Leadership Spotlight: Partnerships in Technology and Learning with Tim Fish

Narrator 00:02
Welcome to Talking Technology with ATLIS, the show that plugs you into the important topics and trends for technology leaders all through a unique Independent School lens. We'll hear stories from technology directors and other special guests from the Independent School community and provide you will focus learning and deep dive topics. And now please welcome your host, Christina Lewellen.
Christina Lewellen 00:25
Hello everyone and welcome back to Talking Technology with ATLIS. I'm Christina Lewellen, executive director of the Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools.
Bill Stites 00:34
And I am Bill Stites, the director of technology at Montclair Kimberley Academy.
Hiram Cuevas 00:39
And I'm Hiram Cuevas, director of information systems and academic technology at St. Christopher's school in Richmond, Virginia.
Christina Lewellen 00:45
Well, hello, gentlemen, welcome back to another episode. It's always a pleasure to see you. I'm going to come in hot today. I have a question for you. Because I've been listening to the episodes, and we've been getting a lot of great feedback about the episodes. And I know that all three of us were really excited about today's guest today on the podcast, we're gonna welcome in a few minutes – Tim Fish. And we started this podcast talking about Tim, in our very first episode. So this is kind of a full circle moment for us, isn't it?
Hiram Cuevas 01:14
Absolutely.
Bill Stites 01:15
As I mentioned earlier, before we got on, I’m a little starstruck, when we were rattling off all of those podcasts that we listen to on a regular basis and those that inspire us, Tim was right up there amongst my top one. So having him here today is very nice.
Christina Lewellen 01:31
Yeah, it's a big get for us. I'm really excited.
And my question that I can't wait to ask him, and I want to ask you guys first, is… You know we've been talking on this podcast and celebrating successes on this podcast, which I think is human nature, right? We bring on these great guests, we talk about all the cool things that they're doing; all the success that they have... But my question today: I've been thinking about when things go wrong. And sometimes, like when the FAFSA form… a new edition of the FAFSA form rolls out, or whatever big rollout, there's always issues. I remember back in the day, when there was the medical platforms, that exchanges that would roll out and those were always a mess. So you know, sometimes technology just doesn't go as planned.
What do you guys do? If you have a tech project, and you said it was gonna go a certain way, your school community is expecting it to go a certain way, and then it absolutely does not go well? What do you do? How do you kind of deal with that in the moment? Is it just a matter of a bunch of communication?
Bill Stites 02:32
A.L. is gonna say… I don't think there's ever been a tech project that has gone 100% the way in which you expect it to go, because a lot of times we're doing that type of work in the summer. And it's not until everyone gets back in the building, and starts hitting those buttons or trying those things, that you see what really worked and what didn't work. But as you said, I think the most important thing, amongst all of it is just clear, consistent communication throughout the entire piece. Because when it goes south, you need to be clear about that and let people know. Otherwise, you've got people asking too many questions and just getting more and more frustrated.
Hiram Cuevas 03:08
And Christina I would add that it's all about modeling. I like to model failing gracefully and modeling problem solving. Because there are too many times when teachers are fearful of trying anything new with technology. And if they see somebody who's supposedly the guru of tech for the school flubbing and failing in front of them, you have the ability to fail gracefully, and also display problem solving skills along the way so that you can actually execute. It goes a long way.
Christina Lewellen 03:40
You know, I think that in another universe, this podcast should have been named “Failing Gracefully”. I think it would have been a good fit for us.
All right. Well, with that, looking forward to talking a little bit about failing gracefully, toward the end of our conversation, it is now time for us to welcome to the podcast, Tim Fish.
Tim, welcome to the podcast. We're so glad to have you here. Thank you for joining us, and tell everybody a little bit about who you are and why we are so starstruck to have you here with us.
Tim Fish 04:13
Oh, man. No, no, no, I am starstruck. I am so excited to be here. Thank you so much for the kind invitation. And I'm just honored, honored to be in the ATLIS studio with the three of you.
So my job is the chief innovation officer at NAIS. I've been with NAIS for almost eight years prior to that I was the associate headmaster at McDonough School in Baltimore. McDonogh is a pre-K to 12th grade school now serving about 1500 students, founded 150 years ago... Big school sits on an 800-acre campus outside of Baltimore. And I did all kinds of different jobs in my 18 years of working at the school.
And now pretty much what I do is I have help schools design to move forward. You know, I do a lot of work with strategy. I do a lot of work with innovation design. I do a lot of work with tech and data. But it's really fundamentally for me about “how do we help schools think about their future?” How do we help them create a vision, a shared story they're telling about the future they want to see? And how do we help them live into that future? That's what I do. I roll up my sleeves every day with schools, and I try to help them make progress.
Christina Lewellen 05:29
So you've been in independent schools for a really long time. And now you have a role where you're helping guide and hopefully spark creativity and innovation. So how do you stay fresh? How do you stay in an innovative space?
Tim Fish 05:44
Oh, man. Yeah, number one is I am always listening to podcasts, like ATLIS’s podcast and others. So I walk a lot. And I listen to podcasts while I walk. I also read a lot. And I'm a big believer in not reading entire books. My wife and I are incredibly different. She finishes every book she starts; I rarely finish a book. So I have a pile of books sitting around that I'm going in and out of all the time. And it's in that sort of conversation I'm having with books that really helps me to sort of shape my thinking.
And I'll tell you the other thing I do, a little secret tip from Tim is I do these things called “walk n’ talks”. And I start most of my days off with a 7:30 or 8:00 call with somebody who just says they would like to talk about whatever. And I usually leave my house, and I jump on the call with my little headset on my phone. I walk up to my Dunkin Donuts, I get a cup of coffee, and then I walk around my neighborhood, and we talk for 35 or 45 minutes. And it's those conversations where I keep myself fresh, because it's other people's ideas more than it is my own.
