The Elephant and the Teacher

Michelle was nervous walking into Capitol Hill — advocating for public education felt heavy, tense, and a little unattainable. One conversation, and one question, changed how the whole day went. In this episode, she unpacks the question that’s reshaping how she shows up for students, colleagues, and herself: what if the opposite were true?

In This Episode

• The story behind Michelle’s Capitol Hill Day with the National Teacher of the Year Program, and the conversation with Sarah Brown-Wesling that shifted her mindset before she walked into a senator’s office

• Commitment #10 from The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership — and how “seeing the opposite of your stance” became a daily practice, not just a one-time reframe

• How this question shows up in the classroom: moving from a deficit lens to a strengths lens when a student is struggling

• Why Michelle believes respect isn’t about niceness — it’s about staying curious about someone even when you disagree with them

• A simple challenge to try this week

Mentioned in This Episode

• The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Klemp

• Sarah Brown-Wesling, Director of the National Teacher of the Year Program

• Previous episode: S2E12 - Pull Up a Chair: Rethinking Data in the Classroom

Have a Question for Michelle?

Got a question about teaching, leading, or the human work of growing people? Michelle answers listener questions right here on the show. Submit yours here.

Connect with Michelle

Follow along on Instagram: @DearMrsRoundy

If this episode moved your thinking, subscribe to the show and leave a 5-star review — it helps more teachers and leaders find these conversations.

Listen: Apple Podcasts · Spotify

This podcast is produced by Dakota Hunt Studio.

Fresh off Washington Week with 55 fellow State Teachers of the Year, Michelle takes on a word most teachers dread: data.

Learning doesn’t pause between assessments, so why should our data collection? Michelle uses Stephen Covey’s “seek first to understand” and Sarah Brown Wessling’s idea of using curiosity as a tool to unravel. With them, she shows how walking the room with a simple roster turns everyday observation into real-time data. That data shapes instruction in the moment, and it also changes how we lead.

This week’s challenge: Let your desk be a little lonely. Walk the room with a notepad and pure curiosity, and see what you notice.

Questions or insights? Leave a comment or use the form below.

Submit your QUESTIONS to the podcast!

Brought to you by Michelle Roundy, The 2026 Wyoming Teacher of the Year

Recommended Reading:

👉 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: 30th Anniversary Edition by Stephen R. Covey 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ If this episode moved your thinking, please leave a 5-star review and tag @DearMrsRoundy on social media!

This podcast is produced by Dakota Hunt Studio.

This week, Michelle sits down with Matt Neale, the 2026 Virginia Teacher of the Year. Matt has spent 20+ years in education, including 14 years teaching English and journalism at Hidden Valley High School in Roanoke County, where he revitalized the journalism program.

Matt walks us through his ASK philosophy (Approachable, Standards, Kindness) and what each looks like when the bell rings. He shares how a Minecraft-vs-Roblox debate turned a reluctant writer into a persuasive one, why he holds himself (not just his students) to a higher standard every single year, and why kindness matters more than ever for a generation that relives rejection on social media over and over.

We also get into how Matt builds a classroom where teenagers are willing to take risks, from AI-friendly study questions paired with no-device Socratic seminars, to the sonnet-rapping assignment (yes, including odes to Chipotle) that breaks the ice every fall.

Then the conversation turns personal. After discovering the true stories of two former students lost to opioid addiction, Matt partnered with his local Prevention Council to bring community wellness topics into the classroom, first as a week-long, cross-curricular effort, and now as a sustainable, state-approved writing prompt that's spreading to schools across Virginia.

Brought to you by Michelle Roundy, The 2026 Wyoming Teacher of the Year

Connect with Matt Neale on Facebook

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ If this episode moved your thinking, please leave a 5-star review and tag @DearMrsRoundy on social media!

Submit your QUESTIONS to the podcast!

Sponsored by Book Notes by Dakota Hunt Studio

Use the code “MICHELLE10” for 10% off!

This podcast is produced by Dakota Hunt Studio.

