Dr. Jim: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining us today. This is your friendly neighborhood talent strategy nerd, Dr. Jim. Every K 12 district is faced with an educator talent crunch. Some districts have it better than others when it comes to solving that crunch. If you're in a suburban or urban district, you still have a decent population base that you could potentially draw from.

If you're in a rural district, but have decent proximity to a suburb or close to a college town, you're still have some shots that you can take. What do you do if you're in the middle of nowhere? Today's conversation will focus on how you build a talent pipeline in extremely rural districts. So who's going to be guiding us through that conversation?

Today we have Adam Bissenius joining us, and he's began his educational career in 1999 as a middle school science teacher, and then also ended up. Being a football and basketball coach and was named to the 2003 Aflac national assistant coach of the year in football and has been involved in various leadership roles for the past 25 years.

spent 11 [00:01:00] of those years as a college football coach at Buena Vista University, the same university that he attended and was a four year letter letter winner on in football. He spent five years as the six through 12 principal and then seven through 12 activities director for River Valley Community School District.

He's currently in his third year as superintendent of both the Galva Holstein Community School District and the Cressland Community School District.

He and his wife, Amy, have been married for 24 years and have three sons, Brody, Brock, and Brayden. Amy is a high school history teacher for Ridgeview and he spends his free time attending all of the different events that his boys are involved in. Adam, welcome to the show.

  Looking forward to chatting with you because I think when we've had other Rural district leaders on the show.

They've had the benefit of filling their talent pipeline, either through a nearby suburb or through a university that was close by you present a unique set of [00:02:00] circumstances that that we have to tackle. But before we get into that conversation, I think it's going to be important for you to share with the listeners, some of those key moments in your career that helped shaped who you are as a leader.

So why don't you share that with the audience?

Adam Bisenius: Sure, I've beenn fortunate enough in my career Too have various leadership roles from the early on teaching, coaching working with even throughout my college years, I was coaching junior high basketball, local schools always involved in trying to. Be a leader at different roles in different capacities in different schools. Early on in my career as a high school football coach and high school basketball coach, middle school science teacher it really was about trying to figure out how to solve problems, whether it be getting kids to participate, whether it be to help counsel kids through their issues at home, through school and then moving from the high school ranks up to the college ranks coaching football.

University recruiting became that challenge. How do we convince players to [00:03:00] maybe leave a much bigger community coming from a big school to a smaller campus that for college campuses feels like it's, it is out in the middle of nowhere. And so you really try to develop skills and a lot of it comes down to relationships, building relationships with those kids to trust that.

You're going to provide a good experience for him. They're going to get a good education. They're going to get an opportunity to play football. And so that, that trust really stuck to me as being such an important factor.

Dr. Jim: It's interesting that you talked about some of your experiences as a college coach and particularly the recruiting experience that you had. How do you feel that recruiting experience as a college coach helped you from a recruiting perspective as a small district leader?

Adam Bisenius: Not that long ago in education if you were to put out a job Posting for say a fifth grade teacher Within say a month three weeks to a month You're gonna have 75 to 100 applications sitting on your desk trying to pick the right one in today's [00:04:00] tough market of finding teachers, finding good quality teachers to put in front of students, it's less about trying to pick out the best one, but you're seeking them out.

So you're essentially recruiting. So it's a different, it's a different area that recruited them too, but it's still recruiting nonetheless. So you try to get creative with. With ways to put yourself on their radar. So that you can be in the hunt to get them as a finalist.

Dr. Jim: One of the things that you mentioned when you were talking about your recruiting experience was, you sometimes had to convince these folks from bigger towns that it made sense for them to be in a university that was in the middle of nowhere. What was the case that you made in those instances to try to get some of those bigger community players into a small community school?

Adam Bisenius: Well, a lot of times it came down to really finding out what they want and what they want. Oftentimes would align with what we can provide. It's just in a setting, in a location that they just weren't familiar [00:05:00] with. And so same thing goes to the job market today. What they want is good quality kids sitting in front of them.

They want manageable classroom sizes. They want competitive pay. And those are all things we can provide in a small rural district. It's just, they aren't, aware of that. So it's trying to create that. Vision for them and what we can provide the experience they would have. 10 years ago, playing for us now working for us.

It really checks all of their boxes. It's just laying it out so that they can see that for themselves.

Dr. Jim: So switching gears a little bit into the specifics of your district It seems to be a thing out in Iowa where superintendents are handling multiple districts at the same time. So tell me a little bit more about, some of the challenges of doing that in general, but some of the particulars of having two different communities come together as one in the middle school and high school level.

