Believe the Data: A Principal Mentor Explains How 5E is Key to School Improvement

Steven Herkert is director of ROE services at Regional Office of Education 8. He is also a principal mentor with the Illinois Principals Association, and a passionate advocate for the 5Essentials Culture and Climate Survey. In this episode, he talks about mistakes he made as a principal, what he got right, and how principals can use data to make their schools better.

Our theme music is by José Rivera.

Transcript

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Dusty Rhodes  0:02  

Hello, we are the Illinois State Board of Education, and we love Illinois schools. I'm Dusty Rhodes in the public relations department. 

Today we have a conversation with Stephen Herkert, whose career has included teaching, coaching, being an athletic director, principal, and now the principal mentor for his ROE, and the Illinois Principals Association. What ties all these roles together is his love of data. I should warn you: this passion has turned him into an advocate for the 5Essentials -- the culture and climate survey your schools should be using right now.

Let's start by you telling me about your first day or week or year as a school principal. You remember any mistakes that you made?

Stephen Herkert  0:50  

Oh, absolutely, probably on a daily basis. I was a principal at Byron Middle School for nine years. And I stepped into that role out of the athletic director position in the Byron school district. I was a high school teacher for 21 years prior to that. I had never stepped foot in the middle school, it was completely foreign land. To me, that age group was somewhat terrifying at first. I wasn't sure if it was the right move. But the opportunity came up and I went for it and got it. And it was a quite a learning curve for me to learn how that age group functions. 

And also just trying to convince myself that I had the skills to be able to help my teachers move forward. That was that was the probably the most challenging thing for me, because Byron -- I don't know if you're familiar with it, I know everybody in the state is not -- but Byron is a very, very high-achieving district, for a small rural district. It's got a power plant. So it's got a lot of money. And there's extremely high expectations from the from central office and extremely high expectations from the community. And it was a very high-achieving building when I took over. 

So to be able to keep it there, and to try to find ways to keep moving forward was the biggest challenge. But it turns out, it was the best move I ever could have made my life. I love middle school kids, they seem to love me, I was able to pretty quickly build some very powerful relationships. So after a year or two, I really got into my grove and our building took some big, pretty big strides forward.

Dusty Rhodes  2:47  

Okay, I noticed you didn't mention any mistakes.

Stephen Herkert  2:51  

As far as specific mistakes go, probably my biggest mistake was I did not keep up with my evaluations, which is something now that I hound my principals that I work with about. But I was, I just had such low confidence in my ability to help my teachers that I kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off. And then it finally got into right about this time of year in February and March, and I don't think that I had actually completed any of my evaluations at that point. And as it turned out, I did not get my tenured teachers evaluated. And that became quite a problem for my superintendent and for me and for my teachers. 

So that was something that I definitely concentrated on but again, that was, that's where the confidence thing came in. I just, I just really was not sure of myself in that first year. And as a result, I almost did something that cost me my job.

Dusty Rhodes  3:56  

Oh, wow. I noticed you said that you thought middle school… you found that age group somewhat terrifying. What is special about middle schoolers? I'm a little fascinated with them myself.

Stephen Herkert  4:16  

Yeah, well, they're a fascinating age group. You know, because it was all my experience being at the high school level as a teacher and I coached football and I coached track and, you know, I just, I knew that animal. I knew the high school animal pretty well. But again, I had no exposure to middle school and kind of the running joke with middle school, teachers and administrators is you've never talked to anybody who works in a middle school who doesn't say they love it. It's not the kind of place where you can work and just kind of tolerate, you know, yeah, they're okay. You know, you've never hear that because middle school kids will either drive you insane or they will or they will just make you just crazy. 

That, that's just the, that's there's such a transition, ours was sixth through eighth. So, you know, when they come in as sixth graders, they're coming out of self-contained classrooms and they're going into, you know, a structure where they're moving around the building, and they're so tiny, and they're so scared, and they still really want to be recognized and noticed and nurtured. And then very quickly, by the time they hit into eighth grade, you know, they're, they're turning into those, you know, getting ready for high school and trying to be really independent. 

