The Table | The Deans' Roundtable Podcast Series

Youth Gambling in Schools: What Adults Are Missing | Saul Malek Content note: This episode discusses gambling addiction, including Saul's own. If you or someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 by call or text. Youth gambling now starts well before high school, and much of it doesn't look like gambling to the adults around students. Saul Malek returns t...

Teacher Burnout and Retention: Fix the Conditions | Dr. Derek Porter When a great teacher burns out, do we ask what's wrong with them, or what's happening around them? Dr. Derek Porter, Assistant Head of Middle School at Greenhill School in Dallas, started asking the second question during his own burnout as a teacher. He went to every administrator he could find for thought partnership, met real...

Duty of Care in Schools: Why Process Protects Students | Brian Murray Duty of care comes down to two questions: where is every student right now, and would your discipline process hold up if a family challenged it in court? Brian Murray spent more than 25 years across independent, public, and international schools as a dean of students and director of student leadership, and he's candid about the...

The Readiness Gap: What Employers Screen For | Edward DuCoin Your students will sit across a desk from someone like Edward DuCoin one day, and he'll know within minutes what school built in them and what it didn't. Edward teaches marketing and entrepreneurship, and then, as an employer, he interviews the same kind of student he just taught. That round trip shows him the distance between how ready...

Family Engagement Is a Relationship, Not a Head Count | Nitza Jimenez What if the family your school has written off as non-responsive is actually drowning? Family engagement usually gets measured as a head count: who came to the football game, who showed up for trunk or treat. Nitza Jimenez, a family engagement and parent communication strategist with over a decade across education and community...

Restorative Practice Across 64 Nationalities | Alistair Goold What happens to belonging when almost nobody in the building is from the country they live in? Alistair Goold has spent 19 years as an international educator across three continents, and he says restorative practice changed shape in every one of them. In Scotland's inner-city schools, affective statements were his superpower, because fo...

Addiction Proofing Your School: What's Changed | Kriya Lendzion Content note: this conversation includes candid discussion of addiction and recovery, overdose, suicide, and sexual assault, including Kriya's own experience. If you or someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 by call or text. What if the substance use policy in your student handbook was wr...

Beyond Generational Labels in Schools | Dr. Unnatti Jain The friction between the adults in your building probably isn't generational. Underneath it, you'll usually find role clarity, workload, or norms nobody ever agreed on. Bridget Johnson opens this one with the skeptical question: how much of what we call a generational difference is really age, career stage, personality, or circumstance? Dr....

Why Women Leaders Struggle to Delegate | Rebecca Malotke-Meslin Your head of school notices you are drowning and says, "You need to delegate more." That is the whole instruction. So why is it so hard to do? In this episode, Bridget Johnson talks with Rebecca Malotke-Meslin, founder of Pleasantly Aggressive Coaching and Consulting, about why delegation is rarely a time-management problem and almost...

Student Support as Infrastructure: Hidden Leadership | Sherann Alkins What if your counseling team isn't a service sitting next to the school, but the infrastructure the whole school depends on? In this episode, Bridget Johnson talks with Sherann Alkins, LICSW, CAGS, founder of Counselor and Concierge and a 20-plus-year school counselor, assistant principal, and principal, about treating student s...

**Sign up for the Advisory Alignment Collective Program! Advisory Done Right: Why "Fine" Isn't Good Enough | Alan Brown What if your advisory program isn't failing because of your advisors, but because of how it was designed? Most schools have advisory. Far fewer have an advisory that works. In this episode of The Table, Bridget Johnson and her business partner, educator and former dean of student...

Youth Sports Betting: The Hidden Addiction in Schools | Saul Malek You wouldn't smell it on a student—and you won't find it in a backpack. So how do you spot the addiction that's quietly reaching your hallways? Host Bridget Johnson talks with Saul Malek, professional speaker and America's emerging voice on the modern gambling landscape, about youth gambling as an overlooked student wellness issue....

Youth Sports Betting: The Hidden Addiction in Schools | Saul Malek You wouldn't smell it on a student—and you won't find it in a backpack. So how do you spot the addiction that's quietly reaching your hallways? Host Bridget Johnson talks with Saul Malek, professional speaker and America's emerging voice on the modern gambling landscape, about youth gambling as an overlooked student wellness issue....

