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Welcome to the Exceptional Educators Podcast by FrenalyticsEDU — where innovation meets inclusion in education!
Each episode features candid conversations with district leaders, school leaders, classroom changemakers, EdTech founders, and executives — all dedicated to transforming learning for each student, especially our learners with unique abilities.
With a focus on extraordinary educators and the exceptional students they serve, we explore the latest in special education, accessible technology, and inclusive leadership. Whether you’re shaping special education policy, pioneering new EdTech tools, or looking to grow your impact in the classroom, this podcast is your front-row seat to the future of inclusive education.
Listen. Learn. Lead. Be Exceptional. 🎙️
Welcome to the Exceptional Educators Podcast by FrenalyticsEDU, where innovation meets inclusion in education. I'm your cohost, Steph. This is my first time on the podcast. I'm excited to be here.
Matt Giovanniello:And I'm Matt Giovanello, the CEO and cofounder of Frenalytics. At Frenalytics, we put special education and English language learners front and center. Our award winning FrenalyticsEDU platform helps streamline progress monitoring, improves communication and compliance, and offers truly personalized learning to your students of all abilities.
Steph Kortan:Each episode of our podcast features candid conversations with district and school leaders, classroom change makers, ed tech founders, and industry executives, all dedicated to transforming learning for each student, especially our learners with unique abilities. With a focus on extraordinary educators and the exceptional students they serve, we explore the latest in special education, accessible technology, and inclusive leadership. In this episode, we have a extra special guest, an exceptional educator. We are thrilled to welcome Chandler Cross. Chandler is the assistant superintendent at Shenandoah School Corporation in Indiana, where the district has quietly become one of the highest performing high schools in the county.
Steph Kortan:With a graduation rate climbing from eighty nine percent to ninety nine percent, we'll dig into that, record setting SAT scores, and nearly ninety five percent of students completing college and career course work. Chandler's work reflects a clear mission, meet students where they are and lead them forward. Chandler, so excited to be here with you today. Tell us a little bit about your background, about your why, about your energy. We just wanna hear from
Chandler Cross:First of all, thank you so much, Matt and Seth, for having me on. I feel honored to be a part of this, to be part of something that is considered exceptional educators. I have a little bit of impostor syndrome, not quite sure that I belong, but I really do appreciate that. I am assistant superintendent here at Shenandoah. This is my third year with the district.
Chandler Cross:The last two years, I was our assistant principal and instructional coach at Shenandoah High School. We were very lucky to be named the distinguished school for the state of Indiana by the National ESEA Organization, which is an organization that's in charge of schools nationwide that receive title funding. We have a lot of really cool things going on here. I love, love celebrating our school. I love telling our story.
Chandler Cross:We have wonderful people here, great systems and great frameworks. To answer your question, what is my why? My why is I'm a people person. I want to help people. Is the number one most important thing for me in my life.
Chandler Cross:I love people, I always have. I embrace and cherish the human experience. And there is no better avenue to really put that and exemplify that mission and mantra into place than public education. Because we get to interact with and we get to work with and help shape and mold a wide variety of personalities of people that come from lots of different places. So whether it's our students, whether it's the adults that we get to work with, I'm a people person.
Chandler Cross:I love being around them, I love talking with them, I love communicating with them, and I love helping them. So that is most definitely my watch.
Matt Giovanniello:Chandler, it is such an honor to have you on. I know it took a minute for us to get here, but thank you for your alliteration, your energy, and all the fun pieces that you're about to unpack with us today. One of those things, Steph mentioned it in her introduction with us, is meeting students where they are. You're a huge proponent of that, and you have told us before we started recording today about Shenandoah's Commandments of Culture, how that helps meet all of your students and grow them, unpack that for us, what does that mean, and how can that be applied to other districts who are looking to create a similar level of Commandments of Culture?
Chandler Cross:Well, you're going to hear me mention a lot of people's names, and that is done with purpose and that is done intentionally, because this is not about me. We have amazing people here at Shenandoah. I just happen to be the person that's put in this position to kind of tell our story. So Doctor. Kyle Barentine was our superintendent at Shenandoah for a few years.
Chandler Cross:He just retired last year and he kind of brought a lot of these things that I'm going to talk about into place. So it kind of started with him and I was part of a leadership team involving a lot of people that brought a lot of this to life. Mr. Weasy, our current superintendent has taken all of those things and his big theme for this year, it's his first year in the role has been momentum. How can we continue and build our momentum?
