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

Over two decades in Memphis-area schools will teach you how to spot a leader who's still growing. Fred Holmes — known inside the Ruckus Maker Mastermind as the Velvet Hammer — started as a science teacher in Shelby County Schools, moved through teacher leadership and an assistant principalship, ran his own building as principal in Arkansas, and is now back in Memphis Shelby County Schools as a Professional Learning Communities coach, building leadership capacity district-wide. He's been a Ruckus Maker since the Mastermind's earliest days, joining during his first principalship and never missing a Wednesday since. Find him inside the Ruckus Maker community at betterleadersbetterschools.com
Most AI tools will give you a confident answer whether or not it's actually true. Fred Holmes, a longtime Ruckus Maker and Memphis-area school leader, breaks down why he trusts his AI coach for principals — Digital Danny, built exclusively for school leadership — with his highest-stakes conversations, and why a decade-old peer Mastermind still shapes how he leads today.
🖊️ What You'll Learn
Why generic AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini can't replace a coach trained specifically for school leadership.
How Fred rehearses high-stakes conversations with his AI coach before he has them in real life.
The four jobs a real AI coach for principals should actually do.
Why Fred still shows up to the same Wednesday Mastermind after nearly a decade.
How to use your commute to get mentally ready to lead, instead of scrolling.
🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules
🫶 Key Insight #1: Why Generic AI Tools Fail as an AI Coach for Principals
What's broken: Tools like ChatGPT and Gemini answer every question with total confidence — even when they don't actually know — because they're trained on everyone's data instead of built for school leadership.
The shift: An AI coach for principals should be trained exclusively on real school leadership coaching, refuse to train on your private conversations, and say "I don't know" instead of guessing.
Impact: Fred trusts it enough to bring real, sensitive workplace situations to it — the kind he'd never run through a general AI tool.
🧲 Key Insight #2: How to Rehearse a High-Stakes Conversation Before You Have It
What's broken: Principals walk into tough conversations — an underperforming direct report, a political conflict with a supervisor, a hard parent call — without a sounding board, and the wrong tone can make everything worse.
The shift: Fred talks through the exact conversation with his AI coach first, testing language and thinking through the other person's perspective before he ever says a word out loud.
Impact: He shows up calm and confident, because he's already rehearsed the hardest part before it happens.
🚀 Key Insight #3: Why an AI Coach Still Can't Replace a Weekly Peer Mastermind
What's broken: Isolated leaders assume an always-on AI tool is enough support — but the loneliness of leadership doesn't disappear because there's an app on your phone.
The shift: Fred pairs his AI coach with a live, weekly Mastermind of peer principals, using one as a thought partner and the other as human accountability.
Impact: Nearly a decade later, he still hasn't missed a Wednesday.
💡 FRED HOLMES QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST
"It's refreshing, it's renewing, it's empowering. It's where the loneliness of leadership disappears."
— Fred Holmes
"I already know where this is going. He's going to say, put it on the calendar."
— Fred Holmes
"Digital Danny just cuts through that noise, gives the signal."
— Fred Holmes
"I have this calmness and this peace. But also I have the confidence because I had that conversation."
— Fred Holmes
"If you're getting better, then your school is going to get better."
— Fred Holmes
♟Your Do School Different Challenge
Ready to implement? Start here:
Tomorrow: Open your AI coach — or a blank doc if you don't have one yet — and talk through the one high-stakes conversation you've been avoiding this week.
This Month: Build a 10-minute reflection or coaching routine into your commute instead of starting your day on your phone.
This Semester: Find or start a weekly peer Mastermind where other leaders push you the way Fred's Wednesday group pushes him.
⌚️ Episode Timestamps
00:00 - Why Fred never misses a Wednesday Mastermind
04:57 - Fred's journey to Memphis PLC coach
06:16 - Why Digital Danny was a level up
08:31 - The four jobs Digital Danny does for principals
11:01 - How Fred uses Digital Danny every morning
14:40 - Using Digital Danny before tough conversations
18:17 - What surprised Fred most about the tool
22:00 - Why Fred trusts Digital Danny over ChatGPT
25:18 - Inside the private Ruckus Maker Club
33:16 - The legacy behind the Ruckus Makers community
34:29 - How Fred found Mastermind through Google
37:53 - Fred's parting advice to Ruckus Makers
🔗 Connect With Fred Holmes
📝 Read trascript here
🌍 Website: https://betterleadersbetterschools.com/
🔗  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frederick-holmes-carpediem/
🎧 Listen & Subscribe
Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.
🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide
Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at myprincipalcoach.com
Today's Ruckuscast Partners
Orchard gives every student an actual career-readiness score — a real number you can hand your board instead of a vague hope. It's built by a founder who watched his own dad drift through a career he hated and decided kids deserve better than that.
🔎 See what Orchard built at BetterLeadersOrchardCareers.com
ODP Business Solutions has spent 30 years turning ordinary campuses into learning environments students actually want to be in — furniture, tech integration, and sustainable builds, all from a single supplier so procurement isn't a nightmare. They helped Belago Academy build collaborative spaces so engaging students forgot to check their phones.
🔎 Start at ODPbusiness.com/education
IXL's universal screener identifies which students need intervention in 20 minutes or less, then its adaptive platform adjusts to the right difficulty for every single student automatically. Over a million teachers already trust it to make differentiated instruction possible without adding hours to their week.
🔎 Get started at IXL.com/leaders
Kids First Education exists to put the reason you became a leader — the kids — back at the center of your job, with coaching and support built specifically for school and district leaders. 98% of educators who work with them say they left ready to use what they learned that same week.
Learn more at KidsFirstLLC.com/leaders

Dr. Naphtali Hoff trains school leaders and teachers to perform at their best without running themselves into the ground. A former educator and school leader himself, Dr. Hoff now coaches and trains school leaders on management, productivity, and delegation across the country.
He's the author of three books, and his newest, Becoming the Delegating School Boss, is the one most relevant here — it helps school leaders clear their plates and empower their teams.
Dr. Naphtali Hoff joins the Ruckuscast to break down why so many principals resist letting go, and what it actually takes to build a team you can trust.
Every principal has felt it: the sense that if they left the building for a day, something would fall apart. That's not a compliment — it's a delegation problem, and it's quietly running good leaders into the ground. This episode breaks down why school leaders won't let go, and the exact framework for handing off real work without losing control of it.
🤯 What You'll Learn
Why most delegation "excuses" are unexamined fears, not facts, and how to name yours honestly.
How to use the Eisenhower matrix to sort your task list into do, defer, delegate, and delete.
Why chasing perfection instead of excellence is quietly costing you time and staff trust.
How Ken Blanchard's ABCD trust model tells you who's actually ready to take something off your plate.
The one low-risk, low-stakes task every principal should delegate first.
🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules
📚 Key Insight #1: Why School Leaders Treat Delegation Excuses Like Facts
What's broken: Principals tell themselves "I don't have the time to train someone" and treat it as an immovable truth instead of an excuse.
The shift: Naphtali Hoff reframes these as excuses, not myths — challenges to work through, not facts to accept.
Impact: Leaders who name the excuse for what it is stop waiting for the "right" moment and start handing off real work now.
💡 Key Insight #2: The Eisenhower Matrix Every Principal Needs for Delegation
What's broken: Without a system, urgent tasks crowd out important ones, and everything ends up back on the principal's desk.
The shift: Sort every task into do, defer, delegate, or delete — and treat quadrant three as your standing delegation list.
Impact: Principals free up hours each week for the visioning and instructional leadership work only they can do.
🧲 Key Insight #3: Why Perfection Is Costing Principals Trust, Not Building It
What's broken: Leaders hold their team to a personal standard of perfection that almost no one else shares or notices.
The shift: Aim for excellence, hand off the outcome, and let go of controlling every small detail along the way.
Impact: Staff step up faster, and the principal gets back the hours they were burning on edits nobody asked for.
🧠 NAPHTALI HOFF QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST
"Excellence really should be the goal, because perfection is the enemy of progress."
— Naphtali Hoff
"Delegating is not abdicating."
— Naphtali Hoff
"Their standard of good enough is probably a lot lower than your standard of excellence."
