The 100 Percent Principal Podcast

Do you have a vision for your school but secretly doubt your teachers will get there with you? You're not alone — and you're not wrong to feel it. But the doubt isn't about your teachers. It's about a belief nobody has ever directly addressed. In this episode, I share the realization that stopped me cold this spring: I've spent twenty years trying to convince principals to believe in 100% student...

Are you beating yourself up because you just don't have enough time, bandwidth, or follow-through to finally get your staff aligned? What if the problem was never you? In this episode, I'm breaking down why every staff alignment tool you've been given — the culture retreats, the PLC protocols, the buy-in campaigns, the accountability conversations — was designed to produce compliance, not alignmen...

A principal recently told me she'd "almost gotten rid of her duds." Just a few more underperforming teachers out, she said, and her school would really take off. I knew different. In this episode of The 100% Principal Podcast, I break down why removing underperforming teachers won't save your school — and what's underneath every staff problem you've been fighting all year. If you've ever told your...

Every principal I know is starting to play around with AI, using it to write faster, produce more, get more off their plate. And most of them are walking away disappointed. In this episode I'm talking about why AI keeps falling flat for principals — and what the actual line is between what AI should handle and what it should never touch. We tried to teacher-proof teaching for decades. Smart boards...

Every year I step completely outside education and bring back five books that have nothing to do with schools — and everything to do with building one. This is my 2026 Summer Reading List, and it's the hardest one I've ever put together. None of these books are education books. But every single one has something real to say about the culture you're trying to build — and the kind of principal you'r...

You already have a vision for your school. You have probably had it for years. The problem is not that you cannot see it. The problem is that you have been waiting for someone else to tell you that you are allowed to believe in it. In this episode of The 100% Principal, I am talking about the permission gap — why the vision problem most principals face is not a skill gap or a knowledge gap, but a...

If you've ever stood in front of your staff in August full of hope and found yourself rationalizing data in May — this episode is for you. In this episode, I'm breaking down why the leadership playbook is keeping you and your teachers stuck in the same loop every single year — and why the only thing that actually breaks it isn't a new program, a new framework, or a new acronym. It's a 100% Vision....

You have a School Improvement Plan. You might not have a vision. And that difference explains everything about why your year keeps ending up in the same place. Most principals think the gap between the year they planned and the year they got is a follow-through problem. A staff problem. A prioritization problem. It isn't. It's a clarity gap — and your SIP, no matter how well-written, can't close i...

You've given the feedback. Done the modeling. Sent them to PD. And some of your teachers are still making the same mistakes they were making in September. Before you write that final evaluation, I want you to consider something: are you judging their decisions — or are you examining their choices? There's a difference. And it changes everything about how you develop teachers. What you'll learn: In...

You've spent real time on your vision. You can articulate it. Your staff has heard it. You believe it. And your master schedule is quietly working against every word of it. Why? Because nobody taught you to look at the schedule the right way:  as a mirror for your vision, not a logistics problem to survive. And once you see it that way, some problems you've been fighting for years turn out to have...

Most principals walk out of a hiring interview with a feeling. A 100% Principal walks out with evidence. In this episode, I'm breaking down the three-stage hiring system that changes who applies, who you interview, and who actually shows up in your building every day. What you'll learn: Why your job posting is filtering for the wrong people (and how to fix it in under 5 minutes) The one question t...

Your last culture-building moment of the year is already underway — and most principals are about to waste it. It's April. The energy has gone flat. Your teachers are still showing up but everyone is running on fumes. And somewhere in the back of your mind is a thought you haven't said out loud: I'm not sure this year went the way I wanted it to. I've watched principals turn around brutal years in...

Every morning you walk into school with a plan. And by 9am it's gone. You're constantly interrupted, constantly pulled into decisions that aren't yours to make, constantly the person everyone is waiting on before they can move. You probably think you have a boundaries problem. You don't. You have a systems problem. And those two problems have completely different solutions. I was on a podcast rece...

After eight years, this podcast has a new name, a new format, and one very specific focus: principals who have decided that 100Percent student success isn't an aspiration. It's something they're going to build. In this first episode, I'm telling you exactly what The 100Percent Principal Podcast is, who it's for, and what you can expect every week when you show up. Whether you're a sitting principa...

For the last four weeks I've been naming something you already knew but couldn't say out loud — what's happening with your students, your teachers, your communities, and why everything you were trained to do feels like it's working less than it used to. Today is the final episode of this series. And I have two things for you: the answer you've been waiting for, and an announcement I've been sittin...

The teacher you were trained to lead and the teacher standing in your building right now are not the same person, and nobody told you that. That's why in this episode, I'm  going to show you exactly who the New Teacher is, why the tactics that used to work have stopped working, and what it actually takes to reach a teacher who evaluates authority, interrogates truth, and is no longer defined by th...

I've spent eight years watching brilliant, dedicated principals do everything right — and still hit the same invisible ceiling. More effort. More initiatives. More of themselves poured into the work. And yet the results plateau, the staff drifts back, and in the quiet moments nobody else sees, the principal starts asking the most dangerous question in education: if I'm doing everything I was train...

Are you doing everything you were trained to do and still feeling stuck? The problem might not be you. It might be the playbook. In this episode, I'm naming the three forces that have converged to make school leadership harder than it's ever been: widening academic gaps that didn't go away when the headlines did, community instability that walks through your front door every morning with your kids...

This month marks eight years of this podcast — and instead of celebrating with a highlight reel, I want to do something more honest: tell you what these eight years have actually changed in me. I started convinced that the biggest problem in schools was a failure of imagination. What I've learned since is harder, more uncomfortable, and more useful than that. So, tune in for a very real examinatio...

Are you really sure your staff believes in your 100% vision — or are they just saying what sounds right in the staff meeting? In this episode, I'm sharing a simple but powerful diagnostic I call the Struggling Student Test: four things you can observe this week that will reveal more about your school's true beliefs than any survey or walkthrough ever could. Once you know what you're really dealing...

Right now, schools everywhere are ramping up test prep, adding review sessions, and trying to make sure nothing slips through the cracks before testing begins. In this episode, I'm breaking down the three biggest mistakes I see schools make right before testing season and show you how these mistakes quietly undermine results even when everyone is working hard. Plus, I'll show you exactly what to d...

By this point in the school year, I see the same pattern play out over and over again: a system isn't working, so we compensate. We work around the gaps, carry the weight ourselves, and tell ourselves it's just what this season requires. But over time, that compensation drains our capacity, and eventually, it drains something even more dangerous: our belief that a better solution is possible. In t...

We all love a good redemption story in schools—the students who struggle for years and finally turn things around. Those stories make us feel good. They also let us avoid a harder question: why did success take so long in the first place? During Coaching Week, that question kept coming up for me, and it forced me to look at how deeply we've normalized struggle and delayed success in the systems we...

I see this pattern over and over again: capable principals implementing solid ideas, working hard, and still feeling like progress won't hold. When that happens, we usually assume the problem is us—our clarity, our follow-through, our leadership—or we blame the moment we're in. In this episode, I unpack a harder truth that explains why so much good work fades, even when the strategies are sound. I...

I know I sound obsessed with vision, but in this episode, I'll explain why I can't stop talking about it. You see, everyone says you need a vision—but very few people can explain why it actually matters once the real work starts. In this episode, I unpack what a vision really does when things get messy: when district priorities shift, when parents push, when politics creep in, and when you're genu...