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Sunanna Chand: Teachers matter more than technology · aiEDU Studios

• 0:04
  Alex Kotran: So I'm here, AIED Studios episode, I think like in the 15s now.
• 0:08
  Sunanna Chand: Wow.
• 0:08
  Alex Kotran: Yeah.
• 0:09
  Alex Kotran: So it's still very early, but who else have you interviewed, Alex?
• 0:12
  Alex Kotran: Also we interviewed uh Kumar Garg from Renaissance Philanthropy, um, Roy Bahad, the head of Bloomberg Beta, which is like the first BC to really invest in future borg.
• 0:20
  Alex Kotran: Cool.
• 0:21
  Alex Kotran: Um, Gavin Purcell, he was Jimmy Fallon's showrunner.
• 0:26
  Alex Kotran: Lots of founders, lots of folks that are leading organizations.
• 0:28
  Alex Kotran: Yeah.
• 0:28
  Alex Kotran: Not necessarily AI organizations.
• 0:30
  Alex Kotran: Like our whole ethos is, you know, we're trying to not necessarily be on the stage.
• 0:37
  Alex Kotran: We're trying to build the stage for um organizations that have the trust and connectivity and uh I think ground game to actually reach the communities across the country that are you know integral to our mission.
• 0:49
  Alex Kotran: Um, we're trying to reach all students.
• 0:50
  Alex Kotran: It's a very audacious goal.
• 0:52
  Alex Kotran: Um, so we can't do it alone.
• 0:54
  Alex Kotran: And so it it it part of this whole thing about why I do a podcast was we were both just talking about having been to the ASUGSV summit.
• 1:02
  Alex Kotran: I was on a like I think four panels.
• 1:05
  Alex Kotran: I was with some of the smartest people in our space.
• 1:07
  Alex Kotran: And it's a travesty to me that they each only got about 15 minutes to talk.
• 1:12
  Alex Kotran: And you know, you're sort of getting only to a certain service level, and also, you know, a live panel is not something that you can go back and edit.
• 1:19
  Alex Kotran: So you're a little more buttoned up.
• 1:21
  Alex Kotran: Um this is a bit more freeform, you know, you can speak freely.
• 1:26
  Alex Kotran: Well, we can go back and, you know, make some tweaks if there's, you know, if you put your foot in your mouth.
• 1:31
  Alex Kotran: Um, but it it allows us to to so our goal really is um for folks who are following our work and wondering, you know, what does the AI readiness movement look like, you know, shining a light on the Reinventure Lab, I think, is part of helping them to understand, not necessarily because the Reinventure Lab is an AI organization, although you might say it is.
• 1:50
  Alex Kotran: Um, I don't really think of it as an AI organization.
• 1:53
  Alex Kotran: And yet, if we think about what is the hardest work to be done over the next five years, it's work that orgs like TFA are extremely well placed to do.
• 2:04
  Alex Kotran: How do you move like 13,000 school districts, 50 million kids, 100 million parents and guardians, 4 million teachers, um, 50 state departments of education, all of them fractured, not centralized.
• 2:19
  Alex Kotran: In some cases, it's not even centralized as a state.
• 2:22
  Alex Kotran: You're you're actually going district by district.
• 2:23
  Alex Kotran: Um and the challenges that come from that is also, I think, you know, benefits to to not being centralized.
• 2:30
  Alex Kotran: But the only way to reach a huge human system, maybe one of the biggest in history, right?
• 2:35
  Alex Kotran: This like very big set of people doing stuff, uh in endeavoring in sort of one set, you know, like a general goal of getting students ready for the future.
• 2:44
  Alex Kotran: Um Yeah, the only way to do it is with orgs that have been walking the walk for out.
• 2:49
  Alex Kotran: So how long have you been at Each for America at the Reinvention Lab?
• 2:53
  Alex Kotran: Maybe you can you don't have to give us the whole journey, but um for folks that aren't familiar with the reinvention lab, uh where were you born?
• 3:00
  Sunanna Chand: I was born in outside Chicago, Illinois.
• 3:02
  Sunanna Chand: Um, moved to England for a few years and ended up in Cleveland, Ohio for most of my growing up.
• 3:08
  Sunanna Chand: So go calves, shout out Shaker Heights.
• 3:10
  Sunanna Chand: Um But yeah, the Reinvention Lab, I was I've been at Teach America for five years now.
• 3:15
  Sunanna Chand: And I was the first employee of the lab that Michelle Culver hired.
• 3:18
  Sunanna Chand: Michelle, who shout out the Rhythm Project, is doing incredible work and thinking about uh human relationships in the age of AI.
• 3:25
  Sunanna Chand: And she came in with a hunch, which is you know, Teach for America has been doing incredible work in systems change education for a really long time, making sure that more young folks are able to access um possibility and opportunity in the way that the system was designed.
• 3:40
  Sunanna Chand: And she kind of started to realize like, what if the system actually is designed in a way that's not gonna reach all of young folks?
• 3:48
  Sunanna Chand: Or what if actually we need to totally reinvent and redesign what the system looks like and do both things at the same time?
• 3:53
  Sunanna Chand: Make sure that the young folks that are going through the system right now, today, are getting the best possible outcomes they can in the current system.
• 3:59
  Sunanna Chand: And also, how do we totally reinvent the system that fundamentally wasn't designed for the type of learning that actually makes us most human, especially in a world where AI is going to take over a lot of the road tasks that our original education system was designed for.
• 4:12
  Sunanna Chand: And so that's kind of the task of the reinvention lab and Teach for America is both being able to improve the current system, get more young people access to opportunity and thriving right now, and also really do the work of reinventing the system for two, five, 10, 100 years from now.
• 4:27
  Sunanna Chand: Well, I've talked about it a lot.
• 4:29
  Sunanna Chand: Yeah.
• 4:30
  Sunanna Chand: Did it make sense?
• 4:31
  Alex Kotran: It's really good.
• 4:32
  Alex Kotran: Yeah, it's really good.
• 4:33
  Alex Kotran: Um so, and so how long have you been at the reinvention lab?
• 4:39
  Sunanna Chand: Uh, it's been five years now.
• 4:41
  Alex Kotran: Oh, where were you before?
• 4:43
  Sunanna Chand: Shout out Remake Learning in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
• 4:45
  Sunanna Chand: I think Remake Learning is one of the most, well, I believe it is the most robust learning ecosystem for the future of learning anywhere in the country.
• 4:53
  Sunanna Chand: 600 organizations.
• 4:54
  Sunanna Chand: I worked with many school districts, about 100 school districts in southwestern Pennsylvania, but also museums, libraries, industry, philanthropy, government, higher ed.
• 5:03
  Sunanna Chand: And my job was to network them all together and figure out how do they work in a cross-systems way to forward the future of learning for young folks in Pittsburgh and the surrounding area.
• 5:12
  Sunanna Chand: And I often say my heart is there are many pieces of my heart that are still in Pittsburgh.
• 5:17
  Sunanna Chand: And if I hadn't fallen in love and needed to move to California, I would, I would still be there.
• 5:20
  Sunanna Chand: Um and as it happened, I met Michelle at the exact moment where I was considering a move out here and she was starting the lab and it all kind of came together in this really beautiful way that I feel grateful for all the time.
• 5:31
  unknown: Yeah.
• 5:32
  Alex Kotran: And Michelle has that effect on people.
• 5:33
  Alex Kotran: She sure does.
• 5:34
  Alex Kotran: She is, she is a visionary, um, and but also someone that you just want to be in space with.
• 5:41
  Alex Kotran: Yes.
• 5:42
  Alex Kotran: Um and and frankly, I think the the the type of work that she built and that you're now leading at Reinventure Lab is it's really like right at the very epicenter of what has to get done.
• 5:52
  Alex Kotran: Um my guess is you're not building a tool like all on your own.
• 5:57
  Alex Kotran: Like that's not your core strategy.
• 5:58
  Alex Kotran: I don't want to assume that.
• 6:00
  Alex Kotran: Okay.
• 6:00
  Alex Kotran: Um it's funny because I was at at ASCGSV, I would say 95% of the conversations, whether it was funders or organizations, it was like all about like what are the tools that we're building?
• 6:10
  Alex Kotran: How are we gonna use AI to do all this stuff?
• 6:13
  Alex Kotran: And to me it rang it rings quite hollow because it feels very much like, well, there's this big problem that we're not necessarily acknowledging, but we all know exists, which is that AI is going to like radically disrupt uh pathways to prosperity for kids.
• 6:27
  Alex Kotran: Um and I chafe a bit at the idea that AI is gonna solve the problem that it created.
• 6:33
  Alex Kotran: Um and and so if you you then sort of ask, well, how do you solve that problem?
• 6:38
  Alex Kotran: And I think the answer is how do you push a traditionally slow-moving molasses-like institution, or really a gazillion institutions, um, and get them to uh evolve at at a pace that um is required, which I don't know that has ever necessarily happened.
• 6:59
  Alex Kotran: I was talking to uh Dr.
• 7:01
  Alex Kotran: Keisha King at T-Mobile.
• 7:02
  Alex Kotran: Um so she's like a longtime administrator um in Houston, outside of Houston, and then went to T-Mobile was leading their sort of like broadband connectivity work.
• 7:11
  Alex Kotran: Uh and so she was there at the beginning of, you know, like online learning.
• 7:15
  Alex Kotran: And we were she was reflecting on, you know, all the analogs that we're hearing where everybody was like, it's gonna change education and it's gonna do all this amazing stuff.
• 7:23
  Alex Kotran: And it was like I just had this nagging feeling in the back of my head that like the internet's not gonna replace teaching and learning.
• 7:31
  Alex Kotran: Like this is sure it's a support.
• 7:33
  Alex Kotran: Um and she was right, I would say.
• 7:37
  Alex Kotran: Um, but I'm I'm curious if there are any analogs that you, you know, in your career, you know.
