David Huang 👻🖋️🚢

Knowing vs Mastering Active Listening: Knowing: Listen without an agenda. Mastering: Catch yourself when your inner voice starts formulating a response before the other person finishes speaking.

AI is the new graphing calculator. • Speed up tedious work? AI. • Store your systems? AI. • Visualize complex problems? AI. • Check your work? AI. The real skill is knowing what to request your desired output.

Brendan Schneider wrote: "Academic excellence means nothing. It's white noise. Every school says it." He's right. Parents want specificity. They want to picture their kid in your classroom. This is why I do classroom walkthroughs every week. Not to evaluate teachers. To capture what learning actually looks like: • What questions are teachers asking? • How do students show they've learned? • What happens in our PLCs when we review student work? Those observations become the language I use to describe our school.

Behavior issues are rarely just behavior issues. Look at all the factors. • Classroom norms • Home environment • Student engagement • The student's unique challenges • Students’ previous school experiences They all contribute to student behaviors. When you only address the behavior, you miss the root cause.

If kids can learn from AI and YouTube, what's the purpose of school? Most people think school exists to deliver content. They are wrong. School exists to build character, community, and the capacity to learn when no algorithm is watching.

He never applied to college. His assistant principal did it for him. One day during his senior year, an envelope showed up in the mail: he'd been accepted to South Carolina State University. Confused, he showed it to his assistant principal. She said: "Yeah, I did that. And you have to be there on Saturday. If your parents can't take you, I'll take you." This is William Whitehurst. Here's his story (with 1 lesson for school leaders): ~ For most of Whitehurst's youth, his future was scoring at the end of a football drive. He took life yard by yard, play by play. But halfway through his senior year, the offers weren't coming. Football wasn't panning out. He wasn't thinking about the academic accolades he'd earned or where they could take him. "I was just in a sunken place," he says. ~ Then came the envelope. His assistant principal, who had become a mentor and confidant, had applied to college on his behalf. His parents drove him that Saturday. "That was the springboard for my educational process," Whitehurst says. ~ He started his career teaching eighth grade math. Then he became a counselor. Then an assistant principal. Now he's principal of Marshall Elementary School in South Carolina. About 85% of his students live below the poverty line. He sees himself in every face. ~ "I want my students to understand that it's not a burden growing up the way they did, or where they did," Whitehurst says. "In fact, that's going to be your superpower." His daughter was once his student. "It changed the way I saw the job. I was not only fighting for each parent's kid, but I was fighting for my own kids, too." ~ Whitehurst leads the way he was led: through relationships, belief, and a constant push. "When I'm working with teachers, I build relationships with them, look at ways to improve what they're doing already, and then serve as that constant push." He models being coached himself. His instructional coaches give him feedback in front of his staff, so teachers see that everyone is learning. "It's always been about helping a teacher see their own potential. Once they see their own potential and understand that I'm there to support them, they rise to the occasion and become a greater version of themselves." Then he asks one thing: "Pay it forward with your students." ~ He still takes progress yard by yard, just in a different way now. "I had to learn to take a step back and appreciate the growth that you see, no matter how small it might be. If you keep the end goal in mind, but focus on the small increments during the journey, then you will arrive exactly where you need to be." ~ Reflecting on his path still brings him to tears. "I can be in the middle of a data talk with my leadership team and almost in tears because I want it that badly for my students." "I understand that it wasn't football or basketball that saved my life. It was education. Education saved my life."

I asked a kindergartener if he was ready for his 3 day weekend. He said no. “I will miss this place a lot, a lot, a lot” This is the school I wanted to build… students who do not want to leave campus because they are loved, feel safe, and are encouraged to let their curiosity drive their learning. They want to spend more time at school.

Saying 'no' to parents who want special exceptions is one of the hardest parts of being a principal.

Learning not to fix everything you notice takes more discipline than fixing it yourself.

2 kids became instant friends at our assessment. At pickup: "Let's play tomorrow! I'll bring my bunny!" The parents were confused. Turns out the kids didn't know each other. They just had fun and planned their own playdate. That's connection.

This morning, I walked to the coffee shop, thinking about what I wanted to write. • what is the topic? • who am I writing to? • why should the audience read it? • why should they listen to me? By the time I sat down, I knew exactly what to write. Sometimes the best strategy to writing is separate your “thinking” block from your “writing block”

Why do school leaders want to change jobs? • For higher salaries? • For lighter workloads? • For better opportunities? The grass is not greener. It takes a lot of “related skills” to excel in being a principal. Changing jobs will not help you master the essential skills you need to thrive. Develop these skills instead.

