Cultivating Innovation and Futures Thinking in Education

Peter Frank 00:00:02
Phil, welcome to Talking Technology with ATLIS,

Peter Frank 00:00:05
the show that plugs you into the important topics and trends for

Peter Frank 00:00:08
technology leaders all through a unique Independent School lens.

Peter Frank 00:00:12
We'll hear stories from technology directors and other

Peter Frank 00:00:15
special guests from the Independent School community,

Peter Frank 00:00:17
and provide you with focused learning and deep dive topics.

Peter Frank 00:00:21
And now please welcome your host, Kristina Lewellen,

Christina Lewellen 00:00:25
Hello, and welcome back to talking

Christina Lewellen 00:00:27
technology with Atlas. I'm Kristina Lewellen, the President

Christina Lewellen 00:00:30
and CEO of the Association of Technology Leaders in

Christina Lewellen 00:00:33
Independent

Bill Stites 00:00:33
Schools. And I am Bill Stites, the Director of

Bill Stites 00:00:36
Technology at Montclair Kimberly Academy in Montclair, New

Bill Stites 00:00:39
Jersey, and

Hiram Cuevas 00:00:40
I'm Hiram Cuevas, Director of Information Systems

Hiram Cuevas 00:00:43
and Academic Technology at St Christopher school here in

Hiram Cuevas 00:00:45
Richmond, Virginia.

Christina Lewellen 00:00:47
Hello, gentlemen. How are you today?

Christina Lewellen 00:00:49
Doing? Well, yes, likewise, I'm really excited. I know you guys

Christina Lewellen 00:00:53
get to be on a campus every day. I don't, but I do try to get to

Christina Lewellen 00:00:58
an independent school campus as often as I can. And this week, I

Christina Lewellen 00:01:03
went to a darling k8 school in Charlotte, North Carolina,

Christina Lewellen 00:01:08
Trinity Episcopal School. And the head of school there and

Christina Lewellen 00:01:12
their IT director had heard me speak at an SA is event in

Christina Lewellen 00:01:16
Charlotte. They brought me back. And so I was there with Kelsea

Christina Lewellen 00:01:19
Watson, and we went, and we were, of course, talking to the

Christina Lewellen 00:01:22
leadership team about, primarily about AI, but also student data

Christina Lewellen 00:01:26
privacy and all of the cyber things. But it never gets old

Christina Lewellen 00:01:30
for me walking down the hall and seeing all the artwork and all

Christina Lewellen 00:01:33
the little kindergarteners and through little uniforms, it was

Christina Lewellen 00:01:37
so cute. When would I get sick of that like, when does that go

Christina Lewellen 00:01:40
away? Do you guys still walk down the hallway and get like

Christina Lewellen 00:01:43
all the feels about the artwork on the wall,

Hiram Cuevas 00:01:45
particularly in the Lower School, I do,

Hiram Cuevas 00:01:47
especially when they're doing their self portraits, the full

Hiram Cuevas 00:01:51
body self portraits, those are hysterical. I

Bill Stites 00:01:54
do enjoy it. We're three different campuses. My

Bill Stites 00:01:56
office is located at our middle school campus. I enjoy getting

Bill Stites 00:02:00
back to the Lower School as well. It's always a very special

Bill Stites 00:02:03
place. There's something about middle school, though, because

Bill Stites 00:02:06
our middle school spans grades four through eight, and you

Bill Stites 00:02:11
have, like, full grown people in eighth grade and sub grades,

Bill Stites 00:02:15
because, you know, there's boys that are, like, 6162, they're

Bill Stites 00:02:17
bigger than I am. And then you've got all the little ones

Bill Stites 00:02:20
that you would have had at the middle school. And just the

Bill Stites 00:02:22
blending of all that in our space is particularly enjoyable

Bill Stites 00:02:25
to see, not only because of the size differential, but also just

Bill Stites 00:02:30
how well they take care of one another. I mean, given the range

Bill Stites 00:02:33
their age, I think it's a special place, and it never gets

Bill Stites 00:02:36
old.

Hiram Cuevas 00:02:36
And middle school, it's that place where you know,

Hiram Cuevas 00:02:38
you find out that God has a sense of humor.

Bill Stites 00:02:41
Indeed, because those six two kids don't know

Bill Stites 00:02:43
how to navigate a six two body. Yeah, yeah. Little awkward, and

Bill Stites 00:02:48
that's happening so quick. I mean, it could be like six

Bill Stites 00:02:50
inches over the summer,

Hiram Cuevas 00:02:51
they're on the cusp of their voice is changing

Hiram Cuevas 00:02:53
too. Uh, yep. When

Christina Lewellen 00:02:55
I was at Trinity Episcopal, the IT

Christina Lewellen 00:02:58
director there, Teresa. Shout out to her. She's incredible,

Christina Lewellen 00:03:01
and she's a big Atlas fan. And if you haven't met her yet, I'll

Christina Lewellen 00:03:04
introduce you guys at the conference. But she was telling

Christina Lewellen 00:03:07
me, yeah, you know, yesterday there was some stress and a

Christina Lewellen 00:03:09
couple things I was juggling, but it was also the 100th day of

Christina Lewellen 00:03:13
kindergarten, so she just wandered down into the

Christina Lewellen 00:03:15
kindergarten space and, like, there was little kids with

Christina Lewellen 00:03:18
rollers in their hairs, and the little walkers with the tennis

Christina Lewellen 00:03:21
balls, and she goes, and then I was better. And so I don't know,

Christina Lewellen 00:03:25
like, I need, like, an emotional support kindergarten so that on

Christina Lewellen 00:03:28
tough days I can just go hang out with the littles and, like,

Christina Lewellen 00:03:31
my heart is happy or something, does it all the time. Or maybe I

Christina Lewellen 00:03:35
need to find make friends with a local independent school, so

Christina Lewellen 00:03:38
that when I'm having a day, I can just show up on campus and

Christina Lewellen 00:03:41
get a little visitors, tag and go wander the hallway. But

Christina Lewellen 00:03:44
anyway, so I got my experience this week, which I don't get

Christina Lewellen 00:03:47
very often. So thank you for letting me gush about it. I

Christina Lewellen 00:03:50
don't think it's ever gonna get old. I've been here for almost

Christina Lewellen 00:03:52
six years, and I just love having the opportunity to walk

Christina Lewellen 00:03:56
around to campus. It makes my heart so so happy. And I'm not

Christina Lewellen 00:03:59
even a teacher, and I love it, so today, let's keep this

Christina Lewellen 00:04:04
conversation going about all the fun with the littles and beyond.

Christina Lewellen 00:04:08
But we do have Jared. Cole is with us, and Jared is the upper

Christina Lewellen 00:04:13
campus head of learning and innovation at the Mount Vernon

Christina Lewellen 00:04:15
school, a very innovative school that gets a lot of attention in

Christina Lewellen 00:04:19
our space. Jared you're upper campus head, so you probably

Christina Lewellen 00:04:23
don't get a lot of time with littles, but tell us your

Christina Lewellen 00:04:26
journey. Have you had any experience along the way with

Christina Lewellen 00:04:30
the lower school kids? And welcome to the podcast, by the

Christina Lewellen 00:04:33
way. Well, thank you

Jared Colley 00:04:34
for having me. I was thrilled to get this

Jared Colley 00:04:36
invitation. I'm very excited to share this space with you and

Jared Colley 00:04:40
get to have a great conversation. But to answer your

Jared Colley 00:04:43
question, well, one, I have a seven and nine year old daughter

Jared Colley 00:04:46
who go to the Lower School at our campus, so I find a lot of

Jared Colley 00:04:51
excuses to get over there. Are they

Christina Lewellen 00:04:53
embarrassed by you or not? Yet, they're too

Christina Lewellen 00:04:55
young to have dad show up. They're still at

Jared Colley 00:04:58
that sacred age where. They get excited when I'm

Jared Colley 00:05:01
over there, which is great. So I'm soaking it in. Sometimes

Jared Colley 00:05:04
I'll schedule a meeting with somebody over there, no purpose

Jared Colley 00:05:06
to it, but it's really just so I can get over there and maybe

Jared Colley 00:05:09
spot one of my kids love it, and have that moment. So I do get to

Jared Colley 00:05:13
spend some space in the Lower School. I would say that the

Jared Colley 00:05:16
Mount Vernon school, we believe that we're better together, and

Jared Colley 00:05:19
we're super intentional about collaborative engagement. So I

Jared Colley 00:05:24
do spend a lot of time in our lower school doing professional

Jared Colley 00:05:27
work as well, and I have a wonderful counterpart over there

Jared Colley 00:05:30
who shares a similar title, and we get to work a lot about

Jared Colley 00:05:35
innovation and academic alignment and continuity of

Jared Colley 00:05:39
experience and a building of capacity around certain

Jared Colley 00:05:43
competencies that we value at Mount Vernon, some of those

Jared Colley 00:05:46
competencies being ones that you would probably see anywhere, and

Jared Colley 00:05:49
some that I think really differentiate us, like our

Jared Colley 00:05:52
design thinking program that really runs through pre K all

Jared Colley 00:05:56
the way to 12th grade. So we have a lot of opportunity for

Jared Colley 00:06:01
the lower campus and the upper campus to come together and

Jared Colley 00:06:04
really align our vision so that there is this great continuity

Jared Colley 00:06:08
of experience, and we do approach it from a competency

Jared Colley 00:06:11
based perspective. And so it's important that we do that. I

Christina Lewellen 00:06:14
love this. I can't wait to get into the

Christina Lewellen 00:06:16
scaffolding that you're talking about, how you take it through

Christina Lewellen 00:06:18
the whole journey for your learners, but let's talk a

Christina Lewellen 00:06:21
little bit about you. How long have you been with the school?

