Developing ATLIS's New Certification: Meet the Volunteers Behind the TLIS

Narrator 00:02
Welcome to Talking Technology with ATLIS, the show that plugs you into the important topics and trends for technology leaders all through a unique Independent School lens. We'll hear stories from technology directors and other special guests from the Independent School community and provide you will focus learning and deep dive topics. And now please welcome your host, Christina Lewellen.

Christina Lewellen 00:25
All right, everybody. Hello, and welcome back to Talking Technology with ATLIS. I'm Christina, the executive director of the Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools. And we are recording a podcast live from the 2024 annual conference, my co host had to rush off to fulfill their presenting duties. So it's just me on stage, but I am joined by my co worker, a voice that you may find some familiar if you're a regular listener of the podcast, I'm with Peter Frank.

Peter Frank 00:55
Thank you. Yeah, I'm the Senior Director of certification and operations at ATLIS and the ATLIS certification Council, and you may know me from welcome to Talking technology.

Christina Lewellen 01:06
Exactly, exactly. Now that voice has been connected to a face. I'm going to ask our panelists here who have joined us for the podcast to introduce themselves. You guys have all been involved in the creation of the new technology leaders in independent school certification, say hello, and introduce yourself so that our listeners can get used to your voice.

Matt Norko 01:25
Hi, I'm Matt Norko. I'm the Director of Information education technology at Derby Academy outside of Boston. Glad to be here.

Shandor Simon 01:33
I’m Shondor Simon, Director of Technology at Beaver Country Day School just outside of Boston.

Heather Ramsey 01:38
And I'm Heather Ramsey, Director of Educational Technology at The Fletcher School in Charlotte.

Christina Lewellen 01:42
Thank you guys for being here. Now. When did you first hear about this certification program? Were you in the audience last year in Grand Rapids and thought, oh, I want to be involved in that. Is it something that you kind of explored once you got home? I know you didn't know exactly what you were getting into. But why did you decide to get involved?

Heather Ramsey 02:01
I saw the emails coming out. Unfortunately, it was not in Grand Rapids last year. But I saw the emails coming out. And I was like, this is really cool. Like I can kind of see where this is going and where the power in it is. So I reached out to be involved.

Shandor Simon 02:13
Yeah, I was in Grand Rapids. And earlier in my career, I got a lot of technical certifications. And so I sort of saw the other side of the process. And I saw the value of going through the process. So I thought it would be interesting to experience the other side.

Matt Norko 02:29
I was also in Grand Rapids. And I remember being in the audience when you announced this. And you also said, if you're interested in helping go to our website, it's live and fill out the form. And I think before you finished the sentence, I put in my Yeah,

Christina Lewellen 02:44
you should the whole thing blew up. Like we had a lot of emails before I even got off the stage. Yes, you are definitely one of the first, Matt

Peter, can you tell us a little bit about how this year has unfolded? In other words, there were a lot of steps and starting a certification program from scratch, especially one that we would co design with our community. It was not like ATLIS went off into a closet and created this alone. So can you walk our listeners through just take a few minutes and tell us how this all went down?

Peter Frank 03:15
Sure, yeah, we definitely wanted it to be from the people who do this. I mean, who better to create the certification for tech leaders and independent schools than people who do that? That was very important to us. We did bring in a consultant, they turned out to be just a incredible partner to us. They really know what they're doing. And taking we who just have not done something like this before, whether it's staff have a staff or whether it's the volunteers, they really directed us well, and taught us and lead us really well. So and they made us feel very comfortable about the outcome here. I think. So yeah, reaching out to the volunteers. And that process was interesting, because we didn't, we just kind of said who wants to help and anyone who said they wanted to help, we said, Sure, join us. And we got a really diverse group of voices from that.

So they walked us through first just discussing the role figuring out so what did these people do? What about independent schools makes it unique. And we had this huge, long list of tasks and objectives that we need to follow. And we organized it into four domains, and put the objectives beneath each. And then with that, we had to learn how to write test questions and test items, as we call them. So they taught us how to develop items. And there was a ton more conversation about best practices. And is this really the right thing to do? And again, the diversity within the group was a huge help, just some amazing conversations. I got lost many times as I listened to them talk about it.

But in the end, all those conversations made us feel all of a stronger about that this exam really does tests. Do you have the right experience? Do you have the right competencies to be a great tech leader? So at an independent school, so we did all that we developed the exam, and now we're here we've launched the exam.

