Monica White is the founder of Elevate Academy and co-creator of Spark Brilliance for Educators with Jackie Insinger.
Monica was formerly a principal and teacher.
Jackie Insinger is a leadership strategist, author and has a background in psychology.
Today we learn about their new book, the charter network they’ve developed to support the trades and more! Hope you enjoy!
Find Monica on Linkedin. Find Jackie on Linkedin.
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Episode Transcript:
Hi everyone and welcome back. Thanks for listening to today’s episode. We have two guests on today. Uh, both are the co-authors of their book, spark Brilliance for Educators, and I’m excited for you to get to know Monica White. And Jackie Inger. Monica is the co-founder of Elevate Academy and Jackie is a leadership coach utilizing her neuroscience background to work with education leaders.
Today we discuss their book, the School Network they’ve created, and how we can support educators to prevent burnout. Hope you enjoy.
Elizabeth: Well, welcome back everyone. Today we’re very excited to have Monica White and Jackie Inger with us. Welcome both.
Monica: Thank you.
Jackie: having us.
Elizabeth: Well, I’m excited. I love, um, I know, I love that we have two people on the podcast, you know, and so we’d love to kick it off by hearing a bit about your roots in education. So, Monica, if you’d like to start, can you tell us a little bit about your background?
Monica: Absolutely, I’d love to start. so I’ve been in education, I think we’re pushing 25 years now, so don’t let that date me. I’m still pretty young at heart. Um, and I’ve done everything from the classroom to the boardroom to, assistant superintendent at a large district, principal, vice principal. So I’ve worn a lot of hats through my years and about seven years ago in 2017, I had the opportunity to leave the traditional district and build what they might call your dream school.
So I. Had the opportunity to dream in detail and, uh, built a charter school that serves, uh, predominantly at risk kids. It’s a trade school. since then it kind of took off and now I’m just getting ready to break ground on our fifth school and, just love the work and love the grind and love the kids and everything about it.
So that’s
kind of the, the quick view.
Elizabeth: Thank you for sharing, and I have so many questions that we’ll get to. But Jackie, tell us a little bit about your background.
Jackie: So my background, I come through the leadership lens. That’s, that’s kind of been my, my squiggly path has been in that direction. So got to study psychology at Duke and then designed a master’s in human development and psychology up at Harvard. Wrote personality tests to uncover human motivation. And then from there started, started a private practice really working with leaders on how to have more effective and meaningful relationships to create outcomes for the leader of their team and their business. So I’ve been studying that. Went back and studied neuroscience. Positive psychology through those angles and really looking at the data and what does the world need, what do people need? And then how do we create strategies through that unique lens to create those outcomes through that human connection.
That’s very intentional. So that’s been my background. Got to partner with Monica to bring this, I’m sure we’ll go into this a little more to education, this framework that we’ve used in the corporate world.
Elizabeth: I can’t wait to hear about that and uh, you know, I’m so excited. Hear about your, book as well as you guys have recently launched one and co-wrote one. So, uh, Monica, I’d love to hear a little bit more about the point where you decided to leave that traditional education space and build this charter network.
What was the point where you decided that, that you needed to move forward with this path?
Monica: Yeah, so it’s kind of a great story, and a big inflection point in my life and I’d argue in a lot of people around ME’S lives. I’d been in the traditional districts for several years and it’s like steering a Titanic. It’s so hard to make quick moves. It’s hard to. Do what’s right, right now. And, I actually went and talked to one of my mentors and, uh, he had moved on into a different career at the time, but was still involved in education.
And he looked at me and he said, you know, enough complaining, you know what, you, you know what, you know you’re ready. Why don’t you go build your own school? And I laughed out loud and I punched him in the shoulder and I said, I’m here for practical advice. And, he said, no, I’m, serious. I want you to go meet with this group of people.
And, I did. And really, I didn’t know a lot about charters at the time. And what I learned is it gave us that, you know, very nimble vehicle to be very reactionary in a positive way and proactive and serve kids at a higher level, take care of teachers at a stronger level. All of those things I’ve been dreaming about for years in the traditional system I was able to do once I, once I moved to the charter world.
