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5 Strategies for Creating a Winning School Culture (ABSD) | E190

• Magnify Learning • Season 7 • Episode 190

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What if you could identify and amplify the bright spots in your school, transforming its culture and success? Join us on the PBL Simplified Podcast to equip you with five powerful strategies to create a winning school culture through Asset Based School Development. Discover how recognizing and building upon existing strengths can inspire both staff and students, leading to remarkable, positive change.

In this episode, we explore the essence of a thriving school culture, touching on key elements like collaboration, empathy, citizenship, and excellence. Using real-life stories and engaging metaphors, we illustrate the profound impact a positive culture can have on achieving school goals. Learn the significance of fostering a supportive environment at the staff level, where a culture of voice, choice, and innovation begins and spreads. Uncover why the first day of school is so pivotal and how effective strategies can set a lasting positive tone.

We'll dive deep into the transformative power of shared workspaces and interdependence, revealing how common planning areas foster natural interactions and integrated Project Based Learning. Hear about practical methods to build trust and collaboration, both among teachers and students. This episode offers educational leaders invaluable insights and practical tools to inspire continuous improvement and empower their schools to thrive. Don’t miss this enriching conversation that promises to change the way you think about school culture.

BLOGS
Building Culture Begins In the Staff Room
Powerful Protocols
Creating Interdependence In Your Classroom
Building A Positive PBL Class Culture

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Ryan Steuer:

Five strategies to create a winning school culture. We're continuing a series on how to co-create your dream school or classroom with asset-based school development. If you're with me with asset-based school developments, it means that you're ready to find the bright spots, record them, magnify them and transform your school or classroom by looking at the assets, the bright spots that are already working. And if you're with me, then I'm with you. Movement Maker, let's go. The bright spots that are already working. And if you're with me, then I'm with you. Movement Maker, let's go. Today we'll discuss how every school can create a winning culture to move the vision forward with these five strategies. Welcome to the PBL Simplified Podcast, where we add value to PBL Movement Makers like you, so that you can lead inspired, because everyone wins when leaders are inspired. Whether you're leading a classroom, a school or a district, your leadership matters. We're obsessed with helping you transform your school.

Ryan Steuer:

I'm your host, ryan Storer, the Chief Inspiration Officer here at Magnify Learning, and fired up to be kind of in the middle of this series of asset-based school development. It's something I think we've been living out over the last decade as we've been helping schools, but we're kind of putting words to it. We're in the middle of writing a book around asset-based school development and kind of testing some of these ideas with you. All this is going to be in the book. So if you've got some ideas or some need-to-knows or some critiques or like, hey, ryan, you're just wrong, go to pblsharecom, it's pblsharecom, it's pblsharecom, and you can give me a comment, Just say, hey, I really liked this portion of asset-based school development. I think you missed it here. Have you thought about this example? Would love to get your real life example into the book or just get a great tip from you. So thank you for listening, thank you for joining us in this series. I think it's going to make a really big difference. So when you go to pblsharecom, I can share your need to know or your win here on the podcast. But today I'm taking the win. I had such a win today. Today I got to be on the what is Smart podcast with Garrett from the Garden Foundation. We just recorded today, so I don't think it comes out for another month or so. So be on the lookout.

Ryan Steuer:

But the podcast is what is Smart? And at first the question because you're such a growth mindset educator, when you say what is smart, you might step back a little bit and say, well, that seems a little fixed mindset to just say you know a kid's smart and just move on. And we got to have a really great discussion about what is smart. And, gosh, he got into my soul a little bit because I was thinking for that it's got to be at least two months that we've had this scheduled and I've just been thinking what is smart? You'll hear me kind of talk about that. It really comes down to confidence, I think. As we look at smartness, if you will, and where are you confident, as an adult or as a kid then everybody's smart. It's just how are you smart? So it's a really fun conversation. It's a really fun podcast. He's got some great guests on there and they have these really great discussions. So I highly recommend that you add Garrett's what is Smart podcast to your repertoire of eight or so podcasts that you probably have in your library. By the way, thanks for having this one in there. Really appreciate it.