Christina Lewellen 00:06:23
What was your journey like to get here? I

Jared Colley 00:06:26
believe I'm in my fifth year at the Mount Vernon

Jared Colley 00:06:28
school. That's a really significant number, if you think

Jared Colley 00:06:31
about what was going on five years ago, I was at a school in

Jared Colley 00:06:34
Texas. Before that, a lovely School in Arlington, Texas

Jared Colley 00:06:38
called the Oak Ridge school. When I was at the Oak Ridge

Jared Colley 00:06:40
school, I was the English department chair, and I also, in

Jared Colley 00:06:45
my later time there, served as our director of professional

Jared Colley 00:06:48
development and also as our kind of, our Chair of our curriculum

Jared Colley 00:06:52
coordination team that worked a lot on alignment at that school.

Jared Colley 00:06:57
And that's the Oak Ridge school where I was before and around

Jared Colley 00:07:01
2020, I had been watching the Mount Vernon school for a long

Jared Colley 00:07:04
time they were school I was paying attention to due to a lot

Jared Colley 00:07:07
of the work that they were doing that I was attracted to. And I

Jared Colley 00:07:10
think one of the things I was really attracted to is that I

Jared Colley 00:07:13
was given a lot of freedom, where I was before to do certain

Jared Colley 00:07:16
things, but I wanted to be at a place that had the capacity to

Jared Colley 00:07:20
do it at scale, and so mastery based or competency based

Jared Colley 00:07:24
learning would be a good example of that. But there are other

Jared Colley 00:07:26
examples I could share too. And so it was around right before

Jared Colley 00:07:31
the pandemic hit that a job opportunity became available at

Jared Colley 00:07:35
the Mount Vernon school for head of learning and innovation, and

Jared Colley 00:07:38
I very aggressively tried to get my foot in the door and talk to

Jared Colley 00:07:42
the people here, and sure enough, I flew over. Did the

Jared Colley 00:07:47
whole, as we all know, the one to two day intensive interview

Jared Colley 00:07:51
that we Independent Schools love to do, came back home, and I

Jared Colley 00:07:55
think about a week later, we all were sheltering in place for the

Jared Colley 00:07:58
pandemic.

Christina Lewellen 00:07:59
That's pretty intense. It was

Jared Colley 00:08:02
talk about a VUCA moment of volatility,

Jared Colley 00:08:04
uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, and I got the job

Jared Colley 00:08:09
offer, so I'm sitting there with my wife, and I'm like, Hey, how

Jared Colley 00:08:13
do you feel about moving across the country in the middle of a

Jared Colley 00:08:16
pandemic, when we're not even supposed to leave our house? And

Jared Colley 00:08:20
we had that conversation, and to be just completely like Frank

Jared Colley 00:08:24
and vulnerable, she says, Yes, but she looks at me, she goes,

Jared Colley 00:08:27
don't screw this up.

Christina Lewellen 00:08:30
You know what? Always a little levity

Christina Lewellen 00:08:31
from the wife. That's right, but it's kind of weird. I mean, let

Christina Lewellen 00:08:36
me just call something out here. You're an English teacher,

Christina Lewellen 00:08:40
English chair, not necessarily the first department I would

Christina Lewellen 00:08:44
think of when it comes to innovation in teaching. That's

Christina Lewellen 00:08:48
kind of a leap. So you definitely clawed your way into

Christina Lewellen 00:08:51
that, yeah, or did you have some background in demonstrating that

Christina Lewellen 00:08:55
you had this interest in innovation?

Jared Colley 00:08:58
Well, I would love to toot my horn and say, Oh, I

Jared Colley 00:09:01
was an English teacher who was integrating technology and very

Jared Colley 00:09:04
creative ways and kind of ahead of the curve on, you know, we

Jared Colley 00:09:09
were all talking about that Samer model, and I was

Jared Colley 00:09:11
redefining the classroom of what an English classroom could look

Jared Colley 00:09:14
like. But I could sit here and say that and tell a story that

Jared Colley 00:09:16
way. But I also would love to give a shout out to somebody who

Jared Colley 00:09:19
I do think sits on your board, who, at that time was our

Jared Colley 00:09:22
director of technology and modern learning at the Oak Ridge

Jared Colley 00:09:24
school. And that's Jason Kern.

Christina Lewellen 00:09:26
Oh, yeah, I love Kern. Nice. So I hope he

Christina Lewellen 00:09:30
listens to this episode. You can know that I will make him Jason,

Jared Colley 00:09:35
at that time, was leading us in terms of the

Jared Colley 00:09:38
adoption of technology in classrooms. He was leading us in

Jared Colley 00:09:41
terms of thinking about like, what does as we were calling at

Jared Colley 00:09:44
the time, what does modern learning look like at this

Jared Colley 00:09:47
moment, and as department chair of the English department, and

Jared Colley 00:09:52
also as a curious lifelong learner, and also what I like to

Jared Colley 00:09:56
call a mischievous collaborator, I was connected. With people,

Jared Colley 00:10:00
and we were having a lot of conversations about, what could

Jared Colley 00:10:03
we do differently in English classrooms that technology now

Jared Colley 00:10:07
makes possible, that before, maybe it just wasn't accessible,

Jared Colley 00:10:10
or we couldn't think of ways to do it. And I could give several

Jared Colley 00:10:13
examples, but one that I would share is we were very early on

Jared Colley 00:10:17
in my English classroom of using blogs and using digital

Jared Colley 00:10:22
platforms in a way that we could connect with other English

Jared Colley 00:10:26
classrooms, whether they were down the street or across the

Jared Colley 00:10:29
country or across the world. And early on, I started what I call

Jared Colley 00:10:35
the time a literary Colloquium. And what it was is I was trying

Jared Colley 00:10:38
to model for English kids like, what do English scholars do?

Jared Colley 00:10:41
What would that even look like? And one thing that people who

Jared Colley 00:10:45
have a advanced degree in humanities do is they often go

Jared Colley 00:10:48
to conferences and present papers, and there's usually

Jared Colley 00:10:52
probably a discussant, someone who's gotten your paper ahead of

Jared Colley 00:10:55
time, they've read it, they've thought of some critical

Jared Colley 00:10:58
questions, and then after you present your paper, there is

Jared Colley 00:11:02
this great discourse with a diversity of people in the room

Jared Colley 00:11:05
from all different institutions, all exchanging ideas and

Jared Colley 00:11:10
furthering each other's scholarship. And so I was really

Jared Colley 00:11:13
thinking about this in a traditional way, and I was like,

Jared Colley 00:11:16
Oh, I'm gonna go find all the email addresses of all the

Jared Colley 00:11:19
English department chairs I can and the surrounding area, and

Jared Colley 00:11:23
I'm just gonna email and be like, hey, what if we all read

Jared Colley 00:11:25
the same book, like, at the same time, and had kids all write

Jared Colley 00:11:29
papers and submit them, and then we, like, run a conference

Jared Colley 00:11:35
that's student driven. And I sent out this email to maybe

Jared Colley 00:11:40
2030 English department chairs, and I totally probably violated

Jared Colley 00:11:44
norms of just going to websites and getting these emails and not

Jared Colley 00:11:48
asking permission to send this out. I send it out, and it's

Jared Colley 00:11:52
crickets, and then a couple people responded, and one person

Jared Colley 00:11:58
that responded that I really encourage people to look up who

Jared Colley 00:12:01
is, I believe, still doing work as an English teacher in a

Jared Colley 00:12:04
department chair at Green Hill School, which is in North

Jared Colley 00:12:07
Dallas. And his name is Joelle Garza. He also started the book

Jared Colley 00:12:11
chat hashtag on Twitter, when that space used to be a space

Jared Colley 00:12:16
where we had more good faith inspired exchange in terms of

Jared Colley 00:12:21
discourse, and he started a group of English teachers who

Jared Colley 00:12:24
were coming together to have conversations about, how do we

Jared Colley 00:12:27
diversify literature and get more representation in classes?

Jared Colley 00:12:30
And so I share that because he was thinking innovatively too.

Jared Colley 00:12:34
And he sends me this email about my conference idea, and he's

Jared Colley 00:12:37
like, I think it's a great idea. I think we should do this. But

Jared Colley 00:12:40
he's like, but why should we wait for a conference? And I'm

Jared Colley 00:12:43
like, email back, like, Well, what do you mean? He's like, we

Jared Colley 00:12:46
got blogs. We could record podcasts. There's so many ways

Jared Colley 00:12:49
that we could start exchanging ideas with our classrooms. And

Jared Colley 00:12:53
so this is years ago, but we set up a blog, and we decided it was

Jared Colley 00:12:58
the 100 year anniversary of the publication of James Joyce's

Jared Colley 00:13:01
short stories Dubliners, and that was a strategic choice.