We've got about 32 people taking Good this spring right now, some people have already taken it, the feedback has all been really positive so far. So we're happy about that. And the volunteers, I think you're enjoying being here and getting the same feedback, I hope. There's a lot to be proud of there. So I

Christina Lewellen 05:12
want to pause on the fact that you were a very diverse group of experts, subject matter experts. When you think back to you know, we locked you off in a room and you were learning how to write test questions. What were for each of you, what were some of the topics that you specifically felt like you contributed the most in terms of writing questions? What was your area of expertise that you sort of dove into when it came to all right now pen to paper, we need to write questions, what were your areas that you really focused on? For

Matt Norko 05:45
me, I focused a lot on the systems implementation questions, and a lot of the data governance or just the governance questions, that whole domain was really important to me. So I enjoyed writing those items. There

Shandor Simon 05:56
were a couple but for me, the one that sort of sticks out was trying to tackle diversity, equity and inclusion, and figure out how that could be a question and included an A.

Heather Ramsey 06:07
And for me, it was the teaching and learning and professional development.

Christina Lewellen 06:11
It's really incredible that we brought together this group of experts that had all this background, Were there times where, you know, obviously, we can't give away specific aspects of the exam. But were there times when you were either validating the domains or writing questions, or even to the point where you're writing justifications for questions and their correct answers, that you are learning a lot about areas that you might not have been as strong in. For me,

Heather Ramsey 06:38
definitely, I did not come to the table with as much of the IT background, but I did challenge myself to look at some of those areas and write some of those questions in collaboration with others from the group. I really learned a lot. It made me question a lot of things that I'm doing at my school that I needed to go back and look at, and I was able to make some changes there. That's awesome.

Shandor Simon 06:59
I see. I found it interesting. I learned some new jargon along the way that like wrong answers aren't wrong answers. They're distractors. Yeah, and I thought it was really interesting, like on some of the questions I was working on, my distractors were, some people thought were right. And it was because I hadn't really thought the question all the way through, and had to be a lot clearer on it. So I wasn't actually one of the domains of knowledge, but more about the processes so that I had that experience. But yeah,

Matt Norko 07:31
Shandor, that was tough work. Yeah. And I think going through this experience, obviously, having such great minds to work with was constantly learning different things about things that I thought I had a good answer for. And it was really great to hear the different perspectives from other folks on the team. But I sort of approached the whole thing as a PD opportunity. And it was as if you had 24/7 access to some great minds to work through these questions and how you would solve these problems at independent schools.

Christina Lewellen 07:59
One of the things that you guys had to wrestle in the beginning, was the definition of a qualified candidate. Are you more comfortable? Now that was quite an arm wrestle a mental wrestle? To get to the definition of what exactly were we trying to test and certify here? So tell us a little bit about where we landed on the idea of a qualified candidate? Yeah,

Peter Frank 08:20
we'll talk a little bit about that process. So it involves what are things that we're not going to ask about that we're just assuming this person must already know, like, things that they already know, we had to identify those things. So we knew not to spend time focusing on that. And then we also had to talk about what are things that just is not related to this specific certification that we don't need to ask about that, as well. And you all could probably give some actual examples of that sort of thing. But it was interesting to hone in on for this exam, specifically, what exactly does someone need to know coming in and what and then go, it's that spot just above it where they need to know about this, some people may not be there yet. But they should already have these things in mind these competencies in mind to be able to pass the exam, we didn't want to make it too hard either. Right? So it was a bit of a honing in on a specific range there.

Christina Lewellen 09:10
We've spent a lot of time talking about how this exam was framed up. And now it's out in the wild. And of course, there is a next step, which is that we have to kind of validate, I'm going to ask Peter to tell us a little bit about what happens next, there's 32 people taking the exam. And there is a little bit more of this process that the ATLIS certification Council on which all of you serve, you're gonna have to go through some more process in wrestling. So I'm gonna ask Peter to give us a little bit of information about that. But in the way of a heads up, as you start thinking about your answer. My big question is, what do you hope this accomplishes? Like, what do you think the impact on the market will be? So Peter, tell us what happens next for the 32 people who sat for the exam?

