The Better Leaders Better Schools Podcast | The #1 Downloaded School Leadership Show

Leading a 25-school network to a 96% graduation rate and 91% staff retention — with zero tenure protection — takes more than good policy. It takes a leader who has lived the exact inequity his schools now solve for. Pablo Villavicencio grew up in East LA, where his own neighborhood school graduated less than half its students, and only got a real shot at a quality education because his parents falsified an address to send him to a school 30 miles away.
He carried that lesson through Teach For America, a school closure in Harlem, and five years as a founding high school principal in the Bronx before landing back in the exact Los Angeles community he grew up in — this time as CEO of Alliance College-Ready Public Schools. Find Alliance's work at laalliance.org.
Teacher retention is the number every superintendent claims to be working on and almost none can move. Pablo Villavicencio's network sits at 91% retention across every employee group, without tenure, while running 25 schools and a 96% graduation rate in some of LA's highest-poverty neighborhoods — and in this episode, he breaks down exactly how belief, not policy, got him there.
✍️ What You'll Learn
Why "all kids can learn" has to function as infrastructure, not a mission statement, before it changes anything
How to build a wraparound services model that pairs academic teacher teams with therapists and social workers
What actually drives teacher retention without tenure protection
How to keep 25 schools aligned to one vision without creating a siloed bureaucracy
Why redefining "college ready" to include community advocacy and wellness changed Alliance's outcomes
🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules
🚀 Key Insight #1: Why School Culture Change Starts With a Belief System, Not a Policy
What's broken: Most school systems write "all students can learn" on a banner and call it culture work, while the master schedule, staffing model, and discipline systems tell students something else entirely.
The shift: Villavicencio treats the belief that every kid can learn as an operating system — it has to show up in the master schedule, the staffing model, and the wraparound services, or it isn't real.
Impact: Alliance's 25 schools graduate 96% of students and get 89-93% to college-ready status, compared to roughly 49% graduation and 59% college-ready rates at neighboring LAUSD schools.
🚀 Key Insight #2: The Wraparound Services Model That Turns Around Low-Performing Schools
What's broken: Teachers are left to diagnose whether a struggling student is "lazy" or dealing with something deeper, usually alone and without the information to know the difference.
The shift: Villavicencio built "kid talk" teams that pair content teachers with therapists and social workers — partnering with outside organizations for family therapy — so root causes get surfaced instead of guessed at.
Impact: At the high school Villavicencio founded in the Bronx for English language learners, the first graduating class hit 66% graduation from a starting point of 10% — climbing to an 88% six-year graduation rate.
🚀 Key Insight #3: How to Hit 91% Teacher Retention Without Tenure
What's broken: Most systems either get good at attracting talent or good at retaining it — rarely both — because they never build a stable, consistent container people trust enough to stay in.
The shift: Alliance runs focus groups across every school, shares the real narrative of what staff are facing, and refuses to place value judgments on how different generations of teachers experience the same problem.
Impact: Alliance holds 91% retention across every employee group in a sector where turnover is the norm — with no tenure protections in place.
🎙️ PABLO VILLAVICENCIO QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST
"You have to believe, deeply believe, that all kids can learn."
— Pablo Villavicencio
"Equity to me is not about fairness. It's about making sure kids get what they need in order so that they're successful."
— Pablo Villavicencio
"We have 91% retention across all employee groups in Alliance. It is not common in the educational space."
— Pablo Villavicencio
"Large bureaucracies or large systems will never fully get the results that are needed for hyper community, like for local context, because those closest to the impact that you're hoping to have are not at the decision-making table."
— Pablo Villavicencio
"You have so much power, you have such a high locus of control."
— Pablo Villavicencio
"You have to be talking to your teachers and your kids on a regular basis. You have to be in relationship, you have to have a pulse on the ground."
— Pablo Villavicencio
🚵‍♀️ Your Do School Different Challenge
Ready to implement? Start here:
Tomorrow: Ask three staff members the same open question Villavicencio uses in his focus groups — "Tell me what's good, then tell me what's bad" — and just listen.
