The TechEd Podcast
The TechEd Podcast sits at the intersection of technology, industry, innovation and the people who make progress possible. Hosted by Matt Kirchner, each episode features builders, executives, educators, and policymakers shaping what’s next—AI, automation, advanced manufacturing, energy, and the systems behind them.
If you care about the future of work, the future of tech, and how talent actually gets built, you’re in the right place.
The TechEd Podcast
Career Exploration Without Barriers: A Middle & High School J-Term Experiment - Josh Davis & Melissa Phillips, Camanche CSD
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Imagine giving middle and high school students a full week to explore careers without grades, homework, or “regular” classes. That’s the core idea behind Camanche Community School District's J-term: a dedicated pause in the academic grind that turns school into a career-exploration lab, where 5th-12th grade students can test-drive career fields, build confidence, and discover options they didn’t even know existed.
That's right: J-term is no longer only reserved for the college experience.
What makes this model so compelling is the way it engages students & teachers in a way that the traditional classroom never could. Middle and High School Principals Melissa Phillips and Josh Davis saw higher engagement and clearer direction in this real-world, hands-on week of learning. You see it in the outcomes and reactions: the high school generated 100+ internships, the middle school reported zero office referrals that week, attendance hit a high-water mark, and the community showed up in force.
In this episode:
- Why a “no grades, no homework” week can reveal a different version of students and teachers.
- How J-term creates equity in exposure by removing barriers families can’t always overcome on their own.
- Why employers and community partners are more likely to say “yes” to short, high-impact experiences than longer commitments.
- How a J-term can reshape course choices and future plans, helping students move from “I don’t know” to a real next step.
3 Big Takeaways from this Episode:
1. A grades-free, hands-on week can encourage a different level of student engagement. At the middle school, they saw zero office referrals and “not one student” sent down for behavior during J-term. The deeper lesson is that when the goal shifts from performance to exploration, more students lean in because the experience finally matches how they learn best.
2. J-term is an equity play because it reduces the “who you know” advantage. The high school framed it explicitly as removing barriers for families who “don’t have the means” or the pathway to get students these opportunities on their own. Guardrails like requiring internships not be at a student’s current job help ensure the week is about new exposure, not just extending what already exists.
3. Short, real-world exposure can change trajectories faster than a semester of coursework. One student had such a strong internship experience that she reworked her schedule to keep going back, and it shifted her likely postsecondary plan toward education. The big insight is that a one-week “test drive” creates clarity either way, helping students confirm a direction or rule one out while the stakes are still low.
Resources in this Episode:
Read about Camanche CSD's J-Term week
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Announcer, this is the TechEd podcast, where we feature leaders who are shaping, innovating and disrupting technical education and the workforce. These are the stories of organizations leading the charge to change education, to rethink the workforce and to embrace emerging technology. You'll find us here every Tuesday on our mission to secure the American Dream for the next generation of STEM and workforce talent. And now here's your host, Matt Kirchner
Matt Kirchner:it's the number one podcast in STEM and technical education, ranked in the top 1% of 1% of technology podcasts around the globe. This is the TechEd podcast. My name is Matt Kirkner. Imagine going to a school, or at least to a term in school, middle school or high school, where there are no grades, no traditional classes and no homework. I can tell you that that would have been the kind of environment for me to learn in, without question, especially since it's focused on career exploration and life skills. Here at the TechEd podcast, we are such strong believers in hands on skills, hands on experiences. Choose Your Own Adventure, let students go in the direction that they want to it's amazing the results we can create when they when we let them do that. And today we are going to learn about a school district in Iowa that did exactly that with a really creative j term. It happened over on the eastern end of Iowa at Comanche High School and Comanche Middle School. And today I am joined by two great people. I'll introduce the first one who is the principal of the middle school, Melissa Phillips, Melissa, so great to have you with us. Thanks. Matt And Josh Davis is our second guest. He is the principal at Comanche High School. So we've got the middle school principal and the high school principal there in Comanche, Iowa. Josh, awesome to have you here. Thanks for having us. So let's, let's start with this. I think about J term. I think of like maybe my friends in college going off to Europe and doing something really cool for, you know, for a month, or what have you or maybe some interesting learning kind of jammed into it, into a post secondary environment. You did a j term. You did it in a high school. You did it in a middle school. Josh, so, so let's start with you. You did it at the high school. Tell me a little bit about if a listener to this podcast doesn't know exactly what a j term is. What is that?
Josh Davis:It's it's a week in January when we first get back from from winter break. So we ended our first semester before break, and then had a little week here in between before second semester. And it's just a chance for kids to take away all obstacles and get them in a spot where they can really explore some careers and after high school type of instances. So we had teachers pair up and partner, and they took a different career cluster, and they had to choose one of eight career clusters, whether it's marketing, manufacturing, information, technology, those things. And then the kids could choose from those career clusters what they wanted to participate in or they could take an internship for the week. So they would go out and work in different areas, do an internship for a week. My son was at the county attorneys and wants to get into law. Melissa's son, who's a freshman, got to go to University of Illinois and work with the athletic program for a few days. So we could kind of piece it together. You could have a full week internship, or you could intern for two days then do a career cluster. But it was just a matter of, you know, our kids may have those experiences, whether or not we did this or not, but a lot of families don't have the means or the expertise or the way to get those kids those opportunities. So we really wanted to take away all the barriers, obstacles for kids and give them a week kind of see what they want to do. And it's the way we told the parents, like, How many times have the kids come home in the dinner table and asked what they would do, and it's nothing that I would ever use for my my life, and now is kind of like, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? And here's a chance to, kind of to see those things.
