Transformative Principal

Latest Episodes:

Everything Curriculum with John Schembari Transformative Principal 571 Nov 13, 2023

Show notes

Dr. John Schembari is an Improvement Coach through which he supports teachers and school leaders by performing on site evaluations, identifying data informed trends, reviewing curriculum/assessment materials, creating improvement plans, coaching individuals one-on-one, developing and delivering group training to educators, and implementing evidence-based instructional strategies that improve teaching practices and increase student learning.

JOHN SCHEMBARI

Senior Education Executive

In today’s episode, we discuss everything curriculum. John shares his answer when teachers say “I’m just going to hurry up and teach all of the curriculum” and “I’m done with the curriculum work”. Instead of teaching the curriculum, John explains how we should be focused on student learning, and he describes the importance of curriculum review cycles. We also explore the role textbooks play and what teachers need if they are going to be tasked with developing their own curriculum and assessments.

Best way for listeners to reach out to John Schembari:

908-442-6636
johnaschembari@msn.com
John Schembari | LinkedIn

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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 technology
Save teachers’ time
Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
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🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Be More Colorful’s Yass Prize Journey with CareerViewXR Entrepreneurship with Matthew Chaussee Nov 05, 2023

Show notes

Matt Chaussee is the CEO of Be More Colorful, a Midwest-based immersive media production studio whose platform, CareerViewXR, is rapidly gaining national attention. Matt, along with his wife (and company owner) Katie, lead an innovative team of creatives who are laser focused on making career exploration affordable, accessible, and fun! CareerViewXR provides students and adult career seekers across the country with an unprecedented opportunity to experience real-world careers through virtual reality technology. Recently selected from a field of over 2,000 applicants to be one of 33 Semifinalists for the prestigious Yass Prize, Matt will discuss the significance of the award, and how he sees tools like CareerViewXR transforming how we guide students on their educational journey.

Please add questions that we would ask here, and you can add anything that you would like to add as well.

STOP Principles of the Yass Prize
Help us connect with students in new and different ways.
How do we use tried and true strategies to help us change things
True transformation is going beyond the books.
How do we all learn best?
Transformation is change with a purpose.
Yass Prize celebrates innovation in education, with over 2000 applicants
Career Exploration - CareerViewXR - How do we challenge others to become better?
Vote in the Yass Prize
Other companies as the 32 semi-finalists: are ASU Preparatory Global, Burbella Learning Academy, CompSci High, Create Conservatory, Indi ED, Sora Schools, Verdi EcoSchool, and VictoryXR.
CareerViewXR - Our focus is really on taking that tried and true real job experience to help kids have real-life experiences - immersive media, showing what that real work is like. Virtual reality and virtual tours.
Bricklayer’s experience - I wanna try that bricklayer’s experience in 4th grade.
Most of the time an adult’s pathways really never gave them an opportunity on which pathway they could choose.
There are so many careers out there.
It doesn’t have to be interesting or exciting, it has to be authentic to someone at the right time.
Helping kids see the excitement of what jobs could be.

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL.

Simplify and streamline technology
Save teachers’ time
Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Learnership: The Skill of Learning with James Anderson Transformative Principal 570 Nov 02, 2023

Show notes

James Anderson is an Australian-based international speaker, author, and educator who is passionate about helping us become better learners. His Mindset Continuum builds on Carol Dweck's work on Growth Mindsets to give us practical tools to nurture a deeper understanding of ourselves as learners. His description of Learnership - the skill of learning, then gives us a powerful way to understand and improve how we engage in the learning process. The result: we get better at getting better!

Originally a teacher and school leader, for the past 20 years, James has been working with schools to make classrooms more thoughtful places. He challenges teachers to think deeply about their own Mindsets and how their beliefs are communicated to students in often subtle and unintended ways. His Growth Mindset Style Guide takes us beyond catchphrases and cliches to provide practical and easily implemented strategies that change learners' mindsets.

In today’s episode, we discuss leadership. Although James made the word up, he defines it as the skill of learning. His work connects the habits of mind and Dweck’s Fixed vs Growth Mindset, but he’s developed ways to take these concepts further and make them applicable to students and schools. It was a refreshing perspective instead of discussing the traditional focus of teaching and achievement. James describes the role of the student, teacher, administrator, and even the parent in developing skilled learners.

The best way for listeners to reach out to James Anderson:

jamesanderson.com.au

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL.

