According to recent data, school systems that prioritize student safety and wellness are seeing increasingly positive results when it comes to both student academic success and educator retention - but what does it take to build and maintain such a system in the modern day?
Dr. Robert Avossa, the founder and president of K-12 Leadership Matters LLC and former superintendent, joins the Voices in Education podcast to discuss just that. With an emphasis on creating positive, supportive school cultures through listening, learning leaders, Dr Avossa shares his wide-ranging experiences and observations of today's schooling system and how we can look to improve on it.
This special episode of Voices in Education is brought to you in conjunction with Securly Prepared: a ground-breaking digital student wellness event that offers educators, support staff, and school leaders the tools and know-how they need to make a meaningful difference for students today.
If you'd like to check out Securly Prepared, it is available here right now on demand.
Voices in Education is powered by Securly
Securly is your school’s all-in-one solution for student safety, wellness, and engagement. Securly's 2023 State of Student Wellness Report is a free-to-download paper that takes a closer look into the data and current trends surrounding student wellness. You'll learn how your school can overcome resource limitations, introduce efficient technologies into the classroom, and ultimately better support the students who need your help the most.
Download your free copy of this illuminating special report today.
According to recent data, school systems that prioritize student safety and wellness are seeing increasingly positive results when it comes to both student academic success and educator retention - but what does it take to build and maintain such a system in the modern day?
Dr. Robert Avossa, the founder and president of K-12 Leadership Matters LLC and former superintendent, joins the Voices in Education podcast to discuss just that. With an emphasis on creating positive, supportive school cultures through listening, learning leaders, Dr Avossa shares his wide-ranging experiences and observations of today's schooling system and how we can look to improve on it.
This special episode of Voices in Education is brought to you in conjunction with Securly Prepared: a ground-breaking digital student wellness event that offers educators, support staff, and school leaders the tools and know-how they need to make a meaningful difference for students today.
If you'd like to check out Securly Prepared, it is available here right now on demand.
Voices in Education is powered by Securly
Securly is your school’s all-in-one solution for student safety, wellness, and engagement. Securly's 2023 State of Student Wellness Report is a free-to-download paper that takes a closer look into the data and current trends surrounding student wellness. You'll learn how your school can overcome resource limitations, introduce efficient technologies into the classroom, and ultimately better support the students who need your help the most.
Download your free copy of this illuminating special report today.
Adam Smith:
You are listening to the Voices in Education podcast, powered by Securly. In our third season of the podcast, we're fine-tuning our focus and shining a spotlight where we believe it's needed most, on those who've dedicated their careers and lives to education. Whether inside or outside of the classroom, we know that students need to feel seen, safe, and supported to perform at their best, but these aren't just the needs of students, they're basic human needs that apply to our educators, administrators, and school mental health professionals as well.
There's a saying that you can't pour from an empty cup. Well, you are invited to fill your cup here with us. I'm Adam Smith, a former teacher, mental health advocate, and your host of the Voices in Education podcast. It's my great honor and pleasure to get to sit down with educators just like you to discuss why they chose a career in education and how they stay the course in the face of challenges. In hearing their stories, I hope you'll come away feeling refreshed, re-energized, and reconnected to your own reasons for becoming an educator. Let's hear from the Voices in Education.
Hello and welcome to a very special episode of the Voices in Education podcast. I'm Adam Smith, your host for Voices in Education, and I can't wait to share these inspiring conversations with you all, but before I get into it, I want to make sure that you don't miss out on a single episode. Be sure to like, follow, and subscribe to the Voices in Education podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts from.
To wrap up our third season of the Voices in Education podcast, we're teaming up with Securly as part of their groundbreaking digital student wellness event, Securly Prepared, an event that offers educators, support staff, and school leaders the tools and know-how they need to make a meaningful difference for students and for themselves today. If you'd like to check out Securly Prepared, it is available right now on demand. Just go to www.bigmarker.com/securly/securly-prepared, or just follow the link in our episode description.
