The Better Leaders Better Schools Podcast | The #1 Downloaded School Leadership Show

Teacher burnout won't be fixed with more grit. When resilience becomes the plan, schools stop redesigning the work that's draining staff.

Teacher burnout and staff wellbeing get the headlines, but school leaders are missing two quieter problems: toxic resilience and bore out. Steph Hawkins, founder of Well Well Well, brings two decades of leadership across the UK and internationally, plus postgraduate work in applied positive psychology.

She explains how "just dig deeper" became the bridge between unrealistic demands and human capability, and why it lets schools skip the real work.

She breaks wellbeing...

Leads education and innovation at Big Bad Boo Studios, where she builds multicultural animated content that helps kids navigate conflict, identity, and belonging. Rachael Thrash has spent 25 years designing curriculum and student leadership systems in international and public schools, from Helsinki to Portland, Maine. Her book, Let the Learners Lead, gives school leaders a field-tested toolkit for turning students from passengers into co-owners of their school culture.

Most classroom management strategies treat student behaviour as something adults control, not something students share responsibility for. Rachael Thrash, author of Let the Learners Lead, spent 25 years testing what happens...

Creativity in schools isn't about talent, it's a system. Budget cuts and constraints make your team more creative, not less.Creativity in schools gets treated like an elective — something reserved for art class and cut the moment budgets tighten.

Creativity researcher and author Susan Riley joins the show to make the case that creativity is a trainable system every school leader can build, not a talent some people have and others don't. Susan breaks creativity into four branches — creative skills, creative application, creative thinking, and creative expression — and explains why most schools only ever touch one or two of...

Delegating feels impossible when you run a school alone — until you turn what's stuck in your head into a playbook someone else can run. Delegation is the hardest skill for a principal running a school without an assistant principal — every checklist, process, and judgment call lives in one head, and that head is exhausted.

Kati Cahill, Head of School at Humanex Academy, a small private school for neurodivergent students south of Denver, walks through how she's been using an AI thought partner to pull her admissions process and scheduling system out of her head and into playbooks her...

Currently in his eleventh year of school administration and his twenty-fifth in education, Bill Renner has run the full course through the Ruckus Maker system — the Mastermind, one-on-one coaching, and now Digital Danny.

A middle school principal transitioning back to his first love, elementary, he's spent this year applying what each stage taught him about slowing down instead of reaching for the fastest answer in the room. He's also working on a book, currently titled Lead with Heart, Build with Purpose, and Serve with Joy, drawn from his own journals.

School principal Bill Renner has us...

Student behavior changed when the adults did: 25 discipline calls a day dropped to about one. Here's the adult-first work behind it.

School discipline problems don't start with the kids. Sarah spent years answering 20 to 25 walkie calls a day for escalated students. Tokens, red-light-green-light charts, taking away recess — external systems trying to fix an internal issue. Then she started doing the work on herself first. Ten days into opening a brand-new school this fall, she hasn't answered 12 calls total.

Jill Molli has taught Conscious Discipline for 25 years, and she names the leap most principals never make. Th...

Leading the Alliance for Decision Education's work to make decision science part of core curriculum are David Samuelson, the organization's Executive Director, and Mary Call Blanusa, its Director of Public Policy. Samuelson spent his career leading digital transformation at national associations before turning to teaching students and school leaders the skills to navigate uncertainty — the same skills, he says, that make a good sailor in unpredictable water.

Blanusa brings two decades of education policy and philanthropy experience, including co-designing decision-making courses with state systems like the Tennessee Board of Regents. Together they're building the research, courses, and di...

Over two decades in Memphis-area schools will teach you how to spot a leader who's still growing. Fred Holmes — known inside the Ruckus Maker Mastermind as the Velvet Hammer — started as a science teacher in Shelby County Schools, moved through teacher leadership and an assistant principalship, ran his own building as principal in Arkansas, and is now back in Memphis Shelby County Schools as a Professional Learning Communities coach, building leadership capacity district-wide. He's been a Ruckus Maker since the Mastermind's earliest days, joining during his first principalship and never missing a Wednesday since. Find him inside the Ruckus Make...