— Naphtali Hoff
"If I leave the building, there's going to be chaos unfolding. That means I have not done a very good job in delegating."
— Naphtali Hoff
"You have to realize what is it that I'm uniquely gifted at and capable of, and what can I empower other people to do?"
— Naphtali Hoff
🧩 Your Do School Different Challenge
Ready to implement? Start here:
Tomorrow: Pick one recurring task — a newsletter, a weekly email, an observation schedule — and hand it off with a clear outcome instead of a script.
This Month: Run a two-week activity log of everything you do, then sort each task into do, defer, delegate, or delete.
This Semester: Move one staff member through Blanchard's four stages — directing, coaching, supporting, delegating — until a real piece of your job is permanently theirs.
⏳ Episode Timestamps
00:00 - The warning sign you're the campus bottleneck
03:02 - Naphtali's delegation disaster as a new headmaster
06:17 - The excuses school leaders use to avoid delegating
08:12 - Why excellence beats perfection in delegation
09:49 - Building trust with the ABCD model
13:50 - Using the Eisenhower matrix to audit your tasks
16:49 - Ruthlessly cutting energy-draining tasks each quarter
22:03 - What leaders should never delegate away
23:23 - Situational leadership and the four stages of delegating
25:00 - How to choose who to delegate to
27:30 - The first low-risk delegation win to try
33:30 - Keeping delegation sustainable when it gets hard
🫶 Connect With Naphtali Hoff
🌍 Websites: impactfulcoaching.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/naphtali.hoff
Twitter: https://twitter.com/impactfulcoach
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/naphtalihoff/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/naphtalihoff/
📚 Books: Becoming the New Boss, Becoming the Productive Boss,
🎧 Listen & Subscribe
Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.
🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide
Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at myprincipalcoach.com
🤝 Today's Ruckuscast Partners
Most kids "think about" their future. They take a quiz, grab a brochure, and name three careers they saw on TV. That's not a plan. Orchard helps every student build a real, personalized career action plan, with an AI buddy named Orchie guiding the way. Explore careers. Compare paths. Take the next step this week.
🔎 Show your students what's possible → https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/
For 30 years, ODP Business Solutions has helped schools swap tired classrooms for spaces students actually want to walk into. Smart boards, flexible furniture that turns any room into a collaboration zone, and tech integrations that bring lessons to life — all from one supplier, with easy access to cooperative contracts so procurement doesn't slow you down. Innovative school leaders use them to simplify ordering and streamline budgeting while staying compliant.
🔎 Visit ODPbusiness.com/education to redesign your learning spaces.
Teachers who say "I taught it, they should have learned it" are missing the diagnostic data to actually close the gap. IXL automatically identifies each student's knowledge gaps and builds a personalized growth plan around them, so teachers walk into class knowing exactly what students know and don't. The platform adjusts difficulty in real time as students learn, making differentiation automatic instead of another task on your plate.
🔎 Get started at ixl.com/leaders
Kids First Education was founded by career educators, not consultants, and it shows in how they work. They partner with PreK-12 districts to deliver instructional coaching, leadership development, and curriculum support built on collaboration, reflective planning, and shared problem-solving — not theory. Whether you lead one building or an entire district, their team meets yours where it is.
🔎 See how they can support your school at kidsfirstllc.com

She studies why anti-racist professional development in schools so often fails to change how teachers actually treat students — and what works instead. Dr Abby C. Emerson is an assistant professor of Childhood Education at Hunter College, CUNY, where her research spans anti-racist and abolitionist teacher education, restorative justice, and the critique of whiteness in educational spaces.
She's been named National Association for Multicultural Education's Critical Teacher of the Year, and this fall she releases her book, From Anti-Racism to Professional Learning for Liberating Schools, with Harvard Education Press.
Most schools running anti-racist professional development hit the same wall: teachers learn the theory, reflect on their own bias, update a unit — and the discipline data doesn't move. Dr. Abby C. Emerson studied schools across New York City to find out why, and she found the fix isn't another workshop. It's handing the mic to students.