• 7:42
  Alex Kotran: I mean, I remember the first time I used, you know, dial up internet.
• 7:45
  Alex Kotran: Um, but I wasn't quite in the education space.
• 7:48
  Alex Kotran: And so yeah, like is there like do do you see any sort of like echoes of you know past new technologies and the euphoria or the excitement or the concern that we're you know experiencing today with AI?
• 8:01
  Sunanna Chand: I mean, a hundred percent.
• 8:02
  Sunanna Chand: You know, I was that that girl who was building HGML websites about my favorite book series when I was really little.
• 8:10
  Sunanna Chand: For those who are curious, it is Anamorphs.
• 8:12
  Sunanna Chand: Um I so I've been interested in emerging technology for a long time and ancestrally, like I feel an ancestral connection to education, right?
• 8:20
  Sunanna Chand: My father was in community college work his whole career.
• 8:22
  Sunanna Chand: And so I literally grew up in the halls of community colleges.
• 8:24
  Sunanna Chand: That was his educational um work to think about like how do all people in a community gain access to high quality education?
• 8:31
  Sunanna Chand: And for him, it was through community colleges.
• 8:33
  Sunanna Chand: Um, and for me, so when I think about the connection between emerging technology and education, I often think about conversations I've had with him.
• 8:43
  Sunanna Chand: I remember one time we were doing this big digital badge, digital portfolio initiative in Pittsburgh in the mid-2010s.
• 8:49
  Sunanna Chand: And I remember telling him about it, and he was like, Oh, yeah, you know, we tried something like that back in the late 90s around, you know, all of these things are cyclical.
• 8:56
  Sunanna Chand: And what I often say is um that a lot of the type of learning that we think about in terms of learning that makes us most human is actually really ancestral.
• 9:04
  Sunanna Chand: And I think about Audrey Lorde and um in Poetry Is Not a Luxury, where she says, you know, there are no new ideas, there are just ideas waiting in the wings um to become known or something like that.
• 9:14
  Sunanna Chand: I'm not getting the, I'm butchering the exact quote.
• 9:16
  Sunanna Chand: Of course, she does it much better than I do.
• 9:17
  Sunanna Chand: But I really ascribe to this idea that everything is cyclical, right?
• 9:20
  Sunanna Chand: And we're building on wisdom from from many, many generations and finding new ideas, new ways to express those ideas.
• 9:28
  Sunanna Chand: And when I came into education, I started teaching as a Teach for America teacher uh in 2010.
• 9:34
  Sunanna Chand: So it was a couple of years after the iPhone came out.
• 9:35
  Sunanna Chand: And it was abundant and clear to me as someone who cared deeply about education and educational access, and who also was really kind of a nerd for emerging technology that the pedagogy that I was teaching wasn't matching what young people needed in that moment.
• 9:49
  Sunanna Chand: Even my first and second graders were on tablets, were, you know, were really interested in the smart board as early as 2010, 2011.
• 9:56
  Sunanna Chand: And so I got into this, I didn't know what to do with it yet, but I felt this really deep tension between what I thought that how fast I knew technology was moving and what I thought it could do for the education sphere, and then where I thought education was in that moment, even a couple of years after the iPhone came out.
• 10:13
  Sunanna Chand: And so that kind of started my journey to search for what felt like a type of learning that could both honor the ways that our brain works in terms of how we learn and also find new ways to be able to help our brains learn by using emerging tools and technologies.
• 10:33
  Sunanna Chand: And so I agree that even AI, I think, is not going to replace deep human teaching and learning.
• 10:41
  Sunanna Chand: And the interesting thing about Teach for America is, you know, for those of you who maybe know Teach for America but know it kind of tangentially, you might say, oh, Teach for America, that's an organization that, you know, puts um recent grads in classrooms for two years to teach.
• 10:57
  Sunanna Chand: And it's true that our core program has changed a lot over the years, but it's still kind of the bread and butter of what Teach for America does.
• 11:03
  Sunanna Chand: But what I want to do is also help everyone who's listening to this think about actually Teach for America as really obsessed with the problem of how do you get high quality educational talent in the places that need it most?
• 11:16
  Sunanna Chand: And when I think about the definition of high quality educational talent, that definition changes over time and should evolve as the tools, technologies, ways of thinking, the ways our brain works, right, evolve over time as well.
• 11:28
  Sunanna Chand: And so that's what we really do with the reinvention lab.
• 11:30
  Sunanna Chand: We think about what's the intersection of the future of learning and the way that we as humankind are evolving in relationship to technology and what's the intersection of that with high-quality educational talent in a way that helps us think about the relationship between the talent that we believe will always be necessary to help young people thrive and the ways that technology as a tool can supplement and augment that in the most efficient and best and ethical ways.
• 11:58
  Sunanna Chand: Um, but this idea of like product, product, product all the time sometimes will frustrate me, especially coming from a place that's so focused on talent and has seen over now 35 years of Hitramaris' existence how important talent is at all levels of the education field to be able to really evolve and change um, you know, how we how we practice education in this country.
• 12:21
  Alex Kotran: Yeah, one of the um one of the things I'll ask somebody if we, you know, if we get to a conversation about like, well, what is the role of AI and in advancing teaching and learning?
• 12:31
  Alex Kotran: And I just say, well, you know, if you were to go to your district and I were to pick two classrooms, um, or maybe someone else's district, because maybe go to a random district in the US, and we have two classrooms in that district, both uh English language arts.
• 12:45
  Alex Kotran: And the only data point I give you is uh one classroom, uh every student is using their laptops regularly throughout the week, and in the other classroom they're not.
• 12:54
  Alex Kotran: Um you feel like you would know enough to even be able to guess which classroom, which teacher is being more effective.
• 13:02
  Alex Kotran: And at least so far, I'm curious for your take on that.
• 13:05
  Alex Kotran: But so far the answer has been, oh no, like that would that would always be that would be useless.
• 13:09
  Alex Kotran: Like it actually could go all over the place.
• 13:11
  Alex Kotran: Like some teachers that are unplugged are actually the most engaged and are really thinking creatively about bringing students in through project-based learning.
• 13:18
  Alex Kotran: Some teachers that are using laptops as just like a multiple choice exam machine.
• 13:23
  Alex Kotran: Um and there's obviously lots of alternative examples, right, on the other, in the other direction.
• 13:28
  Alex Kotran: Um yeah, how would you answer that if, you know, just out of curiosity?
• 13:33
  Sunanna Chand: I mean, I will say And it's a game show.
• 13:35
  Alex Kotran: So, you know, there's there is uh a winnings on the line.
• 13:37
  Sunanna Chand: The family feud, uh survey side.
• 13:40
  Sunanna Chand: I mean, I think the the basic answer to that question is yes, very hard to tell.
• 13:44
  Sunanna Chand: Uh I think one thing that I have been thinking a lot about though, is the underlying baseline necessity of digital infrastructure for any of this.
• 13:59
  Sunanna Chand: So I've been thinking a lot about this whole conversation about I see um on the table the anxious generation.
• 14:05
  Sunanna Chand: And I've been thinking a lot about his push to ban cell phones in schools.
• 14:13
  Alex Kotran: Jonathan Hayde.
• 14:13
  Sunanna Chand: Jonathan Hayde.
• 14:14
  Alex Kotran: Yeah.
• 14:15
  Sunanna Chand: And, you know, that's one of the major kind of points of his plan.
• 14:18
  Sunanna Chand: And I think a lot about, well, I can't tell the difference between if there's a human in the room or if there's technology in the room.
• 14:24
  Sunanna Chand: But one thing I know for sure is that if those two classrooms don't have the same access to that technology or to the internet, then I can start to talk about predicting outcomes, right?
• 14:34
  Sunanna Chand: Um, that that something we often talk about at the reinvention lab is um the type of deep learning, the type of rich, human-centered learning that uh works with our brains and also works in a time of rapid increasing technology should not be come across just by luck or luxury, right?
• 14:53
  Sunanna Chand: And so um I can't tell in that scenario, but what it makes me think is when I hear this conversation about banning phones, I think of all the potential positives of that.
• 15:03
  Sunanna Chand: But I think about also how in some classrooms and some places in America today, phones are the access to the internet and the access point to technology that will then prepare them for a technology-driven future.
• 15:15
  Sunanna Chand: And so um and so as long as the access is the same, I can't tell.
• 15:21
  Sunanna Chand: Uh, but we also have to have a conversation about access, which is kind of the unsexy thing, but is also kind of part of this conversation.
• 15:30
  Alex Kotran: Yeah, and it's especially relevant when you think about um I was looking at the I was I've been I've been looking for analogs.
• 15:39
  Alex Kotran: And one of the analogs is that you know everybody talks to the calculator.
• 15:42
  Alex Kotran: I worry that it's too narrow to draw lots of conclusions from it.
• 15:47
  Alex Kotran: Um but I I think maybe more apt is uh the computer and like the like the keyboard.
• 15:53
  Alex Kotran: And so if you look at, you know, what school was like before like basically the 1980s and before um students are writing about a half a page of like long form prose on average per week.
• 16:04
  Alex Kotran: Um get to the 2010s and it's like three to five pages.
• 16:07
  Alex Kotran: Um and I don't know that people say, but school is getting harder.
• 16:12
  Alex Kotran: It's just it's technology is enabling um, you know, uh more outputs in service of learning.
• 16:21
  Alex Kotran: Um and and it it it it is really troubling to imagine if you're that kid that doesn't have access to a computer and is now having to handwrite you know those three to five pages and doesn't have spell checker, um, doesn't have access to, you know, the wide world wide web, um, for better or worse.
• 16:41
  Alex Kotran: Um yeah, you start to get and and then of course the analog comes to AI where we there's this whole like question of like do we ban it, do we not ban it?
