👋 Hi, it’s Matt. This month, I share my reflection on (almost) not recommending a book to 5th graders and how our decisions affect readers. I also provide information on the upcoming writers group, a tool for teaching narrative writing, and three books I read recently. Enjoy!

I recently finished The Last Resort1, a spooky novel by Newbery-award winning author Erin Estrada Kelly. I had not read any of her books until now.

I don’t know if my expectations were too high, but I wasn’t fully engaged in the story. The characters didn’t feel fully fleshed out. The backstory lacked resonance. The stakes weren’t high enough for me, in spite of the characters’ lives being in danger.

‘Maybe the author felt constrained by the format,’ I thought, giving the author the benefit of the doubt (this is the first in a Scholastic series by multiple authors).

I was reading The Last Resort to give it away as part of a library book budget project I am helping facilitate. Thirteen teachers and library media specialists are participating in this opportunity to empower their students to decide which books to bring into their respective spaces. I didn’t want to offer them a book I couldn't fully recommend. Right?

I eventually realized what I was doing. I was making decisions on behalf of students. I was potentially withholding a book I didn’t think was worth recommending instead of trusting the students to form their own opinions. It wasn’t a bad book. And even if I thought it was, I was forming that judgment through my lens as an adult.

In Better Than Life, Daniel Pennac wrote that “if we want our sons, our daughters, all young people to read, we must grant them the same rights we grant ourselves.”

This lack of rights represents the absence of trust in our students. In my case, I assumed I was the arbiter of quality even though I am not the audience these authors write for.

When it comes to reading children’s literature, what if I am missing something kids haven't lost? What if it’s my lack of imagination, my inability to relate to a text? How do we know what will engage a kid in reading until we let them choose what to read?

There have been lots of stories created to explain why kids aren’t succeeding as readers. It’s technology. It’s the standards. It’s because schools picked the wrong program. I imagine some of these, and others, have had some influence. But how does anyone become a reader if the choosing of what to read is always done for them?2 I nearly made that choice for a roomful of kids myself.

I brought The Last Resort with me to the 5th grade classroom. The students came in from recess, sitting at their desks without redirection. I saw my name on the daily schedule: “Mr. Renwick - 1:00pm”. I smiled, then shared with the class, “I haven’t seen my own name on a classroom wall in years. Thank you for inviting me here today.”

I held up the book and asked the class if they wouldn’t mind if I read aloud the first two pages to them. “I am curious as to what you think about this novel.”

After reading aloud, I asked the students to share their thinking.

“Lila seems like she is an anxious person.”

“Lila really wants to fit in with her friends.”

“She is trying hard to manage her emotions.”

I was impressed. “Wow, you made all of these inferences about the main character only from the first two pages. The author didn’t explicitly state that Lila was anxious, for example, yet you came away with these conclusions. What was it?” One student (who was sneak reading an Alan Gratz book under his desk), looked up when I asked the question and raised his hand. “The author is a good writer.”

I held up my hands and gestured toward the student. “That’s it. You named it.” I paused, and then disclosed to the whole class. “To be honest, I didn’t love this book when I first read it. But after listening to you all share your takeaways from the little that I read aloud, I think I might be in the minority.” I held up the book, cover out. “Who would like to read it?” Several hands went up in the air. I set the book on the teacher’s desk, letting the class decide who would get to read it first.

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Upcoming Writers Group: A Process for Writing

Join us on Sunday, October 18 starting at 6pm for the next writers group. The theme is “A Process for Writing”. We will read a classic introduction by Ray Bradbury and respond to one of two powerful writing prompts. Time will also be provided to offer feedback to colleagues about a piece each of us is working on. RSVP by Friday, 9/16.

If a paid subscription is a challenge, complimentary subscriptions are provided. Just hit reply - no questions asked.

Teaching Tool: Follow the Story Character Planning Guide

I had the privilege of attending Erin Estrada Kelly’s session at last year’s Wisconsin State Reading Association conference. She walked us through the process of brainstorming a new story by developing the main character first. I outlined what she shared. It is now a downloadable tool for all subscribers (free and paid) to use with students, or in your own fiction writing!

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What I’m Reading

A Network for Instructional Improvement: How Teachers and Leaders Made It Work by Sara DeMartino, Anthony Petrosky, Glenn Nolly (professional)

The authors describe their experience in using improvement science tools to implement effective literacy practices in a large school district. This is different than your typical implementation plan where districts buy a program, offer a day or two of training, and then expect teachers to deliver the program with fidelity. The facilitators created a space for professional dialogue along with support in building teachers’ capacity to lead their own learning. They also highlight how successful schools were led by effective principals, and what they did to achieve their goals. This work took several years, which is the reality of schoolwide literacy initiatives. The authors provide a portrait of what is possible when we trust teachers and invest in them.

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (fiction)

This historical novel is a creative interpretation of the origins of Hamlet. O’Farrell offers a complicated portrait of William Shakespeare, who is a supporting character to his wife, the protagonist Agnes. She is an outsider in society, a forest witch, until “the Latin tutor” (Shakespeare is never named) woos her. Throughout the book, we witness the price of over-ambition, systemic neglect, and societal expectations that have no room for certain differences - a 500-year old story that is relevant today. It’s a story that needs to be told more.

Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King by Caroline Bicks (nonfiction)

The author, an English professor at the University of Maine (and Stephen King’s alma mater), is given one year’s access to the famous author’s archives. Bicks pours over first drafts of his most well-known books, including Carrie and The Shining, and highlights King’s revision process. She also has access to the author himself, sending emails and speaking to him in person to learn about the thinking that went into his decision-making as a writer. Even if you are not a fan of King’s work, I think any writer/teachers of writers will find this nonfiction book helpful in understanding the craft more deeply.

What have you been reading? What books are you recommending to students?

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It’s the first month of the school year. A new ELA curriculum program has been purchased and is being implemented throughout the district. Even though you and your colleagues have developed integrated units of study with authentic performance tasks over the last several years, leadership expects you to use the program as the primary resource.

You feel frustrated, even angry. Not just because of all the work you put into developing those units of study. Not just because the students enjoyed learning in the experiences you and your colleagues designed. And not even because the first few weeks of this program have failed to create that same level of engagement. It’s because you got results. Students consistently scored high on assessments. But because your locally developed units of study weren’t deemed “scientific,” they were shelved.

You pause. You breathe. You have options.

After thinking about your ultimate goal - students who can read and write and see themselves as readers and writers - you email your coach and ask if they can meet with you. During the meeting, you ask them to help you review the next unit of study in the program. You ask them what’s essential for the students to know and be able to do. Your coach points you to the program’s scope and sequence. There, you find a matrix. It highlights the standards that students are expected to master by the end of the unit. You pause, thinking about the possible pathways here.

You now feel a mix of relief and guilt. Relief that maybe you don’t have to teach the program word-for-word. Guilt about deviating from the script after only a few weeks. So you start small. You develop a performance task that asks students to produce a podcast to showcase their learning. This is in addition to the traditional test. When you announce this to the class, they become excited, just like previous years. In your enthusiasm, you send a letter home to families explaining the project, including what the students are learning and the aligned standards.

The next day, the principal calls you into their office. They received a call from a district-level administrator last night, expressing concern that you are not following the program as prescribed. Apparently, one of your students’ parents is friends with this administrator. The principal explains that their hands are tied, but you need to focus on implementing the program with fidelity.

You pause again. You take a couple of deep breaths this time. You have options.

Instead of checking for job openings in other districts, you examine the teacher’s manual. As you flip through the myriad of comprehension questions and instructional guidance, you notice the expected amount of time for the daily lesson. The publisher specifies a minimum and maximum number of minutes for each part. You wonder what it would look like to teach in the minimal amount of time outlined in the teacher manual (which you now decide to refer to as a “guide”). You estimate how much time you can save in a week. You are pleasantly surprised.

The next day, you get real with the students. You share your concerns about the change in how literacy is taught without throwing anyone under the bus (especially the student whose parent is friends with the district-level administrator). For example, time for independent reading and writing is treated as an add-on rather than as essential in the new program. You share with the students that you plan to teach the curriculum resource as expected, but you will need their help to avoid teaching too much so they have more time to read and write texts of their choice.

One of your students suggests keeping a visual timer for you. They set it to the minimum time for each portion of the lesson, acting as your teaching assistant. When the timer dings, you are done teaching.

You remind students that this is an experiment and that you need a way to monitor the impact of this teaching approach. So you begin asking students to complete exit tickets at the end of each lesson. They tell you when they were engaged and when their attention drifted. You combine this data with how students are performing on checks for understanding. You use this information to make adjustments from lesson to lesson, student to student.

You learn that the core resource wasn’t necessarily the problem. In fact, you find it helpful in reminding you to maintain high expectations for your students. Not every unit you created was as rigorous as it was relevant. In fact, you feel some regret in not having the whole class read the nonfiction article about corn from the program. Your rationale, that the students would find it boring, may have been a cover for your deeper concern that the text would be too difficult for your students. You make a note in the teacher’s guide to try it next school year with appropriate scaffolding. You also appreciate how the program offers a framework for managing your literacy block; you feel better able to meet with students 1:1 or in pairs based on formative assessments.

Students also seem to be more successful in class. For example, they show more interest in your classroom library and can sustain their attention to what they’re reading for longer periods. They ask permission to visit the school library more frequently, and even other classrooms, for new books. One of your colleagues asks you in the hallway how you are finding time for your students to read, given how much material there is to cover in the program. Shortly after this interaction, the principal emails you to request a conversation.

You pause once again. You practice mindful walking on your way to the office. You tell yourself you still have options.

The principal smiles when you arrive, inviting you to take a seat. They ask you how things are going with the new program. You don’t say anything for a moment. You look at them suspiciously, then say, “Fine.” The principal explains that they wanted to congratulate you on your students’ winter screener scores. You learn that your kids outperformed the other classrooms across the board. The principal asks whether committing more fully to the program was the reason. You take a moment to debate whether to be honest or to tell them what they want to hear; you opt for honesty.

You explain that you taught with fidelity to the students first. You used the resource as a helpful guide for your instruction. You explain how the exit tickets gave you feedback on where the lessons were not connecting with your students, and how you used that feedback to make adjustments. You pull up the spreadsheet on your smartphone to share some of the comments kids gave you over the first semester.

The principal sits back, at a loss for words. After a few moments in thought, they ask you what you need going forward. You explain that you want to share what you are learning with your colleagues, not as an expert but as an experimenter. You also note that, for this to happen, you will need administrative support when the district inevitably learns what is happening in your classroom. Your principal pauses, then nods and explains that they will call the district-level administrator and vouch for your approach to teaching readers and writers. You thank your principal and walk out of the office.

Outside the principal’s office in the hallway, you pause, take a breath, and smile. You have options.

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P.S. If you’re navigating something like this right now - a new program, pressure from above, a values clash with your own instructional judgment - I’m offering free 30-minute coaching sessions for the first 10 people who sign up for an open time.

Topics we could dig into:

• Having a candid conversation with faculty or administration about a tough issue

• Navigating a curriculum acquisition process without losing your instructional vision or values

• Working more effectively with students or parents who present ongoing challenges

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👋 Hi, it’s Matt. In this essay, I reflect on how I avoided important conversations that could have led to growth. Whether you are a teacher or a positional leader, we have an obligation to our colleagues and our students to be both humble and transparent in our professional interactions.

(Note: Many thanks to and for their feedback on this piece. You can find their writings here and here. We met in August and provided feedback on these articles for our first writers group. Become a full subscriber today to join these monthly community sessions!)

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As I sat down in my office chair and opened up my email account, I discovered the following message:

“Are you the one who took down a few of my students’ posters, marked some spelling errors, and put them back in my mailbox? Just curious... As faculty, we’ve talked about whether things had to be perfect or not when in the hall. Of course, I try to stress to the kids the importance of it being correct when in the hall, and I try to catch things so they can fix them. However, sometimes it is too hard to fix an error, as with the posters my kids created. Other times, I put things out for the kids to self-edit, and I indicate that. I thought that was fine because it’s showing where they are at.”

