Coaching You Through All Things Education

Coaching You Through All Things Education is an interview podcast hosted by Anne Labangana-Clay, who also coaches and consults in education. Her guests come from two directions. Some work inside schools and districts, and others run companies that offer services or tools to schools and families. The clearest thread in these episodes is the Educator Excellence, Equity, Recruitment & Retention Series, built on the idea of equity as a catalyst for recruiting and retaining quality educators. Its guests include Delaware educators. The host asks directly for a definition of equity and for what it looks and sounds like in a building. Dr. Jerod Phillips, principal of David E. Robinson Elementary and host of the Squad Builder podcast, boils his answer down to giving each student and educator what they individually need, when they need it. Katie Kremer, lead teacher for teacher recruitment and mentoring in the Colonial School District, takes a wider view. She talks about honoring students, teachers and administrators as whole people, about celebrating a culture beyond a single month, and about making the table big enough for every voice. She also says that teachers entering the profession want to talk about equity. Kyle Hill, another series guest, calls a team approach the approach and uses IEPs as his example: identify a student's strengths, build confidence from them, then work with families and colleagues on what needs to improve. Outside the series, the range widens. Tom DeWire, owner of EdScale, talks about implementation. His picture of success is alignment and coherence across a state, district or school, where expectations, conversations and data are shared and the goalposts stop shifting. He also notes how hard it has been to find teachers since COVID. Aditya Advani, co-founder of Best Parents, a platform for parents looking for summer camps, moves the conversation to college preparation and AI, including AI college counselors that help students put together college lists. The catalog also includes a Mental Health and Wellness Series, and its fourth part features Tairen McCollister. Anne's manner is warm and openly enthusiastic. She tells guests she is ecstatic to have them and ends by collecting the 'gems and nuggets' a listener can use right away. The equity series is a good place to start because each guest there answers the same core question. The DeWire conversation suits anyone whose implementation plan is still at a 'not yet' stage.