Brittanie Bates is a curriculum developer, educator, principal and parent, who's redefining what's possible in global online education. As founding academic head and principal of the global online school, Crimson Global Academy's U.S. diploma pathway, she has built an online learning model that proves digital education is a powerful catalyst for breaking down barriers and unleashing student potential worldwide.

Brittanie and I talk about her teaching journey, and how she fell into online teaching. She gets into how the Crimson Global Academy started and what led to its success, and provides some great advice for teachers wanting to transition into online teaching.

For all links and resources mentioned in this episode, head to the show notes: https://www.educatorforever.com/episode180.

Rob Scheer is the founder and CEO of Comfort Cases, an international nonprofit dedicated to bringing dignity and hope to youth in foster care. His and the organization’s mission is clear: to eliminate the heartbreaking and dehumanizing practice of children being handed a trash bag to carry their belongings when entering the foster care system.

Since founding Comfort Cases in 2013, Rob and his team have distributed more than 300,000 backpacks and duffle bags filled with essential and comforting items to youth in every U.S. state, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the United Kingdom.

In this episode, Rob and I discuss Rob’s journey and how he came around to start Comfort Cases. We also get into the importance of education in the lives of foster children and how a teacher’s kindness helped him in a difficult time.

For all links and resources mentioned in this episode, head to the show notes: https://www.educatorforever.com/episode179.

Hillary Summerbell is the founder and CEO of Summerbell, a literacy technology company redefining how visual dyslexics engage with text. A fourth-generation Washingtonian and lifelong creative, Hillary brings a designer’s eye and an inventor’s persistence to the world of EdTech. After a career in interior design and entrepreneurship, Hillary built on the academic research of positional arc reading and elevated it through technology, creating Summerbell. Her work has delivered measurable gains in reading fluency and comprehension, transforming an academic idea into a tool used by students, parents, and educators nationwide.

Hillary and I talk about her visual dyslexia and how it influenced the creation of Summerbell, which reformats text into an arc for easier comprehension. She gets into the challenges of developing Ed Tech and how teachers can best use Summerbell with AI.

For all links and resources mentioned in this episode, head to the show notes: https://www.educatorforever.com/episode178.