Dr. Luis Cruz 0:00
The rational resistance to change happens when people don't understand why something needs to change. They don't trust who's telling them the change, or they do not know how to commit to the intricacies and nuances of that change. We're going to have to experience change whether we like it or not, whether or not we grow from that change will be up to us.

Winston Benjamin 0:23
The topic for today's podcast is time for change with Dr. Luis Cruz. Unpacking education is brought to you by AVID. AVID believes in seeing the potential of every student. To learn more about AVID, visit their website at avid.org.

Rena Clark 0:42
Welcome to unpacking education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education.

Rena Clark 0:51
I'm Rena Clark.

Paul Beckermann 0:53
I'm Paul Beckermann.

Winston Benjamin 0:54
And I'm Winston Benjamin. We are educators.

Paul Beckermann 0:58
And we're here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Transition Music with Rena's Children 1:03
Education is our passport to the future.

Winston Benjamin 1:07
Our quote for today is from the first line of the introduction in the book Time for Change by Dr. Anthony Mohammed and Dr. Luis Cruz. It reads: "The most vital asset in any organization are the human resources, and the leader is responsible for managing those resources." Rena, Paul, what are you thinking about that?

Rena Clark 1:28
This makes me think it's one of those quotes where it sounds simple, but it's actually really hard. It reminds me that humans are always at the center of the work that we do. In order for humans to really thrive and do well, we—all of us, and as leaders—have to help create those conditions where people can do their best work. And again, that sounds simple, but that actually is really hard and complex.

Paul Beckermann 1:58
Yeah, it is. I'm hanging on the word "assets." I think we have to remember that each one of the people that we work with, or the students that we're working with in the classroom, all of us bring unique viewpoints, insights, and gifts to that space, and we need to make space so that those assets can come forth. That's what I'm thinking of.

Winston Benjamin 2:19
I appreciate both of your conversations. Sometimes we're lucky enough to actually get the individual who writes the quote to help us dig into what the meaning of the quote is, and today we are all in that place as well. We are excited to welcome Dr. Luis Cruz to our podcast. Thank you for being here, sir.

Just a quick introduction: Dr. Cruz is the bestselling author of Time for Change: Four Essential Skills for Transformational School and District Leaders, which he co-authored with Dr. Anthony Mohammed. Dr. Cruz has 30 years of practical experience as a teacher and administrator at the elementary level, the middle school level, and the high school level. We are excited to welcome Dr. Cruz. Thank you so much for being here. How are you today?

Dr. Luis Cruz 3:08
Muchas gracias. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. It's an honor to be here with fellow champions of education, and so I thank you for the invitation.

Winston Benjamin 3:17
So one of the most important things that we try to do is help our audience ground into who the actual person we're talking to is. Can you give our audience a little bit more about yourself to help our listeners ground themselves into who you are?

Dr. Luis Cruz 3:31
So I'm the eldest son of immigrant parents from Ecuador. My mom and dad came here as immigrants from South America, and I often introduce myself as a grown-up English learner. So if you've never seen what we look like all grown up, feel free to look me up and take a picture, because my first language was Spanish, and now I've been able to grasp that superpower of bilingualism as an English and Spanish speaker.

I grew up in the Pico-Union area of Los Angeles, California. My grandfather originally went to New York but then discovered that cold in New York is very different than cold in California, and decided that from South America, cold in California we could hang with, but not cold in New York. And so I grew up in Los Angeles, was an average student. Had loving parents that were great. My mom, I often say, has a PhD in domestic engineering. She knew how to make sure that my brother and I never got in trouble. She made sure that we went to school and never got busted messing around. My brother ends up becoming a police officer, and I end up becoming an educator.

When we moved to the San Gabriel Valley, which is a suburb about 30 miles east of Los Angeles, I was lucky enough to get a job right out of high school working at Lucky's supermarket. Someone walked in, heard me speak Spanish, and offered me a job working with kids in a first-grade setting. The only reason I took it is because I was making $3.35 an hour, and now I'd be making 10 bucks an hour because how hard could it be to work with kids? Within two weeks, man, I fell in love with kids and found my calling.

I became an elementary school teacher, then did middle school and high school in the summers, and then became an administrator. Thirty years later, I am now a consultant and author, happy to be on your podcast. So there you go.

