The Now and Future of Schools Is the Focus of an Annual Student-,Teacher-Run Conference

Join Georgia and Jessica as they learn about a Educon, a Philadelphia-based conference created and run every year by teachers and students. Learn about the conference from the founder Chris Lehmann and one of early adopters of the strategies, Dan Ryder. 

Transcript

Colorado Convention Center 4 (1)

[00:00:00] Recording, we are good to go. It's time for The Edge, a podcast brought to you by ITSD community leaders. Whether you're a seasoned educator, a visionary administrator, or a passionate education enthusiast, fasten your seatbelts, plug in your earbuds, because this podcast is tailor made for you. Get ready to embark on an exhilarating journey as our ISTD community leaders take you behind the scenes and into the dynamic world of education.

[00:00:25] And the episodes ahead will unveil stories from the front lines, showcasing the relentless dedication and innovation that fuels the transformative field of education. Buckle up and brace yourself for an adventure. Coming up today, we are still recording at It's D Live in Denver. We're so excited. I'm one of your community leader hosts.

[00:00:44] I'm Georgia Terlahi. I'm a TK5 instructional coach and educator of 35 years. And I'm here with my always favorite partner in crime, Jessica Pack. Thank you, Georgia. The feeling is as always entirely mutual. I'm Jessica Pack, a middle school teacher and an ISTE author. And you know, the most beautiful part about being part of ISTE Live is that we can harvest guests and incredible stories everywhere we turn.

[00:01:11] For example, we just met today's guests last evening at the Board Game Social. Our incomparable producer, Matt Winters, helped organize and we really felt after talking with them that they just needed to come on to the edge and share their story about developing a learning opportunity called EduCon.

[00:01:30] So please welcome Dan Ryder and Chris Lehmann. Will you introduce yourselves, please? Dan, let's start with you. Hello, my name is Dan Ryder. I am the Director of Design and Innovation at Community Regional Charter School in lovely downtown Skowhegan, Maine. Hi, my name is Chris Lehman. I'm the founding principal of Science Leadership Academy and the CEO of Science Leadership Academy Schools.

[00:01:55] That's a network of three public schools inside the School District of Philadelphia. All of our schools are inquiry driven, project based, and caring, and built on the idea that we can create learning experiences that are authentic, meaningful, and allow students to really drive their education. Well, welcome to the edge.

[00:02:12] We're so glad to have you as Jessica mentioned, we met you Chris last night and Dan, we met you last night, but we feel like, you know, you, because Matt does talk about you often in a very good way. Anyway, we were really interested when we were talking to you, Chris, about educon and the origin. And we were thinking how could that help people be inspired maybe to start and begin their own.

[00:02:35] So can you tell us a little bit about how educon came to be and like that origin story? Because it was really cool. It's really pulled us in. Sure. So educon had it start here at ISTE back when ISTE was NAC and back in, I want to say 2007. Which was just after the first year that SLA had been open. A bunch of education bloggers got together the day before ISTE for a pre conference called EduBloggerCon.

[00:03:06] And it was run by some of the early bloggers. Folks like Wilf Richardson and Gary Stager and David Warlick. And a lot of folks who really became sort of thought leaders in the space were there. And there was about, I think about 70 of us. And we spent the whole day talking about different ideas, looking at these new emerging ways of communicating with each other, looking at the ways that educators were talking directly to each other using blogging and what have you.

[00:03:29] And at the end of the day, Will was giving this big sort of summary like, you know, And he challenged the audience and he said Could we do this without NEC, right, without ISTE? Could, would people come to a conference if it wasn't attached to, you know, the sort of unbelievable experience that ISTE is?

[00:03:48] And my technology coordinator, a woman named Marcy Hall, was sitting next to me and she kind of elbows me and so I stand up and I say like, Well, we got to school. And SLA was beginning to be known in the space already back then as like kind of trying to do some innovative things and what have you and I was like, we got a school and we'll, we'll host it.

[00:04:05] And I literally was like we'll do it the weekend in between the NFL conference finals and the Super Bowl because in Philadelphia, you have to plan around the Philadelphia Eagles. Go birds. And We said we would do it. So I went home from ISTE, I wrote a blog entry about it, you know, wrote one or two of them, like here's what we're gonna do, and here's what it's gonna be about, and here's what this conference is gonna be all about, da da da, and we're gonna host it at the school.

[00:04:27] And I promptly didn't think about it for a month or so, and we come back to school, and it's like early September, and Marcy and I are looking at each other, and we're like, we're really gonna do this? Like, no one's gonna come, like this is ridiculous. And a phenomenal guy, this guy named John Pedersen, who now works for WISC Net.

