Join us for a conversation with Sylvia and Jarrid Hall, founders of GAB-on!, a platform dramatically improving student engagement and academic success in school through student-led conversations at home.
Jarrid and Sylvia were frustrated that their son, Austin, always had the same answer to the question, "what did you learn at school today?"
Can you guess what that was?
We’ll talk to Sylvia and Jarrid about:
• How they decided they were the ones that could solve a universal problem through technology
• What they did to get their program adopted by schools
• How they developed ambassadors that opened the right doors for them
• How online education provides a new opportunity for how they can grow their company
Join us for an opportunity to find out how to solve that one problem that you feel everyone has and you can help with!
Join us for a conversation with Sylvia and Jarrid Hall, founders of GAB-on!, a platform dramatically improving student engagement and academic success in school through student-led conversations at home.
Jarrid and Sylvia were frustrated that their son, Austin, always had the same answer to the question, "what did you learn at school today?"
Can you guess what that was?
We’ll talk to Sylvia and Jarrid about:
• How they decided they were the ones that could solve a universal problem through technology
• What they did to get their program adopted by schools
• How they developed ambassadors that opened the right doors for them
• How online education provides a new opportunity for how they can grow their company
Join us for an opportunity to find out how to solve that one problem that you feel everyone has and you can help with!
Good morning. This is lifelong educators where we, the community of people who are lifelong educators come together to discuss our problems and the solutions that we might have, the new ideas, the innovations, the new educational tech that we want to develop every week. We have special guests that can help us get along that journey. And this week we have Jared and Sylvia hall say hello to the nice people, Jared and Sylvia.
Jarrid:Good morning. Good morning.
Jackie Guzda:And also we have Dotan Tamir who is coming to us all the way from Israel, where it is something like six o'clock this evening. So say hello to the nice people too.
Dotan Tamir:Good morning. Good evening.
Jackie Guzda:Okay. So, uh, Sylvia and Jared are the creators of a wonderful product called Gabon. And what this is about is that, um, they like you, like some of the parents in our audience today probably had the experience where your teenager came home from school and you said, Hey, how was your day today? And they said, and audience, you can fill it in. They said, fine. Well, They got smart about it. And they realize something is that the communication between parent and teacher and the support that the student gets from the home really makes a huge difference in their learning. Don't tell him, he knows a lot about this because of his product click to, uh, an online educational device that can, uh, create learning possibilities in schools and camps all around the world. Well, Sylvia and Jared were doing this with their own son in their home. So what I'd like to say here is that I have a little quote here from Ann Anderson, from the Annenberg Institute for school reform. And they say that more than 40 years of data collection tells us that the most accurate predictor of a student's academic success is the extent to which the family is involved in their education. So Sylvia and Jared, you had this problem, your son Austin would come home, give you that fine answer. And you wanted to know more. So you took this problem into your own hands. Tell us what you did to solve it.
Jarrid:Thanks, Jackie. Great to be here. Thanks so much for, for hosting this and, and great to meet you and excited to be here. Um, yeah, so we did take, uh, you know, we did, we took it on personally. Um, you know, Austin learns differently as part of the challenge that we had and, um, you know, for Austin remembering his day, IS challenge, uh, he physically can't remember it the way his, uh, neurologist set up, uh, which is quite typical of kids who learn differently. And, you know, I was asking about his day. and Generally it was fine. Or I can tell you he's trying to create a conversation and try to find something to bring up. It just wasn't fit. Wasn't fitting. So I went in and talked to his teacher and I asked why can't Austin share his day with me, what's going on? And she said, well, asking Austin to try try harder to remember. His day is like asking a blind person to try harder to see he can't do it. And so that was a spark of two ways. First of all, I felt like a dad, I didn't want to be, you know, I wanted to be a better dad than that understand how to help my son. Um, and then I just thought, how can I help? What can I do? Based on personal experiences and family experiences, I just thought, well, what if we helped him capture some hints or reminders during the day, um, and brought those home, and then we can talk about those hints reminders and the idea was it to put them back, give them a memory trail, you know, like breadcrumbs or where he was, what he was doing, what he was part of. Um, and then with that, with that reminder, it would be a spark for conversation. And that's exactly what happened for us. Um, It was really exciting. The first time he came home with what we call a gap, which has a hint of reminder, it was onion, skin and lake water. He was in science class and wrote inside onionskin at lake water. Like most everyone would say, well, what does that mean? And that's the point? There was no pictures. There's no sentence. I didn't know what that meant. He needed to tell me the story. But at first he couldn't read. It took them about 90 seconds to really walk around the kitchen and thought about it. He sat He said dad. I remember we were in science class and we were looking at onion, skin, onion, skin under a microscope, and we saw the cell walls and we saw the nucleus. We saw the pieces and parts. It was so neat. His eyes were literally lit up and his body language changed. He was leaning in because he remembered something for the first times about school. And it was just an aha moment for him and an exciting moment for us. And then he talked about how the teacher gave him a vial and then his team was in a team in a vial to go down to the pond behind the school and get a sample of lake water, bring it back, looked at it under the microscope and found a water book named Roberto, um, and created a cartoon. And the story went on and on. But what also happened was I shared a story about catching pollywogs and frogs growing up in his eyes lit up WhatsApp. What'd you do. And so you told the story about falling into a pond covered in green pond scope. But what happened was the family came together Gracey our daughter was talking about things. And for the first time we all came together around a school event that was memorable to him. We went back, you know, there's so much going on there. I can actually get excited talking about it, but, um, we made it personal. We really took it on ourselves. And I think yourself is a big problem.
Jackie Guzda:I find that absolutely amazing. But what about the people here in our Facebook group? And I just want to say please people in the Facebook group, if you have any questions, you can put it in the chat. Jared and Sylvia would be more than happy to help you out and answer them. So question for you, Jared, you invented something. What the heck did you end up.
