Podcasts about school leadership

I'm often asked if I can create an “executive functioning lesson plan” that a clinician could do within a 20-minute therapy session with a student or group of students. I understand why people ask me for things like this. This traditional “pull-out” model of therapy is what many clinicians have been taught in our preservice training, and it's often what's focused on in professional development for clinicians. This model works well for many skills. It also plays a part in executive functioning intervention. But it's not enough. Doing “executive functioning” lesson plans without some type of support plan in place for other settings would be like a soccer player doing drills and conditioning without ever playing soccer. Does the right isolated work provide support and a foundation? Yes. Is it necessary? Also yes.But is it enough on its own, without direct application in the situation when those skills will be needed? Absolutely not. I know school teams are overwhelmed, and embedding support across a students' day requires systems and collaboration that aren't often in place in many schools (yet). It's a lot to ask, but it's what needs to happen. And with the right plan, it's possible-which is what I show school leaders how to do in the School of Clinical Leadership. That's why in this second episode in my series on “Five Skills to Create Your Executive Functioning Implementation Framework”, I cover the second skill: Self TalkWhat I cover in this episode:✅ The two distinct types of self-talk: Strategy self-talk and Self-belief self-talk✅ How self-talk integrates with other executive functions like time perception, future pacing, and episodic memory✅ The connection between self-talk and principles of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)—and how to embed those principles into daily routines, not just therapy rooms✅ Why explicit instruction and modeling of self-talk helps students shift from reactive to proactive problem-solving✅ How deficits in self-talk can derail time management, task initiation, and flexible thinking—despite external supports✅ How to start working on self-talk with your students right away-even if you haven't built strong team collaboration systems yet.In this episode, I mentioned my upcoming free live virtual training hosted by Parallel Learning that's coming up on August 14, 2025 from 6:30-8:00 PM EST. It's called “Executive Functioning: Beyond Checklists and Planners”. You'll earn a free CEU, get to learn about a company that offers remote work opportunities, and get to learn some of the concepts I teach in my paid programs. You can sign up for the training here. I also mentioned my free training for school leaders who want to create a research-based executive functioning implementation plan for their school teams. You can sign up for the training here.  We're thrilled 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 technologySave teachers' timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments

The business of education is the business of creating impact.   School leaders step into their roles with dreams of transformation, yet impact doesn't automatically materialize with credentials or titles. It emerges through conscious creation - a co-creation between you and a higher power when you're tuned in and aligned with yourself.    Join me this week to learn how the path to creating lasting impact involves processing emotions in real time rather than avoiding them. You'll discover how to separate your identity from others' behaviors and criticisms, fuel your desire for impact even when facing injustice, and decide whether this is your season for transformation or restoration.    Find the full episode show notes and transcript, click here: https://angelakellycoaching.com/397

For the eighth episode in this series, the topic is 5 Reasons Instructional Coaches are Essential in Schools. This episode focuses on the essential mindset shift that educators need to make when moving into an instructional coaching role.  If you enjoy this episode, you'll love the previous episodes. Go back and listen so you can refresh your coaching practice following the three phases of the Thrive Model: Clarity, Consistency and Community. This series is designed to be an annual refresh of your coaching practice - even if you've heard some of the episodes before, every time you listen, when you reflect back on your growth over the last academic year, you'll be able to take something new away to apply in your practice in the next academic year.  Download our free companion guide & workbook that aligns with this series at edurolearning.com/refresh Let's Connect: Our website: coachbetter.tv EduroLearning on LinkedIn EduroLearning on Instagram EduroLearning on YouTube Subscribe to our weekly newsletter Join our #coachbetter Facebook group Learn with Kim Explore our courses for coaches Watch a FREE workshop Read more from Kim: Finding Your Path as a Woman in School Leadership (book) Fostering a Culture of Growth and Belonging: The Multi-Faceted Impact of Instructional Coaching in International Schools (chapter)

Executive function is often defined as “having good time management skills”. While this isn't completely off-base, it's a vast oversimplification.The REASON people are good at time management is because they have the ability to estimate and sense the passage of time. Most “textbook” definitions of executive functioning don't fully call this out, and as a result many educators and clinicians have a difficult time figuring out how to design instruction and intervention that supports executive functioning. Instead of embedding support across the day, interventions get siloed in special education, or lumped into long lists of cookie cutter classroom accommodations that overwhelm general education teachers. Kids don't generalize skills from one setting to another, even though people think they're working on “time management”, and well-meaning adults find themselves giving constant “five minute warnings” as they try to help their students keep up with the pace of classroom activities or even basic functional tasks (e.g., getting things together, making transitions). Let's be honest: If “five minute warnings” were an effective method of teaching executive functioning and “time management”, we wouldn't have to be doing them constantly. What if there was a way to help kids develop these skills, so we could fade all the prompting? The good news is, there is. The first step is recognizing that the core skill we're teaching is TIME PERCEPTION. When you google a definition of executive functioning, you'll likely get a list of 8 or 9 skills. Things like attention, working memory, shifting, ideational fluency, and self-regulation. It's important for educators, clinicians, and school leaders to understand these terms and what they are, but then they need to organize these abstract cognitive skills into concrete skills that can be both taught explicitly and layered across a students' day. That's why the framework I teach organizes executive functioning into 5 areas: 1. Time perception2. Self-talk3. Future pacing4. Episodic memory5. Encoding. In this first episode of a 5-part podcast series, I discuss the first one: Time perception. In this episode, I'll reveal:✅ What “time perception” means in the context of executive functioning (beyond simply knowing how to tell time).✅ How time perception deficits interfere with task initiation, sustained attention, and task completion.✅ Why students may appear "defiant" or "unmotivated" when the real issue is inaccurate time estimation/perception.✅ How poor time perception creates barriers for following schedules, meeting deadlines, or pacing tasks appropriately.✅ Intervention principles to help build a student's internal sense of time as part of a larger EF support plan.In this episode, I mentioned my upcoming free live virtual training hosted by Parallel Learning that's coming up on August 14, 2025 from 6:30-8:00 PM EST. It's called “Executive Functioning: Beyond Checklists and Planners”. You'll earn a free CEU, get to learn about a company that offers remote work opportunities, and get to learn some of the concepts I teach in my paid programs. You can sign up for the training here. I also mentioned my free training for school leaders who want to create a research-based executive functioning implementation plan for their school teams. You can sign up for the training here.  We're thrilled 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 technologySave teachers' timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments

Pastor Sean Azzaro of River City Community Church shares his journey and the mission behind the church and its affiliated Christian school, River City Believers Academy. Explore the concept of living an abundant, real life through faith, community, and education. Pastor Sean discusses the importance of biblical teachings, the impact of a supportive Christian community, and the role of RCBA in discipling students. www.rcbaonline.com 00:00 Introduction: Made for Something More?00:18 Invitation to River City Community Church01:03 Reaching for Real Life: Back in the Pulpit01:36 Landmark Church and San Marcos Visit02:24 Revival and Greg Lori's Crusades05:43 The Gospel's Fair Hearing in Modern Times07:54 Preparing the Next Generation for College09:28 River City Believers Academy: A Christian School's Journey13:32 Introduction to River City Believers Academy14:10 School Leadership and Faculty15:09 Unique Christian Community16:48 Student Involvement in Worship17:57 Pastor Sean's Role and Influence19:19 Sports and Life Lessons22:24 Enrollment and Scholarships24:06 Service Times and Final Thoughts

Pastor Sean Azzaro of River City Community Church shares his journey and the mission behind the church and its affiliated Christian school, River City Believers Academy. Explore the concept of living an abundant, real life through faith, community, and education. Pastor Sean discusses the importance of biblical teachings, the impact of a supportive Christian community, and the role of RCBA in discipling students. www.rcbaonline.com 00:00 Introduction: Made for Something More?00:18 Invitation to River City Community Church01:03 Reaching for Real Life: Back in the Pulpit01:36 Landmark Church and San Marcos Visit02:24 Revival and Greg Lori's Crusades05:43 The Gospel's Fair Hearing in Modern Times07:54 Preparing the Next Generation for College09:28 River City Believers Academy: A Christian School's Journey13:32 Introduction to River City Believers Academy14:10 School Leadership and Faculty15:09 Unique Christian Community16:48 Student Involvement in Worship17:57 Pastor Sean's Role and Influence19:19 Sports and Life Lessons22:24 Enrollment and Scholarships24:06 Service Times and Final Thoughts

School leaders everywhere face a critical decision as they plan for the upcoming year: tackle every problem that needs fixing or focus on what truly matters.    The pressure to improve student attendance, boost test scores, enhance behavior management systems, and implement multiple district initiatives simultaneously creates an impossible burden that leads to burnout and resentment across entire school communities. The reality is that while you can improve anything you want this year, you cannot improve everything you want.   This episode explores the fundamental difference between "everything planning" and "anything planning" - a distinction that could transform how you approach the 2025-26 school year.    Find the full episode show notes and transcript, click here: https://angelakellycoaching.com/396

For the seventh episode in this series, the topic is 6 Strategies to Build Relationships with ALL Teachers. This episode focuses on the third phase of Thrive Model for Sustainable Instructional Coaching: Community. To make sure you're getting all phases of the Thrive Model, please listen to the previous episodes. This series is designed to be an annual refresh of your coaching practice - even if you've heard some of the episodes before, every time you listen, when you reflect back on your growth over the last academic year, you'll be able to take something new away to apply in your practice in the next academic year.  Download our free companion guide & workbook that aligns with this series at edurolearning.com/refresh Let's Connect: Our website: coachbetter.tv EduroLearning on LinkedIn EduroLearning on Instagram EduroLearning on YouTube Subscribe to our weekly newsletter Join our #coachbetter Facebook group Learn with Kim Explore our courses for coaches Watch a FREE workshop Read more from Kim: Finding Your Path as a Woman in School Leadership (book) Fostering a Culture of Growth and Belonging: The Multi-Faceted Impact of Instructional Coaching in International Schools (chapter)

In this solo episode, Chanie Wilschanski challenges one of the most common—and misleading—phrases in school leadership: “Let's get on the same page.”While it may sound like alignment and feel like unity, this phrase often leads to passive agreement, false harmony, and a school culture built on appeasement—not real accountability.Chanie shares why being “on the same page” is no longer her goal—and how installing shared standards, guardrails, and team rhythms can transform your school systems and restore trust across your staff.If you're tired of repeating the same expectations over and over, this episode offers a leadership framework for creating clarity, follow-through, and sustainable team ownership—without micromanaging.What You'll LearnWhy “being on the same page” creates confusion, not clarityHow to lead with shared standards that drive school-wide accountabilityWhy rhythms and systems—not reminders—protect your school cultureA practical framework for restoring team ownership without overfunctioningWhat false harmony is costing you in terms of trust, time, and retentionHow to navigate team members with inconsistent follow-throughKey Insights“On the Same Page” Is a Leadership MirageIt creates a false sense of alignment while team members continue to operate with unclear expectations. Real school culture is built through systems, clarity, and ownership—not agreement alone.Standards Build Clarity—Ownership Creates StabilityYour team doesn't need the same words. They need the same follow-through. When team roles are clearly defined and reinforced, it reduces micromanaging and school burnout.Guardrails Make Standards StickSystems like recommitment rhythms, role clarity, and consistent follow-up help move your team from second-guessing and scrambling to anchored, confident leadership.Overfunctioning Leaders Block OwnershipWhen school directors or owners jump in to “just fix it,” it reinforces a culture of dependency and disempowers the team. Guardrails allow you to stop doing it all—and let your staff rise.The Guardrails Framework: Try This InsteadTired of repeating the same school standard over and over? Use this 3-part framework to reinforce shared ownership and sustainable systems:1. Define Follow-Through → What does success look like for each role? → Be specific, especially when addressing low accountability or inconsistent team members.2. Install a Recommitment Rhythm → Use weekly check-ins, midpoint reviews, or 1:1s to revisit standards regularly. → Don't build new rules—recommit to existing ones with intention.3. Clarify Ownership → Who is responsible for what? → Sustainable school operations require role clarity and systems that reduce friction.Memorable Quotes “You don't need matching words. You need matching follow-through.” “Culture isn't built by agreement. It's built by what we hold—together.” “If the standard is that children go home clean, your schedule must support that.”Why This Matters for School LeadersReduces the pressure of overfunctioning and the mental load of repeating standardsShifts team dynamics from passive compliance to real accountabilityHelps overwhelmed school directors install systems that actually stickStrengthens school retention and team trust by building predictable rhythmsProtects your school culture from burnout, resentment, and low follow-throughResources & Next Steps...

