The Better Leaders Better Schools Podcast | The #1 Downloaded School Principal Show

Teacher resistance to change won't budge while principals keep shoulding on staff. Your shoulds are resistance too, and they keep it alive.
Teacher resistance to change is rarely a skill problem. It's a will problem, and most principals keep throwing skill fixes at it: more training, more accountability, another relationship-building push. Author and coach Becca Silver (The Resistance Solution) calls this the notice-react loop, and it's why the same resistance keeps showing up in your building.
Schools hire critical thinkers, then ask them to comply with changes they didn't choose. Becca breaks down her NODR approach (notice, observe, diagnose, respond), the five catalyst mindsets that reveal where buy-in is missing, why "build trust" is too vague to fix anything, and why the complaints you keep smoothing over are your best data. Plus the niceness trap, efficiency bias, and how to raise support without lowering rigor.
🧔🏻‍♂️ THINK THROUGH YOUR NEXT LEADERSHIP MOVE:
https://myprincipalcoach.com — your AI-powered principal coach, available 24/7.
⌚️ TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Why shoulds keep resistance alive
04:21 - The teacher who refused a smart board
08:41 - Hiring critical thinkers, demanding compliance
12:14 - What happens when leaders should on staff
15:39 - The notice-react loop vs NODR
17:18 - The five catalyst mindsets
20:08 - Why build trust is the wrong diagnosis
23:07 - Integrity is not about being a good person
31:02 - Efficiency bias and the weed analogy
34:41 - The niceness trap and why complaints are gold
38:52 - Human-centered leadership without lowering rigor
41:29 - Resistance is a compass, not a stop sign
🔗 CONNECT WITH BECCA SILVER:
🌎 Website: https://www.thewholeeducator.com/https://www.thewholeeducator.com/link-in-bio
👩🏻‍💻 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/becca-silver/
WHENEVER YOU ARE READY, HERE'S 3 WAYS TO HELP YOU DO SCHOOL DIFFERENT:
📬 Weekly newsletter: https://ruckusmakers.news/subscribe
📚 Monthly mini-books: https://ruckusmakers.media
🧭 Map your next 90-days: https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/principals-entry-plan/
💚 TODAY'S RUCKUSCAST IN PARTNERSHIP WITH:
IXL:
IXL's adaptive platform finds every student's knowledge gaps, adjusts difficulty as they learn, and gives you a dashboard showing exactly where growth is happening.
🔎 Over 1 million teachers use it — get started at https://ixl.com/leaders
ODP BUSINESS SOLUTIONS:
ODP Business Solutions has supplied schools for 30 years — converting dead computer labs into STEAM centers, stocking multiple campuses, upgrading whiteboards to interactive displays — all from a single supplier through cooperative contracts.
🔎 Learn more at https://odpbusiness.com/education
ORCHARD:
Orchard gives every student a personalized career action plan and scores readiness across 8 dimensions — a number you can take to your board.
🔎 See how it works at https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/
KIDS FIRST EDUCATION:
Kids First Education builds professional learning around your district's priorities, your data, and your classrooms — not pulled off a shelf — and 98% of educators walk out ready to use what they learned.
🔎 Partner with them at https://kidsfirst.llc/leaders

Outdoor learning isn't a field trip or a reward. Most principals already have a better classroom than their building: the forest out back. Outdoor learning in public schools is no longer a nice extra. In Baltimore, it's a right the city is writing into law.
Terris King II built the Baltimore Forest School from a kindergarten classroom in Shanghai into a city-sanctioned system serving 79,000 public school kids, partnering with the Smithsonian and placing 60 weather stations across the city to close neighborhood data deserts.
Terris breaks down the Outdoor Bill of Rights and what it takes to make it enforceable, why taking recess away should never be a punishment, how church volunteers kept kids reading during COVID, and why he swapped the word "play" for "participatory science," a term a principal can actually measure.
Then he names the three city partners every Ruckus Maker needs at the table to Do School Different: city schools, parks and recreation, and the office of sustainability.
THINK THROUGH YOUR NEXT LEADERSHIP MOVE:
https://myprincipalcoach.com — your AI-powered principal coach, available 24/7.
⌚️ TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Why nature is missing school infrastructure
04:41 - What COVID in Shanghai taught Terris
07:00 - Why screens are the most detrimental drug
11:05 - One Health and the recess disparity
14:43 - What the Outdoor Bill of Rights says
17:15 - Making children's outdoor rights enforceable
19:09 - Maryland's outdoor preschool licensure
26:28 - The joy metric and a five-year disruption plan
28:16 - Churches as classrooms during COVID
31:21 - Rebranding play as participatory science
32:10 - 60 weather stations erase data deserts
35:18 - Three city partners every forest school needs
40:08 - The forest patch behind your school
43:26 - Running the Chicago Marathon with students
🔗 CONNECT WITH TERRIS KING II:
🌎 Website: https://www.baltimoreforestschool.org/, https://www.templexschools.com/
👩🏻‍💻 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terriskingii/
WHENEVER YOU ARE READY, HERE'S 3 WAYS TO HELP YOU DO SCHOOL DIFFERENT:
📬 Weekly newsletter: https://ruckusmakers.news/subscribe
📚 Monthly mini-books: https://ruckusmakers.media
🧭 Map your next 90-days: https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/principals-entry-plan/
💟 TODAY'S RUCKUSCAST IN PARTNERSHIP WITH:
IXL:
IXL's adaptive platform finds every student's knowledge gaps, adjusts difficulty as they learn, and gives you a dashboard showing exactly where growth is happening. Over 1 million teachers use it — get started at https://ixl.com/leaders
ODP BUSINESS SOLUTIONS:
ODP Business Solutions has supplied schools for 30 years — converting dead computer labs into STEAM centers, stocking multiple campuses, upgrading whiteboards to interactive displays — all from a single supplier through cooperative contracts. Learn more at https://odpbusiness.com/education
ORCHARD:
Orchard gives every student a personalized career action plan and scores readiness across 8 dimensions — a number you can take to your board. See how it works at https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/
KIDS FIRST EDUCATION:
Kids First Education builds professional learning around your district's priorities, your data, and your classrooms — not pulled off a shelf — and 98% of educators walk out ready to use what they learned. Partner with them at https://kidsfirst.llc/leaders