Rena Clark 5:31
Oh, I love it. I love the story about someone seeing some potential, even at a grocery store at that young age. There are a lot of challenges going on, but we're just curious, from your perspective, what are some of the biggest changes that you think need to happen in K-12 schools in America? Another one of these sounds simple but probably hard questions.

Dr. Luis Cruz 5:57
I mean, for the last maybe 15 years, I've been working with schools all over the world, mostly in our United States. I'll be honest with you, I think that what I see happening is not as visible to the naked eye, if you will, as to someone who really gets to experience what I get to experience. And that is that I think we have a disconnect between those mission statements that all schools have, those vision statements that talk about all kids every day, and practices that actually align to reach that desired outcome.

We often forget, I think, that our schools do not exist in a vacuum, and that as society changes, our schools need to change with it. But as we talk about in our book, change is very difficult for human beings who work in schools. We've inherited an educational system that isn't aligned to the outcomes that we need today for the kids that we serve today. At the same time, we have been psychologically conditioned to believe that the way we experienced school is the way kids today must experience school.

So this disconnect between the world that kids have inherited today and the skills they need, and the way our educational system runs, is off. We might have all the mission vision statements in the world that talk about all kids, but very, very few educators really know the science behind what we must do to actually reach that outcome. It's that disconnect, if you will, that I think is producing a limited number of kids being successful versus the kind of success we need for all kids today.

Paul Beckermann 7:44
So you've written a book called Time for Change, and the subtitle actually is Four Essential Skills for Transformational School and District Leaders. I'm curious, what are those four skills, and why do you think those are the keys to facilitating change?

Dr. Luis Cruz 8:02
Yeah. So let me begin with—I just finished briefly talking about the disconnect between people who work in schools and the outcomes that are needed today. But another one of the gaps that we seem to have in schools is the inability to distinguish between managing schools and leading the people in schools. So if you really think about it, administrators, for example, mostly in every state, have to take some kind of additional coursework in administration. Much of that coursework is focused on how we manage schools. Very few of those courses are linked to how we lead people through change in schools.

The thing that we talk about in our book is the fact that those essential skills are knowing how to address and differentiate between rational reasons why people are going to resist change versus irrational reasons. So in a nutshell, rational resistance to change happens when people don't understand why something needs to change. They don't trust who's telling them to change, or they do not know how to commit to the intricacies and nuances of that change.

So the three skills that leaders need to really possess are:

• The ability to use data to persuade
• The ability to create trustworthiness—and learn that trust does not mean like; hence we're going to use empathy coupled with credibility to create trust
• How to help a body of adults in schools commit to changes by teaching them how to do the change while at the same time inviting them to be part of the conversation of how best to make that happen at a school

Those are three rational reasons why people resist. Now the fourth skill deals specifically with irrational resistors: people who have already been given the why, shown the how, created a trusting relationship with the leader, and still don't want to change. That's when we now need to learn how to tactfully confront.

What I find is that many leaders in schools do not know how to tactfully confront. They avoid confrontation as if it's a bad thing, and instead of seeking a return on the investments made to help people through change, we're afraid to seek a return on that investment. So those are some of the skills that I find many administrative credential programs miss, hence why so many administrators don't know how to lead change. And even worse for our teacher leaders in the rooms.

Winston Benjamin 10:47
You mentioned resistance and rational and irrational. Resistance is the downfall of all attempts to make any movement forward in schools. You and Dr. Mohammed outline a continuum of resistance, and that's the first time I've ever thought of resistance on a continuum. What signs should leaders look for when they're identifying where their staff falls on that continuum, and how do they respond to each of those different levels?

Dr. Luis Cruz 11:32
Yeah, there's a very popular author and leadership guru named John Maxwell. I'm sure many of you have heard of him, but John Maxwell has this great quote, and I like his quotes because they're simple to understand. He says that change is inevitable, growth is optional.

What I often tell audiences when I'm guiding them through this understanding change process is not only that resistance comes in a rational and irrational form, but that a natural byproduct, as you alluded to, of making an organization better—like a school—is going to be resistance. For example, if you dig deep and learn that people are not understanding why something needs to change, for example, and they're giving you clear indications: "Where is this coming from? We've never done this before"—that is an indication that a cognitive need is going unmet, and that these intelligent people that all have college degrees now need to really be explained. We need to explain the why behind something.