[00:04:44] Sends me an email and says, I just bought my ticket. Can't wait. I was like, Oh, dear. Now we got to do this. Right. And so we put it on and you know, we publicize the whole thing just on social media. You know this is the early days of Twitter. When the community was really, you know, tight and really, you know, and you could reach a lot of people, you know, in a, in, in a community.

[00:05:08] And we said, we're going to do this. And nobody bought tickets for weeks and, you know, it was beginning to trickle in and whatever. And, you know, we hosted it at the school, but you still had to buy stuff. And we financed the whole conference on my credit card. And I remember my wife saying to me, like, this is a good thing you're doing for the world.

[00:05:28] This is important. Promise me you will lose less than 2, 000 on this. And, you know, we charged, I think, 50 bucks that year to go. And then in the last month, like, 200 people signed up. So the very first edu con probably had about 200 people there. We made back the money. I had enough money to buy all the students, you know, who volunteered for the weekend pizza.

[00:05:48] And what everybody said was, this is incredible. And this was this amazing community. And the whole idea of the conference is the pedagogy of the conference is supposed to match match the pedagogy of the school, right? So this is not sit and get this is discursive. This is action oriented. This is the wisdom of the room is smarter than any one person in it.

[00:06:06] It is forward thinking. It is how can we make schools that are more authentic that leverage the technologies we have that leverage the ideas that kids have to to create more authentic and more powerful schools. And that was January 2008. And we've been doing it every year since, with the exception of, obviously, the COVID years.

[00:06:25] And at its, you know, zenith, we get about 600 educators to come from all over the country. And the format is still really the same. We get, we don't call them presenters, we call them facilitators, because we want you to come and, like, Start a conversation and bring your best ideas to share and expect your ideas even as a facilitator to be challenged and changed and evolved.

[00:06:44] I like when I do it to, When I'm in my sessions, I like them to be like, what's the burning question I want to ask right now, and what's going to happen when really smart people in a room to ask them together. And it's really kind of a meaningful, it's a powerful experience, I think, for a lot of people.

[00:06:59] And the whole thing, I guess this is really important to say the whole thing is put on by students, teachers, parents, you know, me, and it's all completely school run. The Friday is a site visit, so we have several hundred people just hanging out in our classrooms, which isn't intimidating for us at all.

[00:07:14] And then the Saturday and Sunday we turn the school into a convention center. Which is really fun. This is such a revolutionary approach, I feel like, to just, Bringing together so many stakeholders to partake in the planning of professional development, like, there's not a lot of other places out there that are enfranchising entire communities to come together and create a space where there's that type of learning, like, what has the reception been?

[00:07:41] Is it a legacy effect now, years later, where People are excited to be involved. Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's neat. Like we actually, one of the really fun things that happen is, is the, one of the number one professions that SLA students go into is education. We have a lot of teachers and kids are who like worked educon as, you know, sophomores and juniors are now coming back as teachers to like come back and take part as, you know, attendees, which is really neat.

[00:08:06] I think it's really amazing. So every year there's a senior co chair and a junior co chair. And the senior co chair trains up the junior co chair, and then we have all these different roles that kids can plug into and play, everything from our AV team, like which, you know, which we, we take one or two rooms and we broadcast those sessions to the coffee czar, that is a very important job to my goodness, probably now, gosh, how old is Jeff?

[00:08:32] Probably 12 years ago now with this young man, who was super into like, logistics. He works for Amtrak now and like, he's super into all this stuff. And he invented a title called EduConcierge. And he, so we have this group of students who every year, their job is to make the attendees experience seamless.

[00:08:54] And like, they like have restaurant recommendations and they like, they do all this incredible stuff. They're like, welcome to, like, we're so glad you're here. How can we, how can we make this a better experience for you? And then one year when Jeff was a senior. There was a massive snowstorm and he was literally because he's this kid who just like at 18 years old had memorized planes, trains, and automobiles, like, you know, like all of the different ways you could get to places.

[00:09:15] He was like helping people reroute their tickets. Like he was, he was like the in house travel agent. It was incredible. And there's all these incredible stories. I think the other thing that's really amazing. So it's amazing for the kids. They get to see themselves as. Participants in a national, if not international, discussion on education and innovation.

[00:09:34] And they get to see themselves as expert agents, right? Because the, the, the attendees really love talking to the kids about like, What's it like to go to this school? Like, what's it like, you know, like, is it, you know, like, tell us the experience. And so they get to be sort of experts, which is not sort of, they get to be experts in the space, which is amazing.

[00:09:48] And that's really empowering for them. And then I think for parents, they get this incredible sense of pride of like, my kids go to this school that the world shows up at, right? Like, and that, so I think it's been really, really amazing for the community. Like, we're really proud of what we do because we think that educators who've come year over year.