This Month: Run a "kid talk" style meeting where content teachers and support staff (counselors, social workers) sit down on the same struggling students and name the root cause together.
This Semester: Pilot one structural change to protect planning time — Alliance is testing 8-12 additional hours a week at seven of its schools — and track whether it moves retention or instructional quality.
⏰ Episode Timestamps
00:00 - Why Pablo's parents falsified an address for school
03:53 - Immigrant roots and the path to UC Berkeley
05:18 - First teaching job in a Harlem sixth grade classroom
11:51 - Building a high school from a 10% to 66% graduation rate
13:55 - Joining Alliance and eventually becoming CEO
15:58 - Alliance's 96% graduation rate versus LAUSD's 49%
17:48 - College readiness numbers and a 3.5x persistence rate
21:19 - Keeping 25 schools aligned without going siloed
22:43 - The planning time experiment seven schools are running
25:28 - Leading five generations of teachers with shared values
35:18 - Hitting 91% retention with zero tenure protection
43:57 - Inside the wraparound services model built on kid talk
46:55 - Pablo's final message on locus of control and belonging
🔗 Connect With Pablo Villavicencio
Website: https://laalliancefoundation.org/
🎧 Listen & Subscribe
Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.
🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide
Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at myprincipalcoach.com
🤝 Today's RuckusCast Partners
ODP Business Solutions has spent 30 years equipping schools through negotiated cooperative contracts that stretch every budget dollar — from furniture and tech to sustainable cleaning solutions, all from a single supplier. They helped Baldwin School District transform its entire campus while staying under budget by pairing smart design with smarter purchasing.
🎙️ See how at ODPbusiness.com/education
Frontline Education's 2026 K12 Lens report digs into how districts connect professional growth to staffing stability — districts that automate professional growth report easier hiring nearly 50% of the time, compared to 30% of those that don't. If you're building a campus where great educators choose to stay.
🎙️ The full report is free at FrontlineEducation.com/leaders
IXL eliminates the guesswork in lesson planning with ready-made plans aligned directly to your textbooks and state standards, so teachers spend less time building and more time teaching. Daily performance insights let teachers adjust instruction before a small gap becomes a big one.
🎙️ Get started at ixl.com/leaders
META DESCRIPTION: How Alliance CEO Pablo Villavicencio hit 91% teacher retention and a 96% graduation rate — without tenure. A belief-driven leadership model.

Building a tutoring nonprofit that now serves 25,000 students a year — with a vision to reach millions — required someone who'd lived the exact gap she was trying to close. Aly Murray grew up a low-income student raised by a single immigrant mother, moved through a string of Title 1 schools, and felt firsthand what it's like to navigate homework and college applications without support at home.
She left a trading job at JP Morgan eight years ago to build Upchieve, a nonprofit offering free, 24/7 human tutoring and college counseling to every Title 1 middle and high school student in the country.
Her work is backed by a Gates Foundation-funded study comparing human and AI tutoring, and Upchieve now partners with schools, districts, and CMOs at a cost of about 50 cents per tutoring session.
Most school tutoring programs run from 3 to 5pm — and that single design choice quietly locks out the students who need help the most. Aly Murray, founder of the nonprofit Upchieve, built a 24/7 human tutoring program instead, and the data on why AI can't replace it yet might surprise you.
📚 What You'll Learn
Why the standard after-school tutoring program design quietly excludes the students who need it most
What a Brookings Institute report reveals about grades, identity, and college enrollment
Why Upchieve's founder built a 24/7 human tutoring model instead of scaling with AI
What a Gates Foundation-funded study found when students had access to both AI and human tutors
How much it actually costs a school to close its tutoring gap
💥 Breaking Down the Old Rules
🚀 Key Insight #1: Why Your After-School Tutoring Program Is Built to Exclude Kids
What's broken: Drop-in, after-school tutoring assumes every student has a ride home, free time, and no caregiving responsibilities.
The shift: Upchieve makes human tutoring available 24/7, matching a student to a live tutor in about two minutes — so support meets students wherever and whenever they actually need it, including 3am calculus.
