Education Evolution

december 12

1997 is a day that will live with me

forever

it was an unseasonably warm winter day

in chicago and i just concluded an

outstanding week of high school i

couldn’t wait to get home and start the

weekend

but as my buddy pulled into the driveway

i saw my father’s car

and my mood switched instantly see

normally when my father beat me home

from work

i had done something to deserve it but

as i write my brain it became pretty

clear to me i had done nothing to rise

to that level of trouble

and that’s when my heart sank i started

to think about my mother

my mom had had seven heart surgeries by

the time i was 17 years old and i just

knew something had happened to her

there were 40 steps between my buddy’s

car and the front door

but it seemed like an eternity with each

step thinking worse and worse thoughts

as i got up to the door and went to turn

the knob it opened before i got there

and i looked up and i saw my father

and i’m not sure if i’d ever seen my

father cry before

but i was certain i had never seen him

cry quite like this

i looked up and i said mom he said no

buddy you are really sick in the next

hours and days and weeks and months

wear a blur designed to went seemingly

hundreds of tests treatments and

therapies

in my first battle against cancer and

while i wouldn’t wish

the journey that i went through on my

worst enemy i wouldn’t take it back

either

because there are so many lessons and

silver linings for me to pull from that

experience

the first silver lining is this that

challenge

brought me to my profession i am an

educator

and i have the best job in the world on

any given day

my actions can change the trajectory of

a kid’s life

that is an amazing opportunity but also

an awesome responsibility

and i’m an educator because of one man

ron sawhin

mr sauwan was my advanced math teacher

and as my treatments intensified and my

condition worsened

all i wanted to do was throw in that

white flag on advanced math

and he wouldn’t let me he never let me

give up on myself

he’d show up at my house when i asked

for help he’d show up at my house when i

didn’t ask for help and he

pulled me through that course he

changed the trajectory of my life and i

was hooked

the second silver lining is this i had

the opportunity

to view the medical field up close and

so now i have the ability to juxtapose

what’s happening in the medical field

the field that saved my life

and in the education field the field of

which i have dedicated

my life am continually impressed with

what happens

in the medical field they’re agile they

listen to feedback

they act on their data and they

constantly are working together to do

what’s best

on behalf of their patients in the

education field

sometimes we struggle to coordinate a

unit between social studies and english

when the teachers are next door to each

other

down the hall but there is one thing

that brings the medical field and

education together

and that is crisis it feels like when

the sky is falling down

all around us that society realizes

we really need high quality education

and high quality healthcare

this was true during the coven 19

pandemic a light

shined on both industries there was

praise

there was criticism but as months wore

on

it was pretty clear the medical industry

continued to adapt

and overcome and education was not

taking

the same advantage of the opportunity

if you ask educators what it’s like

right now to be an educator they will

tell you that they are underappreciated

under resourced and underpaid all while

being overworked

vilified in the media and political

punching bags

and the data supports this too

there’s over one hundred thousand

positions annually that go unfilled

or filled by under qualified applicants

and now as a result of the pandemic

we have more students being homeschooled

and private schooled than ever before

in business terms we’re losing some of

our market share

so as educators we have to make a choice

and have to make that choice quickly

we either blame politicians and blame

the system

complain about our circumstances and our

lack of resources

and defend our somewhat stubborn

adherence to the status quo

or we lead in education evolution to

evolve

we have to shed the parts of our process

we no longer need

keep those that are making us successful

and continue to adapt

to be successful in our future

but when i say we are very clear about

who i’m talking about

this is every teacher every principal

and every district leader

but more more importantly it is every

parent

private citizen private industry and our

politicians as well

because if you believe like i believe

that education has to change

quickly comprehensively and permanently

it is going to take all of us

but i do believe there is a path forward

i believe if we focus on three things

that we can move education forward into

the future

one is interdependence the second is we

have to rethink

partnerships in the education sphere and

three we must

increase our rate of change so let’s

talk about interdependence

during the cobin 19 pandemic we saw the

medical field unite as one entity

against one common invisible entity the

communication wasn’t just department to

department

or hospital the hospital it was across

medical systems

across countries across continents

and i wish i could say that same type of

cooperation and collaboration

happen in education but ironically

in a non-for-profit industry we tend to

be dominated by competition

more than collaboration i’m going to

fake a phone call here

and my educators that are watching just

think about how weird this sounds

and parents the same thing could you

imagine getting a phone call like this

yes mrs davis your daughter has done an

amazing job this year we want to put her

into advanced physics next year

but we don’t offer advanced physics so

we’re going to make sure she has access

to the neighboring districts mr turner

he’s a nationally acclaimed teacher

we’ll either bust her there or stream

his lessons in but either way will get

her access to that instruction

that sounds completely nonsensical but

it doesn’t

have to be that way see the result

of us being in competition instead of

collaboration with other districts and

other schools is this

two children born 60 miles apart at the

same time will have

dramatically different educational

experiences

and what’s worse is that this

perpetuates inequity because when those

two students are born

one to an affluent area and one to an

area that socioeconomically struggles

which one do you think gets the better

educational experience

and this isn’t just 60 miles this can be

six miles

or six blocks in our urban center as i

stand here on this red dot right now

