The public high school is a uniquely American invention, and our public high schools have played a powerful role in the development of our nation. The challenge is that in today’s world, a high school diploma alone is not enough to usher young people immediately into a middle-class, life-supporting existence. Further, public high schools must take all who walk in the door, regardless of prior motivations, learning experiences, and life circumstances, and find a way to graduate all of them ready for some sort of post-secondary education or training--a mission they are not currently designed to meet.
Over the past five years, a group of six states have been working with the Everyone Graduate Center at Johns Hopkins University on the Cross State High School Redesign Collaborative initiative. Many of these states are using the comprehensive school improvement provisions from the Federal Every Student Succeeds Act to organize the work. Dr. Sonja Robertson, Executive Director of School Improvement for the Mississippi Department of Education, has been part of this effort from the very beginning and joins Bob Balfanz to discuss the many things we’ve learned from this cross-collaborative effort.
The public high school is a uniquely American invention, and our public high schools have played a powerful role in the development of our nation. The challenge is that in today’s world, a high school diploma alone is not enough to usher young people immediately into a middle-class, life-supporting existence. Further, public high schools must take all who walk in the door, regardless of prior motivations, learning experiences, and life circumstances, and find a way to graduate all of them ready for some sort of post-secondary education or training--a mission they are not currently designed to meet.
Over the past five years, a group of six states have been working with the Everyone Graduate Center at Johns Hopkins University on the Cross State High School Redesign Collaborative initiative. Many of these states are using the comprehensive school improvement provisions from the Federal Every Student Succeeds Act to organize the work. Dr. Sonja Robertson, Executive Director of School Improvement for the Mississippi Department of Education, has been part of this effort from the very beginning and joins Bob Balfanz to discuss the many things we’ve learned from this cross-collaborative effort.
Bob (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to the Designing Education Podcast. In today's episode, we're talking to Dr. Sonja Robertson about what it will take to redesign our high schools to meet the needs of our communities in the 21st century. We can't wait to jump into the conversation, but before we start, we want to take a moment to remind you to subscribe to the Designing Education Podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. We're available on Spotify, Apple, and Google Podcasts just to name a few. Subscribe to the Designing Education podcast and never miss an episode. Welcome to the Designing Education podcast series. I'm Dr. Robert Balfanz, Director of the Pathways to Adult Success Program, and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University. I'm delighted to have you join us today. This is the 10th episode in a series of conversations we'll be having with education leaders, thinkers, and practitioners from across the country.
Bob (00:53):
We'll talk about what it will take to create an education system that truly empowers all young people and sets them on a pathway to long-term success. I'll be joined by Dr. Sonja Robertson from the Office of School Improvement in the Mississippi Department of Education. Before we get into our conversation, I just want to take a minute to set the stage. The public high school is a uniquely American invention, and our public high schools have played a powerful role in the development of our nation. In the first 75 years of the 20th century, the United States led the world in turning high schools from elite institutions for the well-off into an engine of community growth open to all. At the turn of the 20th century, less than 10% of the population graduated from high school, but by 1970, it was close to 75%. Some economic historians see the rapid spread of the public high school as a driving force in making the US the most prosperous nation on the earth in the 20th century; some sociologists believe that the neighborhood high school worked to smooth over the class divides coming out of the Gilded Age and the Roaring Twenties, as it provided students, rich and poor alike, with a common shared experience. For most of the 20th century, the Great American High School was also designed to be the end of formal education for most students.
Bob (02:07):
Only a relatively small percent of students who were interested in the professions—wanting to be a doctor or a lawyer, an engineer or a teacher—went on college, while the majority of high school graduates enter the world of work or started families. The challenge we face today is that the world where you could earn a high school diploma and find pathways to middle class existence no longer exists. Today's high schools are charged with a very different mission. They need to take whoever walks in their door, and regardless of prior motivations, learning experiences, and current life circumstances, find a way to graduate all students prepared for post-secondary schooling or training. The problem is, today's high schools are not designed for this mission. Over the past five years, a group of six states have been working together with the Everyone Graduate Center here at JHU on something called the Cross-State High School Redesign Collaborative.