Peter Frank 09:54
Sure. So once we get all the results, like we're confident in all these items, but we develop more than we needed. We want this to be a 100 question exam, multiple choice. But we needed more. Because as much as we think this item is really good, the distractors are good. The correct response is obvious. Once you know it, it's inevitable, there might be some items that are on this test that just no one is getting right, or everyone's being confused by them. That's why the current test takers, it's actually even a little more challenging, because they've actually been given 122 items to get through. But everyone's been handling that really great. And in the end, we're gonna look at all the items and just see were there any duds, were there any items that were super confusing, or no one's getting this right. And we'll know that we can eliminate those. I mean, hopefully, we have just a lot of extra items that we can mix in and throw around. So that's the next step, it's going to take a couple of months. And then this summer, we'll be announcing who the people taking the exam. Now, we're still going to have a legit, to this certification. When all is said and done, we have to establish the final qualifying score. And then we'll know who passed and we'll let the world now and that'll be really exciting time. It's great. So

Christina Lewellen 11:01
to the next question, then, what is the hope and dream of this? I mean, obviously, it was a lot of work, you all gave up a lot of your time and talents and expertise to get this across the finish line. What do you hope the tea list comes to represent in our space? I

Matt Norko 11:17
shared this story yesterday at our info session. And to me, this was like a really validating moment. But I had a conversation with a friend who's a head of school, and was hiring for a director technology position. And he has an academic background. And he said to me, if this was an English position, I would know what to look for. Right? Because it's a tech position. I don't know what to look for. And this is really challenging for me. And so to be able to have those letters behind your name, to give that head of school, the understanding that that you have the understanding to do the job, I think is the ultimate goal of this program. And to me like that was a personally validating moment, because I could tell him that like in a few months, you will know the answer to that. Yeah, exactly. It's

Christina Lewellen 11:53
coming. For

Heather Ramsey 11:54
me kind of along the same vein, I hope that by the end of this conference this week that people here, those of us that are members will recognize and know. But then taking it one step further to other independent school organizations like NBOA and NAIS. And everybody else in them starting to see it and say, Oh, well, you know, I really do recognize that that's an important piece. And I know that this person knows what they're doing.

Shandor Simon 12:22
I obviously echo the hiring thing, I was on a search once, and the head of school told me I have no idea how to judge, if you know what you're talking about. I can tell you if I want to work with you as a person, but not if you're qualified. So there's that angle of it. But I think also for the recipient of it, or actually the candidate, it reminds you that the job is really broad. And there are all these domains. And we all have strengths in some of them, and probably not all of them. So just even in looking at that handbook, it gives us a roadmap of Oh, yeah, I really should probably focus a little more on this area. And that's useful for elevating our practice.

Christina Lewellen 13:04
Absolutely. Peter, can you tell us a little bit about what's coming up, describe what the handbook is that Shandor was just talking about. But also we did announced this morning live at the conference. For those who weren't here, we're gonna run a prep program.

Peter Frank 13:17
Our goal for the candidate handbook was to serve as a one single source, every possible question you can have about this exam, we want to get it in the handbook. And I think we did a really great job with the first version. and immediately we I already have pages of notes about we have to add this, we have to add this. And we will do that. But it really is meant to be a resource. One of the most valuable parts of it is the sample items. We actually we asked a lot of our volunteers, yeah, they worked really, really hard just to get to develop the exam and write all these items. And then we came right back soon after and said we need more items, because we need sample items. And they put just as much work into those as they did the 122 that were testing right now. And we're really appreciative of that. Because that's a key part of that handbook with all the information about applying and different policies we have the sample items really give you a strong sense of should I be taking this exam? Was this appropriate for me or not?

Christina Lewellen 14:14
And the program this summer, the

Peter Frank 14:16
program this summer, we're super excited. It's a practitioners exam. It's not about reading a specific book and memorizing facts from that. And then repeating that that's not what this exam is. It's really do you have the right experience? And have you been keeping up with all the current best practices? So the prep program this summer, it's the last weekend in July, you can sign up for it now on the ATLIS website. It's going to be in Phoenix. And we're gonna get people together with facilitators, likely volunteers, maybe some people on the stage, and we're gonna go through how to prepare for the exam. What preparing for the exam itself is like it's an online exam again. So what did the screens kind of look like and what can you click around and all that stuff? And then we're going to just focus on those four domains, the objectives The defeat and have a lot of I'm sure I will get lost many, many times again, in those conversations, we'll be talking about best practices. And what we need to know. So we're super excited about having that resource to offer to people to our ATLIS members and non members as well. Yeah,

