Transformative Principal

In today’s episode, we discuss the topic of conflict.  Rob and Seth describe how it keeps principals up at night, but can be harnessed for good when we address conflict instead of avoiding it or getting angry about it.

About Dr. Robert Feirsen
Dr. Robert Feirsen is currently associate professor and coordinator of the Educational Leadership Program at Manhattanville College. Previously, he was assistant professor and chair of the Education Department at 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, he 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.

About Dr. Seth Weitzman

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 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 a 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.

The best way for listeners to reach out to Seth Weitzman and Robert Feirsen: 

• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected] 

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Maxwell Roach is the founder of JonAyves Learning Club. He’s toured the world as a musician sharing stages with artists such as Beyoncé and the Rolling Stones, directed operations for a multi-million dollar tech company, created and sold health products into grocery stores, and was the  CEO of a child care organization with over 250 children across 4 centres.

In today’s episode, we discuss the role of tutoring, the negative connotation it can carry with students and families, and how it can fit the current need of addressing post pandemic learning across the world.  His experiences with his own children learning to master the Rubik's cube and Abacus help illustrate the power of harnessing technology and welcoming those outside of the classroom to help achieve the mission of all students learning at high levels.

Max can be reached by going to jonayveslearningclub.com

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Dr. John Schembari is an Improvement Coach through which he supports teachers and school leaders by performing on site evaluations, identifying data informed trends, reviewing curriculum/assessment materials, creating improvement plans, coaching individuals one-on-one, developing and delivering group training to educators, and implementing evidence-based instructional strategies that improve teaching practices and increase student learning.

JOHN SCHEMBARI 

Senior Education Executive 

In today’s episode, we discuss everything curriculum.  John shares his answer when teachers say “I’m just going to hurry up and teach all of the curriculum” and  “I’m done with the curriculum work”.  Instead of teaching the curriculum, John explains how we should be focused on student learning, and he describes the importance of curriculum review cycles.  We also explore the role textbooks play and what teachers need if they are going to be tasked with developing their own curriculum and assessments.

Best way for listeners to reach out to John Schembari:

1. 908-442-6636 
2. [email protected]
3. John Schembari | LinkedIn 

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Matt Chaussee is the CEO of Be More Colorful, a Midwest-based immersive media production studio whose platform, CareerViewXR, is rapidly gaining national attention. Matt, along with his wife (and company owner) Katie, lead an innovative team of creatives who are laser focused on making career exploration affordable, accessible, and fun! CareerViewXR provides students and adult career seekers across the country with an unprecedented opportunity to experience real-world careers through virtual reality technology. Recently selected from a field of over 2,000 applicants to be one of 33 Semifinalists for the prestigious Yass Prize, Matt will discuss the significance of the award, and how he sees tools like CareerViewXR transforming how we guide students on their educational journey.

Please add questions that we would ask here, and you can add anything that you would like to add as well. 

• STOP Principles of the Yass Prize
• Help us connect with students in new and different ways. 
• How do we use tried and true strategies to help us change things
• True transformation is going beyond the books. 
• How do we all learn best? 
• Transformation is change with a purpose. 
• Yass Prize celebrates innovation in education, with over 2000 applicants
• Career Exploration - CareerViewXR - How do we challenge others to become better? 
• Vote in the Yass Prize
• Other companies as the 32 semi-finalists: are ASU Preparatory Global, Burbella Learning Academy, CompSci High, Create Conservatory, Indi ED, Sora Schools, Verdi EcoSchool, and VictoryXR.
• CareerViewXR - Our focus is really on taking that tried and true real job experience to help kids have real-life experiences - immersive media, showing what that real work is like. Virtual reality and virtual tours. 
• Bricklayer’s experience - I wanna try that bricklayer’s experience in 4th grade. 
• Most of the time an adult’s pathways really never gave them an opportunity on which pathway they could choose. 
• There are so many careers out there. 
• It doesn’t have to be interesting or exciting, it has to be authentic to someone at the right time. 
• Helping kids see the excitement of what jobs could be.

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

James Anderson is an Australian-based international speaker, author, and educator who is passionate about helping us become better learners. His Mindset Continuum builds on Carol Dweck's work on Growth Mindsets to give us practical tools to nurture a deeper understanding of ourselves as learners. His description of  Learnership - the skill of learning, then gives us a powerful way to understand and improve how we engage in the learning process.  The result: we get better at getting better!

