Pam Moran, Liz Calvert, and Ira Socol on Real Learning, Real Accomplishment

In this episode of the Getting Smart Podcast, Rebecca Midles sits down with Pam Moran, Ira David Socol, and Liz Calvert to explore how educational leaders are transforming traditional teaching and assessment into meaningful, student-centered learning experiences. Drawing from their new book, Real Learning, Real Accomplishment, the conversation dives into the power of mastery learning, systemic change, and fostering student and teacher agency. With insights from innovative schools across Kentucky, Virginia, Illinois, and Nevada, this episode highlights the strategies and belief shifts necessary to create lasting, impactful educational transformation. Tune in to learn how educators and leaders can embrace risk, reimagine grading systems, and prioritize real-world learning to empower every student to succeed.

Outline

• (00:00) Introduction: The Journey to Real Learning
• (01:52) Shifting from Achievement to Accomplishment
• (08:37) Systems Change and Misconceptions About Leadership
• (14:35) Building Teacher Agency Through Vulnerability
• (21:52) Embracing Mistakes as Learning Opportunities
• (28:48) The Moral Obligation: Transforming Grades and Assessment

Introduction: The Journey to Real Learning

Rebecca Midles: You’re listening to the Getting Smart podcast. I’m Rebecca Midles. Lately, I’ve been hyper-focused on the state and regional level of educational change and the type of leaders who bridge bold policy and grassroots practice into action.

Our recent conversations with leaders like Bill Nicely, Dave Richards, and Janine Collins have all shown that meaningful change at the state level is possible, but they’re not alone. I’ve seen the magic that today’s guests bring to this work firsthand. I’ve had the honor of working alongside them in Nevada and now Virginia.

Witnessing them in action and seeing their passion for personalized learning, today we get to dive into their new book that provides tools and strategies for that kind of transformation. It’s a testament to the power of collaboration and innovation, showcasing the remarkable work being done in states like Kentucky, Virginia, Illinois, and Nevada.

I am honored to be joined by the co-editors of the great book, Real Learning, Real Accomplishment, Pam Moran and Ira Socol. We’re also joined by Liz Calvert, the amazing principal of Madison High School in Virginia, whose work is a key story in this book. Pam, Ira, and Liz, welcome to the show.

Pamela Moran: It’s great to be here, Rebecca. Thank you.

Ira David Socol: Thanks, Rebecca. It’s nice to be here.

Rebecca Midles: Your book’s title immediately grabs your attention and centers on a key theme: the difference between real learning and accomplishment versus traditional teaching and achievement. What’s the biggest misconception leaders have about the “how” of change, and what are the most fundamental shifts in time, space, and culture that leaders need to be prepared for?

Shifting from Achievement to Accomplishment

Pamela Moran: I’m wondering if you might start with just focusing on the difference between real learning and real accomplishment and the traditional teaching and achievement model that is so alive and well in schools across America today. Because the folks that we found that have made that shift are really folks that are making a difference in a very different way with their kids in terms of teaching and learning and the outcomes of accomplishment.

Ira David Socol: You know, Rebecca, I guess I’d start by what we hear when we talk to students. And we could say this is, you know, a Gen Z or mid-21st century problem, but it’s not. It goes all the way back. When you talk to secondary students, they usually can’t figure out why they’re in school, except that they have to.

And this divides into two groups. There’s the group that simply wants to get the achievement. They want the grades, and they want the diploma at the end of school with, you know, the honors thing and the class rank. And then you get a much greater group that really has no idea, and all they want to do is get done and leave.

Largely, what’s going on is that we’re asking them to achieve a goal that they have had no part in designing, that they have no part in determining how they will achieve it. And most people are pretty unmotivated when they’re put in that situation. The key difference that we see is that when schools shift to an accomplishment-based focus, they’re asking kids to do something—and kids love to do things. That’s what they do.

Kids are always learning. In fact, I’ve always argued that probably the place they’re learning least effectively is often while they’re sitting in classrooms and they’re bored. But kids are in a constant learning mode. And if we can ask them to do things, they will really go at it.

