199. A Culture of Personalized Learning & Reflection for Teachers with Dr. Frederick Buskey

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In this episode, I chat with Dr. Frederick Buskey, a returning guest to the podcast. With 17 years of K-12 teaching experience and another 13 years in higher education, designing and teaching principal licensure programs, Dr. Buskey knows how essential the role of school leaders play in fostering an environment where teachers can flourish. 


In our discussion, Dr. Buskey discusses the major perspective shifts we need to make in school leadership, underscoring the necessity of prioritizing teacher development and advocating for a personalized approach to professional development (PD). Further, he emphasizes the importance of building trust through coaching relationships, offering practical strategies for school leaders to enhance teacher support and growth.

The Big Dream 
Dr. Buskey envisions an educational environment where teachers are empowered in their own PD journeys. This means that school leadership is intentionally creating a supportive environment that prioritizes self-reflection and growth, enabling educators to thrive. 

Mindset Shifts Required
To realize this vision, several mindset shifts are necessary. First, school leaders must know and embrace the fact that their teachers know more about their teaching than they do as a leaders. Teachers are the experts on their teaching, so leaders can’t come in and change everything without first understanding each teacher’s unique context. 


Another crucial mindset shift for school leaders is the transition from being deliverers of PD to facilitators of reflection and growth. Teachers should be in the driver’s seat of their professional development, and it’s the leaders' job to focus on creating spaces for reflection and follow-up. Embracing a culture of trust and collaboration, rather than top-down instruction, is key to empowering educators.

Action Steps  
For school leaders to empower their teachers to take charge of their professional development, they can:

Step 1: Prioritize creating spaces for reflection within the school schedule. 
Leaders must shift from being the “deliverer of PD” to someone who creates space for reflection and follows up with teachers. To do this, encourage teachers to reflect on their learning and experiences, facilitating conversations that anchor their growth. This can look a few different ways and must adapt to the personal and professional needs of the teaching staff.

Step 2: Implement personalized PD formats
There’s no one-size-fits-all for PD, and it’s important to cater to the diverse needs of educators. Again, it must be built on self-reflection and led by teachers themselves. Consider integrating various formats such as book studies, peer observations, and self-paced courses to provide flexible learning opportunities. Ask your teachers what works best for them and help them implement it.

Step 3: Build trust through coaching relationships
To create a culture of self-reflection and ongoing learning, schools can adopt collaborative coaching methods. Hold space for people to reflect by making it a priority in everyone’s busy schedule. Follow up with your teachers after they attend a conference or engage in some other type of PD; by doing so, you’re holding space for them to reflect. Then, ask how you can keep supporting them in their growth. This fosters a culture of trust where teachers feel supported in their professional development journeys.

Step 4: Provide specific information for teachers
Leaders should be a source of information and resources for their teachers. Acting as a coach, you’re listening to what your teachers are interested in, following up with them, and then curating resources that can be useful on their journey.

Challenges?
One of the primary challenges is shifting the existing culture of professional development from a one-size-fits-all approach to a more personalized and reflective model. 

One Step to Get Started 
Because this all represents a big shift from the status quo, it’s helpful to start with a simple next step. Dr. Buskey recommends leaders begin by stopping by their teachers’ classrooms and have a simple check-in: “What went well with your lesson today? Was there anything that surprised you? Is there anything you’d do differently?” 

This starts building a relationship of trust, where you’re inviting them to take charge of their own professional practice. It invites reflection and growth, building an environment where teachers are driving their own PD. 

Stay Connected
You can stay connected with Dr. Buskey and his work on the Assistant Principal Podcast, his website, and LinkedIn. 

To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing Dr. Buskey’s Daily Leadership Email with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 199 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below.

