Building a Positive School Culture

Hey friends! Welcome to the Drug Prevention Power Hour, where we empower leaders in youth drug prevention. After creating a student-led movement hosting epic drug-free events across the nation, your host, Jake White, dedicated himself to making the prevention field more fun, impactful, and relevant for today’s youth. So if you’re in education, counseling, public health, prevention or just a caring adult looking for strategies to protect your kids. We hope you subscribe and learn from every show. Coming to you from Jake White and his team at Vive 18, enjoy this episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour.

Welcome back to another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour. I’m your host, Jake White. And if you haven’t realized it so far, the power hour actually lasts a half hour. You’re welcome. You get an hour worth of content in half hour because that’s how we like to do it. And before we get started and meet our next guest, I need to let you all know there are a couple spots open for the Vive 18 conference.

So if you’ve got some youth that want to ignite a new prevention club or you’re trying to train up your student leaders, you can still get some spots, some last minute spots for our event in Phoenix. And of course, the cruise is coming up in April and we do have a call for proposals out there if you want to lead a session or if you just want to sign up and enjoy this amazing conference on a cruise ship, get your CEUs and change the world. We’d love to see you there. Go to preventioncruise.net.

Now, meeting our awesome guest today, this is Ashley Booth and actually it’s Dr. Ashley Booth. she is so, so fun. She’s doing incredible work and she coordinates the state and federal grants for her school district out in Texas. So Ashley, let me welcome you to the show. Would you do me the honor of just introducing yourself and telling us a little bit of personal info about you?

Sure. So Jake and I met through school, obviously. I had him come out with 518, spoke to our students, and I felt like we had an amazing connection talking about prevention and the culture that we were having in Barbers Hill. And so Jake invited me to come on today. As I said, I work with federal programs in Barbers Hill. I also do a couple of other different things, work for Texas A &M and Stephen F. Austin teaching and then wrote a couple of books. I think we’ll talk about that in a little bit later too. But that’s a little bit about me.

I teach principal education classes, so teachers that are going to get their principal certification and they have to take all the certification classes, plus I do some of the master’s classes that go with that for their master’s program.

Okay, awesome. And now it’s coming back too, because you were kind of pulled into that world and didn’t really want to go, but you did a great job and one of your mentors saw some potential in you. So now you’re actually teaching it at colleges. That’s amazing.

Yes, I love it. love connecting with more people and just breathing life more into teacher leaders, principals who are going to be working with teachers and students, you know, in the classes every day.

Okay, I have to ask you before we get into your story because when, so Trevor from our team got to go work with your students, Tomas got to work with your students and I got to work with your students. And there’s something special about your campus and you might know what it is because you’re there, you’re building the culture together, like you see it. But from the outside coming in, it’s, y’all, if I could describe it, it’s like if a school was run by Disney World where everyone was so happy to be there. Every employee was on the same page. They were patient. They were kind. They were glad to be at work that day. They were connecting with each other. And as a guest, I felt it. And you also have big ambitions too. So can you tell us a little bit about what is so special about what y’all are doing? What’s the secret sauce?

The Importance of Community Engagement

Yes. Well, I love how you compared it to Disney World. And I would agree with that, too. When I first came on board at Barbers Hill, I instantly noticed that there was a big difference as well. And it is definitely the culture and climate that I feel. There’s saying people talk about, you know, drinking the blue Kool-Aid or, you know, just diving into all the things Barbers Hill, bleeding blue and white. And when you hear about those things about like a small community, I bet people really think about like Friday Night Lights, everybody comes together in the community for the football game, they’re joined together in any events, they’re united on every front. And I really truly feel that’s how Barbers Hill is, not just our school district, but our community. Our community is so invested in our students and our teachers and administrators that they are so on board that they are actually the ones who helped us to secure the funding to have Vibe 18 out there.