Jarrid:You know what it turns out as I invented a lot more than I thought I did when I, when I did it, all I wanted straight up was a conversation with Austin and try to get a dialogue going and help him have him coupled with a memory boost, I guess you could say. And so when we did it at first, you thought, okay, this is great. This is wonderful. We connected. And we did it for a while, but as we've learned from that point in time forward, we've talked to neurologists researchers, educators, and what we really created was cognitive growth brains actually grow in kids who have consistent conversations with their brains. There was a study done at MIT that looked at the before and after pictures of through an FMR, I, they call it of what would happen when children have consistent conversations with a dialogue back and forth, the brains literally grew up. Um, we find that the evidence shows kids are more engaged in school. We found that, um, the cortisone. Levels, I think it's cortisol levels and brains come down. Um, because when kids are in a state of fear or anxiety, uh, which a lot of kids were throughout COVID, but also in general, especially special education kids bring that down. There are open to learning them are open to participating and engaging. Uh, we, we gave our son a voice, uh, actually, after we started doing this a little while, he'd won the grit award in school because of self advocacy, he learned to step up and say, I don't understand, can you please help me? Um, his grades went up, um, we have a lot of stories about how this really made very transformative moments and the students, but also the parents' lives and understanding. So we think we created a bridge and what we're hearing a lot, people are saying as a safe space, kids can have a voice. That they are leading the conversation and the parents listen and they participate. And what we keep hearing over and over is I feel like I'm in a safer space, you know, all the, all the media, all the extraneous noise is gone and it's just a parent and child or a family talking about something. The child is meaning. And it's a transformative moment for some people I
Sylvia:think, I think simply it's, um, it's technology that harnesses, parent engagement and, uh, give students agency and supports for mental health. And it's very simple to use in the classroom for the teachers, for the educators and students. And it's very simple to use at home. And people always, well, they often kind of laugh because we built technology to get people off of technology, which is a really odd thing to do in this day and age. Um, but as Jared mentioned, the learnings that we've had through so many of the research team. Um, it's, we're partnered with right now. Um, they've been invaluable lessons, 40 years of research, as you mentioned, um, you know, Ann Henderson, you read her quote, Karen matte, um, at Harvard, uh, Dr. Mike Nakhla at U Penn. They have just studied this for so many years. And so what we're able to offer something very simple for all stakeholders with incredible outcomes.
Jackie Guzda:So it's simple to use. I assume
Jarrid:very simple. The way it works is that, um, during the school day, whether it be after each class or at a reflection period, at the end of the day, the team, the student can pick up, you know, open up a phone, a Chromebook, a tablet of any kind, and they just go to their entry form. It's a drop down menu and they can choose science, math, English, art, wherever the topic is. And it's all manageable editable by the teacher or parent liver sets it up. They choose a topic science, and then they freeform in the idea is one to five words. That gives them a hint or a reminder about a topic and event, something they want to talk about with the family. At the end of the day, uh, for Austin, our first one was science, which was the subject and the topic was just going to lake water. Um, and they enter that. Um, and then it saved automatically. And then as a parent that receive it on my phone at the end of the day, I get a reminder, your gap gaps have been entered and then I can open them up. And I've had parents say, when I get that, all I want to do is find out what it needs. It's a mystery. Um, so it's really simple know for teachers. One of the biggest questions we get is what does the teacher's role in this? Um, and once it's set up, the teacher is more an advisor or a supporter. They don't have any work to do. Really. I think they get part of the homework and they give the child time to do it and track it. And we have a dashboard that teachers can track. That's all we need to do. It's really up to the child to go in and open it up, enter the information and that it goes at home. And then they lead the conversation at home with the parents. So as Sylvia said, Really made this as simple as possible. And we went to our engineer who John Bennett, who's building our technology for us and said, we need this to be the least amount of time spent on an app possible because we want to enter it, look at it, put it down the Sylvia said. And so that's kind of how it works, but it's super simple.
Sylvia:A couple of points, sorry, is, um, you know, we were inspired to create this for our son, but we really built it for all kids. So kids with, um, any, with all challenges, uh, in underserved communities, in all communities, they can use this. Um, and it can be used in all classrooms. We know that educators don't have a lot of time, but we also know that's not the only reason they pick up a new tool. Um, if you talk to teachers and they will, it doesn't take any of your work or time in the classroom, they doesn't, they recognize value. Um, they know when something's going to impact their classroom and their students. And so. The way it was built was in partnership with educators. Um, in fact, one of the teachers said, if, you know, I have two minutes, your daughter has two minutes. And if you can build it within those parameters and happy to learn in our classroom. So Wilson, Wilson principal
Jarrid:principal was the first teacher outside of our initial use case. And she that's how she said it. It was great. If you can make it work within 10 minutes, I'm in, let's do it super simple.
Sylvia:So yeah.
Dotan Tamir:So, sorry, just so Jared. And so you said you, you build it in partnership with educators and I can say as an educator, uh, you know, I, I come from being an educator, uh, and work with kids and, and sometimes you have, I think the most, um, satisfying moment for an educator is to see your students, your, your, the kids that you work with, get getting excited about what you teach them. You know, it's not just, okay. I have to learn that I learned it's fine, but if you get excited about, but then, then you managed to, um, transfer that excitement to, you know, the wider family, to the parents, the siblings, to anybody at home. And, and that, you know, for an educator, that's, that's been always, always been a very, very hard challenge. Um, I know, I know it from the camps, uh, that we had kids getting, they having the time of their lives. Learning, not, not always, they called it learning. Right. But they were learning, uh, and they went back, their parents pick them up and they went back and we always, we were trying to tell parents how to act, what should they ask in order to get some of the experience? And we never hacked it. Right. So I think what you create is really hacking. Little thing. It's basically allowing the kid themselves, the kids themselves to come up with the way that day. So it's like, they, they call it a name. It's not how you call it, not the, how the parent call it. I can ask something as a parent, but I don't ask that. I usually don't ask the right question. So they tell you what to ask and then they feel very comfortable in answering.
