About Betty Norton
For almost 30 years, Betty Norton worked for Broward County Public Schools where she taught middle school students and later concentrated on special populations included Gifted and Exceptions Student Education (ESE) classrooms and Title I schools.
Motivated to bring even more value to the students of Broward County, Ms. Norton pursued and earned a National Board Certification in 2004 and a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction in 2007, while concurrently dedicating her time to increase academic achievement in the district’s middle and high schools. She worked at the district level from 2005-2016. She worked for Core Curriculum as a curriculum developer and then in 2009 transferred to the dept of Accountability. In both cases, she was assigned to low-performing schools (D-F schools) and led a team of district support to evaluate, design, and implement school improvement plans and met with great success. Norton also provided training for faculty and administration.
Keen to learn more about virtual and remote education, Ms. Norton also spent seven-and-a-half years working for both Broward Virtual School and Florida Virtual School before embarking on her career at Xceed Preparatory Academy Virtual School, where she served as Head of Schools for Coral Springs. When Xceed Preparatory Academy Virtual School opened in 2020, Norton was tapped to lead the global virtual campus and since then, has become a go-to expert in online, remote and virtual education, having been featured in Thrive Global and numerous family and lifestyle blogs.
Ms. Norton earned a Bachelor of Science in Secondary English Education from the University of Central Florida and a Master of Science from Capella University.
Connect with Betty Norton: Email | Linkedin
Listen Now
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Resources Mentioned
Broward County Public Schools
Broward Virtual School
Florida Virtual School
Xceed Preparatory Academy Virtual School
The Transcript
**Please note that all of our transcriptions come from rev.com and are 80% accurate. We’re grateful for the robots that make this possible and realize that it’s not a perfect process.
Sam Demma
Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator podcast. This is your host, Sam Demma. Today we have a very special guest on the show. Betty Norton is a veteran in education, almost 30 years. She is currently sitting in her office in beautiful Florida where it is sunny outside and I’m sitting in my office where it is minus five and snowing.
Sam Demma
Betty has an unwavering passion for education, personalizing the experience to individuals to meet their needs and help them excel and exceed. Betty, thank you so much for coming on the show here today. Thank you so much.
Betty Norton
It’s my pleasure.
Sam Demma
Tell me a little bit about the work that you’re doing in education today and what got you into education in the first place.
Betty Norton
Okay, well, those are two very big questions. Do we have time for both? What I do in education these days. So I actually am the chief academic officer for several private schools that we have here in South Florida.
Betty Norton
We have six physical campuses and one virtual school that we use to kind of overlay across all of our campuses. We have students all around the world who attend our virtual school. And we also have students who are visiting the state of Florida for their sports and maybe attending any one of our XSEED Prep campuses.
Betty Norton
So that’s what I do now. I do oversee them. And my focus is doing whatever we can to make those schools better, to be able to provide students with a personalized learning education that really fulfills their needs and helps them achieve their goals. And the biggest reason why I got into education
Betty Norton
is because I have a big passion for it. I know that everyone says that, but I genuinely enjoy working with young people, especially middle schoolers and high schoolers. I graduated college going into business and then very quickly switched gears and went straight into education and I’ve never looked back.
Sam Demma
You mentioned the importance of creating personalized educational experiences and journeys for students. What does that look like for your schools? Great question.
Betty Norton
So at our schools, we have, let’s say for example, our schools open from 8 to 3.30 every day. And we personalize our students’ schedules all the way down to when they will be on campus. So a traditional campus will have students coming in at 8, leaving at 3.30, bells will ring and they will switch from class to class. They only have a certain amount of time with
Betty Norton
each of their teachers and let’s say for example if you’re waiting to get to number 17 because that’s the only question you really had a problem with, it’s really difficult when everyone else kind of gets a turn and perhaps the bell rings before you even get your shot at it. So at XSEED our students have flexible schedules. Some of our students come maybe three or four times a week. They may be on campus for about five to six hours, and they get to work with their teachers individually,
Betty Norton
and they also get to work with their teachers in small group sessions. So one of the ways that we customize our curriculum for them is meeting them where they are and then being able to create a support system for any foundational skills that they may be lacking. We help remediate those throughout the day. And then while they’re working with their teachers and working in small groups,
Betty Norton
they’re accelerating and moving forward. So we have the ability to have some students who may take a little bit longer to earn their high school diploma and say they might go an extra semester. But the opposite is also true.
