Dominic Salerno on Intentional Tech & Career Growth
Dominic Salerno, IT administrator at St. Bernard's School, discusses his journey into ed tech, highlighting the value of traditional teaching methods alongside technology. He shares insights on St. Bernard's philosophy of cautious tech adoption and how his involvement with the ATLIS Leadership Institute (ALI) and Technology Leaders in Independent Schools (TLIS) certification has shaped his professional growth and confidence in the field.
Resources
Transcript
Peter Frank 00:00:02
Nick welcome to Talking technology with Atlas,
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 00:00:22
Everyone this is talking technology with Atlas. My name
Peter Frank 00:00:24
is Peter Frank. I'm the Senior Director of certification and
Peter Frank 00:00:29
operations for Atlas.
Bill Stites 00:00:31
And I am Bill Stites, the Director of
Bill Stites 00:00:33
Technology at Montclair Kimberly Academy.
Hiram Cuevas 00:00:37
And I'm Hiram Cuevas, Director of Information
Hiram Cuevas 00:00:39
Systems and Academic Technology at St Christopher school in
Hiram Cuevas 00:00:42
Richmond, Virginia. Welcome
Peter Frank 00:00:44
guys. So we're on a short week. We had a holiday
Peter Frank 00:00:46
this week, Memorial Day. I hope you all had a good time, and we
Peter Frank 00:00:50
were talking about vacation spots. Curious, do you guys have
Peter Frank 00:00:56
a place you all like to go? Probably not for something like
Peter Frank 00:00:59
Memorial Day. But is there like a retreat, like a thing you like
Peter Frank 00:01:02
to do when it's like, Okay, I just need a break. I need to get
Peter Frank 00:01:05
away. Do you have any sort of off the radar place you like to
Peter Frank 00:01:08
go to get a break? I
Bill Stites 00:01:11
wouldn't say off the radar, but what I would say
Bill Stites 00:01:14
is off the normal track of when you would go. I like going to
Bill Stites 00:01:20
shore towns, beach towns off season, when there is no one
Bill Stites 00:01:25
there, or a limited number of people there, maybe there's even
Bill Stites 00:01:28
limited things open. I don't really even mind that. It's
Bill Stites 00:01:31
like, you want to hit those places that all the people that
Bill Stites 00:01:34
live there year round go, because, you know, those are the
Bill Stites 00:01:37
places that know. They know what's going on. They're there
Bill Stites 00:01:40
for everybody year round. They're not just there for the
Bill Stites 00:01:43
peak season. So one of the places that my wife and I
Bill Stites 00:01:46
actually went last fall, late fall, was up to Algonquin main
Bill Stites 00:01:52
and I say that because ogunqua is hopping in season. But when
Bill Stites 00:01:57
you get into those cooler fall months and you get up to Maine,
Bill Stites 00:02:01
you're definitely not sticking your feet the water, that's for
Bill Stites 00:02:04
sure, right? You walk around and you know, you notice not all the
Bill Stites 00:02:08
hotels are open, not all the B and Bs are open, but there's
Bill Stites 00:02:11
just something about being in a place like that, where it's a
Bill Stites 00:02:14
little calmer, it's a little easier. I grew up down the
Bill Stites 00:02:17
Jersey Shore in the summers, and my favorite month down the
Bill Stites 00:02:20
Jersey Shore is late September, early October. If you could put
Bill Stites 00:02:25
me down there at any point, that's when I'm going for
Hiram Cuevas 00:02:28
me, it's anything that has to do with trails,
Hiram Cuevas 00:02:30
whether it's in the mountains or in the desert, like last summer
Hiram Cuevas 00:02:33
in Arizona, my wife and I love hiking. You put me out on
Hiram Cuevas 00:02:38
trails. As a former cross country runner, I can go for
Hiram Cuevas 00:02:41
miles and miles and miles, and I don't need to see anybody other
Hiram Cuevas 00:02:45
than my bride. And it's just a great way to reconnect with
Hiram Cuevas 00:02:50
what's important, look around and take in all of the nature
Hiram Cuevas 00:02:54
and the wonder. That's a great way to clear the mind.
Hiram Cuevas 00:02:58
Beautiful.
Peter Frank 00:02:59
I love that part of the reason I ask is I don't have
Peter Frank 00:03:02
a go to place like that, so I'm taking suggestions. There's
Peter Frank 00:03:06
always
Hiram Cuevas 00:03:06
the at here in Virginia. It goes all the way up
Hiram Cuevas 00:03:10
from Georgia to Maine, so you can pick up a trail anywhere
Hiram Cuevas 00:03:13
along the way,
Peter Frank 00:03:14
right the Appalachian Trail. Which people
Peter Frank 00:03:17
do? Have you ever done the whole thing?
Hiram Cuevas 00:03:19
No, no, no, no, no, that's a major commitment.
Hiram Cuevas 00:03:22
How long
Peter Frank 00:03:23
typically, what would you prepare for to do the
Peter Frank 00:03:25
whole thing? I don't think I could be working. I'd have to be
Peter Frank 00:03:29
retired, right? Most likely that challenges me, the no showers. I
Peter Frank 00:03:35
know there's stations along the way and all that kind of stuff,
Peter Frank 00:03:37
but it's not even the food or the exercise which also
Peter Frank 00:03:39
challenges me. But none of it, as much as the no showers would
Peter Frank 00:03:43
get to me,
Hiram Cuevas 00:03:44
especially if it's in the summertime when it's
Hiram Cuevas 00:03:46
exceptionally humid, right?
Peter Frank 00:03:49
Well, our guest has been waiting patiently. We are
Peter Frank 00:03:52
super happy to have him. He is the Information Technology
Peter Frank 00:03:55
administrator at St Bernard school in New York City, and he
Peter Frank 00:04:00
is Dominic Salerno, welcome, Dominic. How are you? Thank
Dominic Salerno 00:04:03
you for having me here. It's been good.
Peter Frank 00:04:05
Absolutely thanks for being here to just help us
Peter Frank 00:04:09
get started. Dominic, we talk about how every technology
Peter Frank 00:04:12
leader has their own origin story, and there are often
Peter Frank 00:04:16
similar themes, but there's always unique aspects to you
Peter Frank 00:04:19
know how someone became a independent school technology
Peter Frank 00:04:23
leader, since there isn't really any sort of bachelor's degree or
Peter Frank 00:04:27
formal program to prepare you, so what's your story of how you
Peter Frank 00:04:30
became a indie school technology leader?
