Show Notes:

In episode 53, I interviewed Dr. Dave Schmittou (@daveschmittou), author of the book, “Bold Humility.” Dave is a former teacher and administrator, speaker, and the author of the book, “It’s Like Riding a Bike.” We discussed how to stay humble and use failures and past experiences as motivation for future success.

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About Dave Schmittou

Dave is a former elementary school principal, former middle school principal, assistant principal, coach, teacher, and college professor. Named the 2018 College Educator of the Year and the 2014 Michigan Principal of the Year, Dave Schmittou is currently the Executive Director for Curriculum and Instruction in Michigan.

Dave is a proud father of four children, resident beach bum, educational pirate, and author of “It’s Like Riding a Bike- How to Make Learning Last a Lifetime.”

His last book, “Bold Humility- A leadership guide by a man with a lot left to learn” was published in August, 2019 by EduGladiators.

The Book

Connect with Dave:

Dave’s Website: schmittou.net

Dave’s Twitter: @daveschmittou

Dave’s Instagram: daveschmittou

Our Conversation

Dan Kreiness
All right, very exciting guys. I feel like season three is really shaping up to be absolutely the best season yet for leader of learning because we just continue to have amazing guests on the show. This episode I bring in Dr. Dave Schmittou, who is awesome, first of all, but he’s he’s an author and a speaker and an amazing award winning educator. But I don’t think my introduction will do him much justice. So please, Dr. Dave, if you could introduce yourself and tell the listeners who you are, where you are. And what you do.

Dave Schmittou
Well, Dan I’m going to tell you, I’m kind of intimidated. Now that bar was just raised higher than probably it’s ever been raised from you before. So I’ll see if I can live up to at least some of that. Let me start my introduction by telling you who I really am. I am a father of four incredible kids, my oldest, just started eighth grade this week, 13 years old. And my youngest is four years old, going into preschool this year, for the first time, I’ve got all four of my kids in school. Start with that, because that’s truly the foundation of who I am, personally, and professionally. Everything I do professionally, stems from who I am personally and in the fatherhood set. Professionally, my official title is the Executive Director of Curriculum and Instruction, too fancy title, it just means I support principals and teachers and the daily instruction. at the district level, I have been an educator now for 20 years, I’ve been a teacher, I’ve been a dean, I’ve been a coach, I’ve been an assistant principal, I’ve been a principal, I’ve been lucky enough to to work in multiple states of work in urban, suburban and rural districts. You name it, I’ve had the opportunity to really be exposed to it. And I just I truly love what I do. And you say I’m a writer and a speaker and all that. really all it is is just me telling my experiences and telling my stories and most of all, telling my struggles and my failures so that other people don’t have to follow in my footsteps.

Dan Kreiness
That’s great. First of all, let me just say, I commend you. You know, starting with that family piece first and introducing yourself first and foremost, as a as a family guy, I was just thinking about this the other day, you know, I really do pride, myself and my family on the fact that first and foremost, we’re just a really tight knit family unit. And, and sometimes I almost feel like that takes away from perhaps having more interactions with with friends and things like that, but I don’t know, you know, I there’s just something about being really close like that. And for kids. Wow, that’s a you got your hands full?

Dave Schmittou
Well, I do. But you know, I’ll take a side road here. Probably not the focus of what you wanted to talk about on this episode. But you know, you say having kids in a tight knit family can distract you from from friends, all that and I’ll tell you flat out. I am 41 years old, and I don’t have a single adult friend, true story. Never have I grew up as a Navy brat moved around all the time, went to 16 school from K through 12. And always learned how to make acquaintances but never learned how to make friends. But I do pour my all in to my kids. And those people that have heard me speak or have read, read anything that I’ve written, get to know my kids in a very real way, because they are truly the heartbeat of everything. I do it and they’re the reason I work. And I’ll be honest, they’re the reasons I consider myself a strong educator looking to push the status quo, I look at everything through the lens of is this good enough for my kids?