Originally a teacher and school leader, for the past 20 years, James has been working with schools to make classrooms more thoughtful places. He challenges teachers to think deeply about their own Mindsets and how their beliefs are communicated to students in often subtle and unintended ways. His Growth Mindset Style Guide takes us beyond catchphrases and cliches to provide practical and easily implemented strategies that change learners' mindsets. 

In today’s episode, we discuss leadership.  Although James made the word up, he defines it as the skill of learning.  His work connects the habits of mind and Dweck’s Fixed vs Growth Mindset, but he’s developed ways to take these concepts further and make them applicable to students and schools.  It was a refreshing perspective instead of discussing the traditional focus of teaching and achievement.  James describes the role of the student, teacher, administrator, and even the parent in developing skilled learners.

The best way for listeners to reach out to James Anderson: 

1. jamesanderson.com.au

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Andrea Gribble is the master of all things social media for schools.  Her first book recently launched: Social Media for Schools: Proven Storytelling Strategies & Ideas to Celebrate Your Students & Staff - Without Losing Your Sanity  and she is the host of a podcast called Mastering Social Media for Schools

In today’s episode, Andrea shares where staff can start when they are handed the social media duties for the school or district.  She describes the systems she uses to schedule content and keep followers engaged, how to keep the content going during the summer months, and how to keep it positive.

Andrea can be reached by going to https://socialschool4edu.com/

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Darrin Peppard is a school district superintendent, speaker, author, publisher, and consultant focused on what matters most in leadership. Darrin’s an expert in school culture and climate as well as coaching and growing emerging leaders. He is known for his keen insight, culture-first leadership style, and dynamic personality.  In 2016, Darrin was named Wyoming Secondary School Principal of the Year by WASSP/NASSP and was the 2015 Jostens Renaissance Educator of the Year. In 2017, Darrin earned his Doctorate Degree in Educational Leadership from the University of Wyoming. This past summer, Darrin was inducted into the  Jostens Renaissance Hall of Fame.

On today’s episode, we discuss school culture and the road to awesome.  Darrin describes the moment he knew his school had a culture problem and how he started down the road less traveled instead of the “gotcha” road.  He started by changing what he controlled, himself, and then focused on empowering the students and staff to join him and take ownership in their school’s journey.

www.roadtoawesome.net

307-371-89447 

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Scrible is about the writing process.
- Impact of AI on writing.
- What does “embrace it” actually mean?
- It’s important to define it appropriately.
- We talk about teaching and learning together, but they diverge a little bit here.
- How does embracing it mean that students are using cognitive skills.
- Litmus test for the use of automation in education: Does it help develop or bypass the development of a skill?
- It’s ok to have automation as skills are increasing.
- Granularity is key.
- Map activities in the writing process to skills along the way.
- The “I use it myself” reason may not be good enough for our rising generation.
- Conflation of cognitive development mode with productivity mode.
- Education isn’t about being productive.
- When compliance is gone, they realize it’s all fake.
- Good writers and not good writers.
- Don’t let what it does for you strongly shape what we should be doing for the next generation.
- Lived experience bias - because I lived this, i have this experience.
- What’s best for students?
- First principles perspective
- If we don’t give them the opportunity to gain skills early on, we run into a situation where people won’t know what good looks like.
- What if you stop teaching math and just give kids calculators.
- Connect on LinkedIn

About Victor Karkar

Meet Victor Karkar, the brains behind Scrible, a game-changing startup that’s shaking up the way we do web-based research and collaboration. Victor’s been around the block in both the Internet and biotech sectors, mainly focusing on product management and business development. He was an instrumental part of the early team at insuranceOrder.com, a startup that got snapped up by the Fortune 500 giant, Marsh & McLennan. Oh, and he even dipped his toes into the venture capital world with a gig at New Enterprise Associates. So yeah, he’s seen the startup life from all angles.

But what really makes Victor tick? He’s a modern-day Renaissance person. In the startup world, you’ve got to be a jack-of-all-trades, and Victor’s worn every hat you can think of—designer, product developer, tester, marketer, you name it. He’s a tech nerd at heart, with a deep respect for the engineers and scientists who are pushing us into the future. He’s got a keen eye for clean, thoughtful design and is borderline obsessive about the details. 