Impact: Upchieve gets over a third of students at partner schools using the platform regularly, a usage rate most after-school tutoring programs never come close to.
🚀 Key Insight #2: The Data Says Tutor the Middle, Not Just the Bottom
What's broken: Most tutoring programs target only the lowest-performing 10-20% of students who are actively failing.
The shift: Brookings Institute research found that once you control for academic preparation, over 70% of the college enrollment gap between low-income and high-income students disappears — meaning the biggest leverage sits with the "middle majority" of B and C students, not just the students at risk of failing.
Impact: Small, consistent tutoring shifts a student's grades and, more importantly, their identity as "a student who's good at school" — which is what actually predicts whether they enroll in college.
🚀 Key Insight #3: Human Tutoring Still Beats AI Tutoring — And the Research Proves It
What's broken: Schools are defaulting to AI tutoring because it looks cheaper and easier to scale than finding enough human tutors.
The shift: In a Gates Foundation and Microsoft Research-funded study, less than 20% of students with access to both a human and an AI tutor ever tried the AI tutor once, and more than 92% of all tutoring sessions in the study were human-only.
Impact: Students overwhelmingly chose — and stuck with — human tutors, because the motivational effect of a real person saying "I'm rooting for you" is what actually drives learning outcomes.
📣 ALY MURRAY QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST
"Tutoring is completely misunderstood and, in fact, undervalued as a tool that schools should be using to drive outcomes for their students."
— Aly Murray
"If you don't offer transportation after tutoring, you're going to lose all the kids who depend on the school bus to get home. I was one of those kids."
— Aly Murray
"There are enough humans to provide human tutoring to every student that needs it."
— Aly Murray
"When presented with a choice between an AI tutor and a human tutor, students overwhelmingly choose the human tutor."
— Aly Murray
"Anytime you have a one-on-one pairing of a student and a tutor and they get enough hours of tutoring, it works. It improves learning outcomes. It always works."
— Aly Murray
"Things can be not fun, but still worth doing."
— Aly Murray
"How can I, as a leader, claim to care about students' upward mobility if my staff are not making a living wage?"
— Aly Murray
🚵‍♀️ Your Do School Different Challenge
Ready to implement? Start here:
Tomorrow: Pull your after-school tutoring attendance numbers and identify how many of your neediest students are missing simply because of the time slot.
This Month: Calculate what a per-session cost like Upchieve's 50 cents would run your school and compare it against your current after-school tutoring spend.
This Semester: Pilot a 24/7 or after-hours human tutoring option for your Title 1 students and track weekly usage against your current drop-in numbers.
⏰ Episode Timestamps
00:00 - Why after-school tutoring quietly fails students
04:01 - The student story that changed Aly's approach to tutoring
06:04 - Aly's own path through Title 1 schools as a low-income student
09:49 - The Brookings data linking grades to college enrollment
14:06 - Why Upchieve is built exclusively for Title 1 students
17:34 - How 24/7 human tutoring actually works behind the scenes
23:55 - Human tutoring versus AI tutoring head to head
26:57 - The Gates Foundation study on student tutor preference
34:08 - Reframing the story you tell about your campus
37:40 - How schools partner with Upchieve and what it costs
42:00 - The three principles of Aly's dream school
48:06 - The one thing every Ruckus Maker should remember
🫶 Connect With Aly Murray
🔗 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/alymurray
👩🏻‍💻 Website: upchieve.org
🎙️ Listen & Subscribe
Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.
🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide
Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at myprincipalcoach.com
🫶 Today's RuckusCast Partners
ODP Business Solutions has been the trusted supply partner for schools for 30 years — and they've moved way past pencils and paper. Want to turn a tired computer lab into a STEAM innovation center, or upgrade every classroom from whiteboards to interactive displays? Their team designs it, and you order it all from a single supplier with access to cooperative contracts that simplify budgeting and keep you compliant.