And we have had three different speakers, like you said, come out to our community. And I felt like each one of our speakers that came from Vive 18 was so powerful in different ways because each speaker spoke to a different set of group of students. And our group of students, we had been preparing for a couple of weeks for Vibe 18 to come because we have such a community and culture of teaching what we call the Eagle Way. The Eagle Way, we’re Eagles of course and the equal way is about how we want our students to become global citizens of our community and our world. We want them to be nice, caring, productive members of our society. We want them to be engaged in the classroom. We want them to be engaged in our community. So much so that we have a board goal by our superintendent and our board of directors that every student, 100 % district-wide, will be plugged in.

And what that looks like is that each student has a connection within our school or our community. Maybe they’re in band, orchestra, choir, they’re on drill team, they’re in athletics, they ⁓ do something in the community with their church, or maybe they are involved in our youth soccer league. We have a huge youth soccer league. We wanna make sure that our kids are plugged in so they feel like they’re connected to the community around them, that they feel that they are a part of something bigger than themselves and that they feel like they know where they’re going for their next step in their life as they move forward. And that to me speaks volumes about our school districts and our community. I’ve never been at a place like you said that felt like Barbra Still does. It’s a different kind of feel. And for my own personal children that I have attending Barbra Still, I feel like it was the best decision I ever made. There is just something different about Barbra. So like you said.

Wow. And it was the, when you mentioned the communities gathering around the schools is, you mentioned specifically, they, was it the Chamber of Commerce that, and I’m going to highlight this because some of our listeners are in charge of getting funding for prevention and who knew the Chambers of Commerce could be one.

Yes, the chamber they have a vested interest in the youth in your town and they’re going to be the leaders in your town tomorrow. So they’re investing in the schools. That was really, really cool to hear that that was part of the, they were funding and sponsoring basically Vive 18 to come visit you. And the other one that I want to pull out that you said I think is so important is that you’re actually checking and it’s part of your culture that every student has one extracurricular activity.

Yes and y’all are tracking this and you can ask them questions about it and check in on them. There’s a touch point with your staff and with the community and with the school. That’s incredible.

And Jake, I want to tell you more about that touch point. It is so specific down to the child that we actually have a Google Doc that names every single child and what they’re involved in so that if anybody in the district were to go onto a campus, including our superintendent, and he has done this, you know, finding a kid in the hallway or at lunch and sitting down and talking with them, and then he might pull up that Google Doc and say, little Johnny, you are into football.

Tell me about that. How was your game on Saturday or Friday night, whenever it was? And I think that’s very beautiful and speaks very highly of our administrators and how well invested they are in our students.

That’s so good. And if y’all have heard of the 40 developmental assets that we did episode probably a couple months back, but being plugged into your community is a huge protective factor and it determines success and it repels the risky behaviors that we’re trying to repel. So it’s cool to see a culture built around this and the tangible thing. How cool. It’s one Google document.

The power of that document in a student’s life is they feel seen and heard and cared for and they know that they belong there. I’m getting chills from a Google document. This is so cool. Well, Ashley, let’s talk a little bit about you. I guess let’s start with your story because I’m curious how you became passionate about this stuff and what makes you you.

Yeah, so my personal story is a lot like some of my students that I have taught in the past or some of them have counseled in my office as an administrator. A lot of students would tell me, you look like you grew up in the country club. You’re very privileged. And that’s just, it’s not the case. And so my story, I actually grew up homeless for a short period of time. I had a mom that unfortunately did not graduate high school.

My father did not graduate high school. My mom didn’t even go past the eighth grade. So we kind of struggled a lot in my younger years growing up. I have two younger brothers, two different fathers. So that adds, you know, a different dynamic at home too. And you’ve got one parent, she’s working free jobs. At the time of eight years old, I was in charge a lot of my household. I was the one who got the dinner on the table, cleaned the house, got the laundry done, made sure the kids had their homework done and were in bed because oftentimes my mom was still at work. My dad was not around because he was a drug dealer, a drug addict, an alcoholic in and out of prison.

