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From Vendors to Partners: Evan Abramson on Rewriting the EdTech Partnership Playbook and Reimagining Inclusion Innovation · Exceptional Educators Podcast by FrenalyticsEDU

• 0:00
  Antonayah Ellis: Welcome to the Exceptional Educators Podcast by FrenalyticsEDU, where innovation meets inclusion in education. I'm your co host, Antonia Ellis.
• 0:08
  Matt Giovanniello: And I'm Matt Giovanello, the CEO and co founder of Frenalytics. At Frenalytics, we put special education and English language learners front and center. Our award winning FrenalyticsEDU platform helps streamline progress monitoring, improve communication and compliance, and offers truly personalized learning to your students' availabilities.
• 0:25
  Antonayah Ellis: Each episode of our podcast features candid conversations with district and school leaders, classroom changemakers, EdTech founders, and industry executives, all dedicated to transforming learning for each student, especially our learners with unique abilities. With the focus on extraordinary educators and the exceptional students they serve, we explore the latest on special education, accessible technology, and inclusive leadership. In this episode, Exceptional Educators is exceptionally thrilled to welcome Evan Abramson, director of innovation and technology for the Morris Union Joint Commission and a leader at the intersection of product strategy, technology, and education. Known for his energetic and collaborative leadership style, Evan specializes in helping organizations scale, execute, and innovate with purpose. Welcome to the podcast, Evan.
• 1:12
  We're so excited to have you today.
• 1:14
  Evan Abramson: Welcome, Evan. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Loving this. Love the energy.
• 1:20
  Antonayah Ellis: I myself am super interested in knowing what is your why? What brought you here? I really am interested to see what brought you to the education space.
• 1:29
  Evan Abramson: So I actually didn't start in the education space. I actually started working for the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team and had a family situation, had to move up to New Jersey to deal with some things for family purposes. And my mom, my aunts, everybody was in the education space. And one of my friends was a principal and just said, listen.
• 1:45
  I I have a spot here. Why don't you just come test it out, see if you'd like to do it? And I never left. I started working in the inner city school in Irvington. And for I spent fourteen years there, I loved every minute of it.
• 1:56
  It was hard. I ran multiple programs, did a bunch of different positions. But about year six, they said to me, you're really great at technology. You're the person who's always helping people out. Why don't you become a tech coach?
• 2:07
  And I said, great. So let's do that. So I did that for about four years. And my boss at the time, the director of technology was retiring. And they said, well, we would like you to take over as the director of technology for the district.
• 2:18
  So for me, I've been a director now going on year fourteen in different districts, certainly. Yeah, I love it. I love what I do here. And that and certainly coming to the Joint Chair Commission, and working with two fifty of the most exceptional students in the world. And so the autism, for me, was always about trying to find the why, why can we do things?
• 2:38
  How do we do things? As opposed to the typical reason when they hear special ed of, well, they can't. And that's that's something that was always, always bothering me. And so now to be able to come into this space and work on a daily basis to get that purposeful interaction of let's go and let's do things that nobody thinks that any of these kids can actually do.
• 2:56
  Matt Giovanniello: That's amazing, Evan. You're literally flipping the script and saying, how do we make this possible versus trying to find a reason or excuse to be like, it's not. It's literally in your title. You're the Director of Innovation. There are so many innovative things happening both at the jointure for the students that you directly support.
• 3:10
  But your title spans well beyond that. So let's take a minute. Tell us a little bit more specifically about the role that you play, not only for the two fifty with exceptionalities at the Joint Commission, but for special ed programs and beyond at all the other schools and districts of support in New Jersey. I think this is not a frequently understood thing about your title, I think it's one of the coolest parts about just so much of an impact that you have across the state. So tell us more about what that looks
• 3:32
  Evan Abramson: I appreciate that. It's a lot, certainly. But at the Joint Commission, we're actually made up of 30 member districts. And so each one of our member districts has a representative of the board. So each one of those superintendents from those 30 member districts are actually my bosses.
• 3:46
  They're all the board members. And so, with our daily innovation, technology, everything we do here curricular wise for our two fifty students, I also manage nine different committees ranging from the tech directors, STEAM committees, cybersecurity committees, AI, etcetera. And so I get to work with our 30 member districts and some other school districts that come to our meetings. And so we're working on different projects all around. So I work with the special ed directors and curriculum leaders in those districts as well to kinda say, like, if we can do something here at the Joint Share Commission, you can certainly do it in your district.
