E25 - Renville County West HS Podcast (NewTech High)


Peyton Mills Podcast
Principal, Renville County West
February 22, 2026

Peyton Mills is the High School Principal at Renville County West for the past three years.   Prior to coming to RCW, Peyton was a high school social studies teacher in central Minnesota for one year in Parkers Prairie and two years in Waubun / Ogema White Earth. He was recently named Superintendent of RCW for the 2026-2027 school year. 

Link to the Zoom

Peyton is one of the youngest administrators you will find, and I'm guessing, will be the youngest Superintendent in Minnesota next year. He already has some great experience and has a fairly robust arsenal of knowledge about programs that are high school flavored. Some of those things we speak about in the podcast are: MTSS and Intervention programs, West Central CEO program, PSEO and Enrollment Options, and different leadership concepts. 

Bill Sommers serves as a guest to the podcast and has several things to share, as well. 

Learner-Centered Collaborative Conference, Pittsburgh

I am heading to the Learner-Centered Collaborative conference in Philadelphia this week, along with Ryan Hauge, Rocori HS Principal. 

Wednesday, 2/25: We'll begin with a full day at Hampton Township School District. Hampton looks to be about 900 students in their high school. They are clearly a school of excellence, but I'm not exactly sure what innovations we are seeking to observe there. To read about them, I'd invite you to look at this link. Their district site talks about the "Portrait of a Talbot". What is a Talbot you ask? Apparently, it is a type of English hunting dog. Arff arff. 

Thursday, 2/26: We’ll visit Siemens and the local AIU 3 for an industry perspective and cohort celebration of learning. Siemens AG is a leading German technology and engineering company.They specialize in industrial automation, infrastructure, transportation, and healthcare, utilizing digital twin technology and industrial AI.  I worked with some of their representatives when I was the Principal at Hutchinson. I am sure we are going to learn a lot about the future technologies that are being developed. 

Ryan and I will report out about what we learn on this visit on a future paper or podcast. At this point, I would recommend you review Dr. Katie Martin's paper on the Learner-Centered Ecosystem that LCC bases their work on. I am reviewing it before we get to Pittsburgh after sharing it this fall. One of the documents I came across is the difference between student-centered learning definitions versus learner-centered, as sometimes these two ideas can get confusing. This is a great foundation to build your initiatives on to make them more learner-centered. 

Lastly, I will remind you of the Northern Cass Personalized Learning conference on June 10 and 11. I anticipate that we will have good representation there. 

Next Podcast

Our next podcast is Wednesday, March 4th, Zoom. Dr. Scott McLeod will be our guest. This is a description I gathered about Scott online. He actually was my advisor at the U some 20 years ago. He has been influential to me for over twenty years. I am really looking forward to having him on our podcast. I am really trying to provide you with the best PD folks I can find; Scott is definitely one of those! 

A Professor of Educational Leadership, Scott McLeod, J.D., Ph.D., received the 2025 Excellence in Teaching Award for the entire University of Colorado Denver campus.

Widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading experts on P-12 school leadership, deeper learning, technology, and innovation, he is on a mission to make students’ day-to-day learning less boring and more meaningful and relevant. Scott is the Founding Director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), the only university center in the U.S. dedicated to the technology needs of school administrators, and is the co-creator of both the wildly popular video series, Did You Know? (Shift Happens), and the 4 Shifts Protocol for lesson and unit redesign.

Scott has worked with hundreds of schools, districts, universities, and other organizations and has received numerous awards, including the 2016 global Award for Outstanding Leadership from the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). Scott blogs about leadership and innovation at Dangerously Irrelevant and is a frequent keynote speaker and workshop facilitator at regional, state, national, and international conferences. Scott also hosts two occasional podcasts, LeaderTalk and Redesigning for Deeper Learning.

I'm actually going to share this podcast (on Deeper Learning and the topic of School for Superintendents) as we prepare for him on March 4. To be honest, I want you to use him the best we can rather than to have him repeat what we just do here. This podcast is so awesome and I would never be able to get to all these topics in 40 minutes. Watch this after you watch Peyton! As a matter of fact, I would also enroll in this YouTube podcast series, Education Matters. Wow, this cat has a lot of great podcasts! We have had a great arsenal of podcasts, too, but certainly I am humbled by the professionalism of these as opposed to my sloppy productions. Ha! 

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