Simplify and streamline technology
Save teachers’ time
Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Social Media Skills for Schools with Andrea Gribble Transformative Principal 569 Oct 29, 2023

Show notes

Andrea Gribble is the master of all things social media for schools. Her first book recently launched: Social Media for Schools: Proven Storytelling Strategies & Ideas to Celebrate Your Students & Staff - Without Losing Your Sanity and she is the host of a podcast called Mastering Social Media for Schools

In today’s episode, Andrea shares where staff can start when they are handed the social media duties for the school or district. She describes the systems she uses to schedule content and keep followers engaged, how to keep the content going during the summer months, and how to keep it positive.

Andrea can be reached by going to https://socialschool4edu.com/

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL.

Simplify and streamline technology
Save teachers’ time
Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

School Culture And The Road To Awesome with Darrin Preppard Transformative Principal 568 Oct 22, 2023

Show notes

Darrin Peppard is a school district superintendent, speaker, author, publisher, and consultant focused on what matters most in leadership. Darrin’s an expert in school culture and climate as well as coaching and growing emerging leaders. He is known for his keen insight, culture-first leadership style, and dynamic personality. In 2016, Darrin was named Wyoming Secondary School Principal of the Year by WASSP/NASSP and was the 2015 Jostens Renaissance Educator of the Year. In 2017, Darrin earned his Doctorate Degree in Educational Leadership from the University of Wyoming. This past summer, Darrin was inducted into the Jostens Renaissance Hall of Fame.

On today’s episode, we discuss school culture and the road to awesome. Darrin describes the moment he knew his school had a culture problem and how he started down the road less traveled instead of the “gotcha” road. He started by changing what he controlled, himself, and then focused on empowering the students and staff to join him and take ownership in their school’s journey.

www.roadtoawesome.net

307-371-89447

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL.

Simplify and streamline technology
Save teachers’ time
Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Helping the Development of a Skill with Victor Karkar Transformative Principal 565 Oct 19, 2023

Show notes

Scrible is about the writing process.
- Impact of AI on writing.
- What does “embrace it” actually mean?
- It’s important to define it appropriately.
- We talk about teaching and learning together, but they diverge a little bit here.
- How does embracing it mean that students are using cognitive skills.
- Litmus test for the use of automation in education: Does it help develop or bypass the development of a skill?
- It’s ok to have automation as skills are increasing.
- Granularity is key.
- Map activities in the writing process to skills along the way.
- The “I use it myself” reason may not be good enough for our rising generation.
- Conflation of cognitive development mode with productivity mode.
- Education isn’t about being productive.
- When compliance is gone, they realize it’s all fake.
- Good writers and not good writers.
- Don’t let what it does for you strongly shape what we should be doing for the next generation.
- Lived experience bias - because I lived this, i have this experience.
- What’s best for students?
- First principles perspective
- If we don’t give them the opportunity to gain skills early on, we run into a situation where people won’t know what good looks like.
- What if you stop teaching math and just give kids calculators.
- Connect on LinkedIn

About Victor Karkar

Meet Victor Karkar, the brains behind Scrible, a game-changing startup that’s shaking up the way we do web-based research and collaboration. Victor’s been around the block in both the Internet and biotech sectors, mainly focusing on product management and business development. He was an instrumental part of the early team at insuranceOrder.com, a startup that got snapped up by the Fortune 500 giant, Marsh & McLennan. Oh, and he even dipped his toes into the venture capital world with a gig at New Enterprise Associates. So yeah, he’s seen the startup life from all angles.

But what really makes Victor tick? He’s a modern-day Renaissance person. In the startup world, you’ve got to be a jack-of-all-trades, and Victor’s worn every hat you can think of—designer, product developer, tester, marketer, you name it. He’s a tech nerd at heart, with a deep respect for the engineers and scientists who are pushing us into the future. He’s got a keen eye for clean, thoughtful design and is borderline obsessive about the details.

Victor’s a debate geek turned entrepreneur who loves nothing more than a well-crafted argument or a slick presentation. He’s a dreamer who believes that a few good people can really change the world. But he’s no pie-in-the-sky idealist; he knows that to make lasting change, you need a rock-solid operation to back up those big ideas."

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL.

Simplify and streamline technology
Save teachers’ time
Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Journey Modeling with Molly McGowan Gorsuch Transformative Principal 567 Oct 16, 2023