Bob (02:58):
And together we're aiming to create the conditions under which high school faculties, working with their communities, can redesign their high schools for the world we now live in and provide every student with a pathway to adult success. Many of these states are using the comprehensive school improvement provisions of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act to organize the work. We are so excited to have Dr. Sonja Robinson, Executive Director of School Improvement for the Mississippi Department of Education, who has been part of this effort from the very star,t here with us today to share some of what we have learned. Welcome Sonja.
Sonja (03:32):
Thank you, Bob.
Bob (03:33):
And before we dive in our talk about redesigning high schools, we like to start our designing education series here by asking our guests, when you were in school, what was a good day?
Sonja (03:43):
That's an interesting question, because, of course, it allows us to kind of reflect on what school was like so many years ago. I graduated high school in 1986, so my high school years were from 83 to 86. As I reflect on what high school was like for me, a good day really was one that was filled with positive engagements. It was positive engagements with my peers and with my teachers. I can remember good days being those days where I had an opportunity to share in class without being judged. There was just this openness that existed based on whatever activities were going on within the class. I also participated in sports, so a good day for me was having a good practice, right? Being on the track field or being on the basketball court and spending time learning things about execution and all of those things. So again, I really have to go back to, there were just these things that were positive and even, I guess, if you got into this thing about feeling that you were a part of a place, right? That's really what I land on when I think about my high school experience.
Bob (05:07):
Yeah. Thank you. That's very informative. And when we think about the importance of that positive engagement interactions with teachers and other peers and teammates, you know, that's so much what was lost during the pandemic, right? We focused in, as we should, on instructional loss and challenges, but there was that human connection loss too. And I think it really drove home to us that how much we counted on that, and how much it was part of what we would see as a good day of school.
Sonja (05:38):
I agree, Bob, and I think that that not only was for kids, but for the adults, right? I think about that lack of interaction on a regular basis with the adults in the space, and I think we don't know the major impact that has had on just being able to get back to some aspect of normal school, right? If normal is a word that we'll ever use with school post pandemic.
Bob (06:09):
Right. All right. Let's start by learning a little bit about the work you do with the Office of School Improvement, and your involvement with the Cross-State High School Redesign Collaborative.
Sonja (06:18):
So, yeah, you addressed some of it as you were kind of introducing me, but I lead the work of school improvement in the state. That's working primarily with our lowest performing schools, those schools that meet the criteria that have been established under the ESSA Act for this period. And so that includes our schools that are identified as comprehensive support and improvement, and also those schools that meet the targeted support and improvement criteria, as well as schools that have a state identification. Our state also identifies schools as schools at risk, and so we provide support to those schools in various ways.
Bob (07:09):
Thank you. Thank you. So, let's talk high school redesign. High schools are really a challenge to change and improve. A lot of our understanding of school reform and what worked in many ways came from elementary schools, which are just organizationally different, right? But once you get to the high school, you could easily have 50 to a hundred adults in the building, each of them hired for a very specific role. You're hired to be a math teacher or a counselor, or a dean of discipline, and you traditionally work in a departmentalized structure where you get to meet your other colleagues in the English department, but you have often little idea of who your students’ math and science teachers are. In most ways, our high schools today look and operate a lot like the high schools we attended. So there's this isolation and autonomy, combined with these enduring structures, which can make collective improvement work difficult. What is different about the cross-state high school redesign approach from prior high school reform efforts?
Sonja (08:18):
When we talk about the difference between this approach and prior approaches, I think the thing that stands out for me the most is really that the work was focused on very specific and practical drivers, right? And those drivers really were not theoretical practices that are sometimes difficult to digest, but tangible, hands-on, practical ways that schools and districts can approach the work of redesigning what's happening in their high schools, and that they’re evidence based.
Sonja (09:31):
So, I think that was the biggest draw with just how the work began. And I think that makes it different in a sense from prior reforms, because it was so… you could touch it, right? You could see it, you could envision it. It allowed districts and high schools to really think across support across systems. It wasn't this, again, isolated approach where you have your compartmented piece here, and then now you're trying to apply this, but it gave our districts an opportunity to see things differently, and see how things can be integrated and not siloed. It spoke to the value of the contributions of our students beyond what's happening academically.
