KindlED | The Prenda Podcast
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments through microschooling. Powered by Prenda, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle curiosity, motivation, and well-being in young learners. Do you have a question, topic, or story you'd like to share with us? Get in touch at podcast@prenda.com.
KindlED | The Prenda Podcast
Episode 72: Getting High School Right. A Conversation with Chad Carlson.
Chad Carlson shares how One Stone Lab School uses human-centered design to transform education by treating students as end users rather than products. He describes their unique approach that removes traditional grades, subjects, and bells in favor of personalized growth frameworks that prepare students for the real world.
• One Stone's origin story as an innovative school designed alongside students to make learning relevant and meaningful
• How human-centered design principles are applied to education through continuous iteration and student feedback
• The shift from viewing students as products to seeing them as end users of education
• One Stone's daily structure including Design Labs, interdisciplinary experiences, and mentor relationships
• Their growth transcript system that assesses 24 skills across contexts, replacing traditional grades
• The difference between durable skills (empathy, communication) and cognitive skills
• How colleges respond to their innovative transcript (accepted by 190+ institutions)
• The importance of human relationships over technological solutions in education's future
About our guest
Chad is the Director of Research & Design of the One Stone Lab School in Boise, Idaho. Chad joined One Stone in 2016 and helped design and lead the implementation of One Stone’s innovative, student-driven Lab School. He is currently leading One Stone's initiative to scale the school’s Growth Framework learning model and support schools in their transition to becoming transformative, future-ready schools.
Connect with Chad
Visit onestone.org to learn more about their model and trainings, or email chad@onestone.org for discovery calls to discuss how these principles might work in your educational setting.
Got a story to share or question you want us to answer? Send us a message!
About the podcast
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments.
Powered by Prenda Microschools, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle young learners' curiosity, motivation, and well-being.
Got a burning question?
We're all ears! If you have a question or topic you'd love our hosts to tackle, please send it to podcast@prenda.com. Let's dive into the conversation together!
Important links:
• Connect with us on social
• Get our free literacy curriculum
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And I could argue like well, you know, because I was K-12 public taught, I'm doing great, I'm successful, I'm happy, I'm you know, I've got all these great skills that I could say, oh, it worked for me. But I look back on it, no, it didn't really work for me. You know I was not thriving as a middle and high school student. I was definitely surviving, you know, constantly navigating these like arbitrary rules of engagement and arbitrary what does learning look like?
Speaker 2:Hi and welcome to the Kindle Podcast. I'm Katie, your host for today, and in this episode we're talking to Chad Carlson, who is the Director of Research and Design at the One Stone Lab School in Boise, idaho. And my main take homes from this conversation were that innovation and iteration in education aren't going to go the right direction unless we keep the student at the center, and we talk a lot about human-centered design and trying to kind of replace this belief that the student is the product of education and instead switching our mindset to the idea that the student is the consumer or, like the customer, the end user of the education system. And I think Chad just does such an amazing job explaining that really living that. So super excited to learn more from Chad in this conversation, can't wait to share this with you.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you a little bit more about Chad before we dive in. So, like I said, he's the director of research and design at the One Stone Lab School in Boise, idaho. He joined One Stone in 2016 and helped design and lead the implementation of OneStone's innovative student-driven lab school. He is currently leading OneStone's initiative to scale the school's growth framework, which is kind of like a learning transcript that they've built it's amazing and support schools in their transition to becoming transformative, future-ready schools. So with that, let's get to our conversation with Chad. Chad, welcome to the Kindle podcast. We're super excited to have you on today.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Kitty. I'm excited to be here and excited to share my story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so let's get into that. I want you to kind of take me back, give me like the origin story of you, Chad, like coming into education and into this work that you know we're all kind of coalescing around, and then tell me you run a school called One Stone and I feel like One Stone is Prenda's kind of like closest cousin as far as like pedagogy and philosophy goes and I just am the biggest fan. So, yeah, let's get into it.
Speaker 1:Well, I love that. I love that we have a cousin out there extended family yeah. So I got an education completely by mistake. I was in my fourth year in college and I got involved with tutoring at the University of Oregon and I really enjoyed it. Like I didn't think I would, but I was good at Spanish. So I thought like let's give this a try. And I really connected with the students who were like 18 to 24. They were frustrated, struggling. They signed up for this academic tutoring service through the university and I really just kind of it was fulfilling. It felt really good to have an impact on the lives of these students.
Speaker 1:And so, as I was nearing my graduation time, I really didn't know what I was going to do with my life, like a lot of college graduates. And a friend of mine reached out and said, hey, they're looking for a middle school teacher at the school back in Idaho. You should really put your name in the hat. And I thought, heavens, no, I would never teach middle school. Middle school for me was a disaster. I was not great at school. So I'm like I am not going back to to like a K-12 situation. I loved college but K-12 was a disaster. But anyway, that kind of suited around with the idea for a bit and then ended up putting my name in that I applied and I got the position, which was just a one year sabbatical position. So just you know, I thought it's like no harm, let's give it a shot. And I'll tell you I just I loved it. I loved working with middle school kids. I loved really what they did to me as far as like kind of just my bringing me back to like what is important, bringing me back to, just you know, these kids who are growing up and looking for mentors, looking for people to hear them, to see them. And it was a really powerful year for me. And I think from that moment on I was on the path to getting an education and, you know, continued my efforts and for about 15 years I dabbled between middle school, high school I was in independent education and public for a little bit, really got into the international baccalaureate and the IB program and you know, all along the way I really prided myself in doing really creative, fun things in the classroom with students and making really powerful connections.