Quotes: 

• 2:51 “If you're a school leader—you're keeping everybody safe, you're meeting your legal obligations—but every time, every minute that you spend not supporting and growing teachers, you are not improving your school.” 
• 9:15 “If I move from the deliverer and the scheduler of PD, that gives me more attention, especially, but a little more time to focus on the reflection and the follow-up pieces. Because we could go to the greatest PD in the world and if nobody ever talks about it again, it’s lost.”
• 20:50 “If we want to become partners with teachers in their professional development, I think we need to address their pains before we address what we think the problem is.”
• 32:15 “If we don't have trust, you can't coach. You can tell people what to do, but you can't coach them if there's not a trusting relationship. And so I think that when you go to the “one thing”... build a relationship. People are the purpose. That's why we're here.”

TRANSCRIPT

0:00:03 - Lindsay Lyons
Dr Frederick Buthe. Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. 

0:00:07 - Dr. Frederick Buskey
Oh, thank you, Lindsay, I'm excited to be here. 

0:00:10 - Lindsay Lyons
I'm so excited and so you've been on the podcast before Guests may be familiar with you. I'll give you a moment to like kind of share anything that might feel relevant. But really this is going to be a special kind of episode where we are taking a look behind the curtain and really brainstorming some possibilities as to kind of like people in the space of education who do things around professional learning and kind of brainstorm and co-create and ideate the possibilities out there to make education a great place where teachers are supported and students are learning and excited to learn more. So who are you? What should people know before we dive into our brainstorm to learn more? 

0:00:45 - Dr. Frederick Buskey
So who are you? What should people know before we dive into our brainstorm? Wow, so I have 17 years of experience in K-12 teaching at most levels and county level administration, and then I was 13 years in higher education where I coordinated and helped design and teach in principal licensure programs, and that's where my passion especially for assistant principals, but also school leadership comes from and that's where a lot of my experiences and the things that I bring into what I talk about and what I work with. I think the big thing for me is I was never a building level administrator, so I was very conscious of that and I've been in hundreds of schools as part of my work in higher ed and as part of consulting, and I've tried to steal all of the best stuff from, you know, from everybody that I meet, because they're a lot smarter than me. So, you know, I like to think my superpower is being able to take some of these really complex things like growing teachers, which we're going to talk about today, and and trying to distill them into some really simple frameworks to make it more actionable, and I so I want to leave lead with this, lindsay, because we're talking about teacher development and I think there are some things that I think, some major perspective shifts that we need to make in school leadership. 

I think the first thing I'd point out is school leaders have three jobs Keep everybody safe, right, non-negotiable. Meet all your legal obligations so you're not fired and they don't shut the school down. Number three support and grow your teachers so you're not fired and they don't shut the school down. Number three support and grow your teachers Because in the end, if our teachers are 20% better at the end of the year than at the beginning, it was a great school year and intuitively, we all know that. But then we also all let all the other garbage get in the way and I think a lot of times, even when it comes to growing our teachers, we're tripping over our own feet, and I will dig into that. Times, even when it comes to growing our teachers, we're tripping over our own feet, and I will dig into that in a few minutes. But I kind of wanted to start there. If you're a school leader, you're keeping everybody safe, you're meeting your legal obligations, but every time, every minute that you spend not supporting and growing teachers, you are not improving your school. 

0:03:05 - Lindsay Lyons
I love that for so many reasons. I mean, obviously we're all here for the students, but I love that. Implied in that is, if we don't grow the teachers, we're not actually helping the students right. So it just really brings that top of mind and, given the realities of teacher shortages and burnout and all of the things right now, it's like wait, if we don't grow the teachers, you're not going to have any teachers left. 

0:03:30 - Dr. Frederick Buskey
Exactly, exactly. You know three of the top reasons that teachers lead the field is don't feel supported by administration, struggling with discipline issues and student behavior and poor culture Guess what. Every one of those is about the school leader. And if I'm a new assistant principal, the thing I want to focus on that first year is getting to know and support and grow my early career teachers. It's a natural pairing, right? We don't have to fight the new AP veteran teacher kind of battles. We go in. You've got new people who are thirsty, who want help. You're a neutral person. You just go in and start building a relationship and start working with them. And guess what? A teacher who knows they can call their AP, who knows that their AP is invested in helping them become a better teacher, that person's probably not going to leave. 

