Leadership Spotlight: Matt Scully on Innovation and Collaboration

Narrator 0:02
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 with focused learning and deep dive topics. And now please welcome your host, Christina Lewellen.

Christina Lewellen 0:25
Hello, everyone and welcome back to talking technology with ATLIS. I'm Christina Lewellen, the executive director of the Association of technology leaders in independent schools.

Bill Stites 0:34
And I'm Bill Stites, the Director of Technology at Montclair Kimberley Academy, and

Hiram Cuevas 0:39
I'm Hiram Cuevas, Director of Information Systems and Academic Technology at St. Christopher's school in Richmond, Virginia.

Christina Lewellen 0:45
Hello, gentlemen, it's so glad to be back on the podcast with you. Since we started recording a long time ago, we were just having these conversations with each other. And now we are recording and the world knows about us. And there's been some pretty cool feedback out in the world about our little private coffee dates that we're having with each other are now going public. How do you guys feel about that? Have you been getting some good feedback?

Bill Stites 1:11
Yeah, very much. It's been great. Once you've seen these things go live and you start hearing people and hearing from people about what they're taking from them. It just, it feels good. It feels good to be known that you've been heard at least. Absolutely.

Hiram Cuevas 1:24
I would say the feedback that I have received has been very positive. I must admit my children razzed me a little bit for being on a podcast, but then again, they saw who it was with and they were like we get it.

Christina Lewellen 1:34
Yeah, see, this is going to date the podcast, but I just really don't care. It's Halloween. It's the morning of Halloween. Hiram, can you please tell our listeners what delightful little attire you've showed up with today?

Unknown Speaker 1:48
Oh, absolutely set.

Hiram Cuevas 1:50
I mean, I'm known for dressing up for Halloween. And today I'm one of the red guys from Star Trek The Original Series. I would call them the original Walking Dead and I do have my Star Trek communicator. Man so there you go. complete nerd them.

Bill Stites 2:05
I would expect nothing less.

Hiram Cuevas 2:07
Happy Halloween.

Christina Lewellen 2:09
I think today I've dressed up as an annoyed podcast host but that's okay. So gentlemen, we have some fun, Trick or treat. I think this is a treat. We have Matt Sculley with us today. And one of the things that we do in our world on this podcast is sometimes we come in with topics and other times we come in with people, and today we're coming in hot with one of the coolest in our world Matt Sculley for Providence day school. And so I'm looking forward to this conversation because there's not a big roadmap here so I think we can explore some cool stuff. Before we bring Matt in Bill and Hiram. What are you guys hoping to learn from Matt today?

Bill Stites 2:50
I am hoping to learn some fashion tips from Matt Scully. Because, you know, as I mentioned before we got started. I usually see him in a bow tie. I

Christina Lewellen 3:00
mean, he's a dapper dude, for real like I've never seen him not pulled together. He

Bill Stites 3:04
is he's reminded me a bit today of the man and black himself. I'm just waiting to hear if as it is Halloween, whether he came as Johnny Cash or not, and if he has any songs to sing for us, so I'll be interested in seeing where that goes. This whole

Christina Lewellen 3:20
thing is going downhill Hiram, come in strong, please. Something serious. Okay,

Hiram Cuevas 3:24
so I actually met Matt back in 2012 When we were part of a technology audit for Trinity Episcopal School down in Charlotte, North Carolina. So that was my first exposure to Matt scaly what I've been most impressed with it if you've never seen him do it is his note taking skills tell you his note taking skills and various colors and, and he was using the iPad with the special pen stylus that he had back in the day. So this is back in 2012. So he was he was already a renaissance man in that regard. So between that and the Paisley. Look at folks. Okay, I

Christina Lewellen 3:57
feel a lot of Fanboy and happening here. Matt Scully. Welcome to the podcast. I don't know. I mean, if you want to leave right now, I really wouldn't blame you. But I do offer you a very warm welcome. Thank

Matt Scully 4:08
you very much. All I can think of right now is Ring of Fire for Johnny Cash. Like I think this is going to be a ring of fire. Excellent.

Christina Lewellen 4:15
It might be So Matt, let's start with this. How about without these jokesters saying who you are and how they know you? Introduce yourself, please, to our listeners, tell everyone who you are, and kind of a little bit about your origin story.

Matt Scully 4:30
Yeah, so hi, my name is Matt Scully. I'm the Director of Digital integration and Innovation at Providence state school. I've been at Providence state for about 24 years now. My job is a lot of fun. I get to oversee both the IT side of our team and the ed tech side of our team, as well as work with our Chief Design strategist in our assistant head of school for academics, doing a lot of design work and kind of leaning into the innovation. So that's my role and that's what I'm currently doing. As far as origin story. I graduated from yours, Arizona with an education to degree, I went off and immediately started teaching, as any young teacher knows, you grab whatever role you can get to make a little extra money. So besides coaching on the side, I started helping the Tech coordinator for our school district. Within about a year, 1314 months, he left to job with the Phoenix newspapers. And I was waiting for the next guy to come in. And the superintendent called me personally and said, Hey, I don't see your resume. And I'm like, sir, I'm not qualified. And he's like, how about you put your resume on my desk by Tuesday, and we'll see if you're qualified. I thought that'd be the end of it. And next thing I know, I'm the district level Ed Tech coordinator, after about three years of teaching, and did a lot of learning on the fly. Our district office had a L shaped hallway, mine was at the far end of the L. And people would come to the corner, and I learned that they would look down and if my light wasn't on, they'd assume I wasn't in my office. So I literally would turn the light off, turn the little desk lamp on to hide and read manuals and get online and do stuff in the dark so that nobody would come find me until I could figure out what was going on. So

Christina Lewellen 6:03
trial by fire for sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. I

Matt Scully 6:07
learned a lot on the job. I remember talking to this is early 2000s, talking to a Cisco support. And the engineers telling me well, you need to power cycle the router. And I'm like, You're gonna send me instructions. I don't I don't know what that means. And he's like, Oh, it's really easy. Turn it off, and then turn it back on again.

