Barbara Gruener loves the challenge of being an educator and staying current as things trend in and out of our field. She is a coach, mentor, consultant, speaker, and author of What’s Under Your Cape.
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Barbara especially enjoys working with people as they discover who they are, what they stand for, what motivates them, and what they want and need. Enjoy our conversation!
Where you grew up
Growing up on my family’s dairy farm in Wayside, Wisconsin, I learned what it meant to work hard and make a living off the land. My parents always welcomed people into our home including foreign exchange students and foster children, so I learned to cook and manage a household at a fairly young age. I also grew to appreciate diversity and culture! These skills have all served me well as an adult.
What it was like for you as a student
I got my education at a parochial grade school, a public high school, and a Big 10 University. My first-grade teacher knew what the young know-it-all, energetic child in me needed; she made me a teacher’s assistant at the age of 6. I love learning and teaching; I didn’t love leaving Miss Natzke, and my grades 3 and 4 with the next teacher weren’t very happy. That teacher didn’t know I was an assistant and, even if she did, she didn’t need one. I was a scared, nervous wreck. It did make me happy when it was announced that summer that she was moving, especially since my little sister wouldn’t have to endure another year with her. That is until the move was to grades 5 and 6. I barely survived those four years with her; I stayed home most of the 7th grade with a severe stomach muscle spasms. After a year to heal, I did return back to school and remember enjoying my high school years. College at UW Madison was kind of hard for a farmer’s daughter like me but I love a good challenge. I graduated with a BS majoring in English and minoring in Spanish.
Your family
There were five of us kids plus mom and dad grew up on the farm in my family of origin; they all still live in WI but me. My parents divorced just as they were about to celebrate their Silver Wedding Anniversary. I’ve managed to stay very close with my Wisconsin family despite the distance.
Journey to become an educator
I graduated from the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1984 with a Bachelor of Science degree in English and Spanish. I began a Spanish Department in a small high school in central Wisconsin before heading to Texas in 1985. I taught Spanish and ESL classes at North Shore Middle School for a year before moving to FISD to teach Spanish and coach volleyball and softball at Friendswood High School. My education includes earning a Master of Science degree from the University of Houston Clear Lake in Education in 1989, followed by a Master of Science degree in Counseling in 1994. After 16 years of teaching and counseling at the secondary level, I decided to give the elementary school a try; there I found my niche as the counselor and character coach at Westwood for grades PreK through 3rd for 14 years, then with grades 3-5 at Bales Intermediate for three additional years.
Trauma
In January of 2013, early one afternoon on my way to get my son from Junior High for a dentist appointment, I was hit head-on by a drunk driver, who was also on her way to get her child from school. I was left broken in 3 places physically and in many more pieces emotionally. I returned to work fairly quickly, but by May that semester, I was unable to continue after PTSD made my life too difficult. After two years of trauma therapy, some medical intervention to take the edge off, and the opportunity to give my Victim Impact Statement, I was able to journey through recovery to the other side, to find my joy again, and to forgive so that I could move on. I still experience the startle response when I’m traveling down the road, and I still have chronic pain in my shoulders and neck, but it’s nothing that a chiropractor and a counseling session or two can’t help. This trauma amplified my voice for trauma victims and made me so much more trauma aware and sensitive.
Character Ed
I learned about perseverance, resilience, work ethic, responsibility, growth mindset, and grit from milking 250 cows on the dairy and doing chores before and after school during my formative years. In 1989, community members met and decided what we wanted our graduates to look like; during that time, they selected 14 traits and values that they wanted our graduates to live. In the year 2000, after a Character Counts! Training, I brought the Six Pillars of Character to our school and the Board adopted this framework to revitalize our CE efforts. Under my leadership, Westwood Elementary earned the distinction of Texas State School of Character in 2007. In 2009, we earned a National School of Character (NSOC) honor. The NSOC process strengthened our journey down Character Road; those days were, indeed, magical.
Barbara’s keynote from the National Forum on Character Ed
Book: What’s Under Your Cape
At the end of May 2014, just before my 53rd birthday, my first book was released.
