Category: K12Leaders Announcement

  • SEL Teacher Training

    SEL Teacher Training

    SEL teacher training is a game-changer for educators. It’s not just about teaching students SEL skills, it’s about empowering teachers to model and integrate these skills into their classrooms day in and day out. This can mean encouraging students with confidence-building activities or supporting their career dreams with skill-building exercises.

    To help you with this goal, I have created a free micro-course containing immediately applicable teacher and student resources taken from the Teaching Leader’s Guide and the Student Success Planning Program.

    Visit the SEL Teacher Training Pathway to get these Free Resources

    8 Habits of Highly Effective Teaching Leaders (For Teachers)

    Every teacher has their own unique style, but the most successful Teaching Leaders have certain things in common. The good news is, that great teaching doesn’t come down to charm, charisma, or magic. Rather, each of the 8 Habits represents actions any educator can take and attitudes anyone can adopt.

    As you read through the 8 Habits, consider what practical steps you can take right now to ensure you’re the best teacher you can be. Many of the tips and techniques covered in this section were adapted from Teaching as Leadership by Steven Farr (Jossey-Bass, 2010), and based on principles effectively utilized in the renowned America program.

    Not Giving Ourselves Enough Credit (For Students)


    For many of us, it’s easier to name the areas where we feel we’re lacking than the areas in which we excel. This is largely due to the fact that we don’t give ourselves credit for things that we have actually accomplished.

    It’s easy to dismiss things that come naturally, things we enjoy, or things we simply do without question. The fact is though, whether we realize it or not, these things did take work. Until we acknowledge that, we cheat ourselves out of some much deserved, and needed, credit.

    Whatever our life circumstances have been, with a close review, we will undoubtedly find ample evidence of our strengths. Of course, we also have strengths and abilities that have thus far gone undiscovered or untapped. We may have lacked the opportunity or the confidence to pursue a particular interest, but doing so now might reveal a great skill and source of enjoyment.

    It is equally important that we recognize and appreciate all those things that we have going for us right now. One of the best ways to do this is to begin noticing the times we feel good about ourselves and about life in general, as this is where we express the best of who we are.

    Preparing for the Interview (For Students)

    The interview is one of the most important parts of the job search and your chance to demonstrate the best of what you have to offer. If you’ve gotten an interview then you’re past the screening stage and may have beaten out hundreds of other candidates to get there. This is your opportunity to let the employer know the value you can bring to their organization. But how?

    The interview process can seem like a big mystery – even a scary one, but we’ve taken all the guesswork out with comprehensive materials, exercises, and resources to help you build your interviewing skills and put you in the driver’s seat of your next interview.

    In this section, we look at preparation. We discuss how to confidently approach an interview, reduce nervousness, and learn all you can about your potential employer.

    Next, we give you tips and techniques for answering interview questions and asking your own. By the time you finish this section, you’ll have a clear understanding of how to sound professional in an interview.

    Remember, a successful interview puts you one BIG step closer to your next job. So make the most of this opportunity to improve your skills and ace your next interview!

    Wrap-Up

    Teachers will find that an SEL-competent classroom will mean the difference between an average school day and a truly successful school day. You’ll find that SEL teacher training is critically important for student success on all levels.

    Visit the SEL Teacher Training Pathway to get these Free Resources

     

  • Greetings from Setser Group

    Greetings from Setser Group

    Who is Setser Group? We’re glad you asked!

    Setser Group is a wayfinder for educational and workforce leaders. Bryan Setser, our founder and CEO, pioneered the “Wayfinder Way,” a philosophy that champions the integration of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging with technological advancements to foster environments where everyone can thrive and innovate, particularly within the educational and workforce sectors​​. Leveraging technology as a tool for equitable futures, we adopt a human-centric approach, viewing AI and other advancements as means to amplify human potential rather than replace it. Through empathetic leadership and a belief in the power of continuous learning and adaptability, Setser Group prepares educational and professional communities for the evolving challenges of the modern world, all while maintaining a deep commitment to improving societal outcomes through education and innovation. We champion a shift from traditional models to dynamic, 90-day cycles, promoting rapid innovation and measurable progress. Periodic diagnostics are always better than year-end autopsies.

    Setser Group is dedicated to preparing communities for the challenges ahead, always with an unwavering dedication to social betterment through education and innovation. We hope you give us a follow!

  • June Updates from K12Leaders

    June Updates from K12Leaders

    K12Leaders is growing in membership as well as capacity.  We have some exciting new features we’d love to share with you!

    Ambassador Program.  Are you already a raging fan of K12Leaders? We’d like to reward you with swag and other rewards. A new contest will be coming up soon!! Be sure to check out co-founder Carl Hooker’s article here .

    Banner for K12Leaders Ambassador program.

    Real-time Video and Chat- We’re all familiar with the mainstream platforms, and we’ve all relied on those for years. What’s been missing, though, is a way to “keep the conversation going” after the video conference ends. Any text chat are lost when the meeting ends.

    We’ve solved that by creating a persistent chat within your Groups and Communities that will maintain the text, inks, and media that you may have shared during your video conversation even AFTER the video ends.  So tomorrow or next week you can come back and pickup right where you left off!!!

    Want more than one conversation thread? No problem! Go ahead and create a “Child Group” to house that as well!

    Here’s a quick video intro, and we’ll be scheduling some regular “water cooler” meetups here too to help you get familiar with how it all works.


    – Better Event Management for educators, coaches, consultants, and our solution partners. This gives you:

    – Formatting control over event details

    – Ability to include an event image

    – Assign an event to a Community you organize so it appears in your group’s Event menu, and keeps it private from the global calendar.

    – Control over your event locations… Choose an existing venue (New Orleans Convention Center) or add your own, or assign an online destination like Zoom, or your own chat room.