📚 What You'll Learn
Why the three most common anti-racist PD strategies rarely change discipline outcomes
How one high school's student-led equity committee exposed teacher bias that surveys never could
Why "call-out culture" undermines anti-racist work faster than it builds it
How to communicate proactively with parents before backlash starts
Why breaking curriculum change into small, sequenced steps outperforms sweeping overhauls
🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules
🧠 Key Insight #1: Why Anti-Racist Professional Development Doesn't Change Discipline Data
What's broken: Schools run PD on structural racism, individual reflection, and curriculum revision, then assume the culture has shifted.
The shift: Track whether discipline outcomes actually move — not whether teachers can articulate the theory.
Impact: Educators reported updating their curriculum while the same students kept getting pulled out of class for the same behavior, because the PD never reached school-wide policy.
🧠 Key Insight #2: The Student Voice Committee That Exposed Teacher Bias
What's broken: Adult-only equity committees rely on surveys and self-report — data teachers can rationalize away.
The shift: One high school trained students on its equity committee to collect, analyze, and present discipline data directly to staff, with no teacher in the room.
Impact: Teachers only reversed their denial when white students said out loud that Black classmates were being punished for the exact same behavior they weren't.
🧠 Key Insight #3: Why Call-Out Culture Kills Anti-Racist Progress
What's broken: PD that turns into "gotcha" policing — correcting language, catching mistakes in real time — makes people defensive and shuts the conversation down.
The shift: Build the relationship first: one-on-one conversations, patience, and space for staff to say when they don't feel great about the PD.
Impact: Principals who built trust before pushing change kept staff in the work, instead of losing them to resistance or resignation.
🗣️ DR. ABBY C. EMERSON QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST
"Racism is not just about a couple bad apples, but that racism is a systemic structural piece that impacts all of us."
— Dr. Abby C. Emerson
"Education and teaching can be used as a tool to really challenge inequality in all its forms."
— Dr. Abby C. Emerson
"That relationship piece is more important than calling people out."
— Dr. Abby C. Emerson
"That sort of policing of each other was ultimately really detrimental."
— Dr. Abby C. Emerson
"I really tried to get ahead of the conversation so families knew it was coming home."
— Dr. Abby C. Emerson
🧗‍♂️ Your Do School Different Challenge
Ready to implement? Start here:
Tomorrow: Schedule one 15-minute conversation with a teacher who's pushed back on equity work, and just listen before you respond.
This Month: Pull last semester's discipline data broken out by race and share it with your leadership team before your next PD session.
This Semester: Launch a student equity or student voice committee that collects and presents its own data directly to staff.
⌚️ Episode Timestamps
00:00 - Cold open: the data that shocked teachers
02:47 - Introducing Dr. C. Abby Emerson
04:04 - The PD disaster that sparked her research
06:24 - Why teacher time is too precious to waste
09:35 - Three patterns in anti-racist PD across NYC schools
12:11 - How teachers respond to learning structural racism
16:31 - Why call-out culture backfires in PD
18:08 - Facing political backlash after 2020
23:37 - The hardest work: individual self-reflection
26:25 - Curriculum revision, one unit at a time
29:47 - Two critiques: discipline gaps and individualized PD
37:55 - How a student voice committee changed a school
42:47 - Rapid-fire: marquee message and dream school principles
🤝 Connect With Dr. Abby C. Emerson
👩🏻‍💻 Website: https://www.abbyemerson.com/
🔗 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/abby-emerson-edd-4a387a55
📕 Book: (From Antiracism to Abolition: Professional Learning for Liberating Schools - https://hep.gse.harvard.edu/9798895571170/from-antiracism-to-abolition/ ) 
🎧 Listen & Subscribe
Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.
🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide
Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at myprincipalcoach.com
🫶 Today's RuckusCast Partners
Most kids "think about" their future. They take a quiz, grab a brochure, and name three careers they saw on TV. That's not a plan. Orchard helps every student build a real, personalized career action plan, with an AI buddy named Orchie guiding the way. Explore careers. Compare paths. Take the next step this week.
🔎 Show your students what's possible → https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/
ODP Business Solutions has been a trusted partner for schools for 30 years, handling everything from pencils to projectors so your team stops scrambling for supplies every August. They'll help you turn a tired computer lab into a STEAM innovation center, keep multiple campuses stocked and stocked sustainably, or upgrade from whiteboards to interactive displays — all through one supplier with access to cooperative contracts that simplify ordering and keep budgets compliant.