if you do a five mile radius one of the

top performing schools in the country is

in that radius

but within that same radius there’s a

school that doesn’t graduate 60 percent

of its kids

this is just unfair and it’s

depressingly avoidable

i’m proud of the work we’re doing in our

district to seek interdependence

we’re working with several other rural

districts in the state of illinois

spearheaded

with help from the university of

illinois at champaign to put state of

the art streaming equipment

into our classrooms if the pandemic has

taught us anything

it’s that geography need not limit

access

so when i have an ap us history teacher

that’s literally writing the textbook

for the course

now other students throughout the state

can access that and vice versa for when

they have

amazing instructors doing things that i

cannot provide

this is interdependence this is

cooperation

this is the future of education besides

interdependence we need to talk about

partnerships and i’m going to say a word

that many educators i’m going to send a

chill down your spine but stay with me

we need to amplify private influence in

public education

this is not the privatization of public

education but

private influence the reason is simple

when i

have the privilege of talking to

educators throughout the country and i

say what can we do

to better serve our kids that are headed

toward career path

so not our college kids our career

pathway kids what could we do

the answers generally all sound the same

we need more expertise in those fields

we need a lot more resources and tools

of the day and we need more money

that’s great if we can all identify the

problem that’s step one

but the issue is this what’s the plan

what

school what district has taxpayers

lining up to give more money to them

are our politicians fighting to find

funding for us

so at some point we have to do something

on our own

and several districts are doing this

finding private partners there’s

wonderful work going on

in kalamazoo michigan rockford illinois

akron ohio

and i’m proud of the work that we’re

doing in our district too

see in our area in our geographic region

of the state

there’s a need for welders welders earn

a livable wage so as a high school

if i can send skilled labor

to that job sector i’m doing both the

community a favor

and my students the issue is this even

if i carve out

the space in a schedule to offer a class

like welding and if i have the physical

space to do so

and if i can find a qualified teacher

which is way harder than you might think

then i still have to keep the tools of

the day in the hands

of the students and so even if i somehow

have the money which schools don’t

to put the tools of the day whether it

be in welding or automotives or

other other class you want to use as an

example

the iterative cycle of change is going

to happen so quickly that we won’t be

able to keep

up and soon we’ll be training our

students with obsolete tools

leaving the training relatively useless

we cannot be successful without private

partners

without private expertise and without

private resources

and like i said this is happening in

pockets it’s happening in silos

but there’s no structure and there’s no

systematicity to it

but what if the federal government got

involved see one of the reasons

that private entities donate to schools

is that it’s a tax write-off

it’s a charitable contribution but what

if that was changed to say

you know what private industry if you

help support public school we’ll give

you three times the monetary value of

your donation

and if you’re going to donate to a

school that serves typically underserved

kids

or does not have industry in their

background make it 5x or 6x

can you imagine the influx of expertise

and resources

in skilled labor that’s necessary in our

communities

there is a path forward we just have to

continue to look for it

but even if we have amazing partnerships

and even if districts are working

together and seeking interdependency

nothing matters unless we increase our

rate of change

the favorite example that i love to talk

about when it comes to rate of change in

schools is coding

coding and computer science are

excellent courses but coding became a

booming industry and employment sector

in the 90s

if you could code there’s a lucrative

end for you as such

schools tried to accommodate we now sit

here three decades later three decades

and 20 percent of american public

schools have a coding or computer

science class

and they’re still considered innovative

here’s the problem the employment sector

is now declining

industry can outsource that to foreign

countries for lower wages

we missed an entire three decade window

but it’s not just coding we’re really

slow to respond to external customer

feedback

we don’t like to look at data that

doesn’t fit our pre-existing narratives

and we are glacially slow at responding

to societal trends

what’s the most embarrassing is that we

don’t even change when it comes

to our own peer-reviewed education

research if that was the case

we’d already have later start times for

adolescent kids

there’d be no homework for early

elementary kids we’d focus a lot more on

the social emotional

health of our students before worrying

about test scores and we’d have

completely abandoned

traditional discipline procedures this

list could go on

and on and on but as a result of us not

changing

school looks an awful lot like it did 20

years ago heck maybe even 40 maybe even

60 years ago

and the problem is when school does not

reflect society

school is dangerously close to becoming

irrelevant

and this too is personal for me i share

with you

a story about my first journey with

cancer at the beginning of the talk

if i was diagnosed just 10 years prior

my chance at survival would have been 16

less

so quite literally if medicine changed

at the rate of education

i might not be here

so unless educators start to believe and

i do believe

that we can change the lives of kids and

we can save lives of kids

and we start changing quickly in order

to do so

i think we might be in some serious

trouble so i’ve been really frank with

all of you

i think american public education is in

a really tenuous spot

but that doesn’t mean that i am not full

of hope and belief because i

am i have hope that we will seek

interdependency

i have hope that we will rethink private

partnerships in public education

and i have hope that we will increase

our rate of change

and that hope is fueled by belief i

believe in the educators that i work

with in my district in my state and

across the country

i believe in their commitment their

dedication and their passion

but the bottom line is we must do better

we can do better we will do better

thank you