#436 – Striving for Excellence in the Middle School, with Dr. Darrell Potts

If you are listening to the podcast with your instructional team or would like to explore this topic more deeply, here are guiding questions to prompt your reflection:

• How does your school currently build a culture of achievement?
• What role does struggle play in the learning journeys of your students?
• How do you help students develop transferable skills, like collaboration and inquiry?
• What are some ways to make college and career readiness visible in middle school?
• How do you currently recognize and celebrate student growth?
• What strategies do you use to build relational capacity with your students?
• What is one small leadership move that you could start implementing tomorrow?

• Northridge Middle School (Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools)
• National Principals Month (AFSA, NAESP, and NASSP)
• AVID (official website)
• AVID National Conference Leadership Forum (AVID)
• AVID Community of Practice (CoP) Offerings for Site Administrators (AVID)

#436 Striving for Excellence in the Middle School, with Dr. Darrell Potts

AVID Open Access
35 min

Transcript

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The following transcript was automatically generated from the podcast audio by generative artificial intelligence.  Because of the automated nature of the process, this transcript may include unintended transcription and mechanical errors.

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Dr. Darrell Potts 0:00

The only way you’re going to grow as a leader is to immerse yourself in that environment and take that risk and not be afraid of the struggle. It goes back to that mantra, right? Without struggle, there’s no progress. We want our students to productively struggle, and you’re going to feel that too as a leader, but don’t be afraid of it. Take that risk.

Paul Beckermann 0:19

It’s National Principals Month. To honor that, we’re going to feature principals on our show during the month of October, and today is the third episode in that series. Today’s episode is “Striving for Excellence in the Middle School with Dr. Darrell Potts.” Unpacking Education is brought to you by AVID. AVID believes in seeing the potential of every student. To learn more about AVID, visit their website at avid.org.

Rena Clark 0:45

Welcome to Unpacking Education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education.

Rena Clark 0:55

I’m Rena Clark.

Paul Beckermann 0:56

I’m Paul Beckermann.

Winston Benjamin 0:57

And I’m Winston Benjamin. We are educators, and we’re here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 1:06

Education is our passport to the future.

Paul Beckermann 1:10

Our quote for today is the Northridge Middle School mantra. It reads: “We will strive for excellence in all that we do. There is no plateau we cannot reach, no goal we cannot accomplish, because we are achievers. Without struggle, there is no progress. Together, Hawks, we will prevail.”

Paul Beckermann 1:33

All right, what are you thinking about, Winston and Rena? Getting charged up from that?

Winston Benjamin 1:38

Yeah, there’s a lot to pick here, but the thing that I really appreciate is the strive and struggle. A lot of times we tell students, “Work through it. Work through it. You’ll be great. You’ll be great.” And sometimes you forget to acknowledge, like, yeah, the struggle is going to happen. It’s going to be hard. But like a lot of my favorite rappers have said, “Take the L and turn that into lessons,” right? Sometimes you got to turn your losses into the things that just drive you and find the ways to remember. Because I don’t remember all the classes that I took that were easy. I remember the classes that I took that were hard, that took me time to actually get through, and I remember that right now. You can’t tell me anything about the Pythagorean Theorem. Good looks, Mr. Major, but I definitely have that locked in still to this day. So without those things, we will never be able to be great.

Paul Beckermann 2:29

Yeah, love that. Rena, what are you thinking about?

Rena Clark 2:33

Maybe just because I’ve been teaching a bit of ecology and talking a lot about animals today, but I was zooming in on the idea of hawks and even like that, you know, part of being a hawk, and you really do have to work hard. So this idea of like, to soar high, though, you also have to have an incredible focus and vision. I also think of, you know, as a leader—and since we’re talking about leaders—you have to have that ability to soar above and kind of see your whole landscape, your school, and the ability to really focus in, like laser-like, into all the different members so that you can support them as well. And so I really think in an environment where we thrive, we have all of those things: the larger, bigger community supports, as well as zooming in and being able to support the individual. And then I was like, oh, and then we all are successful. We all can take flight and soar when we are able to accomplish all of those things. In that mantra, I feel like—is there music? I got to know later. Is this a mantra? I’m curious.