Ryan Steuer:

Hey, I think last episode I said it was like the last chance for you to get into a virtual workshop this summer. It's technically not the last chance. You could right here on this Wednesday, as it comes out. You could still register Wednesday, thursday, friday, but it starts next week. So you've got to jump in. If you're doing the virtual, if you want to come out to Missouri in person with us, you can do a jumpstart, you can do an advanced, you could do an emerging schools, you could launch your movement right with us here in July still. So you still have a chance to jump in. Highly recommend that you get your team in there to get some. I don't think it's last-minute PD, but it's really vital PD. You don't want to wait another year to get somebody into PBL. So if you're listening to this like you've got a wondering, at least send one person really. Let them dip their toe in the water with us at magnify learning and let them dip their toe in the water all, all year with PBL, because they're gonna leave the training with the PBL unit. So support them. See what it looks like in your school, see what successes and wins you can pull from your local school environment. It makes a really big deal. So don't wait another year, till next summer. Jump in right now. You do have one last chance for the virtual. I think that's for real this time, because next Wednesday, when the next episode comes out, you will be done with that workshop. It's going to be awesome. We've got people from all over the country coming to jump in, so I think you'll love it. So let's jump into our main episode.

Ryan Steuer:

The main episode topic today is that every school can create a winning school culture to move your vision forward with five strategies. So I need to define a couple things before we get started. So, winning like what does it mean to have a winning school culture? Winning is where you want to take your school culture. I toyed with the idea of kind of defining some things, but I think it's too customized for every school. Listening right, so you're going to want collaboration, empathy, citizenship. You know excellence in your culture, but how you define that and the words that you use is going to be different. So I decided to go with winning school culture.

Ryan Steuer:

As a leader in a classroom or a school, you want your culture to be winning Like. You want to walk in and be like yes, this is the culture that I've been working so hard to achieve, because it's not easy. Like, when you walk into a school, it's different Like you go into you know, one of our model schools. As soon as you walk in, it's like oh, things are different here. What is that? And that's a winning culture. You can feel it and you're going to ask questions about it, because there's this invisible thing behind everything that's happening. That's a little bit different. So, going with winning culture and you're really going to define what that winning culture looks like, the second thing I want to define is a little bit of culture.

Ryan Steuer:

I've got a metaphor that I like to use, that the second thing I want to define is a little bit of culture. I've got a metaphor that I like to use that culture is like the current of a river. So if you're canoeing down a river which I love to do I'm probably happiest when my boats are wet right? So canoeing down the river, and you've got an average current and you can go a little faster, right? So if you're paddling with the current, you're going a little faster. Well, if we decide to turn around and say, oh, my daughter dropped your sunglasses, which happens you, you've turned the boat around and now you're now you're paddling up the current and it's harder to do that, right? So the current is taking your canoe down the river without you fully. Uh, if you're going with it, at least you're not fully, you know, uh, making yourself go that full speed. The current is helping you and if you decide to go against it, you're going to feel that you're like, well, something's not right.

Ryan Steuer:

And one of my favorite stories for this is I was in a high school just doing a visit and I'm sitting in the back of this classroom and it's passing period, right, so normal things happen. And then one student comes in real quick and talks to the teacher at the front of the room and just says, hey, I just want to turn this in. And well, okay, great. So he turned it in. But I went and talked to him. I said so why did that learner just come in and turn this in real quick, like, tell me that story? And he just basically said, like that's what we do in this class. He was super relational, that's what we do in our class. He was super relational, that's what we do in our class. We turn our things in because the things that we're creating are important. So that learner that just came in has not always loved school. He may not love school now, but he's doing a great job and he just turned in an assignment that he basically typed on his phone to make sure it could get done and completed and he wasn't here in the first part of the day so he missed my class.

