The Wheelhouse

Dr. Grant Chandler
  • 5.0 (3)
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The Wheelhouse exists to create an inclusive community of empowered educators who believe that, together, we can disrupt the transactional herding nature of schooling to create districts, schools, and classrooms where each student feels confident, optimistic, capable, well-supported, and emboldened to be and to become who they are meant to be. Guiding Principles 1. We are steadfastly committed to each learner and each educator believing they are distinctive and irreplaceable. 2. We believe that educating our children should be a humanizing, relational, and transformational endeavor. All else is secondary. 3. We believe that dignity is a birthright; it is not earned. Each child deserves a future filled with open doors and unlimited possibilities. Our work is in service to this central aspiration. 4. We believe that each human life is unique and precious; as such we are compelled to remove aspects of schooling that disregard any student’s dignity.

  1. 5d ago

    The Wheelhouse Reorientation: Designing for Coherence

    What happens after we recognize drift? That is where this conversation begins. In our last Wheelhouse Reorientation, we returned to the idea of drift—the slow movement away from what a school or system says matters and what students actually experience. But naming drift is only the beginning. Eventually, we have to ask a harder question: What would we have to build if we actually wanted to resist it? This is a Wheelhouse Reorientation—an earlier conversation we believe is worth hearing again in light of where the work is taking us now. In this episode, the Wheelhouse team turns its attention to the Students Matter Ecosystem and the role coherence plays in creating schools and systems that are more purposeful, more connected, and more human. Kathy Mohney, Michael Pipa, and Dr. Alicia Monroe once again put me in the guest chair and press on the thinking behind the Ecosystem. Why these four pillars? Why is coherence so difficult to create and sustain? Why do schools so often confuse activity with transformation? And what changes when we stop treating leadership, instruction, student care, and preparation for the future as separate conversations? The Students Matter Ecosystem is organized around four interconnected pillars: Tactical Leadership — building the judgment, capacity, and leadership required to navigate complex systems with purpose. Powerful Student Care — creating environments where students are known, valued, supported, and treated as distinctive and irreplaceable human beings. Instructional Excellence — ensuring that what happens in classrooms consistently supports meaningful learning. Future Ready Schools — helping schools prepare students not simply for the world as it is, but for the world they are entering. The point is not to create four more initiatives. The point is to help these parts of the system reinforce one another. One of the biggest challenges facing schools is not a lack of effort. It is disconnected effort. People are working hard. Programs are being launched. Strategic plans are being written. Professional learning is happening. And yet all of that activity does not automatically add up to coherence. A school can be busy and still be fragmented. A district can have strong individual programs and still produce an inconsistent student experience. And a system can keep moving while gradually losing sight of why the work exists in the first place. That is why coherence matters. It is not about making everything identical or creating a perfectly controlled system. It is about making sure the most important parts of the work are connected by a common purpose and consistently reflected in the experiences of students. At the center of all of this is a question that continues to shape the Students Matter work: What kind of educational system would we build if we truly believed every student was distinctive and irreplaceable? That question changes the conversation. It moves us away from simply adding more and toward asking whether the pieces we already have are working together in service of what matters most. A Few Things to Carry With YouCoherence is not the same thing as activity. A system can be extraordinarily busy and still be fragmented. Drift is more difficult to resist when leadership, instruction, student care, and future readiness operate as separate priorities. The four pillars of the Students Matter Ecosystem are designed to reinforce one another, not compete with one another. Transformation does not come from continually adding new initiatives. It comes from creating greater alignment among purpose, people, structures, and practice. And ultimately, coherence matters because students experience the whole system—not the individual initiatives adults use to organize it. The goal isn’t to get every part of the system moving. It’s to get the parts that matter moving together. Follow Students Matter, LLC on Instagram and LinkedIn, and connect with Kathy Mohney, Michael Pipa, Dr. Alicia Monroe, and Dr. Grant Chandler individually on LinkedIn, To learn more about the Students Matter Ecosystem, visit Students Matter and LearnHarbor. The challenge isn’t simply to keep the work moving. It’s to make sure we’re still moving toward what matters. Stay Oriented.