Christina Lewellen 06:57
That's incredible. And it sounds like this “walk n’ talk” is really deep into your bone marrow, because you just took a really interesting sabbatical. Can you tell us a little bit about that trip.
Tim Fish 07:08
I did. I did. Oh my gosh, it was the best I got this opportunity to walk something called the Camino de Santiago in Spain. And there's a lot of different Caminos that all end up going into Santiago de Compostela, in Spain. And I ended up doing what's called “The French Way,” which is a little over a 500 mile walk that starts in Southern France. On the first day it finds its way into Spain, and then I walked pretty much across Spain and ended up in Santiago de Compostela. It's a walk with all these other pilgrims. You know, people have been doing this thing for over 800 years, and I had the privilege of spending 34 days walking on the path with some amazing people.
Christina Lewellen 07:50
Five hundred miles – that's got to be a lot of innovation kicking around in your head.
Tim Fish 07:57
[laughs] There’s a lot kicking around in your head. And I'll tell you, I spent most of that time talking with the people around me. I did it by myself, quote unquote, but I wasn't by myself very long. A “trail family” formed very quickly. And I got to know people, but it also just gives you a lot of time to just be in your head and be thinking and imagining what might be.
Christina Lewellen 08:14
Any big “a-ha moments” that came from all those miles of thinking?
Tim Fish 08:19
I tell you, Christina, I happened to carry my pack, so I stayed in some type of lodging every night, I never slept on the trail. I always say the Camino is not the Appalachian Trail. Each night, you come into a Spanish village, you eat in a restaurant, you have a glass of wine, you hang out with people, you stay in some lodging form along the way. I carried everything on my pack. And one of the things I learned is less is more, right? Less is more, like, you just don't need that much stuff. Two pairs of underwear, two shirts, three pairs of socks, one long sleeve shirt, one little jacket – that was it. That's all I needed, you know, and a little bit of clothing and water and some stuff to take care of my feet if I got blisters, but there wasn't a whole lot.
Christina Lewellen
So less is more.
Tim Fish
Less is more – simplicity. We make it all too complicated too often, I think.
Christina Lewellen 09:10
Yeah, simplicity. I think you're right there. So, we'll come back and talk a little bit about your massive pilgrimage. But first, I want to talk a little bit about some of the things that you're seeing.
You have a really unique perspective, as a person who works with a lot of schools. Obviously, you came from a school, and now you work with a lot of schools. So tell us a little bit about some of the trends and things you're thinking about, kind of weighing in your head, and maybe even talking with some of your walk n’ talk partners.
Tim Fish 09:41
That's great. I'm happy to do it. I'd love to hear what you all are seeing as well. Because for me right now, in terms of where schools are, I think we're at an inflection point.
You know, I think what I'm feeling when I'm out there is teachers and school leaders kind of saying “okay, what does great school look like now?” And I think there's a few things we know.
I think we know that human relationships and connections with young people have never been more important that our young people need us connecting with them. They need us in their lives, they need us knowing them deeply.
I think we've also learned that content in isolation isn't nearly as important as it once was. Certainly in the age of the internet, but now in the age of AI, just knowing facts about stuff that you fill in on multiple choice tests just isn't as important as it once was. Sure, we have to know things. Kids need to know things; they need to learn stuff. But that's not where it stops.
What I'm hearing more and more educators talking about is where are we going with it? What does application look like? What does student agency look like? What's it look like when we bring passion and purpose into learning? How do we design classroom experiences and school experiences to really leverage what young people can bring to the table? That's what I'm hearing a lot more. That's what's really exciting.
You know, when I visit schools – and there's nothing I love doing more than visiting schools, and I'm the, whatever, chief innovation officer at NAIS – when I show up, schools generally want to take me to something innovative. And it's super fun to see how schools define what is innovative. And I think when I see the most impactful examples, it's when those examples are connected, that innovation is connected, to the school's strategy for being the best version of themselves. And when that innovation is deeply rooted in a clear sense of mission, purpose, values and vision, that when the whole thing connects, that's when it works. And when it's random, when it's just another bright and shiny thing, when it's just, it seems to me that they're trying to use the innovation to sort of overcome for something else. That's when it's frankly, its weakest.
So for me, it's all about how's it all connected. And then how is technology an accelerator of that momentum that existed before. Jim Collins talked about that in Good to Great when he talks about technology, he talks about technology as an accelerator of momentum. And that's…when I see that, that's when I'm like, okay, now it's cooking. Now there really cooking.
Bill Stites 12:26
Two of the things that you said, as you were listing off those different pieces that really stuck with me and it got me thinking about what schools are like now… You used the term isolation when you were talking about content, but you also talked about the relationships that schools need to work and develop and foster. And the one thing that I think about… We're just coming off our winter break, and you know, you spend some time on the, you know, just relaxing and scrolling, and I see all those memes. I'm a child of the 80s. And you see all those memes that are like, you know, what it was like when you were in the 80s, how you knew you were at somebody's house: because that's where all the bikes were laying out front. You know, living life without helmets, and doing all of these things. And I think about like those core relationships, and none of that involved technology.
And when I think about where we are now, with our students… And I look at my own children; I look at the kids that we interact with on a daily basis. And so much of those relationships now are in school. Because so much of their lives, you know, when they get out, they're not living their lives the way in which we did in terms of having those connections outside of school as much as we have inside of school.
So I think it's that juxtaposition of the relational status that you've got within the building, how we leverage that, how we look at the tools that we're using in school, to help facilitate the learning.
But I think also build on those relationships when those kids get out of the building, keeping them connected. Because I don't think kids are doing things that we did, looking at all the things that we, based on all of our ages, did when we are growing up. And I'd love to understand and see and ask you really how you see that relationship-building happening in schools, either visa vie technology or not, and where that falls.
