Kraig Sproles: You have to create opportunities for joy throughout the day. And you can have a joyful experience and a joyful classroom that still has high levels of learning and still has high levels of rigor.

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Introduction

Janet Pilcher: Hello, everyone. Welcome to today’s Accelerate Your Performance podcast. I’m your host, Janet Pilcher. As always, thank you for tuning in this week as we focus on what it takes for leaders to achieve important outcomes. And we engage in this work because we’re focused to the Nine Principles Framework, and we review the work that some of our excellent leaders are doing in the field.

So today I’m excited to welcome Superintendent Dr. Kraig Sproles. Kraig has been Superintendent of Bethel School District in Eugene, Oregon since 2021 and a partner of Studer Education since 2023.

And as superintendent, he’s helped boost graduation rates and improve literacy. But what really stands out in his work is making middle school students feel more connected and engaged. Kraig is big on mental health support for students and believes that every student should have equal opportunities.

You’re going to love this podcast with Superintendent Sproles. So I’m happy to welcome him here today to talk about his first year of partnership with us and how his early work as a middle school teacher still inspires him today. I especially think you’ll like what he has to say about humble listening.

Let’s dive right in.

Interview

Janet Pilcher: It’s with great pleasure that I welcome Dr. Kraig Sproles to our show today. Welcome.

Kraig Sproles: Thank you. I’m excited to be here, excited to contribute to the conversation.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah. So, you know, Kraig, you and I have a little bit in common. Years ago, I started my professional education life as a high school math teacher. In this first question, I related to it because when I taught high school math, one of my favorite subjects to teach was Algebra 1 because I got to teach the ninth graders.

Kraig Sproles: Yeah.

Janet Pilcher: Because I love ninth graders, you know.

Kraig Sproles: No, that’s a rare math, that’s a rare math teacher who likes teaching Algebra 1 to ninth graders.

Janet Pilcher: It really is. So that was like every year I’d go in and, “I want to teach that”. You know, the department chair was like, “you wanna what?”

Kraig Sproles: [laughs] I can’t imagine you had to fight for it.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, I didn’t. And my other favorite one was Geometry, you know, which no one wanted to teach either. So for the most part, you know, I had Geometry and Algebra 1 most of the time when I taught and loved every bit of it.

But I love the ninth graders and, you know, you taught middle school science and math and, you know, I talked to Kathy who talks about you loving the energy and the quirkiness of that, that group.

So as you think about your teaching experiences, you know, how do you take that learning into the work of today and decision making as a leader?

Kraig Sproles: Thank you for that question. And I actually started as a high school math teacher as well. High school math and environmental science. And then I got laid off and riffed and moved down to the middle school and I went kicking and screaming, thinking that I wouldn’t love it and absolutely fell in love with that age group. And that’s where I stuck, and that’s where I found my purpose.

So there’s so many things about what I loved about middle school students, but the main lesson that I learned from that group of students is you have to create opportunities for joy throughout the day. And you can have a joyful experience and a joyful classroom that still has high levels of learning and still has high levels of rigor.

And that’s something that I’ve carried with me as a leader, and it’s for our strategic plan that I think we’re going to talk about here in a bit. But, so our mission statement is to create relevant, responsive and joyful learning communities. And that notion of joy, I think at times, is lost and not called out explicitly.

So that’s one of the things I loved about middle school teaching is if you just go with the flow and live in the chaos and take a breath, there is so many punctuated moments of joy. Just laugh out loud. Love what you’re doing. Love where you’re at. Joyful moments.

The other thing that I loved and I take this really seriously as an educator is middle school students are, they come to you largely unformed or they feel, they feel unformed. And it’s such a key time in somebody’s life that, you know, if you think about those time periods, they come in as sixth graders from an elementary and they leave ready for high school.

It’s such a punctuated time in their life. And I just felt like if I can have a small touch point with them that it could really, it really gave me a deep satisfaction to be able to do that. So I guess that’s another thing that I deeply believe in the impact of public education, and it can have profound impact in our communities if we do it well.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, you know, and it’s those transition years, you know, what you get on your transition, you’re in middle school, is you get the transition from elementary to middle and then the transition from middle to high and those transition years are so, you know, so important. And, uh, you know, thinking about even from a leadership standpoint, it’s the helping people through those transitions of change—

Kraig Sproles: Yeah.