What I've done since the book was published is really identified four different whys that can be used. I call them the institutional why, the professional why, the societal why, and then the last one I call the personal why. Now each one of those whys has to be coupled with data to persuade.

An institutional why is when we use student achievement data coupled with our organization or our institution's language to make a case. Our mission statement says all kids will learn at high levels, but we have kids that come from the poor side of town not learning at high levels. Are we going to do something about that, or are we going to need to change our mission statement to "some kids"? So an institutional why is when we use language from the organization coupled with student achievement data to make the case for why something needs to change.

A professional why is when we use a preponderance of research in our field—that's the data piece—to say, "Listen, if we're going to be professional educators, this is the preponderance of research stemming from the effective schools research in the 1960s continuing today, that says that if we're going to be professional about this, we should use research in our field to commit to change."

A societal why is when we remind our faculty and staff that there are real life consequences to kids walking out of our schools without the skills that they need. There's a link to poverty, there's a link to health issues, there's a link to perpetual sadness and depression. So that's when we show them: this is what happens to many human beings who do not walk out of our schools with the skills that they need. That's a societal why.

And then finally, there's a personal why, where we remind each other about the impacts that we've had on students from our past, and use that qualitative data in the form of stories to help us remind one another of the moral imperative that led us to go into this profession.

So when I get questions, "I don't understand why we're doing this. We've never done it like this before"—that's an indication that people need one of those four whys, and that there's a cognitive need to understand the why behind the work. When people say things like, "I just don't trust who's leading us. Oh, we've had three principals in five years, and now we're committing this change"—that's an indication that we have trust issues and that we have to work on trust between leader and followers.

When I hear people say, "I just don't know how to do that"—that's a functional need that's going unmet, and our job then is to slow things down and show people the intricacies and nuances of how something that we are advocating as change is done by those in the trenches.

And then when I don't hear any of those, and all I hear is, "I'm not changing. I get why, I trust who, and I know how, but my stuff is laminated. I'm not changing"—that's someone who's being irrational because they just admitted they understand the why, they trust the who, they know the how, they just don't want to do it. And that person needs to be tactfully confronted. And so that's when we move in that direction.

Rena Clark 16:10
I really appreciate the way that you lay that out. It's just a nice way to really think about it. And let's say we've gone through those steps. We have those rational resistors. We now explain to them, giving their understanding the why. Then how do we move beyond and now get them to be motivated to do that next step? So I understand why. I understand maybe a little bit how, but now I actually need to do it. So how do we really create that intrinsic motivation and continue it?

Dr. Luis Cruz 16:49
Yeah, W. Edward Deming is someone I never met, but I love his quotes, and one of his quotes is: we need to learn how to inspect what we expect. That doesn't mean micromanage people to the core. It just means I'm not going to assume things are getting done.

I can't tell you how many schools I visit where leaders, both admin and teacher leaders alike, with good intentions, assume that just because folks have been supported, that it's happening. When I was working in schools, I'll never forget one teacher called me the St. Thomas of principals, because unless I saw it, I didn't believe it happened. And so don't tell me that you're collaborating—just know that I'm going to stop by and observe it for my own. Don't tell me that you're using scaffolding strategies for our English learners that we've spent three months learning—I need to go in and see it and brag about it and question it if I don't see it happening, never in an ugly way, but in a very, very tactful way, because empathy is part of what transformational leaders use.

So the golden rule that Dr. Mohammed and I developed for transformational leaders is that we need to support before we hold people accountable, but both are needed. Some places I go do a wonderful job of supporting, but they don't hold people accountable. They assume things are getting done. Other places skip over the support and go right to accountability. That creates anxiety at the school with people. Anxiety becomes frustration. Frustration becomes misery. Misery loves company, and now you have what in the Latino community we call a telenovela at our school, usually happening in the parking lot with people unhappy that they're being held accountable on something that they weren't supported on.

So the key is: first, let's begin with support, but then let's follow that up with accountability. Let's inspect what we expect, never assuming. Support is us investing in our faculty and staff. Accountability is us seeking a return on that investment. That's the formula that transformational leaders need to use so that ideas—as my good friend Mike Mattos, who you had on the show, used to say—ideas don't help kids, actions do. And that's how we make sure that actions are being committed in the right way, in the manner that the change that we are advocating for happens.