• 4:14
  And so for us, we're typically the guinea pig on a lot of things that people may not have ever heard of before. And so I love trying new things. I love trying to find ways to use exceptional technology that may just come out and hit the market and saying, well, maybe this wasn't really the directed intent of that, but let's see if we can do it this way and really make kids' lives better. So for me, that's a large part of my job is working with the 30 member districts and and the leaders within those districts as
• 4:39
  Matt Giovanniello: Evan, I love hearing that because you have such an important role that you play in influencing our next generation of students, especially those who find themselves in a special education program. And you're redefining what it means to receive services as a student with an IEP, a five zero four, or related departments. I'm curious about the guinea pig products and services that you've trialed at The Joint Chair. What have you done over the past couple of years, let's say, that has proven to be successful? What are you rolling out to other member districts?
• 5:06
  Are you most excited about? I know you've done esports programs, you've rolled out AI technologies. What have you done that's gone particularly well?
• 5:11
  Evan Abramson: Wow, that's a great question. So, there's a lot of losses along with the wins, and that's kind of what we do, right? We want teachers to fail forward. And that's kind of what our message is here as well. So things that have gone really well for us.
• 5:26
  I mean, we we did build the first national esports arena for students with autism. And so that was kind of the game changer that really put MUJC on the map nationally. We've had a lot of people come and visit, but we worked with partners like SHI, which was they were a really massive help to us. And they they got us in touch with partners like Microsoft. So Microsoft, Xbox, they were building controllers, and we took their newish version of controller that had adaptive features to it.
• 5:48
  And we said, well, this would be great for our kids. And they were stunned that we could do that. And so our kids play all the time. They're consistently on as a reward system, certainly, but they get to go on and they get to try new games, they get to play new things, and we want them to think critically. And so for these children who typically are not gonna be on a basketball team or a baseball team, it's hard to teach the soft skills.
• 6:07
  So now when we're doing this in a way that they can all play and understand with each other, it's massive. And so the moment where we knew we did the right thing was when we had our grand opening and we brought in all the families with the students who were even playing. And all of a sudden, the brothers and sisters sat down and were playing with their brothers and sisters. And the family members had never seen their kids interact that way with each other in their own family. And so there were a lot of tears shed amongst parents, certainly members of our community that said, we didn't expect that.
• 6:37
  And it's amazing. And we're going to enjoy every minute of that. So from that point on, it was like, how do we keep this moving forward? But also, what do we do next? How do we how do we innovate off of that?
• 6:48
  Do use meta glasses here, we actually record in first person different skills that our students need to understand, whether it's tying your shoes, washing your hands, skills that they use on a daily basis, But they're seeing it instead of in the first person from the glasses as opposed to if they're watching a video or if they're watching someone else do it in front of them, it's backwards. And so they have to understand. So now they can see it in first person. You always wanna talk about shout outs. Right?
• 7:09
  And so, like, I I have, you know, I am so fortunate that that I get to work with just a ton of partners that believe in what our mission is here. I mean, outside of of you guys, right, which which, again, for me, and I say this in the nicest way that I know if I ever call you, Matt, you you'd be there in three seconds the same way I would do the same. And so we do have we do have some other partners that we use consistently. Creatively focused is our is our biggest partner when it comes to working with our special needs students. They've built an AI agent for special ed teachers to work with on a on a minute by minute basis.
• 7:39
  And that has changed the game where teachers can just say, I'm struggling with this, tell me now, like, do I do? And it's all really designed around special needs. And it is just been so impactful for our staff here that our teachers love it, and they can go to it. And then on the back end, our administrators, we can see what the questions are. What do we need to change?
• 7:55
  What do we need to provide more professional development with? Another company that we use is Creatium, and that has allowed us to create virtual avatars to have the tough conversations with. So we could teach our teachers, our school administrators, even us, how to have difficult conversations.
• 8:09
  Antonayah Ellis: I'm still stuck on the parents just being kind of overwhelmed with emotion, seeing their children interact. I'm kind of interested in knowing what other social emotional advances have you guys seen from, you know, just this innovative technology where students are becoming more vocal or building these stronger connections with students and staff or families and children. What are some of those things like?
• 8:33
  Evan Abramson: Yeah. So this year, we we actually put in an interactive room. So we have two active floors, which are the projectors that shoot down to the floors that have two hundred and fifty three hundred different learning activities, not games, but like learn, like fun learning activities. So we we actually put two in side by side so the kids can actually talk and and work with each other. And you can have you can have two kids per floor at the same time.
• 8:53
  And then we we have this other product that we put in the same room called the Kinum. And it's a camera that works and actually brings the child almost like the Nintendo Wii back in the day with the little Wii guy, the Mii guy. And so now it's the actual child broadcast into the game, and they can actually see themselves on the screen playing. And so when you see the conversations happening, and they're so excited talking to their teachers, or they're talking to their their parents when they get home, the social emotional aspect is the fact that our kids who typically don't communicate are starting to communicate even if it's in a way and like smiling at each other, or a high five you'll see once in a while. And we do these things and and and we want them to we have students that are nonverbal, and that's okay.
