Ryan Steuer: Welcome to the PBL Simplified podcast. We are here to give you everything there is to know about project-based learning. In fact, we've got a free resource for you, administrators. Um, you've got one at whatisp.com. That's whatisp.com. And we've actually got a resource that you can help your teachers sign into and they can get a full package of resources to get them started on their PBL journey. Sometimes you do just need some resources to get you going and sometimes you need some inspiration, which is why you're tuning in again this week to Today we've got a leadership guest episode. And in that case, we're going to bring you in someone that maybe does PBL, maybe doesn't, maybe they are a martial artist, maybe they're an executive coach. Today, I don't know. I haven't asked Ashley yet. She does martial arts. We'll we'll see if we go in that direction. But she's got PBL in her her tool belt. So, she's been in the school system. You know, we're going to bring people that are boots on the ground. So, Ashley's Green has been a versatile educator for 19 years. in education, former language arts teacher, curriculum coordinator, and principal. She brings a wealth of expertise to her work. Currently, she's the owner of Green Tree Educational Solutions Consulting agency in Mississippi, and they are dedicated to helping individuals and organizations achieve their full potential. In addition to her consulting work, Ashley serves as an adjunct professor, training and preparing future educators for fulfilling careers in teaching. I love it. She's on both ends of this. Ashley, thank you for joining us.
Ashley Green: Absolutely. Absolutely. Happy to be here.
Ryan Steuer: Ashley, any martial arts in your background by chance?
Ashley Green: Um, no. That That's a hard no. Okay.
Ryan Steuer: A hard no. That's fair. Not my end either. You know, that's why we bring a few people on just to get different perspectives. But today, no black belts, no martial arts today. So, uh, but you do have a ton of education experience. So, let's go there. And everybody gets the same question when they come on the podcast, and that is, what is your why for the work that you do?
Ashley Green: You know, that that question has been a challenging one for me for quite some time. I can remember starting to work at a charter school back in 2022 and the CEO was really big on your why. Your why I had been effective for over 17 years and I'm thinking I do this because I'm good at it, right? Um and never really had to tap into really why I do this. And so as I began to soul search and try to figure out why do you do this, Ashley? I realized that from my senior year in high school going into my freshman year in college, my mom took me to uh the university of my choice and we were getting ready to pre-register for classes. We had a very extensive conversation about what I was going to major in on the way there and I told her public relations. I want to be media. I want to do news, you know, and she was like, "Okay, great." And so I get in there and within three minutes, Ryan, I'm at the elementary education table. Don't know how I ended up there. registering for classes and we were done within an hour. And so from there, the story is still being told. So after doing some really deep soulsearching, I think I'm called to do this. I don't I think I was chosen to do this because I mean I was naturally good at it. I climbed the ladder really, really fast and I never really understood why, but it's my calling. And if I had to say why now, I would say it's because I like to see people reach their full potential. Teacher students, leaders, whoever. I like to help them reach their full potential.
Ryan Steuer: Yeah, I love it. I know I always say nobody gets into education because they need a job or a gig, right? It's a calling. There's passion involved. And no matter where you're at, you know, you've got different positions, you know, throughout your career. And sometimes, you know, maybe how you live out your why can change, but it's typically kind of still in there. There's this passionate piece of, you know, watching watching kids succeed that just makes a lot of sense, right? That calling piece.
Ashley Green: And somebody has to do it.
Ryan Steuer: That's right. So, let's step up and do it and help each other. So on the podcast, we've got these PBL movement makers that are listening, right? So we've got principles, superintendent, coaches that are tuning in and they're looking to change school culture and the outcomes for their kids. So as you work with turnaround schools, what are just give me like three keys to a successful turnaround as you're working with schools?
