In this episode teacher leader Laura Stam shares personal experiences in her journey to continual improvement in her teaching practice.Laura also describes her experience of participating in an instructional coaching cycle for the first time.Links:X: @stamstam193Facebook: @Mrs.Stam.2021

Dr. Mario Acosta spent 20 years of his educational career as a teacher, instructional coach, assistant principal, academic director, and principal leading schools with diverse profiles. He was named the 2022 Principal of the Year in the state of Texas while he was the principal at Westwood High School, a U.S. News & World Report top-50 campus and member of the High Reliability Schools (HRS) Network.His latest book is The Schools Our Students Deserve: A Comprehensive Framework for Shaping Exceptional School Culture.In this episode, recorded for The Authority Podcast, Mario and host Ross Romano discuss:What are the schools our students deserve? Are we asking this question enough?The current state of schools and identifying the gapsOutcomes students deserve…The values to center in a school’s cultureMany schools saw temporary bursts of innovation after the pandemic, but struggled to sustain them. How can leaders build on the urgency of that moment and create lasting change?How does a leader take charge of the culture? Building support from the communityAttracting high-quality educators and retaining them long-termAbout the hostRoss Romano is a co-founder of the Be Podcast Network and CEO of September Strategies, a coaching and consulting firm that helps organizations and high-performing leaders in the K-12 education industry communicate their vision and make strategic decisions that lead to long-term success. Connect on Bluesky or LinkedIn I also host Sideline Sessions, a podcast for coaches and parents of student-athletes. The show features conversations with coaches and performance experts in the NFL, NBA, NCAA, Olympics, and more. Listen here: https://bit.ly/3Rp0QGt 

Dr. Chad Dumas is a Solution Tree PLC at Work®, Assessment, and Priority Schools associate and international consultant, presenter, and award-winning researcher whose primary focus is collaborating to develop capacity for continuous improvement. His latest book is The Teacher Team Leader Handbook: Simple Habits to Transform Collaboration in a PLC at Work®.We discuss:Foundations and actions of teacher team leadersHow important to establish the mission of the PLC?The book has Swiss Army Knife-like tools for leaders — you don’t use them all every time you pull out the knife, but you have what’s needed for the situationRole and responsibilities of the teacher team leaderThe assumptions a team leader must makeWho selects the leader?When it’s time to build capacity and when it’s time for a resetGet the book here: https://nextlearningsolutionspress.com/ttlh/Hear my previous conversation with Chad on episode 132, Let’s Put the C in PLC with Chad Dumas.About the hostRoss Romano is a co-founder of the Be Podcast Network and CEO of September Strategies, a coaching and consulting firm that helps organizations and high-performing leaders in the K-12 education industry communicate their vision and make strategic decisions that lead to long-term success. Connect on Bluesky or LinkedIn I also host Sideline Sessions, a podcast for coaches and parents of student-athletes. The show features conversations with coaches and performance experts in the NFL, NBA, NCAA, Olympics, and more. Listen here: https://bit.ly/3Rp0QGt 

