Today, we’re talking about something that may not sound exciting on the surface, but is deeply important for educator and school wellness: the state of our school buildings.

In a city like Washington, DC—where some schools are actual historical buildings—facility maintenance requires constant upkeep. Yet, citywide systems break down far too often. Most of our schools grapple with ongoing facility issues, and teachers are left to mitigate the stress of HVAC failures, water outages, vermin problems, and more.

To have this crucial conversation, we were honored to speak with Janeese Lewis George, the Ward 4 Council Member who oversees the Department of General Services (DGS). DGS is responsible for school building maintenance. Every year during pre-service, she visits DC schools to ensure they are ready for student learning.

As you'll hear, Council Member Lewis George is a lifelong DC resident and an amazing graduate of our city's education system. She also recently announced her candidacy for Mayor of DC and has made education—and teachers—a central focus of her campaign.

In this episode, she shares more about her own K-12 journey and why she cares so deeply about supporting our school system and educators. She explains why functioning school buildings are the lynchpin of student success, and highlights the many people and systems that work together to care for our schools.

We also discuss:

- Why building issues are ultimately a solvable problem, and the concrete policies that can drive improvement.

- DC's incredible new school designs that build community-centered learning environments.

- How to address deeper issues of school safety, including the terror of ongoing ICE actions near our schools.

- And much more.

We hope you enjoy the episode, and we wish you a wonderful winter break! We look forward to sharing more with you in 2026. Thanks for listening, and Happy New Year!

Thank you for listening! Please learn more about our educator wellness work in schools at or email [email protected]

We are so grateful for the conversation we're sharing today about creating a positive school culture.

In our years of educator wellness experience, we've seen how a school's culture can make or break a teacher's well-being. And yet, even when we understand its importance, it can be difficult to pinpoint exactly why one school is thriving while another feels "toxic," especially when they exist within the very same school system.

To help us better understand the building blocks of positive school cultures, we invited an expert, Dr. Nia Nun. Dr. Nia is a teacher, scholar, and DEI consultant based in Ithaca, NY. Her work blends research, creativity, and community engagement with a focus on "radical vulnerability." She uses this approach to encourage the reflective, human-centered practices that are foundational to building positive cultures—in schools, and really, everywhere.

In our conversation, we discuss—and even practice in real time!—the elements that help build community and encourage belonging for staff, students, and families.

In particular, we dive into:

• How shared rituals, like greetings, can set a powerful relational tone.
• The important connection between fear and toxicity within a school culture (and how radical vulnerability can help address it).
• How to begin healing a culture that has felt toxic.

And so much more!

As you'll hear, Dr. Nia is incredibly inspiring. You can find more of her work at her website, DrNiaNunn.com, listen to her fantastic 2014 TED Talk, or check out one of her beautiful books: Super-Girl: Strength & Sadness in Black Girlhood (2016), Deep Breath: A Poetry Book and Curriculum (2022), or the digital textbook The Community is My Classroom: Radical Vulnerability as Curriculum.

Enjoy the conversation, and as always, thanks so much for listening!

Thank you for listening! Please learn more about our educator wellness work in schools at or email [email protected]

For the next few episodes of the podcast, we're going to focus on the federal interventions that have been happening since September 8th in Washington, DC. The current administration is enacting daily physical and political violence through ICE raids and increased police presence which is causing immense harm to and instilling ongoing fear in our residents.

At EmpowerEd, we've been talking a lot about how to practice wellness right now, especially in schools where educators are on the front lines.

For the first installment in our series, we were very lucky to have Queen Adesuyi who runs Reframe Health and Justice and her colleague, Jessica Peñaranda who is a mind-body somatic practitioner focused on grief support within movement work. Together, we discuss the specific challenges facing DC due to our lack of statehood and all the resilience and joy that the amazing people who live across our eight wards are cultivating anyway.

In particular we discuss:

• The specific justice and equity-influenced reasons why DC has been denied statehood and how our deeper values as a city can help us navigate this moment.
• How different concepts of safety can be a hindrance but also an important conversation to engage in to come out of isolation and really practice connection.
• The ways this occupation can worsen outcomes for our already justice-impacted youth and how to stay vigilant on supporting the student, rather than supporting the system.
• and so much more.

We are inspired by Queen and Jessica and grateful to be able share their voices and vision with all our listeners. We hope you find hope and connection in this conversation in their message. As always, please reach out if we can support you in any way.

Thank you so much for listening and enjoy the episode.

Thank you for listening! Please learn more about our educator wellness work in schools at or email [email protected]

Today on the podcast we discuss a topic that is vitally important during this moment of federal takeover and ICE presence in Washington, DC: how to take care of ourselves during moments of grief, loss and uncertainty. Sadly, we are living through a moment where family members of students are being kidnapped and there is unprecedented interference with our governance as a city. Many of us are living on edge, while trying to educate and care for students. 