Chandler Cross:We have a very clear vision here. Our vision at Shenandoah Schools is to be the premier school in the state Of Indiana. Premier. So how are we gonna do that? We are a small rural school, literally located in the middle of a cornfield.
Chandler Cross:So how can a small rural school be premier? One of the things that we feel like we have to do as a small rural school is we have to master what I like to call intimacy. What is the benefit of being in a small rural school is that we can truly get to know and build relationships with our students and their families because we're small enough to do so. Our student to teacher ratio is a little bit lower. Our student to counselor, student to administrator ratio is a little bit lower, which allows us to build authentic and dynamic relationships with students and their families and our teachers that truly, truly make this a very intimate family feel.
Chandler Cross:So we decided to make a mission of meeting students where they are and leading them forward every student, every day. And that ending part is the most important part of that. Every student, every day. One on one intentionality, intimate relationship building is something we practice here on a consistent basis. And it has made a huge difference in our success as a school.
Chandler Cross:How are we going do that? We've got five promises. Be Shenandoah. That's the first one. Service.
Chandler Cross:That's number two. Care, that's number three. Innovate, develop and grow, that's number four. And win together, that's number five. These are our promises, as I like to call them, they're the commandments of our culture.
Chandler Cross:They will stir your building with passion, purpose and positivity. That's what I always like to say to people when I spoke to schools about how we do things in the past. That's kind of the phrase that I have used.
Matt Giovanniello:Chandler, for some context, for those listening to this that are wondering how small is small for the size of Shenandoah, give us some context of the layout of your buildings, your enrollment, and then some of those subpopulation demographics. Thinking about students with IEPs, thinking about students with free and reduced lunch, give us an idea of what Shenandoah looks like makeup wise.
Chandler Cross:Sure, so we have a pres preschool all the way through seniors in high school. We have three traditional brick and mortar schools. We do have two virtual schools as well, which I'll get into later. We have Shenandoah Elementary School, which has preschool all the way through fifth grade. We have Shenandoah Middle School, which is grade six through eight.
Chandler Cross:And then we have Shenandoah High School that is nine through 12. On average, we have about 100 students per grade level. That's what we have here. We have about 46.3% free and reduced lunch, I believe is our most accurate and up to date figure, and we've got about twenty percent of our students in IEP special education population.
Matt Giovanniello:A little bit more into those Commandments Culture, one of the questions I wanted to explore a bit more is how you differentiated yourself, Shenandoah, and you personally, about the way you attract and retain teachers. It is a challenge everywhere, and it is especially a challenge in rural environments. What's your secret behind telling your story as a means of recruiting staff and retaining them and growing them?
Chandler Cross:If you have a teaching opening, especially when you're a small rural school that's in kind of a remote ish setting, how in the world are you going to attract teachers? Well, you can't just sit back and wish and hope and see what comes through. When we have an opening, what are good teachers around us? Let's go find people and let's go get the best teachers that we can get. In the last two years, we have stolen, and I will say that and put it in all caps and say it with great pride, we have stolen five unbelievable educators in the last two years from other school districts that were highly decorated.
Chandler Cross:I think maybe one of the best stories that brings this to life is I live in a town about thirty five minutes from Shenandoah, and this town has its own school and we had a English teaching position open. Freshman English. The school nearby about thirty five minutes away had a high school English teacher that won their teacher of the year. And I know some people that work at that school and they would always tell me how unbelievable this teacher is and how good she was. So I was very determined.
Chandler Cross:I found her phone number. I called her on a Sunday evening and I left a message and she called me back. She was in the parking lot at a Walmart and I spent forty five minutes. I was walking in my community just trying to convince her, talking about all the things we do at Shenandoah, talking about all the awesome things that I've heard that she had done as a teacher and trying to tell our story and just get her to come and meet my principal and myself and have a conversation with us. And, you know, we didn't even really call it an interview, but we brought up some of those teaching and pedagogical questions and things of that nature.
Chandler Cross:I was able to convince her to do that, and she ended up taking the job. We just like to really get in front of people, tell our story, and talk about what a great place to work this is. Our community has made a commitment in being able to talk to teachers about all the different academic supports they get, whether that's weekly professional development, coaching from master teachers, mentor teachers that we provide. Monthly new to Shenandoah teaching professional development meetings with central office leaders. We just give them a lot of freedom.