Adam Bisenius: Sure. So it is an interesting situation. So the two districts I manage, Shaler Cressland and Galva [00:06:00] Holstein they each have their own separate contracts. They each have their own budgets. They each have their own business managers. So it really is. Is trying to balance that act in your head of, okay, is this a Shaylor Cressland contract?

Is this a Galva Holstein contract? What kind of benefits do each district offer? If I'm the way our district is set up when there are each district maintains their own elementary. And then when they come together in seventh grade the middle school, the junior high is under the Shaler Cressland jurisdiction.

So those junior high contracts, those junior high employees, unless they were grandfathered in, those are Shaler Cressland contracts working on their terms. If it's a high school employee which is under the jurisdiction of Galva Holstein again, unless that contract was grandfathered in from when the whole grade sharing started.

Those are Galva Holstein contracts. Those are Galva Holstein benefits and they don't perfectly align. So it is a lot to keep track of and it is unique [00:07:00] how it's wonderful that they all come together, but it's hard at times. We think of ourselves as one, but then when you get in the weeds a little bit, we still have to operate separately.

Dr. Jim: When you look at the dynamics of having these two districts come together at a certain point, what are the challenges that presents from a recruiting perspective?

Adam Bisenius: I think the challenges are there's a couple different bigger ones, our setup right now. Currently, we have four buildings in four of our five communities that make up our Ridgeview district. And and those districts from our east edge to our west edge is about 25 miles. So it's a significant difference.

So if we're looking for, say, a Shaylor Crescent elementary teacher, which is located in early Iowa. 25 miles away from the high school, just those simple demographics make a big difference. So if we have trying to recruit somebody who may live west of town, that's a 30 minute drive. At a minimum to get to that building they may want to be with us, but just the [00:08:00] simple square mileage our district covers that creates a real challenge.

On the flip side of that we're looking at maybe a high school coach trying to fill some coaching positions with our junior high. We have made some changes here recently this year that have helped that, but it's hard to have a teacher being willing to drive, 25 miles to coach a sport that they have to arrive to a practice late.

They're going to get home that much later. And so that, that creates a real challenge just from within to fill positions.

Dr. Jim: So when you look at recruiting challenges in general, you just talked about some of the coaching challenges depending on where you're living within the district, but let's drill, let's focus in on the educator pipeline. You're probably dealing with similar circumstances with low population and a distributed district where you have a lot of ground to cover what were some of the things that you've done?

To close the gap when it comes to finding talent and recruiting them early enough so that you're on their [00:09:00] radar.

Adam Bisenius: One thing we really like to do is we really like to be able to welcome in student teachers college students from maybe earlier on than student teachers. So they're doing some practicum work on a more short term basis. We really like to try to get as many as those, many of those kids in our buildings around our kids in our system.

To provide them with a good opportunity to grow their skill as they're working their way through their degree in college. But also to see what kind of person they are, see what kind of teacher they can become. Obviously as a sophomore, junior in college, you're not a, you're not a finished product by any means, but could they be a good fit to our culture, to what we're looking for?

And then can we, show them what a quality culture we provide. And then knowing that, Hey, we can work with them and help develop those skills so that they would be able to fit right into our system.

Dr. Jim: So it's interesting that you describe identifying or at least reaching out to them as a junior sophomore or junior. And what caught my attention about that is that typically when you're [00:10:00] looking, when I've heard about student teaching, that happens like after your senior year and you have to have a semester of student teaching before you officially graduate.

Tell me a little bit more about why you started focusing in on college sophomores and juniors as your target audience to get them exposed to your district.

Adam Bisenius: Quite honestly in a smaller district, there's challenges. Depending on the background of that individual senior who has done their student teaching and is an applying for different jobs they may. Feel they need the bigger city entertainment, the more options for their social life and things like that.

We're not going to get that kit. And at a time in which you were trying to narrow your list down to your three finalists or four finalists that you want to bring into interview. It's now become, are we going to be able to find, two finalists? Or three finalists. And so you start, you just start looking earlier.

You start to find kids who, maybe graduated from here, from a local school that are in the education. You keep track of them as they're going [00:11:00] through, you try to entice them back, because before, before you student teach you'll do a one week long practicum as more of an observation process.

If we can get them in our system, learn a little bit more about them, the more comfortable they feel around. Us and the things we can provide and the things our communities can provide. It's always nice if they have some connection to the area. Because those are the kids that you want to focus more in on because there's a better chance they're going to stick around and develop and perhaps have long careers in your district.