And that accomplishment fits so critically with where our economy is. Now, I know that, you know, I have a son who’s a classic millennial in the tech industry, and years ago he pointed out that the places he worked had not asked about education on their job applications at all. They weren’t interested in it at all.

And since his father is in education, that struck me as, you know, as a critical thing. But what they want to know is what can you do? What can you actually go out and accomplish? And what people don’t understand is that in order to get there, you have to give up control. You have to give up control to teachers to be able to work with students individually in ways that work for the two together.

And you have to give up control to students so that they actually can own their own education and do it. And I’ll go all the way back, Rebecca, to when I went to an alternative high school. I discussed this in the introduction to the book. It was all based on this kind of mastery learning. And what one of the teacher-founders of that school said was, “I’m taking all your excuses away from you.”

Whenever you fail a class, you’ll say, “The teacher sucked. I’m not interested. The time of day was wrong. The classroom’s uncomfortable.” Because in every one of those cases, I’ll say, “Then find another way to do it. But you gotta do it. You gotta accomplish something.” And I think that’s the critical thing that educators like Liz and the other voices in this book are accomplishing.

Pamela Moran: And I think that really ties into the other piece that Rebecca kicked out in that intro about what are some of the misconceptions, Rebecca, that leaders have about change? Boy, you know, I’ve been the victim of my own misconceptions over a long career, as well as have been the witness to a variety of belief systems that people have about what it takes to create change pathways that don’t pan out.

And one of the reasons why the folks that we’re featuring in the book are featured is because they are people who are really seeing change as something that can be sustainable.

Rebecca Midles: Yes.

Pamela Moran: With the right actions. And so Liz is a great example of that. And I think that a couple of misconceptions that are pretty critical are that oftentimes people think, you know, that what we tend to do in education is we focus on what’s the one thing we’re gonna change.

We’re gonna buy a program to fix reading, or we’re going to change the way that we schedule kids at, you know, the beginning of the day, the middle of the day, the end of the day. And so we tweak the schedule and think that that’s gonna fix some issue that we really want to change and move in a different way.

Or we think, “Oh, if we offer professional development on project-based learning, and we do that at the beginning of the year during pre-service week, then magically everybody’s going to embrace and start doing PBL,” right? What we know is that there is no one solution, and it’s the leaders like Liz and others in the book—Brian Creasman in Fleming, Kentucky, is another; Mike Lubelfeld up in Illinois—both superintendents, even teachers in their classrooms like Dave Glover, who really understand that what we do in our schools is we work through systems.

And that systems change is really where you have to look if you want change to be sustainable.

Systems Change and Misconceptions About Leadership

Pamela Moran: Professional learning folks that start to understand that professional learning needs to be job-embedded, that it has to be something that’s ongoing, that it’s a process, not an event. They are people who start to build toward change that takes root, that sticks. Leaders who understand that you can’t implement project-based learning and leave a schedule that runs in 45- or 60-minute blocks. So they start to look at time, they look at resources, they look at professional learning, they look at the students themselves in terms of student voice, and they start to see the ecosystem of learning as being the system change.

Pamela Moran: That has to happen—not one single element of it. You can’t turn one gear and get the car moving. You’ve got to have all the parts of the engine working in sync. And I think that’s one that’s really critical. The other one, I think, is the idea—and I think Jake Burks, John Burks, who’s an OG of mastery learning, really spoke to this—that belief systems and values are the core of what causes a faculty or a district to really get to a place where you get that deep investment in change. But you have to start with the idea that not everybody in the system has shared beliefs. So what do you do to get to values and beliefs? And one of the things that Jake would say is you have to take action sometimes first. Change the behavior in order for people to be able to see that the result of that change in behavior leads them to a different kind of belief system.

And so I think that that’s also a piece of it—it’s not just about—you cannot mandate beliefs and values. You have to do something. You have to take some action that creates dissonance and causes people to see things differently in terms of student learning. So those are a couple of misconceptions. One, that you can just make change happen and that people will just kind of come with you, right? The other is that you can just change one piece of the system and everything’s just gonna fall in place and start to work together.

