo Muñoz joins us to talk about his book, The Leader’s Algorithm. Pablo is a career educator who has served as a social studies teacher, a director of curriculum and instruction, an assistant superintendent, and a superintendent in two school districts. In both of those districts, he helped transform low performing districts into award winning and publicly recognized high achieving schools. Pablo shares with us what he has found to be keys to that success. Visit AVID Open Access to learn more.

Transcript

#278 The Leaders' Algorithm, with Pablo Munoz

41 min
AVID Open Access

Keywords

passaic, pablo, elizabeth, book, high expectations, theory, students, education, evaluations, policy, action, school district, school, call, level, graduated, toolkit, winston, important, avid

Speakers

Pablo (73%), Rena (11%), Paul (8%), Winston (7%), Student (1%)

Pablo Muñoz  0:00  

I wanted to write a book that could help aspiring new and current school administrators. I wanted to share what I learned from my advocates and my mentors, the heart and soul the book is really the personal theory of action.

Rena Clark  0:15  

A topic for today's podcast is the leaders algorithm with Pablo Munoz. Unpacking Education is brought to you by AVID.org. AVID believes every learner can develop student agency. To learn more about AVID, visit their website http://www.avid.org. Welcome to Unpacking Education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education. I'm Rena Clark.

Paul Beckermann  0:15  

I'm Paul Beckermann.

Winston Benjamin  0:39  

And I'm Winston Benjamin. We are educators.

Paul Beckermann  0:54  

And we're here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Student  0:59  

Education is our passport to the future. 

Rena Clark  1:04  

Our quote for today is from our guest, Pablo Muñoz, in his book, The Leader's Algorithm, he says low expectations, increased disparities, high expectations elevate everyone. All right, Winston, you're up.

Winston Benjamin  1:20  

For me, it's important because like that's, that's dealing with the realities of education. We understand that their kids in low income who have hard times, who are from middle of America, who have hard times. But I do think recognizing that the reality is there. And knowing that having belief in your students to know that they can overcome those things are as important as the knowledge that those things are real. So for me the idea of belief and knowing that you can elevate your students and everyone in a space by knowing they can do that, I think is more important than having a knowledge that there is a problem that students face. So, I liked the idea of views of supportive excellence instead of the reality of sadness.

Paul Beckermann  2:10  

Yeah, Winston, I love that idea of belief. And mine's kind of related to that. And I think of self fulfilling prophecies, which is belief, right? If you believe you can do something, you can do it. If you believe you can't do something, you probably won't. And I think kids will hit the target that we set for them. So hit that set that high target there, and I believe kids can do it. We just have to have confidence and faith in them to do that.

Rena Clark  2:36  

Yeah. What is that age quote, "Reach for the moon, at least you'll touch the stars or something like that."

Paul Beckermann  2:41  

Or, the other way around? 

Rena Clark  2:43  

Yeah, something like that...

Paul Beckermann  2:45  

You'll hit something way up there, right.

Rena Clark  2:48  

Ah, well, I'm excited today. It's my pleasure to welcome Pablo Muñoz to the podcast. And just a little background about our guest here. He is the managing director of Muñoz & Company, an educational and leadership consulting organization. He has 30 years of experience as a teacher, administrator, and was a superintendent for 16 years. So we know that's a difficult job. And he was named one of the George Lucas Educational Foundation's Daring Dozen, which is a prestigious group working to reshape the future of education. Welcome, Pablo.

Pablo Muñoz  3:29  

Rena, thank you for having me. Paul and Winston, I'm happy to be on the show.

Rena Clark  3:33  

And so we gave a nice little brief background, but if you just like to tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself, your career in education, and what that journey really has been like for you.