[00:10:08] have told us that this transforms their pedagogy, that they go back and make differences in the way that they teach and learn. So it's this incredible effect that this little tiny school of 500 kids in Philadelphia has had. But then for our own internal community, it's this opportunity to step back, you know, cause like with any job, like with anything, like school's a lot of work, like for teachers, for kids, for all of us.

[00:10:28] But it's this amazing weekend where we get to step back and say like, oh, wait a minute, that's right. Like this, this thing that we take, not for granted, but that we take as routine. Right. This is just our lives, right? It's still special. And I think to give that to the community and to see them see themselves in that space is it's transformative, right?

[00:10:48] And it's really magical. And so it's, it's a, it's a great thing. So Dan, you've been a participant in Educon. So what has been your experience and if you've done it multiple times, like how it's evolved and how your experience has evolved? It's been mostly terrible. Which is I keep going back glutton for, I'm such a glutton for punishment.

[00:11:12] I can't help it. No, I heard about it man, or years ago it had been going on, it was an ongoing concern I think at that point, probably six or seven years in but I heard about it through the Twitter sphere and refused to call it anything but that and and I had met Chris, I, well, I.

[00:11:27] through Twitter, like, and so I found out about it really late one year and I was like, Oh man, can I still go? And I'd like message like, okay, I know the tickets. I know it's over. It's closed or whatever. Can I, is there any way? And He was like, yes, like, and I'm like, okay, so I spent the money. Is, did you get the money?

[00:11:47] We got the money. Okay. So I went and I was just blown away by the authenticity of everything. But it was also this, like the, just the people that were there. And I'm like, Whoa, that guy's here. And this guy's here and that guy's, you know, and she's here. And, and oh my God, like, and we're all just in Philadelphia in this school.

[00:12:06] Right. And, and also the school represented like a, like a aspirational At that point in my career and what I was doing, and it ended up, SLA ended up informing what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go with, with my career. Kind of a school within a school I was trying to develop at my past school, and it still informs everything that we're doing, that, that I'm doing at, at Community Regional Charter School is largely informed by, by what I've seen and what I've witnessed from afar and paying attention to the, the, the teachers and the stories there at SLA and EduCon is where you get to go and, you know, Do it.

[00:12:43] So, so it was huge for me and this year I got to take three colleagues or two colleagues rather, and the three of us came down and, and conducted one of the conversations, which I also just love that it's called, you know, conversation session, one conversation, session two, as opposed to like session one, right.

[00:13:03] Or presentations one. So you really going in and you stoke the fire. And that's what I explained to my colleagues was like, Hey, what we do for the beginning, don't stress about the presentation park. Is there freaking out about slides and whatever? I'm like, have cool slides. Cause cool slides is cool slides.

[00:13:20] But there's a stoke. It's to get things moving towards conversation. Oh, like, trust me, you'll go to one session and you'll get it. And they came down and they did it. But the idea was like, now we want to bring more people, right? Because I can't tell you how many times we have cited since. What was it? End of end of January.

[00:13:42] Well, we know what it is. It's always the weekend weekend before Super Bowl because go birds. They'll always get in, always get in. And so just since then, SLA and Educon have been cited no less than 14 dozen times in leadership meetings and staff meetings to just say, Hey, you know, it's, it's not that we have to do it that way, but there's a school doing it this way and it's working.

[00:14:06] How do we want to adapt it? And and you know, there's not a lot of people clamoring to go to central rural Maine but you never know, you know, maybe we're going to convince them to put the airstrip back in. I don't know. But it's, it's just, it's such. An amazing community of people. And every time I go, you see the people who come each year, you see new people who have never been, and it's, it's, it's just awesome.

[00:14:33] This sounds like such a great experience. And I think some listeners might be thinking about how could I replicate something like this closer to home? So would you have any advice for someone who's thinking, you know, I've got a really passionate local community here. How can I pull people together? Just any advice for the road?

[00:14:52] Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think the hard part, the thing that I would say is hardest is that the pedagogy of educon is the pedagogy of SLA. So there's this natural, like, this is what we do. And we're just sharing. Right. And I think that, but I think that so like, whether or not, school communities wanted to try to put on a national conference.

[00:15:15] That's a lot. And I don't know that I would even say to people, yeah, you should do that. It's a lot. I mean, we work really, like we start planning literally like the first week in August and the teachers and the students and the parents who work on it are amazing. And it, it's a lot, a lot, a lot of work.

