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Learn • Grow • Thrive with Margaret Boersma

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Learn • Grow • Thrive with Margaret Boersma

Enabling educators, parents & students to LEARN • GROW • THRIVE through social + emotional literacy. Programs Include:
A. Effective Formative Feedback
5.

Professional Development-Integrating SEL & the arts across the curriculum
B. Intensive Workshops-with a whole-brain learning approach, cross curricular
C. Demonstration Lessons; Working with your students
D. Teaching/Learning Cycle-Designing a cross-curricular unit
E. Parent programs in social and emotional learning
F. Lunch n'Learns or 30-60 minutes P.D.:
1. Introduction to the new Social Studies Curriculum and the Inquiry Process
2. Setting Gaudy Goals...Make a Big Difference to Student Progress
3. Creating Optimal “States of Learning” in your Classroom
4. Memory Workouts...Developing Working Memory
6. Developing Vocabulary so it Sticks

09/26/2026

Where Is the Time Actually Going?

“There just isn’t enough time.”

I keep hearing this from educators.

Not enough time to teach.
To plan.
To support students.
To collaborate.
And certainly not enough time for one more initiative.

But sometimes the better question is:

What is consuming the time we already have?

A student escalates.
A conflict needs intervention.
A misunderstanding becomes an email, then a call, then a meeting.

None of those moments appear on the timetable.

But they all consume time, attention and capacity.

This is why Educational Leadership Redefined™ focuses on the human capacity underneath the work.

When educators can regulate emotions, communicate clearly, resolve conflict and respond rather than react, we reduce the moments that repeatedly pull people away from teaching and learning.

Less escalation.
Less preventable conflict.
More capacity for the work that matters.

So before we ask:

“How can we fit everything in?”

Perhaps we should also ask:

“What is repeatedly taking us away from the work we’re here to do?”

09/23/2026

They All Followed the Directions. So What Went Wrong?

There’s a simple exercise I sometimes use when I’m working with educators.

I give everyone a piece of paper and ask them to follow my directions.

Fold the paper in half.
Rip off the top right corner.
Fold it in half again.
Rip off the top right corner.
Fold it one more time.
Rip off the top right corner.

There’s just one catch.

No one is allowed to ask questions or look at what anyone else is doing.

When everyone opens their paper, we look around the room.

They’re different.

Sometimes very different.

And yet everyone followed the directions.

That’s when the conversation gets interesting.

What did “top right corner” mean once the paper had been folded?

Which way were you holding your paper when you started?

Which direction did you fold it?

I gave everyone exactly the same instructions.

But giving the same instructions isn’t the same as creating shared understanding.

I’ve always loved this exercise because it makes something visible that happens in schools all the time.

We explain an expectation at a staff meeting.
We send the follow-up email.
We put it in the handbook.

And then we’re surprised when people interpret or implement it differently.

Our first response can easily be:

“But we were very clear.”

Perhaps we were.

From our perspective.

Sometimes what looks like resistance or non-compliance is actually a difference in interpretation.

Sometimes people need an example.

Sometimes they need to see what something looks like in practice.

And sometimes they simply need the opportunity to ask the question we didn’t realize needed asking.

So here’s a quick exercise you might try at one of your first staff meetings this year.

Then ask:

What does this teach us about the way we communicate with one another, and with our students?

Because communication isn’t complete when we’ve said something.

It’s complete when we’ve created enough shared understanding to move forward together.

09/21/2026

“I Know What I’m Supposed to Do. But…”

There’s a gap I keep hearing about in conversations with educators.

Most educators already know a great deal about what good practice looks like.

They know relationships matter.
They know students need to feel safe.
They know they should remain calm during conflict.
They know difficult conversations should be handled respectfully.
They know collaboration matters.

Knowing isn’t always the problem.

The problem is what happens in the moment.

When the student has escalated.
When the parent is angry.
When a colleague says something that catches you completely off guard.
When you’re already exhausted and someone needs one more thing from you.

When you know exactly how you should respond…

And you don’t.

I’ve become increasingly interested in that gap.

Because professional learning often gives people more information.

Another strategy.
Another framework.
Another list of best practices.

But information alone doesn’t necessarily change what happens when we’re under pressure.

In those moments, we don’t simply draw on what we know.

We draw on the capacity we’ve developed to regulate ourselves, interpret what is happening, communicate clearly, and choose our response rather than simply react.

That capacity can be developed.

It’s one of the reasons I created Educational Leadership Redefined™.

The work isn’t simply about giving leaders more strategies to remember.

It’s about developing the internal and relational capacity to access what they already know when they need it most, and respond differently in the moments that matter.

Because the real test of professional learning isn’t what we understand while we’re sitting in the workshop.

It’s what becomes available to us when the pressure is on.

09/18/2026

The Best Leaders Don’t Need All the Answers

Early in my career, I thought being a good leader meant knowing what to do.

Someone brings you a problem?
Find the solution.

A meeting gets stuck?
Move it forward.