But what was great about middle school kids, at least my experiences, they still think it's cool to be recognized by adults. They still, even eighth grade boys, last day of school, if I put up my hand when I walked by him, they'll still high-five me. They'll still be, they're still polite, and they you know, they call you, Hello, Mr. Herkert or have a great day or good morning. I mean, they, they recognize and are respectful to adults. That's not always the case with high school kids. Not because you know, they're just, they're trying to find themselves and they're turning more into adults. Middle school, kids are still kids.

Dusty Rhodes  6:10  

Well, since I asked you about your mistakes, I also want to ask you, what did you get right?

Stephen Herkert  6:16  

The relationship piece, what I did -- and I got this advice from, I'm pretty sure it was the first IPA conference I went to -- I listened to a principal who said that the most important thing he ever did was learn the names of all the kids in his building. And so that first year, I had when I started, I had 400 or 440 kids. And within the first two months, I learned every one of their names. I took their school photos, and I made a photo array of them -- one with their names on it, one with their names not on them -- and I quizzed myself, every day after school. I brought it home with me at night, and my wife quizzed me on it. And if I was walking through, and then every time and as a result of that, when I'd be walking in the hallway, I always address kids, every kid I passed, if I could, unless there was hundreds of them, I always address them by their name. If I, if I passed the kid, and I didn't know their name, I would go to my office, I would look up who that student was, I would happen to be in the hallway when they came out of their next class. And I would address them by their names. 

And that made such a difference with middle school, middle school kids, I tell I tell people this all the time that, you know, I made… if you ask my teachers, at Byron, if I was a great principal, don't know that they would say great, but they would say yeah, he was good. He got his work done. He did this, he did that. But if you ask the kids that went through Byron Middle School, they thought I walked on water. And the main reason for that is because I took the time to know them. And I went out of my way to recognize them. And at that age, that meant the world to them.

Dusty Rhodes  8:04  

Sounds like you made a concentration board, like a concentration game.

Stephen Herkert    8:09  

Yep, absolutely. And we did that every year. And then after that, when I first started, I was I was just me. And then after a couple of years, I got an assistant principal. And then we would, every day after school, we would carve out at least a half hour beginning school year and we would sit down together, we would quiz each other about student names.

Dusty Rhodes  8:32  

That's awesome. Okay, so go ahead and fill us in on your career from that first job.

Stephen Herkert    8:41  

Okay. So yeah, my first admin job was as the athletic director at Byron and I did that for four years. And I love that I came out of coaching came out of high school. Byron is like, you know, they operate like a suburban school, they've got incredible facilities, they've got a great big indoor track, and, you know, just everything there is top notch. And it was, the AD job was a perfect fit for me. 

But unfortunately, at that time, I've got three daughters. And when I took the job, my daughters were kindergarten, third grade and sixth grade. And I just, I could not maintain both, you know, if I would have stayed as the athletic director, I would have done it as a divorced man, because I was there 14 hours a day, six days a week. And so after four years when the principal job that Byron opened up, you know, that was a that was kind of a life choice, as much as it was a career choice. But as good as it turned out, it was a great move for me. And then I did that for nine years. 

When I retired, I really didn't know what I was going to do. And luckily, I had a good friend of mine from back in my… I taught in Forreston High school, a good friend from Forreston and who had migrated from teaching to working at the Regional Office of Education in Freeport ROE #8. And I happened to bump into her during the last months of working at Byron and at dinner and she convinced me to come up and visit the ROE and see if there's something there I can do and I did that. And they embraced me. 

So I immediately, as soon as I retired, I immediately started working for the regional office, doing kind of running their principal and superintendent meetings and doing PD for teachers. And I remember it was my very first principal regional principal meeting that I led, you know, I came out of Byron, and as I said, Byron was a very, very high achieving district. And that was my only admin experience. So I thought, that's what principals do, that's what is going on in school. So I had my first principals meeting and I threw all this stuff out about things that they need to be on top of and initiatives that are coming down and things that are coming from the state at that time. 

