If you have been hanging out with me for awhile, then you know my keys to leadership are developing a step by step system, having a plan to launch your messaging so that your teacher community takes action to get results they want, and scheduling it into your calendar so that it actually happens. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years of being a school administrator is that having clarity around my core content is not only helpful in creating consistency and action taking, but it also helps me to show up for my teachers without having to worry about how I’m going to answer all their questions. Consistency in my messaging and focus for our community helps me to feel confident because we are focusing on one thing and doing it really well. The content that we focus on and teach helps to set me up with a 10% edge because I have done the front load work of research, implementation trial and error, have proof and evidence to showcase results visually, and…..testimonials from the teachers or leaders that I have worked with.
What I have learned through all of this, is that I needed to get crystal clear on my understanding and wording around the content I was delivering and teaching in meetings and professional learning communities. That’s why I decided to look back on my clarity work and how it relates to the content and journey we have had so far. What came of that reflection? A checklist of course! My goal is to be intentional for everything that I am reflecting on. With that means coming up with a system that I can use over and over again to provide clarity. We all need clarity and a list to keep us organized!! I’m walking you through a five–step process for identifying your core content, getting confident speaking about it, expecting it from others, and living it within your professional learning communities. Next, I will show you how to use the content to help your teachers implement it inside their classrooms.
If you’re ever worried that you will never figure out your core content for your community because there is waaaaaay too many things to get done. I’m an example of someone who has, with the exact same struggles that you have. And don’t kid yourself, I am still refining, reframing, and pivoting as I go, even today. It is still hard, my friends! But, we leaders know, that is exactly how change and growth happens….you have to go through the uncomfortable places where the “Hakken Kraks Howl ” (you know that place in Dr. Seuss’ book, “Oh the Places You’ll go.”). Even Seuss speaks of the mixed up places that you are bound to go when you push for something more. The Hakken Kraks Howl is the confusion place, the frightening creek where people often travel to when change happens. We get frustrated and fear change because it is hard. But it is also where you figure things out and learn the most. It is where you trouble shoot and become stronger and you figure out that system, a plan, and learn how to make it happen by scheduling it in and setting deadlines. The Hakken Kraks Howl is a place where people tend to turn around because the unrest makes it feel like it isn’t working….but it is. This is where the answers surface, if you stick with it long enough. And…chances are, this problem you are experiencing, is the exact problem that most humans are having so….this system you are figuring out, needs you more than ever! On you must go through the Hakken Kraks Howl!
“Onward up many
a frightening creek,
though your arms may get sore
and your sneakers may leak.
On and on you will hike,
And I know you’ll hike far
and face up to your problems
whatever they are.
So be sure when you step.
Step with care and great tact
and remember that Life’s
a Great Balancing Act.”
To figure out our steps and to get to the other side of discomfort, we need to figure out a system and a checklist.
Before we go any further and get into the step–by–step process I mentioned in at the start of this blog, let’s make sure that we’re on the same page when it comes to core content. Your core content is made up of the ideas, strategies, and techniques that solidify your flow and step by step plan to put into action within your professional learning communities. These should be rooted in pain points, challenges, desires, and needs of your teachers. And you should be able to teach them over and over again to help them through the Hakken Kraks Howl. We all know by now, with any change or implementation, this will happen.
When you address these pain points or desires using your core content in meetings, armed with ideas and strategies and techniques, you’re creating jumping stones that your audience can jump across to get through the Hakken Kraks Howl so that when they get to the other side, they are more willing, likely, and excited to actually implement the strategies from your content. There’s a lot of different mindset shifts and understandings that need to happen before somebody is ready to subscribe to your messaging. Your core content gets them ready to do business with you and implement the strategies.
There is a difference between your messaging and your core content that you will be focusing on within your professional learning meetings. Your message should clearly state the objections of your teachers and just address them head on, whereas, in your core content, you’re giving ideas and strategies and techniques to specifically overcome those objections. Basically, your core content is the actions that will solve the messaging priority. My suggestion is always to focus on the top priority of your community and only one until you are ready, as a community, to move onto the next priority. Typically in your message, you’re talking about the teacher’s top pain point or priority. You’re addressing objections. In your core content, you’re taking those objections and your teaching strategies and techniques so that they can see that what they need to do is doable. This way they will begin to want to take action because they see clearly the jumping stones ahead of them and how they might get across the Hakken Kraks Howl.
