Wednesday, December 25, 2013

How #PrincipalCast was Born

My educational and professional goal was always to be a principal.  I love teaching, but I also love helping others to improve their teaching.  It is something that I am very passionate about.  

I have been on Twitter for a while with the hande @theresawhite (changed to @theresastager when I had gotten married).  I utilized Twitter mostly for professional reasons - starring and favoriting every idea I could possibly use in my classroom, knowing I would never, ever be able to use them all.  During grad school, I spent a lot of time online learning about administration - what questions were asked during interviews, how to hire new staff, common issues in the career, etc.  I stumbled upon Scott Elias (@ScottElias) and Melinda Miller's (@mmiller7571) podcast, Practical Principals.  I thought it was awesome, and I loved to listen to them every month.  I remember not being able to wait until the next one was available because I always learned so much.  Plus, they were really techie, and I loved that.

Scott received a job offer from Apple to work for their education team, and Practical Principals abruptly ended.  I missed listening to them, but more than that, I missed having a "real" group of administrators share the things I didn't learn in school and provide me with a PLN of administrators that I would never have met otherwise.

Fast forward to July 2013, and I have received my first job as a principal.  I immediately created a new handle - @PrincipalStager - and ran with it.  I also decided we needed a new administration podcast - and I was going to find people to help me start it.  I contacted Melinda Miller to see if she would like to jump in where she and Scott left off, but she was concerned about having enough time to do so.  She suggested Jessica Johnson, a principal from Wisconsin - the prolific @PrincipalJ.  Jessica was next on my list anyway.  Jessica was in and also suggested trying to get one more in on it, and that is where Dr. Spike Cook (@drspikecook) joined the crew.  We decided we would start within the next two weeks, began communicating on Voxer and sharing ideas for a show, and we did a Google Hangout the following Sunday.  I recorded it, and all that showed was me through the entire show.  Not a great plan.

Luckily, in our lack of GHO experiece, Jessica contacted Jeff Bradbury (@TeacherCast) for help, and he immediately added us to his network.  TeacherCast TV has been producing us ever since show #2.

Please subscribe to us at @PrincipalCast on Twitter, PrincipalCast.net, or subscribe to our audio or video feed on iTunes.

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