Paul Beckermann 3:35

That seems like there should be. And it kind of seems like you should be getting extra credit because you kind of took the metaphor like another level. You might have to expand on the mantra.

Rena Clark 3:49

Okay, I liked it, though.

Paul Beckermann 3:49

All right, we are excited to welcome Dr. Darrell Potts to the podcast today. Darrell is the principal at Northridge Middle School in Charlotte, North Carolina. Welcome, Darrell.

Dr. Darrell Potts 3:58

Thank you. Thank you for having me today. And that’s something we say every day in terms of that mantra. We say it over the intercom. We say it at our eighth grade promotion ceremony, our quarterly achievement ceremonies. We just had a curriculum night last night. I had the parents do a call and response with me for it. We always say it because we believe it, and we believe in our students. And at the end we always say, “Yes, we will prevail. Yes, we will prevail.” And remember to always have—

Rena Clark 4:27

There we go. I was like, there’s got to be more to this.

Paul Beckermann 4:33

There’s a little bit to that.

Rena Clark 4:35

Yeah, yeah. I love that.

Dr. Darrell Potts 4:36

The way of launching our work. Perfect.

Paul Beckermann 4:38

Well, let’s launch our podcast with a little bit more of an introduction of you. I just gave kind of the bare bones basics there. But could you introduce yourself a little bit more to our listeners and share a little bit about yourself, maybe your journey in education?

Dr. Darrell Potts 4:52

Definitely, definitely. I’m originally born in Monroe, North Carolina, but I was raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. I attended Winston-Salem State University, where I was the head drum major in the marching band. That’s when I really realized I could become a leader of my peers. You know, being in front of over 183 of your peers can be kind of intimidating. But that translated to the classroom. I became an AVID teacher, world history teacher for six years, coached girls’ basketball, led student government.

Dr. Darrell Potts 5:26

Was a part of a lot of leadership opportunities as a teacher. I became a dean of students. I did that for about three years. Became an assistant principal, and this was all at my alma mater. So I actually went back to my high school I graduated from as a substitute teacher, worked there for the last—what—two months. Graduated in May, June, and then I came back and served as an AVID teacher in all those other capacities before shifting to Anson County Schools. I was there for a year and a half as a middle school principal, and CMS called me back home, and I came back to my hometown, and I’ve been there ever since. But I’m a lifelong AVID student, AVID learner. I even did my dissertation on AVID, so without AVID, I wouldn’t be here before you today.

Winston Benjamin 6:18

That’s a big sell for the program, and I appreciate that, right? Like, no, again, sometimes it’s so wonderful to hear people say and value the things that help them grow, right? You know what I mean? Like, that’s a great thing to be able to say: I appreciate those journeys that this program helped me walk. So speaking of that, you’ve gone out and come back home, gone out and come back home. And a lot of times when we talk to children about going for their future, we always tell them that they have to leave their home. We never tell them that they can value their home and come back. So in your story, there’s like a full circle thing going on. How is that journey of student, teacher, principal as an AVID individual shaped how you lead today in your principal work?

Dr. Darrell Potts 7:08

Definitely. AVID is embedded into everything we do, starting with the schoolwide domains. So everything we do is broken down into systems, instruction, leadership, and culture, and we try to use those domains to transform our school. We use it through our announcements. We use it through our meetings. We use it through how we set up our leadership structure, and we shift from that into WICOR. WICOR is a part of everything we do instructionally. It’s a part of our instructional framework, and we just try to create a college-going atmosphere at our school that’s inclusive for all students and all staff. And we really use AVID as a vehicle, pretty much as a vehicle, to get our students to that pathway of college and career readiness, and it’s embedded in all of my leadership, in terms of how I present to the staff, how I engage with my students, how I encourage them. It’s just in the fiber of our being at Northridge.

