Latest / Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD / (Re)Creating School for Every Child with Michael Horn

Transcript

(Re)Creating School for Every Child with Michael Horn · Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to parent Data by Emily Oster. This is Emily.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: I'm a professor of economics at Brown University and a
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: mom of two. I write a newsletter called parent Data,
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: and on this podcast, i'll read.
• 0:12
  Speaker 3: It to you.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: If you want to read the newsletter yourself and see
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: more of my writing on parenting and pregnancy, you can
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: sign up for free at www dot parentdata dot org.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: You'll get reader stories, Q and as and other special
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: features in your inbox that I don't share here.
• 0:28
  Speaker 4: And now for today's newsletter.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Okay, so, Michael, thank you for coming to chat with me.
• 0:37
  Speaker 4: I would love to start by.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Having you just tell me who you are, tell us
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: who you are, and give me the little elevator.
• 0:45
  Speaker 4: Pitch for your book.
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah you bet so, Michael Horne. I got into education
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: by accident, if I'm being totally honest, had a public
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: policy and writing background, tried to run away from both
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: and failed by taking Clay Christensen's class when I was
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: at business school, and Klay Christensen is the father of
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: this body of theories around innovation and it just changed
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: my life in terms of how I saw the world,
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: and I started applying it into education about how do
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: you allow every individual to build their passions and fulfill
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: their human potential. And so that's been my mission for
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: the last fifteen twenty years of my life. This book
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: came about because when COVID hit a colleague of mine,
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: Diane Tavner, who runs a series of schools out in
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: California and Washington. She and I just started getting a
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: lot of questions from parents about why does school work
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: this way? As the curtain was really pulled back, and
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: we started a podcast together called Class Disrupted, where we
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: basically took parent questions up at the top of the
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: show and then answered them. But part of the conclusion
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: was schooling wasn't just broken during COVID, It hasn't been
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: working for the majority of families for a long time,
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: not just to have nots in our society, but also
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: frankly haves. And so we started digging in and trying
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: to give parents a different way of looking at this.
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: So I love the book.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: We're going to get into it. I mean, I will
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: just say up front, like this book is quite radical.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, you and I have talked about this over email.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: You know a lot of times when you read a
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: book about like how can we improve schools or what
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: can we do differently? It's sort of little things, and
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: your thing is more or less like this whole system
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: is just a broken mess, and we're just going to
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: do it differently. So I want to pull out a
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: few of those, and I want to start with this
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: something you start with an early chapter. It's the idea
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: of sort of different things for different kids, and the
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: idea that school is delivering a lot of stuff. And
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: I will say I found this extremely resonant because, as
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: you know, I spent a lot of time in COVID
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: doing stuff on schools, and I realized, I think we
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: all realize when school's closed that you know, for many people,
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: school was providing you know, not just learning, but also
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: things like food and childcare and safety and access to
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: medical treatment and all kinds of other stuff. But the
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: other thing I realized, from my own standpoint, as in
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: the space of people who is quite fortunate, is that
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: I had not fully understood what school was delivering to
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: my kids. So I sort of tell people like, my
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: son was in pre K in March of twenty twenty,
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: and I was sort of as academic parents are frequently
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: saying things pre pandemic like well, if I were, if
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: I were in charge, you know, he would be learning to.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Read so much faster, and like we would be to dead.
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: I would have these worksheets.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: And then it was the spring of twenty twenty and
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: I was like, Okay, I'm going to do this.
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: I'm going to teach him to read.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: And the thing is I did, but it was horrible,
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: and I realized that, in fact, you know, what my
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: kid was getting out of school was something different than
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: I had really sort of put together. So I love
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: you to talk a little bit about that part of
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: the book and the idea of almost breaking school into
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: these different pieces that are serving different needs.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, I mean I think you just set it up front,
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: which is that school does lots of different things for
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: lots of different people, and frankly, some people really value
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: parts of what it does and some people value other
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: parts of what it does, right, and we don't all
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: value these things in the same way, but they've been
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: lumped together in this one size fits all offering that
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: we all, historically anyway, have just sort of signed up for.
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: And I'd say one of the big pushes from my
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: perspective that I hope parents take out of this book
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: is to be more deliberate about why are you hiring school?