• 16:50
  Alex Kotran: And there's this presumption that if you it's it's not banned, if AI is allowed, then all the students here have access to the to not just AI but the same model because there's enough uh divergence in terms of the the the quality of the models that you actually could imagine some kids having an advantage just because they have you know they're paying for GPT Pro 200 bucks a month.
• 17:13
  Alex Kotran: Um and so it but that brings me to this like sort of deep respect for like teachers who have been concerned about students using Chat GPT, I don't think it's because they're Luddites.
• 17:26
  Alex Kotran: I don't think it's just because they're like not with the times.
• 17:30
  Alex Kotran: I think they're sensing this the power of this technology, they don't understand it.
• 17:35
  Alex Kotran: Um and if there's something that you know is has the potential for, you know, potentially and maybe even probably harming learning, if not if if you don't adapt to uh you know the reality of that technology.
• 17:51
  Alex Kotran: Um I think there's actually a lot of risks of just sort of like just having sort of almost like a free-for-all.
• 17:58
  Alex Kotran: Um does that make sense?
• 18:02
  Sunanna Chand: It it it does.
• 18:03
  Alex Kotran: And I without putting you on the spot for your opinion about whether at GBT is cheating, feel free to move.
• 18:08
  Sunanna Chand: Well, I'm I'm I've been thinking a lot about our conversation.
• 18:12
  Sunanna Chand: A couple things.
• 18:13
  Sunanna Chand: One, I've been thinking a lot about our conversation we had a couple months ago where you were pushing me on shortcuts and how teachers are reasonably concerned that it's not just about cheating, but around intellectual and cognitive shortcuts and whether or not we should how heightened our concern should be around taking a shortcut to writing that three-page prose paper and just writing it with ChatGBT and editing it.
• 18:38
  Sunanna Chand: And what are we losing in that scenario?
• 18:40
  Sunanna Chand: And uh we can run this in the show notes, but I also recently listened to um an hour talk that Alex told me I should listen to, and he was right.
• 18:49
  Sunanna Chand: So if he ever tells you to listen to a talk, you should listen to it.
• 18:51
  Alex Kotran: Yeah, David Ottour.
• 18:53
  Sunanna Chand: Um and what I thought was I thought the airplane example was fascinating.
• 18:58
  Sunanna Chand: And on the shorthand, it was that, you know, there was a scenario where, correct me if I'm wrong, airplanes were crashing because pilots were so reliant on autopilot that they didn't know how to fly in high altitude.
• 19:10
  Sunanna Chand: They just didn't have the practice.
• 19:12
  Sunanna Chand: And obviously there's so many, there's so many correlations there with possibilities for education and having to have the discernment again is having the human judgment and discernment to say, what things are we okay to take shortcuts on?
• 19:28
  Sunanna Chand: Like what things are not going to be as necessary in the future?
• 19:31
  Sunanna Chand: Maybe we can take shortcuts here.
• 19:32
  Sunanna Chand: But actually, these things are fundamental skills that we have to learn as a whole, because we build the technology, we build in the judgment.
• 19:40
  Sunanna Chand: And I think one thing that that makes me think is how do we bring more, again, human talent, right?
• 19:46
  Sunanna Chand: Educators to the table to be building that judgment into the models, but also building judgment into future curricula that is gonna be a part of this AI world.
• 19:56
  Sunanna Chand: Um, the other thing is that I don't remember who said this.
• 19:59
  Sunanna Chand: So I might be getting the statistic wrong.
• 20:01
  Sunanna Chand: So I don't, I don't mean to um pedal fake statistics on your podcast.
• 20:05
  Sunanna Chand: But it was some larger percentage than I had expected that I heard that are maybe you know the statistics, but teachers who are using AI to grade papers.
• 20:14
  Sunanna Chand: Like that has the percentage that I heard, it was something like 20%, maybe it was high enough where I was kind of shocked by it because again, human judgment is so important in the analysis of student work.
• 20:30
  Sunanna Chand: I've always been worried about that stop point because there is so much.
• 20:38
  Sunanna Chand: I mean, we think about something like writing or we think about something, even like art, you know, things that are just human and subjective.
• 20:46
  Sunanna Chand: It the idea that we could run some of these things through AI and make our grading process more efficient without losing some sort of deep um human-to-human cognitive assessment of some of our more like fundamental human skills.
• 21:01
  Sunanna Chand: It just it that concerns me.
• 21:03
  Sunanna Chand: Um and so I'm trying to kind of calibrate even for myself, like, okay, what are places where we can take shortcuts?
• 21:09
  Sunanna Chand: And for me, at least right now, although my opinions are known to change, um, assessment is an area that I'm generally cautious.
• 21:16
  Alex Kotran: Yeah, absolutely.
• 21:16
  Alex Kotran: It's um a a previous guest was basically said something to the effect of one of the skills that students need to build is they basically need to be their own CIO and their own chief information officer.
• 21:28
  Alex Kotran: And the role of a CIO is really making decisions about what tools and technology an organization uses.
• 21:33
  Alex Kotran: Um and circling back to sort of the thing that you, the point that you made earlier about well, maybe you wouldn't know what's uh uh which which which teacher is more effective based on just knowing whether they're using laptops or not.
• 21:46
  Alex Kotran: But you would be able to say that if it's the case of the students that are in the classroom where they're not getting access to laptops, if that's actually consistent across their learning experience.
• 21:53
  Alex Kotran: Um even if they're building really good uh competencies in ELA, they are missing something important that they're going to need, which is the ability to, you know, use technology and also encounter all the weirdnesses that come from having access to the internet for which is which is very much for better and worse.
• 22:11
  Alex Kotran: Um I the the uh so there's so many threads I want to pull.
• 22:18
  Alex Kotran: The one thing that I also found very interesting, which is all about the shortcuts.
• 22:22
  Alex Kotran: Um the analogy the example that David Autor gave about um the folks flying the plane, it's related to a separate story he told about, or just an example he gave about expertise.
• 22:34
  Alex Kotran: Um and you have like a crosswalk coordinator who's making sure kids are not getting run over, like very important, huge societal value.
• 22:44
  Alex Kotran: And then you have an air traffic controller.
• 22:46
  Alex Kotran: And you know, an air traffic controller makes, I think, something like 3x, what a crosswalk coordinator makes.
• 22:51
  Alex Kotran: And the question is, well, why?
• 22:52
  Alex Kotran: Because they're both really valuable things for society.
• 22:55
  Alex Kotran: Um but the air traffic controller requires more expertise.
• 22:59
  Alex Kotran: Um and so so right now our our you know, our labor market is set up such that you are you are commanding value for expertise.
• 23:06
  Alex Kotran: And so when we think about career pathways, it's all about how do you build the requisite set of expertise to command that value.
• 23:12
  Alex Kotran: Um the the the scary thing about AI to me is um expertise being an expert in using AI, I think is going to be totally it's gonna be like saying I'm an expert in using my phone.
• 23:29
  Alex Kotran: Um no doubt there will be people who are super users and you know I I see friends who post stuff on Instagram and I'm like, how did you create all this?
• 23:37
  Alex Kotran: Um But I don't think that they're listing, you know, mobile phone use on their resume, and it's probably not something that an employer would really care about.
• 23:44
  Alex Kotran: Um I worry that AI, uh using AI is gonna be one of those things where it's absolutely necessary to skill that if you don't have it, um you you you are gonna run into problems.
• 23:56
  Alex Kotran: Um but you need something else on top of that.
• 23:59
  Alex Kotran: And uh and for me, the good news is it's like it's not necessarily new stuff.
• 24:03
  Alex Kotran: It's actually we still need people who can read and think critically.
• 24:06
  Alex Kotran: Uh Peter Galt at Cole.org, he he says something he was really um I keep thinking about this a lot.
• 24:11
  Alex Kotran: It's like writing is thinking.
• 24:13
  Alex Kotran: The point about writing is not that you're learning how to put words into paragraphs, and it's like the process of learning how to write is a process of learning how to actually think and how to take what's in your head and structure it and communicate it.
• 24:26
  Alex Kotran: Um maybe computational thinking skills.
• 24:30
  Alex Kotran: I don't think it's thinking.
• 24:31
  Alex Kotran: I think there's like I think being a good writer makes you a really effective prompt engineer.
• 24:36
  Alex Kotran: Um but it's like, yeah, like I think what what you're getting at is it's not necessarily proven in the other direction.
• 24:42
  Alex Kotran: There's maybe some assumptions that, well, kids just need to be sort of these like sort of super AI augmented workers.
• 24:48
  Alex Kotran: Um but yeah, just that's sort of an idle reflection without a question at the end of it.
• 24:55
  Sunanna Chand: I mean, the thing that I I both thought that crossing guard and air traffic controller part of the point that he makes is it is a specialized set of expertise that is also augmented by technology, that you because the air traffic controller has to have a particular set of advanced skills in technology, that that expertise becomes more valuable in the marketplace.
• 25:20
  Sunanna Chand: And I that that example was a little hard for me because I think there's so many incredibly valuable human-to-human skills that it's gonna be a lot harder for AI to replicate, i.e., eldro care teaching, that is not valued necessarily in the market in the degree that I think it should be.
• 25:42
  Sunanna Chand: Uh, let the record state Santa thing's teachers should be paid a lot more money.
• 25:45
  Sunanna Chand: Um here, here.
• 25:47
  Sunanna Chand: And so I'm trying to wrap my head around that too.
• 25:51
  Sunanna Chand: I mean, another thing that I I thought was interesting was this conversation about how, you know, this conversation about is AI gonna replace teachers, right?
• 26:00
  Sunanna Chand: And obviously, my answer to that is no.
• 26:02
  Sunanna Chand: And part of the great example, I know I'm talking a lot about this talk, but it was, it was kind of a great talk.
• 26:07
  Sunanna Chand: But I I think it's worth also saying I think the medical sphere is a really great example where you have a lot of technology.
• 26:17
  Sunanna Chand: You also just need a lot of high-quality humans.