As this teacher’s principal, I felt a range of emotions. Shame, for not talking to the teacher personally about it. Frustration, in that we have had conversations about writing expectations, yet the teacher was still rationalizing their choice. And uncertainty. Am I over-worried about what other teachers and parents will think when they see less-than-perfect writing on the walls?

While still riding this emotional roller coaster, I replied with the following:

“Yes, I took them down. In 6th grade, published writing needs to be grammatically accurate. We discussed as a staff last year, while examining our shared literacy beliefs, that writing is grade-level appropriate at the K-1 and beginning-of-2nd-grade levels. 3rd grade and up, students’ writing should be publish-ready if posted for an audience.”

This email thread ping-ponged back and forth about who said what and how this expectation was not being consistently monitored. This teacher was making reasonable points. For instance, they pointed out that a discussion around writing expectations needs to happen more than once a year. “It should be an ongoing conversation.”

Regardless, my defenses were up. Recognizing my resistance, I realized that even if I was right, I was still wrong in how I argued my position. I took a deep breath, pushed myself away from my office computer, and went for a walk to visit classrooms.

One characteristic of leaders who fail to achieve schoolwide literacy excellence is pride. To be clear, pride itself is not the enemy. In an appropriate context, pride can be healthy. For example, publishing student writing is a way to affirm a job well done. When the focus is on the effort students put into their learning, pride is a natural and appropriate outcome.

The negative side of pride shows up in common ways between principals and teachers. For example, after taking down the students’ writing because of multiple spelling errors, I recognized that pride had governed my decision to avoid an honest conversation with the teacher. It could have been respectful, in person, and focused on listening to understand. Instead, I let my fear of the teacher’s potentially negative reaction to my correction govern my actions. Pride is selfish. We spare our own feelings at the expense of others’ well-being.

Consequently, professional relationships erode when we hold back what we want to say until we act out of frustration. When people don’t know where each other stands because they talk around what needs to be said, trust withers. We are saying, “I don’t believe you can handle feedback as a professional” by avoiding this interaction.

Ultimately, excessive pride harms everyone. Our actions model acceptable behavior throughout an organization. We stop living by our values and the shared beliefs of our organization. We protect our egos instead of high expectations for all students. This misalignment between our values and actions leads to stress. We aren’t willing to look less than competent at times. This harm influences the entire culture.

Digging even deeper, chronic stress is a symptom of unmet expectations along with uncertainty about how to meet them. We have an idea of what something should be, such as student writing, and when we don’t see that realized, we blame others or ourselves. Unhealthy expectations are based solely on standards, or on pressure for students to perform well on standardized tests, or in competition with other schools. How do we position these expectations so they foster a healthy sense of pride in both our students and ourselves?

In a word: Humility. One way humility is practiced in schools is by admitting to others that we don’t have all the answers and sometimes need help. I remember this also being difficult for me at times as a new teacher.

In my first year as a 5th- and 6th-grade teacher, I had students create informational brochures about our rural town for a local cafe. Feeling rushed because I had overcommitted to this project, I didn’t take enough time to support my 5th- and 6th-graders in producing error-free writing. They were delivered to the cafe, spelling mistakes and all, to sit between orders of pancakes and eggs.

A week later, a colleague stopped by my classroom. “I appreciate what your students created at the cafe, but some of the kids’ writing had misspellings.” I pushed back, arguing that this was where my students were at as writers. “Why not be transparent with the community about their current skill levels?” I don’t recall this situation being resolved, beyond me stopping back at the cafe to collect my students’ work with my head down.

In fairness to myself, our school had no clear agreement on what was acceptable for published writing. But I could have taken the lead. A humbler version of myself might have responded differently.

• I could have thanked my colleague for being willing to speak up and share her concerns, recognizing that it probably wasn’t the easiest conversation to start.

• I could have asked her, a veteran teacher, what she did to get her students to produce grade-level-appropriate writing that she was confident publishing.

• I could have shared this feedback with my students, first taking responsibility for not supporting them as well as I may have in the writing project.

• I could have asked my students to share what they needed to create grade-level-appropriate writing, with the writing standard and exemplars of what this work should look like to help communicate expectations.

• I could have empowered the students to improve upon their previous work through shared demonstrations, opportunities for peer feedback, and guidance on self-assessing their writing before submitting.

• I could have later celebrated the students’ efforts, for example, with a field trip to the cafe for a morning snack.

• I could have facilitated an author’s chair, where I interviewed one student who demonstrated excellence in writing in front of their classmates, so everyone could learn about the process they used to achieve these results.

• I could have co-created an anchor chart with the class documenting what we learned about writing for an audience during this project.

Engaging in this revisionist history, I can see how the teacher I intervened with as a principal regarding their writing reacted the way they did. Expectations weren’t clear. Feedback wasn’t communicated. Trust was low.

Coming back from my classroom visits (which always give me a greater sense of calm), I reread the email exchange with the teacher. Thinking about my role in this interaction, as well as my own experiences as a teacher, I responded with the following message:

“Thanks for your response. I am not specifically looking for errors. When I do see them, I have taken down other pieces of work from other grade levels and rooms that had evident examples of misspellings and grammatical mistakes. Your example is not the only one.

I appreciate your suggestion to re-examine our beliefs about this aspect of writing and all areas of reading and writing. Let’s talk about that on Friday at our staff meeting.”

Rereading my first paragraph, I realized that I was still rationalizing my choices. But I was also demonstrating openness to continuing this conversation as a faculty. It would have been just as easy to go the other way; to apologize fully, drop my own conviction, and let their account of the situation stand as the whole truth.

Edgar Schein and Peter Schein describe relationship building as a “seesaw of asking and revealing”, occurring “within the situational norms of what is appropriate, unless both parties develop enough trust to agree to expand those boundaries” (2025, affiliate link). I was learning that humility didn’t mean stepping off my side of the seesaw. It meant being willing to build trust and accepting that I might temporarily make someone defensive while remaining committed to supporting their long-term growth.

Lesser practices, like the spelling errors on cafe placards, can be entry points to accepting our imperfections as pathways for learning. Leaders who model this create a permission structure for everyone in the school to do the same.

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(Note: Some details have been changed to protect the identity of colleagues.)

This article, a follow-up to describing your school’s ideal state and understanding your current reality, explores the felt conflict when a culture attempts to move from the latter toward the former. How much teacher autonomy can a school honor while expecting a commitment to schoolwide excellence?

When I read this in The Courage to Be Disliked1 by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, I thought about the challenges I experienced as a literacy leader and principal and how they might fit within this principle.

• Communicating our beliefs and values with students, families, and the community

• Coaching and evaluating teachers around effective instructional practices

• Advocating for authentic, engaging curriculum resources with district leadership

Yes, yes, and yes!

To be clear, the vast majority of these interactions were positive and productive. For example, in my last stint as a principal, we were allocated a substantial budget to acquire a literacy curriculum, along with the trust that we would make the right decision.

But when conflict arose, the common theme was that we all wanted the same thing (student success), yet we held different beliefs and approaches to achieving it.

This occurred when our school was close to selecting a core resource. A few teacher leaders felt that the program we were leaning toward (Benchmark Advance, not an endorsement) didn’t have enough time devoted to foundational skill development. The leadership team eventually conceded to purchasing Heggerty as well if we went with Benchmark. But we never resolved this conflict over the appropriate amount of time or the “right” approach to teaching phonics/phonemic awareness.

When negative interactions occur at one level, they can ripple throughout the entire system. Two people’s disagreement over how best to teach readers and writers can become a barrier for an entire school.

The assumption may be that these barriers are to be avoided. If we cannot find agreement on effective instruction, how can we move forward as a school? As a leader, I felt my stress rise due to my sense of powerlessness and a lack of influence in guiding teachers toward agreement.

I’ve learned that when disagreement is high and barriers are present, it’s most productive to hit pause and seek to understand the obstacle that’s in our way. These challenges can become opportunities for growth.

An Example: Resistance to Writing Assessment

When I arrived at my last school as principal, I learned that writing instruction took place on Friday afternoons. This was an improvement over the school's previous practice, which was to teach writing only a handful of times during the year.

One of the first changes we made was to begin assessing student writing across the school. This was met with “Our school is focused on writing now?” and other expressions of fear about not knowing how to teach writing and about change in general.

As our school was preparing to administer our schoolwide writing assessment, I discovered that one team had not submitted its students' writing samples. My initial response was to assume that this team was resistant to change in general, that the teachers resented even the notion of committing to something beyond the four walls of their classrooms.

Instead of reacting, I requested a time to meet with the team. They invited me to stop by their next PLC meeting.

During the meeting, I thanked them for taking the time to chat. “The reason I asked to meet with you is that I noticed your student writing samples for our schoolwide assessment are not yet submitted.” I then paused and let the team sit with this fact. After a few moments of silence, one of the teachers shared that they were unsure how to determine which pieces of writing were high, medium, or low. Instead of judging them for not referring to the ELA standards, I thanked them for sharing this and apologized for not being clear about the process. “This is how we grow — being open to feedback, including me.”

After walking through the steps of selecting writing pieces, three of the teachers nodded and smiled. A fourth teacher seemed to be avoiding eye contact with me. I suspected they might be creating obstacles to this team working together. I made a mental note to continue this conversation around commitment to change.2

Polarity Management: Balancing Collective Accountability with Autonomy

Systems are influenced by individuals. While I agree that we avoid blaming individuals and work to improve systems, people create the culture. The way we do things around here is because one or more influential people decided at some point that this is how we do things around here.

If we believe that systems and cultures are built by individuals, then they can be deconstructed and rebuilt if they are not working for kids.

When we see problems at the systems level, they are symptoms of people’s decisions at a lower level. In my example, when we moved to change how we monitor and assess writing, we were also calling attention to how writing was being taught in our school. Teachers realized that devoting one day a week to writing instruction would no longer suffice. Making the assessment public meant that the outcomes of their instruction would also be public. Asking teams to submit anonymous writing samples made the experience safer compared to asking each teacher to do so.

Changing one’s behavior can create a conflict with one’s beliefs. It may not even have been about writing; at some level, I imagine it was the principal and teacher leaders expecting faculty to adjust their practices. The balance between values has shifted from autonomy toward collective accountability. Teachers were losing some decision-making authority in the name of a schoolwide commitment to excellence.

That was what I was trying to communicate in my meeting with the teacher team: that for our school to achieve better literacy outcomes, we had to be open to the idea that we had more to learn. We can argue about what constitutes a “best practice,” but being a professional is non-negotiable.

I’ve learned that the best way to influence others is to change myself. If I wanted teachers to be more open to feedback, I had to practice openness. If I wanted productive interactions with colleagues, then I needed to model what this looked like. How I acted as a leader was the only thing I could control. Being influenced by others was how I influenced others.

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What I Knew Then

In 2011, our elementary school opted for a structured writing program. This was after three years of professional learning focused on the reading-writing connection. We reached agreement on several beliefs over that time period, such as using student journal writing to assess phonemic awareness. I witnessed simplicity, meaning, and joy in teaching and learning.

So why move toward a program? A few teachers noted that they were tired of the current professional learning. I don’t know if they were tired; I think they felt the need for a “thing”: a resource they could rely on for instructional planning. To be honest, I was becoming tired of trying to hold the line by myself. I wasn’t leaning on our beliefs or asking teacher leaders to help guide this decision-making. I still saw school leadership as a solo act. It’s a lonely and exhausting place to live.

So, when a suggestion was made to use a structured, standards-aligned writing program a teacher had used at another school, we purchased it. Ironically, the money we used to make this purchase was received from the state’s education department to become a lab school; other schools could visit and observe instruction based on our prior professional learning.

A couple of years later, after extensive training on templates and tactics, we conducted a schoolwide writing assessment. Students could write paragraphs. They had clear topic sentences with supporting details. But as a teacher lamented during a group reflection, “Who would want to read these essays?”

This is an example of leadership not committing to shared literacy beliefs we had agreed upon as a faculty. No one explicitly called me out on this. But it was my responsibility. I knew better.

It’s easy to cast blame on a resource. Under the right conditions, programs can be useful if treated as a framework for instruction, for example, when they’re aligned with what you believe in as a staff. But in our case, the structured writing program was never evaluated using the criteria of our shared beliefs. For example, this resource didn’t expect kids to engage in journaling or free writing in general. It was a tight focus on the standards. This gap should have been a red flag when we reviewed it.

