IEI CEO, Doug Roberts is back on this episode of IEI Thought Leaders where he is joined by Dr. Danny Merck of Pickens County School District in South Carolina and Dr. Kari Kumpulainen of the University of Oulu in Finland. Listen here to learn more about the Finnish Method and how it found its way into the Pickens County School District. 

In this week's episode, IEI's Vice President, Sara Croll, and new team member, Ana Garcia, are joined by Dr. Shelly Viramontez and Tom Burton. Dr. Viramontez currently serves as Superintendent of the Campbell Union School District in California. Mr. Burton serves as Superintendent of Princeton City Schools in Ohio. Listen as we discuss the hurdles and success over the past two years and what's to come in 2023 and beyond. 

What better way to celebrate Women's History Month than by interviewing the CEO and Co-Founder of a female-lead company? Joanna McFarland and her Co-Founders, Janelle McGlothlin and Carolyn Yashari Becher, began HopSkipDrive at the dining room table during a kid's birthday party. These moms saw the need for a trustworthy, efficient transportation solution in their community and the rest is history. Joanna and her team at HopSkipDrive are impacting the lives of students and families in districts across the country in more ways than one. Listen in to hear how their "Mom DNA" has helped build a business where working parents are embraced and celebrated and kids are empowered to seize opportunities that would otherwise seem unfathomable. As Joanna said in the show, "The difference between struggle and success can sometimes be as simple as the ability to show up." 

https://www.hopskipdrive.com/

Josh is a self-proclaimed serial entrepreneur. He is the founder of three education companies: Ashley Tutors, Flex Academies, and Flex Tutors. He also began recording and hosting podcasts called “How I Broke That” and "Breaking the Grade" where, in his words, “each episode will simultaneously induce cringes and provide comfort in helping you realize you are not alone in breaking something on your path to innovation.” Beyond starting education companies, he also runs Cascade Communications, where he provides coaching to companies in the education space. Josh has much to share with his experiences of innovating and not just thinking outside of the box, but taking that box and breaking it wide open! As Josh says in our show, "Fear is a liar" and don't forget that oftentimes obstacles are just opportunities in disguise.

Cascade Communications: http://www.cascadego.co/

Josh Chernikoff: https://www.joshchernikoff.com/

Breaking the Grade Podcast: https://www.cascadego.co/breaking-the-grade

Breaking the Grade trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLU5fRs4vrM

On this week's episode of IEI's #EducationThoughtLeaders #podcast Doug Roberts is joined by some of our very own #SupesChoice winners, Cynthia Harrison Barbera, CEO and Founder of STORYWORLD International, Victor Karkar, CEO and Cofounder of Scrible, and Alefiya Master, CEO and Founder of MAD-learn.

Listen in as they discuss how their companies have continued to grow and evolve during the past two years and how participating in Supes' Choice impacted their company's journey.

Districts across the country are struggling with staff shortages and finding ways to continue pushing forward. Listen in to see how Dr. Alena Zachery-Ross, Superintendent of Ypsilanti Community Schools in Michigan, is working overtime to ensure her schools are operating as smoothly as possible. With Dr. Zachery-Ross's contagious optimism and boots-on-the-ground approach, find out how you can help keep the morale of your staff and students up when life and its circumstances can get you down. 

Elizabeth (Liz) and Bill James are public high school English teachers in Stockton, California. They are both accomplished authors and are promoting their most recent publication, A Sea of Troubles: Pairing Literary and Informational Texts to Address Social Inequality, which was published in May of 2021. At the beginning of 2020, Liz and Bill started writing A Sea of Troubles and wrote the bulk of this book while in quarantine as the world was changing drastically around us all. We are so fortunate to have Liz and Bill on with us to discuss how they aim to show educators at the secondary level, that fiction often reflects the real world and vice versa, and that the texts teachers are already using can be catalysts to dive into deeper discussions about social injustices that are happening today.

A Sea of Troubles is a practical and purposeful guide for secondary English teachers to be able to use literary work already present in their classrooms to address social issues. Liz and Bill masterfully orchestrate the units to demonstrate how to broach a current societal issue of injustice while keeping the focus directly on the novel/play/primary document that is being studied. The chapters are broken into themes and the texts that are implemented are just examples of what can be utilized, but Liz and Bill leave the unit outlines open enough for teachers to make it their own using whatever texts they see fit. Some of the themes include Syntactical Othering, Systemic Racial Injustice, Abuses of Power, Authoritarianism, Genocide and Ethnic Internment, and Gender Inequality. Buy their book here! 

Bill James: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-james-800b22a3/ and Liz James: https://www.facebook.com/elizabeth.james.9022

Fresh off of Winter Break and starting the 2022 year, Doug sits with four administrators from IEI: Lead's Fall Cohort. These guests were dedicated learners in our Aspiring Superintendents Institute. Over the course of 10 weeks, 14 cohort members gathered virtually with instructors that currently serve as a superintendent or have walked in the shoes of superintendency recently. Doug hears from Dr. Barbara Nesbitt, Assistant Superintendent for Technology Services at School District of Pickens County in South Carolina, Janet Ciarrocca, Acting Superintendent of North Brunswick Township Schools in New Jersey, George Guy Jr., Principal of Rosa International Middle School in Cherry Hill Public Schools in New Jersey, and Joe Mullikin, Principal & Director of Continuous Improvement, Data, and Assessment at Meridian School District #223 in Illinois. In this episode, we get to hear from the "student" perspective why IEI: Lead was beneficial and what they got out of the experience. 

For any listener interested, we invite you to check out www.ieilead.com to learn more. Applications are currently being accepted for our Spring 2022 Cohort which will start in a few weeks.  

In case you missed the live stream of our Supes' Choice Gala, we have compiled a highlight reel of the red carpet interviews with some of the superintendent judges, participants, and IEI Team Members. Tiffany Law and Traci Davis were the ultimate hosts and we are so grateful to everyone that stopped in to chat with them before the event. You can check out the full event on our YouTube channel: SUPES Choice - YouTube and the second part of the Charity Event portion here: SUPES Choice - YouTube. 

We are gearing up for our first-ever Supes' Choice Awards Gala and in light of that, we have pulled an episode from the archives that rings as true today as it did in 2019. On this episode of Education Thought Leaders, we are bringing you the first of our BEST OF series where we share some of our favorite recordings with meaningful messages that are relevant and necessary to hear again. 

In this BEST OF episode, Dr. PJ Caposey, superintendent of Meridien CUSD 223 (near Rockford, IL) discusses leadership, and the nuance and art to understanding when your leadership style needs to adapt to the changing needs of your team and your organization.