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: What is it complementing in your home life that you
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: can't give them. I mean, my wife and I have
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: this conversation a lot. We've switched our kids' schools I
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: think three or four times so far, and they're roughly
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: the same age, I think as your kids, and the
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: conversation has been, you know, what do we provide well
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: and what do we see that they need that we
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: actually can't provide well. And that could be everything from
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: you know, childcare, it can be to the socialization experience.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: It can be to exposure to different ways of thinking.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: It can be to executive function skills so that you know,
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: people like my wife and I who stay up late
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: at night trying to get things done, learn to manage
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: our time better. But having those deliberate conversations and realizing
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: not all schools will do all of those things well
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: and what's the really important pieces that match your priorities
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: for your children and your household are an incredibly important
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: conversation to be having. And I think the schools need
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: to be having that conversation more deliberately as well with
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: their community about Hey, these services are really important for
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: a part of our community, and we can actually customize
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: and match other needs if these services are less relevant
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: for you and your child.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about that piece of it.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: Because while I sort of like this conceptually, and I
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: see why for people with a lot of choice and
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: a lot of options, it would be, if not easy,
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: possible to think about those kind of crafting and we
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: can talk about things like micro schools and learning pods
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: and all those pieces. But when we think about this
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: on a more nuts and bolt policy level, do you think.
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: This is even remotely feasible? How can you put it
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: out there?
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah? I love the question. You know, it's unclear at
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: the moment, to be totally honest, right, And I think
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: it's one of the reasons we see so many families
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: opting out of traditional district schools right now into micro
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: schools and pods and charter schools and private schools because
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: they're saying, I want that customization. And part of my argument,
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: I think is that if districts really want to hold
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: on and be that commonplace where people come for their education,
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: they're going to have to figure out how to customize.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: And I think that there are lessons that they can
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: learn about how to leverage micro schools and the advantages
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: that they bring within a larger schoolhouse, for example, how
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: to use online tutoring and online teachers to give access
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: to certain options that certain children may want to have.
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: But it doesn't make sense to have a full time teacher,
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: say in the school building, offering that particular class, or
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: plugging into community resources to offer the mental health supports
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: that certain children we know really need right now. But
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: it's really hard, and others have written persuasively about not
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: sure if you want a teacher who hasn't been trained
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: for that sort of set of services delivering mental health
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: supports to your child, but you might really welcome someone
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: from the community who has been trained in those things
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: to plug into school be able to offer those services.
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: So it's not saying that it's the school's core competency
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: or that they need to do every element of this,
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: but more that they become a hub for these different
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: services so that children can customize what they need for
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: them and when they need them. And there are some
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: school districts around the country that have been doing some
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: of this, so I think there's some bright lights out there.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: So when we think about these bright lights, these sort
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: of examples, and you talk about some of them in
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: the book, what do you think of.
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: As the characteristics there?
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: So what might make this kind of more radical change
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: possible from a school district level.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So from a school district level, those that have
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: been successful have really tried to break it down and
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: chunk it apart, right, not try to be all things
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: to all people. And that's the biggest mindset shift. And
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: they've set up autonomous teams, separate teams of educators who
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: have the freedom to ask, what's the purpose of schooling,
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: what is the scope that we need to provide for
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: this particular set of students that really are wanting these services,
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: and particularly for the parents, and then setting up these
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: mini schools within a school, so it's really a set
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: of schools within a school. And then they start to
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: ask how do we get these resources? And so districts
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: like Kettle Moraine in Wisconsin, for example, have seven different
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: micro schools operating within a high school, for example, or
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: a series of different houses within a charter school. It
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: sounds almost Harry Potter like when you say it that way,
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: but the idea is, hey, we still want to be
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: part of this larger community. Know that not every parent
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: is going to want the exact same set of services
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: for their child, and we want to give them some
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: autonomy to figure out philosophy and fit within our broader context.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: I think the other piece of just sort of Devil's
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: advocate pushback a little here is that kind of what
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: you're suggesting, you know, it requires these resources, and I
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: think the picture making is like distress could do this,
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: and here is how they could think about it, But
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: it also requires a set of involvement of parents that
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: is frankly more likely to be accessible to people are
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: who are more privileged. But even within this space, and
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: this is kind of echoing some of the concerns about
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: charter schools, you know, there are a set of school
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: of parents, even within a particular sociodemographic group, who are
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: more engaged with their children's education, and he'll be more
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: able to take advantage of this. And so are we
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: like leaving behind a bunch of kids whose parents are
