In this episode, Jethro Jones interviews Brent Zirkel, the elementary principal at Mary Welsh Elementary in Williamsburg, Iowa. They discuss how Brent is utilizing artificial intelligence to create curriculum tailored for his students. The conversation covers a range of topics including the advantages of AI in organizing content, creating engaging learning activities, and facilitating high-level thinking. Brent shares his experiences and insights on curating educational materials that resonate with both students and the community, and the importance of transparency in education.

• Importance of curriculum being transparent
• Making sure parents know exactly what we are teaching. 
• Web sites for classroom. 
• If you put yourself out there in the public, it motivates you to create more and better things. 
• https://Raidersocialstudies.com 
• AI makes it easier to organize your thoughts and put it in a systemic way. 
• 80/20 in work usage. 
• Middle East Unit
• Gives kids deeper ways to understand what is going on in the world. 
• Not getting kids to understand facts and dates. 
• Helping kids understand and perceive the world and make judgments. 
• American values and patriotism are very important to our community. 
• When you arm teachers with good curriculum you can have good discussions. 
• Greater freedom in the discussion point because it is a discussion, not a “lesson”. 
• Layering with AI - Using multiple technologies that wouldn’t be possible with just one AI. 
• AI Tools used: Suno (music), ChatGPT (art & more), MagicSchool (make it relevant), SchoolAI, assessments
• AI Tools are thought partners. 
• How to be a transformative principal? Good Better Best, Never Let it rest till your good is better and your better is your best. 

About Brent Zirkel:

Brent Zirkel is currently the Elementary Principal at Mary Welsh Elementary in Williamsburg, Iowa, a school of about 650 students.  He also serves as the district ELL Director, Migratory Education Program Director, and Preschool Program Director. Brent has previously served as the Associate Principal at Williamsburg Jr/Sr. High School (7-12) and Fort Madison Middle School (4-8).  Brent taught Spanish at Fort Madison High School for 12 years where he was honored for 5 consecutive years with the Terry Branstad Inspiring Teacher Award for serving as a motivational force to some of Iowa’s top-performing high school students. He has a BA in Geography and Spanish Education, an MS in Interdisciplinary Studies with an emphasis in Bilingual Education (ELL), and is certified as a Pre-K-12 Administrator and Special Education Supervisor.

Brent is also a co-founder of the Test Kitchen Educational Foundation: a non-profit organization that creates innovative after-school programming for rural communities in Iowa by getting youth excited about learning through engagement in academics, culinary arts, and valuable life skills.  

Brent is married to Michelle, a K-6 Media Teacher, and has two children, Brevin (16) and Bram (10). Brent enjoys spending time with his family. He is an avid fan of Survivor, the TV show, and is a true believer in progress through struggle. Brent sees education as the greatest opportunity to build a better tomorrow by positively impacting the lives of his students today.

In this episode, Jethro Jones interviews Dr. Valerie Dehombreux, an experienced educator and school principal who recently completed her doctorate in leadership and innovation. They discuss her dissertation on the trust-based observation protocol and its application, providing valuable insights for both her work and Jethro’s own doctoral process.

• Started as a 3rd grade teacher on the white mountain apache reservation. 
• Engaging in an intervention that is solving a problem of practice. 
• You can just do stuff! Valerie adopted his book and implemented it. 
• Literature review - showed how his approach was good. 
• Chose 4 research questions because they were all important. 
• Open-ended interview questions. 
• Formative interviews along the way. 
• Mixed-methods approach. 
• Reflective conversations are so powerful. 
• How to be a transformative principal? Start talking and meeting with your teachers. 