Dan Kreiness
You know, again, we’re like going down this rabbit hole now but I’m really glad you brought that up. And And quite frankly, we’re going to talk about you know, bold humility here in a few minutes. And and I just mentioned to you before we even hit record that I went through a humbling experience that my listeners at this point are probably actually getting tired of hearing. But I will tell you that I jumped into an administrative role during last school year, and I was very excited about it. It’s something that I still feel that I had been preparing for and striving for for a long time. But quite frankly, I do believe that I probably jumped in into it too. Not too quickly, but just to impulsively. You know, it there’s there’s It’s a long story. But at the end of the day, it was kind of a blessing in disguise really, that things didn’t work out there. And one of the biggest reasons why was because I was commuting well over an hour each way. And with a later school day and administrator hours. I wasn’t getting home until 615 630. And it was really starting to eat me up especially during the the later spring and early summer, when both my kids were playing baseball, my son was playing travel baseball for the first time and really, for the first time in my life as a parent, I was starting to really have to miss games and practices and and it was tough. And I know that sometimes that is the light that can be the life of administrators and school leaders, but I just wasn’t ready for it yet. And so I think having now taken a bit of a step back is like I said, a blessing in disguise.

Dave Schmittou
You know what we call this rabbit hole early on, but it’s really not. I think this is really that the essence of maybe why we’re supposed to be talking today? If it’s okay, I’ll take my own journey. I’ll I’ll share that with you.

Dan Kreiness
Before you do and and and it’s absolutely fine that you do I really appreciate that I think the listeners will as well. Let’s back up for a second. You introduced you know, your educational experiences and and what you’re passionate about, both in terms of your family and your career. Let’s back up a second you you’ve published a couple of books now and you speak about some really great topics educationally speaking, you know, it’s like riding a bike how to make learning last a lifetime. And now you’ve just released by humility. So if you could just kind of build it up a little bit, take us back in time. You know how you got into writing it? And then I know, and I told you again, you know, leading up to the interview, I’m really excited. And I do think it’s very timely to talk about this bold humility piece. So please, explain.

Dave Schmittou
Absolutely. And it’s kind of organic, and it kind of flows into what I was going to talk about already. So I appreciate that perfect segue. So like I said, most of what I I share what I talk about, what I write about is through the lens of my own kids. So if I if I can talk about it’s like riding a bike, the first book that they came out three, maybe four years ago now, really, the idea came from me teaching my two oldest kids how to ride their bikes, they each learn how to ride their bikes when they were four or five years old. And we’ve all heard the saying, once you learn how to ride a bike you never forget. And I just remember that that process that I had to go through to get each of them to do embrace the struggle and the falling down and having the courage and the stamina and the commitment to keep going. And lo and behold, they’re bike riders today, they can go up and down the neighborhood, anywhere and everywhere without my assistance without my guidance. But that process just got me thinking about at the time, I was a school principal. And I was having teachers who were struggling, I was working in a title one school with tons and tons of at risk kids, we had 90% of our kids on free lunch 40% of our kids had at least one parent incarcerated. And it was a it was a struggling school. And I had teachers that were really struggling to get their kids to retain any information Monday through Friday. And yet I’m taking my kids outside and teaching them this crazy complex skill of riding a bike. And truly, they’re never going to forget about it. And they’ll never forget how to do it. They can not ride for 20 years and hop back on and keep writing. And I just started thinking, why is it that my kids can can perfect this skill and master it and have endurance of their education. And yet in my own school, I’ve got kids that can’t remember things two or three days later. And it just got me thinking that’s that that’s the essence of that book. And basically, I take the the approach and the process to teaching a kid how to ride a bike and translate that into the classroom to really revolutionize and transform how we teach kids skills, instead of just focusing on memorizing content. So that’s, that’s that first book is through the lens of my kids. But the most recent book that we talked about bold humility really is my own story. You know, I said that growing up, I never really learned how to make friends moved around a lot. And I would argue that a lot of people would argue my professional life has been the same way for the last 20 years. I was a guy back in 1999, graduated from college. And after one year of teaching thought I had it down thought I I knew how to be an a masterful teacher and I was going to be the next best thing and decided that after a year, I was gonna go get my master’s degree in educational leadership and go run my own school. Fast forward between my second and third year of teaching. When I’m 16 job interviews, tried to become a school level leader, they don’t get a single call back. And I was angry and bitter at the world. I was thinking everybody was just missing out that they were they had no idea what they’re talking about. I was mad at the system thinking that education was just gone wild. And people just didn’t know what they were missing out on. And I decided to actually enrolled in law school and think and thought to myself, I was going to go be a lawyer who starts suing school systems on behalf of parents, because the school school systems obviously had no idea what was going on. Well, the HR director in my district heard about me interviewing called me in and truly just became an awesome mentor for me and gave me some life changing advice. And the advice was basically quit trying to knock down doors, told me quite frankly, that I wasn’t even a good teacher yet, let alone a great teacher yet, if I would just focus on where I was and focus on being great at where I was, doors would start opening and I’d have to and I wouldn’t have to keep knocking them down. Lo and behold, that’s truly what happened to me. When from being a teacher, like I said to an assistant principal, to a principal to multiple states, and now have a central office position and a platform where I’m able to try to help mentor both new teachers and new leaders and new administrators all over the country.