Joining me today is one of the three brilliant speakers that featured on the Securly Prepared Panel, Dr. Robert Avossa. Dr. Avossa is a Brode Academy fellow and a member of Chiefs for Change, an esteemed network of state and district education chiefs. He has served locally on the boards for the American Heart Association and Center for Creative Education, and he speaks nationally on issues of education. In total, Dr. Avossa has spent over 30 years in the school system working his way up from a teacher and principal to superintendent of Palm Beach County Schools, Florida and Fulton County Schools, Georgia. On top of that, Dr. Avossa is also the founder and president of K-12 Leadership Matters, an LLC who provides strategic support and guidance to school district leaders and their teams. Robert, it is a delight to have you here on Voices in Education. How are you doing today?
Dr Robert Avossa:
I am doing well and I appreciate the opportunity to share a little bit of insight and experience I've gained.
Adam Smith:
I think that is an understatement. Having spoken to you in the past and having watched the Securly Prepared webinar, I think you have an absolute influx of incredible ideas, an incredible sort of know-how, experience, and I think our listeners will really benefit from hearing from you today. We have got a lot to chat about today. Not only are we going to kind of dive into your sort of compelling upbringing and career journey, but we are going to look at your thoughts and advice for our listeners when it comes to student safety and wellness. But before all of that, in case any of our listeners aren't familiar with you, I'd love to talk a little bit about your day-to-day work, what your role is currently, and I guess what your objectives are with that role. So would you mind telling our listeners about that?
Dr Robert Avossa:
So my day-to-day is essentially talking to superintendents across the country every single day, whether I'm physically in the buildings with them, which this year I've already visited over 60 school systems from as far away as Anchorage, Alaska, as large as Houston and Dallas, and as small as Botetourt, Virginia or Norwalk, Connecticut. So I spend most of my day on the ground or face-to-face with superintendents. I have a real good sense of what's happening out there nationally, given the conversations that I've been able to be engaged in and with, and really enjoy it. Most of the time I'm either on the road or I'm in my home here in south Florida near West Palm Beach.
Adam Smith:
Amazing. I think it's interesting when people are into education and their career does sort of deviate from being in the classroom, how often they then end up almost back in the classroom in one way or another. It kind of stays with you, doesn't it?
Dr Robert Avossa:
It does stay with me, and the joy I get when it comes to school leaders who move up their career from principal to central office, I've now had about 25 people who left either of my teams, between Palm Beach and Fulton, go on to be school superintendents. Over 150 have been coached through the process of the interview, landing the job, and then I help them create their 90-day entry plan. So that's a big part of what I'm proud of, is that even though I may not be in the seat as superintendent anymore, I've been helping shape the next generation of people who will take on these jobs. They're tough jobs, they always have been. Sitting in the seat for about eight years, I always tell people it's like dog years, so really those eight years felt like 56 years. But if you're doing it for the right reason, it's a wonderful job, but it is complex.
Adam Smith:
I'm sure it is. This was something that was obviously close to your heart as the founder of this whole program and idea, so what made you want to do that?
Dr Robert Avossa:
I felt as though mentoring and coaching one-on-one with people was good, but it wasn't, I think, expansive enough. I've got a partner named Peter Gorman and Julia Raffle Bayer, the three of us now, our collaborators in this, we call it the Forum for Educational Leadership. We decided as we built out our big idea is that we wanted to impact as many people as possible, we wanted to make sure the cohorts were incredibly diverse, that they reflected the community. So we've made a huge emphasis on recruiting individuals that reflect their community, whether African-American, Latino, or now we have shifted over to women leading education. So Julia has been a big part of our effort on trying to empower women to take the top jobs. So in an industry that's predominantly female, with 80% or more of our teachers being female, only a little less than a third of our school superintendents are female. So we've been working really hard on ways to support women through that journey.
Adam Smith:
I think that's wonderful because there is such a need for all of these different voices and the people of different backgrounds to really bring some reality, some honesty, and some truth from all those different areas, be that culturally or otherwise. I think I've spoken to a few female superintendents even on this podcast, and it's wonderful to see how everybody brings something different to the dance. It's just so valuable. One of the things that we love to focus on in Voices in Education is to understand the why behind all of our people in education, why do they do what they do, what brought them into education and what's kept them there. So I'd love, if you wouldn't mind telling our listeners, where did you come from? Where did this begin and what hooked you? What got you hooked into education?