Janet Pilcher: A difficult time. It’s, you know, it’s our young people feeling those same things. And that’s where, where I was as a, why I loved ninth grade, because I knew that at that point, those young people were making very critical decisions about where they were going to land in that, like very scary for many of them, transition point.

Kraig Sproles: Yeah.

Janet Pilcher: And I agree, the joy and the humor that you can attach to it, you know, and the love and care and concern that you build that solid foundation, you know, just could determine if somebody, someone, a young person, you know, manages to be productive and feel like they can work through whatever changes occur to not and end up in a bad place.

So, you know, that’s the, as we think about, I always think about teaching, Kraig, if we take those same concepts that we love so well about teaching and apply it as leaders to the people that we lead every day at work. I

Kraig Sproles: Yeah.

Janet Pilcher: t’s not that different, is it?

Kraig Sproles: No, it’s not. And we’re people in the work, too. I mean, that’s where I just think just being humble in our own learning and that we’re all in transitions. I’m, you know, I’m 56 years old, and I’ve been doing this for 27 years,  and every year that I move into my next year of leading or teaching or being in the work is a transition for us.

And so I think that’s one thing that I really like about improvement science and it’s one of the learnings that I’ve had this year is that it’s not an event. I think it’s not like, and I can talk about a mistake we made around that because it’s not that you gear up to improve for one six-week cycle and then you celebrate that six weeks and then in the seventh week you’re not improving or you’re not changing.

That’s a fallacy. And I think during COVID where we radically changed our delivery model and we radically changed the way we relate to students and families in such a short time period forced us to see, like, we can make radical changes quickly and then be better on the backside of it.

And so that’s one thing I really, I think a lot about that we’re all in transitions all the time. We just don’t necessarily take the time to take a breath and learn from those transitions and learn from where we’re at collectively, and that’s, that’s one thing I really like about this work.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, I love that and you know I have, I always tell people I really have a difficult time when we talk about sometimes the concept of change leadership as if it’s something that happens to us every now and then right, you know? And I’m like—

Kraig Sproles: Yeah.

Janet Pilcher: And I’m like, “leadership is change.” Leadership is about changes happening all the time. If we’re talking about leadership, we’re always talking about the changes and how we manage through those.

So speaking of the work that you do, and again, have had good conversations with Kathy who works closely with you and on our team, and thinking about your strategic plan and operationalizing your goals, you know talk about that process, Kraig, and what you’ve done with that so far.

Kraig Sproles: Yeah, so my just in full disclosure, I’ve done strategic planning. This is probably my fourth or fifth time that I’ve done it in a school district, you know, and quote unquote done it. So, you know, like went through the process of listening, identified a mission statement, wordsmithed the heck out of it, brought together committees to critique the wordsmithing, and then it ends up in this document that sits on a shelf behind me. And then we go on for the other five to seven years and then redo it.

So I really wanted to have a different process here to not have a strategic plan that is ceremonial and that just sits on a shelf but to have a strategic plan which is a living document. And my own learning is I’d never done that before. In 27 years, I’d never created a plan with the intention of having that plan transform me as a leader but also transform the way we teach and reach our students and engage our staff.

So when we, we created a strategic plan, we did all the steps of listening to a lot of folks and doing targeted outreach to families and groups of students who hadn’t typically participated in our processes. We also reached out to families that were disenfranchised or pushed out of our system for a variety of reasons, and we did that with an equity lens to make sure that we were hearing those voices of not just the folks who will answer a survey.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah.

Kraig Sproles: That’s a certain population of people who are super important, but they’re not our only students. And so, students and important constituents. And so then we, we operationalized a plan and in our strategic plan, and our mission statement is, you know, to create relevant responsive and joyful school communities where all members thrive.

And so that notion of thriving is something that we kind of dug into and what does that mean and how can we make measurements around what does it mean to thrive in Bethel? So that was really when Kathy stepped in, and she’s been such a strong thought partner. I can’t tell you how many times she’s kind of helped me course correct and say, you know, if you allow these behaviors, the outcome of it may be this. So let’s think about, you know, this notion of alignment and, and how much leaning you’re going to allow within the organization around behaviors that reinforce or don’t reinforce who we say we’re becoming together.