Speaker 1:But it was about my 15th year in education where I started, just kind of dawned on me like that power that I had was was waning. And I didn't think it was me, I thought it was the kids in the classroom. The landscape of learning was just totally changing. Cell phones were becoming more predominant, mental health was becoming more of an issue. You could do the coolest, funnest things and kids were just in a different place, mentally and emotionally, and I thought I can't do this anymore. I think I'm think I'm through, just because you know like I want to be there and have impact. And I was struggling. And so I actually didn't renew my contract to that job and thought I was going to just embark on a whole new chapter.
Speaker 1:And I ran across Teresa Poppin, who is the co-founder of OneStone, and she had OneStone as an after-school program and was like we are going to start a whole new innovative 9 through 12 lab school and we would love for you to join the team. And I thought, well, tell me more. She's like that's all I got. I know it's not going to have grades. I know it's not going to have teachers. I know it's not going to have subjects and classes as we know it. I know it's not going to have bells and walls. She knew what it was not going to look like, but she's like what it is going to look like is up to our design and they were really big into using the human-centered design approach and doing a lot of experiential service projects at the time in the community. They're like we're going to use human-centered design, we're going to work with a group of students and we are going to design a school that does two things that it brings meaning and relevance to the learner experience. It's going to be a place where kids can learn about who they are, pursue their interests, develop passions and really, you know, make learning important again. And I thought sign me up, let's try this thing.
Speaker 1:And it just so happened that my oldest daughter was moving into high school at that age or at that time, and I thought this is what she needs, because I was watching her come home from public middle school with, you know, four or five hours of homework, just kind of taking over the dining table. You know it looked like somebody's war plans, with textbooks and all of these worksheets and things to do. You know it's 11 or 12 at night and I thought, like what is any of this for? And she's a happy kid, but she was not thriving, and so I was really excited to like, hey, let's thinking about end user, thinking about human centered design. Like I'm excited to work with my daughter and her peers and figuring out, like what should learning look? Like you know, what should this experience be? And so that's kind of my journey, to like getting to One Stone that was 2016, where we kind of jumped in with very little idea of what we're going to do other than make learning relevant and meaningful.
Speaker 2:Love that, what would you say? Make learning relevant and meaningful. Love that, what would you say, would I mean? My next question is what's your big why? But it sounds like you just answered that you know. Make learning relevant and meaningful. Would you add anything to your big why besides that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I think about my why a lot. We do actually a lot of this work at OneStone and my why, like my articulation of my why, always changes and so it's hard to wrap it up in like a sentence. But I think my why is really to like help to support students in their growth, whatever that looks like. And so I think in my first 15 years of learning I really focused or in teaching I really focused on learning, focused on engagement, and now I'm. You know learning is important, but the focus more is on growth and moving from engagement to empowerment.
Speaker 1:How can we empower students to grow in a way that seems personalized to them and meaningful and relevant to them, which you know sounds really hard because every person has a different need and a different direction they want to go in. But as you start working with it, you start to realize like it's so much healthier than trying to get a room full of kids to all focus on one thing that usually no one in the room thinks is important and can't find the relevance of why they're doing it. And so, you know, I think that's that's my why is, yeah, meaning and relevance, and then just helping empower students to grow.
Speaker 2:I love that. Two little bird walks. I want to go back to. You mentioned the IB program, international Baccalaureate. I feel like this is something that comes up a lot in the experience or pedigree of those of us who are now kind of the alternative education world, trying to chart a course for a different system, a different future in education. So tell, just for our listeners' sake, tell a little bit about International Baccalaureate, just like 30 seconds on what it is, what was attractive to you about it, and like, does it still influence your work now?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the the most of my experience in the IB comes in the middle years program. So the IB is broken into three programs primary years program, which is like a K through five, middle years program, which is six through 10, and diploma program, which is an 11 through 12 program. And I really, you know my daughters went through the PYP the primary years program, and they enjoyed it. It was very inquiry based. And then the middle years program, which I taught in, I really really enjoyed because it was inquiry based and it was thematic based and it was really on developing projects with students, which I felt like is really healthy for students.
Speaker 1:As I got involved in the diploma program, it becomes very academic, it becomes very rote, memory-driven. There are certain skills that kids need that are, I would consider, like durable, transferable skills. You know the organization of thoughts and ideas and you know really developing grit and resilience. But it just it was so heavily focused on academics that it lost the individual. You really didn't have time to work with the students in a personal way. If they had, like a social or emotional issue that they had to deal with, it was like, hey, the curriculum's going, you've got this big test in 20 months that you're going to take your senior year, had like a social emotional issue that they had to deal with. It was like, hey, the curriculum's going, you've got this big test in 20 months that you're going to take your senior year and we have to keep going.
Speaker 1:And it really just kind of, for me, took my like I don't know my interest in teaching. I was like, well, this is not what teaching should be. And so I love the IB, pyp, through Middle Years Program, the diploma program. If you are just looking for a peer academic experience, it's probably pretty good as a teacher, not at all for me. I did not enjoy that and I didn't enjoy the fact that I just really we couldn't stop and slow down and, you know, build community in the classroom and do things that were more project-based. It was really about rote memory.
Speaker 1:So yeah, interesting I don't think that does the IB justice, but that was my experience with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that makes sense. I feel like a lot of times, like there's this concept of like doing what we do, like at Prenda or One Stone, and then like as a counter, like quote, unquote real school, do you guys?