Jared Colley 00:13:05
One, okay, anniversary, great moment for a bunch of schools to

Jared Colley 00:13:09
read that book. Two, it's short stories. So this is easy to

Jared Colley 00:13:12
shoehorn into your curriculum. Why don't you join us? And

Jared Colley 00:13:15
before we knew it, we had this critical mass of teachers who

Jared Colley 00:13:19
were all very interested in this idea that we were all going to

Jared Colley 00:13:22
read the same book and our students were going to interact

Jared Colley 00:13:24
on a blog together. And at first, again, there's a lot of

Jared Colley 00:13:28
stages of evolution. So we were like, managing the blog. We're

Jared Colley 00:13:31
like, all right, what do you want to put up there? I'll go

Jared Colley 00:13:33
put it up there for you and post it. And so maybe one of my kids

Jared Colley 00:13:36
had something that they wrote, All right, I'll go get that up

Jared Colley 00:13:39
there for you. Another kid, maybe they recorded a podcast or

Jared Colley 00:13:42
an exchange at that time. I think we're just calling them mp

Jared Colley 00:13:45
three files, and they want to post that on the blog for the

Jared Colley 00:13:48
other schools to react to, and we're using the comment

Jared Colley 00:13:50
mechanism on the blog for doing that. But at some point we were

Jared Colley 00:13:54
like, Why are we gatekeeping as teachers? Why aren't they the

Jared Colley 00:13:58
editors of this blog? Why aren't they the ones who are creating

Jared Colley 00:14:02
the content directly? Why aren't they making those decisions? And

Jared Colley 00:14:06
so before we knew it, we had probably about 12 different

Jared Colley 00:14:10
schools, and this is happening in iterations through a few

Jared Colley 00:14:13
years and selecting different texts each year. But it started

Jared Colley 00:14:17
with just three schools, Hockaday school, the Green Hill

Jared Colley 00:14:20
School and the Oak Ridge school, we came together and had a

Jared Colley 00:14:22
conference too. And I think we all would tell the story that

Jared Colley 00:14:26
what we learned there, there was an interesting dialectic between

Jared Colley 00:14:29
the traditional and the digital, reinforcing and supporting and

Jared Colley 00:14:33
strengthening each other. And so I guess what I mean by that is

Jared Colley 00:14:35
we knew there was gonna be this conference, so there was skin in

Jared Colley 00:14:38
the game. And these kids were engaging on this blog in a way

Jared Colley 00:14:42
that they like. Knew that there was high stakes, but healthy

Jared Colley 00:14:45
high stakes, not like I'm going to fail you if you don't do

Jared Colley 00:14:48
this, right? No, we're going to get together in person, and

Jared Colley 00:14:50
you're going to stare at these people face to face and have a

Jared Colley 00:14:53
conference experience. So there's a lot of reasons to make

Jared Colley 00:14:56
these digital exchanges go well, but also the. Conference now had

Jared Colley 00:15:00
this much greater meaning to it when we came together, as you

Jared Colley 00:15:05
all know, because you have physical conferences too, and

Jared Colley 00:15:08
you know the value add of not just interacting asynchronously,

Jared Colley 00:15:12
interacting digitally, like we are right now, but also

Jared Colley 00:15:15
committing to the idea that we're all going to be in the

Jared Colley 00:15:17
same physical space at this time, and we're going to see

Jared Colley 00:15:20
each other, and we're going to have exchanges, and we are going

Jared Colley 00:15:23
to inspire each other, and we're all going to come back with new

Jared Colley 00:15:26
ideas. And so over the years, we began to build that and build

Jared Colley 00:15:29
that and build that. And it went from picking books like James

Jared Colley 00:15:33
Joyce's Dubliners, and then one year, it was Frankenstein, 200

Jared Colley 00:15:36
years later, and that was a fun year that we read Frankenstein,

Jared Colley 00:15:40
because we started doing more than just having kids submit

Jared Colley 00:15:43
papers. We had kids who were thinking about maker space

Jared Colley 00:15:46
artifacts, having an exhibit space for that. We brought in

Jared Colley 00:15:50
fine arts, and kids were making films and making paintings and

Jared Colley 00:15:56
posters. And so we started to have these exchanges that became

Jared Colley 00:16:00
more than just, say, literary analysis, and then it evolved

Jared Colley 00:16:04
even more where we're like, why are we reading dead authors,

Jared Colley 00:16:08
when we could do this with people who are living right now,

Jared Colley 00:16:13
and we can invite them to come to these events and be keynote

Jared Colley 00:16:17
speakers, interact with our students. And there was this

Jared Colley 00:16:20
evolution that happened, and that really brought me into the

Jared Colley 00:16:22
technology world, that for me to go back to an acronym that I

Jared Colley 00:16:26
think we all know, but, and probably most people who listen

Jared Colley 00:16:29
to this podcast know the same or acronym of, are we using

Jared Colley 00:16:32
technology to substitute like, Okay, write notes with a laptop

Jared Colley 00:16:35
now instead of a pencil? Are we augmenting, okay, instead of

Jared Colley 00:16:39
giving a book report by getting up and just talking, you've got

Jared Colley 00:16:42
a slide deck. Are we modifying all the way to I feel like we

Jared Colley 00:16:48
found a way to redefine what English classrooms look like,

Jared Colley 00:16:52
and that was made possible by new accessible technologies that

Jared Colley 00:16:56
earlier either we didn't know about or they just weren't

Jared Colley 00:16:59
around yet or accessible yet. And so that was my entry point

Jared Colley 00:17:03
from going from a quote, unquote, traditional English

Jared Colley 00:17:07
teacher to somebody who saw the intersection of Yes, classical

Jared Colley 00:17:13
education is important, but technology can really redefine

Jared Colley 00:17:16
it in ways that we can do it differently. And that brought me

Jared Colley 00:17:20
into the Atlas community. I started presenting at Atlas very

Jared Colley 00:17:23
early on, more as an English teacher and coming to Atlas and

Jared Colley 00:17:27
being like, here's how I'm using technology. I got really

Jared Colley 00:17:30
immersed in the gamification culture when that started to

Jared Colley 00:17:34
become a thing, and I started redesigning my classrooms around

Jared Colley 00:17:38
the idea of, like, what brings kids back to video games over

Jared Colley 00:17:42
and over again, even when they fail over and over and over.

Jared Colley 00:17:45
There is something about the structure of a video game, a

Jared Colley 00:17:48
design of a video game, and what could we learn about that in

Jared Colley 00:17:51
curricular design? And so I got really involved with that too.

Jared Colley 00:17:55
And of course, technology helped Augment, modify and redefine how

Jared Colley 00:17:59
we might do that. And again, I was presenting at Atlas about

Jared Colley 00:18:03
topics like that as well, and sooner or later, that led me to

Jared Colley 00:18:07
leading professional development my own school, being a

Jared Colley 00:18:10
curriculum coordinator over alignment of our entire

Jared Colley 00:18:13
curricular scope and vision. That really gave me the skill

Jared Colley 00:18:17
sets to then come to the Mount Vernon school and be in the role

Jared Colley 00:18:20
I am now as head of learning and innovation.

Bill Stites 00:18:23
So Jared, I have a question for you. You mentioned

Bill Stites 00:18:26
two different things. One, as you talked about when you were

Bill Stites 00:18:28
there, you talked about this being modern learning, and now

Bill Stites 00:18:30
you're into innovation in terms of how you were describing these

Bill Stites 00:18:34
different pieces. And you mentioned how you define these

Bill Stites 00:18:37
different things. And I want to ask you how you would

Bill Stites 00:18:41
differentiate what you were doing when you were calling it

Bill Stites 00:18:43
modern learning and what it's now called now you're referring

Bill Stites 00:18:46
to as innovation. It's what your titles got on it. How do you

Bill Stites 00:18:49
because I think everyone does it slightly differently. We're

Bill Stites 00:18:52
going through it right now at MKA. How do you define

Bill Stites 00:18:55
innovation, and how does that differ from what you were doing

Bill Stites 00:18:58
before that you were calling modern learning? What's in a

Bill Stites 00:19:01
name.

Jared Colley 00:19:02
First of all, I think that the word modern is

Jared Colley 00:19:06
somewhat a loaded word that we need to interrogate and unpack.