About:
Dr. Valerie Dehombreux has been a PreK-12 educator for 27 years including 15 as a school principal and 22 years in providing teacher training and professional development. Valerie holds Arizona superintendent, principal, and teacher certifications with two endorsements: Early Childhood and English as a Second Language. In 2019 as principal of McDowell Mountain Elementary School in the Fountain Hills Unified School District, Valerie led the school community in achieving an Arizona Educational Foundation A+ School of Excellence™ award for the first time in the school’s and district’s history. In December 2024, Valerie graduated with an EdD in Leadership and Innovation from Arizona State University. It is a unique, 3 ½-year cohort program that follows the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED) model where practitioners identify a Problem of Practice (PoP) in their work place settings and conduct cycles of action research to implement innovations/interventions seeking to address the PoP and to build up to the culminating experience of the final dissertation. Valerie’s action research explored formative teacher supervision’s effects on trusting administrator–teacher relationships and teachers’ professional growth.

In this episode, Jethro Jones interviews Dr. Kate Anderson Foley, founder and CEO of the Education Policy and Practice Group. They discuss the integral role of special education in school improvement, the double helix approach to support systems, and the importance of tailoring instruction to student needs. Dr. Foley shares insights on the necessity of breaking down silos in education and promoting a student-centered approach that prepares learners for adult life.

• Tight instruction specifically for special education students. 
• Double Helix
• Designing lessons that are comprehensively situating the adults and students.
• Almost half a million students are identified as special education. 
• Ban the Tiers! 
• Nimble and responsive instruction. 
• Not working in isolation anymore. 
• Double Helix as a replacement for the RTI/MTSS
• Strength-based system - foundation of school improvement process. 
• High expectations of staff. 
• Accountability is measured by evidence of impact. 
• Data that is used to inform and adjust. 
• Shared accountability. 
• Collaboratively working on improvement. 
• Discussion about explicit instruction vs. non-explicit instruction. 
• Blooms and scaffolding. 
• The scaffolding needs to be done
• How do we scaffold that skill so they demonstrate it in novel ways? 
• Explicit instruction is 15 minutes and then you transfer that skill. 
• Understand the concept of AM & PM. 

About Dr. Foley:
Kate Anderson Foley, Ph.D.

Founder & CEO of the Education Policy & Practice Group, International Keynote, McLean Affiliate of Harvard Medical School Institute of Coaching Fellow, Thought Partner, Author.

 Kate Anderson Foley is a transformational leader with significant experience leading public school districts and states toward equitable and integrated services for all learners. Her work has been grounded in social justice and breaking down barriers for children who have historically been marginalized. She has led organizational change utilizing a strategic framework that ensured guaranteed and rigorous learning leading to college and career readiness for all students.

Kate began her career as a special education teacher pioneering inclusive practices for students at risk and with disabilities. Her work focused on creating conditions that fostered high expectations of adults for students and innovation which catalyzed equitable opportunities for each learner. Kate's deep commitment to creating nimble and responsive systems that supported the whole child led her into administration where she advocated for local, state, and federal reform. That experience with large-scale reform led to improved academic and social-emotional outcomes for students, fair funding models, innovative healthcare models, and efficient operations.

As a senior educational leader for the State of Illinois, Kate's vision of fulfilling the promise of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was nested within the Every Student Succeeds Act. She was an expert contributor to the State Plan where the deficit-based system was interrupted and a preventative and nimble system was created that intentionally addressed opportunity gaps of all learners, regardless of background or circumstance. Her deep understanding of equity-based school funding also contributed to a legislative reform model for the state of Illinois.

As the founder and CEO of The Education Policy & Practice Group, Kate partners with local, state, national, and international organizations, education agencies, and various industries providing her expertise with the improvement process, professional learning communities, strategic planning, asset-based education policies and practices, special education, coaching, and consulting. Kate is a Roslyn Wolf Lecturer with the Levin College of Public Affairs in Urban Education. Kate teaches a graduate-level Special Education Law course to aspiring superintendents and principals. Kate works closely with senior leadership across various sectors providing executive coaching aimed at creating growth-minded organizational cultures (www.edpolicyconsulting.com). Kate is the author of numerous articles and books including Ida Finds Her Voice and Fearless Coaching. Kate's new book, Radically Excellent School Improvement: Keeping Students at the Center of it All presents a model for ambitious improvement and tireless focus that ensures every student grows, thrives, and achieves to their fullest potential. It provides district and school leaders with a bold blueprint for designing,

implementing, and monitoring a comprehensive school improvement process for radical excellence (https://us.corwin.com/books/radical-excellence-289045).