My mom also had some history with alcohol and drug use as well prior to my brothers and I being born. And so that really had a heavy toll on our family because, you when you’re in one parent household and there’s drugs and alcohol involved as well, that adds a little bit of stress and challenges to the children in the household altogether.

There was a point where we did live in my mom’s car. We lived behind the dollar store and I lived in a women’s shelter for battered women and their children. It was not an easy. I wouldn’t say it was the hardest life. I always tell people, you know, there’s other people that had it harder. I don’t think I had a very hard childhood. There were some definite challenges, of course. But what I learned from those challenges is that you have to have a strong mentor in your life. That was number one for me. And that’s something that I always share with others is you have to have a strong mentor that you can talk to. And for a young child that is experiencing a lot of challenges like that, that is super powerful. I always recommend that they find a trusted adult in their life that they can go to and talk to you about things like that when they get hard. Because there’s a lot of challenges and sometimes situations that come with living in homelessness or driving out the whole household.

Well, actually, it’s so odd to hear you say all the stuff that you went through and then say you didn’t have a tough childhood, which honestly, it alludes to what you said next. So if I’m like putting together the puzzle pieces, I’m thinking the way you grew up sounds totally frightening and very traumatic, which for many people would be. Because you said, I didn’t have it that bad. Was it because of a mentor you had in your life and who was that? was it because of, like, how can you say it wasn’t that bad?

Because it sounds odd, but I didn’t really realize I was homeless until I became an adult late into my adulthood years. Because I still had a stable environment. My mom still made sure we had food on the table. It probably wasn’t the same food everyone else had. I remember eating Pinot beans most nights. If we scrounged up some quarters, we would go down to a blockbuster on a Friday night and roll up some quarters together that kind of dates me and get a blockbuster movie. And we would get, yeah, do you remember? And we would get the Tostitos pizzas back then were a quarter for the cardboard square pizza. And I actually tried to buy those for my own children, you know, a couple of months ago and they asked me what that was. They said that wasn’t pizza, pizza doesn’t come square. And I said, that was a I read those movies it’s your self you know, an extravagant mule for me when I grew up, I think it’s a great meal. But so my three mentors that I had that kind of coached me through that number one was my mom. I saw from her the the perseverance, the endurance that she had to overcome her own obstacles in life and still make sure you know that we had a roof over our heads. We had warm blankets, we had food, we had clothing, we had what we needed and I didn’t realize. Now looking back, I can tell you, okay, my mom would skip meals in order to make sure we had enough food. We would ration our food through the week as well. Those are things now looking back, I can say, okay, those are the signs that maybe I didn’t grow up that like other people did, but I didn’t know that until later on in life.

I had an uncle who is still very much involved in my life today and he taught me that there’s nothing I can’t accomplish. If there’s anything that I want, it doesn’t matter what obstacles are in the way that I need to push through that obstacle and arrive at that goal or that prize. And then I had a third person, my senior teacher in high school. It was her very first year as a teacher.

And later on in life, we’ve connected several times. Come to find out, she said she was struggling so much that year and I credit so much of what I did in college and into my adult life from what I learned from that classroom from her. just presented the nutrition, it was nutrition class. She presented it in such a fun and engaging way that I felt so connected to that. And then I later took those same classes in college and then ended up majoring in food and nutrition because of that love that she had instilled in me as a senior in high school. Now she tells the story that she was just trying to survive her first year of teaching. And who was she to influence an 18 year old in high school? But yes.

Personal Journey and Overcoming Adversity

So you never know who you’re influencing. Like she thought she was struggling just to say afloat in that class and she was changing your life. Wow. That’s really cool, Ashley. The fact that your mom played such a vital role, an uncle and a teacher kind of shows us as a community of, there were all these things happening around you that as the world, we would paint them as negative for sure. But that you had that stability that you could be kind of blinded to it. You’re like, no, this is just my life right now and I have what I need and I’m getting to go to school and learn and all those things. That’s really inspiring in itself. Like your story is very, very inspiring. How, because today you went from getting involved in education, which remind me of your first job because it wasn’t being a principal.

