Why Curriculum Rollouts Fail When Teachers Don't Own the Change ft. Melanie Matta | Transformational Educators Ep. 37

Why Curriculum Rollouts Fail When Teachers Don't Own the Change ft. Melanie Matta | Transformational Educators Ep. 37

Science of Reading implementation stalls when principals treat curriculum adoption as a rollout instead of a staff-owned decision. Superintendent Melanie Matta moved Hope Elementary School District from the 20th percentile to over 50 percent in both ELA and mathematics, serving a 74 percent high-poverty rural population, by letting teachers believe the Science of Reading switch was their own idea. Practicing school leaders who want that kind of implementation intensity will hear exactly how Matta structured staff voice so buy-in wasn't a step in the process but the engine of the whole change. Matta arrived at Hope Elementary after the district had appeared in local news for administrative problems, so she spent her first months interviewing every staff member individually rather than announcing priorities. By the end of year one she placed a staff member on paid administrative leave, a move she says the community accepted because ten months of consistent relationship-building had established enough credibility to absorb the disruption. Data transparency came next: every teacher could see every colleague's assessment results, and Matta deliberately framed low scores as instructional information rather than performance judgment. She also identified the Science of Reading during COVID, but withheld the decision until teachers arrived at the same conclusion through shared reading and direct dialogue with the program developer. For leaders managing a struggling campus, the sequence Matta describes matters as much as the tactics themselves: credibility has to precede accountability, and accountability has to precede curriculum change. Walking into classrooms without a clipboard and sitting on a desk instead of summoning teachers to an office are the kinds of physical choices that signal psychological safety faster than any policy statement. The episode also surfaces a quieter argument about rural districts specifically: operational costs like well testing and bottled water shipments quietly erode the instructional budget, and Matta's performance gains happened despite those constraints, not after solving them. Connect with Melanie: LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanie-matta-056aa093] Hope Elementary School District [https://www.hope-esd.org] | A Message From Our Superintendent [https://www.hope-esd.org/message-from-our-superintendent] AASA [https://www.aasa.org/about-aasa/person/melanie-matta#:~:text=The%20Hope%20Elementary%20School%20Board,her%20eleventh%20year%20in%20administration] ACSA Region 11 [https://regions.acsa.org/11/about/officers/] Innovator of the Year Award by Parsec Education [https://regions.acsa.org/11/2025/02/06/melanie-matta-honored-with-innovator-of-the-year-award/] 🔗 Explore Gracelyn University’s online programs [https://sholink.to/gracelynuniversity] and leadership resources Transformational Educators | School Leadership Stories Thank you for listening to Transformational Educators, where we share real stories of servant leadership, trust-building, and purpose-driven change in schools. 📖 Read Dr. Matthew Flippen’s new book, Win With Your Talent Pipeline [https://sholink.to/WinYourTalentPipelineBook] 📅 New episodes release every Thursday at 6 AM CT. Watch and subscribe on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@TransformationalEducators?sub_confirmation=1]. If today’s conversation inspired you to lead with courage and care, share it with another educator or school leader. Together we can build schools that truly transform lives. Produced by APodcastGeek [https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek]

Why Lesson-Plan Audits Cost Principals the Results They Need ft. Cory Eckstein | Transformational Educators Ep. 36