I spend 15 minutes with every student before I write their recommendation letter. I represent our school. I want to be proud of who we send. I want to know the student, not blindly check boxes. I want the letter to be meaningful for the student as well as to the school they are applying to.

"No one warned me about kindergarten." That's how Jeffrey Monroe describes his first year as a principal. He was a high school teacher. He'd never led a school. He'd never worked in a charter. And he'd definitely never worked with 5-year-olds. "The 'Garden of Children' is a very strange place," he says, laughing. "It's a beautiful place, but you've got to keep your mind right." This is Jeffrey Monroe. Here's his story (with 1 lesson for school leaders): ~ In 2023, Monroe became principal of Promise Academy Hollywood in Memphis, Tennessee. The pre-K to 5th-grade charter school had been around for 20 years. It sat at an area impacted by years of divestment and population decline. When Monroe arrived, everything was in flux. • New leadership team • New curriculum • The previous principal, who had led for 13 years, was still in the building And Monroe had never led anything before. ~ He asked himself a question: "What's going to be my highest-leverage move?" He didn't have the technical skills to coach kindergarten teachers. He'd never taught kindergarten. But he realized something: "I could help them move from focusing on what we didn't have to what we did have." He chose to lead with mindset first. Systems could come later. ~ Monroe built his leadership around five mantras: 1/ Trust before tasks 2/ Support before systems 3/ Relationships before results 4/ Patience before pride 5/ Courage before confidence "In order for people to do the tasks you're asking them to do," he says, "they have to trust that you know what you're talking about, and that you care about them as people." ~ He expanded the leadership team from 3 to 12. He spent time in classrooms, asked teachers what they needed, and made sure they saw the impact of their input. He launched student surveys. He prioritized daily social-emotional check-ins. He built an attendance and behavior team out of the music, art, and PE teachers, because they already had trusting relationships with every student. ~ He called his approach "calm urgency": clear-headed intensity that keeps everyone focused on the goal, even when there are plenty of distractions. Year one was about adaptive work: shifting beliefs, building relationships, creating conditions for growth. Year two was about technical execution: RTI systems, academic monitoring, and small-group instruction for maximum impact. ~ The results in two years: • Teacher attendance reached 98% • ELA proficiency more than doubled • Math proficiency more than tripled • The school was recognized as a Reward School for the first time in its 20-year history • 80% of staff said they planned to stay three years or more ~ Monroe's story is now used to inspire new principals in the National Aspiring Principals Fellowship. His advice to leaders facing a steep learning curve: "The principalship is not promised to you. You only get one chance to get it right. Focus on the work. Drown out the noise. And don't miss your moment."

I met with 2 teachers to tell them we are making an exception. I did not give details. 1/ they do not need to know. 2/ I will not put them in a position where they have to lie to students or skirt questions. Sometimes protecting your team means limiting what they know.

When parents criticize your decisions, remember… • You are the trained educator • They see 2% of what you navigate daily • You have multitudes of constituents, not just parents. Their frustration is real. So are your experiences.

We tell teachers to rejoice in suffering because it builds character (Romans 5). Suffering produces endurance. Endurance produces character. Character produces hope. We count on people's ability to take on pain so that it produces character. But how effective is this practice? How well do I actually treat suffering as a character-building tool?

We dialed up accountability with written forms and specific outcomes. Staff love it. When expectations are specific and objective, people do not have to guess. They know exactly what is expected and can meet it. Checklists and structure actually free up attention for relational work.

We spent 45 minutes debating about schedule changes. Half the room wanted to increase instructional time for core subjects. The other half wanted to create longer class periods for deeper learning. No one stopped to ask which problem we were actually trying to fix. You cannot solve a problem that your team has not agreed on.

This is exactly what I do. I help school leaders tell that story—the one that transforms browsers into families. We build the narrative clarity that makes enrollment growth inevitable. If your school's story isn't doing the work yet, DM me. Let's talk.

If you're struggling to articulate what makes your school different... Then you're leaving enrollment on the table. That story. Written clearly. Told everywhere. That's where growth starts.

A tech billionaire walked away from his industry entirely. What was the reason? He wants to rebuild education. Here's why every school leader needs to see what he did.