Tim Fish 14:13
I think that's a great question. And I think you're spot on. You know, I think back on my childhood… I got home from school. I didn't have a book bag. I don't think any of us had book bags, right. We didn't carry, at least I didn't when I was young. I had all my books on my arm. I walked in the front door, I put my books on the dining room table, I generally had to do a few chores. I grabbed some snack, and I headed out the back door. And when I went out the back to where I was doing whatever I was doing, right digging a hole in the woods playing softball, baseball, whatever it was right? We were just doing stuff.
And it is different now Bill and I think you're 100% right. And what I'm seeing in schools is when the classroom environment… I’ll get back to this, I did a podcast with a guy named Matthew Barzun, and he talks about this concept of “constellation”. And he talks about designing schools where students feel needed. This idea that in [deep-rooted?] relationships a student is seen; a student is known. And I think we've done that really well for a long time in independent schools. But what he talks about is that when you're really part of what he calls constellation you feel needed when you come to school.
You know, we also just did a podcast with a woman named Jenny Wallace, who wrote a book called Never Enough about achievement culture and how achievement culture is really harmful to kids today. And what she talks a lot about is the concept of mattering, that students feel that they matter. And they matter for who they are. They feel seen for who they are, and they feel they can be themselves. And so one of the things I'm curious about what I'm seeing, and what I think are really great schools, is where the deliberate energy is put into designing for that.
I think that often in our schools, we just say, oh, yeah, we're really good at relationships, teachers’ and students’ relationships are amazing. And I think they are generally; I think it is a signature of independent schools.
But I don't think we're doing it nearly as well as we could be, if we truly designed for that. And frankly, what I find is when schools start designing for… What they find is that largely a lot of the magic is when we as adults design our way out of the equation. It's not about us, it's about the young people being with each other and learning to discover for themselves. And the more we can design to get out of the way, the better off things often are. I find.
And it's hard. It's hard to do, because as teachers, I know when I was teaching, I thought my job was to get in the way. My job was to fix it when it wasn't going well, when a student struggled. I would just be on top of it immediately and take away their struggle. I don't know man, I've been on this thing recently the last several months around this concept around what is productive struggle. I'm a big believer that our kids should struggle in school. Schools should be about challenge and overcoming challenges and reaching higher… School should be rigorous and challenging.
I just think the way we used to define rigor and excellence needs to shift a little bit. I think we need to move away from a content, isolated learning model to, I'm deeply engaged in doing what I love, and I'm passionate about it, and I'm working really hard, and I'm stretching myself. That's what we want. That's what we're I think we really want to be after.
So, it's, how is a teacher, how is a technology director, how is somebody in a school, how do I find a way to build those relationships with young people and design intentionally for that to happen? Not have it just happen by happenstance?
Hiram Cuevas 17:34
And, Tim, what's interesting is if we go back to your initial premise of “less is more” on your trip, I see this as still a major roadblock to many, many schools. We keep on adding. So you add the relationship piece, but you never removed anything. Because content is still king. We're still teaching to the test. We're still trying to have the best college lists that are available.
And I was in a meeting recently where our chaplain mentioned that sacred cows make the best hamburger. He just kind of threw that out there as an opportunity to challenge ourselves as to how can we improve our program? And what is it that we can actually remove that isn't necessary anymore, in order to do some of the things that you’re talking about.
Tim Fish 18:27
Hiram, I love it. Did you guys ever see the movie Contact with Jodie Foster? It's awesome, right? So there's a scene at the end, right where the aliens have sent down the plans for this time machine, or whatever it’s warp machine, that transports somebody to another part of the universe or whatever. And there's a sphere that the person is supposed to get in – they're going to drop through and enter a wormhole and move along. And the plans have the person just getting in the sphere, right? But then the engineers, global human engineers, were like, well, they can't just get in the sphere, we need to put a chair in there. So they take this design that's not ever part of the original plans, and they design a chair and they bolt it into the spear. And then Jodie Foster gets in that chair and she buckles in. And the crazy part is, as she's traveling through the wormhole, the thing is shaking like crazy. She doesn't know if she's gonna survive. She's like, I don't know, all of a sudden the chair breaks away. And she's just floating in peaceful silence. And the chair was just getting in the way. The chair wasn't necessary. The magic was in the sphere. It was designed for to be peaceful.
And I just wonder sometimes, where in schools are we just designing this chair infrastructure that we don't actually need? Where are we putting in all this extra stuff? To your really good point, Hiram, what does “less is more” look like in a classroom and how we use technology?
You know, for me, I left my fourth grade classroom in 1994. Thirty years ago, I left the classroom and started as a technology leader in Fairfax County Public Schools. And the holy grail we were all after was transparency, that tech would be transparent in the environment. It wasn't about marching your kids down to the computer lab anymore.
And we think about what that looked like, what does that transparency look like in relationships? What's that transparency look like in student agency? What's transparency with technology look like today? Right? Because we have the devices, we have the internet access. So what are we after? What's the holy grail that we're in the pursuit of now, in our use of technology? I throw that out to you all. I wonder what do you think it is? I have my own ideas. What do you think it is?
[pause]
Christina Lewellen 20:55
You stumped the tech guys. They're like, “umm…more devices, more stuff.”
Bill Stites 21:03
I love the analogy that you made with the movie in terms of what do we take out. And when you said that you didn't finish a book. And I think about the work that we do, again, setting all this stuff up. And it's a tough one.