Dominic Salerno 00:04:33
I kind of fell into it. It wasn't like an
Dominic Salerno 00:04:35
intentional move, sure. Maybe similar to you. Bill, like I was
Dominic Salerno 00:04:40
an artist. I don't say I am an artist. I know some people
Dominic Salerno 00:04:43
correct me when they're artists like, you never stop being I
Dominic Salerno 00:04:45
feel like there was a time where it ended and I wasn't really
Dominic Salerno 00:04:49
doing that well as an artist. And I was also working in
Dominic Salerno 00:04:52
nonprofit, so Joe, I was doing technology for that organization
Dominic Salerno 00:04:57
as a kind of like a side hustle. Yeah, and then as time went by,
Dominic Salerno 00:05:02
I needed to kind of pick up my career game. I met my wife, got
Dominic Salerno 00:05:07
married, and I'm like, I'm pretty sure she wants a husband
Dominic Salerno 00:05:09
who could actually make a living. And one of the things
Dominic Salerno 00:05:14
was I got into the Department of Education. They used to do
Dominic Salerno 00:05:19
outsource and contract companies to do service at the schools,
Dominic Salerno 00:05:23
and I was one of those guys for about less than a year, and I
Dominic Salerno 00:05:26
had met someone during that time that was a director at an
Dominic Salerno 00:05:30
independent school, and he offered me an opportunity for a
Dominic Salerno 00:05:35
job. I took it, and I started working in independent schools,
Dominic Salerno 00:05:38
and then I realized, man, I really love this gig. This is
Dominic Salerno 00:05:41
something I want to keep doing. So I've been, pretty much since
Dominic Salerno 00:05:46
2015 been working in independent schools, various different
Dominic Salerno 00:05:49
schools, over the years, but currently st Bernards,
Peter Frank 00:05:52
and it's st Bernard's. I said St Bernard
Peter Frank 00:05:54
like the way we talk about the dog.
Dominic Salerno 00:05:56
Yeah, they pronounced it the British way,
Dominic Salerno 00:05:58
okay. But yet, we do have a mascot, and we call it the Saint
Dominic Salerno 00:06:02
Bernard, yeah, figure that out. All right. And we also have an
Dominic Salerno 00:06:08
alligator, but it's not the mascot on pictures or anything,
Dominic Salerno 00:06:14
but there is an alligator and it's associated with the school.
Dominic Salerno 00:06:18
Wow.
Peter Frank 00:06:18
All right, that's a lot. I feel like if I let you
Peter Frank 00:06:21
keep talking, it just get weirder and weirder. That's
Peter Frank 00:06:23
fantastic.
Dominic Salerno 00:06:24
We're an interesting community. It's fun.
Dominic Salerno 00:06:26
I love them. Yeah, it sounds like it. It's
Hiram Cuevas 00:06:29
Catholic school too, right? No. Oh,
Dominic Salerno 00:06:32
so it's Anglican. It does have religious
Dominic Salerno 00:06:35
roots in the name, but no, we're not a religious school at all.
Dominic Salerno 00:06:39
I'm
Peter Frank 00:06:40
curious with your artist background, and as much
Peter Frank 00:06:43
as we talk about technology being so ones and zeros, have
Peter Frank 00:06:47
you ever had a moment in your role as a technology leader
Peter Frank 00:06:51
where you thought, oh, kind of like art? Has there ever been a
Peter Frank 00:06:55
moment where it's called back to that? I
Dominic Salerno 00:06:57
kind of had an epiphany moment, maybe like a
Dominic Salerno 00:06:59
few months back, I was talking with my director, and he was
Dominic Salerno 00:07:03
saying, when he processes a problem, he always works from A
Dominic Salerno 00:07:07
to B to C to D. And I told him, I do not think that way, and we
Dominic Salerno 00:07:12
have like, a back and forth about it. I'm like, I go from A
Dominic Salerno 00:07:15
to D to figure out how B got to C to D, right? Artists just
Dominic Salerno 00:07:20
don't think linearly. They just, you're in a cloud, and you kind
Dominic Salerno 00:07:23
of just bounce around till you get to where you need to be. You
Dominic Salerno 00:07:25
know, Dominic,
Bill Stites 00:07:27
one of the things that I think about is when I was
Bill Stites 00:07:30
taking my art classes, couple of the areas where, again, it's
Bill Stites 00:07:33
been 30 plus years, and ironically, I ran into my photo
Bill Stites 00:07:36
teacher coming out of a hardware store in town from 31 years ago,
Bill Stites 00:07:40
and we started chatting. It was hilarious. But the things that
Bill Stites 00:07:44
were still resonate to me is like, from a tech perspective,
Bill Stites 00:07:47
designing our portals, looking at how you do layout, how you
Bill Stites 00:07:51
look at color choices, how you look at arranging the page. So I
Bill Stites 00:07:56
mean, it's not the fine arts, it's not the painting, it's not
Bill Stites 00:07:59
the drawing, which is what I'd like to focus on when I was
Bill Stites 00:08:02
doing that kind of work. But I think definitely that artist's
Bill Stites 00:08:06
eye, when you start looking at the way in which we present
Bill Stites 00:08:09
different things, and even more so, and my team gives me grief
Bill Stites 00:08:13
over when I'm trying to create the one pager for explaining
Bill Stites 00:08:18
something. You know, it's never necessarily one page, but when
Bill Stites 00:08:21
you're trying to simplify those things down and organize that
Bill Stites 00:08:25
page so you don't have a page that scrolls forever, how do you
Bill Stites 00:08:29
condense it? How do you lay it out? That's where it hits for me
Bill Stites 00:08:32
when I think about that background.
Dominic Salerno 00:08:35
Yeah, I've had my creative moments. There was
Dominic Salerno 00:08:38
one year where they needed an associate art teacher to help
Dominic Salerno 00:08:42
with the head of the class. And I did do that. So it was one
Dominic Salerno 00:08:45
year in our teacher.
Peter Frank 00:08:47
Oh, nice. That's fantastic.
Dominic Salerno 00:08:49
That was a learning experience, because it
Dominic Salerno 00:08:51
gave me some insight into the classroom structure that I
Dominic Salerno 00:08:53
didn't really fully have from the outside as it and then I do
Dominic Salerno 00:08:58
help with some of the classes for the technology side now,
Dominic Salerno 00:09:01
like, I'll assist, but I'm not actually formally part of the
Dominic Salerno 00:09:04
class.
Bill Stites 00:09:05
As you said, it's the non linear thinking. Yeah,
Bill Stites 00:09:08
absolutely,
Peter Frank 00:09:10
there's often that serendipity, when you can
Peter Frank 00:09:12
involve your interests into your job. I've been editing videos
Peter Frank 00:09:16
from the conference, and my degree is in Film Video. I went
Peter Frank 00:09:20
to film school, basically for college. So it's fun when I'm
Peter Frank 00:09:23
doing something like that, it's one of those rare times and I'm
Peter Frank 00:09:25
like, Oh, this was my major, and I'm actually using it for
Peter Frank 00:09:29
something related to my work. And it's fun.
Dominic Salerno 00:09:32
I do edit the podcast, and I'm also doing team
Dominic Salerno 00:09:35
three from cohort 23 to 24
Hiram Cuevas 00:09:39
nice. I would love to see Bill painting in a bob,
Hiram Cuevas 00:09:42
Ross wig. First of all, I think that would be fabulous. We can
Hiram Cuevas 00:09:46
make that happen. We can make that happen. We gotta love AI.
Hiram Cuevas 00:09:50
My question, Dominic for you, is we talk about the technology
Hiram Cuevas 00:09:53
roles, and it's interesting having two artists here.