0:04:28 - Lindsay Lyons
What a great point and I so I love one of the things you said was you get to know the teachers and then right, and then you support the teachers and I think that's that's huge right. 

You have to first identify, like, what are the strengths and areas for growth for our teachers and then next part is identifying well, what can I offer or what can I connect them with to be able to support them in the ways that they specifically need, which is going to be different for everyone, right? 

Like the I don't want to say like old school, but the way that I initially was given PD in air quotes, heavy air quotes as a first, second and third year teacher was we come to a large staff meeting once a week and then you leave and goodbye, everyone gets the same thing and it's usually someone talking at you, right, and we probably know that doesn't work well. But if I'm a leader trying to change that dynamic that's always maybe been the dynamic at my school or district is like these large staff meetings, these PD opportunities that are not personalized, like can we brainstorm a little bit about what are the possibilities for either formats or things to consider that might be beyond the all right, everybody's going to get in one room and the leader's going to talk at you. Like what does that look like to support personally? 

0:05:47 - Dr. Frederick Buskey
talk at you Like what does that look like to support personally? Yeah Well, I want to drive that nail deep into the wood, because here's here's a couple of things that I think leaders need to embrace, a couple of perspective shifts. So number one is your teachers know more about their own teaching than you do. You may know more about teaching and learning, but when it comes to their teaching, they know more than you do. Just like I'm going to hazard a guess, by my education experience, I know more about leadership and change than most of the people listening to this podcast, but every person listening to this podcast knows a lot more about their own leadership than I do. 

So for me to just walk into your school and say, oh, you need to change the way you're doing things like that, maybe, but maybe not, because I don't know your context, I don't know your history, I don't know what you're wrestling with. So we have got to get out of the mindset that we're supposed to go in as leaders and tell teachers what they need to work on. That is so, so counterproductive, and so what the alternative is then is to put teachers in the driver's seat of their own professional development and let them tell us what they need and let them find the different kinds of resources that may help them. So we can start there. 

0:07:13 - Lindsay Lyons
Oh my gosh, I love that. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. I love this mindset shift and it's truly kind of like, yeah, this journey of either co-creation or like, yeah, they're just totally in the driver's seat and I'm just like, I'm the GPS that you can ignore if you want, or you can tell me your destination, right, and I help you get there. I don't know why I'm into this analogy, but it's like into my brain and so I'm wondering, you know, once, once, teachers have said like, let's just imagine, okay, I'm just imagining the school. 

There's one teacher who is a brand new teacher and just needs help, like getting oriented to, like how, what is the teaching world? Like, right, what is my planning process? What is, how do I do all of these things? I'm going to orient myself to a new school. There's someone who's maybe like pursuing a new line of pedagogy, right. Maybe someone's like okay, now I've been teaching very like traditional lecture style and I want to try inquiry-based learning. There's someone who, to your point about behavior being a force to drive teachers out of the profession. Someone really wants to work on culture. How do you get all of those folks the thing they need when it's three completely different topics? 

0:08:25 - Dr. Frederick Buskey
So there are multiple things that we can do. 

I would also say that if we can shift from it's my job to deliver PD or even it's my job to connect my teachers with PD, right, even if I can let go of those, what's my job in professional development? 

It's to create space for teachers to reflect, and then it's to create space for teachers to reflect, and then it's to follow up with them to continue the reflection cycle, to gather data. If they're trying to, you know, if they're trying to implement more sophisticated questioning techniques, then as a leader, my role is to go in and observe and check the look like, sound like, get that data so that we can go back and have a discussion and I can can say here's what I saw and heard. Is this what you had in mind? Are you getting what you want out of that? If not, how can we tweak these? So if I move from the deliverer and the scheduler of PD, that gives me more attention especially, but a little more time to focus on the reflection and the follow-up pieces, because we could go to the greatest PD in the world and if nobody ever talks about it again, it's lost. 