Because again, we put so much effort in trying to craft this thing; to make this experience as perfect as possible. And as Hiram mentioned earlier, the idea of failing gracefully, maybe we designed it 80%. Maybe we designed it 70%,90% - whatever the number is. But then open that up to the point where we give the students the opportunity to fill those other pieces in and involve them in that process. I think to the way in which we at MKA, since we've had our one-to-one program, we've always involved what we now refer to as our student ed tech leaders. So we involve them in that work in the beginning to try to figure out how this is all going to work. Because we can't think of all the things that are going to make sense to students at that age, because we're no longer at that age.
It's like I mentioned earlier – children of the 80s. You know what I mean, none of the things that we had, then were things that really are important, necessarily now in terms of the tools or the things that we use. So we can't think to the ways in which we might use what is available to us today in the ways in which would make sense to children of their current age.
So I think opening that up there, I don't know necessarily whether it's the holy grail, but it's the idea of engaging students in more meaningful ways in the process of planning and developing all of these things and being prepared to, as you said earlier, stepping to the side and getting out of the way a little bit more than we maybe used to or comfortable with.
Christina Lewellen 22:55
And I'm hopeful that we can also find some transparency in the realm of belonging and DEI work that maybe sometimes the technology can do that lift for us so that we as humans – flawed humans, biased humans – don't have to always remember. Things as simple as name pronunciation software, things like that, where the tech can be, I hate to say ubiquitous, but… If we let it help us with that lift, maybe that can help a little bit with this idea of transparency and really having it amplify our intentions. Our intention is to be great at DEI and belonging, and so why wouldn't we let technology do some of that lift for us?
Hiram Cuevas 23:37
And Tim, I've been mulling over in my mind here, one of Clay Shirky’s premises, which is “the problem is filter failure, not information overload”. And I go back and forth with that, because I do think today's students are overly burdened with too much information coming at them from all sorts of angles. I mean, I see it with our own adults who can't put their phones down during a meeting.
Tim Fish 24:04
That's right.
Hiram Cuevas 24:07
That it is overly challenging. So, I do think we, in our pursuit for the grail, I do think we would be short sighted if we didn't recognize that there is indeed a filter failure issue because of digital overload.
And one of the things that we ended up trying to emphasize here was being technologically savvy, which meant you knew when to use it and when not to use it, because it was so important to recognize that you could actually do some of this work without tech. And it sounds contrary to what this whole podcast is all about. But by the same token, if we're talking about great schools and what it means to be great schools, isn't that what we're talking about, it's being able to identify and thoughtfully decide when we should be using the correct tools.
Christina Lewellen 24:58
And I think that now AI brings an additional layer of complexity in all of this. So let's talk about that for a minute, because Tim, even on your 500-mile walk, you used AI to help document and have a little snapshot of what that experience was for you.
Tell us a little bit about how you use AI. And then if you don't mind, talk to us a little bit about how you see AI shaping this conversation that we're having right now about what the future in the next 10 years might look like.
Tim Fish 25:30
Yeah, absolutely. Christina, you know… So for me if the word, back when I left teaching in 1994 and took a role as a technology leader, and it was all about transparency, that was the word we looked for, you know, my gut tells me that one of the words that's gonna guide us over the next decade is partnership, partnership with technology. And what I've actually been finding, in my own use of Chat GPT over the last six months… Christina, you were the person who introduced me to Chat GPT.
Christina Lewellen 26:03
I know, I think I need to apologize to everyone who's in your world.
Tim Fish 26:07
It was awesome. It was amazing. Out of the blue, Christina sends me an email, it says, “Hey, have you heard of this thing called Chat GPT?” And that was it. That was it. I was like, oh my God…
Christina Lewellen 26:18
I created a monster. I apologize to everyone in Tim's world.
Tim Fish 26:24
I sent it to Donna Orem, and she and I were going back and forth all night, just saying “I asked it this; look what it said,” you know, all night long. So I thank you for that. I thank you for bringing that and many other things, Christina, to me and to the whole community of schools.
But when I talk about partnership now, you know… AI for me is not about “go do the thing for me,” and it's just done. It's much more [about] working as a partner.
And that's how it was when I was on the Camino, right? I would do research. I would ask Chat GPT questions about things like, “Hey, I'm trying to get from here to here. How should I be thinking about…?” Even things like “what should I be putting in my pack?” Now, there were a lot of websites where people who had walked the Camino talked about what you should have in your pack. But also Chat GPT had some new things to offer to that. And when I got back, I wanted a sketch of my journey. And so I just said to Chat GPT, “do a pencil sketch of the Camino de Santiago.” And it was quite a cool sketch that Dolly created. And we'll put these up in the show notes. And then there was another one I said, “well make it more abstract.” And it kind of did this bizarre thing, you'll see where it's kind of got all like, hippie dippie, sort of psychedelic. And then I said, “Okay, now, make it super simple; get to the core essence of the Camino.” And it drew this simple line. And it's actually quite a beautiful piece that it did. And I said, “Okay, now merge the first one, and the really abstract one into something that's somewhere in the middle,” and they drew this other thing, which I think is actually quite beautiful.
And so for me now, and it's even in the writing I do, I use Chat GPT, as a partner, as a colleague, as someone to help get me ideas, help me move forward, help get me unstuck. But it's still my voice. I don't ever take what it writes verbatim. All I do is just use it as a way of massaging some things together.
You know, I was writing something recently, and I started off just… I was out there taking a walk with somebody on my walk n’ talk and I got some ideas for this article I was writing. And I just had a voice note on my Apple Voice Memos thing. And I just talked for like 15 minutes, right, just walking around talking about this idea. Took that, took all that text, ran it through a transcriber, so voice-to-text, took the text, put a cover on it in Chat GPT saying, “Hey, I'm writing an article. This is what I'm trying to get at this is the audience. This is some of the points I'm trying to make. This is the key thing. Here's some text to get you started, write the first draft of a 1500 word post.” And it was pretty good. And I gave it some new feedback. And it did… I didn't take that text. But what it did is it just got me farther down the road faster. It got my thinking it opened new ideas that offered new opportunities.
