During COVID, Kate saw up close how different other workdays are from teaching. A friend who left teaching told her the new job was so much easier, and it paid more. We ask so much of educators. Before adding the next initiative, decide what comes off their plate.

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Police cars were outside the high school near my house: a threat, and thankfully nothing happened. On Nextdoor, one man said schools don’t discipline anymore and this was on them. The school did its job. We ask schools to handle everything, then blame them first.
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Every October we put every student's name on a wall and gave staff dot stickers color-coded by role. Some kids had no dots. Some only had administrator dots. But a dot shows what an adult believes. Whether the student feels that connection is the other half.

#SoWellEducationPartners #Belonging

Every PD session at my last school had a Mood Meter check-in for adults. It's the easiest minute to cut. RAND: teacher well-being has trailed similar workers every year since 2021. Kids need adults with something left to give. What do you protect when agendas get tight?

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New international data on 15-year-olds: 68% with the strongest sense of belonging said they push harder when work gets tough, vs. 51% of those who belong least. Teacher support made that link stronger. SoWell helps schools build belonging into everyday teaching.

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For years, I taught SEL as its own PD hour and watched staff check out. At my last school, we stopped separating them. We built SEL and trauma-informed practice into the same PD teachers already got on classroom strategy. Not new, just no longer a separate hour.

#SoWellEducationPartners #SEL

A student check-in tool worked because teachers responded, not because the platform existed. Real answers from people who knew the kid, not a receipt confirming the form was seen. Stanford found the same with AI tutoring. Kids quit when no one who knows them shows up.

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A decade of EdTech taught us tools keep showing up for every school gap. AI is just the newest wave, not a break from the pattern. We don't yet know all it'll help with or where it'll go wrong, which is exactly why schools need strong foundations now, not later.

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Stanford found AI tutoring fails without a human on the other end: 40-47% of students quit it. Microsoft just banned AI companion chatbots in schools too. Same conclusion, twice: the tool helps, but the person makes it work. That's what we build for schools.

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My coach benched me freshman year. That summer he sat me down, not with stats, but belief. Same skill, different year. I was named player of the week. He decided I was worth it before I'd proven it. No AI model can make that choice for a kid.

#SoWellEducationPartners #AI #SustainableLeadership

NYC banned student AI this week. Chicago opened a school with no teachers, same week. AI can find where a kid is stuck faster than a person can. It can't decide a kid is worth the time before results prove it. That's the part no model replaces.
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