Chandler Cross:We give them a lot of coaching. We give them a lot of support and we do a lot of things to make it a fun working environment. Again, intimacy. We have to master this. Have to.
Chandler Cross:So whether that's teacher DJ Fridays, every teacher submits a playlist and in between passing periods that are middle school and high school, there's a playlist of songs that plays, and students have a Google form and they try to guess which adult it is in the building. At the end of the day, it's announced, all winning students get a prize. That's a silly, quick, simple example of things that we do. We have a full time coffee bar for students and teachers both. We're the Raiders, Shenandoah Raiders, so it's called Raider Joe's Coffee.
Steph Kortan:Of course it is. It's
Chandler Cross:a student run business, which I know we may get into a little bit. Things like that. We let our teachers wear jeans every Friday, and we just try to work very closely with them and helping manage their schedule, managing the teams that they're a part of. We feel like if we can tell our story and get in front of high quality teachers, we can convince them to come here. But again, I think of these five teachers that have come to us in the last two years from other schools, none of them just applied.
Chandler Cross:I had to go and convince them to apply. And if I can get these teachers in front of our building administrators and we can tell our story, we can attract high quality teachers to this district, which is what we aim to do for our students. Our students deserve the very best teachers that we can put in front of them.
Matt Giovanniello:Chandler, it is obvious to some, but perhaps not obvious to all, the sheer importance of having the highest quality educators they can get, including by any means necessary, which in your case is poaching or as you like to call stealing. What have you found, especially over the past couple of years, by having these high quality educators in place that Shenandoah has been able to achieve that maybe was even beyond your expectations or beyond your dreams? What do you have to credit for these high quality educators? And in other words, what second, third, fourth order effects have happened as a result of having the right people in the right
Chandler Cross:I want to talk about graduation rate first and foremost. Shenandoah High School, the last four years has had ninety eight point six percent, ninety nine percent, 100%, and ninety eight point four percent graduation rate.
Steph Kortan:Reddable.
Chandler Cross:One of the reasons we have had such a high graduation rate is goes back to the original mission that I talked about, meeting students where they are and leading them forward every student, every day. We want to make sure that we are providing our students opportunities to experience and have success in the educational setting. Life after high school does not look the same for everyone. For our students that want to go to college, we have a wonderful pathway for them. We have several AP courses that we offer here locally.
Chandler Cross:We have teachers that are trained through different partnerships, whether it's Indiana University, Vincennes University, Ivy Tech, which are all local post secondary institutions. We have teachers trained to teach classes and get students college credit for those particular classes and to put them in academic college bound types of settings with expectations and curricula that is aligned to that. We also have students that are more interested in getting into the workforce on a quicker level. We partner with two career centers, one in Anderson, Indiana, one in New Castle, Indiana, for students that want to maybe do auto mechanics, nursing, building They spend half the day with us getting the graduation classes they need and then half the day at these career centers getting very technical specific educational opportunities doing that. We also have a very, very robust and holistic work based learning program.
Chandler Cross:Our Director of Guidance, Mr. Readner and John Davis, one of our business teachers at Shenandoah High School have done a phenomenal job the last two years putting this into place. We have students that are with us for three or four periods and then they go work and they get paid. And in some cases, we at the school are able to pay them to do certain things for us that fit into careers that they want to pursue. So that goes back to, again, knowing your students, knowing what their goals are, knowing what their ambitions are, and putting them in pathways, in classes, and in situations where they're going to experience success.
Chandler Cross:And everybody wants to be successful in some way, shape, form.
Matt Giovanniello:I love it. I'm so proud of the different opportunities that you're providing to your students because especially when we think of subpopulations, we're on the Exceptional Educators Podcast, there is disproportional outcomes that unfortunately get reflected on on time graduation rates, whether students graduate at all, or graduation path they pursue, etcetera, and what life looks like after high school. And so sounds like a couple of the jobs that you offer at Shenandoah and through these local partnerships really are in support of students with disabilities as well. So unpack that a little bit more for us. How are you specifically supporting your students with IEPs, students with five zero four, students in alternative environments?
Matt Giovanniello:I know you hinted before that you have a virtual school, but it sounds like you got a lot of different programs and supports in place for students to make sure that they are equivalently supported when they pick their own path. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about that.
