The Challenges and Priorities of a High School Principal: A Conversation with Henry J. Turner

Elana Leoni:

Hello and welcome to All Things Marketing and Education. My name is Elana Leoni and I've devoted my career to helping education brands build their brand awareness and engagement. Each week, I sit down with educators, EdTech entrepreneurs, and experts in educational marketing and community building. All of them will share their successes and failures using social media, inbound marketing, or content marketing, and community building. I'm excited to guide you on your journey to transform your marketing efforts into something that provides consistent value and ultimately improves the lives of your audience. Now, let's jump right into today's episode.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of All Things Marketing and Education. In this episode, I sat down with Henry J. Turner. He's an award-winning high school principal. He's a co-author. He's a nationally-renowned speaker and he's just an overall inspiring leader in education. And you will get that and more in this conversation. You have previously met Henry on a past episode of All Things Marketing And Education, in which we really dug deep into what does it mean to have an anti-racist classroom. What can you do as a leader, as an educator, as an EdTech professional around that topic? I'm going to put a link to that in our show notes, because once you hear Henry talk, you will want to hear more.

He is, today, chatting with us more generally about his experience as an educator. I'm going to ask him all of the questions that you marketers and EdTech professionals want to know, especially from leaders in education right now, but I'm going to be asking him about the buying cycle. How does he choose specific EdTech products? What are his key priorities for the year? Do those change year over year? All of that good stuff. This episode is not to be missed. Even from an educator perspective, I would love for you to meet Henry as a leader and see how maybe you can introduce Henry to other leaders that you may know in your school system as well.

episode. Henry was named the: 2020

In Henry's day-to-Day, obviously, he's very passionate about creating inclusive cultures. He works with educators, leaders, and communities on how to create those cultures that commit to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Again, if you are an EdTech brand specifically, this episode is not to be missed. We're going to be talking about what are education leaders' priorities, specifically his as it relates to back to school and throughout the year. And then, how does he really evaluate EdTech products? And so much more. I get to pick his brain on all of the things, so stay tuned. I'm so excited to give you this conversation from Henry J. Turner.

Henry for EdTech professionals listening, I know this is a bit of an impossible task, but I'd love for you to just give an overview of what your priorities are as the school year unfold. Because so often I look at, "Gosh, they're not..." EdTech, we all come with this mindset of like, "Yes, we're in this business because we want to really help." We all come into that, but sometimes we falter because we're not really sure what your priorities and challenges are, and we want to be able to align that. So, why don't you get started on just like, "Hey, we're at the beginning of the school year. Here's our top priorities. If you're not in our top priorities, sorry, you're going to wait," because that's so helpful for our audience of EdTech professionals

Henry J. Turner:

For sure. As I'm starting to think about my opening message with our staff is that my priorities are to make sure that our staff feel supported and excited for the school year, that our students feel supported and excited for the school year, and that our families feel supported and communicated to. I would say specifically in terms of how we're doing that is we always talk about what are our instructional goals. How do we make sure that students are active and engaged, thinking critically, building skills in the classroom? How are we supporting students when they're struggling in our classrooms or in our hallways? What are the ways to support them in a tiered way, whether it's small or large? What we know now over the last couple of years is that mental health has been a major increased challenge. It's a crisis prior to the pandemic and it's certainly a crisis now. And then, finally how are we making sure or how are we developing citizenship skills for our students? How are we making sure that our students... That we're using an unbiased lens? How are we creating an anti-racist mindset to make sure that students feel connected, that they're able to develop skills, and able to develop those kinds of citizenship skills for their future?