Rebecca Midles: Yeah, I see lots of connections, as usual, when you guys are sharing. The embedded professional learning—isn’t that what we believe to be true about performance-based learning? You learn it, then you do it. Why wouldn’t that be true? And then I also appreciate this idea that you can’t mandate values, just like we mandate some sort of what people now call social-emotional learning—that they walk in the door prepared and that we’re not teaching it. And this idea that if we just mandate it, it’ll happen. So I’m seeing lots of application to what that might look like on the ground in districts and schools. Liz, I’m wondering if you have more to add to that.

Liz Calvert: Yeah. I think one of the things that I think about with change in particular, especially when you’re talking about traditional school as we call it, is there’s this preconceived idea about what school is supposed to be simply because we went through it ourselves. And so to combat that is going to take a lot of energy and courage because what we’re talking about is a very different way of learning. What most adults don’t really understand—and I work in a great community that’s been really supportive, but it took me a solid couple of years to get them on board with this idea—is that we’re not actually trying to hurt your child. We’re actually trying to prepare them for the future.

And the thing about change is that it takes time. And the first years where I really pulled the Band-Aid off and said, “We’re doing this,” I said, “Please take the leap of faith with me. I’m asking you to give me a year. Let’s start small, and we’ll build on it.” And so change in these traditional kinds of ideas—you have to tick away at them over time. They’re not something that just happens overnight. I’ve been in schools before where the, “Oh, that didn’t work. Let’s move on.” You can’t be that way—not if you truly believe that what you’re doing is the right thing for kids and preparing them for the future.

Rebecca Midles: So I’m hearing that leadership come through, that what I’ve already learned about you and am so glad you could make this call, by the way. I know it’s not easy for people in schools to be on a podcast. It’s so great. So when we think about that piece, I’m also hearing a level of that leap of faith. I’m hearing some kind of that vulnerability. I know from the book that you share that you started your journey by asking the staff, “What is learning?” What was the biggest challenge in getting your staff to be vulnerable and question everything, especially grading and assessment? What was that like, and how did that impact your culture?

Liz Calvert: Wow, that’s a huge question. But where we really started was we knew—I worked for a wonderful principal. I was an assistant principal in the building that I’m in, and I worked for a wonderful principal who kind of got hooked onto deeper learning, the deeper learning conferences that were going on at High Tech High. We sent quite a few people out there, and this idea of our kids can do more. They don’t have to just memorize; they don’t have to just be these, you know, wealth of spitting out answers all the time. What is it that they do with that knowledge? And so that idea of learning became the focus of the “why.”

We spent a great deal of time looking at research around deeper learning and what it is that we want kids to be able to be and do. We were very rooted in professional learning communities, so those four critical questions that you ask. But where I stop is we always say, “What do kids know and are able to do?” But we stop with what kids need to know.

Rebecca Midles: Mm.

Liz Calvert: We don’t really expand on what they’re able to do. So we started to talk about our staff. And I will tell you, the three chapters in the book for me are kind of a love letter to my staff in a way because none of this, even though I’m the leader of that building, none of this would’ve been possible without their courage and their vulnerability, right? So we realized that grading, when we started to talk about norming, when we finally got into this process—and norming is really difficult for teachers. It’s a really hard thing to say, “This is where my kids are. Where are your kids?” And so there was this back and forth, and we kept pushing them and said, “Let’s do a protocol. Let’s have somebody come in and facilitate for you.” And what we realized really—and not quite in this order—was that we needed to have this heavy grading discussion about what we believed grades represented. And that’s really where the deep work started for us, even though we had been through three or four years of learning about deeper learning and what that meant.

Building Teacher Agency Through Vulnerability

Liz Calvert: We used Project Zero. We looked—you know, we had all these things, but it wasn’t until we actually got through creating our first grading guidelines where we said, “This is what it means. These are the practices. This is what we will follow,” that the teachers really started to open up more than I ever thought they would because we got the emotional side of grading put over to the side.