• 26:20
  Sunanna Chand: I mean, personally, I don't want to go into a hospital and have a computer judge me and, you know, rely on it for my diagnosis and treatment.
• 26:27
  Sunanna Chand: It would be great to have a human in that process.
• 26:29
  Sunanna Chand: You know, 10 years from now, I might listen back on this podcast and think that was silly.
• 26:33
  Sunanna Chand: Um, but I'm pretty sure I'm still gonna want some human judgment in my in my process of diagnosis and treatment at a hospital.
• 26:39
  Sunanna Chand: Um, I mean, for me, but certainly for my kid.
• 26:43
  Sunanna Chand: And so it just got me thinking about what does teaching and learning look like that is that is a type of teaching and learning that is a higher form of expertise because teachers are trained to be able to implement the highest, most complex versions of technological expertise to do their job because it is one of the most important jobs that our society has.
• 27:09
  Sunanna Chand: And so it deserves the highest quality technology, just like healthcare does.
• 27:13
  Sunanna Chand: And that I feel like is something that would be really cool pairing, pairing the talent with the tech.
• 27:20
  Sunanna Chand: This is also part of the conversation last week about, you know, it's almost like it was so, you said 95% of the conversations, it was something like that that was so geared towards the tech.
• 27:30
  Sunanna Chand: It's almost like having a conversation about hospitals, just about the technology in hospitals, which I'm sure happens without ever talking about the doctors and the nurses and the, you know, everyone in that system who makes that whole thing tick.
• 27:41
  Sunanna Chand: Um and so I would love for the conversation to be more about how do we make sure that every single educator in America has the best technology at their disposal and the best understanding of how to use that technology at their disposal to be able to build human and durable skills for young folks.
• 27:57
  Sunanna Chand: Um, and then how do we make sure that young people in college, young people in high school are seeing that their education is technology enhanced and creative and interesting and like all of those things, and then want to be educators, right?
• 28:11
  Sunanna Chand: Because they see that.
• 28:12
  Sunanna Chand: They're not just sitting bored feeling like schools irrelevant, I'm not interested in being here, I can't even have my phone, which I know is super relevant to the workplace and all these places.
• 28:21
  Sunanna Chand: Why would I want to go be a teacher and be stuck in this situation for a very long time?
• 28:25
  Sunanna Chand: And so without having that conversation about the talent, we also risk future talent into the education ecosystem, which I think is a is a threat, but also an opportunity if we get ahead of it enough.
• 28:36
  Sunanna Chand: I don't know if that was an answer to a question.
• 28:38
  Alex Kotran: No, this is this, but this does lead us it.
• 28:41
  Alex Kotran: Well, this is like this is why I like this format is we can kind of meander a little bit.
• 28:46
  Alex Kotran: And as long as you have someone that's really smart, um, my goal is just to sort of like draw out the insights that might not necessarily be something that we would hit if I sent you a list of 10 questions.
• 28:56
  Alex Kotran: And we've had guests that are like insist, I need to know the 10 questions so I can prep.
• 29:00
  Alex Kotran: And I'm like, I'll send you them, but like I promise you, like we're really going to just sort of feel it out.
• 29:04
  Alex Kotran: Um, but I have actually not heard this argument um uh maybe put as cogently as you put it, in terms of like the the why we need to be pushing uh schools to be able to like safely and effectively into implement AI.
• 29:19
  Alex Kotran: Um in Silicon Valley, the language, especially early on, there was like some mistakes made by some companies.
• 29:25
  Alex Kotran: And the the language was AI is gonna replace teachers and it's gonna help us like bridge the gap and serve all these students, but sort of implicit in that is like, well, we're not gonna need teachers because AI is gonna be able to like do such a better job.
• 29:37
  Alex Kotran: Um and it's a very Silicon Valley way of thinking.
• 29:41
  Alex Kotran: Um, and it really hit people the wrong way.
• 29:44
  Alex Kotran: And then there's, you know, I think people have adapted.
• 29:45
  Alex Kotran: And so the the new flavor of that is AI is going to save teachers time.
• 29:50
  Alex Kotran: It's gonna make them more efficient.
• 29:52
  Alex Kotran: And, you know, and I've talked to unions, I've talked to, you know, district leaders that have gone through layoffs, and this is extremely present right now.
• 30:03
  Alex Kotran: Like the conversation about AI is sure, it could be cool for teaching and learning.
• 30:07
  Alex Kotran: They're really thinking about the impacts on their workforce, on their relationship with not just uh unions, but you know, the teachers, like it they are seeing and hearing what's, you know, like you are basically buying into the all of the conversation about AI when you implement it.
• 30:22
  Alex Kotran: You don't have control over what people are talking about, you know, outside of your building.
• 30:26
  Alex Kotran: Um and I don't know that teachers are energized by gonna save me time.
• 30:30
  Alex Kotran: I think it's like it's a misunderstanding of what actually matters.
• 30:34
  Alex Kotran: Like to teachers, the teachers that I talk to, their goal is I want to be able to do a better job teaching my kids.
• 30:42
  Alex Kotran: I want to do a better job engaging, engaging them.
• 30:44
  Alex Kotran: I feel like kids are not um they don't I know that they don't think their learning is meaningful.
• 30:50
  Alex Kotran: DC public schools, I believe, is like dealing with a 40% uh absenteeism rate.
• 30:55
  Alex Kotran: Yeah.
• 30:55
  Alex Kotran: Um so that's what teachers are really energized by.
• 30:59
  Alex Kotran: And sure, there's like a logical flow of like, well, if you have more time, then you can focus on those things.
• 31:04
  Alex Kotran: But it's it's it's folks who are not necessarily like deep in the education space that have a very sort of like market-driven view of like this is the problem that we need to help to solve, and then we scale it.
• 31:16
  Alex Kotran: Um but the other thing is like I I don't know if you saw, I forget which survey it was, but it was something like I think it was 18%.
• 31:24
  Alex Kotran: We'll have to I'll have to put it in the show notes.
• 31:27
  Alex Kotran: Maybe it was 28, I think it was 18%.
• 31:29
  Alex Kotran: Only 18% of teachers would recommend profession today.
• 31:35
  Alex Kotran: Down from I think 60% not too long ago.
• 31:38
  Sunanna Chand: That's right.
• 31:39
  Alex Kotran: Um and you know, AI might be a shiny object, and there's a lot of like risk to getting too focused on it, but it is exciting.
• 31:48
  Alex Kotran: It is an opportunity for people to build new skills and to feel relevant and to get to just be a part of this future, this moment, this like you know, once in a generation, if you're lucky, you get to be a part of a technology revolution.
• 32:01
  Alex Kotran: Um you put it very interestingly, like is is this actually a way for us to enlist teachers uh not just as something that we give to them and use them as sort of pawns in sort of the implementation strategy, but actually sort of draw them in and help them sort of tell us like what does this look like?
• 32:21
  Alex Kotran: How like how do you want to use it?
• 32:22
  Alex Kotran: Um That's what we that's what we do.
• 32:24
  Alex Kotran: I mean, does TF has the reinvention lab like how have you started to figure this out?
• 32:30
  Alex Kotran: I mean, did have you had any cohorts of teachers that are explicitly empowered to use AI?
• 32:36
  Alex Kotran: Like what, yeah, could any any stories you can share about that?
• 32:39
  Sunanna Chand: Oh man, I wish I had a little.
• 32:40
  Sunanna Chand: See, this is this is my one mistake I made is I didn't bring a little notepad to to take notes on what you said because there are so many interesting things in that thread.
• 32:47
  Sunanna Chand: Um so a couple things.
• 32:49
  Sunanna Chand: I agree with you that the assumption of we will save teachers time and therefore we will teachers will use that time for more creative, you know, project-based, interspace, whatever, 21st century learning is an assumption I have yet to see validated in the real world in a way that um is probably happening in pockets, but it I go back to my experience as a teacher where I had the exact same assumption when I was a young teacher, you know, I was so interested in technology.
• 33:21
  Sunanna Chand: Let's be clear personalized learning and using machine learning for personalized instruction is not a new phenomenon, you know?
• 33:28
  Sunanna Chand: Um, like shout out Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
• 33:31
  Sunanna Chand: We've been talking about these things for a very long time.
• 33:34
  Sunanna Chand: And so what is true is that I think is that often what happens is one, the space that would be taken up by more creative learning is actually taken up by building the new sets of expertise to understand new technologies and be able to deploy them effectively.
• 33:57
  Sunanna Chand: And then with the pace of technology and how fast it's moving, that's almost like a never-ending new building of expertise you have to build.
• 34:04
  Sunanna Chand: And either you don't build it and then you don't get the productivity gains or whatever, you know, the growth gains, or you do build it and then it's a constant process of building it.
• 34:12
  Sunanna Chand: It's almost like that time that you would spend goes back into learning and relearning and being curious and being interested in what the next thing is because you're so obsessed with your young folks growing at the at the highest rate that they can, that that continues to be a place of curiosity and a place of of learning for you as an educator and as a professional, right?
• 34:33
  Sunanna Chand: Um, and so that's like an interesting conversation of will we over the next few years validate or invalidate this hypothesis that saving time, that A, we can save teachers time in this way, and B that if we do save teachers time, it's gonna lead to XYZ or another thing.
• 34:50
  Sunanna Chand: I hear that said a lot, and I'm just not sure that we have the data yet on that.
• 34:54
  Sunanna Chand: The other thing I will say is um is that in terms of I mean, teachers are um are incredibly resourceful and scrappy.
• 35:07
  Sunanna Chand: Um and what they don't often have is the ability to weed through the noise.
• 35:16
  Sunanna Chand: So you ask what Teach for America is doing, and the reality is like we had the great privilege of being at a conference last week where we probably learned about some new AI tools.
• 35:26
  Sunanna Chand: And like between the two of us, we maybe have our arms around some small percentage of all the AI tools that are available to education.
