Transformative Principal
Jethro Jones
Recent Episodes
Jethro Jones interviews Ben Downey, founder of Big Nest, about the vital role and challenges of parent teacher groups (PTAs/PTGs) in schools. They discuss how these groups are essential for building strong school communities but often face issues with organization, communication, and fundraising. Ben explains how his experience managing a local parent group inspired him to create Big Nest—a platform designed to simplify and modernize the management and fundraising efforts of parent teacher groups. The conversation highlights the unique needs of school-based nonprofits, the importance of preserving institutional knowledge, and how Big Nest streamlines processes like donations, record-keeping, and event organization to make parent involvement easier and more effective.
- How Big Nest got started.
- Parent teacher groups are chaotic by nature
- Fundraising can and should be easier.
- Podcast about Software
- Community to get people together
- School and parent groups are intertwined
- Need to have systems and methods to keep track of things
About Ben Downey
Ben Downey is the founder of Big Nest, a platform that helps parent-teacher groups build stronger, more connected school communities. He’s been working with PTGs for the past six years, helping them modernize how they communicate, fundraise, and organize.
Beyond the platform, Ben helps open lines of communication between parent groups so they can share best practices and avoid reinventing the wheel every year.
Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Ben started his career in Chicago before settling in Spokane, Washington, where he lives with his wife and three kids.
LinkedLeaders: You need support. Get just-in-time mentoring at LinkedLeaders.com
We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL.
IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:
- Simplify and streamline technology
- Save teachers’ time
- Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
- Improve student performance on state assessments
🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.
Host Jethro Jones talks with Mike Caldwell, founder of LinkedLeaders, about building a platform that connects school leaders with mentors and peers for real-time support. They discuss the challenges of school leadership, the value of personalized coaching, and how technology and community can help educators grow.
LinkedLeaders: You need support. Get just-in-time mentoring at LinkedLeaders.com
We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL.
IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:
- Simplify and streamline technology
- Save teachers’ time
- Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
- Improve student performance on state assessments
🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.
Welcome to Transformative Principal! In this thought-provoking solo episode, host Jethro Jones explores how artificial intelligence has revealed the weaknesses in our current education system—and why it’s time to refocus on real learning.
Episode Highlights:
- Jethro shares candid reflections from his AI Leader Office Hours, challenging the status quo in education.
- He explains how schools have been designed for adult convenience, making them easy targets for AI automation, and why this approach fails students.
- The episode critiques formulaic assignments, standardized tests, and grading systems that prioritize efficiency over genuine learning.
- Jethro advocates for a shift toward student-centered learning, emphasizing the importance of real audiences, authentic work, and developing “organic skills” like critical thinking, collaboration, and relationship-building.
- He shares personal stories from his teaching career, illustrating the power of giving students agency and meaningful projects.
- The discussion covers the limitations of AI—what it can and can’t do—and why human skills and empathy remain irreplaceable.
- Jethro calls for educators to rethink assignments, assessments, and the very purpose of school, urging a move away from compliance and toward relevance and flourishing for every student.
Key Takeaways:
- Schools must prioritize learning and personal growth over convenience and test scores.
- Assignments should have real audiences and authentic purposes, not just serve as boxes to check.
- AI can handle repetitive, formulaic tasks, but human connection, empathy, and creativity are essential for true education.
- Educators should focus on helping students become flourishing human beings, not just good test-takers.
LinkedLeaders: You need support. Get just-in-time mentoring at LinkedLeaders.com
We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL.
IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:
- Simplify and streamline technology
- Save teachers’ time
- Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
- Improve student performance on state assessments
🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.
The great importance of redesigning Tier 1 instruction that ensures deeper learning for all students. The research shows huge benefits to students and their teachers including higher achievement, closure of gaps among all reporting categories of students, increased attendance, lower misbehavior, and increased teacher satisfaction and retention.
Michael was last on the podcast with me in 2022, talking about student agency.
- Is education about teaching or developing
- Developing humans is much different than teaching students
- Device centric development - similar to addiction
- Epidemic of anxiety because of screen time
- Brain matter loss around the areas of the brain necessary for deep learning and deep reading
- Legacy system (our current system) - Around control
- Something happened at the pandemic
- We put kids on computers constantly
- Maldevelopment in the brain - device parenting
- School’s optional is the other thing we taught with our response to the pandemic
- When you’re on a device, all the human side is not developing.
- Most connected society ever and the most lonely society ever
- Teachers have been underinvested in and have a curriculum and type that is difficult to engage kids
- How to develop character, empathy, and relationships among students and their peers.
- How to do this at scale.
- You can’t intervene your way to success
- Traditional classrooms remove autonomy
- Unstructured groups creates unstructured learning
- Ability-grouping is the worst
- Discussion protocols, team members, etc.
