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]

For the third part of our series this winter on effective teacher mentorship, we wanted to examine the school leader mindsets that put a teacher mentorship program into practice in an actual school environment. 

We were so excited to speak with Lucas Cooke, a DCPS Principal at MacFarland Middle School where EmpowerEd has partnered over the past few years. Principal Cooke was a longtime teacher who was supported by his mentors to become an assistant principal and then principal before he knew he was even ready for the job (this alone is a great practice of mentorship). As you'll hear, he has a wonderful philosophy of the importance of "pouring into his teachers" so they can truly serve their students. 

In our conversation, we discuss the importance of supporting new teachers within the many competing priorities of a school environment, and the big and little successes that have come from EmpowerEd developing a dedicated MacFarland Mentors program this year. 

Additionally, we discuss:

- How creating a "safe" mentorship process sometimes means school admin stepping to the side and letting others lead.

- What incentives the mentor teachers get out of participating in a dedicated mentorship program (and why they aren't always the most important thing).

- Principal Cooke's feedback on the practical and therapeutic value of participating in a reverse mentorship program with one of his teachers.

- And more!

Although this is the last episode in our series on mentorship, we are still building momentum in all our school-based mentorship programs. Please reach out to us if you are curious to keep tracking this process, or are interested in us supporting a mentorship program in your school. 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]

At EmpowerEd, we believe quality mentorship is a crucial, and often overlooked, educator wellness support, and we are excited to be currently supporting mentorship programs in several of our partner schools.

In this episode, we speak with Jen Briones, Deputy Director of Policy and Research for DC's State Board of Education. For those who don't know, the State Board of Education is the only elected body that is exclusively focused on education in Washington, DC. With representatives from all of DC's eight wards, including current and former educators, they represent a diverse and informed perspective on how to create the strongest education system possible in our city.

The State Board's Educator Excellence Committee recently passed SR24-27, a resolution which calls for a comprehensive mentorship and ineducation programming for new teachers in DC. This committee wanted to focus on professional development for new teachers because over half of the DC educator workforce is currently between their first and fifth year of teaching. As many people know, this early period of teaching is a vulnerable time, and without critical mentorship support, these teachers won't stay.

During our conversation, we discuss:

• the tension between providing quality system-wide support and adding one more mandate to teachers' overloaded schedules.
• why teacher retention is particularly important as an equity issue.
• why teachers should be paid for their time participating in mentorship programs.

And so much more!

Thank you to Jen and for such a thoughtful and informative conversation. Please sign up here if you'd like to give public testimony to the State Board. We hope you enjoy it!

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

We are kicking off 2025 with something new - a three-part series on successful educator mentorship. Over our years of school partnership, we have continually heard the desire for more peer-to-peer mentorship to support both the personal and professional growth of teachers.

It turns out that research backs this up. Studies have shown that nearly 92% of first year teachers with mentors return for second year, while almost one in three without mentors leave within the first five years of teaching. But despite this, many schools don't have the necessary time, money and energy to create these essential programs. 

For this, EmpowerEd is very excited to currently be developing mentorship programs at several of our partner schools. The results look a bit different in each school as we think customization is a really essential key for program success. However, the feedback has been great so far and we're excited to share more with our podcast listeners. 

Over the next three episodes we'll be exploring best practices of both policy and practice in educator mentorship. In this first episode, we're bringing together clips from a longer mentorship call we led specifically our mentorship teams (aka our "staff support superstars") with commentary and context from Scott and Caroline.

As you'll hear, we also feature Tara Warrington, a longtime educator and Caroline's mentor, who is a repeat and inspiring podcast guest. There is so much goodness in all these conversations which focus on good mentorship practice both mentors and mentees. Please enjoy, and tune back into our next installment which will focus on policy to support mentorship programming. Thank you as always for listening!

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

Hello and happy holidays! To close out an awesome year for the Educator Wellness Revolution, we wanted to share a few thoughts on how educators can get the most self-care out of their winter breaks.

Gracy Obuchowicz, a long time self-care coach and Director of Educator Wellness for EmpowerEd, offers three perspectives to help you feel rested and ready to start 2025. 

In particular, she shares: 

- Why many educators are conditioned to be overgivers, and how to handle the guilty feelings that may come with taking care of yourself. 

- How to figure out your "rest style," and why that can change for us as life changes.

- The importance of avoiding the New Years Resolution trap, and ways to focus on small, continuous change.

- And more.

Thank you for listening now and throughout the year! We are so grateful for everyone who is engaging in this deeply important conversation about how to care for and retain our amazing educators. We are looking forward to sharing more wellness with you in 2025! Until then, we wish you a wonderful holiday and a very happy new year! 

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

Today's podcast is a heavier one for us. The recent election results were challenging for a lot of people, and, as education advocates in Washington, DC, we are definitely having a lot of feelings. There is just no way to sugarcoat the many potential threats this new administration brings to our education system, and our personal safety, in our nation's capital.

To make sense of what happened and what is ahead, we to have an open conversation about our initial reactions to the election, and how we'd are planning to navigate the new reality of work and lives. This episode is more unscripted than our normal ones, and we share more about our thoughts and feelings than normal.

In particular, we discuss:

- Why it's important to "microdose" hope and understand how the feelings of hope and despair work in our brain (thank you, Brene Brown!).

- The particular changes we are facing in DC, and how we are coming together as a DC advocacy community.

- Issues facing particularly vulnerable students, such as using student data and how it could be used in policing.

- and much more!

As you can hear, we don't have easy answers for the situation we are in and perfect optimism for our near future. What we do have, however, are the wellness tools we've been honing over the years, such as proactive self-care, community support, and the power of our collective resistance.

For those who want to be involved in Defend DC, you can sign up for more information here.

We hope this conversation can help you make sense of your own post-election feelings, and provide a little comfort as we all figure out how to move forward. Thank you for listening, and let us know if we can support you!

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

On today's podcast, we discuss conflict resolution in schools. There isn't a human environment where conflict doesn't play a vital role in people-to-people interactions. However, schools are concentrated places of conflict learning as students work to gain self and relational awareness.

To ensure this student learning happens in a structured, positive way, teachers need a framework and toolbox of conflict resolution skills. However, what happens when educators don't have training? Further, many educators have difficulties in their peer relationships without meaningful support. What is the impact of adult conflict that doesn't get resolved in schools?

These are vitally important questions for creating a positive school culture, but it can be hard to find time to go deeply into both what is needed and what gets in the way of real conflict resolution.

For this, we were so grateful to have this conversation with Leila Peterson, Executive Director of SchoolTalk/Restorative DC, a DC-based organization that serves many schools, and Linda Ryden from Peace of Mind, a conflict resolution and mindfulness program that operates in the District and throughout the United States. Leila and Linda share their vast experience and expertise in successful, and unsuccessful, conflict resolution, and the particular ways this applies to teachers.

Specifically, we discuss:

• the vital connection between mindfulness and effective conflict resolution.
• the very real impacts of ignoring adult conflicts in schools.
• ways to ensure conflict resolution is culturally responsive and safe for participants.
• and much more!

As you'll hear, Leila and Linda are awesome and very generous in sharing their learned wisdom. We hope they help you feel inspired to implement conflict resolution in your schools, and especially focus on tools to resolve adult conflict. Thank you so much for listening and enjoy the show!

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