Dr. Jim: That actually makes a lot of sense as far as getting them early. So they're exposed to your district before they already have their minds made up on some of the places that might, they might potentially go with that being said. When you get to them early. What's the conversation that you have that kind of compels them to give you guys a shot?

Adam Bisenius: go back to my recruiting experience, for a small division three school, in the middle of nowhere. What is it that they're looking for? A lot of teachers as they interviews have [00:12:00] become more about, tell us about what you want and what you have a vision for, and then I'll tell you about what our vision is and we'll see how many things align selling points for a district like ours.

Are you know smaller manageable class sizes? We're very fortunate. We have a progressive both boards are progressive and wanting to update facilities continuously we have smaller communities that are very engaged into the schools And so we have community members in the buildings. We have them supporting kids You'll have no problems finding that community support.

And there's activities you want to do within your classroom and one of the biggest things we like to provide our teachers with is just local control of their room. If they have things they want to do a certain way I'll use, for example, say a high school chemistry teacher. Okay you get into a large school system where they have six chemistry teachers.

Those six people are going to be somewhat expected to do things the same way so that they're providing [00:13:00] a, a more similar experience for all of their 200 chemistry students. In a small district like ours, we have one chemistry teacher. We want that chemistry teacher to know that they're going to have the freedoms to do things their way, as long as they're meeting the core objectives, and they're providing a great environment, we will fully support for them to get creative, think out of the box.

Don't be afraid to try things. Maybe they work, maybe they don't, we're going to support that. And that's just one of the, one of the benefits that when young teachers are, I didn't have to be a young teacher, any teacher that's considering our district, they hear those types of opportunities where they're going to have a lot more freedoms to do things the way they want them done in their classroom when they don't have seven, eight, nine other colleagues that they have to align everything that they do with. This is the vision we can create. Is that something you're interested in? And there are a lot of cases in which that, that does entice teachers because it does provide them with a lot of local control of their own room.

Dr. Jim: I like the fact that you have more flexibility [00:14:00] in your district. When I think back to some of the things that you described, though, there's still another challenge that I think I'd be curious on how you're tackling. So Earlier, when we were talking, you talked about, sometimes it's difficult to find coaches where they live on one side of town and her one side of the district, and it's gonna take them quite a bit of time to get to the school to go ahead and run practice and all that sort of stuff.

That sort of challenge will exist at the student teacher level as well, because if even if you're getting to these candidates as juniors as sophomores and juniors, you know They're still living in one part of the state and they have to work in this part of in your state away from everything else there's a cost Associated with that.

So how are you offsetting that or creating the opportunity for that to not be an obstacle?

Adam Bisenius: To be honest, the type of people we have the most success with in that situation have some sort of connection to the area. They have an aunt, an uncle, a family, [00:15:00] friends, somebody that they can stay with and live with during that time because they're not going to be able to drive, two hours to get to school every day from their college small town colleges, we, we have some within driving distance so that they can continue to live on campus.

And when I say driving distance, 30 minutes to 45 minutes to an hour gives us a few options, but really if there's no connections to this area and there's no housing options available for them as a student teacher that, that university is not going to place them with us anyway.

Just because logistically it's not going to work for that student. We have explored, some potential, could there be a host family type situation that would take that student in that's certainly an option. We haven't, use that option at this point. But I know it's something again with.

Dr. Jim: Five smaller communities represented, there would be a number of families who would be willing to provide that opportunity if need be.

If that's not an active [00:16:00] part of your playbook yet You mentioned something. We have to look for folks that have ties to small communities or ties to the local communities that in that are encompassed in the district. So how does that impact your day to day from a recruitment perspective?

Dr. Jim: How are you getting in front of potential quote unquote leads or candidates that might be good student teaching candidates?

Adam Bisenius: Honestly, there's a lot of network with just local superintendents, local school districts we're in constant communication from day to day happenings to things from the department ed that come our way as superintendents, but we're also in continuous communication about, Hey, I, I'm going to have a.

a high school science position open, or a high school math position open, which are extremely tough to fill you talk to those, you lean on those people, and say, hey, do you know of anybody, you had a position open up, you got yours filled last year, who are the other finalists that you interviewed, can I get their contact information?

You had and we're very open trying to help each other out the best that we can about, [00:17:00] because we're all in the same boat, right? We're all trying to get all the positions filled with the most high quality people we can. And a lot of times, if I were able to interview two or three finalists for a position, and I felt really good about all three of them, or maybe two of the three, I'll let other superintendents know in the area is hey.