Elizabeth: That’s great to hear. And this next question, um, maybe for, for, for either of you, but you know, as we have lots of educators, uh, looking to stay in education, just maybe outside of the traditional environment. So what would you say makes. This charter environment somewhere that might be a little more successful for these educators to thrive in?
Or what kind of strategies do you use to kind of help them to avoid burnout and, and continue on with serving students?
Monica: Yeah,
so with us, it really boils down to that one thing, and that’s human connection. We tried to build our charter ecosphere where you show up to work every single day with your best friends. How do we create a place where your colleagues or your ride or die. people that you want to be with, they’re gonna be there, hold you accountable to do what’s best for kids. But they’re the people that you want to see every day. You’re not dying to get off work, to go do your other things. You’re dying to come to work because those are the people that you wanna surround yourself with. So when we jumped off, that was my partner, Matt and I. That was one of our biggest things.
And both of our parents were educators. So we, we had the opportunity to watch that growing up. And I think as stuff’s been piled on teachers through the years, we’ve forgotten to get back to the roots about what it’s all about. And Ed education in and of itself is about human connection. And so it allowed me to slow down and really, really look at the, where we were missing the mark on human connection for the adults in the room first.
Because if we don’t have it with the adults, we can’t get it to the kids. And when the adults have it and it’s fostered, fostered in a positive way, they excel.
Elizabeth: And can you tell us, you mentioned something about, uh, the trade aspect. So what, what was the need? I find that very interesting is this, um, that you have trade school specific courses for these students.
Monica: Yeah, all of our students are, uh, trade school specific. We offer eight trades at every one of our schools, but we really built it around the notion of the students that struggle sitting in straight rows and hard desks and traditional style school. I firmly believe there’s a genius in all of us. we talk it all the time.
We believe it, but we can’t find it if we do the exact same thing with kids in, in. Different in the same environments. So when we built Elevate, it was really to provide a different environment for students where we could find their talents and help them thrive in different ways. So all of our students go through eight trades throughout their career, and by the time they graduate, we want ‘EM industry certified in two different trades and either ready to enter the workforce or go to college.
Elizabeth: That’s great to hear and I think. Especially relevant at this time. There is such a need for just alternative paths to be seen and and respected because a lot of people decide not to go to college and become electricians who are very successful. And so I think it’s great bringing the traits back, kind of like how it used to be this, this full cycle back again.
Monica: Yep. True, true.
Elizabeth: And then Jackie, can you tell us a little bit about how you started partnering with Monica and some of the things that you’ve been implementing, I know, um, from your leadership lens that you are working towards to kind of, um, empower these educators?
Jackie: Yeah, so Monica and I, we’ve actually known each other for almost 20 years, which has been wonderful. and I launched my leadership accelerator, when I launched my book Spark Brilliance three years ago, Monica knew at that moment she, that the light bulb went off for her that this is something that could be used for education. I didn’t see it yet. Right. So I had just launched this into the corporate world, this particular leadership program. So we brought it to Monica’s schools with all of her executives, her administrators, her principals, assistant principals, to roll out to teachers as we do in the corporate world. You know, from adult to adult, direct report relationships in this drip system and across Monica’s network of schools.
There was an incredible shift in culture. It was like a tangible, measurable shift. So Monica had an idea, and about 18 months ago, I get a 5:00 AM phone call from Monica, which is normally a cause for concern, right? And instead, the way that she and I work together is this almost like this like catalyst of.
Brilliance that sometimes just bounces back and forth until an idea hits and, and she’s like, I’ve got a crazy idea. What if we re-engineer this for, for classrooms? What if we, we rebuild it, redesign what we did here for teachers to bring to kids. I believe this is the missing piece was her words and education to bring back what we need and what’s missing today. Of course I said yes, and then, uh, we tested it out. We brought in university research teams. We re-engineered it. We brought in people, we got grant funding, and we built a, program for Spark Schools. We tested it, the, the full program in a Spark school versus a control school. And third party validated studies showed incredible shifts for students and teachers and burnout, attendance, even depression scores, test scores.