Something isn’t working?
Figure out how to fix it.

After all, people look to leaders for answers.

But experience has taught me something very different.

Sometimes the most useful thing a leader can bring into the room isn’t an answer.

It’s a better question.

“What are we assuming here?”

“What aren’t we seeing?”

“Whose perspective haven’t we heard?”

“What might be driving this?”

“What have we tried, and what did we learn?”

“What would happen if we did less rather than more?”

A good question does something an answer can’t always do.

It makes other people think.
It creates ownership.
It surfaces perspectives we might otherwise miss.

And it builds the capacity of the people around us rather than reinforcing the idea that the leader is the person who is supposed to solve everything.

I’ve come to see this as an important shift in leadership:

From being the person with the answers to being the person who helps the room think better.

That doesn’t mean leaders stop making decisions.

There are moments when clarity and decisiveness are exactly what people need.

But leadership isn’t measured by how many problems come through our door and leave with our solution.

Sometimes the better measure is:

Are the people around us becoming more capable of solving problems without us?

As another school year begins, perhaps we don’t need to walk into every conversation knowing the answer.

Perhaps we need to walk in with the courage, and curiosity, to ask a better question.

09/16/2026

Being Consulted Isn’t the Same as Having a Voice

Something I’m hearing from educators is making me think about the difference between asking for input and actually creating influence.

Schools are full of opportunities for consultation.

Surveys.
Staff meetings.
Committees.
Feedback forms.
“Any thoughts?”

But educators can participate in all of those things and still walk away feeling:

“The decision had already been made.”

And that’s worth paying attention to.

Because teacher voice isn’t simply giving people an opportunity to speak.

Voice matters when people believe what they say can influence what happens next.

That doesn’t mean every decision becomes a group decision.

Leadership sometimes requires making decisions people won’t agree with.

There are mandates we don’t control.

There are constraints around time, staffing, budgets and policy.

But even when the decision itself isn’t negotiable, something else often is.

How will we implement it?

What will this look like in our context?

What challenges do staff anticipate?

What existing practices could support it?

What might need to change or stop?

What expertise already exists in the room?

Those are meaningful places for people to have influence.

And I’m hearing that this distinction matters.

Because when people repeatedly feel that their experience is requested but doesn’t actually inform anything, eventually they stop offering it.

Not necessarily because they don’t care.

Sometimes disengagement is what happens after people have learned that their voice doesn’t make a difference.

So perhaps the leadership question isn’t simply:

“Did we ask for staff input?”

It’s:

“Where can staff genuinely influence what happens next, and have we made that clear?”

That is a very different conversation.

09/14/2026

Before You Add Anything, Listen.

One of the easiest mistakes to make as a leader is walking into a new school year already knowing what needs to change.

I’ve done it.

You see a problem.
You have experience.
You know strategies that have worked elsewhere.

And because you genuinely want to help, your mind starts moving immediately toward solutions.

But over the years, I’ve learned that one of the most valuable things a leader can do at the beginning of a year is something much simpler:

Listen.

Not listen so you can confirm what you already believe.

Listen to discover what you don’t yet know.

Ask teachers what is making their work harder than it needs to be.
Ask students what helps them learn, and what gets in the way.
Ask support staff what they notice that others might not see.
Ask families what builds trust and what erodes it.

And then listen for the patterns.

Because the same situation can look very different depending on where you’re standing.

A leader may see resistance.
A teacher may see overload.
A student may see embarrassment.
A parent may see that their child isn’t being understood.

All of those perspectives contain information.

That doesn’t mean every perspective is accurate or that every request becomes a priority.

It means we become curious before we become certain.

I’ve come to believe that some of the most important leadership work happens in that space between:

“I think I know what’s happening.”

and

“Help me understand what you’re experiencing.”

That’s one reason I’ve used something I call a Listening Tour, a simple, intentional way of gathering perspectives before deciding where attention and energy are most needed.

I’ll share more about that tool in a future post.

For now, perhaps there’s one question worth taking into the beginning of this school year:

What might I discover if I listen before I decide?

09/11/2026

The Problem Isn’t Always the Idea

I’m hearing something interesting in my conversations with educational leaders.

Many of the initiatives schools are being asked to implement are actually good ideas.

The problem isn’t necessarily the idea.

It’s everything required to make the idea work.

A new initiative is introduced.
There’s a presentation.
Resources are shared.
Expectations are communicated.

And then everyone goes back to their already-full day.

We call that implementation.

But is it?

One of the recurring frustrations I’m hearing from educators isn’t necessarily:

“I don’t believe in this.”

It’s more often:

“How am I supposed to make this work alongside everything else?”

Real implementation requires more than information.

People need time to understand the change.
Opportunities to practise.
Permission to ask questions.
Clarity about what it looks like in their particular context.
Support when it doesn’t work the first time.

And perhaps most importantly:

Something may need to come off the plate before something else goes on it.

Otherwise, even very good initiatives can become one more layer of cognitive overload.