0:09:35 - Lindsay Lyons
And so many of those, I've, I've been to so many of those great PDs, right, like that's been my experience. It's like the binder that sits on the shelf forever, right, and we just don't open it back up because it doesn't become part of daily practice. So I love this, and I love the idea, too, that there's like an extra, like a person in the room collecting the data. That's really hard to collect when you are the teacher, because you're doing all the instructional pieces, you're figuring out, okay, what's on the next slide? Is this person grouped with this person? And then really, it's hard to get a sense of what's a student experience here. Like, I have 30 people in the room. What's that kid's experience? I don't know, cause I'm not standing right next to that kid engaged in the learning or not engaged in the learning. So I do love that perspective and and I'm I really love that it's like not even necessarily our job to connect them with the PD. 

I wonder about teachers' familiarity with options available to them, and so here's what I'm thinking in terms of format, are there times? So, okay, two things. One is structure. So are there structured times within the day that, as leaders, you've built into the schedule opportunities for PD time or you can like kind of pursue your own goals, maybe that's like your independent planning time. But I also wonder like, is that the culture of the school, that independent planning time is a time to pursue PD, or is that time to just plan your lessons and then there needs to be a separate time? 

So that's kind of one wondering. It's like what does the structure need to be, or what? I guess not what it needs to be. What could it be? And then also wondering about you know the multitude of formats that I never thought of as PD, and now being in the PD provider space is like oh right, it could be like a book study, it could be a self-paced course, it could be I'm actually going to go visit this teacher down the hall that's doing the thing that I've always wanted to do, and someone's literally doing it. So I just need to like go during my planning time or ask for a sub for 15 minutes to see the thing in action, right when the admin could like step in and watch my kids. You know there's so many possibilities. I'm just wondering if you have favorites, if you've seen this stuff in action. If, what are your thoughts? I'm sure you have some really good ones. 

0:11:50 - Dr. Frederick Buskey
Yeah, I'm kind of thinking about these. The different scales isn't the right word, but we can look at synchronous, we can look at asynchronous, right, because maybe for you the best time to do professional development is nine, thirty in the night, after your kids have gone to bed, because maybe you need to bust out of school at three, fifteen so that you can get your kids up, you know from wherever, or go home and take care of your parent. So there's synchronous, asynchronous. I think we can think of internal to the school, external to the school and I missed the last one. There's another one out there, but it'll pop up later. So I think we can think in those multiple different ways. That lets us really expand out the kinds of opportunities. 

But just a really simple thing what if we have our hour staff meeting? What if the first 20 minutes are dedicated to one thing about teaching that you want to learn? I get 20 minutes and at the end of that 20 minutes you're going to have conversation and we're going to do some share out about what we learned. So now everybody's focusing on their own thing. I knew a elementary school principal who met with her teams and said I want you to come up as a team, a focus area for your team for this quarter and then you can drive the professional development in that and I can come in and support. So it's not wholly individualized, but that's a way to bring the team together, encourage team leaning, learning and right, they're taking the lead in that. So they have agency. Some districts will run the kind of a la carte. So we have professional development day, we have these six things, and what some districts do is they actually solicit that from teachers, like we're gonna have a pd day coming up, what are the things that are most important to you? And then they get all that information back and then they can say, okay, let's, let's then offer these six things and, like you said, you probably have experts in your building that you can have. Start to lead those. But I think we also there's all these opportunities. We also have to be mindful of making sure that we're following up. 

And I wanted to go back. I know you talked about this when we were talking earlier today and our friend Jen Manley has a big thing. We were talking earlier today and you know our friend jen manley has a big thing. How do you, how do you plan without selling your soul and spending 12 hours a day in school. There are a number of really high quality education sources now to help teachers learn how to be more effective planners. That might be the most valuable professional development that a teacher could get. So, yeah, I think if teachers can come and say, hey, I saw this, and show me as a leader, like I want to do this course, I think this is going to be really helpful for me. Great, go do it. I don't have to deliver that, but we need to schedule a time where we're going to have a conversation. I want to hear what you learned and then I want to help make sure that you implement it. 