If any of you are going to be looking for this position, we had two really good finalists. We offered this one, but here's the contact for the other peoples that you can reach out. And so there's just a lot of networking back and forth with us. I like to read just our small school superintendent group in the area, doing the best we can to help each other out with any type of lead that we could create for one another.

Dr. Jim: So up until this point, we've talked about your recruiting or early funnel strategy at the college level. Is there anything that you're doing either at the community level or even a feeder system within the school system itself that helps? Fill the funnel from from an educator talent perspective.

Adam Bisenius: If there's positions, we can't get filled. We have the department [00:18:00] of ed has allowed us to hire long term subs to fill those positions. And what we've, we have done is we've gone to some of those subs and.

That have done a great job for us and think they'd be tremendous educators. They're just not agreed for it. And we've worked with them on helping pay for some education so that they can continue on and get that teaching degree so that they can become a certified teacher, knowing that, Hey, they're going to roll right into the position for us.

So that's been one way that we've taken some of our local subs. And use them, help not use them but help provide them with opportunities to, to get that degree so that we can hire them moving forward down the road. We've reached out to community members who perhaps were in a different job market.

For example, maybe they've run a construction business and they've done that a lot. And now they're to a point where. They want to be able to help kids and develop and then I'll talk to them, okay, would you be interested in getting your teaching degree and to be an industrial tech teacher so that you can take the skills you've learned [00:19:00] through your, however many years of private business work in whatever field, and how can we get that so that you can stay in front of kids and educate them?

Because you have the knowledge, you have the experience. You just don't have the piece of paper that allows you to do it. So how can we help you get that? Diplomas that you can do that.

Dr. Jim: I like how you're leveraging some of the career changing potentials and long term subs as potential options for filling your talent funnel. Are you doing anything with your high school population and using those folks as a feeder into early childhood or even early entrance back into your school?

Adam Bisenius: sure. So with our high school students we do job shadow opportunities and we talked to them early if, are you interested, what are you interested again, trying to really let them lead that discussion. So as they get into their junior and senior years and they're starting to think about college majors or what they want to do moving forward anybody interested in education, if it's any type of elementary.

For early childhood education, what we do is we provide, we have a daycare within our facility. [00:20:00] It's great, in study hall, let's go down to the daycare. Let's start working with kids. Let's start really seeing if it's something, A, are you good with kids? B, are you patient with kids? Are you can tell if this is going to be a passion of yours.

Okay, let's now advance that. Through some classwork start getting some of your gen eds knocked out through college courses that we offer. So now maybe you're on more of a fast track program where you're getting that college degree and perhaps, two and a half or three years. And now we want to get you back home so that you can have a long career with us.

Dr. Jim: So far, we've talked about three different key areas that you look at, or actually even four. So you're targeting juniors and sophomores and juniors in college and getting them early into student teaching. You're also looking at career changers and you're identifying talent that might be interested at the high school level.

And you're also networking across the other rural superintendents in the [00:21:00] region and trying to create a network. Cross pollinate talent that way. So when you look at all of those different things. How does that weave into your day to day as far as how you block off time for that? Because as a rural superintendent, you're going to have a lot of stuff that pops up and this could easily be something that you put on the back burner.

So what are the things that you put into place so that you're saying disciplined about proactively building that talent funnel?

Adam Bisenius: Sure. And I go back to, also advantages of the smaller school district is, we have 250 kids, roughly grades nine through 12. And so it's not hard to know which of those kids are it, for example. And so if it's three, four, five, six kids. Those kids on, and a lot of our kids on a personal level, because there's not a thousand kids in the high school.

So you recognize those kids, you're around those kids. You're intentional about, seeking those kids out. What I try to do is I just try to do, I'd say, check in [00:22:00] every two weeks. Hey, how are things are going? Are you liking it down there? Are you having any second thoughts about potential career moves?

What colleges are you looking at? And really just trying to stay engaged with those kids. And I've been fortunate enough. I've lived in the community in this current situation, I'm a Shaler Creslin graduate from high school. That's where I attended, but I've lived in the Galva Holstein district for 25 years.

And so those, I know the families the first half of my life was at Shayla Cressland. I know those families. I know they're the students, aunts and uncles and parents and all of those things. So that history really helps me. Or makes it a lot easier for me to have those connections and easy for me to check in with them, check in with families.

