The Authority Podcast — Expert Insights and Fresh Ideas for Education Leaders

Welcome to our National Literacy Month series of podcasts, presented in partnership between the Be Podcast Network and Reading Is Fundamental.

In this episode, you’ll hear my conversation with Jennifer McCarty Plucker, who has spent more than 20 years in public education as an English teacher, reading specialist, speech coach, teaching and learning specialist, and district administrator. Her doctoral research focused on student engagement and motivation in literacy.

Jennifer’s book, Inspiring Lifelong Readers: Using Inquiry to Engage Learners in Grades 6–12, was a Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award winner.

We discuss:

• Setting the goal to create competent, confident, engaged readers
• The factors for engagement
• How the inquiry approach works
• How building a community of readers, writers, thinkers, and collaborators benefits student learning and achievement
• Arguing for the inclusion of rich, diverse texts and challenging the idea of assigned reading
• Physical and social-emotional environments that create ideal conditions for literacy engagement
• One technique schools should try more

Find Inspiring Lifelong Readers from Solution Tree or wherever you get your books. Learn more at www.jenniferplucker.com.

Visit https://bepodcast.network to learn about all our shows.

Learn more about Reading Is Fundamental at www.rif.org

About today’s guest

Jennifer McCarty Plucker, EdD, is the director of learning and development and a literacy consultant at Mackin Educational Resources in Burnsville, Minnesota. She has spent more than twenty years in public education as an English teacher, reading specialist, speech coach, teaching and learning specialist, and district administrator. Her doctoral research focused on student engagement and motivation in literacy.

About the host

Ross 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 Twitter @RossBRomano or LinkedIn

Mandy Froehlich is an experienced Director of Innovation and Technology, technology integrator, and teacher. She’s the author of a number of books, including Reignite the Flames, published by EduMatch.

Mandy and Ross talk about:

● Finding our passion and purpose for learning among the embers

● What makes educators predisposed to burnout?

● Giving ourselves forgiveness for the burnout

● What trauma (secondary traumatic stress) and demoralization look like in schools

● How administrators can contribute to engagement and re-engagement

● Proactive culture-building

● Overlooked types of self-care

Find Reignite the Flames and Mandy’s other books at https://www.mandyfroehlich.com and https://www.edumatch.org

Subscribe to The Authority to get more deep-dive interviews with education authors. It’s available wherever you get your podcasts.

Visit https://bepodcast.network to learn more about the Be Podcast Network for educators.

About today’s guest

Mandy Froehlich passionately encourages educators to create innovative change in their classrooms. An experienced Director of Innovation and Technology, technology integrator, and teacher, she has experience at many levels of the organizational structure. Her interest lies in reinvigorating and re-engaging teachers back into their profession, as well as what’s needed to support teachers in their pursuit of innovative and divergent thinking and teaching. She consults internationally with school districts and post-secondary institutions in the effective use of technology to support great teaching, mental health support for educators, and how to create organizational change. Her first book, The Fire Within: Lessons from defeat that have ignited a passion for learning, and discusses mental health awareness for teachers. Her second book, Divergent EDU, is based on an organizational structure she developed to support teachers in innovative and divergent thinking. Her third book, based on educator engagement and mental health, is titled Reignite the Flames which has a recently released companion guide/workbook titled The Educator’s Matchbook.

Learn more about her work: www.mandyfroehlich.com, https://twitter.com/froehlichm

About the host

Ross 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 Twitter @RossBRomano or LinkedIn

Welcome to Best of The Authority! Thanks to wonderful listeners like you, this Be Podcast Network original series is growing and growing and still going strong. In case you haven’t been with us since the beginning, the “Best Of” is designed to catch you up on some of the best and most popular episodes you may have missed. We’ll republish a previous episode of the show on Thursdays this fall for those who haven’t heard it before — or those who want to revisit.