Matt Kirchner:I like the way that you couch the end of that answer. How many times is a student sitting in a classroom or sitting around the dinner table and saying, When am I ever going to use this, you know, whether it's algebra or calculus or English or or what have you. And so super, super relatable, super super involved for these students, giving them lots of options. I love that whole idea. Is this something new? Have you ever done something like this before?
Josh Davis:Josh, this was our first time doing it. There was a school in West Branch in the middle of the state that I'd heard had done something very similar. So Melissa and I went out and talked with them to see how they did it and kind of tailored it to meet our needs. It's been a long process, but we finally got our first one this year.
Matt Kirchner:And is that where the idea sprung from? Is from another district. So you mentioned West Branch, or West Branch, I should say, and tell us about that. How did you hear about what they had done?
Josh Davis:They're in our conference. We have conference principals meetings throughout the year, and just kind of, she's kind of said something in passing, and then once the meeting was over, I emailed her and just said, Hey, you mentioned this. Can you give me some more information on what that is? And as I guess perfectly, what we well, we were kind of looking for some way to incorporate more career stuff anyway, so it's kind of on the look. Out. And then when they said that what they had done, I was like, that's just, that's exactly, you know, the avenue that we want to go down.
Matt Kirchner:And didn't Melissa jump on board, or did she take some convincing when you came up with this crazy idea from
Josh Davis:place, it was in place before she got the job, so she was stuck with us. Okay?
Matt Kirchner:So she stepped in, like, so that it's a good opportunity for us to ask you a little bit about this. Melissa, so you stepped into a into a role this, this idea of a j term was was in place, but hadn't come to fruition yet. But you know, this is the first time that that A j term had been done in your particular school district, in your particular school, Comanche Middle School. Talk about that. I mean, you start out with this, this process. How do you define whether you win or lose, or whether everything worked the way that you the way you expected to. Did you have an idea of what success would look like when you started?
Melissa Phillips:Yeah. So one of the biggest thing is, and this truly is a high school initiative, but as Josh said, you know, we wanted to have our kids explore from an early age, career or college pathways that they could take, especially starting early in middle school, and you'll find out Josh and I are very much go getters. We were fine with deviating away from the norm. We want to give our kids experiences. The biggest thing for us is the middle school was a little bit different. We couldn't send our 10 and 11 and 12 year olds out to do internships, so we brought a lot of the careers and education to them. The biggest thing for us that we wanted to do is we wanted to give our kids a chance to explore what they normally wouldn't get to on a school day. It also gave us a really good insight to see kids in a different light. A lot of times we're teaching standards and benchmarks, and yes, we have great teachers who teach to the learning silos of all of our kids, but a lot of times we don't get to see what they truly connect with. And we were able to do that. Part of that was students taking, like, a pre assessment survey of things that they were interested in, and then doing a post survey of things that went really well, or things that they would even like to see next year, that maybe we didn't get a chance to offer this year.
Matt Kirchner:So let's talk about that a little bit. So students are going through this pre assessment survey, which I really like that idea, right? Because if you think about we don't know what we don't know. I had heard about a year ago that I think the average middle school student can name something like 12 career choices, right? So they know a teacher. They certainly know what their principal does. They know what their parents do, maybe their friend's parents and so on, firemen, the person that works at the grocery store, but because they see those things, right? But they don't know what they don't know. So talk about Melissa this pre assessment survey a little bit, and what kind of questions are the students answering to be able to direct them in whatever direction they should go? Yeah.
Melissa Phillips:So one of the things that we really wanted to focus on, and you were exactly right, I think kids understand a very small scope of what's out there, outside of outside of school. And so the middle school was set up differently. We wanted to be able to have our kids experience many different things under one you hear Josh refer to career clusters. They were very specific. What if it was marketing, if it was business management, if it was becoming a lawyer, where we expanded ours a little bit more. So, for instance, one of ours was digging into farming fun. We included everything from agriculture to farming to truck driving logistics. And so what we really wanted to focus on was just allowing students to gain a better understanding. And our Monday through Friday during that week was different in every single j term course that the kids could have selected.
Matt Kirchner:How many different choices did they have? Yeah, so we did 10.
Melissa Phillips:Josh will explain how high school is a little bit different, and part of ours is it allows for some creativity. What we did is we went over the top 10 courses that were going to be available students then got to pick their top five, and we were able to select them and put them in a top three course for every student. And so it was really well planned. It took a lot of thought process. I think Josh and I going through this, we're like, okay, we know this. We're going to change this for next year. It's our first year. There's a lot of things that we didn't know. And so we were really excited. I think we we picked up some areas that we know we want to do better at next year, just because we've never experienced it before. But all in all, I think it went better than him and I could ever imagined awesome.
Matt Kirchner:And we'll get into some of the some of the some of the things you want to change, and maybe some of the results on the on the back end here in a minute, you know, as we dwell a little bit longer on the experience, first for the middle school students, and we'll talk about the high school students as well. You said 10 options all together. I don't expect you to name all 10 from memory, but you met. You mentioned agriculture, which is certainly a fascinating one, and tying in the transportation and logistics aspects to that, I think is a really cool idea. What were some of the other experiences that the middle school students could choose from?
Melissa Phillips:Yeah, so some of the other ones we had our buzz hub, which was like our marketing, getting into social media. Some other ones were the world of sport. So anything from what life could look like if it was refereeing, you wanted to go down a career path. We brought in d1 athletes. We had different university coaches come in. They also got to get a behind the scenes look of how do you get ready for a game? There was talk with our activities director. So there was just a lot of things that went into that. Some of our other ones we did, it's called Lego knots. Our students were able to FaceTime with. With NASA and present projects to them on robotics. They each got to present with their partners a robot that then the NASA employees got to give them feedback on, which was really exciting. Some of the other things we did, education teachers, babysitting, daycare, and that's just a few. Thank you for not making me memorize all time.
