Jimmy Casas served twenty-two years as a school leader. He is a best-selling author, speaker, leadership coach, and currently serves as an adjunct professor at Drake University teaching a graduate course on Educational Leadership. Jimmy is the CEO and President of J Casas and Associates aimed at serving teachers, principals and superintendents in school districts across the country by providing high quality, practical and meaningful coaching support.

I’ve been following Jimmy on social media, have read his books and refer to his book, “Culturize” especially when helping schools develop positive cultures. I had so much fun talking with Jimmy and even learned something that I think he never told anyone before. Enjoy!
 
You and your family
I was born and raised in Iowa and continue to live in Iowa. I also have a home in Chicago since it is the hub and easy to get in and out of. A good reason for moving there was my oldest son, AJ, recently got transferred to Kalamazoo, Michigan and works for Stryker Corporation. He’s done really well and we’re very proud of him and all of our three children. My oldest daughter, Miraya, graduated from college, lives at our home in Bettendorf, and is a full-time nurse in labor and delivery. My youngest daughter, Marisa, who is 18, is a freshman at the University of Iowa. We’re all proud to be hawks and feel very very blessed that we have three beautiful children who are very kind young people. As parents, that’s all we can ask for is that our children are good people who have good hearts.
What Connected Educators Do with Jimmy Casas – YouTube

Experiences in and out of school that impacted you
I struggled in school, but I did have teachers in elementary school who really cared about me, supported me and tolerated me. Somewhere along the way when I got to middle school, I lost my way. That was due to a loss of confidence and struggling in terms of reading. Literacy was always an issue for me. I was good at math in elementary school, but when I got to middle school, I lost confidence in math also. By the time I got to high school, academics was very difficult for me.
“All of these experiences lead us on a journey to who we are and what we do with that. What do we do with the experiences to make a change in a positive way in our personal lives and hopefully in the lives of others?”
When I left school I didn’t intend to become an educator. I actually had other ideas of what I wanted to do. Life comes at you and I wasn’t ready for the rigors of college. I was not only a dropout of college once, twice, but three times. At one point, i gave up and thought college was not for me so I left and went to work in a sales job for a year which went really well. In fact, they wanted me to stay on. When my mentor was released, I was asked to take his place. I was 19 at the time taking a 49-year-old gentleman’s job who has children in college. It dawned on me that he didn’t have an education either and thought, “is that same thing going to happen to me where someone is eventually going to come along and take my job away?”

That’s what prompted me to go back to school and rethink things. I remember how upset the company was at me for leaving. It dawned on me that they really didn’t care about me. They only cared about me if I was making them money. As soon as I made the decision to go back and invest in school and my studies, it didn’t take long for me, I began to build confidence that I could do this right and finally committed to it. Post-secondary is about having opportunities for young people to find themselves and figure out their own path.
Don’t put a timeline on you that others expect you to get this or that done by a certain time. Take your own journey and then you will figure it out.