HeyJaredThe Elephant and the Teacher
This podcast is for anyone who believes that teaching and leading begins with the human work.You’ll hear reflections from real classrooms, experiments in teacher lead professional learning and leadership thinking rooted in thoughtful self-work instead of compliance.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 8
- Latest publication
- Sep 7, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 20, 2026
Latest episodes
S2E8 – How to Co-Create Classroom Rules: A Restorative Circle Tactic (opens the original)
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Who really owns your classroom on the first day — you, or your students? Michelle Roundy walks through her step-by-step restorative circle protocol for co-creating classroom expectations with kids, from mindfulness openers and talking-piece rounds to building a shared "agreements" chart instead of a list of teacher-enforced rules. She shares the five reasons co-creation deepens learning, practical materials you'll need (hint: a koosh ball goes a long way), and how this same process extends beyon
S2E7 – How I Reclaimed My Peace Mid-Overwhelm (opens the original)
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This week Michelle shows up unscripted in real time talking through how she navigated the overwhelm of the first weeks back to school. She caught herself slipping into old people-pleasing patterns she thought she’d outgrown: saying yes to everything, running on autopilot, losing the boundaries it took her years to build. It’s an honest look at what happens when a new role tests the habits that used to protect your peace. She walks through how she’s course-correcting. From a simple trick for hand
S2E6 – Leadership Is Proximity not Position: How to Lead From Your Classroom (opens the original)
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Do you have to leave the classroom to grow as a teacher? In this episode of The Elephant and the Teacher , host Michelle Roundy challenges the myth that real teacher leadership and instructional leadership only happen in an administrator's office. Responding to a question from fellow educator Ryan Donovan, she shares two field-tested strategies she has used for classroom-based leadership. Building a collaborative teacher cohort focused on multilingual learners. Michelle started with early-mornin
S2E5 – What Icarus Teaches Us About Growth, Failure, and Letting Go of Borrowed Structure (opens the original)
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In today’s episode Michelle is revisiting one of the oldest stories we tell about ambition and failure: the Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus. But instead of the usual “don’t fly too close to the sun” warning, she pulls the myth apart through depth psychology and Jungian archetypes to ask a much more useful question – what if the wax was never meant to hold? As educators and leaders, she argues, those melting-wax moments — the lesson that falls apart, the teacher who hits a wall — aren't failure
S2E4 – My 5 Pillars For A Successful Partnership With My Daughter’s SpEd Team (opens the original)
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Prompted by a question from Tiffani Jaseph, the 2026 Arizona State Teacher of the Year — "What can I do better as a special education teacher?" — Michelle answers as both a classroom teacher and the mom of Emily, her 14-year-old daughter with Down syndrome. She lays out five pillars special education teachers can use to build real partnerships with families: high expectations, two-way trust, genuine collaboration, meaningful inclusion in general ed classes, and consistent daily communication. Mi
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