Family Engagement Is a Relationship, Not a Head Count | Nitza Jimenez

What if the family your school has written off as non-responsive is actually drowning?

Family engagement usually gets measured as a head count: who came to the football game, who showed up for trunk or treat. Nitza Jimenez, a family engagement and parent communication strategist with over a decade across education and community health, says that number rewards the families who can already get to the building, and misses the ones who are trying to help their child at home and don't know how.

She works the difference between relationship-centered and compliance-based through attendance. Telling a parent to send their kid to school, with nothing relational behind it, buys no trust, and the reason the student isn't there is often a sick parent or a car that broke down. Early in her career she spent a quarter chasing a parent who booked meetings and never came, decided that parent didn't care, then called at an hour she normally wouldn't and heard the rest of it: a sick parent at home, a partner deployed, a family drowning. The second moment ran the other way, a family who answered a broken computer with "we're on the same team."

Bridget Johnson names the principle in her own voice, connection before correction, and the two of them take it where deans rarely apply it, to families. She also names the failure underneath a low number, that engagement is happening to families and not with them.

From there it gets practical. What to send families at the start of the year so they know how they fit the goal, why a first-month call to every family matters more than the words in it, why naming your own response time out loud keeps parents from guessing, and why a family survey at the beginning and end of the year puts the plan in the community's hands instead of the building's. Nitza Jimenez is direct about the skill gap behind all of it: teachers get no training in family engagement, and administrators tend to leave the work sitting on them.

Bridget adds the tip of the iceberg frame and the role play she recommends before a hard call, with light notes rather than a script. Nitza Jimenez closes with BRB, breathe, reflect, begin again, the resource she gives at the end of her workshops, applied to a parent, to a student, and to yourself after you blow up.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• Why measuring family engagement as participation misses the families who cannot come to the building, and what Nitza Jimenez tracks instead
• How relationship-centered communication differs from compliance-based, worked all the way through attendance
• What a "non-responsive" parent usually turns out to be carrying, and how she found out
• Why the first contact with every family should be a positive one, connection before correction applied to parents
• What early warning signs of a family communication breakdown look like, including contact that only happens when something is wrong
• Why family engagement belongs to the whole school, the nurse and the front office included, not to the classroom teacher alone
• Why families do not disclose homelessness or food insecurity right away, and the plain list that makes the question read as support rather than judgment
• How to coach an adult through a hard parent conversation: know your own triggers first, because if both of you are escalated, nobody comes down
• BRB, breathe, reflect, begin again: Nitza Jimenez's workshop resource for regulating yourself before a hard conversation with a parent

This episode is for: deans of students, student life professionals, school counselors, advisors, principals and division directors, independent and K-12 school administrators, and any educator responsible for the relationship between home and school.

Featured Guest: Nitza Jimenez is a family engagement and parent communication strategist with over a decade of experience across education and community health. She helps schools strengthen family engagement through relationship-centered communication, trust building, and partnerships between families and educators. Her work includes auditing where engagement is breaking down, retraining teacher and staff mindsets, building an engagement roadmap for each community, and running teacher trainings alongside occasional family-facing workshops.

Resources:

Connect with Nitza Jimenez on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nitza-danielle/

Kinected Coaching, Nitza Jimenez's practice: https://kinected-coaching.kit.com/home

Visit the Deans' Roundtable: https://deansroundtable.org

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/deans-roundtable

Email: [email protected]

The Table Podcast Series: Where student life professionals and K-12 educational leaders connect, learn, share, and grow together.

Restorative Practice Across 64 Nationalities | Alistair Goold What happens to belonging when almost nobody in the building is from the country they live in?

Alistair Goold has spent 19 years as an international educator across three continents, and he says restorative practice changed shape in every one of them. In Scotland's inner-city schools, affective statements were his superpower, because for some kids that was the only positive language they heard all day. In the Middle East, he found that neglect takes a different form at the other end of the wealth spectrum. In Kenya, where he teaches now, he describes a traditional and punitive approach and real pressure on schools.