No, I did start off as teaching. So I got my degree in student food and nutrition, and then I went back my first year of teaching and also worked on my teaching certificate and master’s program at the same time. So yeah, my first year was crazy as well.

And it sounds like you love learning, like you love getting new info learning and growing and just soaking up any knowledge that I can. And that’s what I try to teach my own children and students that I work with you is that you should never stop learning. Always take in that knowledge and whatever topic you’re interested in that’s great. Well, I would love to dive into that because whenever I meet someone who, mean, obviously I’m like, I could learn something from you. Of course. That’s usually why I love hosting this podcast is I always love learning new things. And then I’m always thinking what’s the actionable step that we could take today to, to implement something that we learned let’s start. I would, you, you’ve published a book or a couple of books.

Two books. Okay, let’s hear what are your two books about and then I’m going to put you on the spot. I’ll ask you some questions about them right. So my first one is not related to the podcast at all. It is called Model Classrooms. It is a teaching book. And so that one is just about creating model classrooms, model exemplar teacher classrooms for other teachers to come in and observe. And then my other one is more about my background in and growing up overcoming adversity. called Strong Overcoming Adversity. It’s the story of actually four different stories myself and three other teacher educators who had powerful stories of growing up overcoming adversity and then talking about how that made an impact on their life and how they, how we believe that that should influence teachers interacting with students. So the big thing I talk about is mentorship and making sure that you have built that relationship with your students.

Okay. All right. Let’s dive into those. I’m actually probably going to go in order. So, model classrooms. You clarified it a little bit, but I maybe am still a little confused. The word model classrooms, I’m thinking of like, this is a model to follow. If I’m trying to have, if I’m a teacher or I’m facilitating a group, I’m going to learn how to do that better through your book.

Yes, so it’s a long process. So we set up a team from the district and we decide what are our focus areas that we want. Maybe we’re really struggling in classroom management or we want to increase our reading scores. And then we decide, okay, how are we going to do that? What are our pillars of success or what are our focus areas? And then we put out, there’s some other steps in between, but we put out an all call for who wants to apply to become this model classroom teacher. And then we, do some training with them, and eventually we get them into, they have their classroom, we have other teachers come in and do observations on them. And it’s very specific. So if it’s classroom management that they’re looking for, they go into the classroom with that lens only. We’re not looking at how we’re teaching the content, instructional strategies, it is just that classroom management piece. Or maybe it’s building relationships.

How are we connecting with the students in the classroom? And then we do a follow up with that teacher. Okay, what did you, observe in the classroom and how can you immediately implement that into your classroom? And then we set up a two week time that we come back into that teacher’s classroom because we want to see her implementing that strategy or that building relationships, whatever we’ve asked or tasked her with.

And so that’s the premises of model classrooms is that it’s real time experiential learning, which is very different than what teachers normally do. We normally get all of our professional development in the summertime when we’re off and then we go back a few months later and we may have forgotten or we’re not really jazzed up maybe as much about it as we were when went to PD. So this way it’s continuous professional development throughout the school year.

Okay. That sounds fascinating. you got to be a part of, I mean, obviously if you wrote this book about it, you got to see this in action quite a bit. What do you think are maybe one to three things that you’ve seen? Hey, I’ve seen teachers really excel when they do this or facilitators, because the people listening to this podcast are either in education or they go into schools to implement a curriculum or something like that and we could help with some classroom management skills and things like that. So do you have any quick tips for us that we could get a little better?

Quick tips for classroom management specifically? Okay, so quick tips, I would say you have to make your classroom inviting and that starts with being at the door, greeting your students. Knowing who they are when they come in, that’s a good check in and check out process for the students too. You can tell right away if little Johnny is gonna be in a bad mood or if something happened the night before, maybe he didn’t sleep well by the way that they enter your classroom.