Chandler Cross:Absolutely. So again, going back to our mission, meeting students where they are and leading them forward, every student, every day. That mission is not a word salad. We put, I say this to our staff all the time, we put chicken on our word salads at Shenandoah. We have meat behind those words.
Chandler Cross:Every other week in each of our buildings, we have something called collaborative team meetings. Okay, we have a delayed start in all of our school buildings. So teachers have a bonus prep period before school every day. And two days of the week we're going to take for that one day we do a professional development with a master teacher. Another day we do what's called a collaborative team meeting.
Chandler Cross:Collaborative team meetings are literally teachers looking at all of their students and going through each and every student and looking at their grades, looking at their attendance, talking about how they seem socially, emotionally. When we first delivered this, I challenged our staff. I said, because most of our staff have families, I said, I want all of you in the room that have kids. I want you to put your parents' hat on. Put your parents' hat on.
Chandler Cross:Think about this. What if I were to tell you as a parent that your child's teacher or every teacher that your child has every week was going to sit down and was going to look at their grades, was going to look at their attendance, and was going to talk with other teachers about how they seem socially, emotionally? Do you notice anything? I mean, it created such a great sense of buy in from our teaching staff. And when I talk with people about coming and bringing their kids here to Shenandoah, I kind of bring that up.
Chandler Cross:Said, You're not going to get that type of intentionality at any other place. So we can't meet every student every day if we're not intentionally looking at them. And the holistic child too. Not just academically, not just that attendance piece. How are they seen?
Chandler Cross:Do we know anything about this student? Oh, I know that they like baseball. Has anybody asked them about how their baseball season? No. Well, then I can do that.
Chandler Cross:Here's what this kind of looks like. At our high school, we generally speaking have all of the teachers that have freshmen in one group, all the teachers that generally speaking have mostly sophomores in one group, mostly juniors in one group, mostly seniors in one group. They have a created spreadsheet, goes through A to Z, and they just start going through students. And they, again, they'll have dialogue and they do different things and they log different things. Johnny seemed really sad lately.
Chandler Cross:Does anybody know why? He actually lost his grandmother two weeks ago. Oh, I have a really good rapport with Johnny. So you know what? I'm going to reach out to him and I'm going to just kind of check-in on him and I'll do that and I'll document this on the spreadsheet.
Chandler Cross:It's documented. Everybody can see that. Those are the charts that I give our administrators during these meetings. Walk around, ear hustle, listen to the dialogue. We challenge them to combine, you know, ways to reach out to students and to families.
Chandler Cross:Again, this is all tracked on spreadsheets and this is looked at and analyzed weekly by building leadership and then sometimes by what's called a building ILT, an instructional leadership team, which we may get into a little bit later. They look at this to make sure all of our students are being taken care of. So there are lots of things that positive things that come from that. Obviously, you see a student's grades are going down, you can try to get to all the teachers see that because they're analyzing the student data in front of them. Again, that's got to be our charge for mastering this intimacy.
Chandler Cross:So these collaborative meetings are done at our elementary school. They're done at our middle school. They are done at our high school. They are done on a consistent basis and it gives us a little secret sauce and superpower as to how we can bring that mission of meeting students where they are and leading them forward every student every day. Our special education teachers, they go around the room, our guidance counselors go around the room.
Chandler Cross:So some of those high volume staff that we have that work with a wide variety of students in lots of different grade levels, they're all there and we are all working together. We did a climate audit one time at our high school that I was very proud of. We passed around a picture of every student in our high school, every single student, four twelve students at Shenandoah High School. And every teacher went through every student at each grade level. And if they had a relationship with that student or had some sort of bond or connection that extended beyond the academic setting, they put a dot next to them.
Chandler Cross:So we went through and so I went through as assistant principal, every one of those students and found all the students that had very few or no dots. And I made a point during lunch period to go sit with them, talk with them, get to know them on somewhat of a personal level so they felt like they had a connection in the building. Again, that's another thing that you can do. It's a very small thing that makes a big difference. And generally speaking, how do you build culture?
Chandler Cross:A lot of times it's consistent intentionality with very, very small things that add up and make a difference over time. Those are a couple of things about how we just make an effort to look at all of our populations, whether it's special ed, free and reduced lunch, or high achieving. And those are just some of the things that we do to make sure all of our students are getting the attention, support, and nurturing love that they deserve.
