What if professional learning didn't require another workshop, another hour-long meeting, or another document sitting unopened on your desk? Dr. Wanda Terral found a surprisingly simple starting point: fortune cookies. Her book, Fortune Cookie Pedagogy, transforms short fortune-cookie messages into opportunities for educators to pause, reflect, and think differently about their practice. The idea grew from the hundreds of fortunes Wanda collected and eventually became a book featuring the voic

Congrats to Tom Murray on his latest book: How You Show Up: Change the Belief, Change the Outcome. Tom is a national motivational speaker, multiple-book author, husband, father--& one who is making a positive difference in the education world and beyond.Learn more at https://www.thomascmurray.com/Join us LIVE on the #ELB Podcast, Tuesday 9/29 at 4:30 PM ESTBefore his national work, Murray served as an elementary and middle school teacher, principal at both levels, and a district leader in Bucks

The way you think about authority shapes the way you lead. Every interaction with a person in a position of power, influence, or experience is filtered through the beliefs you carry about yourself, your voice, and what you are capable of. In this episode, I explore authority in leadership and the beliefs that influence how we show up with peers, supervisors, and other people in positions of authority. I look at how childhood experiences, past relationships, and deeply held assumptions can shape

How do you teach text-to-self connections in first grade in a way young readers can really understand? In this episode of The Education Connection, Robin Wilson continues the Writing About Reading Series with a simple, classroom-tested approach to teaching text-to-self connections. Learn how to introduce the strategy with a Book → Me anchor chart, model your own connection, and help students connect events and feelings in a story to experiences from their own lives. Robin also shares how she m

School leaders are carrying more responsibility than ever, but what if the solution is not simply asking them to do more? In this episode, I talk with Lindsay Whorton, president of The Holdsworth Center and author of A New School Leadership Architecture, about why the future of school leadership requires a different approach. We discuss how the principal's role has expanded over time, why expecting one person to carry every aspect of instructional leadership is unsustainable, and how schools ca

How do you teach text-to-text connections in first grade without making the strategy too complicated for young readers? In this episode of The Education Connection, Robin Wilson shares the simple, step-by-step way she teaches first graders to connect one text to another as part of her Writing About Reading series. You'll hear how Robin uses a simple anchor chart with two books and a large arrow, chooses books with easy-to-find connections, and spreads the lesson across two days. She also share