SEEing to Lead: Impact to Influence with Jed Stefanowicz

05/04/23 • 42 min

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

In this episode, we're bringing you a conversation from SEEing to Lead, hosted by Dr. Chris Jones, right here on the Be Podcast Network. As a Digital Learning Coach in Walpole, Massachusetts, Jed Stefanowicz provides job-embedded professional development and instructional coaching for academic technology. Through conferences, workshops, and coaching, Jed aims to engage and build staff/student digital learning capacity, keeping the focus on practice over product. As a 25 year elementary educator, speaker, blogger, and former Massachusetts Teach Plus Policy Fellow, Jed shares his passion for effective tech integration to transform teaching and learning, creating engaging and equitable digital learning environments and experiences that activate, innovate, and motivate digital learning. He is the author of Take AIM at Digital Learning: Activate, Innovate, Motivate and Impact to Influence. Check out his blog at [email protected]

Key Takeaways:

We need to recreate the structures to teach rather than just expecting it to happen.
Leaders are facing a blank slate as they work to stretch people past their comfort zone because people have been out of their comfort zone for the last two years.
Learning something on YouTube is going to teach you how to do it, but not understand how to apply it.
We need to find ways to create and support teacher agency.
It's essential to be aware of circumstances, surroundings, and how to apply the requisite skills to excel in a situation.
Moving people from motivation to commitment is the only way to make progress forward.
Education at any level has to go beyond a transactional experience by starting with what people are passionate about.
You can't be a coach and equipment manager at the same time.
You have to respect where people are to engage them in growth.
Leadership isn't about implementing an agenda, but instead finding what the goals of those you serve are and then helping them achieve them.
Stick to the A,B,Cs = Always Build Capacity
It's about process/project not product.

Subscribe to SEEing to Lead:

About the host:

Dr. Chris Jones has been an educator in Massachusetts for 22 years. He is currently Principal of Whitman-Hanson Regional High School in Whitman, Mass. and Vice President of the Massachusetts State Administrators Association (MSAA). Chris was named the 2022 Massachusetts School Counselors Associaltion’s (MASCA) Administrator of the Year and is a finalist for the Massachusetts School Administrators Association’s Principal of the Year award.

Reach on Twitter at @DrCSJones

Key Takeaways:

We need to recreate the structures to teach rather than just expecting it to happen.
Leaders are facing a blank slate as they work to stretch people past their comfort zone because people have been out of their comfort zone for the last two years.
Learning something on YouTube is going to teach you how to do it, but not understand how to apply it.
We need to find ways to create and support teacher agency.
It's essential to be aware of circumstances, surroundings, and how to apply the requisite skills to excel in a situation.
Moving people from motivation to commitment is the only way to make progress forward.
Education at any level has to go beyond a transactional experience by starting with what people are passionate about.
You can't be a coach and equipment manager at the same time.
You have to respect where people are to engage them in growth.
Leadership isn't about implementing an agenda, but instead finding what the goals of those you serve are and then helping them achieve them.
Stick to the A,B,Cs = Always Build Capacity
It's about process/project not product.

Subscribe to SEEing to Lead:

About the host:

Reach on Twitter at @DrCSJones

Previous Episode

Name, Claim & Reframe with Andrea Mein DeWitt The Authority Podcast 37

Andrea DeWitt joins The Authority to discuss her new book, Name, Claim & Reframe: Your Path to a Well-Lived Life, which was named the Top Motivational Book of 2023 by NBC’s Today Show.

Ross and Andrea discuss:

“This book is filled with inspiration and wisdom about how to take control of your life.” – Emily Giffin
The importance of discovering your core values
What happens when we’re triggered to react rather than respond in a heated moment?
The process behind Name, Claim, and Reframe
Overcoming the limiting beliefs we all carry inside
Becoming a Gentle Warrior
Andrea’s experience as an elementary teacher and how it still serves her work
The most surprising thing about her career

Name, Claim & Reframe is available wherever books are sold. Learn more on Andrea’s website: https://www.andreadewittadvisors.com/my-book

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

Known for her infectious energy, Andrea Mein DeWitt is an author, speaker, and life coach who teaches high-performing leaders to see and step into their authentic lives. She is the CEO of Andrea DeWitt Advisors, where she coaches heart-centered working professionals. Andrea holds an M.Ed. in Reading Leadership from the University of California, Berkeley, and is a Certified Professional Coach through The Co-Active Training Institute and The International Coaching Federation. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her husband and their beloved Labrador, Maggie. Learn more about Andrea on her company website, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

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 and beyond clarify their vision and make strategic decisions that lead to long-term success. Connect on Twitter @RossBRomano or LinkedIn.

Next Episode

Leadership for Deeper Learning with Scott McLeod The Authority Podcast 38

Scott McLeod, Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Colorado - Denver, is the guest on this episode of The Authority. His book, co-authored with Jayson W. Richardson and Justin Bathon, is Leadership for Deeper Learning. It’s published by Routledge Eye on Education.

In the interview, Scott and Ross discuss:

● The definition of “deeper learning.”

● How Scott and his co-authors interviewed leaders at 30 different deeper learning schools in 2019 and 2020.

● Do most leaders even think about being “innovative?” And if they do, how are they defining it?

● What systemic or structural factors inhibit innovation?

● Why conveying a compelling vision is critical to transformative leadership, from Walt Disney and Steve Jobs to innovative school leaders.

● How much of innovative thinking is determined by leaders’ expectations for student success?

● Do leaders need to set new expectations for teaching and learning — or, instead, do they need to avoid extinguishing the motivations and expectations teachers and students begin with?

● What do leaders at innovative schools do that’s different from their counterparts at “traditional” schools?

● Who is driving the innovation and transformation in schools?

Leadership for Deeper Learning is published by Routledge Eye on Education. Find it here: https://bit.ly/Leadership4DL

Learn more about Scott’s work on his website Dangerously Irrelevant: http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/

About today’s guest

A Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Colorado Denver, Scott McLeod, J.D., Ph.D., is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading experts on P-12 school leadership, deeper learning, technology, and innovation. He is on a mission to make students’ day-to-day learning less boring and more meaningful and relevant. He is the Founding Director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), the only university center in the U.S. dedicated to the technology needs of school administrators, and is the co-creator of the wildly popular video series, Did You Know? (Shift Happens). He also is the co-creator of the 4 Shifts Protocol for lesson/unit redesign and the founder of both the annual Iowa 1:1 Institute and EdCampIowa.

Follow Scott on Twitter @mcleod or connect on LinkedIn.

About the host

Ross Romano is a co-founder of the Be Podcast Network and CEO of September Strategies LLC, a 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