Dan Kreiness
Now, you mentioned the advice you got along the way that kind of helped you make a shift in your practice, or your preparation? I’m not exactly sure what as specifically as you can, what was it that you did to make that shift? Was it really like a mindset? Was it your actual instructional practices, the way you prepared for your work every day? What was it?

Dave Schmittou
you know, it was probably a combination of all of those things. I think probably the most foundational change was that I stopped teaching to be noticed and started teaching for my kids. I think that’s that’s the best way to put it. You know, my first two or three years of teaching, I was going through the motions, I would show up and follow the script, cover all the curriculum, get my kids to do whatever they were told they were well managed, well behaved, had great standardized test scores, you know, I checked all the boxes, but I wasn’t one of those teachers that kids would remember 10 1520 years later. But when I was told very bluntly, and very directly that my HR director did not even consider to me to be a very good teacher. And he said that because he said that I didn’t have a reputation. As a teacher, nobody was talking about me that out the community, there was no buzz about me. That hurt, you know, I’m a guy, I’ve got a lot of pride and a lot of competence in certain areas. And in other ways I can get knocked down very, very easily. And that was something that truly swept the feet out right from underneath me. And it was truly just a commitment. And I just went in and said you know what, I’m going to go and I’m just going to love the snot out of the kids in my classroom. I was a middle school teacher, and I wanted to do everything I could to be that teacher that the kids would remembered. Now, I’ve been out of the classroom for 12 years. And I’m getting invited to two weddings now and getting invited to baby showers now from from kids that I taught a decade and a half ago, because I made the commitment that my kids were going to come before all else. And when that happened, like said doors started opening for me professionally, because people saw that passion, that enthusiasm from me, he gave me some some wise advice that I’ve now echoed throughout the years. And I was so focused on making sure my resume lined up. But he said that my resume would get me the interview, my personality would get me the job, my passion would be get would get me a promotion. And from that moment on, I stopped focusing on my resume. And I started focusing on being me and bringing passion to everything I did.