Hiram Cuevas 00:09:56
Actually, I'm gonna say three, because Peter in the film, in
Hiram Cuevas 00:09:59
this. Three is also an artist? Can creativity be taught, or is
Hiram Cuevas 00:10:05
it innate? I
Dominic Salerno 00:10:07
was talking with a math teacher about that
Dominic Salerno 00:10:09
yesterday. I was talking about grading. When you have art
Dominic Salerno 00:10:13
classes, you know you have the metrics, A, B, C, D, or 100% 90,
Dominic Salerno 00:10:19
but how much of it is, you either have it or you don't have
Dominic Salerno 00:10:22
it. So you really are grading on how much effort and trying there
Dominic Salerno 00:10:26
is. But some kids don't have it, just like not every kid's an
Dominic Salerno 00:10:30
athlete, not every child is an artist. I
Peter Frank 00:10:33
think it is innate. I think it can be brought out of
Peter Frank 00:10:36
people, but I don't think you can bring it out of people if
Peter Frank 00:10:38
it's not there. I
Bill Stites 00:10:40
think it depends on what you're focused on, too,
Bill Stites 00:10:42
because I think there is a process over product type thing.
Bill Stites 00:10:46
I switched out of my major for a variety of reasons, but I never
Bill Stites 00:10:49
thought I was like the best artist. But I definitely was
Bill Stites 00:10:54
able to think about what that process did, how I was able to
Bill Stites 00:10:59
explain that process, talk to that process. And I agree with
Bill Stites 00:11:02
you, Peter. I think that some of it is definitely innate. If
Bill Stites 00:11:06
you're focused on the product piece of it, when you're talking
Bill Stites 00:11:10
about the fine arts, I think with technology now and how you
Bill Stites 00:11:15
define those artistic endeavors, you can through exposure,
Bill Stites 00:11:20
through immersing yourself in certain things, you can develop
Bill Stites 00:11:25
that. It might not be that natural innate ability, just
Bill Stites 00:11:29
like with athletics, but it can be developed. It can be
Bill Stites 00:11:32
nurtured.
Dominic Salerno 00:11:34
Yeah, I would agree with that. I was doing the
Dominic Salerno 00:11:36
arts since I was in high school when I was doing it. That's
Dominic Salerno 00:11:39
where it started. I had one high school teacher, oh, man, this is
Dominic Salerno 00:11:43
embarrassing. It's kind of funny, though. So I wasn't the
Dominic Salerno 00:11:46
best artist, and there was this one boy in our class. He was
Dominic Salerno 00:11:50
great. And actually, when I was in college, he was there too,
Dominic Salerno 00:11:53
phenomenal artists. This guy could sketch beautiful art. The
Dominic Salerno 00:11:57
teacher was comparing me and him, not to the whole class, but
Dominic Salerno 00:12:01
just me and him and a group of our friends. And he goes, you
Dominic Salerno 00:12:04
know, Dominic, you're a good artist. You produce a lot of
Dominic Salerno 00:12:07
quantity of work, but such and such over here, he produces
Dominic Salerno 00:12:13
maybe a couple of things a year, but they're very high quality.
Dominic Salerno 00:12:18
And from that day forward, I worked very hard to produce
Dominic Salerno 00:12:22
quality work.
Peter Frank 00:12:25
It's funny, those things that stick with us, those
Peter Frank 00:12:27
points, goodness gracious, turning to technology. So
Peter Frank 00:12:31
Dominic, one thing I've learned about st Bernard's, there's
Peter Frank 00:12:35
pride in how much the school doesn't rely on technology for
Peter Frank 00:12:40
its own sake. Can you explain to us more about that, how that
Peter Frank 00:12:44
works? At your school,
Dominic Salerno 00:12:46
we have like a pen to paper style. We embrace
Dominic Salerno 00:12:49
blackboards and chalk, and while we do have white boards and
Dominic Salerno 00:12:54
projection, it's those traditional values of education
Dominic Salerno 00:12:58
that kind of come through the most, and it's what makes our
Dominic Salerno 00:13:01
community unique. One of the things that I would say, and I
Dominic Salerno 00:13:05
don't think this was by design, but on our school emblem, we
Dominic Salerno 00:13:09
have per gay, sad, proceed with caution, and I think that
Dominic Salerno 00:13:13
applies very much to how we approach technology. We always
Dominic Salerno 00:13:17
look at what innovations are happening, but we cautiously
Dominic Salerno 00:13:21
test it and see if it applies to what we do in our school. So 3d
Dominic Salerno 00:13:26
printing. We have 3d printers in our computer lab, no science a
Dominic Salerno 00:13:30
computer lab, not Innovation Lab, and we'll do 3d prints. But
Dominic Salerno 00:13:36
we don't just print, just for the sake of printing. So we have
Dominic Salerno 00:13:38
like, a 3d design class, and the boys will come up with their
Dominic Salerno 00:13:42
sketchups and we print that out. But sometimes I've seen this in
Dominic Salerno 00:13:47
other schools, they'll just print for the sake of printing
Dominic Salerno 00:13:50
3d print, for the sake of having it, instead of embracing the
Dominic Salerno 00:13:54
educational benefits of it. Bill, you might actually get
Dominic Salerno 00:13:58
this so you probably did your art history. So Roman Greco
Dominic Salerno 00:14:02
architecture, right? Columns. How many times have you seen?
Dominic Salerno 00:14:06
Oh, we're trying to do STEM. They'll have the students print
Dominic Salerno 00:14:10
out columns. The students just grab something off the internet.
Dominic Salerno 00:14:13
They maybe they manipulate, or maybe they create something, but
Dominic Salerno 00:14:16
they just print out the column. Okay, we did something great.
Dominic Salerno 00:14:20
STEM, yay. But really, you would wanna go deeper than that,
Dominic Salerno 00:14:24
right? Are you gonna, like, break down the different parts
Dominic Salerno 00:14:27
of the column? Are you gonna print out the different parts
Dominic Salerno 00:14:29
and build it together to show the process of design and the
Dominic Salerno 00:14:33
architecture we have to look at technology like that? Are we
Dominic Salerno 00:14:36
just using it for the sake of using it, or are we actually
Dominic Salerno 00:14:40
trying to develop something deeper that broadens and
Dominic Salerno 00:14:44
enriches the learning right in the classroom.
Bill Stites 00:14:46
I think what you're describing is the fundamental
Bill Stites 00:14:49
issue that we all deal with and we all ask. Number of years ago,
Bill Stites 00:14:52
I visited Hiram school, and we looked at the stem and the maker
Bill Stites 00:14:56
spaces that they had in each of those areas at those. Points,
Bill Stites 00:15:00
and it was a matter of seeing how those things were actually
Bill Stites 00:15:04
being used, and how they were put in place, and how they
Bill Stites 00:15:07
connected to the learning because a lot of times I think
Bill Stites 00:15:11
technology can be seen as the bright, shiny thing, and it can
Bill Stites 00:15:16
be the thing that gets the admissions team walks around and
Bill Stites 00:15:19
can point to, because you can see it tangibly. You can see it.
