May 7, 2025

Coffee, Classrooms, and Courage: A Principal's Journey

Charles Williams leaps from the page with his powerful insights on educational equity. As an assistant principal in Chicago's Austin neighborhood, Williams bridges theory with everyday practice, offering a framework that transforms abstract equity concepts into concrete actions for educators. Spotlight 4 Success: Spotlight 4 Success

Spotlight 4 Success: Spotlight 4 Success

00:00 - Meeting Charles Williams at NCMLE

01:27 - Equity Workshop and Educational Leadership

02:43 - Inside the Principal's Office Book

06:01 - Student Voice and Accountability Story

08:01 - Skydiving Experience and Taking Leaps

11:03 - Final Thoughts on NCMLE Conference

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Welcome to Spotlight for Success by American Book Company.

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I'm Devin Bintosi, your host.

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We are here at NCMLE, the North Carolina Mid-Level Educators Conference in Charlotte, north Carolina, and we are joined here by Mr Charles Williams.

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Charles joins us from Chicago Public Schools and he is a motivational speaker here with.

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Is it CW Productions?

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Cw Consulting?

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Cw Consulting.

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Welcome, charles.

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Yeah, thank you for having me.

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I appreciate the opportunity to connect.

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No problem, we're very excited to have you here.

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I'd like to know from you, charles, what brings you to NCMLE.

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To know from you, charles, what brings you to.

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NCMLE.

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So David, david, david James brings me here.

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I was a featured speaker last year.

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David reached out, asked me to be here and it was a phenomenal experience.

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And so when he reached out again to say, hey, we want you back, I said, absolutely, this is my spring break back in Chicago.

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So the idea that I was like, yeah, I'll spend my spring break, or at least part of it, in Charlotte at a conference, I think speaks volumes to the value of this conference.

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But just to be able to be in the space oh, that's wonderful and so I understand you were presenting here.

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Is that right?

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I am.

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I had a session this morning, a two hour session, ok, you know, and then I was on a panel last night Fantastic.

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So tell us about the things that you're discussing with the community here at NCMLE.

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Yeah.

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So David asked me to do an equity workshop, and so this is typically something that is done, at least a full-day workshop.

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It is based on a framework that I helped to build back in Chicago for the Chicago Public Schools, and so it was a two-hour workshop here to be more of an introduction, but looking at these four different domains to figure out how do we move from just talking about doing the work to actually doing it.

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So many times you have people who are saying, hey, I know this work is important, I want to do it, but I don't know where to begin.

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I don't know where to start, and so providing a framework allows people to actually begin diving in and really being active.

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Oh, okay, so tell us a bit about.

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I understand that you're a principal.

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Is that correct?

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Yeah, yeah.

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So I'm an assistant principal now.

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I sat in the principal seat for about eight, nine years.

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I dropped back to be an assistant principal so I can do this sort of work.

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It's really, really hard to run a school and be gone all the time.

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Oh yeah, I imagine that would be a problem right.

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Yeah, a little bit of a challenge, a little bit of a challenge.

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So tell us some of the things that go on in your school that you have made part of, what you discuss with other educators as you go around the United States.

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Yeah, I think there are so many different things.

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I think that's one of the things that we were talking about earlier.

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You know is this idea that I'm speaking from a space of practicality, right, when I'm presenting at a conference, you know, a day, day or two later I'm back in the building.

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So I'm not just talking about it from an idea, a space of theory, or this is what I used to do 10, 15, 20 years ago.

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This is the work that I'm currently doing, and so, when we talk about, like, the example of leaning into the concept of essentialism and recognizing what it means to be a leader and being okay with pushing things away, that's the work that I'm actually doing.

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When we talk about providing opportunities for students, right, and I talk about experiential learning, providing those experiences for students those are things that we're actually doing.

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And so at our school, michelle Clark, on the very far west side of Chicago, we're in the Austin neighborhood.

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It is a neighborhood that is your textbook urban space, right, there's a lot of issues plaguing the neighborhood, but a lot of opportunities as well, and so we're trying to figure out how do we make sure that our students have access to the same, you know, opportunities, resources, tools, experiences that schools from all across the district have, and so it's challenging work, but we're seeing the wonderful, the wonderful outcomes of doing that work.

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Wow, that is amazing.

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Tell us a bit about, uh, you understand, you also have some materials, some books that you wrote yeah, so, um, I I fortunately I've been a contributing author to a number of things, in fact, uh, this past weekend.

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Uh, there was a book that came out Friday and then a book that came out Monday and then a book that came out Monday, and I have contributing chapters in both of those.

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Oh, wow.

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And then of course there's— You're prolific, yeah, I'm just a little busy a little busy, I guess so.

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And then there's this book.

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It's about three years old at this point, but this was my first publication called Inside the Principal's Office, and it was called that I call that.

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I think sometimes people get thrown off by the title.

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They're like, oh, it's for principals, like no, it's for school leaders.

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And in fact it's designed in a way for not to be full of.

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You know, it's not a dissertation.

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It's real experiences followed up with some reflection questions focusing on different domains, like how do we embrace celebrations, how do we embrace the concept of being the lead learner in our school, right?

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And so at the end of every chapter or week because you can read it week by week, you know there's some reflection pieces that you can dive deeper into.

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So great for a brand new leader trying to figure out how do I navigate the space, or even for that veteran leader who's gotten so caught up in their routines and maybe have forgotten what they're doing and why they're doing it.

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So it's a great text, a little biased because I wrote it, but it's a great, great text.

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Can you share an experience from the classroom or from your school setting where you felt like the light bulb moment happened, whether it was for faculty or it was for student population?