Pablo Muñoz  3:46  

Yeah, great. I was born, raised, and educated in Elizabeth, New Jersey. For those across the world listening to your podcast, Elizabeth is about 16 miles southwest of New York City. And if you have flown into Newark Liberty International Airport, you have actually been in the city of Elizabeth because part of the airport sits on Elizabeth soil. Last 26 years I've been living in a nearby town called Maplewood, New Jersey. And, so, I'm the son of Pablo and Luis Muñoz. They emigrated from Iguala, Puerto Rico, when they were teenagers got married, had me and my sister. And my dad has an eighth grade education and my mom has a sixth grade education. My father did most of his work in the restaurant business. He started, he started off as a dishwasher. And then someone saw promising and taught him how to cook and by the end of his career, he was a banquet chef serving thousands for weddings and political fundraisers and whatever else people would rent out the banquet hall for. My mom was was a factory worker, initially making plastic products but eventually finished her career as a seamstress. I lived in a house with my maternal grandmother, Cecilia, my dad, my mom, my sister, Doris, my aunt, tia Alia, and my three cousins, Carlos, Johnny, and Vaughn. And my father is one of 15. And my mom is one of five. So, I have a lot of first cousins, and we counted recently it was about 70 first cousins. So by that fact, my upbringing, my circle of friends was largely my family. Over time as you go through school, and I was a baseball player and played other sports, I developed friends but you know, my early years was visiting aunts and uncles' houses and playing with cousins or going to the park. I was educated in Elizabeth Public Schools, kindergarten through 12th grade, graduated Elizabeth High School. I played baseball there and in college. My undergraduate degree was in psychology from Yale University. And while I was there, I entered the teacher preparation program. So I student taught at Wilbur Coss High School in New Haven. And I volunteered as a baseball coach while I did that, and a side note about baseball, I've been baseball coach at all levels. I coached my daughters in little league, and I coached at the high school level, college level and also at the professional level for the Chicago Cubs. I was a minor league pitching coach at one time. I got my master's degree from Teachers College, Columbia University in Educational Administration. And my teaching career began back in my hometown, Elizabeth, I was a teacher of social studies. So I taught American history, and U.S. and world history, both bilingual and regular. And after that, I got promoted to being the supervisor of social studies, Director of Curriculum Instruction, assistant superintendent of schools, and then 2005, I became the superintendent of schools for Elizabeth. I did that for about eight and a half years. And then I transitioned to another city school in a school district in New Jersey called Passaic, slightly smaller, but still similar demographics. I did that for about seven and a half years. And then I retired in 2021. And immediately started my educational consulting company. And I'm an adjunct professor at Lehigh University. And I authored the book, The Leader's Algorithm, and I'll end this part with what I'm most proud of. And that's my two daughters, Cecilia, she's going to be turning 23 in a couple of days. She graduated from MIT in June, she's working for the Boston Consulting Group. And I like to laugh at this point with her because I moved her into Boston in September, but our first consulting job is in New York City. She's spending four days out of the week in New York, basically, she could be living in my house, but she's renting an apartment in Boston. And my old and my youngest daughter is 19. She's a first year at Northeastern University and our first year is actually a full year in London. And so that gives you a sense of where I came from what I did and what I'm doing today.

Rena Clark  8:28  

Well, my it's funny, my dad's actually from Passaic. So we have... 

Pablo Muñoz  8:31  

Oh, okay. 

Rena Clark  8:33  

I'm over here in Kent, Washington now, but it's fun. I was just talking to him the other day, talking stories about growing up in Passaic.

Pablo Muñoz  8:41  

Yeah, that's, it's actually produced a lot of famous folks in the music industry and athletics. So.. 

Rena Clark  8:49  

Oh, yeah. 

Pablo Muñoz  8:50  

Television and...

Paul Beckermann  8:51  

Rena Clark's family.

Rena Clark  8:54  

It's Parcells. But it was personally they changed their name because they came from... Anyways, long. That's my story. But yeah,

Winston Benjamin  9:02  

I appreciate your explanation of your journey to education and why it matters to you. The thing that we that we're also interested in talking to you about is your new book titled The Leader's Algorithm. And one thing that's important to me is there's a lot of buzzwords that if you say, like, algorithm, leadership algorithm. What is the leadership algorithm and what prompted you to write the book?