Betty Norton
We have plenty of students who wish to graduate early because they wanna pursue their careers or the ideas and dreams that they’ve been planning. So sometimes we have students who graduate early.
Sam Demma
And recently you opened a few more schools. Tell me a little bit about it.
Betty Norton
Yes, that was quite the endeavor. We opened three new campuses this August and they are spread out throughout South Florida. We have a new campus in Boca, one in Palm Beach Gardens and one in Fort Lauderdale. All of them were quite exciting and quite challenging
Betty Norton
to open, trying to do three things at once is always a challenge. But we are hoping to tap into those communities and again, allow those students the opportunity to get the education personalized and have those needs met. Our schools tend to be rather small. Our schools are less than 100 students at each campus. And we do that by design so that the teachers can go ahead and personalize things and work students in small groups, if not one-on-one.
Sam Demma
How do people find your schools? Has XSEED been open for a long time? Tell me a little bit more about the process of a family getting their kid involved in one of your campuses.
Betty Norton
Yes, so we opened our doors back in September of 2017. And honestly, the fastest way for them to find us now is typically word of mouth. We have a very strong community build where our families will share with their friends and let them know what the experience has been for their child and so they’ll come out and visit our campuses. But otherwise we do
Betty Norton
what everybody else seems to do. We participate in conversations, we go to conferences, we have our website and Google and so forth. So we do have an active Instagram page and we get a lot of our families through our social and through word of mouth
Sam Demma
When you think of the students you serve at exceed across all campuses How do you measure the success of a student is it? I guess it must be based on their own goals and dreams and if you if you were able to help them move closer to those, but are there any students that stick out in your mind when you think of the impact that XSEED has had on a student’s journey?
Betty Norton
Yes, so you’re right. We do have a different, different ways of measuring, but quite honestly the first and foremost way that I measure student success is based on how happy they are. Many of our students are coming to us because they either feel like they’ve been left behind at a traditional school, whether it be private or public. Larger schools have a difficult time, and no fault to them.
Betty Norton
I used to work public school for about 20 years, so I understand the needs of the classroom teacher. But sometimes you just need to have a little bit of extra time every day to help you do what you need to do. So some of our students really come to us because they want that flexibility in their day,
Betty Norton
they want a little bit of a later start, and they want more of that one-on-one experience so that we can help them with those foundational skills. So honestly, seeing students go from being a little sad or depressed or feeling like they couldn’t achieve things or just even basic things like,
Betty Norton
miss, I’m not good at this math, I’d like to skip it or move on to something else. And then going in, let’s say six to seven weeks after they start with us and see them participating, not only just joining, but participating in a group session and getting up to the board and running through the math and showing you that they know what they’re doing is kind of an amazing task. I think one of the biggest memories that I have with XSEED that really made me proud of what we do and what our team has been successfully doing for the last few years, especially.
Betty Norton
I’ve been to probably 50 or 60 National Honor Society inductions. Between all the schools that I’ve ever worked in and working at the district level, you tend to be invited to things like that. And it’s always a very nice affair and everyone’s quite proud of their child. But at Exceed,
Betty Norton
since so many of those students were already struggling at their previous schools, I’d never seen so many parents just kind of move to tears with sharing so many stories of how their child, if they stayed at their school, they would have never been part of National Honor Society because they just weren’t getting the time and attention that they needed to be successful. So to see something that became so normal for me and then run into so many families that were just crying
Betty Norton
and brought every relative, the biggest event just to celebrate their child’s success really was a huge moment for me. It made me feel like we really were heading in the right direction and providing this level of education for kids.