Principals who tie teacher evaluation to lesson-plan compliance are trading real instructional results for paperwork, and Cory Eckstein built a direct counterargument at Redland Elementary. While leading a rural Alabama K-4 school of 720 students, he moved the state report card score from 84 to 96 across four consecutive years by cutting unregulated compliance requirements for veteran teachers with proven classroom results. His outcome-first approach reframes teacher advocacy as the primary lever for student performance: if a teacher's data shows strong results, the lesson-plan audit adds nothing and costs trust. Practicing school leaders who want diagnosis, not inspiration, will find in Cory's framework a precise case for what real teacher support produces. Cory became principal at Redland after just six months as assistant principal, inheriting a K-6 building of 980 students mid-year with no AP support for six months. When the new middle school opened and fifth and sixth grade left, he narrowed focus to early literacy and numeracy for the remaining 720 K-4 students and pushed formative assessment into daily practice, using STAR diagnostics at the start, middle, and end of the year alongside daily classroom data to drive small-group composition. He also moved veteran teachers to a tiered lesson-plan system, eliminating templated submissions for those with strong results and adding weekly collaborative planning sessions on an extended schedule to replace isolated individual prep time. The accountability architecture Cory describes sits on a cultural foundation worth examining separately: he treats data as a temperature check rather than a performance verdict, which changes how teachers engage with it during common planning. His argument for relationship-building rests on a practical claim, not a philosophical one, specifically that a student who feels known by their teacher produces more during the next day's lesson than one who does not. For principals wondering where the time comes from, Cory points to lunch tables, hallway walks, and morning check-ins as legitimate instructional infrastructure, not feel-good extras, because they reduce the friction between a teacher's capacity and what actually reaches a child. Connect with Cory: LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-eckstein-08b96116] Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/cory.eckstein.9/] Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/themillennialprincipal/] TikTok [https://www.tiktok.com/@themillennialprincipal_] Redland Elementary (School Administration Page) [https://redlandelemelmoreal.schoolinsites.com/administration] 🔗 Explore Gracelyn University’s online programs [https://sholink.to/gracelynuniversity] and leadership resources Transformational Educators | School Leadership Stories Thank you for listening to Transformational Educators, where we share real stories of servant leadership, trust-building, and purpose-driven change in schools. 📖 Read Dr. Matthew Flippen’s new book, Win With Your Talent Pipeline [https://sholink.to/WinYourTalentPipelineBook] 📅 New episodes release every Thursday at 6 AM CT. Watch and subscribe on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@TransformationalEducators?sub_confirmation=1]. If today’s conversation inspired you to lead with courage and care, share it with another educator or school leader. Together we can build schools that truly transform lives. Produced by APodcastGeek [https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek]

Why Principals Who Confuse Social Trust Lose Student Outcomes ft. Lynsy Oswald | Transformational Educators Ep. 35

School principals who want to improve student outcomes often confuse social trust with professional trust, letting instructional quality stagnate behind a staff that simply likes each other.  Lynsy Oswald, former principal of Hamilton Elementary in Moline ISD, closed that gap by embedding herself in common planning time, launching intentional peer classroom walkthroughs, and refusing to let warmth become an excuse to avoid tough conversations. Her approach pushed Hamilton's math MAP scores to their highest point in the building's 11-year history, all while serving a 60% free-and-reduced-lunch population and holding voluntary staff turnover near zero. Hamilton Elementary was rebuilt with a $17.9 million addition that grew enrollment from roughly 120 students to 600, and Oswald joined as assistant principal when the school reopened before becoming principal five years ago. To generate collaboration, she carved out common planning time four days a week and began attending one grade-level planning session every Tuesday alongside instructional coaches.  The school pursued full-staff certification in Kagan Cooperative Learning, with Kagan coaches embedded in the building, and set a School Improvement Plan goal requiring every teacher to complete an intentional peer walkthrough using HMH rigor rubrics, the same framework behind Hamilton's Model School designation. Reading MAP scores remain one RIT point below pre-COVID levels, while math MAP scores have exceeded every prior year in the building's history. 🔗 Explore Gracelyn University’s online programs [https://sholink.to/gracelynuniversity] and leadership resources Transformational Educators | School Leadership Stories Thank you for listening to Transformational Educators, where we share real stories of servant leadership, trust-building, and purpose-driven change in schools. 📖 Read Dr. Matthew Flippen’s new book, Win With Your Talent Pipeline [https://sholink.to/WinYourTalentPipelineBook] 📅 New episodes release every Thursday at 6 AM CT. Watch and subscribe on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@TransformationalEducators?sub_confirmation=1]. If today’s conversation inspired you to lead with courage and care, share it with another educator or school leader. Together we can build schools that truly transform lives. Produced by APodcastGeek [https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek]

Why Adding More Initiatives Burns Out Your Staff Before Culture Forms ft. Bethany Rees | Transformational Educators Ep. 34