That's a lot that's there. Obviously, we try to narrow what are our specific objectives within that, but those are our three key areas every single year that we're looking for. How do we make sure that students are active and engaged? How do we make sure that students are developing skills and how are we using anti-bias strategies to support that? And then, how are we supporting students when they struggle? But I would say my day-to-day is continuing to keep the message going when the craziness happens. We have faculty meetings maybe once a month, and so our teachers aren't regularly thinking about our goals as a school. My job is to continue to communicate and to show our progress, to have those individual conversations, to support student innovation.

ge challenge we're [inaudible: 00:07:31

And then, how do we deal with the day-to-day crisis? Every student is going to have a crisis in high school, whether it's small or large. How do we support students, support families, and how do we do it in a way that is student-focused and learner-centered? I think those are also the day-to-day things that we're constantly thinking about.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. That's a lot, like you said, but I love how you almost start with, "Here's what we're trying to accomplish. Here are three main buckets. Here's how I'm consistently trying to say that message throughout the year amidst all of the ebb and flows of just gush the busyness," what you call some crisises. You're putting out fires. You're ensuring that we stay on that path. When it comes to having technology align with what your challenges or your focuses are, how do you begin to do that? Do you let a lot of your teachers decide some of the things? I know some of it's probably district led, but before the even school year starts, tell me about your process of, "I imagine this school year, here are my top three focuses. Here's what I'm looking for to align with them." And when you had any examples of people coming towards you and say, "Hey, I noticed you focused on equity. Let's see how this product can help you."

Henry J. Turner:

Yeah. I would say that the products that we are most interested in are the ones that are going to help us reach our goals, more particularly our equity and our SEL and our academic goals. For example, we redesigned our schedule a few years ago and created a new lock in our day, where we wanted students to be able to either get extra help or to get some work done or to do some sort of enrichment. We found this company, MyFlexLearning, that built a flexible lock scheduling program. What we saw in this program was that it put the power in the hands of students to be able to choose where they wanted to go. Teachers could say, "I'm doing extra help before the math test on Wednesday, and then on Thursday I'm going to do a reading group." Teachers had the flexibility to be able to say what they wanted to do.

That has been, for sure, the most successful and easiest technology implementation that I've experienced, it's because there was everyone, whether it's students or... Teachers saw how it was going to help students achieve the goal that we wanted was to provide support for them in a variety of different ways and had the flexibility for us. It met several of our needs. I think that while that may have been the smoothest transition of a piece of software, others have been similar, regardless of what the solution that they're trying to solve is. But the solution is geared towards something that we're trying to solve in our school. I think that, for the EdTech companies who learn about our school, once they see here are the things... Because we're very public, these are the things that we're working on as a school. We're very public what our values are.

The tech companies that reach out to us and say, "Hey, I hear that you are trying to understand how students are feeling around some of the DEI work that you're doing. We have an AI tool that's going to help you analyze your survey data even deeper than you're able to." To us, that fits a need because this person reached out to us because they know what we are trying to do and the problems that we're trying to do. You can just go on our website. You can look at all the material we're doing and know what work we're doing. When I get the cold call, emails from someone who has no idea what we're working on, then it's going to be something that I'm just going to bypass.

Elana Leoni:

er that feels like [inaudible: 00:12:20

I know that sounds a little common sense, but it's nice to hear from you on what your priorities are. Do you ever have companies say that... In EdTech, we always like to throw in words that sound buzzword-y and it might get your attention and you're like, "Oh, it really doesn't do that. They just throw in the word equity or AI and they caught my attention, so that's good, but it didn't really deliver." Have you had experiences around that?

Henry J. Turner:

Yes, a lot.

Elana Leoni:

I just want to be real here for the people listening. We all experience it. We don't talk about it. If you're an EdTech company, make sure you can truly deliver on what you say. It's really good that you're listening and you're aligning it to what they need, but make sure it delivers.

Henry J. Turner:

I think the thing that's changed over the last maybe five years is that, I think, a lot of leaders are not looking to necessarily keep adding to the tech that they are bringing into the school, but actually to streamline it. Because I think what COVID brought on was people feeling overwhelmed by the amount of hardware and software that teachers are being asked to use. I think for some companies, that might be the harder environment, but I think for thoughtful companies, there are some clear solutions for them, which is instead of just creating a product and marketing as a one-size-fits-all kind of thing that's going to work for any school, really understanding what is the school struggling with.

