Transformative Principal

Today, Daniel Bauer and I talk about our Mastermind. I encourage you to join. Check it out here: Transformative Mastermind.

If you still have questions or are ready to join, please set up a brief phone call. Schedule a call

Daniel and I are both setting up masterminds. I interview him on his podcast: Better Leaders Better Schools

Mastermind For Principals

We all know that being a principal can be a lonely job. It is isolating to be the only one who has to deal with everything that goes on in your day-to-day life. Some of us have assistant principals, some of us have co principals, but each of us know that there are some things that are just hard to help other people understand what you’re going through.

Enter a mastermind. A mastermind is a group of people who are dedicated to investing in themselves to improve their lives.

We all have social networks which help us in various ways. If you have been on Twitter, in Facebook groups, or Voxer groups, you know there can be an ebb and flow with the conversation and ability to help other people in the group. You know there are a lot of lurkers. You also know that sometimes your questions and needs don’t get answered. Sometimes you don’t even ask questions because you can’t articulate what the problem is without giving a big back story.

A mastermind is different. You commit to being there for yourself and for your teammates. You commit to answering their questions, to supporting them, and, most importantly, to investing in yourself to help you be the best you can be.

Schedule a call with me right now

The truth is, a mastermind isn’t for everybody. Answer the following questions and see if you might be one of the ten principals in the country that will be able to join this mastermind.

• Do you want your work and home life to be in balance?
• Do you want to lead with a new level of confidence and ability?
• Do you want to learn how to communicate with your teachers and students so they understand the vision you have?
• Do you want to learn how to work with other principals and leaders in your district to be on the same page, working towards the same mission?
• Do you want to be healthier?
• Do you want to have better relationships with those you love?

If you answered yes to the questions above, then let’s set up a call and talk further about the possibilities.

Click here to set up the call

What do you get as a member of the mastermind?

• Weekly meetings online to facilitate the mastermind.
• A group of principals that are willing to help you as you help them.
• A monthly leadership book club
• A DISC personality profile test to help you understand how you communicate, and help people communicate with you.
• Free access to events and trainings.
• Private Facebook group and Voxer group.
• A rotating weekly problem-solving session that allows you to go deep into the primary problem you are facing in your school.
• Specific curated podcast list of the best podcasts available.
• Celebrations of overcoming obstacles at your school with people who will understand the complexity of the obstacle.
• A time to reflect that will energize you for the next week to be your best.
• Lifelong relationships with other principals.

I hope you will join me, and take your leadership to a level you never could have imagined.

Click here to set up a call with me

If you are still not sure, please read through the frequently asked questions below and set up a call with me!

What is the time commitment? We will meet each week online for about 60–90 minutes. These sessions will be jam packed with useful information, problem solving, and reflection.

Why does it cost money? I can join a Voxer group for free! This is more than a Voxer group. This is a group of people, meeting regularly, to make sure that we are being the best we can be. Simply put, if you don’t pay for it, you will likely get “too busy” and blow it off. When you invest an amount of money you are going to be more dedicated to it. Your level of commitment and dedication will be commensurate to the monetary value associated with it. Your monetary investment in yourself shows that you are serious about learning and growing...

Principal of South Heights Elementary in his 20th year. Rob doesn’t just look at his students currently, he has a much bigger vision of what they can accomplish and how they can make life better forever. Rob keeps in contact with kids who went to The 1199 many years ago and makes sure that they can still find ways to be successful.

• Special things you do during Christmas for your schools
• You can be an awesome combination of tradition and innovation.
• We celebrate all of our holidays.
• We take all of our kids to a movie.
• Santa’s Treasure Island Mall!
• Most schools going away from all this extra stuff, and it seems you are going toward it full steam ahead!
• Work hard, play hard, succeed!
• Neighborhood Christmas parade.
• Go big or go home.
• How has the community changed since you’ve been doing these things?
• This school not prison, so let’s make it enjoyable.
• Big ideas are going to happen. People are willing to go out and make it happen.
• People are willing to come in and do extra as well.
• Expensive endeavors require the community to buy in.
• People like to be part of something bigger than themselves.
• People look at their budget and try to see what they can do, and that is the wrong way, they need to find their ideas and make their budget work how they need it.
• We do lots of recruiting to find the right people.
• Non traditional interview methods.
• Kids interview them first.
• All about getting inside their head. Interested in what they think.
• We want people that want to be at South Heights.
• We can’t handle mediocre.
• There’s no better identifier of authenticity than the kids.
• Kids interview applicant, teacher support interviews kids to see what they think.
• If you can’t handle being interviewed by a bunch of kids, you might not be able to handle 30 kindergarteners.
• How to be a transformative principal? You’ve got to understand it is not about you, it is about them. It is about building people up.

