Schools of Excellence: The No. 1 ECE & Private School Leadership Podcast

Watch the video interview of this episode: https://schoolsofexcellence.com/ordinary-moments-4

Get all the details about the 2022 Summit of Excellence here: https://schoolsofexcellence.com/ordinary-moments

Do you find yourself constantly operating in survival mode and making excuses for your busyness? 

In this episode, I speak to Aliya Roberts, the owner of Pratt Street Learning Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Aliya and I connect on a lot of different things, one of them being the concept of excuses. She shares some insight into the fact of her highest turnover that she had during a particular season and the shifts that she needed to move through. Aliya had to uncover the lies that she was telling herself about being busy, needing to work all the time, needing to show up, and not feeling like she was doing enough. The leadership mindset of letting go of showing up for the team really came through for her during that season. 

Through another episode of this Ordinary Moments series, I hope that you will walk away with true insights into what it takes to lead an extraordinary center. 

In a nutshell, we talk about:

• Pratt Street Learning Center’s history and the concept of its foundation.
• Some of the systems that Aliya had to put in place for her to free her plate.
• How Pratt Street Learning Center has adopted the mindset and practice of gratitude.
• The identity shift process that Aliya and her staff went through.
• How Aliya dealt with the mixed feeling of not being the hero of everyone's life anymore.
• Some of the ordinary moments that Aliya is enjoying as a mom and a business owner.

… and so much more!

Resources and links mentioned in this episode:

Watch the video interview of this episode: https://schoolsofexcellence.com/ordinary-moments-4

The Summit of Excellence is a two-day in-person experience on March 1-2, 2022 in Boca, Florida. Learn how to master interpersonal dynamics, foster kindness, and establish your school as a beacon of light in your community.

If you want to…

Drive more impact in your community.

Be inspired by a network of peers.

Deliver higher quality care.

Or build a team of leaders.

Imagine your team...

• Doing and thinking “outside the box,” and trying new methods.
• ​Pushing out of their comfort zones without anxiety.
• ​Feeling a sense of community and connection at work.
• ​Treating conflict and change as an opportunity for growth. 

… all so you can be equipped to tackle any challenging situation that comes your center’s way.

Let’s be honest: To truly impact our kids and create a healthy, engaged, and successful next generation, we need to be better leaders. 

And that requires real collaboration—moments where we come together to share our wisdom in order to create healthy, productive learning communities.

Sign up for the Summit of Excellence here: https://schoolsofexcellence.com/summit

If you would like to have a conversation about if the Summit of Excellence is right for you, your team, and your center, please email me at [email protected].

More about the show:

If you are an Early Childhood director or owner, prepare to transform your school and life with the Schools of Excellence podcast. Tune in each week to learn from Chanie Wilschanski, the founder and host of the Schools of Excellence Podcast and a mom of 4 little kids. Each episode will be packed with tools and strategies – equipping you to build schools with higher staff retention, teacher motivation, parent partnership, collaborative culture, and a beautiful quality of life. 

Every week, Chanie shares the truth about the journey to excellence, the strategies that are working TODAY, and the mindset about the critical decisions and choices that you make every day which impact yourself, your teachers, parents, family, and children who you serve every day.

Watch the video interview of this episode: https://schoolsofexcellence.com/ordinary-moments-3

Get all the details about the 2022 Summit of Excellence here: https://schoolsofexcellence.com/ordinary-moments

If you struggle with letting go, giving up control, and trusting the process, then this episode is for you. 

Today's episode is the third of my six-part series, where I'm interviewing and having conversations with owners of childcare centers across the nation, on how they are building their schools of excellence. And they're sharing their real and raw stories with all of you. 

In this episode, I sit down with Kathy Cameron, who has been part of the Schools of Excellence community since July of 2020. She shares her journey of letting go, she talks about her struggle of wanting to control the outcomes, and the processes that she's gone through to take a step back. Kathy is honest and vulnerable about her real retention numbers, and how bad it got. Tune in to learn more about the highs and lows of running a school of excellence, including cultivating the culture of having difficult conversations. 