Bridget Johnson and Alistair go straight to the part most schools skip: culture change is slow, and it usually gets led from the middle. He walks through six years of it, circles in one grade level, then every grade level, then team meetings, then a whole-staff circle in the first week back and a line in the strategic focus areas. He's blunt that training is the beginning and not the finish line, and that leaders who claim restorative without acting it damage this work more than the skeptics do. When a staff member pushed back that it was the soft option, his answer was "show me a better way."

Bridget names the myth in her own voice, that restorative practice means the absence of consequences, and lays out what she tells the schools she works with about consistency: the process has to look the same every time even though the outcome will not. From there the conversation turns to third culture kids, whose identity, as Alistair frames it, rests on relationships rather than geography, which makes the school itself the culture they belong to. It ends where a dean can actually start on Monday, with the circle.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• Why culture change is a slow burn led from the middle, and what six years of it actually looked like
• How to answer "restorative practice means no consequences" without softening the practice, using high accountability and high support
• What third culture kids are, and why Alistair Goold frames their identity as resting on relationships rather than geography
• Why a school that draws students from everywhere becomes the culture they belong to, and what that asks of the adults
• How consistency of process holds a restorative approach together when the outcome is different every time
• Why the North American lens on belonging and identity is one lens, and what happens when international schools import it wholesale
• Why he brings training to schools rather than asking schools to fly staff out to him
• The lowest-hanging fruit for a dean this week: the circle, including the whole-staff circles he designed for the first week back

This episode is for: deans of students, student life professionals, boarding and residential life leaders, independent and international school administrators, counselors, advisors, and restorative practices practitioners.

Featured Guest: Alistair Goold is the founder of Restorative360 and a social science teacher and grade level leader at an international school in Kenya where 64 nationalities are represented. He has spent 19 years as an international educator across three continents, is fully trained and licensed with the International Institute for Restorative Practices, and sits on the European Forum for Restorative Justice's Register of Restorative Trainers and Consultants and its education working group. He completed his master's in restorative practices in 2024, and his academic work has been published in On the Horizon and the International Journal of Restorative Justice.

Resources:

Alistairs LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/alistairgoold Restorative360: https://restorative360.com/ European Forum for Restorative Justice, education section and monthly webinars: https://www.euforumrj.org/

Visit the Deans' Roundtable: https://deansroundtable.org LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/deans-roundtable Email: [email protected]

The Table Podcast Series: Where student life professionals and K-12 educational leaders connect, learn, share, and grow together.

Addiction Proofing Your School: What's Changed | Kriya Lendzion Content note: this conversation includes candid discussion of addiction and recovery, overdose, suicide, and sexual assault, including Kriya's own experience. If you or someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 by call or text.

What if the substance use policy in your student handbook was written for a supply that no longer exists?

Kriya Lendzion has spent more than 30 years as a licensed addictions clinician, prevention specialist, and school counselor, and she opens with her own story: a New England boarding school kid reaching for ways to feel comfortable in her skin, surrounded by adults who cared but didn't know how to intervene. She and Bridget Johnson work through what has actually changed in what students can get their hands on, why staff development is the entry point for everything else, and what it means to addiction proof a school.

Kriya is blunt that today's products are engineered, packaged, and delivered in ways the adults around students were never trained to recognize, and she argues this can't sit with the health center alone. Her policy case is just as direct: state what the policy is for, review it every single year, ground it in science and care rather than prohibition, and protect the student who comes forward.