• 9:29
  But we want to give them a way to communicate in a way that's effective for them to to really help the teachers understand them. And and our students have have rough behavior sometimes. Right? And they're trying to get their point across. They're trying to, like, get us to understand.
• 9:41
  And so the more we can practice with this and putting them in environments where they can be successful and learn and practice, that's our goal here is to really get these kids to be highly functional in life. We want them to do all life skills like anyone else and never ever feel as if they're slighted for any reason. That's our mission here.
• 9:58
  Matt Giovanniello: I think you're walking the walk, Evan, of using technology as a tool to further breed innovation, but also inclusion. Inclusion is this giant buzzword sometimes. We all want to strive for inclusion in an academic setting, easier said than done. Promoting inclusion all across the board is even more challenging. And yet, in a world where EdTech can sometimes create new barriers, especially for our students with special needs, you're proving that that does not need to be the case.
• 10:23
  And you're fighting this out as close to that. It isn't at The Joint Share and also your other districts. A related question through all of this is it takes intentional systems change at an organization like The Jointure to welcome in EdTech partners just as much as it takes intentional change on the EdTech partner side like us to be able to cultivate that, let's call it an enduring partnership. I use that word very much intentionally. I'm curious if you could reflect a little bit for us on some of the very intentional things you've done over the years, MUJC Tech Day being one of them, that is helping partners to come into the Joynter and say, okay, we're ready because you're ready to be more inclusive for your students?
• 10:59
  Evan Abramson: That's a great question. I think for us, it all starts with leadership. Our superintendent pushes us to be better, and and doctor Janet Flegg is our is our superintendent who just wants us to be out there and to to help the world understand all about special needs children and that we can put them on an equal playing field. And so it's her mission, her vision, but also our administrative team. She wants our team to get out there.
• 11:21
  And so we're always focusing on this with our principals, with our other leaders in district, but it certainly starts at the top. And so for us, it's going to conferences, it's speaking and presenting. And for us, it's never about like, we like to show what we've done. And we know it's not a one size fits all, but we're always there for the conversations. And so for me, it actually, it just builds things up when a teacher says, my god, you gave me this great idea.
• 11:42
  And I think I could do this, but I want to do it this way. And I said, that's awesome. Well, let's go figure out how to do it that way. Right? I want to jump in with them.
• 11:49
  The relationship matters to us. We're not just going to work with someone with for the sake of saying, well, you know, we have this great product. You might. But for us, like, I I need to have someone who I know I can trust for myself, my district, and and to protect my students here.
• 12:02
  Matt Giovanniello: I think you bring up a couple of really important points. It's reminding me of your very vocal, sometimes hot take LinkedIn posts where you're like, this is what I expect. I'm going to be as honest and open as I can. If you can match me, then great. We'll be great partners together or hopefully.
• 12:16
  But if you're not gonna meet me in middle, if you're not gonna show up and be your true self, this ain't going to work. I don't want it to be working with one salesperson and then get sold the bill of goods and be connected with somebody the next day because we need that consistency. Tell me about some of the other, maybe what you might not think are hot takes, but others may tell you are hot takes about your belief in what true partnership looks like on the EdTech Board side working with a group such as The Joynter and your other districts.
• 12:40
  Evan Abramson: Yeah. It's funny. I think there's you know, I I try not to give, too hot of taste, but evidently, people kinda see them as hot takes. So and they're not intentional. For me, there's just there's expectations.
• 12:51
  You know, before I can do be do business with you or understand, I need to know who you are. Right? I wanna know about your family. Same way I would hope that you'd wanna know what what's going on in my life. What what's going on with that?
• 12:59
  You know, I talk about my kids all the time in different settings when I present. And I want people to understand, like, this is who I am. Right? I'm a family man. I got my kids.
• 13:06
  And, you know, my wife's out there doing all kinds of amazing things. I want to know these things. I want people to understand who I am to be able to do better business with me. And I wanna know the same thing about them. I ask the same of them.
• 13:17
  It's a commitment, it's a partnership. A lot of businesses look to do sales really quickly. And that sale, and when we talk about it, it becomes a line item if there's no support, if there's no relationship behind it. And I can get rid of that at any point. If I have a partnership with people who I know are gonna show up, and if I ask of them, like, if there's something that goes down at the worst time here, I need to make a phone call, who do I call?
• 13:37
  Give me that person that I know is gonna answer that phone for me. But it's also vice versa, right? If you have a great partnership from the partner side, with a district, if you need someone to be a reference, or if you need someone to go present with you do all these things, like, we're there to jump in with you and say, no, no, like, I've got your back too. Like, this is not something that we look at it just from your side. We wanna jump in and be helpful too.
• 13:56
  And I think it's really fascinating from from partners that I get when I post things, you know, say, well, I can never get on someone's calendar. Well, we'll try not to put a calendar invite directly on my calendar. Like, that's a bad thing. Because when I look at them, don't even know who this person is. And that's an automatic delete and it's a block.