Sylvia:Yeah. And you just, you hit, you know, you hit so many wonderful points there. Um, and the, and the key is student agency. Um, this is student led and student managed. And to your point, they're choosing what they go home and talk with their families at that. Um, and then they lead those conversations with their families at home. Um, and the key to that is. Often you'll get Gabs as we call them, come home. And it's about a challenge or a struggle they've had at school in, in a certain subject. And then the parents able to help navigate that challenge, talk them through it. Um, not necessarily homework, but perhaps a social challenge, a peer challenge, um, something that's concerned about in the real world. But the other piece of that is. They also put in their joy, right? As you said, what excited them in school and when they can come home and talk about what excited them at school, then that is opening up a window for their parents to see where their child finds joy and what they like doing, where their strengths might be. And then where are their possibilities. And then it helps that child recognize those possibilities within, within themselves. And that is tremendous for their evolution into higher education into the workforce, into life fulfillment. It's this tiny piece that we may not think about that conversations consistently every day within your family builds that relationship and then teaches that child how to build other relationships and develops that agency that then they can go and recognize. They need relationships to move forward in life. Life is not overcoming things in a solo pathway. It is about relationships. It's about collaboration. It is about understanding where you need help and where you can help others and, and doing it where you find joy sparked so much, you know,
Dotan Tamir:keep talking about in this show about how education is magical. And I think the word joy, the word fun. Those are the words that should lead education because. Because that's, that's something that kids relate to. That's something that parents can relate to and that's something that makes it, it makes everything possible. Uh, when it's fun, then it can be challenging. It'd be hard as long as it's fun we can, we can do so. I like the word joy as an addition, you know, definitely adopted, uh, in addition to the fun and magic, uh, on my recovery.
Sylvia:I love that we want it everywhere.
Jackie Guzda:You know, Sylvia and Aton, you both talked about agency about the student initiating what they wanted to talk about, but I heard Jarrett say that Austin got the grit award. So tell me a little bit about why grit is so important also.
Jarrid:Um, for a lot of kids, it's really a self advocacy and self-awareness. When a kid can self-advocate for themselves and have the agency is stand up and say, Hey, I have a question. I have something I need to be able to do. I need to take care of, I have something I'm trying to, achieve and they learn how to have that conversation. It can really change the trajectory of, of what they were, where they go and what they actually ended up doing. Um, you know, grit is part through agency, part advocacy and part self-awareness. It's a mixture of all those pieces that come together. Um, and it's really important. I mean, there's some, there's so much study on grit and self advocacy advocacy that it's determined. It really helps determine pass forward. Um, you know, I, I was, we're working with some researchers that were looking at grit at the United States military academy at west point. And that's a pretty grateful location or not a lot of students there are full of grit, which is really the ability to say, I'm going to go somewhere. I'm going to find a way there. I'm going to advocate for myself to get there. Um, so that's a really hyper-focus group of individuals who are full of grit. And, um, we believe that when you start advocating through yourself, you learn what that means inherently. It's not taught, it's not a lesson plan. You just start learning talk about something, when you advocate for yourself, when you lead a conversation with your parents, you learn how to do that. It's scaffold. How do you build a scaffolding by which you can build better conversations, better relationships, you know, it's, um, it's foundational for everything Does that answer your question, Jackie
Jackie Guzda:beautifully. So I, I love this idea of magic. I think that's why most of us who are educators went into this field at first, somebody asked me, why did you want to become a teacher? You don't make that much money. The magic. Yeah. I think we all share that. So you just told us a beautiful story about how you saw a problem with your own son, how you realize that all parents, teachers, students have this problem about communication and getting support from the home. So you've got this great idea. How the heck did you turn it into something that could be used in the
Jarrid:classroom? That's a great question. Uh, because when we started with Austin, it was a Google sheet and I was just a bunch of drop-downs and I created this sheet for him and I then Gracie as well, uh, actually started with Austin in his classroom for the first week. We were doing Gabs with him in the conference at the dinner table and having these great conversations and, you know, love sibling rivalry because at one point Casey crossed her arms and said, why does he get this? Why don't I get one too? All right. So I wrote a note to her teacher who was Katie Wilson. And she said, yeah, I love the idea. Why don't you do it? Um, and then after about three months of doing it with Gracie and her class, she came to us and said, I really love this idea. Can I use it for the whole class? I thought, oh my gosh, how do I build something? I got to scale this to from two kids to 30. Um, and, uh, that's why I used a no-code app to start that build is called actually. So I built the first app, uh, that way. Um, and I'm not an engineer. So when I actually. Created something that could take data from one spot, put it to another. I was like, I want a Superbowl. I was so excited that data moved into another application and I could show it, you know, it'd be on my phone. And we use that with the class originally. And, um, and then it just kept growing from there. And we realized the app that I had built through a no-code app. Wasn't sufficient couldn't scale. Then we got connected with a great engineer. I referenced earlier, John Bennett loved the mission and we were on, we were a part of the social enterprise greenhouse, which is an incubator in Providence, Rhode Island. And he was part of that and we met, he loved it and we've been working together and building a highly scalable app. Now that's really it's
Sylvia:organic growth. It's um, you know, we went from a teacher to then the teacher beside her to then the school and then to another school. And it's been very organic, I think, in the education system. Um, I think when you hear about. Of a valuable platform that might help your students. It's really those trusted relationships among educators sharing by word of mouth, what works in their classrooms that is the most compelling. And so our organic growth just from teacher to school, principal to principal in the superintendents, um, has been very natural. And,
Dotan Tamir:uh, so I, I'm wondering as I'm also working on a product and also developing a company around the, around the technology product for the occasion, um, you, sometimes you start the product and you think, okay, that's going to be the main use case and we're going to do it for the classroom. And the thesis is going to be the teachers or the parents of the kids. What did you find out? You know, you had your base assumptions, um, how, and, and maybe. Ask, uh, um, um, I'm going to ask him another question. What was the most bizarre or, or weird or interesting use case that I had so far for this?