What I Know Now

What I have learned about shared literacy beliefs is that, even though everyone may agree to them on paper, that doesn’t mean they translate into classroom practice. If they describe the ideal state of literacy instruction (and they should), then they will naturally create a gap between some teachers’ current beliefs and practices. As Regie Routman notes:

Where we went wrong with the structured literacy program was that we rarely engaged in reflective professional learning until the resource was embedded schoolwide. We focused so heavily on implementation — the what and the how — that we forgot to ask “why?” We forgot to be curious and to value our own professional knowledge.

This is one of the most challenging parts of literacy leadership: balancing the need for consistent schoolwide instruction while respecting teachers as professionals.

I have heard many metaphors to describe shared beliefs: a filter; the sword you are willing to fall on; a line in the sand.

How I see shared beliefs right now is as an anchor attached to a buoy for a ship.1

Briefly, here is how this metaphor represents the tension between beliefs and practices in schools.

• Shared beliefs are the anchor that holds you in place. They ground you in what you know to be true, holding steady against the current of lesser practices and resources that pull to divert your school's attention toward short-term solutions.

• Your school’s collective practices are an anchor buoy. It’s what you see day-to-day in classrooms. Instructional practices tend to move with the tides, but they never float away from what you know to be true. That is, unless you decide as a school/ship to pull anchor and sail to new seas.

Here is an example: In my last school, we found 100% agreement on the following belief statement:

“You can teach phonics and skills with a child’s written story and assess their phonemic awareness by examining his/her journal writing.”

It wasn’t a prescriptive statement. But it did describe the high-quality instruction we wanted to move toward and eventually incorporate into our literacy culture. Related, what our beliefs didn’t advocate for was just as telling.

So when I received a request to purchase workbooks for phonics exercises, I was in a similar position as before. Was I willing to act on our beliefs?

Yes. I denied the request. The requesting teacher wasn’t happy with my decision. “Our current ELA resource is lacking activities for foundational reading skill instruction,” they said.

Thankfully, I persisted. The pain of my past error could still be felt in the present. So I simply stated: “I made the decision to deny your request because none of our shared literacy beliefs support purchasing workbooks.”

Still unhappy, I invited the teacher to craft their own belief statement about using workbooks to teach phonics. It would be language that the whole school could commit to. This was met with a debate over semantics: “they aren’t worksheets, it’s explicit instruction.” I responded that they then needed to clearly define explicit instruction, since not everyone would equate workbooks with that approach.

A week later, I received a draft of the belief statement. Reading it, I knew it wouldn’t find 100% agreement at the school. Yet I did my best not to judge and treated this instead as a coachable moment. I offered to put the belief statement to a vote at the next staff meeting.

It was at this point, I think, that the teacher felt the weight of what they were asking. They eventually withdrew the request and moved on. I continued to visit classrooms, with our shared literacy beliefs guiding my focus. It wasn’t the last debate on what “explicit instruction” meant in our school. But it was clear what we believed. Just as important, I modeled how to engage in productive conflict and embrace diverse points of view while balancing our collective commitments to high-quality instruction.

A mentor of mine liked to say, “What we permit, we promote.” If I had allowed this one purchase, I would have been giving permission for anyone to steer their own ships in whatever direction they deemed acceptable for literacy instruction. Our shared literacy beliefs were a promise to each other and to our students about what kind of literacy experience they could expect in every classroom. As the principal, I was the lead promise keeper.

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It’s easy to get swept up in this initial excitement. What kept me grounded were the beliefs I held about teaching readers, writers, communicators, and thinkers. I didn’t have them written out anywhere; they were formed over time in my mind. Professional reading, reflections on my experiences, and interacting with colleagues all shaped my theory of practice.

If I were teaching 5th- and 6th-graders again, I would write out my literacy beliefs. Post them behind my desk. Make them visible in my practice and my use of resources. Invite colleagues in my school to critique them and maybe even adopt them. A staff that can name its beliefs has something a loose group of professionals lacks: a shared standard to lean on when the excitement of a new school year inevitably wanes.

Here's a starting point: seven beliefs you could bring into your school to discuss, to debate, and to eventually make your own.

People read and write for understanding. Skill and strategy instruction is in service of the goal of reading: constructing and deepening understanding of the text, of oneself, and of how one interacts with the world. I see the opposite of this belief show up in schools’ strategic plans, for example, when they don’t mention comprehension as a priority for students in grades K-1. Without making meaning, reading and writing become one more thing students do at school.

Readers and writers need time to engage with authentic texts. At a reading conference, Dr. Nell Duke stated that it was “educational malpractice” if kindergarten teachers did not read aloud to their students multiple times a day. I would extend that statement to all grades.

Speaking and listening are just as important as reading and writing. This is not just a statement about our current reality (i.e., video is king on social media). Listening and speaking are the primary ways we engage with the world. Instruction around these standards often stops after the primary grades. What if your speaking and listening standards were the spine for your PK-12 district curriculum?

Explicit instruction that isn't engaging isn't explicit. The Science of Reading (SoR) Movement too often separates the technical aspects of literacy instruction from the context that makes it meaningful. “Explicit” becomes boring when reading is reduced to primarily skill practice and decoding contrived texts. This approach doesn’t match the definition of explicit: “fully revealed or expressed without vagueness, implication, or ambiguity: leaving no question as to meaning or intent” (Merriam-Webster). If explicit instruction doesn’t include engaging students in authentic, rich texts, then it isn’t explicit. The authors of what we read don’t want to bore the reader. Neither should we.

Shared literacy experiences are great relationship builders. You don’t have to put off high-quality instruction in the name of building relational trust in these first weeks of school. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. As an idea, why not have students make books, write personal essays or poetry collections, and then share them with everyone to read? Our students often have the best stories. Your classroom could become a publishing house, a project for September.

What we measure, and how we measure it, matters. If our instruction does not lead students to want to read, write, and engage more with ideas, our teaching is ineffective. Therefore, we need new and diverse ways to assess our students. Surveys that measure students’ motivation to read and empathy interviews are two assessments that can complement our traditional measurement tools. They paint a richer picture of who our students are as literate individuals. Just as important, you communicate that you value your students as readers, not just their ability to get better at reading.

The adult is not the only teacher in the room. This quote is attributed to Peter Johnston. It’s rooted in Vygotsky’s belief that learning is primarily social, and that children grow within the intellectual world around them. If your voice has a monopoly on students’ attention, they are only accessing one person’s perspective, knowledge, and interests. We honor the wisdom our students bring to our classrooms by giving them time and space to express their ideas and ask questions with one another.

Download a poster of these seven literacy beliefs for your classroom below. Use the open box to personalize it and own these beliefs.

Downloadable poster

Take care,

Matt

P.S. If you are looking for motivation for the new school year, check out my 30 minute conversation with Regie Routman. We talk about the power of belonging in schools, teaching beyond the script, and celebrating students’ strengths.

If one person has a question like this, others do too. The rest of this post serves as a guide for educators thinking about publishing a book. It’s broken up into three parts:

• Getting Started

• Getting Established

• Getting Published (full subscribers)

As with any advice, read this guide through a critical lens. What worked for me may not work for you. If you find this information helpful, please share it with others.

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Getting Started

• Spend time writing online.

• Write for understanding.

• Read what others are writing.

Spend time writing online.

Like just about anything, I got better at writing by writing. Publishing my ideas and reflections online, whether a blog, newsletter, or social post, helps me gather immediate feedback. I pay attention to what resonates with readers. That includes comments, shares, and requests from colleagues and organizations in the field who ask to repost something I wrote. Over time and with some reflection, I discover the sweet spot between what I want to write about and what others want to read.

What people want to read may not be what I want to focus on for a book project. For example, posts published here on the Science of Reading (SoR) perform well in terms of engagement. But it is not a topic I want to spend a year or two writing about exclusively. Instead, I wrote a 50-page free eBook on the subject.

Write for understanding.

When I started blogging in 2012, I had no intentions beyond sharing my experience as a principal and literacy leader. I didn’t want to keep a private diary or journal, yet I needed a space to articulate my observations, my failures, and my successes. My blog (short for “web log”) became that space. It helped me see my thoughts somewhere other than in my head and, eventually, to create meaning from my experiences. I didn’t focus on what was engaging readers at the time; that came later when I thought more seriously about publishing. I can see that in some of my earliest blog posts, for instance, this one from 2013 about the principal as a coach. Unknown to me at the time, these initial entries were seeds being planted for my eventual 2022 book with Corwin, Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H. As an added benefit, I now have a repository of experiences that can become stories and examples for the books I want to write.

Read what others are writing.

The best teachers of writing are the writers I read. I follow others’ blogs and newsletters, partly to stay current in the field and partly to study their craft. When something they write resonates with me, I will post a comment in appreciation and maybe even start a conversation. Some of the writers I follow aren’t in education; I find that my creativity is enhanced by reading outside of our profession. For example, I have been a paid subscriber to Virginia Heffernan’s newsletter, Magic + Loss. She “covers politics and tech for English majors”. I am not 100% clear on what that means, but I find her writing smart, interesting, and authentic.

Getting Established

• Build a following.

• Publish where your audience is.

• Write for organizations and websites.

Build a following.

One of my least favorite parts about writing is asking people to follow me or subscribe. It feels too self-serving. But from a reader’s perspective, this invitation can be a service to them. They don’t have to search for my site. Posts show up in their inbox. As long as I am not spamming them with multiple emails a week to buy something and respect their time and attention, I feel okay with making this ask. This is also important because many publishers will ask you in their application for proposals about your current readership and connections. They want to see a track record of your writing practice.

Publish where your audience is.

I am not a fan of Facebook. I was off that platform for several years. But a large group of principals on Facebook engages with what people share. So, while I spend most of my time in my newsletter, I post condensed versions of what I write here on that platform in a Facebook-friendly way: compelling questions, bullet points, and pithy endings. From time to time, I paste a link to the original post here, inviting school leaders to read more if they’re interested. Through this research, I learned who my audience is, their specific roles, and the topics that interest them. Additionally, I embrace a conversational writing style in the comments, which is what publishers want to see in my manuscript.

Write for organizations and websites.

Since I started writing online in 2012, it’s become increasingly difficult to find a consistent readership. There are so many options out there now with podcasts, newsletters, and social media channels. AI has exacerbated this challenge. That’s why it can be helpful to write for a broader audience. In the past, I have written for Choice Literacy, MiddleWeb, and Stenhouse, as well as for both of my publishers’ blogs (ASCD and Corwin). They have credibility, reach, and have earned readers’ trust. Additionally, the folks who run these spaces are connected with editors in the educational publishing world.

Getting Published

• Understand and follow the publisher’s guidelines.

• Know what you want to write about.

• Temper your expectations.

• Ask for what you want.

• Read within your genre and the publishing house(s) you want to write for.

• Share your process for problems you’ve solved.

• Commit to a daily writing practice.

*If finances are a challenge right now, hit reply and let me know. I offer complimentary subscriptions in these situations; no questions asked.

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👋Hi, it’s Matt. In this short essay, I discuss the importance of humility, openness, and trust in building a community of readers. If you enjoy this post, please share it with others!

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A couple of weeks ago, while working at our local independent bookstore, a gentleman asked me what I would recommend to read next. “I’m laid up after shoulder surgery; I’ve read five books in the past three weeks!” A recently retired tradesman, he was reintroduced to reading due to life’s circumstances.

To help recommend titles, I asked him to share some of the books he had recently read. “Let me see…The Names, have you read that? It’s quite good.” I said I hadn’t, but my wife had and also enjoyed it.

“Do you want to borrow my copy?” he asked. I thanked him and said my wife and I share a Kindle account, so I could read the digital version on my device when I was ready.

He was persistent. “Well, reading print is always better, even when you only have one arm,” holding up his recovering limb as evidence. “I agree, print is nicer…” What I didn’t want to say is that I didn’t want to read The Names, at least not right now. I also caught the feeling of resistance, surfacing from being “told” what to read. This was a desire for control, of having a reading plan, and not wanting to deviate. The consequence was potentially missing out on having a new experience.

