Jason Kennedy Brings a Tons of Experience to FocusED Listeners

Jason Kennedy is a 24 year educator, author, school administrator, district curriculum and professional learning director, instructional coach, and presenter.

He has tons of experience at all levels of education, elementary through college.

He has been a part of Cognia review teams, statewide professional learning, and local curriculum design teams, making the intentional designing of instruction for learning his main goal.

FocusED Show Notes with Jason Kennedy

Jason tells us that the original book title was “let’s quit teaching,” which the publisher was a bit squeamish about and so they changed it to “let’s ‘stop’ teaching.” The point is that the focus should be on learning, not just teaching.

He explains that shifting from teaching to learning is a bigger mindset move than one may realize because many of us, as educators, have been trained to teach…include content delivery.

Jason says that we’re always chasing programs versus creating better designs. He explains the difference between planning and designing.

Kennedy reminds school leaders that Tier I should be based on standards and curriculum resources, not a program. Don’t miss what he says about combining the what, the who, and how to make the best designs possible.

School leaders will gravitate toward what he says about making a daily commitment as educators.

We were thrilled to discuss effect sizes and highly impactful teaching strategies, including success criteria.

Kids who don’t like their teachers, and, worse yet, kids who don’t feel like their teacher likes them, will struggle to learn. ~ Jason Kennedy

He covers the concept of a learning design framework, which is what teachers and students should be doing throughout the instructional period. All teachers should work within a framework to incorporate high impact strategies with flexibility to make decisions.

Don’t miss what he says about using AI to build lesson plans.

Jason talks about what gets him excited, including working with teachers and collaborative teams.

We loved the team names that his teachers use when the collaborate, ELA teachers calling themselves “get lit.”

He tells us to go to Corwin for other authors, and mentions John Hattie and VisibleLearning.

We loved what he said about “intentional design choices” and what happens when kids come to school and already know the material.

Jason ends with “learning is the job.” “The second that the adults stop learning, the kids stop as well.

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FocusED is your educational leadership podcast where our mission is to dissect a particular focus for teachers and school leaders so that you can learn to lead better and grow faster in your school or district. Let us know who you would like to hear from next.