Sylvia:So hang on. I have to start because Jared is an entrepreneur at heart. So he had his first business when he was 12 years old. So he's a natural at this. Um, and he told me from the very beginning, what we may see this ad and what, how we, we envision how this is going to look and be, and be used as it may be completely something different, but if it brings value to the user, that is really important. So to your point, it was, we kind of had this idea from the very beginning and might be used in very unique ways,
Jarrid:one of the stumbling block, but a big moment for us was. Well, we're using it in my daughter's school. The principal came to me and said, Hey, there's, this is a special situation. I'd like you to be a part of it because there's a high functioning, autistic child and her mom and his mom would really like to know more about what's going on in his day. Could you please talk to her? Absolutely. You set it up, drop down. Menu science, math, English, art, uh, all the different things that they're doing at school that Gracie was doing. We handed it to her, but let me get a bit cetera. On the technology on the app, we said, go for it. This is gonna be, so she was excited. We were excited, but three days later we went for coffee to have a how's it going conversation. And she actually said, this isn't working. Um, when my son comes home, um, part of the challenges he has with his autism is that he has high anxiety. So he feels like he has to report to me. And so when he reports he cries, um, and so that's not gonna work for Christmas said, okay, how can we change that? Um, and we talked to actually, she kept saying, no, no, no. I said, well, can we do what we did? She said, well, if you can ask questions, What made me laugh today? What was, what challenges did I overcome? And what was the other ones? What made me proud? What made me proud today with the three questions that he would, that she thought would be really helpful? All right. We put those right in, right in the app while we were talking to her, uh, and uh, the next day he entered some gaps and the following day we got an amazing email saying, oh my gosh, I've never had a conversation like that with my son. What happened was the gap that came home was FireDrill. And, um, when loud noises for a lot of commotion came up, he would get very upset and had a hard time managing all that and processing all that input to him and became very upset and challenging for him. But when she asked about fire drill, the mom said, did you cry? Well, first of all, she said, are you okay? And he said, well, our day did you cry? I cried, mom, why do I cry? But the other kids don't cry. They think it's fine. She said that was the first authentic conversation she had about autism with her son. So definitely a real block at first. And now every, every setup we have has those three questions, because it gives a child to talk about something outside of school, different than school. It's something they can stand up to and be proud about and maybe make a joke about, um, and they can lead that conversation. So that was a, a huge aha moment just about children and where they are and whether they're learning challenged or neuro-typical is all kinds of kids dealing with all kinds of anxiety and stress. How do we allow them, but to bypass it and find a way to deal with it and to engage with their parents in a way that brings it brings everyone down. That was one of the lessons. Give it a lot of lessons. That was a big one. Yeah, that
Sylvia:that's
Jackie Guzda:an incredible lesson. So if anybody out there in the Facebook group right now is listening to this and has a similar problem, or maybe a story that you could share with your own creation, your own ed tech type of device, um, that has, as Dotan said, changed from your original intent. I would love you to put it, put it in the chat and maybe Jared and Sylvia and I, we can all talk about it together because the whole point of all of this, as you can see with Gabon is what good use does it bring about? So Jared and Sylvia, you know, this is an amazing story on your journey to develop Gabon, but you didn't do it on your own. We had, uh, John Gannon. Who is innovator in residence at the graduate school of education at Penn on last week. And he said, this is a quote, when I. Maybe not a direct quote, but when he said, when he remembers the story of Gabon, he gets chills. So how did you meet John? How did you, how did you get on that path to have the, um, to have him help you and get his support with
Jarrid:Galvon? Yeah, I'll start it off because one of the things I'd just like to get a shout out to Cecilia about is, you know, putting herself out there, doing things and, you know, speaking in public, uh, although she's excellent at it. It's not our most, it's not our comfort zone. Um, and so she worked really hard to find ways to get the word out there about gab. And we worked with a, um, she found out about a group called LearnLaunch that was hosting a competition, a launch competition about, uh, tech startups. And we, she earned us a spot in the. To present at this event. And that's where we met John. Uh, Sylvia had worked really hard to get us there. We presented, and at the end of our presentation, John walked up to us and said, hi, my name's John Gamble. You need to join the milk and pen contest in pet completely changed at that moment
Sylvia:right there and our lives change. He, um, I think, I think when you share the same passion and you share similar values and you have similar goals, you just connect at a very different level. And it was almost instant when we met John Gamba and he talked to us about parent engagement, the knowledge of a more engaged parent is mortgage student, the life changing to the factory you can have on a student. He totally got it. He got what we were doing. He got our mission. Um, And we clicked because we both have kids and, you know, share similar stories. Um, but he is, gosh, I just, I just can't say enough, but we're very fortunate
Jarrid:is that their, in terms of John gamut for us, as you know, I, I, my day job is at Google and we go through, what's called perfect twice a year, just evaluate each other and give quality feedback. And there's measurements of quality leadership, presence of knowledge. And then every, every, every score that we have, he's at the top level, everything, you know, everything that Google would value. Um, John's at the top of it all, he's just so engaged and so supportive. So knowledgeable, his domain expertise is incredible.