Dr. Naphtali Hoff trains school leaders and teachers to perform at their best without running themselves into the ground. A former educator and school leader himself, Dr. Hoff now coaches and trains school leaders on management, productivity, and delegation across the country.

He's the author of three books, and his newest, Becoming the Delegating School Boss, is the one most relevant here — it helps school leaders clear their plates and empower their teams.

Dr. Naphtali Hoff joins the Ruckuscast to break down why so many principals resist letting go, and what it actually takes to bu...

She studies why anti-racist professional development in schools so often fails to change how teachers actually treat students — and what works instead. Dr Abby C. Emerson is an assistant professor of Childhood Education at Hunter College, CUNY, where her research spans anti-racist and abolitionist teacher education, restorative justice, and the critique of whiteness in educational spaces.

She's been named National Association for Multicultural Education's Critical Teacher of the Year, and this fall she releases her book, From Anti-Racism to Professional Learning for Liberating Schools, with Harvard Education Press.

Most schools running anti-racist professional development hit th...

Building AI tools that replace one-size-fits-all personality tests with real career plans is what got Corey Kossack into K12 education. He's the founder and CEO of Orchard, an AI-powered career counseling platform for schools, and Aspireship, an employee upskilling platform — work born from watching his own father cycle in and out of a job he hated for years.

Kossack has spent his career helping people who want to help themselves climb toward ambitious goals, and Orchard is the result: an AI career counselor named Orchie, paired with real interviews from working professionals across hundreds of occupations. For Ru...

Phil Brown trains educators to build the kind of learning moments a curriculum can't schedule. As an experiential and adventure education trainer at High 5 Adventure Learning Center, he's guided everyone from Iraqi high schoolers working through conflict resolution to NHL players from the Boston Bruins and Calgary Flames through experiences designed to stretch — not break — them.

He also serves on the board of the Association for Experiential Education and hosts the podcast Vertical Playpen, where he digs deeper into the theory and practice behind this work.

Most principals have sat through a lesson that went exac...

Jenny Curtin partners with schools and districts across New England on behalf of the Barr Foundation, where she helps build and scale Transformative Learning Experiences — rigorous, project-based units developed with partner Springpoint that pull students out of the classroom and into courtrooms, communities, and real business ventures.

Her work runs on a philanthropic value most funders don't practice: taking the long view, and staying with schools through the slow, unglamorous work of actual change.

A student named Buddha dropped out of high school after years of disconnected, irrelevant coursework — and became his graduation class speaker afte...

A principal and coach based in Prince George, British Columbia, Canada, this episode's guest flips the usual format and turns the mic on Danny Bauer instead of the other way around. He brings the same coaching lens to the conversation that he uses inside the Better Leaders Better Schools Mastermind, where he works alongside other school leaders on the exact challenges this episode covers.

His questions push Danny past the usual talking points and into the mechanics of building a leadership vision that doesn't depend on him.

Most principals think the answer to burnout is...

Zaretta Hammond has spent her career pushing school leaders past feel-good equity language and into the instructional core, where the real gaps live. Her latest book, Rebuilding Students' Learning Power: Teaching for Instructional Equity and Cognitive Justice, names a pattern she calls cognition redlining — the quiet, well-intentioned way schools underdevelop the thinking capacity of historically marginalized students.

She's the author behind Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, a text already sitting on most instructional coaches' shelves.

Districts have poured billions into equity work for three decades, and the outcomes for Black, brown, Indigenous, and linguistically di...

Running an elementary school in rural British Columbia hasn't stopped this Ruckus Maker from building an indoor worm farm, growing hydroponic lettuce, and taking a self-funded year off to reset — proof that a principal's personality is not a distraction from the job.