🔎 Visit ODPbusiness.com/education to learn more.
IXL helps over 1 million teachers differentiate instruction in 20 minutes or less using real-time, data-informed insight — and gives Ruckus Makers a dashboard to track student progress and growth at every level, with reports you can customize to what matters most to your school. It's how data-informed decisions actually get made at scale, not just talked about.
🔎 Get started at ixl.com/leaders
Kids First Education was founded by career educators and partners with Pre-K through 12 districts and schools to deliver instructional coaching, leadership development, and curriculum support built on collaboration and reflective planning. Whether you lead a single building or an entire district, they meet your team where they are with a relentless focus on what's best for kids.
🔎 Learn more at kidsfirst.llc

Building AI tools that replace one-size-fits-all personality tests with real career plans is what got Corey Kossack into K12 education. He's the founder and CEO of Orchard, an AI-powered career counseling platform for schools, and Aspireship, an employee upskilling platform — work born from watching his own father cycle in and out of a job he hated for years.
Kossack has spent his career helping people who want to help themselves climb toward ambitious goals, and Orchard is the result: an AI career counselor named Orchie, paired with real interviews from working professionals across hundreds of occupations. For Ruckus Makers wrestling with overworked counselors and an outdated career-readiness playbook, that's the credential that matters.
Most schools still run career readiness on a conveyor belt: next grade, next test, college, then hope for the best. Corey Kossack argues that model was built for a workforce AI has already started dismantling — and he's built a system for what comes after it. This is the episode for any Ruckus Maker rethinking what career readiness actually means right now.
🧐 What You'll Learn
Why the "conveyor belt" model of career prep breaks down the moment AI starts reshaping entire job categories
The four stages of school transformation — conveyor belt, simulation, mentor, and venture mode — and what each looks like in practice
Why personality tests give students false certainty instead of real career readiness
How AI tools like Orchard's Orchie can support overworked counselors instead of replacing them
What it actually takes to build career connections into daily instruction instead of treating it as an extra
🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules
📚 Key Insight #1: The Conveyor Belt Career Readiness Model Is Broken
What's broken: Schools push students through a fixed path — next grade, next test, college, career — built for a stable workforce that no longer exists.
The shift: Replace single-path thinking with a system built on exploration, mentorship, and venture (real-world doing) woven into the curriculum instead of bolted onto it.
Impact: Students leave school with an actual plan and multiple explored pathways, instead of a deterministic label like "you're an engineer."
📚 Key Insight #2: Personality Tests Give False Certainty, Not Career Readiness
What's broken: Traditional interest inventories are deterministic — one survey tells a student exactly what they'll be, and it's often wrong.
The shift: AI-driven exploration lets students search by criteria — "an innovative tech career for creative people" — instead of getting boxed into a single job title.
Impact: Students can compare pay, pathways, and requirements across a dozen careers at once instead of fixating on one narrow "good job."
🚀 Key Insight #3: AI Career Coaching Should Back Up Counselors, Not Replace Them
What's broken: School counselors are overworked and can't possibly know the full breadth of occupations that exist today, especially as AI reshapes the job market in real time.
The shift: Tools like Orchard's Orchie generate a personalized student action plan in under 20 seconds, freeing counselors to focus on relationship and guidance instead of research.
Impact: Counselors gain a resource that scales their impact instead of one more task piled onto an already impossible list.
✍️ COREY KOSSACK QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST
"If you're using the conveyor belt method at your school to prepare kids for the future, you are failing your students."
— Corey Kossack
"That conveyor belt method was built to produce a stable workforce. A workforce that's now gone."
— Corey Kossack
"Your students don't need to take a personality test telling them what they will one day be."
— Corey Kossack
"Don't fall into your future. Climb to it."
— Corey Kossack
"Why do we put it all on counselors? Why does it all have to be on counselors?"
— Corey Kossack
"How would you possibly expect a counselor to know all of these things?"
— Corey Kossack
"College is not the destination. It is a step in the journey."