Matt Kirchner:No, not at all. I'm impressed that you named as many as you did, and just a little bit more at the middle school, then we'll talk to Josh about the high school in terms of who's delivering or facilitating. This is this teachers that are doing the facilitation and bringing in these subject matter experts? Or how did that all work?
Melissa Phillips:Yeah, so that was actually interesting, because before we even discussed the top 10 that we wanted to deliver to students, we had to get a feel from our teachers, because our teachers are great, but they're not experts in agriculture or forensic science. That was another one that we did. So before that, we pooled all of our teachers together, and we came up with a different ideas. And okay, could this career fit under this course? Could we throw it into here? After we then took surveys from all of our teachers, we really narrowed it down to the top 10, and that's how we got our 10 courses. And then after we established our 10 courses, our teachers, just like our students, got to rank, what would they feel the most comfortable in planning and the planning, as Josh said, that this was a long process. It took all of last year for us to plan, contact, guest speakers, line up transportation for field trips, so there was a lot of additional work that our teachers pushed through. We put them in teams of two, just like Josh referred to, so that they could have a partner to plan together that would deliver activities, lessons, and like you mentioned before, Matt, this is not great. This is something we truly wanted to see a different side of our kids. We wanted to expose them. We just wanted to give them an opportunity that they didn't get and a normal in a normal school day.
Matt Kirchner:And to that point, before I asked Josh a few questions, did you find that you know certain students, or certain profiles of students, reacted a lot better to that model of learning and experience than maybe a traditional classroom? What kind of what did you see from that standpoint?
Melissa Phillips:Absolutely one of the biggest thing. I am a huge proponent on project based grading. I think that we teach our kids in such unique ways. Sometimes we get focused on paper pencil tests, and that's not a we're finding more and more our kids don't learn that way, and if our kids don't learn that way, we're assessing them that way. And our my our school district has done a great job in allowing teachers to be flexible with how they grade. But as Josh and I were sharing some of our results. I had zero office referrals that week. I did not have one student come down for a behavior the teachers, we got a different side of the teachers, because we just, you know, they're so used to teaching the curriculum that we have laid out for them that it was awesome to also see them explore and dig into something that maybe there was a passion for, but now they got to bring it back and teach kids, but we had zero behaviors. It was just, it was a really fun week.
Matt Kirchner:And I want to come back to some of those points you just made in a moment. Let's, let's, let's take the high school experience a little bit as well, Josh, and talk about, you know, you mentioned things like business management, manufacturing. I think you talked, talked a little bit about me, you know, maybe an experience of being a lawyer. What were some of the other experiences that the high school students were able to choose from.
Josh Davis:So yeah, we took it from the Iowa career clusters. The state of Iowa has some career clusters they want us to focus on. So we divided those up and did eight this year, and we'll do eight next year. Agriculture is one, marketing, law and public safety that ended up being a pretty cool one, Human Services, hospitality, tourism. So, yeah, we had a wide range.
Matt Kirchner:And in Melissa's case, the students were able to choose from, you know, a group of 10, and narrow it down to five. Everybody got one of their top three. How did that work in the high school? How did you how did you make sure that that all the areas were covered and that students were in an area of interest? Yeah.
Josh Davis:So in the first year, the biggest hurdle was like, what is j term, right? So trying to get students to the parents, like, what are we signing up for? What are we supposed to do? And so really tried to get juniors and seniors, trying to really encourage them to do internships as much as we could. The hurdle being there that if they had to kind of secure their own internship, we give them ideas. So, you know, talk to your parents, talk to your family friends, like, what kind of area would you want to be in and try to secure an internship? So they weren't able to get an internship, and they were here with us at school, and then they were just they ranked one through eight, what their experiences would be. And we also had an outlier. We had one group of teachers really want to do a week long sports, one career in sports. So we did deviate and allow them to have a week long one. And we just told you, like, dream big. Like, give me an idea. You have an idea you want to do. We'll roll with that first. If you don't, then we'll default to these kids were able to kind of, then just piecemeal, I think I want an internship, but when it came down to it, they weren't able to explore it. And then they were in a career cluster. But least for round one, everybody who filled out the survey correctly got their number one choice.
Matt Kirchner:Awesome. Yeah, keywords filled out the survey correctly, right? That's beautiful, Lee. Let's, let's think about, I guess. First of all, some of the students are finding their own internships. Other students are learning and experiencing the J term at school. Do you have percentages like, what percentage of them were able to find their their own internship? Yeah. So we have about 320
Josh Davis:kids in the high school. We had over 100 internships. Wow, awesome.
