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 do instead so your efforts actually pay off. You'll hear a smarter, more strategic way to approach these final weeks so you and your students can go into this years' tests with clarity and confidence because you've directed your team's energy where it matters most #LikeABuilder.

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 this episode, I talk about that "compensation cycle," how broken systems train us to survive instead of replace, and why awareness alone doesn't lead to action. If you've ever known something needed to change but felt too depleted to even imagine a different way, this episode will help you step out of the compensation cycle and start building real success #LikeABuilder.

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 call "good." In this episode, I challenge the idea that suffering is a necessary part of learning, examine what our favorite stories reveal about our expectations, and explore what changes when we stop centering heroics and start interrogating design, #LikeABuilder.