What’s Under Your Cape? SUPERHEROES of the Character Kind
Superheroes
In the Fall of 2013, I was giving a workshop at the National Forum on Character Education called Character Is Our Superpower. Marion Nelson, an independent publisher, attended that workshop in DC and invited me to write the book to help other educators focus on strengths as superpowers. SUPERHEROES swoop in and come to the rescue; so do Character Kids (and adults!). It’s not about intangibles like invisibility or spidey-sense; it’s more about inspiring values like service, unconditional love, perseverance, empathy, respect, honesty, enthusiasm, responsibility, obedience, encouragement, and self-discipline.
Cape up; it becomes a fun tagline.
Kindness Matters and Spreading Love
In May of 2018, I decided to retire from my full-time work in public schools and pursue my encore career in consulting, mentoring, coaching, speaking, and writing. I’m currently freelancing as well as speaking with the Character Strong team. Additionally, in September of 2019, I am going back to school on a part-time basis, to serve as a mentor and SEL coach! Here is a graphic by Jule Woodard @woodard_julie about Kindness being a Superpower!
Gratitude, SEL, and Mindfulness
Gratitude: my one word for 2013, helped me tremendously during my trauma recovery. I strive to make it a verb, in all things. In fact, it’s neurologically impossible to be in a state of anxiety and grateful at the same time. Here are some of the suggestions I made in my freelance growth sessions:
Socio-Emotional Learning (SEL)
To me, SEL and Character Development are all about how we establish and maintain healthy relationships, about communicating, self-regulating, making responsible decisions, connecting relationally. It’s HEART work, it’s holy work, and it’s important work. It’s also about serving, about being the KIND of leader that we would follow. It’s about head, heart, and hands; it starts with empathy, becomes compassion, then moves to kindness. And kindness, my friends, is the real global warming!
Mindfulness
I’ve been researching and studying the practice of mindfulness for six years. My trauma responses and recovery brought me to mindfulness, by necessity, because I had to slow down. It’s when I learned to savor, an important lesson because we simply cannot serve from an empty vessel. It pairs nicely with self-care, to be in the moment, mindfully aware, without judgment. It’s a joy to support and encourage those educators in the field to take care of themselves so that they can overflow as they serve.
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Sharing my joy and delight for educating tomorrow’s leaders through speaking and writing is one of my sparks and my blog has been an amazing outlet for that passion. Prior to blogging, my work has been published in Teaching Tolerance magazine, Teaching PreK-8 magazine, Change magazine, Daughters magazine, and the MO Counseling Interviewer. Since the year 2008, I’ve written monthly blog posts for the Josephson Institute of Ethic’s Character Educator and most recently for Really Good Stuff and The Teachers’ Lounge. I’ve also guest posted at Books That Heal Kids, Cachey Mama’s Classroom, Teach Forever, and I Can Teach My Child and I’ve written a guest post for Kleinspiration (thanks Erin!) and was recognized at Maria Dismondy’s blog. I spent three years writing the Counselors’ Corner post for Free Spirit Press and currently guest post periodically for the Prosign Design and the Character Strong blogs.
Website/Blog: corneroncharacter.com
Twitter: @BarbaraGruener #Whatsunderyourcape
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WhatsUnderYourCape
The Corner on Character Where Character Speaks podcast: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-corner-on-character-prosign-design-N3Q7LvmJs6D/
EduMatch has grown to include Voxer, guest blogging, a weekly Twitter chat/podcast, and a publishing arm. I’m so honored to know Sarah and to be part of the EduMatch community. Enjoy our conversation!
I was an early reader and elementary school was a lot of fun. When I got to middle school, it wasn’t as much fun. Everything was separated into tracks. I was the only student in my track that looked like me. The experience was at times difficult navigating my identity, how I fit in the space and it was a little rocky for a while. Academically, when I wanted to get my work done, I buckled down. Whenever I had positive interactions, that would consume me and not do homework. I would stay on AOL and chat messenger for however long and tie up the phone lines. In my junior and senior years, when it was time to start looking at colleges, I got it together. That’s what It was like for me as a student: the best of time and the worst of times.