Sonja (10:31):
I'm sure we'll talk about this in a moment, but as we dig into the drivers, just the power of seeing students really strong for having schools where kids feel like they belong. I just think the support structure that was in place with the collaborative is ideal to support community engagement. Because now you're opening the door for schools to continue to think differently about how they leverage their community supports to foster positive experience for kids. So again, as I shared earlier, when I reflect on my high school experience, I think about those times where I was plugged in and I felt like I was a part of something that, that even went beyond me. And I think that the collaborative has brought that to life and brought that to the forefront in a way maybe that wasn't there before, when you start thinking about what high school was like back in…
Bob (11:36):
The day. Yeah. And all that is informative. What was interesting was what you said about getting that viewpoint from students: Where are they at? What do they think they need? What's working? What could be better? I remember a conversation I had with one of the schools in Mississippi, and it was a very small rural school that I think was a K12 school, or at least a 6-12. The principal began by saying, Well, when we’re usually asked to talk to our students, I'm like, we're a small, small place. I know all my students; what am I going to [learn when I] talk to them that I don't already know? And then she recognized that in the past, she'd always sort of gone to students when she knew they'd give her the answer she was looking for, as opposed to having a genuine conversation and really trying to understand deeply from their point of view what was working for the kids and what wasn't. So, I do think that was an important idea of just taking a step back and talking to the folks as opposed to assuming what we need to do.
Sonja (12:43):
Right? Bob, I think one of the most powerful activities that we did as a part of the collaborative in one of our state meetings was the video that spoke to what is your hope. I think it was a school in the northeast that on the very first of school, they put up a whiteboard or something that people could add their thoughts to, and they did it for all the stakeholders. They did it for the students, and they did it for the teachers, and it gave them an opportunity to say, Hey, this is my hope for the beginning of the year. I mean, what a powerful way to capture voice and even kind of do, quote unquote, an “assessment” of where people are at that point in time, as you begin to dive into a new school year. I just absolutely love that activity, and actually have shared it in several settings. So again, that sense of belonging, in that you matter and you have value and we are happy to hear your voice and we want to hear your voice. I think it's something that the collaborative allows to happen when you can allow space for that.
Bob (13:54):
Absolutely. And then, we touched on this a little bit, another key feature of the redesign effort is this idea—and this also fits in with its connection to the Every Student Succeeds Act and school improvement—is calling upon schools to use evidence-based strategies. That's easy to say and hard to do. And one reason for that, is that from a school's point of view, what is the evidence base? Are you asking us to go out and read a bunch of journal articles and figure it out ourselves? How do we actually make sense of this in a usable way? And so one of the things we tried to do together was to come up with this idea of “let's make it tangible,” as you said.
Bob (14:36):
Let's look at the places that are under control of the school, and let's organize the evidence in those areas so they can sort of work through them. The first is, how are the adults in the school organized? What are the roles and responsibilities they take on? And then how are students supported? How are they put at the center of school’s efforts? And then, how do we do our teaching and learning? And then, this really powerful new feature of high schooling, that was always there, but now has got to be front and center, which is: to what extent are we organized to provide equitable pathways to postsecondary success for all our students? And then collectively, schools work through those over time to figure out what parts they want to add to their redesign.
Bob (15:22):
So in working with your schools in Mississippi—and I know that your team would provide good support—so you're out there, and you have a good tangible sense of what's working for them. All the levers are important, but did one or two stand out as being the ones the schools got a lot of traction from? And also this idea, where they maybe made some local customization to it? Because that was the other key idea: it's evidence-based, but locally customized.
Sonja (15:47):
So, yes. The levers, I believe, that stood out for a few of our schools that come to mind that really latched onto this work and prioritized it, was organizing adults. An example of that, where it was customized, I can name a school, another small school, a K12 setting, that really wanted to focus in on early warning systems. So they leveraged their funds to support personnel to help in that effort. The graduation rate was not what it needed to be, of course, which was reason that [the school was] identified. So [for them] to be able to take those funds to prioritize their needs and to leverage those funds to that end, it was really wonderful to see that come to fruition for them. Even today they sit with a much higher graduation rate, and they attribute that to a lot of the work that came about through this process. So that's one example. Another lever that our schools used was the post-secondary pathways. They found a way to, , again, prioritize their funding so that they could support opportunities and access to dual enrollment so that their kids did have a chance to get access to some college-level curriculum. Those were the two I think that really stood out to me when I think about the schools that were a part of this work.