• 35:34
  Sunanna Chand: I mean, I remember walking around the Expo Center at the AI show and being like, okay, I've heard of some of these, and it's literally my job to know about what these things are.
• 35:42
  Sunanna Chand: And if I'm imagining then being a teacher responsible for any number of young people's lives, I definitely don't have the time or opportunity to be exploring all these different AI tools, then being able to have the expertise skill of choosing, okay, which AI tool do I use?
• 36:00
  Sunanna Chand: And then possibly wasting your time on a tool that doesn't work well, and then that's like burns you, or possibly you use it really well for the freemium version, and then you have to pay to access and either have to pay out of your pocket or your district has to pay and they're not paying for the procurement license.
• 36:14
  Sunanna Chand: And so you run into all of these different um into these different kinds of issue pockets for teachers.
• 36:20
  Sunanna Chand: And so one of the things that we try to do with um at Teach for America, actually, this isn't something as a lab, but I think it's a really interesting early pilot is work with third and fourth year educators who are Teach for America alumni.
• 36:30
  Sunanna Chand: So creative, interesting um teachers who are interested in emerging technology and have them paired with ed tech companies, both to be able to test those, you know, high promise AI um AI tools, but also to give direct feedback to developers.
• 36:45
  Sunanna Chand: And again, this is like a beautiful combination of tech and talent, right?
• 36:49
  Sunanna Chand: We have really high quality talent at Teach for America that's doing incredible work in education, still in classrooms.
• 36:55
  Sunanna Chand: And we have really great connections to ed tech companies, many of which are led by Teach for America alums too.
• 37:01
  Sunanna Chand: And so that connection becomes really beautiful and can lead to some really interesting things.
• 37:06
  Sunanna Chand: I mean, other things we're doing is, you know, we're training our alumni network.
• 37:10
  Sunanna Chand: We're going really deep in regions to work with regional networks around training around AI.
• 37:14
  Sunanna Chand: We've we're training all of our incoming core members around, you know, baseline, how do we use AI effectively and efficiently and build customized tools that are really specific to what we're doing in our classroom, which is different place to place.
• 37:26
  Sunanna Chand: Shout out Play Lab AI.
• 37:27
  Sunanna Chand: Play Lab as it is.
• 37:27
  Sunanna Chand: That sounds like Play Lab.
• 37:28
  Sunanna Chand: Um so Play Lab is um Play Lab is an incredible shout-out, Yusuf, shout out the Play Lab team, um, an incredible tool that actually spun out of the reinvention lab.
• 37:37
  Sunanna Chand: So Yusuf was a was an official teammate of mine for a couple of years and and now we're just very close partners.
• 37:42
  Sunanna Chand: Um and I mean what I love about Play Lab is that it's it's it's really nonprofit.
• 37:47
  Sunanna Chand: You know, the aspiration is to be AI infrastructure for a place like schools and education.
• 37:51
  Sunanna Chand: And so that's really how we're trying to use it with our core members, our alumni.
• 37:55
  Sunanna Chand: Um, and we're even doing AI uh workshops on college campuses.
• 38:00
  Sunanna Chand: You know, we're in, I think, over a hundred college campuses across the country.
• 38:03
  Sunanna Chand: And part of what we want to say teachers or actually college students?
• 38:08
  Sunanna Chand: College students.
• 38:09
  Sunanna Chand: Some of them are preacher's teachers, some of them are just college students.
• 38:12
  Sunanna Chand: And we are trying to say to them, listen, it's something like 66.
• 38:15
  Sunanna Chand: I think it was a Forbes article in November 2024 that said 66% of employers, you know, will not hire an entry-level person without an AI skill set.
• 38:22
  Sunanna Chand: That is probably actually a low ball number.
• 38:24
  Sunanna Chand: And so could we say to college students, this is something that we're actively trying to test and validate?
• 38:30
  Sunanna Chand: Like, hey, come be a teacher.
• 38:33
  Sunanna Chand: Because when you're a teacher, you gain incredible skills in an emerging technology that will put you on a path to accountability for yourself that will give you these really valuable industry skills.
• 38:43
  Sunanna Chand: And most young people didn't see, I mean, if you're a senior in college, you definitely did not see that in high school because the technology wasn't even there, right?
• 38:52
  Sunanna Chand: Which is kind of incredible to think about.
• 38:54
  Sunanna Chand: So we're just testing this hypothesis of like, how do we both really work to change how teachers experience teaching and the combination of teaching with emerging technologies?
• 39:07
  Sunanna Chand: And then how do we really talk about that and share the wisdom and go back to college students and say, actually, this is a really creative and interesting profession that will give you these skills and try and change the collective mindset about what education is and what it means to be an educator?
• 39:20
  Sunanna Chand: Because really, in the best of cases, it is an incredibly invigorating, energizing, creative, interesting profession.
• 39:27
  Sunanna Chand: Um, and again, one of the most important that we have.
• 39:31
  Alex Kotran: Yeah, this is I'm I'm I'm obsessed with this.
• 39:33
  Alex Kotran: Um it's such an interesting theory of change for this moment of how do you how do we rapidly evolve education?
• 39:44
  Alex Kotran: Well, we believe you have to invest in teacher capacity, build like the human capital, and that's what we do, like the teacher PD and the trainings and all that stuff.
• 39:52
  Alex Kotran: Um but actually going a little further up the pipeline and thinking about how do you actually change the um the demand side uh where and and it drives me crazy like my parents are both both educators um you know and I talk to friends who are from Japan or from Norway or Denmark and you know in those countries you like try to become a teacher and if you fail it's like okay I guess I'll go to medical school.
• 40:19
  Alex Kotran: Like it is so respected.
• 40:21
  Alex Kotran: And the pay is good, but it's not even necessarily just about the pay.
• 40:24
  Alex Kotran: It's like society has imparted this prestige.
• 40:28
  Alex Kotran: Um and so there's that and that's something that we are woefully in like the cup honestly the opposite side of where teachers are now almost political pawns.
• 40:37
  Alex Kotran: And it's it's really sad.
• 40:39
  Alex Kotran: I mean my mom my mom works I mean she's one year away from retirement and she works probably 60 hours a week is wild.
• 40:48
  Alex Kotran: And there's not you know in Silicon Valley you're like oh I work 60 hours a week it's like hustle I'm gonna like you know I'm getting my equity grants and um teachers don't get equity grants.
• 40:57
  Alex Kotran: They get a decent pension but um and it's actually really good.
• 41:00
  Alex Kotran: And like there's I I think there's a lot of uh uh a very strong case to be made for education.
• 41:06
  Alex Kotran: Um society is not making that case and T Fe seems really well placed to be a voice in that because you have so much access to not just free service teachers and new teachers, but you're actually bringing in folks that didn't necessarily go to college.
• 41:22
  Alex Kotran: They they wanted to do education.
• 41:23
  Alex Kotran: So you actually maybe you're the organization that's figured out how do we how do we sort of pitch education as if not a vocation at least as a really impactful part of your journey.
• 41:36
  Alex Kotran: And so what I'm hearing from you is there there probably has to be a role for AI there because it's going to be seen as a thing that's you know sexy and cool and um the other thing if I was going to try to like help how would we make the case if you're in college and you're listening and you're wondering well maybe I should I go into education I think the answer is also yes.
• 41:57
  Alex Kotran: One of the heuristics that I use if someone says oh is my job at risk for AI well the first the answer and David Autor I think one of the reasons I share that with you is because he doesn't answer that question.
• 42:06
  Alex Kotran: He like will do he literally will punt it um and says well we don't know.
• 42:09
  Alex Kotran: And that's probably the only right answer if someone is is too sure minded about what the jobs of the future are you might might want to ignore them.
• 42:17
  Alex Kotran: So we don't know what the jobs of the future are I think what a a rough heuristic though is open up your your calendar and how many how many meetings do you have?
• 42:27
  Alex Kotran: Or put differently how much time out of your eight hours a day uh are you interacting with other people and how much of that is you sitting in front of a computer doing stuff and it doesn't matter what the stuff is whether it's coding or writing or analyzing or designing if if you're sitting in front of your computer like that's a problem because whatever the thing is that you're doing in front of your computer um those are the types of things that AI is like that's the low-hanging fruit in knowledge work.
• 42:54
  Alex Kotran: Um and so you think about what like what is it like to be a teacher.
• 42:58
  Alex Kotran: I mean teachers technically have calendars but they're like every single minute of my day is um it's either and there are components of like you know grading and so it's not that they're it's not every single minute but they're spending probably eight hours a day in front of people interacting with kids.
• 43:13
  Alex Kotran: Very complicated interpersonal dynamics of like kids and parents and administration and school boards um I actually cannot imagine a more a better place to cut your teeth in becoming an expert in navigating the the heart the thing that AI will probably struggle the most with.
• 43:31
  Alex Kotran: And even if it doesn't even if AI is good at like grief counseling, I was just talking to a friend of mine who's a therapist is the the the woman in the the Redwoods um she does grief counseling at people who've like lost a child and she's been thinking a lot about AI and you know but there there are places there are there are going to be a lot of things and teaching is probably one of them where even if the person is less good than the AI, like there is something meaningful about having someone that you know actually cares.
• 43:59
  Alex Kotran: Um so what what is the work that needs to be done?
• 44:07
  Alex Kotran: Because you know the reinvention lab is small but mighty I mean I think you the impact you've had is incredible when you think about Play Lab and I think you can also take credit for you know the rhythm project in the sense of you know reinventure lab is sort of this like incubator of talent that is now going out and so so Play Lab, that's Yusuf Ahmed um and his team they're really two like founded like two years ago at the reinventure lab it was so I mean I remember the I remember meeting him and you when you were both at the reinventure lab is very recent.
• 44:38
  Sunanna Chand: Yeah maybe two and a half years ago now it's pretty recent.