Dr Robert Avossa:
So my leadership story really starts with my mom and dad over 80 years ago living in Naples, when Naples, Italy was bombed by the United States, who were trying to push the Germans out. So my mom and dad both finished their education in elementary school. Schools were blown up, kids stopped going to school and they had to go to work. So when you grow up and are born in a community like that post World War II and the communities are rebuilding, and everyone knows education is important and valuable, yet there is nowhere to go to school, and so they grew up in a space where they had no opportunity.
So once all four of the children were born, my father finally was picked in a lottery to move to the United States as a skilled laborer. He was a machinist. So trying to draw out for our listeners this space that I lived in, where my parents every night at the dinner table told me how important education was, how many sacrifices they had made to come to the US, yet I was terrible at school. I couldn't read, I couldn't concentrate. I wasn't making friends. It was because of the differences in our language, our culture, the way we presented ourselves, etc, which was much more formal. My parents used to dress me to school dressed very nicely because in Italy that's how you went to the school, where in the US it was much more casual, so I never really clicked with a lot of kids, and so that was very difficult for me.
Finally, over time, as I started to be able to read and write and do math and build relationships, I began to flourish, but I was definitely a late bloomer. As my mom told me, because I had done so poorly in school, I wound up spending the rest of my career in school, which is a family joke. But the truth is, it was something I chose to do because I was personally impacted by a teacher named Mr. Beal, who happened to be my ninth grade chemistry teacher and also my soccer coach. He sort of took me under his wing and told me, "Look, you want to play soccer, you got to keep your grades up. You need to start focusing on school." I really felt that that mentorship made a huge difference in my life, and as I got older and went off to college, I decided I wanted to spend my career as a teacher and school administrator trying to build the opportunity that I had in a high quality public education system.
So from there, I took a very natural, often followed path from dean of students to assistant principal. Then ultimately, and this is where again, this joyful opportunity, I became an elementary school principal in a school that was 95% Latino, mostly from Puerto Rico and South America, and a lot of those children did not speak English. I saw a lot of me in that story, but the biggest difference was now we have English language learning classrooms, now we have support systems, now we have translators, where back in the 1970s when I moved to the US, none of that was available. So Oakshire Elementary School, again, a very natural fit for my own personal journey, but also the commitment that I wanted to make to my community.
Adam Smith:
It must be great for you being a part of it, as you say, throughout these different eras where you've seen these changes coming in and making such a difference for children like you. The child that you were didn't have those provisions or all that support. Great to see that and to be able to champion that, especially with that opportunity, it sounds like it was a perfect fit for you at the time.
Dr Robert Avossa:
It was a perfect fit and I enjoyed it. I was principal there for several years, but once I had reached some of my milestones at the elementary school, the superintendent, which most of them do, if you see progress, they'll take you and ask you to take on another challenge. So I was asked to take on a high school role, so I was a high school principal for a little over four years at Olympia High School in Orlando. Again, great school, but some real challenges. We were able to move the school up to an A rating as well.
So high school is a completely different scenario. We had 3,500 students, well over 100 staff members, very large comprehensive high school. But once again, using my sort of fundamental authenticity and my sheer energy and focus, we were able to get the school organized in such a way that we wanted to get every kid connected. They needed to have a caring and loving adult on campus that they could go to. We wanted to make sure everyone had access to high quality rigorous coursework and we included a very large group of foreign languages. So we had Italian, German, French, and Spanish, and Latin. So we had five foreign languages there and we also had an AP program, so that school is where I really honed my academic understanding of the high school, and we had great progress there as well.
Adam Smith:
Let's talk about superintendency, then. Obviously enormous responsibility, but a big purview of everything that is going on. You see so much more, you learn so much more. What were some of the biggest learnings for you and what were some of the highlights?
