Bringing Mr. Rogers to Life: Building Community Connections During Crisis

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Those two questions are tough to answer under normal circumstances. They become even tougher when you're staring down a global crisis. Building the leaders of tomorrow requires the community to be involved in and what better way to get the community involved than by driving impact to the bottom lines of many of the members of the community.

intendent in new jersey since: 2016

He's also a best selling author of Calm in the [00:01:00] Chaos, Ancient Stoic Wisdom for Successful School Leadership, and a sought after speaker. Glenn has been awarded numerous administrative, international, national, and state recognitions, including the EdTech Digital International District Leadership Finalist National Exemplar of Education Award winner.

He's named the Top 100 Educational Influencer in the U. S. The Northeast Innovative Superintendent Award, Northeast Visionary Superintendent Award, and a whole bunch of other stuff too. He's been invited to the White House and the U. S. Department of Education several times in the past three administrations.

He's also a proud recipient of the National Superintendent Certification and serves as an AASA National Governing Board member. Aspiring superintendent member and chair of the NJ ASA technology committee. So Glenn is passionate about helping school leaders create schools where every student and educator can have the opportunity to succeed to their utmost potential in today's world. Glenn, welcome to the show.

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[00:01:59] Dr. Jim: [00:02:00] Yeah, that's that's quite the laundry list of accomplishments. So congratulations to you. I'm looking forward to this conversation. And I think we're gonna dig into a lot of different interesting areas. And I'm particularly interested in the story of how you built connection. With the work that's being done in the school and how that can actually build community commitment into the work that you're doing.

So I think that's going to be a pretty interesting story that we're going to tell, but before we dig into that, I think it's important for you to share with the listeners a little bit more about your backstory and in particular maybe some of the things that were defining moments in your career that helped shape who you are as a leader and how you showed up.

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That's also the year that everybody got locked down. If you recall, before that, I [00:03:00] was a superintendent in another district for four years. And as you mentioned, principal and all the other roles that I serve. And throughout my coming up before I was in education, I was also in the water drilling business.

So did a lot of drilling on the back of a drill rig to get water wells for people in their houses. It made me appreciate hard work and made me appreciate, going to college to get a different kind of job. And with that work ethic that was instilled in me at a young age, I think it really.

Pushed me to be forward into where I am now. You mentioned the coaching, I've been very big into soccer throughout my first half of my life, I'd say, and had some amazing nationally recognized coaches that helped me teach me about organization and running an organization and how it can be properly functioning.

tle cold up here. So we're a [: 00:04:00

Our population has decreased some because of the housing market and other things that have happened in the world. But with that being said I think we have one of the premier schools in the whole country.

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I have his jersey as as a, uh, as a national team fan. I didn't connect it until you just mentioned it, but there was something else that you mentioned that caught my attention and that was, yeah. Early on, you were working drilling wells. How do you go from drilling wells to being a teacher?

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And I thought to myself, this is an opportunity that may be able to partake in. And I remember Being with my father, my sophomore year, I was stating, do you want to go to college or do you want to learn the business and learn how to really take it over? And I remember so many days being on the back of a well rig when it was like 34, 35 degrees and I'm standing next to a Honda water pump, like the exhaust, trying to get warm.

And then you are cold all day long until you get home around seven o'clock and then you do a reset. The next day, each and every day, hard manual labor. And, my father had some amazing employees that work for him that I considered second fathers. But it also taught me that's not the job that I want to have.

I'd rather have he inside and I really enjoyed the mentoring of young players. I enjoy coaching and teaching, and that was what put me on that trajectory. And I'm glad I did that.

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What's some of the bigger picture, landscape view of the community and the district?

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So we went from roughly 75 percent free and reduced lunch. Down to roughly about 25 percent free and reduced lunch in just two or three years. That's a massive shift in the community. A lot of our families, unfortunately, the ones that were not homeowners or renters, and a lot of those rental properties were bought up by corporations for Airbnb [00:07:00] and, or VRBOs torn down.

And then put up these big monster houses and the renters got kicked out. So we lost a lot of clientele there. We also, since we're right next to Atlantic city, I do have families that work in New York and or Philadelphia, but we're also a very big tourism industry. And if you know anything about that, what conventions and tourism, where other casinos and hotels are.

Some families have moved on and done that as well. Before, back in the day, it was just Atlantic city and Las Vegas, if you want to gamble now, the Northeast has multiple hubs all over. So it makes it easier for families to move. So unfortunately we did lose a lot of families to that. And now the housing market is a costly way of trying to buy a house.

To buy a house in our community is very high. You're looking at starting at seven 50. And I don't know about you, but when I started, when I bought a house with my wife, our first house was far from that number, when we're starting out working life. So that's a tough thing. Where we are right now, as far as our population size.