In a nutshell, we speak about:

• How Kathy’s definition of excellence has changed since she joined the Schools of Excellence community.
• Some of the systems that Kathy has put in place to sustain excellence.
• The gratitude matrix - a system and process that Kathy has really embraced in her institution.
• The messiness around what gratitude looks like in Kathy’s organization and how that's really shifted her retention.
• How Kathy gets over the challenge of embracing the routine of connecting with her staff.
• Habits and trigger points that have helped Kathy stay consistent.
• Kathy’s first experience with delegating and how it went.
• How Kathy embedded the culture and courage of having difficult conversations with her staff.
• How delegating has made Kathy’s life better and richer.

… and so much more!

Resources and links mentioned in this episode:

Watch the video interview of this episode: https://schoolsofexcellence.com/ordinary-moments-3

The Summit of Excellence is a two-day in-person experience on March 1-2, 2022 in Boca, Florida. Learn how to master interpersonal dynamics, foster kindness, and establish your school as a beacon of light in your community.

If you want to…

Drive more impact in your community.

Be inspired by a network of peers.

Deliver higher quality care.

Or build a team of leaders.

• Doing and thinking “outside the box,” and trying new methods.
• ​Pushing out of their comfort zones without anxiety.
• ​Feeling a sense of community and connection at work.
• ​Treating conflict and change as an opportunity for growth. 

… all so you can be equipped to tackle any challenging situation that comes your center’s way.

Let’s be honest: To truly impact our kids and create a healthy, engaged, and successful next generation, we need to be better leaders. 

And that requires real collaboration—moments where we come together to share our wisdom in order to create healthy, productive learning communities.

Sign up for the Summit of Excellence here: https://schoolsofexcellence.com/summit

If you would like to have a conversation about if the Summit of Excellence is right for you, your team, and your center, please email me at [email protected].

More about the show:

If you are an Early Childhood director or owner, prepare to transform your school and life with the Schools of Excellence podcast. Tune in each week to learn from Chanie Wilschanski, the founder and host of the Schools of Excellence Podcast and a mom of 4 little kids. Each episode will be packed with tools and strategies – equipping you to build schools with higher staff retention, teacher motivation, parent partnership, collaborative culture, and a beautiful quality of life. 

Every week, Chanie shares the truth about the journey to excellence, the strategies that are working TODAY, and the mindset about the critical decisions and choices that you make every day which impact yourself, your teachers, parents, family, and children who you serve every day.

Watch the video interview of this episode: https://schoolsofexcellence.com/ordinary-moments

Get all the details about the 2022 Summit of Excellence here: https://schoolsofexcellence.com/ordinary-moments

Owning a school of excellence is a constant practice and process. It isn't something that's one-and-done. 

Today’s episode is another episode in my six-part series of what it takes to build and sustain a school of excellence. I get to interview school leaders from across the nation to share the real, the raw, and the messy. 

Tune in to hear Jessica Kelley, a Childcare Center Owner, and I talk about the cost of doing it all. Jessica takes her time to share about her company organization chart and the process that she went through to create her team. We talked about some of the hard moments in her family life where she was forced to make some really difficult decisions and how you can learn from them.  

Through this series of Ordinary Moments, I hope that you will walk away with true insights into what it takes to lead an extraordinary center. 

In a nutshell, we talk about:

• What it means to carry the mental load of a director, but for someone else to carry out the execution.
• Some of the shifts that happened when Jessica realized certain tasks were taking too much of her time.
• Some of the ways in which Jessica’s Center was running her life.
• How to unlearn the disease to please and create healthy boundaries.
• The guilt and grief phase of not being the person who “does it all”.
• How Jessica successfully transitioned from being the “doer” to being the “designer’’.

… and so much more!