0:15:13 - Lindsay Lyons
Oh my gosh, I love that so much. So two pieces there. One is this idea of the leader as, again, the person who's doing the follow up, who's who's connecting, who's keeping the person on the path. I mean, I think about just even in my business, right, like Mara, your daughter is actually like really coaching me to keep a lens on what are my priorities. Because sometimes when we're in it right, we're in it and we can't kind of lift ourselves out to be like what is actually most important right now, and without that kind of second set of you know brain or the second brain to kind of remind you of where it is you're trying to go, I often think, as a coach, that's what happens, right, I'm like, hey, remember this vision that you started the year with, like, I just wanna remind you of it. 

Like did we get so far off track that we have been doing cool things but we're not actually pursuing that, we're not actually collecting data on that thing anymore? That was the direction we wanted to go in and it's okay if we shift, but if, but just kind of here to remind you, here, to here to help you on the path, which I often find to be, again, like teachers know best what they need, so it's not us telling them yeah, we have to stick to this path, but it is a reminder of here was was really important to you. You have now spent 12 hours a day, you know, or whatever, for the last week working at school. Are we prioritizing the right things and I think from all the way from like planning, the balance or harmony of like life and work to what are we prioritizing in the curriculum? Because sometimes we get to the point where we're just covering content and we're not actually like focused on the right things, we're not seeing the students in front of us, we're not connecting as humans, right, whatever the thing is. 

0:16:58 - Dr. Frederick Buskey
Yeah, and I think if we just if I ask leaders that are listening just think for a minute what are 10 sources that you could get good professional development from? All right, if we pause for a minute, most of the people listening could come up with 10 sources ASCD, I got my Twitter, I got you know whatever else, linkedin, I go, articles here you come up with 10 different places to get good professional development. How will you reflect on that, on that learning? How will you reflect? Because it's kind of like we operate in a bathtub and if we, if we clear water out, like we clear out some space, the water just flows right into it. So if I create empty time in my schedule, other stuff is going to flow in. 

One of the things that we can do as leaders is we can hold space for people to reflect. So if I know you went to a conference, I can pop in that next day and say, lindsay, tell me what you learned, tell me all about it, let me hear, because you are not going to reflect. You know, maybe on the drive home, but you're not going to reflect. After that you can have all these ideas. You're going to get into school and get overwhelmed, and then it's done and maybe one or two things stick. But if I can say, let's reflect, let's create this time, even if I give you five minutes, reflect, think about it and then say, okay, what's the one thing that you want to implement from this? And then tell me when I'll come in and I'll watch, and then we can have a conversation about it. Now we're actually going to get some improvement, some growth from our professional development, because now we're anchoring it and we're supporting it. 

0:18:48 - Lindsay Lyons
I also am thinking about kind of the cultural shift of just how we do school and how we do professional learning, that I almost wonder if that's the norm, like that's what happens when we go learn, and then we always have that space, that container held for us, and we kind of almost start to do that ourselves in our own minds. 

Perhaps that right like there's going to be, you know, a follow-up I don't want to call it accountability, but like a follow-up, a container for me, as you said, like space being held. And so now I'm kind of proactively thinking about what I want to say in that conversation just in my own head before I get to that space, and I almost wonder if that then creates a dynamic where other teachers are then offering that space and holding that space for each other and as a whole school community. I mean, even to the extent that, are we holding space for learners after they go learn? The thing to reflect? I think it is also just this big cultural shift to prioritize making that space for reflection versus cram more content in right, like again like the same parallels to teaching and covering curriculum. It's like are we just cramming in PD ideas and hoping something sticks and it gets implemented? 

