Have a Good Life

Dr. Henry J. Turner is an award-winning high school principal, author, and nationally renowned speaker.  He is most proud of the collaborative community he works within to empower students to fight hate and bigotry in their school. Pointing to his unwavering commitment to equity and a student-centered culture, Henry was named 2020 K12 Principal of the Year by K–12 Dive.

Henry is the author of the newly released book, Change the Narrative: How to Foster an Antiracist Culture in Your School, published by DBC inc. As a national speaker, he shares his experience as an innovative instructional leader, passionate advocate, and committed antiracist educator with educators and organizational leaders. Henry works with educators, leaders, and communities on how to create a culture that commits to diversity, equity, and inclusion empowers students’ voices and addresses economic and racial disparities.

He has a biweekly newsletter, “Lessons on Social Justice Leadership” that can be found at HenryJTurner.com.

• Race is a social fabric that has been created in our society.

• If we believe in all students succeed, then we need to respond to students’ needs.

• School was founded on separating students and what systems were excluded.

• 25% of students were on IEP, 50% of black students were on IEPs.

• Racism - system of advantage based on race

• Who are we blaming for these disparities? What is wrong with these students vs. what is wrong with these schools?

• 80% of educators want to do racial justice work in their schools.

• Leaders are nervous about diving into this - how

• Teaching students to stand up for someone else.

• Start small

• How do you make sure students are seen?

• How do you pronounce your name?

• Intent is good, impact is bad.

• The way to make students feel included is to empower them.

• How do you get started?

• Creating agreements with students

• Name activity - sharing the history of your name

• This is the way to begin to talk aboutt he work.

• Talking about race really begins with talking about us.

• Focus on relationships.

• Who are we blaming for the problem?

- What did I do over the course of the year to help you feel comfortable sharing that with me?

Sponsors

Pikmykid

Improve your school dismissal and safety response with Pikmykid, the Schools Safety and Dismissal Platform. Help move your dismissal from chaos to calm, get kids to their families faster and safer.  Visit pikmykid.com/be to learn more

Transformative Principal Mastermind

Lead a school everyone can be proud of.

Being a principal is tough work. You’re pulled in all kinds of directions. You never have the time to do the work that really matters. Join me as I help school leaders find the time to do the work they became principals to do.

I help you stop putting out fires and start leading.

Learn more at https://transformativeprincipal.com

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

Dr. Henry J. Turner is an award-winning high school principal, author, and nationally renowned speaker.  He is most proud of the collaborative community he works within to empower students to fight hate and bigotry in their school. Pointing to his unwavering commitment to equity and a student-centered culture, Henry was named 2020 K12 Principal of the Year by K–12 Dive.

Henry is the author of the newly released book, Change the Narrative: How to Foster an Antiracist Culture in Your School, published by DBC inc. As a national speaker, he shares his experience as an innovative instructional leader, passionate advocate, and committed antiracist educator with educators and organizational leaders. Henry works with educators, leaders, and communities on how to create a culture that commits to diversity, equity, and inclusion empowers students’ voices and addresses economic and racial disparities.

He has a biweekly newsletter, “Lessons on Social Justice Leadership” that can be found at HenryJTurner.com.

• Race is a social fabric that has been created in our society.

• If we believe in all students succeed, then we need to respond to students’ needs.

• School was founded on separating students and what systems were excluded.

• 25% of students were on IEP, 50% of black students were on IEPs.

• Racism - system of advantage based on race

• Who are we blaming for these disparities? What is wrong with these students vs. what is wrong with these schools?

• 80% of educators want to do racial justice work in their schools.

• Leaders are nervous about diving into this - how

• Teaching students to stand up for someone else.

• Start small

• How do you make sure students are seen?

• How do you pronounce your name?

• Intent is good, impact is bad.

• The way to make students feel included is to empower them.

• How do you get started?

• Creating agreements with students

• Name activity - sharing the history of your name

• This is the way to begin to talk aboutt he work.

• Talking about race really begins with talking about us.

• Focus on relationships.

• Who are we blaming for the problem?

- What did I do over the course of the year to help you feel comfortable sharing that with me?

Sponsors

Pikmykid

Improve your school dismissal and safety response with Pikmykid, the Schools Safety and Dismissal Platform. Help move your dismissal from chaos to calm, get kids to their families faster and safer.  Visit pikmykid.com/be to learn more

Transformative Principal Mastermind

Lead a school everyone can be proud of.

Being a principal is tough work. You’re pulled in all kinds of directions. You never have the time to do the work that really matters. Join me as I help school leaders find the time to do the work they became principals to do.

I help you stop putting out fires and start leading.

Learn more at https://transformativeprincipal.com

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

This interview is from a recent conference that Fred and I attended called Professional Practices Institute. We had the chance to talk with some great people from around the country. I hope you enjoy this episode.

Jamie Boyd, Southern Arkansas University
- Online K–6 coursework that leads to licensure targeted at paraprofessionals
- Only university where enrollment has gone up.
- Valued as professionals
- How to solve the problem:
- Pay
- Focus in great teaching and providing autonomy

Check out this episode!