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: aren't able to engage for a bunch of different reasons
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: and saying, you know, you're just left with the kind
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: of regular school and everyone else gets the like micro
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: Harry Potter House for Schooling.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: I love the question. Part of the core argument in
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: the book is that for families that don't have the
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: means or ability right to lean into their children's education,
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: school actually has to be doing far more than maybe
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: we've traditionally thought about it, That it needs to be
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: integrating into all sorts of domains of people's lives that
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: maybe we historically have said that's something that occurs at home.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: We don't need schools to do it well. Certain children
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: don't have those privileges and advantages, and schools need to
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: be able to figure out ways to do it. And
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: the quick pushback is, well, no, schools need to stick
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: to their knitting, right, the reading, writing, arithmetic. But the
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: reality is you're not going to accomplish those academic skills
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: for kids unless you're providing that mental health, et cetera
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: foundation that a child otherwise isn't getting. And so I
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: think that's part of the answer. The second part of
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: the answer is frankly, what we're seeing on the ground
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: right now in the data, which is that it's not
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: just well off families who are opting out of traditional schools.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: It's a lot of people from underrepresented minority backgrounds from
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: lower on the socioeconomic status who are opting out of big,
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: large urban districts. And I was talking to one parent
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: recently and I said, are you all really able to
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: provide the solid foundation your kids need? And she looked
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: at me and said, sixteen percent of kids in Detroit
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: can read on grade level. You're telling me I can't
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: do better than that. I beg to differ, right, And
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: I was like, okay, you know, fair point, right. And
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: so I think that's the other piece that I've been
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: humbled by during all this, is to not assume that
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: just someone's in a certain demographic that they're going to
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: have certain limitations, but to really try to listen to
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: them and see what they're capable of doing, and then
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: figuring out how society can offer services to meet them
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: with where they are.
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: That is an excellent point.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, the reading is such a I know this
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: is not the topic of this, but I find this
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: sort of like these reading levels to be kind of
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: a particularly striking fact of something where actually a lot
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: of traditional schools have I think almost failed on the
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: kind of just how we teach kids to read that actually,
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: like we're not doing enough.
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: Phonics, we're not doing enough.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: You know, of the kind of basic pieces of reading
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: that would allow all kids to read at least at
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: some reasonable level. And so I can see a parent saying, look,
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: I can teach my kid to read because it's at
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: least there's a good shot.
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: That you can well.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: And there's templates out there right now, there's a lot
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: more research that's made it way more publicly available about
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: the phonemic awareness and phonics based approach to decoding words.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: And then one of the biggest things that low income
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: families struggle to provide often has a range of experiences
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: just to provide background knowledge, because we know, after you
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: learn to decode and read, you start to read to learn,
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: and reading comprehension really becomes a function of your background knowledge.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: And so that's a key place where schools have not
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: been doing enough to make sure that the families coming in,
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: the parent, the kids coming in are getting the exposure
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: and coherent instruction in a range of subjects. You know,
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: we know social studies, science, arts, music have been disproportionately
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: cut over the last few decades. That's been a mistake
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: in terms of building readers across society. And I think
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: a lot of families are asking more clearly now for
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: that mistake to be remedied.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, So I want to talk about a couple
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: of your kind of crazy ideas.
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: Yes, let's do it.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Okay. So one is is the we can.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: Start, we start a little easy, So like learning pods, Like,
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: tell me more about your feelings on learning pods?
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: Well, having been in one in the pandemic that didn't
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: go well, I could give you with people that you like, Yeah, yeah,
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: I could give you lots of feelings. But the reality is,
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: if we're trying to go to this more customized version
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: of schooling, a lot of districts have treated pods as
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: the enemy. Is this thing that they wish would go
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: away during the pandemic that families are opting into. It's
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: creating inequities within the community. And my basic argument is yes.
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: And there are places like Cleveland, for example, that leaned
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: into pods with after school organizations like the YMCA to
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: create pods to serve all children right, to make sure
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: that children that didn't come from means got access to
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: the personalization and community approach that a pod can bring.
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: And so view it as part of a district's strategy
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: in effect, to create these customization and simplify the problem. Right,
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: don't try to push parents into something that isn't right
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: for their children. You're going to provoke a response, but
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: instead use them as a tool to really serve all
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: the kids in a community.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: So the other one, which I'm a personally fan of,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: is the.
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: Year round school.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: You make a strong pitch which I think was quite
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: resonant with me and probably many of the people who
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: read this newsletter that summer camps are like the vane
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: of everyone's existence, and just the logistics associated with having
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: this kind of agrarian school schedule is a bit challenging,
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: and it's challenging even for people with means.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: It's challenging for everyone. Right, So year around school, Like, what.