Speaker 2:get this At Prenda. It's like we, a lot of people ask our parents like school, Do you guys get this? It's like we, a lot of people ask our parents like, hey, when are you sending your kids back to real school? And it's like, oh, just just because, like, just because the learning doesn't feel painful here doesn't mean it's not authentic, rigorous and like effective, Right, but there's just. And so it's kind of like we only do K through eighth currently and it's like okay, great, you guys like we'll just take care of little kids. Yeah, Like inquiry, Great. But like when, once we start high school, like then we'll like revert to what you're describing as like the diploma program with IB is like then we'll start memorizing and doing tests and like doing all this stuff that we know is like painful and quote unquote effective it's. I don't think it's actually effective, but you're, you're taking a whole new spin on high school, even at One Stone, Right, it's not. It's not this return to quote unquote real school, it's like even a leaning in to further inquiry and further personalization.
Speaker 1:Right, we don't really get mean, especially because One Stone deals with high school students and you know it is an independent education, so people are choosing to come there. So we don't necessarily get the question of like hey, when are they going to do real school? But we get aspects of that of like, you know, parents being, you know, especially in the early years, really hyper-focused on accreditation what are you going to do to accredit the school Like that was going to have some profound impact on their kids' experience. And you know we get a lot. We don't do grades, we're very much a growth-based skills focus. We don't focus on subjects, and so instead of getting grades in courses, students get assessments and they're measured in skills on a growth progression that goes from like emerging and developing through advancing and mastering, and so you know we'll get a lot of questions like well, in that they didn't have a traditional experience, do you think they'll be ready for college?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, which is like the same semblance of the question that you're asking, which is really funny, because when we talk to our kids after graduating and they're alum and they've gone to college or they've gone off to the workforce, they feel way more prepared than the other kids that are their age, that they're working with or studying with.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And they thrive. They're advocates, they know why they are there, they know where they want to go and how to get there. They know how to learn and all of the other things. Taking rote tests and cramming your head full of knowledge, like studies have shown, like kids don't retain that beyond six to seven weeks, let alone years, and so, yeah, we don't get the real school thing, but we definitely get aspects of you know in that they've done this really great collaborative, real world learning. Do you think they'll be able to you know, transition successfully to more traditional colleges? And you're like, of course they will. They're going to thrive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was just having this conversation with my 10 and 12 year old sons because they apprentice doesn't do high school yet. Like I mentioned, we're working on it, but they're like I feel like when we go, like we're going to be really behind and I'm like you are sitting on a pile of data that shows you that you are like far beyond, like grade level in many, many areas, like what, and you you interfere, like interact with that data that tells you that every single day. Why do you have this perception that you're going to be behind or not prepared? It's really interesting because it's an honest question. I don't know where they're getting that idea, but they've never been to quote unquote regular school before, so they have very little to compare to.
Speaker 1:And that of like being behind something like like it's a that's even a thing, yes, exactly but it's this linear progression that we all know that learning is not a linear progression you know, and you know it's, it's just interesting and that's, I think, what the traditional context kind of instills upon you know, to get kind of like heady on it, like on society and a greater like social understanding of education and what it looks like. Because everybody's not everybody, many people come from traditional educational contexts and they're under the assumption that it worked for them.
Speaker 1:And I could argue like well, you know cause? I was K-12 public taught, I'm doing great, I'm successful, I'm happy I'm. You know, I've got all these great skills and I could say, oh, it worked for me, but I look back on it, no, it didn't really work for me. You know, I was not thriving as a middle and high school student. I was definitely surviving, you know, constantly navigating these like arbitrary rules of engagement and arbitrary what does learning look like?
Speaker 1:This person at the front of the classroom is going to tell us and what's important to learn are going to be these seven you know classrooms that you go into all day long, where I knew, like as a kid, there were like so many other things I was interested in, curious about that, I wanted to learn and I felt, you know, I felt that my interests were not just devalidated, but I felt like that, like I almost kind of felt like I wasn't worthy or like I was.
Speaker 1:You know I didn't fit in because, you know, I wasn't connecting with the learning that it seemed like everyone else was connecting with as I. As I started doing research and studying and looking at that like there's a Gallup poll, I think in 2018 that talked about engagement falling in fifth grade from 75% to 33% in 10th grade. Engagement and disengagement looks different in every kid and so you can have all AAP or IB students who are highly disengaged. And that is what I was working with in the diploma program Kids who were like killing it academically but were not engaged in what we were doing. And they seemed engaged but when you thought about what was important to them and what they needed and what they were really dealing with in life, this was not what they needed to be doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean they're engaged, meaning like they're listening to you, but like almost like at a spiritual level, like they're like not into it, right, and that's. We're talking about something that is much more like we've kind of bucketed like education and like we've sliced that off as like part of a child's growing up experience. But then it's like but you have to be there for the vast majority of your time. It becomes this very, very large slice, right. So it's like, okay, when you're saying you have to be here for all of these minutes and you are a little bit accountable for looking at the whole child movement and their mental wellness and things like that. It's not like they are there for an hour in the morning and then they go have many, many other diverse experiences, right, it's like no, you're like the main thing here. So we got to really make sure that this is not causing a national mental health crisis in the youth population, which it currently is, okay.