Matt Giovanniello:Fantastic examples. I know It's right, just it's so specific to it. I'm so, I'm grateful that you're sharing those very specific examples with us, Chandler. I'm hoping that it serves as inspiration for those who are not putting these practices into place or are looking for new, fresh ways to put these practices in place. Okay, these are the specific steps I need to follow now.
Matt Giovanniello:A little bit of a blueprint, if you wish.
Chandler Cross:Yeah. And you, I talked about this before, Doctor. Matt, you had mentioned human centered data. How important, not just looking at each student as a test score or a grade, do we have qualitative human centered data on them? And I always like to tell people the world is a beautiful blend of mathematics and language arts.
Chandler Cross:It's numbers combined with context. Got to have both. It is a blend of sociology and psychology. It's not just the psychology, it's also where they come from. You got have the nature and nurture both.
Chandler Cross:You got to have the numbers and context. You have to embrace and cherish the human experience. And it is all of those things coming together.
Steph Kortan:Yes. And everybody talks about the whole child and doing both, but how effective are they at actually doing it? And you are able to rattle off real life things that you are actually doing to make that culture come to life. Where where are you being a learner, Chandler? Like, where are you figuring out how to do some of this work?
Steph Kortan:Because again, it's easier said than actually done in practice.
Chandler Cross:Sure. Well, I consider myself to be a very reflective practitioner. I am constantly wanting to innovate, develop and grow, which is actually our fourth promise. So I constantly really do enjoy going to different workshops. I am an avid reader.
Chandler Cross:I'm a coach. So by nature, at least I don't coach anymore, but I spent eighteen years coaching high school boys basketball in Indiana. So I love watching coaching clinics because coaches are sometimes some of your best teachers because their classrooms are extremely abstract and they have a lot of extraneous variables, I like to say, that makes their particular classrooms and environments a little bit more complex sometimes in the general education classroom. We, and I say we as a central office staff, Mr. Weasy and myself, we are in these meetings.
Chandler Cross:We go to our weekly PD sessions. We give our master teachers, our instructional coaches, we give them feedback right after. It's about how they're doing with the staff, how they're presenting different PD things. We go to these collaborative team meetings. We do walk throughs.
Chandler Cross:We go to our building instructional leadership team meetings, which are done on a weekly basis. We are very visible. Visibility is something that Doctor. Barentine was very intentional about when he came here at Shenandoah, and it is something that Mr. Weesey and I have continued to follow through on.
Chandler Cross:That visibility piece, making sure that we are there on a consistent basis, in the weeds, so to speak, with our administrators and teachers trying to do the best thing that we can for all of our students.
Matt Giovanniello:Love it. Chandler, going back to a comment you made before, I was smirking and giggling to myself about the dots on the different student names because it reminds me of an episode from The Office, which is one of my all time favorite shows. I cannot believe I made an I haven't made an office reference in nearly 50 episodes, but here we go. First time for everything, where they go around and they're trying to figure out who gets performance raise bonuses, and the number of dots, or I think was a piece of candy or something, next to an old printout on a person's face determined directly how much a person was getting a bonus. Pam Beasley was like, Who printed out this awful old photo of me, and why do I not have as many dots as the person next to me?
Matt Giovanniello:It was smart it reminded me a little bit about that, but you're actually doing it for a good purpose to help determine which students might fall through the cracks and make sure that they don't have eyes on them and make sure that they're getting the human staff professional support that they need, but they may not even realize that they need until that activity staff themselves, you may not even realize that they need it. So I'm glad that you showed that as an example. In the state of Indiana, not only do your staff have choice of working and teaching being employees of Shenandoah Schools, but so do students and families. Tell us a little bit more about how school enrollment works in your area, how funding is tied to school enrollment, how your support from the ESC helps or potentially gives you desire for more support, and what kind of unique challenges you're up against in Indiana that, whether you realize it or not, may not be as relevant or prevalent in other states.
Chandler Cross:In Indiana, have open enrollment. Students can choose where they want to go to school. You're no longer bound by what district you live in. So students get to choose where they want to go from a public school standpoint in Indiana. The state of Indiana has come up with a lot of fiscal research and they have a set figure, a dollar amount, that it takes to educate a child.