To discuss ways to care for ourselves in school communities, I was so grateful to speak with Melissa Sellevaag from the Wendt Center for Loss and Healing. Melissa is a longtime social worker who supports DC schools through difficult moments, including the loss of a student or teacher, and is working to meet the needs of this traumatic time we are living through.

In particular, we discussed:

- How to approach behavior in schools with curiosity, rather than blame and shame, to hone our "compassion lenses"

- Why it's important to think systemically to understand the behavior issues we are seeing in school (for both students and staff)

- The reason that it's so difficult to find and offer connection when we get stuck in the "protection" function of our nervous systems- and much more. 

Although the problems ahead of us are immense, we hope this conversation can help us all practice more self-care and cultivate the resilience we need to support students, families and our teaching communities. 

Please reach out if you have any questions, comments, or just need a little extra support right now. You are doing so much to support others, and we want you to know that we are here to support your wellness as a DC educator. 

Enjoy the episode and thank you so much for listening!

Thank you for listening! Please learn more about our educator wellness work in schools at or email [email protected]

We are so excited to kick off our fourth season of the Educator Wellness Revolution with an episode about how to strengthen educator teaming for both wellness and results!

From early on in our lives, we are taught the importance of teamwork for achieving a goal. There is no "I" in team right? And yet in education, where our goals are so incredibly important, we often lose sight of how teachers need to work together as a cohesive team to truly support students. And when teachers act as individuals, they quickly get siloed and burned out. 

To discuss why this happens, and the necessary design to help teachers work better together, we are so excited to be speaking with Leslie Edwards. Leslie is a longtime educator,  instructional coach, assistant principal, principal, director of school leadership development - you name it! - and currently runs her own educational consulting firm called Ed Leadership 4 Liberation. After such a rich career in education, Leslie's main passion is helping schools to redesign the way their teachers collaborate more effectively. 

In our conversation, we'll discuss;

• Why a "students first" mentality can actually work against the progress we want to see for our learners. 
• How the concept of working together as a team isn't a series of trust-builder exercises, but rather requires real systems and policy work.
• The reason that mindset work for leaders is so critical for great teaming and true educator wellness (and often falls by the wayside in our current education system)

 -and so much more.

As you listen to Leslie, we hope you are inspired to rethink and uplevel the teaming practices in your school this year. Leslie has an exciting upcoming Virtual Global Cohort for Educators & Leaders that you can register for here: www.tinyurl.com/thevirtualglobalcohort

Also, get ready for an exciting new season where we go deeper into EmpowerEd's themes of educator wellness, staff voice, and how retaining our educators is the most important way to transform our education system.

Thanks so much and enjoy the episode!

Thank you for listening! Please learn more about our educator wellness work in schools at or email [email protected]

We’re wrapping up Season Three with a topic that’s big, complex, and absolutely critical: special education in our city and beyond. Because here’s the hard truth—decades of reform haven’t been enough. Too many students are still falling through the cracks, and that’s unacceptable.

Today, we’re diving into this conversation with two powerhouse advocates:

LaJoy Johnson-Law, Ward 8’s elected member to DC’s State Board of Education, and Dominique Moore, a long time DCPS SPED teacher and EmpowerEd’s new community organizer. As educators, mothers, and fierce champions for students, they’ve dedicated their careers to fighting for those too often left behind.

In this episode, we’ll explore:

✅ The ongoing struggle for true inclusion—and the systemic changes needed to make it happen.

✅ How policy failures—like pushing SPED students toward certificates instead of diplomas—hurt our kids.

✅ Why dumping everything on SPED teachers fuels burnout—and how real co-teaching can lighten the load.

✅ Ways to empower families navigating the SPED process—because they shouldn’t have to fight alone.

And so much more!

You’ll hear energy, joy, and urgency in this discussion—just like EmpowerEd’s mission: human-centered and policy-driven. We hope it sparks new ideas, pushes you to rethink inclusion, and hopefully even moves you to, as LaJoy says, "Be Bold!"

This is our last episode before our September return. Please enjoy the break and reach out with ideas for Season Four!

Thanks for listening, and have a great summer!

Thank you for listening! Please learn more about our educator wellness work in schools at or email [email protected]

In this episode of the podcast we are focusing on the specific wellness needs of "specials" or intercore teachers in Washington DC. "Specials" covers the arts, like music and visual arts, as well as P.E., library/media, language programming, STEM activities, and more. As many parents can attest, specials are often what our kids talk about most at the end of the day, and can provide the kind of balanced education that can help students become life long lovers of learning. 