Rena Clark 8:14

I want to dig into that a little more because lots of times, you know, you hear students don’t really get exposed or get to dig into that, especially college career, till they’re in high school, but you’re a principal at a middle school, and you’re talking about building that culture at that middle school level, and it’s such a pivotal time when they’re developing and growing. So I’m just curious—you alluded to a little bit, but what? Maybe there’s some examples or stories about what that looks like in your school and how you provide that culture.

Dr. Darrell Potts 8:43

Definitely, definitely. It starts off with our grade level college teams. So each grade level is divided into three college teams. We have the ACC, we have the SEC, and we also have the CIAA, and we try to get our students and our staff to really take ownership of their college team. And we try to use that as a way to not only celebrate them, but we use it as friendly competition throughout the school. Who has the best transitions? Who has the best behavior at lunch? Who did the best on the first beginning-of-year diagnostic? And we try to celebrate our grade level college teams as much as possible. We’ve also created opportunities for our scholars to attend universities, as far as college tours. Last year we were able to visit four universities, and it’s pretty difficult these days because typically they don’t cater to middle school students. But what we did was we leveraged the alumni at our school, and they generated the tour for our scholars. So they were the chaperones on the field trip. They used their connections at the university. I actually led the tour at Winston-Salem State. My brother of Alpha Phi Alpha—I got the brothers to come together, and they led a tour for our scholars. And they thoroughly enjoyed it. They had a great time. We said we weren’t going to let that be a barrier for us, right? We were going to find a way through the challenge, right? Without struggle, there’s no progress. So we had to find a way to make it happen. So we wanted to expose our scholars to universities their parents attended with them, and they thoroughly enjoyed it. Another way we try to embed college and career readiness is just how we plant seeds. We plant seeds into our middle school students, and we bring in guest speakers. We bring in speakers from organizations, whether it be college organizations, college programs. College students come in and have taught and mentored our students as well. So it’s just really about fully immersing them into the college experience with the resources we have at the middle school level.

Paul Beckermann 10:49

Sounds like you’re doing lots of things to really inspire those kids, give them that vision of where they can go, building that culture of “I can,” which sounds really cool. I’m curious, how do you bridge to those aspirations by giving them those concrete skills, AVID strategies, things like that? How do you build that in so they actually have the skills to get where they might see they want to go?

Dr. Darrell Potts 11:15

Yeah, we start with the why. And our why at Northridge is to ensure that every student is either employed, enlisted, enrolled, or an entrepreneur. That’s a part of our district initiative as well. So we start with that why, and we sell to our students that if you really invest in the skills, particularly around WICOR, then you will become a leader in high school. That’s the main goal. If you invest in the lessons that we’re learning now and build your skills around writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, and reading, you will become a leader in high school. So we start with the interactive notebook. That’s the game changer for us. So we really try to preach organization. We try to preach, you know, how in high school a student must remain organized in order to stay effective and keep their grades up and demonstrate high performance. We supplement that with the agenda, which is still a part of the organizational piece. We really try to challenge kids to collaborate. So most of our classrooms are in collaborative-type structures and seating, and we really push our small group instructional piece that gives kids an opportunity to bounce ideas off each other. We’re really trying to push collaborative inquiry. We’re not quite where we want to be yet with that, but we are knocking on the door of it, and we’re really pushing our teachers to use higher-level questions to push the thinking of our students as well because they have to build those critical thinking and problem-solving skills to be competitive in the 21st century.

Paul Beckermann 12:55

I was going to ask, how are the students accepting that? I mean, do they buy into that pretty well?