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[00:08:04] Glenn Robbins: Great question. So yeah, we do a tuition program. So we open our doors. If anybody wanted to come, it's 5, 000. That's a substantial discount compared to any other private school. You could probably think of probably in your area or across the country. So we do that. We do a lot of different programs cybersecurity, AI in the eighth grade the program that we're talking about working with the chamber of commerce, the successes that we've had in ELA and mathematics as well, and all of our STEAM programs across the country.

We do a lot of great things and we get a lot of notoriety and we push it out to the publication for people to see that. And then it's just a hope of whether or not they want to make the drive over to us and put their kid in our school. We've actually had a couple of families move in and said, Hey, we picked this area because of the school.

We researched it online. We saw when we Googled it and we were excited for this. And now they realize when they come here, they're almost practically getting a, it's a public school, but you're almost getting a private school education.

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[00:09:08] Glenn Robbins: Yeah, I think it was a. Multiple factors came together. When I pitched to the school board during the hiring process, I said, I wanted to put them back on the map again. Brigham team was always an amazing school district when I was in the area. And then, they just, things fell off or it wasn't advertised as much or whatever it may be.

Maybe it wasn't the drive at the time, but I said, I want to put them back on the map and make sure that people know that this is a great place to live and a great place to send your kids to school too. So we started doing a lot of notoriety and then we started sitting down with the staff and said, all right, what do you have here that we can make?

Great. And a lot of the staff came up with some incredible ideas. We sat down with the kids, one of our teachers, I was jumping into her room right away. She does a 20 percent time where the kids get to pitch ideas to us. And I'd sit there and they're like, Hey, we want an ASL class. So the following year we put together an ASL class.

oing to do that. Bingo, done [: 00:10:00

So we merged those two. And then we just continued to blow and continue to reach out to community members and community members like, Hey, how about we try this program or not? And I wanted to bring them into the building. But then ultimately, yeah. Like I said, we have podcasters now from fifth to eighth grade doing it during an ungraded class period, we had to talk to the kids about what they wanted, what the teachers needed, what resources we had, and really looked at it from how can we make this place a really special place?

And we redesigned the mantra, redesigned our philosophy here that Kids are proud to go to school here. Kids want to go to school here. And now if you type in on YouTube, Brigham Teen Community School, and, or you go on Spotify and look up a couple of the different channels that these kids are on the podcasting, they're doing it each and every day on the YouTube channel podcast comes out about monthly, but they're doing it during ungraded class periods.

Purely [: 00:11:00

[00:11:13] Dr. Jim: I want to wind us back to what I opened the show with. And one of the things that I opened the show with was this two prong approach focus on culture when you took over in the district and also try to leverage the work that's being done in the school to help the community drive their bottom lines.

That's an interesting combo, especially when you look at. You took over a couple of months before the pandemic really blew up. So why did you focus in those areas as a big priority when you're smack dab in the middle of a pandemic?

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And [00:12:00] I kept thinking like, how do we, from a leadership perspective, how do we get more people involved? How do we get, if this is a true community school, how are we truly getting the community in? So with that being said, I reached out to the chamber of commerce and said, when we were first locked down, Hey, we're going to do a virtual graduation.

Would can anybody do discounts at any of the restaurants to give out to the families before we. Broadcast our virtual graduation, and then when we came back that October, I reached out to the chamber. I went to one of their meetings and said, Hey, I really would like to get the businesses involved.

Maybe something along the lines of our kids can work with you and vice versa. And the chamber came back to me at that time and said, Yeah. What about a Mr. Rogers project? And we went back and forth on this Mr. Rogers project. Cause the sad part is most people, most kids don't know who Mr.

conglomerates, we're talking [: 00:13:00

So I was like that's perfect because. We have tons of social media experts in the eighth grade, kids are really good at, Tik TOK or Instagram or whatever it may be. So we talked about that. What was that going to be? So we built together this Mr. Rogers project and the chamber of commerce brought in a couple of different businesses.

They sat in this eighth grade class and they talked about. Here's my business. Here's what I'm about. Here's what I'm trying to sell. I need you to help put something together. The kids then take that and run with it. They put together a Facebook page, publication, Instagram publication, and it's evolved since then.

can take their phone and QR [: 00:14:00

So they designed all these things to bring in new clientele and they went back and forth for quite some time. And with that being said, they were literally learning how to email and text message a business owner, and they had to learn how to be professional when they do that. I got kids typing emails and texting better to.

The business owners and their own employees do their owners. It's quite remarkable. And that's the comment that I've gotten. So with that being said, they're helping the business owners, them come back and teach them about what entrepreneurship is, how difficult, how great it can be, and they're getting a new clientele.