The through line will be familiar to anyone in this work. The presenting problem is rarely the actual problem, and Kriya's example is the depression and suicidality workup where nobody thinks to ask about a student's THC use.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• What "teen whispering" looks like in the room, starting with asking what a student already knows before the adult talks
• Why "inflicting help" shuts down the conversation you were trying to have
• How the supply has changed in potency, packaging, and availability
• Why every adult on campus needs this knowledge, not just the health center
• What a strong substance use policy names, and why annual review is the step most schools skip
• Why amnesty and safe-haven provisions decide whether a student tells a counselor the truth
• What no-tolerance policies produce, and what a wraparound response looks like instead

Featured Guest: Kriya Lendzion has spent more than 30 years earning a reputation as a teen whisperer. She has worked as a middle school, high school, and college counselor, and she is a licensed addictions clinician and prevention specialist who has delivered drug and alcohol education to thousands of students and staff development to tens of thousands of educators around the world. She works directly with schools, staff, and parents, and partners with Soundcheck Prevention on larger, system-level engagements.

Resources:

988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988, 24/7): https://988lifeline.org

SAMHSA National Helpline, free and confidential treatment referral (1-800-662-4357, 24/7): https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/national-helpline

Kriya Lendzion: https://www.kriyalendzion.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kriyacounselor/

Soundcheck Prevention: https://soundcheckprevention.org/

Visit the Deans' Roundtable: https://deansroundtable.org

Student Life Assessment Program: https://deansroundtable.org/k-12-student-life-assessment-program-independent-school-evaluation/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/deans-roundtable

Email: [email protected]

The Table Podcast Series: Where student life professionals and K-12 educational leaders connect, learn, share, and grow together.

Beyond Generational Labels in Schools | Dr. Unnatti Jain

The friction between the adults in your building probably isn't generational. Underneath it, you'll usually find role clarity, workload, or norms nobody ever agreed on.

Bridget Johnson opens this one with the skeptical question: how much of what we call a generational difference is really age, career stage, personality, or circumstance? Dr. Unnatti Jain, a speaker, coach, and behavioral change specialist who studies generational difference, says the answer is all of the above, which is why she works from four lenses at once: generation, age, career stage, and culture. Her own position is blunt, that generational difference should never be used as a lens to view or judge people.

The research gives leaders reason to hold the labels loosely. Large reviews find that differences between generations in job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intentions, and work values are often small and inconsistent, because age, historical period, and birth cohort are intertwined. What replaces the label is a diagnostic move: when a staff conflict looks generational, it's frequently a role clarity problem, a workload problem, or a set of communication norms nobody ever set. Dr. Jain also names what Gen Z educators need as they move into teaching, advising, and coaching, and why adult belonging is the piece schools keep skipping.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• The four lenses every read of a staff conflict needs: generation, age, career stage, and culture
• What the research actually shows about generational differences at work, and why it is smaller and less consistent than the discourse suggests
• Where generational tension really shows up in schools, from response times and meeting etiquette to work hours and parent communication
• How to tell a genuine performance issue from a different way of working
• What Gen Z educators need from a supervisor, and why feedback norms belong in onboarding rather than in the aftermath
• What adult belonging looks like in practice, and why it is the precondition for student belonging
• The first step for a leader whose team is already in tension: acknowledge it without assigning blame

Featured Guest: Dr. Unnatti Jain is a speaker, coach, and behavioral change specialist whose work explores generational differences and how they affect relationships, communication, leadership, and collaboration. She keynotes on generational difference and belonging, and works with schools through a gap analysis process that moves from assessment and staff survey to tools and strategy built alongside leadership. She has launched a Generational Diversity Training Program for leaders and a Workforce Readiness Academy for early-career staff.

Connect with Dr. Unnatti Jain: https://www.unnattijain.com/

Resources:

Visit the Deans' Roundtable: https://deansroundtable.org

Student Life Assessment Program: https://deansroundtable.org/k-12-student-life-assessment-program-independent-school-evaluation/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/deans-roundtable

Email: [email protected]

The Table Podcast Series: Where student life professionals and K-12 educational leaders connect, learn, share, and grow together.

Why Women Leaders Struggle to Delegate | Rebecca Malotke-Meslin

Your head of school notices you are drowning and says, "You need to delegate more." That is the whole instruction. So why is it so hard to do?