Rebecca Midles: That’s right. But, I mean, you wouldn’t be the person where I would feel like I’m working for you. I would feel like I’m working with you, alongside you. That is what that would feel like, I can imagine. So I heard not just “What is learning?” but also “What is grading?” and all the things that are attached to it. I think you have a statement in the book that talks about how you can’t have student agency without teacher agency. I would probably add school leader agency too—some districts probably—but you can’t have that without the other. And I’m hearing that. So, like, starting with those questions to kind of dig into your fundamental beliefs, can you tell us a little bit more about how you gave or supported—or unleashed is probably a better word to say—the agency of teachers and how that impacted your culture moving forward?

Liz Calvert: That was—how do you carve out time in an already packed day?

Rebecca Midles: Mm-hmm.

Liz Calvert: Yeah. So, what we had done is we decided that I was gonna just put some funds aside, and I was gonna pay for every single team to have a day off together. They were gonna just take the time. And at the early stages, we were trying to figure out what skills actually do we want to assess. We started out with questions like, “What do you want at the end of biology? What do you want kids to be like? What are the things they need for the next level?” And that’s what a lot of conversation—some of the most impressive and just impressive conversations I’ve ever had with teachers is listening to them talk about what the essential skills kids need to have when they leave their class. And they needed almost a full day just to come up with the skills, right? So you have to carve out time. You have to be able to give them unencumbered moments with a facilitator to be able to dig deeply into their thoughts and ideas around whatever that topic is. And that’s consistent throughout.

But it was once they started to work with each other—we had one team, and they know this, so I’m okay saying this to you. We had one of the most dysfunctional teams in our building. They were a chemistry team, and I love them dearly. I was their assistant principal, and boy, they could not—

Rebecca Midles: You’re saying they didn’t have good chemistry. I just wanted to—I had to get that pun in. Okay.

Liz Calvert: No, they did not. They did not at all. But they were—they’re amazing teachers, really passionate about their subject, and all of them have really good ideas. They just couldn’t get to the same place together. When they came back from that day together—and we made sure that it was offsite, because being offsite is really special for teachers—they came back, and it was just—they were like new people. They had seen each other in a different light. They were—they were talking in ways they hadn’t talked about. And then when that carried over into their conversations, when they met as a team, when they pulled student work together for the first time—and I was in the room when they pulled student work together for the first time—and it was really painful because one student—this was an A to one teacher, and this was a D to another teacher. And so over time, you build that vulnerability.

And I think key to this was having some really strong conversations with my coach. We have a technology specialist as well as—I pay for a halftime instructional coach, and they were as essential in helping us design the protocols for the things we needed to do. When you do that, and you do that wholly and systematically and consistently over the course of six or eight months, people start to see, “Oh, okay, this isn’t going away.”

The other piece that’s essential in all of this—and I think it’s something we often lose as leaders when we’re thinking about change—is that you have to be very delicate when you address the impact on students because—and I said this to my staff over and over again—we cannot let our learning, or lack of it, or pace of it interfere or impact a student’s grade. When that happens, we lose all credibility for the change we’re trying to sustain—to build and sustain. With that, being vulnerable myself to those fears, they in turn—you know, when you model that, they in turn bring that into their team meetings, and they build trust. Trust is critical.

Rebecca Midles: I’m gonna go to Pam next in just a second. But what I love about what you’re sharing is you have not left the teacher in you as a leader. Like, it’s really strong, and you really hear that in terms of best practices. So I just really appreciate that that’s highlighted, and it’s definitely coming out. You’re bringing back a lot of memories for myself, having gone through it in similar systems and how challenging that was, and I just really appreciate it. Keep sharing those insights. Pam, do you have more to add to that?

Pamela Moran: Yeah, I wanna tie into something that I think one of the guiding principles that Liz built out with her staff is that you have to create a safe space for not just kids to experience failure, but for teachers to experience failure. And that means that you have to really build out a culture where people feel comfortable and safe to take risks. And it reminds me—you know, Jake Burks, John Burks, is one of the authors in this book who has been long-time retired from the superintendency but was an early advocate as a principal of mastery learning back in the 1970s and 1980s.