And I had a principal come to me after that meeting, a male principal, come to me after that meeting, pulled me into a side room and cried. He said: “I don't know anything that you just said. I don't know what those things are. I don't know how to find them. I think I made a mistake getting into this.” And he was, this was his first year. And so that was eye-opening for me because, you know, in that region up there, I've got almost all -- with the exception to the Freeport School District -- all the districts are really tiny. 

You know, we've got Scales Mound and Galena, and East Dubuque, Orangeville and Chadwick-Milledgeville and Dakota, you know, Stockton. They're just they're really tiny little silo-like schools. And they don't have the resources or the capability to operate like a larger district like Byron. 

And so I told this principal, I said, Hey, don't, you know, he was his, his school was about 15 miles from Freeport, which is where I was based. And I said, I'll just I'll start coming up. And I'll meet with you. And, you know, just kind of helped us to get you through this first year. And that turned out to be really successful. 

So the second year, my superintendent, my regional superintendent, and I decided we were going to start what we call the Principal Support Program, which was like a coaching mentoring thing. But we were just going to do it in-house through the regional office. And that first year, I probably picked up, you know, maybe 10 or 12 principals that I worked with. And then we can work continuing that to this day, I'm still doing it. But now I'm up to this year, I've got a total between IPA and the ROE, I've got a total of about 27 principals that I work with. And the way that I do it is, it’s face-to-face, on their schedule. Usually, some of them I meet with every two weeks, some of them I meet with every three weeks, I want to go once a month, it really depends on their level of experience. 

But you know, I work with principals that are in year one; I work with principals that have been on the job for 15 years. What we find out -- and anybody in the admin will tell you this, and anybody who's doing what I do will tell you this -- everybody needs somebody to talk to. It's such a difficult, challenging job, that everybody needs somebody, in my opinion, who is not in an evaluative position, or who is not a peer within the district, they need somebody to talk to. And that's what I have found to be the value. And that's the reason why I mean, I don't I don't work really hard soliciting people. It's just, it's a pretty easy sell, you know, once they see that there's some value in this. 

And it's, it's really interesting for me, I mean, number one, it keeps me connected to the profession and helps me pay back the profession that was so good to me. But it's really interesting, as I go through my day-to-day work, I have some people that when I am with them, I am 100% a counselor, or a social worker or a psychologist, I just sit and listen while they rant and rave about all the problems they’re having. I've got some that I'll come in and they'll have a little post it note next to their computer. And then we'll have a list of things that they've encountered since our last meeting that they need help with, you know, could be some kind of state reporting or discipline issues. I do a lot of role-playing stuff with them, where I take them through if they're having difficulty with a teacher, we do some role playing as far as how they can have that conversation with the teacher. 

And then the other really important role that we play as coaches and mentors, is when they're sitting in that chair, they don't have time to really dive into all of the things that are coming at them from above. So our job is to read the State Board of education reports were like when ESSA came out, I became very quickly I became an expert in ESSA i know everything about it, I know how it's calculated, I know all the business rules. And so when I have these conversations with principals, I can explain things to them that they don't have time to learn, but yet are really important for them to be able to do the job correctly.

Dusty Rhodes  15:24  

Okay, you just said that all the things we put out here from ISBE are not just immediately digestible (laughs).

Stephen Herkert  15:35  

It’s just so much! It'd be different if, if they were able to just sit in their office. And, you know, go pour through the reports. And, you know, like, when the State Superintendent message comes out, if they could just go through that item by item and open up all the links and read about all the opportunities and all the things that are coming up, but in the real world, they can't do that. There's just too, there's just too much stuff coming at them every single day, especially in small districts, you know, where, you know, they're wearing the hat of, you know, they don't have assistant principals, they don't have all of the SEL support people that they need. They've they're running that building pretty much completely on their own. So it's a challenge.