Pablo Muñoz  9:37  

So The Leader's Algorithm is the title of the book and it's also an equation in the book. And when we were thinking about what title we would give the book, and we realized we had two equations, and the book is about leadership. We had fun with it by just adding algorithm to it. So And it kind of jumps out at you. But sometimes it gets confused on Amazon as, as, as a computer science book as opposed to a leadership book. Yeah, so I'm combating that. But I got to original. So the book at its basic level is an educational leadership book. And the reason I wrote the book was, I usually like to say one word help. So I wanted to write a book that could help aspiring, new, and current school administrators. And the vision for my book was to share what I learned in my 30 year journey in public education. Like was it was said earlier as 16 years of that as the superintendent of schools, I wanted to share what I learned from my advocates and my mentors. I wanted to share what I learned from the Broad Academy, which had a big impact on how I led as a superintendent. And I wanted to share what I learned from what I like to call my book mentors. That's all the books and case studies and articles that I write about teaching and learning and about leading and managing by authors that I mostly never met. And the second thing, hopefully, I like for people to pick up the book, especially aspiring, new, and current administrators, and that they may they be able to use the book to create their leadership framework and strategy to lead and manage their school districts. But like I said earlier, it is an equation, besides being the title of the book. And in chapter one, called "Defining the leader's algorithm," I define what it is. So the leaders algorithm is a simple equation that puts strategic thinking to work. You write and share a personal theory of action, you execute that personal theory of action, you don't leave it as a theory, you actually have to execute it. Then you do that with public accountability. And if you do that, then you will transform your life, work, schools, school districts, and relationships. So said another way the if the formula is personal theory of action, plus, execution plus accountability, equals transformation.

Paul Beckermann  12:29  

Yeah, and I love when you put the book together, you kind of have some almost like forms that somebody can fill out to sort of develop their own. And I thought that was that was really helpful to just to structure somebody's thinking through that process. That was cool.

Pablo Muñoz  12:43  

Yeah, I did two things. I put in a template in that chapter. And then in Appendix A, I put put the full personal theory of action statement for both Elizabeth and Passaic. And if one is to go on my website, they can even download the template to use.

Paul Beckermann  13:02  

That's cool. actionable, like you said earlier. So another part in your book you write, "One of my fundamental beliefs is that children should not be doomed to a life of poverty and struggle, because they were born into a certain zip code." You want to just talk a little bit about that statement.

Pablo Muñoz  13:21  

Well, as you grounded in my personal story, right? I grew up poor. I think I was on free lunch for most of my life. I think. I got elevated by the time I was graduating to reduced lunch, because I remember maybe taking a quarter at the time to pay for my reduced price lunch. Yeah, so it was a little bit like what you guys were talking about earlier, the Rosenthal, and/or the Pygmalion effect, right. And you set highest expectations for folks, and you believe in them that they'll live up to those standards. But because of my history, of poverty, and because of going through the Elizabeth Public Schools, and returning back to Elizabeth, and because I landed at Yale, and I felt overwhelmed and underprepared. All that shaped me. And when I went back to be a school teacher, and ultimately when I became a superintendent that if I had a say, as to what was going to happen into larger scope of the organization, I wasn't going to allow students to leave my school district unprepared to succeed at the next level, whether it was work or college or the armed forces. But the way, the way that experience shaped me was to look at my leadership in the context of two levels. So when I led both school districts, I would look at this the organization on a macro level, and I would look at it on the micro level. And at the macro level, when I was looking to redesign the school district, through a whole different assortment of ways, I really was trying to design a school district that was in the context of larger America. And that we were going to design a school district that was going to be able to compete against more affluent communities or private prep schools. Right? So kids go through our school systems, and you establish policies and programs and curriculum all that over time to produce a school district, that it didn't matter that it sat in this particular zip code, and the poverty level was 88% 86%, and Elizabeth and 88%, Passaic, right, it didn't matter. We're gonna design a school district for kids that go through that, that they will get an education as if they were living anywhere else, or they had the resources to go to a top prep school. And one of the one of the one example of that was in Passaic, we had what we called an equity goal. And the equity goal was basically that students that graduated from the Passaic Public Schools would graduate with a career certification, 15 college credits, or both. But I had a bigger vision than that, I wanted kids to graduate from high school with a high school diploma and an associate's degree. So we we did the things that we needed to do to make that happen. And the class of 2021, the year I retired in April, that class in June, so I didn't get to shake their hands graduated 12 or 13, students with both a high school diploma and associate's degree, and then the following year in 2022, I think they graduated almost 30. And then I, I stopped, I stopped counting and stop looking at just kind of move forward with my life. But that's kind of a sense of you growing in poverty and it didn't matter that the school district was confined by its city borders. And here, you can design a school district the way you want. And in my case, at the macro level, we wanted to create a high performing school district. At the same time, we also have to be mindful, and this is the micro level version of the concept is that we do have high poverty, and we do have large numbers of English language learners. So and we do have a range of students performing at different academic levels for a whole assortment of reasons. Right? And on top of the English language learners, we would have kids with disrupted education so that they, they landed in our schools. And they may have been a certain age, but they hadn't been consecutively going to school in their countries, for whatever reason, or political turmoil, whatever it was, their education was disruptive, so they weren't even on level in their own native language. Right? So now that now we're getting them. So we have, so the urban centers have a lot to deal with, that some other communities don't have to deal with. So I'm mindful of that. Right? And therefore, as we increase the standards of academic performance, grading professional graduation requirements, at the same time, we have been mindful that we had to address the needs and the gaps that we inherit, or as every year new populations flow into our communities. So that means we had to do before school programs, after school programs, summer programs, credit recovery programs, Saturday programs all in effort to both support and fill in some gaps. But also at times also term rich, right. And so that's, that's kind of how I approached it, looking at it at a macro, macro level and micro level. And it didn't matter that the school district sat in a particular school zone for me.

