[00:01] Announcer:
Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader.
[00:11] SPEAKER_01:
Okay.
[00:33]
Coach Carlos also provides online parent training at PowerParentingU.com, and he's the author of Power Engage, Seven Power Moves for Building Strong Relationships to Increase Engagement with Students and Parents, which we're here to talk about today.
[00:49] Announcer:
And now, our feature presentation.
[00:51] SPEAKER_01:
Coach Carlos, welcome to Principal Center Radio.
[00:54] SPEAKER_00:
Thank you, and thank you for having me.
[00:56] SPEAKER_01:
Let's jump right in and talk about where these strategies come from. Tell us what you saw in your own experience as an educational leader and coach, and what you saw happening more broadly in the education profession that prompted you to write Power Engage.
[01:10] SPEAKER_00:
It was born, like most strategies, out of necessity and out of pain. Pain that we weren't getting the performance that we wanted. And out of necessity, in that we were under the gun by state and local authorities, and even pressure from parents to do better. And then our own, just having a pride in your own work, you want to see kids succeed. So in doing that at the classroom level, and then also at the administrative level, I just saw that there was something missing from the traditional pedagogy that I had saw all these years, that there was something missing From the curriculum, there was something missing from our strategies and how we did classroom management. There was just an ingredient that was missing.
[02:02]
And, uh, so that sent me on a search. That sent me on a journey to find out what that missing ingredient was. It wasn't like we didn't have great curriculum online and offline. It wasn't like we didn't have great supplies in the classroom. It wasn't like we didn't have high-speed internet access. It wasn't like we didn't have all of the things that were needed.
[02:23]
But what I come to find out is that those were more technical issues, but they weren't addressing the culture in the classroom. they weren't addressing the culture in the building. So that was the key thing that kind of led me down this road.
[02:40] SPEAKER_01:
Richard Elmore talks about the instructional core and the relationship between teachers and students and content. And certainly all of those support factors, the internet access and supplies and curriculum, things like that matter, but they don't really make a difference if we don't have that relationship with students if we don't have that engagement. So take us into some of the dimensions of the kind of engagement that you're talking about, because certainly we want our students to do more than pay attention, right? There's more to it than simply, do I have your attention?
[03:10] SPEAKER_00:
The fact of the matter is we're not teaching lower-level animals. We're not teaching robots. We're teaching human beings. And at some point, our industry, it's not that we're not doing it, but one of the key things is that we've gotta recognize that there is a human element that we have to put inside our process. We've got to make sure that human element is being addressed. So when you start thinking about Maslow hierarchy of needs, there's a reason why it's hierarchy of needs.
[03:42]
There is a, there's a process to this. And oftentimes, we miss the fact, because of the pressures of the day, because of the pressures from central office, because of the pressures from leadership, pressures coming all around us, it's real easy to lose the fact that in front of us, there are 15, 20, 30 little human beings that have human needs before they have educational needs. So, too often, we jump right into the educational needs too fast, and we never look back. Once the train leaves the station, we never, uh, look back. And some kids are okay with that. They can jump right on in.
[04:26]
They don't need as much as others. And we're on our train moving, and those kids stay with us, and they become our high flyers. They're the ones we recognize as the good kids, the smart kids, quote-unquote. The other kids who need those human interactions, those human relationships more than others, they get left back. And if we don't want to leave as many as we...
[04:50]
If we want to take more with us, shall I say, then we've got to start with those base needs that are required. And I'd like to add, before any of our listeners go to the wrong space with their thoughts, or I say something that may lead them there, is that this science, this psychology, is not just for poor kids. And too often, we go there... But human beings need, they crave relationships.
[05:21]
We're built for them.
[05:22] SPEAKER_01:
Absolutely, and it seems to be a universal feeling that we all have to fight against, that as educators, we like the kids who like school the most, right? The kids who look like they might become teachers, they might become administrators when they grow up. Like, we like that kind of kid naturally, because maybe they remind us of ourselves, or at least they don't cause as much trouble. But we know that's probably not a very large percentage of our students who are going to follow in our own footsteps. We're here for everybody. We're here for all of our students.
[05:53]
So take us into, to what that, that engagement looks like for kids who maybe, like, school is not their favorite thing to do. They are probably not going to major in education and follow in our footsteps. How do we understand their motivations and, as you said, their fundamental needs in the classroom?
[06:10] SPEAKER_00:
Where there are two extremes that, when I'm working with teachers, I give them, if I don't show the video, I try to paint the picture of two extremes. The first stream being an experiment that was done in the early 70s, and it's still valid, and it's called the Steel Face Experiment. And it literally is an experiment that demonstrates how important and how early engagement is. And there is a mother who's brought into this room with her child, and she sits there and begins to play with her child. And they're doing what mother and child does. The baby's cooing back and forth, and the mother's doing her thing.