Dusty Rhodes  16:19  

I met supt's who double as bus drivers. So yeah, yeah.

Stephen Herkert  16:25  

I do have some that do that as well! I always advise them don't get that license, because as soon as you do, they're gonna make you use it.

Dusty Rhodes  16:33  

But I know in those little districts, people are Swiss Army knives. Okay. So did you say you've been doing it for 15 years?

Stephen Herkert  16:43  

I've been doing the mentoring, this is my 10th year now. coaching mentoring.

Dusty Rhodes  16:49  

Okay, so when we got these federal pandemic relief funds, you know, is the chose to invest some of that money in principal mentoring programs, it sounds like yours was already running. And I don't think that people necessarily perceive principles as people who need mentoring because, you know, when you're, if all you've ever been in school as a student, then you think of the principal as the, you know, the enforcer for good teachers, like a backup, the backup where you got sent when you were bad? Why is it important for principals to have mentors?

Stephen Herkert  17:31  

Well, mainly for the reason that I just mentioned is that they -- and trust me, I've had some that have been assigned to me, like I've had superintendents that have assigned their principals to me. And you know, our first meeting, even though I kind of know who they are, our first meetings are very difficult, because, like you just said, they don't think they need it. I've had some that have told me, I'm only doing this because my superintendent says I have to. 

But then the challenge to me is to prove to that person that I can be an asset to them. And usually that that we don't get to the counseling psychologist part very quickly with those individuals. Those are usually very much business-type meetings where I will have them give me access to their data, and I will go through their their MAP data, I will go through their 5Essentials I will go through there, there's summative designation reports, and I will be able to shine some light on things that they can then go back and use in their school improvement efforts. And I have not had anybody who has been standoffish for, you know, for an entire year. They always seem to come to the realization that yeah, this, this is an hour, every three weeks that could actually be pretty helpful in my career.

Dusty Rhodes  18:58  

I think your history as a coach has probably helped you in this.

Stephen Herkert  19:02  

Yes, definitely. Definitely. It has and the fact that I've been, since I've been doing this now for so long, and I've had so many clients. I know every type of administrator. I've been doing it long enough that I know the districts that I work in very well. But I do think too, that the ISBE when ISBE started really focusing more on principal mentorship and also of course IPA, when their program rebooted, I went through the initial training, I think I was part of my third year, my second or third year of doing it through the ROE that the IPA restarted in conjunction with ISBE, they restarted their principal mentoring. I went through the initial two-day training and so many of the clients that I get right now, I get through IPA, and then I've also picked up clients that are … within the past couple of years, that have been a part of the ISBE initiatives as well.

Dusty Rhodes  20:03  

Okay, I know just as, as a mom, I've gotten a sense that some educators have a certain gift that that can't be taught. They're born with it. So are there some fundamental qualities that a principal needs that, that even you can't teach them? Or is there … are those the people that come in, that are assigned to come in or I mean…

Stephen Herkert  20:33  

That's, that's… since since nobody knows who my clients are, I can kind of talk with someone freely about it. There are definitely, like you said, with educators, there are definitely people that go into leadership, that probably were not ready for it yet. That and that, that's very challenging in my role, because again, having done it for so long, and knowing what good leadership looks like, you can pretty quickly pick up on those that are going to struggle. And mostly it's because of, you know, maybe they don't have a high enough confidence in themselves. Or perhaps they're overconfident in their ability to lead and other people don't really see it in them. Most of the problems that those people encounter have to do with poor communication, not being visible in the building, not really going out of their way to show their teachers that, you know, they're working as a team. And you know, one of the primary roles of being a building leader is to provide whatever support your teachers need to be able to be successful. Not everybody sees that as a real high priority in leading the building, and those are the ones that definitely struggle, and I… currently I'm working with several that are really struggling, because the building, the teachers, the parents are not drinking the Kool Aid that they're putting out there.