This was almost five years ago now. I was on Voxer with a good friend of mine, Rafranz Davis, and were talking about math and gamification. She started mentioned different people to talk to and asked her if there was a program that would match person A to person B to person C. So I had this idea and tweeted out saying what I wanted to do about building a place to connect. Mark Gates in Australia was the first person who responded and I got information about him and added him to a list and tweeted him out. At that point, I set up a site with a Google form and people joined and brought their ideas. From there, we went to Voxer, 
Publishing started in 2016 and got really active a little over a year ago. Somebody asked in the Voxer group what was on your educator bucket list. A lot of people said they wanted to publish someday and write their own book. So this is obviously something that a lot of people want to do so let’s try it. There was a group of about 20 of us the first year. Everybody submitted a chapter and we put out EduMatch Snapshot in Education. That was such a great experience that we made it an annual thing. Last year, we started solo projects. We’ve put out 10 solo books so far and a couple more crowdsourced books in addition to EduMatch Snapshot 2018, Makers in Schools, To Whom It May Concern. We also have Dr. Will with
Dr. Sarah Thomas is a Regional Technology Coordinator in Prince Georges County, MD, Affiliate Faculty at Loyola University, and recently graduated with a Ph.D. in International Education in December 2017.
Mandy is the author of two books, 
I am passionate about learning and my profession in general, but my two favorite components of my position are being able to provide professional development to teachers and present/keynote conferences. I believe that by providing these opportunities to teachers, I am in turn able to reach many more students and ultimately affect their learning experiences. Also, on a personal side note, I was insanely afraid of public speaking throughout my life until I reached college. At that time I took multiple public speaking courses to try to get over my fear of speaking in front of people to the point where it was silly for me not to declare it as my minor because I had so many credits. The ability to get up in front of adults (which is not the same as getting up in front of kids) and not bawl like a baby is one of my accomplishments that I’m most proud of. Just another reason I think I like providing PD, presenting & keynoting.
Mandy Froehlich passionately encourages educators to create innovative change in their classrooms. Her interest lies in reinvigorating and re-engaging teachers back into their profession, as well as what’s needed to support teachers in their pursuit of innovative and divergent thinking and teaching. She consults internationally with school districts and post-secondary institutions in the effective use of technology to support great teaching, mental health support for educators, and how to create organizational change.
Paul Emerich France is a National Board Certified Teacher, dedicated to helping all learners feel seen, heard, and valued in the classroom. Paul writes for a number of prominent education publications, such as Educational Leadership, Edutopia, EdSurge, and the International Literacy Association’s Literacy Today.
I was so fortunate to have met Tara at ISTE in 2018 in person. At that time, she was president of the Global Collaboration PLN where I participated in the scavenger hunt. Tara knows how to make life exciting and fun. Enjoy the post and podcast!
Tara Linney is an award-winning Learning Innovation Coach, recognized for her work in gender equity in the teaching of computer programming, global collaborations in education, and educational coaching. As a Learning Innovation Coach, Linney has guided educators on developing interdisciplinary learning opportunities, allowing their students to leverage prior knowledge in the learning of new concepts. Part of Linney’s recent work includes integrating Sustainable Development Goals into education, finding places of overlap within the C3 Framework, NGSS, and Common Core State Standards, integrating computer science into the curriculum and using ISTE Student Standards to support the “how” in the learning process.
I grew up in Northern Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley which is about an hour from Washington D.C. 
Tonya Gilchrist is an internationally experienced educator, presenter, consultant, instructional coach, and curriculum specialist. She currently serves as a staff developer for Erin Kent Consulting. In addition to helping schools around the world powerfully launch reading and writing workshops and create balanced literacy programs, she specializes in amplifying inquiry across reading and writing workshops and effectively utilizing the workshop model in host country languages.
Ira David Socol is the Senior Provocateur at 
I lived on the eastern shore of Maryland since I was six. A few months ago, we moved about 20 minutes from where I work in a town called Easton, Maryland with my wife, who is a math coach. I have to say she is a much better coach than I ever was. 
Jon Harper is Vice Principal at Sandy Hill Elementary, Cambridge, Maryland. 
Tara Martin is an enthusiastic educator, speaker, and author who thrives on change and refuses to settle for the status quo. She has served as a classroom teacher, an instructional coach for several years, and most recently as a district administrator who leads district staff and school communities to meet the curriculum and instructional needs of the student body. Tara also mentored and supervised instructional coaches and provided job-embedded professional development for certified and classified staff. She is a well-rounded educator. 
Dave Burgess is the New York Times Best-Selling author of Teach Like a PIRATE, co-author of P is for PIRATE, and the president of Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc. which delivers powerful, inspirational, and innovative books, keynotes, and professional development.