Jared Colley 00:19:11
If you have not heard about the book hospicing modernity, I

Jared Colley 00:19:15
highly recommend it. I will credit Will Richardson for

Jared Colley 00:19:19
recommending that book to me on a zoom call one day, and

Jared Colley 00:19:23
modernity carries a lot of baggage. So first, I just want

Jared Colley 00:19:26
to say that modernity is a concept that carries baggage,

Jared Colley 00:19:30
such as growth is always linear. Modernity carries some baggage

Jared Colley 00:19:34
around colonial mindsets that are somewhat Eurocentric. And

Jared Colley 00:19:39
modernity, also to me, is like a fixation on the newness of the

Jared Colley 00:19:44
technology or the products, things like that. And thereby, I

Jared Colley 00:19:48
wonder if it's getting us to focus on the real value add of

Jared Colley 00:19:52
what we do to move education forward. And so as I think about

Jared Colley 00:19:56
innovation, innovation, too can become a word. With a lot of

Jared Colley 00:20:00
trappings. I think innovation can become a word that could

Jared Colley 00:20:05
stagnate us instead of move us forward. So I think it's also

Jared Colley 00:20:08
really important to really ask the question, what are you

Jared Colley 00:20:11
innovating for? Are you innovating for people to have a

Jared Colley 00:20:16
meaningful, positive identity, development, restorative

Jared Colley 00:20:20
experience? Are you innovating for efficiency? Are you

Jared Colley 00:20:24
innovating for marketing reasons, to have a really flashy

Jared Colley 00:20:29
value proposition that once we poke through it a little bit,

Jared Colley 00:20:33
it's a little bit surfacey, and so I also caution that we

Jared Colley 00:20:39
interrogate the word innovation a little bit, and what we mean

Jared Colley 00:20:42
by that. And so I don't know if I can define innovation without

Jared Colley 00:20:46
first defining and making explicit the values that one is

Jared Colley 00:20:50
anchored in that they are thereby innovating for. So

Bill Stites 00:20:54
how are you doing that? At Mount Vernon, what is

Bill Stites 00:20:56
the definition of innovation at Mount Vernon, I had a very

Bill Stites 00:21:00
similar conversation with Steve Valentine, who I work with here

Bill Stites 00:21:03
at MKA, about what the idea of entrepreneurship means at MKA,

Bill Stites 00:21:08
because it's something that we talk about, right, and

Bill Stites 00:21:10
understanding what that word means to us as it relates to

Bill Stites 00:21:14
STEM, STEM, plus ethics, all of those things. So that's the

Bill Stites 00:21:19
context and the reason, to some degree from my question. So what

Bill Stites 00:21:22
does innovation mean for you and for Mount Vernon, yeah,

Jared Colley 00:21:27
and entrepreneurship is another

Jared Colley 00:21:28
word, but ooh, you could get me talking about that for a minute.

Jared Colley 00:21:31
And again, if we don't interrogate that word, I

Jared Colley 00:21:34
challenge us not to get all Latin, but like homo economicus,

Jared Colley 00:21:38
this idea that our purpose is to go out and make money, and our

Jared Colley 00:21:41
purpose is to train people for the job force, and to think like

Jared Colley 00:21:45
that, I think if that's what we mean by entrepreneurship, we're

Jared Colley 00:21:48
missing a huge opportunity. I think that entrepreneurship has

Jared Colley 00:21:52
a much wider application, or opportunity for application,

Jared Colley 00:21:56
where it's really about like, how do you live well and how are

Jared Colley 00:21:59
you going to get there. What is a life well lived? And what

Jared Colley 00:22:03
skills do you need? What competencies do you need, what

Jared Colley 00:22:07
experiences do you need, what mentorship do you need to find a

Jared Colley 00:22:11
path, a path that is ethical, well intentioned, and thereby, I

Jared Colley 00:22:17
want to define entrepreneurial skills as being able to have the

Jared Colley 00:22:21
resourcefulness to bring that together, but to have it be

Jared Colley 00:22:25
layered on top of values that you know what your values are,

Jared Colley 00:22:29
and you know what a life well lived might look like. And so

Jared Colley 00:22:32
for me to be an entrepreneur is what is living well for me, and

Jared Colley 00:22:36
how do I make that a reality? So I know you're asking for a

Jared Colley 00:22:40
definition of innovation. But I first just had to unpack that

Jared Colley 00:22:44
you're talking to an English teacher, if you haven't noticed.

Jared Colley 00:22:47
And so I like to unpack words. So is Steve. I would say this

Jared Colley 00:22:52
about innovation. I think at Mount Vernon, we would first and

Jared Colley 00:22:55
foremost point you to the book innovators, DNA. I'll tell a

Jared Colley 00:22:59
story we have a class in our middle school called Impact

Jared Colley 00:23:04
Design Lab. And think of this as a class for middle schoolers to

Jared Colley 00:23:08
really start building their design thinking muscle. And I

Jared Colley 00:23:12
think already told you there's a continuity going all the way

Jared Colley 00:23:14
back to pre K in terms of giving kids opportunities to build

Jared Colley 00:23:18
skills around design thinking. But the impact Design Lab, which

Jared Colley 00:23:22
happens in eighth grade, is really a leveling up moment. And

Jared Colley 00:23:25
the designers of that class were really wrestling with the fact

Jared Colley 00:23:30
that they were, like, having a hard time communicating to kids

Jared Colley 00:23:33
what they meant when they say, Okay, now let's go innovate. And

Jared Colley 00:23:36
here they were wrestling with, like, how do we define it? And I

Jared Colley 00:23:41
pointed them back to that book, and I don't take credit for

Jared Colley 00:23:44
that. The Mount Vernon school identified that book as well

Jared Colley 00:23:48
before my time here as a guide for us in terms of thinking

Jared Colley 00:23:52
about what do we mean by innovation? And so innovation is

Jared Colley 00:23:56
a very abstract, constructivist concept that I think we all

Jared Colley 00:24:00
would have to come to an agreed upon definition before we could

Jared Colley 00:24:03
move forward with any kind of sense of innovation. So let me

Jared Colley 00:24:06
just say it this way. What if, instead of defining innovation,

Jared Colley 00:24:09
we just started to talk about behaviors that lead to

Jared Colley 00:24:13
innovative outcomes? And so one of the things that I really

Jared Colley 00:24:17
appreciate about the book innovators DNA is it really does

Jared Colley 00:24:20
that for you. So instead of like starting with innovation, it

Jared Colley 00:24:23
starts with five activities that it tells you to build your

Jared Colley 00:24:27
muscle around. Observing is one of them, networking is one of

Jared Colley 00:24:33
them, associating is one of them, experimenting is one of

Jared Colley 00:24:39
them. And Dang, I am missing the other one right now, and that is

Jared Colley 00:24:42
okay, but people can go look up the book if you were engaging in

Jared Colley 00:24:47
those five behaviors. Now, I'm not sure we really have to worry

Jared Colley 00:24:51
about how we're defining innovation as much as we have

Jared Colley 00:24:54
developed behavioral skills that we're getting better at and

Jared Colley 00:24:59
better at. Are leading to innovative outcomes. So if I

Jared Colley 00:25:03
dodged your question, I'm sorry, but that's one way I would try

Jared Colley 00:25:07
to answer that question.

Hiram Cuevas 00:25:09
So Jared, what's been fascinating about this

Hiram Cuevas 00:25:11
conversation is we've taken the superficial, I think, when we're

Hiram Cuevas 00:25:14
talking about some of this lingo, and really, I feel like

Hiram Cuevas 00:25:16
we've been engaging in literary analysis in our conversation

Hiram Cuevas 00:25:20
with you, and I really appreciate that when we were

Hiram Cuevas 00:25:23
talking about the evolution of your community to engage in

Hiram Cuevas 00:25:27
modern learning, there's a certain buy in that has to

Hiram Cuevas 00:25:30
happen. And I think many of our conversations end up starting at

Hiram Cuevas 00:25:34
that superficial level. And how do you get it into that in depth

Hiram Cuevas 00:25:39
thought process about what is important to this preconceived

Hiram Cuevas 00:25:45
notion in your mind of what modern learning looks like,

Hiram Cuevas 00:25:48
knowing full well that it's a loaded term, and then executing

Hiram Cuevas 00:25:52
that, such that you're looking at these new skills that these

Hiram Cuevas 00:25:56
students are now going to acquire versus some of the

Hiram Cuevas 00:25:59
skills that are going to be perhaps left behind or not

Hiram Cuevas 00:26:02
utilized as much

Jared Colley 00:26:05
so I think as a good pedagogue, because I also

Jared Colley 00:26:08
do a lot of coaching and around teaching and learning in my

Jared Colley 00:26:11
role, and we are big on the whole backwards design approach,

Jared Colley 00:26:16
in terms of how we think about building a unit, building a

Jared Colley 00:26:20
Performance Task, or whatever it might be that we're engaging

Jared Colley 00:26:23
students in. Let's apply that same principle here. And what an

Jared Colley 00:26:27
interesting time to apply that principle, because we live, and

Jared Colley 00:26:32
I think I've mentioned to you probably before the recording,

Jared Colley 00:26:35
that one of the areas I am really engaged in right now is

Jared Colley 00:26:38
futures thinking. And futures is intentionally used in the

Jared Colley 00:26:41
plural, because none of us can predict the future. None of us

Jared Colley 00:26:45
can forecast with great certainty that this is what is

Jared Colley 00:26:49
going to happen next. And so the end in mind is a really, really

Jared Colley 00:26:54
perplexing, baffling thing right now, because our students are

Jared Colley 00:26:59
entering a world where more and more it becomes difficult to

Jared Colley 00:27:03
predict in forecast. And so how are we building the skills and

Jared Colley 00:27:06
capacities for a world where there are alternative futures

Jared Colley 00:27:11
that are all equally plausible, that could happen? And so I

Jared Colley 00:27:15
think one way that we might think about modern learning is

Jared Colley 00:27:17
that we've never faced that challenge more poignantly, more

Jared Colley 00:27:22
concretely, and maybe I'm historically biased to my moment

Jared Colley 00:27:25
of lived experience in this moment in history. But let's

Jared Colley 00:27:28
just go over what's happened in the last few years. How many of

Jared Colley 00:27:31
us were talking about a pandemic before COVID hit? Not a lot of

Jared Colley 00:27:36
us. How many of us were talking about racial reckoning before

Jared Colley 00:27:41
the George Floyd moment. There are a lot of people who were

Jared Colley 00:27:44
doing that work, but not a lot of people were how many of us

Jared Colley 00:27:48
were going to be able to predict how polarized our political

Jared Colley 00:27:52
landscape has gotten in recent years, and we, of course, just

Jared Colley 00:27:56
gone through it again, a very difficult time for all of us,

