Have a Good Life

Principal of South Heights Elementary in his 20th year. Rob doesn’t just look at his students currently, he has a much bigger vision of what they can accomplish and how they can make life better forever. Rob keeps in contact with kids who went to The 1199 many years ago and makes sure that they can still find ways to be successful.

• Special things you do during Christmas for your schools
• You can be an awesome combination of tradition and innovation.
• We celebrate all of our holidays.
• We take all of our kids to a movie.
• Santa’s Treasure Island Mall!
• Most schools going away from all this extra stuff, and it seems you are going toward it full steam ahead!
• Work hard, play hard, succeed!
• Neighborhood Christmas parade.
• Go big or go home.
• How has the community changed since you’ve been doing these things?
• This school not prison, so let’s make it enjoyable.
• Big ideas are going to happen. People are willing to go out and make it happen.
• People are willing to come in and do extra as well.
• Expensive endeavors require the community to buy in.
• People like to be part of something bigger than themselves.
• People look at their budget and try to see what they can do, and that is the wrong way, they need to find their ideas and make their budget work how they need it.
• We do lots of recruiting to find the right people.
• Non traditional interview methods.
• Kids interview them first.
• All about getting inside their head. Interested in what they think.
• We want people that want to be at South Heights.
• We can’t handle mediocre.
• There’s no better identifier of authenticity than the kids.
• Kids interview applicant, teacher support interviews kids to see what they think.
• If you can’t handle being interviewed by a bunch of kids, you might not be able to handle 30 kindergarteners.
• How to be a transformative principal? You’ve got to understand it is not about you, it is about them. It is about building people up.

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Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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Rob Carroll

Principal of South Heights Elementary in his 20th year. Rob doesn’t just look at his students currently, he has a much bigger vision of what they can accomplish and how they can make life better forever. Rob keeps in contact with kids who went to The 1199 many years ago and makes sure that they can still find ways to be successful.

• Man cave show on home and garden channel gave them at

• Own version of Harlem Children’s Zone

• Timeline of success milestone

• From conception to career, how does every child succeed.

• Not just a K–5 school. We help them after they move on. Help them in high school. Help them for college applications.

• We really love our students.

• Circle of life sustains change.

• 11 years of doing college tours.

• Kids had an unrealistic expectation of college.

• K goes to local community college

• Each grade goes to a different college.

• Our 5th graders understand more about college than a lot of juniors and seniors.

• If it’s good enough for my biological kids, it’s good enough for all kids.

• Former kids of South Heights are the tour guides at the colleges.

• Everyone can lead. Ideas rule, not people.

• College tours are my baby, but everyone else leads something in our school.

• As long as the idea matches the vision and mission, we say go for it!

• What do our great people need to be inspired and successful?

• Failures recently?

• We love each other as a team.

• Thought we could build our own leadership curriculum ourselves, but it didn’t work out very well.

• Build, don’t copy.

• You’ve only got so many shots at the same idea as a leader.

• You can get a little full of yourself sometimes.

• Respect the awesomeness of the task.

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Ready for a Modern Web Site for your school? Simple School Sites is the place to go for high quality Wordpress sites specially designed for schools.

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

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Sponsor: Sanebox

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New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

Brian Costello is in his 7th year of teaching in Southern New Jersey.  Brian started his career as an instructional aide before going on to teach Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd Grades.  He is an avid writer, blogger, and Twitter user that has published his first children’s novel: Will McGill and the Magic Hat.  Brian speaks at Educational conferences on topics including educational technology, leadership, communication, and professional development.  See Brian’s previous posts for CUE.  

Here is what we talked about today:

• Will McGill and the Magic Hat Independent Publisher
• CUE blog
• Classroom Community World Tour - helping kids see what happens in other places.
• Tour Builder - “Tour Builder is a new way to show people the places you’ve visited and the experiences you had along the way using Google Earth. It lets you pick the locations right on the map, add in photos, text, and video, and then share your creation.”
• The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds
• You use this to show students what life is like in another place.
• Twitter: @btcostello05.
• Inspired by the realization that we are in a really small community, and if we can show kids more of what the world is really like, they will be more open to what is possible for them.
• How to be a transformative principal: Find ways to say Yes.
• People are more willing to do things when you don’t tell them no.

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Ready for a Modern Web Site for your school? Simple School Sites is the place to go for high quality Wordpress sites specially designed for schools.

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

Buy Communication Cards

Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com

Download Paperless Principal.  

Sponsor: Sanebox

Web Site

Transformative Principal on Stitcher

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New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

Brian Costello is in his 7th year of teaching in Southern New Jersey.  Brian started his career as an instructional aide before going on to teach Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd Grades.  He is an avid writer, blogger, and Twitter user that has published his first children’s novel: Will McGill and the Magic Hat.  Brian speaks at Educational conferences on topics including educational technology, leadership, communication, and professional development.  See Brian’s previous posts for CUE.  

Here is what we talked about today:

• Working with the youngest kids provides you with some things that start to disappear as they get older. The light bulbs go off way more than when they are older.
• Rotating through content areas 1–4th grades.
• Give teachers a chance to focus more on a content area.
• Can be more difficult to build relationships with students.
• Works together with other teachers more on because of their transitions.
• How to deal with mean teachers.
• Confront them directly. State the appropriate professional response.
• How you treat people says a lot about you and how you feel.
• Projection
• How do I interact with this person after a confrontation?
• Continue to be professional towards that person.
• Need to model functional relationships for students - appropriate, nonviolent, non-angry problem solving solutions.

Please take a moment to rate this podcast in iTunes or on Stitcher. 

Ready for a Modern Web Site for your school? Simple School Sites is the place to go for high quality Wordpress sites specially designed for schools.

Please follow me on Twitter: @jethrojones for the host and @TrnFrmPrincipal for the show.

Buy Communication Cards

Show notes on TransformativePrincipal.com

Download Paperless Principal.  

Sponsor: Sanebox

Web Site

Transformative Principal on Stitcher

Refer A Principal

Best Tools for Busy Administrators Survey

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal