The Principal's Handbook

[00:00:00] In this episode, we're talking about leading discipline without burning out. That's all coming up next right here on the Principal's Handbook.

Speaker: Welcome to the Principal's Handbook, your go-to resource for principals looking to revamp their leadership approach and prioritize self-care. I'm Barb Flowers, a certified life coach with eight years of experience as an elementary principal. Tune in each week as we delve into strategies for boosting mental resilience, managing time effectively, and nurturing overall wellness.

From tackling daily challenges to maintaining a healthy work-life balance. We'll navigate the complexities of school leadership together. Join me in fostering your sense of purpose as a principal and reigniting your passion for the job. Welcome to a podcast where your wellbeing is the top priority. I.

Welcome everyone to the podcast. Today we are talking about leading discipline without burning out.

As I started outlining this podcast and just thinking about this topic, I [00:01:00] was really reflecting on what causes people to burn out with discipline. What are the hard parts about discipline? And I think it's because discipline isn't just about kids, right? We're not just dealing with kids when it comes to discipline.

I think if we could do that, it would be so much easier, but it's really that we're dealing with all stakeholders, we're dealing with staff when it comes to discipline. A lot of times they're in control of the situation.

They're the ones monitoring the situation, and then we have to discipline. So maybe we don't necessarily like how they were monitoring or what they did. Or maybe it's that staff aren't happy with the consequence that we get, so that makes discipline really challenging, where when you're a teacher, it's a little bit different because you actually have control of that situation, the supervision you provided and all of that.

So as a principal, it feels like you're, it's more out of your control. Also, when it comes to parents, you can be dealing with parents who are really difficult. And it can be hard. And then you have the students and hoping [00:02:00] that you're making a change in their behavior as well. And then there's the part about protecting your own energy, because it can be so draining, right? To deal with discipline if you are constantly reacting. And so without boundaries and systems, I always say discipline can really take over everything. it can take over your life after school because of the thoughts that you're thinking about discipline.

And , I know this from my experience when I was a new administrator. Literally going home all evening, all weekend, , just ruminating on discipline, on how I handled it, on how a parent was upset, whatever it was, I was just ruminating on discipline. And so it did, it consumed so much of my life.

And so today what I wanna talk about is how do we lead discipline and how do we handle discipline in the building without burning out? Because it can be really difficult. So I wanna give you a few tips on how you can do this without sacrificing your time, your sanity, because it really can take your sanity or the relationships that you have with those parents, staff, and students.

[00:03:00] So first I wanna talk about structure in your building so the structure in your building actually can prevent chaos. So this is really important to think about and I . actually did a few podcast episodes as I got ready to transition into my current role because I'm a principal in a new building.

, Episode 98 through 1 0 1. I'm talking about my transition plan into a new building, but episode 98, I'm talking about my top three moves to prevent behavior issues before the school year even started. If you didn't listen to that podcast episode, that might be a good one to go back and listen to, but that's really what I'm talking about here.

Is, how are you providing structure in your building? How is the schedule helping you prevent chaos and discipline in your building? So some things I want you to think about, where is supervision strong and weak? So I'm always thinking about. How many people are outside supervising recess? How many people do I have at lunch?

How many students [00:04:00] are grouped in one place at one time? And I will tell you, because I am in this transition where I'm new to a new building, we've had to do a lot of things differently than I did in my old building because of the setup of the building. We only have one way that buses and cars come in one U-shaped driveway for the whole school for cars and buses, which makes it really difficult.

So arrival and dismissal has been a whole thing and we've changed it many times. And this year I'm coming into a building that previously didn't have kindergarten, so we added a grade level. So we added a lot more cars, parents, things like that. So it wasn't like I could just do what they did before. I had to rethink things and how we could make this work.

And we tried to have students in the gym for dismissal. And I'll tell you, it was terrible., I'm a principal who will try something and then. I am fine with making tweaks with it. I'm not a perfectionist.

I don't have to have it perfect before we do it. I'm like, let's try it. Let's see if it works. Let's see how it goes. My staff knows this and I tell [00:05:00] everybody, , we just have to be flexible with it and we found that we hated it. , It was just too many kids in one place. The teachers were ending their day, so stressed out.

They said they were ending the day just yelling at kids. It wasn't great. There were a lot of behaviors. It was too loud, and so again, that had a lot of chaos in it. So to prevent chaos, we then had to just dismiss buses from the classroom. Which changed then what our duty rotation looked like and how many people we had to supervise kids, and it changed all kinds of things.

But it was just something that we had to think about for the structure of our building to prevent chaos. Another thing, our transition's too long or too short, leading to downtime and behavior issues. And this is a huge one. And again, I'm dealing with this in my building that our dismissal, we are really working to shorten it, but our buses, it's like a range of 25 minutes that the buses come.