    This new process also makes it MUCH easier for our team to review and publish your event to the calendar.


    “Subscribe” to Group Updates .  Groups on K12Leaders are buzzing – don’t miss a post or a reply when you use the new Subscribe feature!

    A group homepage with an arrow pointing to the bell symbol with a reminder to click on the bell to subscribe to updates.


    Course Builder Launched.   Are you or your organization looking to host an online course? We now have the tools you’ll need!  Feel free to check out the courses we are already offering as well here!.


    Mobile App Changes .  We have updated our K12Leaders app to look and respond much like the website.  Be sure to discard the pilot app and then download this new, more responsive one!

    Then, invite a friend to download the app and join you on K12Leaders!


    Hashtags .  Have you noticed the trending hashtags on the K12Leaders’ home page? You can add hashtags to your posts to gain more visibility and interaction.


    New, improved searching capabilities !

    We have designed a comprehensive search engine within the K12Leaders site. When you search, you will see results for people, articles, posts and more! Give it a try and see what you can find!!

     So as you can see, we have many new features on the site, with more soon to come. Feel free to reach out if you have suggestions or feedback. We value the ideas of our members!!

  • K12Leaders and My eCoach Announce Acquisition

    K12Leaders and My eCoach Announce Acquisition

    K12 pioneer, My eCoach, to merge with K12Leaders creating the largest community and professional development platform for K12 educators, staff, and administrators.

    Andover, MA— January 23rd, 2023 Barbara Bray, Owner/Founder of My eCoach and Michael Bronder, CEO of K12Leaders, today announced the acquisition and merger of  My eCoach into K12Leaders (https://K12leaders.com) for undisclosed terms. This agreement expands K12Leaders’ active membership and creates new opportunities for collaboration, networking, and career development for the long-time users of My eCoach.

    My eCoach was founded in 2001 by digital pioneer Barbara Bray who built the platform to provide a safe and secure online environment that would provide educators with the tools they needed to improve their instruction, leadership potential, and careers. With that platform, she and her team created coaching and mentoring strategies that were adopted by thousands of schools, 犀利士 districts, and educators world-wide. Bray will continue to support her mission through the K12Leaders platform.

    K12Leaders was launched in the summer of 2022 by a team of educators with a similar mission… to create a safe online environment for educators, staff, and administrators to collaborate on strategies to improve education. That includes platforms for social networking, career advancement, and professional learning & certifications.

    Together, these platforms create a comprehensive suite of tools and a team of experienced educational leaders to better serve the professionals who serve K12 education.

    “We’ve known that K12 educators have a hard relationship with social media,” said Bronder. “Our team of educators created K12Leaders as a space where teachers, staff, and administrators can find the tools they need to network and collaborate, while avoiding the downsides of some of the more well-known platforms.  Barbara has been on a similar mission throughout her career and has created so many opportunities for coaches and mentors to collaborate and share resources. Working together we’ll be able to advance our shared missions that much better!”

    “The My eCoach team searched for an online coaching platform to help educators improve their practice,” said Bray. “There was nothing available at that time, so we created My eCoach as a safe place where educators could network, learn, create, and share online. When I realized that K12Leaders was on a similar mission as My eCoach, I saw the benefits of merging our tools and content into their platform. I’m excited to work together to provide My eCoach members a new platform that allows educators to connect, collaborate, create, and curate in innovative ways.”

    ###

    K12Leaders (https://K12leaders.com) is a social media platform designed exclusively to serve K12 education.  K12Leaders differs from more well-known social media sites by specifically supporting the needs of K12 educators, staff, and administrators. That includes career management tools, mentoring and coaching opportunities, event management, and professional networking. Learn more and teach better at K12leaders.com!

    For more information contact:

    Carl Hooker

    press@k12leaders.com

  • Learning Loss and the Blame Game

    Learning Loss and the Blame Game

    I like The 74 and read their updates most mornings… Todays’ piece on 40,000 LA high school students being off track falls into a common trap as it outlines a number of distressing facts that we’ve heard or anticipated for this past year… (https://www.the74million.org/article/report-learning-loss-data-shows-40000-los-angeles-high-school-students-off-track-to-graduate)

    But we continue to ‘skate to where the puck is, not where it will be,’ to paraphrase Wayne Gretsky, by ringing our hands and proclaiming that students need to “learn more now” and teachers need to “teach faster.”

    That’s all embedded in some good observation, however… there are equity issues, there are remote learning issues, there are equity issues, there are staffing issues, there are health and safety concerns.

    If we’re going to have a successful response we need to shift how we’re approaching this fight..

    We need to accomodate the current situation, not blame students and teachers for what we call “learning loss.” Blame? Yes… when someone says “Students are going to have a hard time catching up,” that is putting the blame on the student.

    And we need to plan for better educational continuity, by ensuring that we have the curricular, technological, HR, and safety plans in place by Fall 2021 to create a meaningful and sustainable repsonse to our new normal.

    What would you include in your “Educational Continuity Plan?”

  • K12Leaders launches to help improve educational outcomes by developing educational leaders

    K12Leaders launches to help improve educational outcomes by developing educational leaders

    We’re excited to announce the launch of K12Leaders, a peer2peer collaboration of leading educational professionals from across North America!

    K12Leaders provides an authentic social environment, where leaders can solicit feedback from each other, collaborate on projects, provide guidance and development support, and work towards improving educational outcomes together.

    Membership is by invitation only, and is strictly controlled to ensure the integrity of the community. The intention is to provide a collaborative space for those in education to improve education. Participation requires an active district email address, or sponsorship by district personnel.

    If you’re interested in participating, please contact…

    adults sitting on chairs in a circle talking.