Ryan Steuer:

But in my class we turn things in because things are important. So that's like a mantra we turn our things in because they're important. We don't turn them in for a grade, although you do get a grade. We don't turn them in because I don't want to feel bad or don't want to let Mr Klein down. We turn things in because that's what we do here and that's the culture of that classroom. So even a learner that's typically probably struggling, it's like and may not be turning things in other classes, it's like, but in this class we turn things in because your work's important, and that's the power of culture.

Ryan Steuer:

The power of culture is that it's taking all of your learners, all of your staff, right in a certain direction of excellence or winning, without them even fully knowing it. And then, once they get on board right, they start paddling with the current. Then things are really humming and things are really moving. So when we're talking culture, that's some of the power I think of culture, because it's going to take work to create a winning culture and you're going to have to take meetings and you're going to have to do a lot of planning work. And you're going to say is it really worth it? And have to do a lot of planning work, you have to say, is it really worth it? And the answer is yes, because down the line, the return on investment, the ROI, is huge. Because now things are happening in your school that you're not immediately involved in, you're not paddling the current's, taking things in the right direction, because your culture is winning.

Ryan Steuer:

So the first strategy to create a winning culture is to recognize that culture begins at a staff level. When you want a school culture with your learners, you want to be winning. You have to recognize that it begins at a staff level. So that might be an epiphany right there that you need to look at your faculty meetings. You need to look at how you speak to your staff, how you listen to your staff. Do they have voice and choice? Because if you want voice and choice in the classroom, that needs to be there. If you want to have innovative teaching practices in the classroom, but you have sit and get faculty meetings, it's not going to transfer right. So we need to look at the staff level. What are some other things you can practically do right now to help build staff culture so that it drips down into your student culture?

Ryan Steuer:

Shared workspaces Shared workspaces are amazing and you wouldn't think that it changes things so drastically, but it does. And they're not completely magic, right, because so a shared workspace is. You know you've got a group of teachers Maybe you're in a pod, maybe it's, you know, a small school but they all meet in the same place as their teacher planning area. They're not meeting in individual classrooms with doors shut, where they're siloed, and there's a big table in the middle, there's desks outside, you know, kind of the outside of the room, so you can go do your individual work if you need to, but then you come to the middle when you're ready to collaborate, and it makes collaboration easier. Does it guarantee collaboration? No, you could have a toxic culture and everybody stays at their desk inside this neat room and some aren't necessarily always neat, right, they're brick and mortar, right, but you transfer this room and you could have a toxic culture where people never go to the middle table to collaborate. But what is more likely to happen is, as you're building this culture, you're gonna start having people come to the middle and collaborate and talk about what they're doing in their classroom and, oh, that matches what I was doing in my classroom. We should I don't know do an integrated PBL unit together. That would be awesome, by the way.

Ryan Steuer:

That's the next part of this is that you can do integrated PBL units. Maybe you get science and English together or you build a humanities PBL unit in this shared planning time and shared planning space. It makes those things a lot easier. And once you have a shared PBL unit, integrated PBL unit, you've got two teachers that are working together creating culture, and those learners are looking at those two adults to see how they're interacting and they're feeding off of that. Oh, they're super transparent. Oh, they work together. Oh, mr Story doesn't always know what's going on, but you know, mrs Smith does right. So you get to show the learners how we collaborate and interact in an integrated PBL unit and a lot of other things that are really awesome about an integrated PBL unit. There's some authenticity pieces, but for our discussion today about winning culture, just how the adults are interacting for the learners to see, that is gold.