Dan Watt is a Mastermind Coach inside the Ruckus Maker community and a recurring co-host of the Ruckuscast, known for turning "pay yourself first" into a leadership philosophy that's kept him energized four years into the role.

Joining him is Mitch Weathers, CEO and author of Executive Functions for Every Classroom, whose work on...

Confidence as a principal isn't something you're born with — it's something you build. I've been asking new Mastermind members and Digital Danny users why they're signing up, and I keep hearing the same thing: they're working on their confidence. Most won't say it out loud. Most think their doubt means they're not cut out for this.

That's the pattern I'm noticing. Here are three concrete practices — starting with a 90-second daily routine — that transform how you show up next year. You'll stop questioning every decision. You'll start trusting your gut. You'll lead like you mean it.

THIN...

Leading a 25-school network to a 96% graduation rate and 91% staff retention — with zero tenure protection — takes more than good policy. It takes a leader who has lived the exact inequity his schools now solve for. Pablo Villavicencio grew up in East LA, where his own neighborhood school graduated less than half its students, and only got a real shot at a quality education because his parents falsified an address to send him to a school 30 miles away.

He carried that lesson through Teach For America, a school closure in Harlem, and five years as a founding high scho...

Building a tutoring nonprofit that now serves 25,000 students a year — with a vision to reach millions — required someone who'd lived the exact gap she was trying to close. Aly Murray grew up a low-income student raised by a single immigrant mother, moved through a string of Title 1 schools, and felt firsthand what it's like to navigate homework and college applications without support at home.

She left a trading job at JP Morgan eight years ago to build Upchieve, a nonprofit offering free, 24/7 human tutoring and college counseling to every Title 1 middle and high school student in the coun...

Adam Wolfsdorf chairs the Humanities Department at Bay Ridge Preparatory in Brooklyn and teaches graduate students at NYU and Wesleyan, drawing on 26 years inside the classroom. He's the author of Teaching in the Riptide, where he names the moments educators get pulled under by something more powerful than their plan — and what to do when that happens. Outside the classroom, he spent 25 years performing professionally, including national tours of RENT and Grease.

A student kicks over a trash can, slams the door, and storms out mid-lesson. Seventeen other students sit frozen, waiting to see what the teacher do...

She spent six years hiding her autism diagnosis from everyone — peers, friends, even herself. Then she built a neuroscience-backed video game that's changing how neurodivergent students understand who they are.

Vanessa Castañeda Gill the founder of Social Cipher, an SEL video game platform designed by and for neurodivergent people, developed in partnership with the LEGO Foundation. Her work sits at the intersection of neuroscience research and lived autistic experience — and she's one of the few people in edtech who has both. She was diagnosed autistic at 14, went on to become a published neuroscience researcher, and turned her p...

Jeff Meade spent 20 years building companies. Then a friend asked him one question on a hike near Mount Fuji — what makes you happy? — and he couldn't answer it. That four-hour conversation led him to Paul Quinn College in Dallas, where he now serves as Chief Innovation Officer and runs a program with one non-negotiable rule: every student, regardless of major, must start and operate a real business before they graduate. No simulations. No worksheets. Real ventures, real customers, real failure.

Every school says it wants future-ready students. Most are still teaching them how to pass tests. Jeff Mead...

A researcher, Edtech expert, and PhD candidate studying the intersection of AI, learning, and human experience, Kris brings a rare combination of academic rigor and real-world application to the question every principal is quietly asking: is all this technology actually helping? His work with Play Piper puts him at the front lines of how kids interact with screens — and what happens when that interaction goes wrong. Kris has been studying and speaking about screen usage in learning environments since 2013, long before most districts had a policy on the subject.

AI policy still doesn't exist in most school di...

Eight years ago, Chad Weiden walked into one of South Carolina's most underperforming elementary schools — a campus so low-rated that the state took it over, failed to fix it, and handed it back to the district. He just turned it into a good school. The strategy for school turnaround he used wasn't a new curriculum, a fresh initiative, or a culture retreat. It was building beacons of excellence on every team and coaching teachers in real time, in the moment, while students were in the room.