Ashley Green: So if if I have to give three keys then and can I square two of the keys because that's fair. I have a coaching model that we created in my company in 2022 is called CMC Square. It stands for communication, model, monitor, celebrate or correct. Um, and so I feel like with a PBL initiative or with any initiative you're trying to implement in your school settings, you have to communicate. You have to let them know specifically how it will function, um, the components of it, how will it take place, where will it take place, who will we use, right? And And after that, you either need to model it because we've been doing surveys on students and teachers and 82% of our population is visual. So people need to see what's being done. So after you model it, you monitor it because anything that you're doing that you're doing that involves other people, if you don't monitor it, nine times out of 10 it won't happen. So model, monitor, and then last but not least, the two C's at the end. Correct. If you go in and you monitor it and you see that things aren't going Right? Maybe the uh teacher or the student had a misconception or a misunderstanding. You go back and you correct that behavior or that that action step that was taken and um fix it and model it again and go back and monitor it and then correct it again if need be or if not celebrate it if they get it right this time. So we believe that communication, modeling and monitoring, correcting and celebrating are the key elements to a successful turnaround and just keep going that circle over and over. over and over again.
Ryan Steuer: That's right. I mean, at the heart of it, you need a system, right? Because it's otherwise it's it's messy messy work, right? When schools need to be turned around, there's a lot of things that need to change. So, I heard you've got a system and that I like the idea there's a lot of clarity and transparency with what's happening, right? We're going to celebrate this or we're going to correct it. So, it's super transparent. Let's have that conversation. So, is let's talk about like how has your model works? Like, can you give us a success story from one of the schools you've worked with?
Ashley Green: Absolutely. You know, they've thrived. Absolutely. Um, so I I recently worked with a teacher who was a fifth grade ELA teacher. She uh was very good, Ryan. She had like really good classroom management. She had really good presentations and the kids were all listening but not engaged, right? Because she was authoritarian. Like what I say goes, which is nice. Like you need that structure, but students need engagement. So during the coaching model after I communicate unicated what I saw and what I witnessed and I also communicated what I thought could happen to enhance the engagement in the classroom. We started modeling and monitoring some things. So I told her, "Hey, let's do some small grouping at least three times a week, right? So you frontload on Monday, do all of this great teaching that you do, and then on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, we small group." All right? And she's like, "Okay, well, what do I do in my small group?" I'm like, "We're going to let kids exp explore more. All right, we're going to let them engage more with the text. She's like, they don't like the text. I'm like, it's okay cuz in my company, we created a procedure called the SAC procedure. Scan, annotate, comprehend, and show what you know. Today, I will only share the S and the A with you to kind of show you how the PBL side of it engaged and connected students to the text. So, we started the small grouping segment and she would speak for about five minutes in the beginning of the small grouping days only to set background knowledge for whatever the students were about to read about because we do believe in equity. Ryan, like do you know how many kids come with different background knowledge when it's time to read a text or even learn a new skill? We like to build them a an equitable playing field where every child gets background knowledge on whatever we're about to talk about. So every child enters into that new text with the same amount of prerequisite skill. So she'll take five minutes to go over the background knowledge. Then we'll start the the scan. During that scan, they are observing this text. They're looking for the title. They're looking for the text features. They're looking for the pictures. They're looking for the captions, the footnotes. They're even looking at the structure to determine the genre of the text.
Once they've completed that scan and observe it, then they started a start asking the text questions like, "Why did you choose this title?" And what does this picture mean? And what is that in this picture? Right? And then they start making predictions. Well, I think this text is going to be about this or I think this text is going to be about that and then we would stop them after they've collaborated for about five or 10 minutes observing and taking apart that text and ask them what are those questions and what are those predictions right so we've increased their curiosity about the text and you know that's really hard to do in an ELA classroom with generation alpha and generation Z they could care less about reading the text right and so with us making it more active and activating those active reading skills They start to explore the text. Next, the next thing they do is annotate. So when they go into the text, they actually start looking for the answers to their own questions. They actually start looking to justify their predictions. Was I right or was I wrong? You can literally hear students screaming in their seats or jumping and say, "Oh, I got that right. I got that right. Oh, I predicted that right." You know, and it was really a reading teacher's playground because she didn't have to do any work. She got a chance to walk around and facilitate instruction. while students, right, take back the power of the text because normally they're intimidated when it comes to a text. But if you give them the power and let them totally investigate it and explore it and connect with it in their own way through questions and predictions and text features, it just changes the game. And so that is one where we increase engagement through me having a coaching conversation with her. I modeled and I monitored it with her. I correct did some things and we celebrated for sure the students growth after using this strategy and her growth for taking a step back and allowing children to lead the stage.