I thought for a moment and then offered a productive response. “To be honest, my to-be-read pile is quite high.” His eyes lit up. “Your pile of books you want to read? I’d like to see that. Take a picture of your pile and share it with me.”

My to-be-read (TBR) pile wasn’t an actual pile; it was just books sitting on different shelves of my house that I mentally labeled as such. I don’t need to organize them, I thought. I know what I want to read.

But the work of organizing them wasn’t the barrier. Rather, I saw myself as a “better” reader. I didn’t want to be influenced by someone rebuilding their reading life. But would my arrogance prevent me from a new experience? Why was I positioning myself in this way? Likely my ego and a need to reinforce my identity as a reader.

Eventually, I warmed up to the idea, so I collected them all, took a picture, and emailed the image to his wife.

As I looked at my TBR pile, I realized how almost every title was there due to another reader’s influence on me.

• Upstream is a used book gifted from a retired educator, who thought it would be a nice fit with my current role as a systems coach.

• Harlem Shuffle was introduced to me as an excerpt during a writers’ retreat; we studied Whitehead’s excellent craft as a mentor text for our own work.

• My family and I watched the movie Hamnet; I want to revisit the idea of art as healing and immerse myself in this story once again.1

Balancing personal agency while being open to others’ suggestions is a key feature of living a meaningful life. It is a principle not limited to literacy. That said, access to high-quality literature and the conditions that support collective engagement with reading are good practice for being in community with others.

A good place to start: find fifteen minutes in your day devoted to any of the following:

• Partner up people to share what they are reading and why they chose that text.

• Everyone organizes their TBR pile — physically, illustrated, or digitally — and reflects on why each title is there.

• Read said books without any requirements or incentives (quizzes, points, reports, free pizza).2

These activities can work for students or adults. This small shift alone will likely not lead to lifelong readers. But it will give you and those around you a glimpse of what’s possible. When a group of people acts together, you can barely differentiate the individual from the community.

The Names isn’t in the image of my TBR pile. But I am open to putting it there.3

What’s in your TBR pile? How did those titles get there?

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3

I modeled what it means to be a reader during the webinar earlier this week, “A Simple Process for Getting Into Every Classroom in September,” asking participants if they would rather only read new books or only reread books they’ve enjoyed. If you couldn’t join us, you can watch the recording here (scroll down to “Webinar: A Simple Process for Getting Into Classrooms”). If you are a principal, coach, or specialist hoping to get into classrooms more frequently this year, join us for our September Instructional Walks course!

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During the 2014 Wisconsin Badgers men’s basketball run to the Final Four, I fondly remember Charles Barkley’s halftime commentary during their Elite Eight game.

If you prefer not to watch the video below, Barkley’s advice to head coach Bo Ryan was a three-step plan:

1. Get the ball to Mr. Kaminsky.

2. Get the ball to Mr. Kaminsky.

3. Get the ball to Mr. Kaminsky.

Frank Kaminsky was the Badgers’ go-to player during March Madness. He was virtually unstoppable. No elaborate plays or special defense necessary. Just find a way to get the ball in Kaminsky’s hands.

This memory came to mind as I worked with a number of school and district leadership teams this week. They engaged in root cause analyses to determine what’s contributing to their challenges. They articulated SMART goals. They identified at least one strategy to implement as an organization.

Putting together these improvement plans feels good. That’s because the process is valid. Root cause analyses and SMART goals are genuinely helpful. As a principal, I felt a greater sense of control before the school year began. I carried myself with more confidence as I communicated our plan with teachers and the community.

And yet if any school leader expects to see growth in student learning outcomes, there really is only one thing they can do: improve schoolwide instruction.

Improving schoolwide instruction is every school’s Mr. Kaminsky. The ball - our focus - has to be on teaching and learning. All other challenges funnel down to this priority.

• Student attendance has not bounced back after the pandemic? Improve schoolwide instruction.

• Too many behavior referrals? Improve schoolwide instruction.

• Want to improve relationships with families? Improve schoolwide instruction.

This is not an argument against other strategies. For example, improving home-school communication can positively influence attendance and relationships, which in turn can increase student achievement. But if strategic efforts dance around the primary driver of high-quality instruction in every classroom, growth will be limited.

So how soon can you get the ball to Mr. Kaminsky?

Take care,

Matt

P.S. One of the best ways I know for positively influencing instruction is by getting into classrooms. I’ll be hosting a free webinar on Tuesday, August 11, where I share a simple process for making that happen. In September, I am co-facilitating a paid course on how to make instructional walks a habit. We hope you can join us.

Register today

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I could see the teachers’ defenses show up as we reviewed their student data. A few arms crossed as I shared a chart showing chronic absenteeism had not recovered since the pandemic. When I pulled up a graph that highlighted the difference between students with and without disabilities on their state reading assessment, one teacher started scrolling through their smartphone. I could feel the group closing themselves off from the analysis with every dataset I introduced.

I was brought in to support a secondary ELA team in selecting a literacy curriculum program. So far, they had looked at one core resource from the same publisher that the elementary school in their district went with. “It seems to make sense, right?” one educator asked. “Go with the program our younger students are using? Then they are getting the same experience.” Another educator commented that they were “loving this program” and were ready to commit to it only three weeks into their pilot.

I mentally hit pause when I heard these comments. They seemed to have a case of “solutionitis”, a term coined by Anthony Bryk and colleagues to describe “the propensity to jump quickly on a solution before fully understanding the exact problem to be solved.” Not every educator felt that way: a special education teacher, leafing through the three-pound anthology, wondered aloud how excited his students would be opening up this resource each day.

We are seeing this desire for convenience and control show up in our lives outside of school. While people are reading more words than ever before, what we are reading has become fragmented and lacks depth. Writing is being outsourced to AI in areas previously deemed essential, for example, doctors’ notes after seeing a patient. While it’s easy to blame smartphones and social media (Peter Gray makes a reasoned argument to counter the ham-fisted solutions Jonathan Haidt recommends in The Anxious Generation), I am convinced that modern technologies in general have smoothed out the wrinkles of inconvenience that make life interesting and purposeful.

In his book The Uncontrollability of the World1, Hartmut Rosa offers a model for imagining what is lost when we seek too much convenience.

Our desire for control, whether that’s to get ahead in our notes and tasks at work or to deliver an ELA curriculum with fidelity, comes at the expense of resonance. Rosa points out that people see challenges as “points of aggression”: problems to be solved instead of challenges to experience and grow from. There’s little room for “resonance”: the ability to be influenced, changed, and even transformed by new ideas presented to us in literature and from each other.

How can students feel empowered as readers, writers, and thinkers if they have few opportunities to be challenged during their ELA experiences? This is the consequence of programming our curricula: treated as a technology to make our lives easier, we inadvertently remove the obstacles our students could find in authentic literature and complex writing tasks.

After hearing these comments from the ELA team, I asked if I could collect student voice data through empathy interviews. I wanted to help the team understand the students’ experiences during literacy instruction. Was implementing a new program with fidelity the solution to the problems students were experiencing?

Their students didn’t hold back. In my open conversations, they expressed a desire for more relevant activities. More hands-on tasks. More project-based experiences that lent themselves to authentic audiences and purposes. Not one student said they wanted an easier experience, or to reduce literature down to readable excerpts. As one student put it:

“It would be great if we knew what this could lead to in the future and understood why it’s needed exactly. Otherwise, it’s something in school that we have to do.”

The teachers read the anonymous student comments. After some honest conversations about the pilot, they agreed that, while they would still move forward with acquiring the program, they would adapt it to ensure it was meeting students’ expressed needs. One teacher summed up the team’s thinking succinctly.

“We could do better in proving to students that reading fiction, writing creatively, and analyzing style and form in language can have a huge impact on their real-life skills.”

In a world of social media influencers and talking points, that might feel like a tough sell for a teenager today. But based on what the students told us, what they desire isn’t an excerpted version of life. It’s depth, meaning, and connection with each other. The tools we choose can support that outcome or crowd it out. The choice is ours to make.

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👋 Hi, it’s Matt. I am taking a break from this newsletter for a couple of weeks. I hope you can find time for yourself too! Below are my favorite books so far this year, along with a reflection on my reading life.

Take care,

-Matt

P.S. If you are a principal, or you know a school leader who wants to get into classrooms more, I am hosting a free webinar on August 11, 2026 at 4pm CST. RSVP here or below. (A cohort-based course to continue the learning will be offered at the end.)

RSVP for webinar

Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts by Oliver Burkeman (essays, philosophy)

I read this book one essay at a time before I went to sleep over four weeks. I wanted my brain to process through Burkeman's ideas, which are really summaries and insights from other philosophers and thinkers.

I can't say that I woke up with any epiphanies, and yet I am thankful that I read the book. Burkeman's penchant for tweetable sentences are balanced with vulnerability and true wisdom.

The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson (history)

Thompson, a journalist, comes back home to exhume what his hometown is known for: the lynching of Emmitt Till at the hands of white men, for allegedly whistling at a white woman. He visits the barn where this happened, along with interviewing residents and reviewing historical records. Thompson wanted to understand how something like this could happen in a community. The conclusion: it can happen anywhere when people who commit a crime are not held accountable. Justice, both individual and social, and owning our responsibilities in helping shape our present and future are the antidote. Timely lessons for today.

One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder by Brian Doyle (essays, spiritual)

The late Brian Doyle was a beloved writer in the Northwest U.S. This collection of short essays was recommended to me by a friend living in that area. I read this book slowly, savoring each word. Doyle finds both delight and in the ordinary: voice is what unique: courageous, vulnerable, and uninhibited. One Long River of Song offers a reprieve from all the performative online (and possibly AI-generated) writing: an honest and subjective view of the world. I want to read more writers like Brian.

Shelter and Storm: At Home in the Driftless by Tamara Dean (essays, environment)

A powerful set of essays, using the driftless region of Wisconsin as the context to understand the impact of climate change. It’s similar to Doyle’s collection, sort of a memoir-in-essays. Dean shares the ups and downs of living within nature, for example building a mud brick home close to a flood plain. I have a greater appreciation for my role and influence within a community,

Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall (historical fiction)

A historical/romance novel that spans a decade in the lives of two English families and how their pasts are still present. Hall goes back and forth in time, creating suspension through the structure. Class conflict and small town expectations influence characters’ choices and shape their fates. It’s well-paced, with timely twists that don’t feel forced. I also appreciated how there wasn’t the traditional hero/villain construct. No one is without fault and everyone has good intentions.

Humble Inquiry, 3rd Edition: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling by Edgar H. Schein and Peter A. Schein (business, leadership)

The authors provide a clear framework on how to be genuinely curious as a leader or a coach. The foundation of humble inquiry is coming from a place of wanting to truly learn about someone else and their circumstances. This seems uncommon today, where everyone is busy and focused on themselves. Considering that context, humble inquiry might be the key to standing out in a noisy world.

Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation by Parker J Palmer (essays, spirituality)

A short collection of essays that works as both a memoir and a motivational. Palmer relies on his natural style, balancing honesty and humility with deep wisdom about our nature as human beings in a complex world. His essay on his journey through depression is the author at his most honest and profound.

What have you read so far in 2026 that’s work recommending? Please share in the comments!

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My reading life: I’m noticing a pattern…

This year, I started a new book tracking tool: Story Graph. It’s like Goodreads, except not owned by Amazon.

What’s the same: book reviews, to-read, currently reading/to-read lists, and challenges. What’s different: the visualizations of my reading life.

I am not surprised by the typical length of a book I read. Books over 500 pages are a commitment! If a book requires to hands to hold it up and read, that means I am saying no to other books. (I also think a lot of longer books could have simply used more editing.)

What’s more interesting to me is my mood chart. These describe the types of books I am reading. Do they reflect my own states of mind in 2026? Who I am? How can use this data to shape my reading life and life in general going forward?

While this data is interesting, it doesn’t tell me who I am as a reader. I can only answer the questions I posed in the previous paragraph through reflection on what I read and how I felt about the experiences.

For example, I noticed I have been reading more collections of essays recently. It’s intentional; I rewrote some previous articles and posts for a series on leading with authenticity and integrity (available next school year for full subscribers; see below).

