Jean Lee is a neuroscientist and homeschooling parent of three who founded the Academy of Chaos, which provides classes for homeschoolers. She’s also the director of the Midwest Homeschool Expo, one of the largest secular homeschool conferences in the United States. Jean’s career is defined by scaling operations, leading diverse teams, and building high-impact partnerships. Today, she brings that expertise to reimagine education, bridging the gap between homeschool, higher education, and the business world.

In our conversation, Jean and I discuss why she homeschooled her children, how she started the Academy of Chaos and how it lead to starting the Midwest Homeschool Expo. She also drops some great advice for budding entrepreneurs working in the field of education.

For all links and resources mentioned in this episode, head to the show notes: https://www.educatorforever.com/episode159.

National Novel Writing Month might be gone, but its founder Chris Baty and a collection of former employees and volunteers are making sure the writing tradition continues. Next month their new organization, NaNo 2.0, will be encouraging writers all over to start and complete a novel, while also providing support through resources and camaraderie.

In this episode, Lily talks to Tavia Stewart and Laura Bradley from NaNo 2.0. Both of whom played integral roles in the original NaNoWriMo, with Tavia being its first employee. Laura was an eighth grade teacher who incorporated NaNoWriMo into her writing lessons and saw her students fall in love with the hardest writing assignment she had ever given in her 20 years of teaching. She’s now one of the tradition’s biggest advocates.

Tune in to hear why Tavia and Laura believe in NaNo 2.0 and how it helps foster a love for writing. You might want to write a novel this year after listening!

For all links and resources mentioned in this episode, head to the show notes: https://www.educatorforever.com/episode158.

Alexandra DeSorbo-Quinn is the executive director of Pilot Light, a nonprofit that helps educators incorporate food education into their lessons. She joined the organization in 2014, hired personally by its founders as its first staff member, and since then, she has proudly worked in partnership with many educators, chefs and community members to grow the reach of their food education programs from one school to 79 impacting over 20,000 students nationwide.

Alexandra and I get into her work history, starting with her days at a stroke center where she used hip hop to teach stroke prevention. We also dive deep into Pilot Light and the group’s involvement in developing food education’s seven standards. Alexandra’s story is a testament to the need for vision in the worlds of education and social work.

For all links and resources mentioned in this episode, head to the show notes: https://www.educatorforever.com/episode157.

Dr. Scott Pickle is superintendent of the Sequoia Union Elementary School District in Woodlake, California. He is also a public speaker and best-selling author who uses his platform to champion the belief that all students can achieve at high levels. Scott used his 30 years of experience to write two published books, Upright and Impact Mentoring: 200 Ways to Make an Impact, and his third book, Impact Artificial Intelligence, will be published soon.

Scott and I start off with his long history in public education and working his way up to superintendent. We then dive deep into his beliefs about mentoring, which we agree is lacking for teachers. We also discuss AI’s potential impact on teaching and why it needs to be regulated, as well as utilized.

For all links and resources mentioned in this episode, head to the show notes: https://www.educatorforever.com/episode156.

Holly Britton is a handwriting instruction specialist with teaching experience in grades K through eight. She educated her own four now-adult children, has taught in private and public school classrooms, served as a curriculum director and founded Squiggle Squad, a unique approach to handwriting instruction for children, pre K to second grade.

In this episode we go in depth into strategies for teaching writing, with emphasis on early transcription skills and letter formation. If you’re helping kids teach writing, you’ll want to take notes.

For all links and resources mentioned in this episode, head to the show notes: https://www.educatorforever.com/episode155.

For this episode, I speak to Maya Smart, an early literacy advocate, parent educator and author of Reading for Our Lives: The Urgency of Early Literacy and the Action Plan to Help Your Child. She's affiliated faculty at Marquette University and holds degrees from Harvard and Northwestern. Her website MayaSmart.com features weekly book picks some playful learning ideas and free tools to help parents grow as their children's first teachers.

We get into how she became in reading and why she wanted to research early literacy. We dive into her research, which found disparity in reading achievement between black and white kids. We also spend time discussing her book and how she wrote it. Take notes, it’s a good one!

For all links and resources mentioned in this episode, head to the show notes: https://www.educatorforever.com/episode154.

In this episode, I talk to Donita Grissom, a senior lecturer at at the University of Central Florida and co-author of the book, High Five to Thrive. She is also the CEO of Best Questers, which provides teachers with practical, effective teaching strategies that they can immediately implement in their classrooms to help create resilient, thriving school communities.

In this episode, Donita and I talk about her start in education as a K–12 ESOL teacher and how that led to her training other ESOL teachers. She also explains her Hope Theory and her belief in the importance of goal-setting. This interview is full of great tips to reignite your passion for teaching!

For all links and resources mentioned in this episode, head to the show notes: https://www.educatorforever.com/episode153.

This week on the show we have Ben Somers, the founder of Recess.gg an education platform built for homeschoolers who learn differently. Recess is a kid centered product, and has helped kids publish books on Amazon, win awards at Oxford writing conferences and start amazing businesses.

In this episode, Ben and I get into how Ben’s own frustrating experiences with school lead him to pursue education alternatives. He then goes into his goals with his online schooling platform, Recess, which allows students to pick their own classes. He also provides some notable reasons for getting into the homeschooling market.

For all links and resources mentioned in this episode, head to the show notes: https://www.educatorforever.com/episode152.