In this episode, I sit down with Jessica Lane, founder of Data-Informed Impact, to unpack the critical role of data in K-12 education—and how to use it responsibly, effectively, and equitably. Jessica shares her expertise on building a strong data culture in schools, improving data literacy, and creating clear, ethical data visualizations that empower—not overwhelm—educators and leaders.We explore the often-overlooked human side of data: how to build trust around data use, avoid duplicative processes that drain educators' time, and leverage data to evaluate systems. Jessica also offers insights into how different stakeholders—teachers, administrators, district leaders—use data from both micro and macro lenses, and how EdTech plays a role in the broader data landscape.Whether you're a classroom teacher, building leader, or part of a district team, this conversation will help you think critically about using data as a tool for improvement—not just compliance.Key Topics Covered:✔️ Building a positive and ethical data culture in schools✔️ Improving data literacy for educators and leaders✔️ How to design accessible, meaningful data visualizations✔️ Strategies to streamline administrative processes and reduce redundancy✔️ Student data use and privacy✔️ Understanding the micro vs. macro data needs across K-12 stakeholdersAbout Our Guest:As the founder of Data-Informed Impact, Jessica Lane is known for turning webs of data into easy-to-leverage visual dashboards, systems, and training for K-12 schools – fully equipping leaders and teachers to close the student success gap together. Having created custom solutions for 160 schools across the United States and Canada since 2020, she's an educational data expert. With 10+ years of experience from all angles of the classroom, Jessica's a former data coach, instructional coach, certified math teacher, and holds a Master of Education in learning and technology. Proudly data-informed and people-driven, she believes that data can tell great student success stories, if we let it guide, not decide, how to lead education forward.Jessica currently lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she can often be found excitedly exploring spreadsheets, brain studies, Brené Brown books, and puzzles. And when she's not partnering with schools, she's caring for her darling daughter, Emmy, or one of her 50 houseplants.You can connect with Jessican on her website at: https://www.data-informedimpact.com/Learn about her Data Culture Framework here: https://www.data-informedimpact.com/3-domains-of-diiLearn about her Re-Teaching Cycle Template and other Templates here: https://www.data-informedimpact.com/templatesConnect with Jessica on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/informedimpact/ We're thrilled 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 technologySave teachers' timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments

Are you caught in the endless cycle of deadlines, to-do lists, and meetings?   If you're like most school leaders, you probably measure your success by how many tasks you complete and deadlines you meet. But here's the truth: that approach is keeping you stuck in a loop of doing without ever feeling truly accomplished.   As we enter a new school year, I'm inviting leaders to shift from purely deadline-driven planning to outcome-based vision that considers not just what needs to be done, but who we need to be while doing it.    Find the full episode show notes and transcript, click here: https://angelakellycoaching.com/395

The topic for the sixth episode in this series is 5 Ways to Build a Coaching Culture. This episode focuses on the third phase of Thrive Model for Sustainable Instructional Coaching: Community. To make sure you're getting all phases of the Thrive Model, please listen to the previous episodes. This series is designed to be an annual refresh of your coaching practice - even if you've heard some of the episodes before, every time you listen, when you reflect back on your growth over the last academic year, you'll be able to take something new away to apply in your practice in the next academic year.  Download our free companion guide & workbook that aligns with this series at edurolearning.com/refresh Let's Connect: Our website: coachbetter.tv EduroLearning on LinkedIn EduroLearning on Instagram EduroLearning on YouTube Subscribe to our weekly newsletter Join our #coachbetter Facebook group Learn with Kim Explore our courses for coaches Watch a FREE workshop Read more from Kim: Finding Your Path as a Woman in School Leadership (book) Fostering a Culture of Growth and Belonging: The Multi-Faceted Impact of Instructional Coaching in International Schools (chapter)

Today, I'm joined by Melissa Kennedy - a passionate educator, leader, and storyteller. Melissa is Head of English at her school, a sessional university lecturer, and a presenter who brings depth and clarity to conversations about teaching, leadership, and curriculum. She's also an accomplished author and was recently recognised as an ACEL New Voice in School Leadership for 2024. Her work lives at the intersection of language, leadership, and learning. Whether she's guiding students through rich texts or mentoring colleagues, Melissa is all about empowering others to think critically, communicate clearly, and lead with purpose. This is a thoughtful and inspiring conversation. 

In this episode, we're joined by literacy expert Dr. Molly Ness, author of Making Words Stick, to unpack the science behind orthographic mapping and what truly effective spelling instruction looks like. If you've ever found yourself wondering whether “irregular” words really exist—or how to teach spelling in a way that actually transfers to reading and writing—this episode is for you.Dr. Molly Ness is a former classroom teacher, a reading researcher, and a teacher educator. She earned a doctorate in reading education at the University of Virginia, and spent 16 years as an associate professor at Fordham University in New York City. The author of five books, Molly served on the Board of Directors for the International Literacy Association and is a New York state chapter founder of the Reading League. Dr. Ness has extensive experience in reading clinics, consulting with school districts, leading professional development, and advising school systems on research-based reading instruction. She is also the host of the End Book Deserts podcast. In 2024, she founded Dirigo Literacy, a literacy consulting firm supporting schools, districts, and states align with and implement the science of reading.

School leaders constantly face situations where they need to expand their skills, build new systems, or navigate challenging conversations. The natural response is often to look outside ourselves for answers, seeking the exact steps someone else took to achieve success. But this external search for solutions can actually limit our growth and keep us from tapping into the wisdom and expertise we already possess.   In this episode, I explore why we ask "how" questions and what they reveal about our beliefs in our own capabilities. I share three powerful options for handling those moments when your brain offers up questions like "How do I build culture?" or "How do I manage my time?" And you'll learn an approach that will transform the way you view your own expertise.   Find the full episode show notes and transcript, click here: https://angelakellycoaching.com/394

We're sitting down with Associate Superintendent Dr. Jeff Hawkins for an amazing conversation on what summer really looks like in school leadership. We'll dive into how collaborative leadership shapes the school experience for both staff and students, and how we can take that summer momentum and launch into a strong new school year.

For the fifth episode of this series, our topic is Asking Just the Right Questions as an Instructional Coach. This episode focuses on the second phase of Thrive Model for Sustainable Instructional Coaching: Consistency. To make sure you're getting all phases of the Thrive Model, please listen to the previous episodes. This series is designed to be an annual refresh of your coaching practice - even if you've heard some of the episodes before, every time you listen, when you reflect back on your growth over the last academic year, you'll be able to take something new away to apply in your practice in the next academic year.  Download our free companion guide & workbook that aligns with this series at edurolearning.com/refresh Let's Connect: Our website: coachbetter.tv EduroLearning on LinkedIn EduroLearning on Instagram EduroLearning on YouTube Subscribe to our weekly newsletter Join our #coachbetter Facebook group Learn with Kim Explore our courses for coaches Watch a FREE workshop Read more from Kim: Finding Your Path as a Woman in School Leadership (book) Fostering a Culture of Growth and Belonging: The Multi-Faceted Impact of Instructional Coaching in International Schools (chapter)

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Ever feel like your school is trying all the “right” strategies—social skills groups, planners, behavior charts—but students still struggle with time management, motivation, and peer relationships?You're not alone—and there's a reason why.This episode is a clip from my free training, “Create a Research-Based Implementation Plan for your School Team.”It's designed for school leaders who want to guide their teams in embedding executive functioning support across both general and special education settings—without burning out staff.This episode is for you if you're ready to: ✔️ Help students truly benefit from academic instruction ✔️ Support social-emotional growth alongside learning ✔️ Avoid overwhelming your team with another “initiative”In the training, I'll reveal:✅Why social skills groups fall flat—and how to really boost students' emotional regulation and peer connections.✅The truth about planners, lists, and behavior charts—and why they're not improving student's time management or motivation.✅The 3 key elements school teams need to support executive functioning across gen ed and special ed—without burning out your staff (in this episode, I share element #1).This episode is the first half of the training in audio format, but to view the whole training with the video, you can go to drkarendudekbrannan.com/efteams. We're thrilled 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 technologySave teachers' timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments

In this episode of Just Schools, Jon Eckert talks with Alysia-Lara about how loss and healing led her to a life of listening, leading, and lifting up student voices. She shares how education became a path to purpose. A powerful student question, “What language do you dream in?”—guides this conversation about identity and belonging.  The Just Schools Podcast is brought to you by the Baylor Center for School Leadership. Be encouraged. Connect with us: Center for School Leadership at Baylor University Jon Eckert LinkedIn Baylor MA in School Leadership   Jon Eckert: Alysia, welcome to the Just Schools podcast. I want to jump right in with a question for you that I think is an interesting one for all educators, but I think particularly for you. But many of us in education have known we wanted to be in education since we were kids. What drew you specifically into education? Alysia-Lara: So my story is quite layered. But I'd start by saying, so as a child, my identical sister and I, we just loved playing schools. We both knew we wanted to be teachers. We would ask our dad to take on different roles as different students and we loved that. But she tragically passed away when we were six years old and something inside me just shattered and the loss was indescribable for me. And so, due to the trauma, I stopped speaking for about four years plus after that. And when I reflect on that, I think my silence became a form of survival. I was just trying to survive at that point. And I think, subconsciously, I rejected that dream that we shared for being teachers because it was just too painful. So when it came time to choose a career, I went for medicine. I was one of those irritating A-star students so my dad encouraged me on that path. He knew how much I love children and thought I could lead in medical school in that capacity. However, I only lasted three months. The reality hit so quickly that I wasn't made for hospitals, blood, or sick people. So it wasn't the best space. But I had a conversation with my parents about that and I remember telling them I still wanted to work with children. So my mum arranged me to go back to my old primary school. And honestly, that was it. I felt God's call clearly for the first time in so many years. It was a really reminder for me of what He had placed in my heart from such a young age and education actually became part of my healing. But also, a way to honor my sister's memory. Jon Eckert: That's such an amazing story. And the first time I heard that, it was so moving for what you had been through, the tragic loss and the trauma that you experienced that you don't wish on any kid. And yet, this path that you found to education, which led you to the work that you do today, which I'd love for you to talk a little bit about what motivates your work that you do today specifically in education. Alysia-Lara: So today, I think what really motivates me is that radical potential of encounter. And by that, I mean by even the simple act of listening deeply to a student's story or a parent's fears or a colleague's hopes, that helps me to create spaces for transformation. And I think within education and within my role that I have, I'm able to do that and I'm really energized by what becomes possible when we bring children and young people into dialogue. And that's across different cultures and backgrounds and, also, involving other generations as well. So for me, in my role now, education is really a space where meaning and purpose is searched for. It's not imposed upon students. I remember loving my school. But I also remember not seeing people who looked like me in the stories or in the curriculum that I was taught and that really had a deep sense of impact on my identity. I didn't feel like I truly belonged even though I enjoyed my school. So it was more about me assimilating rather than feeling included and I just wanted to really change that for other students. I remember what it's like not to have a voice but have words that I wanted to say and I want to make sure that I create spaces where I can lift up the voices of others. Particularly if they're from marginalized backgrounds. And I was reflecting recently that, for me, education is a Christian mission of hospitality. It's creating those spaces, honoring the stories, welcoming those on the margins. So it's really deeply relational and sacred work, that's how I view what I do. And so, we're offering welcome to others, creating opportunities. But also, having the humility to be changed positively by those who we welcome and that's very much about what I do today. Jon Eckert: Well, I love the generous hospitality you described because I really think as Christians, we should be the most hospitable people in the world as we welcome people in. And through the work that you're doing in the United Kingdom with schools giving students a voice, I think it's especially powerful because you, for over four years, did not have a voice. And so, I think it's helped you listen in different ways that a lot of us have missed because people like me are too busy talking instead of listening. And so, this next question really builds off that. What do you think students most need from educators as you listen to educators, students especially, and then speak to educators all over the world, in fact? But what do you think they most need from us? Alysia-Lara: Sure. I think it's a really great question. I mean, I'm very blessed to be able to speak to children from three-year-olds to 18-year-olds within my work. And what is so clear is that they just need us to be present. And that's not just physically, but emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually for them as well. And to kind of create spaces where these spaces say that you matter, you belong. You're not here to be fixed but you are here to be known, to know who they are. And this can be obviously across curriculum but it also can be beyond that. And just enabling children to be able to ask big questions, to tell their truths and kind of wrestle with the complexity that we have today. I also think that what the students really need is not to be reduced to outcomes. So they're more than their achievements, it's that whole child that's in front of us and knowing that there is such a delight in the mystery of learning and becoming within education. So that's I think what I'd say for that question. Actually, there's one more thing, and this came from a child that I'm thinking of, to really cherish the uniqueness of each and every student and that came from a 12-year-old which I thought was really beautiful. Jon Eckert: That is beautiful. And you're remarkable at listening to kids and hearing that kind of common grace that comes through that, because that's how God sees us. And as His followers, that's how we should be seeing others because we're... Each is very different than some or all. It's that individual that we are created in His image and how do we see that and hear that and make sure they know that. And so, you had a conversation with a student that I love that you had shared with me at the conference where we met for the first time. You speak several languages and you had a student ask you a really good question about how you dream when you speak different languages. What language do you dream in? And so, could you share that interaction and what you told him? Alysia-Lara: Of course. I mean, I think the best questions come from children just before they're about to go to break time or what you would call reset. And then, they ask the question and they run outside. They're like, "What do I do with this?" Although this is about 15 years ago now, this question stays with me. And the young student who was aged seven asked, "Ms. Sirinda, if you speak two languages the same or equally, what language do you dream in?" That was such an incredible question because when I had time to think about it, I realized it wasn't just about language. This was about belonging. This was about identity, memory, home. And it reminded me that we're all layered in that our dreams, like our hopes, are often held in the languages and experiences that have shaped us. So for me, that question really opened up a space of dialogue about culture. And actually, this young child, at seven years old, offered me hospitality in the form of a question and I've never forgotten that. So at the time, I did tell him that I needed just a minute to think about that. But I said that it depends on who was in the dream. For example, if it was my grandma, it would be in Portuguese because that's the language she spoke to me in. But maybe English with other people. But I think that question will always stay with me. Jon Eckert: Mm-hmm. And such a beautiful answer because in that, following up on the last question, what do students most need from us? They need hope. They need a sense of agency. They need a sense that they can become more of who they were created to be. And so, just the way you talked about dreaming, that's what we want for each kid, that they dream that they can become more of who they were created to be. But this next question is, you've worked in many countries, what do you think every parent and educator should know about students? So we asked you earlier, "What do they need?" But what do you think we should know? You have an audience of mostly adults listening to this, so what should we know about students from your perspective? Alysia-Lara: Yeah. I would say I'm... Whether it's England or West Africa or South America where I've been in senior leadership in education, what is really important is just to really know about their uniqueness, like I sort of alluded to. That every child carries a stories, they carry ancestry, some carry unspoken pain, but all have amazing potential. And these are shaped by lots of different things such as their faith, their community, the cultures they come from, what they really yearn to learn, and what they're searching for with regards to meaning. But I think what is coming out most recently within my work is needing to acknowledge that the shift in how students are engaging today. So we know that social media and AI and are now deeply woven into how students see themselves and how they relate to others. Now, these spaces, they can sometimes offer connection and creativity and things like knowledge. But they also bring that pressure, that distortion, and sometimes can be harmful. So I think the educators and parents, it's really important to know that we can walk alongside them. They need us to walk alongside them in their journey. And we're in that space, not in a controlling way, but just to be there for them. And just reminded that for students, they're not determined by algorithms or likes that social media is kind of dictating, but who they are in Christ and help them to grow into that fullness of who they were created to be. Jon Eckert: Yeah. That's beautiful. And I think your point earlier about being present, that they need us to be present. We need to make sure that our devices, life around us is not distracting us from that embodied soul. That's the only immortal thing we're going to come across in a day. It's that individual. It's that relationship. And that's a really good reminder. And I feel like you have such a unique take on this because of your love for education with your twin sister and then the loss of your sister at six and then that long space of silence where you're surviving. I feel like there is something that came out of that trauma that is this beautiful understanding of that and I think you see and hear people differently because of that. And so, when you think about that experience. And then, when you think about the best and worst advice you've ever given or received, how would you... I'm really curious to hear what you would say about this because I feel like you should have some really interesting insights into advice that was given to you as you went through... You've gone through really hard things or advice that you've given that's been helpful or advice that you've received that hasn't been helpful or what you've received that's been life-giving to you. So can you share either one? You can go whatever order you want. Most life-giving, most helpful advice, or least helpful advice. Take it away. Alysia-Lara: I'll start with the worst one and then I'll go to the best one. I think the worst advice I have ever been given was just to do my best to fit in. That made me shrink even smaller. It made me hide who I truly was. Real freedom came when I embraced my story and realized that belonging doesn't mean I have to blend in. Okay. I wasn't speaking, I wasn't articulating as other people were, but take a moment to look at my writing or the way I played my musical instruments. It's a whole different thing. So I think that's probably the worst advice I was given. And the best advice, I think, I was given... I'm going to kind of turn this on its head a little bit, if that's okay. I'm going to say as the best question I've been asked is, "What makes my heart sing?" And that's what my grandma used to ask me every day, particularly after my sister passed, waiting for a day where I actually verbally respond to that. And I wouldn't always, I might hug her so... But I still today take time to think, "What makes my heart sing? What has given me joy today? What has given me life today?" And yeah, so within that, I think I've kind of turned that a little bit on its head, but just knowing that there's still joy no matter what we're going through. Jon Eckert: Yeah. I love that. I have a friend who talks about, "What stirs your affections every day? And I love that, that, "What makes your heart sing?" And that's what we want our kids to be able to articulate and identify. And so, we can't give what we don't have. And so, it's really good to be aware of that. So given that, the best and worst advice, which... Very good. And I like advice in the form of a question. I think anything that can make us think is helpful. But what do you think the biggest challenge facing students today is? Alysia-Lara: I think one of the biggest challenges that children trying to navigate are really complex, noisy, divided world where there's lots of political debates. There's turbulence for them as well with regards to, like I said, social media, AI, and how they see themselves which is causing lots of confusion to conform. External influence is saying who they should be. But actually, it's not about that. It's who they are in Christ. So they're often found that they're competing with different external voices and that's really hard for them. So it's about them knowing who they are in Christ. I think that's one of the biggest challenges. But also, having an unpredictable future. I think that's quite hard for them to navigate. But then, often, when I speak to children, it's still hearing those young voices who still lean into hope, even though they know there are certain challenges. But they know that actually they can make a difference, even in the spaces that they're in. Jon Eckert: No, that's good which leads nicely into the last question. What makes you most hopeful about our students? Alysia-Lara: I think their openness. Their openness and resilience is just so inspiring. Their willingness to question, to listen, and to connect across differences is so powerful. I think there's a lot that adults can learn from our students and they are really eager to build this sort of just and compassionate world. They show kindness and creativity and they truly inspire all aspects of my work. Jon Eckert: Yeah. Well, it's a great place to wrap up but so grateful for the work that you do and the story that you have to share. But more importantly, the stories you elicit from kids. Because I think that's one of the things, great leaders can tell a good story. But the best leaders elicit those stories from others and then make that part of the culture of the organizations they lead, so really grateful for that. So thank you for your time and for joining us today. Alysia-Lara: Thank you so much.  