Dusty Rhodes  22:15  

Well, I, I believe I read somewhere -- and I don't think it's a surprising fact – that principals are a crucial factor in teacher retention.

Stephen Herkert  22:29  

Oh, my gosh, yes.

Dusty Rhodes  22:31  

So obviously, I'm asking you that because we're in the midst of a teacher shortage. So what do you tell the your mentees about teacher retention?

Stephen Herkert  22:43  

it's the if they're a strong solid leader, teachers are going to want to work in that environment, you know, they're there, they're going to want to work in a place where they're recognized. And a place where if they make a mistake, there's going to be an opportunity for them to learn from it and move forward, instead of being, you know, singled out or pointed out or reprimanded for it, because, again, teaching is pretty darn hard itself. And there's a lot of things that are going into that, you know, a lot of stresses, especially, you know, go with now, when they're trying to recover from the with the last two or three years have looked like, it's extremely difficult and to be able to work in a building where the climate and culture is very positive. And reinforcing. Teachers really need that. 

And the example that I give all the time when I talk with principals, especially when I first start with them, I asked them to reflect back on the leaders that they have worked under, you know, when they were teaching, and to evaluate how different the buildings were based on who the leader is. I had personal experience in that when I was in Forreston. I was there for 21 years, we had four different principals. And with each building leadership change, our building changed -- sometimes for the good, a couple of times for the really, really bad. It's the same students, same community, same teachers, but the atmosphere of the building changed because of the person who was sitting in that principal's chair. That was really eye-opening for me as a teacher. And then leaning into my leadership to really see what an impact a building leader has on how a building functions.

Dusty Rhodes  24:35  

I believe you. So let's talk about the 5Essentials. We're in that window right now where hopefully, students teachers, parents are completing the survey. What all can a principal learn from the 5E?

Stephen Herkert  24:50  

Well, the 5Essentials are really the only, in most cases, it's really the only opportunity they get to get anonymous feedback from all stakeholders. And what I have found is the most challenging part of the 5Essentials is getting administrators to believe that the data is valid, and is truly reflective of what people think. And that goes back. I was principal at Byron, when 5Essentials first came out, it was in 2012. And I was so excited as building there because at that time, I had done it for what, six, seven years, five, six years, I think. And our building was humming. I mean, we were high achieving my teachers were awesome. We had great results. It was… the climate was tremendous in the building, people liked coming to work, kids like coming to school, I liked going to work every day. And I was really excited that I was going to have an opportunity to show the world that Byron Middle School is the best school in Illinois. 

So we took the survey the first time. And I remember we got the result then in June, I think they got released like 11:30 at night. I got the email, I opened it up. And I felt like somebody had punched me in the gut. Because the results that I got on that survey, while they weren't terrible, they did not shine as positive a light on my school as what I thought they were going to. And it hurt. It hurt to the point where I was mad. 

And the first thing I did was I ignored it. And again, I'm-- some people listening may have been around during that time, and I'm sure that if they were they remember what happened afterwards, the IPA listserv lit up for about a month of principals just ranting about how ridiculous a survey was and how it does not reflect what's going on their building and how they know that I was one of those. I complained about it. 

But then I got to the point, because I had good, good structure in my building, I thought, I'm taking this to my school improvement team. We met every Tuesday 7:30 In the morning, and I brought the survey results in and I said look at this. Can you believe this? And was the question that sticks out, there's a question on there under the instructional leadership piece, is a question that says the principal knows what's going on in my classroom. And I had, like 28% of my teachers disagreed with that statement. And I threw it out there. And I said, Can you believe this? And there was kind of silence. And they're saying, we kind of can believe this. 

And so we started because you know, I had a good relationship with them, we started really honest discussion. And it turns out that there were things that that I was overlooking, that was really important to the teachers. And that I just wasn't aware of it, you know, I thought I was doing everything completely the right way. They did not necessarily see it that way. 