  2. Sep 22

    The Wheelhouse Reorientation: The Quiet Cost of Drift

    Drift rarely announces itself. Schools and systems don’t usually lose their way all at once. It happens slowly. Quietly. Sometimes almost invisibly. The meetings still happen. The initiatives keep moving. People stay incredibly busy. But somewhere along the way, the work can begin moving further and further from the purpose that started it. And students often feel that shift long before adults are willing, or able, to name it. This is a Wheelhouse Reorientation—an earlier conversation we believe is worth hearing again in light of where the work is taking us now. We originally recorded this conversation as part of a three-episode series exploring the thinking behind the Students Matter Ecosystem. After everything we wrestled with during Season 13—lack of alignment, fragmentation, dehumanization, instructional erosion, future confusion, and the other conditions shaping our schools—we believe the conversation about drift matters even more today. For this episode, I step out of the host chair and into the guest seat while Kathy Mohney, Michael Pipa, and Dr. Alicia Monroe take over The Wheelhouse. And they press on a question that sits underneath much of our work: If we say each student matters, why do our systems sometimes produce experiences that suggest otherwise? We talk about drift not as a buzzword or abstract theory, but as something that happens every day inside organizations—often while everyone involved is working incredibly hard and believing they are doing the right things. The conversation explores five ways drift can show up: Purpose drift — when the work becomes disconnected from why it exists. Interpretation drift — when people begin making meaning of the work in different directions. Action drift — when activity continues, but its connection to meaningful impact weakens. Human drift — when systems gradually lose sight of the people they were created to serve. Coherence drift — when priorities, initiatives, structures, and practices stop working together. None of this is about blame. It is about noticing. Drift does not correct itself. Someone has to see it. Someone has to name it. And leaders have to be willing to make deliberate moves to bring the work back toward purpose, coherence, and humanity. Perhaps that is one of the most uncomfortable realities of drift: a school or district can be busy, productive, and completely operational—and still be moving away from what students actually need. That is why we wanted to return to this conversation now. As Students Matter continues to evolve, and as we begin thinking about what comes next, these foundational ideas matter. Before we can build more coherent and human-centered systems, we have to be willing to see clearly what our current systems are producing. A Few Things to Carry With YouDrift is rarely sudden. It is the gradual movement away from purpose, clarity, coherence, and humanity.Students frequently experience the consequences of drift before adults recognize what is happening.Activity is not the same thing as alignment. A system can be extraordinarily busy and still be adrift.Naming drift is not about assigning blame. It is about accepting responsibility for what our systems produce.And leadership requires continually reorienting the work toward purpose, toward humanity, and toward the lived experience of students. Follow Students Matter, LLC on Instagram and LinkedIn, and connect with Kathy Mohney, Michael Pipa, Dr. Alicia Monroe, and Dr. Grant Chandler individually on LinkedIn, To learn more about the Students Matter Ecosystem, visit Students Matter and LearnHarbor. The challenge isn’t simply to keep the work moving. It’s to make sure we’re still moving toward what matters. Stay Oriented.