Christina Lewellen 15:13
and I want to just publicly thank you, for all of our listeners, Peter Frank has been shepherding this program since the idea was born. So thank you so much for all of your hard work. It really has been incredible to watch. Before I let you guys go off the stage to head back to the sessions that I'm making you miss at the moment, can you just take a moment and speak to someone who's listening? Who might be a little bit nervous about sitting for the TLIS or even diving into this? Maybe even asking their head or their supervisor for permission to take it and perhaps financial and time resource support to take it? What are your words of encouragement for people who might be on the fence but are curious

Heather Ramsey 15:54
about the TLIS? I would say, for me, it would be to trust yourself. That's a conversation that we had in the woman power hour yesterday. And something that I often grapple with is that I just don't trust myself. And I look around the room and I say, Well, I'm not the person for this. But after going through the process, and getting the information, looking at the information, like okay, I do know more than I give myself credit for. So trust yourself and study in, give it a try and see what happens. Yeah,

Shandor Simon 16:25
I echo that I definitely have worked myself into a tizzy before taking,

Christina Lewellen 16:31
or you seem so still, I don't think of you as a tizzy person. And

Shandor Simon 16:35
like, what's the worst that could happen? Right, you have some growth you need to do to be able to pass that exam, and you'll probably have a pretty good idea on what it was. And so you can learn and become better at your job. So like, even the worst outcome is positive, it gives you feedback, and much more likely, you're just working on that confidence issue. And you're going to pass so like, work through the handbook, look at the sample questions, go through it. And if you're on the fence, like Oh, I think I might be just go for it. You know, like, if you go through that sample thing, and you're like, oh, I don't want any of this stuff for large domains, well, then probably not. But like, if you're on that bubble, have confidence, give it a shot. And like I said, What's the worst that can happen? You learn an area you can grow in? I

Christina Lewellen 17:28
love that. That's a really great advice. Yeah. And I mean, obviously, I

Matt Norko 17:31
would echo what these guys have said, I think obviously, this exam, the certification has a natural path for somebody who's in an early career, and maybe is looking to advance. But also, I think, as we've said, in our info sessions, like this is a great way to demonstrate your value to your school. And even if you're in a job where you plan to stay, having these letters after your name does demonstrate to your leadership to your community, that you have the knowledge, you have this background that is bringing value to your

Christina Lewellen 17:59
community. Thank you all, first of all, for joining me this morning. But also for being such incredible ambassadors for this new fledgling program. We're really proud of it. I think that we're gonna see more and more energy around it. But you guys were very brave trailblazers. So I want to thank you.

Peter Frank 18:16
Just three things. First of all, while we've been sitting here, we did get a question submitted from the audience from a Hiram Abbott and a William Abbott. Is it part of the TLIS prep? Is there anything to help us prepare for a zombie apocalypse? They asked.

Christina Lewellen 18:31
Okay, so look, even though Hiram and Bill are not hosting this podcast, they still live through you, how much did they pay you to ask me that question?

Peter Frank 18:38
I mean, I'm just taking the questions.

Christina Lewellen 18:41
You know, I think you might be fired. But go ahead. What's your next question for

Peter Frank 18:44
the 20 of the time? Second, I just wanted to thank you, Christina, for the opportunity to shepherd this man is this, like you said, it's been a huge growth experience for myself. And I really value your confidence and trust in that.

And finally, I just want to thank all the volunteers. I'll never stop thanking you probably for a long, long time for being the first to jump in and say, Yeah, I'll help with that. And then the amount of passion that they put in just to get it right, like you all just wanted, it writes, you know, and you it was so obvious throughout the process, and we are just so blown away by the certification, where it is today. We thought it would take a lot longer to get here. Yeah. And thanks to you all, we're here. And it's here. And it's real. So thank you.

Shandor Simon 19:26
I'd like also to just chime in, as a volunteer, you make it sound like it was a lot of work. And it was a lot of work. But it was a great opportunity and getting to work with other volunteers and talk about what we all do. You know, I learned things. And it was an amazing process to be part of. So thank you.

Christina Lewellen 19:46
Yes, you're welcome. Matt, Shandor, Heather, thank you guys so much for joining us. This has been another episode of Talking Technology with ATLIS. Join us next time.

Peter Frank 19:53
That’s my line.

Christina Lewellen 19:56
That is your line.

Narrator 20:01
This has been Talking Technology with ATLIS, produced by the Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools. For more information about ATLIS and ATLIS membership, please visit the atlis.org If you enjoyed this discussion, please subscribe, leave a review and share this podcast with your colleagues in the independent school community. Thank you for listening.