De Facto Leaders

Preparing young people for adulthood is all about providing them with the right blend of experiences; both in and outside of school. Building literacy, numeracy, and content knowledge will give students a foundation for success; but we need to pair that with real-world experiences where they can apply that knowledge in real time. When we think about “real-world” experiences; we often think of inte...

My heart sinks when I see how polarizing topics in education have become, as well as the tendency for people to have “all or nothing” thinking. I’ve seen an increasing amount of activities pitted against each other as if doing one means we can’t ALSO do the other: 👉Standardized testing vs. real-world observations/stakeholder interviews. 👉Year-round school vs. traditional summer break. 👉Critical...

Helping families feel involved in their children’s education goes beyond checking the boxes to make sure you’re following legal guidelines. That’s why I invited Dr. Kristin Vogel-Campbell to De Facto Leaders to talk about how school teams can make the IEP process more welcoming to families, especially those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.  Dr. Kristin Vogel-Campbell (she/he...

About The Authority Podcast: Hosted by leadership coach, storytelling strategist, and edtech advisor Ross Romano, The Authority provides education leaders with proven ideas to increase your influence, hire and develop an excellent staff, build a stronger culture, lead meaningful change, form a strong foundation for teaching and learning success, and more.  The show features interviews with the aut...

There’s a lot of "us vs. them" thinking happening relating to what’s going on in the school systems. Parents feeling like teachers don't want to accommodate students with diverse learning needs. Teachers feeling like administrators don't understand because they aren't in classrooms anymore.  Therapists feeling like teachers don't want to reinforce strategies in their classrooms, or that administra...

When kids need support with language, reading/writing, and executive functioning, they often have multiple diagnoses. This makes both treatment planning, diagnosis, and determining eligibility for educational programming complicated; especially when it comes to legal guidelines as well as state and local policies.  That’s why in episode 159 of De Facto Leaders, I’m sharing a Q & A session I di...

The most effective reading instructional practices aren’t always the ones that gain traction. It’s the ones with the most successful marketing campaigns.  The best marketer wins; but this certainly isn’t a win for the students who go without effective instruction or the school staff struggling to support them.  That’s why I was so excited to talk with Dr. Pamela Snow about the growing body of rese...

The literacy space has become increasingly polarizing since the reading wars began. There are a number of debates and questions that continue, including: Will kids learn to read “naturally”?  What did the whole language approach get right, if anything? Is explicit phonics instruction just a pendulum swing (and is focusing on phonics enough)? Are we teaching kids to read too early?  When we talk ab...

No one working in special ed has ever said, “I chose this career so I could do paperwork all evening and weekend.” Yet many realize after getting into the field that administrative demands can take away from time spent with students or collaborating with colleagues.  That’s why I was so excited to connect with Sean Klamm, special educator and founder of Playground IEP (Link here: https://www.playg...

Related service providers are often considered subject matter experts. Our role is to support other members of multidisciplinary teams like teachers, parents and administrators.  But many clinicians I’ve talked to started their careers feeling like a “jack of all trades, master of none”.  Some feel that graduate school was all theory and no practice. Others feel it was “drinking water through a fi...

In this episode, I share a special Q & A session I did with the members of Language Therapy Advance Foundations; my program that provides service providers with a research-based framework for language therapy. I get a lot of questions about how to make the transition between preschool to school-age, what language therapy activities are appropriate for younger children, and when to start direct...

Our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors don’t have to define us.  This is an important thing to remember for adults dealing with professional burnout and compassion fatigue; and it’s also important to model for kids. When school discipline focuses on punitive measures alone, we miss out on opportunities to teach kids how to manage emotions or repair mistakes.  That’s why I’m so excited to share this...

People working in school or medical settings are in a position to be caring for others in their professional lives; which makes it difficult to leave work at work. When you combine that with relationships outside of work, family responsibilities or having a child with a disability, there’s a high risk of burnout.  I invited Crissy Mombela to episode 152 of “De Facto Leaders” to discuss this topic...

If we try to make schools in the US more like schools in other countries, will that result in more effective practices? Why do policies work in some districts, but not others? Many ideas sound good on paper; but the people working with students or leading schools are telling a different story. That’s why I invited reading specialist Jalita Johnson to episode 151 to share her expertise on these top...

This week, I’m sharing an interview I did with another host on the BE podcast network because I think it’s something you’ll really enjoy. The episode is going live in the De Facto Leaders podcast feed.  Dr. Chris Jones has been an educator in Massachusetts for 22 years. His experience in the classroom ranged from 8th - 11th grade working in an urban setting. A portion of this was spent opening a h...

There’s a difference between influence and control.   Whether we’re making suggestions to a coworker, asking a supervisor for support, setting expectations with kids, or interacting with someone in an online forum…we’re all attempting to create behavioral change.  In “helping people” professions, it’s easy to get emotionally involved with our work.  This makes it difficult to identify if there are...

If the schools are devoting time and money to improving reading instruction, how should the rest of the day look for kids as it pertains to literacy?  Should parents be working with kids at home? If so, how much? What about reading? Can we use apps to help build language skills? How about audiobooks?  A common recommendation is that we should read 20 minutes a day, several times a week.  I had a h...

When I first learned about the field of occupational therapy, I had a very superficial understanding of what it entailed. In the school systems, it seemed like referrals often focused on fine-motor skills related to school, like pencil grip.  When I learned about sensory processing, I discovered that it’s so much more than that; and I realized how important it is for other members of both school a...

Language therapy often focuses on early intervention; but what happens if students continue to struggle with language in the high school years?  Many SLPs are pressured to drop students from their caseloads or move to a consult-only model when students transition to secondary school. Yet that often means many students enter adulthood lacking skills that have a significant impact on their ability t...

In this conversation, Ben Hockema and I discuss how to create a solid financial plan in your career so you can focus your time and energy on the impact you can make.  We discuss all kinds of possibilities; whether you want to stay in your current position as a therapist and/or teacher, whether you want to add an additional income stream, or whether you know for certain you want to start a business...

Executive functioning and financial literacy go hand-in-hand; which is why money management should be a part of any K-12 curriculum.  Much of this has to do with self-evaluation, the ability to think into the future, and the understanding of quantitative and temporal concepts. There are endless digital tools designed to help people manage their finances, but these tools won’t be useful for people...

Many people working in K-12 education have ambitions to start their own company where they have the ability to redesign the way student learning happens. The motivation often comes from wanting to create a scenario where they feel less constrained , more innovative , and more impactful . When I ventured into self-employment, I found that many of the “how to start your business” programs focused on...

Many clinicians are trained to focus on checklists and evaluations so we can walk in to work confident; knowing exactly what our protocols are.  And while systems and processes are extremely important, we have to know how to use them flexibly.  When we think about this in relation to cultural competency; we often think of eliminating biases in our evaluations and materials; but it goes so much dee...

People working in the schools are often expected to make everything a priority all the time, without consideration of how they might be able to manage the backlog of projects.  They have to say “No” to people who need help in the interest of saying “Yes” to others. They have to see the faces of the people their decisions are impacting.  While there is an understanding that prioritization is part o...

Skeptics of the Science of Reading claim that the current push for evidence-based reading instruction is just another pendulum swing.  Yet if you look at the research, we haven’t so much been “swinging” as much as we’ve been building, evolving, and expanding on what we know about how we learn to read. Even though the Science of Reading is “trending” as I write this, there are still many kids witho...