Speaker 2:So you mentioned one other thing that I think our listeners would be interested if you dug into a little bit. You said the words human-centered design, and I'm familiar with this concept, but I'd love for you to describe this for our listeners, because it's something that's typically applied to like making a product right, like you're designing software or something like that, and then to take that and to treat the student as the customer and to really get to know their needs, as you would like if you had someone who was using an app or a blender or something like that. That's a very unique approach that I don't see being applied elsewhere. Like you know, you see a lot of like legislators and like experts sitting in, sitting around tables, far away from children, making all these decisions right. So tell me about what human-centered design is and how you use it to build a future of education at OneStone.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. Well, so human-centered design really is the process that you know another word for it is design thinking, but it's the process that really puts the person or the perspectives that you're bringing to the table and identifying those and, you know, understanding your positionality and whatever the topic might be, and not just putting that aside, just being aware of that, and then really getting to know the person or the people that you are working with and designing with. And you know it's a tremendously empathetic process where you know you're going beyond just talking to them, you're also trying to put yourself in their shoes, so trying to design experiences where you're actually experiencing their pains or their glories, whatever it might be. You're conducting observations, you're really just kind of trying to understand the experience of the end user or the person that you're designing with and through the human-centered design process. It's very iterative and so, you know, I think number one is identifying the problem. You know, and I think it was Einstein who talked about having a certain amount of time, you know, given a problem, and he would spend about 95% of that time understanding the problem before solving it and just 5% solving it. And I think human-centered design really does that. It's like its intention is to best understand the problem and also understand the implications of the effects that your solutions might have. Solutions don't happen in a vacuum. So if you're going to disrupt something through a new, innovative approach, there's going to be a trickle down or downstream effect of that disruption. And so, you know, human centered design does its best to continually be in a state of empathy and understanding and kind of perspective taking so that you can design with your end user person you're designing with and then prototype that, test it, step back, get some more feedback and iterate Really, like we see, like one stone where we've built at the lab school is incredibly iterative.
Speaker 1:We didn't build it and then you know, go through an iteration or two and be like well, there it is, this is what it is. We iterate every year. We're in our 10th year Continuously iterating, continuously reflecting, always checking in with our students. The students that we have today are very different than the students we started the school with almost 10 years ago, and so is the world. You know, I mean, ai wasn't a thing in people's back pockets in 2016. You know, a mental health challenge has evolved, and so things are continually changing. The world is continually changing. And you know that's what we really believe.
Speaker 1:Like we say, like we don't have a set curriculum, but like if I were to say we have a curriculum at OneStone, it would be the student.
Speaker 1:And you know, and that's our job every year at the beginning of the year is to tap into the student, learn from the student. What is it that they need, what is it that they want and what is it that they aspire, and help them tap into those and understand those better. And that's hard for a 14 year old, but they get better at it each year, to the point when they graduate they're like fully self-actualizing, highly reflective, able to self-evaluate, like transparently, honestly in most cases. And that's how we built the schools is to really build it, so that we know that it's this thing that's in continual evolution. And you know it's this thing that is never going to be the same. And we often tell our graduates like hey, when you come back next year it's going to look different and when you come back at your 10-year reunion it's going to look even more different, but it's going to reflect the people in the building.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that that's so key and it's interesting because you're really so like when we make a blender or an app, like there's a body of people, the market, who has money that they can either elect or not elect to spend on your product, right, and that puts that person in a position of power. It incentivizes you as the builder, the designer, to make that person happy. And it's so interesting because in education, we have an end user, right Like the student, who is not actually the customer. Sometimes we actually end up doing what the government wants, or like a legislator, or like a state test wants, or the parents want. We were confused about who our customer is, because those are the people that are making the decisions. Right, the child doesn't actually have any decision-making power, sometimes about even where they're going to go to school, right, so like, why would we focus on this person? That doesn't like we're not incentivized to ever make this person happy. And so I think that it's so key, as we look at redesigning education and iterating constantly, that we are really clear on who our customer is, because, while there are many stakeholders, like there's one person in that desk for 13 years, right, like they really are the end user, and I think just so many of us get confused about that, and that's why education, like the systems we build one, they don't iterate well, right.
Speaker 2:If you look at any other category, the iteration over the last 150 years has been substantial and education largely looks the same because there's no, there's no customer at the center of that, saying, hey, I'm not happy, and I'm I and I can vote with my feet. Right, kids can't vote with their feet, they don't have that power. But we need to because we love them and we want what's best for them. Like, put them at the center. And that takes it takes people who are actually really humble and curious, and I just feel like a lot of the people who are have, over the last 150 years, been building education like they know best, they have the degree, like you know everyone.
Speaker 2:Should they kind of sit in their ivory tower a little bit and like, but boots on the ground? Like there's a lot of pain in these classrooms from teachers and there's a lot of pain from kids, and like we were, we've kind of just been telling kids tough luck, this is how the world is. Get used to it instead of like oh, like, yeah, we could. We could be responsive to to these concerns and we could actually create systems that aren't terrible. Like I'm running a middle school micro school out of my home Hadn't started yet, but soon and like the tagline that I've come, that I've come up with when I'm talking to parents, is like it's just middle school, so it's called the Wonder League and my tagline- is where middle school isn't terrible and it's like oh, that's like a new aspiration, just like to get past the not terrible line.