Bill Stites 6:24
The key to all troubleshooting? Yeah,

Matt Scully 6:26
I learned really quickly that it helps when you create really nice acronyms and powerful language to overlay that you're just turning it off and turning it on. It's the key to what we do, I think, yeah. And our superintendent would always be like, Hey, do you need to go power cycled something, and I'm like, Yep, I'm gonna go power cycle, the router, nice. Phoenix was from 9495, through about 9899. And I landed in Charlotte, right around the 1999 2000. school year. Providence state is a really remarkable place a lot of really cool stuff going on a lot of great people got to plug in with some really fun folks and do some really great work. And that's kind of what I've been doing ever since. I've been really fortunate. My team of six that I work with, our newest team member is for five years with us now. And everybody else has been here over a decade. So I've got a really crackerjack staff that basically just want me to stay out of the way, which I'm good at. That's

Christina Lewellen 7:19
awesome. My kids are now out of high school. But I've raised a couple of band geek kids, they will often say, what section are they in? Oh, they're brass. Oh, they're percussion. And that indicates something about their personality. And I've started to learn on this podcast, that one of my favorite questions is what did you teach? Because that might give us a little insight into your personality. So before you transitioned into the world of technology by fire, what did you teach? So I

Matt Scully 7:47
came out of school with a education degree major in English minor in US history, was totally prepared to teach language arts in English, and some US history. And my first teaching job, I had a section of English a section of US history, civics, I had a pre algebra, an earth science and a reading course. So I had five preps, I became the extra teacher in the eighth grade. So I had one of everything. And when my mom heard that I was teaching math, she was like, Oh, you're you're gonna last a week, you've got no chance?

Christina Lewellen 8:18
Well, as it turns out, you lasted three years until you were sucked over into tech. Now, the idea that you've been at Providence since 2000, right? A lot has changed. So before I turn the mic over to my co host, my question for the moment is, can you walk me through that? I mean, what was your world like, in 2000, compared to now, I mean, this field and this profession has grown up around you. That's kind of crazy.

Matt Scully 8:47
Yeah, we were actually just talking about this the other day, when I landed at Providence day, it was all about file servers and delivering files to people. You know, it was we had this network that we're trying to manage and having kids sign. And for those of us that are older, the opening of Get Smart, with all the doors, you know, that he had to unlock to get into headquarters, that was our original system, like you had to sign into the machine, then you had to sign into the file server, you had to sign in past the internet filter, it was all these different logins. And literally, we timed it, it was like seven to nine minutes for kids to get into the machines. At one point, it was just that laborious. And it was all about getting into that you could get access to your files, which are stored locally. And now you know, most of what we do is Device Management, and everything's cloud based. So what my team does on a daily basis is more about cleaning up machines, keeping the network running smoothly, that kind of stuff, but we don't have any file servers on campus anymore. And you know, we're getting into VR headsets and all that kind of stuff. So it's just a very different at the beginning. It was a lot of daily like putting out small fires and keeping everything running. And now we do a lot more of, you know the system. We can keep it up. It's really stable, everything runs and it's supporting people doing some really great stuff. I

Christina Lewellen 10:00
think that one of the reasons that we invited you to be a part of this podcast is that I've observed that you never really lost the energy for students. You know, I think that sometimes the more you get into a support staff role, maybe you could take or leave all that energy around students, but you are really active with your student body. And you kind of think of technology a little bit differently as it pertains to your students, and how you involve them in the process of technology. What is your philosophy on that? Like, how do you stay so tapped into student needs, and you're interested in their wellness, you know, it just seems to me like you have a passion. We all do, I hope, but I think that your interest in the kids is advanced, maybe a little bit more than some of your peers.

Matt Scully 10:46
I think I've always just been fascinated about being the best teacher, I could be building the best learning environments we could build, how learning works, how kids function, those are been the things that really I geek out on more so than tech specs, and that kind of stuff. And so I'm very fortunate, I get to teach a class for juniors and seniors called the art science of teaching. And so these are typically juniors and seniors that are exploring education as a possible career path. And so we get to explore all this on a regular basis. You know, both my daughters came through provenance day. So you're raising kids while you're teaching kids, and that really changes this perspective. Quite honestly, we hit a sweet spot, like right when social media was starting to blow up, my girls were in that preteen place in that teenage spot. And so I felt like we were all learning this stuff together. And it really became readily apparent to me that both direct and indirect consequences both positive and negative consequences were coming from the tools we were using more so than any other time that I had seen. So I felt as well as you with a couple of colleagues, Derek Willard, who is the head of school at Augusta, or just get prep, excuse me, and then we'll be going up to Ravenscroft next year. But he was a key player, we both saw this coming like all this great potential, but there was something that we were anxious about. And so that really kept us involved with the students and how they were perceiving tech and what they were doing with it. It's really been something I've been really curious about watching over the years, I got

Bill Stites 12:10
a question along the lines of the balance between those two, I mean, I think, as you develop into your career, and you start spending more and more time, at an institution, a lot of times you can become segmented in certain areas, your focus can kind of drift in one direction or the other and maintaining that balance in both areas that you seem like you've been able to do from talking about how to reboot the router? You don't I mean, to working with the students? And really, how have you managed that in terms of keeping a foot in both areas? Because I think that's a struggle that a lot of tech directors a lot of schools have in terms of the structure of their program, and the the way they organize themselves from kind of like that leadership position, how have you managed to keep that going?