One student finishes early, starts chatting with their neighbors, and suddenly quiet work time is falling apart. In this flip the script reframing episode, Michelle walks through a three-minute mental reset using collaborative problem-solving. You'll get three steps to run through before you walk over, plus a low-key script for inviting the student into solving the problem with you, so you can trade the redirect for a partnership.

Brought to you by Michelle Roundy, The 2026 Wyoming Teacher of the Year

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ If this episode moved your thinking, please leave a 5-star review and tag @DearMrsRoundy on social media!

Submit your QUESTIONS to the podcast!

Sponsored by Book Notes by Dakota Hunt Studio

Use the code “MICHELLE10” for 10% off!

This podcast is produced by Dakota Hunt Studio.

Host Michelle Roundy opens with a personal story about a pair of rubber gloves that did more harm than good to unpack a common trap in education: confusing protection with support. She explores how educators, coaches, and leaders often withhold honest feedback, stay silent during toxic conversations, or avoid challenging professional learning under the guise of keeping the peace. Michelle challenges listeners to drop their "professional rubber gloves" and lean into the healthy tension required for genuine growth, resilience, and transformation.

Brought to you by Michelle Roundy, The 2026 Wyoming Teacher of the Year

Recommended Reading:

👉 Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High

by Grenny 

👉 ⁠Embracing Relational Teaching⁠: How Strong Relationships Promote Student Self-Regulation and Efficacy (Strengthen student ownership of learning with relational classroom practices) by Anthony R. Reibel

👉⁠The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success⁠ by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, Kaley Klemp

Submit your QUESTIONS to the podcast!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ If this episode moved your thinking, please leave a 5-star review and tag @DearMrsRoundy on social media! 

Sponsored by Book Notes by Dakota Hunt Studio

Use the code “MICHELLE10” for 10% off!

This podcast is produced by Dakota Hunt Studio.

Who really owns your classroom on the first day — you, or your students? Michelle Roundy walks through her step-by-step restorative circle protocol for co-creating classroom expectations with kids, from mindfulness openers and talking-piece rounds to building a shared "agreements" chart instead of a list of teacher-enforced rules. 

She shares the five reasons co-creation deepens learning, practical materials you'll need (hint: a koosh ball goes a long way), and how this same process extends beyond classroom norms into modeling metacognition for any skill you teach. A grounded, hands-on episode for teachers ready to shift from classroom management to true community ownership.

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SPONSOR

Book Notes by Dakota Hunt Studio

Shop Book Notes on Etsy by Clicking This Link and use code “MICHELLE10” for 10% off!

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RECOMMENDED LISTENING:

3 Outstanding Community - Building Activities for Back to School

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HOST

Michelle Roundy | 2026 Wyoming Teacher of The Year

Have your question featured on the podcast by filling out the form Linked Here!

If this episode moved your thinking, please leave a 5-star review and tag @DearMrsRoundy on social media! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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This podcast is produced by Dakota Hunt Studio.

This week Michelle shows up unscripted in real time talking through how she navigated the overwhelm of the first weeks back to school. She caught herself slipping into old people-pleasing patterns she thought she’d outgrown: saying yes to everything, running on autopilot, losing the boundaries it took her years to build. It’s an honest look at what happens when a new role tests the habits that used to protect your peace.

She walks through how she’s course-correcting. From a simple trick for handling information overload to why she’s reclaiming her planning time and how she models self-care out loud. If you’re stepping into something new or just feeling stretched thin right now, this episode’s worth a listen.

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SPONSOR

Book Notes by Dakota Hunt Studio

Shop Book Notes on Etsy by Clicking This Link and use code “MICHELLE10” for 10% off!

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HOST

Michelle Roundy | 2026 Wyoming Teacher of The Year

Have your question featured on the podcast by filling out the form Linked Here!

If this episode moved your thinking, please leave a 5-star review and tag @DearMrsRoundy on social media! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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This podcast is produced by Dakota Hunt Studio.