Speaker 1:We have these cool one-stone stickers that say high school doesn't have to suck right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:But I want to like kind of jump in on what you said there, katie, what you were saying early on. I mean it's a revolutionary concept because I would argue that for the last 150 years the end user was not the student, the student was the product. The student was the product society or the industrial economy that was expecting these people to come out in the world and be compliant, be obedient, fit into a career and get on the conveyor belt and go work for 30 or so years, retire and kind of fit into this formula that created this very stable economy and stable society. And the 21st century education because oftentimes you hear like, oh, stable society and the 21st century education because oftentimes you hear like, oh, 21st century skills is such a tagline Well, the thing about 21st century skills and 21st century education is that we have begun to take the paradigm of the student being the product and saying, no, the student is the end user and they are going to take their experience and move into the world and design the life that they want to live. That wouldn't have done that, that wouldn't have fit in so well in the 20th century, where we really needed obedient, compliant industrial, you know, industrially equipped kids going into a workforce that were able to just do what they're told.
Speaker 1:You know, in today's world, the economy is very different. There's so much DIY there's, so the economy is very different. There's so much DIY, there's so much need for problem solving. There's so much that our education system is not answering that. We're realizing that the end user should be the student and that the student will go out into the world with these tools that they develop through their experience and design the life they want to live, and so I think that's a, you know, kind of a fundamental change in how we're starting to see education.
Speaker 1:And so, you know you mentioned that word of like we're struggling with the you know, the end user, and it's like I think I think we haven't really fully articulated that the end user is a different person than what we used to design for, and a lot of systems that are stuck are still focused on, well, what do employers want, what do colleges want? X, y and Z, and I think those are great questions. I'm not saying that they shouldn't ask those, but those should not be the drivers. That should be information that we provide to our students so that they can equip themselves with the skills with the direction they want to go in life and so that they understand what are colleges looking for. Because I want to go to college and this is what I want to study.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:What is the workforce looking at or looking for? I want to be a software engineer, so here are the skills that I need.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:You know, moving away from this kind of cookie cutter. Okay, they've been molded, they're compliant, they're obedient, they're now ready to be further trained in whatever it is that you need them to do, because they're trainable, yeah, so yeah, that's my kind of my soapbox pitch on human-centered design. I love it Perfect.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I want to get to durable skills, but I think it would be helpful for listeners if you kind of just like went through a quick day in the life of what learning at One Stone looks like, just like kind of high level.
Speaker 1:Sure, every day at One Stone looks different and a lot of students design their own experience. That doesn't mean anarchy, it's organized chaos and it's beautiful when it's really rolling. Students engage in various different aspects of the program. The first one, since we were just talking about human-centered design, is what we call Design Lab and students will work in small groups four or five students and they will spend the semester working with a community partner, designing with that community partner to solve a problem that they might have. That community partner might be, the end user might not be, but they're definitely involved in the challenge or the problem or whatever it might be. Those are all defined by the student through the process of working with the community partner and identifying the end user.
Speaker 1:So, a lot of learning about problem solving, collaboration, creativity, the human-centered design process in its own About a couple of hours, three or four times a week. It's a significant part of what we do. They do a lot of research, primary and secondary. They do a lot of field work. They do a lot of writing in that area, a lot of reading, and then we have what we call experiences, and experiences are interdisciplinary learning immersions where you might be combining a math and science, or combining a language arts of science, humanities, whatever it might be, to engage in project-based learning that in most cases is also real world connected. So we use a lot of our community as a classroom out in the world a lot. Then we have workshops which are more academic focused. They will be shorter, a couple of days a week, focusing on specific disciplinary skills like reading, writing, mathematics.
Speaker 2:Are those taught by? I know everyone has a mentor, I'm sure you'll get to mentorship, but are those taught? How are those academic subjects or skills built?
Speaker 1:We have people who focus like experts in writing and critical reading and mathematics. You know people who focus like experts in writing and critical reading and mathematics. You know some of our coaches are well-versed and like jack of all trades. Others are highly focused in one area. But a good coach at OneStone is usually someone who is able to coach multiple disciplines, both from a project-based perspective and then just a disciplinary focus in the workshops.
Speaker 1:Then we have a thing called community read, where the students are choosing their novels or whatever they want to read and they work in kind of communities of practice, doing Socratic discussions and what have you. Another big part, as you mentioned, is our mentorship program. We've got a program we call it Living in Beta. It's our wayfinding mentorship program. The students will spend four years living in beta where they are developing the skills and the mindset to really identify who they are, what their values are, what's important to them from an existential perspective, and then from a more experiential perspective, they are testing their interests and their curiosities through internships, job shadows, passion projects, even through their experiences or design labs. That they're in doing a lot of goal setting, a lot of reflection, and they're paired with a mentor that kind of walks through that with them. We have a number of wayfinding activities that they engage in as well to kind of help elicit like that sense of like introspection and reflection.
Speaker 1:That is like, say, day in a life, every day is different at One Stone. Those are the core elements of the program. There's a lot more granularity to it as well, like, for example, today and tomorrow are do good days, and those are two days in April where we just stop everything we're doing and we get engaged in community projects. This year we're hearing from a guest speaker who's going to talk about a topic that's important to them and they just really engage with the community, kind of in this effort to like give back and to do good. So we will, we will disrupt normal programming to do really cool things like that as well, that are just like fundamental cultural pieces where there's like tremendous growth that happens like in a short amount of time that we're not trying to like assess or capture or whatever, just letting them grow and, you know, watching them change as young learners and humans.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so when do you like, evaluate, assess and compare them to each other?
Speaker 1:Well, we don't compare them to each other.