Matt Scully 12:59
I was always curious about how these things worked. I was the kid who took apart the old alarm clock that we had on the flip over diet, you know, just to see how that worked. Never got it back together again. So I've always had that curiosity. But the other thing that's really important to me is making sure that the learning spaces that we're touching and the way we're influencing instruction, that we're doing no harm and actually leaning into doing some benefit. So it was always important to know how it worked. I was always curious about that. But the big piece for me is how do we build learning spaces and learning environments that allow these kids to do the things that really get them into long term retention of content, development of skills, leaning into those things that are really important? Great, you know, the dates around the Civil War? But do you have the context to understand all of those other pieces, and when you suddenly put a kid in a VR headset and take them places? That's the stuff that I geek out about? Because that's really fun. So, again, it's always been a curiosity about both sides. So

Hiram Cuevas 13:58
Matt, it's obvious to me that you work really hard at developing relationships, not only with your students, but also with your staff. You have a unique capacity to do that in both of those areas, and extremely well. Talk to me about your relationship to try and develop some of that empathy for your staff with the students, not just you.

Matt Scully 14:18
Yeah, I've been very fortunate. The team I've got, they get the mission. They get that we're here to serve our community. They see themselves much like the facilities team does that we're a service provider, we, we are about customer service, and all of that great stuff. I think my team recognizes to that. I like to put them while we talk about it. I asked them to be hostage negotiators to never use the word no. So if somebody comes in and need something, and you can't do that for them, it's not No I can't do that. But here's what I can do. And so we've worked really hard to do that. So if anybody from Providence day is listening to this podcast, they're going to tell you that Matt is the no guy. Like if you get sent to Matt, he's typically going to tell you No, because that's kind of what I've done with my team, as I've set myself up that if we get to that spot where there is no option, and somebody has to be told we can't do that, but that's my role. And we'll try to do that together and figure that out. That's

Christina Lewellen 15:14
cool. So you play the bad guy. So like you want them to get to yes, and only when you've exhausted all the resources and has to get to know then you step in as the no guy. Some

Matt Scully 15:24
people would argue I'm really good at that. And I'm well suited to that.

Christina Lewellen 15:28
Me too. I mean, that's my role in my parenting, and my marriage. So like, I totally get this. I'm very excited about this for you. Yeah,

Matt Scully 15:36
playing the role of the boogey monster works really well, for me, nobody wants to come to me with no, I'm getting a little bit but uh, in empowering my team to do that work and provide that level of customer service. It's been a big advantage for my team, that those tougher conversations those, these are the things we can or cannot do. Because the reality is, I mean, Bill, hire Christina, you guys get this cybersecurity stuff teachers aren't thinking about that teachers are thinking about, Okay, I've got this really challenging scene, a Romeo and Juliet that I have to engage these kids with. And I found this really cool tool that I think is going to help them do it. And the fact that it's harvesting every piece of information from the kids and pushing it out online, like that's not a part of the equation on how I'm getting to my next target my next goal. And so to be able to have to step in and say, Hey, I get that's a really cool idea. But unfortunately, at this time, we can't do that we're not ready. We're not sure about what that's going to do for us. I mean, right now, AI is the Wild West. And that's been a big one. I've got some teachers really excited about doing some things. And we're, you know, just want to move intentionally, deliberately into that space without doing anything that in hindsight will be a mistake.

Christina Lewellen 16:46
If we can pause on that a second, I'd love to hear a little more about your philosophies around AI because I think that many people in your position are wrestling that and it is such an interesting balance of trying to explore it while at the same time not step in any potholes that we're going to regret. So share with us a little bit about where you stand and how you're guiding your school in terms of AI thought leadership. Well, first,

Matt Scully 17:12
I've got to put a plug in for Jared colleague down at Mount Vernon, Jared and Mount Vernon have done some remarkable stuff and have a publication you can actually get from them that that really does some really nice things about laying out a framework for exploring this and thinking about it. Providence de what we started with was like, Okay, we got to build policy, we got to build procedure, how are we going to do this. And then jumping into writing policy and procedure, we immediately recognized we did not have enough experience as a group to craft anything that was anything other than kind of fear driven, because we were guessing at what we were afraid of we are guessing and how to protect. So we've backed up a little bit. And what we started doing is with our regular Academic Council meetings, as these are our department chairs, and grade level leaders, we're building opportunities for people to build experience. So we're generating prompts and playing with the tools and learning more about them. And from those experiences, we're extrapolating each time we beat, and we have an experience, what did we learn? What do we know? What do we want to know. And as we continue to build these experiences, our goal is by the spring, to have enough experience to kind of draft the first guidelines for what we think we want to do. In the meantime, we're really asking teachers to make sure that everything they're doing is related to AI, that we're having conversations with each other. So we're asking them to let us know, if you're going to use AI. Let's talk beforehand, let's talk about what you're doing. Let's talk about how you want to use it, let's talk about are we setting clear boundaries for the kids about what they can and can't do. And the interesting side pieces, it's led to some really great conversation about assessment. Because there's so much fear around, the kids are going to just have the AI do the homework, the kids are going to just have it build the assignments for them, that I think it's generated some really cool conversations with kids about all weight, you need to understand what I'm trying to measure in this assessment, you need to understand what I need to know you can or cannot do. So therefore, as long as the AI is not doing that for you, then the AI can help you and support you. I need to know you can write a topic sentence. So you can't have the AI write your topic sentence. You can have the AI generate five topic sentences. And we can talk about which one's the best one and then you craft one using those five models. Great, but I want to see those five models. And I want to see what you finished and created so that I can say yes, Student A knows how to write a topic sentence. And so there's been some really cool conversation around it. We've had the obvious mishaps that other schools have had I had a teacher come to me and say I think this kid cheated. And we're reading through the assignment and we get to the question and it's like the question was using Google Images, find an image of a music box that looks like the music box from the opening of the novella. And the kids response that he pasted in was I'm a text based machine and can not generate this response. Oh,