• 14:11
  But the one thing I talked about at EdTech Week, I think two years ago was if somebody writes me an email, and it's personalized, where it took you five minutes to do research, whether it's on myself, the joints or something we've done, you will 100% get a response within forty eight hours. Doesn't matter. And nine times out of 10, we'll set up a call. It may not go anywhere, but at least let's have that conversation. Because I respect the fact that you took time to understand and get to know us.
• 14:35
  As soon as I started getting all these generic emails, last week, I got a generic email that said hi, and it had the field name in there. It didn't even have my name. It just had that. And a bunch of us got them. We said, well, you didn't even take the time to even figure that out before you sent it out to partners.
• 14:50
  We know it's generic. And so I on average, I get about 300 emails a day, probably about 200 in sales that are trying to look to to do partnerships, which is amazing. But that generic email is going nowhere. So for me, that's it's not really a hot take. I would think it would be common sense.
• 15:04
  Say hello. I know a lot of us in the LinkedIn community talk all the time about say hello to us, like introduce yourself, tell me about yourself. And I think Matt, that's why I think we got along so well, from the beginning was we didn't talk about sales. We didn't we didn't even talk about what we did. It was just what's going on in your life?
• 15:20
  Like what's going on? And we just connected that way. And I think that's how most of my business is done. And it's not through friendships, it's through relationships, right? Like I have great friends, but we're trying to do some really amazing special things at the joint share commission.
• 15:32
  And again, myself and in my professional career, I wanna do great things to help partners out too. And so I think I've I've gotten, like I said, a lot of interest where where partners are reaching out and saying, can you please help us? And the first thing I say automatically is let's do this. But the first thing you're doing is getting rid of the your your generic sales emails. Take five minutes.
• 15:49
  Matt Giovanniello: I'm redoing your sales org.
• 15:51
  Evan Abramson: Yeah. In five minutes. Like, let's go. The the ROI on on taking five minutes to learn about your people will jump 10 times without a doubt.
• 15:59
  Matt Giovanniello: A thousand percent. So to sum up a couple of the things that and I agree. I don't think that they're hot takes, but for some where you don't realize it until you're hit over the head with it, these things aren't so obvious until all of a sudden they are. Canned response AI emails, no go. Spamming you, sending direct calendar invites, no go.
• 16:16
  Not taking a moment to understand the needs of the organization that you're trying to connect with, big no go. The opposite of those are also true and could help garner a partnership with someone like you. And I imagine many other district leaders who agree with your philosophy in the districts that they're serving, excuse me. What other standout things in a positive way, Evan, come to mind about some of the partners you work with? What would you recommend if a sales org is saying, Hey, want to work with a joint venture.
• 16:39
  What else comes to mind that your partners are doing particularly well? I know we talked about this from slightly different angle of what the joint is doing well with your partners. But what are partners doing in service of the joint are really well that you wish more organizations did?
• 16:52
  Evan Abramson: Yeah, I think I think partners in general are starting to like the good partners at least are acting like a partner. And they're saying, Listen, we we saw this, you posted this on social media. This was awesome. Right? Even a quick two second note saying this is great.
• 17:04
  How do I how do I help? What can I do to help you? Awesome. Right? Like just just saying, giving giving the the staff here awareness that that people are paying attention to the work that they're doing is so justifying for them because it's so hard for the work that they do every day.
• 17:17
  The teachers here work really, really hard in the classroom. And so we do really innovative, creative things. It's good for them to see that they're rewarded. Right? This is not about me.
• 17:25
  This is about the kids. And so for from that perspective, the partners who do this will pay attention. They'll also say, listen, I saw something at a conference, and you might want to link up with this partner, right? Like, they're doing some pretty creative things maybe you haven't thought of yet. So by them introducing me to other people and helping expand their business, expanding their customer base, I try to do the same things.
• 17:45
  Like, if we're at a conference, how many times do I just grab somebody? And I'm like, no, no, you have to meet Matt. Like this, like, you have to understand what they're doing over there. Because when I think the relationships when when someone comes to me and says, listen, I'm friends with Matt. Do you have a couple minutes?
• 17:59
  Course, right? If I know that my people are giving their recommendations or face to that, I want to know what's going on because I trust what I trust their opinions. And certainly from my partners that I trust doing the same thing, to me, that's a whole other level when a partner is like, look, I have someone else that I think will will crush it with you at the joint, you're gonna do some really cool things, you should really talk to them. That to me shows that they genuinely care. It's not about the sale, but it's about it's really about the kids, which is what, you know, I've said from day one, we all the decisions we make here are what's in the best interest of kids.