Sam Demma
It’s so cool to hear about the impact the programs are creating in the lives of families and their children. I know that the reason many educators, heart-centered individuals, get into education is because they want to make a difference. Sometimes you don’t hear about it for a really long time, and more often than not, might not even realize that you are making
Sam Demma
a serious contribution to the life of a young person and their family. To attend an event like that and hear the stories must be such a gift. It sounds like you’ve spent years in public education, you’ve now spent multiple years in private education.
Sam Demma
You’ve also spent years teaching and leading virtual education. Can you talk a little bit about what it means to create a great experience virtually for students because school boards, especially in the pandemic hit, really struggled to maintain engagement and provide a good experience virtually. But I think it’s a beautiful opportunity to connect students from all over the globe with virtual experiences.
Sam Demma
And I know you’ve been doing it very well. No, thank you. And I mean, Sam, I’ll have to say, just this experience that you and I are currently having,
Betty Norton
that you’re in Canada and I’m in Florida, and we’re able to have this conversation, and I feel like we’re in the same room just chatting with each other. So the virtual education, I think, that’s probably the biggest piece right there.
Betty Norton
If you can help the student feel like they are live and in person and they’re engaging, regardless of where they’re sitting, I think you’ve really, you’ve kind of like overcome your first hurdle, if you will, in the virtual world. The other is over communication. I think that when you have a physical environment, people get a lot of their
Betty Norton
physical cues, you know, they look at each other, they can see how someone is feeling and so on, but in the virtual world, it’s kind of radio silent until you tap into them. So it’s really important to have different engagement opportunities for our students. We have social hours for them. We have activities that we sometimes run. We have virtual parties. We have all kinds of things that help them still be a part
Betty Norton
of our virtual community. They can even volunteer online and participate in donations if they wanted to donate for Toys to Tots or what have you through that virtual platform. So I think the key there in order for the students to feel really engaged is to have those connections
Betty Norton
and have those opportunities for the students to be a part of something, whether they can physically be there or not, they feel connected to everyone else in the group.
Sam Demma
Throughout your educational career, which mentors have you had or resources that have been really instrumental in your personal and professional development? And if so, what did you learn from those things or those individuals?
Betty Norton
Yes, that’s a really good question. So I’m gonna have to say my very first resource is the library. Ever since I was in elementary school, any time I wanted to know a little bit more about something rather than, and maybe this is probably because I did go to public and private school when I was younger, but going to your teacher and asking 20 questions wasn’t always ideal.
Betty Norton
So being able to go to the library and check out books and talk to the librarian and learn as much as I could about a particular topic really helped me stay curious and really helped me figure out how to tap into things and be a self-advocate and self-reliant. I think those skills really have transferred into my academic career and my professional career. But if I were to talk about any one mentor that I think really helped change things and
Betty Norton
helped mold me is Dr. Janet Allen. She was my college professor, and I kind of used to call her my college mom. So she’s the person who guided me through the entire process, helped me land my first job in education, and really saw that I had a passion for working with students, especially underprivileged students,
Betty Norton
who may have been attending Title I schools or lived in difficult environments. And me growing up in Newark, New Jersey also kind of gave me that opportunity to feel like, yes, I know what it’s like to be in a tough neighborhood and go to school.
Betty Norton
So she really understood what I wanted and saw that talent in me and made sure that I was in every rough school I could possibly work in so that I can make the greatest impact. And I really appreciate her for that because if it wasn’t for her, I don’t know that I would have taken advantage of those opportunities myself.
Sam Demma
Does she know how much of a difference she’s made in your journey in life?
Betty Norton
I hope so. I ran into her probably about seven years ago. She was presenting at a conference and I just walked up to her and said, hey, do you remember me? And she said, yes.
Betty Norton
And I said, I just wanted to give you a big hug and say, these are all the things I’ve been able to accomplish because you put me, or helped put me on the right path. And we both cried a little bit over that and reminisced about the good old days.
Betty Norton
But so I think to a certain extent she knows. Does she know? The full extent of it I think as teachers we never really know the power that we have over someone or how far our reach is, even when we run into them, really. They share their successes, and we say that’s fascinating. But to have that inside of you and every time you think about that person,
Betty Norton
you can get warm fuzzies and feel like they were your greatest cheerleader and supporter. I don’t know that we ever know how great that impact is.