Ryan Steuer: Yeah, I love it. So even within that structure again, right, we got more structures and we've got this idea of hey, you might not be comfortable with this yet. I love that the teacher was comfortable saying hey with you to say hey how do I do this right? This isn't something I've done before. So you've kind of got this model was like well why don't you show me right so we can go show it teacher who's new to PBL or new to this initiative. This is how it could be done. Let's see how the kids react. You know, that's great. Look how you don't have to be the sage on the stage. You don't have to be talking and be authoritative for 48 minutes. You can get in and talk to the kids. Love it. Let them talk to each other. Yeah. So, that's a success story. How about maybe the other end? Because you're always we're always, you know, going over hurdles or obstacles, but when you're working with a school and you're really trying to change things, right? We're trying to change obst outcomes for turnaround schools. That's that's why we're in this process, right? What are some of the obstacles that we come across when we hit a turnaround school?
Ashley Green: There are so many obstacles around school because I mean if it if there weren't any obstacles, it wouldn't need a turnaround, right? That's right. Yeah. So, I think if I had to narrow it down to two, I would say the first one would be buyin. Getting uh the leaders to buy into the fact that you can actually turn this school around. I know what you've been doing for the past months or years and I know what you're accustomed to, but just try something different, you know. So, we spend a lot of time getting them to trust our decisions and buy into what we're asking them to do. And I think the second one would be vision. A lot of leaders, believe it or not, Ryan, lack vision. They don't have a clue as to where they would like to take their organization or their school to. They don't have vision. They have orders. They have directives. They have compliance steps and and criteria, but they do not have vision. And so when leaders have a vision, it makes our job a lot easier to help them arrive or put action steps in place to reach their vision. But when they don't have vision and they don't buy in, we spend majority of our time getting them to trust us and then helping them create vision for themselves. And then we actually start the process. But if we could walk in with vision and walk in with you really wanting this help and you're willing to buy into what we're saying, it it will progress a lot faster. So I think obstacles are buy in and vision.
Ryan Steuer: I like those two that you picked. You we talk about vision a lot on the podcast. I do I think it's that building leaders job to launch the vision. Now we obviously you want to invite people into that vision. You want your staff to be bought in. You want them to help build it out. But I do think it's, you know, the building leaders job to bring the vision and You know, to their credit, we're not taught that lot, right? We're not taught like we were great teachers, so we became a coach, great coach, become an AP. Great AP, so you become a principal. There's not a whole lot of leadership courses in there. A lot of times, we've actually just developed a leadership accelerator where we're kind of teaching some of the John Maxwell like uh leadership tools, you know, to really build leadership. I think it's a big deal. And I I think it's a bit of a missing piece to the puzzle of leadership is, you know, hey, you need vision and our leaders are like, "Well, you never taught me how to do that." Right? We can't grade kids on things we haven't taught. But sometimes we're expecting adults to do things we haven't taught them to do.
Ashley Green: It's true. I mean, when you look at the college curriculum, there isn't a class that really targets, you know, hey, let's tap into your vision. Let's tap into the steps that it takes to actually articulate your vision. Like, that's a that's a full course, Ryan. Oh, yeah. And some of us are born with it. And I say us because I believe you and I both have Otherwise, we wouldn't be on this phone together or this podcast together. But a lot of people don't naturally have that skill and we have to teach them.
Ryan Steuer: Yeah. And I think it's fair to say it is a skill. I think it's a muscle that you can grow towards buyin. It sometimes is a mystery, too. I was in a failing school in in an English classroom. We've got that that in common, too. And project-based learning came along. And I just thought, how could it get worse? Like, if we didn't like because you don't know, right? When you have a new initiative, you can go visit a school, you can learn the tools, you can come to training, you still don't really know if it's going to work with your kids a lot of times. But man, I I know I was just in a position, and again, everybody's different, but that's kind of my innovative mindset is if it doesn't work, we're already a failing school, so let's try something, you know? Let's try something. Let's do something to see if it works.