Weiden spent nearly three decades building and leading schools across Chicago an...

A decade into the Better Leaders Better Schools Ruckuscast, Danny Bauer has coached and interviewed hundreds of school leaders — and the patterns are clear. Dan Watt, elementary principal in British Columbia and Ruckus Maker, flips the microphone and puts Danny in the guest chair. What follows isn't nostalgia. It's the unfiltered architecture of a school leadership development ecosystem that actually works — and what it means for how you lead your campus.

The Ruckuscast turns 10 this year. That's 10 years of watching which principals grow and which ones stall, which leadership beliefs hold up and which ones collapse under pres...

She helps principals stop surviving their schools and start leading them. Michelle Sloan is an educator, author, and leadership coach who spent seven years building a school from the ground up — which gave her something rare: "firsthand proof that mission-driven leadership isn't a feel-good concept, it's a survival strategy." Her book The Purpose Driven Principal is the framework she wishes she'd had in year one.

School leadership burnout is not a willpower problem. It's a systems problem. A principal walks in energized, writes down what matters, and by 6pm hasn't touched a single item on the list. Th...

The principal drive home test: if you can't name one thing that mattered today, you're in reactive mode. Here's the fix.

Principal burnout doesn't start in a crisis. It starts in the car at 6pm, when you've done a lot but moved nothing forward — the instructional leadership, the culture work, the long game stuff that actually changes outcomes never got touched. That's not a productivity problem. It's an access problem.

This episode introduces selfmentorship — the practice of being your own first coach instead of waiting for permission-based PD, the right mentor, or the right conference to l...

A professor at San Diego's High Tech High Graduate School of Education and co-author of PLC+: Better Decisions and Greater Impact by Design, Nancy Frey has spent decades studying how teachers actually collaborate — and why most of it doesn't work. Her research-backed PLC+ framework is the difference between a Wednesday morning ritual and a genuine engine of collective efficacy. She teaches full-time at a high school that runs every student through a real-world internship program, so her frameworks aren't theoretical — they're road-tested. Find her work at hightechhigh.org.

Professional learning communities were supposed to fix teacher isolation. Inst...

Her career started in Philadelphia public schools in the 90s, full of idealism and a master's in counseling psychology. A decade later, she was coaching executives in global corporations.

Now Sage Hobbs coaches school principals and superintendents on the skill that drives everything else — the ability to have conversations that actually matter. She is the author of Naked Communication: Courageously Create the Relationships You Really Want and the host of the Principal Pep Talks podcast.

School leadership research points to strategy, curriculum, data, and policy as the levers that move outcomes. Sage Hobbs will tell yo...

A Chicano educator from Los Angeles has spent nearly 20 years building the infrastructure that schools won't — the kind that catches students before they fall through the cracks.

Hector Chaira is the Director of Education Programs at the Latino Film Institute , home to the Youth Cinema Project, a filmmaking mentorship program now operating in 21 California school districts across 61 classrooms.

YCP brings professional filmmakers into English classes to guide students from concept to screen over a full school year. The results — in test scores, reclassification rates, graduation, and lives redirected — are impossible to ignore. Find ALIFI at latino...

The man who co-created category design — the strategic framework behind companies like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Drift — has a blunt message for principals: your recruiting ads are announcing that nobody wants to work at your school.

Christopher Lochhead is co-author of Play Bigger, Niche Down, and Category Pirates, the wildly popular business newsletter read by some of the sharpest operators in tech and venture. His latest book, Creator Capitalist, makes the case that the creator economy isn't a trend — it's the future of every career, including the ones you're trying to build on your campus.

Most princi...

Ten years of school leadership podcasting reveals one consistent truth: most principals are doing it alone when they don't have to. In this special anniversary episode, Danny Bauer sits down with co-host Dan Watt to trace the arc from isolated AP to category-defining podcast host — and what he's learned coaching hundreds of school leaders along the way.