So once I got over the initial shock, we started digging into the results of the 5Essentials. And I can say from that moment until the time I retired, that process of diving into the data that we mined from the 5Essentials lead our school improvement process. Some of the biggest, most powerful changes we made in the way we did business came as a result of feedback from the 5Essentials, both from the students and from the teachers as well. 

And the biggest problem with the 5Essentials -- and I've said this to them, because I work with not directly with the team, like on a regular basis, but I meet with them on occasion, and I have a connection with the leader of the UCImpact team -- the biggest problem that the survey presents is that they put those darn ratings on them. I wish they didn't put ratings, I wish they just gave you the raw data, and then allowed you to do what you needed to do with it. And two years ago, they changed the naming of the rating system. They used to rate… is this going too far into the weeds here?

Dusty Rhodes  29:14  

No, we like weeds.

Stephen Herkert  29:18  

They used to rate your like, you know, the 5Essentials has, you know, that's called 5Essentials because it's like five pillars of indicators of successful schools. And within each of the pillars, there's sub-components, there's subcategories. And then within each subcategory is where the questions are. And there's anywhere from like four or five up to 10 questions in each one of these subcategories. They assign a rating to the 5Essential itself and then they assign ratings to the sub components also. And the ratings from the time it started -- 2012 until a couple of years ago -- used to be about how close you were to implementing that essential. So it would say, well implemented, not yet implemented. Yeah, whatever. Nobody really understood what it meant. So it didn't mean anything, which was good. 

And then two years ago, they changed those systems to five ratings you can get, and they range from very strong, to strong, to neutral, to weak, to very weak. So now you've got principals that are going on and look at their 5Essentials. And instead of it saying, partially organized for improvement, it now says, weak under instructional leadership, that's hard to overcome. And that I really, truly believe that's the biggest obstacle to getting people to acknowledge their 5Essential survey, because leaders don't want to go in front of their board, or go in front of their teachers, and present them with a document that says, their collaborative teachers are very weak, or their academic instruction is weak or neutral. That's the biggest concern. 

So when I work with schools I, remove the ratings. And all we do is we look at the data. And we determine regardless of what the ratings are, does that response to this question mean that things are going well, or that this is a concern of yours. And once we can get them to that point, positive things happen. And realistically, in my region, I tell this to the 5Essential people all the time, if they could do a survey to see which area of the state most heavily utilizes 5Essentials, I would almost guarantee it's Northwest Illinois, because I have a hold in almost all school districts up here. And it's a priority for the work that we do.

Dusty Rhodes  32:05  

There you go looking for this survey to prove that you're the best. So competitive there. I mean, that's a good thing. That's the coach in you, I guess. Okay, so if I'm a principal, and you've got my data, what do you focus on? And what do you drill down on? 

Stephen Herkert  32:28  

Okay, so when I'm actually sitting down and working with a principal, as when the reports first come out, the first thing I look at with them, is the effective leaders essential, because that's the one that is most directly reflected on the work that they do. And then the other one, like, if I'm just, let's say that I'm going to go do some work with a school, and I really don't know anything about it. Then, before I walk into that environment, the five essential that I look at is the one on collaborative teachers. Because that's when teachers reflect on what it's like to work in that building. And they also reflect on each other. And so it's pretty easy to get a pretty good grip on whether or not that's a fun place to work, based on how the teachers feel on a day to day basis about the work they do and about the people that they work with as well.

Dusty Rhodes  33:27  

Okay. I'll say as a mom, I think my first one would be for students. Do you feel safe in school? And I would disaggregate that by race.