Jared Colley 00:27:59
socially, emotionally speaking, and also in terms of not being

Jared Colley 00:28:02
able to predict what's going to happen next. And how many of us

Jared Colley 00:28:06
now maybe the Atlas community be like, well, a lot of us, how

Jared Colley 00:28:09
many of us were able to predict that large language models were

Jared Colley 00:28:13
going to so quickly and so ubiquitously show up at schools

Jared Colley 00:28:17
and be able to do so well what they're doing? And so we have

Jared Colley 00:28:22
lived through so many interesting alternative futures

Jared Colley 00:28:27
that were all plausible and maybe probable and definitely

Jared Colley 00:28:31
possible, but none of us could have forecasted or predicted

Jared Colley 00:28:34
they were going to happen the exact way they did. And so as I

Jared Colley 00:28:38
think about the end in mind, the end in mind is so much more

Jared Colley 00:28:41
nebulous right now compared to previous periods of the

Jared Colley 00:28:45
educational landscape. I think that we are often still

Jared Colley 00:28:49
operating on models that track kids in a way that whether

Jared Colley 00:28:54
they're doing it explicitly or implicitly, probably implicitly,

Jared Colley 00:28:57
a lot of times by way of how schools are structured, by way

Jared Colley 00:29:00
how curriculum is structured by how instructional practices are

Jared Colley 00:29:04
structured. We are still messaging a certain end in mind

Jared Colley 00:29:09
that really isn't that accurate or honest about what we're

Jared Colley 00:29:13
facing. And so the end in mind is one of alternative futures.

Jared Colley 00:29:17
The End in Mind is one of great uncertainty. I like to call it

Jared Colley 00:29:21
critical uncertainties, which is kind of a cross section of

Jared Colley 00:29:25
something that's highly uncertain but also high impact.

Jared Colley 00:29:29
And artificial intelligence is a great example of one. We just

Jared Colley 00:29:32
went through, and we're still going through, artificial

Jared Colley 00:29:34
intelligence isn't really interesting critical

Jared Colley 00:29:37
uncertainty. It is very uncertain what's going to happen

Jared Colley 00:29:40
and how quickly it will and we all know it's going to have a

Jared Colley 00:29:43
huge impact. And so identifying critical uncertainties is

Jared Colley 00:29:48
something we can do. And so what are the skills and competencies

Jared Colley 00:29:53
that we need to be building in this next generation to handle

Jared Colley 00:29:59
with temper? Insights, with strategy to handle, with

Jared Colley 00:30:04
creativity and curiosity, a whole bunch of alternative

Jared Colley 00:30:08
futures. And so I am so sick of hearing about we don't know the

Jared Colley 00:30:13
jobs of the future. I think we have to go even deeper than

Jared Colley 00:30:15
that. We don't know the values and the greater context of the

Jared Colley 00:30:21
future. I mean, how do we talk about jobs if we're not talking

Jared Colley 00:30:26
about the ecological uncertainties of our entire

Jared Colley 00:30:28
planet? How do we talk about here's how you're going to

Jared Colley 00:30:32
create value in the economy when a lot of resources that make our

Jared Colley 00:30:37
economy valuable are under threat. And so before we even

Jared Colley 00:30:42
talk about jobs of the future, I think there's other things of

Jared Colley 00:30:44
the future that we have to talk about, but we can't talk about

Jared Colley 00:30:47
them with certainty. And we have to think about a different

Jared Colley 00:30:50
approach, and that is a different kind of backwards

Jared Colley 00:30:53
design approach, because a lot of times backwards design is be

Jared Colley 00:30:57
absolutely explicitly clear on the standard you're trying to

Jared Colley 00:31:01
get this kid to master. But as I think about modern learning, I

Jared Colley 00:31:05
think modern learning differentiates itself from

Jared Colley 00:31:08
previous forms of learning on those terms,

Christina Lewellen 00:31:12
it's really interesting. So with this

Christina Lewellen 00:31:14
uncertainty in mind, and looping back to this scaffolding that

Christina Lewellen 00:31:19
you provide at the Mount Vernon school, from even the pre case

Christina Lewellen 00:31:23
you mentioned, like, how do you then weave this into the entire

Christina Lewellen 00:31:27
life cycle of the students? As you think about some of these

Christina Lewellen 00:31:30
uncertain outcomes,

Jared Colley 00:31:32
we start with questions, and we build that

Jared Colley 00:31:35
mantra into our students, and we call that a mantra. We start

Jared Colley 00:31:39
with questions, not with answers. And I think that we

Jared Colley 00:31:43
build that mantra, we build that mindset in preschoolers, we

Jared Colley 00:31:47
build it in our lower schoolers, we build it in our middle

Jared Colley 00:31:49
schoolers, and by the time we get to our upper schoolers,

Jared Colley 00:31:52
hopefully the scaffolding is a little bit taken away, and they

Jared Colley 00:31:56
are driving the questions that we're starting with. There's a

Jared Colley 00:32:00
wonderful thinker named Christian wall. He writes a lot

Jared Colley 00:32:03
about the environment, and he's written a book called Designing

Jared Colley 00:32:08
regenerative cultures. And regenerative is a huge buzz word

Jared Colley 00:32:11
that I think we have to interrogate as well, because I'm

Jared Colley 00:32:14
not sure we all know what we mean when we say regenerative.

Jared Colley 00:32:17
But one thing I'll say about that book, that he said that I

Jared Colley 00:32:20
thought was so interesting, is that a lot of times we think of

Jared Colley 00:32:24
questions as the vehicles to an answer, whereas in reality, what

Jared Colley 00:32:31
he says is and he uses the three horizons framework, which I'm

Jared Colley 00:32:35
not sure our listeners will be familiar with, the three

Jared Colley 00:32:38
horizons framework, But if I were to use an example. First

Jared Colley 00:32:42
horizon like, how do we as a business get people to consume

Jared Colley 00:32:47
movies? Oh, we're gonna set up a brick and mortar blockbuster

Jared Colley 00:32:51
where they're gonna come and they're gonna rent movies,

Jared Colley 00:32:53
right? And so then second horizon might be Netflix being

Jared Colley 00:32:56
like, Oh, we're gonna mail DVDs to your house and there's no

Jared Colley 00:33:01
late fee. Mail it back when you're ready, and then you can

Jared Colley 00:33:04
get your next one. And I'm probably dating myself, because

Jared Colley 00:33:06
some people listening are being like, What are you talking

Jared Colley 00:33:08
about? That's not what Netflix does, but that's that second

Jared Colley 00:33:11
horizon, right? They were disrupting the blockbuster

Jared Colley 00:33:14
business model. But then there's a third horizon, which is now we

Jared Colley 00:33:18
have streaming services, and I don't even need you to mail me a

Jared Colley 00:33:22
DVD to my house, but I want to go back to what I was saying

Jared Colley 00:33:25
about Christian wall within this three horizon framework. It's

Jared Colley 00:33:29
not that streaming is the answer. Now we have new

Jared Colley 00:33:32
questions, because streaming is using a lot of energy, and

Jared Colley 00:33:37
there's a lot of carbon emissions going on, and we're

Jared Colley 00:33:40
generating a lot of heat through all this consumption of video

Jared Colley 00:33:44
online for our convenience. And so if anything, the new answer

Jared Colley 00:33:50
brought us to new questions. And so to go back to what I first

Jared Colley 00:33:54
said, it's not that questions are the vehicle to answers.

Jared Colley 00:33:59
Answers are the vehicle to new questions that we need to ask.

Jared Colley 00:34:04
And so we're never going to get to a final horizon. The third

Jared Colley 00:34:08
horizon just brings us to a whole new set of questions that

Jared Colley 00:34:11
we need to interrogate. And so if everybody on this planet were

Jared Colley 00:34:16
to stream at the same volume at the same time, I think we all

Jared Colley 00:34:20
know it's unsustainable. I think there's a reason that Google and

Jared Colley 00:34:25
a lot of other companies out there are buying nuclear

Jared Colley 00:34:28
reactors scanning signals here as a futures thinker, they know

Jared Colley 00:34:32
that when we go to scale with artificial intelligence and the

Jared Colley 00:34:36
demand of energy, the demand of carbon emission, that that is

Jared Colley 00:34:40
going to exact upon our planet. How are we going to do that? And

Jared Colley 00:34:44
so there are new questions to be asked. There are not answers

Jared Colley 00:34:48
that have now solved as much as they have brought us to a new

Jared Colley 00:34:52
horizon for new questions. So not only should we start with

Jared Colley 00:34:56
questions, we also end with questions, which begins in.

Jared Colley 00:35:00
Start. So going back to that was a really kind of roundabout way

Jared Colley 00:35:04
of answering one question you asked, but we start with

Jared Colley 00:35:07
preschoolers with start with questions, right? And we want to

Jared Colley 00:35:10
build that curiosity, and we want to build that lack of

Jared Colley 00:35:14
complacency, that answers have been answered, there's always

Jared Colley 00:35:18
new questions to be asked, and that is one way that we try to

Jared Colley 00:35:23
build something in our students, a mindset, a mental model, a way

Jared Colley 00:35:28
of comporting oneself to the world, that they continue to

Jared Colley 00:35:33
build a capacity in, that they continue to work that muscle in

Jared Colley 00:35:37
as they move all the way through till they get to grade 12. And

Jared Colley 00:35:41
there's a lot of other ways to answer that question of how we

Jared Colley 00:35:44
are building continuity around competencies that we think are

Jared Colley 00:35:47
important in a modern learning context or in a futures thinking

Jared Colley 00:35:50
context, but that's one example I would give.