Let’s get to that checklist for identifying your core content and how to actually put it into action:
Step number one: Consider the biggest pain point of your teacher community. What matters to them the most? What could you teach? What is the transformation they would feel on the other side of that problem? What core steps does your teachers have to take to achieve that transformation? Now, I suggest you lean heavily on any research you’ve done, and if you’ve done any ideal–community–avatar work or if you’ve had conversations or listened to conversations with your teachers to validate the pain point or priority that is at the top of your mind. Here’s a little hint. Ideal–community avatar work is taking who your community is at this moment and getting real with what inspires them or makes them tick. Next, it is about looking how you could teach to them so that they transform and conquer that priority. Think about anything you know about your teachers, what you’ve learned about them, and then pull from your own knowledge, your skill set, your expertise. That’s where you’re starting here.
Identify this core themes and get hyper clear on the patterns and trends of what your teachers are saying or asking for . So to give you an example, in my school, I got clear on our core content. The teachers were asking for more clarity on how to livestream and there was a lot of unrest about teaching virtually in a pandemic. From there— I brainstormed all the things that I could do to teach them about live streaming so they could have some clear step by step jumping stones to get them through the Hakken-Krak Howls. I looked for the patterns and trends and noticed that there were three key areas that I could help to teach them so that they learned how to livestream. The three areas were teaching them how to set up and use Zoom, how to use google classroom in a really efficient and effective way, and ways to engage students virtually getting them familiar with using their ipad, chats, and workshop strategies. I typed out those three categories, and then I left space underneath each one of them to go back and break those overarching themes down into more bite–size, manageable pieces. These are all pieces of core content that help me to support and educate my audience, and it helps them to cross over that Hakken-Kraks Howl by providing stepping stones. Once the teachers got clear on the steps they needed to implement, practice, and take they wanted to take, they’d be more willing and excited to finally conquer that fear of livestreaming.
Do you see how I create my core content around pain points and desires? That’s exactly what you want to do as well. So step number one, sit down and write out your overarching themes, and then break down those into bite–size pieces. The bite–size pieces are the pieces of content you will teach within your mini-lessons in your professional learning meetings.
Moving on to step number two, find your 10% edge within that priority through research, practice, and story telling. Do the research, get into classrooms and teach focusing on that one priority and strategies, find ways to experiment with the strategy yourself. Do whatever you want to do to perfect how you would like to speak of each of these areas of content. This will give you your 10% edge because you have had experience with these strategies and learned from gurus or research. Think about the most important points, and as you do this, keep coming back to the pain points or desires. How can you clarify this and use your messaging around your core content to give your teachers the confidence they need to tackle this content and implement it?
A really great way to do this is to include stories, both personal and from other students or teachers, and stories that are related to a specific piece of content. For example, I talk a lot about working with teachers in my school who are doing the work of the content, or I use giants in the field or even bring them in. I also document my own journey and struggles implementing these strategies so they have a backstage pass to my own journey through the Hakken-Kraks Howl. Stories really bring things to life. As you’re thinking about how you’re going to talk about this, the wording, think about your own stories, because if you don’t have stories from students or your teachers yet, you do have your own stories.
Step number three is practice the strategy and gather proof and evidence along the way. Once you’ve gotten clear on your messaging, it’s time for you to practice so you feel comfortable and confident sharing this message with your teachers. With time, this gets easier but of course Hakken-Kraks howl flares up again! As you practice implementing this strategy, gather proof and evidence along the way. This will help to send your community clear and inspiring messaging because they can visually see the results. Think of it like before and after photos. That is what people want to see. This is the transformation they want. Your proof and evidence should show the before and after. For example, it might be work samples with baseline evidence and then work that shows growth after you implemented the strategy. Maybe it is pictures or videos. It could be teaching tools that were created and implemented. Share your stories and struggles as well. Anything that will help to inspire and convince your teachers that this will work will be another nudge to get them to start crossing through the Hakken-Kraks Howl.
Alright, I am going to take you back to your childhood or perhaps your teenage years. You know… when you sang in the car or talked to yourself with no one watching. No? Just me? Ok, well anyways, this may seem a little odd but trust me, it really works. Actually start practicing in private. So let’s say you’re in the car alone. Just start talking about your core content. How would you talk about it? What stories would you tell? How would you break it down? What’s the content that you want to talk about over and over again? Now, you also have to just deliver it but this will help sooooo much. Either way, you’ve got to put yourself out there eventually. Talk it through in your head and it will help you so much with your confidence.