Chandler Cross:So each school gets that much money based on how many kids they have. With the fact that we have open enrollment, obviously, we definitely try to get out there and we try to market our school. Our location can be a challenge when it comes to getting transfer students from out of district because we are not in the middle of a heavily populated place. However, that being said, we can offer intimacy and a wonderful school experience for students that they can't get at much larger schools. We try to get out there and we try to tell our story as best we can, whether that's through mailers, marketing on our website, digital marketing.
Chandler Cross:We try to do a great job of that. One thing that we put into place a couple of years ago, we also have a virtual option. So this can be a little bit confusing. So here's how I like to explain this to people. We have five schools in the Shenandoah School Corporation.
Chandler Cross:We have three traditional brick and mortar schools, Shenandoah Elementary School, Shenandoah Middle School, Shenandoah High School. These are your traditional public schools, but we also have two virtual schools. We partner with a company called Stellar Virtual, and we have two virtual schools in our corporation. We have Indiana eSchool Primary that has grades K-six and Indiana eSchool Secondary that has grades seven-twelve. Any student in the state of Indiana can be a part of our virtual school.
Chandler Cross:So we are able to offer an online setting that we keep in house. It does help us financially. We get some of the funding for all of those students and they're very much a part of our corporation. They have their own principal, they have their own guidance counselors, they have their own teachers, stellar virtual finances, all of that. We do work with those teachers.
Chandler Cross:Had a Mr. Weesey and I, we held a retreat this summer. It was a lot of fun. We met all of our online teachers, but we got to present some PD to them and talk a little bit about what we expect from people in the Shenandoah School Corporation. We meet weekly with leadership from our virtual schools, and we have different dialogue.
Chandler Cross:And it has really been good for us because it doesn't matter where you live in Indiana, you can be a part of our corporation. One awesome benefit, I should have mentioned this earlier, is through this partnership, all of our brick and mortar students, and this is particularly important at the high school level, they can take a class through our virtual school for free, one class a year. So maybe classes that we don't have the ability to offer through staffing or scheduling issues, can offer through our virtual school and we can give students a study hall period during the day where they can essentially take that class. Or in some cases, have a few students that are very high achieving students typically that will choose to take a class in addition to their full time workload outside of the school day. So that's kind of how we have tried to help come up with some of the challenges with our enrollment and trying to make sure we are providing a lot of flexibility and a lot of options to students as best we can.
Matt Giovanniello:It's so clever. Like, talk about thinking outside the box. That's fascinating. Tell So us a bit more, Chandler, because I'm not as familiar with the logistics behind a virtual model. Does the per student funding that traditionally in the state of Indiana that follows a student for a brick and mortar enrollment, is it equivalent for a virtual?
Matt Giovanniello:Is it different because it's virtual? Tell us more about
Chandler Cross:Funding is the same. We have an agreement with the virtual school where they get a percentage of the money and we get a percentage of the money. So we have a partnership with Seller Virtual and it works like that. Seller Virtual chose us. They could have chosen any school district in the state of Indiana.
Chandler Cross:We were able to get in front of them, tell us their story, and they chose us. For, you know, virtual school, you have to go into it with a little bit of an open mind. There's going to be some logistical headaches when you're bringing in a virtual school. Just are. And we've had some logistical things that we've worked through.
Chandler Cross:It is so much better this year than it was our first year. I go back to think about how much better we are at collaborating from the buildings. If a student wants to leave Shenandoah High School to go to Indiana eSchool, we're just so much better at communicating with each other, speaking the same language. The alignment's gotten so much better over time. Part of that is because we intentionally, again, Mr.
Chandler Cross:Wiese and I, we meet with their leadership on a weekly consistent basis. We have good dialogue. Jose Lopez, one of the leaders at Stellar Virtual, he does a phenomenal job at making sure he's bringing everybody in the meetings weekly that need to be there. And he does a great job kind of as that conduit and collaborator communicating back and forth between us and then our virtual school. Because we don't get to see our virtual school on a daily basis, right?
Chandler Cross:We don't get to walk down the hallway. If I need to see our high school principal, I just walk across the street and I go talk to him. From our virtual school, we have to be a little bit more strategic sometimes with our ability to communicate with them, but it's gotten so much better. But if you decide, you're a building leader out there and you're hearing this and you want to bring this, you're going to have some logistical headaches. It's just part of it.