Sam Demma
I think it’s an important reminder that we don’t know, and it’s equally as important a reminder to reach out to those individuals and tell them. I have a teacher who in grade 12 totally changed my life and trajectory, and fortunately he lives close to home,
Sam Demma
and we’ve stayed in touch over email, and once a year I try to eat a lunch with him and his wife on their porch and their dog. And every time I go, I get emotional. And I tell him and his wife how thankful and grateful I am for their presence in my life growing up.
Sam Demma
And I just think that the world needs more of those moments. And if you still have contact with Dr. Janet, it would be a beautiful reason to reach out and let her know. And if you’re an educator listening to this and you haven’t heard from a student or a colleague about the impact you’ve created on their life, just because you haven’t heard doesn’t mean you weren’t instrumental in that person’s personal and professional development. So please keep showing up and keep going and start the cycle. If there’s someone who had an impact on you
Sam Demma
and you’re listening to this, reach out to them. Use this as a reason to do so. I’m curious, Betty, you seem like someone who is extremely driven and dedicated to supporting young people and their families and advancing them in their education and their personal dreams and goals. How do you fill your own cup when you’re not at work to ensure that when you do show up,
Sam Demma
you’re giving the best of yourself that you possibly can? Well, I think the most important thing is to strike a balance between what you do for
Betty Norton
yourself and what you do for others. And a balance doesn’t necessarily mean 50 50, right? Today, it might be 100% exceed and 0% Betty, but tomorrow, it might be 90% Betty and 10% exceed, right? It’s knowing that balance, knowing what the priority is of the day and where you’re going to make the most impact. When you first start off, especially doing something
Betty Norton
at this scale, you feel like you have to be there for every single person, and you want to be a great leader, you want to be able to talk to them and say, I have an open-door policy, reach out to me, talk to me. But if you allow that, you could easily have 65 to 70 people reaching out to you on a daily basis,
Betty Norton
trying to troubleshoot things. So I think the biggest thing that I try to do, especially with our heads of schools and our leadership team is delegates, right? I want them to be able to provide and support our teachers by becoming experts in different areas. So even though I oversee everything,
Betty Norton
I do have them helping and balancing the load. And I try to take off as much as I can off their plates so that they can spend their time working on the job itself, working with the families and the students. And I take care of the business side of things or managing any issues that we may have, our curriculum, our facilities,
Betty Norton
and so forth. But I think having that downtime at home, spending time with my family, I have a daughter, a son, and a beautiful husband who are incredibly supportive of me, who understand that sometimes I have to work on a Sunday at 6 in the morning, and understand that, you know, I make up for it in other ways. We have family time, we always have dinner together, I do have a few things that are non-negotiables, if
Betty Norton
you will. I think those are important to have that set of standards in your work life, but also have some boundaries in your personal life.
Sam Demma
Saying no is so difficult in my own personal life. I know that as an educator, you’re pulled in hundreds of different directions too. How do you build that muscle to set the boundaries and stick to them when you really want to serve and support all the time
Betty Norton
You make a lot of mistakes. I’m gonna be honest with you. I mean, it’s not it’s most certainly not a perfected craft I think it’s always a work in progress and I think it will be until forever Yeah, it really is, you know, sometimes you sit there and go jeez. I probably shouldn’t have extended myself there I really wanted to be better at this and it really only takes one or two opportunities where you feel like you could have been at 100% to make you feel like, okay, I need to really focus because being here for the students and our families is what’s most important to me. Being here to support the teachers is also incredibly important. So once you have
Betty Norton
that experience, you say, all right, I’m going to wake up every morning and get myself organized. So that’s exactly what I do before I even hop out of bed. I go through my calendar, what’s going on, what do I need to do, what do I need to fire off and delegate or ask someone to assist with so that I can clear the path and be fully present. That’s something that I’ve been focusing on,
Betty Norton
especially over the last two years, with everything that happened with COVID and social media and all the things that are going on, wanting to be present is incredibly important for me. So I do, I sit with people, I like to sit with you face-to-face.