Dr. Darrell Potts 13:02

Now, initially there was some pushback initially, but they have started to see their success, especially with our school being removed from the low-performing school list this past school year, improving our school performance grade, and many of them exceeding their projection. Over 91% of our students exceeded their projection, so they were able to see those wins along the way, not only at the end of the year but building in those quick wins throughout the school year. So the middle-of-year diagnostic through our common assessments, when we reteach and reassess and they’re able to see some growth on those additional assessments that we provide for them. So it’s really about allowing kids to see small opportunities of victory and building on that incrementally, comprehensively to the larger goal. Another thing that we did was we’re trying to champion AI this year. So that’s something else we’re trying to leverage. AI is becoming more pervasive throughout the nation, throughout the world, right? So we’re really trying to push our kids to be critical thinkers and be able to use AI, and that collaborative inquiry is a big part of that because you have to prompt.

Winston Benjamin 14:15

Congratulations on turning your school around and your student success. That is awesome. Congratulations on that excellent work. A lot of times the leadership—you have a vision of where you’re going and where you want to go, and then you have the students who are the things that are moving through that process. But a very key, important cog—the teachers. Like, you can say all of that you want to say, but if you don’t got those teachers that are doing that same work in lockstep, that culture that you’ve been talking about doesn’t exist or can’t be done. So the question is, like, to value those teachers and say about how they’ve done it, what role do they play in reinforcing this culture every day? And how do you support them in the work they’re doing? Because, again, they’re the cog. How are you greasing the wheels so that the cog don’t break?

Dr. Darrell Potts 15:15

First, I would like to shout out all the teachers at Northridge Middle School. Without you, we couldn’t have experienced the success that we have experienced. You’re the engine of our school. I want to start off by saying that. Secondly, I want to start off by saying one of my mentors, strong mentors, always says, “Things don’t just happen. People make them happen,” right? So you have to have the right people in place to reach the goals that you’re trying to reach and to reach and to really grow our students academically, socially, and emotionally. So teachers are—they’re instrumental in the success of our—

Dr. Darrell Potts 15:49

It starts with the relationship piece. Definitely the relationship piece. So we really use the culture domain of AVID to push building relational capacity, right, trust between teacher and student. And from there, we really focus on professional development, making sure our teachers are equipped with the knowledge to facilitate the standards, facilitate instruction, and make it relevant to students so that they maintain engagement. And in doing that, students will run through a wall for you if they feel like you care, and they know you care about them.

Winston Benjamin 16:25

Facts.

Dr. Darrell Potts 16:27

And I know our teachers care, and we care about them, so we have to support them as well. Some ways we do that—you know, the fastest way to the heart is through the stomach. So we try to feed our teachers as much as possible. We have staff meetings in which we celebrate them. Staff meetings aren’t all about feeding information. Staff meetings are about celebrating everyone and the success that they’re having and trying to put those college teams against each other for some friendly competition for the next round or the next quarter. We also have medals. I’ve given out medals to my teachers. So because our school and positive score increased, every teacher received a medal because every teacher was a part of that. And even though that was last year, we knew that that was the last time we would have that particular staff together, right? And that was something that we accomplished together. So we wanted to celebrate that staff particularly. And then coming in, we have a lot of teachers returning, not exactly the same staff, but getting even more people on the bus that’s going to get us to our destination of increasing our school performance grade and the proficiency of all of our students, even more so. Much more like get more people to drive the buses, to get the kids on the buses.

Rena Clark 17:50

Which then makes me think about students. So, you know, some of our listeners aren’t at AVID schools, or maybe they—when I know some of the people I know, when they think of AVID, they see it as a class, like an individual thing. But you’re talking about the whole school, so you’ve given us some strategies. And I’m curious, like, when you do college visits, is it just a couple kids that get to go? What are some things that you do, like, schoolwide, the entire school, to get that student buy-in, especially for middle school students who—we talk about college career readiness, and they’re like, well, that’s a ways from now. I don’t have to worry about that right now.

Dr. Darrell Potts 18:30

Yeah, that’s a good question. So one of the main strategies we use is our Triple A initiative, right? So Triple A stands for attitude, academics, and attendance, and we have criteria tied to that, and we do it each month because you can’t go the entire quarter. That’s too long, right? Just as you mentioned, college being too far away. So you have to have a carrot that’s a little bit closer, you know, to the time frame that we’re currently in. And basically, with Triple A, students have to have, for academics, no grade lower than a C. For attendance, they can’t miss more than 10% of the quarter. So typically first quarter it’s two days, second quarter is four days.