That's what I think technology is going to become. Technology is more and more going to become our essential partner – the partner for me and my work, and the partner for a team of people that I have, I'm working with.
You know, I love the work.. If you all know of the work that Sugata Mitra did, he talks about this idea that he said that he doesn't want a world where every student has their own computer. He wants a world where there's a group of three students and one computer and they're using that as kind of the fourth partner in the conversation, which I actually find really interesting. Certainly there are times when every student should have one. But I wonder about those moments where the technology is another partner at the table, and we see it that way.
Christina Lewellen 29:55
And what about for teachers?
Tim Fish 29:57
Oh my gosh, yeah. I mean, one of my favorite books I taught when I was teaching fourth grade in Fairfax County Schools was How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell. I don't know if anybody knows that book. It was an awesome book. I was saying, well, what if I were teaching that book? So I asked Chat GPT. I said, “Hey, I'm teaching How to Eat Fried Worms, and I want to send a letter to the parents that just summarizes the book and tells them a little bit what it's about.” Bam – what it kicked out was 95% ready to send the parents. I said, “Well, you know what, I also am doing a teaching with fourth graders, and I'm doing vocabulary units.” And so I guess Chat GPT somehow has access to the book, because I said, “give me 10 vocabulary words from each chapter with their definitions that are appropriate for fourth graders.” [Tim makes “old computer running its calculations” noises] [The AI] did really good.
Then I said, “Okay, give me a Mexican food recipe that we could use chicken instead of worms, but we'll call it a worm recipe, and make it Mexican inspired, and give me a recipe that I could have with my students that I could cook with my students.” So then it gave me a pretty good recipe, actually.
And then I said, alright “now give me a project-based learning unit that students could do around insects and small little critters that would be appropriate for fourth graders.” And it designed a pretty good project-based learning unit.
And then I said, “Give me a rubric to evaluate a four-scale rubric to evaluate it.” And I was actually really blown away by the quality of the rubric. And then I said, “Okay, now take that rubric and put it in a table format,” because it was not in table format; I wanted it in a nice… And it reformatted it to put it into a table format.
And so it's amazing to me as a teacher. Now, would I take all of that verbatim? No, but I'm just starting to teach a new book; why not just get me going using Chat GPT to help me think about some of that stuff.
Hiram Cuevas 31:43
So Tim, what's interesting when you went through that exercise… My wife who teaches biology, and anatomy and physiology, was approached to potentially having to teach a forensic science class. And she got all in a panic, because she had never taught a forensic science class. She knew anatomy and phys and, and biology all that, but now to merge the forensics piece to it – she was very, very worried. I said, well, let's start fiddling around with AI.
And so I created the prompt to create a semester-long forensic science course, week-by-week. And she was fascinated by how, just like you did with your Fried Worms example, your prompt led to another prompt, and then it led to another prompt, and then it led to another prompt. And you found yourself refining your prompts along the way, in order to get at the essence of what you were trying to develop. And I reminded her, I said, could you imagine if we had this as Year One teachers, where you had two or three preps that you are responsible for, and you were lucky to be a week ahead, if not a day ahead. But to have these tools available to you today is truly inspiring for the young teacher today.
Tim Fish 33:00
Absolutely.
Bill Stites 33:01
Hiram one of the things I was going to piggyback on, because it's all about conversations that you have with your wife... And you and I had a conversation with my wife not too long ago about this, and how she could use it. And, Tim, I'd be really interested for your take on this.
One of the things that Hiram and I were trying to explain to her was… She was stuck on this idea that if she used AI to do any of her planning work, she was cheating her students on her expertise that she brought to her teaching. That she was allowing someone else or some thing else, in this case, to take over what it was she thought that she needed to bring.
Because we talked about this on a previous podcast – so much of a teacher's identity is grounded in the fact that they are an educator – that this is who they are, this is what they do. You know, one of the things that we talked about, and I think unfortunately comes up too much with AI, is around cheating. She took that cheating mindset in terms of where that was going to go with her and what she brought to the classroom. And I think… What are your thoughts on that point?
Tim Fish 34:16
Oh, that's such a great point. And I love the way you described it, because I think it is absolutely true, and I think it's out there.
And I think that… What I've been really curious about is, going back to what we talked about earlier, what's going to be… What are the essence, the essential skills, the things we need even more now than we ever needed them. And I think this notion of relationships is super key.
And so imagine me, Tim Fish, fourth grade teacher, teaching How to Eat Fried Worms without AI. I literally would have stayed at school till 8:30 at night. And I would have been trying to come up with the vocabulary words, and I would have been reading them, and I would have had a dictionary on my table, and I would have been looking them up, and I would’ve been writing them out… And I would have tried to come up with this project-based learning unit; I would have tried to come up with a rubric. [That would’ve taken] five hours, at least, in that which took me 20 minutes to do with AI.
Now, again, it wasn't perfect with AI; I would have tweaked it. That's my job. My job is to go beyond where the AI is. And to bring me into that first draft of the work is number one.
But the second thing is, what else could I do with that five hours? Right? What could I do with thinking about another way to do a really cool activity that the AI was never going to come up with – an outdoor experience with the students where we're gonna go out and dig in the ground. And I'm making this up off top my head. But imagine we had every student now go into the schoolyard and take one square meter… Have you ever done an ecology? Those one square meter projects, and you watch it deeply, and you sit in the ground, and you look at what's in there, and you take it apart? Imagine if I start designing that, and I start figuring out and using that five hours how am I going to get my kids outside doing that project, right?
Or what if instead, I took an hour of that time, and I took some index cards, and I wrote some handwritten notes to the 10 students in my class who I thought had really been working hard and pushing themselves, and they could use a little even more encouragement to get them there. Right? How powerful could that one note be?