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Ready for a Modern Web Site for your school? Simple School Sites is the place to go for high quality Wordpress sites specially designed for schools.

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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Sponsor: Sanebox

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We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL.

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Brian Hyosaka is a Chicago native and has spent time around the world I’m originally from the Chicago area and am the son of career high school special educator. I grew up playing a multitude of sports and got into coaching alongside my sister who is also a teacher. For a few summers during college, I was splitting my day interning at my dad’s company and coaching swimming. Each day, I would dread going to the office and count the hours until I could be with young people coaching swimming. That final summer proved pivotal and I came to the realization that pursuing business or an office type job was just not for me.

Thankfully, Teach For America existed to allow me to jump into teaching and utilize my bilingualism in Spanish. I knew that in order to truly give education a shot, I needed to leave my friends and family in Chicago, so I moved to Denver to teach 5th grade in a bilingual classroom. Unlike most of my friends at the time, I ended up staying in Denver for 5 years teaching in the same school. During my final 2 years, I also took on full-time teacher residents and realized I had a passion for developing educators.

At the same time, I had maintained a dream of living abroad and decided that after 5 years, the time was right to make that happen. My then fiance who is a high school counselor then applied to schools all of Latin America. We ended up landing jobs at the American School of Guatemala in Guatemala City. For us, these were two of the best years of our lives for a number of reasons. For me, I had begun to feel burned out on the constant pressure to show student achievement on a standardized test.

Working in Guatemala, we had no standardized test and I was able to grow my practice tremendously as an educator. At the same time, a new school leader came in with me my first year. It was through him that I got to witness and feel the power of an excellent leader for the first time. He not only changed the culture of the school, but also the trajectory of the school. This was the first time I really considered school leadership as a realistic pathway.

During our second year, I began to feel the pull to begin working with students where I really felt needed compared to the incredibly wealthy families we served in Guatemala. I was aware of the School Leadership Program through the University of Denver and decided that it was time to see if I might be able to follow his lead, but serving a population I really cared for.

After being accepted to the program, my bilingualism proved pivotal again and I landed an internship at Academia Ana Marie Sandoval, a dual language public Montessori School in Denver. My first year at the school was eye opening to say the least. I had been used to being an effective teacher and immediately felt uncomfortable and very ineffective. I learned quickly that my strength was not direct and honest communication. I caused many tears and considered returning to the classroom midway through the year. Thankfully, I had a great mentor and the support of a peer group in my program and confronted many of the issues within my control.

As the next two years progressed, I became a far better communicator and really learned to sit beside teachers, families and students. At the same time, I was being pushed towards principalship a few different schools. After verbally accepting an offer, I realized that I was not trusting my intuition and was making decisions on a faulty premise.

Reneging in this way forced me to reconsider my complete path professionally. As a new dad, I was concerned about my ability to be present for my daughter and wife with the rigors and stress of principalship. I actually began applying to positions in the corporate world thinking that I might have both more financial stability and less work to bring home.

Around that same time, my nephew invited me on a ski trip with his school. I had actually been the one to find his school a year earlier and reluctantly joined him on the trip. His school was a micro-school in North Denver called Embark, and he was thriving there. I rode up to the mountain with Miguel, the school director, and we chatted as collegial administrators do. He mentioned that Embark would be opening a 6th grade to go along with the existing 7th/8th grade in order to capitalize on enrollment.

I didn’t think too much more about it, but I really loved what I saw on that trip from the educators and the students and went home that night feeling jealous of the school. It hit me almost immediately that I would be the next 6th grade educator at Embark. After reaching out to Miguel, interviewing, and discussing with my wife, I made the very unobvious, to some, decision to go back to the classroom.