Bill Stites 00:35:54
One of the things you said there when you were

Bill Stites 00:35:56
just really focusing on the questions. You know, one of the

Bill Stites 00:35:58
things that we ask people here a lot of questions about is their

Bill Stites 00:36:01
thoughts on AI. And one of the things that I think has come up

Bill Stites 00:36:05
about questions in general, at least in the conversations that

Bill Stites 00:36:08
I've been in, is that questions almost become the check for

Bill Stites 00:36:11
understanding. When you worry that AI can give you all the

Bill Stites 00:36:16
answers, it becomes less about the answer that you get or that

Bill Stites 00:36:20
you write down on the paper more about your ability either to ask

Bill Stites 00:36:24
the question or have a conversation and ask deeper

Bill Stites 00:36:27
questions that truly represent what you were able to learn from

Bill Stites 00:36:32
that. So one of the things that I'm seeing, and I'm kind of

Bill Stites 00:36:35
interested in tracking, is if the concern around AI is about

Bill Stites 00:36:39
it giving you the answers, then we need to focus more on exactly

Bill Stites 00:36:42
what you're saying, the ability to generate those questions in

Bill Stites 00:36:45
meaningful ways that point to what it is I've gathered from

Bill Stites 00:36:50
the work that I've done, Hiram posted in the chat, and you can

Bill Stites 00:36:53
jump in on this more if you want to. It's the idea of AI being

Bill Stites 00:36:56
that thought partner in a lot of the work that we're doing. But

Bill Stites 00:36:59
you've still gotta have those competencies and those

Bill Stites 00:37:02
understandings to be able to question things in the right

Bill Stites 00:37:06
way. Absolutely,

Jared Colley 00:37:07
I'm gonna respond to that. But I also just wanna

Jared Colley 00:37:09
say, and this is the educator coming out in me, is that we

Jared Colley 00:37:14
have to be careful. And I'm gonna use an educator framework,

Jared Colley 00:37:18
depth of knowledge framework, so those that are listening that

Jared Colley 00:37:22
might be more in the technology world and not as much in the

Jared Colley 00:37:24
curriculum world. Depth of Knowledge is just a framework to

Jared Colley 00:37:28
think about complexity of what you're asking kids to do, right?

Jared Colley 00:37:30
So Dok one is recalling facts, being able to know things. Dok

Jared Colley 00:37:37
two, next level might be application and explanation in

Jared Colley 00:37:41
the ability to do that. And we might say that Dok three is now

Jared Colley 00:37:44
okay. Now take that and start to think really strategically about

Jared Colley 00:37:49
what you're going to do with all that. And you know, dok four

Jared Colley 00:37:52
might be like, how are you transferring all this to totally

Jared Colley 00:37:56
new context that you couldn't even predict were going to

Jared Colley 00:37:58
happen? So Extended Thinking. And so I first just want to say,

Jared Colley 00:38:02
I think something we have to be cautious about is that Dok one

Jared Colley 00:38:06
is just as important as Dok two, dok three, dok four. And so AI

Jared Colley 00:38:13
is doing a great job as a thought partner of leap frogging

Jared Colley 00:38:16
kids to Dok three and four work as a thought partner how to

Jared Colley 00:38:19
think strategically, how to extend their thinking. But

Jared Colley 00:38:22
students need to know things. I think about that even. You know,

Jared Colley 00:38:27
I'm not getting political, but let's just say, for the sake of

Jared Colley 00:38:30
our democracy, kids need to know things, and they can't just rely

Jared Colley 00:38:36
on technology to give them answers. And so I had to have

Jared Colley 00:38:40
that soap box moment. And everybody on my campus will tell

Jared Colley 00:38:44
you, I'm the proselytizer of you got to integrate AI in your

Jared Colley 00:38:47
class, so I'm not the guy here that's saying, oh my gosh, AI is

Jared Colley 00:38:51
doing something dangerous. It's dialectical, isn't it? Both

Jared Colley 00:38:55
truths are true, right? There are things that we have to be

Jared Colley 00:38:57
worried about, and there are things that we got to be so

Jared Colley 00:38:59
excited about, where AI is this thought partner? But to your

Jared Colley 00:39:02
question about being a thought partner, I'll just share it an

Jared Colley 00:39:06
answer through story telling, which is, although I'm out of

Jared Colley 00:39:09
the classroom and Kristina, I love the beginning of our

Jared Colley 00:39:12
conversation, where you said you visited a school, and it just

Jared Colley 00:39:15
reminded you of the joy of being in a hallway and seeing student

Jared Colley 00:39:21
work. Let me share my own version of that. I'm teaching a

Jared Colley 00:39:24
course right now, even though I'm a full time administrator,

Jared Colley 00:39:27
I'm also a consultant for our NV ventures, R and D company, but I

Jared Colley 00:39:32
also teach a class, and the class I'm teaching right now is

Jared Colley 00:39:34
called philosophy in the age of artificial intelligence, and we

Jared Colley 00:39:38
are doing three things in that class, and our mission statement

Jared Colley 00:39:42
at Mount Vernon is we are a school of inquiry, innovation

Jared Colley 00:39:45
and impact. So every single week we are inquiring

Jared Colley 00:39:48
philosophically. What I really mean by that is we're reading

Jared Colley 00:39:51
academic papers by John Searle about, can a machine ever be

Jared Colley 00:39:55
conscious, or is consciousness in some way necessarily tied? To

Jared Colley 00:40:00
biological systems. So we're inquiring philosophically, but

Jared Colley 00:40:04
we are also innovating experimentally, and we are also

Jared Colley 00:40:08
examining technology's impact. And that latter way that we do

Jared Colley 00:40:12
that is we also read a fun sci fi story every week, and it's

Jared Colley 00:40:16
usually some sort of sci fi story that's showing the impact

Jared Colley 00:40:19
of technology in some speculative future, and it gets

Jared Colley 00:40:22
us talking about it, ethically, gets us talking about it,

Jared Colley 00:40:24
philosophically, speculatively. Where is this going? But I want

Jared Colley 00:40:29
to go back to the middle one. The other thing that we do in

Jared Colley 00:40:31
our class every week is we are innovating experimentally. And

Jared Colley 00:40:34
so the kids have a task board. It's like a tic tac toe board,

Jared Colley 00:40:38
and each of the boxes is like something that like go try this

Jared Colley 00:40:42
with AI, and I'm Trojan horsing them a little bit because the

Jared Colley 00:40:46
prompts are very much getting them to use AI as a thought

Jared Colley 00:40:49
partner, not as an answer giver, not as the problem solver, but

Jared Colley 00:40:55
as something that they have to engage with and start to get

Jared Colley 00:40:59
better at asking it the right questions, getting better at how

Jared Colley 00:41:04
to evaluate the answers it gives back, or the suggestions it

Jared Colley 00:41:09
might be prompting them to think about. And they go and they do

Jared Colley 00:41:12
something every week. I'll just give an example. One of the

Jared Colley 00:41:15
boxes says, like build a bot that is a study partner for

Jared Colley 00:41:19
something that you need to drill down on and study or build it

Jared Colley 00:41:23
for a friend and test it, get feedback and come back and tell

Jared Colley 00:41:26
us how it went. And that's not the end of the assignment. They

Jared Colley 00:41:30
also have a series of questions they have to answer, and it's

Jared Colley 00:41:32
based on one of the project zero thinking routines. And so what

Jared Colley 00:41:37
new ideas did it get you to consider? It also asks you, what

Jared Colley 00:41:41
could have been improved? Where did it not work well, and where

Jared Colley 00:41:45
did it fall flat? And so they also, as they go through this

Jared Colley 00:41:48
routine every week of experimenting with AI

Jared Colley 00:41:52
innovatively, they're really thinking about it evaluatively,

Jared Colley 00:41:56
which is the ok for by the way, they are thinking about it

Jared Colley 00:41:59
evaluatively, and where is it a good thought partner? Where is

Jared Colley 00:42:03
it a good task partner? Where does it not work well? And they

Jared Colley 00:42:07
reflect on that every week. We assign things through what we

Jared Colley 00:42:10
call a proverbial card. They use this card, and they go through

Jared Colley 00:42:13
that thinking routine. They show the evidence of a chat log, or

Jared Colley 00:42:17
whatever it is. They need to show evidence of of how they

Jared Colley 00:42:19
used it, but they're also doing that evaluative reflection, and

Jared Colley 00:42:23
so that gets them back to asking the right questions about AI,

Jared Colley 00:42:27
about the human role, about the human advantage, about the AI

Jared Colley 00:42:32
advantage, and how those two things come together to create

Jared Colley 00:42:36
what I call collective intelligence. And if we go back

Jared Colley 00:42:40
to SAMR, right? Are we just using AI to substitute? Maybe

Jared Colley 00:42:45
not that great. Are we using AI to augment something we do? Are

Jared Colley 00:42:49
we using it to modify something we do, or has it redefined

Jared Colley 00:42:53
something for us? Right? And so it's getting them to ask those

Jared Colley 00:42:57
questions without necessarily making it the same or model, but