I also think about how I learned about each of these books. In every case, I picked up and committed to a book because someone else recommended it. Maybe it was a colleague, friend, or family member directly suggesting it, or I read about it in a book review. I have agency in my choices, of course, based on my goals and values. And there have been plenty of books I’ve declined to pick up. But ultimately, my reading life is shaped by the people and the information I choose to surround myself with.

Which leads me to think about our students. They have less agency and choice in what to read and who recommends books to them. As teachers and leaders, we have an enormous responsibility in shaping our students’ reading lives. Our choices matter. Lack of quality literature and little time to read in classrooms is a choice. Yes, there are mandates and expectations, but there is also creativity and courage. The same is true for how we spend our time as leaders, walking into classrooms is its own version of choosing what we surround ourselves with.

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On Monday, June 22, 2026, eleven teachers and library media specialists gathered on a summer afternoon to select books for their students and respective libraries. Each educator would receive an allocation of money to purchase texts with their students.

Why they gathered went beyond free books. One 5^th-grade teacher said she couldn’t get a student to read a full book until the end of the school year. “He was so proud that he finally finished one.” She had scoured garage sales for used books the previous summer, having moved up from the primary grades. “Hopefully, with this project you won’t have to spend your own money on books or wait all year to find the right ones,” I noted. Other educators talked about having more money in their budgets now for basic classroom supplies.

Beyond Books and Budgets

The goal of this project goes beyond giving educators and students financial support to purchase books for their libraries. The Library Book Budget Project aims to empower them as influencers and leaders in their respective schools. When students and educators are given the authority and the trust to shape their own learning and that of others, they model courage and agency.

This project is a direct response to the external mandates on their literacy instruction and learning environments. Reading is becoming more isolated, lacking both in context and in connection. Literature is nice-to-have, replaced by excerpted or contrived texts. Little time is available for kids to talk about what they are reading. It’s the same for teachers. They have become so busy implementing bloated programs that there is little energy left for professional reading or conversation with colleagues.

This group of educators is now a network. They have each other’s email addresses. Everyone introduced themselves and explained why they were there. Their mere presence together had an impact. One teacher commented that “it is nice to know that I am not alone in facing this problem of authentic reading experiences disappearing from schools.”

Book Buying as a Context

This sense of camaraderie was observable when the group finished reviewing the project toolkit and headed to another conference room, where three independent bookstores were set up. Pure joy is how I would describe what I felt being in that room with these educators. Smiles, along with “Oh, my kids would love this book,” accompanied the flipping of pages.

Some educators were unsure where to start. “There are so many to choose from!” commented one teacher. A library media specialist asked me how many books they should buy for their project launch, before getting student input. I shrugged. “I don’t know your kids as you do.” They appreciated the trust, even as they sat with this discomfort in abundance.

Inviting local booksellers to partner with schools aligns with the belief that trust is a driver of growth, not just an outcome. The educators could buy books without getting their principal’s permission. That is no small thing. All the participants had to do was check a box that said their administration was on board with the project. Trust was intentionally built in before anyone walked through the door.

There was also a natural trust between the booksellers and the educators. The latter knew that the former wanted one thing: good literature in kids’ hands and minds. There was no ulterior motive, such as raising test scores. Plus, booksellers have more time to read what’s available and make wise recommendations.

Coordination: The Invisible Structure

This project goes beyond providing a community of readers and leaders. Coordination creates the conditions for teacher learning and student learning to inform each other. It’s often invisible, gets little limelight, and is essential for providing the structure for professional growth and change.

During our yearlong networked improvement community1, each session will open with consistent rituals: reviewing agreements, reading the network's principles, sharing updates, and making space for educators to tell stories and pose questions to the group. A standing feature will be book blurbs highlighting texts by authors and characters of color — books that were available at the kickoff but weren't readily selected; this data will shape the network. Educators outside the network will be invited to speak about how they empower their students, offering ideas such as teaching kids to make book trailers for new titles. Clear demonstrations will address the practical work: setting up a data plan, navigating policy, and guiding students to organize and manage their own library.

I will stay with this concept of coordination for a while. It can be seen as boring, for example, to follow a consistent routine for network meetings or auditing a library. At a deeper level, coordination also means releasing some of the most joyful parts of the educational experience to others. For example, if students are expected to select books for their respective libraries, where does that leave educators? It requires reframing our source of joy, instilling a greater sense of humility, and being a witness to students’ successes to create the conditions for mutual growth. What we can gain is increasing our influence by doing less and allowing our students to build their identities as readers.

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To improve traffic, the owners created a bookshop quest. Participants travel to one of the 35 participating stores to receive a stamp. Ten stamps = one free audiobook.

There are also bonus stamps for additional prizes, such as for bookstores with pets.

I was surprised by the number of people who came in with their bookshop quest maps with at least ten stamps. They were visiting two to three stores a day. They were making a day of it with a friend or on their own.

My initial theory was that they just love books and reading in general. This was an excuse to share the love! But I also wondered, why do I visit bookstores when I travel?

I did just that on a recent work trip to Green Bay. While colleagues were figuring out dinner, I found an independent bookstore downtown. When I walked in, a book club discussion was happening. I quietly walked around this sacred circle, locating myself in the back of the small store. I eavesdropped on their chat while looking at their shelves. This was a BYOB club: bring your own book. No required title to read. After they each introduced themselves (followed by an enthusiastic “Hi, _____!”), they shared what they had been reading, why they chose these titles, and what they were reading today. Once everyone shared, they sat quietly in their circle and read.

I learned that this space was more than a bookstore. It is what sociologist Ray Oldenburg refers to as a “third place”, a location “outside of home and work (one’s first and second places) where friends and strangers can gather unrushed — like cafes, bars, hair salons, dog parks and gyms.”

I found artifacts of this bookshop as a third place beyond the circle of readers. In the back, the sellers devoted several shelves to the upcoming book club picks. There was something for everyone. If I lived in Green Bay, I would join the “Short Stuff Bookclub”, a good fit for my busy life right now.

I continue to think about Oldenburg’s definition of third places:

· They are on neutral ground and promote social equity by leveling the status of guests.

· Conversation is the main activity and the mood is playful.

· Strangers are welcome, and there are regulars who feel a piece of themselves is rooted in the space.

· They enjoy the same feelings of warmth, possession, and belonging as they would in their own homes.

What I realized is that too many of our classrooms, where we are tasked to literally raise readers, are anything but a third place. Students are assessed and sorted with reading screeners before teachers have time to really get to know them. The mood is growth, sometimes at the expense of accessing other elements of school, such as physical education or the arts. Families and community members have to complete background checks to volunteer in or even visit a classroom. Some of this is driven by the Science of Reading (SoR) movement, which does not include joy or belonging as part of its advocacy work. (There is nothing scientific about disconnected reading.)

This is why I have continued to pursue an understanding of what a truly effective learning environment looks and feels like. What I have discovered is that building an appreciation for reading is important. Teacher book talks and read alouds are and should remain mainstays.

Additionally, students have to be readers. They have to embody every aspect of the reading experience. For example, it’s not enough to have voice and choice in what to read; students also need to be involved in the selection, curation, and organization of the books available in their respective libraries. Related, a strict protocol for facilitating classroom discourse limits opportunities for students to immerse themselves in conversation with peers about what they are reading. When we position students as authorities in their reading lives and as influencers on their peers, they see the impact they have on each other. They build a sense of agency and, ultimately, an identity as a reader. Identities are shaped by the social context in which one lives.

What’s the pathway to agency and reader identity? In a word: empowerment. Merriam-Webster defines empowerment as “to give authority or power to”. This can feel like a scary proposition for teachers and leaders. It involves trusting students to make choices about what to read, sometimes not what we would recommend. It involves allowing students to shape the learning environment to what works for them, which doesn’t always work for us. It’s about honoring students’ rightful presence, moving beyond inclusion, where the adults are no longer the only ones who decide which voices are heard and whose stories are included in school.

As you can imagine, this pathway to student agency naturally conflicts with an educational system that is designed to achieve certain outcomes.

Is there a middle road here? Is it possible to achieve both ends? I believe so. This journey can begin by asking students about their experience as readers and writers in school. What’s worked for them so far? What hasn’t, and why? What would they like to see going forward, for themselves and for peers? These are basic questions that I believe students at any level, K-12, can answer, provided that the person asking the questions has a genuine desire to learn. Student voice data like this can be the impetus for a learning environment that truly supports the development of a third place for readers.

Here is what a third place in school might look like:

· No teacher-directed reading groups for the first month or so of school. When possible, group students based on self-selected interests, and not levels. (Also, refrain from sharing assessment results with the students from the fall screener. Why shape a reader’s identity by one test score?)

· Position the text as the central point in student conversations. Start by modeling civil discourse and gradually releasing responsibility. Ensure high-quality, interesting texts are being used. It’s tough to talk about a book no one likes. Seek joy vs. compliance.

· Invite students’ families and community members to visit the learning space. (Work within your district policies.) Have them witness an engaging and joyful discussion about a book that students selected. The visiting adults will take what happens in the classroom with them to their own homes and community spaces, an extension of that reader community.

· Start and end the literacy block with recognition and reflection. Hold brave spaces for students to celebrate together, and to share with their peers what’s working for them and what’s not.

How have you created a third place in your classroom or context? If you are moving toward this type of experience, what first step do you have in mind? Please share your thoughts with this community. (Comments are now open to all readers, thanks to feedback from you.)

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What I’m Reading

This Substack post by summarizes the origin and evolution of reciprocal reading, from its evidence-based approach to its “lethal mutation” we sometimes see today. It’s a good example of how educational systems too often shape the spirit of a teaching approach to a reductive set of steps that leeches the joy out of teaching readers. His post also demonstrates how instructional practices in general are difficult to spread and scale without losing their effectiveness, along with the importance of site-based professional learning.

“The active ingredient is the teacher’s responsiveness. No script can specify when to push a student to clarify, when to let a confident-sounding wrong answer ride for a minute to see if a classmate catches it, when to take the turn herself to model what skeptical engagement with model output looks like.

The teacher who can do this work is doing the same work Palincsar’s teachers were doing with Sara in 1984 — hosting a novice inside a discourse she is gradually internalizing, increasing the demands one stage further into the zone of proximal development as the novice becomes capable of more.”

Quotable

👋Hi, it’s Matt. This week, I spoke with Jen Schwanke, former principal, current deputy superintendent, and author of Trusted. (Full subscribers can watch the video of our conversation below.) Enjoy! Also, my feedback survey closes soon. If you have a few minutes to spare, I’d love to know more about your experience here. Take care, -Matt

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Jen Schwanke has spent her career inside schools as a teacher, a building leader, and now a deputy superintendent in Ohio. She is the author of five ASCD books, including her most recent, Trusted: Trust Pillars, Trust Killers, and the Secret to Successful Schools. She also writes the newsletter “Principal Problems with Dr. Jen” and co-hosts the Principal Matters Podcast, which has surpassed 1.5 million downloads.

In this conversation, Jen and Matt discuss what it takes to lead with trust: riding the inevitable ups and downs of the principalship, delegating without losing accountability, building the self-awareness to recognize when you are undermining relational trust, and staying connected to students when compliance and logistics pull you in every other direction.

What We Discussed

• The connection between trust to student outcomes

• The difference between being trustworthy and being trust-willing

• How to recognize when you are unintentionally harming trust with your staff

• What it means to lead through teachers, from the inside out

• The area where teachers are most willing to take feedback from their principal

• The two things that keep Jen grounded as a leader when the job gets enormous

About Jen Schwanke

Jen Schwanke, Ed.D., is a longtime educator who has served as a teacher and leader at all levels. She is the author of five ASCD books, including Trusted: Trust Pillars, Trust Killers, and the Secret to Successful Schools. She writes the newsletter “Principal Problems with Dr. Jen” and co-hosts the Principal Matters Podcast. She is an instructor in educational administration at The Ohio State University and currently serves as a Deputy Superintendent in Ohio.

Find Jen at jenschwanke.com, on X at @JenSchwanke, and on Instagram at @DrJenSchwanke.