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: Do you think this is the most radical one in
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: some ways, I think because we're so set in the
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: idea that school occurs right from mid August, say, to
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: sometime in late May mid June, right depending on where
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: you live in the country. First, the reality is it
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: wasn't always this way. If you went back one hundred
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: and fifty years ago, kids went to school year round
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: for the most part in urban areas in particular. Second,
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: the stress, as you just pointed out, of trying to
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: balance all the different summer camps and balance the spreadsheets
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: and the childcare and who's doing pickup when, and trying
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: to match your kids' interests in the campus filling up.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: It just creates this unbelievable stress on parents that's really
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: breaking them and it's hurting the kids as a result too.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: And the basic argument is not that kids should be
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: in school every single day. We should still have vacations,
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: but let's move to a more balanced school calendar that
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: has some more flexibility in it, where I can go, say,
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: for nine twelve weeks in a row, get a couple
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: weeks off, and then do the same thing, and maybe
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: there's a little longer break during the summer so we
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: can still have that memorable trip, work outside of the home,
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: things of that nature. But we don't need to do
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: this sort of sprint through one hundred eighty days and
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: then just we all breathe this deep sigh of relief,
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: Except it's not really with all the stress, and so
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: something that is again meeting parents where they are and
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: meeting society where it's evolved to. We're not all escaping
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: to the lake house or the mountain house in the summer,
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: like these breaks were built for I think would be
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: more equitable but also a lot more sustainable in our lives.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and of course there are I mean, like with
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: many of the things you talk about, I think there
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: are versions of this where we could sort of think
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: about something that doesn't go all the way but goes
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: part of the way and says, you know, here we're
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: going to have more summer scaffolding. We're going to think
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: of the summer as you know, the school district's providing
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: a project based learning experience for kids, or you know,
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: a bunch of different things that you could opt into
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: that you wouldn't necessarily have to opt into.
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: And so I can see versions of.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: That, right Like if you want to spend the time
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: with the spreadsheet in the camp, that's great, But if
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: you don't like the default is you know, your kid
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: can go to school one hundred percent.
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: And I've been taken by some of the micro schools
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: that offer it schooling year round. The mix of programming,
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: to your point, changes depending on the time of year,
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: and kids have some more and parents have some more
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: flexibility of which parts of the year are we going
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: to go to and which parts are we going to
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: opt into? The extracurricular is the summer school to travel,
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: whatever it might be, and just give more choice. There's
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: a huge range of what this could look like. My
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: main argument is like, let's just question the first principle
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: and figure out what works for your community.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: So that's a good segue into into sort of the
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: what I think is like the biggest challenge with all
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: of this, other than all the other challenges, which is
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: just the kind of loss of version status quo. You
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: talk about that you know, we are we are used
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: to school being away, and you're you're right that the
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: pandemic caused a lot of people to be like, but wait,
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: why you know, but yet as we as we re emerge.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: Mostly my sense is people have this idea of what
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: school does and how school works, and they're comfortable with that, and.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure what the way in.
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: Is to just to do it different.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, look, a major part
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: of the book is writing about loss of version and
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: how to frame that within school, and so at one level,
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: the book is, I agree, a radical departure from how
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: school has been done and at the other level, Like
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: my main conclusion when you get to the end of
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: the book is incrementalism in line with your parents right
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: as a school innovates. It's not to push any dramatic changes,
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: but to frame things that are small steps forward for
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: different pockets of your schooling community to allow them to
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: make progress and better set their lives against it. And
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: so I think that's the big piece of the loss
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: of version, is not that we have to force everyone
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: to all of a sudden have elementary school kids waiting
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: for buses at six point thirty in the morning, but
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: that instead we start to figure out, Okay, is there
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: a more flexible way we could do morning arrival for
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: high school kids that maybe would allow them to sleep
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: later in line with adolescent needs for their circadian rhythms
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: and when they sleep right. Just little things at the
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: margins that would start pushing us and not taking the
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: status quo as the way it's always been because it's
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: the way it's always been.
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: I love that.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: I think for parents there's a sort of similar or
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: take away from the book in some ways, you know,
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: I mean, your book is written largely for educators, although
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: I think that you know, parents should should read it.
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: But one of the things I've been talking a lot
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: about with people.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Is trying to sort of shape the life that you.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: Want and think about your big choices deliberately. And but
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: a part of that is thinking about incremental pieces, and
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: so sort of reading something that's about here are all
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: these cool, big ideas. The book is about all the
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: ways in which things could be totally different. But then
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: you can dial in and say, Okay, well, actually, like
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: this makes me think about a small number of things
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: which I really wish were different, about the way I
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: engage with school, the way my kid engage with school,
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: or sort of what we're doing. And maybe that leads
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: to either.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: Helping the school or helping your family think about some
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: of these more incremental kinds of changes.