Ashley Green: I think it's control. I think I'm afraid that if this does work and I didn't come up with it and I was the leader, then I'm less than. And and that's not the case at all because you still get the credit because you were a strong enough leader to say, "I need help." Yeah. Right. You have to apologize sometimes as a leader and you have to be humble enough to say, "I need help." And what a way to model that for your teachers and your students.
Ryan Steuer: That's right. I think that's key. So, let's take these two obstacles, buy in, vision, like let's work through it a little bit. How how can we help principles work through these obstacles for turnaround.
Ashley Green: I think principles really need to survey their organizations and determine where they really want to take their organizations. I like I feel like they should strongly uh survey their resources, survey their their f their facility, their clients, students, parents, community members. Just find out everything that you have, every possible resource that you have that actually functions and and the potential within those resources and begin creating a vision for your school. then you know you can really reach your school's full potential and your goals are attainable. You know they're not unrealistic and you can kind of scale your goal and your vision down to the actual resources that you currently have.
Ryan Steuer: Yeah. And you we'll just plus one that we so we call that assetbased school development. Start with where you're at. Start with what you have. Build on the assets. Love it. Right. You can't build on something you don't have. But but figure out what you have. Figure out what you have. So where do you think principles should start if they're working to bring their vision to a school kind of what what are some of their first steps? First step you said like let's survey what we have like let's get our assets together get people together survey people what do they think about us and now we're going to step forward what where do they start next
Ashley Green: I think it's time to communicate and collaborate then um whenever I started at a new school after I completed my surveys I would do individual interviews with my teachers if it was a small school I would do ind idual interviews with departmental chairs. If it was a large school, I had to get some information about them. And so then I would go in and if if it's my first year, we're having a retreat. I need to have a so that we can get together and collaborate in a light-hearted setting so that I can really catch up and and discern and check out everyone's uh characteristics and find out what type of individual are you an introvert, are you an extrovert? So that when the school year begins, I've already set a tone for collaboration and I figured out how I need to approach you as a leader because also as leaders we have to differentiate our approaches to our teachers just like teachers are expected to differentiate their approach to students and so that's my way of seeing everyone collaborate struggle etc and then after that I articulate the vision that I have for the school and charge them to join forces with me and of course you know Ryan I have to feed them so we make sure we eat at that at at the retreat but the most thing the most important thing is to get them together so that you can see how well they collaborate. Pick up on the individuals that you have in your building so that you can lead appropriately.
Ryan Steuer: Yeah, that's good. Yep. A good practical step for leaders, right? Have a retreat. Um make it off site. Get good food, right? Not just food. Get good food. Get plenty of snacks, right? Don't don't go buy a pound of ham and a and a loaf of bread. Right. Don't do that. Impress them. That's right. Yeah. That's right. Right. spend a little bit money, impress them, and if you're worried about the agenda, just know that you're you're halfway to a win just by holding the retreat.
Ashley Green: That part, Ryan. Exactly. They love it, too. They love it. Especially if you're not used to doing things together. And then you have to continue those activities throughout the year. So, I couldn't do another retreat off campus uh in the winter, but I had someone to come in and we did team building inside the building. You have to keep that going because team building is very important.
Ryan Steuer: Yep, that's right. It lets you move faster later. So, how can teachers be involved? We talk about leaders, but how can teachers be involved in transforming schools?
