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