This interview is a recap from the conference that Fred and I attended called Professional Practices Institute. We had the chance to talk with some great people from around the country. I hope you enjoy this episode. In this episode Fred talks with Quinton “Q” Dale fro Massachusetts.

Check out this episode!

This interview is from a recent conference that Fred and I attended called Professional Practices Institute. We had the chance to talk with some great people from around the country. I hope you enjoy this episode.

Arizona School Risk Retention Insurance Trust - You can Never be Safe Enough.
- Rise in the tools, use, manipulation
- Secrecy and ability to keep up.
- Easier to hide it now.
- Handled with deliberate indifference
- Someone could have stepped in.
- Groomers start by grooming the community, then grooming the family, then grooming the individual.

Check out this episode!

<p>This interview is from a recent conference that Fred and I attended called <a href="https://www.nasdtec.net/page/MCEE_Doc">Professional Practices Institute</a>. We had the chance to talk with some great people from around the country. I hope you enjoy this episode. </p>

Check out this episode!

Al Kingsley has spent the last 30 years in the EdTech space and 20 of those as a school trustee and governor. He is co-chair of Workstream 4 at the Foundation for Educational Development, an organization developing a framework for long-term vision and sustainable planning in England. Al is Group CEO of NetSupport Ltd, an internationally acclaimed EdTech vendor. As a firm supporter of lifelong learning, he is also a regional Apprenticeship Ambassador and Chair of the Employment & Skills board for his region’s combined authority. An active writer about all things EdTech, Al is a member of the Forbes Technology Council and sits on the advisory council for the Foundation for Education Development. He authored a book, My Secret #EdTech Diary, released in July 2021 that is a road map to a new way of thinking about technology in education.

• Many similarities - Local authority schools, state run, and private/independent school.
• Two checkpoints in year 2 and year 6
• Internal (teacher-based) and external assessments (formal assessments marked and moderated externally).
• GCSE - age 16 in a range of subjects.
• Types of assessments
  • Attainment - comparative score
  • Progress - how much they grew.
  • A Levels - final exam before college.
• What is the purpose and the outcome of these measures?
• external serves only 2 measures - certificate of completion or accountability for schools
• Are those results where they are in attainment, or are there other reasons.
• Whether our measure of a successful education is acquisition of knowledge or something more?
• Staff retention
• PISA is suggesting some changes in how to assess students.
• Sugata Mitra ted talk
• NAEP scores for last 15 years - 15–16 jurisdictions in US that were low consistently.
• Educational decisions are made in political cycles.
• We don’t want quick change, we want long term embedded money.
• What are the indicators that might vary the funding for schools?
• Respect and trust our school leaders.
• Who knows our students best? Do we trust those people?
• The skills being acquired in the workplace are actually the things we’re putting more weight on in the world.
• Key skills that could be applied anywhere.
• Education for Human Flourishing
• Aesthetic appreciation -
• How do you measure if people value their learning process at your school?
• Test less and Don’t make the test 100% percent of the assessment.
• Breadth of offerings.

Sponsors

Pikmykid

Improve your school dismissal and safety response with Pikmykid, the Schools Safety and Dismissal Platform. Help move your dismissal from chaos to calm, get kids to their families faster and safer.  Visit pikmykid.com/be to learn more

Transformative Principal Mastermind

Lead a school everyone can be proud of.

Being a principal is tough work. You’re pulled in all kinds of directions. You never have the time to do the work that really matters. Join me as I help school leaders find the time to do the work they became principals to do.

I help you stop putting out fires and start leading.

Learn more at https://transformativeprincipal.com

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

This week is our next installment of seeing how Eric is doing in his new school. As a refresher, here is last month’s update.

Last time, we gave him three strategies:
- Strategy 1: add 15–30 minutes to however long you think each meeting will be.
- Strategy 2: You seem upset, what’s the best way to contact you when he gets back at X?
- Strategy 3: intentional Drive-bys - Schedule time to go be visible.

We checkin on those ideas and then talk about what he’s facing today.

Eric shared a great strategy today:

Strategy #1: Create a “canned response” in your email provider to send to people when they are upset inviting them to talk in person or on the phone.

It’s never a good idea to get in an email war. Much better to have a conversation with a person who is upset. Creating a response you send that always invites someone to meet with you and resolve differences is a sure-fire way to stop email wars and keyboard warriors.

Strategy #2: Schedule to send out that email! Don’t send it immediately after you write it. Give everyone time to cool down.

Today, Eric asks the question, “How can I help teachers have confidence that I’ll stick around so they’ll stop avoiding digging into the work?”

This is a valid question.

Teachers want to know you’ll stick around before they commit, but that is really just smokescreen for trust issues. They don’t trust you yet. People don’t actually care how long you’ll be around if they can trust you now.

Eric and I discuss some ways to make sure they are experiencing that trust, including doing the exact opposite of what a teacher specifically requests.

We highlight how to deal with past issues of traumatic experiences and how to do better in the future.

We also share one of the great books i’ve read recently: What happened to you.

Finally, I gave Eric two pieces of advice:
1. Preplan how you will exit when you do exit the school (spoiler alert: everyone leaves the school!)
2. Create different experiences around what were bad experiences!