In this episode, Bridget Johnson talks with Rebecca Malotke-Meslin, founder of Pleasantly Aggressive Coaching and Consulting, about why delegation is rarely a time-management problem and almost always something deeper. Rebecca connects the resistance to socialization and perfectionism: women are praised for figuring it out alone, asking for help feels like admitting failure, and the people we hand work to get held to an impossible standard. Bridget names how the quiet internal refrain (Am I good enough? What will people think of me?) does its damage without ever being spoken.

The conversation moves from a practical, staged approach to delegation, starting with what to eliminate before anything is handed off, into the systems around it: inclusive leadership training and succession planning. Rebecca is direct that the informal "tap on the shoulder" pipeline rewards the loudest, most confident voices, and shares her view that those are too often the men in the room. Her alternative is a system of proactive career conversations, equitable access to developmental work, and in-house leadership development that becomes a retention and recruitment tool. These are Rebecca's views on women in leadership and equity, offered to peers who already know the terrain.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• Why "just delegate more" fails as advice, and what a real, staged process looks like
• How perfectionism and socialization make offloading work feel like personal failure
• Why the first step in delegation is deciding what to eliminate entirely
• How to delegate by outcome, and set check-ins that support instead of micromanage
• Why not delegating robs your team of the chance to grow into future leaders
• How the informal "tap on the shoulder" quietly shapes who gets developed
• How to start building an equitable succession plan when your school has none

Featured Guest: Rebecca Malotke-Meslin is the founder of Pleasantly Aggressive Coaching and Consulting and co-host of the Confidently You: Women in Leadership podcast. After more than twenty years across sales, marketing, communications, and school leadership, including roughly fifteen years in admissions across three independent schools, she now coaches early and mid-career women in schools and nonprofits on delegation, boundaries, difficult conversations, and equitable leadership development.

🌐 pleasantlyaggressive.com | Podcast: Confidently You: Women in Leadership

Visit the Deans' Roundtable: https://deansroundtable.org

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/deans-roundtable

Email: [email protected]

The Table Podcast Series: Where student life professionals and K-12 educational leaders connect, learn, share, and grow together.

Student Support as Infrastructure: Hidden Leadership | Sherann Alkins

What if your counseling team isn't a service sitting next to the school, but the infrastructure the whole school depends on?

In this episode, Bridget Johnson talks with Sherann Alkins, LICSW, CAGS, founder of Counselor and Concierge and a 20-plus-year school counselor, assistant principal, and principal, about treating student support as central infrastructure rather than a department or program. Sherann names the hidden leadership of these teams as two things, visibility and capacity, and explains why their data has to connect to achievement instead of staying siloed.

Bridget and Sherann, who share a restorative-practices foundation, get specific about building trust across adults, giving counselors a seat at the leadership table, designing with people rather than doing things to them, and making advisory a true psychosocial space. They close on the harder questions Sherann now researches about AI, student voice, and student mental health. It's a conversation for anyone building strong student life systems and tired of doing it alone.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

Why student support is central school infrastructure, not a standalone service

What "hidden leadership" means, and how visibility and capacity unlock a counseling team

How to make student support data translate to achievement, not just attendance

Why counselors and deans belong on the leadership team, and how to claim that seat

What "design with you, not for you" protects, and what breaks when schools skip the "with"

Why advisory falls short, and what makes it a real psychosocial space

What ethical AI integration demands when student voice and mental health are at stake

Featured Guest: Sherann Alkins, LICSW, CAGS, is the founder of Counselor and Concierge and a former school counselor, assistant principal, and principal with more than two decades in student support, school culture, and leadership. A Doctor of Social Work candidate at USC, she researches school counseling leadership, trust and belonging, and the ethical integration of AI into student-centered practice.