This would ...

Mike is a principal of a pre-K–8 school. He is a great principal and also really great at using technology in unique ways. You can follow him on Twitter (@Techedvance). Spending a few minutes on his web site will teach you a ton about how to use technology to improve your professional practice.

• Turning off the red badge for email notifications. Blog Post
• Classroom Walkthroughs with Drafts
• The Drafts app.
• Dealing with things that come up through the day (do it now, or save for later).
• Mac Power Users Podcast appearance.
• Plain text notes held together by Dropbox is Byword, NVAlt, Fantasical all make him a better leader.
• How to be a transformative principal: Find one way that you can use technology to do your job. If you carry around a smart phone and you can’t answer the question, how does my phone help me be a better principal, make it a goal to find out how it does help you do your job.
• What keeps him inspired: The things in my office that remind me of my faith and my daughter starting in preschool at my school.

Sponsor: Sanebox

Web Site

Transformative Principal on Stitcher

Refer A Principal

Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL.

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

In this podcast interview, Julie Ulstrup discusses the concept of the "Zone of Brilliance," where individuals can create a vision and achieve their dreams. She emphasizes the importance of having a definite chief aim and aligning one's actions, time, and money with that aim. Ulstrup highlights the common problem of educators providing a lot of value but not being compensated fairly for it.

She suggests that educators can increase their income by understanding their zone of brilliance, changing their mindset about compensation, and becoming more aware of their transferable skills. Ulstrup also challenges the idea put forth by Simon Sinek that one should start with "why" when setting goals, arguing that teachers should focus on their zone of brilliance and act accordingly.

• Zone of Brilliance - We help everyone else create a vision and achieve their dreams.
• Every achievement is a result of a definite chief aim
• How you see yourself, how others see you, how you spend your time, how you spend your money.
• We say we value something, but we do something else.
• It looks like doing nothing.
• Impact, influence, increase and income.
• We know it is our zone of brilliance when we feel it inside.
• How to change your mindset about compensation.
• Common and chronic problem that educators provide a lot of value and don’t get paid enough for it.
• Increase is three dimensional - who are we becoming.
• How we serve on the earth is how we can define ourselves.
• How much did the US pay out for all the Olympic gold, silver and bronze medals?
• Teachers do have a lot of transferable skills.
• Act in your zone of brilliance
• Simon Sinek was wrong - Don’t start with why
• Teachers have skills that can work well in other settings.
• Teachers have always been in sales.
• Mindset, human-centered part of being an entrepreneur.
• Five minutes and use the quote by Sarah Blankely “The biggest risk is not taking a risk” - Journal about that for two minutes. “I serve and I deserve” and what does that mean?
• Venn to Zen.

About Julie Ulstrup

Meet Julie Ulstrup, the visionary CEO of Women's Brilliance Collective and transformational personal and business strategist for experienced educators seeking their next chapter. With more than two decades of counseling expertise and a track record of incredible business growth, Julie is the catalyst educators trust to turn their expertise into purpose and passion driven new opportunities.

A two-time international leadership award winner and top 1% entrepreneur, Julie's unique blend of business acumen and deep understanding of human potential guides educators to create a vision for their careers so they increase their impact, income and influence.

Julie's superpower? Helping you discover yours. She combines razor-sharp strategy with heartfelt empathy, empowering you to:

• Leverage your skills, knowledge, expertise and wisdom in innovative ways

• Cultivate authentic leadership that inspires across sectors

• Align your passion with purpose-driven opportunities

• Make meaningful contributions in exciting new fields

As a sought-after speaker and trusted mentor, Julie's insights have transformed lives at universities, schools, and prominent events worldwide. Her message is clear: Your passion and purpose is the key to unlocking a future filled with increased influence, income, and impact.

Julie's mission is to create a ripple effect of positive change by guiding educators like you to thrive in your next chapter. Whether you're eyeing leadership roles, consultancy, or entrepreneurship, she'll help you navigate the path with confidence and purpose.

Ready to write the most exciting chapter of your career? Connect with Julie and the Women's Brilliance Collective today. Together, we’re creating a world where the rest of your life truly becomes the best of your life.

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL.

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see w...