Show notes

What is journey modeling?
Take a look at what decisions people make and what it means for your potential people to look for you
What brings true value to your School/District?
Where are you bringing value to your employee and where are they bringing value to you?
What skill sets are you looking for and are articulated in the
Bringing people into your fold before you really get them in the door.
You want to appeal to the individual and create a customer experience.
Weird to think of these future employees as a customer of your district.
How are people seeing you? And what are they seeing?
Are your messages being seen in a positive way?
Identify a friction point and how you could turn that into a touchpoint
How could you use LinkedIn in a more effective manner?
Engage with your constituents - go and ask what people are saying.
It’s valuable to know each student’s name, but have you talked to every parent?
Collaborative
Job descriptions from old-school approaches.
Key drivers for specific generations.
Value talents and skillsets in that job description
Expectations around the job and the process
How do you make people feel wanted?
Relationships and setting expectations.
HR does have the opportunity to grow here.
You can still communicate.
You can automate many of these sequences.
Automate what you can
New Hire Onramp Email Template
Journey Model - teachers saw that they weren’t hearing from districts during a period of time over the summer.
People expect a certain level of interaction with schools and districts to understand what is going on.
Showing them what it is to be in the community.
Journey Model components - catalyst, question-asking, touchpoints (community, benefits, etc.), decision-making process, after acceptance, on ramping, continuing
Identifying key focus areas

About Molly McGowan Gorsuch, APR

Director of Client Engagement at Rhodes Branding

Molly is the liaison between education leaders and Rhodes Branding, connecting the K-12 community with services designed to accelerate performance and market position. She leads content and partner engagement strategy and is a frequent conference presenter and podcast/blog guest.

You can find me on LinkedIn, or @MollyMGorsuch on Twitter.

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL.

Simplify and streamline technology
Save teachers’ time
Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Generative AI is Just Round 1 with Micah Miner Transformative Principal 566 Oct 12, 2023

Show notes

Generative AI in k12 education and it's impact on teacher prep and planning, assessments, writing instruction, and other subjects. Ethical use of generative AI and importance of transparency and demystifying it. Also, contrast generative AI tools with instructional AI, and how high can be leveraged to improve teaching and learning. Also, a conversation on civics and history instruction and it's impact on society and polarization.

Student data privacy laws.
DigLitCon - AI Literacy
4300 kids in 9 schools in Chicago area.
AI literacy - Generative AI is just round 1.
Demystify what AI is and that it’s not magic
Feels like magic
MIT’s Day of AI
We need to know about it, but not everyone needs to be an expert.
What do kids need to know in relation to AI Literacy
We pretend that people should know a lot of things
Will we call AI friends or supports.
Harnessing AI for a Human-Centered Education
We can’t find our life inside of a fake reality
It is a tool, and it can do great things when it is with people.
Can’t hide from AI. Cheating
What can we do with planning education guidelines
Academic integrity policies and policies in place for Generative AI.
Assessment has to be redefined as a process. Packback, writable, character.ai
Clearly articulating where you can and can’t use AI.
Have to teach them how to use it.
How to teach and use it ethically, model ethics, be transparent when we use it, make sure it’s not taking away from the learning process.
“This X was created with use of Generative AI tools.”
We need to be professionally humble.
We need to have local policies that reflect policies
6 tenets of post-plagiarism
This is only round one of a potential fourth revolution.
Just because it is almost right doesn’t mean that it is right.
Data privacy - byte

About Micah Miner:

Micah J. Miner

District Administrator Instructional Technology & Social Studies at Maywood, Melrose Park, Broadview School District 89, American Consortium for Equity in Education Contributing Writer , Times 10 Publications Author of the book Harnessing AI for a Human-Centered Education

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL.

Simplify and streamline technology
Save teachers’ time
Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Creating a Venture to Fund Your School with Dr. Brett Jacobsen Transformative Principal #SummerofAI Oct 05, 2023

Show notes

Welcome to another episode of Transformative Principal! In today’s episode, we have the privilege of speaking with Dr. Brett Jacobsen, the CEO of The Mount Vernon School, Mount Vernon Ventures, and Mount Vernon Online – The Global Online Campus. With over 15 years of experience leading Mount Vernon through a transformational period, Dr. Jacobsen has gained a national reputation for innovation in education.

In our conversation, Dr. Jacobsen shares his insights on creating a venture to fund your school. He discusses how Mount Vernon School, established in 1972 as a PK–8 school, has embraced an innovation mindset, even though they have been around for a long time. Driven by a desire to be known as an innovative school, Mount Vernon has experienced significant growth over the last decade.

Dr. Jacobsen introduces the concept of the Blue Ocean Strategy, emphasizing the importance of shaping your school’s narrative and brand. Rather than trying to compete with other schools, Mount Vernon Ventures focuses on consulting with other schools and developing accessible products and tools. They have also ventured into business development with Mount Vernon Online.

Dr. Jacobsen explores the challenge of separating funding from the backs of their people and finding alternative markets to support their initiatives. He also highlights the importance of creating multiple pathways for students and implementing an inquiry-based, competency-driven system.

