Episode 62: How To Escape Your Echo Chamber

Dec 23, 2023

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Do you believe that the Earth is flat?

I can hear what you are saying: “Mark, I'm a college graduate. I am an educator. I have common sense. NO, I don't believe the Earth is flat!”

Just to be clear, I don’t believe the Earth is flat either. We’ve all heard of “flat-earthers” or The Flat Earth Society. I have always thought that this was probably a few thousand misinformed people in the world.

Imagine my surprise when I saw the following statistics:

As of July 2021, there were 122 YouTube Channels dedicated to Flat Earth theories and conversations, with over 4 million subscribers and 744 million views.
As many as 11% of Americans believe the Earth is flat.

Wait, what?? How can there be that many people that believe that the Earth is flat when there is so much evidence to the contrary? Well, there has actually been a lot of research on that topic.

One of the major contributing factors to this belief is that “flat-earthers” are in an echo chamber with each other.

“An echo chamber is the intellectual environment that people create to pad themselves from disagreement and to believe that their opinions are shared and correct.” (EDUCAUSE Review Blog Post)

OK, that's just weird. But, a lot of Private school leaders are in their own echo chambers and that can be REALLY BAD for their schools. On today’s episode of the PSLP, we are going to discuss The 11 ways you can get out of your echo chamber.

Thank you for taking me along with you when you are walking the dog, driving to school or running errands. I appreciate you and what you are doing for the lucky kids and teachers at your school.

Thanks so much for listening and thanks for making a difference!

Mark Minkus

I want to say thank you for listening to the podcast by giving you a FREE GIFT. It is called The 7 Steps To Having Successful Meetings With Upset Parents. This guide is an 11 page pdf that gives you a step by step plan to have better meetings with the parents at your school. Every good coach has a game plan. Every good teacher has a lesson plan. Too many private school leaders don’t have a plan when they sit down to meet with an upset parent. Well, now you have a PLAN! You can grab this FREE GUIDE at www.theprivateschoolleader.com/meeting

I’ve created a free resource for you called “The 6 Things That Every Private School Teacher Wants From Their Leader”. This guide is a 6 page pdf that will be a game changer for you. I guarantee you that if you do these 6 things, the teachers at your school will be happy to follow you. You can pick up your free guide by going to www.theprivateschoolleader.com/guide

I want to give you a gift to say “thank you” for listening to the podcast. I have created a FREE guide for you called “5 Strategies To Help You Work With Difficult Parents”. We know that working with parents is part of the job and most of our parents are great, but some of them can be very demanding and emotional and difficult. This guide will give you the tools that you need to build better relationships and have better meetings with the difficult parents at your school. Go to www.theprivateschoolleader.com/parents to grab the guide. Thank you again for listening every week!

Please check out all of the free resources on my website that can help you serve and lead your school community. There are "Plug & Play PD's" (45 minute webinars with guided notes) as well as Top 10 Lists of Leadership Books, Productivity Books and TED Talks over at www.theprivateschoolleader.com/resources. You can grab the show notes for today's episode at www.theprivateschoolleader.com/episode62

If you have gotten value from listening to the podcast, I would love to work with you 1-on-1. I would love to take my experience and help you to feel less overwhelmed and frustrated or help you have success if you are a brand new leader. I also work with private school leaders who are aspiring Heads of School and want to accelerate their leadership growth or experienced leaders that are moving on to a new school and they want to get off to a great start. If I’m describing you, then head over to www.theprivateschoolleader.com/coaching to learn more about working with me 1-on-1.

Please write a review of this podcast and help the algorithm push this content out to more leaders. I would love to get your feedback about the podcast, ideas for future episodes and hear about how you are implementing these strategies in your life and at your school. You can email me at mark.o.minkus@gmail.com Thanks!!

I’ve created a FREE RESOURCE for you called “The Top 6 Ways To Protect Your School From a Lawsuit”. This is a 10 page pdf that will help you to keep your staff and students safe and help keep your school out of court. Litigation is expensive, time consuming and extremely stressful. This common sense guide will help you to be more intentional and proactive when it comes to protecting your school. You can grab “The Top 6 Ways To Protect Your School From a Lawsuit” at www.theprivateschoolleader.com/lawsuit. Thanks!