Chandler Cross:Whenever you're starting a new system, new framework, there's going to be some headaches. You gotta embrace it, you gotta attack it, and then you gotta innovate, develop, and grow it. And that's what we've tried to do with our virtual school, and we are in a much better place with it this year than we were a couple years ago when we started.
Steph Kortan:Like the sign behind you, never give up.
Chandler Cross:And I have applied that to many things in my life as we talked about before.
Matt Giovanniello:That's for our after hours podcast. Yeah. Chandler, I have one more topic I'd like to quickly explore with you. That is going back to your coffee shop that you spoke about earlier that is run by students. Tell us about how that came to be in the spirit of our logistics conversation.
Matt Giovanniello:How is that being propped up? How does that support students, including in a special education population? And what does that bring to the community, among the obvious of I have coffee within my school walls every day that I
Chandler Cross:Well, coffee is very popular with educators, and it's become increasingly popular with the student body, which is interesting to me, because I don't ever remember drinking coffee. Didn't even like the taste of it, so I was probably 21 or 22. Neither. Raider Joe's, obviously that's a play on Trader Joe's, the popular grocery shop. Mrs.
Chandler Cross:McKnight is our guidance counselor in grades nine through 10, and she started this. This is her brainchild. She is the CEO and the overseer, but the students pretty much run that coffee shop, Raider Joe's, in their own way. They are currently housed in our concession stand, but construction is underway. They're working on it right now as we speak because I was looking at our cameras, making sure the crew was there working.
Chandler Cross:We are building their own wing and they have self funded this pretty much. They provide lots of different things. The students, like I said, they'll take the money, count the money, order materials. They keep track of budget. Mrs.
Chandler Cross:McKnight oversees all this, of course, but it's a wonderful work experience for them. Two other business, student run business initiatives that we have in our high school is we have vending machine business that our middle school and high school uses. These are high schoolers, Mrs. Killian, one of our special ed teachers, she kind of runs this and students will fill up the vending machine, order materials, and they provide lots of dynamic vending options that students can buy during lunch or in between passing periods. And we have a car detailing business.
Chandler Cross:I use this every year. We have students that literally have a period where they will detail cars. They'll detail teachers' cars. I mean, you gotta pay for it, of course. It's really, really cool.
Chandler Cross:And it just provides students a chance to do something outside of the classroom that they enjoy doing, but they also feel successful at, and they feel like they're helping others when they're doing
Steph Kortan:And they're learning skills to prepare them for the future.
Chandler Cross:Yeah. Absolutely. Working employability skills. No doubt about it.
Matt Giovanniello:How fun. And that's literally a win win win, maybe even a fourth win, but it's fantastic for the students. They get that real experience before they leave the walls of Shenandoah's buildings. It's amazing for your staff. You don't need
Chandler Cross:to go very far to get your car cleaned or to
Matt Giovanniello:get a delicious cup of coffee, and it's excellent for the corporation. You're bringing that money internally where your staff would otherwise be spending it for a nearby business, which too bad for them, but fantastic for Shenandoah. You deserve it.
Chandler Cross:Yeah. Absolutely. Really good for us and a really good experience for our students and our staff as well.
Steph Kortan:You do more than think outside of the box. You live outside of the box.
Chandler Cross:Do, but I do not live in a box. I wanna point that out. I have a beautiful home.
Matt Giovanniello:Just to be clear. Yes. And you In case we were worried.
Steph Kortan:You live and breathe what you preach, and that's what I love so much about you is you can say all these things, but you are doing them. You are in it, and your students and staff are lucky to have you.
Chandler Cross:Well, you. I appreciate that. Education for me has never been a job. It's always been a lifestyle. Again, I embrace and cherish the human experience.
Chandler Cross:This is not a job for me. It is a lifestyle and I have been so lucky and so fortunate. I've had so many wonderful experiences as an educator. I wanted to go different places. I wanted to try different things because my end game goal was to always be a central office leader where I can lead the leaders and I can help influence every single child in our district in some way, shape, or form.
Chandler Cross:And so I really felt like to do that, I needed to experience all of those things. There are people that have been in a high school their whole life. They don't know how hard being an elementary teacher is. They know how hard being a kindergarten teacher is. And it helped me so much as an administrator now and as a central office leader.