So that is one thing I always encourage my teachers to do is be greeting their students at the door. And then I also say, know, pick something about that student that you can comment on. You have to find something to connect with. If I don’t know what they’re involved in or what they’re interested in, my go-to is their shoes. Hey man, I love your shoes today. Those are pretty cool. I mean, everybody has shoes on. You don’t have to like the shoes, but it’s a conversation starter for you and that student.

And then they start talking about their shoe or where they got them from, or some story about their shoe. It’s just an entry point. So I like to use that as a way of connecting with the students. I always tell my teachers to you to find out what they’re interested in. Usually they’re involved in something. Maybe not always, but usually they’re in something. Usually I have a teacher will say, hey, you know what? I really struggle working with this one student. What do you recommend for them and I’ll ask them, they in basketball, football, anything? And they usually say, yes, they’re on whatever team. And I say, you need to be at that event, that theater arts performance, that choir performance, band, whatever it is, for five minutes. You don’t have to stay for the whole program. It is really enough time for they see that Dr. Boots in the audience. She came here to see me. I matter, I’m seen. I was one of those kids who my mom, because she was working so much, could not come to my performances. I was in choir, I was in soccer, and I did some other activities, and she was never able to be at my events. My uncle, who is also her brother, he was always at my events, and he is at every single one of my kids’ Doesn’t matter if he’s sick, he’s had a surgery, he’s come up there with his little leg brace on when he had knee surgery, he’s always there.

The kids need to know that there’s someone there that is rooting for them, that cares about them. Even the kid that you think is awful, has poor behavior, is not jazzed up about anything, he needs you more than anything. He is the kid that needs you to show that you care, that you want to see that you are in the audience at his events or whatever he’s at. And those that don’t do anything, you’ve got to pick and pull and find out what that one thing is that you can connect and talk about. Maybe the shoes or t-shirt. Maybe they’ve got a band on their shirt. Pick out those little pieces. You’ve got to notice those things about the kids to be able to build that relationship. And the third thing I like to do, Jake, is going back to those students that are just a little unruly that we’re not real sure about, that we don’t know what to do with them. I like to give them a job in the classroom.

And I taught high school, so giving jobs in high school is not really something you do. It’s usually something in an elementary classroom. They’ll have a line leader, a paper collector, know, somebody that passes out books or whatever. High school, you don’t normally do that, but I recommend that for all grade levels because when that kid feels like, I have an important job, this is my job, I have to check roll. Even though I’m checking roll on my computer, I would still print out a roll sheet, put it on a clipboard and say, okay, Jake, this is your job every day.

I’m counting on you. I need you to let me know who’s here and who’s late when they walk in. And that gives them a little bit of a little bit of power and they feel excited that they’re a leader in the classroom. oftentimes those are the kids that will also redirect those other kids in your classroom when they get off track too, because they built that relationship with you and they know, hey, Dr. Ruth said we need to get back to business. So this is what we need to do.

And so those are my advice that I would give to administrators and teachers. Those are cool because what I’m hearing you saying is you’re becoming a real, like a partner with that student. And that’s the goal of education is students can see school as like a, they’re making me do this and it’s me against them or they always get me in trouble. And what you’re saying is like, hey, no, this is the way the river is flowing. We’re here to create a successful life for you. So I’m going to get to know you.

I’m going to pop in five minutes so you see me at one of your games or your concerts, something like that, which I can also attest means the world to these students and that you can give them roles. And I love that last one too of giving them a role because this is the stuff that builds their confidence and builds that rapport between you two. And if maybe I didn’t get a lot of opportunities because I’m the one who comes in the class grumpy and I just had to deal with this at home.

But man, at least Dr. Ashley thinks that I’m good enough to fulfill this role for her. That’s going to build my confidence a lot. Yeah, and Jake, I have one more recommendation that I always tell teachers, and they always look at me like I’m crazy. The first two weeks of school, I always challenge my teachers to call every single parent on their roster within the first two weeks of school. Because the first phone call home that that parent should get should not be that little Johnny’s in trouble. It should be a positive phone call home, because you’re not gonna build that positive school home culture and relationship if you only call for negative reasons. They need to know that you’re a part of that partnership.