Christina Lewellen 20:02
no. Oh, kid. Oh,

Matt Scully 20:07
so of course, the teacher is asking me like, do you think this is cheating? And I'm like, Well, I hope it's cheating. Because if it's not, he thinks she's a text based machine like we got two potential problems. Cheating is the easier one to address.

Christina Lewellen 20:20
I mean, at the very least, it's a conversation starter for sure. So we're

Matt Scully 20:24
wrestling with it, we're getting through it. But I really think that if we stay focused on what our goals are, what our outcomes are, what are we trying to accomplish? As educators, we're going to be able to be in the sweet spot, are we going to make mistakes? Sure, these tools are really complicated and hard to understand, are we ultimately going to come out on the other side having more advantages and disadvantages, I believe. So

Bill Stites 20:45
hearing the way you're describing the way in which you're approaching that topic of AI, in this case, or any kind of like new trend that is fraught with fear, or maybe misunderstanding is great, because it talks about how you need to develop the understanding and the appreciation of that trend with everyone and get everyone's kind of like knowledge up before you can really start tackling that. And one of the things that I appreciate it I want to pivot towards is, when you talk about that you're talking about, you know, the professional development, how are you, you know, learning all of these new things, whether it's with a new trend, like AI, or you mentioned before, like turning the light off in your office so that you can sit down and, you know, go through the books, we can't really turn off our lights any longer just with the demands that we have upon us. But it really kind of speaks to the need for this level of professional development. And I loved hearing the way you talk about, you know, the way in which you're supporting your staff so that they can be the best people. You can be the bad guy when you need to. And you can set the frame or the context for the reason for the no in these things. But but as you think about the ways in which you support your staff, how do you go about developing your staff, I'd love that you said that you put them in position so that you can be left alone. And I'd love that because what that means to me is that there's been a level of proficiency that's been developed amongst the staff in certain areas where you can delegate those things off, you can hand those things off and allow them to own those things and know that that work is going to get done. How have you supported your staff in getting to that point where you can take that step back and feel that you've done enough in the areas of PD and development to really empower that. One

Matt Scully 22:36
of the big things for us is when new opportunities come up getting people in contact with the right people. So Shannon Weldon is one of my instructional strategists does mostly middle and upper school work. She's working with Alyssa Finnick, rock down at Optima ed on the VR stuff. And like having that connection and having someone help us through that learning curve is instrumental, I often see folks doing our role, feeling like they have to figure it out first, that they have to become a quasi expert before they can hand it off to anybody else. My team will tell you, I'm pretty close to being useless in a lot of situations. And in some cases, they appreciate that they like the opportunity to be the expert in this area or do this thing. My role is to set them up and make the connections. I think the other piece is when we are working through stuff, we've set some large targets as far as the way we do things I mentioned earlier, the hostage negotiation trying to say no, like we have large umbrella ideas. So that as new ideas come at us as new situations that we've never seen before come out as my team has a framework in which to kind of work through making those decisions. And as far as helping them and leading them through that I always try to never make it a you did the wrong thing, or you did the right thing. But it's like helped me understand how you applied our framework here. And as long as we're working within that framework, great, we may decide to do something different next time. But in that moment, you made a decision based on your experience here, your time here, our community values, you know, bigger than the team, but like what Providence Day is all about. And I think it makes sense that you made that decision in that moment. Moving forward, let's talk about how we want to handle that. And then we bring that, you know, my team member and I who might have that conversation are going to bring that to their team meeting, which we do once a week and share that with the rest of the team. So that one, what two of us have talked about is agreed to by all seven of us. The other pieces that we get to brainstorm a little bit about the novel and unique situations. So that as a team, we're all thinking about the same stuff. Because my network admin comes at these questions very differently than my instructional strategies, right? My Lower School instructional strategies, has a very education oriented focus my network admin, he doesn't he's not an educator. So having all of those perspectives and voices shape, our choices and lean into our stuff moving forward have been essential for us. But again, in those individual moments when they have to make it decision on the fly, I hope we have enough of a framework that gives them kind of borders and guardrails to work with them.

Hiram Cuevas 25:06
So Matt, one of the things that I was struck by is your level of respect for your team and the relationship that you have with your team. I love the fact that it's fairly obvious that you trust them implicitly. The other is that you want to set them up for success so that they can actually serve as partners within the school community. And the third thing that struck a chord with me, because it resonates with me, almost directly is, I find myself knowing a little bit about a lot of different things in my role, you almost feel like you're in triage. And as an ER doctor, you kind of go in and you're like, Alright, what's coming at me now. But you really are relying so much on the expertise of your team, and the development of your team. If people don't know it, it sounds like Providence Forge is a very special place to work in this field.