Connect with Sherann: @counselorandconcierge across all platforms

Visit the Deans' Roundtable: https://deansroundtable.org

Community: https://bit.ly/drt-community-profile

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/deans-roundtable

Email: [email protected]

The Table Podcast Series: Where student life professionals and K-12 educational leaders connect, learn, share, and grow together.

**Sign up for the Advisory Alignment Collective Program! Advisory Done Right: Why "Fine" Isn't Good Enough | Alan Brown

What if your advisory program isn't failing because of your advisors, but because of how it was designed?

Most schools have advisory. Far fewer have an advisory that works. In this episode of The Table, Bridget Johnson and her business partner, educator and former dean of students Alan Brown, pull back the curtain on the Advisory Alignment Collective, the program they built to help schools move advisory from a vague good idea to a meaningful student experience.

Bridget and Alan name what so often goes unsaid: being an advisor is a real professional skill, and the presenting problem (advisors who "aren't cut out for it") is rarely the actual problem. More often it lives in the container, unclear purpose, no job description, design decisions that quietly pull advisory away from connection. Their answer is a two-phase model: an advisory audit for administrators and an advisory playbook for advisors, grounded in the difference between how to do advisory and how to be an advisor.

• Why "we have advisory" and "we have an advisory that works" are two very different things
• Why a strong teacher is not automatically a strong advisor, and which skills actually transfer
• How structural design decisions shape whether advisory builds connection or erodes it
• Why advisors so often feel lonely, and what alignment, connection, and support look like in practice
• How a clear purpose and job description reduce guesswork and stabilize a program
• Why uneven advisor experience creates real inequity for students
• What the Advisory Alignment Collective's two-phase audit and playbook involve

Alan Brown is an educator, coach, and former dean of students, and co-founder with Bridget Johnson of the Advisory Alignment Collective. He brings mindfulness, positive psychology, and nervous-system-informed practices to his work helping schools build cultures of belonging, wellbeing, and connection.

Visit the Deans' Roundtable: https://deansroundtable.org

Community: https://bit.ly/drt-community-profile

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/deans-roundtable

Email: [email protected]

The Table Podcast Series: Where student life professionals and K-12 educational leaders connect, learn, share, and grow together.

Youth Sports Betting: The Hidden Addiction in Schools | Saul Malek

You wouldn't smell it on a student—and you won't find it in a backpack. So how do you spot the addiction that's quietly reaching your hallways?

Host Bridget Johnson talks with Saul Malek, professional speaker and America's emerging voice on the modern gambling landscape, about youth gambling as an overlooked student wellness issue. Saul's addiction began with a single $10 bet in college and grew into a $20,000+ spiral that cost him relationships, sleep, and nearly his life before he entered recovery in 2019.

Drawing on his work in schools nationwide, Saul explains why gambling is a "subtle and progressive" addiction that online access has accelerated, how it's now reaching students through video games and microtransactions, and what student life leaders can actually do about it—from screening questions to handbook policy to parent education.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why gambling addiction is so easy to hide—and which warning signs actually matter

• How a small first bet escalates into a full-blown addiction

• Why online access has sped up how fast students get hooked

• How gambling is reaching middle schoolers through gaming and loot boxes

• How schools can balance accountability with treatment and protect students who ask for help

Featured Guest: Saul Malek is a professional speaker and founder of Saul Malek Speaking LLC who has been in recovery from gambling addiction since 2019. He delivers assemblies, workshops, and parent and faculty sessions on youth gambling for schools nationwide, with his story featured by the New York Times, NPR, PBS NewsHour, and Dr. Phil Primetime.

Recommended Resources: Connect with Saul Malek — Website: https://www.saulmalek.com | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saulmalek/ | Instagram: @SaulMalekSpeaking

Visit the Deans' Roundtable: https://deansroundtable.org LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/deans-roundtable Email: [email protected]

The Table Podcast Series: Where student life professionals and K–12 educational leaders connect, learn, share, and grow together.