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At American Book Company in Woodstock, georgia, we are committed to your students' success.

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As you can see behind me, we have our workbooks and we have online testing and e-books that go on fancy iPads over here, for instance.

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They're all designed to help your students succeed and have higher test scores on their high-stakes assessments.

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Give us a call 888-264-5877, or find us on the web, abck12.com and you can receive a free trial or a free preview book of your choice.

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Hope to hear from you soon.

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Bye-bye.

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Yeah, so you know, one of the stories that I share and I think it's in this book is we had this policy where we weren't supposed to have food in the hallways Right, mostly because you know if you're a teacher or anybody, we weren't running through the hallway with a hot cup of coffee.

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Right, bad things happen.

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But you know, I would do my morning rounds and every morning one of my last stops was the cafeteria, because my cafeteria staff always had a cup of coffee and a pastry for me.

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Oh, nice.

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Because you got to take care of your cafeteria staff.

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Yeah.

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So I remember I was on my way to a meeting, I was rushing back, and so, of course, now I'm picking at my food as I'm moving through the hallways and one of the students sees me in the hallway and says hey, mr Williams, like what are you doing?

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You're not supposed to have food in the hallway.

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And I remember there was a teacher there who was like hey, you don't speak to him that way.

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And I said no, no, no, you know the student's right.

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We have an expectation as a school.

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It's not a student expectation, it is an expectation for the school, and I am no different.

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In fact, I should be leaning into that space and modeling what it is that we're expecting, and so I thank the student for reminding me of our school-wide expectations and policies.

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And it was just this kind of aha moment, right as we talk about student voice and empowerment, like, yeah, you also have a voice in this space, and so it wasn't just something that we were talking about, we were actually living.

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Oh, that is awesome.

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What a great experience so for your book how people find out about your book.

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Yeah.

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So I mean, people can access me all sorts of ways.

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I used to joke with students when Google was becoming a thing.

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You know.

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They were like we're going to Google you.

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I was like, yeah, okay, go ahead.

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Like you never find me.

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Uh, now that's a little bit different.

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Now, if you Google me, you'll find me.

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Uh, but you can find me on the website.

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Uh, cw consulting servicecom.

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Uh, you can find me all across social media at underscore CW consulting, and so you'll be able to access this text as well as all the other materials that I have to offer.

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Oh, that is fantastic.

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Can you tell us a little bit about I understand?

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You had a recent experience that was like uh, really, uh, uh prescient, uh, I guess you had a moment uh, up in the air.

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Yeah, yeah, it was.

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Uh, it was a moment so about three years ago, when I first joined the district.

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And talk about an initiation moment.

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So our school has a JROTC program and so we have a very close relationship with the United States Army and so they said, hey, listen, we've got this great opportunity to go skydiving.

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Now that has been something that has been on my bucket list and I was like sure, why not?

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Bucket list?

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And I was like sure why not?

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And so, yeah, we went, we went skydiving.

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I joked, you know, my daughter was with me, my youngest daughter, and it was like she was going to be the last person to ever see me alive on this earth.

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But it was just this incredible, incredible experience, you know we.

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So the door opened to the airplane, right, you kind of squat down because it's a tiny plane and you do this like kind of little duck crab, walk to the edge and you have to count down backwards three, two, one, and at one you jump and for those first few I'm sure it's like five seconds, but it felt like five minutes You're falling as a free fall, right, and you know you're waiting for the parachute to catch is a free fall right, and you know you're, you're waiting for the parachute to catch.

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And I think the beautiful thing was, once that parachute caught, I was able to pause and kind of look around and I remember the guy attached to my back because you know they're, they're with you, I wasn't by myself and he said listen, you have two choices.

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We could either just go down now that we're up here, or we could take the scenic route.

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You know, we could kind of move around a little bit, let you see.

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And it was like, well, we're already here, let's see, right, and I think it's one of these powerful moments like even that can be a testament to the work that we do, like you got to take the leap.

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That is an experience that I never would have ever had.

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You know, I had to push back against every fiber of my being to do this thing right, and I think sometimes we find ourselves in very uncomfortable situations that we do have to push back against.

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And you know, literally in my case, take that leap right.

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And so now I have an experience that I would never have had anywhere else.

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I could have done the indoor flying thing, I could have done a simulator and nothing would have compared.

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So I think that that you know for me anyway right, and I tell other people, like, even if you're not jumping out of an airplane, when you find yourself in that place where you don't know whether or not to take the proverbial leap, like do it right because you I mean, in most cases you're probably not going to crash to the ground and die a horrible death, but like you're going to have an experience that you probably would never have had otherwise.

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That is wow, that is quite the thing and very awesome that you were able to have an experience that you probably would never have had otherwise.

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That is wow, that is quite the thing and very awesome that you were able to do that and check another thing off the bucket list there.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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I don't know if I would ever do it again.

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I checked it off, I'm good, good.

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Is there anything else you'd like to share with the NCMLE community?

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Yeah, I think that, just if you ever have an opportunity to be at this conference, it's an incredible experience, the amounts of educators who come on out you know you've got the featured speakers from all over the country who come out and just connect with one another but also to provide and just the dynamic space.

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I go to a lot of conferences, a lot, and this is probably one of my favorites to be at, so I'm hoping that I'll be here again next year.

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I just think that this is a great opportunity.

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If you're looking to learn, to lead and to grow with like-minded educators, this is a place to be.

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Awesome.

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Once again, thank you, charles Williams.

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Charles Williams with CW Consulting, thank you so much for joining us today.

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I appreciate you having me.

Coffee, Classrooms, and Courage: A Principal's Journey

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