When I'm walking around at a conference going to different booths, instead of just giving me a pamphlet, actually learning about what am I struggling with as an educator. That's what's going to engage me, because there are a lot of problems going on in our school schools. There are a lot of challenges that we're trying to solve and you're not going to find out how to actually help me to see how your product is going to help our school or help me until you actually understand what we're struggling with.

Elana Leoni:

I'm going to point this out because we've had some episodes on conferences and how to be effective with conferences. A lot of the questions from the EdTech perspective is, "What is the ROI of conferences? How do they measure it?" But if you come up to me at my booth, I'm selling something that you're at least intrigued, I'm going to take time to listen, as what you said. "Hey, what are your struggles?" Not me talk about, "You want to see a demo?" No. "Hey, what are you struggling with right now? Maybe we can align it with what this product does first shift." Second is I'm going to take some notes on who you are, make sure I have your personal follow-up, and do a personalized, "Hey, Henry, I know we talked about the struggles that you're having and these are your key priorities. Let's set up a demo. I want to show you exactly how this feature does it."

The typical standard is, "Hey..." About three weeks later, you get a generic email blast and we've all got it. It's a different approach. Yes, it may not be scalable, but having this relationship with the principal and understanding and having that... Just like Henry's talking about in his book, and we haven't even mentioned it, it's called Change the Narrative: How to Foster an Antiracist Culture in Your School, talks a lot about how to create inclusivity belonging, and that goes with us interacting with educators. We see you, we want to hear you, and that's where that starts too. I just wanted to pause there because you said some really good things on how do we align the product to your needs and you really feel seen and heard.

Henry J. Turner:

Without a doubt. I think that, again, for us as school leaders is that there's a lot of things that we're trying to solve in our school. Teachers are pretty exhausted over the last couple of years since... Helping them or helping educators to adopt something new, we really have to see how it's going to benefit the work that we're working on in our school. As I said, I think the best relationships that I have seen with companies has been those who are really trying to understand, "What am I trying to do? What am I trying to accomplish in my school?" and recognizing that there may be nuance.

when they are most [inaudible: 00:17:25

Elana Leoni:

ding on and it may [inaudible: 00:17:34

Henry J. Turner:

To clarify, what I meant is that we may be taking on something new, but we're going to get rid of something if we do that. That's just from a financial standpoint, but also just from a bandwidth standpoint for our school. Certainly, anything that is structural solution or an organizational solution, we've thought about task management through Asana, for example, has been super helpful for our team and how we build our schedule, how we build, how we go through our budgeting process. Those have been super helpful, as well as instructional software that helps to meet instructional goal that we have.

Social-emotional learning skills are something that we're really thinking about. It's companies that have helped to build differentiated curriculum around CL strategies and skill building have been really helpful in stuff that's not canned but actually is built on true CL skills for students, whether it's empathetic skills or whether it's self-regulation type of skills.

e's been some math [inaudible: 00:19:16

Elana Leoni:

Got it. Really, for you, your lens is, "Gosh, I got this problem or this is our focus. I'm going to keep the stuff that most directly aligns with that and maybe discard." Like you said, it's not necessarily a cutting. Some schools and districts are... They became so bloated with tech in the pandemic, they are just cutting for cutting sake and simplifying and looking for tools that are a little bit more all-in-one versus things, and looking at engagement. Are people actually using it and those things? But what I hear from you is like, "No, I think we're probably good budget-wise, but if we add something in, let's take something away. But let's always go with the lens of, 'Does this align with what we want to do as a school?'"

Henry J. Turner:

Without a doubt. I also think connecting my two points of helping us to solve a problem and also company helping us to think through how we can solve that problem. IXLs was a great example where they were marketing a lot towards elementary schools, but we had a need for students who were performing below standards. Since they worked with us to help us think through, how do we support students with interrupted or limited formal education to help them to build those skills? That's been one of the best resources for our math teachers for our students who are struggling the most. They were helpful in helping us to think through how it could help a need at a high school.