Matt Kirchner:Yeah, you mentioned the law internship with the county. What are some of the other examples of internships that
Josh Davis:students here? We had some kids that were with the city, doing a city work, stuff, maintenance. We had a number of kids go to elementary school and work with teachers there, not just our elementary school, but they branched out to neighboring schools, neighboring principals and T were very, very welcoming to our kids. One girl had such a great experience with her internship that she has reworked her schedule for the afternoons to go back and work over there to be teaching. She will likely go to college for an education which was not the her intent before she did this, which was great love it. We had kids with the police department and the 911, call center was a pretty cool one. We had students with a real estate agent that were able to love it so much, buy the real estate course, which happened to be on sale that week, and start working on our real estate stuff with the agent, awesome during the week. And we had kids at the airport. We had kids at Veterinary Clinic, the library, just about anywhere you could think of any industry, they were not allowed to pick a place where they were currently working. That was one of the requirements. So you couldn't be, couldn't get paid for it, couldn't be out of it already working there. And we encouraged that, not if mom and dad own a bookstore, don't work at the bookstore, right? So that haven't have a you could go to work with a parent. We had kids at John Deere. You know, my dad works. Here Can I go? Yep, absolutely. Just have a supervisor that's not your parent. Be the final sign off. And then we were able to, almost all we were able to get out and see those kids in their environment throughout the week and kind of see what they were doing, awesome. And so did, was there a common denominator on the kids that managed to find internships? Did the most of them have a parent that had a network. Or were they enterprising in terms of finding something, or maybe they were more focused on what career was interesting to them? Were there any commonalities you saw there? It was pretty wide ranging. I would say, you know, I'm sure parents had a high handle on especially first time through, too, as well. But yeah, there were kids. There were businesses that reached out. So when we first got started, we went with our our local grow Clinton, you know, our kind of a chamber of commerce, and they got the name out, and I went to a few meetings with some business leaders, and kind of said, here's what we're thinking, who would like to host. And so they they, they reached out, and we kind of gave some kids, hey, here's some people that are looking if you want to intern. And so we kind of got the ball rolling that way. And then some kids we work with, our counselor and our instructional coach, who are very instrumental. And, you know, I really want to do something in veterinary science, but I don't know who to contact. And so we had adult help and say, All right, hey, look at these places. And here's some ideas. But ultimately, it came down to the student making the contact and the student being responsible for those things. It was kind of unnerving sending them to break and December 20, and they're kind of come back and not come to school. And so we met with them before and had them fill out a little form like, who's your contact? What happens if there's a snow day? What happens if you get sick? You know, who do you contact? What's the expectation for what you wear, kind of shoes you need? Do you have time for lunch, or do you bring on lunch? So just some things that the kids wouldn't have thought of, or not necessarily thought of, going into those environments. How much structure did you give these employers, like, if they're engaging in this? Was there a set of criteria that you gave them of this is what the experience should look like, or how much autonomy, autonomy did they have? Yeah, we kind of said. We kind of just said, you know, we went to 35 hours. Didn't have to be during the school. They didn't have to match. Some kids were working in the evenings. Some kids did the weekends. There was one young lady who was doing some stuff at the local Y and her first class that she had to help teach was at 5am so it was a little bit different than than the school day. So we kind of said, here's the goal, you know, we want these kids to learn and get some hands on stuff more applicable. 35 hours was kind of our criteria. Most kids went well over that. But we could also tailor it. If they were gonna do a full week, 35 hours, if they were just gonna do a one or two day, they could do that as well. So it was kind of pick your own adventure, like I think you had
Matt Kirchner:said earlier, and great, great experience for these students that are doing their internships in areas that they're interested in. You mentioned a couple instances where students said had actually changed career choices into something that they experienced, and in some cases, maybe even decided that something they experienced it wasn't for them as well. That's that can be as valuable as learning what you want to do. So super, super important for the students that stayed back at school, which sounds like about two thirds of them, give or take, talk about the experience there.
Josh Davis:Yeah, yeah. It was, it was awesome. Our teachers really wanted to get out and about as much as possible, so it became kind of a logistic challenge. I ended up getting my bus driver's license just so I could help with the week to drive a bus, yeah, about from Clinton to Cedar Rapids to on the Illinois side of the river, Davenport, Dubuque. And we were all over the place, going to different things, and then we had guest speakers come in as well and talk about different things. And we're able to tap into where our alumni base at a higher level than I had even thought. And it was awesome for the alumni to come back and say, I wish we would have had something like this when we were here. And here's our experience. And see some of our kids, see some of those kids that may have they've seen walking the halls, or they knew from you. Know, she used to be my babysitter, and now she's running this marketing firm, you know, something like that. Was super cool to have some alumni involved. But for the most part, it was very, very hands on and out and about and seeing the world really, really cool. And they get, they get to see the world their their principal gets another career opportunity, which is to be the bus driver, which is, which is awesome, and really shows how invested you were in this, in this entire model, you know, Melissa mentioned that the, you know, she had two teachers, and William, we'll be back to her in just a moment, but two teachers kind of working in each subject areas. Did you have something similar at the high school? Yep, kind of just said, you know, sent out a form. Who would you want to work with? If you're with somebody for a week, most people say they didn't care. Wasn't that it? But, you know, if you had a partnership, and then from there, here's our career clusters. Melissa was a little bit different, because they had the week long and needed to be kind of an expert in an area a little bit, or have a focus. Our teachers didn't need to have any background at all, just willingness to call, calling and bring the experts in for the further two days. And so some stayed in their lane, kind of, you know, and you know, if I was, you know, information technology teacher I wanted, but other was willing to go and say, I know nothing about the manufacturer other than I live in a manufacturing belt. But go experience and they they learned. They came back and said they learned so much. We had one of our teachers did the marketing, and she said, I need to update what I do in my class, because I need to catch up. And made some great contacts in the marketing world to help her now, when she comes back to her class and planning her units, she can adjust to see what's out in the real world. So it was awesome for them as well.