And at the end of each marketing period, they take a field trip. Because there might be four businesses in that class. That one group is working with one business. The other one's working with another. So they don't get to all focus on them. So they take a field trip to go see the different businesses and the businesses hang out, hand out swag or memorabilia.

ir family. So it's all these [: 00:15:00

And our kids are helping them realize how do you work in the 2024 to connect with people that you want to bring into your business?

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[00:15:50] Glenn Robbins: That is a great question. And that's where it takes great leadership at the chamber level. They had to decide on how they're going to bring these businesses in and convince them to help out kids because that's [00:16:00] correct. You have some businesses like, why do I want to team up with the school?

There's no need for that. But what happened was the first group and then the second group, they started to talk to each other and they started to see a revitalization of new people going into their businesses and helping them out. So for us, I have a very strong chamber of commerce president. The president would then pitch to the businesses what the program's for.

And it's, a lot of people do want to give back when you think about that. So they're giving back to a community, whether they went to school here or someplace else, but they're giving back in a way that they're helping kids to be potential employees for them. We've had some people say, we want to hire you as soon as you get out of school.

So that worked for our advantage. We're teaching them a workforce of some sort. When chambers are talking about, we need better employees, we need better workforce, what better way than working with the school and developing that workforce together. And that's where our chamber president really pitched that.

ut and talks to the business [: 00:17:00

And the best part about that is, in just the last three years, we have a 26th floor. Business waiting list right now that people want to get in for that reason. Because like I said, they're building a new workforce. So they have better employees coming to them in the future and they're getting new clientele.

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[00:17:47] Glenn Robbins: I think it was just the excitement level. We do a lot of advertising on social media. So along the way, the chamber was taking pictures and the chamber is blasting it out on all their social media platforms. And other members were starting to see that [00:18:00] there's like, all right why aren't we being recognized?

Why? Why isn't my business on here? And, we got to a point to where we actually had a couple business owners who work from home. So look, we don't have a brick and mortar store. But, we work at home cause we're saving on overhead cost. And that was a brand new conversation that was brought to the kids on why they were going that route compared to having the brick and mortar.

So like I said, the biggest thing was the social media advertising. A lot more business was coming into these businesses that were getting involved with us. The kids were starting to wear swag, sweatpants, I'm sorry, sweatshirts and t shirts of what the business is on there.

There's not many eighth grade kids walking around this country wearing a shirt that's an insurance company. Some, the kids all want to do the surf shops here. There's some that there's a bait shop here, that jumped in like It was like, I had a teacher who's lived here, the head of historical society.

es and she's a lifer. So now [: 00:19:00

You need to get in there and see what's truly going on in our schools. Because, I know the media says one thing, but that's not happening here. This is what's going on, and you need to get involved to help your business out. And that's what's really happened. The social media presence picked up, and the businesses got more business, and they got new clientele, and there's a lot more excitement on the island.

What business doesn't want excitement and or generating new people that come through their door?

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[00:19:59] Glenn Robbins: Yeah, great [00:20:00] question. So I have an amazing curriculum instruction supervisor, Chloe Sheplin. She sat down with Jesse Eslo and I, our teacher, and said, how does this look? And we brought the chamber in and we designed this. So we talked about the social media almost literacy. And now you have social media publications and you have marketing.

So for us, it was like, all right, we need new marketing. We're going to tie that into the curriculum. And then it was also, professionalism, citizenship. How do you write an email to a potential job employee? How do you write a text to somebody? When you're putting together a product for this employer.

Who is grading you with the teacher, because they come back. I forgot to mention that part when they get the pitch about their company and they're building this social media page under the newspaper ad, depending on what they want, they're also doing that Canva ad, they come back a little later.

ey put certain colors there, [: 00:21:00

Now that kid's work is on a door when they walk into any type of business here. But like I said earlier. It teaches them how to email. It teaches them what their boss is looking for. It's not, it's a deadline. It's a hard deadline. It has to be done when the boss says this is what it's going to be done.

And then they get to go and explore and understand what's truly going on in this business. Do they want to go into a surf shop one day? Do they want to work in insurance one day that he want to work in a pizzeria one day? And those businesses show them what is necessary. What skills are necessary that they're looking for when they go to hire somebody.

So I think that's a conversation that was never there before for these young kids. Hey, if you're going to come work for me, you need to be very good on the computer. You need to be very good at your skills and what they're looking for and their programs. And, or if you're going to another store, that's not computers, they've done architectural firms.

They'd done the [: 00:22:00

[00:22:11] Dr. Jim: One of the things that I'm thinking about when you're working on this sort of practical learning stuff that takes it out of the classroom and into the world of work and gets people ready for, whatever that future work looks like.