Matt Scully 25:57
Yeah, I mean, I've got to say what I do and how I do things is what I've been shown from other leadership roles. I'm constantly figuring out how to be a better leader, by watching those around me. And so I'm very fortunate that I've worked with some great folks over the years. And that's really been essential to how I do stuff. The other big piece is we have a unique, diverse team. But the one common piece is these people are, well, they're all nuts. They're just crazy. And humor is a huge part of how this team clicks and bonds and communicates. We started our team meeting this morning with about a 12 minute conversation about black licorice. And there were some really strong feelings about black licorice. Oh,

Christina Lewellen 26:38
yeah, that's a hard no for me, friend. What? What? No, no, thanks, please. Now we need to know Matt. I mean, like, are you pro or anti black licorice. Get on the record, please. So

Matt Scully 26:50
the entire team with one exception was anti black licorice. And I'm anti black licorice. Okay, thank goodness, that's not a flavor. But the good natured, poking fun at each other and going after my system support specialists. It's part of what I think keeps the team comfortable in the moments get tense and are crazy. We were doing the PSATs. And College Board was telling us, hey, you've got to make sure the kids are keeping the machines up to date. So we pushed all the kids to update their iPads to iPad os 17, which is the only operating system that does not work for the PSAT. We had to reschedule our testing date. And then we had to take about 375 Lower School iPads, and reposition them one afternoon so that we could take the PSAT for the juniors and seniors the next morning, and then that afternoon, take 375 iPads and get them all back into the right lower school classroom. So I mean, you know, it's not building the Great Wall of China. But for us, it was a big list, and my team got through it really well. And again, it's that underlying framework, why we do what we do, and that humor that helps us pull those things off. You're

Christina Lewellen 27:57
not the only ones who had some gray hair over that whole scene.

Hiram Cuevas 28:00
I hope he gave everybody a pack of black licorice, which is a flavor. I

Matt Scully 28:05
want them to like me so no, I'm not giving anyone black licorice. Yeah, good

Christina Lewellen 28:08
call. So I have a question for you, Matt. Because you know, when I first came in to ATLIS, when I first came in, as the executive director, the staff here, my incredible staff could not sing your praises high enough. And so it's like I knew about you before we even met. And I think it's just because you've been an active supportive contributor in the ATLIS community. And since you've been kind of inventing this job for the last two decades, kind of, you know, figuring out the plane as you're flying it, like many tech leaders, including Bill and Hiram, I'm just curious, like, what the ATLIS community has changed for you. You know, now that we've kind of firmed it up, I know that you guys were gathering elsewhere and making connections elsewhere. But now that we've brought you together into our crazy little ATLIS tent, talk to me a little bit about that. And also, I know that you've been a leader in our space that so many people learn from you. And you've helped lead programming that ATLIS does, including our now ala program, our ATLIS Leadership Institute. So basically, I'm saying can you tell me a little bit about how much you love us.

Matt Scully 29:14
So prior to ATLIS, what would happen is you you would go to a conference. And what I learned really quick is the ed tech folks sit in the back right corner. So you go to the keynote, and you drift to the back right corner. And you'd look around for people that were, you know, you get a sense of like, Oh, they're carrying a backpack, they've got tools, they pulled out their laptop, they pulled out their iPad, these are my people. And so you go to a conference about something else, and then look to find the EdTech people in the 80 people and try to have some good conversations. ATLIS, there's no back, right? It's everybody at the conference. And it's all these amazing people doing amazing stuff. And I think what's amazing is like, it doesn't matter that Providence de has, you know, over 1900 kids this year and we're big. I go to those conferences and I sit down with somebody and I I learned that somebody running a school that has 350 Kids is doing something incredibly agile, and flexible, it's going to be a beautiful idea for me to steal, and bring back to my school. And like any good con artist, I mean, I've just been stealing everybody else's stuff for 25 years now, like, I don't know, the last time I came up with an original idea. It's just applying these great ideas to other places. And ATLIS is a huge piece of that the resources, the podcasts, the conferences, like it is a phenomenal opportunity to get connected in with people that get it, Bill and Hiram, they know like, you go into admin meeting sometimes. And it's like, what's the analogy? What's the metaphor I can use to help somebody understand what I'm about to explain, because the technical language isn't going to work here. And so you're constantly working with folks where you're trying to convert what you know, into stuff that they understand. When you go to ATLIS, you don't have to convert, you can speak your native tongue, and everybody gets it.

Christina Lewellen 30:55
That's awesome. I know that you also have been such a wonderful mentor to folks who are coming up in a way behind you as new technology leaders, clearly at your own school, but also within the ATLIS community. Why do you think that's important? Like why do you contribute your time? I mean, my understanding is you're always willing to pick up a call or answer an email. So you know, you give a lot of your time to help others in your position. Why do you do that?

Matt Scully 31:21
You guys are making me sound really good. I don't know what I owe you for this later. But

Christina Lewellen 31:25
you'll get your bill,

Matt Scully 31:27
I don't even know that I can live up to half of this. So when I started, there was when you started connecting and building your own network, there were a lot of us that were learning all of this together. Like these listservs. It was never somebody who was the expert who had done this a million times, we were all doing it for the first time. And that community that sense of like, taking a little bit of this and a little bit of that figuring out how to make your network come online tomorrow, like that was huge. So as I've matured, as my beard has gotten wider and wider. And I feel like I'm watching the next generations come up through that. And it's where I can offer, you know, a little bit of like, it took me five years to figure this out. Like if I can give you the Candyland shortcut to get past the molasses swamp and get to the other side faster. Like, why would I not do that?

Christina Lewellen 32:13
That is an incredible analogy. Let's everybody bookmark that one. That's great.