Bill Stites 00:15:23
You can't put your finger on all the learning that happens in a
Bill Stites 00:15:27
lot of the other areas. But if you've got a big, shiny room
Bill Stites 00:15:30
that you can walk people through, you can really sell
Bill Stites 00:15:34
that. And the one thing I always like to say is you need to be
Bill Stites 00:15:36
able to walk the walk. If you're selling that, you better be able
Bill Stites 00:15:40
to show how it's impacting teaching and learning, and I
Bill Stites 00:15:44
would commend you for that, because I think that that's
Bill Stites 00:15:47
often not the case in MKA history, I remember we had our
Bill Stites 00:15:51
distance learning room that was at our high school. We had this
Bill Stites 00:15:54
big satellite dish on the roof, and we had this room that was
Bill Stites 00:15:57
decked out with all these different cameras, and we were
Bill Stites 00:15:59
going to bring in professor. This is before, like, all the
Bill Stites 00:16:02
zoom and the Google meet and all that stuff, and we were going to
Bill Stites 00:16:05
connect with all these college professors and bring them in to
Bill Stites 00:16:09
teach our kids. The problem was, was that everything that we had
Bill Stites 00:16:13
in that room had to match up, from a technology standpoint, to
Bill Stites 00:16:17
what was going in all those other places. And if it didn't
Bill Stites 00:16:20
match, you didn't connect. So we spent all this money on this
Bill Stites 00:16:23
room, and it was a great place to go. Say, Oh, your kids are
Bill Stites 00:16:26
going to work with, you know, professors from Boston
Bill Stites 00:16:28
University, and this, that and the other thing. And it maybe
Bill Stites 00:16:31
happened like once, three out of a seven day cycle, and it wasn't
Bill Stites 00:16:36
really what we wanted it to be, or it really should have been,
Bill Stites 00:16:39
and it never really delivered on the promise. And I think it
Bill Stites 00:16:43
sounds like that's what you're doing
Dominic Salerno 00:16:45
there. I'll throw in another example. IPads,
Dominic Salerno 00:16:48
I don't think they're as big a deal in schools as they've been
Dominic Salerno 00:16:52
made out to be. You can have moments where iPads are great
Dominic Salerno 00:16:55
learning tools, right? Children are interacting with them.
Dominic Salerno 00:16:59
You'll have setups where it's like, Let's do health and
Dominic Salerno 00:17:02
learning. Let's show the inside of the body. And you have the
Dominic Salerno 00:17:05
children, they're like, pointing it around the room in a space,
Dominic Salerno 00:17:08
and they're seeing all this stuff happening. And that's
Dominic Salerno 00:17:11
great. It's awesome. I enjoy watching it and you're using it.
Dominic Salerno 00:17:16
But is it that much better than talking about it, having a
Dominic Salerno 00:17:21
textbook and just delivering the information. I mean, we learned
Dominic Salerno 00:17:25
that way. Are we any less than capable from it because we
Dominic Salerno 00:17:30
didn't have the iPad? Those kind of things I try to think about
Dominic Salerno 00:17:34
when rationalizing the technology use, when approaching
Dominic Salerno 00:17:37
any innovation that's coming through at St Bernard's, we were
Dominic Salerno 00:17:41
thinking about jot. It great product. In our case, it was an
Dominic Salerno 00:17:46
LMS thing, so we couldn't really go deeper with it, but just the
Dominic Salerno 00:17:50
idea of E Ink tablets, just focused on handwriting. It's a
Dominic Salerno 00:17:56
wonderful thing, right? We care about handwriting in our school,
Dominic Salerno 00:17:58
we give awards for it. So having that the Jada tablets, same
Dominic Salerno 00:18:04
thing. I think they use books, which is a nice tablet in our
Dominic Salerno 00:18:08
case. How much more is it than just handwriting in class? You
Dominic Salerno 00:18:13
have to weigh those things, right? How meaningful is it?
Dominic Salerno 00:18:16
It's great with this
Peter Frank 00:18:17
podcast, because we always get differing views, and
Peter Frank 00:18:20
sometimes completely conflicting views. So just yesterday, we did
Peter Frank 00:18:23
an episode, and it was all experiential learning. It was
Peter Frank 00:18:26
all about having the students experience it. And maybe that's
Peter Frank 00:18:29
not conflicting with what you're saying necessarily. So
Peter Frank 00:18:33
presenting this view that st Bernards has, I'm curious, what
Peter Frank 00:18:36
kind of things do you experience that you think to yourself, see
Peter Frank 00:18:39
this is why we do it this
Dominic Salerno 00:18:40
way, I should preface I'm also speaking for
Dominic Salerno 00:18:43
myself, not necessarily the school, even though we do do
Dominic Salerno 00:18:46
those things. One example is just doing research. We're an
Dominic Salerno 00:18:50
all boys school, so we have boys on Chromebooks, and the
Dominic Salerno 00:18:54
Chromebooks are great, and they could do all their research
Dominic Salerno 00:18:56
online, but a same furniture thing to do is go to the
Dominic Salerno 00:19:00
library, grab the book off the shelf, read through it, and
Dominic Salerno 00:19:05
reference the book. There's a tactile thing to it. I'm sure
Dominic Salerno 00:19:10
there's a learning specialist out there that's probably like,
Dominic Salerno 00:19:12
this helps you memorize and take in the information more those
Dominic Salerno 00:19:17
kinds of things are like st Bernards
Hiram Cuevas 00:19:19
and Dominic. I think what you're addressing
Hiram Cuevas 00:19:21
there are the various learning modalities, how they take in
Hiram Cuevas 00:19:24
information. And if you are at a very, what I'm going to call a
Hiram Cuevas 00:19:29
generic level, on the continuum of a transformative education,
Hiram Cuevas 00:19:34
if you're using technology in the exact same way that you were
Hiram Cuevas 00:19:37
doing your teaching prior to using the tech, that's not a
Hiram Cuevas 00:19:40
transformative experience for the child. I remember back when
Hiram Cuevas 00:19:45
I was still teaching, we would actually try really hard to have
Hiram Cuevas 00:19:50
a kinesthetic approach, a visual approach and an auditory
Hiram Cuevas 00:19:53
approach, so that we were hitting all three modalities in
Hiram Cuevas 00:19:56
which a child is able to take in information and really. The goal
Hiram Cuevas 00:20:00
there was not so much to make sure that one modality was
Hiram Cuevas 00:20:05
better than another, it was to try and reach as many kids as
Hiram Cuevas 00:20:08
possible. And what I find fascinating is when you talked
Hiram Cuevas 00:20:12
about the Jot it tablet, there's some interesting pluses to that,
Hiram Cuevas 00:20:17
from the distractiveness of notifications, and I think
Hiram Cuevas 00:20:20
that's why we are seeing schools getting rid of phones. I think
Hiram Cuevas 00:20:23
there's going to be a place for that, this tablet technology
Hiram Cuevas 00:20:28
that has the eating capabilities, because we're also
Hiram Cuevas 00:20:31
an old boy school at St Christopher's, and we have heard
Hiram Cuevas 00:20:35
from our alums when they go to college that a lot of students
Hiram Cuevas 00:20:39
don't have the endurance to handwrite anymore if they're
Hiram Cuevas 00:20:42
being asked to hand write on exams and draft essays and
Hiram Cuevas 00:20:46
whatnot, if they are not allowed to use their laptops, and it's a
Hiram Cuevas 00:20:51
very different exercise to produce an essay by hand than it
Hiram Cuevas 00:20:57
is to compose on a word processor. So they're different
Hiram Cuevas 00:21:01
skills, and they're different ways of thinking. And to your
Hiram Cuevas 00:21:04
point earlier about going from A to D, handwriting requires you
Hiram Cuevas 00:21:08
to go from A to B to C to D, whereas word processing allows
Hiram Cuevas 00:21:14
you to jump around a little bit. I'm going to cut this and paste
Hiram Cuevas 00:21:17
it here, et cetera. Yeah,
Dominic Salerno 00:21:18
it doesn't allow you to focus or refine
Dominic Salerno 00:21:21
your thoughts as much as you probably would if you were
Dominic Salerno 00:21:23
handwriting.
