The Great School Leadership Game
Why Making a Ruckus Is More Fun Than Playing-It-Safe
👋 Welcome to a 🔓 free edition 🔓 of Ruckus Makers — the newsletter for bold school leaders who Do School Different. Each week we drop fresh content across our signature styles:
The Reframe → Mindset shifts in 90-seconds.
Dot AI → Supercharged leadership prompts and custom gpts
MEH → The Onion meets Education. What could go wrong?
First in Line → Exclusive access to content before the bookshelf.
The Automatic School → A system that moves you FROM bottleneck TO breakthrough
The Hot Seat → Coaching calls turned into case studies
💡Premium subscribers get access to custom GPTs, full archives, advanced tools, and Digital Danny — your AI-powered coach. Upgrade here.
This didn't start as a piece about games.
I set out to answer this question: why are some principals transforming their schools while others stay trapped in administrative hell?
But I figured out how to explain it in way fewer words:
Making a Ruckus is just more fun.
And here's the thing most Play-It-Safe-Principals miss: Making a Ruckus isn't the endgame. It's the currency for a much bigger game that determines whether you'll spend your career managing the status quo or actually changing lives.
We're all playing a Great School Leadership Game. How well we play determines the impact we make.
The Great School Leadership Game is played simultaneously by thousands of educators, in real schools, with real consequences for students. Your professional reputation and student outcomes are at stake, but here's the kicker — the downside is limited. The upside? Transformational.
Most administrators treat their role like a compliance checklist. But that's just playing small.
Principal Mastery is indistinguishable from an ongoing game.
Here's what Play-It-Safe-Principals don’t get: the way you play in one area unlocks opportunities everywhere else.
That innovation you implement? Gets you invited to speak.
That speaking gig? Connects you with other Ruckus Makers.
Those relationships? Transform how you think about what's possible.
We now live in a world where, by reimagining your school culture or sharing your story, you can marshal resources, support, and opportunities that seemed impossible five years ago.
The Great School Leadership Game is free to play, and it starts simply: by realizing that you're playing a game.
Every innovation is a lottery ticket for student transformation. That's a big unlock.
What Game Are You Really Playing?
It's Monday morning. You're tired. Three parent complaints, a teacher observation due, and the superintendent wants those test scores "ASAP." Plus someone's vaping in the bathroom again.
This does not seem fun. This does not seem like a game.
But here's what I've learned after mentoring school leaders for a decade:
Sometimes it's weird to remember that we're all effectively competing to impact the right students in the right ways, and if we do it well enough, we can change entire communities.
Hit the right strategies in the right sequence, transform lives.
Traditional administration is just an often boring sub-game within the meta-game.
The most successful school leaders use four elements that make the work feel like play:
Frequent Feedback Loops (weekly coaching, real-time student voice).
Variable Outcomes (celebrating wins, learning from failures).
Sense of Control (you design the experience).
Connection to a Meta-Game (building something legendary).
All four are present in the Great School Leadership Game. But here's what matters most: the connection to the meta-game.
The Meta-Game Changes Everything
"This job is incredible." You'll hear that a lot from Ruckus Makers who've figured out how to play.
Getting good at the Great School Leadership Game makes seemingly impossible things happen:
That "difficult" teacher everyone warned you about? Now your biggest advocate.
That district initiative you thought was pointless? You found a way to make it meaningful.
Your dream job? Reaching out because they've heard about your results.
Look, this overlaps with the traditional career ladder — promotions, awards, conference speaking — but it doesn't require climbing the district hierarchy.
The best players create their own paths.
Meet The Players
The Balanced Leader:
Principal Justin King just finished his 7th year as a high school principal. Here's what he told us:
"I feel the most rested and balanced after this year than any year prior. For the first time, I am receiving professional development that I can immediately use. For the first time, I have boundaries around my time, and I don't feel like my job is always controlling my life. My family and mental health have been the biggest beneficiaries."
Justin figured out what most principals never do: you can be incredibly effective without sacrificing everything else that matters.
The Career Transformer:
Principal Demetrius Ball realized something crucial in 2017:
"I couldn't wait on my principal or my school district to really guide my career and provide the development that I needed as an individual and as a leader."
So he invested in himself and joined the mastermind. The results? He went from assistant principal to leading schools that became a California Distinguished School and a national Blue Ribbon school. But here's what he values most:
"The Mastermind gives you a family to be a part of. Being isolated as a school leader is easy, but the Mastermind has been life changing."
Demetrius is now finishing year three as a high school principal, leading exactly the way his school needs because he never stopped growing.