In this episode, Jethro Jones interviews Will Richardson, a veteran in the educational field for over 30 years. The discussion covers Will's new educational cohort initiatives, his manifesto addressing the need for educational reform in chaotic times, the role of politics in education, and the significance of long-term thinking for future generations. They delve into the necessity of reshaping educational goals to foster relationships and prepare students for a complex future.

• Constant Evolving, every five or so years. 
• Three C’s - Complexity, Chaos, and Collapse
• The Manifesto
• Will’s Substack
• There is still common ground here regardless of who is in political power.
• What do you want to still exist in 50 years? 
• We can go to our school communities and just ask to have a chat. 
• Parents are the fundamental educators in a child’s life. 
• Jethro on Stewardship
• What are we doing for our grandchildren? 
• It’s personal work first. 
• Soul work before school work. 
• Out of relation with each other and out of relation with other living things. 
• Join Will’s Workshops at https://futureserious.school 

About Will Richardson

Building capacity and community for educators (and others) ready to confront "complexity, chaos, and collapse." Founder, Future Serious Schools; Co-Founder, Big Questions Institute; Speaker, Author, Provocateur, Educator

In this episode, host Jethro Jones interviews Mike Cronley, founder and CEO of Class Composer, about how his software helps create equitable classrooms. They discuss the challenges faced by educators in balancing class compositions and how Class Composer addresses these issues.

• Getting the right kids in the right places in elementary school
• Focus on behavior and then start overloading based on other characteristics. 
• Rarely changed once the school year starts. 
• Classroom imbalance can impact the school for much longer than just the school year. 
• Teachers are happy with the output. 
• People weren’t starters but they make an impact. 

About Mike Cronley

While some big ideas are born in the boardroom, others are born in the lunchroom. In his 12 years teaching third grade near Denver, Colorado, Mike shared the frustrations of many colleagues enduring inequitable classes – for example, classes having an imbalance of low readers or students with challenging behavior. 

These imbalances weren’t surprising, given the student placement process was done with pink and blue paper cards. Over lunch one day in 2007, the school’s music teacher was venting to Mike about some unruly students who mistakenly ended up in her class together, even though they were supposed to have been separated based on their disruptive behavior the year before. 

Wouldn’t it be great, they mused, if there were some software to create class lists and avoid these basic errors? As a self-professed technology geek, Mike started dreaming about the possibility of creating his own solution. That dream grew into an obsession, and he found himself spending evenings and weekends consumed by research – driving his wife crazy. 

The result was Class Composer, software built on Mike’s tech savvy, his teacher’s perspective, and his commitment to creating positive learning environments. 

Mike, who received his B.S. in Psychology from the Ohio State University and an elementary teaching certificate from the University of Colorado Denver, is no longer in the classroom, but is an educator at heart who loves making a positive impact on the lives of teachers and students. 

He lives in Boulder, Colorado with his wife and two poodles, and he loves to ski, bike, and camp with his family, including his college-age son and daughter.

In this episode, Jethro Jones welcomes back Adam Geller, the founder and CEO of Edthena. They discuss the new Observation Copilot tool, designed to streamline principals' feedback processes for teachers, and delve into the challenges and solutions regarding teacher observations. Adam shares insights on how this innovative tool bridges the gap, saving valuable time for principals while maintaining meaningful and timely feedback for teachers.