Matt Scully 32:20
I don't think I necessarily know more or smarter than anybody else, and just been around longer. I've just seen more things come through. And you can start getting a feel for I'm sure Bill at hired do it's like you start talking to a vendor. And you know, some of the right questions to ask like, so how long have you guys been around who's behind you? Like, oh, that's the same venture capital company that basically creates new companies and sells them to somebody else. I'm gonna wait three years, and then I'm going to talk to you again, because you'll have changed names twice, and you'll be part of something bigger, I'm not going to jump in right now. Or you find somebody who's literally on the edge of doing something and you're like, Oh, you're literally doing something cool. And I'm gonna get in on this. Because it's not about creating a commodity to sell later. It's about doing something really cool. And those things come from experience. And so anytime you can kind of shortcut things for people and help them see those things.

Christina Lewellen 33:12
I think that's a good thing. Basically,

Matt Scully 33:14
it boils down to this. When I was going into middle school, my mom went back to teaching, my sister was a little bit younger. So she wasn't necessarily in this but my my brother and I had to learn how to do laundry and how to learn how to make meatloaf and start cooking. And when we would complain, the line was always you two aren't pretty enough to be useless.

Christina Lewellen 33:32
Mom's brutal. And it's

Matt Scully 33:35
really kind of been this foundational piece for me that like I have to find ways to be valuable because just sitting here isn't going to do it. So that's part of what drives me. I'm

Christina Lewellen 33:46
loving that your mom's an icon thank you for that nugget. You're not pretty enough to be useless loving that on all levels. Alright, so these guys know, Hiram Speaking of not pretty enough to be useless. Wow. Oh, I know. I'm sorry, guys. I love you, Hiram and Bill know that usually in each podcast, I bring the Snark Okay, yeah. And I also bring a question for all three of you. So even though Matt, you're the guest, I also just learned so much from my co hosts. And so my question for you this week in this podcast, for all three of you is the thing that strikes me as really impressive about the work you do is that you are coaching up and you are coaching down all the time. So in any given day, you are empowering and bringing students into whatever it is you're helping them with, from a technology standpoint, making them feel empowered, at the same time. Your very next meeting is walking into an admin office. And using those Candyland analogies to help them understand why we're trying to protect the school in a certain way or while we're trying to be innovative in a certain way. So I know that's kind of a big question, but my question for all three of you and anybody can go first is simply in any given day. You're coaching up you're coaching down that has to be kind of tricky. How do you get good at that? How do you perfect that skill set, please teach me.

Bill Stites 35:08
The only thing I say is something I've been hearing a lot of people talk about, which is to pause for a moment, and to really listen. And I think that that is, for so much of what we do, I think what we do is we sit at that middle point between all this confusing technology that people don't understand not because they don't want to, but maybe they just don't have the time. And then what all those educational needs are, and being able to listen at both ends of that, and do that translation of, okay, I hear this little piece from here, I hear this little piece from there. And then bringing those things together, within Matt, kind of like what you were talking about, like within the context of what your mission is, or in the context of what it is that you've agreed to our our goals. And I think that so much of that is, at least in my mind, listening to both those sides, understanding where our grounding is, and then trying to take the time, if you have it, which we often don't, but to take that time to really coach up or coach down based on the intersection of all of those things, which I think to your other point, Matt, that level comes with a certain degree of time in the job, I don't know whether or not that is something that someone going through the AI program that's fairly new to the job, a new tech leader that they would really be able to get without that time, it's the benefit of the fact that you and I both have a gray beard and Hiram and I both have no hair on the top of our heads. That's something that comes with time and as much as we can do as an ATLIS community to take it back to what Christina was asking before that community might and does provide the help there.

Christina Lewellen 36:59
I mean, I get some themes, right? Because it's like, okay, so experience certainly helps you coaching up and coaching down because you've just been doing it a long time. And also listening is important. Matt, Hiram, do you guys have anything else to add in terms of that dynamic. In any given hour, you're probably putting on your I'm helping a student hat. And then you're putting on your I've got to convince admin hat. And that's just intense.

Hiram Cuevas 37:22
One of the thing that has benefited me the most in this role is coming from this, as a teacher first, I started my career in as a teacher, and all of us here were teachers. And I think the thing that you have to realize almost immediately is the need for differentiated instruction.

Christina Lewellen 37:40
That is brilliant, whether

Hiram Cuevas 37:43
it's having to explain a pretty abstract concept to your admin team or various constituents within your community, or talking to, in our case, the boys about certain policies that we've got to put into place, you've got to be able to meet them where they are. And so one of the things that I have found most valuable, because, like Matt, I relied on Twitter, for my personal learning community, I relied on the various listservs. And now it's ATLIS. Because here on campus, there aren't a whole lot of people that I can talk to you outside of my department about what's going on and really understands what we are going through. So in order for me to be effective within this community, I need to be able to reach them where

Matt Scully 38:26
they are, yes to everything bill and Hiram have put out there, I would add that somewhere along the line, I figured out that you have to be both an expert and a learner. And you have to be at both of those modes. At the same time. You have to share what you know, you have to share your experience. But the minute you think you've got the right answer the minute you are absolutely certain this is what needs to happen. That's quite honestly, when you are at your most useless and most vulnerable. The minute you forget that I need to know more I need to learn I need to listen, that's where you make your missteps and I've done it plenty over the my career, which is how I am so aware of that. I think the other thing that I've recently come across is a gentleman by the name of Jared Horvath was speaking this summer at the southern Association's annual conference. And Jared was sharing a lot of things. But one of the things that really struck me was everybody has a primary story about any tool. And you know, as Bill mentioned at Hirens mentioned listening to people but like trying to unpack their primary story. The easiest one is when kids pull out their phones, or an iPad, for example. Their primary story is not this is an education tool. This is a learning device, right? Their primary story is this is what entertains me when no one else is around. This is how I get to my games. So understanding someone's primary story about a tool about a situation, what is it that they're leading into? Because my primary story might be completely different than if I approach it from only understanding my primary story. I'm gonna put myself on a huge disadvantage. I think Bill and Hiram nailed it, just being both a learner and a listener, and sharing your expertise in carefully rationed bits.