So finishing up our first year, I’ve really appreciated the way that we’ve been able to have other people own the work. And so we’ve created a leadership team that has a group of building principals on it, and they’re starting to deliver the message. And so it’s not just centralized in one person. It’s not Kraig’s plan.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, some people ask, like, “how do you, how do you get people to buy in?” You know, what you’re talking about is the first step. Quote, you know, I’m like, well, if I could answer that question and put, you know, sprinkle dust and answer your question and say, “that’s it,” you know, then that would be too easy for us. But buying in is a system. It’s a process. It’s the way we make—

Kraig Sproles: Yeah.

Janet Pilcher: —conversation with people. I mean, and what you did is really that first step of how you set the stage for that. You know, that, that second step phase, Kraig, is what you’re doing as well. And that is you’re getting to that execution process of the strategic plan, not just letting it, like you said, sit on the shelf. But you’re saying, basically, “what are we going to do? How are we going to determine our success, and how are we going to execute on the actions that are most significant for us to do over time?”

So you’re beginning to do your short cycles of improvement and you’re with your implementation teams and cascading that process. So talk a little bit now about how you’re managing through or leading through that process.

Kraig Sproles: Yeah. And I do think this notion of buy-in is an interesting one. And that’s one of the things I just love about Studer. So like the one of the things that I’ve learned in this process is we need to be humble listeners to the people we’re serving. And intentional humble listening is, and that for me is the essence of rounding. That for me is the essence of doing targeted surveys, is that we are going to slow ourselves down enough to be humble with our decision-making as humans in the work. And that’s how you get buy-in.

And so when people see that you’re actually listening to them and that you’re taking what they’re saying as something that’s important and making changes based on that, I think that’s the key to this. And we’ve made a lot of mistakes. One of the things I really like is this notion of failing forward, and that if we can identify the actions we’re going to take and then try something and it’s going to be half-baked, it’s not going to be perfect. And then we learn from that, we publicly fail forward and say, “you know what, this worked and this didn’t work.”

And here’s just an example of that. Our first time of doing our 60-day cycles of improvement, I really needed to get to use your analogy of the flywheel, we really needed to get the flywheel moving in a similar direction. So we decided to do a K-12 cycle of improvement at exactly the same time. It started January 3rd, right when we came back from winter break. We got our administrators together and I said, “this is what we’re going to do for the next 60 days. We’re going to focus on literacy across K-12. We’re going to see what we learn from these improvement efforts. And then we’re going to have each building team report back on what they learned.”

In concept, I think it’s a really good concept. And it did force us to have really strong alignment from our five-year-olds to our 17 year olds, specifically focused on literacy and, which is a goal in our district. And so we learned a lot.

One of the things that we struggled with then is it became an event. So these 60 day cycles, you know, everyone dropped what they were doing in December—

Janet Pilcher: [laughs]

Kraig Sproles: —to start this 60 day thing. And there was tons of celebrations throughout. And then on the 61st day, people said—

Janet Pilcher: “Okay.”

Kraig Sproles: [laughs] “What now?” [laughs] “Like, what’s the next event?” And I realized, oh, this doesn’t stop on day 61.

Janet Pilcher: Mmmhmm.

Kraig Sproles: And we didn’t start learning on day one. So I just think this notion of whether we capture it in a strategic cycle or not, organizations are constantly learning. They’re constantly making mistakes and having successes, and then trying to build on that and moving forward.

Janet Pilcher: Mmmhmm.

Kraig Sproles: You know, I was a math and science teacher. So that’s just the way that organisms function is that they get feedback from their environment and they change. The thing I like about improvement science is, yes, this is something that we’re all doing, but we’re going to do it in a public way where we’re going to identify what exactly we’re trying. So then we can collectively learn from it.

Janet Pilcher: Mmmhmm.

Kraig Sproles: So it’s not like Bethel School District wasn’t doing this for the last 50 years, like we’ve been trying to serve our families and trying to do a good job since we were founded in the 1950s. But the thing that I like about this process and these cycles of improvement is that it gives us a way to do it publicly. And it gives us a way to align our strategic plan from, you know, from the boardroom to the classroom.

And just one more example of that, that something that we really learned this year is connecting our improvement science with our budget cycles. So we are in a time of declining enrollment in Bethel, which means if you are in Oregon, if you’re losing students, you also lose funding.

Janet Pilcher: Mmmhmm.