Rena Clark  19:15  

So yeah, we call it, I always say you're on the dance floor, or you have the balcony level. So that micro macro. And you have to be able to kind of see both and hear voices from both. And it sounds like that really impacted that theory of action and your algorithm. And I think that you mentioned this a little bit, but one of the big ideas and we talked about at the beginning is this idea with all those things you just mentioned is still having high expectations. So where have you seen high expectations make the biggest difference with students? And what do you think educators and school leaders might do to raise expectations?

Pablo Muñoz  19:57  

There's an element of of personal attitude, right. As, as the superintendent of schools, and every everything else rises and falls on, on that particular leader. There's there's an element of, do you have high expectations? Right? You know, there's a little side note to that is that I replaced two superintendents who could have done exactly what I did. I didn't perform rocket science or brain surgery, right. But I just had higher expectations and then took the necessary steps to bring, do policy programs, curriculum, and professional development, everything else to kind of change the school district over time. It doesn't happen in one year. It happens over time. And fortunately, I had enough years to, to get enough of the stuff in place to try to get deep roots. But if, if you're at two places where you can have kind of some direct impact on high expectations, one would be on policy development. And the other one would be on feedback. And then I'll give you some examples. So on a policy development front, right, hopefully you have a board. And fortunately, I did have a board that wanted to make significant changes academically for the organization. And therefore, there were some key policies that I worked on to elevate the standards, right. There are policies that come from the state as a law or a state regulation that gets kind of boilerplate board policy, but that's kind of the basic level, you have to hit that but you can always raise it. And therefore, we would take a hard look at our promotion, retention policy, our grading reporting policy or student attendance policy, and our high school graduation policy, and high school graduation policy is probably the easiest one to talk about. Because New Jersey, they required students to achieve 120 credits, just call it an index number, I won't get too deep into what it means. And there were particular academic courses you had to take to achieve them. In Elizabeth, we raised that to 160 credits, and in Passaic, we raised it to 150. And when you look at it, right, we added like an extra school year in the amount of time that they needed to, to, to be in high school to graduate, right, if it's 120. And you add another 40 credits, in order to get out, you're basically adding another new another year of credits. Right? And they had to do it in four years. So that's one place where you can actually actualize your vision and your mission and acting upon high expectations, right? I could talk about high expectations, all I want, but if I don't have guiding policy documents to support me, so then I can design everything else around it. You know, I'm just kind of out there by myself, right? And you definitely want the board to own it, right? So you want them to pass a policy. So that's it. That's an important place if people are looking to think about, well, I want to do this, but don't go off and do it by yourself, get the board to buy in, have a passive policy that that sets that standard, and then work towards it. The second part would be, and this really comes from John Hattie's work, right? The critical elements of feedback. And in both of there's a funny story there. In both of the communities, feedback was not being done very well. Right? So what was my leverage as superintendent, it was feedback to administrators and feedback to teachers, right? And the most critical piece is teacher to student but where I'm sitting I'm not in the classroom, and I'm not evaluating