Or what if I took some of that five hours, and I called three kids’ parents, and I said, nothing's wrong; I'm just calling you to tell you how amazing your child is doing, how much I enjoy what he said yesterday, or she said yesterday in the classroom?
Or what if I just took some of that five hours, and I invested it back in me. And I took some time to relax. And I enjoyed myself a little bit. And I spent more time with my family so that my job could be more sustaining.
Christina Lewellen 36:33
Yeah that's what I've been talking about, Tim, with business officers and HR folks, when they're not quite sure what the role of AI is. I'll often bring up the fact that your massive burnout issue that you have among your faculty could be absolutely eased with the use of AI, if we have that kind of culture where we celebrate it rather than in any way feel shame about it and using it.
Tim Fish 36:58
That’s right. And I don't mean to discount that feeling that [Bill’s] wife has. I think it's real, and I think people are going to have it, and I understand it. What we want to be doing, though, is seeing what else could we be doing?
The one thing I have heard consistently through my entire career when thinking about technology integration with teachers has been people saying, “that's really cool, but I just don't have enough time. I just don't have the time. How… Where am I going to find the time to learn that new tool to design that new experience?”
I think what AI has said is, “I have a way of bringing you time, and we can utilize it as a partner – not as the answer, not as the only one doing the work, but as a partner in the work that can help us advance.”
Hiram Cuevas 37:44
Tim, I couldn't agree with you more.
I've often heard AI described as an overzealous intern that you have to put guardrails around in order to ensure that you actually get the information that you want out of it, because an intern will often bring you everything and anything that they've created, thinking it's the best. And you have to sit back and go, “Wup; let's take a step back and review.”
But what's fascinating about what you talked about just a moment ago is you got the time back. And what you were creating along the way is you were developing those relationships with your students, you were developing that transit, you were taking them outside. You were doing all the different things that help foster what schools want: relationships with the kids experiences to show that agency so that they feel like they are part of something bigger than themselves. And you did it in a span of about three minutes. Taking a simple book that was read in the fourth grade and you expanded it, because you had the luxury of time. And bringing it outside probably also was a plus for your own wellbeing as well, because it was an opportunity for you to get out of the classroom, out of the four walls, and expand your horizons as well.
Christina Lewellen 38:58
So Tim, it sounds like you spend a lot of time on the road visiting with schools, talking to school leaders. Tell us some stories from the road. What kind of cool things are you hearing and experiencing, and what are some of the cool things that schools are doing that sort of land with you?
Tim Fish 39:14
Yeah, that's a great question.
You know, one, we talk about time. I definitely see schools that are thinking about time.
One example that comes to mind is Crossroads College Prep in St. Louis, Missouri. So we just… POCC was just there (the annual conference), the NAIS annual conference is going to be there at the end of February. And Crossroads College Prep – cool school – surveyed about 125 students in grades six through 12. They created this concept now they call Fifth Day. I think it's a super interesting way… They really wanted to get serious about deep, engaged projects for students where students had more opportunity, more time, more freedom, and teachers had more freedom to really design units that were very, very different.
So now every Wednesday they call Fifth Day, and every Wednesday, they start off with some community stuff together. And then the students, working in teams with their teachers and other students, go out into the world to do what they call “real work that matters.” And that, for me is a fascinating idea there.
There's a couple other things that I'm also seeing… One Stone School in Boise, Idaho, that I did a podcast with two students from one school. I think that's a school that's kind of redefining what we mean by agency, even to a point of what some people would think is radical. And so one of the things I'm seeing, certainly at One Stone, but in other schools, is this reimagining, as you were talking about Hiram, what can the students really do to take part in the, sort of, running of this school? How can they be involved?
So at One Stone, the Board of Directors or Board of Trustees – two thirds of the board is students. The majority of people on the admissions committee are students. Hiring committees have the students involved. The students have real responsibilities in that community. And it speaks to the idea of “how do students show up and feel needed at school?”
That's a question that, I'm telling you, it plagues me. How do kids, to every day when they get up, do they feel needed in their school? And what does that look like? How do we really make that go forward?
I love what Tyler Thigpen is doing at the Forest School in Atlanta, Georgia; it’s an Acton Academy school that’s serving about 125 or 150 students, now, I think. And that's this whole notion of self-directed learning. I think one of the other trends that I'm really seeing is some elements of self-directed learning. some elements of… The teacher is Jay McTighe, who is the creator of Understanding by Design, talks about the notion of creating in our structures, we create the riverbanks. That learning design needs banks. We need to sort of contain, through our design as educators, what our goals are, what our assessments will be, how we know that learning has happened. But then once the banks are created, we can really let the student, as a river, flow through those banks and have more autonomy and agency in designing their own journey down the river. And too often, I think we've tried to run everything. But what I'm seeing, certainly in the work that Tyler is doing, is around this idea of self-directed learning and where does that come from?
And I think the last trend I would talk about is the idea of space design. What I'm seeing is more through architecture and technology and the creation of… What do we call a classroom? What do we call space? That idea of the third teacher people often talk about is the classroom. It's the physical space. And I'm seeing more and more creative applications of what we think of when we think of space, the idea of a classroom in the traditional sense – this container where learning happens… I think we're literally breaking outside those walls, and we're thinking in really new ways.
Christina Lewellen 42:52
Yeah, that's really great. I think a lot of our technology leaders work closely with their schools around space and technology, and how those two things meld together to make a really cool learning environment, so we talk about that quite a bit.
Tim, I know that you just came off a sabbatical, but there's been a lot of great change happening in the last year or so at NAIS. Tell us what you're excited about at your organization.