In his chapter, he says something like this—and I wanna kick this to Ira and to Liz. He says, “Mastery learning requires a different relationship with mistakes. Mistakes aren’t failures; they’re feedback. In fact, we told our kids mistakes are where the learning happens. That’s why formative assessment’s so powerful. It’s where kids try, they err, they reflect, and grow. Teachers guide, they adjust, and reteach based on real-time data, not just scores on a final test. When students start to see themselves improving, when they realize, ‘I couldn’t do this before, and I can now,’ you light a fire. And that confidence, that sense of ‘I can,’ is transformative.”

And I think about that. Ira had that experience as a student. Liz has seen that come alive—not just with her kids. That philosophy that Jake so beautifully articulates, Liz really built that out as part of the philosophy of change over time. It’s, “We all are going to make mistakes as we go through this process. How do we sustain that vulnerability and that safety and that risk-taking all at the same time?” And I’m wondering if they both have sort of a connection to that and how important that is for a leader, whether it’s in a classroom, whether it’s at the building level, or at the district level—or even the state level. Because I’ve even seen Janine Collins model that in terms of what she does.

Shorts Content

Embracing Mistakes as Learning Opportunities

Ira David Socol: Well, you know, Rebecca, it’s interesting because Janine and I had lots of conversations when we started all working together in Nevada. Janine, like me, first went to an art school. That’s her first educational experience, which is, when you think of it, the ultimate mastery learning environment. When you’re in an arts program of any kind, that’s all you’re doing. You’re not getting graded on the fact that you said, “That’s a paintbrush.” That doesn’t matter—it’s what you do with it.

But one of the things I watched in that is that mistakes are—that’s where you learn. You’re expected to fail and fail and fail and fail because I don’t care whether you’re learning how to weld or whether you’re learning math—if you’re really going to learn it, you’re going to mess up the first bunch of times. Otherwise, it’s just memorization, and that isn’t actually learning anything. That’s just simply having something stored in your head.

The other thing that, when you see that happen, you see an assessment system that changes completely. So when I was in art school, I remember thinking—I was at Michigan State, it’s the classic four-point university scale—but in the art department, there were only three grades. There was 0.0, which meant they never saw you, you didn’t show up. There was 3.5, which was described as “You did everything, but it didn’t work.” And there was 4.0, where you did everything, you’re really happy with it, and it did work.

But then it was interesting—my next educational experience was in the New York City Police Academy, which is 37 State University of New York credits in six months. It’s an incredible hunt, but it is also driven by the idea that every single person that begins in that class will finish. That’s the absolute belief system, and I went through the academy with 1,800 people, and 1,799 successfully got through it. There was a simple belief system that this is what was going to happen.

When you’re starting from scratch with people—most people in the New York City Police Academy had never held a gun before in their lives and had to learn to shoot. It’s New York City, so probably 25% had never driven a car before and had to learn pursuit driving. None of us—well, very, very few of us—had ever had any experience with the law before, and suddenly you’re expected to get 16 university credits of constitutional law in six months. You’re going to blow it. You’re going to blow it over and over and over again on your way to getting there.

But I think the critical belief system that Jake expressed in the book is: You either start by going in with the assumption that everybody’s going to succeed, or you don’t. And that’s the critical thing. So it’s not a question of, “Are you making mistakes?” It’s, “How many mistakes are you making on your way to getting where you want to be?”

Liz Calvert: If I can jump in—it’s a really difficult thing for students who have come up in a system knowing there’s a right or wrong answer for things, and then there’s a score at the end, for them to say, “Wait a second, you’re not done with this yet. It’s not over once that test is there.” So you talk about those intense belief systems, and part of the belief systems we attacked was, “What does a grade represent?” Why do we have grades?

In Northern Virginia, we are kind of in a bubble. And all kids—like my school, we’ve always had a ton of kids—over 95% of our kids go on to, I think it’s 95%, go on to some sort of college. That’s changing. To be clear, that is really changing. That is not necessarily the path for everybody. But when you talk about grades in particular, grades are critically important to families. But why do we need grades? What are they supposed to represent and communicate? Are they for ranking and sorting kids? And we just said, “That’s not what grades are about. Grades are about what learning is happening and what your students are able to do. And by the way, it takes time for some kids to learn it.”