[06:48]
And then the mother is instructed to stop and just go cold-faced in front of her child. And the baby is sitting there, like, looking at mom, like, what's going on? You can see it in the baby's face that, oh, something's wrong. Mom's not here anymore. And very quickly, the baby begins to play and reach out for mom, and then mom's still holding that stone still face. And then the baby...
[07:19]
Ramps up their attention-getting skills. They're swinging, they're making noise, and the longer the mother holds that stone face, the angrier or the more unsettled the child gets. Finally, the mother's instructed to come out of still face and to re-engage the child, and then the child's happy again. And what was proven from that experiment is that even at those early stages in life, we need human interaction. We need human engagement. But then let me take you to the other extreme.
[07:52]
The other extreme is what we do to those who have not done very well in society, when we put them behind bars, when they're incarcerated. If you don't do very well in there, what do we do? We put you in solitary confinement. Why? Because that is a punishment. Why?
[08:10]
Because, once again, we've proven that even children need it, but adults crave interaction. We have to have some type of engagement from another human being. And if we don't get it,
[08:27]
We will tear the place down for it. So, that was one of the things that we recognized early on in our classroom. So, we begin developing from the science. We begin developing skills, and that's what those seven power moves are. Skills on how to create a classroom culture and environment where healthy engagement takes place. And the first, but the first one, believe it or not, starts with the sage on the stage, if you will, the instructor.
[09:00]
It starts with that key person remembering their passion for teaching. Remembering why they're there. And when that happens, once we get the teacher remembering that and executing on that passion... The other six moves become a whole lot more easier to implement.
[09:23]
And I am not saying that these, by far, at all, am I saying these are the only moves. But these were the seven that we implemented, not only in our school, but in 36 schools around the country and two schools in Africa. We implemented these seven power moves, different ones in different schools, and they all worked for different reasons. They don't have to work in any particular order. The good thing about the seven power moves is that you can grab them off the shelf when you need them. The other reason why we landed on these moves is that none of them require district approval.
[10:05]
They don't require you to get any major budgetary funding for it. These are strategies that teachers can implement by and large by themselves. So, out of all the moves that we looked at, my team and I said, we don't want to give them a bunch of moves where they have to go talk to the school building leader, they have to talk to central office, this requires $10,000 for us to implement. We wanted to come up with some things that teachers could do. So, the quick moves are very simple. First of all is the mindset of the teacher, and that is what we call having a coach's mindset.
[10:41]
Not just being a teacher, and that's one of the reasons why I embrace the title Coach Carlos, is because my mindset is not that of an administrator, not that of a classroom teacher. Although those skills are important, my mindset is that of a coach. And I don't know if you've ever watched a athletic coach at football practice, basketball practice, or whatever the sport is. But there's something about a coach that's able to pull just a little extra out of a kid. It's something about it. So, we studied coaches, uh, for a while, really to understand what it was that they were able to do with kids who wouldn't work in a classroom.
[11:28]
Coaches have a unique ability to transfer their confidence onto a child. I believe you can hit that shot. I believe you can throw that pass. I believe you can run that fast. They have an ability to transfer their belief onto a child and pull something out of a child that even a child sometimes wrestles with. So, one of the things we talk about in the book and one of the things we really encourage teachers wherever we're training...
[11:58]
Is to, before you do anything else, adopt this coach's mindset. And that coach's mindset cemented in the fact, or is built upon the fact, that first, they have this unwavering belief, that child in front of me can do it. But I'm not just talking about the traditional, have high expectations. Everybody can document high expectations. We can do that all day long. Write high expectations and put them on the wall, put them on the board, put them everywhere.
[12:28]
But coaches have the ability... They actually believe in those expectations. Even though the team... Their players aren't performing that way, they believe in them.
[12:41]
And I'll say this last thing about this one. Right now, as you and I are having this conversation, the living embodiment of that philosophy... is Coach Deion Sanders, primetime, out in Colorado. This guy has just walked on this campus, and he has re-energized everything.
[13:04]
He just has said to these players, you can do it, and he's done it at every level, at every single level. And he becomes their de facto faith. He just, they just believe in him. And therefore, ergo, believe in themselves. That's what the coach's mindset is, power move number one. That's paramount.
[13:22]
Teachers must have that coach's mindset. They've got to see themselves more as a coach than a teacher.
[13:29] SPEAKER_01:
I love what you said about a coach's ability to transfer their confidence to their students, not just as athletes, but in the classroom as well. I think that makes so much sense. And I personally planned to teach high school chemistry and ended up becoming a middle school teacher. And I realized that my middle school colleagues who had either intended to teach middle school or previously are intended to teach Elementary school had a little bit of a different angle than I did coming from the high school level. I did my student teaching in high school. And I think probably a lot of us who are interested in the content, who are interested in teaching at the secondary level, have a little bit more of a hard time...