Matt Kirchner:Did you expect that? I mean, what a great unintended consequence. If you did, yes, yeah. How cool is that? So that's kind of feedback you got. Speaking of feedback from teachers, Melissa, let's talk about yours a little bit. You know, anytime you're implementing change in an organization, you get some people that are gung ho, some people that maybe aren't so much, and others that kind of wait in the middle to see how it goes. Tell us a little bit about the how your and teach your teachers embraced what they were doing. To Josh's point, they, you know, they certainly, in some cases, had to be a little bit more of, if not subject matter experts, at least up to speed on some of these content areas where they were delivering learning to your students. Talk about how this was received by the teachers,
Melissa Phillips:yeah, well, bluntly, they didn't have a choice. No, they from the minute we started talking about this, it was all hands on deck. The teachers really embrace this. You know, we get into teaching because we want to make a change, and we know that our world is changing. Kids are not like they used to be. We're not like we used to be when we were in school. And so we really wanted to explore different opportunities for our kids. And I think, like you had talked about and unintended consequences is our teachers learn things too, which was really awesome. And one of these things that we the unintended consequence, kind of moving forward, is our teachers had kids that they might not have had on a normal school day. So we are a building of fifth through eighth graders, and our fifth through eighth graders were all intermingled. This gave a chance for our fifth graders to work with our eighth graders, and for us, it kind of broke the stigma of a fifth grader thinking, Oh, maybe the eighth graders aren't so scary. And vice versa, the eighth graders, maybe those fifth graders aren't so annoying. So it really had some really cool output that we weren't predicting. It kind of worked with our courses, though, that we offered that almost one teacher in there had a comfortability. So for instance, our dig into farming, our math teacher, Caitlin Geiss is a math teacher, first job, second job. She goes home, and she owns a farm, and so there was a lot of connections, I think that a lot of our teachers made. I think the biggest thing that Josh and I will work through next year is although we gave a lot of planning and prep, we think that our teachers always could have more and benefit from more, and that's part of our process of defining what our calendar next year looks like. So our teachers are prepared. We have time to make any changes. But yeah, our teachers were on board from the minute that we presented this. I think that there was a little bit of unknown, but as we went through it, I think that was that was pretty, pretty well received when we got through it. How much
Matt Kirchner:structure did you give the teachers? We asked about some of the internships and how much structure the employers got. Were they kind of free to just make this experience whatever they wanted, or did you give them some some framework?
Melissa Phillips:Yeah, so our teachers and I think Josh would concur too. They had a lot of freedom. We were very open with them that this is not graded. We don't want them to witness something that they get in every day from school from eight to 330 we want this to be an experience. We don't expect them to take a test. We want them to be hands on. We let them get creative, make their own plans. We really wanted them to own this, and they did an awesome job doing that.
Matt Kirchner:And at the middle school level, how much for a typical student was the experience, you know, maybe sitting in a traditional learning environment, whether you're whether it's a video or a lecture or presentation of sorts, and how much of it was was hands on, interactive,
Melissa Phillips:yeah, so I would say almost every group was hands on. We got to be a lot more creative than, you know, our typical ELA class or our typical writing courses that our students may be taking, the the J term courses and the we. Week allowed for students to be hands on, be creative. We got to explore creativity like we've never seen with some of our kids, whether that was through crafts, whether that was them, planting, working with the calves that we brought in, going out and interviewing our buzz hub, our marketing group at the school, walked around to even the high school, interviewed some of the high school students on their experiences with J term. And so there was just one of the biggest ones, too, was volunteering. We did a volunteering group, and we went out and helped our community and just did different support. So it was a lot of experience that students don't normally get. And they got to the biggest thing, I think, they got to interact with a lot of people that they don't typically ever do.
Matt Kirchner:Absolutely, you know, speaking of interacting, and you talked about the volunteering, you mentioned the field trips a couple times. So why don't you just mention to our audience examples of some some field trips that the students were able to engage in
Melissa Phillips:for the middle school. We have, for instance, our local coffee shop, current coffee our students got to go, whether it was our writer station, whether it was our superhero cafe, they got to go and make their own drinks. Our writers got to match their writing with the personality that they were showing and make a drink and then sit in a coffee shop and have a drink with reading their stories that they created. We've visited our local assisted living Park VISTA to go and be able to volunteer play cards with some of what we call the grandmas and grandpas at the assisted living we grow Clinton was a huge asset, as Josh mentioned, before our middle schoolers got to go there, we went to a dairy farm. There was just a lot of different exploration. But I know Josh experienced a little bit more outside of the area that we went for some of those full day experiences.
Matt Kirchner:Yeah, it sounds like a full court press from not just your community, but surrounding communities, employers and so on. What kind of feedback did you get from, you know, let's say the coffee shop where you've got the students going in there, or the assisted living facility? Did you get, did you get feedback from the individuals who either owned or ran those organizations?
Melissa Phillips:Yeah, some of the feedback that we got is, it was really reassuring for me, is, oh my gosh, your students came in and they were so polite. They were so appropriate. When they came in and they asked for help, they asked such good questions. And that's one thing that we're really trying to work with our kids and questioning like it's okay to question, it's okay to get deeper answers so you can really understand the community support was hands down. I think one of the things that Josh and I were so thankful for, because without community support, we wouldn't have been able to do this. We have an idea of what we wanted j term to be like, and that was experiences and giving kids a new set of what education really looks like, but without the community support and just willing to take our kids, willing to work with them on a daily basis, it wouldn't have been possible without them.