Dr. Darrell Potts 19:11

And then attitude is all around behavior. So no out-of-school suspensions, no in-school suspensions. And then you have to have the incentives to back it up, right? You can’t just be all talk, right, and no show, right? So you have to have incentives that students care about. And the way we’ve done that is to incorporate student government into the decision-making of our incentives. So they choose the type of incentives they would like, whether it be a social, whether it be going on a field trip, whether it be bringing bounce houses into the school, having a teachers versus students basketball game or flag football game. You know, if we have the funding, we’ll try to find the funding, but we try to make it happen if they want it to happen because we know that’s the biggest motivator: student interest.

Rena Clark 20:00

I mean, as a drum major, have they ever had you—you know, when I think of you, I love bands—like, put on the outfit, like, do the high marching legs? Have they ever incorporated any of that?

Dr. Darrell Potts 20:13

Not in middle school. When I was a high school assistant principal, more so. But middle school, I think they think I’m a little—they think I’m still cool now. You still have to have a cool appeal. Yeah.

Paul Beckermann 20:26

Drum majors are cool. What are you talking about?

Dr. Darrell Potts 20:28

I just don’t want to get down and not be able to get back up. James Brown split or something.

Paul Beckermann 20:40

Oh my. I can just see it now. That’d be awesome. We have our next incentive all lined up here.

Dr. Darrell Potts 20:50

But guys, I did want to share that over 50% of our students were eligible for that incentive during the second and third quarter last year. So we had to build that initially. It was only what, about 25 to 30% initially, and that grew to 50% and over 50%, so they started to buy in to what we were doing with those incentives. And it was pretty effective for us.

Paul Beckermann 21:14

Yeah, it’s working.

Dr. Darrell Potts 21:14

Yeah, once you get the drum major part in there, I think you’re going to be up to about 75%.

Dr. Darrell Potts 21:19

Hey, I might do it if we get to 75%.

Paul Beckermann 21:21

Hey, there you go. All right, anybody listening out there, students? All right. Well, let’s talk a little more about AVID strategies. You’ve mentioned a few along the way already, and we mentioned that college and high school does seem to be a little ways away for these middle school students. But what are the strategies that you think that you have seen made the biggest difference in preparing students to be ready for that jump once they get to the high school? Like, what are some of the most effective ones?

Dr. Darrell Potts 21:52

Outside of the interactive notebook, I would really say giving students the opportunity to speak publicly. So public speaking.

Dr. Darrell Potts 22:02

Whether it be at the achievement ceremonies, whether it be in the classroom when they’re presenting projects or sharing out or debriefing, just really getting our students to share their thinking and share their ideas. We know sometimes man’s biggest fear is public speaking, so we try to find a way to disarm them from that by allowing multiple opportunities to approach that challenge. I know that’s one that we really use. Others that we use—just kind of throwing out some collaborative strategies—we use give one, get one. We’ve used numbered heads together. We’ve used four corners. We’ve used philosophical chairs, just to name a few.

Winston Benjamin 22:46

So you’ve shifted a building from being below standard. You’ve gotten students from being a 25% participation to 50%, soon to be 75% participation in the AAA, right? One of the things that’s valuable is each one teach one, right? So based on your leadership insight, from your perspective, what leadership moves are most important for principals who want to embed the idea of college and career readiness as a part of the DNA for their school? What are some of the tips that you could think about that would be valuable for them to consider?