• 18:26
  And I think for the educators, we all say that the tech directors, from a tech leadership, it's been hard for a long time to get that across. Because we do have a job to protect our students from cyber AI, all these different issues that are coming out that. But we do have to do what's best for kids ultimately in the classroom. And so I think there's been a really big shift from the partner side, to really start to pay attention, but also from the tech leadership side also to say, how do we do this better? How do we do it differently?
• 18:51
  And just to kind of to summarize in a second, I talk about this all the time. How did the tech directors do better for the partners? Right? A lot of people talk about, my partners are this, this, this, good, bad, all that kind of stuff. But in our community, as educators and leaders, we have to step up our game.
• 19:04
  And if somebody takes the time to write you an email that's personalized, respond to them. Right? If somebody wants to give you a lead and say, oh, you might wanna reach out to that person, because it's a respect factor. And I think there's there's so many great people that do that. But there's a lot of people out there, because I hear from the partners that it's not really working.
• 19:20
  So I think we collectively need to have we we need to do a better job in the entire ecosystem.
• 19:24
  Matt Giovanniello: Evan, I feel like you were at our EdTech Week twenty twenty five panel on building enduring district partnerships, even though you're other side of the country. These are the exact conversations that we explored with district leaders. I'm glad that we're giving more credence to these topics because I think it's like the untold truth, some of these pieces. And I'm just glad that it's getting spotlighted a little bit more so partners know specifically how to do better. But also, the to extent that district leaders can do better as well, here are a couple of suggestions of doing so.
• 19:50
  And this partnership will be a true partnership if everybody respects it and treats it as such. I'm really glad you're bringing those things up. I do want to return to a comment you just most recently made about cybersecurity in cybersecurity in the wake of AI and in the wake of adopting all these tech tools, especially among a student population like yours. Before we got there, tell us about the role that you see that playing, not only for your professional growth, but also in building those partnerships that we've been speaking about.
• 20:14
  Evan Abramson: Yeah. So there's a couple ways we'll take this. So the first one, we started last year at the New Jersey Education Technology Association, which has been a massive, massive project. It's almost like fifteen years in the making amongst tech directors. And so we created this, I'm the vice president of the organization, And we created this organization to build a unified front between school leaders, so superintendents, tech coaches, curriculum leaders, along with tech directors, tech coaches, instructional coaches, network administrators.
• 20:40
  So we're all in the same forum, and we're all working together towards something. So to have that right now, we're we're in less than a year. We're over 500 members. We have a bunch of partners, and and we continue to grow our partnership base all the time because we want people to understand what's out there and what a real partner looks like, but also the fact that we have a discourse in in our group, and it's it's active all the time. Because now we have a way to communicate from the North, the South, and what we like to call Central Jersey, even though nobody really recognizes that.
• 21:06
  But we we it it is real, but we can all work together now and do things as a partnership. So we'll have curriculum leaders put a question out, and then they'll get responses from tech leaders and vice versa, which I think is is is meaningful partnerships. And then so so, Matt, your other part of your question is conferences, organizations that are doing really great things. So whether it's IEI, RTM, you know, TEXPO, which is the largest tech conference in, you in New Jersey, FETC is out there, ISTE, right? Everybody's doing this great work.
• 21:32
  But for us, if you're a district leader, and you are not putting yourself out there, and I say this, I go to RTM more often than not, I have amazing conversations with school leaders there that I can't get anywhere else. It's hard to go to these big educational technology conferences, because a lot of it's just vendor driven. A lot of it is educational driven towards teachers. But if I wanna sit with my peers and leaders above me, right, assistant superintendents and superintendents, and understanding what's going on all across the country, I thrive in those conversations, because I always say I want to be the dumbest person in the room. And that's most often the case.
• 22:04
  And so that being the case, I want to ask questions, I want to challenge them, because I genuinely want to hear what they have to say. And I think a lot of those, those those rooms, whether it's roundtables, or sessions that I go into, or conversations at lunch or dinner, they'll go for hours, because we really get to understand the impact that it's making somewhere else. A lot of times in the tech world, we're so just focused on on our lane. But a superintendent has to see things from a three sixty degree view, right? They have to understand all the potential impacts.
• 22:34
  And as a district leader, we definitely have multiple impacts. But sometimes we forget some of the other ones. And so I love hearing what they like, what they don't like. And and certainly, when you when you put yourself in a vulnerable position, and that's coming from the superintendent side too, they'll be like, well, they'll a lot of times they'll say to us, well, can you help me understand this tool? I don't I don't understand what's the need for it.
• 22:53
  Or how are you using it? Because I don't I don't see a purpose for it in my district. And we'll just sit at dinner and talk for hours. And I think that's the purpose of where this is going in the next few years. Right?