Sylvia:And I know he was your, you know, a guest last week with you and he's, um, at catalyst at U Penn and his phone is probably ringing off the hook now with entrepreneurs trying to get in. But it's interesting that where he works is what he does. Like he is a catalyst for change. That's what he does that to his core, um, for, just for the betterment of, uh, kids in education. And so we've just our timing. Sometimes you get lucky and
Jarrid:we got lucky there. One of the things you talked about was creating those meetings that are explosions in podcast, and you're bringing people together and that's what he does. Amazing. Well, he has a network that's just so deep and so rich, uh, with people, whether it's technical people, you know, educators, uh, administrative, whatever it is, he has contacts. And one of the contacts he made for us, which was, again, another life-changing vulnerable. He said, I want you to meet someone on the other graduate school of education research team. They want to hear about this. I think, um, and we met ended in wheelchairs, um, who we were going to present. We walk in, ready to present gab on, we had our deck ready. We've had our presentation up and he walked in and sat down and said, before you present, if you do not, if you're not talking about student agency, if you're not talking about how a student's going to lead a conversation with parents, if you're not talking about how our child is going to have the ability to find some way to connect with their parents on their term, I don't want to hear about it because there's too much out there about parent engagement is not real. And we just said, that's our presentation said, okay, go ahead. So,
Sylvia:and to go back to that point about the parent engagement tools that are out there, certainly, um, they're needed, um, those schooled home, uh, teacher to parent emails, texts, different platforms, they're all needed. Um, and we often find those in the elementary school age. Uh, grades kids, but what is unique about Galvon is it is not parent. It's not teacher to parent. It's not school to home. It is student to home. And that is a unique difference. Is there are three stakeholders in this equation and it's the student, the parent, and the teacher. And we need all three of them
Jarrid:in the game. Yeah. Pam Cantor, who is the founder of turnaround for children, um, is doing some exceptional work at re you know, how to possibly reengineer the school systems here in America and globally. And she's doing amazing amount of work. She's a medical doctor, psychiatrist and dedicated her life to really figuring out how to help kids in trauma. Then we interviewed her for some work that we're doing with Galvan, and she talked about how the three legged stool is so vital for the child. Um, that connection we connect the student and the parent and the family and the family can kick back to the, to the teacher on how the child is doing, because what we bring is not just what the. But how they're doing, how is that child doing? And that really creates a wonderful communication. Um, but with the child leading it and kicking it off and being the catalyst for it all.
Dotan Tamir:But let me, if I may, um, challenge you with Jack going back to Jackie's question, uh, about John Gamba and you described some kind of a coincidence and luck by, you know, meeting John Gamba. And of course, you know, all the, everything that came after this, but it's not luck. Um, it's, it's, it's hard work it's strategy. It's, you know, it's a way of living. Um, and. For the community members of our show. And for those who will actually watch some pieces of it later, if you can come tell them, tell them, or share with us, um, you know, what is it that is not black. That is actually strategy. That is actually something that you have to follow some basic rules or guidelines to get the word out or to proceed to create that kind of network effect. Yeah. So
Jackie Guzda:if I could ask a question along those lines, Tom, I'm sitting here listening to Sylvia and Jared, and I'm thinking I'm an educator. What if I have some great idea and I want to find my own John Gamba.
Jarrid:Yeah. One of the things we talk a lot about is just, you got to put yourself out there. You, you know, if you have an idea, a, I think you can have a sponsor of some point to get, get some feedback. Um, you know, it's about learning, understanding your market really, really well, uh, in the problem you're trying to solve. And what problem you're solving is what, who values that and why do they value it and what is the value to them? And then finding that type of a group of people in that audience to get in front of consistently and often, um, and engage and build relationships, um, because it's their network effect. You mentioned photon. I believe that really helped us so much that we just kept talking to people. We were putting ourselves into different, um, pitch contests, and we're talking to educators, uh, do you know anybody that we can talk to? And so whether you're a teacher with an idea or a parent with an idea, or an entrepreneur who sees a problem, we want to try to solve it is really reaching out and connecting and building your own network because you do put yourself in the best opportunities for luck. It doesn't come to you. You've got to put yourself out there. I believe.
Sylvia:Yeah. So when I mentioned it was, I think, I think finding the gamma was locked, but in that, what I mean by that is he's, you know, he's made us feel very lucky. It is hard. Um, it is a lot of persistence. There's a lot of nos that you have to get past. Um, the answer, no, the answer, not now the answer. Oh, I don't need that. Um, so I think it is aligning yourself with like-minded people with the same passion and the same mission. And I think the same, um, uh, this, they want the same outcomes for your audience. Um, and I think if you can find those people and you learn from each other and collaborate, uh, I just, I think that is step-by-step how you move forward. But absolutely it is. It's a lot of work and it's the longest overnight success you'll ever have. I don't know. I, I read that. So I can't claim that. I don't, I think it's out of a song, but it's, um, yeah, it's it's work, but
Jarrid:it's function and it's really being, getting comfortable with, um, what some people might perceive as failures along the way. You know, we talk about the build break model. We got to build something out there and find a way to get it broken, to make sure we're growing. Um, and you know, another example of this was we, we depleted, we're doing a pilot in a school in Pennsylvania. Um, there was a relationship with U Penn and we deployed more market, the parent uptake that we expected. Um, and so we figured out, well, how can we break the system? Like, here's our system, here's our process? What do you break to make it, you know, to change something or really, uh, started working with the children and rewarding the children for getting more gaps for a week. Um, and we threw a pizza party in there. And what happened like a hundred percent or literally overnight, there was more parent engagement. There's more conversations because we found a way to empower the children even more. And the other than just entering it, they could go home and talk on the shirtsleeves and say, Hey, can we have a conversation about this gap? I'm going to get points for it. I really want the points part of homework, part of a reward or some kind of finding creative ways to move forward is so important and being willing to make mistakes. It's a constant mistake and rebuild
Jackie Guzda:sounds it. So what can you tell us specifically? I mean, I know that you, um, told us a little bit about how you networked and you kept trying, but are there any golden nuggets that you can give us, like go see this person or go to this conference?