Bob (17:34):
Yeah. And the dual enrollment, I think, is so important. Because we have growing evidence that getting that actual exposure to a college-level type class in high school is so important. One, you could earn credits and you could actually reduce the cost of college that way. But secondly, so many of our students, if they don't have that taste of what college level work is like, are sometimes a little surprised when they get there and they can get knocked back a little bit in their first semester. And that really is this idea of how we build these pathways. It shouldn't just be that those that are ready and prepared, they succeed; and those that didn't have the opportunity… well, we know that's really not appropriate, right? And we really have to give them that scaffold experience in high school that makes them know they're ready to succeed in the next stage of their schooling or training. Another central feature of high school redesign is this idea of a design team. Can you tell us a little bit about who is typically on these teams and the power of taking this collective and collaborative approach to redesigning a high school?
Sonja (18:47):
Our teams for our schools that participated typically consisted of the administrator—of course, the principal was a driving force as a part of the work. And it included a counselor. Some of our teams included a coordinator, so if they were coordinating multi-tiered systems of support or early warning systems work, they were in some cases a part of the group. For those schools that leveraged their funds to support personnel, those individuals were intentionally placed on the redesign team. A couple of redesign teams also had students; I can think of one in particular where students were brought as a part of the team. So, it really depended on the context of the school. Of course, some of our schools were so small that just staffing—we've got one teacher per grade, right?
Sonja (19:53):
[But] what we saw consistently were the administrator, a counselor, a teacher, and then of course some support personnel that coordinated that support structure or support work within the school. There were even exceptional ed teachers. From gen ed to exceptional ed, we saw that representation on our school teams. I think on the second part, where you speak to the power of taking a collective or collaborative approach to this work, I really think that can be seen by all of the [ways] where you are not in this thing alone. You are working with a group of individuals who may be at different places with their thinking about the work, but you are all working toward this common focus.
Sonja (21:00):
Or this common effort. And I think that there is power in that.
Bob (22:03):
Yeah, no, so true. And we know from a lot of work that it's really building that sense of team, and teams of teams. That's actually a very big shift for the traditional organization of high school, which was quite hierarchical, quite departmentalized, quite everybody in their role, in their lane and their space. For a time and place when you're trying to rapidly scale something that's often necessary, but we're no longer trying to build lots of new high schools. We're trying to create really good high schools. And that's where this power of the team comes to the forefront.
Sonja (22:43):
I couldn't agree more. I think that the power of the team allows us to tap into and leverage the strength of the group. And I believe that initiatives as they're moved forward, or processes as they're moved forward, get elevated, as the team gets under and guides that work. When it's viewed from the whole, that it's a unified effort, I think that amplifies the potential for impact, because you see it. You've got a vision for it. And that does something to individuals that are maybe on the bus, I mean, are on the line about shifting. You know: “Is this what they say it is?” But when they can see and they can envision what the team is moving forward in, I think that is so, so strong.
Bob (23:46):
Yeah. And another thing we observed—I don't know if you saw us in your schools in Mississippi and elsewhere—but it was that during the pandemic, a lot of our schools involved in the redesign process, because they already had these team and adaptive structures in place, were able to be more nimble than some more traditional schools that were very hierarchical and waiting for someone to tell [them] what to do when no one knew what to do. So you had to figure it out yourselves.
Sonja (24:11):
Right?
Bob (24:12):
Another critical feature that you and I have talked about before in redesigning high schools and schools in general, is that you need to shift not only practices and policies, but mindsets. And there are these really ingrained high school mindsets of “this is what high school is.” And we don't even really fully appreciate that we're thinking that way. We're just so used to it. It is what it's been and is what it is, right? We don't really appreciate how much that shapes what we think might be possible. Can you share with us why mindsets are so powerful and why they need to shift to create schools that work for everybody in the 21st century?