Elana Leoni:

e hardest thing... [inaudible: 00:21:26

One of the challenges in K through 12 education is it's so nuanced school to school. Everyone's needs are slightly different, so how do you implement something and make sure that you're doing it with fidelity? Anyway, thank you so much for your time, Henry. I know that you probably don't get to talk about the tech aspect much, but it is so valuable to our audience because a lot of the times in EdTech, if we don't embed educator voices, we make assumptions. Assumptions can lead us in the wrong direction. I thank you for being transparent about, "Here's how I do things and here are my priorities." For those of you that are educators listening, you're like, "Oh, boring and tactical," but so helpful and insightful. You don't understand. Thank you.

Henry J. Turner:

st impact for your [inaudible: 00:22:27

Elana Leoni:

Yes. When I started as a marketer after Edutopia, I started working with all sorts of EdTech companies, and one of them was a school scheduling company. I have to tell you that the people that talk about school schedules... It's a boring topic and they don't really like talking about it, because they've already accepted the status quo. It was one of the biggest challenges the marketer ever encountered, but it makes a huge difference. Like you said, it was one of the things that was the most differentiated, and, wow, if we rolled it out successfully, it makes a difference every single day.

Henry J. Turner:

Big time. Agreed.

Elana Leoni:

Yes. We ask all of our guests one closing question, and it's really necessary in our work. We are all very passionate human beings, especially in education, but we are human beings that get drained. How do you personally recharge on those days that are just so challenging? What gets you coming back the next day excited and ready to go?

Henry J. Turner:

I would say that whether I'm in the building or it's at the end of a really hard day, I try to develop a strategy of just being able to check out, to leave the work, walk away from the work for a bit. So, I may step away from my office or wherever a meeting that I'm in in and just hang out with kids in the cafeteria and just chat. That's a quick way for me just to feel re-energized and remember why I'm in this job. Or I may just be spending time with my family or I'm really passionate about my yoga practice, and so doing that or going for a walk or working out. Those are ways that I can disconnect. Writing for me was a meditative process. That's why I wrote the book during a really hard time, because it helped me with... It was a therapy for me. Those are definitely the ways I recharge is just disconnecting a bit and getting away from craziness of the job.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. I like it. You started with grounding practice of something that you can do in your day-to-day, but reach out to the kid, to the educators that I'm supporting, to really give me that bump. But then what are some things in my day-to-day? In this answer, for all of our podcast guests, we get a variety of things, but there's usually a grounding force of it of what you mentioned. And then, what do I do for myself? Almost unapologetically when I put self-care into myself, know that I'm a better human, I'm coming as a better person, more recharged and more productive the next day.

For those of you educators listening, that's just your gentle reminder to take care of you throughout the school year. Okay, thank you so much, Henry. We will put the link to your book in the show notes as well. And for people that want to get in touch with you, how can they go ahead and do that?

Henry J. Turner:

Yeah. On a variety of social media, you can find me on Instagram at turner_HJ, Twitter or X, whatever it's being called today, at turnerhj. And then I do a biweekly newsletter on social justice leadership. You can subscribe to that at henryjturner.com/subscribe.

Elana Leoni:

Awesome. Thank you again for spending the time with us. We really appreciate it. Gosh, I love reconnecting after all these years. Let's find some ways to collaborate and do something that really makes a difference this year.

Henry J. Turner:

A hundred percent. I would love to do that. Thanks so much for having me. It means a lot.

Elana Leoni:

Awesome. Take care.

Thanks everyone for listening to this episode. If you love what you heard and you want to dive deeper into the topics or want to just hear more from Henry in particular, you can start by getting his book. We'll put a link to that in the show notes.

In terms of getting in touch with Henry and continuing the conversation with him, you can reach him on social media @TurnerHJ on Twitter/X, and we'll put all the links to other ways that you can get in contact with Henry in the show notes. Speaking of the show notes, they are located as always on our website, Leoniconsultinggroup.com. This episode is back slash, the number 60, so 6-0. Leoniconsultinggroup.com/60. It'll include the audio, the transcript, all of the things. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. We really appreciate you. We'll see you next time on All Things Marketing and Education. Take care.