Resources Mentioned

• Trusted: Trust Pillars, Trust Killers, and the Secret to Successful Schools by Jen Schwanke (ASCD, 2025)

• Principal Matters Podcast

• Principal Problems with Dr. Jen

• Choice Literacy

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Full Transcript

Matt Renwick

Hi, my name is Matt Renwick. I am a coach, former principal, classroom teacher, and I am joined today by a colleague, also a former principal, former classroom teacher, current deputy superintendent, Jen Schwanke. Welcome, Jen.

Jen Schwanke

Hi, Matt, so good to be here, thank you.

Matt Renwick

Good to be connected with you again. I want to read your bio. You’re a long-time educator, teacher, and leader at all levels. You’re the author of 5 books. The last one is the one we’re going to talk about today, Trusted: Trust Pillars, Trust Killers, and the Secret to Successful Schools, published through ASCD. In my review that I wrote for it, for Middle Web, I wrote it was a book that I wish I would have had when I was a principal — it was just really well done. We’re going to talk more about that, but Jen has published 5 books, all focused on leadership at the school level. She’s a frequent contributor to multiple educational publishers, including Choice Literacy, which we’ve both been contributors to and proud writers for. She also consults with districts and school leaders in the areas of school climate, personnel, and instructional leadership. She’s a frequent presenter at national organizations, including ASCD, ISTE, NASSP, and NAESP, and also an instructor in educational administration at The Ohio State University. She currently serves as Deputy Superintendent in Ohio. You can find her at JenSchwanke.com, on X at Jen Schwanke, and on Instagram at Dr. Jen Schwanke. Welcome.

Matt Renwick

What made you decide that you wanted to write a book about trust?

Jen Schwanke

Well, let me tell you a story related to that. I’ve been lucky to have a great relationship with my editor at ASCD, and this book came to life because I had just published one on conflict management for school leaders. The ink was still warm on the press, and I reached out to my editor and said, I want to write one about trust. And she said, Jen, my goodness, be quiet for a minute. And I said, no, no, these things do go hand in hand. Managing conflict in a school, and how you talk to people, and how you try to anticipate and analyze and act on conflict is so tied to trust. So here’s what she said to me: we really need you to come up with something that has a true effect on student outcomes. So anything you write about trust has to be tied to student outcomes. And I thought, I don’t know how to do that. I know how to write about how trust feels and how to not be a jerk, but I don’t know if I can tie it to student outcomes. Then I started doing some research, and I was shocked — I should not have been — I was shocked to find how much of a correlation there is between principal and staff trust and student outcomes. Students achieve more when teachers trust their principal. After that, the book was easy to write, because I was able to really focus on the why, my intentionality with building trust, and what happens with students.

Matt Renwick

I’m glad you wrote it. I’m glad you convinced the editors, because you do get at the student level, and that’s one thing I appreciate about the book and your writing. I’ve read your writing with Choice Literacy, and I’ve been on peer review groups with you. I always appreciate your stories — small anecdotes from your own experience, the ups and downs of the principalship. It’s an interesting polarity: conflict management and trust, those two tensions.

Jen Schwanke

That’s exactly right, because you can’t do one without the other. You and I met, probably 10 years ago. You were doing some writing for ASCD, I was too, and we went to an authors’ retreat together, and where we geeked out together was with the literacy piece — the reading, and the writing, and student engagement. To me, it was a little bit of an aha moment to think about how it really all is tied together, including student achievement and progress.

Matt Renwick

You note in the book that the only way to be successful as a school leader is to learn to ride the inevitable ups and downs. That conflict, and engagement with it, and trust — that’s something I both miss and don’t miss as a former principal. What strategies did you use in your 17 years as a building leader to ride those waves?

Jen Schwanke

I had a little bit of an aha moment. I was probably in my 10th year as a school leader, and I was complaining to my dad about it — about a teacher, or a parent, or a curricular resource, or a data point. He happened to be standing on his skid steer with a chainsaw at the time, cutting down some branches after a recent summer storm. And he said, you know what your problem is? You always think there’s going to be a point where there’s no more problems. You’re always dissatisfied, because there’s always another problem. And he looked up to the tree and said, a storm blows in, you gotta cut a few branches down. It’s just the day’s work. I thought about that for quite some time, and I thought, that has been my weakness as a leader. I’m looking for this moment when there’s no more conflict, everybody’s getting along, everybody understands what we’re trying to do, everybody’s engaged in the learning — and that’s never going to happen. Because we’re humans, and we have feelings and responses. So rather than feel like I’m chasing an impossibility, I found a great deal of peace in thinking, problems are going to come and go. That is literally what I am paid to do. The strategies were, first of all, recognition of that. I have to embrace these problems that come. And I will even say — my team will tell you it’s very annoying — they’ll come in and say, we have this problem, and I’ll say, okay, let’s pause and think about this together. That takes self-discipline. It also takes team. Because if you are alone, and you feel like you’re the only one who’s going to ride this up and this down, it gets pretty hopeless — like going in the ocean and taking another wave, and then another wave, and then another wave. And then perspective. It is so easy as school leaders, as teachers, as coaches, to feel like the things in our bubble are the most important to anyone. We have to make sure that we don’t wrap too much of our identity into the work — meaning letting go of the sense that we have to have everything perfect.

Matt Renwick

That very much resonates with me. Of those things you listed, the one I struggle with most is letting go of control to get things done. As you said, you need others to help lead. It’s the only way to manage it all. What have you found effective to make it clear what’s expected, and how to do things well, so that you’re not trying to do it all? How do we let go of control?

Jen Schwanke

This is something I did not do well at the beginning of my career. I thought that when I got the master key to the school, I needed to put on a Superman cape and be everything to everyone. I needed to know everything, be involved in every conversation, make every decision. And if I didn’t, the whole place would fall apart. I’ve come to know — and part of this was through the research I did in my doctoral program — there’s so much out there about collective efficacy. If, as leaders, we don’t empower our staff, if we don’t say, hey, you got this, or, I need help with this certain thing, and invite those other voices, then the trust and the ability of a staff to let their gifts shine is really diminished. We work with people who have bachelor’s degrees and master’s degrees, and many times we overstep in our assumptions of our own expertise versus saying, hey, you have the expertise. I’ll be honest, to this day, I still have to enact self-discipline and say, Jen, you would not do it that way at all — but the outcome is going to be the same or better if you just step aside. Really, all of this is a synonym for trust. In the book, I make a distinction between trustworthy — which most of us know how to be: be honest, do the right thing, follow through — and trustwilling, where we have to be willing to let other people do their thing, do what they were hired to do, get out of their way, and help and guide them instead of criticize or micromanage.

Matt Renwick

You bring up a good point about the differentiation between being trustworthy and being trustwilling. A step of that is humility — and also self-awareness. You talk in the book about how trust killing can sometimes be unintentional. Principals aren’t always aware of how their words and actions are damaging, both what they do and what they don’t do. How did you create that self-awareness, or how have you seen leaders create it, so they’re becoming more adaptive and not making the same mistakes over and over?

Jen Schwanke

I’m a listener, I’m a watcher, and I watch myself with the most critical eye — but I watch other leaders too, and I watch teachers and coaches and see how they respond to different leadership styles. Self-awareness of when you are undermining relational trust — you can’t measure how important that is. Trust killing is generally unintentional. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, I really want to ruin some trusting relationships today. But many of us miss the cues that we are undermining that relational trust. Two things I’d like to say about this. The first is a bit of an offshoot of the ‘let them’ theory, which many listeners probably know. Let people feel how they need to feel. That comes with a little bit of tension as a school leader, because we can’t just let people do whatever they want — we have to lead, and provide guidance and standards and expectations. But if we are doing things with sound mind, with thought, with input, with an eye to how it’s going to affect students, then we really have to be able to let some things go. However, we’ve got to have our eyes and ears open for the feedback, because it comes in various ways. If I walk into a staff meeting and no one will meet my eye, or if I’m explaining a new initiative and people are just coming at me with all the reasons it won’t work — rather than thinking, okay, this is a staff that is resistant or toxic or negative, what they might be is scared, or uncertain, or nervous about change. We have to listen for feedback and learn from it. I always look for my truth-tellers, the people who will tell me when we’re getting off track. I also tell people: look for patterns and look for mirrors. If every time you roll out a new initiative or program you’re finding significant resistance, that’s when you look in the mirror and say, I may not be communicating well enough, or I may be leading a group of people so scared of change that they can’t see the potential outcomes. Then I have to backtrack and see how I can fill the holes in the sieve so that my leadership intentions are not seen as barriers, but as potential for the future.

Matt Renwick

The need for feedback and having your truth-tellers around you is crucial. I was married to one of my truth-tellers. She was a special education teacher in the same building where I was the principal, so if I screwed up, I learned about it very quickly — which I appreciated. And she knew how to approach me in the way I needed to hear it, so that I actually would.

Jen Schwanke

Let’s talk about that for a minute. Your wife was a truth-teller, and she probably saw things you didn’t see — and there you were, trust-willing. Willing to listen to her, willing to say, where am I going sideways? I’m certainly not saying we all should be married to our truth-tellers, but we need to trust that they don’t want us to fail, they don’t want to bring us down. There’s no ill intent when people try to give us feedback. We can choose to say, thank you, that’s very helpful, let me think about that — or we can choose to say, we’re moving forward. The first one is the only way that you build trust.

Matt Renwick

How do you get to that level of intimacy — in a relational sense — so that no matter what happens, you’re still going to be on good terms with each other? I think that’s a barrier in people’s minds, though it may not always be correct. They think this is going to destroy the relationship if I have this conversation, and it really is not, unless something truly egregious has occurred. I didn’t love the story, but I really connected with the story in the book about when you walked into the lounge and heard some teachers talking about you. If I remember right, you didn’t respond in the moment. You kind of walked away and found a custodian’s closet and...

Jen Schwanke

Cried.

Matt Renwick

I think we’ve all been there. If you’ve been in the principalship long enough, you’re going to catch that at some point. That’s just the nature of the job. It made me think about the principal as an outsider — how we have to lead through teachers, from the inside out. You pushed back on that a little, and I appreciate that, because you don’t think of principals as outsiders, although oftentimes principals do think of themselves that way. Especially teachers who become principals in the same building — they see the shift in relationships right away, just from that positionality. So I guess the question is: how do you balance being somewhat of an outsider with needing to lead the building and maintain those relationships?

Jen Schwanke

In the past, many years ago, the principal was very far removed from the day-to-day intentionality of a school. The principal was there to handle discipline, the facilities, maybe suspend kids when the teacher couldn’t or was exhausted. Now, principals are in the muck with instruction, classroom management, and professional development — things that were never the original job of a principal. I understand why it’s still in the DNA of some teachers and principals to think of the work as separate. And of course it is, because the principal is the boss at the end of the day. But the most ideal version of the model is if the principal is the one in charge, but with a team mindset. This goes back to that collective efficacy piece. If a principal thinks of him or herself as an outsider, there’s something wrong there. Outsider is different from leader. Leaders should not be outsiders. Leaders should be in the work. In schools, everybody is talking about everybody else — that’s just human nature. We spend an exorbitant amount of time with the people we work with in our schools. It’s okay if people have complaints or feelings or want to talk about the principal. But we want people to know what we’re trying to do. And by the way, sometimes the negative talk is exactly what you want. There was a teacher I once called to task for the tone she used when talking with children. It was really upsetting. She had been doing it for a decade. I finally heard an interaction with a very young child that shook up the child and even me. I went to her and said, we’re done. We’re not going to talk to kids like this anymore. She marched right to the lounge and said something along the lines of, can you believe she’s insisting I be nice. Well, her colleagues may have nodded along, but deep down, they were applauding me. Many of them came to me and said, thank you for taking on this long-running problem. The things people say — we’re never going to eliminate that. We want them to say things like, I trust her, she’s fair, she follows through. I sure don’t like this PD she’s rolling out, but I see what good it’s going to do for kids. Those are the kinds of lounge conversations we want had about us.

Matt Renwick

I love that example. If you’re going to have a candid conversation with someone and you’re going to upset someone, upset the right people — the people who need to be nudged to improve — and you’re right, the other teachers are going to quietly applaud. They may not come to you and say thank you, but yes.