Bill Stites 00:21:24
There's research to back that up in terms of your
Bill Stites 00:21:27
ability to note take or the speed factor with the pieces
Bill Stites 00:21:33
when you're typing. There's definitely a speed factor there,
Bill Stites 00:21:36
but there is more of a connection to the brain,
Bill Stites 00:21:40
connection to the data retention that you're talking about in
Bill Stites 00:21:44
terms of that writing aspect of it, and the ability to notate,
Bill Stites 00:21:48
the ability to sketch note, to draw around, you know, the way
Bill Stites 00:21:53
in which you can organize your thoughts with the digital ink or
Bill Stites 00:21:57
a paper and pencil. So I think Dominic a lot of what you're
Bill Stites 00:22:00
talking about, whether it's the iPad tablets, your example of
Bill Stites 00:22:03
like augmented reality. You hold it up, you can expand it, you
Bill Stites 00:22:06
can see different things going around. I think that those
Bill Stites 00:22:10
tools, as Hiram pointed out, if they're enhancing the exercise,
Bill Stites 00:22:14
if they're doing something that you can't do in their
Bill Stites 00:22:17
traditional sense, then they're adding value. They're adding
Bill Stites 00:22:21
meaning to what you're doing. When I switched majors from fine
Bill Stites 00:22:25
arts, I went to early childhood Ed, so it was like, focused on
Bill Stites 00:22:28
block building manipulatives. You're really focused on
Bill Stites 00:22:32
developing those skills at an early age. So our technology
Bill Stites 00:22:36
choices were very deliberate, because we were working on
Bill Stites 00:22:42
building the foundational blocks for which all the other learning
Bill Stites 00:22:45
is going to happen. And I think that approach, which is the
Bill Stites 00:22:49
approach I think you're describing, is the approach that
Bill Stites 00:22:52
you take that early learning approach, and you apply that
Bill Stites 00:22:55
throughout the course of the time that students are in in
Bill Stites 00:22:58
terms of deliberate choices that are going to bring real meaning
Bill Stites 00:23:02
to the learning in ways that you can't do under a traditional
Bill Stites 00:23:05
method, because there is value to what those traditional
Bill Stites 00:23:08
options provide. It just
Dominic Salerno 00:23:10
reminded me at kindergarten how, you know, we
Dominic Salerno 00:23:13
have the interactive episodes and don't put stuff on the board
Dominic Salerno 00:23:17
and have the digital interactions where the boys will
Dominic Salerno 00:23:19
drag something to something else, and that's awesome. But
Dominic Salerno 00:23:22
you know what works just as well? The pieces of construction
Dominic Salerno 00:23:26
paper, the printouts laminated and on the magnets, and they're
Dominic Salerno 00:23:30
just moving them across the board. It's the same learning
Dominic Salerno 00:23:35
without the electronic component, and they do both. But
Dominic Salerno 00:23:38
I can tell you this, when the power goes out, they're still
Dominic Salerno 00:23:42
learning. When the smart pen goes out, they'll just grab the
Dominic Salerno 00:23:46
whiteboard marker and keep going. And that's important,
Dominic Salerno 00:23:49
right? They don't stop in learning. Well,
Hiram Cuevas 00:23:52
I think we're at an interesting point of
Hiram Cuevas 00:23:54
inflection here, where we're also trying to examine how much
Hiram Cuevas 00:23:59
technology should be being used within a classroom. I mean, the
Hiram Cuevas 00:24:03
whole phone conversation has really blown up to the extent
Hiram Cuevas 00:24:07
where we really don't want phones being used throughout the
Hiram Cuevas 00:24:11
school day. We're seeing some nations in the EU passing
Hiram Cuevas 00:24:15
legislation where they're saying no social media until the age of
Hiram Cuevas 00:24:18
13, or phone use at different times. And I think the same can
Hiram Cuevas 00:24:24
be said about the curriculum. We probably dove in head and feet
Hiram Cuevas 00:24:29
first the majority of schools in terms of trying to leverage
Hiram Cuevas 00:24:34
technology with the students, because we had to show an ROI,
Hiram Cuevas 00:24:39
yep. So there are two different kinds of conversations I think
Hiram Cuevas 00:24:43
that one could have regarding technology. I mean, Bill school,
Hiram Cuevas 00:24:46
for example, is an Apple Distinguished School three
Hiram Cuevas 00:24:49
times, and there's a reason why. It's not because of the shiny
Hiram Cuevas 00:24:53
apple, it's because they're doing quality work at his
Hiram Cuevas 00:24:56
school. And so it has to be intentional, right? Yeah, we
Hiram Cuevas 00:25:01
have, for instance, in our computer lab, we have backs. We
Hiram Cuevas 00:25:04
have a lab set of Macs. So when you come in purposely to do
Hiram Cuevas 00:25:09
those things, you go on those but any other time, Chromebook
Hiram Cuevas 00:25:13
go guardian, you know, all the pieces of the puzzle put in
Hiram Cuevas 00:25:16
place to protect the children from themselves. I'm curious,
Peter Frank 00:25:19
in that environment. I'm sure many of
Peter Frank 00:25:22
our listeners can relate. Have there been times where there was
Peter Frank 00:25:24
tech that you saw value and said, hey, I can think of a
Peter Frank 00:25:27
purpose. Or I have teachers saying, Hey, we have a purpose
Peter Frank 00:25:30
here. Have there been times that you've brought tech and tried to
Peter Frank 00:25:33
get it to the school, but the school, because of the
Peter Frank 00:25:35
philosophy, the school, just resisted and said, No. Have
Peter Frank 00:25:38
there been challenges like that? Anytime you've been successful,
Peter Frank 00:25:40
maybe campaigning for something. The
Dominic Salerno 00:25:43
Jada one was probably the best example. We
Dominic Salerno 00:25:45
loved it. I love it. I think the E Ink, the handwriting, because
Dominic Salerno 00:25:49
it would have alleviated two problems, the handwriting focus
Dominic Salerno 00:25:53
and having Chromebooks. Because, you know, you go lock down a
Dominic Salerno 00:25:56
Chromebook, but kids try to circumvent, and I spend half the
Dominic Salerno 00:25:59
time trying to prevent them from, you know, sabotaging it.
Dominic Salerno 00:26:02
So does that. And I pushed for that, but that didn't work out.
Dominic Salerno 00:26:07
There was some stuff that went the other way, where they got it
Dominic Salerno 00:26:10
and they ended up backing off of it, like the iPads. Another
Dominic Salerno 00:26:14
example was, I think they used to have Kindles in the library.
Dominic Salerno 00:26:18
This was before my time, but obviously they didn't go that
Dominic Salerno 00:26:22
route. So there's like, these little bits where they, like,
Dominic Salerno 00:26:24
they step in, proceeded, and then with caution, stepped right
Dominic Salerno 00:26:28
back out. Sure. I'm
Peter Frank 00:26:31
sure that's common at all your schools. You're
Peter Frank 00:26:33
introduced new things, and you have a plan, and you think you
Peter Frank 00:26:35
know how it's gonna go, and then that's not how it goes.
Hiram Cuevas 00:26:38
And you watch it all evolve at the same time.