• Observation copilot. 
• Streamlining feedback to teachers 
• Where are your pain points in observing teachers. 
• Making sure chickenscratch notes turn into valuable prose and you can generate valuable ideas.
• Quick turnaround time - Observe today and get feedback today. 
• How is streamlining the observation process transformative
• Human powered notes from the principal. 
• Focus is on reorganizing, not on filling in blanks. 
• Computer’s job is to show the evidence that a principal inputs. 
• System to help a principal make a first draft. 
• This service is free for anyone to use spring 2025. 
• observationcopilot.com free for spring 2025

In this episode, Jethro Jones introduces the Big Impact Mixer, where innovative minds gather to share and implement impactful ideas. Jethro discusses his approach of small, manageable experiments aimed at making significant changes and provides insights into some of his personal experiments, including supplements, workout routines, and productivity methods. He encourages listeners to join the mixer and his SchoolX Beta book study for collaborative growth and development.

This episode is a special From the Vault.

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Robert Feirsen and Dr. Seth Weitzman about their new book From Conflict to Collaboration: A School Leader’s Guide to Unleashing Conflict’s Problem-Solving Power.

We talk about how to avoid conflict, the three A’s to approach conflict, and much more.

About the Guests
Dr. Robert Feirsen is currently an associate professor and coordinator of the Educational Leadership Program at Manhattanville College. Previously, he was assistant professor and chair of the Education Department at the New York Institute of Technology. A former SAANYS member, Dr. Feirsen enjoyed a distinguished career in P-12 schools. As a school building leader in Westchester and Nassau Counties, he served as an elementary school principal, a middle school assistant principal, and a middle school principal. At the central office level, he served as an assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, deputy superintendent, and superintendent of schools. Dr. Feirsen taught at the elementary, middle, and high school levels as a social studies and special education teacher in schools in New York City before moving into supervisory roles. Dr. Feirsen holds an Ed.D. from Fordham University. Dr. Feirsen’s research interests include addressing organizational conflict, the school principal-school counselor relationship, principal and teacher retention, the relationship between psychological ownership and professional learning, college readiness, and the applications of design thinking. His research and other articles have been published in a number of academic journals, as well as Educational Leadership and Education Week. Dr. Feirsen has led workshops at such venues as ASCD, the American School Counselor Association (ASCA), the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE), and the American Educational Research Association (AERA). With Seth Weitzman, he has presented at national and statewide conferences including ASCD, the New York State Council of School Superintendents (NYSCOSS), and the New York Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (NYACTE). Seth Weitzman is also the co-author of From Conflict to Collaboration: A School Leader’s Guide to Unleashing Conflict’s Problem-Solving Power and How to Get the Teaching Job You Want.

Dr. Seth Weitzman sat in a middle school principal’s chair for 27 years in Nassau and Westchester counties. Leadership positions included co-president of the Mamaroneck administrators’ union, president of the Nassau County, and later, the Westchester County Middle School Principals’ Association, and a New York State Middle-Level Liaison (a working group of principals representing every county and BOCES in New York State meeting with NYSED officials). Together with Dr. Robert Feirsen, he is the co-author of two books: How to Get the Teaching Job You Want and From Conflict to Collaboration: A School Leader’s Guide to Unleashing Conflict’s Problem-Solving Power. He is either author or co-author of a number of articles published in national education journals including Educational Leadership and American Middle-Level Education Magazine. Drs. Feirsen and Weitzman have presented in numerous professional association conferences at the county, state, and local levels (e.g. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, American Association of School Personnel Administrators, New York State Middle School Association, New York State Association of Teacher Educators) and graduate-level classes (Teachers College, Bank Street College of Education). He is currently Senior Instructor in the Mercy College Educational Leadership Department. His 40-year education career began teaching elementary school and middle school in Connecticut and New York City. He holds an EdD from Teachers College, Columbia University.

In this episode of the Transformative Principal podcast, we introduce you to Dr. Trish Stoll, a transformative leader who played a pivotal role in the Mississippi Miracle—a remarkable effort to improve child literacy rates in the state. Dr. Stoll will share her insights on how to empower teachers, build their capacity for literacy instruction, and create a culture of learning where all students can thrive. She'll discuss the importance of focusing on teacher capacity, providing ample training and support, and involving teachers in decision-making. Dr. Stoll will also share her thoughts on how principals can be transformative leaders by observing classrooms, learning from students, and creating a culture of continuous improvement. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in improving literacy outcomes for all students.