Here are some tips: Make yourself some notes. Take your content that you developed in step one and step two, and then break it down into brief bullet points. Bullet points are another way of practicing and will definitely help you streamline and simplify your thoughts. Keep putting it out there and talking yourself through it. Remember, you are not perfect so don’t wait for that. We all know perfection is never really a reality. People are looking for perfection, they are looking for guidance. I think I heard this statement from Amy Porterfield. Just practice and do your best. That is always enough.
Step four: Repurpose and reuse your content over and over again until your teacher community is ready to move on. This is so key! Not to mention, it will save you a lot of wasted time. Do not switch the content and direction of it every meeting. Lord knows, I have been guilty of implementing too many initiatives, not breaking down my content enough, and completely confusing my community. Each segment that you have already broken down can be repeated, refined, and refocused so that teachers have time to implement these actions. For example, in my livestreaming example. We needed to spend multiple meetings on ways to engage the students in livestreaming. I made sure to break down the strategies as much as possible to allow for discernment, conversation, and time for teachers to practice in their classrooms and with each other. With each meeting, I found a deeper stepping stone to teach them about so they had clear step by steps to help them get across the Hakken-Kraks Howl. We even co-constructed criteria to develop a blueprint of expectations of what we expected ourselves to learn, to do, and to articulate.
Repeat yourself. If your teachers hear it over and over again, it eventually clicks. If someone hears it once, it is not going to click in. It may not feel fresh but you are always adding new ideas to the same focus, going deeper, and using new stories because you are paying attention to the work that is happening in real time. Every time you deliver it, it brings a different energy so yes, repeat yourself! It works! I promise you each time it may feel new to them. Just try to find new ways of delivery vs. always digging up new content. Your delivery may be through getting them to research, co-constructing criteria, modelling a strategy, using a powerpoint, watching a video, etc all on the same content. The delivery change-up matters but with the intention to always go deeper not stack another new thing on. Good news! This means meaning you’re not always on the hamster wheel of creating new content, new content, new content. Take your core themes and redevelop it, repurpose it. Don’t always start from scratch.
Step five: Provide your teachers with the expectation of action steps for them to take and implement in their own classrooms. Every time you finish delivering your content within your mini-lesson in your meetings, give them time to practice, reflect and implement what they just learned from you with their colleagues. I suggest giving them 20-40 minutes to work through what they just learned right inside the meeting. They can work independently or collaboratively depending on the content. I even suggest giving them a step by step PDF to go with your content any time that you can to provide clarity on their marching orders.
Next, set up the call to action and set a deadline. Be very clear what you want them to try and implement. However, autonomy is important so set it up that it is a framework for them to follow to help them get through the Hakken-Kraks howl, however, they can curate it to make it work for them. They need to know the work they are already doing is important and this content is there to help them take their next step and solve a problem that has been hanging around for a long time. I suggest also scheduling your content into your calendar along with deadlines for implementations and delivery of content.
Be sure to not deliver the content and then leave the teachers hanging. Support is key to delivery and implementation of the content. Set them up with ways to get support from you, their colleagues, gurus, etc. Set up a zoom call once a week that they can jump on to ask questions, set up a Q and A vault google doc, team teach with them, cover for them so they can team teach with someone else, actively observe and coach right inside the classroom, leave them with some articles they can look through if they want, etc. Think tight support, loose pressure. However, the call to action is that they actually start to implement.
There you have it! A step by step checklist to use your content to get your community through the Hakken-Kraks Howl! The important thing to remember is to give yourself that space and time to kind of get your thoughts together. And then from there, start to write out your content. I opened up a Google Doc, and I started to write exactly how I wanted to support my audience during the pandemic, how I could teach them, what are pieces of content I knew that they would need? I learned all of this from Michael Hyatt and Amy Porterfield and it has been game changer. In fact, I wrote out a whole vision script in fifteen minutes.This checklist can be used over and over again. That’s the beauty of it. I like to think of it as a survival guide for surviving the Hakken-Kraks Howl! Take that Dr. Seuss! I think he would be proud of our game plan!! I am certain that you’re going to love this five–step process, and it’s going to help you not only with your content creation across all of your workshop professional learning communities, but also allow you to show up more for your teachers, rejuvenate your love for leading meetings and ultimately serve them better.
Want more? Check out my website, join our private facebook community and download my free guide for creating a vision for your community!
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