Jared Colley 00:43:00
it's getting them to interrogate, like, Where does AI

Jared Colley 00:43:04
fit in? Well, because a competency that is important for

Jared Colley 00:43:07
our students to thrive in the age of intelligent machines is

Jared Colley 00:43:11
to be able to work well with machines, and that is something

Jared Colley 00:43:15
that these students need to practice. And I understand why

Jared Colley 00:43:19
some classes are struggling with figuring out how to give kids

Jared Colley 00:43:22
that opportunity. I have great empathy for a lot of teachers

Jared Colley 00:43:27
who are threatened by what AI is bringing into their classroom,

Jared Colley 00:43:31
and I think we have to approach this conversation with teachers

Jared Colley 00:43:34
with great understanding, with active listening and with a deep

Jared Colley 00:43:39
sense of empathy, because there are things, there are stories of

Jared Colley 00:43:45
an assignment that I have given for years, and I have these

Jared Colley 00:43:49
memories of these experiences and these relationships I built,

Jared Colley 00:43:54
and AI is disrupting that in the bad way, because now my kids

Jared Colley 00:43:59
aren't doing it the way we used To do it, and it's easy, I

Jared Colley 00:44:02
think, for us that are thinking creatively and we have time to

Jared Colley 00:44:05
think creatively about technology's application, it's

Jared Colley 00:44:08
easy for us to be like, Oh, get a growth mindset. But no,

Jared Colley 00:44:12
there's a lot of mourning, and I mean that M, o, u, r, N, I N, G,

Jared Colley 00:44:17
there is a lot of mourning and processing that I think a lot of

Jared Colley 00:44:22
great instructors are having to go through right now in terms of

Jared Colley 00:44:26
what AI might be doing to their classroom. And so I understand

Jared Colley 00:44:29
why some of the things I'm getting to do in my class may be

Jared Colley 00:44:32
a little bit more difficult in some other contexts. And I just

Jared Colley 00:44:36
want you to know on my task board, it does say, if you're

Jared Colley 00:44:39
going to use this AI experimentation another class, I

Jared Colley 00:44:42
have to have written permission from that teacher. I, in no way

Jared Colley 00:44:46
am going to be the person who encourages you to go use AI in

Jared Colley 00:44:49
another teacher's class without us, First all, being on some

Jared Colley 00:44:53
sort of shared understanding level of agreement.

Christina Lewellen 00:44:57
So Jared before we run. Out of Time, I do

Christina Lewellen 00:45:00
want to circle back to the ventures piece of things,

Christina Lewellen 00:45:03
because I think that that's a really interesting and creative

Christina Lewellen 00:45:08
aspect of your school that is a little unusual. There's

Christina Lewellen 00:45:12
incredible publications coming out of the space that I really

Christina Lewellen 00:45:15
enjoy, but Mount Vernon Ventures is your research development and

Christina Lewellen 00:45:21
consulting division of the school. Can you just take a

Christina Lewellen 00:45:25
minute and tell us a little bit about where that came from and

Christina Lewellen 00:45:27
how in the world, does that fit in the larger mission of the

Christina Lewellen 00:45:31
school?

Jared Colley 00:45:32
Yes, I'll start with where it came from, and

Jared Colley 00:45:35
that predates me, and so I want to start by apologizing to those

Jared Colley 00:45:39
who predate me if I don't tell the story to the utmost fidelity

Jared Colley 00:45:43
and accuracy, forgive me. But it started with the Mount Vernon

Jared Colley 00:45:49
Institute for Innovation, M, V, I, Fi is what it was called, and

Jared Colley 00:45:53
it was a group of people who were doing great, innovative

Jared Colley 00:45:55
work that was getting the attention of other schools. And

Jared Colley 00:45:58
people were asking questions, and people were wanting to know

Jared Colley 00:46:01
more. And a group of people on this campus, led by Bo Adams, I

Jared Colley 00:46:07
know a lot of listeners who are going to probably listen to this

Jared Colley 00:46:10
podcast will know exactly who Bo Adams is. He's had a great

Jared Colley 00:46:13
impact upon the educational community across this country.

Jared Colley 00:46:17
Bo was leading a team of MVI phi Mount Vernon Institute for

Jared Colley 00:46:22
Innovation, and I think it was just born out of we were doing

Jared Colley 00:46:26
interesting things with design thinking. We were doing

Jared Colley 00:46:29
interesting things with just curricular innovation. We were

Jared Colley 00:46:32
doing interesting things with project based learning. We were

Jared Colley 00:46:35
doing interesting things with what we might call expeditionary

Jared Colley 00:46:38
learning, where it doesn't have to happen in the four walls of

Jared Colley 00:46:41
our classrooms, getting kids out into place based learning

Jared Colley 00:46:44
scenarios. And I think a lot of schools were wondering like, how

Jared Colley 00:46:48
are you doing that at scale? And it became very, very obvious to

Jared Colley 00:46:52
us that there's a service that we could provide, but greater

Jared Colley 00:46:55
community of schools. And I think we've always had the

Jared Colley 00:46:58
philosophy that we're not just here to be a school that's

Jared Colley 00:47:01
changing in a way that we know is research based and also best

Jared Colley 00:47:06
for our students. But we want to also change the educational

Jared Colley 00:47:09
landscape beyond our school as well, and we want to have a role

Jared Colley 00:47:12
in that. I know that Atlas wants to have a role in that, that we

Jared Colley 00:47:16
are all probably have a shared vocation, passion and motivation

Jared Colley 00:47:21
to not keep these things to ourselves and not just be the

Jared Colley 00:47:24
innovative school and everybody else is still doing it a more

Jared Colley 00:47:27
traditional way. But how might we transform this so that we

Jared Colley 00:47:31
design a better world? And that is a phrase that we use here at

Jared Colley 00:47:35
Mount Vernon quite often. How might we design a better world?

Jared Colley 00:47:39
It started there, and then we rebranded as NV ventures in

Jared Colley 00:47:43
recent years. And I would say that NV Ventures is really doing

Jared Colley 00:47:48
two or three things, but two things that also sometimes leads

Jared Colley 00:47:52
to a third thing. The first is we're doing research and

Jared Colley 00:47:55
development. And thank you, Kristina, for saying that you've

Jared Colley 00:47:58
enjoyed reading some of our publications. I am the editor of

Jared Colley 00:48:02
our R and D reports that comes out, and so a lot of times that

Jared Colley 00:48:06
means I have the privilege of getting to read research that's

Jared Colley 00:48:10
going on, read other people's synthesis of research as editor,

Jared Colley 00:48:14
and other times I'm the primary writer of some of these reports.

Jared Colley 00:48:18
I wrote one of our reports on it's called Imagine, then, act

Jared Colley 00:48:22
now, futures literacy for learning organizations. A year

Jared Colley 00:48:26
or two ago, I wrote one called a people centered organization,

Jared Colley 00:48:28
living in an AI world. And so those are ones where I got to be

Jared Colley 00:48:32
a primary writer, but I also serve as an editor for other

Jared Colley 00:48:36
researchers and other writers that are a part of our team that

Jared Colley 00:48:38
are doing great work and synthesizing great work that's

Jared Colley 00:48:42
out there, and so that research and development aspect, I think

Jared Colley 00:48:45
one way I would also explain why we think it adds value is that

Jared Colley 00:48:50
most of us, our bandwidth is full, and most of us don't have

Jared Colley 00:48:54
time to go around and synthesize a lot of research and show up at

Jared Colley 00:48:58
meetings and be able to lead a team with confidence and say,

Jared Colley 00:49:02
here's how we need to be thinking about this. So I think

Jared Colley 00:49:05
AI is a great example writing that report about AI. What I

Jared Colley 00:49:08
hope it did is it gave school leaders a document to read with

Jared Colley 00:49:13
a playlist at the end of everything that got cited, so

Jared Colley 00:49:17
that they could have what they need to know to be able to go

Jared Colley 00:49:20
into a meeting and lead with intentionality, lead with

Jared Colley 00:49:23
purpose, but also lead from a informed perspective on

Jared Colley 00:49:27
something that needs to be talked about, but who has the

Jared Colley 00:49:29
bandwidth to do the research. And so that is one service that

Jared Colley 00:49:33
we at MV ventures are trying to provide for the greater

Jared Colley 00:49:36
educational community. I think the second thing that we also do

Jared Colley 00:49:39
is we work with clients, and so we work in a consulting capacity

Jared Colley 00:49:44
around a lot of different issues, whether that's brand

Jared Colley 00:49:46
development, whether that's working on strategy, strategic

Jared Colley 00:49:50
plan, we like to talk about strategic positioning and a

Jared Colley 00:49:52
futures thinking framework, whether that be going to scale

Jared Colley 00:49:54
on transforming your assessment practices, because you want to

Jared Colley 00:49:57
move to a competency based model. So there's a. Lot of

Jared Colley 00:50:00
things that we consult with schools on. And the third thing

Jared Colley 00:50:03
that that sometimes leads to is product development, developing

Jared Colley 00:50:06
our own tools that we often provide for other schools.

Jared Colley 00:50:10
Sometimes it's free, sometimes they cost something. But product

Jared Colley 00:50:13
development is not our primary purpose. It's a bonus outcome of

Jared Colley 00:50:17
that more important work that I think we're doing around

Jared Colley 00:50:20
research synthesis and consulting work to help

Jared Colley 00:50:23
transform schools that perhaps need a little bit of support in

Jared Colley 00:50:27
doing that. Do

Christina Lewellen 00:50:28
you have an example of a product that you've

Christina Lewellen 00:50:31
developed? I mean, like aI chat bots or, like, what kind of

Christina Lewellen 00:50:34
product as an example? I

Jared Colley 00:50:36
could give several, but I'll stick to one.