Christina Lewellen 40:09
I love that you guys, thank you so much for that. You couldn't have known this. There are so many reasons that I profoundly respect teachers. And you guys just blew up my brain a little bit today. Because basically, your answer to my question is we're good at this because we're educators, because never walked away from that teaching role. You don't know this. But today, my oldest daughter just walked into her very first teaching practicum she went back to college a little bit late. And so she is in a classroom right now. And I actually got a little bit teary eyed as you guys were talking, because she's taking literally the first step on her journey. And who knows where she'll be? Maybe she'll be you guys in 20 years, right?

Unknown Speaker 40:49
Oh, she could do better than that. Oh.

Christina Lewellen 40:53
Well, I appreciate that was, uh, Gosh, what a wonderful moment. Thank you guys for that. Man. I know that you're a humble guy. And I know that you probably are about done with this whole thing. But I also have to like circle into the fact that you're an innovative thinker, you have innovation in your title, you also tend to talk a lot about entrepreneurial efforts and entrepreneurship. And so can you just tell me a little bit about how you empower kids to take technology into their own hands, and really feel confident using those tools for their own education, it seems to me a common theme and some of the work that you and your team do. But in particular, you take a lot of these puzzle pieces, put them together. And there's this very strong focus on students, which is kind of where we started this discussion. So tell us a little bit about that, and how you think about that, how you go about empowering your learners.

Matt Scully 41:44
I'm very fortunate to work with a great group of folks. Dr. Ryan Welsh is the head of our newest department, which is called ideas. So innovation, design, entrepreneurship, analytics, and sustainability. And what we did is we took our computer science department, and we took a handful of orphaned courses that had been squeezed into different places. And we brought them all together in one department. So engineering, architecture, computer programming, entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, design, and entrepreneurship. These are all courses within the ideas team. And what this is doing is leaning into creating more kind of experiential and project based opportunities in these areas. So we're letting kids solve problems and go after things that they're curious about things that they think they can't do to make a difference. And so we've got a team member, Dr. James edge, and another one, Brian Lee, who've done a tremendous amount with financial understanding and with entrepreneurship. And so for our Fall Festival, we have a student market, and our kids are there with their stuff. But the idea behind ideas is that the web design kids are sitting there bumped into the entrepreneurship, kids bumped into the engineering kids, and that these cross curricular opportunities come out with opportunities for these kids to work together on entrepreneurial endeavors. Again, Dr. James, Ed is there to support them. And then Brian Lee is there to coach him up on the financial side of things. And it's been great. So that department in and of itself is a huge piece of this. But I think the bigger pieces were learning into creating more experiential, and opportunities to apply what they were learning to take it and try it. And what's the old TED talk about? If schools taught kids how to ride a bike, you do like six weeks of like, bicycle chain, and like you'd learn everything, but it would take you like nine weeks before you'd ever sit on a bike. I think we're trying to take that and embody that and give kids more opportunities to like, oh, you tried, something didn't quite work, or it worked? Well. Now let's unpack that. Let's understand why it worked, why it didn't work. And I get to do that with my art and science of teaching kids. We're a K 12 campus, and I've got students that want to learn how to be a middle are thinking about being a middle school science teacher, great, let's go hang out with a middle school science teacher, go teach a mini lesson in a classroom, come back and go, Okay, middle school isn't what you want to do, you've learned that that's great. Let's move on to something else. Like, those are the things that we're trying to do. And the technology allows us to accelerate and connect kids in ways that we couldn't without,

Christina Lewellen 44:02
if we could just do that more often, I think we'd save a lot of our young people a lot of heartache of walking down the wrong path for a while, right. So that's incredible.

Matt Scully 44:11
I think one of the things I love about middle school and high school, even elementary school is like letting kids explore as many paths as possible. Wait till you're older, start picking a path and going down it, try some things out, kick the tires, see what you like,

Hiram Cuevas 44:25
so impressed with the fact that you are doing some really great cross pollination at your school with the various groups of students as it really reflects where I think today's workplace is headed. And if you can't get along with all the different groups that are out there, it's going to be really important that you learn how to collaborate on a regular basis. And so this is just a wonderful opportunity that you students have.

Matt Scully 44:48
Yeah, the collaboration has been a huge part of getting kids to work together, especially post pandemic, you know, getting us out of our shells and getting us back into working with people. I've watched my own daughters who are 20 Before in 25, you know, one's a third grade teacher and one's in sales for the Columbus Blue Jackets. But both of them kind of getting into the work environment and being an adult and figuring out how to, you know, something's our communication, you have to go talk to someone, you have to pick up the phone and call someone, you can't just fill out an online form and get what you need. And so coaching kids through that early and getting them connected, it's a big piece.

Bill Stites 45:23
So as we look to kind of the future, and where things are going to really end up for all of us. What do you see as the things you're going to be looking forward to, in the next part of your career, you know, where you're going to be where things are going to go? What are the things that you're looking forward to in the future?