Resources and links mentioned in this episode:

Watch the video interview of this episode: https://schoolsofexcellence.com/ordinary-moments

The Summit of Excellence is a two-day in-person experience on March 1-2, 2022 in Boca, Florida. Learn how to master interpersonal dynamics, foster kindness, and establish your school as a beacon of light in your community.

If you want to…

Drive more impact in your community.

Be inspired by a network of peers.

Deliver higher quality care.

Or build a team of leaders.

• Doing and thinking “outside the box,” and trying new methods.
• ​Pushing out of their comfort zones without anxiety.
• ​Feeling a sense of community and connection at work.
• ​Treating conflict and change as an opportunity for growth. 

… all so you can be equipped to tackle any challenging situation that comes your center’s way.

Let’s be honest: To truly impact our kids and create a healthy, engaged, and successful next generation, we need to be better leaders. 

And that requires real collaboration—moments where we come together to share our wisdom in order to create healthy, productive learning communities.

Sign up for the Summit of Excellence here: https://schoolsofexcellence.com/summit

If you would like to have a conversation about if the Summit of Excellence is right for you, your team, and your center, please email me at [email protected].

More about the show:

If you are an Early Childhood director or owner, prepare to transform your school and life with the Schools of Excellence podcast. Tune in each week to learn from Chanie Wilschanski, the founder and host of the Schools of Excellence Podcast and a mom of 4 little kids. Each episode will be packed with tools and strategies – equipping you to build schools with higher staff retention, teacher motivation, parent partnership, collaborative culture, and a beautiful quality of life. 

Every week, Chanie shares the truth about the journey to excellence, the strategies that are working TODAY, and the mindset about the critical decisions and choices that you make every day which impact yourself, your teachers, parents, family, and children who you serve every day.

Watch the video interview of this episode: https://schoolsofexcellence.com/ordinary-moments

Get all the details about the 2022 Summit of Excellence here: https://schoolsofexcellence.com/ordinary-moments

Are you a school leader who wants to remove yourself from the day-to-day, and truly into the visionary CEO role? Do you want to hear the real, the raw, and the messy of what it takes to become such a school leader?

Today’s episode is the first episode in my six-part series of what it takes to build and sustain a school of excellence. I get to interview school leaders from across the nation to share the real, the raw, and the messy.

Tune in as I speak to Sara Schreiner, the owner of Sunshine Academy in Montana. Sara has a very unique upbringing from most entrepreneurs and owners that I've connected within this field - she was raised by a stay-at-home mom. Over the course of our relationship and working together, she has had a slow but powerful evolution into the leader that she is today. Sara talks about how her upbringing catapulted many of the decisions that she made in her own in her career, how she continues to navigate her leadership as she shifts from being a manager to being a leader, and the phases of grief that she needed to reflect on as she stepped out of the day to day operations.

Through this series of Ordinary Moments, I hope that you will walk away with true insights into what it takes to lead an extraordinary center. 

In a nutshell, we speak about:

• Some of the big, audacious goals that Sara had for her company.
• Why Sara chose the path of becoming a school owner.
• How Sara defines the difference between manager and CEO.
• Lightbulb moments that started to come up for Sara when she realized that people wanted her to slow down and listen.
• What grief looks like as one transitions from the manager of the day-to-day to being the C.E.O.
• How the dreams of the company can be held hostage by your own abilities.
• Some of the beautiful ordinary moments that Sara gets to enjoy now, both as a mom and as a business owner.

… and so much more!

Resources and links mentioned in this episode:

Watch the video interview of this episode: https://schoolsofexcellence.com/ordinary-moments

The Summit of Excellence is a two-day in-person experience on March 1-2, 2022 in Boca, Florida. Learn how to master interpersonal dynamics, foster kindness, and establish your school as a beacon of light in your community.

If you want to…

Drive more impact in your community.

Be inspired by a network of peers.

Deliver higher quality care.

Or build a team of leaders.