  3. Sep 8

    What We Can No Longer Ignore

    For the Season 13 finale, we’re not looking back just for the sake of looking back. We’re asking a harder question: After everything we’ve heard this season, what can we no longer afford to ignore? Over the course of this season, we’ve talked about belonging, curiosity, neurodiversity, identity, artificial intelligence, student agency, dignity, and the systems and practices that can either support human beings or slowly diminish them. We’ve listened to students, educators, and leaders describe the distance that can exist between what schools say they value and what people actually experience inside them. And again and again, our conversations have brought us back to the same place: humanity has to remain at the center of the work. So this finale isn’t really a recap. It’s a reckoning with what we now know. What stayed with us? What challenged our thinking? What patterns became impossible to ignore? And, perhaps most importantly, what are we responsible for doing differently because we know better? The Wheelhouse Team comes together one final time this season to reflect on the ideas and voices that have stayed with us and to consider what they require of us moving forward. Because listening matters. Awareness matters. Reflection matters. But eventually, what we hear has to change what we do. The future of education isn’t somewhere off in the distance. We are creating it right now—in the choices we make, the practices we protect, the systems we challenge, the voices we listen to, and what we are willing to change because we listened. TakeawaysThere is often a significant gap between what schools intend for students and what students actually experience.Listening to students matters, but listening without changing anything is not enough.Belonging, dignity, identity, curiosity, and agency are not separate from learning; they are part of the conditions that make meaningful learning possible.Many of the challenges we explored this season ultimately come back to whether our schools are designed around the human beings who inhabit them.Once we recognize what is getting in the way of students thriving, we have a responsibility to act.If students really matter, something should be visibly different because they do. Follow Students Matter, LLC on Instagram or LinkedIn. Connect on LinkedIn with each of us individually: Kathy Mohney, Michael Pipa, Dr. Alicia Monroe, and Dr. Grant Chandler. To learn more about the Students Matter Ecosystem, stop by: Students Matter LearnHarbor We'll see you back here on Tuesday, October 13th for the premier of Season 14. Until next time, remember: Stay Curious. Stay Human. Stay Oriented.

  4. Aug 31

    No One Should Have to Shrink to Belong

    What does it cost to walk into a room and wonder whether all of you is welcome there? For many LGBTQIA+ people, that question is not theoretical. It can shape how we move through schools, workplaces, families, communities, and relationships. How much of ourselves do we reveal? Who is safe? What happens if people really know us? And why, in spaces that claim to value dignity and belonging, are people still being asked to hide, shrink, or edit themselves just to fit? In this episode of The Wheelhouse, I’m joined by three recurring guests and friends of the show, Jamar Green, Mel King, and Rich Ognibene, for a deeply personal conversation about identity, faith, family, belonging, and the environments we create for one another. Jamar reflects on growing up in a strict Baptist home as the son of a pastor and the complicated intersections of faith, family, and identity. Mel brings his perspective as a trans man, writer, and advocate working with Equality Federation. And our education royal, Rich Ognibene, shares what he has learned across an extraordinary career as an educator and openly gay man. I’m part of this conversation too. As a gay man who has experienced hostility in the workplace, I know something about the calculations people make when deciding whether it is safe to bring their whole selves into a space. Throughout this season, we have talked about dehumanization, fragmentation, drift, and the other conditions that emerge when schools and organizations lose sight of the human beings at the center of their work. This conversation reminds us that those conditions are not abstract. People live inside them. We talk about the difference between being tolerated and genuinely valued. We explore what conditional belonging takes from people — the energy spent hiding, watching, calculating, and protecting oneself — and what schools, workplaces, and communities lose when people cannot fully show up as themselves. And we consider something equally important: what happens when someone gets it right. When another person communicates, through words and actions, You do not have to edit yourself here. Because belonging that requires us to surrender part of who we are isn’t really belonging at all. And once someone has trusted us enough to tell us who they are and what they are experiencing, the question becomes ours: What are we going to do with what we’ve heard? TakeawaysBelonging becomes conditional when people must decide how much of themselves is safe to reveal.Dehumanization is not always loud; sometimes it shows up in the quiet calculations people make simply to move through a space safely.There is an important difference between being tolerated, accepted, affirmed, and genuinely valued.Schools and workplaces lose something significant when people spend their energy protecting themselves instead of learning, creating, teaching, leading, and connecting.Genuine belonging does not require people to hide, shrink, defend, or apologize for who they are.Once we understand someone’s lived experience, we have a responsibility to consider what our own actions — or silence — are communicating. Follow Students Matter, LLC on Instagram or LinkedIn. Connect on LinkedIn with each of us individually: Kathy Mohney, Michael Pipa, Dr. Alicia Monroe, and Dr. Grant Chandler. To learn more about the Students Matter Ecosystem, stop by: Students Matter LearnHarbor Until next time, remember: Every student matters. Every educator matters. And what we create together matters. Stay oriented.

