The Worthy Educator Initiative: Educators Working for School Transformation in the Digital Age with guests Walter McKenzie, Heather Lageman, & Leigh Reagan Alley
The Worthy Educator Initiative with Walter McKenzie, Heather Lageman, and Leigh Reagan Alley
The Worthy Educator launched in July 2024 to serve mid-to-late career educators doing the work in schools and classrooms around the world. A community with no costs to participate and no limits to its potential to influence and inform education, it is approaching 1,300 education professionals sharing questions, answers, resources and opportunities to advance our profession to fuel its transformation to meet the needs of society in the digital age.
Its most recent initiative is Roadmap 2031, nailing down everything we know and believe about public education, beginning with a committed core of veterans serving on our panels, following the energy of everyone attending, moving from an honest assessment of the state of the profession to a call for action, and having practitioners lead and inform this work because the map in hand has to match the terrain on the ground. Real educators doing the real work are in position to chart this course.
The Worthy Educator is also known for xSELeratED, a monthly feature on putting social-emotional learning (SEL) into practice, now a three-book series:
School Seasons xSELeratED is a calling to a collective pause, a purposeful inhale, and an invitation to return to ourselves, to each other, and to the legacy we build individually and together. It is our refocusing on the work of education not as knowledge, outcomes, and achievement, but as connection, belonging and healing. This is intentional, purposeful work: the integration of head and heart, skills and relationships, academic rigor and human well-being. The book is developed as a monthly guide of reflexive practices that span the entire school year, serving not as something extra, but as an essential companion for well-being, growth and fulfillment.
xSELeratED Students is the companion to School Seasons xSELeratED: A Year of Community and Collective Growth for Educators, and whether at the hopeful beginning of a school year, in the weary middle, or at the edge of a goodbye, we want everyone to know that no one enters this work alone! xSELeratED Students is our attempt to make learning more intentional. It is not another program to complete or a script to perform. It is a seasonal path, a way to notice what the year is asking of the people in the room and to meet that moment with language, reflection, relationship, and action.
And the xSELeratED Schools Framework provides big-picture architecture and shared language for this work, supporting educators, leaders, and teams to move from isolated strategies to an integrated, schoolwide approach centering relationships, repairing harm, and providing everyday opportunities for everyone to be seen, valued, and understood. Designed for PK–12 teachers, leaders, counselors, teacher-educators, and others, this framework helps school communities speak one SEL language, notice growth, and respond with care—together. Use a page tomorrow or plan a yearlong arc. Start small and build. The work is big, the steps are clear, and we walk them together.
Reading & Resources
Episode Guests
Walter McKenzie
Walter McKenzie is the founder of The Worthy Educator, a thriving community of leaders in education supporting each other to have impact and build lasting legacies in their work. Before leading community programs at ASCD, he served 25 years in Massachusetts and Virginia public schools: 14 years as a classroom teacher and 11 years as a district director and assistant superintendent. He also served as a senior training specialist for the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, D.C., and its field offices around the nation.
In addition to his work in public education, Walter is an internationally known presenter and author. He has been instrumental in launching and leading online professional development programs and postgraduate professional education courses, and he has actively facilitated online educator communities and web-based interdisciplinary instructional projects over the past forty years.
Heather Lageman
Heather Lageman is a Maryland-based author, educator, coach and advocate for well-being and professional growth. With over two decades of K-12 experience spanning classroom, school, district, and state levels, she brings a human-centered lens to systems leadership.
Heather writes about education, leadership, personal growth and creating healthier, more supportive communities for educators and students. Dedicated to empowering students, educators, and leaders with the skills they need to thrive, she has co-authored the School Seasons xSELeratED series with Walter and Leigh, and The Hope-Centered Educator: A Guide to Professional Renewal and Personal Empowerment with Janice Bradley (May 2026).
Leigh Reagan Alley
Dr. Leigh Alley is an internationally recognized teacher-educator, scholar, author, and advocate for wholeness-centered education. She serves as a Coordinator of Graduate Programs at the University of Maine at Augusta, where she created the world's first dedicated Master of Arts in Teaching Whole Child Education. Her 25-year career spans classroom teaching, organizational leadership, school improvement, and higher education, united by a commitment to creating the conditions in which children and educators can thrive.
Dr. Alley's work advances whole-child and whole-educator approaches through social-emotional learning, trauma-sensitive practice, resilience, and relational school cultures. She champions mattering, belonging, and psychological safety as essential to learning and well-being. Her scholarship and advocacy seek to transform educational systems through compassionate rigor, human connection, and an unwavering commitment to the dignity and potential of every learner and every educator.