Saying No To Unconditional Service with Dr. Jessica Reed-Thomas

Her closing words? Joy chaser. And she means it.

Born in Anchorage, raised to become a lawyer, and fully resistant to the classroom, Jessica Reed-Thomas, Ed.D., fought off teaching for years. Then, a mentor, a university employee with good intuition and an air-conditioned education building at Temple University, changed everything.

What followed was a 12+ year career spanning classroom teacher, technology integration specialist, service-learning coordinator, agriculture curriculum lead, and, eventually, assistant principal overseeing 2,700 students and nearly 500 IEPs in the School District of Philadelphia.

But the real story is what it cost her.

Dr. Thomas opens up about surviving on leftover event food, falling asleep in her guacamole, being physically injured on the job multiple times, and staying in toxic workplaces the same way you stay in a bad relationship until the people she was serving told her to leave.

It was her students who said, " Go". It was her daughter who said, "Why do you keep going back?" And it was her own reflection on unconditional service as a false badge of honor that finally made it click.

Now she's channeling 20 years of hard-won wisdom into consulting on educator wellness, running a youth entrepreneurship program out of Temple University, and building a vending machine curriculum that teaches algebra and financial literacy. Her five-part retention framework policy, practice, people, power, and accountability, is a blueprint every district should be reading.