Today's kindergartners will retire in 2082, but are we preparing them for that world or ours? In this episode, Dr. Michael Conner sits down with Stewart Brown, Director of Partnerships at Code4Kids, to challenge the "21st century" trap that's already widening the gap for Generation Alpha and Beta.

Stewart and Michael dig into why coding is becoming as essential as cursive, a fundamental literacy every student needs, not just a technical skill for future developers. They explore how cross-curricular computer science can bridge math, science, arts, and social studies, and why the education system urgently needs to move beyond outdated frameworks and embrace what Stewart calls 22nd-century thinking.

The conversation unpacks why understanding technology matters far more than becoming a software engineer, and how Code for Kids is already reshaping what digital literacy looks like in practice, through connective, curriculum-integrated education that gives students real agency in a technology-saturated world.

Stewart Brown is a multiple founder of international EdTech companies and a trusted voice in AI literacy in education. Code for Kids, launched in 2018, integrates coding, robotics, digital literacy, and STEAM across the curriculum.

This is essential listening for educators, administrators, and parents asking the question that matters most: how do we truly prepare students for their future? Subscribe to Voices for Excellence for conversations that challenge education's status quo.

Stop managing behavior. Start changing it.

Dr. Mike Conner sits down with Dr. Donna Housman, CEO and founder of Housman Learning, to explore the paradigm shift reshaping early childhood education: why emotional intelligence isn't a soft skill, it's the durable, sustainable driver of academic achievement and lasting behavioral change.

Key Topics:

• The evolution of emotional intelligence from "soft skill" to critical educational driver
• ECSEL (Emotional, Cognitive, and Social Early Learning): The evidence-based program closing the preparation gap
• Why self-regulation, not funding, is the real differentiator in high-risk populations
• The achievement gap is a symptom; the preparation gap (birth to kindergarten) is the disease
• How early childhood emotional competence prevents the "troubled teen" crisis before it starts
• Teacher satisfaction, retention, and the post-COVID educational landscape

Dr. Housman brings 30 years of clinical psychology expertise and longitudinal research proving that developing emotional intelligence starting as early as 3 months old transforms children's trajectories, and challenges the entire education sector to rethink what "preparation" really means.

Subscribe for deep conversations on education, human development, and the research-backed practices that create lasting change.

Organizations love to say they’ve “given people the tools to succeed”, so why do the same individuals and teams keep being labeled as the problem?

In this episode, host Dr. Michael Conner talks with Dr. Shokry Eldaly (Teachers College, Columbia University) about what’s really missing: structures that make efficacy possible. Shokry breaks down why motivation isn’t the primary barrier, how rigid systems discount lived experience, and what it looks like to build collective impact without blaming individuals.

In this conversation:

• Why “lack of motivation” is often a convenient story
• How structures shape outcomes more than individual effort
• Lived experience as essential data for change
• Hope as a practical strategy for collective impact

Subscribe to Voices for Excellence for conversations that challenge how we lead, learn, and grow together.

Schools aren't just content delivery systems, they're the places where belonging happens, and that matters more in the age of AI than it did before.

Matthew Berkshire, Director of Curriculum and Instruction at Greenville Central School District in New York, built something unusual: a school improvement process that used AI to strengthen the human trust network, not replace it. When Greenville adopted the Agile Evolutionary Group platform, the Diagnostic revealed hidden patterns in pacing, intervention, and assessment that educators had felt but couldn't name. The real work started after, sitting together, reviewing insights against lived experience, and making decisions as a learning organization.

In this conversation with Dr. Michael T. Conner, Berkshire walks through what intentional AI integration looks like: starting with people who already trust each other, designing conditions for learning rather than supervising instruction, and keeping professional judgment and collective efficacy at the center. He talks about pandemic lessons, how the AEG platform fit into an already-strong school improvement process, the challenge of keeping dynamic collaboration alive across 6-12 departmental alignment meetings, and why, even with AI, the educators make the final call.

• How to integrate AI tools without removing people from the process
• What the AC-Stage means for instructional leadership
• Why the Diagnostic is a beginning, not an ending
• How to design conditions for learning across a whole district
• The difference between technology that supports and technology that replaces

This episode is essential listening for instructional leaders, superintendents, and anyone building the conditions for continuous improvement in a learning organization.

And on that note, onward and upward.

The superintendent isn't a budget manager, they're the chief advocate for all children. Dr. Michael J. Barnes rebuilt Mayfield City Schools around this principle, and the results speak for themselves.