Paul Beckermann 19:21
A little bit earlier you talked about some schools have these mission statements that say all students can, but in practice, or when you really get down to it, it's more "some kids can." So how do we change the culture of the school into that culture of collective efficacy, where everybody actually believes that all can?

Dr. Luis Cruz 19:47
Howard Gardner, the multiple intelligence guru, years ago—I was introduced to this book by one of my mentors, Dr. Rick DuFour—and he had me read this book called Changing Minds. In the book, there are several ways that individuals can influence others to change their minds, but the two things that stood out the most were:

One, you have to show people irrefutable evidence that there's a better way of doing something. So what I've learned over time is that, like most human beings, seeing is believing. So at our school, when we had convinced ourselves that kids learning English as an additional language couldn't learn at the highest levels, someone presented us with a school at the time in Texas, Ysleta School District, that was doing exactly what we said couldn't be done. And that made us a little curious.

Nowadays, when people say English learners can't learn at high levels because they don't speak English, I often will use Sanger Unified School District near Fresno as an example of: "Well, if that's impossible, then why are they doing it?" So sometimes we need to be confronted with actual evidence that what we're saying can't be done is being done in other places. So what's holding us back? We become a little curious as we dig into that.

But the other thing that he says in his book helps people change minds is positive peer pressure. So if this back and forth between "yes they can, no they can't" is only between admin and teachers, then we're losing the formula. We're missing the formula that can get other teachers to believe. And that is: why not put teachers in front of these teachers to talk about the fact that, "Hey, we've been exposed to a reality that makes it very clear these kids can. So maybe we should just explore how there is not an achievement gap, but an opportunity gap. Our system is not giving these kids the opportunity to achieve. Hence, maybe it's our system that is not allowing these kids to achieve versus our ability or their ability."

So I think that putting that all together, we're going to have to really show folks irrefutable evidence that what we believe is true is actually not true when it comes to the belief that kids can't learn at the highest levels, and we're going to use teachers from our school to advocate for the changes that may give us exactly what we don't believe can happen. And I think those two ingredients over the years have really changed mindsets, so that then that change in mindset can proceed to change in the system never designed for the kids we serve today.

Winston Benjamin 22:34
So one of the truest statements about schools is that they are a representation of the local community that they serve. You mentioned in our question from Paul about this idea of collective efficacy when we're talking about culture of the school. So my question is: what role does student and community voices play in shifting that school culture to get to that point of collective efficacy? And how do leaders authentically capture and act on those inputs from those families? How do you really listen and then act?

Dr. Luis Cruz 23:21
So I think sometimes we forget that student voices, and giving students a space to share their experiences and their opinions about what's working and not working in schools, is probably one of the most powerful forms of data that we can use. So if Dr. Mohammed and I are writing about how transformational leaders use data to persuade, student voice is a powerful form of data that we have to take into account.

Recently, I was asked to be a keynote speaker here in California at an ACSA conference, which is a conference usually for administrators. And one of the opening keynote speakers was this wonderful scholar by the name of Shane Safir, who is the author of a book called Street Data. And she talks about how street data is student voices. It's listening to them and coupling that with satellite data, which is all those graphs and pie charts that we get from students taking summative assessments. But to hear the voices of students, to hear them share with us what's working and not working, is a powerful, powerful source of potential change.

So at our school, we had a student voices committee. And the student voices committee would share with us what was working and not working in schools, what kind of instruction helped them learn versus the kind of instruction that didn't help them to learn. Now mind you, the kids on the student voices committee at our high school were not your AP-I'm-off-to-Harvard. We're talking—these were kids who, while we had one or two of those kids, we also had those kids that were struggling academically or learning English as an additional language.

When we tried convincing our faculty and staff that we had to change our practices so that all kids, including our emergent bilingual population, could also learn, one of the most powerful things we did was record them talking to our faculty and staff about what works with instructional strategies and what doesn't work with instructional strategies when it comes to them learning content and learning a new language.

I'll be honest with you, I could have paid for a consultant to come in with years of experience, but the voices of students talking to our faculty and staff is what prompted us to say we really need to pay attention to this, because what these kids are saying we all admitted was true. So student voices is a powerful form of street data, to quote the authors of Street Data, that we can really use as an impetus to really reflect on: are the practices that I'm sharing really the ones that our kids need today? And maybe that kind of initiative is going to help us embrace change moving forward. I hope I answered your question.