The chaos dial in your mind is turned all the way up. Your nervous system is hijacked by the latest crisis, your thoughts are racing through solutions that feel impossible, and your body is vibrating with an intensity that no amount of positive thinking can override.    This is the reality of school leadership - where the challenges pile up faster than the successes register, and where your mind's ability to coach itself through the overwhelm sometimes falls short.    In this special episode, I'm offering something completely different from my usual teaching and strategies. This is an empowerment meditation - a tool I've been using since 2022 when my own identity began to crumble in what I call an "identity quake.” This meditation is designed for those moments when your emotional reaction is more powerful than your ability to redirect your thoughts.

The topic of episode 4 is the Top 5 Elements for an Effective Instructional Coaching Conversation. This episode focuses on the second phase of Thrive Model for Sustainable Instructional Coaching: Consistency. To learn about all three phases of the Thrive Model, please listen to the previous episodes. This series is designed to be an annual refresh of your coaching practice - even if you've heard some of the episodes before, every time you listen, when you reflect back on your growth over the last academic year, you'll be able to take something new away to apply in your practice in the next academic year.  Download our free companion guide & workbook that aligns with this series at edurolearning.com/refresh Let's Connect: Our website: coachbetter.tv EduroLearning on LinkedIn EduroLearning on Instagram EduroLearning on YouTube Subscribe to our weekly newsletter Join our #coachbetter Facebook group Learn with Kim Explore our courses for coaches Watch a FREE workshop Read more from Kim: Finding Your Path as a Woman in School Leadership (book) Fostering a Culture of Growth and Belonging: The Multi-Faceted Impact of Instructional Coaching in International Schools (chapter)

In this episode of The Good Life EDU Podcast, we sit down with Elizabeth Dampf, a school administrator in the Chicagoland are and author of the new book from ASCD, Am I Cut Out for This? An Educational Leader's Guide to Navigating Self-Doubt. Together, they explore the often unspoken realities of school leadership from early career challenges and feeling like an “instructional imposter” to facing difficult meetings and the isolation many leaders experience. Elizabeth shares candid insights from her own journey as an administrator, explains why self-doubt is so prevalent (yet taboo) in the field, and offers practical strategies that leaders can use in real moments of uncertainty. Whether you're a veteran principal or a new admin, this conversation — and Elizabeth's book — will remind you that you're not alone and that leadership skills can be learned and strengthened over time.

We know school administrators play a crucial role in driving long-term math improvement—but what happens when you're a coach or teacher leader trying to create change without formal authority?In this episode, we dive into the practical side of leading from the middle. If you're trying to build a team, clarify roles, and move math goals forward—this conversation is for you. You'll hear actionable ideas for engaging principals in the work, building shared ownership, and creating momentum even when it feels like the responsibility falls on your shoulders.Because here's the truth: sustainable change doesn't happen alone—and if you're waiting for someone else to set up the team, it might never happen.Key Takeaways:How to lead from the middle and engage administrators without formal authorityWhy shared ownership is critical for sustainable school-level changePractical strategies to build teams, clarify roles, and establish shared responsibilityWhat coaches can do today to influence leadership alignment around math goalsReal talk about what happens when you wait for someone else to lead the workNot sure what matters most when designing math improvement plans? Take this assessment and get a free customized report: https://makemathmoments.com/grow/ Math coordinators and leaders – Ready to design your math improvement plan with guidance, support and using structure? Learn how to follow our 4 stage process. https://growyourmathprogram.com Looking to supplement your curriculum with problem based lessons and units? Make Math Moments Problem Based Lessons & Units Show Notes PageLove the show? Text us your big takeaway!Create engagement while fuelling students sense making by using Make Math Moments ready-made lessons and units. Access our vast catalogue of lessons for elementary through high school math classes.Check the catalogue here --> https://makemathmoments.com/tasks/Are you wondering how to create K-12 math lesson plans that leave students so engaged they don't want to stop exploring your math curriculum when the bell rings? In their podcast, Kyle Pearce and Jon Orr—founders of MakeMathMoments.com—share over 19 years of experience inspiring K-12 math students, teachers, and district leaders with effective math activities, engaging resources, and innovative math leadership strategies. Through a 6-step framework, they guide K-12 classroom teachers and district math coordinators on building a strong, balanced math program that grows student and teacher impact. Each week, gain fresh ideas, feedback, and practical strategies to feel more confident and motivate students to see the beauty in math. Start making math moments today by listening to Episode #139: "Making Math Moments From Day 1 to 180.

  Mitch Weathers on Breaking the Bottleneck Leadership Trap The Ruckus Report Quick take: Most principals think they're the chief problem solver—but that mindset is actually what's breaking their schools. When you're the go-to for every fire, you're not leading, you're enabling dependence. Meet Your Fellow Ruckus Maker Mitch became a gifted teacher because he was a mediocre student. Mitch rarely felt comfortable in the classroom. In fact, it took him 7 years to graduate from college. Choosing to become a teacher, Mitch was fortunate enough to experience school as if it was happening all around him. He was unsure how to jump into his learning with confidence. There is a loneliness to experiencing your education as a passive object as opposed to an active subject. From the moment he entered the classroom, Mitch relied on his personal experiences as a learner. He recognized that what we teach—the content or curriculum—is secondary. We must first lay the foundation for learning before we can get to teaching. Mitch designed Organized Binder to empower teachers with a simple but research-backed strategy to teach students executive functioning skills while protecting the time needed for content instruction. The secret is found in establishing a predictable learning routine that serves to foster safer learning spaces. When students get practice with executive functions by virtue, we set them up for success. Learn more in his recent book Executive Functions for Every Classroom: Breaking Down the Old Rules

In this eye-opening episode, I sit down with Dr. A. Jordan Wright, psychologist who brings both professional insight and lived experience to the conversation—having been diagnosed with ADHD in college. Together, we explore the often-overlooked stories of kids who manage to compensate for ADHD symptoms well into adolescence or adulthood, only to receive a diagnosis later in life.We also dive into why early educational settings are crucial for embedding executive functioning supports and how these skills can be proactively taught rather than reactively addressed. Our guest offers a compelling argument for why executive functioning should be considered the new social-emotional learning—essential, foundational, and deeply tied to lifelong success.We also spend a good portion of the episode discussing best practices for assessing executive functioning in a way that is robust and sensitive to diverse learning needs—moving to deeper understanding.Topics Covered:✅ Being diagnosed with ADHD in college and why high-performing kids with ADHD are often missed✅ The case for embedding executive functioning support into early education✅ Executive functioning as the new SEL: What educators need to know✅ Best practices for executive functioning assessment, including surveys, non-standardized methods, and optimal functioning measures. Dr. A. Jordan Wright is the Chief Clinical Officer at Parallel Learning and leading clinical psychologist who specializes in psychological assessment (including learning disabilities and ADHD) and therapy. Dr. Jordan received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He is on faculty at New York University, where he leads the Clinical/Counseling Psychology PhD program, training doctoral students in psychological assessment and counseling, and he founded and runs the Center for Counseling and Community Wellbeing, the low-fee community mental health training clinic at NYU.Dr. Jordan has authored multiple widely-used books on psychological assessment, including Conducting Psychological Assessment: A Guide for Practitioners (2nd ed.; Wiley, 2020); Essentials of Psychological Tele-Assessment (with Susie Raiford; Wiley, 2021); Essentials of Psychological Assessment Supervision (Wiley, 2019); and, with Gary Groth-Marnat, the sixth edition of the Handbook of Psychological Assessment (Wiley, 2016), the most widely used text in graduate training on assessment. His most recent book is Essentials of Culture in Psychological Assessment (Wiley, 2024), which focuses on areas of diversity, culture, privilege, and oppression in how we evaluate and understand individuals.You can learn more about Parallel Learning's comprehensive services for providers on their website here: https://www.parallellearning.com/You can find Dr. Jordan's free White Papers from Parallel Learning on executive functioning assessment, self-care for clinicians, telehealth best practices, plus much more here: https://www.parallellearning.com/white-papersIf you're a clinician looking for new career opportunities, you can take a look at Parallel Learning's “Careers” page here: https://www.parallellearning.com/careersIn this episode, I mentioned “The School Leader's Guide to Executive Functioning Support”, a 7-day course to help school leaders launch their executive functioning implementation plan. You can learn more about the course here : https://drkarenspeech.lpages.co/school-leaders-guide-to-executive-functioning-support/ We're thrilled 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 technologySave teachers' timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments

When parents storm into your office demanding that you eliminate all conflict from their child's school experience, they're operating from a place of fierce love and limited perspective. They see their kindergartener struggling with a classmate or their fifth grader being harassed, and their protective instincts kick into overdrive.   Suddenly you're being asked to create an impossible reality where children never experience discomfort, rejection, or disagreement. These situations reveal a fundamental gap between what parents expect (no conflict ever) and what we know as educators about human development. So, as a school leader, what are your options here?   Tune in this week to explore how to shift conversations with parents from conflict elimination to conflict navigation, helping them understand that conflict serves a crucial developmental purpose when we equip children with the right tools to handle it. On top of that, what I share today can be applied to conflict at all levels, from kindergarteners through to your teaching staff.   Find the full episode show notes and transcript, click here: https://angelakellycoaching.com/392

