The Principal's Desk Podcast

AI is here to stay. Educators have the opportunity to either embrace this new frontier or to be fearful of it. In this episode, Dr. Sarah Levy discusses how to have conversations around AI in schools as well as how its use can help to create a culture of inquiry and experimentation.

In this episode, we learn about the importance of teaching executive functions and learning to address the varied needs of students who often get identified as lazy, unmotivated, or defiant, when in reality, they simply don't know how to do what we expect them to do.

Candace Heiken, M.Ed. combined her background in education and psychology with her passion for empowering students and founded Lively Minds Institute, an organization with a mission to cultivate independent, lifelong learners through the development of executive function skills.  Lively Minds developed Cerebrate, an executive function solution that provides educators with a simple way to identify deficiencies based on observable classroom behaviors and then access lessons to teach the strategies needed. Candace leads a team of talented educators who utilize Cerebrate to advance their mission with school administrators, teachers, parents, and students across the country.  With over 25 years in education, Candace is driven to affect lasting and impactful change by helping students see what they can achieve when they have the executive function skills necessary for learning success.

This week, we sit down with Mrs. Brianne Hudak, M. Ed., a sixteen-year veteran of education serving in public, private, and charter schools. She is a passionate advocate for the gifted, a certified gifted and talented educator, and supports gifted education through her professional memberships in the National Association of Gifted Children (NAGC), the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children (WCGTC), the North Carolina Association of the Gifted and Talented (NCAGT), and the Social-Emotional Needs of the Gifted (SENG) serving as a state liaison.

In this episode, Brianne will walk us through how to define the term gifted and talented and how to accurately identify these learners. Then, she will go deeper and discuss how to unlock their genius by identifying twice-exceptional students and combating underachievement. Finally, she will guide us in using appropriate skills, tools, and resources to help gifted individuals reach their full potential.

Resources:

Websites:

• The National Association of Gifted Children (NAGC)- plethora of content, books, articles, resources, links and publications on gifted learners and gifted education 
• Social-Emotional Needs of the Gifted (SENG)- variety of materials focused on gifted individuals' social-emotional learning and development
• Hoagies' Gifted Education Page- educational resources, support, and links for both educators and families
• The Davidson Institute- shares scholarships, resources, and offers an insightful gifted community
• State and local gifted associations/organizations

• Dr. Joseph Renzulli- The Three-Ring Conception of Giftedness (Explains how giftedness is developed)
• Dr. Sally Reis- The Schoolwide Enrichment Model (Explains how to set up effective learning environments and programming for the gifted and talented)
• Dr. Joyce Van Tassel-Baska provides content, curriculum, and best practices for gifted learners

Gifted Research:Easy-Read Book:

• Genius Denied: How to Stop Wasting Our Brightest Young Minds by Jan and Bob Davidson

Professional Development:

In this episode, Brian Miller, principal, writer, speaker, and podcaster, talks about renewing our educational vows in order to do great things. As educators, there are times that we all need to remember why we chose this profession, what is truly important, and how to be and additive to the education experience of our students and the work environment of our collegues.

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Bunnie Claxton, Director of Applied Doctoral Research at Liberty University. Students are bombarded with ideas and arguments that they neglect to stop and analyze because the information is disguised and oftentimes deceitful. The result is that students believe false ideas they find on social media which may be hurtful to themselves and others. Dr. Claxton takes us through the five Rs of critical thinking: Receive, Research, Restructure Thinking, Respond, and Reflect. The use of these 5 Rs will help students learn to think critically to discern truth for themselves.

Dr. Bunnie L. Claxton, is the Director of Applied Doctoral Research at Liberty University and an associate professor at Colorado Christian University and Liberty University. She has 30 years of experience in the field of education, including public, private, homeschool, and higher education. She has developed multiple graduate-level courses, Chaired dissertations, served as a Research Methodologist, Subject Matter Expert, and Instructional Mentor to professors. Dr. Claxton served as the Superintendent of Liberty University Online Academy; an online K-12 school with over 18,000 students. She is the author of 12 textbooks including those from the Step-By-Step series.

Check out Dr. Claxton's published books here: 

This week, we had the opportunity to sit down with Monte' Demars. At the age of 17 years old, Monte’ discovered his passion for purpose as an educator and worked his way from a substitute teacher, school bus driver, paraprofessional, teacher, mentor teacher, assistant principal, and principal. His inspirational story of walking through the ranks and “becoming” is rare. Demars understands the struggle of persistently reaching for a goal and never stopping until the dream becomes a reality, regardless of setbacks.

In this episode, we get to hear from Andrea Bitner who is an is an educator, author, and speaker.  She lives in Philadelphia, PA. She has worked with students in grades K-12 throughout her twenty-two years in public education from all around the world.   Her first book, “Take Me Home,” was published by Austin Macauley in July of 2021. "Take Me Home" is the true story of 11 of her former EL students who give a first-hand account of what it's really like to become bilingual in America.  She is also a co-author of Chip Baker’s “The Impact of Influence-Volume 3 and Dr. Rick Jetter’s 100 No-Nonsense Things ALL School Leaders Shout STOP Doing.”  She travels the country speaking and teaching educators how to teach and reach EL students, and effectively communicate with EL families! 

The Five Strategies:

1.  All EL students are not the same

2. Lack of language never equals lack of intelligence

3. There are 10 essential questions you should ask when you receive an English language learner in your class

4. There are many resources out there that you can use to immediately communicate with your EL families.

5. It takes a village to raise a student and there are many ways that we can be connecting EL students building-wide, district-wide, and county-wide.