Letting go of what you're known for is the hardest move in school leadership. It's also how your team, and your impact, gets bigger.
Leadership succession and delegation break down when principals refuse to hand off the thing they're best at. Danny Bauer handed the Ruckus Maker Mastermind, his flagship, to a coach team built from its own members. He expected people to leave. They stayed, and the Mastermind grew.
Now he's doing it again with the podcast. Practicing principals Dan Watt (K–7, rural British Columbia) and Demetrius Ball (2,800-student high school, San Ramon, California) step in as co-hosts. They unpack invent-give it away-fire yourself, why improv's "every offer is a gift" rule belongs on campus, and the bar that beats downloads: conversations worth sharing.
THINK THROUGH YOUR NEXT LEADERSHIP MOVE:
https://myprincipalcoach.com — your AI-powered principal coach, available 24/7.
⌚️ TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Reinventing your role as a leader
03:28 - The scariest announcement Danny ever made
05:06 - Why the Mastermind grew after he left
06:40 - What members felt when the leader stepped back
15:19 - Improv lesson: every offer is a gift
17:57 - The janitor who loves cleaning
19:13 - Why your brain plus mine wins
23:30 - Invent, give it away, fire yourself
25:35 - Shareable beats most downloaded
29:51 - Conversations over interviews and book plugs
32:36 - Problem, process, proof for any context
41:14 - Saying it out loud: I want to quit
44:36 - Coaching trees and who gets a seat
📝 WHENEVER YOU ARE READY, HERE'S 3 WAYS TO HELP YOU DO SCHOOL DIFFERENT:
📬 Weekly newsletter: https://ruckusmakers.news/subscribe
📚 Monthly mini-books: https://ruckusmakers.media
🧭 Map your next 90-days: https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/principals-entry-plan/
🤝 TODAY'S RUCKUSCAST IN PARTNERSHIP WITH:
IXL:
IXL's adaptive platform finds every student's knowledge gaps, adjusts difficulty as they learn, and gives you a dashboard showing exactly where growth is happening.
🔎 Over 1 million teachers use it — get started at https://ixl.com/leaders
ODP BUSINESS SOLUTIONS:
ODP Business Solutions has supplied schools for 30 years — converting dead computer labs into STEAM centers, stocking multiple campuses, upgrading whiteboards to interactive displays — all from a single supplier through cooperative contracts.
🔎 Learn more at https://odpbusiness.com/education
ORCHARD:
Orchard gives every student a personalized career action plan and scores readiness across 8 dimensions — a number you can take to your board.
🔎 See how it works at https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/
KIDS FIRST EDUCATION:
Kids First Education builds professional learning around your district's priorities, your data, and your classrooms — not pulled off a shelf — and 98% of educators walk out ready to use what they learned.
🔎 Partner with them at https://kidsfirst.llc/leaders

