Transformative Principal

Jethro Jones met up with Marlena Gross-Taylor at the Future of Educational Technology Conference earlier this year.    Today’s Transformative Principal sponsor, John Catt Educational, has been publishing high quality guidebooks, magazines and educator-focused professional development books since 1959. John Catt’s mission is to support high-quality teaching and learning by ensuring every educator has access to professional development materials that are research-based, practical, and focused on the key topics proven essential in today’s and tomorrow’s schools.   John Catt amplifies fresh voices on timeless topics, with a list of authors recognized around the world for their fresh perspectives and proven strategies to drive success in modern schools and classrooms. Learn more about these professional development publications that are easy to implement for your entire faculty, and are both quickly digestible and rigorous, by visiting https://us.johncattbookshop.com/.    Visit this page to learn more about bulk o

Tom Murray and Jethro Jones hosted office hours for people to answer questions during these school closures.  We're so grateful to our sponsor AI Coach by Edthena. AI Coach enables your teachers to go through coaching cycles based on their own needs. The virtual coach guides teachers to reflect on their teaching, set a goal, and create an action plan… all based on gathering classroom evidence. It gives support between PD days  and other coaching cycles.Get a free trial for your teachers here.

Katie and Camille are the dynamic duo of Educational Technologists in Canyons District. I worked with them nearly a decade ago. This interview is from #FETC2020   Today’s Transformative Principal sponsor, John Catt Educational, has been publishing high quality guidebooks, magazines and educator-focused professional development books since 1959. John Catt’s mission is to support high-quality teaching and learning by ensuring every educator has access to professional development materials that are research-based, practical, and focused on the key topics proven essential in today’s and tomorrow’s schools. John Catt amplifies fresh voices on timeless topics, with a list of authors recognized around the world for their fresh perspectives and proven strategies to drive success in modern schools and classrooms. Learn more about these professional development publications that are easy to implement for your entire faculty, and are both quickly digestible and rigorous, by visiting https://us.johncattbookshop.com/.  Vi

An interview with Ed Tech Digest's Mark Gura and Victor Rivero from #FETC2020 Today’s Transformative Principal sponsor, John Catt Educational, has been publishing high quality guidebooks, magazines and educator-focused professional development books since 1959. John Catt’s mission is to support high-quality teaching and learning by ensuring every educator has access to professional development materials that are research-based, practical, and focused on the key topics proven essential in today’s and tomorrow’s schools.   John Catt amplifies fresh voices on timeless topics, with a list of authors recognized around the world for their fresh perspectives and proven strategies to drive success in modern schools and classrooms. Learn more about these professional development publications that are easy to implement for your entire faculty, and are both quickly digestible and rigorous, by visiting https://us.johncattbookshop.com/.    Visit this page to learn more about bulk orders and how to bring John Catt’s resear

Adam Geller is the Founder of Edthena, a video coaching program.  Enjoy this chat from #FETC2020 Today’s Transformative Principal sponsor, John Catt Educational, has been publishing high quality guidebooks, magazines and educator-focused professional development books since 1959. John Catt’s mission is to support high-quality teaching and learning by ensuring every educator has access to professional development materials that are research-based, practical, and focused on the key topics proven essential in today’s and tomorrow’s schools.   John Catt amplifies fresh voices on timeless topics, with a list of authors recognized around the world for their fresh perspectives and proven strategies to drive success in modern schools and classrooms. Learn more about these professional development publications that are easy to implement for your entire faculty, and are both quickly digestible and rigorous, by visiting https://us.johncattbookshop.com/.    Visit this page to learn more about bulk orders and how to bring

Join host Tamara Fyke and Jethro Jones of Transformative Principal for a conversation about how to keep yourself calm when you’re feeling stressed and nervous. We will talk about: Phrases to show empathy Phrases to give yourself some time to think! Phrases to calm fears How to control your voice. Phone vs. in person vs. video conversations. We're so grateful to our sponsor AI Coach by Edthena. AI Coach enables your teachers to go through coaching cycles based on their own needs. The virtual coach guides teachers to reflect on their teaching, set a goal, and create an action plan… all based on gathering classroom evidence. It gives support between PD days  and other coaching cycles.Get a free trial for your teachers here.

