Discover strategies for educational leaders to combat staff burnout and foster a thriving workplace culture with insights from Bethany Rees.

In this episode, Bethany shares what she learned while opening a brand-new Texas 6A high school in 2018, growing the campus from 1,200 to 4,000 students and hiring 213 staff members in one semester. That experience taught her that the “magic program” fallacy can destroy the very capacity leaders need to create lasting change.

Bethany explains how she anchored the school’s identity in the “Grizzly Growl,” a five-pillar framework built around growth mindset, respect, ownership, work ethic, and leadership. Every decision involving students, teachers, parents, or the broader community was checked against those pillars, creating a shared language that guided the campus through growth, pressure, and uncertainty.

The conversation also explores how Bethany used small-group teacher town halls to build a feedback loop that kept the framework alive. Instead of leading those meetings by talking first, she positioned herself as the secretary, allowing staff to name the gaps, identify solutions, and help shape the systems that would support the school.

Listeners will leave with a clear build order for school culture: establish shared identity before purchasing any program, then strengthen communication, safety, logistics, classroom environment, and teaching and learning as load-bearing systems. Bethany also names three mistakes that weaken culture: making decisions without teacher input, buying a magic-bullet program and rushing to implement it, and adding to the plate without removing anything first.

The episode offers practical leadership moves school leaders can use right away, including running town halls where the leader listens and takes notes, replacing long email threads with short conversations, and auditing the plate before every new initiative by naming what gets cut first.