Clear Communication, Confident Leadership: 3 Shifts to Strengthen Resilience
Communication is a key pillar of resilience. These 3 shifts help leaders reduce confusion, build trust, and lead teams with clarity and calm.

“Maslow before you Bloom” emphasizes the importance of addressing students’ basic needs before expecting them to engage in higher-level learning. If students don’t feel safe, trusted, or cared for, they can’t focus on learning. Just as you wouldn’t brush your teeth while running for your life, students can’t learn when they don’t feel secure. Building a safe and supportive classroom environment through strong relationships and credibility is crucial for effective teaching and learning.

Instead of focusing on rigid classroom rules, let’s shift to collaborative expectations. Adults often break rules themselves, so it’s unfair to expect children to follow them flawlessly. By building expectations together as a learning community, keeping them simple, and modeling positive behavior, we help students learn and remember them better. Praise the positive actions, practice regularly, and make learning enjoyable. “Expecrulations” is a blend of rules and expectations, highlighting the importance of mutual understanding and cooperation in creating a positive classroom environment.

### Promoting Change with Buy-In This post discusses the challenges principals face when introducing changes in schools. Drawing from personal experience, I emphasize the importance of starting with enthusiastic teachers, providing hands-on demonstrations, sharing data, and maintaining transparency. These steps foster staff support and successful implementation of new programs, such as a reading intervention initiative that transformed my school's approach to student reading skills.

This post explores the importance of routines in daily life and their essential role in creating a conducive learning environment for students. As a former teacher and school administrator, I advocate for establishing structured routines to enhance student engagement and productivity.