Principal PLN is now part of the Be Podcast Network, a community of 25+ shows promoting transformative change in formal and informal learning environments — schools and classrooms, companies, community organizations, and at home. Learn more and subscribe: https://bepodcast.network

This episode is part of the #SameHere Schools series for Mental Health Awareness Month. Get all the content from this series here: https://samehere.transistor.fm

In this session, educators explore the impact of a professional learning network (PLN) or professional learning community (PLC) on health, well-being, and professional practice. 

Ilene Winokur (@IleneWinokur)

Dr. Winokur is a coach, PD specialist, and author of Journey to Belonging. She’s also host of the podcast, Journeys to Belonging. Visit her website: https://www.ilenewinokur.com/ 

Rachelle Dené Poth (@Rdene915)

Rachelle is a Spanish and STEAM: Emerging Technology teacher at Riverview High School in Oakmont, PA. Rachelle is also an edtech consultant, presenter, attorney, and the author of seven books, her most recent Things I Wish [...] Knew includes stories from 50 educators. Follow Rachelle's blog at www.Rdene915.com. 

Livia Chan (@LiviaChanL)

Livia Chan is a head teacher, writer, and presenter. She is a contributing author of Because of a Teacher who is deeply passionate about the gift of relationships, learning, and leading with heart. Livia believes in fostering the love and joy of learning where all learners are seen, valued, heard, appreciated, inspired, and empowered. Visit here website: https://livchan.com/ 

Make sure to subscribe to this series to hear more panel discussions focused on mental health awareness. 

Visit https://bepodcast.network to learn about 25+ shows covering education and learning at all levels. 

Visit https://belouga.org to learn more about Belouga. 

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

#PrincipalPLN is now part of the BE Podcast Network and we're replaying some of the great episodes from the vault. Hope you enjoy this blast from the past. Be sure to see all the great shows on the BE Podcast Network.

In this episode Jessica and Spike discuss a bunch of different things going on in the life of a Principal. They begin by discussing the summer responsibilities and how to complete the end of the year, manage the day to day and plan for the upcoming year. They discuss the role of the vice/assistant Principals, student use of cell phones, and summer learning. 

Resources mentioned in our discussion:

Cell Phones In School? - Away for the Day

Books Jessica read/plans to read this summer:

• Creating a Culture of Reflective Practice: Capacity-Building for Schoolwide Success
• Swimming in the Deep End: Four Foundational Skills for Leading Successful School Initiatives
• Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity
• The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace
• Relentless:Changing Lives by Disrupting the Educational Norm by Hamish Brewer   

Spike: 

• Crucial Conversations: Tools For Talking When The Stakes Are High
• The Artist's Way: A Spiritrual Path to Higher Creativity  Here is a Principal to follow who is doing things differently and getting amazing results: 

Hamish Brewer 

• Relentless: Changing Lives By Disrupting 
• Principal of the Year: Hamish Brewer, Fred Lynn Middle School 
• Ted Talk - How Radical Love Transformed a School 

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

In this week's episode, Theresa and Spike discuss how they are preparing for the upcoming school year. They begin by talking about how each of their district's update discipline and dress codes. Even though this may seem to be a boring or redundant activity, Theresa and Spike try to put a lot of thought into the process. They also discussed how policies should be updated to create an inclusive environment. For instance, Theresa went through her school's policies to ensure they reflect equity and diversity in terms of gender. The discussion then went into how to prepare the students and staff for the long haul (180 days) as opposed to over-hyped welcome back sessions. Theresa and Spike want to keep that topic for the next podcast and get ideas on how to work with their staff on the marathon of the school year, not the sprint.

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

In this episode Jessica and Spike discuss a bunch of different things going on in the life of a Principal. They begin by discussing the summer responsibilities and how to complete the end of the year, manage the day to day and plan for the upcoming year. They discuss the role of the vice/assistant Principals, student use of cell phones, and summer learning. 