  5. Aug 25

    How Many Students Will It Take

    How many students have to tell us the exact same thing before we decide to do something about it? That question sits at the center of this episode. Throughout Season 13, we have heard students, educators, and advocates describe many of the same experiences in different ways. Students want to be known. They want to matter. They want adults to see more than a score, a label, a diagnosis, a behavior, or a circumstance. They want learning to mean something. They want to belong. And they want some evidence that when they speak, what they say actually matters. So this week, the Wheelhouse Team comes back together to wrestle with a harder question: What happens after we listen? Because at some point, repeated student voice stops being anecdote and becomes evidence. We survey students. We invite them onto panels. We create advisory groups. We conduct focus groups and listening sessions. And then another group of students comes along and tells us many of the same things. If nothing changes, the problem may no longer be whether students have a voice. The problem may be what adults are willing to do with what they hear. In this conversation, we return to the six conditions we have been exploring throughout the season—lack of alignment, drift, fragmentation, dehumanization, instructional erosion, and future confusion—but this time we look at them through the experience of students living inside them. Students often feel these conditions long before adults name them. They know when our stated beliefs and daily practices do not match. They feel fragmentation across classrooms and adults. They know when learning has become something to complete rather than something worth engaging in. They know when they have been reduced to a category rather than seen as a whole person. And they know when school no longer seems connected to the future they are trying to imagine. Which brings us back to the question we cannot avoid: What changed because we listened? Listening matters. But listening is not the finish line. If student voice does not influence our thinking, our decisions, our practices, or the experiences we create, then eventually we teach students something we never intended to teach them: that telling us the truth does not really matter. This episode is not a call for another survey. It is a call for responsibility. Takeways At some point, repeated student voice becomes evidence, and evidence creates an obligation to respond.Students consistently tell us they want to be known as whole human beings, not reduced to labels, scores, challenges, or circumstances.The six conditions are not simply organizational problems; students experience their consequences every day.Student voice without meaningful response can become performative rather than transformative.Adult intention is not enough. The real measure is the experience our choices create for students.Listening does not mean agreeing with every student request, but it does mean taking what students tell us seriously enough to let it influence what happens next.The better question is no longer simply, “Are we listening?” It is, “What are we willing to change because we did?” Follow Students Matter, LLC on Instagram or LinkedIn. Connect on LinkedIn with each of us individually: Kathy Mohney, Michael Pipa, Dr. Alicia Monroe, and Dr. Grant Chandler. To learn more about the Students Matter Ecosystem, stop by: Students Matter LearnHarbor Until next time, remember: Every student matters. Every educator matters. And what we create together matters. Stay Oriented.

