I Love This Place

When Patrick Erwin's band recruitment plummeted from 120 to 82 students, his wife delivered a painful truth: "You preach leadership to your students but don't practice it for yourself."

That moment changed everything.

In I Love This Place, Erwin shares seventeen years of hard-won lessons from leading a premier high school music program, revealing how authentic leadership creates school cultures where everyone genuinely wants to belong. Through honest stories of failure and breakthrough, he introduces the HUSTLE framework-a practical approach built on Humility, Understanding, Scholarship, Trust, Leadership, and Excellence.

School culture doesn't change through programs or mandates. It changes when leaders change-when we stop relying solely on techniques and start embodying the values we want to see. And that culture is amplified when we grow more leaders in our schools.

"Patrick provides steps that are both transferable and transformational-anyone can practice them, and they will change your school atmosphere."
-Tim Elmore, Founder of Growing Leaders

The struggle is real. But so is the solution. It starts with you, leader.