• 23:03
  Antonayah Ellis: I I'm interested in knowing how or what conversations do you have at home with your kids about digital footprints, especially being in a space that you are. I mean, you work in an environment where you constantly are having to be cautious of protecting students from all of these strange things out on the internet, but still pushing to use it in a positive way. So how do you make that balance at home? What are some of those conversations that you have?
• 23:28
  Evan Abramson: Yeah. So that's a that's a phenomenal question. I think my kids are my life, right? I I want them to grow up into a space in a world that's that's much better. I wanna leave it in a better place than where where I got it.
• 23:38
  And right now, this world is a tough place. Right? We didn't have to deal with social media growing up like this. We didn't have to deal with the cell phones attached all over the place. We had our pagers back in the day, which we were really excited to get a page from someone.
• 23:49
  But you know, for these kids these days, you're whether it's Snapchat, or Instagram, or Tiktok, or any of these things that they're on, there's a there is a high level of peer pressure to for the kids to be on there. And they don't understand the ramifications. A lot of the parents understand the ramifications. I'm in my house. My kids both know they both have cell phones.
• 24:11
  But they know I pay for the cell phone, I can look at it anytime I want. And they do. I think it's important to do to do that. I think a lot of times parents just say here's here's the device and, you know, as long as you're quiet and doing something, that's okay. We talk about it all the time.
• 24:23
  We talk about different issues going on in school. If there's something in the news, we talk about it at the dinner table. There there's expectations that are set to to allow my kids to to be kids, certainly, because they're gonna do some silly things. I mean, we all done some dumb some dumb things as kids. But there were never really large ramifications where if they do something really awful, or, you know, I say something stupid on on social media, that could end that that could end their college career, if they're doing anything professionally, whatever they want to do.
• 24:50
  People are going to see this, Anything on the internet is public and permanent, doesn't matter what it is. And I and I preach that to my to my my own kids, to their friends, we talk about with the parent groups. It's a really, really important piece. I mean, my kids have not grown up in the easiest settings. You know, my son had had a cancerous tumor in his left ear, you know, young, very, very young.
• 25:09
  He's had multiple operations had hearing aids. Now, nothing. My daughter was the was the typical COVID child. She was the child that was enjoying watching everybody's, you know, bedrooms during COVID time and was enjoying the Barbies and what was going on, and not realizing, oh, there's learning supposed to be happening too. So when she came back to school, she, you know, she was, she was struggling a bit, put into interventions.
• 25:30
  And we've worked with that, and certainly with AI to help do that. But I wanted my kids to know, like, there's there's things that are out there that are tools that can help. But But I always wanted them to come be able to come to me and ask questions. If there's something that they're not sure of, it's really important to open up those lines of conversation, whether it's at the dinner table, whether it's in the morning getting ready for school. I just wanted them to always feel that they weren't alone in this, you know, I think we just need to be there for them.
• 25:51
  I think we need to help them understand that we're adults. We've been through a lot, we understand how we can help. But as adults, we also have to understand ask them questions too. Like, we have to let them use their expertise. And in the education world, our teachers need to ask those questions, right?
• 26:04
  Like, don't they don't necessarily know. So to have student panels and, Matt, I know you guys were doing things with students. To me, that's critical. We can get the students talking in front of people, letting them share their expertise and and highlighting the amazing things that they're doing and and putting out there, like, they probably know the answers to our questions before they before we ask.
• 26:19
  Matt Giovanniello: They totally do. Speaking of, what kind of questions have you, at least as of recent, been asking your kids, either to learn more about the AI space, to learn more about the apps that they're using, how to get dad off TikTok? What are you asking your kids that you feel is making you not only a better parent, but also more attuned to tech that might be happening in your school or just in your life?
• 26:38
  Evan Abramson: In talking about these things and understanding trends, I want to know what kids are into what they like, because it is different. And it changes weekly. And so for me, it's about what are you guys into? Why are you into it? But how is it making an impact on you?
• 26:52
  You know, when Roblox first came out, it was a thing that was really scary to adults because the chat piece and there were there were rumors of all kinds of things going on on there. And then I just sat down with my son and boss said, Listen, like, let's play together. Let's do this. The same thing went for for fortnight. You know, I was highly, highly against it based on what I had heard.
• 27:09
  And he came to me and sat down at the dinner table and said, dad, can you come sit and watch me play with if I'm playing with my friends? Can I play with you there next to me? And what I discovered there was something so fascinating that I never expected to discover. They had eight eight of their friends on on the call, and they're all playing Fortnite. And they're all talking and strategy and empathy and all kinds of critical thinking that we've always wanted from our kids that used to be outside when they were everybody was outside playing forever.
• 27:35
  And now nobody can go outside and play. But they're on their devices, and they were doing this that they were doing this. And so I just sat back and I said, Oh, my goodness, I did teach you right. Like, get it. And so for the first six months he played, I was with him every time.