Victor’s a debate geek turned entrepreneur who loves nothing more than a well-crafted argument or a slick presentation. He’s a dreamer who believes that a few good people can really change the world. But he’s no pie-in-the-sky idealist; he knows that to make lasting change, you need a rock-solid operation to back up those big ideas."

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

• What is journey modeling? 
• Take a look at what decisions people make and what it means for your potential people to look for you
• What brings true value to your School/District?
• Where are you bringing value to your employee and where are they bringing value to you? 
• What skill sets are you looking for and are articulated in the 
• Bringing people into your fold before you really get them in the door. 
• You want to appeal to the individual and create a customer experience.
• Weird to think of these future employees as a customer of your district. 
• How are people seeing you? And what are they seeing? 
• Are your messages being seen in a positive way? 
• Identify a friction point and how you could turn that into a touchpoint
• How could you use LinkedIn in a more effective manner? 
• Engage with your constituents - go and ask what people are saying. 
• It’s valuable to know each student’s name, but have you talked to every parent? 
• Collaborative
• Job descriptions from old-school approaches. 
• Key drivers for specific generations. 
• Value talents and skillsets in that job description
• Expectations around the job and the process
• How do you make people feel wanted? 
• Relationships and setting expectations.
• HR does have the opportunity to grow here. 
• You can still communicate. 
• You can automate many of these sequences. 
• Automate what you can
• New Hire Onramp Email Template
• Journey Model - teachers saw that they weren’t hearing from districts during a period of time over the summer. 
• People expect a certain level of interaction with schools and districts to understand what is going on. 
• Showing them what it is to be in the community. 
• Journey Model components - catalyst, question-asking, touchpoints (community, benefits, etc.), decision-making process, after acceptance, on ramping, continuing
• Identifying key focus areas

About Molly McGowan Gorsuch, APR

Director of Client Engagement at Rhodes Branding

Molly is the liaison between education leaders and Rhodes Branding, connecting the K-12 community with services designed to accelerate performance and market position. She leads content and partner engagement strategy and is a frequent conference presenter and podcast/blog guest.

You can find me on LinkedIn, or @MollyMGorsuch on Twitter. 

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Generative AI in k12 education and it's impact on teacher prep and planning, assessments, writing instruction, and other subjects. Ethical use of generative AI and importance of transparency and demystifying it. Also, contrast generative AI tools with instructional AI, and how high can be leveraged to improve teaching and learning. Also, a conversation on civics and history instruction and it's impact on society and polarization.

• Student data privacy laws. 
• DigLitCon - AI Literacy
• 4300 kids in 9 schools in Chicago area. 
• AI literacy - Generative AI is just round 1. 
• Demystify what AI is and that it’s not magic
• Feels like magic
• MIT’s Day of AI
• We need to know about it, but not everyone needs to be an expert. 
• What do kids need to know in relation to AI Literacy
• We pretend that people should know a lot of things
• Will we call AI friends or supports. 
• Harnessing AI for a Human-Centered Education
• We can’t find our life inside of a fake reality
• It is a tool, and it can do great things when it is with people. 
• Can’t hide from AI. Cheating
• What can we do with planning education guidelines
• Academic integrity policies and policies in place for Generative AI. 
• Assessment has to be redefined as a process. Packback, writable, character.ai
• Clearly articulating where you can and can’t use AI. 
• Have to teach them how to use it. 
• How to teach and use it ethically, model ethics, be transparent when we use it, make sure it’s not taking away from the learning process. 
• “This X was created with use of Generative AI tools.”
• We need to be professionally humble. 
• We need to have local policies that reflect policies
• 6 tenets of post-plagiarism
• This is only round one of a potential fourth revolution. 
• Just because it is almost right doesn’t mean that it is right. 
• Data privacy - byte

About Micah Miner: 

Micah J. Miner

District Administrator Instructional Technology & Social Studies at Maywood, Melrose Park, Broadview School District 89, American Consortium for Equity in Education Contributing Writer , Times 10 Publications Author of the book Harnessing AI for a Human-Centered Education

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.