⚡️ Learn more at ODPbusiness.com/education
Frontline Education's 2026 K12 Lens report tracked how professional learning design connects to staffing stability across districts — and the findings are a wake-up call for anyone planning next year's PD calendar. Districts with structured, individually targeted professional growth report easier hiring; nearly half of districts using software to manage that growth say hiring has gotten easier, compared to just 30% of districts that don't.
⚡️ Download the full report at frontlineeducation.com/leaders
IXL is the adaptive platform teachers already trust to make differentiated instruction simple — and for Ruckus Makers, it does even more. Its dashboard gives school leaders a real-time pulse on student performance, drillable down to the individual student, with reports you can customize to whatever matters most to your building.
⚡️ Get started today at ixl.com/leaders
META DESCRIPTION: Aly Murray of Upchieve on why after-school tutoring fails low-income students, and the research behind 24/7 human tutoring that works.

Adam Wolfsdorf chairs the Humanities Department at Bay Ridge Preparatory in Brooklyn and teaches graduate students at NYU and Wesleyan, drawing on 26 years inside the classroom. He's the author of Teaching in the Riptide, where he names the moments educators get pulled under by something more powerful than their plan — and what to do when that happens. Outside the classroom, he spent 25 years performing professionally, including national tours of RENT and Grease.
A student kicks over a trash can, slams the door, and storms out mid-lesson. Seventeen other students sit frozen, waiting to see what the teacher does next. That moment — and the instinct to fight back in it — is what most classroom management training gets wrong. Dr. Adam Wolfsdorf has spent 26 years studying what happens when teachers refuse to match a student's energy, and why that refusal is the most powerful classroom management tool no one teaches.
🫶 What You'll Learn
Why matching a student's outburst with your own energy guarantees you lose the room.
How "constructive subversion" turns a disruptive moment into the most powerful lesson of the year.
What separates teachers who do harm from teachers who do good — and it isn't classroom control.
Why compliance is the wrong goal for both students and educators.
How to teach students to feel a story instead of just analyze one.
🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules
✅ Key Insight #1: Why Reacting to Student Outbursts Destroys Classroom Management
What's broken: Teachers are trained to regain control the moment a student acts out, so they react instantly — and the reaction is what costs them the room.
The shift: The strongest move is often no move at all — sitting in the discomfort of a disrupted classroom without flinching or matching the student's intensity.
Impact: Students who provoke a reaction to feel powerful lose that power entirely once a teacher stops giving it to them — Wolfsdorf reports the student who kicked over the trash-can, never had another outburst that year.
✅ Key Insight #2: How Constructive Subversion Turns Disruption Into the Best Lesson You'll Teach
What's broken: Teachers walk into a lesson with fixed expectations for what students are capable of, then read any departure from the plan as a problem to shut down.
The shift: Wolfsdorf names a category he calls "constructive subversion" — student behavior that breaks from the assignment but exceeds everything the teacher hoped for, like a ninth grader's poem about her father's death disguised as a poem about vegetables.
Impact: The student who wrote that poem has now worked with Wolfsdorf three separate times and is heading to college — a years-long relationship built from a moment he almost dismissed as off-topic.
✅ Key Insight #3: Why Compliant Students and Compliant Teachers Both Stunt Growth
What's broken: Schools reward compliance in students and conformity in teachers, treating obedience as the marker of a "good" classroom.
The shift: Real progress — for a student, a teacher, or a system — requires people willing to push back, because systems don't change unless they get rattled.
Impact: Wolfsdorf points to his own students calling him out at home for thinking too rigidly, forcing him to revise his own positions in real time rather than defaulting to authority.
🎩 DR. ADAM WOLFSDORF QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST
"Do you understand that you are the punchline of the classroom?"
— Dr. Adam Wolfsdorf
"Sometimes the student needs to give the teacher a hard time because the teacher is the one who needs to learn more than the student in that particular situation."
— Dr. Adam Wolfsdorf
"There are educators who really want students to learn, and then there are educators who kind of want to torture students."
— Dr. Adam Wolfsdorf
"Systems don't change unless they get rattled."
— Dr. Adam Wolfsdorf
"We have to be aware that we could be a counter narrative to those destructive elements."