In this episode, Ross speaks with international best-selling author and business leader Mark Miller. At the time of the interview, Mark was Vice President of High Performance Leadership for Chick-Fil-A. He first started at the company as an hourly team member in 1977 and has served in numerous roles along the way. He recently retired from the company and co-founded Lead Every Day.

Culture Rules: The Leader's Guide to Creating the Ultimate Competitive Advantage is Mark’s 11th book. The book became a Wall Street Journal best seller. Mark currently has over one million books in print in more than twenty-five languages.

Ross and Mark discussed:

• 71% of U.S. leaders believe culture is their #1 most powerful tool to drive performance, but enhancing culture ranks low on their priority list — why the gap?
• First move: decide and declare what you're trying to create. Culture needs to be explicit.
• Leaders animate culture — this is the big idea of the book
• The 3 Culture Rules: Aspire, Amplify, Adapt
• What does culture mean to your customers?
• Adapt, not react — how to adapt and what the current in-person vs. remote debate tells us.
• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wanted to shift the company from being “know-it-alls” to “learn-it-alls” — what did Mark learn while working on the book?
• The “magic circle” of game design and how it explains culture.
• What Mark learned about innovation and purpose.
• Measuring culture

Culture Rules is available here: https://www.leadeveryday.com

Subscribe to The Authority to get more deep-dive interviews with education authors. It’s available wherever you get your podcasts. Visit https://bepodcast.network to learn more about the Be Podcast Network for educators.

About our guest

Mark Miller is a business leader, best-selling author, and communicator. Mark started his Chick-fil-A career working as an hourly team member in 1977 and rose through the ranks to become Vice President of High Performance Leadership.

He began writing almost twenty years ago, and with over one million books in print in more than twenty-five languages, Mark’s global impact continues to grow. In addition to his writing, Mark enjoys encouraging and equipping leaders. Over the years, he’s traveled to dozens of countries teaching for numerous international organizations.

Married to Donna, his high school sweetheart of forty years, they have two sons, Justin and David, a daughter-in-law Lindsay, and three amazing grandchildren Addie, Logan, and Finn. Connect with Mark:

● https://www.linkedin.com/in/highperformanceleaders/

● https://twitter.com/MarkMillerLeads

About the host

Ross Romano is a co-founder of the Be Podcast Network and CEO of September Strategies, a consulting and coaching 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 Twitter @RossBRomano or LinkedIn.

Are you a professional looking for insights to reach the next level, find a fulfilling new career, or achieve peak performance? You may be a candidate for performance coaching. Schedule an introductory chat here.

Patrice Bain is a veteran K–12 educator, speaker, and author.

As a finalist for Illinois Teacher of the Year and a Fulbright Scholar in Europe, she has been featured in national and international podcasts, webinars, presentations, and popular press, including NOVA and Scientific American.

Patrice is co-author of Powerful Teaching and author of A Parent’s Guide to Powerful Teaching, which reinforces the “Teaching Triangle'' of student, parent, and teacher collaboration.

In this episode, Patrice and Ross talk about:

• The traditional state of the Teaching Triangle
• How kids learn
• Why it’s important for parents to know how kids learn
• The “power tools”: retrieval, spacing, interleaving, and feedback-driven metacognition
• Daniel Willingham: “Children are more alike than different in terms of how they think and learn.”
• What are some of the other critical things for educators to communicate to parents?
• How educators can become better at creating parent engagement
• Book recommendation: Initium by Emma Turner

A Parent’s Guide to Powerful Teaching is published by John Catt Educational. Learn more at https://www.patricebain.com.

Subscribe to The Authority to get more deep-dive interviews with education authors. It’s available wherever you get your podcasts.

Visit https://bepodcast.network to learn more about the Be Podcast Network for educators.