Chandler Cross:That experience, I always definitely wanted that. But education has to be it's not just a job, it's a lifestyle. People that choose to get into this do that. And it is so important when I ask in an interview, why do you do this job?' If that question, what makes you want to be a teacher?' If you're asked that, you better say because you like young people. I tell people all the time, do not do this job for content.
Chandler Cross:Don't tell me you're you're a math teacher because you love math. I don't want to hear that. You better do this because you like young people and they have to be the number one reason, because if you do not truly enjoy young people, you will not enjoy this job because they, and when I say they, your general classroom, your student population, they will never be into the content as much as you are. There'll be a few students here and there that absolutely will get into it just like you, but your larger student body that you interact with, they're never going to be into the content as much as you are. They're going to do things that are going to try your patience, so you better enjoy young people.
Chandler Cross:And I can say without a doubt that I truly do enjoy young people and enjoy all people, which is why I decided to get into because I am a people person, which I talked about at the very beginning in my why.
Matt Giovanniello:Chandler, as we wrap up today's episode, which I'm very, very sad that we have reached this point, but I have one more question for you that we love to ask all of our guests. If you'd like to take a moment to think and reflect on it, I know you're a big reflection person, but a question for you, Chandler, is what does being an exceptional educator or being an exceptional leader mean to you?
Chandler Cross:Being an exceptional an exceptional educator and leader is simply this. You can have a lot of passion. You can have purpose. You can have positivity. You can work hard.
Chandler Cross:But can you get others to do it? And when I coached, I always said this, I've coached so many players that work and train really hard. The best players, the best leaders are the ones that can get those around them to do it. And when they asked me at Shenandoah High School when I interviewed to be the assistant principal, the last question Mr. Allen asked me is he said, why you?' And I said, 'Because I will bring an energy and enthusiasm, a work ethic to the school building, and not only will I have it, I will spread it to all those around me.
Chandler Cross:So for me, exceptional educators and exceptional leaders are people that can not only model proper work habits, proper mindset themselves, but can get it to spread and get others to do the same.
Matt Giovanniello:I love that. And you are a living, breathing example of Chandler. You're rallying the troops each and every day. You're inspiring me. Steph, I can only imagine how much Chandler has inspired you today.
Chandler Cross:At our PD sessions, I would always tell our teachers when I was getting ready to do a collaborative exercise, make your table better. This is not always just about you. How can you make the teacher next to you better by your energy, by your engagement, and by the ideas that you bring, because you're all exceptional educators, which we are lucky to have at Shenandoah. Our teachers are top notch. I would not trade them for any.
Matt Giovanniello:And as you said, Chandler, and as we introduce you with, you're meeting everybody, not just students where they are, but you're leading everyone forward together. And for that, believe it or not, news flash, you are exceptional. We need a better word for exceptional for you. I don't know what it is. Exquisite, maybe.
Matt Giovanniello:Give you an exquisite. How about that? Chandler, for real, though, thank you for joining us this morning. You are just, like, a wealth of knowledge. I feel like this this stream of knowledge is not gonna end.
Chandler Cross:Thank you so much again for having me on, and thank you so much for doing this. Again, it takes a lot of energy having gone through this process. All you people listening here, Matt and Steph worked very hard to put this podcast on. This takes a lot of time out of their day. We are here to help people.
Chandler Cross:If anybody out there listening has heard something that has resonated with them or something that they wanna talk about, Again, my number one, I want to help people. If I can help a student in Rhode Island at a school because they want to start talk to me about collaborative teams, I'm more than happy to do so. Please feel free to reach out to me. Matt can put my email in the show notes. I have a website, mrcross.net, www.mrcross.net.
Chandler Cross:If you click on contact information, you can send me a private message there. I will get back to you. You can give me a call here at any time, (765) 354-2266. Again, I want to help people, and that includes educators as well. And the most noble of professions is education.
Chandler Cross:We all do this to help people, and we are more than happy to help here at Shenandoah.
Matt Giovanniello:Mike, drop. And there have been a lot of firsts on this podcast, Chandler. Dropping your office phone and your email and your website is a first and a sincere offer legitimately, and I hope that people take you up on it. So, Chandler, thank you. I'm so honored.
Matt Giovanniello:I'm so grateful for you to be with us today. I'm excited for part two. Steph, thank you for joining us on today's episode. And for all of those who are listening in as well, thank you for joining this episode of the Exceptional Educators Podcast. We look forward to catching you on our next one.