[14:10]
with the student side, with seeing kids as human beings, frankly, like, it's a little bit more difficult for us. And I think when people come into the profession, figuring out that why, and realizing that it may be difficult than what they originally thought. If you were to ask me as an undergraduate, why do you want to teach chemistry? I would have said, because I like chemistry. I think it's interesting. And that was not enough to make me a good teacher.
[14:33]
Like, I needed a better why, and I needed that I needed to trust in something other than my ability to explain things in order to actually get my kids to learn the stuff that I was there to teach them. So, take us into some more of those dimensions of that learning, because I think that coach's mindset is such a powerful shift and can really be the gateway into further engagement.
[14:55] SPEAKER_00:
That right there is the relationship. There's a term that I use in the book that's called performance-based relationships. So, what I encourage coaches to do, classroom coaches to do, is not to just create those fun, familiar, friendly type of relationships, but relationships that are steeped in performance and helping the students believe that I believe you can perform at this level. And that mindset, that relationship...
[15:27]
is what increases engagement. When you have that ability to say that desire to share with the student that I believe in you, and whatever wording comes out of your mouth to their ears, it's fine. Whatever effort that you give to demonstrate to that child and that student and their family that I believe in you, now that relationship is based on performance, and it begins to increase... Engagement.
[15:57]
And let me do it this way, because I want to paint a word picture for those who are listening. One of the things that I do in my trainings is I line up dominoes. And if you've ever seen dominoes, what we know scientifically about dominoes is that dominoes have the ability to knock over the next domino 50% higher or larger than its own weight. So if you line up a small domino, a one-inch domino can knock over a one-and-a-half-inch domino. The one-and-a-half-inch domino can knock over a two-inch domino, so on and so forth. So, if we line what we know through geometric progression is that, theoretically, if you lined up your first domino that's the size of a chiclet and took it so far out, dominoes could knock over the Empire State Building.
[16:44]
Now, why do I say that? Is that if we truly want our biggest domino to be performance, high performance in the classroom, Then what I'm encouraging teachers or coaches to do is to line up tasks in a domino fashion, interrelated tasks to knock over performance. The first smallest domino being relationship. Relationship knocks over the next domino being engagement. The next domino is attendance. The next domino is behavior.
[17:18]
And the next domino, if a child is there every day, if a child is there every day and engaged, if a child is there every day and engaged and behaved very well, the last domino to fall over is performance. But the very first domino to fall is relationship. You can't get to the other dominoes if you don't have relationship. To the core of your question there about whichever strategy someone uses, that's secondary to first building a performance-based relationship. And performance-based relationships start with the mindset of a coach.
[17:57] SPEAKER_01:
That's a great way to put it. I really appreciate that and the progression, you know, and understanding that that Maslow's hierarchy matters instructionally. We can't just, as I said, maybe before I started actually teaching, what I thought teaching would be like being very content-focused and being not as especially relational. Makes total sense to see it the other way around, as you put it. Let's talk, if we could, a little bit about engaging parents, because I know a lot of your book is about engaging parents, and sometimes we are proactive about that. Sometimes we do a good job of connecting with parents.
[18:30]
Sometimes we don't succeed in connecting with parents, and we might have to make a negative parent contact, and that doesn't always go well if that's our first contact. How do we engage parents from the get-go and build that partnership that we need on behalf of their students?
[18:46] SPEAKER_00:
One of the first things I would say to teams is to huddle around the desk, your next PD, the next time you're talking, think about the demographics and the psychographics of your population. Don't think about yourself. Take yourself out the mix. You're a teacher. We know you're good at parenting. We know you're good at being engaged.
[19:09]
Take yourself out the mix. And write down the demographics of your parents. Write down the psychographics of your parents. Create an avatar. Don't think school. Think business.
[19:23]
We want to sell to these parents. So what do they need? Create that avatar of them. Once they create that avatar, and we do this in our sessions, we come up with this representative of our parent culture, our parents. And then we ask the question, what are the three meaningful minimums? And I want to emphasize those two words, meaningful, in that they have an impact on academics, attendance, behavior, and culture.
[19:56]
That's my ABC. Academics, attendance, behavior, and culture. What are the things that have a meaningful impact on those three things, and then what are the things you know that these parents can do? For instance, if you're dealing with a culture whose socioeconomics is very low, you know that it's a tough crowd you're working with, economically speaking, then be real careful about the parent engagement task that you put before them. What's the minimum things that those parents can do? Ask yourself, what's the percentage of our parents who truly have cell phones?