Youth Sports Betting: The Hidden Addiction in Schools | Saul Malek

You wouldn't smell it on a student—and you won't find it in a backpack. So how do you spot the addiction that's quietly reaching your hallways?

Host Bridget Johnson talks with Saul Malek, professional speaker and America's emerging voice on the modern gambling landscape, about youth gambling as an overlooked student wellness issue. Saul's addiction began with a single $10 bet in college and grew into a $20,000+ spiral that cost him relationships, sleep, and nearly his life before he entered recovery in 2019.

Drawing on his work in schools nationwide, Saul explains why gambling is a "subtle and progressive" addiction that online access has accelerated, how it's now reaching students through video games and microtransactions, and what student life leaders can actually do about it—from screening questions to handbook policy to parent education.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why gambling addiction is so easy to hide—and which warning signs actually matter

• How a small first bet escalates into a full-blown addiction

• Why online access has sped up how fast students get hooked

• How gambling is reaching middle schoolers through gaming and loot boxes

• How schools can balance accountability with treatment and protect students who ask for help

Featured Guest: Saul Malek is a professional speaker and founder of Saul Malek Speaking LLC who has been in recovery from gambling addiction since 2019. He delivers assemblies, workshops, and parent and faculty sessions on youth gambling for schools nationwide, with his story featured by the New York Times, NPR, PBS NewsHour, and Dr. Phil Primetime.

Recommended Resources: Connect with Saul Malek — Website: https://www.saulmalek.com | LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saulmalek/ | Instagram: @SaulMalekSpeaking

Visit the Deans' Roundtable: https://deansroundtable.org LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/deans-roundtable Email: [email protected]

The Table Podcast Series: Where student life professionals and K–12 educational leaders connect, learn, share, and grow together.

Beyond Spreadsheets: Fixing Student Support with August Schools

Your school has a counselor, a nurse, a dean, a learning specialist, and a dozen advisors — but are they actually working with the same picture of each student?

For most independent schools, the honest answer is no. Student support data lives in spiral notebooks, unsecured Google Docs, disconnected email threads, and the memory of whoever happened to be in the room. That's not a technology problem. It's a student care problem.

In this episode, Bridget Johnson sits down with Pete Russell, co-founder of August Schools, and Victoria Bush, product manager at August Schools, to explore what a truly connected student support system looks like — and what it costs schools when they don't have one. From continuity of care to behavior management, from documentation and legal risk to the potential of AI-informed workflows, this conversation gives school leaders a framework for thinking about student support infrastructure in a new way.

What you'll hear isn't a product pitch. It's a practitioner-level conversation about why students are slipping through the cracks, what data schools are sitting on but not using, and why the nurse's office is often the first place student distress shows up — and the last place that information travels.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• Why disconnected support systems create gaps in student care — and how schools can start closing them

• How continuity of care breaks down at school transitions, and what that costs students and institutions

• What role-based data access looks like in practice — protecting privacy while giving leaders the context they need

• Why proper documentation isn't just good practice; it's a school's best legal protection

• How one school's data revealed an 80/20 gender split in counseling visits — and what they did about it

• What attendance patterns actually signal about student belonging and disengagement

• How AI-informed student support tools may reshape school workflows in the next five years

Featured Guests:

Pete Russell is co-founder of August Schools, a platform built for student health, wellbeing, and support in K–12 independent schools. He holds an MBA from Yale and spent over a decade in strategy and product development before founding August in 2021 in response to the collapse of school support systems during the pandemic.

Victoria Bush is a Product Manager at August Schools who works directly with school counselors, nurses, learning specialists, and deans to build tools that reflect how schools actually support students. She holds an MBA from Yale School of Management and brings a background in product marketing and health tech.

Recommended Resources:

August Schools: https://augustschools.com

Visit the Deans' Roundtable: https://deansroundtable.org

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/deans-roundtable

Email: [email protected]

The Table Podcast Series: Where student life professionals and K–12 educational leaders connect, learn, share, and grow together.