Hiram Cuevas 00:26:40
Great example, you know, you've got the computer lab model. And
Hiram Cuevas 00:26:44
then there was, who remembers cows in schools, computers on
Hiram Cuevas 00:26:48
wheels, where you just roll the cart around the school, because
Hiram Cuevas 00:26:51
you kept laptops in there, because you moved away from the
Hiram Cuevas 00:26:53
desktop model, and then eventually you moved to a one to
Hiram Cuevas 00:26:56
one model. And now, I dare say, a lot of schools because of the
Hiram Cuevas 00:27:01
phones. You've got smart watches, you've got tablets,
Hiram Cuevas 00:27:06
you've got laptops, you've got phones, you've got each kid now
Hiram Cuevas 00:27:09
potentially having two or three devices with them at all times
Bill Stites 00:27:14
you mentioned your Ali cohort, former colleague,
Bill Stites 00:27:17
longtime friend, Steve France. You know, just from the
Bill Stites 00:27:20
conversations I've had with Steve, the conversations I've
Bill Stites 00:27:23
had with you, seeing everything, you know, it's a very tight
Bill Stites 00:27:25
group that you developed with that cohort, given the school
Bill Stites 00:27:29
you're at, the mindset, the conversation that we've had to
Bill Stites 00:27:32
this point, how has your participation in the ALI program
Bill Stites 00:27:37
shaped, redefined, molded your thinking around these things by
Bill Stites 00:27:43
the interactions that you had with the group as a whole, and
Bill Stites 00:27:46
then those interactions that you had within your cohort, within
Bill Stites 00:27:50
that larger group. Thank you for bringing
Dominic Salerno 00:27:53
it up, because that's a strong part of my
Dominic Salerno 00:27:56
continuing education with technology, meeting my cohort
Dominic Salerno 00:28:00
and then doing the capstone project with them, and all that
Dominic Salerno 00:28:03
really got us talking, and it got us connecting. And actually,
Dominic Salerno 00:28:07
I don't, I don't know if there's other cohorts from other years
Dominic Salerno 00:28:10
that keep talking, but we talk like every week, whether it's
Dominic Salerno 00:28:14
through WhatsApp or when we do our podcasts or whatnot, and we
Dominic Salerno 00:28:18
have meetings, we'll have Google meet check ins every two weeks,
Dominic Salerno 00:28:23
but we'll, like, commiserate together about certain things,
Dominic Salerno 00:28:26
or, like, try to problem solve sales pitch. If I didn't go into
Dominic Salerno 00:28:30
AI, I would have never had that, and I'm glad I had that. And the
Dominic Salerno 00:28:34
icing on the cake is having that help get the ball rolling, to
Dominic Salerno 00:28:39
make me feel like, okay, I could go for T list for my title,
Dominic Salerno 00:28:42
information technology administrator. I'm not a
Dominic Salerno 00:28:44
director, but in my cohort, there are and me having those
Dominic Salerno 00:28:49
conversations made me feel like, you know what, I'm ready. I feel
Dominic Salerno 00:28:52
like I'm on that level. I'm gonna go take the T list exam
Dominic Salerno 00:28:55
and prove myself and prepare myself so I'm ready for the next
Dominic Salerno 00:28:59
step when that time comes. That's
Peter Frank 00:29:01
great. We love that. And I can tell you from
Peter Frank 00:29:04
observation that the cohorts absolutely stay in touch. You're
Peter Frank 00:29:07
definitely not alone there. We even saw in Atlanta at that past
Peter Frank 00:29:10
conference, the latest cohort. They did the conference
Peter Frank 00:29:14
together. There was this group of like 20 people that they were
Peter Frank 00:29:17
together the entire conference. And I learned after a day or so,
Peter Frank 00:29:21
it was like, oh, that's the latest Ali cohorts. And they
Peter Frank 00:29:24
were just peas in a pod, and they just do everything
Peter Frank 00:29:26
together. It's very common. That's great to hear that
Dominic Salerno 00:29:29
absolutely the same. We met every day at the
Dominic Salerno 00:29:32
conference, and we're already thinking about next year, right?
Peter Frank 00:29:36
So let's talk about the tilas as the certification
Peter Frank 00:29:40
person at ATLIS, it makes me very happy. It was one of the
Peter Frank 00:29:44
reasons we wanted to have you on the pod. We've had a few people
Peter Frank 00:29:47
who are in the TLS on the podcast. You told us about what
Peter Frank 00:29:51
led to you deciding the confidence and having the
Peter Frank 00:29:54
support of the ALI cohort, and going through all that you
Peter Frank 00:29:57
decided to go for it. So talk about like, what was next? What
Peter Frank 00:30:01
was your journey like to go ahead and earn it?
Dominic Salerno 00:30:04
One was honestly soul searching, because
Dominic Salerno 00:30:08
you have to feel ready for it. That's the mindset. I'm ready.
Dominic Salerno 00:30:12
The next part was the T list prep program, making sure that I
Dominic Salerno 00:30:16
got into that so I had an understanding and exam the
Dominic Salerno 00:30:20
candidate handbook with the sample questions, so I had like
Dominic Salerno 00:30:24
a frame of reference on how I could approach the exam, and
Dominic Salerno 00:30:27
then just talking with my cohort, ping ponging the
Dominic Salerno 00:30:30
questions and asking, why is this the answer, as opposed to
Dominic Salerno 00:30:33
that? And back and forth, just to try to get an understanding.
Dominic Salerno 00:30:37
From my perspective, it was a little bit more difficult. I
Dominic Salerno 00:30:41
don't wanna say too difficult, but I'm in a small school, 365
Dominic Salerno 00:30:46
kids, and the T list in this case reference like 1000
Dominic Salerno 00:30:50
students school, 200 and something. So I faculty and
Dominic Salerno 00:30:54
staff. So I'm like a third the size. I had to change my
Dominic Salerno 00:30:57
thinking in preparation for the exam. That was the hurdle, how
Dominic Salerno 00:31:01
do I think on a bigger, larger scale?
Peter Frank 00:31:04
Sure, for reference for our listeners, the
Peter Frank 00:31:06
technology leaders and independent school
Peter Frank 00:31:08
certification, the TLS part of preparing for it, you learned
Peter Frank 00:31:13
that every question on the exam is going through a certain lens
Peter Frank 00:31:17
of a certain school, a school that has about 1000 students.
Peter Frank 00:31:21
You should be answering the questions from the perspective
Peter Frank 00:31:24
of you are the primary technology leader, so you are
Peter Frank 00:31:27
leading the department, and you have about five people beneath
Peter Frank 00:31:31
you that work for you and support you in your department.
Peter Frank 00:31:33
Then there's a few more lenses that we talk about at today
Peter Frank 00:31:36
school and whatnot, and that's what Dominic's referring to. So
Peter Frank 00:31:39
for some people like Dominic, if you don't have that experience
Peter Frank 00:31:42
at all, or you've had it, but that's not your current
Peter Frank 00:31:44
experience. You do have to shift a bit. And we understand that
Peter Frank 00:31:47
that is a challenge. One
Bill Stites 00:31:49
of the things about the T list, when we were talking
Bill Stites 00:31:52
about the development of it, the idea was that it wasn't like a
Bill Stites 00:31:56
step one, you have to do Aoi, and the step two is you have to
Bill Stites 00:31:59
do tos. But I think from what you're describing with your
Bill Stites 00:32:03
school, I think that Ali and that cohort and those
Bill Stites 00:32:07
conversations and those discussions and being able to
Bill Stites 00:32:11
hear from others in other size schools probably helps develop
Bill Stites 00:32:16
the frame so that when you sit down to that, you as somebody
Bill Stites 00:32:20
who's at a smaller school, given your numbers, you might be
Bill Stites 00:32:23
sitting down looking at that T list exam and saying to
Bill Stites 00:32:25
yourself, wow, like, I don't even know how to wrap my head
Bill Stites 00:32:28
around this, because I'd never even thought about it this way.