A great interview with Tom Murray at #FETC20 earlier this year.  Today’s Transformative Principal sponsor, John Catt Educational, has been publishing high quality guidebooks, magazines and educator-focused professional development books since 1959. John Catt’s mission is to support high-quality teaching and learning by ensuring every educator has access to professional development materials that are research-based, practical, and focused on the key topics proven essential in today’s and tomorrow’s schools.   John Catt amplifies fresh voices on timeless topics, with a list of authors recognized around the world for their fresh perspectives and proven strategies to drive success in modern schools and classrooms. Learn more about these professional development publications that are easy to implement for your entire faculty, and are both quickly digestible and rigorous, by visiting https://us.johncattbookshop.com/.    Visit this page to learn more about bulk orders and how to bring John Catt’s research-based mate

At FETC2020, I had the privilege of interviewing Rebekah McPherson and Nikoski Darnell.  Such a great conversation. I hope you enjoy it.  Today’s Transformative Principal sponsor, John Catt Educational, has been publishing high quality guidebooks, magazines and educator-focused professional development books since 1959. John Catt’s mission is to support high-quality teaching and learning by ensuring every educator has access to professional development materials that are research-based, practical, and focused on the key topics proven essential in today’s and tomorrow’s schools.   John Catt amplifies fresh voices on timeless topics, with a list of authors recognized around the world for their fresh perspectives and proven strategies to drive success in modern schools and classrooms. Learn more about these professional development publications that are easy to implement for your entire faculty, and are both quickly digestible and rigorous, by visiting https://us.johncattbookshop.com/.    Visit this page to lear

I had a 1:1 coaching call with Natalie Irons. She’s awesome. If you want to reach out for help, you can send me a text: 801–252–6368 We're so grateful to our sponsor AI Coach by Edthena. AI Coach enables your teachers to go through coaching cycles based on their own needs. The virtual coach guides teachers to reflect on their teaching, set a goal, and create an action plan… all based on gathering classroom evidence. It gives support between PD days  and other coaching cycles.Get a free trial for your teachers here.

Matt Pavao is a principal in Burlingame, California. The following is a transcript of our conversation.  I'd love to talk about my school will be a lot lots of things going great at the school in the district. I have a small district in in the Bay Area, like you said, We're right near the San Francisco Airport. We are a school of 338 students k five. We are title one school. We are also school. It's very dedicated to innovation and very dedicated to our community and being a real community school all the school district all the schools in Burlingame are committed to being really community schools. So we're really tight and tight knit community at our and in our district. 338 today? Yeah. You know, we always say about 350, actually, but we just did the count the other day, so 338 Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I've been at the school for eight years. My eighth year at the school. Yeah. As the principal the whole time. Yeah. It's my 20 I think third year in education. I'm done. Teaching and then other administration jobs

Jeff Becker and I are hosting a webinar about how to implement SEL in your school. Register here! Jeff is a former school counselor and current video production teacher in Florida. He also hosts the CanDoU SEL podcast and produces courses for high schools to use to support their students. Check those out here. It won’t work unless you address SEL with staff, too People feel ill-equipped to do SEL. The students will lead you through the process. CASEL Core Competencies - Self-awareness, Self-management, Social awareness, Relationship skills, Responsible decision-making What is SEL? SEL just feels fluffy. Professional development on social emotional learning. Teachers hate to be put in a situation where they don’t feel set up for success. If you work with kids, and you do care, you’ve already won 80–90% of the battle. You know more than you know. Kids just want to be listened to. Create a space to talk about what the kids want to talk about. Think about when you had a connection At worst, SEL shows kids how m

Systematizing Our Professional Development For The Charter School with Amanda Huza Transformative Principal 320 Social Media: We’re not wasting the time of teachers who have already mastered that aspect of teaching. Amanda Huza is the principal of Equality charter school. Serve about 630 middle and high school students in the bronx. Share space with two other partner schools. 27 teachers - 50% of them are new or 2 years or less. Important to accelerate their growth. Want them to feel successful enough to improve student learning. Data-based professional development. Focus on 10 pieces of Danielson framework. Create rich cultures of learning, routines and procedures, logical consequences in the classroom, Provide examples and non examples. Informal observation on a weekly basis. Teachers know that someone could be in classrooms at any time. higher order thinking questions and wait time. Scaffolding questions. Focus on specific areas of mastery and track those. We’re not wasting the time of teachers who have a

Kim Marshall is the founder of the Marshall Memo and Jenn David-Lang is the founder of the Main Idea. We talk about their new book, “The Best of the Marshall Memo,” As a principal I rarely had time to read in a thoughtful way. Why write a book about the Marshall Memo. Articles not organized. Professional development ideas. Educational journals have theme issues. How to take the next step from the learning to the doing. Practical article about how to have conversations - Don’t email criticism Watching a teacher who made a grammatical mistake. It’s going to be in the principal’s hands. One strategy, what do you notice? Why have a conversation about the grammatical error? Are there reasons why you should talk with this teacher? She was miseducating the kids. We couldn’t let that go by. Has the leader created a culture of feedback? Getting into classrooms enough that you see the bigger picture. Teachers need to be appreciated. Real time coaching vs after-the-event feedback. Routine for principals to take over th

Phil Echols is an Administrator of Professional Learning supporting K-12 needs in the area of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) and coaching in Wake County Public Schools in North Carolina. Psychology major and teacher in his home town. Counseling The power of Twitter. People often find a way to monetize things Monetization of the network. You can’t monetize the network - via @adamcurry * #BMETalk - Black male educators * Black males are like unicorns in so many spaces. * Every time I meet someone face to face at a conference I create a twitter list with them on it. * How do you mentor those unicorns? * 100+ staff members. 1200 students. * Why do you stay here? * You could be in a school where there are more minority students. Why do you stay here? * Good things come from my DNA. * Patience and reflection comes from my parents. * Enter spaces with the mindset of who do I need to be in this space? * How to decide who you need to be in a meeting. * The relationships of the people at the table