[20:38]
What's the percentage of our parents who truly have the internet? What's the percentage of our parents who truly have reliable transportation? Once you build that avatar, come up with the three things that have meaningful impact and minimal impact, and then you work real diligently to communicate that to your parents. Um... Um... Um...
[21:22]
Ensure that we have the most recent email for you. Ensure that we have the most recent telephone for you. And you would be surprised how many databases that I look at schools that don't have a complete database of emails and telephone numbers for their customers or their parents. The same thing, their customers. So, if you concentrate on the three most meaningful minimums That parents can do, and then concentrate on having parents complete those things. Parents will appreciate that.
[21:59]
They will see that you understand who we are. Communicate to them based on the way they communicate, not the way you communicate as an administrator, as an instructor. The amount of letters that I read that are sent from the school to homes, it baffles me. I'm saying, guys, if you are in business to get these folk to buy from you...
[22:21]
You would alienate them as customers because you're not speaking to them in their language. So that would be the first thing I would suggest is come up with a meaningful minimum list of things and then work that list until you've gotten parents on board with that meaningful minimum.
[22:40] SPEAKER_01:
Carlos, you talk a lot in the book about not only striving to engage students and families, but measuring engagement. Take us into the idea of the engagement evidence chain. What is that?
[22:52] SPEAKER_00:
Yeah. What happens often when we do cultural audits or engagement audits at schools? What I am, what I'm on grounds doing is I am auditing the processes of engagement in the building. Everyone has them. Unfortunately, there is a list of things that traditionally go bad, and that's why we created the evidence chain. So what I ask school leaders to do, and those who are responsible for engaging parents, engaging students, is to share with me their processes and their policies for engagement.
[23:30]
And then what we do is take that policy and process through our engagement evidence chain. And I don't know how young your audience is or how young you are, but back in my day, we rode bicycles that had chains, and if a link broke off one of the chains, your bike was pretty much no good anymore because you needed that little small link. And we'd have to go to the corner store, get a link, pop it back in, and the bike would run again. I say that because the same thing happens when we have processes. Typically, the processes are well thought out. The processes are well documented.
[24:10]
But where the issue comes in is in implementation. So, the evidence chain works like this. We take a process or policy, and we ask a series of questions based on the policy and practice here. Is this policy first very well communicated or exchanged? Is it exchanged in the language of the hearer? If you're talking to parents, did you send this information to parents in parent-friendly language?
[24:46]
And we look at the information. That gets back to my earlier point. Most often, it has been communicated. But it's been communicated in a way that parents are like, what did they just say? Or it's been communicated at a time that doesn't work for parents. So you're holding your PTC meetings only at a certain time of the day where parents really can't be there.
[25:09]
The next evidence chain is, okay, so if you've communicated, if that link is down, then that's where you need to fix the issue at. The next one after exchange is, has it been implemented the way that you said you wanted it to be implemented? And if it's not, then we know that link is broken. That even though we exchanged it properly, it wasn't executed properly. So we go back to the execution. But let's just say it was exchanged properly.
[25:42]
Let's just say it was executed properly. The next link is, has it been evaluated? And oftentimes, processes are in place, they're on paper, but very few times are they evaluated to see if they're even working. But let's just say it's been executed. I mean, it's been, the expectations have been set, they've been communicated, it's been executed, it's been evaluated. And then you find out that some things haven't been executed properly.
[26:17]
What we find out too often to our demise is that they're not enforced. And I don't mean enforced anybody who's hearing me that is enforced in a negative way, but is enforced in terms of have the people who are responsible for implementing this process, have they been supported properly? Have they been trained properly? And if they haven't, Then we have to get in there and train them and enforce them because if any one of those links are out of place, your initiative is going to fall on its face. If it hasn't been exchanged properly, if it hasn't been executed properly, if it hasn't been evaluated properly, and if it hasn't been enforced properly. Any one of those links break.
[27:01]
Then your program or your initiative is falling flat on its face. And then what do we say when it falls? We typically say, oh, this product or this curriculum or this process doesn't work. We don't like that. Sometimes it's not the product. Sometimes it's something in that chain that's gone bad.
[27:18] SPEAKER_01:
So the book is Power Engage, Seven Power Moves for Building Strong Relationships to Increase Engagement with Students and Parents. Coach Carlos, if people want to learn more about your work, get in touch with you or your team, talk about working together, where's the best place for them to go online?
[27:33] SPEAKER_00:
The simplest way to do it is just go to carlosjohnson.org. If you don't go there, you can go to Solution Tree and just search for Carlos Johnson. You can go direct to imageofsuccess.com. But carlosjohnson.org or Solution Tree, either one of those places will be real easy to find us.
[27:54] SPEAKER_01:
Coach Carlos, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure.
[27:57] SPEAKER_00:
It's been a pleasure being with you. Thanks again, Justin.
[28:00] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.