When schools talk about improving engagement, student wellness, or school climate, it often turns into assemblies, themed weeks, or standalone initiatives. When schools talk about community engagement, student wellness, or school climate, they often turn into assemblies, themed weeks, or standalone initiatives. In this episode, I invited Lauren Porosoff from The Teacher Nerd to unpack why a focus on engagement and wellness must be woven into the daily fabric of the school experience to have lasting impact.Lauren is an educational consultant who helps schools design learning environments where community values like equity, empathy, and creativity emerge from the instruction itself. She was a teacher for 18 years, most recently at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York. She’s taught the 2nd, 5th, 6th, and 7th grades, mostly in English and history, and has also served as a diversity coordinator, a grade dean, and a leader of curricular initiatives. Lauren develops tools and protocols that transform the psychological experience of school for teachers and students. She’s developed applications in instructional design, social-emotional learning, professional development, and anti-bias action.In this conversation, we discuss:✅ What “compensatory programs” mean in the context of wellness, belonging, and community engagement.✅ Why one-off events and initiatives aren’t sufficient for supporting student mental health and well-being. ✅ How to embed protective factors like connection into instruction and routines.✅ The impact of technology on engagement and agency (plus a writing example)If you’re a school leader, instructional coach, or support professional who wants to strengthen student engagement and well-being in a sustainable way, this episode will help you shift from programming for students to designing systems with them across the entire day.You can learn more about Lauren’s products and services on her website at: https://www.theteachernerd.com/You can read her article on the trouble with compensatory programming here: https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/the-trouble-with-compensatory-programsGet her book, Teaching for Authentic Engagement here: https://www.ascd.org/books/teach-for-authentic-engagementConnect with her on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-porosoff-2b728b75/In this episode, I mentioned Language Therapy Advance Foundations, my program that gives speech pathologists a scalable framework for building language skills needed to thrive in school, social situations, and daily life. You can learn more about the program here: https://drkarenspeech.com/languagetherapyI also mentioned the School of Clinical Leadership, my program that helps related service providers design an executive functioning implementation plan for their school teams. You can learn more about the program here: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/clinicalleadership

In this episode, Priten speaks with Megan Barnes, a PhD student in learning technologies at the University of North Texas and a K-12 librarian with 14 years of experience, about what age-appropriate AI in education actually means. Megan holds dual roles as library director and director of educational technology for early childhood through fourth grade in Dallas, and her research draws on cognitive and affective neuroscience to evaluate how emerging tools interact with child development. The conversation moves through the real-versus-synthetic distinction that young children struggle with, the attention economy driving AI product design, information literacy as a foundation for AI literacy, and why curiosity may be the most important thing educators need to protect.Key Takeaways:Before children can use chatbots, they need a solid concept of real versus not real. Most kindergartners interact with AI through voice and animated characters, adding layers of anthropomorphization that make it nearly impossible for them to distinguish a computer from a person. Megan argues that chatbot-based AI is not developmentally appropriate at this age, and any exposure should be adult-controlled and side-by-side, consistent with American Academy of Pediatrics guidance on co-viewing media.The attention economy is becoming a relational economy—and children are the target. The same design logic that removed page numbers from Google search results is now being applied to conversational AI. If a child builds five years of chat history with a platform before adulthood, that relationship becomes a powerful lock-in mechanism. Megan also raises the concern that chat histories are now being used to drive advertising, meaning the tools students use for learning are simultaneously selling to them.AI literacy in elementary school means information literacy, not prompt engineering. Rather than teaching young students how to use AI tools directly, Megan focuses on helping them understand who generates information, who validates it, and where AI is already present in their daily lives. During morning announcements, she points out the background remover tool and tells students, "This is AI right here." The goal is building foundational skills for evaluating any new technology, not training on a specific product.Every generation of creative technology triggers the same panic—and the pattern holds. Megan draws on her background as a violinist and recording arts student. When Apple's GarageBand launched during her final semester, her synthesizer professor declared it the downfall of music. Instead, it democratized creativity. More people creating doesn't mean everything produced is good, but the tool itself is not the threat. AI follows the same arc.Curiosity doesn't need to be taught—it needs to be protected. Young children arrive with natural wonder intact. Megan distinguishes between formal classroom learning and the informal learning space of the library, where autonomy and exploration still drive engagement. The job of early education is not to instill curiosity but to give children frameworks for approaching new things with wonder while still thinking critically, so that instinct survives into adulthood.Megan E. Barnes is a librarian with over 14 years experience, as well as a Ph.D. student in Learning Technologies at the University of North Texas. Her research focuses on ethical considerations in educational technology adoption and curriculum design. She is currently a research assistant developing curriculum for edge AI and is an ed-tech leader and library director at an independent school. She believes that librarians are information professionals uniquely suited to exploring the intersection of information, technology, and pedagogy.