Ryan Steuer:

The other piece in this first strategy, about living at this staff level and making sure culture is excellent. There is a critical friends group or a tuning protocol In every Magnify Learning Workshop, whether it's a Jumpstart, advanced or Certification. You're going to be engaged in some kind of a tuning protocol where we are looking at your work and we're giving you likes and wonders, we're asking you maybe some probing questions even, or some clarifying questions to help you think about your work, and what really starts to build the culture is that we're helping you build, you know, maybe, a PBL unit. We're not criticizing or giving you feedback as a person. We're looking at this thing that you're creating and we're making it better together. As you do that. It starts to build culture because I'm giving you feedback, you get a chance to give me feedback and now we're working together, probably in that really cool shared space that we have. So the first strategy to create a winning school culture is that culture begins at a staff level, and sometimes that's a switch we need to flip. Sometimes that's not something we think about right away as leaders.

Ryan Steuer:

The second strategy to create a winning culture is transparency Transparency. So, just like I mentioned, when those two teachers are doing an integrated PBL unit together, they're up front. It's okay to say things like I don't know, but let's find out. Right, we don't have to be the expert with all of the answers, and when we're transparent about that, it allows our learners to pick up on that attitude of I don't have to be perfect, I don't have to have a fixed mindset. I can say I don't know, but I'd love to find out. Or I don't know, how, can you help me find out? It starts to give them wording for this growth mindset. They can start to see it, but only for transparent. If we hide all the faults that we have, which is very difficult to do, people see them anyway. But if we try to be perfect all the time, then our learners don't know how to react in that situation.

Ryan Steuer:

So the other piece of transparency is critical friends groups. These are going to overlap. So as you're building your culture, you're going to see, actually all five strategies are going to overlap somewhere, I think. But what the critical friends group also does is you have to be transparent. Before you did a critical friends group, before you had a shared teacher room, how often would it be that someone would launch a unit and nobody else on the team would really even know what they're doing? Isn't that totally possible. But if you're doing critical friends groups, then we know what we're doing. The language arts teacher knows what the science teacher is doing. The science teacher knows what the math teacher is doing, because I've given input on there.

Ryan Steuer:

Right, I'm thinking about it and I'm also showing that my PBL unit is not perfect, right, I love some feedback. We're going to do the same thing with kids. We're going to put them through tuning protocols as well so that they can understand what transparency looks like, that you don't have to be perfect when we're tuning something. In fact, it's probably better if you can point out some things that you're not sure about, because now you can get some really good feedback on it. So we're going to model transparency, some portion of the PBL process that, I think, just leads us towards transparency, which, again, I think is great for culture, because we start to be authentic as people and we get to teach our learners how to be authentic as people and that they don't have to be perfect. But presentations right, we're going to do public presentations at the end of most PBL units, right, and as we do that, we're taking our learning out of our heads, off of worksheets, out of essays, and we're presenting them to the world.

Ryan Steuer:

That is vulnerable. It's transparent. We're all doing it together, we're all going through these same things and as we're doing that, we're building a culture of transparency that our work is not hidden. It's not a grade that I get an essay and then I throw it away and nobody knows what I got. Like everybody knows I prepared for this presentation or I didn't, right, like gosh, I really didn't prepare for this one, right? I'll make sure I crush the next one, right? Or is there another way I can make up for this right? But the work becomes transparent and once that's a non-negotiable and it's what you're doing, then everybody knows the work's going to be transparent, every unit that you're doing, and they're ready and they're going to dive in, and you're going to see these strategies start to mix together and compound each other to create this current, that culture that when you walk into our model school in Columbus, indiana, and as soon as you walk in the door you're like, wow, something's different. It's all of these things building on each other.

Ryan Steuer:

So the second strategy is transparency. The third strategy to create a winning school culture is protocols, protocols, and we love protocols. We, like you, know an affinity map protocol. We're going to bring a bunch of post-it notes, a bunch of different ideas from all stakeholders in the room. We're going to protect everybody's voice. We're not just going to shout things out. So then you know, our introverted learners don't say anything and their voice doesn't come out. We're going to protect it. We're bringing the ideas together. We're going to you, we're going to bring the ideas together. We're going to magnify these ideas and talk about how great they are. And as we do that, it's very structured. And we're going to structure these protocols so that we are protecting voice, so that we're getting the brilliance of everyone in the room. And I've seen these affinity maps happen at all levels, like they should be happening in classrooms. They can happen at faculty meetings. I've seen them happen in central office. This is where the culture comes from. These protocols are important and we want to protect voice all the way through the chain from central office down, and that's how you spread culture.