Ashley Green: So, in in my company, we host a culture and climate uh session in the beginning of the summer for our clients who are ready to turn their schools around through using a culture and climate approach, which honestly I believe that's the first step anyway. You have to change the culture. ing the mindsets of the individuals. And so I believe that you have to get these teachers in there and establish some shared beliefs. So they go through like a three-hour shared belief session where it's very engaging, fun. They work together at tables and then at the end everyone walks away with five or six statements that they believe that the they believe about the learning environment or how the learning environment should be. And throughout the year as a leader, you're able and not even just as a leader, colleagues are able to hold each other account. accountable and celebrate each other throughout the year based on the statements. Wait a minute. We said that we believe that every child can learn, right? So why aren't you acting as if you know that, you know, and your colleague can hold you accountable. The leader no longer has the power. Everyone holds the power to change the culture in the building. So I believe you have to get your team together as teachers. Let them come together and come up with those five belief statements and then we share them and and expound on them throughout the year. That's how you get teachers in Yeah, that's so good. Right now, now they're starting to build the culture. They're starting to build the core values. And here in just a second, I want you to give us all the URLs and all the places we can connect with you. But I I I want to just sit on this point for just a moment because I just had somebody tell me, I don't I haven't even fully thought through it all, but I'm going to say it. We can see where it goes. They said, "If you've got if they help build the barn, they're less likely to burn it down."
Ashley Green: Right? And it might be a little too uh extreme for me, but The thought is, right, if if they're helping to build this vision, they're less likely to be talking bad about it in the faculty room, right? Like, oh, I can't believe Ryan came up with this. Oh, it's another great idea from Ryan. No, no, we all came up with this. In fact, you guys did. You all came up with it. You said every learner could learn. And then you sent in my office and said, "That kid didn't learn." Well, that's that's not what you said. That's not what you said. And it works, Ryan. I did it for six years in a building with 10,000 000 children, 91 employees. It it I turned the entire school around, Ryan. It's still thriving to this day with all of the systems that we put in place and they still have the shared beliefs. That's so good. A game changer. I promise. But I 100% agree with that analogy uh of if they help build a burn born, they won't burn it down. That's so true. If it's always the leader coming up with things and putting initiatives in place, then they won't always buy in, but you have to include teachers because ultimately they are your legs.
Ryan Steuer: Yep. So, so good. So, Ashley, I've got one last stumper question at the end, but right now would you just tell us like URLs, you know, maybe freebies, Facebook, where where do you want people to connect with you? We'll put it all in the show notes, guys.
Ashley Green: You guys can connect with me on my Facebook page. We have a Facebook page, Green Tree Educational Solutions. We post every day advice videos. Um, and you keep up with the fun things that we do. We're a really fun consulting group. Also, you can find me on LinkedIn at Ashley Green. Um, you can just look up Ashley Green and I'll pop up and Greentree will be right there behind you. And of course, you can visit our websites website www.greentreesolutions.org. I post a bimonthly newsletter called Swagen Solutions. Really cool articles and I give some fashion tips for the ladies and gentlemen. And we host a lot of events. We just recently host our very first Teachella Educator Expo. It's a light-hearted social event where we provide teachers with school supplies, they network with each other and entertainment. So, uh, please check us out guys in all those places.
Ryan Steuer: So, good. All right. So, last question for you, Ashley. Imagine that you are in front of a room full of teachers and principles who are pour pouring their hearts and souls into their work every day. They truly desire the best outcomes and opportunities for their learners. What parting advice do you have for them on their PBL journey?
Ashley Green: Trust your inner child. We often forget that this work is for children. They deserve a fun and engaging experience every single day. Students deserve to be at the forefront of every initiative. Activate the three C's. Challenge them, make them curious, and show them that you care.
Ryan Steuer: So good. I have nothing to add for that. You're just going to trust your inner child. Ashley, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing with our audience. I really appreciate it.
Ashley Green: Thank you for having me, Ryan.
Ryan Steuer: All right, PBL Simplified listeners, you just heard a great example of energy and structure and passion. And as you bring those things to your school, you can turn around a school. You can solidify a positive culture, but you're going to engage as a leader with that vision. And then you're going to invite in those teachers so that you've got momentum and you've got clarity both in processes, vision, and structure. So good. The process is there. It's it's yours for the taking. given you some really u concrete steps. You can go start with the retreat and even if you don't know what you're doing, just do it. You know, reach out if you want some help. Of course, you know, we can get you over to Ashley or we can help out any way we can. We want you to be successful. Don't do this alone. Go out and lead inspired.
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