• Doing and thinking “outside the box,” and trying new methods.
• ​Pushing out of their comfort zones without anxiety.
• ​Feeling a sense of community and connection at work.
• ​Treating conflict and change as an opportunity for growth. 

… all so you can be equipped to tackle any challenging situation that comes your center’s way.

Let’s be honest: To truly impact our kids and create a healthy, engaged, and successful next generation, we need to be better leaders. 

And that requires real collaboration—moments where we come together to share our wisdom in order to create healthy, productive learning communities.

Sign up for the Summit of Excellence here: https://schoolsofexcellence.com/summit

 More about the show:

If you are an Early Childhood director or owner, prepare to transform your school and life with the Schools of Excellence podcast. Tune in each week to learn from Chanie Wilschanski, the founder and host of the Schools of Excellence Podcast and a mom of 4 little kids. Each episode will be packed with tools and strategies – equipping you to build schools with higher staff retention, teacher motivation, parent partnership, collaborative culture, and a beautiful quality of life. 

Every week, Chanie shares the truth about the journey to excellence, the strategies that are working TODAY, and the mindset about the critical decisions and choices that you make every day which impact yourself, your teachers, parents, family, and children who you serve every day.

Want to be a great school leader? Stop being nice. Being nice works well with strangers, but leaders who care about the long-term growth of their teams are not nice. They are kind. Niceness is the short game. And when you're a leader, you're always playing the long-term vision game. 

Today's episode is a conversation that I had with Lori Buxton, who's the Managing Director at Association for Early Learning Leaders. Lori and I have monthly conversations on leadership on our social channels. And I felt that this conversation was really important and needed to be brought onto the podcast as well. Besides being a great conversation with a lot of strategies, it is one that will incite great conversations among your leadership team members.

In this episode we talk about:

• The difference between being nice and being kind.
• Why there’s so much more niceness and people-pleasing among leaders.
• Why you should choose temporary discomfort over long-term resentment.
• How to hold your staff accountable and still be kind.
• Steps for leaders that are looking to start shifting from being the nice leader to the claimed leader.

… and so much more! 

Resources and links mentioned in this episode:

Sign up for the Summit of Excellence: https://schoolsofexcellence.com/summit

More about the show:

If you are an Early Childhood director or owner, prepare to transform your school and life with the Schools of Excellence podcast. Tune in each week to learn from Chanie Wilschanski, the founder and host of the Schools of Excellence Podcast and a mom of 4 little kids. Each episode will be packed with tools and strategies – equipping you to build schools with higher staff retention, teacher motivation, parent partnership, collaborative culture, and a beautiful quality of life. 

Every week, Chanie shares the truth about the journey to excellence, the strategies that are working TODAY, and the mindset about the critical decisions and choices that you make every day which impact yourself, your teachers, parents, family, and children who you serve every day.

One of the things that we teach a lot at the Schools of Excellence is the quality of decision-making. When potential clients or attendees connect with me, I always talk about giving them all of the data and the information so that they can make an informed decision. A lot of times we feel kind of insecure about our decision-making, or we're unsure. And a lot of that comes from just a lack of data.

This is why in today’s podcast episode, I take a very unique inside look into what the Summit of Excellence is about. People are checking out the page, reviewing the investment, looking over the details of the event, and we’ve been getting a lot of different questions. 

So I wanted to share in this episode an inside look at what happens at this event. 

In a nutshell, I talk about:

• What we will cover and teach at the Summit of Excellence and how it is different from other conferences you may have been to,
• Who the Summit of Excellence is for and how we’re curating a specific event with limited tickets available,
• The guest speakers for this experience,
• The results you can expect from the event,
• How you can upgrade to the VIP experience that is limited to 30 registrants,
• And more!

I really look forward to greeting you in-person, welcoming you, and embracing you with a big giant hug!