• 27:47
  So I wanted to understand. And then I understood it was not necessarily the blood, the guts, all that kind of stuff, like people were getting vaporized. But there wasn't part of the game. It it was really a fun game that they could work with their friends and play with. And so for me, that was kind of like the turning point in my whole career of saying, okay, obviously, I'm not I've lost touch here.
• 28:02
  Right? I'm not playing Madden football anymore. I'm not playing Super Mario on on Nintendo. It's a whole different world, but it's not necessarily a bad world. And when working together, so now my kids were 14 and 11 will play Roblox together, and I have all their friends and their cousins all in the same rooms playing and doing.
• 28:16
  And I'm like, this is the great connector. We've missed an opportunity for our cousins all over the country. These kids are online playing together, they have better relationships with their family now all over the country than I ever did with my family who's over the country. And so I look at it from a positive standpoint is connecting people, not necessarily dividing people.
• 28:33
  Matt Giovanniello: That's awesome. That's an excellent reminder of tech for good. And yes, parenting is a piece to this. Yes, your exposure to technology and your position plays a role in this, but that's not to say that parents and family and communities at large can't take on the same set of responsibilities to encourage use of tech for good. It's a different way of learning.
• 28:52
  We're not drawing talk and playing roller hockey in the street quite as much maybe as we were used to growing up, but our kids are learning skills in a similar tech driven way. And it's good to know that there's still tech for good out there. I'm really glad to share that story, Evan. Evan, I have one more topic I want to explore with you. We were talking about conferences before.
• 29:08
  We were talking about panels. We were talking about keynotes. I want to hear about your upcoming keynote at RTM on twenty four seven leadership. We have been exploring this theme throughout the podcast on your perspectives and importance of being a leader, not just to your staff, but to your students and also to your kids. What is your twenty four seven leadership keynote gonna look like?
• 29:27
  What are your big points that you hope everybody walks away with?
• 29:30
  Evan Abramson: Yeah, I mean, this is it's such a great, amazing opportunity. And I can't thank RTM enough for believing me even put me on the stage in front of in front of, you know, my colleagues and and to see to sit around a group of superintendents. So for me, it's understanding is the fact that you're watching superintendent burnout happens significantly faster than ever before. It's to understand your administrators are doing the same thing. They're burning out faster.
• 29:50
  And we're losing a lot of really great administrators because people are having a hard time separating work and their personal life. But on the other side of it, is to understand there sometimes it does like there's sometimes some events happen at night, where we have to be part of it. There's emergencies. But the one thing we don't do very well in education, we don't have we don't really handle difficult conversations very well. Right?
• 30:12
  Those that's a very hard thing. Teachers always wanted to be loved. And so, move as they move up into supervisory, director, superintendent positions, they've never been taught how to have difficult conversations. And so, that's something we're going to focus on is how to have that conversation. Why do we need to have that conversation?
• 30:26
  But on the other side of it too, is how do we train people? How do we cross train? So that way, a superintendent, I have people underneath me that can handle things, and they have people underneath them that can handle things. Right? And then even as it gets down to, you know, we our entire district should know how to do each other's jobs, where if a cafeteria workers out for the day, we all need to be able to understand like, how do we go in and just help this is this should not be something foreign to us.
• 30:47
  As leaders, the farther away we get in from the classroom, the farther away we get away from kids and learning and being able to relate. And I think that's kind of what we're we're gonna go with this in February is to take a step back. And because every one of us has had that amazing teacher, right? We all say, who is that amazing teacher that influenced you? And we all know who it was.
• 31:05
  When was the last time you heard when was that amazing administrator that influenced you? You don't hear that very often. Right? Most people don't. And the reason is, is because a lot of times they're so far away from the classroom that our students forget that they're even there, even though they play an important role, certainly, but it's hard.
• 31:21
  And I think for us, it's hard on the individual. It's hard on the coworkers, but it's certainly hard on their families too. And so we've got to do a better job in managing our administrative teams than what we've been doing and support people. And again, when you do that, and you have that really core amazing team that has really solid values, you can then bring that back down into into teachers. Our teachers are burning out.
• 31:42
  Our teachers don't necessarily feel respected all the time. They feel like they're doing more work than they ever have before for less wages. But how do we change that? When was the last time we just sat with a group of teachers and said, listen, take money off the table for a second. Right?
• 31:52
  There's contracts. We're not gonna deal with that for second. What else do we do? How do we change the game? How do we change this?
• 31:57
  Education has not changed in two hundred years. Right? Our school days are typically nine to three or in that ballpark, eight to four somewhere in there. Because that's when our kids were out had to go out to the farms, like they had to stop and go out to the farms when they when when they got to America. This is what they did.
