Getting Unstuck – Cultivating Curiosity

Innovating in today's schools is tough for a number of reasons. There are historic barriers and sometimes frankly, there's the inertia of leadership. One easy way to innovate and bring some pretty interesting results for kids, however, is to literally step outside the walls of the classroom and school. Long-time educational observer and reformer, Tom Vander Ark explains "The Power of Place."

We all like to think we're working hard, right? The sad fact, though, is that most of us spend a lot of time doing "fake work," which is emotionally draining and non-productive. And someone who has researched the concept of fake work and seen a lot of it first hand – and sometimes engaged in it – is Gaylan Nielson , author of Stop Fake Work in Education . Listen in as Gaylan defines "fake work" an...

How do you teach during these challenging times? Experiment. Try something. Try something else. And above all, nurture student relationships. Teacher and education technology master Chris Nesi explains.

How do we move forward as a national around the discussion of race? We start, says principal Anthony McWright , by acknowledging our biases.

Why won't a cooker-cutter approach to transforming schools work? Principal of the innovative Science Leadership Academy, Chris Lehmann explains.

Today we welcome Dimitry Anselme , the Executive Program Director for Professional Learning and Support at "Facing History and Ourselves." The mission of this nonprofit organization is to use lessons of history to challenge teachers and their students to stand up to bigotry and hate. In this episode, we'll learn about Dimitri's and Facing History's vision for how schools can create educational exp...

"The best thing we can ever do for kids is help them find their 'why' in life." Dr. Ken Wallace , Superintendent of District 207 in Park Ridge, Illinois explains why and what happens when schools don't.

Fundamental to changing schools so that they're more beneficial to a student's future is understanding how students learn. Neuroscience researcher Melissa Hughes Ph. D . explains.

Innovating in education just to innovate is pointless. Ideas on how to change education abound. The key, according to veteran principal Evan Robb is to align everyone around a vision of student success.

Whether you're a parent, an educator, or just a concerned citizen, you have a big stake in what happens in our classrooms – the incubators of our future. If you listen to education transformation advocates, we need to change those incubators by recognizing that we're in a post-industrial society and build an educational system that better prepares children for it.  To support that discussion, we w...

Today we welcome Mike Oliver , Principal of Zaharis Elementary School in Mesa Arizona. Mike and his team have shaped this extraordinary school over the past 18 years. It brings to life many of the principles of change called for by the transformation advocates: agency for students and teachers; real-world problem solving; opportunities for collaboration and innovation; social and emotional develop...

Whether you're a parent, an educator, or a concerned citizen, you have a big stake in what happens in our classrooms – the incubators of our future. If you listen to education transformation advocates, we need to build an educational system that better prepares children for our post-industrial age. The problem is most school systems are still rooted in competition, the status quo, and trying to ma...

Today we're joined by professors Mark Smylie and Karen Seashore Louis . Mark and Karen along with Joseph Murphy are the authors of Caring School Leadership and Stories of Caring School Leadership , two books that speak to the need to develop caring leadership in schools. We'd think that "caring" in schools would be a given, but as the authors have seen, it's not always the case. Here we'll find ou...

Today we are joined by author Ted Dintersmith. Ted's LinkedIn profile reads "change agent" – and the changes he's focused on are at the intersection of "education, innovation, and democracy." He is the author of What Schools Could Be, which details the trip he took across the U.S. in 2016, visiting some 200 schools in all 50 states. Listen as he asks and answers his own question: "Is thinking abou...

Today, educational leaders and schools are barraged with suggestions and directives to do "this" and "that" to improve student performance and outcomes. But the problem is that we don't really have agreement on what we mean by "performance" and "outcomes." This special series seeks to turn up the volume on that much needed discussion. Someone who is uniquely qualified to give us a broad perspectiv...

Here, we welcome Dr. Lynne Pierson , an experienced educational professional with successful leadership achievements in urban, rural, suburban and international schools. In 2007, Dr. Pierson was asked to lead an effort to overhaul the educational system of the United Arab Emirates. Her six-year effort was a lesson in patience, understanding, and collaborating. Ultimately, coordinating the comprehe...

Anthony Kim , consultant and author of The New School Rules , is an advocate of embracing new management practices that allow continuous adaptation in today's rapidly changing environment. As he writes in the book, "Schools that are working – and there are many – always create, early on, environments designed for evolution, responsiveness, continuous learning. A new approach to the management, org...

If you're a leader or teammate, you're going to need to support the social and emotional health of your colleagues. To do that effectively, you must first establish and be secure in your own emotional intelligence. It's a variation on the axiom: if you're going to lead others effectively, you must first lead yourself effectively. We're joined here by Teresa Quinlan , a consultant and coach who spe...

We all have a superpower – a unique gift to share with the world. The question is, how are we going to unlock, grow, and share it? Schools can help tap into our natural curiosity, but we also have to be willing to experiment and turn down the volume of our inner critic. Today we're joined by Stacy McCoy Prime , a former New York City school principal and now the inspiration behind the "Upstream De...

Today we are deeply fortunate to sit down with two amazing guests: Benjamin Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander . Ben is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and the Boston Youth Orchestra. Rosamund is a therapist and an accomplished painter. They are the authors of The Art of Possibility what can be a life-change book if you practice its twelve practices. Roz is the author of a follow-...

It's pretty accepted today by thought leaders that you can't effectively lead others until you know yourself and manage your behaviors appropriately. Understanding our various mindsets is key to building that self-awareness and the appropriate behaviors that follow. We'll dig into those mindsets in this conversation with Ryan Gottfredson PhD ., a cutting-edge teacher, consultant, author, trainer,...

School discipline has traditionally seen administrators and teachers mete out punishment for inappropriate student behavior. There's another way advises social and emotional consultant Jim Collin . It relies instead on a social and emotional approach – one that seeks to help adults and students first understand the underlying cause or causes of the disruptive behavior. Central to success is the ne...

Leading complex changes – especially during a crisis – requires leaders to be master balancers in that they have to manage both the human aspects of change , e.g., resistance to change, motivation, and consensus decision making, as well as the more technical aspects of change, e.g. What concern do we attack first? How do priorities shift over the life of a complex change? We hear the details from...

People think "virtual distance" is a function of geographic dispersion, but it's not. It's really the psychological and emotional distance that is created when we put a piece of machinery between us when we're talking. When virtual distance is high, this disconnect starts to affect how we feel, which affects how we think, which affects the decisions we make, which affects performance, which impact...

As authors Chris Mason and Dr. Melissa ("Missie") Patschke describe it in their new book, Visioning Onward , "visioning" is more than just another prescription for a lofty sounding Mission or Vision statement that we see adorning the walls of most schools. Instead, "visioning" is a step-by step process that helps schools and communities imagine in a heart-centered way what they want on behalf of t...