individual teachers. But I'm setting the standard for how many evaluations needs to be done, because the state doesn't dictate it, right? They kind of set minimum standards. And the more important part is the quality of those evaluations. And I tell the story in the book. So the funny story is one I call three and the other one I call none at this time. So the three story is when I landed in Passaic, I inherited a cabinet and I held a meeting and I went around the room and I said, tell me your name, tell me your position, what certificates do you hold, how long you've been here, and how many evaluations you did last year of teacher. And I got to the math supervisor, and I got all the fundamentals. And then she said three, and it was quiet like that. And everybody's just kind of looking at me. And I go, okay, let me help her out. Three a day, three a week, three a month? She goes, three in the whole year. And there you go, we have a problem. She wasn't the only one that the evaluations weren't getting done. So in Passaic they were they were much more broken. They weren't, they weren't even given feedback, right? So how did administrators or teachers know if they're doing well or poor? Or are you giving them feedback to help them improve in certain areas that will affect student achievement? Then Elizabeth, they were a meat meat potatoes district. So they did their evaluations, right? And they have this form with kind of boxes up satisfactory, very good. And at the bottom, they had some open ended questions, what was what was strong? What was weak? And what advice would you would you give them and when it came to the advice giving all the supervisor who would be writing none at this time, none of this time. So they're doing evaluations, but they weren't giving any substantive feedback around areas that needed to, to improve. So in both districts, I took a what I call, it took two cue strategy, I did a quantity and said, we're going to do X number of evaluations per month. And I did a quality thing, which is, I modeled it and rolled it down, it trickled down. As Assistant Sups, when you do evaluations of your principals in your directors, I want to see this number done. And then I'm going to read all your evaluations. And then I'm gonna, when I write up your evaluation, I'm going to comment on how well you gave feedback to your principals and assistant principals. And I want you to do the same thing when you're evaluating your principals and you're the assistant principals and see if the principals are giving good feedback to teachers and assistant principals. So that's, that's that's kind of how I approach at least two elements of high expectations. And what ended up happening on a policy front that in Elizabeth, there were two schools and in Passaic, there are two schools, and Elizabeth High School in Elizabeth and Passaic Prep, and Passaic Science, and when we redesigned those schools. We made the students, if you were enrolled in those schools, you had to take every eligible advanced placement course offered in that content area, that you had no choice that if you wanted to enroll in that school, that's what you had to do. And at Hamilton, we had kind of talked off air about this, we designed it around AVID, and we made it a comprehensive AVID program. And little by little as at first wanted to get AVID in, across all the grades, nine to 12, sequencing it in having everybody do the professional development to be able to do that AVID, AVID pieces. And eventually, over time, the school started adding more more kids to taking advanced placement courses, because they also had the AVID support system, helping them to be successful at a higher level more rigorous content there. So those are kind of some examples of how I approach high expectations.

Winston Benjamin  28:44  

I really appreciate the fact that you're giving clear examples for leaders. So you describe a developing a theory of action. Right? You you saw an issue and then you decided how to move forward? What is a theory of action? And why is it so important for leaders to develop that in order to be successful?