Then six months later, we wonder why implementation is inconsistent.

We may call it resistance.

We may conclude that people weren’t committed.

We may introduce another strategy to fix the strategy.

But perhaps we need to ask a different question:

Did we actually create the conditions for people to succeed?

Because introducing change and building capacity for change are not the same thing.

And if we want sustainable change, we need to pay as much attention to how people will implement an idea as we do to the idea itself.

09/09/2026

Culture Isn’t What’s Written on the Wall

At the beginning of a school year, we spend a lot of time talking about the culture we want to create.

We put words like respect, belonging, kindness, excellence, and community into our plans.

But culture isn’t created by the words we put on the wall.

It’s created in thousands of small interactions that happen every day.

It’s what happens in the hallway on a busy Tuesday morning.

In a classroom when a student makes a mistake.

In the staff room when people disagree.

In the principal’s office when a parent is upset.

In a meeting when someone offers a different perspective.

And perhaps most importantly, it’s what happens under pressure, because that’s when our culture becomes visible.

Years ago, I began asking a different kind of question about school culture:

What do we actually want it to feel like to be here?

Not as an aspiration.

In practice.

If we say we want a school where people feel respected, safe, capable, and connected, then we need to get much more concrete.

What would we see?
What would we hear?
What would we feel?

Would we hear adults speaking respectfully about students when students aren’t in the room?

Would we see people disagreeing without becoming adversaries?

Would mistakes be met with curiosity or judgement?

Would someone who was struggling experience support while still being encouraged to take responsibility?

Would students experience the values we say we believe in through the way the adults around them behave?

Because culture isn’t something we establish in September and then move on from.

We create it, and recreate it, in every interaction.

So as another school year begins, alongside the goals, schedules, and improvement plans, perhaps there’s another conversation worth having with your staff:

If the culture we say we want were already happening here, what would it actually look like, sound like, and feel like?

And then comes the harder question:

What would we, as adults, need to do consistently to create it?

09/07/2026

When Being Kind Means Being Clear

Something has been coming up in my conversations with educational leaders:

How do you care deeply about people and still hold them accountable?

One experienced educator described it to me this way.

She wanted to practise servant leadership. She wanted her teachers to know she was there for them.

But over the years, she realized there were times when her desire to protect people, or even to be liked, made it harder to do another important part of her job:

Be direct.

I think many caring leaders know this tension.

We don’t want to add pressure when someone is already overwhelmed.

We don’t want to damage a relationship.

We don’t want a difficult conversation to become conflict.

So sometimes we soften the message.

We postpone the conversation.

We compensate for someone.

Or we hope the situation will improve on its own.

But I’ve come to believe that clarity can be one of the kindest things a leader offers.

Being clear about an expectation isn’t unkind.

Giving someone honest feedback isn’t unkind.

Holding a boundary isn’t unkind.

And respectfully addressing something that isn’t working isn’t unkind.

In fact, avoiding those conversations can create a different kind of harm.

Resentment grows.

Other people compensate.

Expectations become inconsistent.

Trust begins to erode.

And eventually, the conversation we were trying to avoid becomes much harder.

Perhaps the question isn’t:

“How can I be kind OR direct?”

Perhaps it’s:

“How can I be kind AND direct?”

That little word and changes the leadership conversation.

Because strong relationships and accountability don’t have to compete with one another.

Done well, they strengthen one another.

As you begin this school year, is there a conversation that would actually become kinder if it became clearer?

09/04/2026

Before We Fix It, Do We Understand It?

One of the things I learned fairly early in my career was that educators are very good at solving problems.

Sometimes too good.

We see a problem and immediately start generating solutions.

A student isn’t engaged? Let’s find a new strategy.
Behaviour is escalating? Let’s create a plan.
Staff morale is low? Let’s organize something positive.
Achievement is slipping? Let’s introduce a new program.
Parents are frustrated? Let’s improve communication.

All reasonable responses.

But what if the problem we’ve identified isn’t actually the problem?

I’ve sat in many meetings where considerable time and energy went into finding solutions before we had spent enough time understanding what was actually happening.

And I’ve done it myself.

We see the visible symptom and naturally want to make it better.

But I’ve learned to become much more curious about what sits underneath it.

A disengaged student may not need another engagement strategy.

A resistant staff member may not be resistant to change itself.

A frustrated parent may not really be upset about the issue they first raised.

And a team struggling to implement something may not need another reminder about expectations.

The presenting problem gives us information. It doesn’t necessarily give us the cause.

That’s why one of the questions I find myself asking more and more is:

“What might be driving this?”

That question slows us down just enough to listen.

To notice.

To ask another question.

To consider the situation from more than one perspective.

And sometimes what we discover changes the solution entirely.

As another school year begins, there will be no shortage of problems asking for our attention.

Perhaps our first job isn’t always to solve them.

Perhaps it’s to understand them well enough that we solve the right problem.

Address

Toronto, ON

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

Telephone

+16478816958

Website

https://margaretboersma.com/

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