Matt Kirchner:And we remind our audience, the number one influencer every young person's career pathway is their own interests and experiences in middle school and high school, and without the involvement of those employers of organizations in the community that show and give students an opportunity to see what some of these careers are like. If you can't see it, you can't be it really, really important that you handled this exactly the way that you did. I've got to believe Melissa, that you got some great feedback from students. Do you have a handful of stories that you want to share along those lines of feedback from your students that you learned from? Yes, they
Melissa Phillips:would like the J term week to be the whole school year. Awesome. They would like. And we did a survey like, what could we do better? Because, you know, yes, we're implementing and yes, we're running it, but we really do want the feedback from the kids. One of the feedback that we were getting, like Josh had said, we went into this either two ways. We either were going to do for the middle school a week long, five days of them being in one course, so we could really expose them Monday through Friday. We got some feedback from kids that they really liked that because they got to do more. We also got some feedback. Hey, Mrs. Holtz, we would really like to do two, two day courses, so we can do, you know, agriculture on day one and two, and then the other couple of days, we could do buzz hub and we could go interview people. So that's a takeaway that we're definitely taking. I think the biggest thing for us is the amount of people that came in and volunteered their time, either through guest speakers, hands on. It allowed our kids to ask questions, especially questions that they don't get to ask on a normal day to day basis, like, why did you get into this? Or what keeps you at your job? So just the questioning, I think, that our kids grew from Monday through Friday was really it was very apparent, absolutely.
Matt Kirchner:And we say all the time, you get further in life by asking the right questions than you do by giving the right answers. And it sounds like they ask tons and tons of really, really good questions. Which is, which is terrific. It's about is, you know, we see a lot of times when students, for instance, are choosing their class schedules. Well, I chose this class because my friend took this class, or what have you. Are the things that you can do to make sure that students are really following their interests and not just expressing an interest in something, because their two best friends are expressing an interest in that.
Melissa Phillips:Yeah, and that was very purposeful. The students took the survey individually. Now, did we tell the students and parents what the courses were going to be offered? Yes. Do I think they went home and said, Hey, What course are you going to pick for one, two and three? Yes, but at the end of the day. Myself, my instructional coach and my counselor, we all sat down, and we had to go back to some students and say, Hey, do you really want this? Or are you only doing this because your friend is in there, like, this is a chance for you to explore and for you to see what you really want to do. So some changes were made, but it still was in with their top three, because our students, a lot of times are with the same kids throughout the whole their whole Monday through Friday, their eighth or eight o'clock to 330 time. And we really wanted them to feel comfortable with where they are, and sometimes that's surrounded by friends. But we also really wanted them to explore things that they normally wouldn't. And they also got gained some new friendships. Just like I said, our fifth through eighth graders, they were with each other all day long. They sat with lunch together, and now we still have fifth and eighth graders talking to each other in the hallway and say, How is this going? Because they took it past just j term, which was what was one of our hopes for, absolutely.
Matt Kirchner:And we'll talk about some of the other success stories and hopes and goals in just a moment. My guests on this episode of The TechEd podcast, Melissa Phillips, who is the principal of Comanche Middle School. Josh Davis, the principal of comaj High School, that school district in eastern Iowa, by the way. And Josh, you know, a question for you when you start thinking about not just student success stories. We talked about that, and we'll maybe have an opportunity to go deeper there. You talked about your teachers and your staff. How about families? I mean, what did you hear from the parents and the families of the students that participated in j
Josh Davis:term after the first session? I did have one parent email and say my son, senior didn't really have a path, and we're going to spend the week filling out college applications. He really wants to get this type of degree to maybe own his own business. So it just sent a chill down my spine, you know, because, you know, you spend all these year, years, I mean, literally, years planning to this and then to have a positive feedback right off the bat, on like we literally changed some kids lives, hopefully for the better. But it was we. It was all it was, it was, it was great feedback. Parents loved it. You know, Melissa talked about not having any discipline referrals. It was the highest attended week of school since I've been a principal, and there was no attendance requirement. I mean, we told them they should come, but it was not like, if you're not going to come, you're not I mean, you're getting detentions. There was no like, you're late for like, we have some late policies, and we have some attendance policies by talking to, you know, the school board or other people in charge, like, what are you gonna do for tenant? Well, let's just see how it goes for year one, right? And part of it is coming back off a two week break. It's easier to be there. But kids were really, really looking forward to it, and the families really appreciated how much, you know, conversation there was at the dinner table from those evenings and nights. And, you know, from a parent aspect, it was 100% positive. And that's not something that happens
Matt Kirchner:very often. No, for sure, not and 100% positive. And I want to just underscore the two things that both of you now have mentioned. And you know, one of them is the lack of behavioral issues and referrals to the office, which really tells you, it tells you something, right? It tells you that. And it may even be, I don't want to read too much into it, but maybe some of those students that are a little bit more prone to acting out in a traditional classroom, those are the ones that get the most engaged and the most benefit, in some cases, out of this style learning. I can tell you from experience, that was certainly my that was my story when I was going through middle school and high school is the more interactive the learning could be, the more I could be moving around, the more I could be not just sitting in a debt at a desk, the better I behaved at school. And I think that's true certainly of a lot of a lot of boys and a lot of students, and then the attendance side of it as well. Students didn't want to miss this educational experience as they were going through it, which just tells us, I think the more interactive, the more interesting, the more specific to their interests. Not that all education can be like that. Sometimes we have to learn things. Maybe we don't want to, but the more that we can align learning with a student's own interest, the better results we're going to get. I've got to believe that that's that's one of the great victories of this, this whole process, Josh, are you going to do it again next year? It was all this logistics and bus driving and coordination and everything, not quite worth it.
Josh Davis:It's already built into the calendar for next year. We'd be idiots not to keep it going as well as it went.
Matt Kirchner:Yeah, it sounds like it went incredibly well. The teachers, are you getting the sense that they want to maybe do something a little bit different in terms of their areas of interest? Do they want to stay kind of in the same lane that they were in this last year? Or is it too early to know that?
