The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | Clear Intentional Decisions

This week, I’m diving into a powerful but deceptively sneaky thought most school leaders carry around with them every single day, and it’s this: “I want to make the right decision.”

Wanting to make the ‘right’ decision is a thought we hold very tightly onto, and it drives our actions in unhelpful ways that you might not see right now. It’s no surprise that believing you have to make the ‘right’ decision is leaving you frozen. So if you find yourself spinning in indecision, procrastinating, and worrying about whether or not you’re making the right decision, this episode is for you.

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The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | Substitute Teacher Support: Key Insights for Principals with Megan Conklin

We often overlook the valuable contributions of substitute teachers, who serve as essential members of our staff. As principals, we are so busy running around that we may not emphasize the importance of nurturing and cultivating our substitute teachers enough. While everyone assumes substitutes are being looked after, they don’t receive the acknowledgment and support they deserve.

To discuss the importance of nurturing and cultivating our substitutes, I am excited to welcome Megan Conklin to the show. Megan received her master’s in teaching in 2001 and has been working as a teacher, an instructional specialist, and a substitute ever since. Megan participated in the creation of sub-communities to offer support to substitutes, and she’s here to give tips on how principals can contribute to creating a more welcoming environment for substitutes.

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The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | Leveraging District Walkthroughs

What is your experience of district walkthroughs as a site leader? Whether you’ve had the more formal district walkthrough experience with clipboards and documents offering feedback, or you’ve experienced more casual interactions where it’s up to you to interpret and decipher the feedback, they often get our teachers extremely worked up.

The experience I’m hearing from my clients all over the country is that their teachers stress, worry, and freak out about district walkthroughs. There are several reasons most teachers dread this experience, which I’m diving into on this episode. However, as a site leader, you have the opportunity to leverage district walkthroughs to create empowerment, and I’m here to show you how.

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The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | The Key to Thriving Schools with Jessica Sinarski

How can we make brain science accessible and entertaining to children and adults alike? What does it mean to break down what’s going on inside of our brains into child speak? And how can we translate our understanding of neuroscience into action steps that ultimately lead to healthier, more robust, thriving school communities? 

While our understanding of neuroscience has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years, learning how to apply it in our daily lives is a whole other ballgame, and my guest today is here to fill the gap. Jessica Sinarski is an author, speaker, and specialist in brain development whose superpower lies in connecting with kids at the brain level, and she’s here to talk all things neuroscience and emotional literacy.

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The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | Mid-Year Reboot: Overcoming Obstacles

Do you consider it a problem when you’re on a learning curve and feel like a novice at something? What if I told you it’s incredibly valuable to be in this zone, and that the obstacles you’re facing aren’t there to punish you but exist to condition and strengthen you?

Obstacles are part and parcel of your desire to create impact, have influence, and contribute to the world in bigger and bolder ways as a school leader. You’re likely facing obstacles you could only dream of at one point in your career, and now, they’re a reality. Obstacles are a key part of the dream-come-true experience, but what’s preventing you from seeing this are your objections.

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The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | Mid Year Reboot: Generating Momentum

Welcome to the third session of The Mid-Year Reboot for School Leaders! This is my favorite session of the entire class because we’re diving into the topic of generating momentum and how it’s a key element of the goal-setting process as a school leader. 

If you believe that pain and suffering are necessary components of setting and achieving goals, you are not alone. We grind our way to the finish line, wondering why we don’t feel fulfilled when we hit our goals, and what you may not realize is how you’re energetically dropping momentum along the way when you perceive the achievement of the goal as the ultimate prize.

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The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | Mid Year Reboot: Creating Alignment

This week, you’re hearing a clip from our second session of the Mid-Year Reboot that was centered around creating alignment. Alignment is the lens through which you make all of your decisions, and if your current school leadership experience looks like overexerting, overworking, and over-scheduling yourself, listen in.

Most school leaders are so focused on taking action and the “doing” aspect of their jobs that they don’t spend enough time cultivating the belief that the leadership experience they want is possible. If you’re craving a balanced approach to school leadership that leans more on ease, flow, and connection instead of coercion, manipulation, and force—you must first create alignment and I’m showing you how.

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The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | Mid-Year Reboot: Deepening AwarenessWhile January is a fresh start for those following the calendar year, it marks the mid-point of the school year for educators. This is the perfect time to check in with yourself and to feel delighted in your work for the rest of the year, instead of pushing yourself to the finish line.

To help, I’m inviting you to my upcoming training series called the Mid-Year Reboot. I ran this training throughout December, but I wanted to offer it to those of you this January who were busy during the Holidays and taking a break from school leadership conversations.

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The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | Executive Function Strategies for Leaders, Teachers, and Students with Candace Heiken

You could probably think of one student right now who seems to demonstrate lazy or defiant classroom behavior. Maybe they just can’t get started on a simple worksheet, can’t get their desk organized, or turn in their homework on time. What’s going on here? And what does executive functioning have to do with it?

To illuminate what’s really going on behind challenging classroom behaviors, this week, I’m speaking to Candace Heiken: the founder of Lively Minds Institute and Cerebrate. With over 25 years in education, Candace is on a mission to cultivate independent, life-long learners through the development of executive function skills, and she’s here to share why prioritizing executive function instruction leads to an all-round win for everyone in your school community.

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The Empowered Principal® Podcast Angela Kelly | Coaching Up

I recently had a conversation with a client who was feeling out of alignment with her district leadership’s decisions and actions. This is a common experience for many school leaders, where you’re given instructions that don’t sit right with you, you feel disagreement and frustration percolating, and you don’t understand their thought process.

Coaching up is a tool that will help you navigate difficult conversations with anyone who has positional authority over you. If you want to advocate for your school community while reducing conflict with your superiors at the same time, coaching up is the secret to igniting awareness and getting everyone on the same page.

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