Jarrid:Yeah, I think, um, it, again, it comes back to knowing your market and understanding what problem you're trying to solve and who cares about your problem. And we were going to a lot of events that people didn't really parent engage. It wasn't their focus were having, talking to me about parent engagement. Wasn't their focus when we got into our sweet spot, John Gamba, and he did L check Dr. um, at UPN, Dr. Mike Rogan at new Penn, when they heard what we were doing, we got into a Dole of parent engagement is just, it was amazing how much conversation that got it immediately. We're trying to figure out how to help us. There was a lot of problem solving going on a lot of how do we do this? How do we do that? There was a lot of building going on with, in every conversation that we have with them. When we get into your domain and you get into your peeps and you find your peeps, it's amazing what can happen, but it takes a while to find them because you've got to keep, especially if you don't know right away, we didn't know this U Penn team even existed until we ran into John Gamba. And then we got introduced and now a few of them are getting all these other wonderful people who really care about parent engagement. Not that anyone doesn't care about it, but they know how important it is. Those relationships kids build so early as, as, uh, Pam Cantor talks about Dr. Pam can talk to us. When kids go on their flywheel to find their thing, get in their zone with the help of their relationships and help with their peeps. That's where everything changes.
Jackie Guzda:Wow. So how long did it take you before you met John?
Jarrid:Um, we had been it
Sylvia:wasn't, it actually wasn't that for, for us, it wasn't that long. We had. Our S you know, our son using it, and then our daughter using it, a couple of classrooms we were in, we were just starting that organic growth when we landed at LearnLaunch and, and met John. Yeah. It was kind of like
Jarrid:we can do with let's find out, you know, at the very beginning, it wasn't was not the idea of let's go build a business. It was, let's go solve a problem who else wants this problem to be solved in their school, in their home and their family. And we just started figuring out, like, who cares about this? And then, um, I don't know, learn launch happened. And then within U Penn happened within a month or two, after that, we were in the milk of pen contest. That's right. Cause when we met John, he said, you've got like three days to finish the application. If you want to apply, we finished that. We sat up that night working on it, we finished it, submitted it. And then we heard the wonderful news about three or four weeks later that we got in. And then we were in the U Penn world. And so it's just, it's been transferred.
Dotan Tamir:You spoke, uh, you, you, you keep speaking about the, the, uh, problem, like identify the problem and trying to solve a problem. Uh, and, and, you know, I find it fascinating because, uh, in your case, the problem is so simple. It's so. Transparent. I mean, it's so it's actually visible, but transparent in some way. Um, you know, it's a matter of one word that the parents here, they, most of most parents, if you ask them, not necessarily, they'll tell you it's a problem, right. They it's just, that's how it is. And you've, and you've found that spot, that little problem and, and realize that this is actually a huge problem. Um, I can tell you, uh, from, you know, you, you, you have this, you identify that problem in your community, in your family. Um, I can have you from oceans away here in Israel, that this is exactly the same problem that I hear parents complaining about. Not always, they, they come and complain about, but when you really talk to them and ask them how, you know, how is it for you? For your child at school. And then they say, you know, actually we're not exactly sure. You know, every time we ask them, they say fine and we never get to really do a conversation about it. So it's like exactly the same problem in probably everywhere on the planet or in our, you know, in, in, in modern society, uh, on the planet. Um, and that's, and that's great. I mean, it's sometimes for entrepreneurs, it's actually the most, the most hard, the hardest part is to identify the exact problem. They think they have the problem and then they figure out, actually, it's not this problem. It's another problem. It's some, another, it's a, it's a variety of problems. So, um, yeah, I think that, you know, the fact that you were able to identify such a specific and so international, so road problem is part of this, uh, the, the FA part of why people relate to this. Yeah.
Jarrid:And if I could build on that a little bit, one of the things that's really interesting you said is that some parents will say it's fine. You know, I talk to my kid every day, um, and I've got a good relationship with them. And we had a parent who is very involved with her, but with his sons, um, he's involved with either both once an Eagle scout ones, we're going to Eagle this year. He's a scout master. His lot spends lots of time with him. And I asked him, just give it a try. I said, okay, I'll give it a try. And to make a long story short. One of the gaps that came home from one of his sons was science and the topic was what he wrote in was nothing now in science. And this situation meant biology. And the parents just said, I love how I have a lot of examples where parents made an assumption about what a gap and the assumption was this boy's in biology. He loves biology. This is his favorite class in school. He puts all this time into it, but during COVID. His grades were suffering substantially. They went from, A's almost failing every class. He was really struggling throughout his academic career at this point. And the gap turned out to be nothing. Then on board. I don't like it anymore. What I'm interested in? Cause they were studying something in biology that it just wasn't, it wasn't connecting with because it was on zoom, not in classroom that connecting with this teacher. But what he was doing was he was very interested in DNA. He wanted to study DNA. He'd been spending most of his time on YouTube, looking at looking up what researchers are doing, what does research mean and studying DNA. How do you do that? Where do you go for school? And what it became was an aha moment for them, for that father saying, oh my gosh, I had no idea. I thought I knew what was going on. I thought things were okay. They're not okay. My son's really struggling here. And then what was interesting, he said, it became part of the family conversation going forward. And it was a comfortable conversation. The boy was struggling to bring up this topic in this challenge that he's having. Once it came out that he brought it out in the conversation, now it was open and they could have been now they're working on how to get that child more focused and more engaged in what he's interested in. And he's doing much better.