Speaker 2:Hopefully you get my jest there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we don't compare them to each other. We assess them on their skills and every experience that I kind of outline design lab experiences, community reads, workshops we'll have certain skills and objectives that they're focusing on whether they're durable skills or they're cognitive, you know, disciplinary skills and they will get assessed during those experiences, oftentimes alongside with the learner. And so we have a rubric that kind of spans this growth progression that we use, that looks at the student in three different areas that the context they're applying their skill, the level of agency in which they're applying their skill and learning. And the level of sophistication in which they're actually applying the skill. So they get assessed for each skill that they're working on and the experiences through those criteria, and they do that alongside the coach.
Speaker 1:So there's a lot of like self-evaluation, where students are learning how they're like kind of calibrating their ability to assess themselves, and that's when they do it, and so all of the assessments are aggregated across the curriculum. So they might have three or four things that they're doing in a semester that's really focused on critical thinking or research, or even vulnerability is one of the skills we assess. Those scores that are assessed over the semester are aggregated, so we don't look at like what can a student do in vulnerability in design lab? We look at a student's vulnerability across the curriculum and outside of the school. We're even assessing internships and passion projects and things like that, so really trying to get a holistic snapshot of the student and the 24 skills that we're working with.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Can you give me an example of like the difference between a durable skill and a cognitive skill?
Speaker 1:Yeah, certainly A durable skill is one that's like transferable across subjects, transferable across professions. It's also their skills that are, like, very helpful in relationships, so not just career focused. So, you know, wonderful example of a durable skill would be something like empathy, or creativity, or iteration, leadership, communication. These are all really important durable skills that, no matter what you're doing, you need to effectively communicate both ways. You need to be a great listener, active listener, and you need to be able to effectively articulate what you hear and what you understand. And so those are really durable skills.
Speaker 1:Thinking about transferability, understanding that they look different in different contexts, and so I've often used like empathy as an example.
Speaker 1:Like empathy and design thinking is one thing where we're really trying to understand the end user and design with the end user.
Speaker 1:But empathy might look vastly different in the medical sciences, where you're working with patients, you're working with families who are concerned, you know, in the medical sciences, where you're working with patients, you're working with families who are concerned. You know working with a patient who's maybe also navigating, you know, the world of finances and insurance, or just the fact that they're dealing with a health issue, and so understanding how to use empathy in your particular field of study. So understanding like our students are really good at like identifying the ways in which the durable skills are utilized and applied differently across fields, whereas more cognitive or disciplinary skills are focused on things like research and writing, mathematics, the sciences, and there's still a lot of creativity can be involved in those. A lot of durable skills are used in those, but you know there are mechanics to writing and they do apply across fields. However, you know writing is far more focused on a disciplinary use as opposed to like a personal, professional use.
Speaker 2:Okay, interesting, and you guys have like a system like a, like software that tracks this, don't you?
Speaker 1:We do? Yeah, we have. It's in beta, it's being tested. We've got nine partner schools across the country that are using it, schools that are in K through 12. It basically allows schools to measure and track the skills that they're teaching and coaching across the curriculum and even, like I said, outside of the curriculum or outside of the school, and it allows them to develop what we call the growth transcript, which is our kind of our visual, with that growth progression that updates in real time as assessments are our input.
Speaker 2:That's awesome Talk to me about like these kids transitioning into college and the workforce. Like, what does that look like? How do you call it? Like, say, I'm a college and I get a growth transcript instead of like like, instead of a like letter grades and an ACT score. Like, what is what is like? That bridge look like?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so when, when kids are applying to college, they're asked for their GPA and unless they've gone to a public school for like a year or two and then joined us but they've been with us for all four years, they put in a 0.0 for their GPA, which is really nerve wracking for a student because they don't have a GPA. And we upload the growth transcript as well as what we call an experience tracker. It kind of like it's like a credit transcript. It outlines all of the different projects and courses and what have you that students have done in their four years at OneStone. So schools will get those two pieces of you know, support to see what a student can do. They obviously get letters of recommendation and you know the same thing that all other students in the US get, and we have a very well-articulated school profile that schools are able to learn about our program and learn about the skills and the ways in which, like the context in which our kids are applying these skills.
Speaker 1:In a lot of ways colleges are getting or in many, many, many ways colleges are getting a lot more information about our students than they are about a traditional public school kid or even traditional private school kid where they're getting letter grades and symbols in courses.
Speaker 1:These schools are getting assessments and a growth transcript on a student's vulnerability and level of empathy, plus mathematical application and research and writing. And so you know, that's the game on for students. They can really. This thing really shows the portrait of the learner and what they can do, and we work really closely with colleges so that they can understand how to read this and interpret it, how to understand the context in which kids are coming from. And you know, we've the growth transcript that we've been using has been accepted by about 190 plus colleges, colleges and universities across the country. We have found schools that originally said, no, we won't take this to like now being very open and accepting our students, and so it's taken a little bit of time to, like you know, not win people over but to really kind of put more fish in the pond so they're feeling comfortable with it. But as they see that list grow, colleges are becoming more and more comfortable with accepting these kind of innovative transcripts, and so that's the work we put into it.
Speaker 2:I love that. Do they still take the ACT? Like SAT, does it matter? Some do, some students do, some don't. Okay, and like, when you have maybe a kid coming in and he is going to apply to a college that's never accepted the growth transcript before, do you guys like call the college and be like, hey, just FYI, this is going to be weird. Will you like reach out to them and educate them?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, we do a lot of it's very hands-on.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Very high touch Our college counselor, lisa Fisher. She's amazing and she does an amazing job communicating with colleges and then developing the relationship with them. The thing about college admissions is a lot of those college admissions officers that receive transcripts are very young and there's a very high turnover rate. They're doing it for a year or two and they're moving on. So you're going to like a well-established private liberal arts school. Oftentimes you know you might have a transcript reader who's only been doing it for a couple of weeks and they're just going to be there for that season, and so it does.