• 32:12
  And so there were still students sitting in rows way back when two hundred years ago, and all of a sudden, they're still sitting in rows, and there was a board on the front. First was a chalkboard, and it became this really cool thing called a whiteboard. And then it is a smart board. Right? But the the model hasn't changed.
• 32:27
  And as much as we want to change it, we say our big change over the last twenty five years in in classrooms was the fact that we went from rows to pods of four, where students can talk to each other. Right? And it was it was like, wow, like, that's a great step. Don't get me wrong. But is that the is that the game changer?
• 32:44
  Like, that's gonna change education? I'm not really so sure about that. And so last thing I'll say is, you look at high school scheduling. High schools are normally the first kids that have to go to school in the morning. They go early.
• 32:55
  And the elementary kids go to latest. Look at what all the information says. High school students need to sleep more. When was the last time you had a one and a half year old, two year old, five year old, that said I really need to get my ten hours ten to ten to twelve hours of sleep ever.
• 33:08
  Matt Giovanniello: And I need to wake up at 8AM. So I can get to school at 9AM as right. Yeah, they're awake until 8AM.
• 33:14
  Evan Abramson: They wake up at 5AM. They wake up, they wake us up at 5AM ready to go. But yeah, we're gonna let those kids come later. So to understand, what are we doing? And again, I understand there's there's after school activities and all these different things in there.
• 33:26
  But if we want students to be successful, we've gotta change the way we do things. You're starting to see a lot of these on, you know, online AI schools, or or in person AI schools that are curriculum driven by AI teachers, but they have brought in the the best teachers around to come teach all the soft skills, to teach these classes called entrepreneurship, public speaking. And they're doing it at such a young age, where they're making these professionals because they realize a great teacher has great influence on the child and the whole child, not just teaching them math or language arts. And so I think you're going to start to see a lot of these pick up. There's a bunch of schools that are out there right now that are starting this AI model.
• 34:01
  And it's going to be it's going to force public schools to change has to.
• 34:05
  Matt Giovanniello: I think there's there are a lot of models that are challenging the status quo. And I'm glad that leaders like you in the public school setting are not only picking up on that, but saying, I don't agree with all their points necessarily, but they've got a point, and we can do better. I'm really glad that you've got your eyes wide open to that idea, especially in a role where you're directing innovation at a district. It's a very thought provoking concept. And I think that it it that might need to be a part two, Evan.
• 34:27
  We need to explore that a little bit more. But to no surprise whatsoever, we are at our time and I have to wrap up today's episode with one more question that I am very interested in asking you. I'd like to I'd like to leave you with our final question that we love to ask each of our guests. And that question is, what does being an exceptional leader or being an exceptional educator mean to you?
• 34:43
  Evan Abramson: So I think for me being an exceptional leader educator, it's about the kids. What do we do to make it about the kids? And how do we advance their knowledge? How do we make them feel more comfortable? How do we teach them all the soft skills that we've we've started to lose sight of to make this world a better place?
• 34:57
  We've got to bring conversations back, relationships, critical thinking, all these soft skills to make people really, you know, look at look at things that are out in the world now and say, what's the source behind that not just agreeing with something that's posted somewhere, right? Excuse me. So we know not everything you read on the internet is true. But our students don't realize that because they haven't had to necessarily go through that. We had encyclopedias back in the day, we could go do that.
• 35:24
  They don't. The the internet is their encyclopedia now, which is a really scary space. And so we need to teach our students how to research again. We need to teach our parents how to research and formulate opinions and be able to back those opinions with facts as opposed to just, you know, continuing to spew things out there to our kids. And even our kids doing the same thing that are not really great arguments, we need to teach them how to have real conversations again, not something that's an anger, anger base.
• 35:47
  So we do with our staff, we want everybody to be on the same team. And how do we make each other better? How do we cross train? How do we do all these great skills? So it's a long, hard road ahead.
• 35:55
  But I think a lot of great leaders out there and a lot of great partners that wanna join in and formulate, you know, partnerships to do that.
• 36:01
  Matt Giovanniello: Evan, I hate to break it to you, but you're one of them. You are one of those exceptional leaders. You're in it for the kids every moment of your school day, but also outside of your school day as well. That that twenty four seven leadership, it's a very convenient topic for you to title your keynote. You are one, and I think that you give countless examples today of how others can follow in your footsteps and do this in service of our next generation of students as well.
• 36:21
  I mean it, really. Evan, thank you for joining us today. It was such a pleasure exploring this through an official podcast medium. I am so lucky to call you a friend, and I really appreciate you coming on today.
• 36:30
  Evan Abramson: Likewise. Thank you so much for having me. This is awesome. And and, I hope it just sparks other conversations. Right?
• 36:34
  That's the goal. So let's do it.
• 36:36
  Matt Giovanniello: To everybody listening to today's episode of the Exceptional Educators Podcast, thank you again for joining us, and we look forward to catching you on our next episode.