Kraig Sproles: So we had to make a really difficult decision of closing an elementary school this year. And in times when you have declining resources, you have to have clarity of your values and clarity of your purpose differently than when you’re not in those times.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah.

Kraig Sproles: Because if we could link our budget and the principles in our budget to our values, then when you have to make a really, really difficult decision, like closing, we have five K-5 schools, and we’re in the process of closing one of them. And that’s a really difficult decision for a community to go through.

But I attribute that we started with the articulation of who we are and who we are becoming in Bethel through our strategic plan. People see evidence of that in the way we’re deeply listening in the way we’re changing our practice and trying to get better to serve our students and families. And then when you make a difficult decision, there’s a little bit more clarity to it. And it’s more purpose driven, not necessarily just financial continuity driven.

So I’ve learned a lot through those processes. And I think it makes us better, not only in the classroom, but better as an organization overall, as we tackle some of these bigger issues.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, gosh, that’s such a, I mean, what a huge decision, you know, that, you’re right. I mean, there’s one of the biggest decisions that you’ll make in terms of closing a school. So just the, what nice work, Kraig, to be able to build that foundation so that you are not just making a decision and putting that out there and communicating it. But people really understand why that decision needed to be made and what the implications would be if not. And you know, how you manage that with continued relationship-building as you’re implementing that decision. That’s not a small accomplishment in any way. So—

Kraig Sproles: Yeah.

Janet Pilcher: Didn’t know you were in the process of doing that. But congratulations on just the heavy listening and good work that you’re doing to get to that place in your community.

Kraig Sproles: I just think that the essence of this model is this notion of humble listening, which is something that really, really appeals to me. And I like the idea, we think about rounding as there’s two different facets to it for us. One of them is rounding for outcomes. And so that would be rounding on something that we tried, like for instance, with our new employees. And so we wanted to get feedback, particularly with our employees of color, because we need to really recruit and retain staff that look more like our students and our families. And we currently don’t. We have many more white identified staff than the students and families that we serve. So we have a goal of increasing the diversity of our staff. And so rounding for specifically saying, you know, “how did the orientation to Bethel go? Do you feel supported? Are there people who are supporting you in the work?” And so that was one type.

But also this notion of rounding for engagement is another one where that is more of what we do is to just go out and say, “how are things going for you in Bethel?” [laughs]

Janet Pilcher: Yeah.

Kraig Sproles: “What are things that we can improve to get better? Do you feel like our communication strategies are working for you? And do you have just two or three things that if you could change, you would?”

So it’s not related to a specific initiative or a strategy, but it’s more just this notion of trying to centralize our decisions closest to the classroom and closest to the people who are actually delivering on our services, of course, which is our teachers in relationship with our students, you know, thinking about that notion of the instructional cores. We talk a lot about that. So, you know, that all teaching and learning happens in a relationship between a teacher and a student in the presence of rigorous content.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah.

Kraig Sproles: And so that’s the foundation. And then we use PLCs where groups of teachers come together and talk about their teaching. And then we use our improvement science and our strategic plan as an organization to keep the learning together. And that model from the classroom out instead of from the district office down is something that we tried to reinforce, and, and I think it makes us better.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, the natural alignment is occurring, like you said, not from the top down, but really from the classroom up. And people can see the interconnections of why certain things are occurring, and why you’re doing what you’re doing, and what you’re trying to do to help them, you know, be the best that they can be in the work that they do, and how that work contributes. That’s the, I love your term, “humble listening.” Mine’s not near as nice as that. Might just say “pay ridiculous attention to people.” [laughs]

Kraig Sproles: Yeah, well, it’s the same. Yeah, no, it’s incredibly nice. I think both of them are nice and both of them are important. But I think one thing I really appreciate, and I actually have your Hardwiring book on my desk. We’re having all of our administrators read it this summer. Because I do think the next level of work for us in Bethel is to hardwire these practices.

And so it’s not a one and done. So our 60 day cycle of improvement, we don’t necessarily have to have them start on the same day and end on the same day in that fashion. That was a good learning for us. So I want to, we’re going to hardwire our scorecards. We’re going to hardwire our rounding strategies, both rounding for outcomes and rounding for one of my principals calls it rounding for relationships, but rounding for engagement.