0:20:09 - Dr. Frederick Buskey
Yes, we are in a lot of cases and it's understandable. And one of the challenges is teaching is so complex just the act of teaching, and then you layer in curriculum and all the other stuff. It's so complicated and if I'm working with a teacher, there are probably 20 different things that teacher could get better at. And I think one of the challenges we have as leaders is we think there's this thing. Challenges we have as leaders is we think there's this thing, but we also know there's this thing and this thing. So we're trying to help that teacher grow in three different areas and, by the way, maybe none of them are the area that is causing the most pain for the teacher. And if we want to become partners with teachers in their professional development, I think we need to address their pains before we address what we think. 

The problem is Because the research is pretty consistent that as principals, assistant principals, we're actually not that good at identifying air quotes the thing. Like we're not. Most of us haven't had that kind of training right. It's this weird thing where, because you're the principal or assistant principal or instructional coach, you are expected to be able to walk in a classroom, assess, provide feedback and you're expected to be able to coach. Most principals and assistant principals have not had any depth of formal training in any of those things and a lot of instructional coaches haven't even had training on actually how you coach like real coaching. That's complicated, but they do them because they're supposed to and then we don't. 

You know we make a lot of mistakes, but I was. I was in a session, a presentation I did last week, and it was about this reflective process and asking reflective questions, and so I had school leaders in this presentation and I walked them through three reflective questions and some of them were working with people that they didn't know at all. Right, they had no idea. And one of the participants at the end said they reflected so much and they got so much out of this and I had no idea what they were talking about. Right, because they didn't know the situation. But the power for us is in asking the questions and creating the space to give that space to people reflect, because once they start to reflect now, they're going to start to anchor their learning. We can't anchor learning without reflection and we can get our learning from anywhere, but there's only a few people that can create the space for us to reflect. 

0:22:59 - Lindsay Lyons
This is so beautiful and it reminds me too. I keep going back to like the types and the formats still, because one of the things that I think I've seen at a classroom level even is we create space for things like revision, for example. So let's say, a student does a piece of writing and they get the feedback on rubric and then it's like, okay, we're going to give space to implement and then I'll come back. Right, or you're going to have time to revise this paragraph and then you come back, but then without the specific supports I'm thinking of like a brand new teacher, right, who maybe doesn't even know that something like ASCD exists or that there is like an educational space on Twitter or you know whatever, like without that kind of resource bank, then we are doing the same thing we're doing with students where it's like okay, do better. And then we're like okay, where's, why aren't you doing better? 

And so I am wondering about like, whether it is literally like a Google doc of resources that we kind of like co-create with fellow teachers or like things that have been interesting. Maybe it is like I think Jennifer Gonzalez called them pineapple charts of like, co-create with fellow teachers, or like things that have been interesting. Maybe it is like I think Jennifer Gonzalez called them pineapple charts of like the here's when teachers are doing things you might be interested in seeing in your own building so here's the times to sign up to visit their classes Like some sort of resource collection that people could tap into. That might be topical, that might be, you know, whatever it is Like. Have you seen kind of that model or could you envision kind of what? Either things could be in there or where leaders, if leaders feel stuck, like where leaders could go to get ideas about those kinds of things, and we've named several today. I'm just wondering about systems. 

0:24:53 - Dr. Frederick Buskey
I haven't seen that in practice. It certainly makes a lot of sense. I haven't seen that in practice. It certainly makes a lot of sense, and especially with the collaborative documents that are available now where we can all access that and put that in. I think it's really cool to the idea that if we all have goals like how we want to get better as professionals and that begins with leaders setting the example of being transparent, right and putting out there, yeah, this phenomenal source for how to cut my planning time in half and now I see that's the goal of a couple of my teachers I can go right there and say, hey, hey, y'all, you need to look at this. And I think that's another thing. 