The topic of our third episode is 3 Ways to Find Clarity in Your Instructional Coaching Role featuring one of our amazing The Coach Mentors, Diana Beabout. This episode focuses on the first phase of Thrive Model for Sustainable Instructional Coaching: Clarity  For more about the series, and to get some background on the Thrive Model, please listen to the previous episodes. This series is designed to be an annual refresh of your coaching practice - even if you've heard some of the episodes before, every time you listen, when you reflect back on your growth over the last academic year, you'll be able to take something new away to apply in your practice in the next academic year.  Download our free companion guide & workbook that aligns with this series at edurolearning.com/refresh Let's Connect: Our website: coachbetter.tv EduroLearning on LinkedIn EduroLearning on Instagram EduroLearning on YouTube Subscribe to our weekly newsletter Join our #coachbetter Facebook group Learn with Kim Explore our courses for coaches Watch a FREE workshop Read more from Kim: Finding Your Path as a Woman in School Leadership (book) Fostering a Culture of Growth and Belonging: The Multi-Faceted Impact of Instructional Coaching in International Schools (chapter)

In this conversation, Marc and Nick discuss the intricacies of lesson planning, emphasizing the importance of structured questioning and engagement techniques. They explore how to effectively plan lessons that foster student participation and understanding, while also considering the role of AI in education and the balance between creativity and structure in teaching. Follow Marc on X, online, TikTok, or YouTube Check out Marc's new book, CAPTIVATE

How does an educator become a Lutheran School Principal? Dr. Alan Freeman (Director of School Ministry, LCMS Office of National Mission) joins Andy and Sarah for our Set Apart to Serve series to talk about how he became a school administrator, what kind of “leadership training program” for Lutheran schools existed when he became an administrator, the need for Lutheran school administrators today, the correlation existing between the shortage of Lutheran school teachers and the shortage of Lutheran school administrators, how Lutheran educators are trained for leadership through the SLED (School Leadership Development) program, and what SLED training looks like. Learn more about Lutheran Schools and Lutheran School Leadership at lcms.org/schools. Christ's church will continue until He returns, and that church will continue to need church workers. Set Apart to Serve (SAS) is an initiative of the LCMS to recruit church workers. Together, we pray for workers for the Kingdom of God and encourage children to consider church work vocations. Here are three easy ways you can participate in SAS: 1. Pray with your children for God to provide church workers. 2. Talk to your children about becoming church workers. 3. Thank God for the people who work in your congregation. To learn more about Set Apart to Serve, visit lcms.org/set-apart-to-serve. Have a topic you'd like to hear about on The Coffee Hour? Contact us at: listener@kfuo.org.

We know principals are busy—constantly managing urgent issues and putting out fires. But we also know this: school-level change is the most powerful lever we have for improving student learning in math. So the real question is: are we setting school leaders up for success?In this episode, we help you reflect on your current systems and support structures using a simple leadership audit:How are we positioning principals to take ownership of instructional leadership in math?Are they aligned to the school's math goals?What's getting in the way—and how can we fix it?You'll hear about common barriers schools face and gain actionable ideas from our work across North America to overcome them. If we want meaningful math improvement, engaging principals is not optional—it's essential.Key Takeaways:Why principals are essential for leading instructional change in mathHow to identify and remove barriers that limit their involvementWhat it looks like when district and school leadership are aligned on math goalsQuestions to help you audit your current leadership structuresStrategies to build principal ownership and capacity in math instructionNot sure what matters most when designing math improvement plans? Take this assessment and get a free customized report: https://makemathmoments.com/grow/ Math coordinators and leaders – Ready to design your math improvement plan with guidance, support and using structure? Learn how to follow our 4 stage process. https://growyourmathprogram.com Looking to supplement your curriculum with problem based lessons and units? Make Math Moments Problem Based Lessons & Units Show Notes PageLove the show? Text us your big takeaway!Create engagement while fuelling students sense making by using Make Math Moments ready-made lessons and units. Access our vast catalogue of lessons for elementary through high school math classes.Check the catalogue here --> https://makemathmoments.com/tasks/Are you wondering how to create K-12 math lesson plans that leave students so engaged they don't want to stop exploring your math curriculum when the bell rings? In their podcast, Kyle Pearce and Jon Orr—founders of MakeMathMoments.com—share over 19 years of experience inspiring K-12 math students, teachers, and district leaders with effective math activities, engaging resources, and innovative math leadership strategies. Through a 6-step framework, they guide K-12 classroom teachers and district math coordinators on building a strong, balanced math program that grows student and teacher impact. Each week, gain fresh ideas, feedback, and practical strategies to feel more confident and motivate students to see the beauty in math. Start making math moments today by listening to Episode #139: "Making Math Moments From Day 1 to 180.

In this episode, I  interview Connie, a student from the Language Therapy Advance Foundations program. She shares her practical experiences and results achieved with her students. Key highlights include:✅ Engaging a Disengaged Student: Connie discusses her strategies for working with a high school student who was bored with therapy, emphasizing the use of engaging books to enhance vocabulary learning.✅ Time Efficiency: Learn how Connie cut her preparation time in half by implementing the frameworks taught in our program, allowing for more focused and effective sessions.✅ Achieving Generalization: Connie reports significant progress in several of her students who had previously plateaued, particularly in their ability to generalize syntax skills.This episode offers actionable insights for language therapists looking to improve engagement and outcomes in their practice.Ready to elevate your language therapy skills? Join Language Therapy Advance Foundations and start transforming your therapy approach today.  Learn more about Language Therapy Advance Foundations here: https://drkarenspeech.com/languagetherapy/ We're thrilled 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 technologySave teachers' timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments

In this episode of Just Schools, Dr. Jon Eckert speaks with Dr. Lynn E. Swaner, the President US, for Cardus. Lynn's professional experience spans several sectors and encompasses roles in academia, sponsored research, associations, and independent schools. As a result, she is passionate about building bridges within and across fields. They share about the 2023 Cardus Education Survey and what it reveals about the long-term impact of different educational sectors, including Protestant Christian, Catholic, public, independent, and homeschool settings. Swaner highlights key findings: Christian schools continue to excel in faith formation, are improving in academic outcomes, and face growth opportunities around belonging and peer relationships.  The Just Schools Podcast is brought to you by the Baylor Center for School Leadership. Be encouraged. Mentioned: Cardus 2023 Findings Work and Worship: Reconnecting Our Labor and Liturgy by Matthew Kaemingk The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs by Peter Enns Connect with us: Center for School Leadership at Baylor University Jon Eckert LinkedIn Baylor MA in School Leadership   Jon: All right, so welcome to the Just Schools podcast. This is Dr. Lynn Swaner. She has a new role as of last year, so we're going to dig in a little bit into that and then some of the work we've been able to do together. So Lynn, thanks for being with us and just tell us a little bit about what you're doing. Dr. Lynn Swaner: Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Jon. I'm excited to be here and join you and your listeners. So some exciting things that I've been working on, a new part of my role as Cardus President U.S., which I joined in January of last year. I can't believe it's almost been a year. And so in that role... It's helpful for me to explain a little bit about what Cardus does. Cardus is a nonpartisan think tank. It is grounded and rooted in 2000 plus years of Christian social thought. And what we look at are how the different spheres of society. So education is one. For example, healthcare could be another, government, family, citizenship, all work independently as well as work together for flourishing societies. And so we have research files in all of those areas. And of course here in the U.S., I'm still very involved in working with education and that's where we get to the Cardus Education survey, which I know we're going to be talking about today. But just a little bit of framing really quickly about Cardus's philosophy and approach to education. In many societies in the U.S. is no different, there's kind of this division of education into, for example, your traditional public or district schools. You've got private schools, you've got charter schools, which obviously are a type of a public school. You've got homeschooling, etc. And Cardus's position is that all education is public in the sense that it contributes to the public good. And certainly when we do the Cardus education survey, that's what we found will impact that a little bit. But we're finding that different types of schools and homeschooling actually contribute positively to a range of outcomes that we would want healthy, thriving, contributing citizens of our country to demonstrate to and to inculcate. Jon: So great introduction. I first became aware of Cardus through the Cardus education survey because Katie Weins was writing a draft of it as a next door neighbor back, I guess this would've been in 2011, 2012 that she was working on that. And I love the idea of what Cardus is about because it's not trying to say, Hey, we want to privilege this over this, over this. It's like, Hey, no, all education is for this common good and it's all public and let's do this work. And so at the Baylor Center for School Leadership, that's what we want to do. We want to support Christians in whatever work and whatever schools they're called to. So Cardus has been a huge blessing in our work, and it's one of the places where our work's been able to overlap. And so in this last year, we were able to do the data collection for the 2023 Cardus education survey for the U.S. So talk a little bit about the way we collect that data. Getting that nationally representative sample of 24 to 39 year olds is hard, it's expensive and it's not done very often. So can you dig into a little bit of how we collect this data and how Cardus is doing it since 2011, but how we did particularly in 2023? Dr. Lynn Swaner: Sure. And I'd love for you to chime into obviously Jon as a card senior fellow and as a co-author on the report. If you want to provide any additional flavoring to anything I'm saying, feel free to. But I think most particularly practitioners, and if you've done doctoral research, the type of research that you're used to is certainly collecting data on graduates through alumni surveys and things like that. And we also have anecdotal data, right? So graduates will come back and say, "Hey, this is the impact that this teacher had on me," et cetera. And from these and other places, I think most educators know that they make a difference in the lives of students, but we don't always know in a really rigorous way what difference certain types of schools make, let alone what is the impact of a whole sector. And that leads to all different kinds of questions like are we delivering on our promises in our mission statements, [inaudible 00:04:18] of a graduate, et cetera. So that's where the CES comes in. And it is quite different to the types of research that most practitioners will be aware of. And so there's essentially three different ways that I can differentiate the CES, the versus as you mentioned in the sample. So we survey over 2300 graduates in that age 24, 39-year-old bracket, it looks at the five largest educational sectors in the U.S. So those are traditional public schools, Protestant Christian, Catholic, non-religious independent schools and homeschooling. And so that enables us to kind of compare in a healthy way, not in a competitive way, but a healthy way, how graduates from a specific sector are faring. And the way that we do this is we use a leading polling firm in the United States. So we use Ipsos Public Affairs KnowledgePanel, and then from that they generate a nationally representative sample. And so most of the time practitioners will be more familiar with convenient samples, so for example, the alumni that they have emails for or the people who respond, this is very different where we're starting with that polling panel where actually it is already nationally representative and we can weigh things and make sure that it is. That's the first difference. The second is really looking at holistic outcomes. So when we administer the CES, we're asking questions about academic, spiritual, cultural, civic, relational, we even have mental health and well-being in 2023. So we're not just asking, did you go to college? Although we do ask those questions. It's really looking at more of those flourishing outcomes. And probably one of the strongest things that the CES does is we use rigorous controls, which is a fancy research term. So we actually screen out methodologically and statistically the impact of family background characteristics. So that's things like socioeconomic status, education level parents, religiosity of your family, that kind of stuff so that no two graduates are ever identical. But let's say you and I were very, very similar in our backgrounds. And then you multiply that over hundreds of people, we're able to estimate, well, we've got these people who are essentially the same in these major pieces. So any difference that we observe in their life outcomes, we can estimate that we can actually attribute that to the type of school that they went to. So again, nobody's exactly the same, but because we use those rigorous controls, we can actually start to estimate the difference of the specific type of school that they attended. That's just a little background on the CES and the power that it brings to these questions. Jon: Yeah, that's super helpful. And the charts that you see in the report will always have two bars. One that's the raw score and then one that estimates the school effect. And of course, we can't control for every variable, but we control for a lot of them to try to get a better handle. So you'll see those and we try to be as transparent as we can. Again, with any good research, that's what you want to do. Another thing, when we started timeout doing this iteration, I remember talking to you in Ottawa about this. We really wanted to get a sense of how schools have shifted since COVID, because that was this seismic shift and we realized that to collect those data was going to be insurmountably expensive and too hard to do. So we opted for this, which I actually like what we finally landed on this I think is great. These graduates, the 24 to 39 year olds in this sample, the youngest graduates would've finished in 2018. So I feel like we've got this really interesting baseline of what we launched into when COVID created this unbelievably tragic in many ways, but natural experiment when all education shifted because that created a seismic shift like we haven't seen in education ever. And so now we have this data that says, Hey, these are the 24 to 39 year olds that graduated from these places. And so I think the key is to see some of the major findings that came out in this iteration, because I think then future CES surveys will capture some of the shifts that happened in graduates post-2018 when 2020 hit. So can you just lay out three or four of the major findings? Obviously the report is quite long, so if you want to dig into all the different outcomes about civic life, family life, religiosity, faith, mental health, I love the mental health items that we added. What would you say the three or four main findings that people would be most interested in from this iteration of the CES? Dr. Lynn Swaner: Yeah, so obviously I'll speak specifically to the Christian school sector. In the actual report, we provide a summary of findings for each sector, so for Catholic schools, for Protestant Christian schools, homeschooling, etc. So I'll focus here specifically on Christian schools. And so there's essentially three large sort of theme, thematic findings, if you will. One is really good news in terms of consistency. One is some good changes. And then one is an area that as we've talked with school leaders about this, that they really want to be thinking more deeply about and focus on for growth and improvement. So the first key finding is consistency in faith formation. So as you mentioned, we've done this survey now four times in the U.S. and each since 2011, and in each iteration, Christian schools stand out most distinctly in their ability to foster faith formation. So when we look at things like religious engagement in terms of going to church, regular practices such as prayer, Bible reading, when we look at spiritual vibrancy, so like saying that their schools prepared them for a vibrant spiritual life or they have a higher sense of regularly experiencing God's presence compared to all the other formal schooling sectors, Christian schools stand out the most in terms of their graduates report that at much higher levels. And we even see beyond personal faith that graduates are seemingly living out those values in a couple of ways specifically. So for example, they participate in charitable giving and volunteerism at much higher levels than graduates of other formal schooling sectors. So that's really good news. Again, we've seen that consistently, and I think it makes sense, right? If you have schools, some estimates like 13 to 15,000 hours spent in a school in a formal schooling context, right? And if one of the stated outcomes is these types of spiritual formation outcomes, then we would hope to see that in the data. And in fact, we do. And again, remember this is after estimating school effect, right? So this is not the influence of family, although of course we know families influence this and churches, et cetera. This is saying we take two students that look the same in terms of background, we're going to notice this benefit, this boost. So that's consistent finding number one. The next- Jon: Hey, can I jump in there real quick, Lynn? Dr. Lynn Swaner: Yeah, please. Jon: So on that, just to make sure, because you're not able to see the charts because it's a podcast, we will try to link this to the podcast so you can look at the report. And Lynn's done a great blog summary of this too. So we will post that as well. What she means by that is, so for example on how often, if at all, do you pray to God or some higher power, 37% of public school students, there are baselines. So when you look at the report, don't think the public school people are left out, they are the baseline. Everything's being compared against the public school because that was the largest population that we look at. 24% more Protestant Christian school graduates pray to God or a higher power regularly, just the raw score. When you adjust for all the other demographics that feed into that graduate, that drops to 14%, that's still significant at the 0.01 level. So that means with 99% certainty, that's not random. And so that's what she means when she says, Hey, even controlling for school effects. So we try to focus in on those things that are significant even when you control for demographic backgrounds, because it would make sense. Well, if you grow up in a family where that's typical and that's normal and you have all these things, then maybe that's all that it is. And the school doesn't have any effect. That doesn't appear to be the case on an item like that. So thanks for setting up and let me interject there into the wonky details that people can't see. Dr. Lynn Swaner: No, that's really, really helpful. Trying to paint a word picture here, but just a plug for folks to access the report. One of the really great things about these graphics, which are some of the best I think we've ever done, is you can actually, on the online report, you can just simply click and download any of these figures. So if you want to pop it into... They're publicly and freely available. But yeah, thanks for flushing that out, Jon. So that's the consistency piece we've seen. Key finding number two is rising academic outcomes. So people who've been in Christian education for a while will remember the 2011 CES. I certainly remember when that came out because I was in a Christian school at the time. And at that time, Christian school graduates were reporting lower levels than their public school peers when it came to college attainment, when it came to feeling prepared for academics post-secondary school. And what we see in the 2023 data is that that has significantly improved. So now Christian school graduates are trending at the same levels when they report as their public school peers earning bachelor's degrees, how well-prepared they feel for college, et cetera. And I think, Jon, I'd be curious to hear your take on this, but this to me reflects what many Christian school leaders have shared with me anecdotally and what I have seen in the field. That over the past decade or so, schools have worked to increase academic rigor, right? So I think this is something that as I'm sharing this with school leaders, that seems to really ring true with them. That it used to be years ago sort of the sense of, well, we really, really care about the spiritual outcomes. We're not as concerned about academic. And there's been a rethinking of that to say, well, actually, if we're going to be a school, then we need to do academics really, really well, both... Because of our spiritual mission. Because we want to be excellent to honor the name of Christ, and also because we want students to be well-prepared for whatever good works. Think about Ephesians 2:10 that God has prepared for them. So Jon, I'm assuming you've seen some of that as well, but I think this is worth celebrating. There's still more work to do, right? We don't want to settle for, okay, Christian schools are at par with public schools. There's still more to do, but I think this is something worth celebrating. Jon: Well, I agree, and I think there's been this shift even in the last few years where there's some skepticism about college as the ideal outcome for kids because of the sense that some colleges skew worldview in these ways that may not be in keeping with the belief system that a more conservative family might have. And so the way this question is worded I think is well set up. And again, we took this from previous surveys, so it's not like Lynn and I are sitting here complimenting our structure of our question here. But it's how well did your high school prepare you for academic success in post-secondary education or training? So it's this kind of wide open, Hey, do you feel prepared? 31% of public school students said, yeah, they were. Even when controlling for the family effect and the other socioeconomic effects, Protestant Christian schools are 22% higher than that, so that's 53%, over half of them felt that way. Now, unless we think we're getting everything right, Catholic schools are at 59% and non-religious independent schools are at 64%. So we still have room to continue growing in that. I think that's one that, again, its perception is somewhat reality here. If you don't feel like you're prepared for post-secondary success, then you probably aren't. And at 24 to 39, you have evidence that says, yeah, I wasn't really well-prepared. And so I do feel like given the previous iterations of CES, I think Protestant schools have made some big gains there. And I think that's super encouraging. And I hope that coming out of COVID, that that momentum can continue. Because I think for many schools that was a moment to say, Hey, look, this is a really good place to try to meet needs for specific learners that help them be prepared for life, not just for economic outcomes, but for outcomes more broadly. Dr. Lynn Swaner: Yeah. I think too, just to go meta for a minute, I think it's also really encouraging... I'm encouraged by this, that if a whole sector or let's say a large number of schools within a sector say, Hey, this is something we're going to improve on, we're going to be intentional about, we actually have evidence that it can make a difference, and that should be obvious. But I think when you get into the nitty-gritty of leading a school, of teaching in a school day in and day out, that can be hard to remember. And so I hope that schools, educators, leaders find this encouraging that when we focus on something... And the other interesting piece here which we don't have to go into in depth, is that I think a decade or two ago, there was this perception maybe that if we focus on the academic, it would be at the detriment of spiritual formation. And we're not seeing that. So it's not like all of a sudden there's been this precipitous drop and spiritual formation with academic outcomes skyrocketing. That's not what's happening. And so I think that's just really kind of a validation of the work that schools have been doing and still need to do, but I just want to kind of point that out. Jon: Well, and to quickly add to that, if you look at the highest level of school completed, this is the broader perception of preparation for post-secondary. When you control for the sector, Protestant schools are almost identical to public schools on bachelor's degree or higher, a 0.01 higher in that. So it's not that we necessarily have more students going on to bachelor's degrees or higher in Protestant Christian schools, it's that they feel more prepared for whatever it is they're heading into, whatever that might be. And so I think that is an encouragement that academics, you don't look at academics as one subset that hurts the others. As Christians, we should be doing everything excellent ways. And so I like the robust way that the Cardus survey, especially this year, tries to look at that. Dr. Lynn Swaner: Yeah. So we'll move on to the final... And again, encourage everyone to download the report, lasts to be seen and to understand. But the final thing that stands out and that really is resonating as we speak with schools and leaders and teachers, is sort of this broad category of shortfalls in belonging and peer relationships. So the first thing is in terms of overall mental health and well-being, graduate of Christian schools report similar levels in terms of depression, anxiety as peers and other sectors. So that I guess is good news in the sense that they're not necessarily more anxious or struggling with well-being than other sectors. It's important to just mention that graduates of homeschooling are the only sector that experienced lower rates in that. So that's really interesting. That's a conversation for another day. But that's the first thing. But what we did observe is that... And this is slight, it's not extreme, so we can pull the numbers and they're not hugely significant, but it still, we can see this is that graduates of Christian schools seem to have a lower sense of belonging. So saying they felt that they belonged when they were in their schools and also slightly weaker peer relationships. And this all compared to their public school counterparts. So again, you mentioned the public school being the baseline. So we're not even talking about non-religious independent Catholic schools. We're just talking about the public school comparison. And what's really interesting is that even though they had this sense, lower sense of belonging, they still felt like their schools were really close-knit communities. And that's a bit of a paradox, I guess you could say. Their schools were really, really close-knit, but they didn't feel they belonged at the same rate as public school graduates and other graduates of other sectors. So I think this is... There's a lot of speculation. Obviously the data doesn't explain why this is the case. And as I've talked with school leaders, as you've talked with leaders trying to give some thoughts around this, some interesting things are coming up, which is it's very easy to look to the external environment for answers. So if you look at 24 to 39-year-olds right now, we know that a significant tranche of that group would've been impacted during high school by smartphones, social media, even some declining enrollment in private schools, right? So immediately we're going to... Cyberbullying, we turn to those kinds of things. And that's absolutely true, and there's no doubt that those things had an impact. But where the question is, is why didn't we see the same dip in the other sectors, right? Because arguably, Catholic school enrollments were dropping at the same time. Independent school enrollments, everybody's got smartphones. So I think there's something unique to the Christian school environment that we need to ask the question, what happened there? What's going on? And again, anecdotally, just as I saw over the last 10 plus years, an emphasis on improving academics, I think we've started in Christian schools to really be thinking about how do we build communities where there's a sense of belonging, right? Where we have people from different backgrounds, where we are working on bullying, we're working on these things. And it'll be interesting to track this into future years, but there's a lot of discussion about this and why this could be, how we can do this better. Jon: Yeah, I think this is a great example of where the CES is super helpful because Protestant schools and public schools are not statistically significantly different. About half the kids feel like they belong, about half don't. So we had about half say, agree or strongly agree in both public schools and Protestant schools. But what I'm fascinated by is the non-religious independent schools. Even when controlling for school effect, they are significantly by 21%, 18% different where you have 68, 70% of their kids feeling they belong. And when you lean into stereotypes about secular independent schools, it's like, oh, well, those are going to be clicky, they're elitist, and they're all these things, but based on these data, they feel like they belong and they have stronger relationships with students at their schools. So I mean, I think that's something to dig into. And Catholic schools are similar. They don't have quite the same effect, but Catholic schools are significantly higher on belonging and on the relationships with students in schools. And so again, if all education is public education, then we should be learning from each other, from our areas of relative strength. And so I think that's a super helpful finding, even though it may be a little bit hard to look at because we want to make sure each kid belongs at our school and half of them saying they don't feel they belong. That's a punch in the gut to educators, but we've got to look into it and we've got to find ways to do that better. And I think, my hope is that it's 2020 on all schools have gotten more thoughtful about that, and I hope Protestant Christian schools have been leading the way in that. And I hope we see that in future iterations of the CES. But are you optimistic about that, Lynn? Dr. Lynn Swaner: I am, and I think I would go back to what I said. One of the most encouraging things about the findings for me has been one, as a sector or a large number of schools in the sector say, Hey, we're going to focus on improving this. We see the results. And so I think certainly in all the marketing materials I've ever seen for every Christian school... I know Christian school is saying, we have a sort of unfriendly community or environment, and kids aren't going to... Usually it's the opposite where Christian schools are saying, we're a family, we're so close-knit. And I think the findings here suggest and encourage us to not just assume that that is happening. Just because we say that we're a close-knit community, that kids are loved and feel like they belong, just because we say that, doesn't mean automatically that that is happening. And so we just need to lean into that, and that's going to look different on every campus, right? I certainly am hopeful about some of the changing approaches to technology in schools that are more thoughtful, more intentional than I think reactional... Reactionary, I should say. So I think a lot of schools are thinking about, Hey, if we let kids have cell phones... I just heard about school the other day that lets the students have cell phones in passing periods. Well, okay, they have their cell phone in passing periods, but then they're not of looking up and talking with people, whereas other schools will say, you can't have them. We're going to lock them away for the full day. And then you have students who are like, I got to talk to people in the hall. So I just think schools are being more intentional about this. And I guess my encouragement would be to lean in that even more deeply and understand what this looks like at your school, what are some of the pressure points for students, ask your graduates and your alumni. And I think it's just a really good way for us to say, Hey, let's continue leaning into what we say about ourselves and also what we want to be. Jon: Yeah. I'm so encouraged hearing about all the loud cafeterias that are coming back. I think that's a blessing. And so that's an encouragement. So we're going to do a quick lightning round here, and I'm going to frame these, and you can answer them as succinctly as you can. But if you were to say, Hey, here is the worst piece of advice that you could take from the CES. If you were to say somebody were to look at this and say, Hey, you should take this finding from the CES, and this would be... What would be a misapplication of the CES? And then on the other side, what would be the best application of something coming out of the CES? Dr. Lynn Swaner: Yeah, that's an interesting one. I think a misapplication of the CES would be to make a declarative statement and say, if you want your child to be this way, you should send them to this type of school. I think that would be a mistake. Because there's a lot of nuance that the CES doesn't... At least if you read it doesn't capture it certainly. And so that would be sort of the negative mistake. How do I think it... And what was the other question? What would be the one thing I would want the- Jon: Best takeaway from the CES. Dr. Lynn Swaner: The best takeaway would be that not that different schools have different kinds of outcomes, and they're rich and diverse and holistic. And so each one of the sectors that we looked at has really, really positive things about it, including public schools and has some things that they need to work on. And so I think that the best takeaway would be to not write off any of schools and to also not say this is the only way to do it. But rather to look at the data to understand, hey, if you're a parent, to say these are our values as a family, these are the things that we want. And we see there's a couple sectors that do these things really well. There's a couple that maybe we wouldn't be interested in that and to make a really informed decision based on that. So I think that would be number one if you were families. And the second thing I would say is just for people who are involved in policymaking, people who are like lawmakers, advocates, is this is not a zero-sum game. There are millions of children in this country, and the vast majority, some, I think around 80% are in public school settings, about 20% are not, which that's not an insignificant number. That's one in five kids. And all of these schools are public education. All of these schools are training people and hopefully creating productive human beings and flourishing human beings and et cetera. And so when we look at how to set up our educational system, there really is... I think about our colleague, Ashley Berner at Jons Hopkins, who's also a senior fellow at Cardus. The subtitle one of her books, the title of her book is No One Way to School. There is no one way to school, and not every school is right for every kid, every year. And so if we have a robust educational system that allows families to make choices that fit their children and fit their needs and the types of things that they want to see for their kids, that is not only the most just system, but also the CES provides evidence that all kids can flourish. Jon: And that's the goal, each kid flourishing. So I always have to ask, what's your favorite book or one of your... I know you read a lot. One of your favorite books you've read in the last year? Dr. Lynn Swaner: Yeah, that's a really tough question. Jon: I know. I know- Dr. Lynn Swaner: Yeah, I'm going to have to say two. One of which is a little bit more academic, and another one which is a little more accessible. So the first would be Work and Worship. So that's actually by Matthew Kaemingk and Cory Wilson. So Matt Kaemingk is out at Fuller. And it really looks at how... We were just having this conversation about Christian schools, right? So bifurcating, academics and spiritual formation. And we do that a lot with our work, right? Maybe a little bit less in Christian school settings, but really taking a look at how we bring our work as an offering of worship and how we worship through our work. And I was not raised in a liturgical background. Getting to know the beauty of liturgy more now as an adult and as I continue on in my faith, and just to be able to look through this book and see different prayers and liturgies for work has been really, really encouraging. So it's the first one. And the second one is The Sin of Certainty. Subtitles, Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs. So this is by Peter Enns, who's actually out of Eastern University near where I live. And what I really like about this book is I think I can't really diagnose this or talk about this briefly in a podcast. In fact, I'm working on a book that looks at this in depth. But God calls us to love him with all of our heart, our mind, soul strength, and love your neighbor as yourself, right? And I think it's easy for schools, it's easy for educators to focus on one of those. It's easy as disciples to focus on one, but that's really not, we're called for this sort of total discipleship. And I think a lot of times, there's been a lot of wonderful things through the emphasis on biblical worldview that we've had in Christian schools. But oftentimes that can morph into, Hey, let's have the correct beliefs, right? Let's get everybody to think rightly about these issues, about what's going on society, etc. And so much of our faith is not just thinking correctly, it's also learning to trust in God and not having the answers, right? And having complicated situations, right? Artificial intelligence, very complicated, right? So how are we going to get the correct belief around that? So this book has been really, really helpful to be thinking about how really people over millennia, literally millennia, have trusted God without always having all the answers in front of them. Jon: That's good. All right, last question. Looking ahead, after we clicked this data, which is kind of backward looking, what was your experience like in schools? And then we do all this work with schools in the present, and then we get to look ahead. What makes you most hopeful about what you see in the future for education that's for the common good? Dr. Lynn Swaner: Yeah. So what makes me most hopeful, I've been spending a lot of time... In fact, I just got back from the International School Choice and Reform Conference presenting there on this data. And what makes me really hopeful is that there's a renewed interest in education by parents, by people who never saw themselves as educational entrepreneurs or edupreneurs as the topic is or as the title may be. So I think there's just a plethora of new types of school options coming on board. So hybrid micro-school, co-ops, all kinds of things that are growing and they're really, really exciting. It's a little bit of the wild west in some ways, but I am excited to see people excited about the possibilities for education as opposed to we're locked into choices that were made 100 plus years ago, and we're just sort of trying to live with the consequences. So I'm excited about the innovation and the diversity that I'm seeing in educational types and models. I think that's going to grow over the coming years. I think as we have more funding available at the state level, I think we'll see parents taking advantage of that. And I'm excited to see what's going to happen. I like change in general. I'm not a person who doesn't change, but I think we're due for a bit of a transformation of our educational system where we end up putting students at the center instead of systems and structures and sort of the way that we've always done things. Jon: That's great. Well, Lynn, really appreciate your time and the work that you do at Cardus and the Cardus education survey. Again, the great thing about Cardus is we're looking to support each kid in the way that they are made so they can become more of who they're created to be. So we don't like to get in the weeds on policy issues and how you should structure vouchers and are these bad. I mean, Texas, we're in the middle of voucher wars and at the end of the day, everybody in Texas wants to make sure each kid is educated well, and families have to be involved in those decisions. And are. I mean, we've made choices with where we live and where we go for years. And so school choice is not a new idea. And I think we need voices like Cardus there saying, Hey, look, this is what graduates are saying about these educa... And we put it out there transparently and we spend the money to get a nationally representative sample so that we try our best to give a accurate picture. So grateful for your work, always grateful for your work at Cardus, and thanks for your time.  