Resources and links mentioned in this episode:

Sign up for the Summit of Excellence before December 31st to get an Early Bird Discount: https://schoolsofexcellence.com/summit

More about the show:

If you are an Early Childhood director or owner, prepare to transform your school and life with the Schools of Excellence podcast. Tune in each week to learn from Chanie Wilschanski, the founder and host of the Schools of Excellence Podcast and a mom of 4 little kids. Each episode will be packed with tools and strategies – equipping you to build schools with higher staff retention, teacher motivation, parent partnership, collaborative culture, and a beautiful quality of life. 

Every week, Chanie shares the truth about the journey to excellence, the strategies that are working TODAY, and the mindset about the critical decisions and choices that you make every day which impact yourself, your teachers, parents, family, and children who you serve every day.

The holiday season can evoke feelings of sipping warm drinks by the fire, reuniting with loved ones, and opening gifts. But for school leaders who already juggle a lot of responsibilities throughout the year, the holiday season can also bring an added layer of anxiety and even stress. In the quest to “do ALL the things,” they may find their holidays not so merry and bright after all.

In this episode, I share tips on how to set boundaries during the holiday season, so that you can be where your feet are without feeling guilty. If you are interested in entering the holiday season and being fully present and intentional about wherever you are, this episode is for you!

In a nutshell, I talk about:

• Removing the guilt that many of us experience during the holiday season.
• Tangible strategies for being present in the moment.
• Creating boundaries that are associated with protecting that specific thing that you want for the holiday.
• What connection and disconnection from our learning centers should mean.
• Assessing the habits you want to engage in for the next few days so that you can get the most out of the holiday season.

Resources and links mentioned in this episode:

Sign up for the Director’s Inner Circle & Owner's HQ: http://Chanie.me/jointhedic

More about the show:

If you are an Early Childhood director or owner, prepare to transform your school and life with the Schools of Excellence podcast. Tune in each week to learn from Chanie Wilschanski, the founder and host of the Schools of Excellence Podcast and a mom of 4 little kids. Each episode will be packed with tools and strategies – equipping you to build schools with higher staff retention, teacher motivation, parent partnership, collaborative culture, and a beautiful quality of life. 

Every week, Chanie shares the truth about the journey to excellence, the strategies that are working TODAY, and the mindset about the critical decisions and choices that you make every day which impact yourself, your teachers, parents, family, and children who you serve every day.

Everyone makes excuses. We've all made excuses, and we will continue to make excuses. But what does it take to break this cycle of excuses and encourage personal responsibility in our schools of excellence? It's not about eliminating, it's about learning how to break the cycle.

Allowing the cycle of excuses to continue is normalizing behavior and work ethic that is completely against our values, morals and ethics. If you (or your staff) spend most of your time giving justifications rather than leaning in and learning, it’s time to break the cycle of excuses for your center. Listen in, as I share tips on how to do this.

In a nutshell, I speak about:

• How genuine reasons and excuses get mixed up - and how to differentiate the two.
• Tips for breaking the cycle of excuses and why it is important to do so.
• How to shift the culture of giving excuses in your school of excellence.

… and so much more!

Resources and links mentioned in this episode:

Interested in coming to our in person Summit of Excellence on March 1 & 2 in Florida for School Owners and Directors? Email [email protected] for more information. Early Bird tickets are on sale now for a limited time.

Sign up for the Delegate to Elevate Workshop on December 7th: https://schoolsofexcellence.com/delegatetoelevate

Sign up for the Director’s Inner Circle & Owner's HQ: http://Chanie.me/jointhedic

More about the show:

If you are an Early Childhood director or owner, prepare to transform your school and life with the Schools of Excellence podcast. Tune in each week to learn from Chanie Wilschanski, the founder and host of the Schools of Excellence Podcast and a mom of 4 little kids. Each episode will be packed with tools and strategies – equipping you to build schools with higher staff retention, teacher motivation, parent partnership, collaborative culture, and a beautiful quality of life. 

Every week, Chanie shares the truth about the journey to excellence, the strategies that are working TODAY, and the mindset about the critical decisions and choices that you make every day which impact yourself, your teachers, parents, family, and children who you serve every day.