Dan Kreiness
So you’ve mentioned a couple of these kind of humbling experiences. And and I have to again, apologize I haven’t read the book yet, but I am excited about it. And once again, it’s it’s really timely for me as well to, you know, after going through a humbling experience myself and quite honestly, experiencing, it seems like some of the similar things that you experienced, especially, you know, trying to get into a leadership role and trying lots of times unsuccessfully, let’s say, I am really looking forward to reading it. But leading up to the release of the book and when it was just released, because we are friends on social media, I know that you were sharing and opening up about some humbling experiences for you. And I think you’ve mentioned a couple already. But I was wondering if you could explain this one I’m actually looking right now it says that four years ago, you were invited to speak at a national conference in Las Vegas. And you were put up in a nice hotel and you were treated to great fruit food and a packed auditorium that you were speaking to, but then you were told that you weren’t going to be asked back again. Yeah, bring us back to that experience.

Dave Schmittou
Yeah. You know, that was a it was an interesting one. So I’ll leave the name of the organization out of this. But I was called about six weeks before the conference to come in and be basically a backup presenter. I had applied for the for the conference and was rejected and had just moved on. And for some reason, couple of their presenters back down, they needed somebody to step in and fill in, and I jumped at the opportunity. This was a huge national conference in Vegas. They put me up at the Venetian and this huge hotel room. And I mean, I felt like I had finally made it. I was a guy who was just starting to dabble in writing, I was just starting to do some presentations had never even really presented at the state level. And I was presenting to at a national conference I went in, did my presentation to a packed room filled with people that I admire, and I have kind of educational hero worship for they came up and talk to me afterwards, we had great conversations, I was on cloud nine. Before I even made it back to my hotel room. I had an email waiting for me though, from the organization who said that they had somebody in the room who was there to evaluate me. And their quote was, the content was spot on. But my dress was less than the best. Long story short is I showed up in this comp at this conference dress like I normally do for my presentations with jeans and a T shirt. And at the time, it was a bike riding t shirt because the presentation was based off. It’s like riding a bike, a baseball hat with a bicycle on it. And I thought I fit the part. I mean, I wasn’t dressed like a pirate like some people were, I wasn’t dressed in a Hawaiian shirt like others were that had do great jobs. Those are some of my heroes, I was playing the role of me. And I was rejected and told that I would not be getting another invitation back that that presentation was seen as a quote unquote dress rehearsal. And that because I couldn’t dress the part, I would not be called back and it hurt. I wanted you to finish myself I wanted to explain myself and rationalize it, but it hurt. And you know, it literally just took me until maybe a month ago before I even told anybody about that, that that story. I actually told it by reaching out to the the one guy who actually chose to sit next to me at lunch the following day at that conference will be friended me, we become friends on social media. He’s actually a contributor to to the book bold humility. I just I reached out to him just to say thank you for showing me support and, and love and grace when when I needed it and you didn’t even know it.

Dan Kreiness
Alright, so we’re talking about humility here bold humility. You’ve shared a few moments and experiences that humbled you I’ve shared again, an experience that I went through recently in my career that was humbling as well. How do you bounce back? How do you how do you fight through it? Is it is it about just really focusing on why what what is your why why do you do it? Why do you Why did you keep going even though you had these opportunities, let’s say to to be humbled, and maybe even, you know, make some life changes and different paths in your life and career?

Dave Schmittou
Yeah, you know, Dan that’s a, it’s an amazing question. And one that I wish I really had the answer. Or, you know, one thing I can tell you is that the way that I’m wired is I go all in on anything and everything, whether it’s my beliefs, whether it’s my passions, whether it’s my relationships, I am all in. And anytime I get criticism on any of those things that I go all in on, it hurts to the core. I mean, I don’t want to act like I’ve got got it figured out. I’ve been diagnosed with depression, I have been on medication, I’ve gone down that road, because I have felt like at times who I am, and my identity has been under attack because of my beliefs, and my stand on sometimes relatively small things, but they pile up in my own head. And I start to own those things as though they’re my identity. But the thing that I think probably gets me through it is I’ve come to the conclusion that not all fights need to be fought. One of the best lessons that any leader can learn is identifying which Hill is worth dying on. If you are constantly the rabble rouser, if you’re constantly the person poking the bear, eventually the bear is going to get mad, and it’s going to gobble you up. But you have to have some sort of guiding principle to say this is this is where this is where it all ends. And we can’t just make it a big glorious statement, like, I’m going to do whatever’s right for kids, because then we can justify every single fight saying it’s all for the best of kids, or I’m gonna do whatever my teachers need, and sacrifice all else, because then we will be truly fighting battles every single day that will wear us down. For me in different positions in different roles. It’s been pedagogical shifts, maybe I focused on standards based grading or quality feedback. Right now, my big focus is on being vulnerable and being real. I want to give people the power to take risks, and take chances and eliminate as many barriers and as much bureaucracy as I can try and eliminate the scripts and the processes. And I will do everything I can to allow teachers to be the change agents for kids.

