Ep #211: The Balance of AND

The Empowered Principal Podcast with Angela Kelly | The Balance of AND

Do you believe you can have a great life and a great career? What about making lots of money and being an amazing educator? What do you think you have to give up to achieve the next thing you want?

Our human brains love to live in the world of all-or-none, telling us we simply can’t have it all. This thinking is constantly reinforced throughout our lifetimes, so of course, we come to believe life is an all-or-none game. But I’m here this week to show you that you can have things that seem to contradict each other by leaning into the balance of AND.

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Ep #210: Do Not Fear Numbers

The Empowered Principal Podcast with Angela Kelly | Do Not Fear Numbers

Throughout January, we’re going to cover four concepts that will help you reboot your brain and connect to the goals you want to achieve as a school leader as well as outside of school. And to kick off, I’m introducing you to a philosophy I teach and live by all about not fearing numbers. 

When it comes to school goals, so many of them are driven by numbers. Turn your mind to test scores, student attendance, behavior referrals… the list goes on. But there are also other goals that feel less measurable, like school climate, parent satisfaction, and leadership impact. And setting numbers as a measure of progress here can feel scary.

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Ep #209: Goodbye 2021, Hello 2022

The Empowered Principal Podcast with Angela Kelly | Goodbye 2021, Hello 2022

It’s the end of the year, and it’s been a long one. In so many ways, it was amazing. But in so many other ways, it was incredibly challenging. So, you’re in the middle of a break right now, and I think this is the perfect time to reflect on the past year and start looking ahead.

In today’s episode, we’re closing out 2021 and welcoming in 2022. You’re going to review everything you enjoyed, everything that challenged you, and by the end, you’ll be able to look back with a newfound appreciation for one of the most difficult years in history and look forward with anticipation and excitement.

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Holiday Bonus: When Someone Bugs You

The Empowered Principal Podcast with Angela Kelly | Holiday Bonus: When Someone Bugs You

As a gift to all of you listeners, I have decided to drop an extra holiday bonus special to help you through the festive season. If you know you’re going to have to deal with someone who bugs you this holiday season, you’re in the right place.

This time of year can be highly stressful and we have to deal with a lot of people, and we all know someone who gets on our nerves. So whether it’s somebody at work or someone in your personal life, this episode is all about how to deal with that one person who triggers you, and how you can choose to react when they bug you.

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Ep #208: Take a Real Break

The Empowered Principal Podcast with Angela Kelly | Take a Real Break

How much do you actually enjoy your holiday break? One of the questions I love to ask myself is, what would feel like a miracle for my school leaders this month? Well, I believe that my work in this area is showing you how to actually not work over the Christmas and New Year period and instead take a real break.

If you know you’re going to struggle to make it through the holiday break without feeling the itch to do some work, this episode is for you. I’m walking you through how I personally developed a way for me to get my work done before a break and decide what a real break looks like for me, so I can fully enjoy and be present during my time off.

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Ep #207: Creating Balance

The Empowered Principal Podcast with Angela Kelly | Creating Balance

What is balance? This is such an important question. We’ve all said before, “I wish I had more work-life balance.” And typically, what people are thinking about when they say this is the way that they’re spending their time. They want to spend less time working and more time engaging in their lives outside of work.

Often, it feels like we’re spending our entire time working and not enough time doing what makes us feel happy and rejuvenated, and that is imbalanced. We want to think of it as a mathematical equation. But the truth is, balance is something that we feel. And even if you spend equal time working and playing, that feeling of balance isn’t guaranteed.

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Ep #206: Staff Meetings

The Empowered Principal Podcast with Angela Kelly | Staff Meetings

How often do you leave your staff meetings feeling like they were completely unproductive? My clients come to me perplexed about how to get their teachers on the same page when it comes to a staff meeting agenda, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this quandary play out. 

You might feel like you and your teachers just don’t have the same goals at a staff meeting. What you want to accomplish and what they want sometimes aren’t aligned. They might want to hash out nuts and bolts, or have questions they need answering, and the desire to find the balance here can often lead to everyone walking away with nothing, tired after a long day of work.

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Ep #205: Leading Through an Emotional Tsunami

The Empowered Principal Podcast with Angela Kelly | Leading Through an Emotional Tsunami

I hope you all had a fun break from school over Thanksgiving. But today, we’re talking about something that’s not fun: the emotional tsunami that we are experiencing in schools. Last week was all about building up your emotional resiliency so you can lead others, and today we’re discussing how you can apply this work to help your students and staff through their emotional experience.

I’m seeing some definite trends around how teachers and students are showing up at the moment, what the principals are going through, and how all of this has impacted education as a whole. And now is the time to regroup because this job is not going to get any easier on its own.

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Ep #204: Culture of Resilience

The Empowered Principal Podcast with Angela Kelly | Culture of Resilience

Right now, many teachers are reporting to me that they’re worried about their teachers. They’re seeing low morale and toxic behavior. Now, the problem here isn’t necessarily your staff. The truth is, your staff are tired, fatigued from change, and their resilience is at an all-time low. So, what can you do about it as their leader?

Your teachers are feeling the burn, and they’re seeking out others who feel it too in the search of validation, and they’re feeding off that negativity. They’re looking to you for a solution. Now, the choice is yours. You can either meet them with the same frustration, or you can show them some compassion and understanding, and ultimately help build a culture of resilience during these difficult times.

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Ep #203: Data Meetings

The Empowered Principal Podcast with Angela Kelly | Data Meetings

I recently had a phone call with one of my clients, and the conversation we had was so insightful and relevant for this time of year, so I knew I had to bring the topic to the podcast. So, this week, we’re discussing planning data meetings.

Many of you school leaders have decided to meet with your grade levels or individual teachers to have conversations around student data. This is what my client needed help with. I helped her plan her data meetings, and I’m sharing that process with all of you because, when you can predetermine the outcome that you want to create from these meetings, you’ll feel so much more at ease around them.

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