Speaker 1:It does require a very high touch process and it does require, like a college counselor who really knows the admissions process and knows the admissions officers so that they can reach out. But yeah, that's what we do and we invest in that. We also help students identify like career. If they want to pursue a career, what are the technical degrees or certificates that they need? You know what if they don't want to pursue college, like, how do they go find a job and do they need additional training or what is it to be successful? And so that's part of our college and career training as well.
Speaker 2:Do you ever have kids who want to do like dual enrollment during their One Stone time?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we unbundle everything. So kids are welcome to attend the local university, which is like literally right across the river from us. They attend the community college here in the Treasure Valley. They also like we've had students who have attended like zero hour at the local high school for whatever reason it is. We also will bring in experts in fields that we don't have expertise in.
Speaker 1:So we had a student who really it was important for him to learn Farsi. His mom was Iranian and that was something that he wanted. The local public school didn't offer it and we didn't have anyone on staff that spoke Farsi. But you know, he said give us a couple of weeks, we will find somebody. And sure enough, we found a tutor that came in and worked with them one-on-one. We've done the same thing with all of our world languages Japanese, korean, spanish, german again focusing on what the students need. We're not just like hey, we've got Spanish, french, pick one, but you have to take it. We want to know, like hey, what do you want to learn? And give us some time, we will find the expertise for that.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Have you gotten any opposition to like trying to put this forward in the world? Like I don't know, as an independent, like private school, like you probably don't have to fight a lot of those battles, you can just exist. But just curious if there are any naysayers out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean they're naysayers for sure, right, I mean they're like I don't think we're as threatening as we once were when we started to the public system, but they were really worried that we're going to take kids out of seats. So that was a big thing. So that was a big thing. We had to rethink our relationship with public schools. Where before it was easy to come into public schools and really kind of market and advertise our after school program, which is like super powerful for the public school kids, they started closing the doors to us, which was really sad because they were stealing opportunities, robbing their students of opportunities to engage with us and the after school. So anyway, so like stuff like that. And then, you know, in the world of funding, funders love to, you know, fund things that are scalable. They love to fund things that have a lot of data to back them, and early on it was like it was really hard. We didn't have data and so really developing data, capturing the learning stories of our students, has been really important.
Speaker 2:You have a documentary about One Stone, yeah it's called Rise, rise. It's so good, yeah, if anyone wants to learn more about One Stone, that's a great place to start. Right, fantastic, what do you think? What's? I'm curious like what's next for One Stone, what's like on your horizon. Then, like sub question what do you think? We'll just answer that. I'll ask you the sub question after what's?
Speaker 1:next for OneStone. What's next is what we're working on now and that's like can this model fit into other models across the country? So right now we're partnering with nine schools across the country public, private, charter. We've got a micro school or two and we're working with them to see like can this fit? What kind of training do they need? What does it look like? What's the uh, what's the systems that they need to deconstruct and rebuild?
Speaker 1:but that's kind of what we've been working on other than you know making sure that we're like really sticking true to providing a quality experience at the lab school, um, and so we're kind of growing our tentacles a little bit.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. I'm curious, as you're pushing into the public charter world, if you're, if there's questions about like, when do you guarantee that all of these kids have been exposed to the 10th grade standards? Like, are we still going to give them letter grades, you know, like, what's that been like?
Speaker 1:Challenge.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, I think it's really easy to teach the standards in what we're doing and the way that we do it, but I think traditionally trained educators struggle to see doing things in different ways than the one way they've been trained. So it's a challenge. I think the mindset of the teacher is probably the biggest challenge for us. School leaders typically are very open to like, hey, what types of things do we need to change? However, they always have their little oh, but you can't change the schedule. You know, oh, but we have to do this.
Speaker 1:And so helping them, like helping school leaders understand, like, how do you lead systems change? How do you lead it in a way that doesn't fully disrupt and alienate your teachers but brings them in? Because this is, you know, it's a fearful place to be a teacher that's been trained a certain way and has done something a certain way for 10 years, and then having the rug pulled out from underneath you, being told, hey, you know what, next year we're not doing grades and this is what we're going to do, don't recommend that approach. And so our partner schools do it and they're just like, no, we're all in. And so we really just try to navigate the waters with them and you know, I think being very thoughtful and design is super important of education looks like.
Speaker 2:It's like I mean, you can just answer that, but you're kind of already walking around it. Yeah, just take that one. What do you think? Not just like one iteration of One Stone, but like for 55 million kids.
Speaker 1:I don't know what the future looks like, definitely can't predict.
Speaker 2:I was really banking on you. Knowing this Chad, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1:I mean, if the last 150 years was an indicator of the future of education, is probably going to look very similar to what it is today. Not to be totally pessimistic or cynical, I do hear a lot about the impact that AI is going to have on learning. I do hear a lot about the quest for the ultimate LMS and these kind of like technology driven solutions, where I think and this is just me going back to what kids need are powerful adult relationships in their lives, powerful peer relationships in their lives and really understanding what it means to be human, and so I don't think an LMS delivers that. Understanding what it means to be human and so I don't think an LMS delivers that. I don't think AI has the ability to offer that. It does have the ability to take some of the busy work out of it.