Sonja (24:51):
Yeah I, I think being able to tap into this shift in mindsets is also another powerful piece about the work in the collaborative. From my experience, it creates the conditions to really envision the learning environment differently for our learners. Being able to embrace teaming structures, as opposed to the silos or the isolated departmentalized approaches, I think creates such an opportunity. I think tapping into our learners and ensuring that they have this sense of belonging and that they do have agency and that they can be really critical in directing their path as it relates to their educational experience is really powerful.
Sonja (26:01):
And I think that mindset shifts make that happen or open the doors for that to happen. I think that our kids having the opportunity to be able to see that there are clear pathways, that there are opportunities for fruitful and purposeful learning experiences as they tread this path, is something that tapping into the mindset shifts helps to bring about. Regardless of whether our kids are slated for post-secondary experiences or whether they're going to go into the workforce immediately following school, I think these mindset shifts have been instrumental in working to create the conditions to make that a viable option for kids. And so I think that's something that we should be embracing, as we shift to enable our communities to create these kinds of schools to meet those needs of our 21st century learners.
Bob (27:15):
Yeah. So true. One of the things I recently read was how sometimes the way you shift mindsets is by putting yourself in that other person's shoes. And it was telling the story of a principal who actually took on the role of being a new student in in his school and going through the school day. And he noticed many things, where there were these very traditional practices that were driven by “this is the way it's been done,” as opposed to “this is the way it might make sense to do it.” One of them, once he noticed it, was that the schedule in high school often drives a lot of what happens.
Bob (27:57):
And often the scheduler is this very powerful person, somebody who's more powerful in this principal, because, “If you don't listen to me, it'll be chaos.” And how do we get everyone in the right place at the right time to get everything done? And then he just said, “Traditionally, we always had four lunches here, but if you're in the fourth lunch, you're hungry by two o'clock. And all my kids were asking me, can we sell snacks? Can we sell snacks? I'm like, No, that's not appropriate.” And then he recognized that we have to have a healthy way for them to get a snack if you have a two o'clock lunch, because that actually is a long [time] to go without any additional energy. And it was only by putting himself in the shoes of a student that he could make that mindset shift.
Sonja (28:43):
I think that's a great example. I've seen before where administrators have identified, it might not necessarily be a new student, but just a student and just decided that they were going to shadow that student that day, and go through the majority of that schedule. And some of the things that were revealed were things like you just [mentioned]: kids going for four hours before a break and not having a whole bunch of meaningful experiences; but they've gone through four periods. Or two periods and spent time in classrooms and learning environments where they haven't had great engagement. And so I think when you experience things like that, it allows you to say, Hey, how can we look at this in a different way?
Sonja (29:38):
And I think it's important to be able to determine how to lift that up to your staff and your team. And that's a power of a redesign team, because you bring it to the table. And then we have an opportunity to discuss what currently is versus what we are envisioning and what we hope to have or hope to be in our schools. And it leads to critical dialogue about how can we get to this place? What will it take for us to make the shift so that Susan, when she's walking through or going through her day, is being met with wonderful learning engagements right across the board. I think that's something that's also powerful about the mindset shifts, the teaming structure: it gets you to how you're going to organize your adults and really putting students at the center. When you put that kid at the center, it really shifted how you saw everything. So, yeah. I love that example.
Bob (30:44):
Yeah. Another big core idea of high school redesign is that it's really hard to improve alone. If we just tell a school get better or else, without the ability to learn with or from others, we greatly decrease the odds of success. Can you share with us a little bit of some of the value high schools in Mississippi have seen in working together with other high schools in the redesign project, and also the value you've seen as a state department working with other state departments, on these challenges?
Certainly there is power in knowing that you're not alone, as you've said. And I think we've kind of gotten to that through parts of this conversation. I think in the times that we came together, and I'm talking about our network of schools, in the times that we came together, whether virtually or in person, I think our teams often shared, knowing that others could relate to their experiences. Was really helpful? It gave them that space where they had people who could offer encouragement. Because these schools were schools that were identified for comprehensive support and improvement. It gave them the opportunity to build networks beyond our circle of schools that were engaging. I think one of the most powerful or positive experiences of our cohort of schools was when we did an activity where they did empathy interviews with one another.