• Mississippi Miracle
• Prior initiatives
  • Barksdale Reading Academy
  • Reading Universe 
  • Reading First - Literacy block was protected, pockets not the entire state
  • Literacy-Based Promotion Act - 3rd grade assessment
  • Mississippi Kindergarten Readiness
• Focus on Teacher Capacity on Literacy
  • State literacy programs
  • 3 Consortiums throughout the state to help teachers learn more
  • AIM Pathways partnering with the state
  • Lots of training and support for all teachers. 
  • If we focus on learning to read from Pre-K to second
• Empowering Teachers
  • State literacy coaches were teachers
  • Teacher advisory committee - created by state Supt. 
  • Teachers take ownership of their professional learning
  • TEDx talk for teachers
• How to be a transformative principal? Go into classrooms observe what students are doing and be a learner. Even district personnel are learners too

About Trish Stoll

Dr. Trish Stoll is a dedicated and experienced educator who currently serves as the ELA Curriculum Specialist for the Gulfport School District in Gulfport, Mississippi. With over two decades of experience in the field of education, Dr. Stoll has held various roles including general education teacher, Visual Arts Instructor, Literacy Coach, and Instructional Coach. Her passion for implementing best practices in literacy education has made her a valuable asset in improving literacy for students in Mississippi and beyond. Dr. Stoll's commitment to continuous learning, research, and collaboration with other literacy professionals across the nation ensures that students receive the most effective literacy instruction possible. Holding an Ed. D in Educational Leadership, a Specialist Degree in Instructional Leadership, a Master of Science, and a Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education, Dr. Stoll has a strong educational background that informs her work in the field. Furthermore, Dr. Trish Stoll is a Middle and Early Childhood Art National Board Certified Teacher, showcasing her expertise and dedication to the field of education. With her wealth of experience and qualifications, Dr. Stoll continues to make a significant impact on the literacy education landscape, striving to enhance learning outcomes for students and promote excellence in education.

School is becoming more hyper-localized. Parents’ choice is expanding, and public schools are already having to court new families to choose them, and this is going to become even more important as time goes on. John Mihalyo joins me to discuss how to improve your school’s branding. 

• Your identity and brand is an individualized school decision. 
• How to look at a school from a parent perspective
• What is the last parent perspective? 
• If you have a problem with enrollment, retention, and engagement, it might actually be a branding problem. 
• What are your teachers’ elevator pitch? 
• Give them topics of conversation. 
• Give people opportunities to discuss great things happening in your school. 
• Kids who start at your school want to finish at your school! 
• Two ways to look at things: “Tuition is so expensive” and “I’m getting all that for just $X in Tuition? Sign me up!”
• Word of mouth opportunities. 
• If you are not telling your story effectively
• Chaos to alignment to integration! 
• How to be a transformative principal? Ask this question: What is causing things to not go well? 

About John Mihalyo:

John Mihalyo is a distinguished education professional and the visionary founder of Elementary Advancement Solutions, a premier consulting firm dedicated to empowering Catholic and faith-based school leaders, and host of the excellent Catholic School Leaders Podcast. 

With over 20 years of administrative experience and 15 years as a Catholic school principal, John has become a trusted expert in navigating the complexities of Catholic education, including leadership development, advancement, and enrollment growth.

Throughout his career, John has demonstrated a steadfast commitment to supporting Catholic school leaders as they address the unique challenges of faith-based education. His extensive collaborations with pastors, bishops, superintendents, and dioceses across multiple states highlight his ability to develop innovative strategies that align with Catholic mission and values while driving measurable success.

John’s expertise in advancement is evidenced by his instrumental role in establishing two successful Advancement Offices, securing over $1.8 million in funding, and leading impactful initiatives such as a $6 million renovation project. Under his leadership, schools have experienced transformative growth, including an average enrollment increase of 24%, all while building stronger communities rooted in faith and mission.