School leaders who keep adding initiatives without removing anything will burn out their staff before culture ever takes hold. Bethany Rees, principal and founder of Leadership on the Rocks, scaled a brand-new Texas 6A high school from 1,200 to 4,000 students while hiring 213 staff in one semester, and she learned fast that the "magic program" fallacy destroys the very capacity leaders need. Her "who before do" framework shows how anchoring every decision in shared identity, not the next initiative, is the only way to build a culture that holds when the storms hit. Bethany opened her 6A campus in 2018, anchoring the school's identity in the "Grizzly Growl," a five-pillar framework covering growth mindset, respect, ownership, work ethic, and leadership. Every decision, whether it involved a student, teacher, parent, or community member, was checked against those pillars. To build the feedback loop that kept the framework alive, she ran small-group teacher town halls where she positioned herself as secretary, letting staff name every gap and every solution. Rather than chasing external ratings, the internal check of those town halls drove continuous improvement and became, in her words, the system that made every other system better. Listeners leave with a clear build order: lock shared identity before purchasing any program, then establish communication, safety, logistics, classroom environment, and teaching and learning as load-bearing systems. Bethany names three mistakes that collapse that sequence: deciding without teacher input, buying a magic-bullet program and sprinting to implement it, and adding to the plate without ever removing anything. COVID stress-tested her work-ethic pillar hardest, proving that culture cracks where the foundation was skipped. Practically, that means running town halls where the leader takes notes rather than talks, replacing twenty-email threads with a two-minute conversation, and auditing the plate before every new initiative by naming what gets cut first. Connect with Bethany Rees: LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethanyrees/] Leadership On The Rocks [https://www.leadershipontherocks.com/] Book (Amazon – Hardcover) [https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Rocks-Survive-Succeed-Wilderness/dp/B0FCTL58Y3] Podcast (Apple Podcasts) [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/leadership-on-the-rocks/id1608044408] Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/leadershipontherocks/] Linktree [https://linktr.ee/leadershipontherocks] 🔗 Explore Gracelyn University’s online programs [https://sholink.to/gracelynuniversity] and leadership resources Transformational Educators | School Leadership Stories Thank you for listening to Transformational Educators, where we share real stories of servant leadership, trust-building, and purpose-driven change in schools. 📖 Read Dr. Matthew Flippen’s new book, Win With Your Talent Pipeline [https://sholink.to/WinYourTalentPipelineBook] 📅 New episodes release every Thursday at 6 AM CT. Watch and subscribe on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@TransformationalEducators?sub_confirmation=1]. If today’s conversation inspired you to lead with courage and care, share it with another educator or school leader. Together we can build schools that truly transform lives. Produced by APodcastGeek [https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek]

Why Backing Staff Unconditionally Costs You Your Best Teachers ft. Dr. Todd Dugan | Transformational Educators Ep. 33

Building school culture requires more than backing your staff; aspiring principals who confuse loyalty with tolerance risk losing their best teachers and normalizing mediocrity.  Superintendent Dr. Todd Dugan spent three deliberate years fixing culture before touching instruction in Bunker Hill School District, guided by a concrete standard: you get what you model and what you tolerate. In this conversation with host Matthew Flippen, Dugan explains why test scores are a symptom rather than the goal, how a neglected building silently communicated low expectations, and how a CNA nursing pathway sent students into $20-an-hour healthcare careers before graduation, proving that psychological safety and high standards are not opposites. His district funded the first 15 college credit hours for every qualifying student, backed by research showing five college courses make students 22 percent more likely to succeed post-secondary. The district's north star is now graduating every student with either 15 credit hours or an industry credential. That goal is reachable only because culture came first: psychological safety enabled risk-taking, modeled standards replaced tolerance of mediocrity, and a renovated environment signaled that students were worth investing in. Leaders who reverse the order, chasing test scores before trust, end up pressing the accelerator with the emergency brake still engaged. Connect with Dr. Todd Dugan: LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-dugan-219a74117/] Bunker Hill District Website [https://www.bhcusd.org/] 🔗 Explore Gracelyn University’s online programs [https://sholink.to/gracelynuniversity] and leadership resources Transformational Educators | School Leadership Stories Thank you for listening to Transformational Educators, where we share real stories of servant leadership, trust-building, and purpose-driven change in schools. 📖 Read Dr. Matthew Flippen’s new book, Win With Your Talent Pipeline [https://sholink.to/WinYourTalentPipelineBook] 📅 New episodes release every Thursday at 6 AM CT. Watch and subscribe on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@TransformationalEducators?sub_confirmation=1]. If today’s conversation inspired you to lead with courage and care, share it with another educator or school leader. Together we can build schools that truly transform lives. Produced by APodcastGeek [https://itl.ink/APodcastGeek]