Disclaimer: Please be advised that this episode contains content related to crisis situations. If these topics are challenging for you, you may wish to skip this episode or seek support.   When students are struggling with everything from friendship drama to thoughts of self-harm, the gap between needing help and getting it can feel insurmountable. And school leaders carry the weight of hundreds or thousands of students' well-being on their shoulders, knowing they can't possibly reach every child who needs support.   In this episode, I'm joined by Iuri Melo, a licensed clinical social worker and founder of School Pulse, to discuss a proactive approach to student mental health that's transforming how schools support their students. After losing seven students to suicide in his Southern Utah community in 2017, Iuri and his team developed a text-based support system that connects students with trained professionals 365 days a year. The service emerged from a principal's desperate plea for tools that could reach students before crisis struck, not just react after tragedy occurred.   Listen in to hear how, through real-time text conversations initiated twice weekly, School Pulse creates a bridge between students and support that feels safe, accessible, and immediate.   Find the full episode show notes and transcript, click here: https://angelakellycoaching.com/391

This episode focuses on the first phase of Thrive Model for Sustainable Instructional Coaching: Clarity. This is the second episode in the Refresh Your Coaching Practice series. The previous episode introduces the Thrive Model - if you haven't listened to that one yet, go back and listen so you have the framework for the entire series. This series is designed to be an annual refresh of your coaching practice - even if you've heard some of the episodes before, every time you listen, when you reflect back on your growth over the last academic year, you'll be able to take something new away to apply in your practice in the next academic year.  Download our free companion guide & workbook that aligns with this series at edurolearning.com/refresh Let's Connect: Our website: coachbetter.tv EduroLearning on LinkedIn EduroLearning on Instagram EduroLearning on YouTube Subscribe to our weekly newsletter Join our #coachbetter Facebook group Learn with Kim Explore our courses for coaches Watch a FREE workshop Read more from Kim: Finding Your Path as a Woman in School Leadership (book) Fostering a Culture of Growth and Belonging: The Multi-Faceted Impact of Instructional Coaching in International Schools (chapter)

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We know principals are busy—constantly managing urgent issues and putting out fires. But we also know this: school-level change is the most powerful lever we have for improving student learning in math. So the real question is: are we setting school leaders up for math success?In this episode, we help schools and districts reflect on their current systems and support structures using a simple leadership audit:How are we positioning principals to take ownership of instructional leadership in math?Are they aligned to the school's math goals?What's getting in the way—and how can we fix it?You'll hear about common barriers schools face and gain actionable ideas from our work in math across North America to overcome them. If we want meaningful math improvement, engaging principals is not optional—it's essential.Key Takeaways:Why principals are essential for leading instructional change in mathHow to identify and remove barriers that limit principal involvementWhat it looks like when district and school leadership are aligned on math goalsQuestions to help you audit your current leadership structures for mathStrategies to build principal ownership and capacity in math instructionNot sure what matters most when designing math improvement plans? Take this assessment and get a free customized report: https://makemathmoments.com/grow/ Math coordinators and leaders – Ready to design your math improvement plan with guidance, support and using structure? Learn how to follow our 4 stage process. https://growyourmathprogram.com Looking to supplement your curriculum with problem based lessons and units? Make Math Moments Problem Based Lessons & Units Show Notes PageLove the show? Text us your big takeaway!Get a Customized Math Improvement Plan For Your District.Are you district leader for mathematics? Take the 12 minute assessment and you'll get a free, customized improvement plan to shape and grow the 6 parts of any strong mathematics program.Take the assessmentAre you wondering how to create K-12 math lesson plans that leave students so engaged they don't want to stop exploring your math curriculum when the bell rings? In their podcast, Kyle Pearce and Jon Orr—founders of MakeMathMoments.com—share over 19 years of experience inspiring K-12 math students, teachers, and district leaders with effective math activities, engaging resources, and innovative math leadership strategies. Through a 6-step framework, they guide K-12 classroom teachers and district math coordinators on building a strong, balanced math program that grows student and teacher impact. Each week, gain fresh ideas, feedback, and practical strategies to feel more confident and motivate students to see the beauty in math. Start making math moments today by listening to Episode #139: "Making Math Moments From Day 1 to 180.

Many clinicians, educators, and school leaders know they should be working collaboratively, but don't know how to find time to do it. If you have a friend or colleague who seems to have magical productivity powers, I promise there's a method to the madness. Most likely, they've just gotten really good at a concept I call “asset stacking”. It starts with asking yourself the question, “What can I create now that can save me time or effort later?”  In this third episode in the 3-part clinical leadership, I share how the concept of “asset stacking” can be used by both current and aspiring clinical and educational leaders to make an impact on the systems they're working in. Key Points:✅ Creating a long-term strategic vision for your professional growth✅ The concept of asset stacking and how to use it to impact systems✅ Multiple service delivery models that position you as a leader✅ Developing a master plan that aligns your expertise with system needsTakeaways:✅ Asset stacking compounds your influence over time✅ Your unique combination of skills creates distinctive value✅ Service delivery innovation positions you as a thought leaderAction Step: Begin your leadership master plan by identifying your unique "stack" of professional assets and one system-level challenge they could address.In this episode, I mentioned “The School Leader's Guide to Executive Functioning Support”, a 7-day course to help school leaders launch their executive functioning implementation plan. You can learn more about the course here: https://drkarenspeech.lpages.co/school-leaders-guide-to-executive-functioning-support/  We're thrilled 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 technologySave teachers' timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments

Leadership requires processing both professional and personal experiences, particularly when faced with injustice.   As school leaders, we encounter unfairness in various forms - from promotion decisions to resource allocation to systemic inequities affecting our students and families. I've found that managing these experiences requires understanding how our minds and bodies respond to perceived injustice.   In this episode, I share practical insights for acknowledging and safely expressing these difficult emotions without causing harm to ourselves or others. While solutions aren't always available, we can learn to validate our experiences, maintain our personal power, and find healthy ways to process these universal human experiences that impact us as leaders.   Find the full episode show notes and transcript, click here: https://angelakellycoaching.com/390

Our topic for episode 1 is Growing a Thriving Coaching Culture: Introducing the Thrive Model for Sustainable Instructional Coaching. This episode shares an overview of the Thrive Model for Sustainable Instructional Coaching that will set the stage for all other episodes in this series. Kim developed the Thrive Model after a decade of working with coaches and school leaders around the world. It brings together all of her own experience as an instructional coach, as well as the experiences of her clients, and all the expert guests she's interviewed on this podcast.  We use this model to structure all of our courses for coaches, and in particular The Coach Certificate and Mentorship Program. You'll get an overview of the model in this series, and how the three elements of Clarity, Consistency and Community can be used to develop and refine your individual coaching practice and your coaching program in your school.  This series is designed to be an annual refresh of your coaching practice - even if you've heard some of the episodes before, every time you listen, when you reflect back on your growth over the last academic year, you'll be able to take something new away to apply in your practice in the next academic year. Download our free companion guide & workbook that aligns with this series at edurolearning.com/refresh Let's Connect: Our website: coachbetter.tv EduroLearning on LinkedIn EduroLearning on Instagram EduroLearning on YouTube Subscribe to our weekly newsletter Join our #coachbetter Facebook group Learn with Kim Explore our courses for coaches Watch a FREE workshop Read more from Kim: Finding Your Path as a Woman in School Leadership (book) Fostering a Culture of Growth and Belonging: The Multi-Faceted Impact of Instructional Coaching in International Schools (chapter)

In this episode, I'm joined by Karen Borchert, Founder and CEO of Alpaca, for a powerful conversation about data-driven ways to boost teacher engagement. You'll also hear surprising insights about teacher well-being plus actionable strategies and digital tools that school leaders can use to cultivate a more positive and supportive school culture. Tune in if you're looking to create an environment where educators feel seen, valued, and energized! Show notes: https://classtechtips.com/2025/06/13/boost-teacher-engagement-bonus/ Sponsored by Alpaca: https://getalpaca.com/easyedtech Follow Monica on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/classtechtips/  Take your pick of free EdTech resources: https://classtechtips.com/free-stuff-favorites/   

In this second episode in the 3-part clinical leadership series, I explore the 'lesson planning trap'—a common situation where clinicians focus so much on perfecting individual sessions and miss broader opportunities for impact.I experienced this myself, spending years creating detailed therapy plans while seeing little change at the systems level. Then I realized the importance of distinguishing between planning for individual therapy and planning for effective service delivery. This insight transformed my practice and leadership approach.Today, I'll share how you can take your intervention skills and scale them for lasting change in your school or organization. Key Points:✅ Applying effective intervention principles to enhance service delivery.✅ Understanding the difference between therapy planning and service delivery planning.✅ Introducing scalable protocols that maximize your impact.✅ Evaluating your current strategies for scalability.✅ Utilizing intervention principles in team leadership situations.In this episode, I mentioned “The School Leader's Guide to Executive Functioning Support”, a 7-day course to help school leaders launch their executive functioning implementation plan. You can learn more about the course here: https://drkarenspeech.lpages.co/school-leaders-guide-to-executive-functioning-support/ We're thrilled 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 technologySave teachers' timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments

In this episode of Just Schools, Dr. Jon Eckert speaks with Lionel Cable and Joi Taylor Johnson from New Hope Christian Academy in Memphis, Tennessee. New Hope, founded nearly 30 years ago is an urban, college-preparatory elementary school providing students with a challenging, intellectual, and Christ-centered education Joi, a New Hope alum and now Director of Development, shares how the school helped shape her leadership and calling. The conversation highlights New Hope's innovative scholarship model, its farm and forest learning spaces, and the school's vision for expansion. The episode ends with a powerful piece of advice from Lionel's sister, “Do the exact opposite of what you want to do and watch what God does through you.” The Just Schools Podcast is brought to you by the Baylor Center for School Leadership. Be encouraged. Connect with us: Center for School Leadership at Baylor University Jon Eckert LinkedIn Baylor MA in School Leadership   Jon: Well, Lionel and Joi, it is a blessing to have you here today. I'd love for you to just give our listeners a little bit of an idea of what New Hope Christian Academy is all about, where it's at, what its history is, and what your hopes are as you move forward. Lionel: First, thanks so much, Jon, for having me and Joi this morning. So New Hope is going on 30 years old. We were founded in the basement of a church downtown Memphis in 1995, 1996. Basically, it was established because there were no high quality, just private or public education options for kids in the downtown corridor. So we were founded to just offer teaching, learning, discipleship to families in need at the time. So over the past 30 years, we've grown to a little over 420 kids. 80% of our families, they have to qualify for free and reduced lunch. So the core of our mission truly is impoverished families and reaching out to them because we know in order to change that trajectory, it's two things. One, gets at the heart and that's the gospel, and then two high quality academics. If we can bridge those two things together, obviously that's going to change the trajectory of family, but then also change the trajectory of Memphis. Jon: And you have kids from age three all the way through sixth grade currently with the hope of expanding in the coming years. Is that correct? Lionel: Yeah, absolutely. Past 30 years due to our funding model, which is simply on a sliding scale, it was an impossible thing to expand. Now, with the passing of the Voucher Law in the state of Tennessee, the doors are now wide open for us to expand. So after next school year, we will be adding seventh and eighth grade. Jon: Yes. And so it's great to have your director of development on here because she has a vested interest in New Hope. So Joi, can you tell us a little bit about how you ended up back here professionally at New Hope? Joi: Yes, it's such a beautiful story honestly. I graduated from New Hope in 2007 and graduated from the sixth grade, and New Hope gave me a scholarship to go on to another independent school here in Memphis named ECS, Evangelical Christian School. And from there I went to the University of Memphis and I was all about social work and helping others. And from there, I helped start a program called the Choose 901 Alumni Program. And the alumni that we were helping were exactly the alumni from New Hope Christian Academy. And so I've kind of just always been in the works, helping our alumni get internships, jobs, and just connecting them to different opportunities and networks here in the city of Memphis. But as time went on, I kind of yearned to be back home. I wanted to be here and trying to advance the mission of New Hope. We want this school to be known all around the Memphis community and even further, because there's just so many great things happening here. This is the place that helped raise me honestly and cultivate the type of leadership and servant leadership that I have to this day. So it just made complete sense for me to come back and give my twenties, my thirties away to a school that helped make me who I am. Jon: I love that. And you mentioned this scholarship that happened after you left New Hope to go to another school. That is an unusual model. Joi: It's different. Jon: So can you talk a little bit about that Joi? How does that work? Joi: Yeah, so New Hope has always been a main proponent of school choice. Whether the actual vouchers have been passed or not, they've always just had a heart to connect students to quality education. Low-income students, underserved students to quality, Christ-centered education. And so they have always been connected to several foundations and donors who really care about what's happening in the Memphis community. And so they did the thing, they made sure it happened, and they've been doing it for 30 years now, funding scholars to go to different schools all around the city. Jon: That's such a beautiful thing, especially in a place like Memphis. Memphis is an amazing city, but it's also one of the most racially polarized cities that I've ever seen. And when they integrated Shelby County schools and they tried to connect with other counties, there was a lot of strife in that. And what I love about New Hope is it's, hey, each kid deserves an education that best fits that kid. And so ultimately you have people that have put money behind doing that, and then you have a school that's living out that mission pre-K through sixth grade, and now that's expanding with some additional opportunities. But even when it wasn't, it wasn't ever just about New Hope, but that's what I love. It was about the kids you were serving, and so therefore you're willing to use resources that a lot of schools would hold for themselves. And you're putting that scholarship with kids over the next six years to get you to the University of Memphis so that you can get through successfully. Do you know of other schools that have that model? I've been in a lot of schools and I don't know if I've ever heard that. Are you familiar with anybody else? Or Lionel, where did that idea come from? Was that just the community that you were in, or did that come from another school's model? Lionel: Yeah, so 30 years ago know when we opened, we wanted to go through 12th grade. However, the demand for high quality Christian urban education, it exploded, so we grew faster than what we intended. So the founder, Steven Carpenter, no, I can tell you the scholarship program, that was not a part of his original design for the school. It was around year four or five, we need to figure out are we going to expand or are we going to just send the kids somewhere else? And ultimately our checkbook said, okay, it's cheaper and actually easier to send the kids to our surrounding schools rather than add a grade at the time. So the model stuck. But I will tell you, Jon, you mentioned just Memphis being such a unique place. In the private sector, there are not a lot of urban ED private schools here. As a matter of fact, they're exact opposite of us. So I would like to think that our children know 30 years ago, they were really the first black and brown kids to go to some of these predominantly white spaces. So there were struggles there, but there was also opportunity for growth in terms of how New Hope could better support our kids when they left us to go to some of these other schools. So we created what was called the Alumni Support Office. There's three people in that office right now who spend 95% of their time on the campuses of the other schools to stay connected with the kids, to act as that bridge, to also act as a cheerleader, but then to also act as an advocate so that the children don't lose themselves in these spaces so that their identity can remain and then also so that they can cross the finish line. So with that particular model, we've had great success. Over the last 30 years, we have a 99.9% graduation rate from high school. 99.9% of our kids get accepted into college, 70% of which are actually working on their college degree or post-secondary. So I'd like to think it was a combination of the New Hope Scholarship opening the door, but then also that continued support that the organization offers all the way through to the finish line. Jon: Well, it's such a beautiful example of building the kingdom because it's not just a gift to your students, it's a gift to those campuses that were impoverished by the lack of diversity. They were not the kingdom because they were only serving a segment of the population. And so you enrich those campuses with the gift of your students. And so that's always one of the things when we study Brown vs Board of Education and the language of that, it's always like, well, how the black and brown kids are being harmed. And the counter argument to that is, all of the students who were not able to be exposed to different cultures and different kinds of kids and people within their own community, that's impoverishing to everyone. So you have been a gift financially in the scholarship to those schools, but to send kids out who are well-prepared in an academically rigorous setting with a heart grounded in Christ, like what a beautiful gift that is to Memphis. And so sometimes we hear all of the polarizing stories and the separation, and even in school choice discussions, it's this othering of, "how could you be for that or how could you be for this?" And it's like, "No, we want each kid to become more like Christ." And we do that best when we do that in community. And I feel like that's what you're living out. Now. Joi, can you talk a little bit about that experience of going to ECS? We've worked with ECS, a really fascinating school. How helpful was that office to you? Obviously you were successful, you went on to college, you're part of that 99.9% that Lionel talked about, but what was that experience like as a student? Joi: Honestly, it was really difficult. When I graduated, it was still in the early years of our alumni scholarship or support office, and so they were really still trying to understand how to get involved and be on the campus and really understand the difficulties we were experiencing as alumni going to these schools, because as Lionel stated, that New Hope is a predominantly black and brown school. And so when you leave this place and go to a predominantly white school, I mean, when I say culture shock, that's seriously what I was feeling as a seventh grader. We're already teenagers and crazy and feeling all kinds of ways. And so being in a completely new environment without my family really, we went through kindergarten through sixth grade together. And so leaving them and being placed in a completely new situation, it was really hard. It was really, really difficult. But the ASO office, they were there and they walked with me through all of those obstacles and difficulties and challenges that I faced, and they really encouraged me to just keep going because I was going to come out gold in the end. Even though it was some hard times, there was a lot of beauty in that as well. I tell a lot of people, the ECS definitely helped me academically. I mean, when it came to college, I was so ready. I didn't even blink to some of the work that they were throwing at me. But also spiritually. I mean, it really gave me that foundation of the Bible and knowing these verses and scriptures. Whenever I'm in these science classes or philosophy classes, and they really want to deter you from thinking that Jesus is the Savior and he is the creator, it really just gave me a foundation to know who I am, whose I am, I'm a daughter of the King, and it just really gave me a push to really get through everything. So I think I came out gold from doing all of that and trying to navigate it. Jon: Yeah, that joy through struggle is something that I think our current students have a hard time understanding. I mean, we want adversity. We don't want trauma. And so certainly going outside of your comfort zone to a new campus with support, that's adversity. We don't want it to bleed into trauma because I think through that adversity, we grow and become more of who we're created to be. And that's part of learning. I mean, that's the zone of proximal development. It's where you're at on your own versus what you can do with others through struggle, and that's where real joy is, and that's where transformation happens. So you would do some interesting things, Lionel, at your school with the forest and the farm. These aren't typical things that you think of in urban settings. Can you talk a little bit about what you're doing there and what the idea behind all that is? Lionel: Yeah, it was 2013, Mary Leslie Ramsey, who was the teacher that came up with the idea. We had recently been gifted the land from Habitat for Humanity, it's right across the street. They wanted to actually turn it into a subdivision, but found out it was on a floodplain, so couldn't do anything with it, so they gave it to us. She woke up one day with the head of school at the time and said, "Hey, the Lord has given me a vision. Do you see it? Do you see it?" And he kept saying, "I don't see a thing," because there was nothing there. And she said, "No, do you see this farm and this forest?" So she talked him into it, and obviously we didn't have a budget at the time to get it started. So we partnered with the Memphis Botanic Garden and they gave us all of the plantings that they were going to throw away. And it just really started with this small idea. Since Frayser is a fresh food desert, and the majority of our kids are either apartment dwellers or they don't necessarily go outside like they should, Mary Leslie just, she had the idea, "Okay, we've got to get our kids outside and we've got to expose them to something completely different than what they're used to." So that's when the farm and the forest was birthed. Currently, it is sitting on about five and a half acres. About one and a half of those acres, that's the actual farm. And it's more agricultural than it is animals. So our kids grow anything and everything from cabbage to strawberries to harvest their own honey. I mean, you name it, it is there. I'd like to think of it as the Garden of Eden because in the middle of Frayser, you wouldn't expect just this beautiful farm and forest that is there. We've got a full-time horticulturist who pours into that, and our teachers are able to go out there and do some applicable things with everything that is growing out there. With what's happening in the classroom, the forest piece is about four, four and a half acres, and we look at that as more of our play space. There are birdwatching observatories, there's about 1.7 miles of a walking trail that has been excavated there. I mean, just a beautiful space. And it's a way for our kids to really connect with our Lord. I mean, there's no better way to put your hands in the ground to plant something and just see how good God is by something coming up out of the ground. Jon: So you've got to tell me, how good are your kids at avoiding the instant gratification trap that gets really exposed in gardening. So they see something that is not even close to ripe, like that's it. I want to try it. Are they good at leaving it and letting it develop to its fullness of what the Lord wanted before they indulge? Or do they give in to that childlike instant gratification of the underdeveloped prefrontal cortex? Lionel: Yeah. Yeah, I think it's pretty developed. Jon: Okay. Lionel: Probably not at the beginning. And let me tell you why. So a part of Mary Leslie's strategy was also to give back to the Frayser community, so our kids understand the things that we plant, it's going towards a common good. So with this being a fresh food desert, every Friday, starting in late March all the way through, I'd say the end of October, we have what is called a pay what you can stand. And we invite the entire Frayser community to come in and grab as much produce as they'd like, and they can pay something or they can get it for free. So our kids know that, hey, we got to wait. We want that fruit to get ripe or those vegetables to be fully developed because it's going towards a good cause. Jon: That is so beautiful. The reason why I ask is last week I was at a school that's in a juvenile detention center down here in Texas, and they have violent youth offenders. They have quite a range of kids from age 13 to 18, and they have a garden. And in the English class, they were writing about weeds and the weeds they have in their own lives and then going out and weeding and tilling this garden. It was this beautiful lesson, but there was a very underdeveloped cucumber that one of the guys picked up and started munching for about 15 seconds. Until then, it's all out all over the ground because it was not ready. And the guy who's in charge of the garden says, "Yeah, they lose about 90% of the produce to kids not being able to delay that gratification to the point that it is ripe." And I think your point about they're doing this for someone else, that changes the calculus, that changes what it is. And now these kids are in juvenile detention through a series of tragic circumstances, bad decisions. Some of it may be related to not being able to delay gratification or not having the security of believing that something will be there the next day and not just taking what's available right now. But it was a fascinating lesson. So when you started talking about what your kids do, I was like, "Oh, I got to hear it." I had not thought about what a great lesson in delayed gratification gardening is. Because you take that too early and that thing that's going to be amazing in a week is inedible in the moment. So I love that. I love that. Joi, you're telling the story from a development fundraising perspective. Anything you want to add to what New Hope's doing that you think is particularly compelling? Joi: Yes. When I was a student at New Hope, we always craved for a middle school or a high school. We wanted to be at New Hope for as long as we possibly can. So for me to be here at New Hope, at the start of the transition of us actually bringing in a middle school, I mean, that's amazing to me. It feels like my sixth grade dreams are coming true right before my eyes. So I'm excited that I get to extend this type of opportunity to the current fifth graders who are here now. And then to the rest of the generations who are coming through, that they really get a chance to be involved and get this, it's like an incubator for Christ-Centered leadership and learning service and different activities that they get a longer chance to kind of experience that before they enter into high school where it really gets crazy. Middle school is just the beginning, but high school, I feel like we give them a chance to be prepared and cultivate their social emotional learning process needs that they have, so that when they are in those frightening or new situations, that they feel more prepared how to navigate these things. And so I think that's one of the best things that I'm excited about preparing or clearing out a new pathway for our students to really get time here with us here at New Hope. And then of course, it's our 30th anniversary. That's a huge deal. I don't know if we ever thought we would see this kind of day, but we're so blessed and thankful that we've made it. God has been with us the whole time. We've had a lot of obstacles, but we've come out on top every single time because his hand has been over us. And so I want to offer more partnerships and relationships to the community, especially right now. We have a really hectic education system going on, atmosphere in Memphis right now. So I really feel like this is a great time to amp up New Hope and tell more people about it because they are getting fearful and worried about what their child's education really will look like in the future. But we have been stable. We've been here for 30 years, and hopefully we can open our doors to more people. Jon: Yes. Love it. Love it. And the fact that you can describe middle school as a dream and not a nightmare, is a true testimony to the work of the spirit at New Hope. So love it. As a former middle school teacher and a middle school kid, I think I would have loved being at your farm and forest and in the culture you've built at New Hope. So that's a beautiful thing. We always end with a lightning round where I'll just ask a few questions and we just keep the answers to about a sentence if you can. I'm terrible at this, but if you can, that's better than me. So the first question is, what's the worst piece of advice you've ever received, as an educator or as a student, but just worst piece of advice you've ever gotten? Lionel: I guess I'll go first, Joi. Joi: Go ahead. Lionel: Honestly, I don't think I've ever gotten really bad advice. It may not have worked out because there's learning and failure. I just learned not to do that again, but I learned from it. So to answer your question, no bad advice. Jon: Well, one thing, Lionel, I would say that the piece I always give is people tell you to stay in your lane. And I feel like that's bad advice many times. And if New Hope would have stayed in its lane, you wouldn't have scholarships to send people off to school. You wouldn't exist. You wouldn't have a farm, you wouldn't have the wood. So I'm applying my bad advice that I received to New Hope as a counter example, and I'm grateful for educators that step up and speak out about, here's what we need, here's what we need to flourish, and here's what we need to do together. So I'll apply my bad advice to your good counter example. So thank you for that. Joi, what about you? Have you gotten any bad advice or are you as blessed as Lionel is to never have received bad advice? Joi: No, I think I have gotten bad advice before. Being in this new situation, raising money for an independent black school in Memphis, I think people have definitely told me that there are certain groups of people and populations I shouldn't ask money for support from or any type of activity from. But we're learning that our parents, our grandparents, the people in our community might be great people who can give and be a part of this whole mission that we have going on in New Hope. It doesn't have to be one specific person or they have to look a certain way. This is an opportunity for all. Jon: That's good. All right. Best advice you've either given or received? Joi: I will say the best advice that I think I've gotten actually come from Lionel. It was a couple of years ago, I was still in my previous job and antsy to get back home and to do work here at New Hope. And I talked to Lionel about it, "Like, why is it this not working out? I want to be here." And he told me to be still and wait on the Lord. And that's been the best advice because look where I am a couple of years later. I'm here and an opportunity to really lead in a big way, bigger than what I was trying to do earlier. So being still. Jon: Psalm 46:10, always good advice. All right. Lionel, what about you? Lionel: Yeah, you may have heard this one already, Jon. I think this advice came from my sister. About 10, 15 years ago, I had an opportunity, between two schools, to be the principal. One, was the highest performing school in the district, the other was the seventh worst performing school in the entire state of Tennessee. I was offered both jobs. Go out to the car, called my sister, I'm like, "Hey, I think I'm going to decline the worst school. I just want to go to the best school." And keep in mind, Jon, I had no experience at a failing school at all. Simple advice from her. She said, "Lionel, God has really blessed you in your career. Why don't you do the exact opposite of what you want to do and watch what God does through you?" Jon: That's amazing. Lionel: At that point, I accepted the job at the other place, and that's all she wrote. I mean, it was the best decision of my life. Jon: Yeah, love that. You have told me that. And it's always a good story to hear that again. Because I think so often I want my desires to always be aligned with Christ. And the more I am praying, the more I'm in the word, the more that is likely. But so often, my selfish desires get in the way of what He wants. And so love that. Okay. What do you see as the biggest challenge for New Hope specifically for the next 30 years? What would you say? And then we'll go back to what's your greatest hope? But we'll start with the challenge first. Lionel: Yeah. Prior to this year, it was the funding model. I mean, it's flipped on its head. 93% of our dollars came from donations. Past 30 years, we've never been in the red. Praise God, thankful for that. Now that ESA's vouchers, all of that is here, there is a path forward. So I think the challenge is how can we leverage our 30 years of experience and create more new hopes? New Hope, we serve 44 different zip codes in Memphis. In the north Memphis area is where we planted our flag, but South Memphis is the most impoverished area in the city. And my dream, my desire, my hope is that we can plant our flag in South Memphis and create a New Hope South Memphis, and then hopefully a New Hope East Memphis. So many children here, Jon, they need teaching, learning, and discipleship, and they need hope. And New Hope can certainly provide that through the gospel, but then also change that family's trajectory just through high quality academics and just building that foundation. So in short, to answer your question, the challenge is, how do we get more dollars? How do we leverage the dollars we have? How do we create these partnerships so that New Hope can grow well beyond Frayser, which is where we are now? Jon: Joi, anything you'd add to that challenge? Joi: He is the visionary leader of New Hope Christian Academy, so I stand behind him. That's our goal and vision. That's what we're doing. Jon: That's great. So then what's your greatest hope for New Hope or education in general, what's your greatest hope? Lionel: Oh, that's a loaded question, Jon. Jon: I know. We ask good ones for the lightning round and try to get you to give a parsimonious answer. Lionel: Oh. For Memphis specifically, and I think there's two parts to that. Memphis specifically, I'm hopeful that the education system will look more like the Kingdom, in particularly the private schools. Because it's not, Jon. I mean, again, New Hope and Collegiate, which is our sister school, we're the only ones that are high poverty, high concentration of black and brown children. Other schools are the complete opposite. And I always say, if you don't like diversity, you don't like heaven, you're not going to like heaven. And the thing is, I mean, I'm hopeful that in the independent school space that there will be room for growth so that it can look more like the Kingdom and that the leaders will be more Kingdom minded. As it relates to just education? We need more urban Christian education. I think that's the key. In the core of the city, we need high quality options for families because that's where the concentration of brokenness is, and in every major city in America. So I'm very hopeful, you know that the lens will look towards just again, high quality urban Christian education in cities across America. Jon: Oh, yes. Love that. Rebecca McLaughlin says, "Don't miss the fact that Christianity is the most diverse multicultural movement in the history of the world. And the church is becoming increasingly black and brown in 2025." So that's a great word and appreciate your heart behind that. Joi, anything you'd add to your hope for where things are headed? Joi: Yes. I think when people think of Memphis, their mind goes to our crime rate, our history, our music, and our food. And I think one thing about Memphis that most people miss is that this is a place with a lot of opportunity. And I'm grateful that the ESAs and EFS has made their way to the Shelby County area because crime is a big issue here. Safety is a big issue here. But I do know that that's directly related and linked to poverty. And I know that poverty can be changed with quality education. And so I think this is a great time for us to really capitalize on, now's the time. New Hope is the place for parents and community members to pour into and send people to, and maybe even replicate a school like that in their own city or their own state, that this kind of gospel and movement that we're trying to spread actually spreads everywhere. Jon: That's great. This resonates with what the Spreading Hope Network does. They're based out of Minneapolis. I'm sure they're aware of you and hopefully you're aware of them. Love the heart, love the work you're doing. Our team, they got to visit, it all came back. Bill Sterrett was enamored with the farm and the forest. Loved it. The team loved it. So anybody that gets a chance to get through Memphis and visit, I know they find a welcome team there that is just doing good work. And it's an encouragement and there's great joy in the work that we get to do with kids. So thank you for your time. Appreciate your work on our advisory board, Lionel. Joi, it's great to meet you virtually. Hopefully we'll meet you in person soon, and thanks for all you do. Joi: Sure. Thank you. Lionel: Thank you.  