— Dr. Adam Wolfsdorf
"Sometimes it's the case that it's the teacher even more than the student who needs the education."
— Dr. Adam Wolfsdorf
"If you have the equanimity to resist, even if you're feeling it, that's a pretty powerful lesson."
— Dr. Adam Wolfsdorf
🧠 Your Do School Different Challenge
Ready to implement? Start here:
Tomorrow: The next time a student pushes your buttons, pause for three full seconds before responding instead of reacting in the moment.
This Month: Identify one student whose disruptive behaviour might actually be a "constructive subversion" worth leaning into rather than shutting down.
This Semester: Build a feedback loop where students can call out your own rigid thinking, the way Wolfsdorf's kids challenged him at home.
⌚️ Episode Timestamps
00:00 - Why reacting to outbursts destroys your classroom
04:13 - How to handle subversive behaviour without shutting it down
05:55 - Teaching a student who identified as a Neo-Nazi
12:50 - The ninth-grade poem that changed his perspective
19:20 - How schools are creating the focus crisis in kids
23:27 - The trash can story: a student's full classroom outburst
35:05 - The Harvard professor who tried to break his confidence
38:34 - Are good students and good teachers actually compliant
44:59 - The professor who taught him to feel a story
53:04 - Building a dream school with no limitations
👩🏻‍💻 Connect With Dr. Adam Wolfsdorf
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-wolfsdorf-1032b5383/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamwolfsdorf/
🎧 Listen & Subscribe
Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.
🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide
Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at myprincipalcoach.com
🤝 Today's RuckusCast Partners
ODP Business Solutions has spent 30 years equipping schools through negotiated cooperative contracts that stretch every budget dollar — from furniture and tech to sustainable cleaning solutions, all from a single supplier. They helped Baldwin School District transform its entire campus while staying under budget by pairing smart design with smarter purchasing.
🎙️ See how at ODPbusiness.com/education
Frontline Education's 2026 K12 Lens report digs into how districts connect professional growth to staffing stability — districts that automate professional growth report easier hiring nearly 50% of the time, compared to 30% of those that don't. If you're building a campus where great educators choose to stay.
🎙️ The full report is free at FrontlineEducation.com/leaders
IXL eliminates the guesswork in lesson planning with ready-made plans aligned directly to your textbooks and state standards, so teachers spend less time building and more time teaching. Daily performance insights let teachers adjust instruction before a small gap becomes a big one.
🎙️ Get started at ixl.com/leaders
META DESCRIPTION: Why reacting to student outbursts backfires — Dr. Adam Wolfsdorf on classroom management, compliance, and constructive subversion.

She spent six years hiding her autism diagnosis from everyone — peers, friends, even herself. Then she built a neuroscience-backed video game that's changing how neurodivergent students understand who they are.
Vanessa Castañeda Gill the founder of Social Cipher, an SEL video game platform designed by and for neurodivergent people, developed in partnership with the LEGO Foundation. Her work sits at the intersection of neuroscience research and lived autistic experience — and she's one of the few people in edtech who has both. She was diagnosed autistic at 14, went on to become a published neuroscience researcher, and turned her personal story into a scalable tool now reaching classrooms across the country.
80% of school avoidance students are neurodivergent. That single stat reframes every conversation you've been having about "disengaged" kids in your building. Your neurodivergent students aren't checking out because they don't care — they're burning out from performing normalcy in a system that was never designed for how their brains actually work. This episode is a practical roadmap for principals who want to close the gap between their inclusion vision and what neurodivergent students are actually experiencing every single day.
🤩 What You'll Learn
Why calm corners and flexible seating aren't enough — and what neurodivergent students actually need to feel safe and stay enrolled.
How Social Cipher uses video game mechanics to build a shared emotional vocabulary between students and teachers.
What it looks like to lead a majority neurodivergent team — and why that's a strength, not a challenge.
Three low-cost, high-impact classroom moves any teacher can make this week to support neurodivergent learners.
The principle of "diagnosing a need over needing a diagnosis" — and why it matters for the undiagnosed kids already in your building.
🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules
🧠 Key Insight #1: Neurodivergent Students Aren't Disengaged — They're Exhausted from Masking
What's broken: Schools interpret quiet compliance as success, missing that neurodivergent students spend the entire school day suppressing their natural responses to fit in — and completely collapse when they get home.
The shift: Recognizing masking as a coping mechanism, not good behavior, and designing school environments where self-regulation is taught explicitly and practiced safely before students hit their limit.
Impact: When schools build in structured regulation opportunities for all students — not just flagged kids — neurodivergent students stop burning out by dismissal and school avoidance rates drop.
🧰 Key Insight #2: SEL Programs Built for Neurotypical Kids Are Leaving Neurodivergent Kids Behind
What's broken: Most SEL programs were designed with neurotypical students in mind — and when a neurodivergent student's natural coping tools (stimming, special interests, movement) aren't built into the framework, those tools get labeled as problems instead of recognized as regulation strategies.
The shift: SEL curriculum designed by neurodivergent people, grounded in neuroscience, that treats stimming and special interests as assets and builds a shared emotional vocabulary students can actually use in the moment.
Impact: Teachers report students using in-game language to communicate their needs in real time — "I feel like Ava right now, I need to go to my quiet space" — which means fewer outbursts, fewer evacuations, and a classroom that's actually safer for everyone.
🧰 Key Insight #3: Diagnose the Need Before You Wait for the Label
What's broken: Schools gatekeep neurodivergent supports behind official diagnoses, leaving a massive population of undiagnosed students — disproportionately students of color, girls, and late-identified learners — without the tools they need.
The shift: Design your building to meet underlying needs regardless of whether a formal diagnosis exists, because the underlying needs are real whether or not the paperwork has arrived.
Impact: Every student who needs movement breaks, predictable routines, or permission to engage through special interests gets those things — and the students who were flying under the radar stop disappearing.
🎙️ VANESSA CASTAÑEDA GILL QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST
"Neurodivergence doesn't need fixing. Your approach does."
— Vanessa Castaneda Gill
"The world won't work without all kinds of minds."
— Vanessa Castaneda Gill
"It is part of my identity and part of who I am. It is not all of who I am, and it's not something that needs to be fixed."
— Vanessa Castaneda Gill
"If you are in a position of leadership, model that vulnerability. It will just allow for so much more vulnerability between your employees or your students and you."
— Vanessa Castaneda Gill
"It's really hard to tell nuanced and rich and resonant stories that kids can actually root for and feel represented by if it wasn't led by neurodivergent experience."
— Vanessa Castaneda Gill
"You can give kids all of the tools in the world to be able to learn their best with their neurodivergence. But if representation and vulnerability in sharing those experiences is not part of that, then a lot of those tools kind of go out the window."
— Vanessa Castaneda Gill
"Instead of playing it safe, we make it safe to play."
— Vanessa Castaneda Gill
🤔 Your Do School Different Challenge
Ready to implement? Start here:
Tomorrow: Identify one student in your building who is frequently labeled "disruptive" and ask a teacher who works with them to describe what happens immediately before the behavior — look for the sensory or regulation trigger underneath it.
This Month: Pilot a 5-minute movement or sensory break built into the schedule for one class or grade level, regardless of neurotype, and gather teacher observations on how it shifts the afternoon.
This Semester: Audit your SEL program to determine whether neurodivergent students are represented in its design — and if Social Cipher's free pilot program is a fit for your building, start one.
