The podcast by education leaders for education leaders

Jenni Donohoo is the director of Praxis-Engaging Ideas, Inc and a project manager for the Council of Ontario Directors of Education (CODE). Jenni has a PhD in Educational Studies and Supervisory Officer Qualifications. Jenni is a former classroom teacher and currently works with system, school leaders, and teachers around the world to support high quality professional learning. She has authored many peer-reviewed publications and three best-selling books, including Collaborative Inquiry for Educators, The Transformative Power of Collaborative Inquiry (with Moses Velasco), and Collective Efficacy: How Educators’ Beliefs Impact Student Learning. Jenni’s areas of expertise include collective efficacy, metacognition, adolescent literacy, and facilitating collaborative learning structures.

Megan Tschannen-Moran (Ph.D., The Ohio State University) is a Professor of Educational Leadership at the William & Mary School of Education.  Inspired by her fourteen years of experience as the founder and principal of a school serving primarily low-income and minority students in a distressed neighborhood of Chicago, she is motivated to work at the intersection of theory and practice so that schools grow in their capacity to serve all students well. The coaching model presented in this book sits squarely at that intersection. Megan’s scholarly research focuses on relationships of trust in school settings and how these are related to important outcomes such as the collective efficacy beliefs of a school faculty, teacher professionalism, and student achievement.  Her book Trust Matters: Leadership for Successful Schools (2nd Ed.) (2014) reports the experience of three principals and the consequences of their successes and failures to build trust.  Another line of research explores school climate through the Vibrant School Scale that assesses the degree to which a school fosters enlivened minds, emboldened voice, and playful learning.

  Peter M. DeWitt, EdD is a former K–5 teacher (eleven years) and princi­pal (eight years). He is a school leader­ship coach who runs competency-based workshops and provides keynotes nationally and internationally, focus­ing on school leadership (collaborative cultures and instructional leadership), as well as fostering inclusive school climates.

Additionally, Peter coaches school-based leaders, directors, instructional coaches, teacher leaders, and school-based leadership teams both in per­son and remotely. In summer 2021 Peter created a yearlong on-demand asynchronous coaching course through Thinkific where he has fostered a community of learners that includes K–12 educators in leadership positions.

Peter’s work has been adopted at the state and university level, and he works with numerous school districts, school boards, regional networks, and ministries of education around North America, Australia, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the UK.

Peter writes the “Finding Common Ground” column for Education Week, which has been in circulation since 2011. In 2020 Peter co-created Education Week’s “A Seat at the Table” series, where he moderates con­versations with experts around the topics of race, gender, sexual orienta­tion, research, trauma, and many other educational topics.

Additionally, Peter is the editor for the Connected Educator series (Corwin) and the Impact series (Corwin), which include books by Viviane Robinson, Andy Hargreaves, Pasi Sahlberg, Yong Zhao, and Michael Fullan. He is the 2013 School Administrators Association of New York State’s (SAANYS) Outstanding Educator of the Year and the 2015 Education Blogger of the Year (Academy of Education Arts & Sciences), and he sits on numerous advisory boards. Peter is the author, co-author, or contributor of numerous books, including the following:

·       Dignity for All: Safeguarding LGBT Students (Corwin, 2012)

·       School Climate Change (co-authored with Sean Slade; ASCD, 2014)

·       Flipping Leadership Doesn’t Mean Reinventing the Wheel (Corwin, 2014)

·       Collaborative Leadership: Six Influences That Matter Most (Corwin/Learning Forward, 2016)

·       School Climate: Leading With Collective Teacher Efficacy (Corwin/Ontario Principals Council, 2017)

·       Coach It Further: Using the Art of Coaching to Improve School Leadership (Corwin, 2018)

·       Instructional Leadership: Creating Practice Out of Theory (Corwin, 2020)

·       10 Mindframes for Leaders: The Visible Learning Approach to School Success (edited by John Hattie and Ray Smith; Corwin, 2020)

·       Collective Leader Efficacy: Strengthening the Impact of Instructional Leadership Teams (Corwin/Learning Forward, 2021)

Peter’s articles have appeared in educational research journals at the state, national, and international level. His books have been translated into four languages.

Some of the organizations Peter has worked with are the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), Arkansas State University, EDUTAS, University of Oklahoma, Victoria Department of Education (Australia), University of Rotterdam (Netherlands), Washington Association of School Administrators (WASA), Texas Association of School Administrators (TASA), the National Education Association (NEA), New Brunswick Teacher’s Association (Canada), the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), Education Scotland (Scotland), Glasgow City Council (Scotland), Kuwait Technical College (Kuwait), the National Association of School Psychologists, ASCD, l’Association des directions et directions adjointes des écoles franco-ontariennes (ADFO), the Catholic Principals’ Council of Ontario (CPCO), the Ontario Principals’ Council (OPC), National School Climate Center, GLSEN, PBS, NPR, BAM Radio Network, ABC, and NBC’s Education Nation.