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, a big part
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: of the family firm, right. The second half of your
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: book was to think about, you know, the big picture,
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: what are your priorities, what are your rules and work
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: your schedule? Right that? And I think that there's a
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: large number of parents who just sort of set school
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: and forget it, right, And the big thing here is
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: actually your choices around school are part of that big picture.
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: They're part of your priorities, they're part of your rules,
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: and they're part of how your family is navigating the world.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: And we all have different work schedules, we all have
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: different needs for our kids. No child is exactly alike.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: And it's not saying you know you demand everything, you
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: know there's going to be trade offs, but realize you
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: have a little bit more agency than perhaps you thought
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: you did about how school meets your family and what
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: school is right for your circumstances.
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: So the last thing I want to talk about is
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: just the role of ed tech because I get I
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: think a lot of people have wondered coming out of
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: the pandemic, are we using too much tech?
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: What is the right way? What is the right way
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: to use it?
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: And certainly like Zoom school, I think we can agree
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: is not the right way to use it.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: But it does seem to me.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: As you talk about some of the personalization around learning,
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: that there is an enormous role for some kinds of
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: ED tech in the classroom in some scaffolded way.
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And look, my background historically has been writing a
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: lot about ed tech, and yet I'm also the family
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: that sent my kids for a couple of years to
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: a Waldorf school where there is no tech. So we've
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: lived it both ways. But I think what we've found
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: both with our children and I find in the research
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: is that some moderate use of technology to allow them
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: to learn it their path and pace and follow interests
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: is tremendously advantaged. It brings them opportunities that they would
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: never otherwise know exist, and that parents should be part
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: of that experience, right, we should be moderating it, and
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: so too in schools. This isn't a free for all
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: of everyone should be on their smartphones doing whatever they want,
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: but that we're using technology to personalize learning in very
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: discrete ways where it makes sense as a way to
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: self direct learning, build agency in children, and build fluency
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: with the facts and skills that we want them to learn.
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: You know, you had Shllony right from Zeri on this.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: You know, that's a great use of technology to create
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: more rigor to allow students to continue to move at
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: the pace of their grade level, but fill in the
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: gaps that are holding them back and personalize in that
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: way and really amplify the teacher's reach so that they're
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: not just delivering content to everyone who we know is
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: dramatically different places in the classroom, but allow the teacher
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: to get data to say, gee, Michael's really struggling with
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: double digit edition. That's probably what's holding him back from
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: doing double digit multiplication right now. We need to actually
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: go in and help with that before he's going to
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: really start moving forward again. No one wants their kid
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: on an iPad for six hours straight in school. It
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: should be a social experience, But for thirty minutes here,
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: thirty minutes there in the street blocks it can be
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: tremendously opening up of opportunities.
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, just.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: I mean it feels again like a place where there's
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: sort of no substitute for judgment ye targeted math instruction
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: through something like zeron, where you can really see how
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: kids are moving and get this feedback.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: It's hard to argue with the value there.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: As we move into things that are maybe less valuable,
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: I think we can generate more concerns about you know,
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: how much YouTube but my kid's actually watching and.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: I'm not my Yeah, how much YouTube are ones kids
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: watching in school?
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: No? I think that's right, right, And it's like, again,
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: it comes back to what's the right balance for that child,
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: what's the objective at the moment. It's not always a
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: learning objective. There's social objectives to school, right, There's all
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: sorts of ways we want kids to grow, and technology
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: can be part of that mosaic of answers, but it's
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: never going to be, nor should it be the whole
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: part of it. No.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: And I think that's I mean think is a great
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: point to end on because it comes back really to
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: the beginning of you know, what are you trying to
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: get out of the school, and maybe even as a parent,
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: just framing that as your first question, like what am
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: I hoping that my child will be getting out of school?
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: And to recognize that that answer may not be you know,
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: this score on the SAT or learning this particular you
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: know math concept this year. There may be a lot
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: of other things that we're hoping to get out of
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: the school, and finding ways for your school to deliver
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: for your family in that way is crucial.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: I think that's exactly right. It's well said, and I
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: won't add to it because I don't think I could
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: say it better.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: It was so nice to have this conversation. Thank you
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: so much. The book is called from Reopen to Reinvent
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: Recreating school for every child and it is great.
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you, Emily appreciate it.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.
• 25:52
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• 26:00
  Speaker 4: And subscribe to the whole.
• 26:01
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• 26:05
  Speaker 4: Talk to you soon.