As we head into a new school year, this is exactly the kind of episode I want school leaders to hear early. I sat in on Jason Craige Harris’s session at the LeadTeam Summit, where he broke down what it actually takes to build a strategy for culture that works, and I left that room energized in a way that stuck with me.

So when he joined us on the podcast, I wanted to go even deeper. Jason is a strategist, mediator, and mindfulness teacher who spends his time helping leaders navigate conflict and uncertainty without losing themselves in the process. We talk about what resilience actually requires, the difference between reacting to a moment and being ready for one, and how the small, consistent practices we build in private show up in how we lead in public.

In This Episode, We Discuss:

• Why “powering through” isn’t real resilience, and what actually builds it
• The balcony metaphor Jason uses to get perspective in the middle of conflict
• How naming an emotion can measurably calm your nervous system
• The two types of practices, routines and in-the-moment resets, that keep leaders grounded
• Why schools tend to swing between all transaction and all relational, and what the middle looks like
• The pre-action and post-action reviews Jason recommends before big decisions
• What separates teams that bounce back from teams that just survive

Every spring, schools pour weeks of staff time and thousands of dollars into a gala or auction because that’s what has always been done, even as the return on all that effort keeps shrinking. Barbara Barron joins us in this conversation to talk about why that model is running out of road and what a school might do instead if it actually let it go.

We also get into how many separate asks a family absorbs in a single school year before the annual fund even launches, why alumni giving looks so different for day schools than it does for boarding schools, and what it actually means to bring mindfulness into a fundraising conversation instead of running through a script.

In This Episode, We Discuss:

• The approach Barbara uses to get marketing, development, and admissions rowing in the same direction
• Why galas and auctions have some of the lowest ROI in school fundraising, and where she recommends looking instead
• How alumni giving realistically differs between day schools and boarding schools, and why that changes the strategy
• Why the months leading up to the annual fund can quietly work against it
• What actually gets a school’s email opened when families are drowning in their inbox
• Why being a little imperfect in donor communication builds more trust than a polished message
• How reframing interruptions as “the work” changes what a fundraising conversation feels like

Andrea Gribble manages social media for around 85 schools across the country, so she’s usually the first person to notice when something is shifting for school communicators. In this conversation, we get into the real tension a lot of schools are sitting with right now, how to protect students from deepfakes and misuse without disappearing from social media altogether, and how to keep posting consistently without leaning on AI so much that everything starts to look the same.

We also get into the pressure to make every post perfect before it goes out, and why that instinct is often the thing holding school marketers back the most. Andrea shares what has actually worked in her own small district, from a photo that was never supposed to perform well to a reel strategy that took almost no equipment and reached more people than her page’s follower count would suggest.

In This Episode, I Discuss:

• Why treating student photo permission as strictly in or out is easier to manage than a mix of exceptions
• The small details, like identifying names or labeled desks, that can quietly turn a simple photo into a privacy risk
• What is fueling parent concern about AI-generated content, and why an AI-made flyer can cost a school its branding
• Where AI can genuinely help with social media strategy, beyond just writing captions
• Why an imperfect, in-the-moment photo can outperform a planned, polished post
• The mindset shift behind “posted is better than perfect and unpublished”
• Why reels do not require a professional camera, a large following, or a complicated plan to get started

There’s a version of busy that gets worn like a badge of honor in schools. Wearing a lot of hats, doing more with less, the kind of overload that gets praised right up until it doesn’t.

Rebecca Malotke-Meslin, founder of Pleasantly Aggressive Coaching and Consulting, coaches women leaders in schools and nonprofits, and she’s watched this pattern play out over and over; that instinct to keep giving until something breaks. We get into why over-delegating feels like dumping work instead of building trust, the real reason women hesitate to ask for a raise when their role quietly expands, and what a script for saying no can actually sound like.

• Why wearing a lot of hats becomes a badge of honor instead of a warning sign
• The physical toll Rebecca has watched play out with her clients, including stress-related autoimmune diagnoses
• Why over- delegating so often feels like dumping work instead of building trust
• What to say when your role expands but your pay doesn’t
• The story we tell ourselves about school budgets that isn’t actually true
• Rebecca’s approach to saying no without over-explaining yourself
• The one conversation every head of school should be having about roles and responsibilities
• Why Rebecca sees caregiving as a resource, and who gets to decide how much of it you give

Should This School Event Stay or Go? How Schools Can Evaluate Events and Programs with Miriam Stein

Schools are really good at adding things. A new event, a new tradition, a new fundraiser, another community-building moment, and every one of them started for a real reason. The problem is that almost nothing ever comes back off the calendar. So you end up with programs that look successful from the outside while quietly draining staff time, volunteer energy, and budget that could be going somewhere with more return.

In this episode, I sit down with Miriam Stein of Thrive Hive to talk through the part nobody loves to say out loud, which is that some of our events have run their course. Miriam shares a simple decision-making matrix she adapted from a corporate CFO and rebuilt for schools, and it gives teams a way to move past the emotion around a beloved program and into a shared, honest conversation about whether it still serves the mission, the enrollment goals, and the people doing the work.