⌚️ Episode Timestamps
00:00 - The school avoidance crisis and neurodivergent students
00:58 - Who is Vanessa Castaneda Gill and Social Cipher
04:09 - What it's like to receive an autism diagnosis at 14
08:18 - Six years of masking and the mental health cost
13:34 - How Social Cipher was born in a college dorm
15:44 - What the Social Cipher games do for neurodivergent students
18:35 - The shutdown sequence and quiet space explained
20:42 - How schools partner with Social Cipher
31:45 - Leading a majority neurodivergent team
34:57 - Classroom strategies for neurodivergent inclusion
37:07 - Insights from partnering with the LEGO Foundation
39:32 - Marquee messages and dream campus principles
42:58 - The one thing every Ruckus Maker should remember
👩🏻‍💻 Connect With Vanessa Castañeda Gill
Vanessa Castañeda Gill Website: socialcipher.com
Link to create a free account on our platform: https://dashboard.socialcipher.com/signup
Free month-long pilot program: https://www.socialcipher.com/pilot-program
Free inclusive SEL resource library: https://www.socialcipher.com/sel-resources
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessacastanedagill/
🎧 Listen & Subscribe
Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.
🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide
Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide., never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at myprincipalcoach.com
🤝 Today's RuckusCast Partners
ODP Business Solutions has been a trusted partner for schools for 30 years — and they're not just filling supply orders. They help you design dynamic learning environments with tech integrations that bring lessons to life, flexible furniture that transforms any space into a collaboration zone, and sustainable solutions that teach by example. One supplier, everything you need, cooperative contract compliant.
🔍 Visit ODPbusiness.com/education
Frontline Education's 2026 K12 Lens Report is the data every principal trying to retain great staff needs right now. Districts that use software to automate professional growth are nearly twice as likely to report improved hiring outcomes compared to those that don't — and the report breaks down exactly what's working.
🔍 Download the full report at frontlineeducation.com/leaders
IXL's diagnostic automatically identifies knowledge gaps and gives every teacher a personalized growth plan for each student — so nobody walks into class guessing what their kids know. As students learn, IXL adapts to the right level of difficulty for each individual. Close the knowledge gaps that are holding your building.
🔍  Get started at ixl.com/leaders
META DESCRIPTION: 80% of school avoidance students are neurodivergent. Social Cipher founder Vanessa Castaneda Gill shows principals how to actually close that gap.

Jeff Meade spent 20 years building companies. Then a friend asked him one question on a hike near Mount Fuji — what makes you happy? — and he couldn't answer it. That four-hour conversation led him to Paul Quinn College in Dallas, where he now serves as Chief Innovation Officer and runs a program with one non-negotiable rule: every student, regardless of major, must start and operate a real business before they graduate. No simulations. No worksheets. Real ventures, real customers, real failure.
Every school says it wants future-ready students. Most are still teaching them how to pass tests. Jeff Meade decided that wasn't good enough — and built a venture-based learning model that turns a graduation requirement into the most practical education a student can get. If you're a school leader wondering whether entrepreneurship education belongs on your campus, this episode answers the question.
✅ What You'll Learn
Why employers stopped wanting graduates who can pass tests — and what they're asking for instead
How Paul Quinn structured a seed fund and advisor model so student ventures get real resources, not just pitch competitions
Why this generation's biggest professional liability is their inability to talk to strangers — and what to do about it
What a theoretical entrepreneurship curriculum gets wrong, and how venture-based learning fixes it
How K–12 leaders can apply the same principles without a college-sized program
🔨 Breaking Down the Old Rules
🎯 Key Insight #1: Entrepreneurship Curriculum That Stays Theoretical Is Useless
What's broken: Most school entrepreneurship programs teach students about business through reading, multiple choice questions, and theoretical frameworks — producing students who can define entrepreneurship but have never done it.
The shift: Venture-based learning requires students to actually start and operate a business — finding customers, managing limited resources, pricing, pitching, and iterating on failure in real time.
Impact: Students graduate having already been an entrepreneur, not just having studied one — and employers notice the difference immediately.
🎯 Key Insight #2: Soft Skills Are the Real Curriculum Gap
What's broken: Leaders building entrepreneurship programs focus on funding, advisors, and curriculum structure — the infrastructure — while assuming students already have the interpersonal skills to execute.
The shift: This generation has built entire social identities through virtual success and can have 20,000 followers on TikTok without ever sitting across from an adult in a real conversation.
Impact: When students are pushed to talk to real people — potential customers, community members, advisors — they build the human connection muscle that no app can replicate, and one student went out to practice cold outreach and came back with an internship.