Freshmen fall behind because no one teaches the hidden curriculum. One school taught it and hit 99% credit sufficiency.Freshman year predicts graduation, yet most ninth graders walk in without knowing what a GPA, a transcript, or credit sufficiency means. That's the hidden curriculum, and Estella Evans Hamilton decided to stop hiding it.
At a 6A Oklahoma City high school with up to 1,300 freshmen, she built G-SAP Life: a 10-minute monthly routine where every student checks their GPA, sets a goal one letter grade higher, writes a plan, and tracks attendance.
Credit sufficiency jumped from roughly 65% to 85% in one year. Two years after the pandemic, it hit 99%.The real shift is ownership: students who know where they stand every month instead of finding out in April they're repeating ninth grade.
🧔🏻‍♂️THINK THROUGH YOUR NEXT LEADERSHIP MOVE:
https://myprincipalcoach.com — your AI-powered principal coach, available 24/7.
⌚️ TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - How 99% of 1,300 freshmen stayed on track
04:12 - The freshman who loved his grandpa
05:47 - Why the pandemic proved the system worked
09:12 - The heartbreak behind G-SAP Life
13:12 - Teaching students systems from first grade up
18:25 - The credit sufficiency wall at lunch
19:41 - Why posting results is about more than recognition
23:06 - Academic wellness and the monthly folder
26:01 - Why no student plans to fail
32:15 - The five questions students answer monthly
34:50 - Taking the sting out of parent conferences
37:36 - Starting the GPA conversation before ninth grade
39:17 - Dream school principles and final takeaway
🫶 CONNECT WITH ESTELLA EVANS HAMILTON:
Website: https://www.g-saplife.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eehgsaplife/
Full episode transcript: here
🚵‍♀️ WHENEVER YOU ARE READY, HERE'S 3 WAYS TO HELP YOU DO SCHOOL DIFFERENT:
📬 Weekly newsletter: https://ruckusmakers.news/subscribe
📚 Monthly mini-books: https://ruckusmakers.media
🧭 Map your next 90-days: https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/principals-entry-plan/
🤝 TODAY'S RUCKUSCAST IN PARTNERSHIP WITH:
IXL:
IXL's adaptive platform finds every student's knowledge gaps, adjusts difficulty as they learn, and gives you a dashboard showing exactly where growth is happening.
🔎 Over 1 million teachers use it — get started at https://ixl.com/leaders
ODP BUSINESS SOLUTIONS:
ODP Business Solutions has supplied schools for 30 years — converting dead computer labs into STEAM centers, stocking multiple campuses, upgrading whiteboards to interactive displays — all from a single supplier through cooperative contracts.
🔎 Learn more at https://odpbusiness.com/education
ORCHARD:
Orchard gives every student a personalized career action plan and scores readiness across 8 dimensions — a number you can take to your board.
🔎 See how it works at https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/
KIDS FIRST EDUCATION:
Kids First Education builds professional learning around your district's priorities, your data, and your classrooms — not pulled off a shelf — and 98% of educators walk out ready to use what they learned.
🔎 Partner with them at https://kidsfirst.llc/leaders

Tough conversations fail when principals soften the message so much it can't be heard. Here's what clear, kind feedback sounds like.
Tough conversations with teachers, staff, and caregivers are the part of school leadership nobody trains you for, so most principals avoid them or soften them until nothing changes. Superintendent Erika Bare and leadership coach Tiffany Burns, co-authors of A School Leader's Playbook for Tough Conversations, break down how to prepare, why the feedback sandwich fails, and what to do when a teacher on an improvement plan still isn't improving.
You'll get their caregiver framework (care, facts, the why, next steps, care again), the 10-second purpose check that keeps you on track when the other person goes off script, and how to answer excuses with data instead of debate. Plus why rescuing a struggling teacher from their own realization is the least kind thing you can do.
Clear is kind. Avoidance isn't.
THINK THROUGH YOUR NEXT LEADERSHIP MOVE
https://myprincipalcoach.com — your AI-powered principal coach, available 24/7.
⌚️ TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Danny's prepared conversation that still backfired
10:21 - Why principals avoid tough conversations
14:04 - Coaching up vs coaching out with dignity
17:32 - Why the feedback sandwich fails
21:13 - Learning hard conversations through practice
25:04 - Reflecting after a hard conversation
34:29 - Common mistakes leaders make in tough talks
37:13 - Framing hard news for caregivers
41:18 - Coaching a veteran teacher mailing it in
43:44 - Next steps when improvement plans stall
45:11 - The you seem miserable conversation
48:20 - Lack of will vs lack of skill
52:31 - Answering defensive teachers with data
54:31 - Yes, struggling teachers can turn it around
🔗 CONNECT WITH ERIKA BARE & TIFFANY BURNS:
Website: https://www.connectingthroughconversation.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiffany-burns-90a50a274/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erika-bare-6a72a6215/
📆 WHENEVER YOU ARE READY, HERE'S 3 WAYS TO HELP YOU DO SCHOOL DIFFERENT:
📬 Weekly newsletter: https://ruckusmakers.news/subscribe
📚 Monthly mini-books: https://ruckusmakers.media
🧭 Map your next 90-days: https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/principals-entry-plan/
🤝 TODAY'S RUCKUSCAST IN PARTNERSHIP WITH:
IXL:
IXL's adaptive platform finds every student's knowledge gaps, adjusts difficulty as they learn, and gives you a dashboard showing exactly where growth is happening.
🔎 Over 1 million teachers use it — get started at https://ixl.com/leaders
ODP BUSINESS SOLUTIONS:
ODP Business Solutions has supplied schools for 30 years — converting dead computer labs into STEAM centers, stocking multiple campuses, upgrading whiteboards to interactive displays — all from a single supplier through cooperative contracts.
🔎 Learn more at https://odpbusiness.com/education
ORCHARD:
Orchard gives every student a personalized career action plan and scores readiness across 8 dimensions — a number you can take to your board.
🔎 See how it works at https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/
KIDS FIRST EDUCATION:
Kids First Education builds professional learning around your district's priorities, your data, and your classrooms — not pulled off a shelf — and 98% of educators walk out ready to use what they learned.
🔎 Partner with them at https://kidsfirst.llc/leaders