Test scores rolling in can trigger intense emotions and identity crises for school leaders. As principals, we intellectually understand that standardized tests are just one measure of student growth and school success. Yet when scores arrive, we can't help but attach deep meaning to these numbers and worry about how they'll be interpreted by staff, families, and district leadership.   Through sports analogies and real-world examples, I explore why we shouldn't let a single data point define our identity as educational leaders. Just as elite athletes aren't defined by one game's outcome, principals and schools can't be reduced to a single test score. Our capacity to lead, inspire, and create positive change comes from within - not from external metrics.   Find the full episode show notes and transcript, click here: https://angelakellycoaching.com/389

As the school year winds down, it's time to reflect—not react on your math impact. In this episode, we dive into one of the most important (and often skipped) parts of sustainable change for math programs: reflection and intentional decision-making.Using the Adopt, Adapt, Abandon protocol, we'll guide you through how to evaluate what worked, what can be improved, and what truly needs to go in your school or district math program. Plus, we'll share key insights and cautionary tales from the districts we support across North America.Our biggest advice? Don't toss everything out for the next shiny thing. Momentum matters. The flywheel is turning—let's not start from zero again.In this episode, you'll discover:How to use the Adopt, Adapt, Abandon protocol effectively for math programming.Why reflecting with evidence is critical before making changes to your math plan.How to avoid losing momentum by jumping to new initiatives too quickly.Lessons from other districts: what worked, what didn't, and what they're doing next.Not sure what matters most when designing math improvement plans? Take this assessment and get a free customized report: https://makemathmoments.com/grow/ Math coordinators and leaders – Ready to design your math improvement plan with guidance, support and using structure? Learn how to follow our 4 stage process. https://growyourmathprogram.com Looking to supplement your curriculum with problem based lessons and units? Make Math Moments Problem Based Lessons & Units Show Notes PageLove the show? Text us your big takeaway!Get a Customized Math Improvement Plan For Your District.Are you district leader for mathematics? Take the 12 minute assessment and you'll get a free, customized improvement plan to shape and grow the 6 parts of any strong mathematics program.Take the assessmentAre you wondering how to create K-12 math lesson plans that leave students so engaged they don't want to stop exploring your math curriculum when the bell rings? In their podcast, Kyle Pearce and Jon Orr—founders of MakeMathMoments.com—share over 19 years of experience inspiring K-12 math students, teachers, and district leaders with effective math activities, engaging resources, and innovative math leadership strategies. Through a 6-step framework, they guide K-12 classroom teachers and district math coordinators on building a strong, balanced math program that grows student and teacher impact. Each week, gain fresh ideas, feedback, and practical strategies to feel more confident and motivate students to see the beauty in math. Start making math moments today by listening to Episode #139: "Making Math Moments From Day 1 to 180.

In this episode, we address the common experience of being overlooked in crucial conversations about the students we serve. Whether you're a clinician or educator who feels unheard while trying to contribute, aspiring to be in a leadership role, or currently in leadership and experiencing impostor syndrome, this discussion challenges you to embrace your role as a leader—regardless of your job title.We'll start this 3-part clinical leadership series by clarifying some misconceptions about leadership and explore how to change your approach.Key Points:✅ Why are important team members excluded from key team decisions about services and programs in schools and other organizations?✅ How to stay relevant and visible to colleagues so they see you as an asset.✅ Overcoming three core limiting beliefs:        

Finding balance between fun and structure after end-of-year testing can be a real challenge. As school leaders, we often notice a clear shift in energy, behaviors, and routines once testing concludes, leaving many of us struggling to maintain consistency while still allowing for meaningful closure and celebration.   In this episode, I share ways to help teachers plan activities that build life skills, encourage reflection, and maintain clear expectations, all while embracing the celebratory spirit of the year's end. Whether you're still in session or planning ahead for next year, this episode will help you rethink what's possible in the final weeks of school.   Find the full episode show notes and transcript, click here: https://angelakellycoaching.com/388

In this episode, we dive deep with educational consultant and innovator Dr. Kate Anderson Foley, who challenges conventional wisdom about student support systems and offers a fresh perspective on educational leadership. Dr. Anderson Foley's  shares revolutionary ideas about restructuring intervention frameworks and explains why some traditional approaches may be limiting student potential.Episode Highlights:✅ The Double Helix Model - Dr. Anderson Foley introduces her groundbreaking concept comparing educational support systems to DNA's double helix structure, demonstrating how interwoven approaches create stronger outcomes than linear interventions, and why we shouldn't label students according to tiers. ✅ Restructuring RtI Tiers - We explore Dr. Anderson Foley's compelling case for removing the traditional tiered structure of Response to Intervention, discussing how these artificial divisions can create barriers to providing students with appropriate support at critical moments.✅ Cross-Pollination of Services - Dr. Anderson Foley flips conventional thinking by arguing that what's often labeled as "duplication of services" actually represents valuable cross-pollination of educational approaches, creating richer learning environments and multiple pathways for student growth.✅ High-Quality vs. Traditional Tutoring - We distinguish between standard tutoring and "high-quality tutoring," examining the specific elements that transform supplemental instruction into transformative educational experiences.✅ Agile vs. Waterfall Leadership - Dr. Anderson Foley contrasts traditional "waterfall" leadership models with agile approaches, explaining how educational leaders can create more responsive, adaptive systems by implementing initiatives in shorter releases and using data to make adjustments sooner, rather than later. Our conversation challenges listeners to reconsider fundamental assumptions about educational interventions and offers practical strategies for transforming support systems to better serve all students. Dr. Anderson Foley's innovative perspectives provide valuable insights for educators, administrators, and policy makers seeking to create more effective and equitable educational environments.Dr. Anderson Foley is Founder & CEO of the Education Policy & Practice Group, an international keynote speaker, and Harvard Medical School Institute of Coaching Fellow. A transformational leader, she has guided school districts and states toward equitable services for all learners, with a focus on breaking barriers for marginalized children.Beginning as a special education teacher pioneering inclusive practices, Dr. Kate advanced to administration where she advocated for reform at local, state, and federal levels. As a senior educational leader for Illinois, she helped create preventative systems addressing opportunity gaps for all learners regardless of background or circumstance, and contributed to equity-based school funding reform.Dr. Kate partners with organizations worldwide, providing expertise in improvement processes, professional learning communities, and asset-based education policies. She teaches Special Education Law to aspiring educational leaders and authors books including "Ida Finds Her Voice," "Fearless Coaching," and "Radically Excellent School Improvement," which offers a blueprint for comprehensive school improvement that ensures every student thrives.