I’m not gonna—every kid is not gonna learn about osmosis in a week. Some kids are gonna take four weeks to learn it, but we’re gonna penalize that student just because of that time-based system. So breaking that belief system that everybody had to learn it at the same pace needed to be challenged. And I will continue to challenge it because I don’t learn at the same pace as everybody else. I’m a slow reader. It takes me five minutes to read what might take somebody else 30 seconds to read and really comprehend. So challenging those deeply held beliefs around the purpose of grades and what grades are supposed to communicate is a key critical component.

Now, as we transitioned, we took a lot of feedback from families—and I’m calling it specifically feedback because they originally were telling us we were failing their kids because they didn’t understand what we were trying to do. They didn’t understand that belief system. But that’s where that leap of faith came in. And lucky for me, I had enough trust with the people in the community that most families were like, “All right, Liz, we got you. We trust you. We know you’re not gonna harm our kids. Let’s see where this goes.” And when you get the feedback, when a student’s been in this process now for two or three years, even four years, and then you hear how successful they are on the other end for whatever it is they’re gonna do—that’s what education is supposed to be. It’s supposed to be about where they end up. You are just providing all those foundations. But if you believe that grades are only about ranking and sorting and, you know, moving kids from this group to that group, you’re missing the whole point. So belief systems are critical.

The Moral Obligation: Transforming Grades and Assessment

Rebecca Midles: I don’t know if there’s more you can add to this because that was a perfect capture, Liz. But Pam, with what she just surfaced, I think this comes up in the book that you guys edited. From what you had from your authors that contributed to this book, how would you help educators and parents make that shift from grades as a ranking system and make it more of a moral obligation, not just a new policy?

Pamela Moran: Well, Liz, it’s hard to follow Liz—she’s so darn eloquent. I think that the point I would make in terms of moral obligation is that everybody in this book saw learning as a cycle in which assessment and grades were not apart from, but a part of, the learning process. And there is so much more in this book than just a focus on mastery learning. Although we started out with that as the focus, we really shifted it to this idea that it was not so much about achievement in a traditional sense, but in a sense of real accomplishment of learning—learning that kids could show evidence of, learning that mattered.

Too much of our kids’ time—and I’ve heard parent after parent say this—how much time did I spend in school learning things that I’ve never used and didn’t remember any longer than the test I took? How many kids have I had come back to me as a superintendent back in the day from college and say, “There was so much time in high school that was wasted that I could have used to better prepare me to be ready for the kinds of work that I’m doing in college or in the workforce?”

And so I think that obligation we have is a moral imperative. If we have kids who do not learn anything that is sustained in their lives and that only mattered for a test, then we have really not delivered to our kids what they need for their future. There is so much rich focus in this book from people who have actually changed work and sustained it. It’s not just about assessment, but it’s about the changes in curriculum and teaching practices and how time is used. And that really speaks to how do you do that? And I think that’s something that educators yearn to know—how do people really do that?

Ira David Socol: Well, you know, Rebecca, I think one of the critical things in the book that excites me is so often in education, as in far too many things in this country, people say, “Oh, well, that works there, but we couldn’t possibly do it because…” When we started asking people to contribute to this book, we thought of this, and I don’t think you could pick three more radically different places than North Las Vegas, Nevada; Fairfax County, Virginia; and Fleming County, Kentucky. I mean, these are literally all over the map in every way—socioeconomically, resource-wise, and everything else.

What we have with this collection of authors is that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter the size of the school. It doesn’t matter where it is. It doesn’t matter whether your community has a lot of wealth or not. It just—that doesn’t matter. What matters is, I think, what Liz most expressed: shifting a belief system to thinking about what is it that students need? What do they need to carry themselves forward into life? What are the lessons that go along with that?

And like Liz was saying, you know, you can’t just drop in social-emotional learning. Social-emotional learning is part of everything, but so is getting through the competency things you need to live your life. And you’re not going to do it if you’re dependent entirely on someone giving you a random grade that may or may not mean anything to you. That’s not what our kids need, and that’s not what they want.

So I think the critical thing is this can be done. And what this book is a testament to is a whole bunch of different people in radically different places doing the work and getting it done.