Pablo Muñoz  29:09  

A theory of action basically is a hypothesis that certain actions will lead to certain results. That's the basic level. And ultimately, you want to take your theory of action and execute it. So it's no longer a theory. But the heart and soul of the book is really the personal theory of action. And that's what we kind of alluded to that a little bit earlier. So what is a personal theory of action? It's personal theory of action is basically a written leadership framework. And it's critical that you write it, right, and it's critical that you share it publicly with everyone. And so a personal theory of action really, states what you are personally going aim to do and what you are personally going to do through your team to achieve your goals. And this personal theory of action is written in a logical chain of IF/THEN statements that ultimately lead to the ultimate goal. And usually the ultimate goal is a paraphrasing of your mission statement. So, like I said earlier, I had one for Elizabeth and one for Passaic, it fit on an eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper, one size, it was my leadership framework. And, and that's how I led my organizations, right. I took everything that I said earlier, all my readings, all my experiences, all my beliefs, values, my mental models in my head, and kind of wrote it down on a piece of paper and shared it publicly. So people knew how I was going to lead the organization. And the beauty of it is that it written on paper, it's not written in stone. And as you learn more, and you try things, and things succeed, and things fail you, you're you revise it. But said a different way, a personal theory of action is basically if I do A, B, and C, then you will get XY and Z results. And I'll give you a little taste of the organism, how it's organized. So my personal theory action had four if statements. The first IF statement was what I was personally going to do, there was three things I focused in on. Then the second IF statement was what were my leaders going to do. And oftentimes, I use those six same variables and selecting them. But I also use them in telling them what I expected of them. The third IF statement was a more global statement about how we were going to redesign the organization. And, and the beauty of it, it was in my personal theory of action's organizational change, but that same piece I made into a board policy as an organizational theory of action. So not only that, my personal theory of action, have it so that the board, and I wrote it for them and convinced them to adopt it. So now, not only do I have an operating system, in my personal theory of action, I have board policy to support the redesign of the organization around those pieces. And then the fourth IF statement, were my guiding principles, and then I ended with a one, THEN which was paraphrasing the mission statement. So that's kind of the construct of a personal theory of action and, and what is what is a personal theory of action. And much of that I learned in two places. I learned about organizational theory of actions at the Broad Foundation in the Broad Academy. And it was really out of Dan McAdams' book, What School Boards Can Do. And they have a bunch of different organizational theory of actions that one could adopt. And then, a few years later, I did some work with the Panasonic Foundation, we did a lot of equity work, but they introduced us to a book called Instructional Rounds in Education, where they introduced the personal theory of action as a as an IF/THEN statement, but it was really like a condensed one or two sentences. And it was in the context of solving a problem of practice. In the context of instructional rounds, what I did was take that experience of an organizational theory of action and a personal theory of action, making more expansive framework for how you would lead a whole organization.

And I'm thinking you can even your because we a lot of our listeners are educators and you could think about how they have their own personal theory of action and how that plays into their school's mission statement, which then they have influence on different groups that they're part of the school like, you can bring that all the way I feel like down and up. It can be impactful for for everybody. Well, speaking of how we can make impact, Winston, I'm gonna take I'm gonna let you take us to our next section.

Winston Benjamin  34:13  

Absolutely. So there was a lot of important information given to us in this conversation. So I'm just wondering what's in your toolkit, what are you taking away from this and to apply to your work or your daily action? 

Student  34:28  

Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What's in the toolkit? What is in the toolkit? What's in the toolkit? In check it out. 

Winston Benjamin  34:39  

Well, Rena.

Rena Clark  34:39  

It's so hard to pick one, y'all again. I think that for me in your toolkit, you need to know your core values. And then, as we've talked to, said this word many times, put your personal theory of action, but what are your core values so that you can then enact them on action or even when looking at policy and guidelines to enact that?

Paul Beckermann  35:07  

And I'm going to drop in the toolkit, something that Pablo wrote in his book. He wrote, "Repeat the vision and mission everywhere and often." And I saw that in practice in my previous district. The mission statement had the phrase, "Educate, inspire, and empower." And we saw, educate and inspire and empower everywhere it started every agenda for every meeting, it was posted in every classroom, it was on the wall, the school teacher said it all the time, and it honestly guided what we did. And I think you have to if it, if it's just a word on a piece of paper that gets put in the file cabinet, then you're just wasting your time and everybody's time making it. It's got to be something you live. And it's not going to be lived unless everybody knows it. And you're going to read it. In fact, when our new teachers were hired, one of our administrators got up in front and made the entire group memorize the mission statement before they could walk out the door into their next day of new teacher inductions. So I do think it's important.

Rena Clark  36:06  

Well, it makes it we have a VOI, a vision of instruction. And similarly, it's connected to always starting meetings, or you can some people think about what is that North Star, but you have to know what that North Star is and constantly refer to it in order to follow it.