• 44:41
  Sunanna Chand: Yeah.
• 44:41
  Alex Kotran: And Play Lab is really I would say one of the leading if not the leading nonprofit building accessible tools for teachers without profit motive.
• 44:50
  Alex Kotran: And then Michelle Colmer storms out of the gates with this big idea of the rhythm project and how do we address the social emotional dimension of uh like human thriving and especially how do we have those conversations with young people nobody there is there is no other organization in the country that is like thinking about that.
• 45:09
  Sunanna Chand: Um shout out to my friends and colleagues I love them both very much um but what yeah what is what is next I mean there's so obviously lots to learn but you've you've also been like pretty hands-on for longer than most organizations in the space the reinvention lab is Teach for America's future of learning RD engine.
• 45:27
  Sunanna Chand: What does that mean?
• 45:27
  Sunanna Chand: We do kind of early I call it little R design research, ethnographic research we work very deeply with teachers, young folks to try and deeply understand some of the larger kind of narratives and things that are going on in the ecosystem, including but not limited to AI.
• 45:44
  Sunanna Chand: And then we develop offerings that could be helpful against that set of real, you know, challenges that students teachers are facing in the ecosystem.
• 45:54
  Sunanna Chand: And you mentioned chronic absenteeism earlier and I have to shout out another colleague of mine who's one of the original OGs of Reinvention Lab, Colleen Keating Crawford.
• 46:05
  Sunanna Chand: And she did design sprints with I think over 150 teachers and young people over the course of August to February.
• 46:14
  Sunanna Chand: And she basically was able to plot young folks on a scale of you know there's a scale of are people are young people in school or are they not in school?
• 46:26
  Sunanna Chand: When we talk about chronic, I promise I'm coming around to the point of answering your question.
• 46:29
  Sunanna Chand: Are people in school or are they not in school?
• 46:31
  Sunanna Chand: That's usually what we talk about when we talk about chronic absenteeism and the numbers.
• 46:34
  Sunanna Chand: She kind of put a y-axis on that which is do young people want to be in school and do they not want to be in school?
• 46:41
  Sunanna Chand: And so then you get some interesting quadrants, right?
• 46:43
  Sunanna Chand: One quadrant is they're in school and they want to be there.
• 46:45
  Sunanna Chand: They're we talk to young folks who are in school and want to be there.
• 46:47
  Sunanna Chand: They are engaged that's great.
• 46:49
  Sunanna Chand: There's another group of people who are not in school but they want to be there.
• 46:54
  Sunanna Chand: We call those systemically blocked and often when you look at the chronic absenteeism research there's a lot of young people that fit into that category right they um they have to work they have to take care of young young siblings they need transportation we talked to young folks who were really benefiting from things like um washers and dryers in schools things like that.
• 47:12
  Sunanna Chand: And so you you see a lot of that um systemically blocked work happening in the space.
• 47:17
  Sunanna Chand: When you go into the lower quadrants we're really interested in those quadrants right because it's young people who don't want to be in school and who are not there.
• 47:25
  Sunanna Chand: So any number of you know deans of students going out to making house calls and trying to play on people back into school might not really make a difference if the young folks don't want to be there anyway are going to find ways to get out of it.
• 47:36
  Sunanna Chand: And then there's another group of young folks who are there but they don't want to be there.
• 47:40
  Sunanna Chand: And those are young folks who what we're finding is that the line is moving up, right?
• 47:46
  Sunanna Chand: There are a lot more young folks that don't want to be in school increasingly as we look at we were talking before recording started about attentional power and the rise of things like TikTok and different types of new media as we look at the rise of artificial intelligence, what we're finding is that young people just feel so much more and more urgently disaffected by the way that they're being taught and the what what I often say is, you know, when I got into this work I felt a tension between the reality of the world and the inertia of the classroom right like there's just so much inertia in the education field to keep the system at the way it is for various reasons.
• 48:27
  Sunanna Chand: And I felt that pressure between the exponential rate of change and the inertia of the education system.
• 48:33
  Sunanna Chand: And I feel that year over year, because things are moving exponentially that young people, educators, more folks are feeling that pressure to a greater degree year over year over year.
• 48:45
  Sunanna Chand: And that's why that line is increasing.
• 48:46
  Sunanna Chand: And so when you talked about the intersection of teaching and learning with quantum absenteeism, what we found in our research is that's absolutely true and that and you also talked about how teachers really they care about the tools and technology to the extent that they care that young people are growing.
• 49:03
  Sunanna Chand: So what we learned is that you know teachers teachers like, do they care that a young person is in or out of school?
• 49:11
  Sunanna Chand: Yes, to the extent that they think that being in school means that a young person is learning and growing and they care about that growth.
• 49:17
  Sunanna Chand: Young people are saying well I want to grow too and being in school does not help me grow.
• 49:23
  Sunanna Chand: And so you have a similar interest but a different position between teachers in schools and students who think where is the right place for growth to happen.
• 49:32
  Sunanna Chand: And so what I'm hoping is that we as a as this tension grows between how do we grow students and what is the most appropriate way to grow students.
• 49:44
  Sunanna Chand: And that tension comes in direct conflict with an education system that was built, you know, 150 years ago and was never actually built to prioritize deep human learning, um, durable skills, 21st century skills, deeper learning, human-centered learning whatever you want to call it maybe I'm wildly optimistic that's a character flaw of mine, but I feel that tension growing and I feel like it's gonna it's gonna get to a head, right?
• 50:09
  Sunanna Chand: You talk to progressive educators, folks who've been doing learn center education for 50 years and those folks exist and you know we've seen schools pop up and collapse and it hasn't been the right moment.
• 50:20
  Sunanna Chand: It just feels like the right moment for learn center education, 21st century education durable skills is coming because this pressure is building so intensely in a way that feels like we to your very original point, we have to work together as an ecosystem to figure out okay, what do we what do we build now, right?
• 50:38
  Sunanna Chand: If this system is kind of collapsing under the weight of all of these different pressures coming in and actually what we all want is for students to grow, young folks to learn, how do we have the radical imagination to dream into a new way of being that actually meets that need and if the pressure isn't high enough now, another thing we were talking about off camera is that pressure when you put agentic AI and artificial general intelligence into the mix is gonna just I mean it's I I think it's gonna add so many more degrees of pressure to a system that is already feeling a ton of pressure from all directions.
• 51:13
  Alex Kotran: Yeah that's the um I mean there is there is the risk that AI is the shiny object that distracts us from the work we need to do that from the work we need to do.
• 51:22
  Alex Kotran: And I think that looks something like schools rushing to implement tools just because that's the box they want to check.
• 51:30
  Alex Kotran: Implementing tools is probably important but just implementing tools is again not enough.
• 51:34
  Alex Kotran: But I think it's meaningful that there has been this reinvigoration of conversation about 21st century skills and durable skills and there is people are now talking about school transformation without you know I mean like the the education philanthropy space I just learned this this year.
• 51:51
  Alex Kotran: I should know this as someone who spends a lot of time too much time fundraising.
• 51:54
  Alex Kotran: I wish I spent less um maybe we can get some cool sponsors.
• 51:58
  Sunanna Chand: Spindrift by the way I I've been dutifully drinking my spindrift at every episode of eventually maybe they'll be our our marquee sponsor um who knows someone at Spindrift Philanthropy um who's listening right now the Spindrift Foundation please get a drop the link to the email address in the show notes or the comments.
• 52:17
  Alex Kotran: The Philanthropy space I didn't realize this shrinking specifically for education yeah Francis Masano's done some really interesting thought pieces on this yes I actually she's she's hosting something I think this week um and I'm really excited to kind of learn a lot about sort of the funding landscape now post federal dollars.
• 52:36
  Alex Kotran: Why is the philanthropy space uh contracted?
• 52:39
  Alex Kotran: Well this is this is I think one of the big consultancies I don't I won't I won't name drop them but um one of the big education sort of like boutiques that you've heard of um they were saying that essentially there's been a lot of foundations that have been working just you know private individuals have been working on let's say school transformation uh systems change you know whatever the whatever whatever the these long threads of of work in the social impact space in K-12 have been and they're just like exasperated.
• 53:06
  Alex Kotran: Like not that we're not just seeing meaningful improvements it's like we're regressing.
• 53:11
  Alex Kotran: The nave scores are worse than they were before.
• 53:15
  Alex Kotran: Like we are actually going in the wrong direction and there's a sense of like well nothing is working.
• 53:21
  Alex Kotran: This is clearly not a good place for us to put our money.
• 53:23
  Alex Kotran: I think that AI could be that shiny object that reinvigorates it's like almost a Trojan horse that it it's the thing that's gonna get all these people to show up to the ASUGSV summit and South by Southwest.
• 53:37
  Alex Kotran: And it's gonna get 21st century skills back onto talking points and back onto the menu and get researchers to start to really think about all these questions.
• 53:44
  Alex Kotran: And I think I'm very confident that all the hard research into like what are the skills of the future like we're we're basically going to land somewhere around durable skills.
• 53:52
  Alex Kotran: We're gonna land somewhere around schools need to be more engaging and you know self-advocacy and you know inquiry and um perseverance and persistence and creativity communication.
• 54:02
  Alex Kotran: And so if if that is the result, I'm willing to sort of just you know go with the, you know, like surf the wave, even though I think there's it there's also a lot of um opportunism that happens when there is that shiny object.
• 54:15
  Alex Kotran: And and so I think the key is how do schools navigate because you made this point about for teachers, it's not that they aren't aware that these tools exist.
• 54:24
  Alex Kotran: They're getting probably emails every day from vendors that are that are shilling you know this or that tool.
• 54:30
  Alex Kotran: But it's it takes I mean even for me sometimes I I struggle to like there was like one company that I saw and I was like wow this actually makes a lot of sense like it you know this feels like a legitimate like use case I I can see the safety component that they've addressed.