So we’re going to hardwire those processes. And then we’re also going to really lean in on our PLCs as our kind of if you think about the organizational flywheel as we move and improve together. But on the internal part of that flywheel, we have a little visual diagram that I have in my mind is the engine of change at the teacher level. So it’s teachers, honestly, this notion of humble listening, it’s these teachers getting together and saying, “Hey, I tried this thing. And I trust you enough to present my student data to you, knowing that you’re going to give me feedback with the best intention of moving the dial for our kids.”

That requires a lot of humility as well. And so modeling this notion of that we’re going to get better at getting better, we’re going to fail forward, ultimately in the service of our students. So that’s what we’re, that’s our next level of work.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah. So I’m looking forward to see the work that you all do next year. I think I’d like to close today, Kraig, with, you know, just as you think about your role as a leader, and you’ve done, as you started out to say, “it’s not like I haven’t ever done a strategic plan, I’ve done it multiple times. But this time, I did a little different. And I did it in a way that built meaning in our organization.”

You know, as you think about where you are now, and how the improvement work really changes you as a leader, you know, as we close today, what changes have you experienced as a leader, as you’ve led from this perspective?

Kraig Sproles: Yeah, I’ve thought a lot about this. And I think what the improvement science work and through Kathy’s leadership and mentoring as well, it’s brought together pieces for me that have existed for a long time in my personal beliefs about how we should be servant leaders in the world and in this work. But it’s reinforced a lot of the principles that were already existing.

The thing that I like about it, moving forward is it gives me a framework to talk about the little bits of improvement that I’ve been using for a long time. So when I wrote my doctorate on the notion of teacher flourishing, what are the school level factors that impact teacher flourishing? And it’s things like positive relationships and engagement, finding your work meaningful, having a sense of collective achievement or efficacy.

So those are things that have been bouncing around with me for a long time. So I think it is clarifying those things within myself, distilling them down to a few actionable strategies and a few actionable, honestly, talking points that I can constantly cite and recite. Because I think that the notion that a strategic plan and a mission statement only lives if people live it out in their behaviors. And so calling it out when I see it and reinforcing the words makes a difference to reinforce behaviors.

And then also just thinking deeply about who am I as a person in this work? Who am I as a humble leader and a humble listener and a servant in this work as well? Which I believe that that notion of a reflective practitioner should start with our leaders, first and foremost, who are able to identify where their learning points are and make that visible to the community. So those are just a few things that I’m thinking about moving into next year.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, the humble listening is so aligned to you and you are a humble leader. And sometimes as I’m interviewing people, what goes through my mind, Kraig, is, “well, you know, who wouldn’t want to be led by you, right?”

You’re the type of person with your approach, so you have the systems, but there’s a relationship and human connection to the systems. And what you really bring to the table is that human connection to a good improvement system that really provides your team with a great opportunity to be successful and in turn, you know, provide the best education to your students and families. So I just really appreciated our time together and appreciate the leadership that you’re bringing to our profession. Thank you very much for your time today.

Kraig Sproles: Well, thank you for the opportunities and for the kind words, Janet, that, that means a lot to me. Just as a quick shout out, I want to, just a quick shout out to Kathy as our coach and who has made me better as a leader, but also as a person in the work. And I appreciate her so much.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, thank you. And Kathy will listen to this and she’s cheering on as we’re speaking, and I’ll also just reach out to Kathy. She has had great impact on many lives of the leaders that we worked with. Thank you for sharing that about Kathy.

Kraig Sproles: Yeah, thank you.

Conclusion

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Janet Pilcher: Thank you for listening to our conversation today. Like Kraig said, it’s so important to create opportunities for joy in our work, and making a difference for our students certainly allows us to do that. I think you can see examples that Kraig provided to us that he’s committed to and that his district is focused on. I so appreciate him joining us today.

And if you enjoyed this episode, I think you’ll like our annual K-12 leadership event, What’s Right in Education. This will be our 13th year organizing it, and I’d love to see you there. This is one of my favorite times of year where we bring our partner organizations and leaders together to learn and network and enjoy each other. So if you’re interested, visit studentereducation.com/wrie to get more information and to register. In fact, Kraig himself will be speaking there on rounding strategies.

And as always, I thank you for tuning into this episode of Accelerate Your Performance. I look forward to connecting with you next time as we continue to focus on the Nine Principles Framework so that we can be our best at work. Have a great week everyone.