The superintendent is the chief advocate for all children in their community. Nobody else can say that, not the mayor, not the school board, not the superintendent of the next district over. But somewhere along the way, superintendents drifted from the instructional chair into operations and politics. Dr. Michael J. Barnes reversed that drift entirely.

At Mayfield City Schools (Ohio), Barnes built a four-track personalized learning model that blew up the time/learning equation. Traditional, Cross-Curricular, Self-Paced, and The Option. When students got agency over their learning design, attendance skyrocketed, not because of better discipline policies, but because students were actually designing their own learning. Time stopped being the constant. Learning became it.

In this conversation with Dr. Conner, Barnes walks the AC-Stage reframe: what does instructional leadership look like when the industrial model is obsolete? What's the role of the superintendent in an Innovation Core? Why do design thinking, engineering, and entrepreneurship matter as much as math? How do you navigate the VUCA landscape of state politics without abandoning your moral imperative?

• The superintendent's real job: chief advocate for all children
• How to flip the time/learning variable, when learning is constant, time becomes flexible
• The four-track personalized learning model and why student agency drives attendance
• Why instructional leadership means staying in the learning chair, not the politics chair
• The Creative Staircase framework for systemic innovation
• How to navigate the VUCA landscape in state politics without compromising your vision

This conversation is essential for any superintendent or central office leader in the AC-Stage of education. Dr. Conner and Dr. Barnes dig into the frameworks that move the dial from excellence as an aspiration to excellence as a system.

And on that note, onward and upward.

What happens when a public school district builds a micro school inside itself, and doesn't apologize for it?

Rob Dickson is the CIO of Wichita Public Schools (USD 259), and he's not waiting for permission to innovate. Creative Minds, a K-6 vertical classroom where kindergartners learn alongside sixth graders. Future Ready Centers that look like businesses, not classrooms, where students earn certifications in advanced manufacturing and cybersecurity. An iterative, agile approach to systems change that treats failure as feedback, not failure.

Dickson's work bridges the operational and instructional sides of AI adoption, from changing app approval processes to training teachers on generative AI within weeks of ChatGPT's release. He argues that adaptability is the highest form of intelligence, and that schools must prepare students not for certainty, but for curiosity in the face of constant change.

What You'll Learn:

1. The three learning stages: K-5 learning by doing, 6-8 skill discovery, 9-12 skill development
2. Social fitness - how Generation Alpha navigates networks of billions, not 15
3. Why AI replaces tasks, not jobs - and what that means for curriculum design
4. How Wichita's Future Ready Centers and Creative Minds micro school operate
5. Arizona State's six levels of problem solving - and why academia lives in the first three
6. Humanity, Agency, Audacity: Rob's three words for being 2035-ready

What if AI isn't trying to fit into your classroom — but to rebuild it entirely?

Erin Mote, CEO and founder of InnovateEDU, explores what it means to navigate an arrival technology, one that doesn't fit into existing systems but fundamentally reorders them. Erin leads national and international work on AI literacy, including National AI Literacy Day (March 27th), and she's not here to hype or fear-monger. She's a scout: someone managing both the promise and the peril.

What You'll Learn:

1. The difference between arrival technologies (AI, electricity, internet) and adoption technologies (crypto, VR)
2. Why AI literacy is as critical in English and science as it is in computer science
3. Real examples of AI reducing bias, optimizing bus routes, and screening for dyslexia
4. How National AI Literacy Day (March 27) is calling in parents, students, and communities
5. Why "do something" is the only response that matters
6. Erin's two-word challenge: Do something
7. Her song choice: Happy (balancing promise and peril)

Can Your AI Guidance Actually Guide — Or Does It Just Add Cognitive Load?

Thirty-five states have issued AI guidance for schools. But how many of those documents reduce workload instead of compounding it? How many build judgment muscles instead of issuing checkbox mandates? And how many actually get used in real classrooms?

Julia Fallon, Executive Director of SETDA, has spent 25 years working with state education technology leaders to design systems that prioritize coherence over compliance. In this conversation, she reveals why effective guidance must anchor values in context, design for agency, and trust educators by default, or it will live on a shelf, ignored.

What You'll Learn:

1. Why AI is infrastructure, not a program, and what that means for funding and strategy
2. The three divides from the 2024 National Ed Tech Plan: access, design, and use
3. How No Child Left Behind's compliance trap offers lessons for AI adoption today
4. Why reducing cognitive load is the design principle most guidance ignores
5. What DJing on Twitch teaches about learning publicly and modeling transparency
6. The three-word challenge: Coherence. Agency. Trust.

Julia also shares her leadership signature song — "The Music Sounds Better with You" by Stardust — and why collective rhythm, not solo performance, defines systems-level change.