Do you have to leave the classroom to grow as a teacher? In this episode of The Elephant and the Teacher, host Michelle Roundy challenges the myth that real teacher leadership and instructional leadership only happen in an administrator's office. Responding to a question from fellow educator Ryan Donovan, she shares two field-tested strategies she has used for classroom-based leadership.

• Building a collaborative teacher cohort focused on multilingual learners. Michelle started with early-morning PD sessions on supporting ML students, which grew into an official district-sponsored cohort. Teachers studied discourse together, moved from generic "turn and talk" to explicit sentence frames and structured talk protocols, then opened "lab classrooms" so peers could observe the strategies in real time.

• Inviting colleagues into a vulnerable, protocol-driven study of real student work. Using the "wondering hat" protocol ("I noticed ___, which makes me wonder ___"), Michelle gathered teachers from different content areas to look at one ML student's essay and self-assessment together, replacing critique and defensiveness with shared curiosity, and modeling the kind of openness that builds trust and drives instructional growth.
  

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SPONSOR

Book Notes by Dakota Hunt Studio

Shop Book Notes on Etsy by Clicking This Link and use code “MICHELLE10” for 10% off!

—------------------

HOST

Michelle Roundy | 2026 Wyoming Teacher of The Year

Have your question featured on the podcast by filling out the form Linked Here!

If this episode moved your thinking, please leave a 5-star review and tag @DearMrsRoundy on social media! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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This podcast is produced by Dakota Hunt Studio.

In today’s episode Michelle is revisiting one of the oldest stories we tell about ambition and failure: the Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus. But instead of the usual “don’t fly too close to the sun” warning, she pulls the myth apart through depth psychology and Jungian archetypes to ask a much more useful question – what if the wax was never meant to hold?

As educators and leaders, she argues, those melting-wax moments — the lesson that falls apart, the teacher who hits a wall — aren't failures to prevent. They're essential learning, for our students and for us, and this episode is about how we hold space for each other while they happen.

Michelle digs into:

• Two very different ways to read the myth — cautionary tale vs. Jungian archetype

• Why the wax was never meant to last

• The ocean as the unconscious, and Icarus's fall as a kind of baptism

• Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés' life-death-life cycle

• Three roles we play in this myth as educators and leaders

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SPONSOR: 

Book Notes by Dakota Hunt Studio

Shop Book Notes on Etsy by Clicking This Link and use code “MICHELLE10” for 10% off!

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RESOURCES & LINKS: 

👉 Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes

👉 The myth of Daedalus and Icarus, as retold from classical Greek mythology

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HOST: 

Michelle Roundy | 2026 Wyoming Teacher of The Year

👉 INSTAGRAM: @dearmrsroundy

Have your question featured on the podcast by filling out the form Linked Here!

If this episode moved your thinking, please leave a 5-star review and tag @DearMrsRoundy on social media! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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This podcast is produced by Dakota Hunt Studio.

Prompted by a question from Tiffani Jaseph, the 2026 Arizona State Teacher of the Year — "What can I do better as a special education teacher?" — Michelle answers as both a classroom teacher and the mom of Emily, her 14-year-old daughter with Down syndrome. She lays out five pillars special education teachers can use to build real partnerships with families: high expectations, two-way trust, genuine collaboration, meaningful inclusion in general ed classes, and consistent daily communication.

Michelle grounds each pillar in real moments from raising and advocating for Emily, offering special ed teachers concrete, practical ways to strengthen how they work with parents.

Also in this episode: Michelle's first-ever sponsor read for Book Notes by Dakota Hunt Studio — get a 3-pack for $20 with free shipping on Etsy, plus 10% off with code MICHELLE10.

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SPONSOR: 

Book Notes by Dakota Hunt Studio

Shop Book Notes on Etsy by Clicking This Link and use code “MICHELLE10” for 10% off!

—------------------

HOST: 

Michelle Roundy | 2026 Wyoming Teacher of The Year

👉 INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/dearmrsroundy/

Have your question featured on the podcast by filling out the form Linked Here!

If this episode moved your thinking, please leave a 5-star review and tag @DearMrsRoundy on social media! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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This podcast is produced by Dakota Hunt Studio.