[00:15:34] But I think that what schools, what I would encourage people to do is say that like you can bring, like one of the things we say at SLA, that is sort of one of our mantras. High school shouldn't be preparation for real life. High school should be real life, right? Like, and we should ask kids to do real stuff that matters now.

[00:15:52] And so whether or not you try to put on a national conference or whether or not you just try to create the opportunity for students to do something where the world comes to their school, their, their, their community comes to their school, whether that's the six districts in their immediate region, whether that's bringing in like the community to see what is going on, whether that's just giving people the opportunity to, you know, To make their school not for walls and floor, but to really look at the sort of walls of our school as permeable membranes.

[00:16:22] And creating those opportunities where you are inviting people to come in and share the best things you do and the best things they do. And to get smarter because of that. Right? I think that how you structure that, how you create that, and how you allow a truly collaborative atmosphere where students, teachers, parents are coming together and saying what is the thing that we think we would want to bring to, what is the idea that we would want to bring people together around and share?

[00:16:50] Right? And I think that, again, like you don't necessarily, you don't have to make it a national conference, right? Like that's a thing. Like we got very, very lucky that we did it, that we started doing it when we did it. I think, you know, the Twitter sphere is harder to get out than to get the word out.

[00:17:05] Like, I don't know how you would do it today without a massive marketing budget that we don't have. But there's opportunities in every community to bring people together and to give students and teachers and parents the opportunity to say, this is who we are, this is what we do, and we want to share it with you, and we want you to share your best ideas with us.

[00:17:24] And I think that all schools could create those moments for kids. Yeah. And I, I think you talking about like your model of just Volunteering to do something, not knowing what it was going to be, because that is the wheelhouse where sort of Jessica and I live too. It's like, this is a great idea. No idea how I'm going to make it happen, but I'll say yes.

[00:17:46] And I think that's important for people to understand because everything doesn't have to be nailed down. It's like, it probably never would have started if you guys hadn't just said yes. And then had the power of, oh, we have someone that bought a plane ticket. Okay, now we need to do this. Thank you, John.

[00:18:04] No, I think that's right. I think that's absolutely right. There's Zach Chase, who is now working with the U. S. Department of Education, is one of the authors of the National Educational Tech Plan, is my co author of our book, 0, and was a teacher at SLA for four years. He had one of his hobbies was improv comedy.

[00:18:23] And in improv comedy there is a technique called yes and, right, as opposed to yes but. And I think that's the thing that schools can learn is that when, when people come up with sort of these audacious ideas. Like, yes, we have to think through, like, okay, what's the terrible thing that could happen if we do that?

[00:18:42] Like, yes, we have to iterate around, like, how are we going to do it, and da da da da da. But yes, and is so much more powerful than yes, but. And yes, and allows you to build as opposed to block and brick. And I think it's such a powerful And that's, I think, something that when, when you have those big audacious ideas, we do need to say, like, well, what's going to happen?

[00:19:02] Like, it's important to have your wife say, please don't lose more than 2, 000, right? Like, that's important. And it's important to say, like, all right, well then how do we do this well? I love that so much. Just the idea of being brave, saying yes, and building on audacious ideas as you call them. Well, thank you so much for your time at ISTE live.

[00:19:21] How can listeners connect with you both to be able to ask questions, continue the conversation, or just hear some really great big thoughts? Well, you can find Dan Ryder on the Twitter, at Wicked Decent. You can, and you can find me on other show, socials that way, and LinkedIn. You can also find my, my improv group, Teachers Lounge Mafia, an ongoing concern, as I just learned that Chris likes to bring improv people into his circle.

[00:19:48] We've been, we've been performing all over New England. But you can find us on Facebook, too. And for us if you want to find out more about Educon, you can go to Educon. org. If you want to learn more about SLA, you can go to SLA. PhilaSD. org. If you want to read about all the ideas that sort of brought us together.

[00:20:07] Power what we do, you can buy Zach and my book called Building School 2. 0 How to Create the Schools We Need. And again, I'm out there on the Twitters on, at Chris Lehman with two Ns, and LinkedIn and all the other places. But Twitter, the book, and the school, and the conference, and stuff. And you can always just email me too.

[00:20:26] Like if you go to the website, you'll find my email address, and I, I love to talk about the stuff we do. Awesome. Thank you so much. Well, that wraps up this episode of the EDGE podcast. We hope you had a great time. My name is Jessica and you can find me at Packwoman208 on Xthreads and Instagram.

[00:20:43] And I'm Georgia Turlahi and you can find me at Georgia Turlahi on X and both Jessica and I on StorytellingSavesTheWorld. com. On behalf of everyone at ISTE's The Edge podcast, remember to keep exploring your passion, fostering your creativity, and continue taking risks. All things that can bring you to the edge.