• 54:45
  Alex Kotran: Then I talked with like one of the top five districts uh in the country when the person that was leading there like Jen AI work and that person was like oh yeah we like we actually like looked under the hood and you know it they there's a lot of issues basically um they're not thinking about safety effectively they're not really thinking about yeah um you know algorithm bias and and so I realized like even for me I like my spite senses are are insufficient.
• 55:09
  Alex Kotran: Um so this this is like sort of like back to this like idea of well what does this future world look like where we are effectively harnessing technology to both reinvigorate the teaching profession but also to you know in imbue students with the I don't know is it knowledge skills also just like the mentality I mean like lifelong learning is that a skill how do how do we how do we talk about this orientation towards curiosity?
• 55:36
  Sunanna Chand: Um yeah I actually have two very concrete examples I can share one small one larger um one thing I'll say is so at a at ASUGSV the session that we led in the glass classroom was called from reinforce to reinvent meaning how do we not just use AI to reinforce the current system as it exists, create faster lesson plans, but actually use it to build more human skills.
• 55:59
  Sunanna Chand: And so what we did was basically build a tool on Playlab um in which it prompted folks to leave the conference space we were in it was called the Glass Classroom and gave them an eight minute challenge to build a durable skill.
• 56:13
  Sunanna Chand: So they chose a double skill they wanted to build and then I gave them kind of an eight minute challenge on how they might do that using the space, the literal conference town square that we were in at GSV and also using strangers, right?
• 56:24
  Sunanna Chand: Getting them out of their comfort zone and interacting with other people, pulling them out of meetings, you know, interacting people who are on their computers, stuff like that.
• 56:30
  Sunanna Chand: And I will never forget a couple of my colleagues who were there, Joey Ocaro and and Elizabeth Booz did I think it was collaboration or communication or something and they stared into each other's eyes for 60 seconds.
• 56:45
  Sunanna Chand: They'd never met really before and so they were strangers kind of staring at each other for 60 seconds and Joy's reflections were really powerful that it felt like a really intimate experience.
• 56:55
  Sunanna Chand: I felt like this deep human connection with someone that I'd never met before it felt really uncomfortable and I kept looking at my clock to see you know 60 seconds felt really long.
• 57:03
  Sunanna Chand: And the whole presentation was 30 minutes, right?
• 57:07
  Sunanna Chand: So it's not enough time to deeply explore this but the the whole idea was the the session's 30 minutes you're using three minutes of it to be able to get this challenge that helps you build a durable skill and then going out and practicing that challenge.
• 57:19
  Sunanna Chand: And the fact that an AI tool could get that type of deep intimate connection in that short of a time span was kind of mind blowing because it's like actually you know sometimes people paint the vision of the future of AI in classrooms of basically rows of students that looks exactly like a classroom might look with computers and they're all doing their personalized learning by themselves and they're on computers all day.
• 57:39
  Sunanna Chand: And I think that that vision is so unfortunate because really if you use AI at very strategic moments, you can unlock a whole realm of how to do durable skills in in a in a really creative and interesting way, right?
• 57:54
  Sunanna Chand: And so that was a 30 minute session.
• 57:55
  Sunanna Chand: So it's a small example now let's take Future Shock, which is a summer offering that we do around it's basically like how do you navigate how do you help young folks build the skills in interest driven learning in lifelong learning in inquiry in um in uh executive functioning to be able to say this is something that I really care about.
• 58:17
  Sunanna Chand: Here are the steps that I can take to go try this thing out and actually just try it out for myself.
• 58:21
  Sunanna Chand: And again, we have this AI tool that um is called Project Launcher that we use it's a 10, it's a two week program, right?
• 58:29
  Sunanna Chand: And we use it for maybe an hour on one of those days.
• 58:33
  Sunanna Chand: First we start with community building we start with interest building we really help young people work with each other and work with the facilitators to figure out like what are my interests?
• 58:40
  Sunanna Chand: What do I really care about?
• 58:40
  Sunanna Chand: What am I curious about?
• 58:42
  Sunanna Chand: And then you input that into the AI and it spits out options for a project you can do within the time span and then first steps to kind of get you started.
• 58:49
  Sunanna Chand: And then it also acts kind of as a coaching tool but what we generally find is like you then go from interest to let's say there are 24 young folks in a classroom, 24 individualized projects which for someone who's been doing project-based learning for a long time might think like, oh my God, you know you generally have to go around running around like a chicken with your head cut off trying to like get authentic projects with 24 young folks if you're one teacher in a room.
• 59:10
  Sunanna Chand: Suddenly AI lets you do it in an hour.
• 59:12
  Sunanna Chand: And then your job is really to coach both on how to help young people use that AI to continue to coach if they need to, but then being able to just coach on the project and help them move forward.
• 59:20
  Sunanna Chand: And again it's this really small strategic use of AI that opens up a whole world of being able to do skill development in a way that I think was legit kind of impossible a few years ago if you didn't have um you know if if you if you weren't able to take the time to sit with every student and coach them through a project idea.
• 59:40
  Sunanna Chand: So I think there are these ways in which it's not all or nothing.
• 59:45
  Sunanna Chand: It's not ban AI or use it for everything and every young person's in front of a computer all the time.
• 59:49
  Sunanna Chand: It's like, how do you use it strategically as a tool and then again empower the human talent in the room to be facilitators and guides of that learning over time.
• 59:59
  Sunanna Chand: Um And that requires different capacities for educators for sure, but it doesn't eliminate educators.
• 1:00:05
  Sunanna Chand: In fact, it makes them even more important in this type of meaningful relationship coaching mode that's going to continue to be important.
• 1:00:13
  Alex Kotran: Yeah, but every story you shared, and every story that I've heard, every story that we share of a teacher using AI in some amazing creative, impactful way.
• 1:00:23
  Alex Kotran: Um, there's a teacher that's like the main character of that story.
• 1:00:26
  Alex Kotran: Um invariably.
• 1:00:27
  Alex Kotran: Like I've I've literally never come across any anecdote where it's like, oh, we like brought it AI in and it sort of just like totally replaced or ugly automated this thing that, you know, that that helped students figure out this concept that I was really struggling with.
• 1:00:41
  Alex Kotran: Yeah, but the I think the tension is the teachers are in many cases behind their students.
• 1:00:46
  Alex Kotran: Which is like the whole cheating thing, in part is like I I've even evolved my thinking about this where it's even simpler.
• 1:00:51
  Alex Kotran: I think it's just if the student is way better at using the AI than you are, they will always be able to outmaneuver you.
• 1:00:57
  Alex Kotran: And so the the one thing you really hone in on, and this is like we actually did something in the class classroom as well.
• 1:01:03
  Alex Kotran: Um ours was like a like a cheat-a-thon where basically bought educators in and it was like, you're gonna you're gonna cheat.
• 1:01:09
  Alex Kotran: We're gonna give you an assignment.
• 1:01:10
  Alex Kotran: We want you, we want you to use AI to cheat on the assignment.
• 1:01:13
  Alex Kotran: Yeah.
• 1:01:13
  Alex Kotran: Um, and so cool.
• 1:01:15
  Alex Kotran: It was, and you'd be surprised, like a lot of the like the the tri tips and tricks that like I've seen bandied about, like the um, oh we just get, you know, you just have students, you know, uh uh grade the AI and have them sort of like edit and like revise and provide feedback on whatever the AI puts out.
• 1:01:34
  Alex Kotran: And it's like, oh that that teacher just didn't realize that you could just also put the the prompt into another window and just ask it to like like it just and so it's some of these things that you they're not hard to figure out, but it's not it's not a set of it's not a it's not a specific set of things.
• 1:01:50
  Alex Kotran: It also is like a moving target.
• 1:01:51
  Alex Kotran: You know, the way you even prompt today is different than than three months ago.
• 1:01:56
  Sunanna Chand: And we'll be different again.
• 1:01:57
  Alex Kotran: We'll we'll we'll almost certainly be different again.
• 1:01:59
  Alex Kotran: And that's you you mentioned agentic AI.
• 1:02:02
  Alex Kotran: Um you probably don't have time to go into that whole rabbit hole.
• 1:02:05
  Alex Kotran: Um and so how next pod uh season two.
• 1:02:09
  Alex Kotran: Yeah, season two.
• 1:02:10
  Alex Kotran: Um yeah, so it's like like this this this world where the the goal needs to be for teachers at a minimum to be able to keep up with students.
• 1:02:18
  Alex Kotran: Yeah.
• 1:02:18
  Alex Kotran: Um and so yeah, we're we're like you know, thinking about what does it look like at the systems level.
• 1:02:25
  Alex Kotran: Um as we kind of draw to a close, I I I'm curious like who are the other maybe surprising actors uh or or influencers in the space that could help with sort of pushing forward a movement to really redefine and increase the prestige of teaching and like whether or not they could directly work with the reinvention lab, but are there other folks that maybe aren't necessarily at the table right now that could be turnkey?
• 1:02:57
  Alex Kotran: And I mentioned that because you mentioned Jonathan Hayes' book, The Anxious Generation.
• 1:03:00
  Alex Kotran: And he talked about like the solution to phones and all the horrible harms that are coming from students being sort of like you know, glued to their phones is it's not necessarily just regulation.
• 1:03:10
  Alex Kotran: Like maybe regulation is a part of it, maybe, you know, even with cell phone bands, like that's a part of it.
• 1:03:14
  Alex Kotran: But he will he also will admit that that's not sufficient.
• 1:03:16
  Sunanna Chand: Yeah.
• 1:03:17
  Alex Kotran: That's right.
• 1:03:17
  Alex Kotran: When when he's pressed and they're like, well, what what is a solution?
• 1:03:20
  Alex Kotran: The best thing he can go with is we need to create this like social norms.
• 1:03:24
  Alex Kotran: And like, how do you create social norms?
• 1:03:26
  Alex Kotran: There is no policy that creates social norms.