Josh Davis:Yeah, so the eight clusters will flip, so it'll be new, so there won't be any repeats this year. The following year, it'll go back and repeat. So got it. I think some really enjoyed it and wanted to do it. I think others, as we debriefed as a staff, saw what the others did and like, oh, I would love to learn that. You know, so is there a way to kind of meet them in the middle? Would you want to keep your same partnership and do what you did and then you are like, our law and public safety was a two day course. After that went through, it probably could have been a one week course. Okay, had they came and did a crash simulation, they did fingerprinting, they did they did so many hands on interactive things that one side got maybe the other side didn't. So to make that a full week, we might would do that and we had kids participate in that thing that had not, I've been in the. Classrooms, and some of the kids who were dominating that some conversation hadn't said much words in many other courses, so going through and seeing some of that stuff was awesome, and we're definitely ready to go. We had a chance to debrief as a staff at the end of the week. So our Friday, which we hadn't really mentioned the Friday part of it yet, but on a Friday, we had ja come in and do some interview skills with kids. So we had a budgeting activity where they got a budget and going around and talked about how many cars they would have, how many Netflix accounts, how many cell phones, you know, based on your career, we had interview skills. We had how to handle yourself in the workplace. So our Friday was kind of our wrap up. And, you know, maybe what did you learn some from the careers and then taking that to or I'm a freshman. I liked this. We have course registration coming up. What high school courses do I need to take to kind of pursue these type of things? So after that, kids were done on Friday, our staff met, and they got to kind of talk about what they had done to other staff members. Because in my seat, let's see, we got to see everything was going on and move around. But they were so in their zone, they didn't have a chance to kind of know what other people were doing. So it was a great end of the week for us to kind of talk about what we had done. And teacher, oh, I would have loved to hear that and tell me more about this. And it was a great community fellowship at the very end on what they were doing.
Matt Kirchner:Is there one teacher comment that really sticks out to you as you were reflecting on the week, something that somebody said that's like, wow, this is why we did that.
Josh Davis:I think just yeah, just seeing the kids interact. I mean, just the one theme was like, Hey, you would never know, you know, little Josh Davis. He was really out there and really asking questions, you know, and we didn't really see that side of him in class. So that was the biggest thing, just seeing some kids maybe come out of their shells a little bit in these environments. Awesome. Melissa, same question to you. You're gonna do it again next year?
Melissa Phillips:Yep. This is yeah, that we we, you know, we really are digging into this. This isn't something that's going away. Like I said, Josh and I was our first year, way more pros than cons. One thing that we had that the high school day, we had a showcase night on that Thursday night, where parents and community members and families could come in and see what the kids produced, whether that was their robots, whether it was the writing that they did, it surpassed everything that we had. Over 300 people walk in the door. Some people didn't even have an affiliation. Didn't have kids at the school, but they saw this advertised. We pushed hard, we shared it with the news. We had a lot of great advertisement, and it just brought a lot of neat and new faces into Comanche. And a lot of a lot of the comments were, we wish we had this when we were their age, or we wish that we could have done something like this. It probably would have given us a different outlook on our school. So in our education, it's
Matt Kirchner:interesting that you both said that. I think Josh mentioned that if some of the alum that came back to be a part of the student experiences, and in your particular case, folks that came to the community night and said, We wish we would have had this. I, you know, as I'm thinking through this, we had this thing when I was in grade school called high interest day, and it was when, you know, somebody's parents would come in and they had some specific career, and you would spend a whole day with that parent, and they would be telling you about what it's like to be a dentist, or what it's like to be a veterinarian or what have you, and that, you know all these years later, still sticks with me. I'm sure you're going to have students that are telling stories about what they learned in this experience, you know, 20, 3040, years from now. And there's no doubt you're inspiring certain students to explore careers as we talked about, or explore interests that they didn't know they had. You know, you learned from West Branch, and they did this. I know there's going to be tons of folks all over the US that are listening to this podcast saying, Wow, this sounds really, really cool. I'm interested. If you could give those districts one piece of advice as they consider doing something like the J term that you did in Comanche. What would you tell them to do?
Josh Davis:Yeah, I would say just really work with your community as much as you can. I think one thing we heard back from the business owners and the people in the real world was it was so much easier to commit to a week or a few days than it was, you know, trying to get an intern for a semester or for an extended period of time. So they really liked the short bursts. And could really give the kids some things hands on wise. So you just make the calls and do those things. And, you know, we're small school, and I think that allows us to maybe do some things that maybe bigger schools couldn't, because we can manage the amount of kids that are going out there and doing that, and don't rush into it. It took us over, well over a year to kind of get everything in our ducks in a row, and before we even told the teachers about it, and then give them plenty of chances to plan and collaborate and do those type of things.
Matt Kirchner:Don't rush into it and build those relationships with your your private employers and other partners in the community. And I can tell you, as someone who spends time on both education and and on the private employer side, they want to help a lot of times they don't know how to be involved. But when you when you can get in touch with them and you ask them, especially if it's a week, I mean, who's going to say no to four or five days? Absolutely, I love that and those short bursts, really, really good advice. Melissa, how about you? What would you tell folks?
Melissa Phillips:A lot of it was apprehension, I think, because it's new to us, one of our things is we just jumped in. We knew that this was going to be a learning year for us, but for us, I think the biggest thing is, like Josh had community, and I know Josh and I, we tried our best to make ourselves of. Available if it was us, making phone calls to communities, to businesses, looking for donations, we just jumped head first into asking local businesses if they would like to donate. The middle school was lucky, because a lot of us, we stayed on site. And so we needed to buy things for kids. We needed to have crafts ready, have books ready. Just hands on supplies ready. And so we weren't scared to reach out to local businesses to ask if they would be willing to donate. And we had a really good response.