Sonja (33:20):
We did a number of things, Bob, the first few years. We provided, during those first two years of the cohorts, an actual leadership coach that walked with and worked with our administrators and their teams throughout the year. I think that was seen as of value based on feedback we've gotten from schools. Those coaches were an ear; they pushed in and leaned in when they needed to. They probed, so they were critical friends to our administrators. They shared resources that we've gotten even from the center. From the Everyone Graduates Center and the redesign work. Those things I believe were hugely beneficial and seen as valuable by our participants.
Sonja (34:31):
And during that time, we gave our schools the opportunity to help frame what their work was going to look like. Kind of their planning phase. They developed their blueprint narrative, and that new blueprint narrative is something that we revisited every year from that first year of identification. It also became one of those things that it wasn't something that we wanted to just sit on a computer, but every opportunity that we had to bring it back to the table for them to revisit and to think through: does this still mirror our line to your team's vision for redesign? So I thought that was a huge piece, because as administrators changed, we were able to go back to this narrative. for a new administrator to say, “Hey, let me take a look at this. and let's see how this fits with the current vision.”
Sonja (35:33):
We also have an annual conference with one of our partner universities, the research and curriculum unit at Mississippi State University. We host an innovative institute. That's for high schools across the state to come in and be a part in sharing the innovative learnings that are being shared during that time. We were able to partner with this conference and have not only some special dedicated time for our schools to come together as a network, but also for them to be able to attend the full conference, to network with other schools. I thought that was really powerful, because we not only made a special place for those schools to come and be together themselves as a network, but we also opened the door for them to see and experience what others were doing are doing in the state with regard to innovation and looking at high schools differently.
Bob (36:59):
Yeah. I think those are really great examples and a great connected effort to bring together, on one hand, the importance of local insight and initiative and organically coming from the community—This is our vision; this is is what we think we need to have for our schools to work for our kids in the 21st century—matched with some supportive structures. So (A), you're not doing it alone, and (B), you're not having to figure out everything by yourself. There's someone to walk with you. There's some tools and some processes that can help you. That key thing of having that blueprint narrative so that it's on paper, what we've committed to, so it's not just in the head of the principal and when that principal leaves, it leaves with him or her.
Bob (37:50):
I think there's really the combination of those two ideas, that really comes out in the work that you've done in Mississippi. I want us to conclude now by going a little bigger here and looking at the context under which high schools have been redesigning, in Mississippi and, in many ways, in some of our other states too. On one hand, when you look at the data, you can broadly see that there has been under-investment in infrastructure and inequities in school funding, and this [has affected] the other states in our cross states in many ways for a long time. The water crisis in Jackson is a very real recent example of what that looks like.
Bob (38:36):
On the other hand, we could see in the data, and in some ways, this gets much less publicity (though that should not be the case), is that in many areas, Mississippi has made significant improvements in educational outcomes over the past decade from literacy and math to high school graduation rates. Help us reconcile these two facts. Historical inequities and yet progress. What does that tell us about what it will take to provide all our students with strong and supported pathways to adult success in the 21st century?
From my perspective, that point of reconciliation only be seen through the people. It's always going to be the people, whether in the community, the classrooms, whether you're in central services or you're in a state and local government, whether you're in a state agency, it still really comes down to the people that are charged with creating the conditions for stronger and better opportunities for its citizens, which includes its learners. I think that desire and that hope for making things better compel us really to push, to really look hard and [stay] focused and really directed at finding those paths for our kids that lead to strong and better outcomes for them.
Sonja (40:41):
You mentioned the achievements and the recognition and literacy and math and our improved graduation rates, but that didn't happen in isolation. That's the culmination of a whole bunch of hard focused work by a whole bunch of hard-focused, dedicated individuals, from students all the way to the individuals that make policy. I think that that's what has to continue. I think as we tread this road, we have to realize that we're not doing this alone. If we want to go far, we go together. How do we make sure we remain aligned to make those things become a reality? To fix those things that are broken, to make sure that we've gotten to a place where we are better prepared for obstacles that might come forward or might get in our way.