Betty Norton
I ask for people to turn off their cell phones and let’s just have 20 minutes where you and I are engaging, we’re present, we’re here, we’re not worrying about all the things that are happening around us. And let’s focus on the items that we wanna get to, to make a better tomorrow for everybody.
Betty Norton
But it is difficult.
Sam Demma
The presence piece is huge. I think about my personal relationships and when I feel most seen, heard, understood and connected to others. And it’s when we are sitting together face to face or engaging in an activity, our phones are off or not in sight.
Sam Demma
Simon Sinek, there’s a picture or a video of him sitting on stage, and he pulls out his phone and holds it in his hand and waves it around while he’s speaking, and ask the audience, did it change the way you feel about me while I’m holding my phone speaking to you right now versus when it was hidden in my pocket. And as a viewer watching this video online, I answered the question in my head like saying yes,
Sam Demma
because it made me feel like I wasn’t the most important thing, that you’re holding onto something else. Maybe there’s something you’re thinking about related to your phone or a task you have to complete rather than being present with me.
Sam Demma
And it’s something I’ve tried to carry forward in all of our relationships, whether personally or professionally. When you think about XSEED and the new year’s right around the corner, what are some of the objectives the school as a whole,
Sam Demma
across all campuses are focused on, or some of the things you’re very excited about as we move forward?
Betty Norton
Yeah, so I think I have to start that by saying that I’m already in planning mode for fall of 2025, right? So I’m looking at our curriculum, our staffing, our facilities, the resources, what do we need to do? Are we adding more classes? Are we taking away classes?
Betty Norton
What are we gonna do to help provide opportunities for our students, field trips, guest speakers, and so on. So I’m very much ingrained in fall of 2025 right now, to the point where I’ve actually put in my calendar that Christmas is a week away and I need to shop. And every single day I have a notification
Betty Norton
that says go Christmas shopping, because I’m just so living in the future right now. And we have so many great things planned. We have, you know, with all of our campuses kind of ramping up for the fall, we wanna be able to provide
Betty Norton
those unique student experiences. I’m very big on experience versus giving someone an actual gift, I’d rather you have an experience or a moment, so we’re focusing on what do we need to do to take that classroom, that day-to-day and add to it, right? How do we take this opportunity
Betty Norton
and let you have a real life experience through a guest speaker or a field trip or even just a virtual tour? Those are incredibly powerful as well. You can visit anywhere in the world on a virtual tour. And I think it’s quite fascinating
Betty Norton
to be able to do that with students. But of course, continuing our work with the rigorous curriculum, we are a college prep school, so we want to make sure that we have strong relationships with the colleges and universities, especially those that our students wish to attend. And then supporting our community, having more opportunities dedicated to volunteer work and being able to work with everyone in our, you know, surrounding cities and towns by donating our time. So those are our big focuses.
Sam Demma
It’s been such a pleasure having you on the podcast to talk about your journey through education, some of your beliefs and philosophies around education and the cool things that are happening at XSEED across all the campuses. If someone is listening to this very inspired,
Sam Demma
wants to share a note of gratitude or appreciation or ask you a question, what would be the best way for them to reach out and get in touch with you?
Betty Norton
Absolutely, I would love it. I like talking shop, so anyone who’s open to chat, I’m always up for it. But I think emailing me at bnorton@xceedprep.org would be fantastic.
Sam Demma
Awesome, Betty, thank you so much for your time and your presence. I appreciate it and I wish you all the best in 2025 and beyond.
Betty Norton
Thank you so much, Sam. It’s been really great speaking with you today. It’s been really great speaking with you today. Thank you for your time.
Join the Educator Network & Connect with Betty Norton
The High Performing Educator Podcast was brought to life during the outbreak of COVID-19 to provide you with inspirational stories and practical advice from your colleagues in education. By tuning in, you will hear the stories and ideas of the world’s brightest and most ambitious educators. You can expect interviews with Principals, Teachers, Guidance Counsellors, National Student Association, Directors and anybody that works with youth. You can find and listen to all the episodes for free here.