Dr Robert Avossa:
Well, what I would say is the five years I spent in Charlotte after my principalship as a deputy superintendent, I paid very close attention to the board governance, to the state policy, to the finance, because again, Palm Beach had a $3 billion, with a B, budget. Fulton County had a $1.5 billion dollars budget. Oftentimes as superintendent, you are running the largest company in the community, you're the largest employer. So I honed my skills in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, but then as superintendent in Fulton, when I took over, I was able to rely on those experiences and really organize ourselves in such a way to see dramatic improvement in student achievement.
Adam Smith:
Right, and it is a continual learning process, I think. You cannot possibly learn in just as you're say, in just one school or in one phase of school even. Everything that you sort of need to know, and as you say, it becomes a lot more of a business, you have to become business-minded as a superintendent.
Dr Robert Avossa:
Totally.
Adam Smith:
Yeah, and I think-
Dr Robert Avossa:
Part of that is recruiting excellent people and building a team, organizing the folks around a common vision, mission, and core beliefs, creating a strategic plan with three or four big goals, and then getting out of the way. If you hire the right people and you've got the right direction set, then really it's about managing and monitoring progress towards those goals.
Securly:
The Voices and Education podcast is brought to you by Securly. Since 2013, Securly's sole mission has been to support student safety and wellness. With more than 15,000 schools worldwide already choosing to bring Securly into their school communities, we are creating a clearer picture of what young people are struggling with each and every day. With this data, we are able to more effectively target and implement support, and we want to share that information with as many educators like you as possible. The 2023 State of Student Wellness Report is a free to download paper that takes a closer look into the data and current trends surrounding student wellness. You'll learn how your school can overcome resource limitations, introduce efficient technologies into the classroom, and ultimately better support the students who need your help the most. Download your free copy of this illuminating special report by visiting hs.securly.com/report. That's hs.securly.com/report today.
Adam Smith:
I hear so much about how you need to build not just teams of people, but communities of people. One thing actually, I would love to now go into a little bit more of what we discussed during Securly Prepared, because I think there's a great opportunity now to dig a little deeper and to offer our listeners some great ideas, advice, anecdotal evidence of things that are working to support students. I'd love to know a little bit more about that. What have you seen out and about in your current role? What have you seen going on that is working? How are people building these meaningful cultures?
Dr Robert Avossa:
I think the first part is just paying attention and listening. I think a lot of our leaders today are so busy and under so much pressure to raise student achievement, to make sure parents aren't calling the central office, to make sure that they're following all these compliance and rules, they're so busy, they stop being human-to-human and making connection. The vast majority of people who go into education tend to like people. I mean, that's who we are. We are people who enjoy being around others, we are people who enjoy growing others and seeing them flourish, and so we need to get back to fundamentals.
What I have found and how I coach the people I work with is listen first, pay close attention, learn what's happening in that space, and then finally begin to lead. So you're listening, you're learning, and then you ultimately begin leading. The other piece that helps improve culture is helping teachers, custodians, and I'm talking now at the school level, understand how they contribute to the success of the school. Once we create that culture where this isn't about, these are only my students, my students are the whole school, these aren't just one teacher that's in my department, it's all of us.
People want to know how they contribute, and then leaders need to actually celebrate success, even if it's a little success, even if it's teeny. Okay, our attendance rates went up a little bit. Let's do a special, something to reinforce the fact that the kids are coming to school more, right? Let's give a teacher two or three early release days so she can go to a dentist office and not have to take a day off or go to her own child's parent teacher meeting. Oftentimes, those small things people forget go a long way, and they don't cost you anything. It's just being kind, considerate, and flexible.
Once you have that community built, then you can begin to expect folks to do a little more, run a little faster, lift a little more. But if you start with asking them to do more and you give them no foundation of support, that's where burnout comes in. So for me, as I coach individuals, know who you work with. Understand that a mom maybe is a single parent, and so she may be exhausted because the child was up all night and there's not a partner in the home to help. Maybe someone's going through a divorce or a child is sick and we don't understand why she seems so sad or not involved or engaged. If you know people, then you understand it, you can be empathetic, you can support them through that crisis. Then again, we said this during our last meeting, which is this issue of student wellness really is about all of the adults in the building too. Are they well? Are they taking care of themselves? Do they have someone to talk to? We've been through a lot over these last three years.