All of these things shifted in a very short amount of time. Bringing this framework to the classroom.
Elizabeth: That’s great to hear. And you mentioned earlier, Monica, about, you know, making sure we serve the adults so they can then serve the kids. So what are, are there any examples of, of things in your framework that you do to kind of help support the adults, um, in the school?
Monica: in the framework and the adults go through everything first before the kids go through it. And when it’s really about human connection and bringing about that best in each other, that’s adults. Doing that with adults before it ever even gets to the student level. And so, you know, one prime example is, is, you know, Jackie does such a great job. Really bringing out and highlighting the platinum rule. And we all know the golden rule is treat others like you wanna be treated. Well. We jump to platinum and say, treat others as they’d like to be treated. And oftentimes we miss the mark in not realizing that you might like to be treated a different way than I’d like to be treated.
You may like feedback a different way than I like to get feedback. And so when you pull the adults together and you start to get this basic understanding of not just. Your hobbies or what you do here or there, but how you really operate as a human being. It really elevates the level of their connection. And so we elevated the level of the connection with the adults in the room, and then they were able to elevate that connection with the kids. Not just kid to kid, but kid to adult as well. So it goes through your, it ripples through your entire system culturally.
Elizabeth: And is this all available in your book? Would you tell us a little bit about, uh, the book and, and who, who’s the audience for the book?
Monica: Yeah. Jackie, take this one.
Jackie: Okay, so the book we’ve got here, spark Brilliance for Educators, came out on teacher appreciation day. Teachers need a lot of appreciation. They deserve it. So this book is a playbook so teachers can use this book to implement right away. The drip system that we created, it really compounds. There’s a very particular order.
Everything’s very intentional. Everything’s been tested. the end of each chapter, there’s a QR code where teachers can get a resource guide of, what can I do about this particular action right now? So we have that created for teachers so that they don’t have to wait. They can start using it right away.
If they wanna read it over the summer, they can start implementing in their classrooms right when they get back to school. So this book is written for educators, um, at all levels, teachers, administrators, principals, all, all of it. What we also have is a Spark School certification program. So if a school wants to be certified and roll this out, we have a train the trainer model that we’re launching for Spark schools across the country to be able to execute it top down as a school to create this culture that’s really systemic to uplift, from just how people feel and how they feel seen, and that sense of belonging and connection to the results in terms of. You know, we had attendance go up almost 13% in the Spark School test scores went up on average 15.6%. Teacher burnout was down over 25%. So we see these incredible outcomes that you can do as, as a school or a district.
Elizabeth: Thank you for sharing that. That’s great to hear and very timely of the release, uh, on teacher appreciation day. And then I know a lot of educators, this, this question is kind of front in their mind about, you know, what you’re doing with. Kind of building this alternative school, you know, you’re trying to solve a problem that, that we’ve had for so many years.
So how can, if educators are looking, you know, you’ve got five schools, what is something you think if they wanted to start something like this or, or join and expand, how, how do we expand this nationwide to kind of, strengthen the ripple effect?
Monica: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I’m sitting at a, at a charter school conference right now. and those conversations are happening everywhere and we need innovative educators and we need innovative teachers. they’re everywhere. They’re some of the most brightest. in this entire country are the people that show up every day for our classes, classrooms, and our students and our children. and with the laws and mandates and everything else that gets put on teachers, not much gets taken off their plates. And so when I jumped into the charter school movement, it’s because I control. To a degree what went on plates and what went off of plates. So my advice to people out there looking to do it differently is I pretty much every state in the nation now has some kind of organization that’s incubating really thoughtful work behind school choice and leading school choice movements.
and I just wanna make it clear too, and I’m not a hundred percent a charter school person. I’m my. kids went to traditional public school, and, uh, we need amazing people in all schools in this country because every child deserves a great teacher. it’s really about that voice of taking care.
It’s so easy anymore to have the e we call ’em the easy conversations. I. When we talk about everything and what’s wrong and what’s not going right, and we like to live our lives in the hard conversation of, yeah, you know, these things might be going wrong, but how do we show up and bring our best for the kids every single day, which so many teachers do, but that’s where they get worn out.