  6. Aug 18

    Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing

    We spend a lot of time talking about what schools need to become. More innovative. More responsive. More future ready. But before we add another initiative, another technology, another pathway, or another reform, maybe we need to ask a more fundamental question: Have we kept the main thing the main thing? In this episode of The Wheelhouse, we are joined by Derek Shuttleworth, a public school English teacher beginning his twenty-sixth year in education, and one of his former students, Madison Middlestead. Derek has spent his career teaching across four states, multiple grade levels, and rural, urban, and suburban communities. Along the way, he has done far more than teach English. He has created clubs and community events, mentored future teachers, advocated for reform, built partnerships, and worked to expand access to postsecondary opportunities for students. Today, at Lansingburgh High School in Troy, New York, he teaches Junior Regents English and dual enrollment courses through Hudson Valley Community College while helping create pathways that could eventually allow students to earn significant college credit—and perhaps even an associate’s degree—before graduating from high school. Madison brings an equally important perspective. She is now a college student, but her journey through school was not always easy. Her experience gives us the opportunity to look at education from the other side of the desk—to consider the difference between what educators intend for students and what students actually experience. And that difference matters. Together, Derek and Madison help us explore what happens when students feel seen, known, challenged, and believed in—and what happens when they do not. We talk about the power of relationships, the importance of student voice, the difference between creating an opportunity and helping a student believe that opportunity is actually meant for them, and the responsibility educators carry in helping young people imagine possibilities they may not yet be able to imagine for themselves. Derek’s work reminds us that teaching can be much bigger than delivering a curriculum. It can mean opening doors, building pathways, expanding possibilities, and refusing to accept that the boundaries we inherited are the boundaries students must inherit. Madison reminds us of something just as important: an opportunity can exist without a student ever believing they belong in it. That is why student voice cannot simply be something we collect. It has to be something that changes us. Ultimately, this conversation brings us back to one deceptively simple question: What is the main thing? Maybe it isn’t the program. Maybe it isn’t the credential. Maybe it isn’t the newest reform, technology, or initiative. Maybe the main thing is the young person in front of us—the human being whose life should become larger because they encountered our schools. If that is true, then everything else we build has to answer to that. TakeawaysBefore schools chase what is next, we have to be clear about what must never be lost.Student voice matters most when it changes how adults think, lead, teach, and design.There is a difference between offering students an opportunity and helping them believe that opportunity is truly available to them.Relationships can shape how students see themselves, their abilities, and what they believe is possible.Teaching is bigger than delivering content; it is also about opening doors and expanding possibility.What educators intend and what students actually experience are not always the same thing.The main thing in education is the human being whose life school is supposed to enlarge. Follow Students Matter, LLC on Instagram or LinkedIn. Connect on LinkedIn with each of us individually: Kathy Mohney, Michael Pipa, Dr. Alicia Monroe, and Dr. Grant Chandler. To learn more about the Students Matter Ecosystem, stop by: Students Matter LearnHarbor Until next time, remember: Every student matters. Every educator matters. And what we create together matters. Stay Oriented.

  7. Aug 11

    Navigating AI in Education: The Human Element

    Artificial intelligence is changing how we work, create, communicate, and learn. But it is not arriving in schools on neutral ground. Schools are already wrestling with lack of alignment, drift, fragmentation, dehumanization, instructional erosion, and uncertainty about the future. So the real question is not simply whether students should use AI. The more important question is this: Will AI help schools become more coherent, more purposeful, and more human—or will it accelerate the very conditions already pulling them apart? In this episode, Donna McAndrews and Chris Miciek join us to explore what human-centered learning looks like in the age of artificial intelligence. Together, we examine both the promise and the risk of AI in education. AI can expand access, spark creativity, support inquiry, and open possibilities for learners. But it can also make it easier to substitute production for thinking, efficiency for relationship, and polished answers for genuine understanding. That is why this conversation is ultimately about much more than technology. It is about purpose. What should learning accomplish? What capacities do young people need in a future we cannot fully predict? What can technology strengthen—and what should we never hand over to it? Perhaps most importantly, how do we ensure that students remain active participants in their own learning rather than becoming increasingly dependent on the tools designed to support them? AI is not a seventh condition affecting schools. It is an amplifier. Without alignment, it can create more drift. Without coherence, it can deepen fragmentation. Without strong instructional purpose, it can accelerate instructional erosion. And without an unwavering commitment to human dignity, it can create even greater distance between people. But used thoughtfully, AI can also help us imagine something better. The challenge before schools is not to resist change. It is to make certain that as education changes, we do not surrender the human purposes that make learning matter in the first place. TakeawaysAI is entering schools that are already facing significant challenges around alignment, coherence, instruction, humanity, and the future.The most important question is not whether students should use AI, but how its use supports—or undermines—the purposes of learning.AI can amplify existing problems such as fragmentation, dehumanization, and instructional erosion, but it can also expand access, creativity, inquiry, and possibility.Human-centered learning requires us to protect curiosity, agency, critical thinking, judgment, relationships, and genuine human connection.Schools need more than AI policies and guardrails. They need clarity about what learning is for and what young people need to become.The future of education will not be determined by what artificial intelligence can do. It will be shaped by the choices we make about what technology should support—and what must remain unmistakably human. Follow Students Matter, LLC on Instagram or LinkedIn. Connect on LinkedIn with each of us individually: Kathy Mohney, Michael Pipa, Dr. Alicia Monroe, and Dr. Grant Chandler. To learn more about the Students Matter Ecosystem, stop by: Students Matter LearnHarbor Until next time, remember: Every student matters. Every educator matters. And what we create together matters. Stay Oriented.