Rena Clark 26:18
Yes. And Dr. Luis, you're so correct. I know one of the most powerful, I guess you could call it professional learnings that I was a part of is we brought—as in the elementary school—we brought back former elementary students, multilingual learners in the high school. And we'd been saying the same thing for a year, trying to get these practices. But when the students told the teachers what worked well for them, it took one one-hour meeting, and then they were convinced. They were motivated just listening to those students speak. We recorded it. It was so powerful.

Dr. Luis Cruz 26:51
So very powerful. And I want to say, at our high school, it wasn't me, the administrator, who initiated that recording of students. It was one of our teachers who said, "Listen, all this graphing data, all these pie charts are wonderful, but I want to get student voices in the mix." And he nailed it. So the fact that this gentleman saw the power of student voices is something that I as an administrator couldn't see because I was stuck in that world of making API in California and making sure that our kids were scoring at the highest levels, and this is the data we need to look at. But it took a teacher to help me understand that we needed to couple that data with student voices to really, really create exactly the change that you're talking about.

Rena Clark 27:34
So I think that actually leads perfectly into my next question, because just thinking about we have lots of teacher leaders, and lots of teacher leaders listening, not necessarily administrators, but thinking about how, as a teacher leader, you could positively influence the culture and cultural change within your own team or your building. What are some things that you could do from that teacher leader level? Maybe some of this stuff isn't happening at the higher level?

Dr. Luis Cruz 28:01
Yeah, I think what sometimes we forget, as a former administrator, is that teachers have more influence on other teachers. And it's our job not to be the sole leaders of change, but it's to give these teacher leaders a space and an identity as leaders in their own right.

So as a member of a movement to create professional learning communities across the nation, one of the most important aspects of creating a professional learning community is forming a guiding coalition—not a traditional leadership team that mostly focuses on managing the school, but a guiding coalition, a team of adults, mostly made up of teachers who are going to guide, who are going to support, who are going to empower other teachers to commit to the changes, regardless of who the principal is.

Because what drives me crazy is when you get something going in the right direction, and then all of a sudden the principal leaves, it's like everybody throws their hands up and says, "Oh, well, we lost our principal, so we'll see what happens now." What really needs to happen is those teachers who were part of that movement need to welcome the new principal and say, "All right, sit down. Let us go over with you what's working, what helped our kids learn at higher levels, and we're excited to see how you're going to contribute, new principal." But that's not what happens.

So I think what we need to do as administrators who have more authority than teachers, granted by the administration at the district office and Board of Education, is we need to use that authority to create a space for teacher leadership, allowing them to sit at the table with us, look at data—both satellite data, map data, street data—and then match that with best practices in our field, so that together we are a united front, with mostly teachers standing in front of other teachers saying, "Hey, listen, everyone. This is what the data is saying we're doing well. This is what the data is saying we're not doing well. And here are the changes we propose we must advocate and commit to."

And so I think giving teachers that space and teaching them how to deal with rational and irrational forms of resistance would be a good move for all schools, especially in our nation.

Paul Beckermann 30:23
I love that reference to empowering teachers, giving them a voice in your school, and your leadership, and your decision making. I'm curious—you gave the one example of the staff member who really pushed to have the students come and speak to staff. So that's teacher leadership, pushing things. I'm wondering if you have another example of where a teacher maybe led a cultural shift from the classroom? Maybe they began a change that rippled out through the rest of the building?

Dr. Luis Cruz 30:53
Yeah. I mean, I've been fortunate enough to work with some amazing teachers in my time. But one of the most scary things to hear, especially on a high school campus, is "we might need to change the bell schedule." I mean, those are terrifying words for those of us in education to hear, right?

So we started exploring the fact that if part of creating a systematic intervention model is going to entail changing a schedule, how do we do that in a way that doesn't create political craziness when it comes to literally adding some minutes or taking some minutes to explore in a different capacity?

So together with our teachers, we began to study what a change in schedule would look like. They attended conferences with administrators. They read articles on most effective ways to change a schedule for systematic intervention to become a reality at our school. And slowly but surely, teachers took the lead on making sure that we had three different models of a change in our schedule. They then presented that information to other teachers. They said, "This is why we are advocating for one of these three models to become the new bell schedule."

