Empowering Tomorrow's Leaders with Taylor Oliver

0:00 This podcast Spotlight for Success is our way of highlighting the incredible success stories happening in education right here in our home state of Georgia. Today, we are thrilled to be joined by Taylor Oliver, with EverFi, who has made a significant impact in the field of social studies education. Through her work, We'll explore her journey, insights and the positive changes she's creating for students and teachers. So let's get started. Great, Can you start by telling us about yourself? Yeah, so my name is Taylor Oliver. I currently live in Jacksonville, Florida, and I support all schools, teachers, districts, students using our resources in North Florida and I also get to support the entire amazing state of Georgia.

0:46 Wow, that's a big territory. You're running there. It is Wow. And so what brought you to that previously? What kind of things were you involved in in the schools? Yeah, so previously I've actually held a couple of positions. So, starting with, right after college, I went right into the classroom. I taught for some years, not to age myself, but I took grades 5 through 12 with social studies, and then from there, I became a district administrator, where I was a curriculum specialist for a couple of years as well, and I was servicing grades K through 12. Wow, and tell me, did you have any takeaways from your experience, either as a curriculum coordinator or as a teacher, like a milestones or an aha moment with your students, that you'd like to share?

1:28 Yeah, I think the biggest aha moments. I've had several I had one major one as a specialist and one major one as a teacher. I think the biggest one that I had as a teacher I got to teach during the last presidential election and we actually ran a mock election. And my assistant principal, who's now a principal, he was amazing and he helped me set everything up and it was really, really cool to be able to do a mock election with students and students the next day, like we, of course, we had to sit down at night and run all the numbers and then they got to see like, oh, like, our vote matters and of course it was a mock election, but they got to see the outcome of their votes and it was really cool, wow. And then the aha moment I had when I was a curriculum specialist.

2:11 I did a PD and at the end of PD I'm sorry, the beginning of PD I would always start with some type of an instructional tool. I would gamify our PDs and throughout the year I had teachers tell me like oh, that thing that you did in PD, I did it in my classroom and students were, you know, really engaged and it was a lot of fun. So it was cool that, like the things that I was like trying to be an exemplar for these teachers, they were doing it in their classrooms and it was having positive outcomes for students. Wonderful. So what brought you to EverFi? So what brought me to EverFi was was as a curriculum specialist. I serviced a couple of schools. I serviced, you know, a couple thousand students, but now with Everfi I actually get to reach, I mean, several hundred thousand students between North Florida and the entire state of Georgia.

2:57 I get to attend conferences and meet cool folks like yourself and I get to travel and I get to meet and network and really be involved with what's going on in K-12 and I get to sort of like burst outside of my little county bubble, which is really, really cool. I'm hearing new ideas, new instructional tools, new instructional technologies that are out here. So I love being out here in the field with EverFi. That is wonderful. So you're here promoting EverFi to the masses of Georgia. That's great, I understand. Are you presenting soon? I am. So I will be presenting tomorrow, on our last day, from 9 to 9.50. And I'm very excited to present.

3:38 I'm hoping for a big turnout, yeah. So I'm super excited to present to our teachers and admin here. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, we're really busy at the Georgia Council of Social Studies and I'm sure this is very exciting with what's going on there, so I wanted to touch base on let's see. So do you have any other things you'd like to share with the audience? Yeah, so I would love to share more about EverFi. Okay. My favorite part about EverFi and if anyone's ever been in any of my PDs or trainings we are 100% free. We never charge teachers, even if I come out to do a PD, if I come out to work with students and do a workshop, we are 100% free every time because we're backed by sponsors.

4:22 So here in Georgia we're backed by the Atlanta Falcons. They pay for our courses called the Character Playbook NFL. They pay for some of our courses called Understanding Mental Wellness. We're backed by Truist Mass Mutual and so we get to partner with these super amazing companies and they actually provide these resources for free. And we also wear standards alignment as well. So we have all of our standard alignment guides specifically to our personal finance mandates here in Georgia. Wow, come check us out. That is amazing. Yes, absolutely. So. Go check out EverFi, and see Ms Oliver. She'll be able to help you with all the things that are going on here, again brought to you courtesy of ABC Spotlight for Success.

5:03 We're here for you. Hope you have a great rest of the conference. Thank you. You too, it was great meeting you. All right, nice meeting you.