As a leader, you likely live, sleep and breathe your school. You want to remain comfortable making the same decisions you have always made. You probably believe you can do a better job yourself because you don’t want to risk losing control of the situation or outcome. While you may think you are staying on top of the game, you actually are fueling the cycle of dependency among your staff!

In this episode, I share with you how you can use effective delegation to break the dependency cycle. In order to avoid burnout and declining productivity, it’s important to delegate certain tasks to trusted employees. Doing so can allow you to focus more on your top priorities and less on those tiny day-to-day tasks that you don’t truly need to be doing yourself.

In a nutshell, I speak about: 

• The concept of dependency.
• The top three reasons why you are stuck in the cycle of dependency.
• Some of the thoughts that swirl through your head when you think of delegating.
• How to train your team to take responsibility for their own projects instead of coming to you hand holding every step of the way. 
• How to know whether your school encourages responsibility and independent thinking,  or unintentionally fostering dependency.
• Understanding the priority matrix.
• Tips on how to start implementing the changes that will help you break the cycle of dependency.

Resources and links mentioned in this episode:

Sign up for the Delegate to Elevate Workshop: https://schoolsofexcellence.com/delegatetoelevate

Sign up for the Director’s Inner Circle & Owner's HQ: http://Chanie.me/jointhedic

More about the show:

If you are an Early Childhood director or owner, prepare to transform your school and life with the Schools of Excellence podcast. Tune in each week to learn from Chanie Wilschanski, the founder and host of the Schools of Excellence Podcast and a mom of 4 little kids. Each episode will be packed with tools and strategies – equipping you to build schools with higher staff retention, teacher motivation, parent partnership, collaborative culture, and a beautiful quality of life. 

Every week, Chanie shares the truth about the journey to excellence, the strategies that are working TODAY, and the mindset about the critical decisions and choices that you make every day which impact yourself, your teachers, parents, family, and children who you serve every day.

Burnout not only hurts our productivity, it also affects our mental and physical well being. In fact, there is evidence that links burnout to weakened immune systems and even cardiovascular disease. It’s interesting how people are afraid to ask for help, yet in my mind, it is a sign of strength, not weakness. 

In this podcast episode, I share strategies that will help you break the cycle of stress and burnout among your staff. 

This is the first of a 3 part series - Break the Cycle in Your Center - that is being sponsored by our upcoming workshop, Delegate to Elevate. The next two parts cover the delegating and managing up cycle and the accountability vs excuses cycle. By the end of this 3-part series, you should have gained perspective, awareness, clarity and strategy on what you're actually dealing with.

In a nutshell, I speak about:

• The symptoms of burnout and how they manifest themselves inside our organizations.
• The biggest buffers against burnout, exhaustion and stress.
• Celebrating daily progress and helping staff find joy in ordinary moments.
• Understanding how to close the stress cycle.

… and so much more!

It is my hope that this episode will help you identify the symptoms of burnout faster, so you can be more cognizant of when it’s happening to you or your team and make the necessary changes.

Resources and links mentioned in this episode:

Access the Schools in Transition resource: https://discovered.thrivecart.com/schools-in-transition/

Sign up for the Director’s Inner Circle & Owner's HQ: http://Chanie.me/jointhedic

More about the show:

If you are an Early Childhood director or owner, prepare to transform your school and life with the Schools of Excellence podcast. Tune in each week to learn from Chanie Wilschanski, the founder and host of the Schools of Excellence Podcast and a mom of 4 little kids. Each episode will be packed with tools and strategies – equipping you to build schools with higher staff retention, teacher motivation, parent partnership, collaborative culture, and a beautiful quality of life. 

Every week, Chanie shares the truth about the journey to excellence, the strategies that are working TODAY, and the mindset about the critical decisions and choices that you make every day which impact yourself, your teachers, parents, family, and children who you serve every day.