So how do we collectively come together? regardless of the space and really get back to the root. And that’s the connection, the relationship, the child that we’re all serving and choosing to serve, to bring out the best. And that’s where the joy comes for teachers. So part of it’s just a recalibration on our part is to get back to the joy and get back to the love of teaching.
I told teachers years ago, it’s not your job to worry about a test score. That’s my job. Your job is to make kids love learning again. And if teachers can show up every day and know that their main mission is to help students love learning, that changes the perspective of when you’re coming to work.
Elizabeth: Absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. And in speaking of school choice, I know that’s a hot topic. parents ask me, you know, it’s everywhere. And so in, in that aspect, do you have any kind of like success stories or just any feedback from, from parents or even educators that teach in your school just about.
Shift they’ve seen maybe from coming from a different environment.
Monica: Yeah. You know, we, we’ve been wildly successful. That’s why we’ve built, you know, five schools in four years, or sorry, four schools in five years. The work is, it’s challenging. Um, I. And it’s really hard, but the parent, the parents, and the impact we’ve made on students is exponential. we could have a whole 10 hour podcast dedicated to success stories that we’ve, we’ve seen with our students.
And, you know, some of the basics are really, and this is where Spark Brilliance has been amazing for us to even move to the next level because I felt like we were doing good. Spark really brought us to that next level. And, you know, I did a. round table with kids about three months ago as a follow up to Spark.
And I just asked them the simple question, you know, what did Spark do for you? And I had one young lady, she’s a junior in high school, and she just started crying and she said, it’s the first time in my entire life I’ve ever really had to look at myself in the mirror decide who I wanted to be, what I was about.
And I really felt like a human. And she’s like, since that tipping point, I’ve shown up to school on time. I’ve paid attention to what my teachers are doing. I know that they really care about me and that we’re all here for the same reason, and that’s for me to be successful in life. And I have story after story of students that have experienced that, but it’s really about slowing down.
We have to slow down. We have to remember the connection. Now, do we lower rigor? No. Our kids need rigor. They need that, you know, high impact of the education. But we’ve gotten to the point in many places where we’ve lost that human element. We’re bringing back the human element, and that’s where I think kids flourish and shine.
Elizabeth: And, and Jackie, this question might be for you, but in terms of, of you met, you formed this partnership and you know, a lot of teachers out there, especially listen to listening to this podcast are, are looking to go in a different direction, build something, stay in education, leave education, but, but how did you kind of.
know what to do business-wise. You spoke about, you know, getting grants and I know especially with building a school, there’s a lot of state specific and legalities with that. So how, as you formed this partnership, then also the skill and knowledge come for that?
Jackie: Well, I think from, in terms of building the school was, was separate from the the Spark program. You know, I think it’s just driven by a passion and two people that came together with very different backgrounds, but a synergized purpose. And, you know, I create business models. That’s what I do. I work with companies.
I have my own company. And so it was very much about taking a framework that had already been proven and tested and saying, how do we adapt it to schools and how do we bring in the right experts to help us figure out what exactly do we need to do in the right way? We’re on our third pilot now studying it to make sure that every step removed for scalability, it still works and creates the same results.
So I think there’s that piece. Monica’s very tied into the grant world, so soon as they heard about this next thing that she was building and partnering with me to do, they were very excited and supported. They saw a need, um, in the United States for this authentic connection and to. really tap into that to reduce burnout for teachers.
Create an environment where people want to be again, right? And where students really thrive and feel like they can lean into their potential and that someone sees that in them. And so that’s what we, you know, we have this vision and this mission and this purpose to do it. And so it was a very easy partnership and, we, we work very similarly, so it’s been really fun and it, and it worked.
You know, we’ve iterated along the way. We take feedback constantly. We’re in that process where. At the third pilot, we keep refining and refining, but we’ve really nailed something pretty special and it’s ready to scale.