Bill Stites 00:32:31
Ali, and I think those connections and those
Bill Stites 00:32:33
interactions, given the scope and the breadth of the people
Bill Stites 00:32:36
that are there, require you to have those conversations,
Bill Stites 00:32:39
because you need to be actively listening to what those members
Bill Stites 00:32:42
in the overall cohort or in the smaller groups are talking
Bill Stites 00:32:45
about, and as you have those troubleshooting, those
Bill Stites 00:32:48
generative conversations, as you think about what the capstone is
Bill Stites 00:32:51
going to be and how you're going to develop around that, you need
Bill Stites 00:32:54
to take all those things into perspective. So whether
Bill Stites 00:32:57
intentionally or not, the Ali, I don't want to put words in your
Bill Stites 00:33:00
mouth, but I think it would probably provide a very good for
Bill Stites 00:33:02
probably provide a very good frame for at least getting into
Bill Stites 00:33:05
that mindset that you've discussed. I will
Dominic Salerno 00:33:08
accept those words. I agree one doesn't
Dominic Salerno 00:33:14
necessarily facilitate the other, but I think it helps on
Dominic Salerno 00:33:18
the path when you're going through Ali and you're going
Dominic Salerno 00:33:21
through like the monthly chats and the discussion groups and
Dominic Salerno 00:33:25
all that, you learn different things. I learned stuff about
Dominic Salerno 00:33:28
schools in California that I would never have occurred to me.
Dominic Salerno 00:33:32
Being in New York. You would think all independent schools
Dominic Salerno 00:33:34
have similar approaches in other ways, but no, they could be
Dominic Salerno 00:33:38
drastically different, especially like org charts and
Dominic Salerno 00:33:42
things like that. Those were the harder questions for me, because
Dominic Salerno 00:33:47
an org chart's different for me. At my school, I could talk to my
Dominic Salerno 00:33:52
director and then the director could talk to the CFO. That
Dominic Salerno 00:33:55
would be the chain of command, but we're small. I can just go
Dominic Salerno 00:33:58
ask the CFO. It's a different approach. Someone would say,
Dominic Salerno 00:34:02
well, you're circumventing the chain of command. You going over
Dominic Salerno 00:34:06
your director. Now I'm going for clarification. Hey, what's up?
Dominic Salerno 00:34:09
What's going on? Blah, blah, blah. Hey, by the way, did you
Dominic Salerno 00:34:13
know? Oh, okay, thank you for updating me. Now I know. And
Dominic Salerno 00:34:16
then I move on to the next thing, right? That doesn't
Dominic Salerno 00:34:19
always happen when you're in, 1000 1500 student school. As it
Dominic Salerno 00:34:24
gets bigger now, all of a sudden you have to work your way up.
Dominic Salerno 00:34:27
There's gonna be meetings about it. It's a month later you talk
Dominic Salerno 00:34:32
about it. So it does change the approach when you're a smaller
Dominic Salerno 00:34:36
school,
Peter Frank 00:34:37
right? Do you need to do that translation then for
Peter Frank 00:34:39
the certification? Yeah. But he just said, you seem to have
Peter Frank 00:34:42
found value in seeing the other experiences.
Dominic Salerno 00:34:45
Yeah, I took the exam, but I would ask my
Dominic Salerno 00:34:48
cohorts, like, Hey, Steve, how do we go about such and such?
Dominic Salerno 00:34:52
Because I'm thinking, this is the answer, but obviously it's
Dominic Salerno 00:34:56
this other answer. Why is it that other answer? And he might
Dominic Salerno 00:34:59
go. Well, you would never ask that person when you're in a
Dominic Salerno 00:35:02
school this big. You would go to that person to ask about
Dominic Salerno 00:35:04
budgeting or this and that, those kinds of things. I know
Dominic Salerno 00:35:08
I'm a little vague, but those are the kinds of things that
Dominic Salerno 00:35:10
come up that aren't as apparent to me being in a smaller school
Dominic Salerno 00:35:14
and
Bill Stites 00:35:15
Dominic, the one thing I want to point out is Be
Bill Stites 00:35:17
wary of any advice Steve France gives you. That's all I'm going
Bill Stites 00:35:19
to say. You just need to be very careful about what you take from
Bill Stites 00:35:22
him, because it can be questionable. I'll
Dominic Salerno 00:35:25
throw out another name, Cecile, because
Dominic Salerno 00:35:27
Cecile is also very helpful, and she has a campus. And I'm not on
Dominic Salerno 00:35:32
a campus. I'm in a small, little building on a street Upper East
Dominic Salerno 00:35:36
Side. Actually, that's a good example. I'm not on a campus,
Dominic Salerno 00:35:42
right? How many things come up when you're on a campus? Data
Dominic Salerno 00:35:46
from one end to the other, trenching, all that stuff. I'll
Dominic Salerno 00:35:48
never have to deal with that. The most is you trench out the
Dominic Salerno 00:35:52
sidewalk, and you gotta get the permit in front of the building
Dominic Salerno 00:35:54
to do it right. It's a little bit different. So
Peter Frank 00:35:57
having earned it now, tell me about moments since
Peter Frank 00:36:01
earning it that you've thought, Oh, the T list or the PREP
Peter Frank 00:36:04
program, or I heard in one of my questions with the cohorts about
Peter Frank 00:36:08
the T list, like this came up. One
Dominic Salerno 00:36:10
of the things about the T list, they tell you
Dominic Salerno 00:36:12
the percentages of how you did on the different domains. Yeah,
Dominic Salerno 00:36:17
that was valuable to me because now it gave me confidence. I'm
Dominic Salerno 00:36:20
like, Okay, I must know what I'm talking about, because these
Dominic Salerno 00:36:23
domains gave me an idea of where I'm at. I guess nationally, I
Dominic Salerno 00:36:28
should say, amongst our peers,
Peter Frank 00:36:30
sure, amongst the candidates. So what Dominic's
Peter Frank 00:36:33
talking about is, you receive your results immediately. It's a
Peter Frank 00:36:36
pass, fail result. However you do get to see to certification
Peter Frank 00:36:40
is broken down into four domains. We've broken the
Peter Frank 00:36:43
technology leader role down into four domains, and each question
Peter Frank 00:36:47
on the exam is tied to one of those domains. And so you see at
Peter Frank 00:36:50
the end with your pass fail, the percentages correct in each of
Peter Frank 00:36:55
the four domains. So Dominic, you saw in a domain, or more
Peter Frank 00:37:00
than one domain, but you did particularly well, and you're
Peter Frank 00:37:02
saying that boosted your confidence in
Hiram Cuevas 00:37:04
that area. Yeah, I
Dominic Salerno 00:37:06
remember operations and professional
Dominic Salerno 00:37:09
development were high. I was like, Okay, I know this. If
Dominic Salerno 00:37:14
someone asked me about this, more often than not, I'm giving
Dominic Salerno 00:37:18
good information. I'm giving a good, respectable answer. And
Dominic Salerno 00:37:21