Sonja (41:52):
I think it comes down to the people in this state that want nothing but the best for their kids and for their state. I really hope that if I go back to that point of reconciliation, I think I just always have to go back to who we are as a people in the state of Mississippi, striving and working hard to make things be the best they can be for our learners. I'll say this, and it's not to tout anything, but it does speak to how I value this work that we've done with our schools through the cross-state collaborative. Being able to cultivate the implementation of these practices: organizing adults, students being at the center, teaching and learning, and, and post-secondary pathways.
Sonja (42:56):
And last but not least, we've talked about it a little bit, but I remember one of the pieces that was added as we got to work was this notion of relationships being our superpower. And that we've got to make sure that that's part of this thing. When we say students at the center, how do relationships help to make that a reality for our learners? And the impact of being able to lead work that has the basis of evidence to do what you need to do, I made it more palatable. Made the work fun. It made the work enjoyable. Because I'm not looking at these pie-in-the-sky theoretical concepts that I've got to try to help schools and districts see and open themselves up to as they work toward improving their schools[RB3] . Honestly, I think it would continue to take this or an even greater degree of commitment, intentionality, for this work to really bring about the clearer pathways for adults to have that success in the 21st century in Mississippi. But also, I would go so far as to say, the nation. I think as you talk about what's happening in Mississippi, and then you talk about what's happening in the nation, I can't help but go back and reflect on my engagement with my peers in the collaborative, right?
Sonja (45:07):
Us coming together to be able to share in the same manner that our kids, our school teams got a chance to come together and share. You guys creating the opportunities for us to engage in a lot of the practices that help to foster deeper thought, different thinking. I believe that we may approach the work differently based on our respective contexts. But not once did I walk away feeling that our time together was not of value.
Sonja (46:05):
Not once did I walk away feeling like I was not supported in my work. Not once did I walk away feeling that I was alone. I think that that is so powerful. In the same vein that it's really important for our school teams to know that they're not in this thing alone.
Bob (47:33):
Thank you. Thank you, Sonja. I can't imagine a more powerful close than that earlier, the points you make of, it's the people doing the work, and that relationships are the superpower and, together we go far. I think that's really a strong summation of this work. To bring our discussion to a close, I want to thank you, Sonja, again for sharing what is being learned to Mississippi's involvement in the Cross-State High School Redesign Collaborative, and what it will take to redesign our high schools so they work for all our students and communities in the 21st century. And are there any last words you want to give or any way folks can learn more about the work in Mississippi or any place they can look on the website to learn more you want tp share?
Sonja (48:16):
So I would just say thank you, Bob, for the opportunity to share. I just loved my time being a part of the collaborative. If there are any questions people want to share or want to reach out, they can reach me at srobertson@mdk12.org. Of course, they can tap into our website, which is mde@k12.org. Whether they're looking at our secondary education or our career technical work, or even our work that's tied to school improvement, they can easily navigate to the links for those sites to find out more about our work.
Bob (49:04):
Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us today. It was a really enriching and enlivening conversation.
Sonja (49:10):
Thank you.
Bob (49:11):
One of the challenges we face in designing education systems that work for everyone is that our current system, despite its many flaws, has worked for a considerable number of communities and families who can trace their path to upward mobility. Through it, many of us then naturally advocate to provide to others what was provided to us. This only becomes problematic when the pace of change in the world moves at a generational speed. And that is the case today for the role high schools play in our society, and why they need to be redesigned. To do this, as we have heard today, requires us to engage those nearest to the work—teachers, school leaders, students—in the redesign, as they are closest to the educational world as it is, not as we might wish it to be. Before we go, we want to ask you to please subscribe to Designing Education to stay up to date on all the revolutionary work happening in education. If you're enjoying this show, leave us a five star review and also please share the show with a friend or a colleague on social media. This has been Robert Balfanz from the Everyone Graduates Center and the Pathways to Adult Success project, thanking everyone for listening and inviting you to listen to other episodes in our Designing Education series, wherever you listen to podcasts. Onward and be well.