Dang that is cool. My brain goes to the thought that people have in our field sometimes, like it’s, it’s really hard to get parents to show up to things. And that simple phone call, we don’t get a lot of phone calls these days unless it’s like a spam, somebody trying to buy our house from us or something or like, and then our close friends, but that’s really special. Call home so that the first impression is a good one, not a terrifying, what did they do? Dang! All right, this is cool. All right, we’re coming to the end of our episode, but I want to tie in this theme that seems to be coming from the episode two, which is you’re really acting more as a mentor.

The Role of Mentorship in Education

Yes. that you’re showing up for these students in ways that they don’t expect, whether it’s the front of the door to welcome them into class, to a recital or an activity, that you’re believing in them with these leadership roles. You’re on the phone. yeah, I talked to your mom. She’s so sweet. Like this seems to go more into this mentorship role. So just to cap the episode off, you have emphasized mentorship enough to write a book on it. What’s the main takeaway and what’s one thing we can do to become a great mentor for people? I mean, you’ve probably already given a lot of them, but is there a central theme or thing you like people to take away about mentorship and its role in people’s lives?

Sure, that fostering that strong relationship with another person that looks up to you can make a huge impact in their life. For me, it meant the fact that I was not gonna go down the same path as my parents. I was not going to choose drugs and alcohol as a means of controlling my life. I was not gonna go down that same path. Everything that I set up for me in my life was advice that I’d gotten from my mentors that channeled me in the right direction and guided me in the right direction.

I knew that the life that I saw from some of my family members was not for me because I wanted something more, because I had been taught that there was something more available for me. And I didn’t know what that was yet, but I knew that there was something out there different for me. And there was a pivotal moment in my eighth grade year where I remember thinking, okay, this is not the life that I want for my future family and I’m going to work as hard as I can every day to make sure and I’m going to lean into these three key people in my life because they have poured into me and I didn’t know that at the time that I was going to become a teacher and administrator and be able to use this experience when I spoke with students and teachers and when the first time I became an assistant principal and I had my first student in my office that’s when it became full circle and I realized, okay, this is why these obstacles and challenges happened to me in my life. This is why these people were placed in my life so that I would be able to have the same influence on others in my office and in my campus.

Because I think you’re so correct. Is that we don’t understand the power that we have in someone’s life. And what I love about your story is you took that pain and now you’re using it for a purpose to help others. And I’m a big fan of getting coaching and basically mentorship, right? And one of my mentors, Rory Vadin says, that you are best equipped to help the person you once were. And that is exactly, it’s why people can’t argue with your story, that you have something that helped you and maybe it’s going to help someone else. And so I love your story and where you came from and how you’re using it to help other people right now. And I feel super privileged that I got to meet you and work with you. And it sounds like we’ll be working together in the future. There’s so much excitement around our partnership.

It’s going to be a blast and I just want to thank you for being who you are and for giving me some of your time too to be on the show today.

Absolutely, thank you for having me on today. Of course. And for everyone listening, listen, you are making a big difference. Dr. Ashley is just one example of what one positive mentor can do in your life. And today she’s an author, she’s an administrator, she’s influenced countless students. And I can tell from meeting her, like she loves her life. And that is not by accident, that’s by the support that she’s received, even under negative circumstances, some would argue. So I just want to lean in and say for everyone listening, keep up the great work, whether you’re in prevention or education or all of the above, or you’re a caring parent and ask yourself, what can you do this week? Maybe it’s calling a parent that you haven’t connected with. Maybe it’s now standing outside the door when you’re facilitating that classroom activity or something, or asking what the students are or developing your own Google doc of the students that you’re in touch with so that you can make sure you know a little bit about each one and you can further that connection. And that’s a wrap for this episode. We will see you next Monday for another episode of the Drug Prevention Power Hour.