Cristina Garza is the director of social impact for the Mission Economic Development Corporation. She curates and leads all STEAM and entrepreneurship initiatives for this EDC, and through this work commits herself improving the financial mobility of area residents, and fostering progressive and equitable economic development practices. Among the programs she founded are Web of Women, an initiative to teach technical skills to women professionals, and Career Readiness and Empowerment of Women (CREW), a multidisciplinary internship that trains young high-school women to serve as leaders in STEM and entrepreneurship. She is  2017 Next City Vanguard and named by CityLab Latino one of the Top 20 Young Civic Leaders of 2017. Before her career in economic development, Cristina worked in several museums in New York City including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rubin of Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Historical Society, and the Brooklyn Museum.  What prevents the community relationships from having this kind of impact

Cristina Garza is the director of social impact for the Mission Economic Development Corporation. She curates and leads all STEAM and entrepreneurship initiatives for this EDC, and through this work commits herself improving the financial mobility of area residents, and fostering progressive and equitable economic development practices. Among the programs she founded are Web of Women, an initiative to teach technical skills to women professionals, and Career Readiness and Empowerment of Women (CREW), a multidisciplinary internship that trains young high-school women to serve as leaders in STEM and entrepreneurship. She is  2017 Next City Vanguard and named by CityLab Latino one of the Top 20 Young Civic Leaders of 2017. Before her career in economic development, Cristina worked in several museums in New York City including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rubin of Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Historical Society, and the Brooklyn Museum.  CREW is a year-long internship and career preparation program for women a

Sam Brooks is honored to have worked for Putnam County Schools (TN) for the past 27 years. Brooks leads all student/teacher personalized learning opportunities in the district, which includes online, dual enrollment, dual credit, and industry certification options. Mr. Brooks is a Google Certified Trainer and was recognized by the Center for Digital Education as a national Top 30 Technologists, Transformers, Trailblazers in 2014 and his program has been identified in several national publications. Director of Personalized Learning - started as credit options for kids. Now is for so much more. How can we meet the individual needs of each child in the classroom? State level personalized learning. VITAL - virtual instruction to accentuate learning Personalized learning task force. Mimic task force in our own district. Doing a lot with credit recovery. Pockets of innovation. Future Ready - Getting a student to be ready for whatever they want their future to be. I only saw how things affected me as a teacher with

Zachary Hartzman is a high school Economics & English teacher in New York City. Taught many different social studies classes. International and transfer school. 100% immigrant & ELL students. Passionate about videos games. Getting kids to interact with games Florence - great app for relationships. Using games to deal with discussing heavy issues. Whenever I teach one of these lessons, I write a post showing how it went. It’s been really hard to find engaging content that 3 days a week, I teach an ELA course using video games as the main text. Gone Home What Remains of Edith Finch? One student playing while everyone else is talking about the gameplay. Regents exam required for graduation - read a text and identify the central idea, so we use the videos games to focus on those literary events. You have to give them time to learn how to use the controller. Positive outcomes: Whenever I teach with a game, there’s never a head down that day. Expanding the curriculum, but would love to get more science and

I've got some exciting news to share with you.... But first, a little context. The last few months have been pretty exciting. I've started a student driven learning newsletter in partnership with ASCD. I spoke at the ReWire conference in New Jersey. I've been at FETC this week, and have some amazing interviews coming out on the podcast soon. The podcast is at 600,000 downloads for its six-year anniversary. (click here to get an email each Sunday when it is released!) I am a New Team Habits Champion! My wife and I have started coaching families on how to set goals in a family setting! How cool is that? I'm giving a keynote at a conference in February, more details soon... And here's the big news: At the end of this school year I will be leaving Fairbanks and start supporting principals directly full time through the mastermind, speaking, and consulting. I'm pretty excited about our new adventure, and I hope that I can work with you! If you've got a need for a speaker in the next six months, please reach out.  

This is an amazing story of how Kimberly's district set them up for success so they could find time for the important things in life. What a cool and unique approach.  Kimberly Dixon is principal in Toronto Took a year off to take some coursework. Mother had supported her at the beginning of her career. Lacking balance. Four over 5. Paid 80% over four years then paid 80% for fifth year. Typically accept about a dozen people for that in our district. Became principal and started coursework to become a superintendent at the same time. I realized I had been working really hard so travel was definitely a goal. I had to operate within the parameters of Principal of a summer school program in South Korea, kids met in South Korea and then went to the Philippines. Be present as a mother and take care of myself. The year was very unplanned. School seems very Eurocentric, but our schools are so diverse. Families are always excited The balance needed in life to be your best. Without balance, we run into issues of burno