Dan Kreiness
That’s awesome. I think that says a lot about you, and why you do what you do. And, you know, I think that for me, and I’m sure for my listeners as well, we could take a lot out of what you just said. But if you could, as we sort of wrap up here, boil it down, like if you know someone has just gone through some humbling experience, believe me, I know, or maybe throughout this school year, they will, what kind of advice would you give to someone else to kind of, I don’t want to use the word battle or fight to just push through an experience that will humble them. And we’ll just get in their way of potentially succeeding at what they set out to.

Dave Schmittou
Yeah, I think it’s important to remember that we have to assume the good and out the bad. when bad things happen to us. When humbling things happen to us. It’s often because people don’t see things the same way that we do. But we have to remember that they’re coming from a place that they consider to be good as well. And a we have to assume that they have honest and pure intentions to try to, to grow whatever their causes. And we cannot look at anything like people are trying to attack us as people, they’re just seeing things differently. And the way that they might fight is different than ours. You know, it’s so tempting at times to lash out to try to retaliate, to try to get even, but ultimately, the fight that we’re fighting is not against people. It’s for kids. And it’s for beliefs and ideas, we have to be willing to put ideas on the table, knowing that the ideas are going to get challenged and not get upset when we start to feel like we’re being challenged. And it’s going to happen. If you are a leader, you are designed to go out there and change course your nobody is called to an elevator pitch how to maintain the status quo, you are there to push things forward, which means you are going to make some people uncomfortable, and you just simply have to decide what’s worth it and what’s not. And if you decide that something is worth it, that means it’s worth it, no matter the costs, the good, the bad, and the ugly, because of the cause is more important than your pride.

Dan Kreiness
That’s really great. I don’t even have anything else. I think we that’s a great way to take us on out of here. Dr. Dave, I really appreciate your time. everyone listening Of course, Dave’s information including where you can go to listen to his podcast and and also, of course, purchase the books. Bold humility is now available at Amazon and everywhere that you can purchase your books from edgy gladiators publishing. Correct. That’s it. That’s right. That’s awesome. I love that that they’re getting into the publishing game. I really like those edgy gladiators. They’re good people. Anyway, if if any of our listeners are not connected with you yet on social or or your website or anything, please let them know where they can go.

Dave Schmittou
Absolutely. So I’m one of those guys has waited four years to get my Instagram account and twitter account to finally have the same username. So they are both now at Dave Schmidt. Oh, and Schmidt Oh, is SCHMITTOU. And my website is Schmidt o net.

Dan Kreiness
That’s easy. and congratulate. I saw that that Instagram thing I think just earlier today, right? Yeah. So now you’re fully aligned. That’s, that’s awesome. All your social accounts are the same thing. I have that too. And it’s it makes everything really easy. Yeah. Anyway, thank you for your humility and your vulnerability. I really appreciate it. Again, I think hearing some of the things that you went through, although they were difficult at the time, that you fought through it, and that you have shared them have definitely helped me just by listening to your story. And, you know, listeners out there, please reach out to me or Dave, if anything he just said or I just said really resonated with you like they did with me. Dave, thank you so much for your time.

Dave Schmittou
Thank you, Dan. Appreciate it.