They met with the teacher association and explained to the teacher association that they were not being manipulated to say what we were advocating for, or part of the advocation of administrators being involved in that conversation. And over time, we were able to make some changes. Now we started by scaling it low first. So we practiced what it would look like one day, worked out the kinks.

But the beautiful thing about this: it wasn't just administrators advocating for these changes, it was teachers helping other teachers see why a change in schedule was needed. We confronted the why we needed to do it. We created a trustworthy who—listened to folks' concerns, that's empathy—and then we showed them how it would work. And over time, something that is nearly impossible in schools, changing a schedule, happened in a way that was very—we went slow to go fast, but in the end, it gave us exactly what we needed to really, really help our kids learn at the highest levels with systematic intervention being in play.

Winston Benjamin 33:34
You are wonderful at providing a calm, clear explanation and direction as a leader.

Dr. Luis Cruz 33:46
Thank you. Thank you very much.

Winston Benjamin 33:49
As a student who's in their own leadership program right now, admin leadership, yeah, I am overwhelmed. And for someone who finishes your book, and they're asking themselves this question, where should I start on Monday? Because that feels daunting.

Dr. Luis Cruz 34:13
I think it really begins with just understanding that any change, as positive as it would be, that a natural byproduct of initiating and implementing that change will be resistance. You almost have to go into it knowing that. I think the problem that we face as new leaders is no one ever tells us that. And so when we go in, we're assuming that I'm the principal, or I'm the department chair, or I'm the teacher leader, and everyone's going to love the changes I propose. No one ever explains that a natural byproduct of initiating even the most subtle change is going to be met with resistance.

So that leads me to say, then we should not ask, "Why are people resisting?" Instead, we should ask, "Is the resistance that we're experiencing rational or irrational?"

So Viktor Frankl talked about—is talked about in Stephen Covey's book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People—and Viktor Frankl, for those who don't know, was a Jewish psychiatrist that was captured by the Nazis during World War II, and he was beaten and just tortured. And he said that the only way he survived that torture from the Nazis was he created a space between stimulus and response. So between the stimulus of torture and his response, he created a place he could go to where the Germans didn't get the agonizing, painful outcry of someone being tortured.

So when I go into a situation, I try to go into it creating a space between stimulus and response. So the minute that I feel resistance coming, I create a space that allows me to process: is what I'm experiencing rational or irrational resistance? Because what our book goes into is how to handle both.

So the best advice I have for someone on Monday is: know that a natural byproduct of you initiating change will be resistance. Do not ask why people are resisting. Instead, ask, is the resistance rational or irrational? Because I have a book by Dr. Muhammad and Dr. Cruz that can help me differentiate between both.

Rena Clark 36:53
Well, that leads us into our section because, books—a tool, it's helpful. And so our next section is our toolkit.

Transition Music with Rena's Children 37:02
Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What's in the toolkit? Check it out.

Rena Clark 37:11
So what's in our toolkit today, gentlemen?

Paul Beckermann 37:15
I think I maybe shared this example one other time. But when you were talking about changing the bell schedules and things, I think back to in my teaching career, we were moving from a seven-period day to a four-period block schedule, which was a big change, and we were moving also from semesters to trimesters. So another big change wrapped up in there. And the reason that the change eventually worked is because our principal made sure that every single teacher on staff was part of at least one committee that designed some aspect of the change. Every single teacher in the building had a voice in shaping what that outcome was. And it just really spoke to me about the power of empowering. And that seems to me to be an example of what you're talking about. And I think giving student voice, or teacher voice, is just so essential.

Dr. Luis Cruz 38:17
Let me complement that with a quick quote. And it's a quick one. It's a simple one. And here it is: people are less likely to tear down a fence that they help build. And so when I heard you talk about how everyone helped build that schedule, a little bit of that, a little bit of each person was part of that change. So once again, people are less likely to tear down a fence that we helped build.

Paul Beckermann 38:42
Because even the teachers who were opposed at first, once they had ownership in there, that opposition changed to ownership.

Dr. Luis Cruz 38:50
Exactly.