Paul Beckermann  36:25  

And you're not talking about Minnesota, right? You're not talking about Minnesota, the North Star. We used to have the North Stars, though, you know, the hockey team.

Winston Benjamin  36:37  

That's a deep cut of a sports reference. For me, one of the most important things that came out of this conversation was to slow down and look at the macro and micro levels of situations, because those will really impact your decision. Right? So if you're not paying attention to all the things that impact you, then you're not out. Pablo, do you have anything you would like to add?

Pablo Muñoz  37:01  

I do. I do. Before I add the toolkit, let me just comment on what Paul said. I thought you were going to finish the line, which is, "...repeat the vision and mission until people gag on it." And...

Paul Beckermann  37:18  

No, I didn't read that.

Pablo Muñoz  37:18  

And when I teach, I teach leading managing change in the fall. And we read some of John Carter's work on leading change. He talks about how leaders think they're repeating the vision and mission, often, but the people on the receiving end are saying that they don't, they don't hear it enough. And then the other piece is, it's one thing to write it and have people memorize it. But the most important piece is that you embody it that people actually see it in your actions, right? In my toolkit, we haven't talked about it, but I'll throw in something that's in the book that that wasn't brought up. Community political map, I would have in my toolkit, because public education, especially my urban center experiences sit right in the middle of politics, and you have to navigate them and knowing your political map of who has power and who their constituents are. It's critically important to know that so that when you are introducing concepts, you know, who is going to affect them whether they can derail you.

Paul Beckermann  38:37  

Very good. And you know what, we have time for our one thing. 

Rena Clark  38:43  

It's time for that one thing.

Student  38:45  

One thing, one thing.

Rena Clark  38:48  

It's time for that one thing.

Paul Beckermann  38:53  

That one thing all right. One thing time everybody, Rena, you want to start what's what's your final thought for the day?

Rena Clark  39:03  

And all this conversation, I think it's apparent that you need to create deep roots, but it takes time to create deep roots and you can't grow without really intentional feedback. So kind of my big takeaway, talking a bit about that, that transgressors, I feel like across different positions in the educational setting.

Paul Beckermann  39:26  

Right, regardless of what you do. Winston, one thing...

Winston Benjamin  39:31  

For me, it's know your realities so that you can make real action plans to support growth, because you can make a lot of moves without knowing what you're doing. But having a real understanding is allows for better action so you don't have to go back and forth and waste time.

Paul Beckermann  39:48  

For sure, I would say mine maybe it goes right back to our opening quote, but it's to have high expectations. And I really loved when Pablo was talking about how they were requiring students or at least having a goal for students to have a career certification or college credits or something in addition to their high school diploma when they graduate. That is such a tangible thing. And I can totally see kids understanding that goal and going for that goal. And I taught high school for many years. I could totally see that working. And I think that that's a really cool thing to introduce to a school. Pablo, what's your what's your final thought for today? What would you like to leave our listeners with?

Pablo Muñoz  40:27  

Lead from the heart with love.

Rena Clark  40:30  

I love that.

Paul Beckermann  40:31  

That's awesome. That's like a t-shirt. We have t-shirt moments, Pablo. When things can be boiled down to a t-shirt slogan, we love it.

Rena Clark  40:40  

Well, I think you know, we might have to adjust this to a sticker moment because t-shirts or hats, stickers, water bottles, laptops are in. So I'm just gonna start calling them sticker moments sticker.

Paul Beckermann  40:50  

Sticker moment. I like it. I like it.

Rena Clark  40:52  

I think that can be a sticker. But Pablo, we really appreciate you being on and sharing your unique experience and all of that wealth of knowledge you have through all of those experiences. And again, you can check out Pablo's book, The Leader's Algorithm. So thanks again for being here with us today.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin  41:20  

We invite you to visit us at https://avidopenaccess.org/ where you can discover resources to support student agency, equity, and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future-ready learners.

Paul Beckermann  41:35  

We'll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education.

Rena Clark  41:40  

And remember, go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin  41:43  

Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann  41:45  

You make a difference.