In This Episode, We Discuss:

• The emotional reasons schools hold onto events long after they stop working, from legacy and fear to the one influential donor or board member nobody wants to disappoint
• Miriam’s four-quadrant matrix and what the heart, the star, the question mark, and the money tree each tell you about a program
• Why an event can be completely off mission and still be worth keeping
• The clearest signs it’s time to reevaluate, including drag around volunteers, last-minute RSVPs, and any program that’s run more than seven years on autopilot
• Why staff hours and time investment almost never get counted in an event’s real ROI, and what that hidden cost is actually buying you
• The one in, one out approach to keeping your calendar from ballooning every single year
• How to communicate a cut or a change to families in a way that ties back to mission instead of sounding apologetic or defensive
• Using the three words your families actually use to describe your school to anchor the messaging around every event you run

We put a lot into our websites. The pages look good, the content is thorough, and we assume families will move through it the way we mapped it out. Then we actually look at the data and realize a lot of them are not navigating it at all. They are researching on their own time, often late at night when no one is at the desk, and showing up as fully formed applicants we have never spoken to.

In this episode, I sit down with Angela Brown from Halda AI, Stephanie Vasta of Moravian Academy, and Lori Kriegel of Wooster School to talk about what happens when you put a chatbot in front of those families. Two of them are running chatbots in their admissions and marketing right now, and Angela works with schools implementing them every day. What comes up is less about the technology itself and more about what it reveals about how families actually research a school.

In This Episode, We Discuss:

• Why students, not just parents, are using the chatbot and how their questions shape the enrollment decision.
• Why current families lean on it as much as prospective ones, from game times to the parent handbook.
• Choosing a closed chatbot that answers only from your own content instead of pulling from Reddit or Wikipedia.
• How chat logs expose gaps in your site and surface audiences you did not expect, like prospective employees.
• Moving information into a knowledge base instead of piling more pages onto the website.
• Front-loading affordability so the admissions team spends its human time with right-fit families.
• Testing answers in Spanish and Mandarin and treating multilingual support as a recruitment advantage.
• What the first 30 days actually require and where the handoff from bot to human should live.

Enrollment looks different than it did even two years ago, and the pressure to figure out what’s actually moving families from inquiry to enrolled is real. The COVID bump has leveled off, parent expectations have shifted, and the mental load of carrying your school’s enrollment goals while wearing every other hat is not getting lighter.

In this episode, I sit down with Marnie Schattgen from Fredericksburg Academy, Matt Thornton from Robert C. Parker School, and Matthew Farley from James River Day School for an honest panel conversation about what’s working right now. These are small school leaders doing this work every day, and what they share is grounded, practical, and immediately useful.

In This Episode, We Discuss:

• How parent behavior in the admissions process has shifted, including the expectation of instant responses and a changing sense of partnership with schools
• What the admissions funnel actually looks like post-COVID and where the real drop-offs are happening
• Why the traditional open house model is working for some schools and completely gone for others, and what they’re doing instead
• How student-led tours and in-the-moment campus experiences are converting families more effectively than formal events
• The onboarding strategies schools are using to build connection with newly enrolled families before the first day of school
• What the financial aid conversation looks like right now, including families who need it but don’t ask and families who apply but probably shouldn’t
• How these leaders are protecting their mental load through processes, planning, and leadership support that actually helps

Retention conversations tend to spike at re-enrollment time, but by then, a lot of the damage is already done. Families aren’t usually making their decision to leave in one moment. They’re collecting small data points all year long, quietly asking themselves whether the school still feels like the right place for their family.

In this episode, we sit down together to talk through what’s actually driving retention challenges right now, and why the “who owns it” question is one schools keep circling without ever fully answering. We also walk through the Connect Four framework, four areas of connection that move the needle for families and help schools figure out where they need to lean in more.

We also have a special announcement to share. This is episode 131, and after five years of building this podcast together, Tara is stepping away as co-host. It’s a bittersweet moment, and one that reflects exactly what this show has always been about: being mindful of where your energy is going and making intentional decisions, even when something good has to make space for something else.

But don’t worry, the Mindful School Marketing podcast isn’t going anywhere! Aubrey will continue as it always has, with the same mission!

In This Episode, We Discuss:

• Why retention breaks down across small moments, not one big event, and what schools can do to close those gaps
• The misconception that silence from families means satisfaction, and what’s actually happening when you don’t hear from them
• Who really owns retention at most schools, and why the answer “everyone” often means no one
• How the admissions handoff creates the first major retention risk for new families, especially over summer
• The role of internal marketing in helping families understand and feel the value of your school
• Aubrey’s Connect Four framework: connection to peers, to the student experience, to the classroom, and to the teacher
• Why aiming for a B-minus retention plan you can actually implement beats a perfect one that never gets executed
• Tara’s reflection on five years of Mindful School Marketing and what mindfulness looked like in making this decision