then the other stuff, I didn't score as high as I would have
Dominic Salerno 00:37:24
liked. Now I know going forward, I'm going to do more, PD,
Dominic Salerno 00:37:28
focusing on those other points so I could build myself up so
Dominic Salerno 00:37:32
when I do go into a room and have a conversation, oh, Dominic
Dominic Salerno 00:37:36
Salerno telis, he knows what he's talking about, and that's
Dominic Salerno 00:37:40
the confidence that I want. I want to know when I go into a
Dominic Salerno 00:37:43
meeting. Maybe it could be an interview for the tech director
Dominic Salerno 00:37:46
somewhere, that when I walk in there, I can confidently speak
Dominic Salerno 00:37:49
and feel good about myself, knowing, yes, I have the backing
Dominic Salerno 00:37:53
that says I know what I'm doing. I know what I'm talking about,
Dominic Salerno 00:37:56
right? That's interesting,
Peter Frank 00:37:57
because you're someone that you've said that
Peter Frank 00:37:58
you don't have that director title. The vast majority of
Peter Frank 00:38:02
people who take the teal is have the title. So it's
Bill Stites 00:38:05
it's reinforcing. And I think Peter, hearing you
Bill Stites 00:38:08
say that for a lot of us that have the title, the
Bill Stites 00:38:11
certification just reinforces that. I can think back when I
Bill Stites 00:38:15
graduated, there wasn't an undergraduate, there weren't
Bill Stites 00:38:18
even masters programs in anything as it related to
Bill Stites 00:38:21
educational technology. So the Tila certification does a nice
Bill Stites 00:38:24
job of the affirmation that Dominic's describing in terms of
Bill Stites 00:38:28
proving your understanding and within those different domains
Bill Stites 00:38:31
and relieving you of the imposter syndrome that you might
Bill Stites 00:38:34
have in some cases with the work like this. But I think for
Bill Stites 00:38:38
people who don't have the title, who are aspiring to the title.
Bill Stites 00:38:42
You know, I think one of the things we've said all along is
Bill Stites 00:38:44
it gives those people making the hires. It gives yourself the
Bill Stites 00:38:47
confidence. It gives the employer that might be looking
Bill Stites 00:38:50
at you or or your current employer, you know, the way in
Bill Stites 00:38:53
which they're looking at you and seeing you within the context of
Bill Stites 00:38:56
the organization. It gives you that level of gravitas that I've
Bill Stites 00:39:00
achieved this I've proven myself to the point where I've studied,
Bill Stites 00:39:05
I've taken this examination. I'm keeping up with the work to
Bill Stites 00:39:09
maintain you mentioned those areas where you pass, but you
Bill Stites 00:39:12
may not have scored as high well, you're doing the
Bill Stites 00:39:15
professional development work. You're that lifelong learner
Bill Stites 00:39:18
that we all talk about in terms of aspiring to that level, so
Bill Stites 00:39:23
that you can stay current, so that you can stay abreast of
Bill Stites 00:39:26
those things we talk about, our upcoming tech leaders, those
Bill Stites 00:39:30
that are rising in the ranks. You know, it puts you right into
Bill Stites 00:39:33
the mix at that point, because you've done the work to
Peter Frank 00:39:36
demonstrate the knowledge, right? I really like
Peter Frank 00:39:39
the observation about I could see where I needed to direct my
Peter Frank 00:39:42
professional development. And that's something where we met
Peter Frank 00:39:45
with a head of school at the conference specifically to talk
Peter Frank 00:39:49
about the TLS, and he observed that that was his number two
Peter Frank 00:39:52
most compelling thing about it was that when these technology
Peter Frank 00:39:55
directors coming to him saying, hey, I want this professional
Peter Frank 00:39:57
development. I want that professional to. Element. And he
Peter Frank 00:40:00
feels like, I don't know if this is valuable to the school. I'm
Peter Frank 00:40:04
kind of just like, it's all in my tech directors hands. But he
Peter Frank 00:40:07
felt like, with the T list and these domains or whatnot, it
Peter Frank 00:40:09
gives like a framework to direct the professional development and
Peter Frank 00:40:12
just kind of reinforces where to direct those things in general.
Peter Frank 00:40:16
So that's powerful. What do we got to do to get Hiram to get
Peter Frank 00:40:19
the T list. I'm just gonna call him out right now. Yeah,
Hiram Cuevas 00:40:23
he just did.
Peter Frank 00:40:27
Think about your confidence level. Hiram, you
Peter Frank 00:40:29
could boost your confidence.
Dominic Salerno 00:40:31
Are you gonna let some scrappy young guy like
Dominic Salerno 00:40:33
me stop you from
Peter Frank 00:40:35
rights? I mean, come on,
Hiram Cuevas 00:40:39
if I only knew some people who could help me
Hiram Cuevas 00:40:42
with the D list.
Peter Frank 00:40:46
We'll talk offline about that. It's fine. So before
Peter Frank 00:40:50
we wrap things up, Dominic, thanks so much for doing this.
Peter Frank 00:40:53
We don't always bookend it like this, but we will today. We were
Peter Frank 00:40:57
talking about getaways when we just need to get away vacation
Peter Frank 00:41:01
spots like an under the radar. Others won't think of this kind
Peter Frank 00:41:06
of getaway spot.
Dominic Salerno 00:41:09
I got a good one, but it's a bad one at the
Dominic Salerno 00:41:11
same time. No, no, no, when I say, why my favorite getaway
Dominic Salerno 00:41:19
spot, and this is truthfully, going to my wife city in
Dominic Salerno 00:41:23
Ukraine. I love it there. Oh, wow, with everything that's
Dominic Salerno 00:41:27
going on, obviously that's not the spot to go to right now.
Dominic Salerno 00:41:30
Yeah, and we were just talking about how we want to go again. I
Dominic Salerno 00:41:34
want to go see my in laws. I have this mayor of the town
Dominic Salerno 00:41:37
thing. When I'm there, I say hi to everybody in English, and
Dominic Salerno 00:41:42
everybody's like, hey, like, Hey, back at you. You know,
Dominic Salerno 00:41:46
happy to see you.
Hiram Cuevas 00:41:47
I could see it. You're not speaking English.
Hiram Cuevas 00:41:49
You're speaking new Yorkish.
Bill Stites 00:41:52
My inner Bronx, I haven't noticed.
Peter Frank 00:41:57
Thank you, Dominic, thanks so much for the
Peter Frank 00:41:58
conversation. We appreciate
Dominic Salerno 00:41:59
it. Thank you.
Peter Frank 00:42:03
This has been talking technology with Atlas,
Peter Frank 00:42:06
produced by the Association of Technology Leaders in
Peter Frank 00:42:08
Independent Schools. For more information about Atlas and
Peter Frank 00:42:12
Atlas membership, please visit theatlas.org if you enjoyed this
Peter Frank 00:42:16
discussion, please subscribe, leave a review and share this
Peter Frank 00:42:20
podcast with your colleagues in the independent school
Peter Frank 00:42:22
community. Thank you for listening. You.