Adam Smith:
We absolutely have. I think, I mean at any given time, we don't know what every individual is going through. I think we do forget that if we are not looking after ourselves, we cannot perform to our fullest output or we can't be our best self, we can't focus on those little signals we might miss in a student who needs help or whatever because we're absorbed in our own struggles, and that's so human, it's so normal. Allowing teachers to understand that that is okay, and in fact it should be something that is almost championed really, to actually be able to reach out and say, "I need a little break here, I need a little help here," just to get yourself back on that level. In your role, obviously you see thousands of different schools and you talk to hundreds of different leaders of these schools and districts. What are some of the ways that people are creating these cultures successfully? What are you seeing? What are seeing them do to instill that across such enormous numbers of staff and educators?
Dr Robert Avossa:
So I talked a minute ago about how to maybe address some of that at the school level. Every layer you go up, it gets more and more complicated as a superintendent who now supervises multiple schools, I talk about hiring for those kinds of soft skills. Hire the kind of people that reflect the priorities of the school system. Right now we're seeing a shift towards creating this holistic approach to schooling. Remember the example I gave as a child coming to the US in the 70s, there were no programs for English language learners. Now we've caught up, we're really doing a much better job of that, and today, schools are now expected to do more. So now many schools have a medical center where children can go and schedule an appointment to see a physician or a nurse to get medication because they have a tooth problem or they need glasses. So 30, 40 years ago, schools didn't have to do that. Now we're dealing with major crises, around suicide as an example.
So at the central office, you need to hire for those things, you need to train for those things, and then you need to monitor and evaluate for those things. Is your school district doing an annual survey that allows teachers to be honest and anonymous about how things are going culturally, and then bringing the team in and saying, "All right, what can we do to address this?" We've got way too many vacancies. There's a signal here coming from the teacher who that we're out of balance. We're putting too much pressure on people and not enough support.
So I think that's how a central office can think about the systems level work with that, but don't just brush aside the fact that we've got a mental health crisis and it starts with making sure the adults are well and then well-trained so they can look after the children and when they see something, they need to say something, and who they say it to and what services are available is really the most important part. That's where I'm still seeing struggle. I still don't see school systems having reached a level where they have lots of resources to help children who are struggling with mental health.
Adam Smith:
I mean, you made a really good point. It's about seeing something and saying something, but creating a community and culture where that is something people feel comfortable to do and where they feel not obliged to, but it's something that actually behooves them, it's something that is worthwhile for the entire school, the entire community, be that if it's a student, be that their friends and other groups, or if it's the teachers. It keeps the other teachers safe, it keeps the other staff informed, and people can then act accordingly, right? It's communication and it's building those sort of relationships, I suppose.
Dr Robert Avossa:
That's right, and it starts with that, but to your point about not being driven by compliance, but being driven by choice because you care, right? These are someone's sons and daughters that are in our buildings, these are someone's loved ones, and so we've got to make sure to take good care of them while they're in our responsibility. I have seen lots of superintendents get out ahead and really make this a priority and actually solidify it in a goal for the school system. Reducing suspensions, how are we going to do that? Positive behavior interventions. We want to increase, for example attendance, and we're going to do so by making sure every child has a loving and caring adult that checks on them when they're missing school. It's really trying to take a systemic approach and then monitoring it. See, that's the key, the accountability that comes with it. Just like we monitor reading, writing, and math, we need to monitor wellness that way, and then we need to make sure we've got partners like Securly and others who can help us layer these interventions and get that done.
Adam Smith:
You're so right. I mean, you mentioned Securly, one of our real focal points is creating and collecting the data around those things in the same way you would a child's academic progress. You are monitoring their wellness, and especially in such a digital world where the classroom is now online and everything really is online, it's so important to still monitor that space in the same way you would keep the corridor safe, in the same way you would keep the classroom safe. I just think that's so key as well now.