The Purpose-Driven Rookie:
Assistant Principal Kelyn Marmalejo was feeling stuck until she found her community of Ruckus Makers:
"I'm able to share challenges and celebrate successes. I'm able to problem solve and brainstorm and just gain new perspective with a group of friends across the nation, across the world."
The breakthrough? Getting grounded in her purpose and why.
The result? She just accepted an offer to become a principal 🎉
These leaders all understand:
If education ain't a bit disruptive, then what are the students really learning?
How Making a Ruckus Supercharges the Game
People who Make a Ruckus understand that this is all a game with different rules than traditional education suggests.
Here's what most principals miss:
Making a Ruckus is the currency for educational leadership.
It rewards participation directly. Innovators, collaborators, and community builders get recognition, opportunities, and results.
When you run a "Do School Different" experiment, you're not following someone else's playbook — you're creating value through innovation.
The Great School Leadership Game rewards authentic transformation. Students want to tackle real-world problems instead of filling in scantrons. Teachers want to express creativity through meaningful projects. Of course they'd want to participate in schools that value that.
In an abundant game like this, the more you signal what you care about, the more you open yourself up to possibilities.
Our masterminds and The Ruckus Maker Club are critical infrastructure for this game. They let educators collaborate across districts at the speed of innovation instead of bureaucracy, creating dynamic groups when you want to combine expertise.
How to Play the Game
The cost of failure in education innovation is as close to zero as it's ever been.
That's a key mental shift. You're not trying to build perfection overnight. When you start playing the Great School Leadership Game, you're building better outcomes for students.
Anyone can play. All you need is vision and curiosity about what's possible.
Step 1: Find Your Fellow Ruckus Makers
Ask yourself: "What am I most passionate about in education?" Then find your people. They're out there.
Maybe you start implementing student voice initiatives. Or you join The Ruckus Maker Mastermind and get a feel for innovation before proposing new approaches.
Step 2: Go From Follower to Leader
Over time, you implement, share results, lead discussions, pilot projects. You document your experience as someone figuring it out.
Be yourself, but experiment with your leadership attributes. You can be innovative in many areas, or absolutely transformational in one. Both work.
Step 3: Embrace the Game Mechanics
Feedback Loops: You'll get feedback from students, teachers, parents. Don't expect it all positive. Pay attention to what works, but stay authentic. Your metric isn't test scores alone — a breakthrough with one struggling student matters more.
Variable Outcomes: Some innovations work, some don't. That's the game. The goal isn't perfection, it's transformation.
Sense of Control: You get out what you put in. Pick innovations aligned with your values. Learn, implement, measure impact. No manual exists for creating the future of education.
Connection to the Meta Game: This is about educational transformation and student impact. The more you innovate and create results, the more opportunities you'll have to scale impact.
The Real Reason This Matters
Look, we could talk about "best practices" and "research-based strategies" until we're blue in the face.
But here's the real deal:
Education needs more than incremental improvement. It needs transformation.
And transformation doesn't wait for perfect timing.
Every day you spend playing by the old rules is another day your students spend in a system designed for a world that doesn't exist anymore.
The fun part? If you do it right, it really can feel like a game. Don't take yourself too seriously. Don't wait for the perfect moment.
Most people reading this won't quit their district job to become full-time consultants. That doesn't mean you can't play. Innovate where you are. Build relationships with other Ruckus Makers. Give yourself options.
Important note: Don't be an educational elitist. It's easy to criticize traditional educators, but it's the fastest way to lose credibility.
My Challenge to You
Pick one thing — just one thing — that makes you think, "There's no way they'll let me do that."
Then do it anyway.
Because here's what I know about you: You didn't get into education to maintain the status quo. You got into it to make a ruckus.
When people ask what I do, I don't have a simple answer. Educational innovator? Ruckus Maker? Community builder? They all fit.
Playing the Game is about having impact while opening doors you didn't even know existed.
It's meaningful work, with exponential impact and compounding returns for students.
Remember: If your approach to education isn't making someone a little uncomfortable, are you really preparing students for a world that doesn't exist yet?
Now go forth and Make a Ruckus. Your students are waiting.
Whenever You Are Ready … Here Are Three Ways We Can Help You Win the Great School Leadership Game
Subscribe to the premium version of Ruckus Maker Media. Begin your subscription today.
Join Play Your Game 1: An 8-week leadership reset where you define the game by your own rules. Comment “PLAY MY GAME” on this post and I will DM you the details.
Apply to the Mastermind: This is our weekly peer coaching and mentorship program teaching Ruckus Makers how to Do School Different. The application takes less than 3-minutes to complete.
Shout out to Packy McCormick. This post was inspired by the Great Online Game.