— Corey Kossack
🚵‍♀️ Your Do School Different Challenge
Ready to implement? Start here:
Tomorrow: Pull up the episode's example of an overlooked career — like clinical operations for pharma trials — and share it with one counselor or teacher today.
This Month: Sit down with your counseling team and map where your current career-advising process relies on a single deterministic test instead of open-ended exploration.
This Semester: Build at least one explicit career connection into a core academic course, so students see how the subject maps to real occupations as part of the curriculum, not an add-on.
⌚️Episode Timestamps
00:00 - The conveyor belt method is failing students
03:26 - Corey's origin story: why his dad hated his job
06:15 - Why AI urgency is reshaping career readiness now
08:51 - A marketing team goes from five reports to zero
09:58 - Trades, GTM engineers, and chasing "the one thing"
12:27 - Why no one fully understands real career options
15:35 - The problem with deterministic personality tests
18:10 - Conveyor belt, simulation, mentor, and venture mode
28:54 - Inside Orchard: meeting Orchie, the AI career counselor
33:24 - Comparing pay and pathways across a dozen careers
35:58 - Building a personalized action plan in under 20 seconds
42:46 - Why this supports counselors instead of replacing them
44:29 - Corey's marquee message and dream campus principles
🎧 Connect With Corey Kossack
Website: https://corey@orchard.careers/, aspireship.com
Follow on social: linkedin.com/in/coreykossack
🎧 Listen & Subscribe
Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.
🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide
Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at myprincipalcoach.com
🤝 Today's RuckusCast Partners
Most kids "think about" their future. They take a quiz, grab a brochure, and name three careers they saw on TV. That's not a plan. 
Orchard helps every student build a real, personalized career action plan, with an AI buddy named Orchie guiding the way. Explore careers. Compare paths. Take the next step this week.
🔎 Show your students what's possible → https://betterleaders.orchard.careers/
ODP Business Solutions has spent 30 years helping school districts build learning environments students actually want to be in. They helped Belago Academy replace disengaged classrooms with collaborative spaces, tech integration, and flexible furniture that changed how kids learn — not just where they sit. You get it all from one supplier, which means simpler ordering, easier budgeting, and access to cooperative contracts that keep you compliant.
🔎 Visit ODPbusiness.com/education to see what they can build for your campus.
IXL's universal screener identifies which students need intervention in 20 minutes or less — no guesswork, no wasted class time. Its adaptive learning platform, used by more than 1 million teachers, automatically adjusts to each student's exact level, so differentiation stops being a heavy lift.
🔎 Get started at IXL.com/leaders
Kids First Education was founded by career educators who partner with Pre-K through 12 schools and districts to deliver instructional coaching, leadership development, and curriculum support built on real classroom experience. Their approach runs on collaboration, reflective planning, and shared problem-solving — all pointed at one outcome: better decisions for kids. Whether you lead one building or an entire district, they meet your team where it is.
🔎 Learn more at kidsfirst.llc

Phil Brown trains educators to build the kind of learning moments a curriculum can't schedule. As an experiential and adventure education trainer at High 5 Adventure Learning Center, he's guided everyone from Iraqi high schoolers working through conflict resolution to NHL players from the Boston Bruins and Calgary Flames through experiences designed to stretch — not break — them.
He also serves on the board of the Association for Experiential Education and hosts the podcast Vertical Playpen, where he digs deeper into the theory and practice behind this work.
Most principals have sat through a lesson that went exactly as planned and taught nobody anything. Phil Brown has the opposite story: a day where nothing went as planned, and it became the most important teaching moment of his career. This episode is about what happened in between — and why experiential education, not another curriculum map, might be the fix your campus actually needs.
🫶 What You'll Learn
Why following student curiosity can outperform even the best-designed lesson plan
How the comfort zone, stretch zone, and panic zone model applies to staff and students alike
Why "connection before content" isn't a soft skill — it's the fastest path to real learning
What Kolb's experiential learning cycle looks like in a real classroom
Why experiential education has a marketing problem, not a results problem
🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules
✅ Key Insight #1: Why Rigid Lesson Plans Kill Real Learning
What's broken: Principals and teachers design lessons with locked agendas, tight timelines, and predetermined outcomes — then treat any deviation as a distraction.