Sylvia:I love what you said about, it's a simple, it's a simple problems that are sometimes the toughest nut to crack. And, and they've been researching for over 40 years, the impact of family engagement and, and are still researching it today, which means we haven't solved the problem yet. Um, and all the families that are. Having that daily dialogue of how was your day fine? What'd you do nothing? Um, they're checking, uh, it's like checking a box, but you're not really connecting. And so it's a huge opportunity cost because family connectedness and that relationship giving the student that confidence there's going through that dialogue academically they're re retracing their day, they're recalling, um, their event, their storytelling they're practicing communication skills. They're checking those boxes. But what really happens often is that those smaller conversations or smaller moments that happen in school about a subject, about a topic, about an event or activity, they evolve into bigger conversations at home about social situations, peer situations, things that are happening in the real world. Um, and there's a lot going on in the real world. So how does that affect that child's life? How do they manage through that? Where is their anxiety? So there's so many conversations that come from that, that's the start of the gap. And those that family connectedness, um, is so important and such a foundation for that student returning into school so much more engaged, so much more competent in their classroom.
Jarrid:The things we're working on, it's part of our delivery model. Now is educating parents more, doing a better job of coaching them. And the number one message is you really matter more than, you know, these small little conversations can lead to a Sylvia set to so much. And that, that connection is so much scaffolding modeling, evolving. I'm okay. You're okay. We're okay. And all of these little settling that happens with that and this modeling that takes place. Is, it can be for some kids trajectory change, um, and parents don't understand how powerful that is with a simple 5 or 10 minute conversation, two or three times a week, preferably more. But at least that much John Gabrielli of MIT said it is magical with the dialogue, consistent dialogue between a parent and a child has on their brain and their cognitive skills going forward. It's in his, his was his quote. It's magical what parent engagement can do for Children
Sylvia:And so many people think of family engagement as going into the school, going in for a parent conference or going in to help volunteer at the class party. But there are many and diverse barriers to families, parents being able to go in to schools. Um, they may have, um, multiple jobs. They may not have had. Trustworthy education experience themselves. Um, the reasons are profound. And so how do we better bring school to home? Um, not necessarily to homework, but through a student experience and through sharing from the student's perspective, what their day look like.
Jackie Guzda:Hmm, I'm Sylvia. I'm so glad you brought that up because I had once worked at LA unified school district in east LA. And there were all kinds of barriers there, as you said, you know, we had parents with two, three jobs, um, people who didn't speak English, me with my broken Spanish, it just all kinds of problems. You know, parents who just weren't engaged that just knew they had to get their kids in school. That that was the right thing to do, but didn't know what they could do on their end. So what do we do about that problem? Is there, do you have, uh, an idea of how to develop some kind of ed tech that can help that? Or do you know of any tech that's out there that's already addressing the problem?
Sylvia:Well, I think Evonne addresses that problem. Um, We were chatting with a superintendent out in California. And he said to us, I would like to offer gab on as the only homework that my students in secondary schools do. And talk about, you know, earlier part of the conversation about having it used for something completely unexpected. Um, but it told me several things. I think it taught us how important family engagement is in a child's school experience. Um, it taught us how important building those relationships between school and home are, and it has to be simple. Um, and it has to be unique. It doesn't necessarily. Need to be about specifically about the work that's being done. It's about the child's experience with their work that they're doing at the school.
Jarrid:We're talking to another superintendent right now who had their nets, not California, but it's in Pennsylvania. There's another superintendent has a large population of people who are native American, not native to America. They are immigrants from Latin America. And, um, they're not comfortable going to the school or going into the school or participating in the school. And his thought is what we were just talking about is if we can bring the student, get students to bring home these topics, to talk about, they can get the parents engaged there and start working with them. From that perspective, another problem he's looking to try to solve. And you know, our problem that we're solving is conversations with the parent, the child, for a child to bring a gap home. They have to be in the school. They have to be participating in something. And so when we talked about it, he said, well, the child has to be in the school to be able to enter their gaps and have something to talk about related to school. They have to be there. So it will be less absentees. I wonder if it helps solve an absentee problem. So it's a challenge we didn't think about, but it's a problem aren't we we're solving our problem in the middle, but on the side we have other things that can be accomplished through it. Um, and they're looking at as an outreach program, as much as it is a parent engagement program.
Dotan Tamir:No, I think, uh, I think there were just at the beginning, uh, solving the parent engagement problem. I think there are, you know, just out of just doing this conversation, my mind came up with at least two more ideas in that field. Um, I, I think that, um, also the, the online space brings new opportunities for parents to be more engaged. Um, maybe do stuff together. Or learn together with their, with their kids. Um, once the distance and the physical space of school is not anymore a barrier, uh, they can do it from home. So, you know, I came up with some ideas already that, um, I'll share with you at a different point in time. Um, but I think, you know, I. Um, take, uh, do a little twist on the use cases that you described. Um, and I'm thinking about people who own education of businesses like enrichment providers, afterschool providers, people that are doing amazing running amazing programs. Um, given like, you know, when I'm coming from the summer camp space or it's kind of the same. And, um, you know, we invest a lot in the program. We invest a lot in delivering an amazing experience for the kids, but then our customer is the parents, right? So we want the customer, the, the parent to really know and feel, um, w all that value that we delivered, uh, can, can a solution like Gavin help with that?
