Just Talk to Us Normally: A Leader's Guide to Organizing Schools That Elevate Students

By Whitney M. Hegseth

Just talk to us normally assists educational leaders in critically examining their instructional supports, reflecting on how to use these supports to elevate students. This leadership guide is informed by Hegseth's extensive ethnographic and comparative research in elementary schools that span different educational systems and national contexts. Focusing on the International Baccalaureate and Montessori educational systems, in particular, Hegseth demonstrates how educational leaders can change culture. Specifically, Hegseth argues that educational leaders can use educational infrastructure, both direct and indirect supports to teaching and learning, to improve the way we see and teach young people.

To support leaders in this work, Just talk to us normally provides a framework that highlights the following: there is more than one way to change culture, more than one way for leaders to use educational infrastructure to systemically improve how students are perceived and taught. Educational leaders can determine how adaptable, aligned, and specified their supports are for teaching and learning. However, these decisions leaders make around their educational infrastructure have implications for the work and challenges of leaders, the beliefs and practice of teachers, and the experiences and beliefs of children. The cases and framework presented in this book therefore provide leaders with the tools necessary for enhancing the student experience.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0197833004
• ISBN13: 9780197833001
• Release Date: September 2026
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 216 Pages