We’ll be back with another interview with Eric at the beginning of December!

Sponsors

Pikmykid

Improve your school dismissal and safety response with Pikmykid, the Schools Safety and Dismissal Platform. Help move your dismissal from chaos to calm, get kids to their families faster and safer.  Visit pikmykid.com/be to learn more

Transformative Principal Mastermind

Lead a school everyone can be proud of.

Being a principal is tough work. You’re pulled in all kinds of directions. You never have the time to do the work that really matters. Join me as I help school leaders find the time to do the work they became principals to do.

I help you stop putting out fires and start leading.

Learn more at https://transformativeprincipal.com

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

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Ami Shah is the Co-Founder and CEO of Peekapak, an award-winning social-emotional learning platform that engages elementary and middle school students to learn skills like self-regulation, empathy and teamwork and reaches over 450,000 educators and students. Peekapak does this using stories, evidence-based lessons, and game-based learning. Behind-the-scenes, teachers, and administrators receive real-time reports showing a student’s progress and emotional state.  This empowers educators to be proactive in helping curb future mental health issues. Educators can share pre-written class updates, activities, and stories with families to reinforce learning at home in English and Spanish.

Peekapak is backed by; Silicon Valley-based accelerator, Imagine K12, the Edtech vertical of Y Combinator and the Unreasonable Institute.

Ami has earned an MBA from INSEAD, a BBA from Wilfrid Laurier University and is passionate about improving youth education, and has previously taught in K–4 classrooms and advised & volunteered at education-related non-profit organizations. Ami has been featured on Toronto Life, Flare, TechVibes, CBC and numerous other outlets.  Ami has also spoken on topics such as social-emotional learning, student well-being, and mental health and education technology. Ami has spoken at conferences such as SXSWedu, Future of Education Technology Conference, LearnLaunch, ASU GSV and many more.

• Overcoming the barriers
• Interviewed over 300 educators to find out if SEL is actually important.
• It’s really hard to fit this in if it’s not required.
• Weren’t taught this, how am I expected to teach this to my students
• Shouldn’t parents be teaching this?
• How to involve parents in SEL.
• Family Well-being nights
• How to be a transformative principal? Help people feel heard.

 

<h2 id="sponsors">Sponsors</h2>

<h3 id="pikmykid"><a href="https://pikmykid.com/be">Pikmykid</a></h3>

<p>Improve your school dismissal and safety response with <a href="https://pikmykid.com/be">Pikmykid, the Schools Safety and Dismissal Platform</a>. Help move your dismissal from chaos to calm, get kids to their families faster and safer.  Visit pikmykid.com/be to learn more</p>

<h3 id="transformativeprincipalmastermind"><a href="https://transformativeprincipal.com">Transformative Principal Mastermind</a></h3>

<p>Lead a school everyone can be proud of. </p>

<p>Being a principal is tough work. You&#8217;re pulled in all kinds of directions. You never have the time to do the work that really matters. Join me as I help school leaders find the time to do the work they became principals to do. </p>

<p>I help you stop putting out fires and start leading. </p>

<p>Learn more at <a href="https://transformativeprincipal.com">https://transformativeprincipal.com</a></p>

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal

Ryan Steuer launched the first Project Based Learning middle school in the country and is the founder of Magnify Learning, a PBL professional development organization that equips teachers, instructional coaches, and principals across the country to engage learners, tackle boredom, and transform classrooms. Prior to founding Magnify Learning, Ryan was an engineer for a Fortune 50 company, 8th grade English teacher, and missionary. He shares his education and leadership insights on YouTube and on the PBL Simplified podcast.

• New Tech Network
• Taught traditionally, and didn’t see results that I wanted.
• Kids were showing up to school and doing what they were supposed to.
• The Punnett Square
• Work is so authentic and worthwhile that they want to learn it.
• Grammar lesson has life to it.
• It can take time to make the switch. Just starting to see the engagement.
• Upfront time to create this
• Lots more resources and structures.
• Define the problem, research solution, try it out, reflect
• Umbrella of authenticity
• Bring the Why Closer
• Cool stories of PBL
• Going across the street to a forest to see how much CO2 schools are sucking in.
• Who cares about that work?
• how to increase rigor.
• We get stuck on engagement and rigor.
• Opportunity to expand their view of the world.
• Liaison’s for PBL. Community partnerships.
• Do more than just be the audience.
• Bringing partners in to be part of the teaching force.
• How to be a transformative principal? Go and talk to learners.

Sponsors

Pikmykid

Improve your school dismissal and safety response with Pikmykid, the Schools Safety and Dismissal Platform. Help move your dismissal from chaos to calm, get kids to their families faster and safer.  Visit pikmykid.com/be to learn more

Transformative Principal Mastermind

Lead a school everyone can be proud of.

Being a principal is tough work. You’re pulled in all kinds of directions. You never have the time to do the work that really matters. Join me as I help school leaders find the time to do the work they became principals to do.

I help you stop putting out fires and start leading.

Learn more at https://transformativeprincipal.com

New Episode of @TrnFrmPrincipal