Jarrid:Yeah, definitely. I think if kids are bringing home these hints or reminders or talking about empowerment, I'd like the parents up and say, oh, this is. I'm seeing the change in my child or I'm seeing I'm hearing about their experience. I think they have no window into that child's day without that. No, you can say that newsletters and most parents receive emails, newsletters, updates, and they sometimes read them. They don't always have time to sit down and read them, but they might be in the car with that child driving them from camp or picking him up from camp. And that 10 minutes, 20 minutes, maybe an hour long conversation drive home. Perfect time for conversation. I have some of my best job. We call them gap for stations. So the kids in the car, they don't want to. When I hit the car, I opened up my phone. I say, oh, here's the Gabs. I put them down while we go through those on the drive home. Sometimes it's a five minute conversation. Sometimes it's 20 minutes or half an hour, depending on how many and how engaging the conversation. So I think it's a really great window into it. Any experience? School, afterschool camps, events. Because it helps kids. You know, one thing I did when I first started as a, I'm going to go date myself here, but I was at GE capital for a while and I was a six Sigma black belt, which is really how do you look at a process and break it down to its individual parts and pieces of parts and improve the process. And I actually sat Gracie down one day as I take me through your day, tell me your process, tell me your daily experiences. What do you do? Where are you? Who you engage with? Who you're talking to now, she was quite young and you know, what's going on here dead. But I knocked out all the things that she did and it was seven hours of experiences. And there were, so each one of them was so rich. But when I asked her, so why don't you tell me about this at home? She said, I don't know where to start. I don't know what you want to hear. So when it gives, when we say these are the things you want to be able to tell your parents, it just it's easier. And so that can talk about camps. You can talk about events, whether it's online in person, it's that door opener for the child.
Sylvia:We actually had, um, a camp this summer, a YMC camp in Texas. Um, you use gab on for their campers and the feedback was fantastic because to your point, they're doing a lot of fun things and the counselors want parents to know that they're doing a lot of things, but also it's a really long, busy day with a multitude of activities. So for, as Jared said, the child come home and be able to retrace recall and in pinpoint that moment to share, um, it's, it's a great starting point. Um, so yeah, we, we, and the, the other piece of this is, um, w we found this out through the camp to point at the camp is that families are really complex. They look different to everybody, so it's not always. Who are gabbing with that child? Um, it's grandparents who are getting with the child, it's coaches, it's mentors, it's, um, guidance counselors at school. So how we built the platform was certainly for parents and children to connect, but that's not always the case, you know, um, what we've discovered through going through, um, some military deployments is that there are deployed parents. Um, there are parents living in different houses. There are grandparents where the kids are staying, so that trusted adults, that caregiver is also part of that family engagement.
Dotan Tamir:Really a short time. I would still want, I want to ask one quick question, maybe with a quick answer, because you did mention COVID and activate and kids learning remotely and from home and online. But I want to ask you from the positive angle of things, um, if you ha if you've learned anything during that online time, uh, about what online educational experience they did, uh, produce positive reports, like positive gaps. Um, if you can give us an example or some guidelines of what works,
Sylvia:um, yeah, I'm going to jump in real quick and say, I think there were a few silvers. I'm from COVID and one of them was the discovery of parents engagement. And that parents were indeed, I always say in voluntarily volunteering to be part of their child's education. But I think now parents have a taste of that and they recognized how important that is, and they don't necessarily want to lose that. And I think educators realize that there's an enormous opportunity to maintain that involvement and that engagement from families. So I do think that was a silver lining from folks. And I think
Jarrid:some, unless you're lying is some kids really were successful for the online learning. You know, we have with our two kids, one, our son was his grades. Gracie never been better than being online. Um, our daughters was still, she was still, still did well and was harder for her. My son loved, he loved being remote and being able to concentrate on his work.
Sylvia:Yeah. I think that's a huge eye opener for some families is that some kids really thrive. When they didn't have to worry about being in a social setting, um, with different types of pressures and they could really focus on their work and perhaps even choose the work they want to do. Um, so I think that, you know, again, they're just changing the trajectory of education and how that might meet the needs of even more kids.
Jackie Guzda:Yeah. I know, as an educator, it really surprised me. I had some kids that's flourished online. So we are, as Don said, really running out of time. But I want to ask this question for our community, our Facebook community out there they're entrepreneurs, they might be parents. They might be educators, whatever their interest is in joining this community. So what lessons did you learn on your journey to develop gap on that you'd like to share with them?
Jarrid:Two minutes. So the most important lesson, I think that we we've talked a little bit about already is the ability and the willingness to put yourself out there and the communities that matter that care about the problem you're trying to solve or the solution you're trying to bring. Um, and then being willing to build and break, you've got to start with something and be willing to have alterations as you go to fit your need. But in the same time, they get to stay true to your core. We had one superintendent stand up and say, you're going to deploy in my district first, but you're going to stay true to your core. You're going to be a parent engagement app student, that student manager, anything beyond that, don't do it, stay in your lane, but understand how your lane can change within that focus. Um, I think that's a challenge I find with a lot of entrepreneurs is exactly what is my lane? How much am I willing to change that? And what do I Keep away from it. If you could solve all kinds of problems and you can become too much of a problem solver, state of one that you really can win from and then grow from there, I think is the biggest lesson I've learned through Gabon and other.
Sylvia:experiences And I will say, find the right partners, know your strengths and collaborate when you're, when your family of partners grows, your immediate circle grows. The
Jarrid:network is so vital. Be
Sylvia:authentic, be
Jarrid:trustworthy. The other thing I'd say is purpose. This is a really, as you know, Dotan and Jackie, this is an up and down experience. There's highs and there's extreme lows If you're not really passionate or your purpose, isn't really strong in your intestinal fortitude. It's hard to keep going. It's very strong for us. So we keep going, but you got to have the intestinal fortitude to stick it through the good and the bad, but we wish
Sylvia:everyone out there. Who's taking this journey just to stay strong and stick. with it Aw, that's a
Jackie Guzda:wonderful, so I want to thank you so much, Jared and Sylvia. I think you've given our community a lot to chew on when they walk away from this today as usual, your insight is amazing. And, uh, I just want to say to everyone out there, thanks again, that I encourage you please to join our Facebook group because each week we're going to have amazing guests like we had today, who can help you through your journey to develop your tech, to develop your idea, your innovation, and just to help you as perhaps an educator or a parent or someone who's just interested in being a lifelong educator. So with that, I'll say goodbye to everyone. Thank you
Dotan Tamir:so much.
Jarrid:Yay, bye. Thank you.