Jen Schwanke

Respect and loyalty deserve a place in this conversation. Sometimes somebody might say something disparaging about the principal that makes the principal feel like an outsider, but that might be one of your most loyal teachers, saying something to a colleague because they don’t like a decision. And that’s okay. We want that collegiality among teachers, where they can talk things through. And then if something’s a real problem, you’re probably going to have a truth-teller who comes and says, hey, do you have a few minutes? Can we talk about this initiative you’re rolling out? Respect and loyalty on both sides make for a very strong school culture.

Matt Renwick

Everyone’s responsible. I remember coming into my last school, and there had been 6 principals over the past 10 years. I knew trust was going to be an issue. I learned from Anthony Muhammad — the Solution Tree PLC approach — a concern form. Teachers would fill it out: rate the concern 1 to 5, describe what the concern was, what they’d tried to do so far, and what they would like me to do. They’d give that sheet to my assistant, who would enter it into a form anonymously. My assistant would still know who submitted it, so it wasn’t character assassination, but it gave teachers an initial avenue to communicate with me. And eventually, similar to what you’re saying, they just eventually said, I trust them, I’m just going to come and talk to them. That’s a great sign — they trust that you’re going to be respectful and loyal.

Matt Renwick

This is always a challenging one: trusting teachers professionally, their professional knowledge. You note in the book that they are the experts, and trusting them means not questioning their knowledge. I wanted to push back a little. I’m strong in literacy — not an expert, but I know it well enough — and there were times when I did know more than some teachers. How do we approach that, especially if we haven’t taught at the grade level they’re teaching, but we know we’re right and there may be some errors in thinking?

Jen Schwanke

I just talked about this this morning with the Ohio Association of Secondary School Administrators, leading a talk on instructional leadership. I appreciate your pushback, because you’re right: there are times a principal might know more in terms of content knowledge, but that’s generally only going to happen if it’s in your area of expertise. As teachers, we are masters of one subject. Many times, leaders — and I would say this is true for instructional coaches at the beginning — we go in, and I remember when I first went into a science classroom, I thought, I’m going to have to evaluate science? I don’t know math? World language? Over time you begin to understand what to look for, but most of us will never truly understand the depths of content that someone with, say, a master’s degree in that content will have. What we do tend to know as leaders is instruction — what good instruction looks like. And we know what engagement looks like. What leaders need to tease out is this: if I see something inaccurate and damage will be done to a student, I need to step in and correct it, of course. But many times, especially in today’s classrooms, learning is about discovery. Unless a teacher is presenting inaccurate facts and then testing kids on them, it may be part of a journey a student is taking instructionally. We might be able to ask questions about the intent of the content, the intent of the instructional model. The other thing — and I do talk about this in the book — there’s been research on what impact principals actually have when they evaluate instruction. There’s only one area where teachers are really willing to change, and that is not content knowledge, not facts so to speak, but classroom environment. They will listen to their principal about that: where we seat kids, how we manage behaviors, how we set the routine for the class. That is the only thing that moves the needle. So as leaders, that’s what we should focus on. What does it feel like to be in the classroom? How do you manage how do you assess kids? If you went out and lined up 100 students pulled off the street and asked what they remembered about school last year, none of them is going to say, I really liked the day we broke down the Pythagorean Theorem. What they’re going to say is: I liked it when my teacher was kind to me. I liked the day we got to bring Gatorades to school. I had fun when we did that lab. They’re going to talk about experiences that were feeling experiences, not fact experiences. As an instructional leader, I try to look for ways to approach not necessarily the teacher’s knowledge, but how they’re teaching, not necessarily what they’re teaching.

Matt Renwick

You could go in almost as a student yourself during non-evaluative visits — learning walks, instructional walks, whatever you want to call it. I recall teachers saying, can you pay attention to so-and-so? I want to see how they respond to instruction. These were teachers I had a good degree of trust with, and you’re right — they wanted to know the response to their instruction. They were open to that feedback.

Jen Schwanke

I have a new idea I’m teasing out and working on with some groups — a rise theory. My belief is that all of us as educators have four needs. We want relationships: people we connect with, whether students or colleagues. We want an identity: to be known as something, to have a thing — maybe the fun teacher, maybe the tough teacher. We want success: to feel good at what we do. And that ties to the last one, which is efficacy: we want to feel like we’re making a difference. When I work with teachers, I don’t get hung up on factual knowledge or accuracy so much as whether they’re feeling that rise. How can I, as a principal, help them feel it?

Matt Renwick

I don’t want to go too far here, but it sounds like a potential book down the road.

Jen Schwanke

I do want to write that as a book. I have to trademark it, because I believe it’s a human need.

Matt Renwick

I love it. I have one more question, and you’ve already touched on this: students care about being challenged, being seen, and fitting in. I’ve heard that from parents too, and from kids themselves, so it really does check out. When we get buried in logistics and compliance — and you do a great job in the first chapter of listing all the ways the job has become quite enormous — how do you stay grounded in those values, those principles of challenging kids, seeing kids, helping them belong? What grounds you as a school leader?

Jen Schwanke

There’s a balance. Imagine a scale, and there are two things that help me stay grounded. One of them is consistency — being the same leader every day. Having expectations and accountability that are what they are, but every day being student-centered, being visible, being available. And then the other is being immersed in the work. I have never, ever regretted putting down my pen, closing my laptop, and going to get immersed in a student activity in a classroom, on a field trip, at lunch, at recess. I have never regretted that. There have been times I didn’t want to. But when I make myself do it, I always think, why don’t I do that more? Consistency and immersion are the two things that keep my scale balanced.

Matt Renwick

Those are huge trust builders. Thank you, Jen, for talking with us. The book is Trusted: Trust Pillars, Trust Killers, and the Secret to Successful Schools. If you’re a new principal, if you’re looking for renewal, I would recommend it to anyone in leadership — and beyond the principalship. These are good lessons for coaches, superintendents, anyone in those kinds of positions. Thank you, Jen. This was great.

Jen Schwanke

Thank you so much. I appreciate it, Matt. We always have great conversations.

Thank you for your support of Read by Example. This is a video recording of my conversation with Dr. Jen Schwanke, author of Trusted and other books for school leaders, available only to full subscribers like you. Take care, -Matt

Refer a friend

Jen Schwanke has spent her career inside schools as a teacher, a building leader, and now a deputy superintendent in Ohio. She is the author of five ASCD books, including her most recent, Trusted: Trust Pillars, Trust Killers, and the Secret to Successful Schools. She also writes the newsletter “Principal Problems with Dr. Jen” and co-hosts the Principal Matters Podcast, which has surpassed 1.5 million downloads.

In this conversation, Jen and Matt discuss what it takes to lead with trust: riding the inevitable ups and downs of the principalship, delegating without losing accountability, building the self-awareness to recognize when you are undermining relational trust, and staying connected to students when compliance and logistics pull you in every other dire…

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Hi, it’s Matt. Thank you for your readership and leadership. If you haven’t already, please provide feedback on Read by Example here. Your insights are appreciated!

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“I’ve only been using this resource for a couple of weeks, and I’m already loving it.”

When a teacher announced this during our regular coaching meeting, I looked at my colleague. We were both supporting this ELA team during the school year. They brought us to their school to support them in a curriculum program acquisition process.

My coaching partner kept his poker face.

Coming into this project, I made the prediction that this school would be like most every school seeking out a program. It’s a simple equation: If we acquire a program, and we bring in a one-day training, then our students will become more capable, confident readers. It’s an alluring option. I know this because I have felt it. I’ve been there.

As a classroom teacher, I was excited when the curriculum materials showed up. Unwrapping the anthologies, cracking them open, smelling that fresh book smell. They offered so much promise, with their clean lines and daily plans and schedules that can fill up every minute of a literacy block. What’s implied: you as a teacher no longer have to doubt your instruction. Just lean on this resource, teach it with fidelity.

So, I could empathize with the comment made by the teacher. The novelty of a new resource is enchanting. But it wears off. When it does, what is left is where you started: a room full of students, wanting to become readers and writers.

These programs make impossible promises. And we as educators are complicit in believing them. It’s almost as if we are posting want ads online, such as the following:

What I know is there is no program that exists that will solve every problem a school feels it has. The only thing that has worked is knowledgeable, caring, and confident teachers working together on behalf of their students.

This sounds great, but what does it look like in practice? We need mental models and methodologies. Otherwise, we end up hunting for the perfect program, an example of what Anthony Bryk and colleagues refer to as solutionitis - “the propensity to jump quickly on a solution before fully understanding the exact problem to be solved” (p. 24). Improvement science offers a pathway for empowering teachers as leaders of their own learning. The following six principles map out that pathway (Bryk et al, 2015; Demartino, Petrosky, & Nolly, 2026).

1. Understand the problem of practice that needs to be solved by collaborating with those affected by the problem.

When we heard that the teacher was “sold” on the program, we asked the team: “If this program is the solution, what is the problem it is solving?” The initial response was that they didn’t have a core program. We pressed them, asking what problem a core program would solve. They landed on improving their test scores. Their theory of action at the time was: If we implement a core ELA program, then students will receive more consistent and effective instruction.

2. Locate the variation in performance related to the problem to identify its root causes.

We accepted their response as a starting point. Then we disaggregated some of their assessment results. We wanted to see exactly which students were not succeeding as readers and writers. What we learned is that their students with disabilities and their students of color demonstrated lower achievement scores compared to all students. No one had a good response for what to do. To the team’s credit, they did not blame the students for these outcomes. They were willing to own the results.

3. See the system that is responsible for the problem.

To help the team take a step back, we mapped out more of their current system. We wanted to understand how different parts of the school experience were contributing to the outcomes they were seeing.

One challenge we discovered was the lack of any formal process for examining a new program, beyond trying it out in classrooms. In response, a curriculum implementation guide was used by the team to review the programs they were considering. Additionally, they formed a curriculum leadership team which described the roles and responsibilities of each member. Any decision on which program to recommend to the school board would go through a clear process with this team.

4. Select various practical measures to collect data on the implemented changes.

Beyond the process to support decision-making, the team also looked at demographic data. For example, their students’ attendance rates had not fully recovered to at least 95% since the pandemic. Chronic absenteeism was a particular issue for their students who scored in the bottom quartile of the state exam in reading. What additional data did the team need to learn?

Empathy interviews were recommended. Empathy interviews can “help us listen for how a person feels and perceives the equity challenge we are trying to address, as well as access their creative thinking around how to approach it” (Safir & Dugan, 2021, p. 177). I along with a teacher leader chatted with a dozen students about their current literacy experiences, including what they liked, what they didn’t, how they perceive themselves as readers and writers, and what they would like to see improve during ELA instruction.

Once we deidentified the data (interview transcripts), the teachers had a chance to read through them and write down themes and patterns.

5. Apply disciplined inquiry to test hypotheses about what drives change.

While collecting this qualitative data, teachers were also engaged in a pilot of their preferred resource. We co-created an assessment plan to help ensure that everyone was taking a more objective and comprehensive perspective of the resource.

We organized this assessment plan by three types of measures: outcomes, process, and balanced measures. Outcomes measures include traditional assessments such as end-of unit tests; process measures, such as the empathy interviews, provided data about the pilot as it was happening. A balance measure “comes from recognizing that when a change is introduced into one part of a complex work system, it often produces unintended changes elsewhere” (Bryk et al, 2015, p. 136).

The team anticipated a potentially unintended change:

If we introduce a core resource with fidelity, meaning to adopt it as prescribed by the publisher, what negative effects might there be on our students who currently struggle?

This question was driven in large part by the empathy interviews. Students who have historically not succeeded as readers and writers expressed what they needed: more hands-on, real world literacy tasks that had a meaningful impact in their lives. As the teachers explored the large student anthology text, they could see how parts of it might not be perceived by students as relevant.

6. Participate in networked improvement communities (NICs) of practitioners, content field experts, and researchers to collaboratively engage in the improvement process.

Instead of adopting, the ELA team decided to adapt the program during the implementation process. They would use various measures to monitor instruction during the school year, instead of assuming the program would simply work. There was also discussion around this team connecting with other area schools to learn from one another during implementation.