As far as the community members I've been around them for a long time and perhaps our kids have been friends for years and we've been friends. So having those connections. Makes it a lot easier. I'm not saying that would be an easy process to do in the middle of a city that contains five high schools and 50, 000 [00:23:00] people.

But again, a benefit of a smaller school, you get to know literally almost everybody much easier.

Dr. Jim: Really good conversation, Adam. I think one of the things that I'm curious about, when I opened the show, I talked about how difficult it is to find talent in general, but how it's a double or even triple whammy for super rural districts.

So when you look at all of the things that you're doing in the, in light of the talent shortage. What's been the impact in terms of your overall talent funnel and how that's helped you fill roles.

Adam Bisenius: The biggest impact that. Getting those students, getting those adults looking for career changes getting them into our walls. If they like how they feel in our walls, then you have got a real shot at keeping them getting them hired, keeping them retained. One thing we really pride ourselves on is culture.

And I think every district tries to do that, but really allowing them to share their vision, allowing us to show them how their vision will work within our walls. And [00:24:00] then once they are around the people that we have, and they start to feel that. That commonality between them all that's had big impacts.

And so the earlier we can get them in our walls, the longer we can keep them within our walls, whether it be through student teaching, whether it be through, subbing for us as they're working towards a degree getting them around our kids. Our kids are they're infectious in there.

Willingness to try new things that really has had an impact on not only landing good quality teachers, but also that word travels because that that new teacher that we hired. Has college classmates, has friends, has others that they know that are in the same program. And we really want that, that positivity to leak back to those other people so that when it's their turn to be looking for jobs they're going to, they're going to take a look at us.

Dr. Jim: I want you to think back to this conversation that we've had and speak directly to that rural. district leader that's listening to this [00:25:00] conversation. If you wanted to advise them on how they can set up a program like this so that they're not in as much of a talent crunch, what are the key things that they need to be doing within their districts to set them up, set themselves up for success?

Adam Bisenius: I think a key to success is that it's twofold. One, you've got to go and get them. It's no longer the time in which you look at your stack of applicants and start to narrow down by all of the different things they're able to do. All of the experiences that they've had it is the time of which.

You can't sit back on your heels and wait for something to happen anymore. You've got to be proactive. You've got to be aggressive. You have to you can't be afraid to call a junior in college that might just be doing their observation for two days at a neighboring school district, but it's in the field that you're looking at and start making that connection now so that you can get them in your office.

As a junior in college or even younger to start having those conversations of, Hey, this is what I [00:26:00] can see working out for you. What are your thoughts on that now? So that's twofold. And then once you get them in the walls, do everything you can to have the culture that's going to keep them.

There's only so many things you can control. You can't control, how much entertainment there is uptown for a young kid out of college. And if those are the things that are priorities to them then it's probably not going to be a good fit. If there have no connections to anything around and their nearest family member is five hours away, it might work, but it's probably going to be more short term.

That doesn't mean you, you don't. Shy away from, if you think they're a good candidate, but really seek them out early, try to find anything that has any ties to the area that helps them feel just more comfortable, maybe outside of the walls, but then do everything you can control inside the walls to, to make them welcome, make them feel like it's their room.

They're in control and you're going to support as many of the ideas that they have as you possibly can.

Dr. Jim: Great stuff, Adam. If folks want to get in touch with you and continue the conversation, what's the best way [00:27:00] for them to find you?

Adam Bisenius: One of two ways. My email or always willing to take a phone call,

Dr. Jim: one of the things that stood out about this conversation is that It reminded me of one of the design philosophies that apple Had as a technology company and steve jobs when he was talking to his design team said that we are not Out there to be all things to all people and that really helped inform how their design principles showed up in all the products that they wanted and I think that's important When you're looking at this from the context of a rural school district If you want to be successful in proactively building a pipeline of talent, you have to be at peace with the fact that you can't be all things to all people.

So it's important for you to find the right people that get who you are and what you're about. And once you've identified those folks that are likely to be aligned with you, you have to give them an experience once they're inside your walls. So those two [00:28:00] principles, find the people that get you. And then give them an experience is probably really good advice for any company that's looking at solving the talent crunch.

I think oftentimes a lot of companies try to be all things, all people, and that leads to a lot of different churn that exists, and that's not good from a cultural perspective. So I appreciate you sharing that with us, for those of you who've been listening to this conversation. If you liked the discussion, make sure you leave us a review on your favorite podcast player.

If you haven't already done so make sure you join our K through 12 leadership community and then tune in next time where we'll have another leader hanging out with us and sharing with us the game changing insights that helped them build a high performance team.