And so it's a really long time for buses, but then adding car riders that we [00:06:00] start a little bit earlier because we can't really have. A huge wave of buses and car riders at the same time because of our space. And it creates a 40 minute dismissal if it's a good day. And so that is a really long transition for kids.

And so again, we talk about that, what does that look like in classrooms when we're thinking about downtime and behavior issues? , So it's just always thinking about these systems. And sometimes, like in my situation, it's. There's only so much within our con. There's only so much within our control that we can do.

But we're constantly revisiting this, having conversations and thinking about how can we make this better in the building? So how can we structure our buildings to prevent more chaos? How can we have systems to have more safety and calm in the building? Okay, so that's what I want you to think about when it comes to behavior.

Also, thinking about big picture, your PBIS systems. Again, being new in a building, it's been nice because I've been able to watch a little [00:07:00] bit. They've done PBIS in the building for a long time. But see that our expectations are not being taught the way that they need to be taught, and they're really not friendly for primary kids because we're a kindergarten, first, and second grade building.

And so that's causing us to revisit expectations. What do they look like? How do we make them more primary friendly for our students that we're working with? Because we're trying to prevent those behavior issues. So we're trying to create better systems and structure to help. Less discipline issues happen in the first place.

So that's the first thing we're working towards constantly, and it's a work in progress. Like I said, I've been at this school now for a couple of months. This is probably going to take all year. Next year to start the year we'll feel really good. But this year we're just experimenting with systems. We're constantly refining things, tweaking things, and now we're working on those expectations and even the reinforcers that we're giving to prevent that chaos and all the discipline issues in the building.

So that's the first [00:08:00] thing I want you to think about with your own school. The second thing I want you to think about when it comes to discipline and not burning out is parents. Parents don't have to derail you. Now, I will say that parents can be, I think, one of the most difficult parts of discipline, depending on the parent,

i'm sure you make a phone call and you get that supportive parent who's like, thank you. There will be a consequence at home. And you're like, whew. I dodged a bullet. That's awesome. They're supporting my discipline. And then you get those parents who are defensive. Their child didn't do it.

How do you know they said that? They just start questioning you and you feel like you're on trial. And we just have to acknowledge that's really hard and that's hard not to get defensive ourself. What I've really noticed about parents in their defensiveness is they're rooted in fear and protection of their child.

They must have had a terrible experience at school and they feel like they have to protect their child. Like we're not doing that at school. And [00:09:00] so I am seeing. A lot, and I've been in two very different districts, but parents can come really escalated, only hearing their child's side of the story first.

So one thing we know there is we always wanna get that story to the parents before the kids, so they have your story versus just hearing it from the kid. , I think that's really important, but we know that parents can get really dis defensive, so you want to have empathy and understand where that's rooted from, because if you don't, it's easy to get frustrated and to get defensive right away and let your own emotions take over.

And this is one of the biggest mistakes I've seen with principals is that we get so defensive like. And even I've seen it with teachers that I work with, that we have to defend our actions and we match that parent's energy instead of being the calm in the situation. I always say as the administrator, we have to bring the calm.

A parent might not be calm, but we have to bring that, because we have to be the leader even in that conversation, we're the leader of that building, [00:10:00] but we're the leader of these conversations as well. And so when a parent is escalated and defensive, we are calm. And we wanna bring their energy down.

. And so one thing I talk about in the principal's discipline blueprint, my new course that I have is four different parent arch types. And so I'm just gonna go through those really quick that maybe you can relate to. But the, my child does, no wrong parent. We've probably all dealt with that. The controlling parents, they wanna control the situation.

They wanna control the consequence that you give the aggressive parent. So this is a parent who just. Every time you call or talk to them, they could be very aggressive. The chronically difficult parent, they just seem to make every situation super difficult. And if you look at all of these different types of parents that you know, and there's more, these are just like four overarching types of parents that can be difficult to deal with, is they all stem from fear.

They have a fear-based perspective coming into the school. . And so I [00:11:00] think we have to have that empathy that these parents come to you with being scared in some way underneath, they might not know it, but underneath that is coming from fear and protection of their child. And so if we can have that empathy.

Build trust with them and focus on the relationship. We can actually build deeper relationships with parents from dealing with behavior. I always say, behavior might not be the most fun thing to deal with, but at the end of the day it could be. The best way to build relationships with students and parents because you, have these hard conversations and you talk to them, and you listen to them, and you come from a place of empathy and it can help you really build that relationship with them.

So that's the part of discipline I always think about that I really like, so that I actually can build better relationships with parents. And the last piece I wanna talk about when it comes to discipline and leading to burnout is having boundaries.

Having boundaries equals sustainability. In your job as a principal, and I always say this, if you [00:12:00] don't have boundaries, it'll work for a little while, but then eventually you just can't handle it anymore because your body has to get out of its stress cycle. At school. Your probably emotions are heightened.

You're in this fight or flight. State because you're constantly like figuring out what you need to do. You're stressed out, but you have to have time to decompress at home. And if you don't have that, it's not sustainable. You're gonna have health issues, you're gonna have mental health issues and not be able to mentally sustain the job.