Liz Calvert: If I could just follow up on that—you know, sorry, I can’t help it. I’m not gonna let you have the last word, Ira. Not gonna do it. No. You know, you talk about a moral obligation. My father was a pastor. He was in service. I’m just—service is kind of built into me. This is what you do. I got into teaching because I felt a moral obligation to prepare kids even 25 years ago. I just didn’t really know 25 years ago what that meant.

Kids are walking into a society where there is no civil discourse, right? There are so many challenges that I could never have dreamed of. And if we shelter our students in a way, at the high school level in particular, and just kind of talk about just the content, that doesn’t really give them the tools to be successful later. And so it’s really important to me—what I wrote down in my little notes, I said, “Every child has the right to an education at the pace in which it fits their needs.” And that means this system, I truly believe, is not just for your high-end learner or your middle-of-the-road learner. It’s for any student—your multilingual learners. They can produce evidence. It may not look like the student who’s been speaking English their whole lives, but they can produce evidence and demonstrate mastery for something. And so can students with IEPs, and so can 504 students. It’s not predefining who kids are, and every single child in this country deserves to have that kind of respect and the belief behind them that they can do it.

If we don’t do that, we’re just going to continue to keep failing our kids.

Rebecca Midles: Thank you. Thank you all. I think what you’ve really done here is everyone’s running to the show notes to find out how to get a copy of this book or find out where it is. But thank you, Pam, Ira, and Liz. This conversation has shown that transformation isn’t a single event. It’s a journey, and from what you’ve been hearing on this podcast, but certainly how they’ve been lifting the voices of others that are in this collection of stories, it’s built on the collective wisdom of educators on the ground. I’m sure that drove that title. Your book that you’ve collected has captured the work beautifully, providing inspiration for others to get started. Thank you for making time today.

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Guest Bio

Pamela Moran

Dr. Moran currently serves as the Executive Director of the non-profit Virginia School Consortium for Learning.  A retired Superintendent, Dr. Moran’s former school district has been recognized nationally as offering a continuum of contemporary learning options that expand access and equity of opportunity to all learners.

One of four finalists for the AASA National Superintendent of the Year, she also has been recognized as a national Tech Savvy Superintendent, BAM Education Superintendent of the Year, and Virginia Superintendent of the Year. She was a gubernatorial appointee to the State Higher Education Council for Virginia and is a past president of the Virginia Association of School Superintendents.

Dr. Moran serves a member of the Maker Ed Advisory Board, the Aspen Institute Council of Distinguished Educators, and the American Institute of Architects Leadership Committee for Education. She is a co-author of Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation, and Zero-based Thinking Change Schools.

Ira David Socol

Ira Socol is a former Chief Technology and Innovation Officer in Virginia. He has been recognized by the Center for Digital Education for its annual award to the nation’s 2017 top 30 Technologists, Transformers and Trailblazers. He is the author of numerous journal articles in national education and school architectural journals. During doctoral studies at Michigan State, he became a leading national expert in the use of accessibility technology and Universal Design for Learning where he also developed Toolbelt Theory, an equity lens for all learners. He also co-authored the just released “Timeless Learning” with Pam Moran. Pam and Ira have keynoted and workshopped together at national and state conferences.

Liz Calvert

Lynne Calvert, a dedicated educator with nearly 25 years of experience, has a rich and varied career in K-12 education. After starting as a history teacher and coach at Chantilly High School, she took on roles ranging from social studies teacher and department chair at Oakton to school-based technology specialist at Rocky Run Middle School. Her journey also includes leadership positions such as director of student services and assistant principal at Thoreau before becoming assistant principal at Madison in 2015. During the pandemic, Calvert stepped in as acting principal at Marshall Road Elementary, where she led the school through the challenges of transitioning to virtual learning. Now the principal of Madison, she is committed to fostering a unified school community through inclusive values and skill-based learning frameworks. Calvert is passionate about preparing students for the challenges of the future and creating a space where every student feels valued, heard, and supported.

Links

• Watch the full video here
• LinkedIn | Liz Calvert
• LinkedIn | Ira David Socol
• LinkedIn | Pamela Moran
• Real Learning, Real Accomplishment