Ryan Steuer:

Some other protocols Chalk Talk is a great one, and we've got them on the website. You can Google most of these as well. So, chalk Talk, you've got something up on the dry race board and we're silently talking about this while talking in quotes by writing down our ideas and everything gets written down. There's tuning protocol. I mentioned protocols of zones comfort, risk and danger and it's a really active protocol where we're up, we're moving around. I do this in PDs or in keynotes that I give. You can do some of these protocols just really quickly, but we're all going through the same motions and abiding by the same rules and listening to each other. So it starts to build a culture and these are the expectations that start to build your culture, because these are the things that we do. That's the third strategy is to bring in protocols, and when you bring in these structured activities, we just find that it frees us up to be who, again, we authentically are. So that's the third strategy.

Ryan Steuer:

We'll get back to the episode in just a minute, but I want you to know about Magnify Learning, design Days. Design Days is a two-day workshop held at one of our PBL model schools, so a school or a district that's operating a really high level with project-based learning. Then we're going to take you and your leadership team, a group of 10 or less made up of you, assistant principals, coaches, teachers that are all starting to plan out the next three years of PBL implementation. If you just start and hope it's going to work, it's probably going to fizzle. So what about a three-year plan where you think about all the different stakeholders, we think about the values, we think about the rollout, think about which teachers on your leadership team could start to implement and start to have your own local success stories around PBL that you can share with your staff. That goes a really long way. You're going to do it at one of our model schools so you and your team get to ask questions of that local principal, the teachers, the learners that are in the classroom. You get to go see it and then we pull you back out and one of our facilitators helps you and your team plan. As the leader, you get to be a part of the planning process, not just driving it home or pulling people along. You're going to leave those two days with a grassroots movement. You're going to leave with momentum for your PBL vision. This is the way to start. We've done it a lot of different ways. We've seen other groups do it. We've been doing this for a decade. The schools that start with design days and keep those going implement strong and a lot of times faster than you might otherwise, because you have more people moving in the right direction and they know what the goal is. So look in the description, get it, get an overview of our magnified learning design, days, schedule a call, let's jump in and partner. Now back to the episode.

Ryan Steuer:

The fourth strategy to create a winning school culture is interdependence. Interdependence so how do you create interdependence? Protocols is one of those right. So in a protocol, we all have these different ideas that we're going to do so, say, a tuning protocol, right, where it's interdependence, because I am now dependent on you to give me great feedback, likes and wonders, and you're dependent on me because at the next round I'm going to give you likes and wonders, we're going to make your end product even better. We start to build interdependence.

Ryan Steuer:

It's one of the reasons that grouping is so important in project based learning, and we've we've got a lot of resources and we talked about on the podcast about how to use group contracts to make sure that grouping is less awful. There's a lot of great ways to make grouping helpful. When you do that, we're interdependent on each other. Even kind of the basic level of grouping is where, like, we just split up the work right, which isn't the top level, but the lowest level is we split it up. We get it all done. We're interdependent, we're dependent on each other and as you grow in grouping and collaboration, now you know we're making each other's portions better, right, not just doing it to put it together later at the end. Right, we're raising our expertise of collaboration, but that happens because we're interdependent.