We talk about informational power. One of the powers that leaders can exert is providing specific information for people. So instead of me going in and saying you need to do this, I can find that one page, two page, three page article, you know, with four bullet points, four steps to doing X, and I can put that in your box and just say, hey, you might want to read this and that's a source. And then those sources usually have other places that you can go as well. So I think we can, as leaders, we can see some of that and start to curate that, and I think that is one of the really important roles for instructional coaches is that kind of curation of resources. 

0:26:36 - Lindsay Lyons
Oh, I love that idea, the curation of resources I also was thinking about. I was talking recently to a preschool who was saying you know we have such turnover because you know they're. They're with us for like two years and then they leave. And so the the families they were working specifically with educating families around how to talk about social justice issues, which I love, but they were like it's hard because you know the families leave and then we have new families and we did this PD or whatever for them, but now they're gone and so either with students, with staff, with you know any sort of turnover, particularly thinking about the high turnover rates and teacher shortages. 

Now I'm almost wondering too about the institutional knowledge that either leaders have or veteran teachers have. That I'm new, maybe not even to the profession but new to the school and like could you kind of archive or synthesize you know brainstorming here but like you know what are what's kind of the ethos of the school, what are these kind of key resources to like put in your grades or like here's the go to person for this parent contact or something. If that was kind of like a loom video I mean as simple as a loom video. That's like now part of this course library of things, that like we have a shared google drive and I have this particular question is there a way that that? I mean, I'm totally just brainstorming, I don't know if something like this that exists now. Would that be like viable to have a kind of co-created resource bank of people, just like loom screen sharing and talking through ideas? 

0:28:06 - Dr. Frederick Buskey
I don't know. I think it's a great idea and I do know there are districts or schools that compile resources in that way so that it is accessible. I don't know how realistic it is in the pace of our world that people are actually going to take the time to go look at it Like I think it's a great idea, and maybe if you build in that time to create the opportunities and say, hey, this is a time to go look at these kinds of things I'm not sure how much utilization like uh, uh, you know we've had this experience. I think I know I have. I do have some online courses and everybody's like, oh, we want this, we want this, so you put it out and then everybody's too busy to do it. So it's a great idea and people want to do it. But the two scarcest resources are time and attention and most of us are stretched way too thin already and so anything no matter how good it is. 

0:29:10 - Lindsay Lyons
just one more thing oh my gosh, that's really good point because it's making me think of one the importance of structures, so like where's the structure in the day to go do the thing. But also I'm thinking about as a leader or even as a teacher. I think there are things that sometimes we know that we become the go-to person for. So people, colleagues, are like oh you know, go ask lindsey this or go ask Frederick this thing, and so we just keep like saying the same thing or directing people to the same resource. I wonder if there is kind of a time saver inherent in I'm going to document this thing for everyone Anytime you ask a question, instead of taking 10 minutes of my prep time or you know my time as I'm running out the door to go grab my kid from school or whatever like it now lives here, and so I wonder if that's actually a value. I mean, I'm thinking also of like coaching cycles. Right, if we can like. 

Cara and I have been kind of playing with this idea of asynchronous coaching cycles and having feedback that you can like do the reflection at nine at night if that's your jam, but that that kind of lives in either an email or a Voxer thread or somewhere, and then we can kind of continue the conversation as each of us is available, because time is so short, particularly in schools where we have different schedules and leaders are kind of in 30 places at once, it seems. Yeah, I mean, I just I think there's so much possibility in all of the things we've talked about today and I appreciate that you have really anchored us in some of those kind of like formats but also kind of what the leader's role is again is to, in whatever way possible, hold that space for reflection, prompt that reflection, be the kind of follow-up data collector and potentially link to or share different resources and be the curator, as you said, of those things. 

I want to like leave space for anything else you want to share, but I do want to, in closing, when we get to that point, just leave people with like what's one thing they could do as they end the episode, Because we've talked about like 50, maybe. 

0:31:16 - Dr. Frederick Buskey
So I think the other thing that I really wanted to share is doing some leadership development with nonprofit leaders and I was. We were always trying to teach them how you coach right. So I had them. They were working in kind of ABC, where A was coaching, b and then C was observing, and this was in the third of three all day sessions that we'd had. So we we had just wonderful collegiality. People got very close. In these sessions we do a lot of kind of deep work, not just learning stuff. 

