Hi everyone!

It's Saturday night and we just got the twins down. The seven-year-old and mom are watching Harry Potter, and I love that our seven-year-old is getting into that story. It shaped my childhood for sure. I have just three days of work next week before Fall Break, and man, am I ready for it.

I wanted to share a couple of reflections I've had recently.

We're almost at 600 followers on Instagram, and I only launched that account on July 21st. Two of my reels, posted on back-to-back days, got real reach and engagement, and I wanted to unpack why.

Here are the reels:

Reel #1 Four things your principal wishes you knew Watch it

Reel #2 Three truths teachers won't like hearing from their principal Watch it

If you don't have time to watch them, I get it. Here's a quick summary along with my reflections:

Reel #1 really resonated (27k views and 1.1k likes), I think because it said out loud what so many principals and school leaders deal with. We want to be in classrooms, but a lot of the time there's operational madness up in the office. Sometimes one student can take 16 hours of administrator time in a single day across two assistant principals. It's no secret that teachers are the most valuable role in education, but school leaders need to say it out loud more often.

Reel #2 didn't get quite the reach (8k views and 100+ likes), but one point drew some polarizing responses. Point number two was that a small percentage of teachers need to be directed to change their teaching, but only after positive reinforcement, quality instructional coaching, and administrative support have already happened. That connects to a fundamental question behind my work here with Finance for Instructional Leaders: how does a principal allocate enough time, people, and money to support, and even direct, improvements in teaching?

As I started drafting this for the 500+ of you in this community, I realized my reflections on both reels come down to one simple idea from my doctoral work in school finance at USC: distributing and nurturing instructional leadership across your faculty. It really is the antidote to what both reels are getting at.

Widespread instructional leadership is also one of the key ways we operationalize that unicorn term "collective teacher efficacy." That's the answer. I had a whole write-up drafted on how I operationalize collective teacher efficacy to address issues like the ones in these reels, and then I realized I'd already built a resource for exactly that, for you!

Don't take my word for it. Here's what a few people who spent the whopping $10 on it had to say. Not bad next to the hundreds of dollars per credit hour we all paid for our master's degrees and other formal education.

This resource will give you more insight into bringing collective teacher efficacy to life in your school than any of our graduate programs ever did. Check it out, and enjoy your Saturday night and the rest of the weekend!

$10.00 Collective Teacher Efficacy by Design Collective teacher efficacy is your teachers' shared belief that, together, they can move student learning, and it's the... Read more Send me the document

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With the most appreciation and gratitude,

Ryan