Dr. Darrell Potts 23:34

Definitely. I would say, first off, don’t be overly ambitious. That’s the first thing, and you got to start small. Start small. Don’t try to change the world in one setting. So that’s why the elective is so important with AVID. Even if you don’t have the AVID elective, start with a grade level, start with a particular class or a particular teacher, and try to see if you can impact change with that particular teacher or grade level, and then look to expand that impact into the rest of the school and try to make that initiative more pervasive throughout the school. Because a leader has to think about their own wellness, right? There’s a lot that we go through as leaders, and sometimes we want to do so much in such a small amount of time that we have, and we’ll burn ourselves out. And you don’t want to do that. If you’re a burnt-out leader, you’re no good to your school, you’re no good to your staff, you’re no good for your parents. So pace yourself and understand it’s a process. I know you say “trust the process.” I know it sounds cliché, but make sure you just establish what you believe in. Start incrementally, and then you eventually get there.

Rena Clark 24:48

I kind of feel like you just answered my question a bit. So I’ll see if you want to add any bit more to that, because that was some pretty good advice to our leaders. But I know there are many, many people listening who are considering going into leadership, admin, or brand new starting out. And if you could just give them, maybe, besides the one you just gave us, one piece of advice for them?

Dr. Darrell Potts 25:15

Just like Nike, just do it. Jump in. That’s the only way you’re going to learn. Experiential learning. Experience is the best teacher, right? We hear all of these different clichés. We hear all these different expressions. The only way you’re going to grow as a leader is to immerse yourself in that environment and take that risk and not be afraid of the struggle. It goes back to that mantra, right? Without struggle, there’s no progress. We want our students to productively struggle, and you’re going to feel that too as a leader. But don’t be afraid of it, right? Take that risk. Take that risk. You’re probably more capable than you think of yourself, right? Because a lot of times leaders are very critical of themselves, right? Don’t question yourself. Just evaluate where you are, figure out your best time. But I say there’s no time better than the present, and just do it.

Winston Benjamin 26:07

I’m stuck on your power. So the thing that I’m trying to do is how to take that “just do it” and turn it into a toolkit movement. So I’m going to ask everybody—

Paul Beckermann 26:16

Just do it, Winston. Just do it exactly.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 26:22

Check it out. Check it out.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 26:25

What’s in the toolkit? What is in the toolkit?

Winston Benjamin 26:31

Check it out. What are you trying to take away and add to your toolbox, toolkit, so that you can make action steps in the future so you could just do it? See, brother, I’m trying to—I’m listening. What’s in your tool? Paul? Rena?

Rena Clark 26:50

Well, you know, I don’t think I mentioned it well, but even AVID Open Access, maybe. You can look at your AVID stuff, but if maybe you’re not part yet of the AVID program, you can go to AVID Open Access and look there. We have a lot of resources and supports for you to support what we’re talking about today. So go ahead and check it out.

Paul Beckermann 27:13

Yeah, this is one that’s probably not an AVID strategy specifically, but it ties into the AVID idea of opportunity knowledge. I think we need to weave in opportunity knowledge wherever we can into our daily work. It doesn’t mean that we have to have a huge unit on college and career. We don’t have to dedicate a whole class to it if we don’t have that capability. Weave it in somewhere into your class where it makes sense. Like, I was an English teacher. I’m teaching writing. Well, the subject is flexible, so maybe they write about career opportunities or postsecondary opportunities. Where I was a speech teacher, they can speak about it wherever the topic is flexible. See if you can weave it in there. Or maybe you do a bell ringer at the beginning of each class period that explores a different college or a different career each day, and then at the end, maybe the students have to, like, vote up their favorite three or something. There’s ways to work it in, but opportunity knowledge is so important. So I’m going there.

Winston Benjamin 28:10

I like that. So I’m going to say radical network usage. I love how Darrell was using his networks—parents, family, alumni of the program—to get kids on the colleges, to get them those tours, to be able to see what it’s like to look at a person who knows you, connected to you, who’s in that thing, where they can say, “I can see myself in that thing.” So I really appreciate the guerrilla radical use of your network to say we may not got the money, we may not got the connect, the use of the traditional connection, but we got some way, and we will make it so. I appreciate the use of that, and I’m going to continue to think about how to use my network in a radical way. Darrell, what would you like to throw in our toolkit? What other advice could you give our listeners?