Resources mentioned in our discussion:

Cell Phones In School? - Away for the Day

Books Jessica read/plans to read this summer:

• Creating a Culture of Reflective Practice: Capacity-Building for Schoolwide Success

• Swimming in the Deep End: Four Foundational Skills for Leading Successful School Initiatives

• Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity

• The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace

• Relentless:Changing Lives by Disrupting the Educational Norm by Hamish Brewer

   

Spike: 

• Crucial Conversations: Tools For Talking When The Stakes Are High

• The Artist's Way: A Spiritrual Path to Higher Creativity

   Here is a Principal to follow who is doing things differently and getting amazing results:

Hamish Brewer 

• Relentless: Changing Lives By Disrupting 

• Principal of the Year: Hamish Brewer, Fred Lynn Middle School 

• Ted Talk - How Radical Love Transformed a School 

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

In this episode, Spike and Jessica catch up on the new initiatives in their school and how things are going. Jessica discussed the progress of PBIS and Playworks in her school. Spike discussed how his school is going through the revalidation process to continue being an AVID National Demonstration School. Based on the feedback from a prior visit, the staff have been working on increasing Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS). The AVID site team have provided weekly instructional practices, developed a Google Form to collect best practices, and they meet with Spike on a monthly basis to coach him how to use HOTS in the weekly email, staff meetings, and for teacher feedback. They are also correlating the McREL Walkthrough data from last year as the compare the instances of remembering and understanding with analyzing and evaluating. The revalidation process has definitely caused the school to improve in areas to make student learning better.  

Here is a link to Spike’s blog “5 Ways to Increase Higher Order Thinking Skills at Your School”

PrincipalPLN is a part of the Education Podcast Network

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

In this episode, Theresa and Jessica discuss what they're up to with welcome staff back to school. Jessica finally tried out Flipgrid thanks to Eric Ewald's encouragement when she attended his session at the National Principals Conference.  Here's a quick video Jessica made to show her staff how to do this: Flipgrid intro.  Theresa shared some other awesome ideas she's seen Flipgrid used for.

As they talked about Social Emotional Learning, here are links to some of the resources/programs mentioned:

• Second Step Curriculum
• Zones of Regulation
• Pyramid Model
• Playworks
• Handle with Care Referral
• The Fire Within book
• Fostering Resilient Learners book
• Lavonna Roth
• Web and Link Crew from The Boomerang Project
• Playspent.org Poverty simulation

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

In this episode, Theresa and Spike sit down to discuss the first week of school and reflect on their openings. Both Theresa and Spike discussed how they were in the "cycle of sacrifice" due to the high levels of stress in opening up school for the year. Are you in the cycle of sacrifice? 

Spike discussed the First Three Days project he did with his school. This was an idea that was inspired by the Significant 72 by Greg Wolcott. The Lakeside staff and students spent a significant amount of time building relationships with each other as well as reviewing the expectations of the school. Spike plans to blog about this initiative and also will discuss upcoming ideas for follow up. 

Theresa shared ideas to make the weekly communication more collaborative. Her administrative team writes their information on a shared Google Document which is generated from a weekly reminder email from Theresa through Boomerang. She also uses Boomerang to manage her email inbox by using the tools such as pausing, scheduling and having emails re-delivered for emphasis and reminders. Boomerang can be used for Gmail and Microsoft Office. Be sure to check it out! 

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

In this episode, Spike and Jessica talked about their school plans for the first days of school. Spike talked about the Significant 72 and Jessica talked about Playworks. 

Spike and his staff took the Significant 72 and used it as an outline for the first 3 days. They made a Google Slides presentation for all staff to use period by period. Within the presentation are "get to know you" activities as well as instructions to cover all expectations. The Significant 72 places emphasis on students knowing teachers, teachers knowing students, students knowing students. Spike and his staff added students knowing the school. Spike will report out on this on the next podcast.

We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.