Jared Colley 00:50:38
A while back, we did a product that's called it's a design

Jared Colley 00:50:42
thinking Field Guide to borrow from Harvard's Project Zero.

Jared Colley 00:50:45
It's kind of like visible thinking routines that help a

Jared Colley 00:50:49
team do more intentional outcomes focused design thinking

Jared Colley 00:50:53
work. But I share that product as well, because now we have a

Jared Colley 00:50:56
design thinking Field Guide for littles, because at first like,

Jared Colley 00:51:00
oh, adults can do design thinking. But what we quickly

Jared Colley 00:51:03
started using this resource for, and a lot of other schools are

Jared Colley 00:51:05
using it for, is they're having students use this resource and

Jared Colley 00:51:08
use these tools in their classes. It helps scaffold them

Jared Colley 00:51:12
on giving better feedback and peer to peer feedback with

Jared Colley 00:51:15
certain thinking routines. It helps them and their design

Jared Colley 00:51:18
process and their iteration process and whatever project

Jared Colley 00:51:21
they working on. And so not only are adults using that field

Jared Colley 00:51:25
guide, so are students, but it became evidently clear we need

Jared Colley 00:51:29
one for littles. And so a recent product that we developed is our

Jared Colley 00:51:32
design thinking Field Guide for littles. And so the language and

Jared Colley 00:51:37
the complexity of the tools are developmentally appropriate for

Jared Colley 00:51:42
that age group. And again, it's also another example of us

Jared Colley 00:51:45
having a continuity of building capacity around a skill that we

Jared Colley 00:51:48
think is important at Mount Vernon, from the little ones all

Jared Colley 00:51:52
the way to the adults. And to borrow a quote from our former

Jared Colley 00:51:56
Director of Innovation diploma, Brad droke, age does not equal

Jared Colley 00:52:00
capacity. And littles can do great work. Middle schoolers can

Jared Colley 00:52:04
do amazing work. High schoolers can do amazing work, just like

Jared Colley 00:52:08
we adults. That's

Christina Lewellen 00:52:10
really cool. What a full circle kind of

Christina Lewellen 00:52:12
conversation we've been having here today. I love it. You put a

Christina Lewellen 00:52:16
lot more research and deep thinking around where we started

Christina Lewellen 00:52:20
this conversation, but it's been really, really insightful. You

Christina Lewellen 00:52:23
know, as we kind of wrap up here, I do have just a couple

Christina Lewellen 00:52:27
questions for you. What are you reading and thinking about right

Christina Lewellen 00:52:30
now, in your own world, what's interesting you or capturing

Christina Lewellen 00:52:32
your attention?

Jared Colley 00:52:34
I'm reading two things right now. One has to do

Jared Colley 00:52:37
with some research that we're doing, which is, I'm reading a

Jared Colley 00:52:40
lot about how do we put into place, from a systems thinking

Jared Colley 00:52:44
point of view, programs that lead to professional growth that

Jared Colley 00:52:48
is personalized, that is customizable, but is also

Jared Colley 00:52:52
mission aligned, and is also ensuring equity and growth for

Jared Colley 00:52:56
everyone, and providing pathways for growth that lead to greater

Jared Colley 00:53:00
opportunity. So we've developed, for instance, our own system of

Jared Colley 00:53:04
competencies for faculty and our system of competencies for

Jared Colley 00:53:08
administrative leaders. And what does a systemic approach to

Jared Colley 00:53:14
improvement for every individual in your organization? What does

Jared Colley 00:53:18
that look like? And how can you do that at scale? And how can

Jared Colley 00:53:21
you do that at scale again, in this context where what does it

Jared Colley 00:53:24
mean to improve? And we don't know what schools look like in

Jared Colley 00:53:26
10 years, and so that's one area that I'm doing a lot of reading,

Jared Colley 00:53:30
and another area that I'm doing a lot of research right now is,

Jared Colley 00:53:33
I think it's very important that we don't forget about the fact

Jared Colley 00:53:37
that we need to build ecological literacy and competencies, and

Jared Colley 00:53:42
to our students and to our staff and to our organizations. And so

Jared Colley 00:53:46
I'm also reading a lot of literature around like, what do

Jared Colley 00:53:50
we need to get skillful at to handle the wicked problems that

Jared Colley 00:53:55
extreme weather events, that climate change, that depletion

Jared Colley 00:54:00
of resources are going to be presenting, not just to us, but

Jared Colley 00:54:04
really to our next generation of learners. And it's not up to

Jared Colley 00:54:08
them to solve it. It's up for us to start thinking about that now

Jared Colley 00:54:12
and to start building the frameworks that provide a vision

Jared Colley 00:54:16
of what those competencies and skills look like. And so again,

Jared Colley 00:54:20
getting back to collective intelligence, there's the human

Jared Colley 00:54:24
and human centered design is really important. There's the

Jared Colley 00:54:27
technology, and the technology as a thought partner and an

Jared Colley 00:54:30
augmenter and a modifier is important. And there is nature.

Jared Colley 00:54:35
And we also need to be thinking about the more than human world

Jared Colley 00:54:38
and the more than human centered design perspectives that are

Jared Colley 00:54:42
really important right now. That's my long winded answer to

Jared Colley 00:54:46
say. I'm reading a lot of books about that stuff.

Christina Lewellen 00:54:49
I love it. And will we see you at the Atlas

Christina Lewellen 00:54:52
conference coming up in a couple of months?

Jared Colley 00:54:54
You're gonna be in my hometown. I will be here, and

Jared Colley 00:54:57
I think I'm doing a session with two great friends. This

Jared Colley 00:55:00
organization, Vinnie rotney And Matt school, that's a good one

Jared Colley 00:55:03
can't miss. Yes, please come visit with us, even if you don't

Jared Colley 00:55:07
come to our session. Let's talk. Let's talk in the hallways. But

Jared Colley 00:55:10
also just, I want to just say thank you. We've had a couple

Jared Colley 00:55:13
students that are have been invited to be on a panel this

Jared Colley 00:55:16
year at the Atlas conference here in Atlanta, and I am so

Jared Colley 00:55:19
excited that all of you are going to get to see and hear

Jared Colley 00:55:24
from our Mount Vernon students and how they're thinking about a

Jared Colley 00:55:28
lot of these things.

Christina Lewellen 00:55:29
I know I'm really excited. I'm glad you

Christina Lewellen 00:55:31
brought that up last year. Dr Paul Turnbull, from the Mid

Christina Lewellen 00:55:34
Pacific school out in Hawaii, pulled me aside on the final

Christina Lewellen 00:55:38
morning and said, you know, Kristina, this conference is

Christina Lewellen 00:55:41
just so cool. We've got to get students here, and we found a

Christina Lewellen 00:55:44
few different ways to honor and recognize and elevate our

Christina Lewellen 00:55:48
students voices. So I'm really looking forward to that. So

Christina Lewellen 00:55:51
thank you for being a facilitator in all of that.

Christina Lewellen 00:55:53
Yeah, well,

Bill Stites 00:55:54
thank you judge. The one thing I want to say is

Bill Stites 00:55:56
good luck with both Vinnie and Matt. You're gonna need to be on

Bill Stites 00:56:01
your A game to keep the two of them focused and going in the

Bill Stites 00:56:04
right direction. But the one thing I honestly want to do, I

Bill Stites 00:56:07
was joking in the chat, you know, I said to Kristina in the

Bill Stites 00:56:10
back end here that my head is about to explode after this

Bill Stites 00:56:13
conversation in all of the best ways, right? And I've been

Bill Stites 00:56:18
watching and I'm challenging Peter Frank, who is our

Bill Stites 00:56:21
producer, who's been filling in all of the show notes with every

Bill Stites 00:56:25
reference. I'm sitting here, I'm taking notes, I'm googling

Bill Stites 00:56:28
stuff. I'm like, what was that? What did he just say? So I want

Bill Stites 00:56:30
to thank you for what was truly a mind expanding conversation,

Bill Stites 00:56:36
as you said, a lot of deep thinking, a lot of really good

Bill Stites 00:56:39
stuff that I'm gonna have to go back to. I said, before you came

Bill Stites 00:56:42
on, you know, I was re listening to some of our recent episodes,

Bill Stites 00:56:45
and I'm gonna have to give this one another listen, because

Bill Stites 00:56:47
there's a lot of great stuff here, and I think everyone's

Bill Stites 00:56:49
gonna get a lot out of it. So thank you,

Unknown 00:56:51
100% Absolutely. Thank

Jared Colley 00:56:53
you, Bill, yeah,

Christina Lewellen 00:56:54
thank you for challenging us. This was

Christina Lewellen 00:56:56
wonderful. Jared, thank you for your time.

Peter Frank 00:57:00
This has been talking technology with Atlas,

Peter Frank 00:57:03
produced by the Association of Technology Leaders in

Peter Frank 00:57:05
Independent Schools. For more information about Atlas and

Peter Frank 00:57:09
Atlas membership, please visit the atlas.org if you enjoyed

Peter Frank 00:57:13
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Peter Frank 00:57:16
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Peter Frank 00:57:19
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