I could imagine probably. A group of maybe old school parents or whatever who are looking at this saying this really doesn't have anything to do with reading, writing or math outcomes that you're delivering, which is what we really care about as parents. If another superintendent were to encounter that sort of pushback, how would you advise them to connect the dots so that parents are on board with this sort of hands on type of district learning as well?

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And ultimately, what is your goal as an educator? Your goal as an educator is to get the workforce ready, right? To get them in a position that during an interview, they can say I've done this project for this business, and here's how I went about doing this project when I was in eighth grade, instead of kid or a person saying, I don't know, can you ask me that in an ABCD question form that's on a test?

Cause that's all I know how to do. We need, and we look at the world economic forum when they put out the top. Skill sets needed in the futures ahead, relationships, strong conversations, being confident, right? They're right there and they always will be there, so for us, it's celebrate the work that the kids are doing, have the work, the businesses celebrated as well.

And build that community [: 00:24:00

And that's the beauty of it. When kids are working to help out others in business, it's not just A lot of great things happen, but you got to showcase it and you got to have those tough conversations. Come look, you don't go to the same hospital you went to 20 years ago. All right. Things have changed. All right.

And here's how we're putting in mathematics. Here's how we're putting in language arts. We're doing it from a digital scale and we're doing it in different ways.

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Thank you very much. But you have an entire leadership and educator team that's never done it. How do you bridge the gap in getting the leadership team aligned, the educator team aligned to do this practical sort of learning model versus the traditional learning models that that maybe we grew up with?

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And I kept thinking how could we do that with eighth graders? And how do we make it best for our community? We don't have those, Corporations where we are, but other districts do, so my recommendation is go visit other schools. If this is something you're going to be passionate about, go visit schools that are doing something similar.

they make those connections. [: 00:26:00

We have an a dynamic chamber of commerce and they helped do all the work for us on the side. You're already busy doing a million other administrative duties in your school district. If they can do it on the outside for you through the chamber selects who's coming in each marking period.

They send them to us. They have a liaison of two amazing ladies that come in each time and lead it off before the businesses talk. So my point is. Go visit and go have those conversations.

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And he did a lot of work in building integrations across multiple stakeholders within the district and the community. What's been the payoff

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I have chamber of commerce members telling the story. I have city council mayor telling the story. And I have kids and staff members telling the story about. Wow, we did this with this business, we helped redesign their logo, we helped redesign their marketing plan, and I might want to work there one day.

And the businesses are talking about this is what's really going on in the school district. So if you want to tell your story, the best way to go about it is to have others telling your story as well. But like I said, you see the academic excellence. I was coming through, as I mentioned earlier, I have kids that email me in eighth grade who are typing better emails than I could ever have expected, and that comes from being in Jesse Eslow's class of doing the Mr.

face to face with an unknown [: 00:28:00

So to have that as an eighth grader, what does that track, a trajectory you're going to set them up for in life that they worked with the business. And now they know that maybe that's something you want to do one day.

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What are the key things that they need to keep in mind when they're trying to set up a program like this and have it be effective?

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The long term goal for us was to establish something of a program that we thought was gonna be, two marking periods a year. Now turned into four [00:29:00] and the fact that we have the waiting list. So the point is, you need to be willing to have the conversations. You need to be willing to say, all right, what is our community?

What is it we want to build? Like I mentioned, we're doing the marketing in the social media feed and the Canva and the marketing in the newspapers. That might be completely different than what you want to build out in your school district. So you gotta understand what your players are, what your community is about, and who are the players that you want to have jump on first.

There might be some businesses out there that are really good social media page, and or Focus in a community that people listen to, perhaps they're the ones you run with first, but you gotta be willing to have the conversation. It's not easy at first when you sit down and talk about this idea and trying to convince businesses to come in and work with the particular grade level that you'll be working with.

And that's the conversation [: 00:30:00

We want you to expose the kids to numerous workforces that are out there to give them a better future. So don't lose focus on the long term goal when the little dogs are barking along the way.

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[00:30:19] Glenn Robbins: Yeah, so they can go to, just go to glenrobbins. com, G L E N R O B I N S dot com. I'm also on social media is at glengrobbins and Yeah, you can also reach out to me by email, which is also on like I said on their website

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Practical learning has to be an integrated part of what traditional K through 12 school districts are providing, where you can take the content that's in the textbook and bring it [00:31:00] to life in by integrating it into the business world and the community that actually helps develop skills that are gonna be.

Usable immediately post graduation. So I think that particular model is particularly interesting and I think it's going to have some impact in the long run. So I appreciate you sharing that with us. For those of you who've been listening to this conversation, if you like the show, make sure you leave us a review on your favorite podcast player.

If you haven't already done so. Make sure you join our community. You can find that at engaging leadership show. com and then tune in next time where we'll have another great leader hanging out with us and sharing with us the game changing insights that help them build a high performing team.