🎯 Key Insight #3: Failing Fast Has to Be Built Into the Design
What's broken: Twelve years of traditional schooling trains students to avoid failure at all costs — honor roll, dean's list, perfect SAT prep — and that fear of failure becomes a ceiling on their entrepreneurial potential.
The shift: Jeff flips the frame on day one: the goal is to fail big and fast, then iterate — with a soft landing built in because the stakes are learning, not rent.
Impact: Students who learn to process failure as data rather than identity become the exact kind of adaptive, resilient thinkers that employers say they can't find enough of.
💬 JEFF MEAD QUOTES FROM THE RUCKUSCAST
"Students don't just study entrepreneurship, they actually do it."
— Jeff Meade
"The marketplace was telling us that they wanted a different type of student. So when I show up with this idea that every student starts a business, it's like, oh my God, you were answering sort of the prayers that we had."
— Jeff Meade
"You want somebody who thinks like this and not somebody who is trying to pass a test. That doesn't do anything for anybody."
— Jeff Meade
"I want you to fail big and fast. And that's so hard because you just graduated high school, you just took your SATs, you want to be on the dean's list. And then you walk into my class and I'm like, oh, you are going to fail so quick."
— Jeff Meade
"Students are dream chasers. They have these dreams — sometimes they may be uncomfortable sharing them, but they have these really cool dreams. And so we have the power to help them dream bigger and actualize those dreams."
— Jeff Meade
"In order for you to take it to another level and actually grow a business, you have to sit across from somebody and share your dream."
— Jeff Meade
🤗 Your Do School Different Challenge
Ready to implement? Start here:
Tomorrow: Audit your current entrepreneurship or career-readiness curriculum and identify one unit that is purely theoretical with no real-world interaction built in.
This Month: Identify three local business owners or entrepreneurs who would come to your campus for a career-day-style conversation with students — make the ask.
This Semester: Design one student-facing project where the deliverable is a real pitch to a real audience — parents, community leaders, local business owners — with a defined problem, a proposed solution, and a student-built case for why they're the right person to solve it.
⌚️ Episode Timestamps
00:00 - Schools teach compliance, not how to build anything real
01:09 - Jeff Meade and the Paul Quinn entrepreneur requirement
04:32 - The hike on Mount Fuji that changed Jeff's career
10:21 - How Paul Quinn cut football to fund its future
13:37 - What employers actually want from graduates
17:56 - The seed fund and advisor model supporting student ventures
20:34 - What venture-based learning actually means
24:05 - Why Gen Z struggles to talk to people in real life
32:31 - What Jeff tells K–12 leaders about student entrepreneurship
39:09 - The Babson model Jeff is rebuilding for HBCUs
43:10 - Jeff's three principles for his dream school
🔗 Connect With Jeff Mead
Website: jeff-meade.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jeffmeade
🎧 Listen & Subscribe
Listen to Better Leaders Better Schools on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get your podcasts. If today's episode moved you, leave a review — it helps more Ruckus Makers find the show.
🧔🏻‍♂️ Your SelfMentorship Guide
Meet Digital Danny — your SelfMentorship guide. Always available, never forgets, and evolves with you. Think through your next leadership move at myprincipalcoach.com
🤝 Today's RuckusCast Partners
ODP Business Solutions has spent 30 years helping school districts build environments where students actually want to show up. From flexible learning spaces to tech integration to sustainable solutions, they deliver it all from a single supplier — simplifying ordering and keeping you compliant with cooperative contracts. One school, Belago Academy, worked with ODP to create collaborative spaces so engaging that students forgot to check their phones.
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Frontline Education's 2026 K–12 Lens Report cuts through the noise with insights from over 1,000 school leaders navigating staffing, student support, operations, and technology — all at once, all interconnected. If your district is managing multiple pressures simultaneously (and whose isn't?), this report shows how other leaders are adapting their strategies in real time.
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META DESCRIPTION: Paul Quinn College requires every student to launch a real business before graduation. Here's what venture-based learning looks like — and what K–12 leaders can steal from it.