Stephen Herkert  33:40  

And again, that's, I work with, I live in Rockford. And so most of the IPA assignments that I get are with Rockford schools. And working with principal in Rockford is really different than working with a principal in Galena, as far as, you know, what their day to day life looks like. So we definitely, like, in in the Rockford schools, we definitely look very heavily at the student responses to the survey as well. And that of the of the 5Essentials, three of them are populated by teacher responses, and two of them are populated by student responses. So we can look at ambitious instruction, which is when students are reflecting on, you know, what the instruction looks like in that building, how rigorous it is, how much they're challenged, whether the teachers asked difficult questions on tests, you know, those kinds of things they're asked. And then the other one is supportive environment. That's also student populated. And that's where that's, you know, they asked as a student teacher trust, you know, do you trust your teachers do they follow through on what they tell you? Do they challenge you? Do you feel safe in the building? Do you feel safe on the buses? Do you feel safe on the bathrooms? That's, that's where that information comes from, you can divide the data by gender, by grade level, by race, by IEP, non IEP, by ELL, non ELL, and by low income or non low income. Okay, so that's something that everybody has access to, but that's only with the student data.

Dusty Rhodes  35:32  

Okay. So outside of your ROE, where it sounds like you insist on 5E, do you have any sense of what percentage of principles actually view and analyze their 5E results?

Stephen Herkert  35:48  

You know, I do not, I do not know that. But my gut would tell me that very few. I mean, to the extent where they focus on it at, you know, like with school improvement teams, or with building leadership teams, and where they spend time, you know, really diving into, you know, the historical trend data, or the actual responses to all of the questions and a lot of questions on this thing, you know, there's teachers take close to 100 students, high school students take over 100. So there's a lot of data collected. And I would be surprised, honestly, if it was double digits of schools that really make the 5Essentials a central point of the work that they do.

Dusty Rhodes  36:33  

Wow. And 10 is a double digit, you think it's that low? So what would you say to the ones who just don't bother? It sounds like they have the same relationship with the 5E that I have with my bathroom scale.

Stephen Herkert  36:51  

Yeah, that's very, very true. If you ignore it, it doesn't exist. So one thing that we are trying to do, and my one man crusade to spread the love about the 5Essentials is we are in the process of writing an administrator Academy. For the 5Essentials, surprisingly, one doesn't exist. You know, there's admin academies for everything. But there isn't one that focuses on the 5Essentials. So we are very close to submitting proposal for a 5Essentials one. 

And the outcome of the administrator Academy is not just to get them familiar with how to navigate the site, because the site can be very, very challenging, because there's so much data on it. But it's how to take the data from the site and process it in a way that you can put it in front of teachers and start having conversations. And during that process, we remove the ratings. And we just focus on question by question and what the response rates were to that question. And then walk them through a process of determining whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, or something that we're really not worried about. So hopefully, if we get an academy written up, we'll be able to start spreading that outside of this area.

Dusty Rhodes  38:14  

Okay, you know, I have a son who got me hooked on NBA basketball years ago. And so I watch, I listen to all these podcasts, and I watch all these shows where they sit and analyze that, I think you can just put together a little panel of guys in bright suits, and they will be chopping up all the stats. From the 5E Draft, you can have a draft…

Stephen Herkert  38:43  

Whatever it takes to get to get them involved, that would be…

Dusty Rhodes  38:47  

…give every school fake name with a fake mascot, and draft. I'm curious, I think this is a panel at an IPA event. And you got to wear your best sneakers.

Stephen Herkert  39:05  

Well, I have like I've presented this at Triple I conference, 5Essentials, for several years, I've presented to school boards at the Triple I why the 5Essentials is important to school boards. I've presented at other conferences on it.  Again, anybody who will listen, I will talk, because I really do feel that you can make huge important changes in your building. If you would take the time, in a collaborative way, to go through what people are saying about your building and how you can move forward. It's a great tool for that -- if they only knew how to use it and took the time to do it.

Dusty Rhodes  39:49  

Okay, thank you so much for taking time to talk to me. 

Stephen Herkert  

Sure. Thank you.

You've been listening to Stephen Herkert, Director of ROE services for ROE #8, and a principal mentor with the Illinois Principals Association. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe on Apple or Spotify, and share it with your colleagues and friends. Thanks for listening!