Beyond Spreadsheets: Fixing Student Support with August Schools Your school has a counselor, a nurse, a dean, a learning specialist, and a dozen advisors — but are they actually working with the same picture of each student? For most independent schools, the honest answer is no. Student support data lives in spiral notebooks, unsecured Google Docs, disconnected email threads, and the memory of who...

Nature as the Classroom: Healing Teen Isolation | Manny Almonte What if the most isolated young men in your community aren't missing a mentor program—they're missing a campfire? Teen social isolation has been declared a national epidemic, and young men of color are carrying a particular kind of loneliness that schools and traditional mentorship programs often fail to reach. In this episode, Bridge...

The Trauma-to-Prison Pipeline: What Every Educator Needs to Know What if the student disrupting your classroom isn't defiant—but dysregulated? In this episode of The Table Podcast Series, Bridget Johnson sits down with Dr. Dana Ainsworth to explore the trauma-to-prison pipeline and what it means for schools today. Drawing from her doctoral research, Dr. Ainsworth explains how childhood adversity,...

Faculty Onboarding Done Right: Retention Starts Here | Meera Shah What if your school's biggest retention strategy isn't compensation—but onboarding? In this episode of The Table Podcast Series, Bridget Johnson sits down with Meera Shah, founder of Tray Education, to explore what faculty onboarding should actually look like in independent schools—and why most programs fall short. Meera reframes on...

Character Formation in Independent Schools with Ryan S. Olson What kind of human does your school make it easier to become? In this episode of The Table Podcast Series, Bridget Johnson welcomes Ryan S. Olson for a thoughtful, research-based conversation on character formation in independent schools—and the tension many schools face between academic excellence and developing young people of depth,...

Student Wellbeing Crisis: What Schools Get Wrong | Dr. Denise Pope Are today's students more successful—or more overwhelmed than ever? In this episode, Bridget Johnson sits down with Dr. Denise Pope, Senior Lecturer at Stanford and co-founder of Challenge Success, to explore what decades of research reveal about student stress, belonging, and engagement. Drawing from data on over 350,000 students,...

Why Schools Are Getting AI Wrong (And What It's Costing Students) with Sarah Hanawald Why are so many educators resisting generative AI—and what's at risk if they do? In this episode, Bridget Johnson sits down with Sarah Hanawald, Executive Director of the Association for Academic Leaders, to explore one of the biggest challenges facing schools today: how to lead in an AI-driven world. While stude...

Raising Kids Who Belong: Home & School Strategies | Peyten Williams What if every behavior challenge your students or children throw at you is actually a belonging signal in disguise? In this episode of The Table Podcast Series, Bridget Johnson sits down with Peyten Williams — founder of BowBend Consulting and 16-year educator — to explore the brain science behind belonging and what it practically...

Stop Your Brain From Sabotaging Your School | Mitch Weisburgh What if the biggest obstacle in your school isn't budget cuts, student behavior, or the system — but the way your own brain responds to stress? In this episode of The Table Podcast Series, Bridget Johnson is joined by educator and MindShifting founder Mitch Weisburgh to unpack why our survival brains hijack our best leadership instincts...

Trusted Adults & Healthy Boundaries: Sustainable Student Relationships What does it actually mean to be a trusted adult — and are you doing it in a way that's sustainable? In this episode of The Table Podcast Series, host Bridget Johnson sits down with Dr. Brooklyn Raney to explore the real cost of blurred boundaries in schools and what it takes to build authentic student connections without burni...

Sustainable School Leadership: Escape Heroic Mode with Kalimah Fergus-Ayele Is your school running on systems — or running on you? If things stall the moment you're out of the building, this episode is essential listening. Host Bridget Johnson sits down with Kalimah Fergus Ayele, Author of Roundtrip Ticket Home , to tackle one of the most urgent challenges in school leadership: breaking free from...

Leading From the Middle: Navigate Up, Down & Across | Meredith Herrera Are you the connective tissue of your school — leading in every direction at once, without the authority to match your responsibility? This episode is your roadmap. In Episode 46 of The Table Podcast Series, host Bridget Johnson is joined by Board-Certified executive coach Meredith Herrera for a deeply practical conversation on...