Ryan Steuer:

You have some collaborative learning activities that you likely already know as best practices. Right, there's, you know, jigsaws, or think pair share. There's like kind of the somewhat famous like marshmallow tower, right With the spaghetti, and you know you can build these things and it's like, well, why do we do those? And we say they're culture building activities. But let's go ahead and label it as the importance of interdependence. Right, we're going to figure out how to work together. We're going to, you know, test different ideas, and that's why we do these team building, culture building activities is because it does build our culture. But I think that one of the reasons is it's the interdependence that we have on each other. Then, when we get into a protocol, we've done the marshmallow challenge. You know this kind of small step. It's fun, it's quick. Now it's a little bit heavier, like this is going to be a part of my grade, it's going to be part of my end product. Now I'm trust you just a little bit more and when that goes well, I trust you just a little bit more and you start to build an interdependence within your classroom and within your school and it's all a part of the culture. And it'd be a really great question You're probably asking it right now, like Ryan, which of these five?

Ryan Steuer:

Because we have one more of these five strategies, which one's the most important? And I don't know that I could label one as most important. I think that I'd almost be missing the point and your call to action is going to be to pick one of these that you're really good at. But you really want to build all five of these in and I don't want to overwhelm you by saying to do all five, but as you grow these, once you get to all five, like our model schools, I would say have all five of these. That's what creates this culture the flow of the river, if you will right the current, that's taking kids to do excellent things that they wouldn't do on their own or that they haven't done before, and it allows them to try new things because there's this safe culture that they're a part of and it's all these different interdependent things working together. So that is the fourth strategy is to create interdependence.

Ryan Steuer:

The fifth strategy to creating a winning school culture is that the first day matters, like first day matters. Day one is a new start for everybody. It's a new start for the principal, it's a new start for the teachers, it's a new start for students. Like I used to teach eighth grade and I loved eighth grade because, well, something happens from seventh grade to eighth grade.

Ryan Steuer:

If you're a middle school teacher, like you get that there's I don't know, there's a seventh grade piece that never really fit with me and seventh grade teachers that love seventh graders. Like, oh, I can't stay in eighth graders, right. But I loved eighth graders because, even if you hadn't tried for the first eight years of your education, like you could switch. Like that could be your hinge moment in eighth grade, where you change before you get into high school and now you've got credits, right. Because if you're a junior and you have two credits, like it's really hard to make that switch right. If the light bulb goes off, then it's pretty tough. But in eighth grade, if you can get the light bulb to go off. If you can hinge right there, really amazing things can happen.

Ryan Steuer:

But you have to be able to give kids a new start. You need that time, and day one is a new start, so don't miss the opportunity that's there, right? So you don't have to do the secret handshake with every learner like that kind of thing that's you know, tiktok or YouTube, and I'm good with that, like I think that's a lot of fun, it's a great culture building piece, right, but you don't have to do that, right? Like, if that's not your thing, you don't have to do it that way. But think about that first day, right. What are you going to do the first day? That's going to affect your culture?

Ryan Steuer:

That's going to be something you do on the first day that's going to say, hey, this classroom might be a little bit different than other classrooms that you've been in, or this school is a little bit different than other schools that you've been in, and you're going to feel that right on the first day, some of our model schools the principal's just out first day high fives. Everybody gets a high five. And what's it saying? It's saying to parents that are dropping off their kids wow, the principal's super visible. He's not going to be hidden in his office, he's going to get out there, he's going to be high fives, he's going to be in classrooms. Wow, this school's different Now. Is that principal going to end up in his office later that day getting a bunch of stuff done? Yes, but the first day matters and he knows that. So he's gonna be super visible In your classroom.

Ryan Steuer:

You want to establish norms, and is that different than rules? I think it is right. We've got some protocols. We'll put some blogs in the show notes that will draw some of these ideas out even more but we've got some protocols for establishing norms. You're going to co-create these norms of. This is how we learn best, right? You're developing a we within this culture that says your voice is important, that there's going to be rules and norms that we're going to abide by.