- Productive Struggle - is a key element that leads to learning moving forward
- Toolbox of strategies given to students
- How to get kids unstuck without giving the answer
- Power of shared background knowledge
- Easy to conflate teaching with learning
- The Baseball Experiment
- Babies build brain cells fast, but they don’t make neural connections
- What gets exercised in a brain gets developed
- One factor and one factor only changes neocortex: wealth of the family.
- Needs productive struggle to grow
- Rigor walk on Instructional Empowerment
- Just above ability level
- Time is an issue - how do you teach in this way in a slower path
- Kids also test better if they can critically think about the information
- The more you use AI the hippocampus shrinks
- How to be a transformative principal? Look at who’s doing the work: teacher or student?
- Library for deeper learning
About Michael Toth:
Michael D. Toth (LinkedIn, X) is founder and CEO of Instructional Empowerment and leads IE’s Applied Research Center. He is also the author of the multi-award-winning book The Power of Student Teams with David Sousa; author of Who Moved My Standards; and co-author with Robert Marzano of The Essentials of a Standards-Driven Classroom, School Leadership for Results, and Teacher Evaluation that Makes a Difference.
Michael is a keynote speaker at conferences and coaches and mentors superintendents on creating a bold instructional vision, designing and launching a high-functioning cabinet team, transforming Tier 1 core instruction, and leading systems-based school advancement.
Throughout Michael’s career, he has been privileged to collaborate with some of the top researchers and thinkers in education. His past key roles include CEO of Learning Sciences International (LSI), President of the National Center for the Profession of Teaching, and University Faculty Grant Director for research and development grants.
LinkedLeaders: You need support. Get just-in-time mentoring at LinkedLeaders.com
We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL.
IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:
- Simplify and streamline technology
- Save teachers’ time
- Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
- Improve student performance on state assessments
🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.
In this episode of Transformative Principal, host Jethro Jones interviews Adrian Ireland, an international educator, systems thinker, and author of "Designing Different." Together, they explore the challenges and opportunities in reimagining the architecture of learning within schools. The conversation delves into why educational reform often fails when it focuses on incremental improvements rather than structural changes, emphasizing the importance of authentic learning experiences, student motivation, and agency.
Adrian shares insights on how small but significant changes—like creating "sandboxes" for experimentation and expanding the audience for student work—can lead to meaningful transformation. The discussion covers the pitfalls of over-relying on extrinsic motivators like grades, the value of interdisciplinary and project-based learning, and the need for flexible systems that nurture both passion and competence in students. Practical examples, such as school newspapers and project weeks, illustrate how schools can foster ownership, engagement, and real-world skills.
- Making little pockets where students can be seen in a different light with different experiences
- How education has an architecture problem, not an effort problem.
- The flow of the river.
- Curricularize them!
- Neglect students’ autonomy at our own demise.
- More about motivation. Intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation.
- False fails - good ideas that are implemented into architecture that rejects them.
- Design principles - authenticity, flexibility, mutuality (we are connected), and simplexity (designed simple but able to handle a complex reality)
- School Newspaper as an example of mutuality.
- The whole game at a junior level -
- Good architectures that already exist.
- Avenues World School
- What comes first, passion or competence?
- Interdisciplinary teams
- How to be a transformative principal? Make a decision that we are going to have two official expositions of student work. Create a sandbox, a space of possibility.
About Adrian Ireland
Adrian Ireland is an international educator, systems thinker, and author dedicated to reimagining the architecture of learning. With extensive experience teaching and leading across Asia and Europe, Adrian has spent his career challenging the traditional, standardized models of education by championing learner-centered approaches that value individuality, curiosity, and creativity. His entrepreneurial mindset drives him to experiment with bold ideas, test innovative systems, and design frameworks that empower both students and educators to thrive.
He wears a mix of hats that have shaped his perspectives on education: Watching the development and natural learning progressions of his two boys as father. Coaching Volleyball at both high and low levels. Teaching in the classroom in both middle and high school. Leading full school change efforts around interdisciplinary learning and project-based learning. Redesigning time and scheduling to allow space for change and most recently Coordinating the MYP (Middle Years Program).
Rooted in both practical classroom experience and a deep understanding of educational theory, Adrian believes that the future of learning lies not in small improvements, but in daring to create something fundamentally different. His work blends systems thinking with human-centered design principles, helping schools and organizations shift toward environments that foster authentic engagement and personal growth.
In "Designing Different", Adrian shares the lessons, insights, and strategies gathered from years of navigating the complexity of educational reform, inspiring others to move beyond "better" and design the future of learning. (Link to Book Website)
LinkedLeaders: You need support. Get just-in-time mentoring at LinkedLeaders.com
We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL.
IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:
- Simplify and streamline technology
- Save teachers’ time
- Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
- Improve student performance on state assessments
🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.