Tim Fish 43:18
Oh, man. Well first of all, I'm really excited that Deborah Wilson has come back to NAIS as our new president. I think her vision and energy is exciting for our team and exciting for the community. We certainly miss Donna Orem and her 25 years of contribution to NAIS and to our schools. And we're excited about a new moment. So, number one, that's very exciting.
And then the other thing we're really excited about is… We’re thinking about how might we leverage the power of AI and partnership to help us think about big data, help us think about how the industry can utilize data to understand what's going on. What does it look like for us to be imagining how an AI, or AI as a tool, as a partner, could be really helpful in our thinking. That's super fun.
And we're just thinking about more and more ways that we can really bring insights to schools and work in deep partnership with them.
One of our big words at NAIS co-creation – this idea that we don't have the answer. Just like on this podcast, Christina, you're co-creating this podcast with Hiram, with Bill... And I think the same is true with what we're trying to do. That it's not us to come up with the answer, it's just us to hold the space so that we can partner with our schools to co-create. And for me, that's super, super exciting.
Christina Lewellen 44:38
Yeah, absolutely. And usually when you crowdsource information and solutions and ideas, it comes out so much more rich and vibrant than if you were just the association kind of from on high.
So I think that that's where most associations are finding success is in the very unique partnership that comes from your staff that keeps its eye on the ball and your subject matter experts in your members… When you bring those two together in a really healthy way, incredible things can happen. So I agree with you there.
So in the beginning of the podcast, I started by asking the guys, “what happens when things go wrong?” I'd now like to kind of frame that up and turn to you, Tim, because you spent so many years focusing on innovation, looking at what the trends are.
But obviously, there are potholes. I mean, we all acknowledge that even in the space of AI, there are some significant potholes that we need to be aware of. We made some missteps in the late 90s, when it came to the internet, and how that was used and how it was monetized. And I think that we need to all, as a society, be careful about AI; we need to maybe be thoughtful about it.
So when it comes to innovation, when it comes to stretching the boundaries of what teaching and learning looks like, sometimes we step in the pothole. What is your response when things go wrong? How do you handle it? How should schools address missteps? Whether it's on the technology front, or really anything in general?
Tim Fish 46:07
Yeah, I think it's a great question. And man, in my career, there have been many, many of those missteps. And many, many times when it has not gone well.
So I would say my number one is to own it. When it doesn't go well, just stand up and say, that's on me. I own it, you know.
Christina Lewellen 46:24
I tried a thing; it didn't go well.
Tim Fish 46:27
That’s right, I tried a thing. And it did not go well. Number one is own it.
Number two for me is figure out how to fix it, figure out what needs to be done for us to continue to move forward.
And then I think the third piece for me, and I would love to hear what you all think, is to go out individually and repair relationships. You know, when things don't go well, sometimes relationships take a hit, and to get out there one-on-one and spend time with people to do the work you need to do to repair the relationship.
Christina Lewellen 46:56
I would say that that's probably very, very true.
And things have gotten complicated, especially in the last few years for schools, because our communities are so diverse. Granted, we focus primarily in the tech and innovation space here at ATLIS, but there's so many times where I'm either working with heads of school or helping heads of school navigate tech, and I think to myself, oh man who would want that job?. Like, that's a hard job.
Tim Fish
That’s a hard job.
Christina Lewllen
And going out and repairing those relationships has to be so complex, wouldn’t you think?
Tim Fish 47:28
I think you're absolutely right.
And also, what's hard about being in the technology role is that often people don't understand what it is that's really going on behind the scenes. And if you try to explain to someone what happened, it's like what? And they actually don't want to know, right?. But we know just how many things have to go right sometimes for these experiments to really work.
Bill Stites 47:51
It really hits home. And that's one of the things… I think I was going to ask you – how would you solve for that? Because the level of complexity is almost unseen, and people don't really get that.
And the one thing that I'll go back to… some of the work that we did over the summer with the CIRIS guy for institutional research, we talked about data mapping. And we talked about putting all of your systems on a page. And I remember an example where we were going to be taking on a large change at the school around one of our data systems. And I brought our current map in, and I showed it to our administrative team. And I said we're taking this piece out – look at all the lines that connect to that piece.
Tim Fish
Wow; great idea.
Bill Stites
And we're going to need to plug this piece in.
Because, you know, we had them all on a spreadsheet that you could see, but there was no frame for what it looked like; how it was all interconnected. And just that web of connectedness and confusion wasn't clear.
And once we had that, the best thing that came out of that meeting was the woman who was currently our middle school head looked at it and said, “Wow, that's really confusing.” And I said “that’s all I need you to get out of this, so that you understand that scope of change.”
And I think the more we can paint that picture for people to be able to literally see, to hopefully open that door so people can look behind the curtain and see how much is going on, the better off we're going to be. It's just that struggle of figuring out how to make that work.
Tim Fish 49:28
That's right on.
Hiram Cuevas 49:29
And Tim, we've done the same thing. And we actually did it recently with a couple of board members who have technology backgrounds. And we included things like “these are the authentication methods; these are the two different types of API's that we're dealing with.”
Because it was important for them to understand not only the complexity, but also the varying points of failure that schools have to deal with on a regular basis when you're trying to piece a variety of different applications together.
In our case, it's a K-12 school, so you've got the whole gambit of applications and services that you're trying to provide. And they were stunned by the level of complexity. And it's nice to have folks on the board who can recognize that and can actually say, “Listen, we need to make sure that we are mindful of the systems that we have on campus and make sure that the prerequisites are kept into place.”
Because sometimes we'll deal with a conversation where somebody wants to bring an application on the campus, and if it doesn't satisfy at least an authentication method or have an API, you now have created a data silo. And people need to understand all of those varying nuances when it comes to systems work.
Tim Fish
That’s right.