And yet, too often we leave the work of special teachers out of the conversation about educator wellness. Because these teachers have access to most grade-levels, they both have a different perspective and different wellness needs than classroom teachers. By taking time to understand their experiences, we can learn essential information for education policy and design. 

To explore their wellness needs further, we are joined by three specials teachers in DC. Rachel Hargreaves teaches art at Deal Middle School, Dr. Robert Bannister is Burroughs Elementary School's music teacher, and Kerri Richardson-Redding is Savoy Elementary School's library/media specialist. As you'll hear, they represent a wealth of education experience and human knowledge.

We discuss:

• The ways planning time and daily scheduling can look very different for specials teachers.
• The importance of specializing within specials to create a strong program. 
• How the education system could become stronger with a greater emphasis on intercore.
• And much more!

We are so grateful to our guests and for the rich topics that emerged in the conversation. We're also grateful to you for listening and sharing our podcast with others! As always, please take good care of yourself and reach out if you need anything!

Thank you for listening! Please learn more about our educator wellness work in schools at or email [email protected]

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week, everyone! We are so grateful for all the educators in Washington, DC and beyond!

To celebrate properly, we wanted to focus this episode on ways to reimagine teacher appreciation week beyond traditional gestures like food and gifts.

For this, we invited the amazing teachers and EmpowerEd Fellows and Board Members, Jackeline Peña and Gabrielle Dubose, to share the memorable and meaningful forms of appreciation they have received during their education careers.

Together, we discussed:

• How to handle the under-appreciated aspects of teaching, such as emotional labor and behind-the-scenes tasks.
• Ways to infuse teacher appreciation efforts with a human-centered touch.
• How city-level policy reforms and policy change can be the most impactful way to show appreciation for educators.

We are so grateful to be working with so many amazing school leaders who understand the power of teachers' contributions and work to support the wellness of their educators.

Please let us know the ways you like to be appreciated and please share this episode with another educator in your life! Thanks for listening and all you do.

Thank you for listening! Please learn more about our educator wellness work in schools at or email [email protected]

We're doing something pretty different on today's podcast. As we struggle to figure out a response to recent federal changes, we want to focus a podcast episode on the role wellness can play in our activism. It's really important to us to make sure we don't lose sight of the wellness focus we know is so important, even when the world is on fire. As we pondered who to invite into the discussion, we realized that it might be most helpful to look within our own team.

For this, we decided to invite Gracy Obuchowicz, our very own director of educator wellness at EmpowerEd, to be our podcast guest. Gracy has spent her career supporting both individual and group wellness. She taught yoga for many years, helped hundreds of individuals through her own self-care coaching business, and has been running EmpowerEd's teacher wellness programming since 2016. Since 2021, she's coordinated educator wellness programs in more than 25 partner schools. She even wrote a book about self-care and how it can be applied to help us through difficult life moments.

All this to say, we knew Gracy might have some wisdom to offer us and our listeners about the role self-care and wellness can play in these moments.

During our conversation, our team discussed:

• The ways our views of wellness can change with the political climate
• How to balance personal self-care and community care as we engage in activism
• Why taking a break from reading headlines could be a form of self-care
• and much more!

We really enjoyed this discussion and hope you do too! As we mentioned at the end of the episode, we want to know what self-care is currently working for you. Write to us at [email protected] and let us know. As always, thanks for listening and please take care of yourself!

Thank you for listening! Please learn more about our educator wellness work in schools at or email [email protected]

On this episode, we're talking about a subject we're extremely passionate about at EmpowerEd: pedagogy and how it can be better used to support teachers.

During a time in society when more and more students seem to be checking out, how can teachers keep them engaged? Further, how does this kind of professional development add to teacher wellness, rather than land as one more initiative.

To have this conversation, we were really happy to speak with Robert Barnett, former DCPS teacher and founder of the Modern Classroom Project. His pedagogical approach uses technology to create dynamic teaching tools, especially for reaching diverse learners and to shift student behavior dynamics. In our conversation, we dive into why thoughtful pedagogy matters, and how to use it in a way that is sustainable and empowering for educators.

Additionally, we discuss:

- How to use technology to actually enhance the human component of teaching and learning.

- Why you may be thinking about the term "differentiation" in a way that works against your teaching aims.

- Ways to effectively work with the realities of student absenteeism while still helping learners create mastery.

We hope this conversation invigorates your pedagogical practice and increases your wellness. To learn more about the Modern Classroom Project, please visit: modernclassrooms.org

As always, thanks for listening!

Thank you for listening! Please learn more about our educator wellness work in schools at or email [email protected]