Improvement science tools fuel continuous improvement: many cycles of inquiry that support professional teams to examine their practices and make adjustments based on multiple measures including local data. They move from “loving a program” to loving the process.

References

Bryk, A. S., Gomez, L. M., Grunow, A., & LeMahieu, P. G. (2015). Learning to improve: How America’s schools can get better at getting better. Harvard Education Press.

DeMartino, S., Petrosky, A., & Nolly, G. (2026). A network for instructional improvement: How teachers and leaders made it work. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

Safir, S., & Dugan, J. (2021). Street data: A next-generation model for equity, pedagogy, and school transformation. Corwin.

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Hi, it’s Matt. If you haven’t already, please provide feedback on Read by Example. Your insights and shared experience will help make this space even better for readers and literacy leaders. Thank you in advance!

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Join me for a conversation with Jen Schwanke, author of Trusted.

Monday, June 9 at 1:30pm CST

Jen Schwanke has spent her career inside schools as a teacher, a building leader, and now a deputy superintendent in Ohio. She is the author of five ASCD books, including her most recent, Trusted: Trust Pillars, Trust Killers, and the Secret to Successful Schools. She also writes the newsletter “Principal Problems with Dr. Jen” and co-hosts the Principal Matters Podcast, which has surpassed 1.5 million downloads.

On June 9, Jen joins Read by Example for a conversation about what it actually takes to lead with trust: riding the inevitable ups and downs, delegating without losing accountability, and staying connected to students when compliance pulls you in every other direction. Paid subscribers can join us live on Zoom. Register below.

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Hi, it’s Matt. If you have a few minutes, I am looking for feedback on Read by Example. The link is below. Your insights are appreciated!

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Instead of an article, I am posting a four-part video series of conversations between Regie Routman, educator and author of The Heart-Centered Teacher: Restoring Hope, Joy, and Possibility in Uncertain Times (Routledge, 2023) and many other books, and Kathy Champeau, educator and co-author of Engaging Literate Minds: Developing Children’s Social, Emotional, and Intellectual Lives, K-3 (Routledge, 2020). These videos are excellent resources for your professional learning plan as a school, as a team, or on your own. View the entire series here.

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Conversation #1: A Contagious Bold Vision for Literacy Teaching

In the first of four conversations, Regie and Kathy discuss why and how to ground teaching in story, establish a culture of trusting relationships, prioritize professional learning, effectively and authentically teach readers and writers, support students to be “noticers” and engaged citizens and to deal with the complexities and dilemmas that make teaching, learning, and leading so challenging—and, also, so promising.

Conversation #2: Creating Joyful, Reader-Centered Classrooms

In this second conversation, Regie and Kathy discuss why and how to ground teaching in story, establish a culture of trusting relationships, prioritize professional learning, effectively and authentically teach readers and writers, support students to be “noticers” and engaged citizens and to deal with the complexities and dilemmas that make teaching, learning, and leading so challenging—and, also, so promising.

Conversation #3: Centering Children’s Voices Through Writing

In this third conversation, Regie and Kathy discuss centering children’s voices through writing—poetry writing, children’s own stories, writing for authentic audiences and purposes—all with a focus on possibilities, joyful learning, and celebrating students’ strengths.

Conversation #4: Curriculum as Conversation

In the fourth of this four-part conversation, Kathy and Regie discuss why engaging children’s minds in conversations is an essential part of the literacy classroom. To that end, they demonstrate how to have productive conversations in a kind and caring environment where all students’ voices are encouraged, supported, and celebrated. Reading and writing skills and strategies are explicitly taught, practiced, and applied in authentic teaching-learning contexts. An essential conversation about what it means to truly see a child.

For all Crucial Conversations and accompanying transcripts, visit the companion website that goes hand and hand with The Heart-Centered Teacher: Restoring Hope, Joy, and Possibility in Uncertain Times.

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Hi, it’s Matt. This article is an update to a blog post I wrote in 2012. You can read the original here. Thank you for your leadership and readership!

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In 2012, I was in my second year as an elementary principal. Like all job changes, I was still figuring out what I was supposed to be doing (this generally takes me three years).

Upon my arrival in 2011, the school had already embarked on a multi-year literacy initiative. The faculty was engaged in the Regie Routman in Residence: Reading-Writing Connection professional learning series, watching videos of highly effective instruction in action and applying these skills in classrooms.

Part of this learning experience was coming to agreement on what literacy beliefs we all could commit to; below are the eight we landed on after three years.

While we stated that these beliefs were important, I didn’t always see them play out in instruction. I would visit classrooms regularly during instructional walks and witness actions that contradicted them. For example, I rarely saw a child’s written story used to teach phonics and skills. Worksheets and isolated skill practice still proliferated in some classrooms. It wasn’t just teachers; I clicked the “approve” button on some purchase requests for resources like this.

My theory at the time was that we needed more effective ways to communicate these beliefs and hold each other accountable for their implementation. So, we invested in professional learning communities, or PLCs. I read Professional Learning Communities at Work by Rick DuFour and colleagues as part of my own studies.

One section in the resource touched on beliefs in a way that was different than what I had previously understood. The authors stated that beliefs alone were not enough. You also need values. The authors define values as core statements that clarify how a shared vision, or a list of beliefs, becomes a reality. It was made clear that as leaders, we need to focus on behaviors, not beliefs.

This created a conflict for me. Do I focus on behaviors or beliefs? Who was right: Regie or Rick?

I found my answer at a literacy institute hosted by Regie and colleagues. Judy Wallis, a literacy consultant, explained that beliefs and values are part of a continuum for a school in change.

“Schools can develop their shared beliefs first. These are the principles that you would be willing to fall on your sword for. An example: ‘We believe students should have wide access to books they can and want to read.’ Would any educator worth their salt disagree with this belief?”

Once beliefs are established, schools can examine their values. Judy defined values as our instructional practices, our beliefs in action. Rereading the belief that students should have access to books they can and want to read, a corresponding value could be: "Independent reading happens in every classroom, every day, with the appropriate amount of support."

You cannot have beliefs without values, and vice versa. Beliefs provide the common language that drives the implementation of common practices. Our values are a mirror for our beliefs. What we see in practice tells us what we actually believe, not just what we say we believe.

This foundation of beliefs and values inoculates schools from relying too heavily on programs and resources. It cannot be bought, only built.

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“Don’t be afraid to answer the questions. You will find endless resources inside yourself. Writing is the act of burning through the fog in your mind.”

- Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones

For as long as I have been a writer, why do I still struggle to write?

Not to say I don’t have a practice. Anyone who identifies as a writer has one. It’s just that mine has not been very consistent over time. I would prefer to write first thing in the morning, but I am not always awake early enough. I also tend to be an optimizer, trying to squeeze in a short meditation, some journaling, maybe take the dog for a walk...and then it’s the evening and I am too tired to open up my laptop. Deadlines and group accountability help a lot, but then I am dependent on others and only external structures.

I’ve come to learn that these behaviors, while healthy, are also a way to avoid the discomfort I feel with the unknowingness of writing. I don’t know what exactly I am going to put down on a page. It can be great or garbage. That can feel scary to me. Psychologist Stephen Hayes refers to this as “experiential avoidance”, defined as “the process of trying to avoid your own experiences (thoughts, feelings, memories, bodily sensations, behavioral predispositions) even when doing so causes long-term behavioral difficulties (like not going to a party because you’re a social phobic, or not exercising because you feel too depressed to get out of bed).”1 Skipping one writing session because I anticipate the discomfort can create a vicious cycle and teach my mind to associate writing with a negative experience.

Enter Improvement Science

As a systems coach, I see a form of writer’s block occur in schools. For example, they will reach out with a request to help them develop a bank of reading interventions at the intermediate grades. I will listen, take notes, and then ask questions about their current practices.

· “What program are you currently using as your core ELA resource?”

· “How much time do teachers have to collaborate monthly?”

· “What data are you looking at to assess the effectiveness of Tier 1 instruction?”

Too often, I get silence or unproductive rationales. These are also avoidance strategies. I know this because I engaged in similar behaviors as a principal. Leaders feel overwhelmed by the prospect of a multiyear effort to shift core literacy instruction in every classroom for the better.

What has helped teams is to apply strategies and ideas from improvement science. This domain within organizational leadership has been applied to many professional fields, including healthcare and business. Anthony Bryk and colleagues brought this work to education through their seminal book Learning to Improve: How Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better2 (Harvard, 2015). In a nutshell, improvement science is about finding root causes for challenges and engaging in brief experiments to learn quickly. Think action research, but through several short cycles of inquiry.

In the rest of this article, I share three tools – fishbone analysis, process map, driver diagram – and how I applied them to help me improve my writing practice. Readers can use my example as a guide for supporting writers in their classrooms or to understand their schoolwide literacy initiatives from a systems level.

Tool #1: Fishbone Analysis

Improvement science is guided by three questions:

1. What specifically am I trying to accomplish?

2. What change might I introduce and why?

3. How will I know if it’s an improvement?

When working with a team, which is often the case, the pronoun “I” is replaced with a “we”.

In my situation, I was trying to create a more natural and sustainable writing practice. I had the answer to #1. #2 was a bit trickier. I didn’t know what change to introduce because I didn’t know what barriers were preventing me from achieving #1.

A fishbone analysis, also known as a cause-and-effect analysis, can help to dig up the root causes of our challenges. It’s important to be honest with oneself when engaging in this initial improvement step. As a systems coach, I will often collect data, such as student and teacher voice data, to ensure that what is identified as a barrier is based in objective reality.

Below is my fishbone analysis, sketched in a two-page layout in my bullet journal.

At the head of the fishbone is my problem I am trying to solve: “Writing is inconsistent and not a practice”. The major bones are categories in which specific factors within my writing practice are organized. After listing several factors that are likely contributing to my challenge, I put an asterisk next to the ones I felt were most salient.

• Rhythm: It’s hard to start writing.

• Purpose: I am sometimes confused on which writing project to focus on.

• Process: My folders in Google Drive are messy, yet I can be resistant to structures.

• Ritual/Identity: My schedule as a systems coach varies from day to day.

Other factors, such as “Perfectionism can get in the way”, became symptoms of some of these deeper issues.

Tool #2: Process Map

A process map reveals what’s working and what’s not within the part of your system you’ve targeted. Below is my process map for what I believe was my ideal state for my writing practice.

Mapping out this process revealed a clear pattern: when I wait until the morning to engage in my writing, it is already too late. My defenses were up. In response, I decided to “start” my writing practice the night before through an evening review in my bullet journal. I would look at my calendar and confirm the specific time I would be writing. Instead of fighting with my schedule, I worked around it. In addition, I recognized the need for positive reinforcement for my efforts. So, after each writing session, I would give myself a sticker in my daily writing log based on the number of words written. (No one is above stickers.)

Tool #3: Driver Diagram

A driver diagram ensures your improvement work is actually connected to the bigger problem you are trying to solve. My driver diagram looks like the flip of my fishbone analysis.

Instead of the problem at the head, I am now describing the aim of my efforts: to reduce my resistance to writing through a more clear and consistent process. Three major categories of my writing practice serve as the primary drivers. Secondary drivers, including my reward system and evening ritual, are connected to my first change idea: have my current writing document open and ready on my computer when I wake up. In effect, I am making it as easy as possible for me to write in the morning. I am removing excuses to not write. Having my current writing up and ready also ensures that I am purposeful in what I will be writing about. No wavering in which project is the priority.

I tried this for 30 days in my writing log. Instead of focusing solely on output (word count), I balanced my assessment with process measures, including whether my document was open, if I was joining a virtual writing group, and if I scheduled and wrote for at least 30 minutes. I also tracked my sense of resistance while writing as a balance measure.

As you can see, I didn’t write every day. However, my consistency and word count improved over time. I recognized that it helped that I had a specific writing project I was working on (a collection of essays).

I treated this entire process through the lens of inquiry. If something didn’t work, I didn’t take it personally. I engaged in my writing with curiosity instead of judgment. There were not good days or bad days; there were just days on which I wrote or didn’t. After this 30-day experiment, I am now finishing up the essay collection and preparing the book proposal. Evening reviews and open documents are still a part of my practice. I took a break from the stickers; the practice feels like more of its own reward.

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