Winston Benjamin 38:50
And that leads me into mine, which is a frame of thought, which is for the individual teacher or person: Why are you resistant to the change? Ask yourself that question. Is it rational or irrational? Am I worried I'm going to get fired? Or what reason is it for you to have this resistance to the change? So I think taking Paul's point, which is helping yourself be empowered, not just having someone empower you, but shifting your mindset so that you are able to empower yourself and participate with the change.

Rena Clark 39:24
Yes, and as you know, we've gone through a lot of change the last few years, so you've been just figuring that out for yourself, which brings me—I just like the idea. My toolkit is evidence. We've heard it mentioned lots of different times. So whether it's data, all the different forms of data that can inform, but also, I love this: follow-through evidence. I need to see it. I want to—with our students, we just believe, "Oh, if they told us, yep, I do that." No, no, no, I don't think so. So it's like I want evidence to support my claim. And so I think that evidence is a really important thing to have in your toolkit. All right. Dr. Cruz, is there anything you'd like to add?

Paul Beckermann 40:05
Do you want to take a moment and let our listeners know the full title of your book and where they might be able to get that?

Dr. Luis Cruz 40:15
So our publisher is Solution Tree. They are our friends who support our work and advocate for our work, although I hear you can also find the book on Amazon too. The name of the book is Time for Change: Four Essential Skills for Transformational School and District Leaders, written by my good friend and mentor, Dr. Anthony Mohammed, and little old me, Dr. Luis Cruz. Thank you.

Paul Beckermann 40:42
So it is now time for our one thing.

Transition Music 40:45
It's time for that one thing. It's that one thing.

Paul Beckermann 40:55
All right, now it's time for our final takeaways of the day. Everybody gets a chance to throw something in there. Luis, we will each take a turn, and we're going to let you have the final word today.

Dr. Luis Cruz 41:05
Thank you.

Winston Benjamin 41:08
The thing that I'm walking away with is: trust doesn't mean like, it means credibility. My brother used to always tell me about how he would be on the floor of his factory and cleaning up with the workers. And then now, when he's telling people what to do, he gets no resistance. And I'm like, that's going to work. So sometimes it's about doing the dirty work with somebody to get credibility before you can start telling them to do things. So I appreciate that: trust doesn't mean like.

Rena Clark 41:46
Which is similar, and so many good quotes today. I don't know—you're a quote factory over there. But I really like the idea of support before we hold accountable. But you need both, because I do feel like one is left off often, but that piece of support, which also helps with building some trust and accountability and credibility, but then you do need to hold accountable, which might lead to the part where maybe they don't like you as your best friend. So that's okay, but you need both.

Paul Beckermann 42:20
And I'm thinking about the power of voice, and giving people ownership through their voice, empowering them, making them part of the solution, knowing that there will be resistance, but if you can empower and bring them in, we can maybe turn the tide and bring them over to the change that we're hoping to make. All right, Luis, you get the final say. What is your one thing you'd like to leave our listeners with today?

Dr. Luis Cruz 42:47
I'm going to go back to that John Maxwell quote, because I think it's powerful. And that is: change is inevitable, growth is optional. And because our schools do not exist in this vacuum, when economic structures change, when technology changes, when politics happens, it's going to create a change in the place that we think is independent of all those other institutions. But we're not, and so we're going to have to experience change, whether we like it or not. Whether or not we grow from that change will be up to us. So change is inevitable, growth is optional.

Winston Benjamin 43:27
Luis, I appreciate you being here with us and having this conversation.

Dr. Luis Cruz 43:32
It's just wonderful to share a space with fellow educators, and I appreciate being invited to come on, and I hope that our time together produces some thinking and some actions that, in the end, will help the kids that we all want to serve well. So thank you for the space.

Winston Benjamin 43:49
I'd like to end it by saying, yo, everybody go check out Dr. Cruz's and Dr. Mohammed's book, Time for Change, because, again, as a leader and as a future leader, we can work with our coworkers to help them think about what irrational and rational resistance they have, so we can do better for our students. So let's get active and do the work for our kids.

Dr. Luis Cruz 44:13
Thank you.

Rena Clark 44:15
Thanks for listening to unpacking education.

Winston Benjamin 44:19
We invite you to visit us at avidopenaccess.org where you can discover resources to support student agency and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future-ready learners.

Paul Beckermann 44:32
We'll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of unpacking education.

Rena Clark 44:36
And remember, go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin 44:40
Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann 44:43
You make a difference.