Speaker 1:An LMS allows us to be more organized, but I think a lot of schools are looking for that like really cool AI LMS thing so that they can revolutionize their program, and it's like no, we need to radically change the mindset of those in the building, and so it starts with the humans, the human-centered design part, and then we can go from there. And so if I start hearing those conversations and I hear them in pockets from time to time. But you know massive conferences on that. You know typically we're focusing on things like technology or competencies. I love, like social emotional skills are powerful, but like really more human centered things, I think.
Speaker 1:I would say, hey, it's like a rosier outlook because that's the direction we're going. So I get I get a little concerned about technology solving our problems yeah, where we need to solve our own problems first.
Speaker 2:I agree with that. So the beliefs of the people in the building so vital. Those beliefs start getting laid down initially as we come through the system right, but then also in like teacher education. So that's one of the areas I'm excited to maybe see some innovation in soon is like I don't just have a teaching certificate, but I like chose to specialize in like Socratic practice or like you know, like like there's lots of different types of teachers that really go deep into different methodologies, instead of just like I have this certificate and can teach in a public school right, because then I think we'll get a body of teachers who will like demand better.
Speaker 2:They will not be satisfied and I mean it will take time, right. People just need to retire out of the system and eventually, if we're pumping the system full of people with different, you know, like a different goal, rather than like move kids through curriculum schedule, make them be quiet in desks. So my job as a teacher is easy. I'm not saying that all teachers are like that, by any means. There are amazing teachers in our school system.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:But just broadly like the belief system kind of has to shift from the teacher's perspective, the admin perspective and also legislatively. And I think we're starting to see that in the school choice movement, where we're giving back a lot of the power to parents to be able to be the arbiter of what is good. It's like, oh, this is good for my child and I'm going to like vote with my feet a little bit. I think that's a good, that's going to help make the shift that needs to happen. But a lot of factors, a lot of stakeholders, lots of things, lots of problems to solve. So exciting times.
Speaker 1:You know as much as I kind of ended there on a cynical note, I mean, I do think that there are, like you mentioned, some amazing people, amazing leaders out there who are really grappling with the fact that, like that first mindset change of, like the student is the end user, not the product, yeah, like. Like the student is the end user, not the product, yeah, Like like questioning what is the purpose of education. And I think we are having that conversation which I think is like so meaningful.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So you know, in that sense, in that regard, it's very optimistic.
Speaker 2:For sure, for sure. Ok, this last two questions, this first question, something we ask all of our guests. The whole point of the Kindle podcast is to help inspire us as grownups to become the kind of people who can influence and inspire, kind of kindle the curiosity and motivation of the next generation. So who is someone that did that for you and helped, kind of like, make you who you were? Someone who saw you for you, believed in you who is that for you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a lot of. I've worked with a lot of amazing people in the professional realm. My very first kind of supervisor, school leader this guy named Nigel Whittington, who's a middle school director the year that I worked the sabbatical position and teaching middle school social science and Spanish language, he really just had a profound impact on my understanding of teaching and learning. And his very first observation of me came in the classroom and he watched and whatever. And then you know kind of did the 45 minute post observation wrap up how to go. And he's like, first off, like love what you're doing, super cool, and kids all seem that funny and great, great handle the class and like thinking this is great stuff. Um, and then he asked that so what, why are you teaching this? And like like I thought that was the silliest question ever. I'm like because that's what the guy who's out on sabbatical left me and this is like you hired me to teach this stuff.
Speaker 1:And and that did not suffice. He was like that's why you're teaching it. Is that really like, is what you're doing important for the kids? How are they going to use this?
Speaker 1:And I remember being so frustrated, like walking away from that conversation like oh my God, you know what is he trying to do, you know, and and so frustrated and really a couple of days of like I was young kicking it around. I'd never questioned the role of the way we do things and what we do and why we do it. And he got me to really question what I was doing and why I was doing it and it empowered me to really start with why and be able to throw everything that was left behind for me out the window and meet the kids where they were and make learning meaningful and relevant. Even though I wasn't talking about it that way, but it really just kind of struck a foundational chord in me that from that day on, I was like if a kid ever asked why are we doing this, I'm going to have like an answer that's important to them.
Speaker 2:I love that. Okay, and last question, just to wrap up how can people learn more about OneStone, your work? If they want to learn more, where do they go?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. Just starting on our website, onestoneorg there's a great place. We have lots of stories of impact on there. There's a couple of seven-minute documentary shorts, a PBS one, one by Freethink and Stand Together Great stuff just to learn about aspects of our model. We also have various different offerings and trainings that we offer, um, and so you could reach out to me or just through our website, finding our trainings and like wayfinding mentorship. But I would start with our, our website, um, and then I'm. I'm always open to getting on kind of what we call discovery calls and just talking, but what is it you're trying to do? How can we help, or can I point you? You in a different direction, and my email is chad at one stone dot org. But yeah, we're, we try to get as much as we can on the website. So there's a lot on there. I would start there.
Speaker 2:Perfect. Thank you so much for your time today. I've so enjoyed our conversation.
Speaker 1:Likewise, Katie. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:The Kindled podcast is brought to you by Prenda. Prenda makes it easy to start and run an amazing micro school based on all the ideas we talk about here on the Kindled podcast. Don't forget to follow us on social media at Prenda Learn, and if you'd like more information about starting a micro school, just go to Prendacom. Thanks for listening and remember to keep kindling.