Elizabeth: And that data, data piece is so important. I know teachers love data, so I just That’s great. You know, to have all that. And I remember the researchers you brought in, um, as well, but Monica, you were, did I?
Monica: just wanna add a little bit to that, Elizabeth, because you know, part of getting to the point where we’re launching the book and you know, the school fifth school’s being built, it’s kind of one of those like 20 year overnight successes where it’s all the small incremental things that got. Got me to this point especially.
And then the other piece of that is you have to cultivate the relationships around you when you have them. So teachers that are looking at doing things differently, you know, expand, meet people. When we first built our, when we built our first Elevate, My partner, Matt and I, when we were building a school, we went to every community event we networked, and that’s kind of outside my personal comfort zone, but it was really about getting to know people so that we could make sure the community was aligned, the school was aligned, and we brought everybody together to bring something great to the community. And so when you’re looking to change, you have to put yourself out there in a way that you’re not typically. Comfortable when you’re in a, in a classroom. When we built the first elevator, left our jobs to build it. it was the first time I hadn’t gone to to school, um, since I was five years old. and that realization, like I went to, you know, kindergarten, went through all the way through school, jumped into college, became a teacher.
I’d never not had a first day of school since I was five years old. And so that first day when you sit there and go, what do people do when they don’t have a first day of school was like this big awakening. And that’s when you just had to get to work and create. And you know, you find the grants by networking.
You, find the organizations you can work with by just researching. And so there’s not like a magic bullet to the question that you ask. It’s just really you have to decide what your deeper moral purpose and passion is, and then lean in and find the people that align with you on those things.
Elizabeth: Makes sense and it sounds like a lot of self-reflection through, through those years of experience.
Monica: but yeah.
Elizabeth: And, you know, I’ve loved learning about Spark and Elevate and, and as we wrap this up, we always love to end the podcast by hearing about what you’ve each learned about yourself during this journey.
Monica: You wanna go first,
Elizabeth: Mm-hmm.
monica-white_1_05-14-2025_110300: that’s a good question.
Jackie: is a really good
Monica: That’s a good question.
Jackie: So something that I think I learned, and it’s a little bit about myself and a little bit about this program, well, two things actually. One is how incredible it is to have a partner, and share the responsibility and opportunity with somebody else, makes things so much more fun and feel so much easier. That’s number one. the second part of that is having the right partner, right? It makes all a world of difference In terms of also learning about myself is sometimes when you find something that’s just right, it takes on a life of its own. And sometimes we work really hard for things, and maybe don’t allow it to flourish in the way that it’s supposed to on its own.
And this project, this passion, this business. The spark really had a whole life of its own. It’s like its own being. That’s really been having this force field behind it that has been so incredible to watch, and it really came together with, more ease than I’ve ever experienced.
Elizabeth: And what about you, Monica?
Monica: that’s a, this is a great question, but just reflecting back to when we started this, you know, even picking up the phone to call Jackie that morning was kind of a risk on my part. And I think even since then I’ve been more willing to pick up the phone and call. ’cause the worst things people can say is no. Right. But we spend so much time in our lives in that fear of rejection portal and rejection’s. Okay. It just means not now, not yet. And um, so even in these last 18 months, I’ve learned to lean into situations a lot harder than I used to lean into situations to at least see if the opportunity exists and is there. And, um, that’s been really awakening for me as well, doing this work.
Elizabeth: Thank you both for sharing that, and I love, I love the part about no, just being meaning not now.
Monica: Yeah.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Monica: I’ve had a lot of nos and they’ve all turned out pretty well and you know, down the road.
Elizabeth: Well, thank you so much, uh, both of you for sharing your time today and for the book. Is that available? Um, spark Brilliance on Amazon, Barnes and Noble.
Jackie: Yep. It’s on, on everywhere. So spark brilliance for educators. Um, you know, end of school years here. We really hope people will purchase this as a gift for teachers that spark something for their families. It’s a, it’s a great way to show appreciation for, for your teachers.
Elizabeth: Well, I’ve loved meeting you and learning, um, about elevate and spark, so thank you so much for joining us today.
Monica: Thanks, Elizabeth.