  8. Aug 4

    Cultivating Student Curiosity and Wonder: The Secret Sauce

    Curiosity is not something schools have to manufacture. Students arrive with it. They ask questions. They explore. They test ideas. They try to make sense of the world around them. And yet, somewhere along the way, too many begin to experience learning as something to complete rather than something that invites discovery. It becomes about assignments, grades, pacing, and getting through the required material. So what happens to wonder? In this episode, Dr. Beverly Bisnett-Jenks joins us to explore the conditions that allow curiosity, inspired teaching, and meaningful learning to flourish. Our conversation examines what happens when instruction becomes overly shaped by compliance, fragmentation, and curriculum coverage. We consider how even well-intended educational environments can gradually move away from the curiosity, connection, and intellectual challenge that make learning matter. Beverly helps us think about the leader’s responsibility in all of this. Inspired teaching cannot depend entirely on the individual effort of exceptional educators. Leaders must create and protect the conditions that allow teachers to grow, collaborate, take thoughtful risks, and bring curriculum to life. That requires more than support. It requires clarity. It requires coherence. And it requires the willingness to maintain high expectations while also developing the people responsible for carrying the work forward. We also explore the meaning of curriculum alignment. True alignment is not about forcing every teacher to teach in exactly the same way. It is about ensuring that purpose, curriculum, instruction, assessment, professional learning, and student experience are moving in the same direction. When that coherence is present, educators can focus their energy on teaching rather than navigating confusion. Students are more likely to understand not only what they are learning, but why it matters and how it connects to the world around them. This conversation also continues the progression of our recent Season 13 episodes. Students must be recognized in their full humanity. Their ideas and contributions must not be deferred until some distant future. And they must experience learning environments that develop their curiosity, confidence, capability, and sense of possibility. Curiosity is not an optional feature of education. It is one of the ways students discover who they are, what they can do, and how they might contribute to the world. Cultivating that curiosity is the secret sauce. TakeawaysCuriosity is already present in students; the question is whether schools cultivate it or slowly diminish it.Instructional erosion often begins when learning becomes more focused on compliance and coverage than meaning and discovery.Inspired teaching cannot be sustained through individual effort alone; leaders must create the conditions that allow it to thrive.Curriculum alignment should create coherence without eliminating teacher creativity or professional judgment.Supporting educators and maintaining high expectations are not competing responsibilities.Students need learning experiences that connect curiosity to confidence, capability, contribution, and meaningful futures. Follow Students Matter, LLC on Instagram or LinkedIn. Connect on LinkedIn with each of us individually: Kathy Mohney, Michael Pipa, Dr. Alicia Monroe, and Dr. Grant Chandler. To learn more about the Students Matter Ecosystem, stop by: Students Matter LearnHarbor Until next time, remember: Students matter, and our choices should show it. Stay Oriented.

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
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About

The Wheelhouse exists to create an inclusive community of empowered educators who believe that, together, we can disrupt the transactional herding nature of schooling to create districts, schools, and classrooms where each student feels confident, optimistic, capable, well-supported, and emboldened to be and to become who they are meant to be. Guiding Principles 1. We are steadfastly committed to each learner and each educator believing they are distinctive and irreplaceable. 2. We believe that educating our children should be a humanizing, relational, and transformational endeavor. All else is secondary. 3. We believe that dignity is a birthright; it is not earned. Each child deserves a future filled with open doors and unlimited possibilities. Our work is in service to this central aspiration. 4. We believe that each human life is unique and precious; as such we are compelled to remove aspects of schooling that disregard any student’s dignity.

Information

  • Creator
    Dr. Grant Chandler
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    138
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2021-2026, Students Matter, LLC.
  • Show Website
    The Wheelhouse

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