And we were debriefing the coaching and one of the people said she said this was so easy. Like why, why was it she? And she said real coaching is hard. This was easy. Like why was it easy? Well, because I trusted her and I knew she this wasn't going to be a gotcha or I knew I could say whatever. And so I had this level of trust. And that was last year and that conversation has just stayed with me. If we don't have trust, you can't coach. You can tell people what to do. You can't coach them if there's not a trusting relationship. And so I think that when you go to the one thing like build a relationship, people are the purpose. That's why we're here. Build the relationship, get to know your people, and if you get to know your people, they're going to tell you what they need. If your people aren't telling you what you what they need. 

0:32:48 - Lindsay Lyons
You either haven't built trust or you're not having the right conversations. 

0:32:50 - Dr. Frederick Buskey
Yeah, that's it, that's it, yeah. So the the way I would have leaders start is I do my little five-minute coaching thing. It is the simplest thing, lindsey. Just stop by a teacher and say, hey, tell me what went well with your lesson today, and just listen, listen, and they'll go for about 30 to 90 seconds. 

And then the second question is was there anything that surprised you? And it's such an amazing question because you'll see people look up or look down. They'll do that pause to really kind of reprocess the lesson through a different lens. Like a lot of us will think about what worked, what didn't work, but we never think about what surprised us. So you're forcing them to kind of replay their whole lesson and think about it from the different perspective. 

And then the final question is is there anything you'd do differently? And how you phrase those questions is really important because we want it to be invitational. We want them to be able to say is really important, because we want it to be invitational, we want them to be able to say, nope, nothing I would do differently, because what they're used to is I come to talk to you about your teaching and I'm going to tell you what you did well, and then I'm going to tell you the grow. Right, I give you the glow and then I give you the grow. You don't even hear the glow because you're waiting for the grow and it's not helpful because I give you the grow. You might want to think about this and I walk away and we never talk about it again. 

If I just said, lindsay, tell me about how that training went, were there any surprises? Is there anything you'd do differently? That's the growth and that's what I think. If leaders well, a couple things One, we want them to take away that teachers need to be driving their own professional development, and there are all these different ways that that could work. But the other thing is to understand that your value is in creating the space for people to reflect, because if you don't do that, if you don't create that space, nobody else is going to. And in doing that space, you are building credibility, you are providing opportunities for your teachers, you're building a relationship and you're learning. You learn so much. 

0:34:58 - Lindsay Lyons
just listening to your teachers celebrate. That is beautiful. I'm going to use five-minute coaching. Those three questions, that's beautiful, thank you. Thank you for that offering to all of us. I love it. And if people want to connect with you I mean you talk about this stuff all the time. You speak publicly. You were just saying you were doing that last week. So how do people get in touch and where can they find you in the online spaces? What do you want them to know? 

0:35:23 - Dr. Frederick Buskey
Yeah, so my website is frederick at frederickbuskeycom and you can get to anything from there. I'm on LinkedIn a fair amount, so a lot of people find me on LinkedIn and send me a direct message. The biggest joy I have in this part of my career is just speaking with people and meeting people, so anybody that wants to have a conversation with me message me on LinkedIn. If you go to my website, you can find a place to schedule a call. My email's plastered all over the place and I do a daily leadership email and that comes out 300 words or less, monday through Friday, and it's just a way to think about some of these things, right, it's just a reminder. A lot of times it might be a little story or just something to think about and set an intention for the day. If we're intentional in our leadership in a day, the day is going to be a win, right? 

0:36:20 - Lindsay Lyons
So yeah, oh my gosh. Thank you so much, dr Bruschi. It has been so nice to have you on today. 

0:36:27 - Dr. Frederick Buskey
So fun as always, Lindsay. Thank you.

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