Portfolio of three different areas
1972 school established
PK–8 School
Felt Like a startup even though they’ve been around for a long time.
Giving more tours than serving our own community.
Over the last decade school has grown by 60%
Blue Ocean Strategy
Cirque du Soleil is it high art or circus?
Didn’t want to be known as a traditional school.
Didn’t want to be known as a progressive school.
how do you shape your narrative around your school’s brand?
Wanted to be known as an innovative school.
We would lose every time if we tried to compete with others
Mount Vernon Ventures
- Consulting with other schools
- Value proposition - current practitioners leading change.
- What is your innovation intention?
- Ventures work on developing products and tools that are accessible.
- Business development as well - Mount Vernon Online.
- Multiple Pathways
- R&D Report around AI
Funding is generated from Mount Vernon Ventures
Traditionally generated from Non-tuition generating activities.
Externally, how could we reinvest back into the school?
How do you separate from funding being on the backs of our people?
Find another market that funds things.
How do we create multiple pathways for our students?
Learning outcomes explored in an inquiry model - assessed based on proficiency.
Inquiry, Competency-based system.
Lego-bricking courses - systems taken
Mod System is based on 9-week time periods - students take four courses during a mod.
They have to have more math courses at the backend of their high school course.
Did a lot of open share when we started.
Agnostic about things they implement with schools.
Ventures are about birthing opportunities that expand the Mount Vernon Ecosystem.
Training and investing in professionals in school
Identify market segments - creating more pathways for students.
Would look very different from the three we’ve talked about today.

About Brett Jacobsen

Entering his 15th year, Dr. Brett Jacobsen is CEO of The Mount Vernon School, Mount Vernon Ventures, and Mount Vernon Online – The Global Online Campus. Leading Mount Vernon through a transformational period since 2009, the School with 1,250 students strong, has gained a national reputation for innovation in education, As a result, Dr. Jacobsen launched a Transformation R&D consulting company known as Mount Vernon Ventures, partnering with schools throughout the world. Most recently, in August 2022, Mount Vernon Online, Mount Vernon’s online high school, welcomed its first cohort of students to the School. Outside of overseeing a portfolio of business units, Dr. Jacobsen frequently shares his journey of innovation and entrepreneurial impact at national and international conferences. Dr. Jacobsen was recognized by the Atlanta Business Chronicle as one of the 2017 Most admired CEOs in the education category. He is also a proud member of Leadership Atlanta, Class of 2013.

The Mount Vernon School | Mount Vernon Ventures | Mount Vernon Online

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL.

Simplify and streamline technology
Save teachers’ time
Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

The Intersection of Ai, Instructional Design, and Backend Classroom Administration Opportunites and Tradeoffs with Thomas Thompson Transformative Principal 564 Oct 02, 2023

Show notes

Perhaps large language models could solve some challenges in schools.
Teacher attrition - how can you build excellence if you can’t keep teachers?
Time is not enough to do deep work, which is required for effective planning.
The AI can’t do everything (nor should it).
Source it, shape it, share it.
AI as a creative collaborator - Lesson seed
Look at generative content like a sculptor would look at a block of marble.
Elaborative explanation is a best practice in education.
Prefer to pull methods from cognitive sciences
Students engaging in essay evaluation rather than essay writing.
Artificially intelligent tutors - Khanmigo and others.
Training against chess bots.
Chess is a closed system, so perhaps not the best idea.
Proficiency vs aptitude vs
Hard to get quality feedback -
What are the parameters you need to be in to access the highest level of success?
Embedding best practices into our
One-shot prompt vs. leading the language model into learning.
Unit plans - 4-6 weeks of instructional planning.
Distributed & interleaved practice
Assessments & quizzes.
AI lowers the cost of evolution.
Open Educational Resources compared to Teacher Pay Teachers.
Things open up in ways you couldn’t imagine simply because you did something.
Foundational models are not particularly useful in their basic form for what we’re trying to do in education.
Having granular control that teacher can make changes in the workspace
How to take Smart Notes
Obsidian note taking app
You learn in relation to what you already know.

The intersection of Ai, instructional design, and backend classroom administration—opportunities and tradeoffs.

The limits of the technology, boundary conditions
Broad institutional implications - Foundational flaws in education
Ludwig Wittgenstein - blue and brown books. The Wittgensten Reader, the tractatus

About Thomas Thompson

Thomas Thompson is the founder and CEO of eduaide.ai, which boasts over 100,000 users. Eduaide is an AI tool to help eliminate teacher burnout and make high-quality teaching resources universally accessible.

Thomas has a Master in Educational Technology from Johns Hopkins School of Education and is still a teacher in the Maryland area.

Martin Gurry - Public

2001 data produced more in one year than we’ve every produced before.

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL.

Simplify and streamline technology
Save teachers’ time
Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

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