Dr Robert Avossa:
That's right. We are a data-driven system now. Education is probably one of the last verticals or last industries to really be driven by data. You see it in sports with baseball statistics and football, in finance, in almost any element in any industry, but we finally now have realized we need to be data-driven as well, in not just reading, writing and math, but also how our students are using the technology we've provided them, what are they looking at on those devices, triggers that tell us, "Hey, there's a problem here." The computer's not going to know exactly what the problem is, but the algorithms are written in such a way that we're notified and say, "You need to do something about this, something's wrong here."
Adam Smith:
Well, like you said, it's just somebody raising that flag so that you are aware of it, you're aware of it, that it is actually exists, it's something that needs to be considered as well. Again, that's just good resource and time management. It's pointing people in the right direction when they need to be looking in those directions. Robert, I could talk to you about this all day, but I would love to go onto our end segment. We like to ask our guests three questions to wrap things up, and we're talking a lot here about student safety and wellness, and I'd love to know, in your opinion, what the biggest challenge educators face when it comes to supporting their student wellness now. What is that biggest challenge, do you think?
Dr Robert Avossa:
I think the biggest challenge we face is making sure we can respond appropriately based on the level of the emergency, the level of the situation.
Adam Smith:
The level of need.
Dr Robert Avossa:
Let's not overreact. Yeah, let's not overreact, let's not under-react. Let's try to find a balance, because some parents are also very particular about their children speaking with anybody outside their home, and that's fine. That's the parents' right. However, we have an obligation as educators to, and depending on the state and the school system, to report things that occur, and that's why training for staff is so important. So what I would say, number one thing is let's continue to push on recruiting trained mental health professionals that can help our kids and help our teachers do the work.
Adam Smith:
I love that, yeah. You're right, it's just something that we're just building those layers of support. Again, parents don't have to reach out to those, they don't have to utilize them, but you're right, if we can put those in place and provide information, we see those children for a good portion of their day, perhaps even longer than the parents may see them on a weekday, and I think that's just so key that we provide that knowledge, that information. So a lot of our listeners are obviously educators. What's one thing you would like to say to our listeners? If they are working in education right now and they're feeling a bit burnt out or a bit lost, or perhaps they've lost sight of their why, what's one thing that you would like to say to them?
Dr Robert Avossa:
Well, I think you just sort of wove one part into that, which is your why. I try to remind myself regularly about my path. I grew up, as they say here, with two nickels to rub together. My parents did not have money. Education made the world of difference for me. Many of our teachers could be first generation college educated in their family and they're inspired by that. There's others whose parents went to college, and they should be inspired not because they overcame something like I shared, but because they want to see the next kid succeed who came here with nothing and went on to run the ninth-largest school system in the country.
I'm a success story for those teachers. This is not just my success, this is the success of those who I stood on their shoulders because they're the ones who lifted me up. So I would argue, try to find ways to keep yourself motivated by surrounding yourself with positive people, and don't go into that toxic lunchroom. If you've got teachers at a school that are always negative, just find a positive group of people to be with because you are influenced greatly by the people you're surrounded by.
The second piece I would say is get moving. Move your body. Find a way to exercise, find a way to eat a little healthier, find a way to disconnect from the work by doing something, whether it's watching Netflix, whether it's going out on a bike ride or hanging out with friends. We cannot just spend all day teaching and all night lesson planning and worrying about work, otherwise there's no balance and you're not doing the kids any favor because you're not showing up at 100%.
Adam Smith:
It's so true.
Dr Robert Avossa:
You can't do it. Yeah, you can't do it.
Adam Smith:
It feels almost incongruous to say that the more time you spend in that education bubble, the worse you may become, but it's so true. We are a finite resource, actually. Our energy, our focus, concentration, all of those things start to go out the window the longer that we stay in that space. It is so important to have the outside world to disconnect yourself for a little while so that you can recenter, you can find what makes you, you, the human part again, not the educator part. That's incredible advice, I think. A lot of the educators I speak to have at some stage or other been through that period where they're so focused on their job, they're so focused on the work troubles that they forget that they're a human being outside of that. Outside of the school walls, they are actually just a human being as well.