About today’s guest

Patrice M. Bain, Ed.S., is a veteran K–12 educator, speaker, and author. As a finalist for Illinois Teacher of the Year and a Fulbright Scholar in Europe, she has been featured in national and international podcasts, webinars, presentations, and popular press, including NOVA and Scientific American. In addition to Powerful Teaching, she also co-authored an essential practice guide for educators: Organizing Instruction and Study to Improve Student Learning, in collaboration with the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). Bain’s latest book A Parent’s Guide to Powerful Teaching reinforces the “Teaching Triangle'' of student, parent, and teacher collaboration. Patrice was one of two U.S. teachers on the working task group: Neuromyths vs. Neurotruths, sponsored by (IES) and the National Commission of Educational Research (NCER). In addition, she was a contributor to the United Nation’s UNESCO ISEE (International Science and Evidence-based Education) Assessment, outlining the vision for world education by 2030.

Connect with Patrice at https://www.patricebain.com and @patricebain1.

About the host

Ross 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 Twitter @RossBRomano or LinkedIn

In this episode, we discuss innovations with the exciting potential to shape an all-new future of education.

My guests are Nolan Bushnell — the “father of electronic gaming” who has founded 20+ companies, including Atari and Chuck E. Cheese’s — and Dr. Leah Hanes, CEO of the Two Bit Circus Foundation.

Nolan and Leah are currently working together on the gamified education company ExoDexa and have co-authored the book Shaping the Future of Education: The ExoDexa Manifesto, an Amazon best seller.

Topics we cover:

• How Nolan got interested in tackling education
• Steve Jobs: “What if you’re in a room and everybody thinks you’re wrong, but you think you’re right and you’ve thought more deeply about it than anybody?”
• The biggest solvable problems Leah and Nolan are focusing on
• The vision and goals of the school of the future
• What it really means to be designed around students first
• Artificial intelligence (AI) and why we should embrace it
• Entrepreneurship in the classroom
• “Competing” with video games vs. leaning into their organic ability to support learning
• Challenges and opportunities of using video games in the classroom
• “Games should be easy to learn but difficult to master.” Are schools focusing on mastery?
• What are the critics saying?
• The St. Crispin’s Day Speech and the “band of brothers”

Shaping the Future of Education is available on Amazon. Learn more at https://www.exodexa.com.

Subscribe to The Authority to get more deep-dive interviews with education authors. It’s available wherever you get your podcasts.

Visit https://bepodcast.network to learn more about the Be Podcast Network.

About today’s guests

In 1972, Nolan Bushnell created an industry when he founded Atari and gave the world Pong, the first blockbuster video game. Today his design credo―that games should be “easy to learn and difficult to master”―is inspiring a new generation of developers. A prolific entrepreneur, Bushnell has started more than 20 companies, including Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theater; Catalyst Technologies, the first Silicon Valley incubator; and Etak, the first in-car navigation system. Bushnell was the first and only person ever to hire Steve Jobs, which he details in his 2013 book, Finding the Next Steve Jobs.

He is chairman of ExoDexa, a gamified education company; CKO of Moxy, a “play to earn” game and token platform; and an advisor to companies in the gaming and eSports spaces. He was named one of “50 People Who Changed America” by Newsweek. A biopic about Bushnell, tentatively titled “Atari,” was acquired by Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company and is in pre-production.

Leah Hanes, PhD, is CEO of the Two Bit Circus Foundation (2BCF). During her tenure, 2BCF has developed a strong voice in the current STEAM education discourse. Bringing potent creative play allies like T4T.org, STEAM Carnival, Imagination.org, and LA Makerspace under the 2BCF big top helped increase both reach and impact in education.

Prior to joining 2BCF, Dr. Hanes held a variety of positions focused on children and education. Most recently, she taught courses on adult developmental theory and ethics at Antioch University Los Angeles. Her PhD included a study of ethical decision-making and gender at Antioch University’s Graduate School of Leadership and Change.

About the host

Ross 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 Twitter @RossBRomano or LinkedIn.

Are you a professional looking for insights to reach the next level, find a fulfilling new career, or achieve peak performance? You may be a candidate for performance coaching. Schedule an introductory chat here.