Ryan Steuer:

And if I, as the teacher in the front or the side or the back of the room, if I mess up on these norms, I want you to call me out on it. I want to say, mr Stoyer, you know, one of our norms is that we're going to listen to everybody's voice, and you didn't take Kevin's question, so that doesn't abide by our norms. Wow, you're totally right. Hey Kevin, would you go ahead and repeat your question? I'm also going to call you out on those norms to make sure that we're abiding by those, because that's how we learn best and there's a lot of protocols you can put in that first day. Maybe you do compass points, maybe you do some kind of personality piece, Something that says the culture in this classroom, in this school, is going to be different, the expectations are different and it's such a big deal.

Ryan Steuer:

And why do I bring it up right now? Because you might be listening to this or maybe you're reading PBL Simplified right now, like next to a pool, which would be great, right, Like, good on you. I'm super excited you're doing that and I don't want to alarm you. But the first day is coming right Like. We know what the first day is already Like, whatever your school district is. Whenever your school starts, you know what the first day is. School district is. Whenever your school starts, you know what the first day is. Do not let it surprise you. Take the time at a faculty meeting, take the time with your team to establish a really solid first day, because the first day matters.

Ryan Steuer:

So those are your five strategies to creating a winning school culture? You're going to start at the staff level to get to the student level. You're going to have transparency. You're going to use protocols. There's going to start at the staff level to get to the student level. You're going to have transparency. You're going to use protocols. There's going to be an interdependence that you're building throughout and you're going to remember that the first day matters.

Ryan Steuer:

So what's your call to action today when you go to start establishing your winning culture? We all want a winning culture, whether it's organization or school business, wherever it is. We all want a winning culture. But it doesn't happen by accident. We know when we see it, we can feel it. So I harp on this a lot, but go visit really great schools that have a good culture. And when you go visit and you feel it, ask questions. Where do you guys think this culture comes from? What do you do to establish this culture? And ask the students right, like what happens here at your school, that makes it feel different than other schools. So go feel some different cultures. That's one call to action that's technically not in my notes. I didn't plan on going for that one, but I think it's really important. Go feel the culture and ask really good questions.

Ryan Steuer:

What I'd like you to do for establishing your winning culture I want you to pick one of the strategies, one of the five today, that you're really great at, like it's a bright spot. Maybe you crush the first day. Well, I want you to double crush the first day, like I want you to go all in on that first day, right? Maybe you're really good at the protocol piece, right? Like you know what dust off those protocols and then what you could do is then look at your second strength of strategy. So, if you're really good at protocols and your first day is pretty solid, put some protocols in your first day. Like, double those up, double up your bright spots to really push your culture. And if you're pushing that culture in day one which again it's coming if you're pushing it in day one, you're going to get the current from that. You're going to get the return on investment all year, right, because you're going to get the current from that. You're going to get the return on investment all year, right, because you're going to keep pouring into that culture and you get a benefit from that even when you're not pushing, even when you're not paddling.

Ryan Steuer:

So the truth is that you already have a school or a classroom culture Like it's there. So the question is what can you do to improve that culture on purpose? Because we know that nothing in life gets better without effort, without planning, without diving into this, and some things are more important than others. I'm advocating today that culture is one of those things. It's more important than some other things Because it's the current that can move kids along without you having to stand right next to their desk. It's a big deal and it happens on purpose. You can learn it and you can get better at it and, by the way, if we can help, would you reach out? We'd love to help you out. You can go to pblsharecom. It's a great way to ask a question and get some help, because that's what we do we help transform schools so that they have a winning culture that is sustainable, that goes beyond any one or two people. It becomes a system-wide sustainability of transformation and that's such a big deal. All right, so go. Start small, but start now. Go lead inspired.

Ryan Steuer:

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the PBL Simplified Podcast. I appreciate you and honor that. You tune in each week. Would you please take two minutes to leave a rating and a review? When you leave a review, it lets the next person know that this is a podcast worth listening to. When they go into their player and search project-based learning and PBL Simplified popped up. When they see those reviews, they know high quality, visionary leaders are listening, so they tune in too and they can find their way into the PBL journey. Thank you so much for leaving a review. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate you. Thank you.

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Ryan Steuer

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