Bill Stites 50:46
One of the things I've heard often said, when they talk about technology in schools, they say, “Well, you know, education is an enterprise.” And we brought this up on a recent podcast… I would argue it's more complicated than enterprise, because the number of tools that are often used in schools based on the size of the school can be much, much more... The different areas that a school needs to focus on is much broader than what is probably in a lot of enterprise-based solutions.
And the one thing, also, is that the staff to support that is a lot smaller. So you know, there are multiple systems, there's multiple complicating factors, and there is less in terms of the overall support and budget for supporting those systems in place to make it all work.
As Hiram said, the more we can make that clear to people, I think is really the hardest thing that we have to do outside of what we do on a day-to-day.
Tim Fish 51:45
That's such a great point. And I would argue also, Bill, that we've got this wide range of the age of tools we're using, right?
I remember, when I was in a school, we had the, you know, the middle school typing teacher wanted to use Typing Tutor, or whatever it was called, from 1996. And she was like, “My entire curriculum is built around Typing Tutor.” We were like, “it's 2010. [The software is] DOS-based!” An operating system won't run Typing Tutor anymore, right? But the sort of range that you have, whether it be that piece of software, or the scheduling system you're using, or the whatever it is, that kind of range is really quite incredible.
And we can't forget our staff colleagues also – the folks in our development office and our admissions office and our business office, that we're like… You're right, I mean, the number of applications that we support in a school is mind boggling. And it's only getting more and more in the age of the cloud, where everybody just finds these apps.
And you know, I did it all the time when I was in school, I'd find some new scheduling software, a new tool for doing/making little note cards, or whatever. And I would just start using it with my students. And I just can't imagine what it's like being a technology director today, and trying to keep all of that stuff in balance and secure. That's the other thing that didn't really exist in the same way when I was doing the work. It was there, but it was nowhere near as complicated or as impactful as it is today.
Christina Lewellen 53:17
So Tim, as you look ahead, you just told us that you carry the word “partnership” in your mental basket. Well, maybe for you it's like a mental cornucopia. I think it's a real big basket in that brain of yours. But you carry the word “partnership” as it pertains to technology. So what does that mean looking ahead? Tell us what you see on the horizon for technology; what the future might look like… Specifically for independent schools.
Tim Fish 53:46
I'll jump back to the Camino, if I might, just for the beginning of that… What was fascinating for me on the Camino was, what was my relationship with my phone, right? I didn't have a laptop, I didn't have an iPad; I didn't have anything else. All I had was my little iPhone 13 Mini. It was my partner on the journey. It was my camera. It was the way I communicated with other pilgrims. It was the way I knew if I was still on the trail. It was, you know… All the things I did with it – it was an incredibly important partner. But it also, often, was a silent partner. It was in the background. The walk isn't about the phone or the tech, the walk is about the walk.
And I think the same thing is true when I think of partnership with technology – that school… All the things we do – that's the work. That's the thing. And man, technology can be, as we said earlier, such a powerful accelerator of that momentum, of that core values that we have in our community. How does technology enhance and accelerate that work? That for me is the exciting conversation.
And I think now, just like you could say, well, everything's in the cloud. We don't need the technology leadership that we used to need because maybe, somebody would argue, it's kind of less complicated. I don't think so, Hiram, to the conversation we just had – it's actually gotten more complicated in many ways.
But even now, we need the human partnership to help a school navigate how we're going to leverage… How we're going to ask questions, how we're going to wrestle with the dilemmas that things like AI bring into our school community. Your point is so well taken, Christina, it's got so much potential, and there are a lot of dilemmas that it unearths as well that we need to consider.
And we need, technology leaders... I think what technology leaders are doing such a great job of is being that partner at the table, to the head of school, to the board of trustees, to the rest of the other administrators and administrative team members, to help navigate the complexity – not only the infrastructure, but of the issues that this technology really brings up.
And so, it is such an exciting time.
Christina Lewellen
It really is.
Tim Fish
I'm so thankful that ATLIS is doing the work that you're doing, that there is such partnership and community, among the technology directors in our industry, thanks to you and thanks to the work you all are doing.
Because we need each other; we can't do this alone. Being a technology leader in a school is a lonely job. There's a lot of “9pm, sitting in the server room,” if there is still server rooms like there was when I was doing the work. But trying to solve a complex problem, and you are alone and everybody needs you to get it fixed, or get it working, or get it set up or whatever.
And so I am just in awe of the work that our colleagues in this work do and just am so grateful for seeing what happens.
Christina Lewellen 56:41
Thank you for that. Yeah, I do think that our community is very powerful; incredibly collaborative. And I know I'm a little biased, but I really think that they power the schools that we're serving, so, it makes me very proud to be a part of it.
Tim, you are a very interesting pilgrim, my friend. I'm so grateful that you have joined us and brought all of your wisdom from the trail. Clearly it did you very well, because this has been an incredible conversation. I think maybe we should change your title to chief innovation sherpa.
Tim Fish 57:14
[laughs] Sherpa. That's right. I used to have this whole mountain climbing thing about technology. And I used to always say, as technology directors are we on the expeditionary team or are we just the sherpa, just carrying all the stuff?
And I'm a big believer that while we do carry a lot of stuff, we need to be, as technology leaders, we've got to be on the expeditionary team. We need a seat at the table.
Christina Lewellen 57:37
That is fantastic. And I think that this crowd will definitely agree with you. Tim Fish, thank you so much for your time. You are welcome back anytime… You go on those long walks and you come up with good ideas, you come back and see us, okay?
Tim Fish 57:50
I sure will; thank you so much.
Christina Lewellen 57:52
Thanks for being here.
Hiram Cuevas 57:53
Thank you, Tim.
Bill Stites 57:54
Thanks so much, Tim.
Narrator 57:56
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 theATLIS.org.
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