The shift: Follow the student's natural curiosity, even when it means abandoning the plan entirely.
Impact: Phil scrapped an entire day's ropes-course curriculum to follow a student's question about a pine cone — and it became the most connective, most talked-about day of the entire program.
📚 Key Insight #2: Why Connection Before Content Changes Classroom Outcomes
What's broken: Educators rush into curriculum before earning trust, assuming content delivery is the job and connection is a nice-to-have.
The shift: Build genuine connection first. Content moves faster once trust exists.
Impact: Groups who bond before instruction absorb content faster and take more risks, because they trust the adult guiding them enough to be honest when something's too much.
🚀 Key Insight #3: The Comfort Zone, Stretch Zone, and Panic Zone Every Leader Should Know
What's broken: Educators assume "pushing kids out of their comfort zone" is automatically good — and push straight into panic without realizing it.
The shift: Real growth happens in the stretch zone, not the panic zone. The goal is productive struggle, not overwhelm.
Impact: Students who trust their leader will self-advocate the moment they're nearing panic — instead of shutting down or disengaging silently.
🗣️ PHIL BROWN QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST
"Find the pine cone. That just really means to be open to students' natural curiosity and follow it."
— Phil Brown
"Connection before content."
— Phil Brown
"It's the same thing with that supervisor who says, my door is always open — you know full well that door is not open."
— Phil Brown
"When in doubt, give them your heart."
— Phil Brown
"The only thing that you learn when you panic is, hell no, I don't want to do it again."
— Phil Brown
"Your aim is not to be childish, but be childlike."
— Phil Brown
🚵‍♀️ Your Do School Different Challenge
Ready to implement? Start here:
Tomorrow: The next time a student or teacher asks an off-topic question, stop and follow it for five minutes instead of redirecting back to your agenda.
This Month: Build one intentional "connection before content" activity into your next staff meeting, before any agenda item gets introduced.
This Semester: Pick one entrenched schedule block — a 42-minute period, a PD day — and redesign it around Kolb's cycle: experience, reflect, apply, act, instead of a fixed lesson plan.
⌚️ Episode Timestamps
00:00 - Why rigid lesson plans block real learning
05:01 - Bringing Sunni and Shiite teens to Vermont
07:25 - Planning ropes courses the students didn't need
08:49 - The pine cone question that changed everything
12:20 - Using Ubuntu cards to build connection
14:20 - Why connection must come before content
15:23 - Kolb's experiential learning cycle explained
20:13 - The three components that make it adventure
26:37 - Comfort zone stretch zone and panic zone
29:34 - Why trust determines how far students stretch
35:59 - Why schools were built for the industrial age
38:11 - Selling experiential education to administrators
44:38 - Phil's message for every school marquee
47:47 - Find the pine cone the final takeaway
🔗 Connect With Phil Brown
👩🏻‍💻 Website: https://high5adventure.org/ , https://www.aee.org/
👉 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/phil-brown-high5
🎧 Listen & Subscribe
Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.
🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide
Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at myprincipalcoach.com
Today's RuckusCast Partners
Still scrambling for supplies like it's 1999? ODP Business Solutions has been the trusted supply partner for schools for 30 years — from restocking eight campuses with sustainable, scalable solutions to redesigning a tired computer lab into a full STEAM innovation center. Everything comes from one supplier, which means simpler ordering, streamlined budgeting, and easy access to cooperative contracts.
🔎 Visit ODPbusiness.com/education to see what they can build for your district.
IXL isn't just a teacher tool — it's a leadership dashboard. Ruckus Makers use IXL to put a finger on the pulse of student performance, drilling down to individual growth and customizing reports around what matters most to their goals.
🔎 Get started at ixl.com/leaders
Kids First Education was founded by career educators who partner with Pre-K through 12 schools and districts to deliver instructional coaching, leadership development, and curriculum support built on collaboration and real classroom data — not theory. Whether you lead a single building or an entire system, they meet your team where it is.
🔎 Learn more at kidsfirst.llc
META DESCRIPTION: Experiential education beats lesson plans. Learn how connection-before-content and stretch zones drive real student engagement.