• 1:03:28
  Alex Kotran: There is no like PD session.
• 1:03:30
  Alex Kotran: And I'm curious, just like given that you're sort of like a little bit closer to the front lines, if there's anybody out there, maybe it's like who do teachers really listen to?
• 1:03:38
  Alex Kotran: Person, organization.
• 1:03:40
  Sunanna Chand: My answer to this is an appeal.
• 1:03:43
  Sunanna Chand: Um well, first of all, let me just say we talked earlier about um the fact that I am wildly optimistic um about this moment for learner, center education, deeper learning, whatever you want to call it.
• 1:03:58
  Sunanna Chand: And I have to say that um part of the reason why I'm optimistic is because I am sitting on the shoulders of giants who have been doing this work for a long time.
• 1:04:08
  Sunanna Chand: I mean, shout out High School for Recording Arts, shout out Big Picture Learning, shout out, you know, High Tech High, shout out so many folks that have really built the foundation for how we think about this type of learning that we're talking about that's gonna be ever more necessary.
• 1:04:24
  Sunanna Chand: Um, and there have been so many difficult moments and losses in the journey of, you know, thinking about changing the system of education and um and so many technology waves, even the pandemic.
• 1:04:39
  Sunanna Chand: I mean, folks were saying, oh, you know, everything's gonna change after the pandemic.
• 1:04:42
  Sunanna Chand: And um, and I was, you know, also wildly optimistic in a time of deep trouble and despair um in that as well.
• 1:04:50
  Sunanna Chand: And we didn't quite see that difference.
• 1:04:52
  Sunanna Chand: I still, I still feel like I hold that optimism, and part of that is because we have so many incredible people working in this field.
• 1:04:59
  Sunanna Chand: Um, I wouldn't say that they're necessarily not at the table, but it's still important to remember that, you know, folks have been doing this work for decades and you say this all the time.
• 1:05:08
  Sunanna Chand: The second thing I'll say is um I think that everything you just spoke to, Alex, is why your organization is really important and why it circles all the way back to being in this conversation where we need each other in this ecosystem, right?
• 1:05:22
  Sunanna Chand: Like Teach for America is a part of this ecosystem.
• 1:05:24
  Sunanna Chand: Um, but there's so many other players in the ecosystem that we have to bring together because the reality is there are still so many teachers that are using generative AI in their, you know, in their personal life, but are not trained to use it in the ways that you're describing.
• 1:05:41
  Sunanna Chand: And um, and there's so much exciting opportunity there to bring, again, creative professionals into this new technology world.
• 1:05:49
  Sunanna Chand: And we're gonna need everyone on board with that.
• 1:05:52
  Sunanna Chand: And so um appreciate being on this podcast and also just just being a partner with you over, I can't remember, maybe a couple years now I met you.
• 1:05:58
  Sunanna Chand: Um and I just always appreciate your pushes, your friendship, your ability to bring people together in this work.
• 1:06:05
  Sunanna Chand: Cause I think that's really incredibly important.
• 1:06:06
  Sunanna Chand: And the last thing I'll say, and I I before this comes out of my mouth, I know it's gonna sound trite, but I I'm I'm I'm just gonna say it because I think it's important.
• 1:06:13
  Sunanna Chand: We need more young folks.
• 1:06:15
  Sunanna Chand: And I know that's always something that people say, they're like, oh, there should be more young folks in the room.
• 1:06:19
  Sunanna Chand: What I have learned, and again, shout out to Michelle because she was kind of the first person to really to put this in the forefront of my mind is like, we don't just need young folks at the table on a panel saying, here's what I think about something, right?
• 1:06:34
  Sunanna Chand: Like we actually need young people, not in front of us, but also not behind us, like with us at the seats of power, saying, Here's how I'm experiencing this every day.
• 1:06:42
  Sunanna Chand: Because you're right, in a lot of ways, young people are far ahead.
• 1:06:46
  Sunanna Chand: In a lot of ways, they're also not as far ahead in thinking about some of these things, right?
• 1:06:49
  Sunanna Chand: And it's not, there's there's this great um, there's this great kind of quote about not having young people ahead or behind, but actually just walking alongside us in this work.
• 1:07:01
  Sunanna Chand: And it is really, really hard.
• 1:07:03
  Sunanna Chand: I mean, it's hard from a power seat, and we've had young people working on the lab team for as long as it's existed, um, and co-designing and really building with us.
• 1:07:11
  Sunanna Chand: And that has fundamentally shaped the way I think about AI, but the way I've thought about all kinds of other things that we've built in the lab over the years.
• 1:07:18
  Sunanna Chand: Um, and it is incredibly hard for a whole host of reasons.
• 1:07:21
  Sunanna Chand: There's a reason why it doesn't happen all the time.
• 1:07:24
  Sunanna Chand: And I would be um I would be both chewed out by Izzy Fitzgerald.
• 1:07:29
  Sunanna Chand: Shout out the lead of intergenerational co-creation on my team, um, who has worked on the lab since she was 16.
• 1:07:34
  Sunanna Chand: She's now 20.
• 1:07:35
  Sunanna Chand: She's amazing.
• 1:07:36
  Sunanna Chand: If you want to know anything about intergenerational co-creation, please reach out to Izzy.
• 1:07:39
  Sunanna Chand: Um, but also I wouldn't be in my values without saying that like young folks, young folks should be on the main stages at these conferences talking about how they're using AI.
• 1:07:49
  Sunanna Chand: Like it is just true and it shouldn't be tokenized.
• 1:07:53
  Sunanna Chand: It should not be just I'm on, I'm on stage for this one presentation, but then I'm going back to my life and no one calls on me again when the lights aren't on.
• 1:07:59
  Sunanna Chand: Like this is sustained real work that we as education professionals, as education nonprofit professionals especially, need to build the skills, the capacity, the unlearning, the logistics, all of the things that come alongside working with young people.
• 1:08:16
  Sunanna Chand: Um, because we can read all the statistics we want, but actually if we don't understand how young folks in a day-to-day practice are using this technology right alongside us, and and if they don't have the power to speak to the things we're doing as a field, um, we we do that at our own peril.
• 1:08:30
  Alex Kotran: That's a mic drop.
• 1:08:31
  Alex Kotran: Um, you didn't say we need Brad Pitt and I mean, sure, if Brad Pitt wants to hang out, I'm cool with that too.
• 1:08:38
  Alex Kotran: Yeah, but we have this incredible.
• 1:08:41
  Alex Kotran: There's 1.8 million K-12 nonprofits.
• 1:08:44
  Alex Kotran: Figure that out yesterday.
• 1:08:45
  Alex Kotran: We have 1.8 million organizations and they're not making lots of money.
• 1:08:50
  Alex Kotran: Nonprofit work sucks.
• 1:08:51
  Alex Kotran: It's hard.
• 1:08:52
  Alex Kotran: It doesn't suck, but it's hard.
• 1:08:53
  Alex Kotran: It's not suck.
• 1:08:54
  Alex Kotran: It doesn't suck.
• 1:08:55
  Alex Kotran: It's actually amazing.
• 1:08:56
  Alex Kotran: Um, but nonprofit work is it is not traditionally rewarding in the way that our society tends to value work.
• 1:09:05
  Alex Kotran: Um these are people that are the reason they're doing it, the reason they don't think it sucks because they are passionate about like the kids in the school, the teachers that they're serving.
• 1:09:14
  Alex Kotran: Um and they may not necessarily see themselves as a part of this solution.
• 1:09:19
  Alex Kotran: And I think that's that's sort of like the golden goose.
• 1:09:21
  Alex Kotran: It's like how do we actually create sort of again build a stage for them and let them lead us?
• 1:09:27
  Alex Kotran: Um I hadn't thought about students though.
• 1:09:29
  Alex Kotran: That's really, really interesting is having students walk with you and not just sort of bringing them as a focus group.
• 1:09:37
  Alex Kotran: Um so as is always the case with these conversations, I actually will will it it this has happened like three or four times now where I've left and it's resulted in actually like meetings and discussions, you know, with my team about things that I've learned.
• 1:09:50
  Alex Kotran: Um I do feel like I learned uh something.
• 1:09:52
  Alex Kotran: I'm you know, look forward to having, sharing and holding more space with you.
• 1:09:56
  Alex Kotran: I'm sure it's gonna be hopefully a while.
• 1:09:58
  Alex Kotran: I'm trying not to travel too much.
• 1:10:01
  Sunanna Chand: Well, come across the bridge coming out in Oakland.
• 1:10:02
  Alex Kotran: Well, yeah, definitely, definitely, yeah.
• 1:10:03
  Alex Kotran: You're local.
• 1:10:04
  Sunanna Chand: So cheers.
• 1:10:05
  Sunanna Chand: Thank you for having me.
• 1:10:06
  Sunanna Chand: Thank you for being part of this like community of folks who's really deeply thinking about this.
• 1:10:09
  Sunanna Chand: And and one thing that I appreciate about you, Alex, is that you have this really uh deep sense of intellectually intellectual flexibility.
• 1:10:18
  Sunanna Chand: Like you will learn from a lot of people and change your mind, not on a dime, but when you get enough data and information, you you learn and you change.
• 1:10:26
  Sunanna Chand: And I see you move differently based on how you're learning and changing in the space and deeply learning from educators, deeply learning from technologists.
• 1:10:33
  Sunanna Chand: And I always learn something in a conversation with you.
• 1:10:35
  Sunanna Chand: And so I want to thank you for having me on the podcast.
• 1:10:38
  Sunanna Chand: Uh and I I want to just thank you for being a friend and leader in the space.
• 1:10:43
  Sunanna Chand: It's really important to have community in doing this work.
• 1:10:46
  Sunanna Chand: So thank you.
• 1:10:46
  Alex Kotran: Sonana Chen, thanks for joining.
• 1:10:48
  Sunanna Chand: Thank you.