Dan Watt is a school principal, leadership coach, and Mastermind coach for Better Leaders Better Schools, based in northern British Columbia, Canada. He joined the Ruckus Maker community as a member before stepping into a coaching role, and now co-writes th...

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Quick take: This episode is a masterclass in what happens when a teacher stops delivering lessons — and starts creating life-changing experiences.

Jesus Huerta is an educator and innovation coach who transforms classrooms into launchpads for curiosity, creativity, and future careers. From 3D printing to robotics, his work centers on one mission: give students access, spark possibility, and let them build what's next.

In this episode, Jesus Huerta challenges traditional education paradigms:

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Quick take: Most principals accept their school building as a fixed constraint. Anne Seeley proves it's actually your most under-utilized leadership tool — and you don't need a construction budget to start.

Anne Seeley, a Senior Associate Project Manager, NCARB, LEED, AP, AIA is an accomplished architect with a distinct blend of expertise.

For over 20 years, she has focused on educational architecture, creating everything from visionary master plans and engaging student Centers to complex campus renovations.

Anne doesn't just design buildings; she creates thoughtful environments that reflect...

Principal leadership development is broken — 3 out of 4 school leaders have no coach, no mentor, no one to think it through with.

Principal coaching and self-mentorship are the difference between leaders who wait for answers and leaders who generate their own. Corey, a Chicago principal, logged 910 conversations with Digital Danny over one school year — not for generic advice, but to think through the hardest decisions he faced: a staff situation, a career crossroads, a coaching conversation he needed to get right. He called it "almost like your self mentor." That's the category. That's what this is.

This...

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Quick take: Schools didn't gradually adopt tech — they surrendered to it. This episode is a wake-up call for leaders ready to reclaim learning, relationships, and childhood from screens.

Emily Cherkin, M.Ed., The Screentime Consultant, is leading the fight for a Tech-IntentionalTM childhood. Emily works with schools, families, policymakers, and advocacy organizations to ensure the future of education prioritizes skills, safety, and relationships over screens, EdTech, and A.I.

Emily is an author, speaker, consultant, and associate professor of public policy at the University of Washington. She is also...

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Quick take: Most systems are designed to control people, not empower them.This episode shows what happens when a leader flips that script — and trusts the people closest to students to lead.

Dr. Lindsay Whorton is president of The Holdsworth Center, a nonprofit building stronger leaders for public schools. She's the author of A New School Leadership Architecture, a bold blueprint for redesigning leadership roles so educators are supported, developed, and able to help students thrive.

In this episode, Dr. Lindsay Whorton challenges tradi...

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Quick take: You can't force engagement — but you can design for success. Tommy Floyd breaks down how one meaningful win can transform disconnected students into confident, motivated learners.

Tommy Floyd originally became involved in NASP® in 2003, while serving as a high school principal and NASP® coach. Several of the first NASP® state champions were on the Somerset High School team that Tommy coached.

He has seen, first-hand, how the program positively impacts students, parents, and teachers.

He has seen NASP® promote constructive teacher/student relationships, academic mot...

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Quick take: Most strategic plans fail for one simple reason — leaders try to sell a vision the community didn't help create. Drew Howick and Dr. Jeffrey Axelbank reveal how the Future Search process flips that script by putting the whole community in the room to design the future together.

Drew Howick is the founder of Howick Associates, a highly regarded consulting firm based in Madison Wis, and is well regarded as a trusted advisor and collaborative partner to hundreds of schools districts, most of which are in Wisconsin.

He is...

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Quick take:

This episode flips the script on school culture and student motivation. Adrian Ireland shows why most engagement issues aren't about effort — they're about environment — and what to do instead.

Adrian Ireland is an international educator, systems thinker, and author who reimagines the architecture of learning by challenging traditional, standardized education models. With experience leading across Asia and Europe, he champions learner-centered approaches that elevate curiosity, individuality, and creativity.