You're gonna dread going to work, right? And you might already be there. And so I really recommend if you're already there. Or if you're on your way there to think about what boundaries you need to put in place. Because I always say, and I said this at the beginning, it doesn't just take up your day, but it can follow you home if you don't protect your time.

And there's multiple ways you that it can follow you home, like I talked about earlier, it's you ruminating, but it could be that you decide to call a parent from home. It could be this that you are. It could be that you're answering emails [00:13:00] at home. It could be that teachers are calling to talk about discipline after work, right?

All these things are unhealthy boundaries, but what I really, really recommend for you is to , set healthy boundaries with your teachers, with parents, and let them know what those boundaries are. So for example, when I started at my school just recently, I told teachers I do not check my email after work.

Now are there times I checked me email after work? Yes. Are there times I was sick and I checked my email a couple times, right? But. I do not reply after work. If I'm going to reply, I always schedule send it, or sometimes I'm an early morning person, I wake up early, I schedule, send an email out.

But I want to keep my boundaries of eight to four. One because it helps them keep those boundaries as well. I'm modeling the boundaries for teachers. I do that for parents because again, I'm modeling boundaries for everybody. I think with COVID, our boundaries got really out of whack that people just expect responses all the time, like educators are.

[00:14:00] On 24 7, and I just think that we really have to set communication norms to, business hours, eight to four, nine to five, eight to five, whatever you want it to be. But you have to set that and communicate that. And so I always communicate that to my teachers and I communicate that to the parents as well.

Now, when it comes to teachers, I always tell teachers, if you're worried about a situation or you think I need to know something right away. Call me. No emergency ever happens or gets handled through email, i've had situations where kids didn't make it home or , the police needed to get in contact with me.

They never emailed me. They called me on my cell phone. So I always tell people, if it's an emergency, you call me on my cell phone, but it just sets the boundary that you really don't need to contact me unless it's an emergency. And so that limits those after hours parent conversations.

Now, I had a parent who was really upset about a situation. My superintendent called me. I responded through messaging and told her I would handle the situation [00:15:00] the next day. Other than that, I pretty much do not get back to parents until the next day because everything can wait. I can't handle it at night anyways.

I don't have access to students, I can't call students talk to them, so it doesn't need to be handled at night. So you wanna set those boundaries for yourself. And just remind yourself that boundaries aren't selfish. Boundaries actually benefit everyone. I talk about that a lot, that boundaries benefit everyone because you're modeling what healthy boundaries look like, and you're modeling that it's okay to have a life outside of school and that when a situation comes up, it doesn't have to occupy everyone's time because we get to decide what an emergency is.

When I first started at my last school. I felt like everything was an emergency. Constant emergencies all day long. And over time when people understood what an emergency was and we had those conversations, it shifted. There was less reactivity. I could be more proactive. And so it's the [00:16:00] same being in a new school with new district, but you have to think about that all the time as.

Am I being reactive or am I being proactive? And if I'm constantly dealing with stuff at night, I'm being reactive. If I'm letting myself recharge and be ready for a ne for the next school day, then I'm being proactive. . You really want to reframe that.

Boundaries aren't selfish. They benefit everyone, and you're actually going to be better for everybody when you have those boundaries. So just to recap, you wanna structure your building to prevent chaos and more discipline. Parents don't have to derail you when it comes to discipline and boundaries equal sustainability in the long term.

So really focus on those three things to help make discipline feel a little bit lighter and not cause you burnout. So this week what I want you to try, my challenge for you is create one boundary around discipline. So maybe your boundary is not checking email after a certain time. Maybe it is setting a routine so that, you check your email one [00:17:00] last time and then you're done for the night.

Maybe it's creating a script. So when you're talking to a difficult parent, you can stay calm and you can bring the calm to the situation. Whatever it is, think about the thing that really causes you the most stress when it comes to discipline, and think about how you wanna protect your time and your sanity.

And what's going to make discipline more sustainable for you. And if you want more than just these quick tips on the podcast, if you want the full blueprint to handle discipline with confidence while protecting your time, check out the Principal's discipline blueprint. It's a full course where I give you everything you need to know about.

Coming up with consequences. My four step discipline process, working with parents. Also, I just wanna let you know I am starting a new membership, October, we are talking about discipline. And so if you wanna get on these coaching calls, if you wanna have more support when it comes to discipline, check out the eight to four principal leadership hub.

This is my membership for [00:18:00] principals, and I'm going to support you in all the areas of discipline and when you join the membership. You have access to all of my courses when you're in the membership.

So join us there. I'll put the link in the show notes if you wanna be part of that membership to have more help. With discipline. It can be challenging, and that's why I think every principal needs a coach. But keep in mind, you have the power to shape your life according to the mindset you choose. I hope you have a great week, and I'll see you back here next time.