Matt Kirchner:So just jump in. Is someone who it was part of a team five years ago that started a podcast, and we said, let's just do an education podcast and and jump in. And five years later, in some 250, 50, some odd episodes later, here we are. We can certainly relate to that. That was with another Melissa, by the way, Melissa Martin, our producer, and we managed to figure it out. It's amazing. If the idea is big enough and the goal is big enough, you're going to sort out a way to make it all happen. The two of you certainly have, and we've had just a wonderful time with both of you in the TechEd podcast studio. Nobody gets out of that studio without answering these two questions. So I'll pose each of them together to each of you. We'll start with Melissa and that first question we love asking every guest here on the TechEd podcast. You know, we all have our own education journey. We all had our path through whatever version of education we went through. You had yours. What is one thing that you believe about our educational system? And I know you're a disruptor too, because you told us that early on. What's one thing that you believe that would surprise our audience?
Melissa Phillips:Our education system is changing, and it's totally different from when we were in school. I think we have to embrace technology. The World AI is coming quick at us, and we are actually, as a district, looking at our AI policy, because it's not going away, and we want to get our kids prepared and use it purposeful. I use AI every day. I think Josh uses AI every day, and it's a tool that we find that is going to probably set some of our kids apart, knowing that they were taught purposely how to use it and be prepared for the real world. But I just think one of the biggest things for me is taking our kids where they're at and pushing them where they need to go, because we know all of them can get there.
Matt Kirchner:That's a beautiful answer, and we're obviously huge believers of all that here at the TechEd podcast, education is changing, certainly being affected by technology, from edge to cloud, artificial intelligence and so on, and we have an obligation to morph ourselves into that future, if for no other reason, that it's the right thing to do for our students. Josh, same question to you, and then we'll come back to Melissa, the your education journey different than Melissa is different than mine. You had your own what's something that would surprise our audience, that you believe about education?
Josh Davis:I think we need all the adults to step up to protect the high school experience for kids, I think kids get wrapped up on some things, and, you know, there's a lot of different pathways after high school, but the kids that really want to work, we really got to protect that you can you have your rest of your life to work, right? And the kids who really want to get to college, don't rush in and take so many college classes as a high school student, step back. You don't need to take all the take all those classes. Step back, be a high school student, be involved in the stuff. I think as adults, we really got to fight, you know, there's gonna be exceptions here or there, you know, but just really fight for those kids to keep the high school experience, because I think it's really, really sacred. Yeah, you only
Matt Kirchner:go through high school once. There's all kinds of things that you can not necessarily only learn in high school, but high school, but high school is the best, and some of that's academic. A lot of it isn't, but making sure that we're protecting that experience, that makes a ton of sense to me. Well, one more question for each of you. We'll stay with Josh for the next question, going all the way back to your 15 year old self, you're a sophomore in high school, just like those sophomores and just like those high school kids you were just talking about in your last answer, you could give that one, that young man, one piece of advice, Josh, what would it be?
Josh Davis:I mean, invest in Bitcoin. Maybe. There you go. Yeah. I think just Yeah. I mean, trust the people who are there for you to try and to help you. And maybe you didn't want to listen as 15. But there's a lot of good people in my life around that time that have influenced where I'm at today.
Matt Kirchner:So no, no question about that. You could do those in the in the same order. Those aren't mutually exclusive. You couldn't, couldn't invest in Bitcoin at least when I was 15, but probably had that opportunity four or five, six years ago. Really, really good advice. And also make sure you've got all these great people surrounding you. Let's take the time to listen to what they have to say. Melissa, one piece of advice for the 15 year old self going all the way back to just a year or so older, two years older than the students you have in middle school. What would you tell yourself?
Melissa Phillips:Yeah, I think for me, the biggest thing that I'm kind of pushing for our kids is this too shall pass. I think a lot of our kids, especially at the middle school and high school, get focused on such the small things that make such a huge impact. And knowing that, you know, a part of the conversation I have with many kids is think about a hard time that you went through. Went through, and did you get through it? And you did, and so this too shall pass, meaning keep working hard. I came from a family of educators, my parents, my sisters, all educators, still are educators. And like Josh said, some families don't have people kids don't have people that surround them to push them for their best interests. And. Josh and I and all of our teachers are stepping in to do that and just to surround yourself with people that will get you there.
Matt Kirchner:It's really an example of the really, really important work that you're doing this too shall pass. By the way, I love that. If you know, if I had $1 for every time that I've repeated that to myself spiritual, of course, as many of us know, I could have bought a billion dollars of Bitcoin, probably for for all the times that I've told myself this too shall pass. But I agree, keep things in perspective. It's never as bad as it seems. And you've got all these people around you, to Josh's point, to support you and to your point, to the to those teachers and to staff and anybody else that's involved in the life of a student, all those family members of yours, Melissa, that we're focused on developing young people. You have a lot of people that care about you, a lot of people that love you. Take advantage of that. Know that and the future can be really, really bright. I know the future is going to be bright for all of these students at command School District, both the middle school and the high school, all this experiential learning, this j term, hope our audience enjoyed as much as I did, learning about the incredible work that both Melissa and Josh are doing. We had all kinds of good stuff come up. We'll link any of the resources that we mentioned in the show notes. We do have the best show notes in the business. You will find those at TechEd podcast.com/commands that is TechEd podcast.com c, a, m, a, n, C, H, E, and when you're done there, be sure and check us out on social media. We are all over social you'll find us on Tiktok, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Instagram. YouTube page is still blowing up the YouTube videos that we're now doing this episode in video form, getting all kinds of views there as well. So check us out on social media when you're there, say hello. Don't forget to be back next week for the TechEd podcast. Until then, my name is Matt Kirkner. I am your host, and thank you for being with us. You.