Matt Scully 45:40
I'm really curious about virtual reality and augmented reality, I'm really curious about AI and where this is going to take us how we do this in a way where we're not sharing too much information and how we're controlling what information we get and how we're validating sources like a lot of that really just, I'm fascinated by how this is going to unfold and unpack. Personally, I think one of the areas that I have really curious about is how we help teachers really streamline and create more efficiencies where they're doing the same work at the same quality, without giving up nights and weekends. And people outside of education. Let me say it this way, don't get that. Yeah, some teachers may have the summers off. But man, Tuesday night, through Sunday afternoon, they don't. They're grading papers, they're working on stuff, they're planning lessons, I live with a sick baby English teacher, she is phenomenal. And you know, in football season, it's great because I can be on the couch watching football. And she's unfortunately stuck grading essays. So things that we can do there where AI can lean into the process and create more time for teachers to not have to work quite as hard is long, but still get similar results. So where they can partner with an AI that's going to help them generate the same quality of comment, like where they can apply their understanding of the child and the AI can apply their understanding of the content or the skills. And that's the sweet spot. But that's what really excites me about the potential coming up.

Bill Stites 47:07
So Matt, one of the things I think is great about what you said there is an Hiram will remember the time was up my way a few weeks ago and you know I to live with a teacher as hire him, you know, my wife is a Spanish teacher. And one of the most interesting things is we were having a conversation with my wife about using AI to help do our lesson planning. And to reduce that because I see the exact same thing. I'm watching the the Eagles play football, my wife's grading or doing all the work that she has, where she's trying to put together a lesson one of the things that I think is very interesting about all that, and this was point I think hiring was trying to make and I was trying to make is she thought that using AI to help plan her lessons was cheating. She thought she was cheating her kids, she was thought she was cheating, the level of professionalism that she brings to her work by using these tools to help make her more efficient. We were having this conversation about it's not cheating, it's getting you started, it's helping you get over that initial hurdle to trying to figure out alright, how am I going to do this, rather than having to reinvent the wheel or come up with all of these things on our own? You know how AI could support that. And I think it's a great thing for us to consider as we talk to our faculty about using these tools. And when we talk about the things that are going to make us better at what we do in the future, and how to leverage them in the right ways and appropriate ways.

Matt Scully 48:38
Yeah, Bill, I think you're spot on. I think there are a handful of occupations where people's personal identity and their professional identity are just absolutely intertwined. You cannot separate them, firefighters, police officers, teachers, these are people who their professional identity and their personal identity are so woven together, I have a buddy from college who worked for Frito Lay for years. He was not corn chips on the weekend. Like that's not who he was. But you can't take an educator on the weekend and get them to not talk school at some point like they're going to do it. So when you give them tools that are going to start doing some of the things that they do it impinges it bumps up against that sense of identity. And I get it like what makes teachers really good is their personal commitment to providing this quality, this understanding. I think one of the levers that we can pull on as a tech folks is helping people understand like yes, but I want more of your best stuff. I don't want your time spent on the stuff that isn't the best. The best is, you know, in the kids the best is the relationship you have with the kids. If AI generates five ideas for you, and you can pick the one that works best for period two and the one that works best for period three. That's gold, because you know the kids, you're doing the most important work. They're building those relationships and knowing how these kids are going to respond to these different ideas. Isn't these different lessons? Right? You nailed it, but like that's gonna be the big challenge is helping people not think of this as cheating as taking shortcuts. Because the teachers that I know, they don't take shortcuts. And I don't think this is a shortcut, I think this is a path to doing the good stuff more often.

Christina Lewellen 50:16
This is incredible, Matt, I think that if this is your passion project for the next however many years, I can only imagine what's going to come out of it. I just messaged my team, as you were talking. And I'm like, Well, I know what Matt Scully is going to be talking about at the annual conference, driving efficiency for teachers. This is incredible. I love this topic. I love that you have passion around it. Like almost everything you've been passionate about over the last however many years, when you get an interest, it ends up being a benefit to our entire community. And so now everyone, you heard it here, first, Matt Scully has a new pet project. And so we're gonna frame up some content around this because I think that this in and of itself, could be a whole nother conversation. And it's a really important one, given the last few years that teachers have gone through, we should work really hard to figure out how to make their lives easier. So as we wrap this up, I want to thank you for giving us so much of your time, it was incredible to wander around with you this morning, explore different aspects of things that you're interested in, and other things that you're passionate about, and also a little bit about what's coming next. So it's been exciting, and I'm so glad that we got to know you a little bit better. Hopefully, we'll see you again, on either this podcast or a webinar or speaking for ATLIS, you have always kind of made that circuit, an important part of the work you do. And we're very, very grateful. Thank

Matt Scully 51:46
you for the opportunity. It's been fun, really opportunity to hang with Bill and Hiram. I'm gonna jump at it.

Christina Lewellen 51:51
Hey, me, too. You know, that's why we're doing this whole podcast. Christina, it

Matt Scully 51:55
goes without saying that hanging out with you is a number one. I mean, if I have to choose between Bill and Hiram, or it's you, I was just trying to throw the old guys a bone. I mean, it's a safe bet. Hands down, hands down. And

Christina Lewellen 52:08
if you choose to hang out with me, there's a very low likelihood that you'll end up needing bail money or running up a big bar tab or anything like that. So I'm probably your safer bet.

Bill Stites 52:18
All I know is this is the last time we're taking Matt out for Thai food. He's not coming.

Christina Lewellen 52:24
I think that's a lie, too. All right, guys. Thank you for joining us once again for talking technology. With ATLIS. We always get a little off the rails here. But honestly, do you expect anything different? Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next time.

Narrator 52:38
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.