Building Relationships with Your Students AND Staff: A Groundbreaking Conversation

Presented by Miyoshi Knox, Former Principal for Chicago Public Schools and Leadership Consultant for The Leadership Perspective; and Darius Weatherspoon, Student Special Services Advocate, Chicago Public Schools’ Burnham Elementary (IL)
Moderated by Jessica Berlinski, Director of K-12 Education, Ripple Effects

Sponsored by Ripple Effects

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Watch Chicago Public Schools award-winning turnaround school leader and MTSS consultant Mioyshi Knox and Student Special Services Advocate Darius Weatherspoon as they share the secrets behind building student and staff relationships for academic success and mental wellness. Former colleagues—a principal and school intervention specialist—come together for a no-holds-barred conversation on how they worked together to build trust with high-ACEs students and each other to turn around a failing Chicago school. Viewers learn:

• The five best ways to make students and staff feel safe and build trust
• What administrators need to know their staff wants; and what staff need to know their administrators want—but are afraid to tell each other
• The best trauma-informed strategies and tools for building students’ coping skills around their real-world challenges
• How to lead so that students and staff show up and are motivated to do their best

This recorded edWebinar is of interest to school and district leaders of PreK through high school grade levels, as well as deans, counselors, social workers, federal program coordinators, and all those involved in student mental and behavioral health.

About the Presenters

Miyoshi Knox has been an educator in Chicago Public Schools for more than 23 years, serving as a teacher, instructional coach, assistant principal, and principal. She is the 2019 recipient of the LEAP Innovations Leader Award and the recipient of the 2020 Chicago Public Schools Distinguished Leader Award. Miyoshi shares the impact of her journey as a transformational school leader at LEARN Charter School, Howe School of Excellence, and Stagg School of Excellence to give voice to the students and families of North Lawndale, Austin, and Englewood in Chicago. She has served as the Academy of Urban School Leadership network representative for the Principal Advisory Council to the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools for two consecutive years. Miyoshi led her former school Stagg School of Excellence through the process of reimagining classrooms through a personalized learning framework. Together with her team, they developed and implemented a redesign plan to transform Stagg into a personalized learning school. She is currently living her dream of supporting leaders all over the world to take the risk of leading with vulnerability, transparency, and compassion through her consulting firm, The Leadership Perspective, where she is an executive coach and consultant.

Darius Weatherspoon currently serves as the Student Special Services Advocate of Chicago Public Schools’ Burnham Elementary. He has served young people and the community for over 20 years. His career started as a childcare worker at Daniel J. Nellum Services working with Illinois Wards of State and DCFS. In 2015, he transitioned into supporting diverse youth in classroom settings at Chicago Public Schools’ Curtis Elementary. In 2019, Stagg School of Excellence’s Principal Miyoshi Knox hired Darius to serve as a youth interventionist in the Englewood area and Jeffrey Manor neighborhoods. Together they worked with PreK-8 youth to successfully turnaround Stagg, but more importantly to motivate their learners to build social and emotional skills, change their behavior, and thrive. Working with children and teens has taught him that youth can be successful in any environment.

About the Moderator

Jessica Berlinski is the director of K-12 for Ripple Effects, an innovative social-change enterprise focused on leveraging personalized SEL to improve students’ behavior and academics and achieve educational equity. She brings over a decade of experience leading organizations dedicated to supporting the “whole child” through academic and SEL tools and programs to her work. Jessica co-founded and served as Chief Impact Officer of SEL tech start-ups, If You Can and Centervention (formerly Personalized Learning Games). In these roles, she commercialized the first evidence-based SEL assessment and learning game for K-12, and the first SEL iPad game for the consumer marketplace. Previously, she served as Managing Director of GameDesk, a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded non-profit focused on innovative learning models, and as National Director of Character Counts. Jessica speaks on technology and SEL at education and social-change conferences nationally, and her work has been featured on National Public Radio, and in Forbes and Newsweek. She graduated from Northwestern University with a B.A. in philosophy.

Learn more about viewing the live presentation and the recording, earning your CE certificate, and using our new accessibility features.

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Ripple Effects is the only digital SEL and mental health program for students and staff that is proven to improve student behavior, academics and SEL skills, and reduce drop-out rates and depression scores. The CASEL aligned Ripple Effects program empowers K-12 learners to build resiliency assets around their personal needs and traumas via over 400 interactive lessons (e.g. anxiety, loneliness, getting help, unplanned change, substance abuse.)