Last question then. We've talked about a lot of the challenges and some of, I guess, the negative aspects, but there's been a lot of positives that we've discussed too. So I would love to know, for you personally, what's one thing that's giving you hope about the future of education?
Dr Robert Avossa:
I'm starting to see school systems really get traction around wraparound services for children. So for example, the City of Atlanta Schools has done a really nice job around supporting social-emotional learning and helping kids understand that they have agency, they are not a passive participant in life. They can help move from the back of the seat to the driver's seat. I see Atlanta really doing a nice job, and that's a very urban and complex school system.
In San Antonio, we're seeing a lot of the same things there, where a district has put sort of a stake in the ground and said, "We're not going to do this anymore. We're going to make sure that every child has an opportunity to be at some of the best schools," and they've included transportation in getting kids to the school of their choice based on a theme. So if you're very artistic and you want to stay in a school of the arts, then you get to do that. If you're a tech kid who loves technology, we have a school for you. If you're theater, that doesn't mean you do theater all day, but it does mean that we focus very deeply on that. So as we write, we write scripts for the theater. As we do math, we talk about things that maybe are part of a set. That's the kind of thing I'm starting to see, we're starting to react to that.
I also see school systems who are putting in place great ways to manage security and safety. I'm now finally starting to see some academic gains. I'm really proud of Cambridge, Massachusetts, they have a school system there who after a couple of years is finally back to where they were. They've regained all the academic success that they had lost previous to COVID. So there's a lot to be hopeful for and I'm starting to see a younger generation now raising their hand to take on these roles. We have a superintendent in Anchorage, Alaska who's a millennial, young man, 30, 31, 32 years old. He's the school superintendent of the largest system in Alaska, and so he's going to bring energy and excitement and new sets of ideas. As we mentioned earlier, it's so important to have different people at the table. Well, he now is at the head of the table, and so his view of the high school experience is going to be much fresher than the one I had in the 80s. Does that make sense?
Adam Smith:
It makes so much sense, and I love that we are now giving the opportunities to younger people. We are open more to their opinions, their ideas, their viewpoints, because again, they were in education more recently than a lot of the other superintendents who they may be stuck in their ways in some places. But as you say, that's the importance of having these varied teams around you, making sure that if you have got a blind spot because of your own experiences, you find somebody who can fill that and can speak to what you can't see or what you can't really give the knowhow for.
So love to hear that, some amazing things there. I really love the idea of those schools that are a little bit more focused around where a child is finding enjoyment or where they're finding success. I would love to talk to you again in a few years and see how that's going, to see if it has gleaned some brilliant results, we've seen positive change. Robert, we've come to the end of the podcast, but it has been just a great conversation. I've love being able to go a little bit more in depth with you after Securly Prepared. But if any of our listeners would like to get in touch with you, find out more of what you're doing or anything like that, where can they find you online?
Dr Robert Avossa:
Oh, well, thank you. I'm on Twitter. Follow me on Twitter, Robert_Avossa. I'm also on LinkedIn. Check out the program that we lead called The Forum for Educational Leadership. You can Google that and learn a little bit about that program as well. But thank you for having me.
Adam Smith:
Robert, it's been my absolute pleasure. Well, that does bring us to the end of today's special episode of the Voices in Education podcast in partnership with Securly Prepared. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to leave a rating and review to help other listeners like you find the podcast and be sure to check out the on-demand replay of Securly Prepared. Just go to www.bigmarker.com/securly/securly-prepared, or you can follow the link in our episode description.
We'd also love for you to continue the conversation over on our social channels. You can follow us on Twitter at Securly, over on Instagram at SecurlyInc, or on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/company/securly. I look forward to seeing you all there. Be sure to check out our other two special episodes, as well as the entirety of this incredible third season of the podcast. And as always, I want to thank you for all of the hard work you do to support our students. Be sure, as Robert says, to look after yourselves and your colleagues, build those communities, because we're all in this together. Take care.
Thanks for tuning in to the Voices in Education podcast, powered by Securly. For more episodes and additional details about the podcast, visit www.securly.com/podcast.