Dr. Darrell Potts 29:03

Yeah, just along the lines of relational capacity and really building those relationships: start each lesson with a “good thing.” So just give each student opportunity to share something good that’s going on in their life. It’s a way to really tap into what’s relevant to them at the moment, use that as an opportunity to debrief with your class. I would definitely say, make sure that your students understand their learning targets. Make sure you’re creating transferable learning targets. When I say transferable, we’re talking about the skills that students are developing through the lesson. It’s not always about getting an A on the assignment. It’s about how well is this skill transferring, and how will you be able to make this applicable to your real life. So I would definitely start there as well. And I would also encourage our listeners to really engage more with parents, right? When we get parents on our side, I mean, it is truly an academic partnership. You can disarm some of the most passionate parents about a situation if you just communicate with them in advance, get them on your side, and let them know that you’re there for their child. But if you can incorporate just those couple things, it can make a world of difference for you, and there’s many more.

Rena Clark 30:29

Well, you’ve given us a lot of things to think about, but we’re going to just talk about the one thing that’s still left on our mind, or the one thing that has really stuck with us. It’s time for that one thing.

Rena Clark 30:51

One thing. So we are sharing our one thing. All right, I don’t know who’s up first today, gentlemen.

Paul Beckermann 31:00

I can go first. I love what Darrell said when he said, “Things don’t just happen. People make them happen.” I love that cause-effect thing because it makes us empowered in the situation. We can change our reality by doing something, even what you just said in the last segment about starting with one good thing at the beginning of a lesson. That does wonders for building the atmosphere of that classroom and setting the tone. Every action makes a difference, and we can make it happen. So I love that.

Winston Benjamin 31:34

I like that too. And shout out to your teachers, Darrell, for being the things that make it—the people that make it happen, for sure. So one thing that I am continuing my thoughts around is the idea of starting small, just thinking about how you get even with your students, right? That the carrot has to be in some earlier than at the very end because everybody needs a little reward for the work they’re doing. So taking off too big of a chunk, it leads to, like, doubt and looking at your failure. So I really like the idea of starting small and like making smaller success steps.

Rena Clark 32:12

Yeah, it was kind of a mashup of both of yours, but kind of like, I always think about how you’re not your thoughts, you are your actions. And then, really, you’ve repeated it several times, Darrell, but it was, you know, no struggle, no progress. So we do need to struggle to make progress, and that struggle needs to be in the form of actions and not just thoughts.

Dr. Darrell Potts 32:40

And to build on that, I’m just going to go back to “just do it,” right? But more so I’m thinking about those leaders that I was, you know, speaking to and trying to inspire, because someone had to inspire me. And when I went back to my alma mater, my former AVID teacher was my teacher mentor, and that was very powerful for me because he was able to not only teach me as an AVID student, but he was able to mentor me as an AVID teacher. And the mantra actually comes from him. It was something we said in his class, and I remember saying that as a student. I modified it just a little bit, and I started to say it in my class, and it was just something that I wanted to, you know, carry with me on my leadership journey. And you never know who you’re going to inspire. So by just doing it, you know, you can inspire the next generation of leaders, wherever they may be, whether they’re at the school level, their students currently looking at you now as a teacher and listening to your lessons. Just doing it and stepping out can really inspire someone else and change the world one student, one child at a time.

Paul Beckermann 33:50

That’s awesome. And thank you for being here, because I can tell that what you are doing, you are changing the world in that middle school of yours. So thank you so much for being our guest today and sharing all your insights.

Dr. Darrell Potts 34:02

Thank you all for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

Paul Beckermann 34:05

And happy Principals Month to you as well and all the other principals out there listening.

Dr. Darrell Potts 34:10

Good deal, good deal. Keep your head up, principals. We’re making a difference.

Rena Clark 34:14

Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin 34:17

We invite you to visit us at AvidOpenAccess.org, where you can discover resources to support student agency and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future-ready learners.

Paul Beckermann 34:30

We’ll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education.

Rena Clark 34:35

And remember, go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin 34:39

Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann 34:41

You make a difference.