Leadership You Can Learn — Part One: Who You're Becoming
Leadership is not a personality you're born with. It can be learned — and if it can be learned, it can be taught. In part one of a two-part series, Vicki Davis talks with Ronn Nozoe, CEO of the National Principals Association (formerly NASSP), about what principals across the country actually told us about AI in their schools — and why the number one thing they need isn't a tool, it's time. Then Muriel Summers describes taking a struggling Title I elementary school and rebuilding it around a single conviction: every person in that building is a leader, including the five-year-olds who interview teacher candidates. The thread running through both conversations is the idea Vicki's mother gave her — make your to-be list before you make your to-do list. Character before tactics. Identity before activity.
In this episode, you'll learn:
• Why "time" — not training, not tools, not money — is what principals say they need most right now, and what a leader can actually take off a teacher's plate this week
• How to find the two or three teachers everyone in your building already listens to, and why consulting them before a decision solves problems the front office can't
• The difference between a multiplier who draws more capability out of people and a diminisher who shrinks it — and how to tell which one you're being
• What happened when a Title I school taught leadership habits to kindergarteners: discipline referrals fell, academics followed, and the model spread to more than 8,000 schools in over seventy countries
• Why "nobody is just anything" belongs on your wall, and what three words written above a school door did for the children who read them every morning
Full show notes, every book and link from the episode, and the complete transcript:
https://www.coolcatteacher.com/becoming
Part two takes this into the building with two National Principals of the Year who lead with love and prove that it works.
If this show helps you, the single best thing you can do is leave a rating or a review wherever you're listening — it's how other teachers find us. And if one educator comes to mind who needs to hear Muriel's story, send it to them.
