Bridging the Gap Between Big Data and Student Stories with Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan

Executive Functioning Guide: drkarendudekbrannan.com/efschools
7-Day Course: drkarendudekbrannan.com/schoolleaders 
Karen’s Podcast: defactoleaders.com

In this episode, I interview Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan, a speech pathologist with a wide range of experience in education, from one-on-one student evaluations to designing state-level data systems. The conversation centers on the challenge of balancing large-scale data with the individual stories of students, particularly for difficult-to-measure skills like executive functioning. We discuss why many people are skeptical of data in education, often due to its historical misuse for punitive accountability rather than for growth and support. The conversation highlights the difference between "data-driven" and "data-informed" approaches, emphasizing that data should serve as a starting point to ask questions, not a final verdict. We also explore how to build a culture of trust and collaboration around data, especially when implementing new systems and protocols.

Learn more about Karen Dudek-Brannan at drkarenspeech.com, drkarendudekbrannan.com

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Connect with Karen Dudek-Brannan
Email: drkarenspeech@gmail.com
X: @drkaren2014
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-dudek-brannan/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drkarenspeech
Podcast: defactoleaders.com

Connect with Jessica 
Email: jess@data-informedimpact.com 
X: @informedimpact
Instagram: @informedimpact 
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/informedimpact 

Transcript

Jessica Lane 0:50

Welcome to Data and Education. Today I'm talking with Dr. Karen AK Brennan, whose career has taken her from one-on-one student evaluations all the way to designing state level data systems. We're diving into a huge topic, how to balance the big data schools rely on with the individual stories of our students, especially for those tricky to measure skills like executive function. One of my favorite things to talk about. We'll also tackle why so many people are skeptical of data and how we can build a culture of trust instead of fear. This is all about bridging the gap between the numbers and the real narratives. Welcome, Karen.

Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan 1:22

Thank you for having me.

Jessica Lane 1:24

Yeah. I'm so excited. So I, I gave a very brief, um, overview of your background, but I'd love for you to tell me just a bit more. Um, give me, give me your, your full story.

Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan 1:35

My full story. Okay. Um, so I'll try to, I'll give the, uh, the Cliff notes version of this. So I started off as a speech pathologist. I was in that role for, uh, about 14 years. Was doing lots of other things on the side at the same time, a little bit of. Adult rehab, um, was working on my doctorate in special ed, was doing some adjunct teaching. Um, so I was doing that for a while. Thought I wanted to do higher ed or school administration, which, um, so I was, when I, when I was close to the end of my doctoral program, I did start looking into opportunities in, you know, special ed director, special ed coordinator, and also higher ed, but then also was kind of. You know, dabbling with this idea of self-employment and, um, was thinking about private practice, just kind of figuring out what I wanted to do. And I had all of this information from my doctoral work that was just kind of sitting there and, you know, academic publishing takes a really long time, uh, when, when I thought maybe it's. Maybe higher ed is not where I'm gonna go. I thought, is there another way that I can share my work and all of this work I have sitting here. So what I ended up doing was putting that into a course and creating a suite of courses designed originally for SLPs, really in the language therapy area.'cause that's a, an area that is a challenge for a lot of speech pathologists because language and literacy is so huge and it. Kind of difficult to figure out what our role is in the school systems. And that was always a challenge for me. That was what my doctoral work centered around that and just all of the cognitive aspects that impact kids when they're going through their school age years. So that took me to, let's see, around 2015. So I was still in the schools. I was doing a million different things. Um, and then I. Decided to, um, to start a business, and that's when I started to put my online programs together. So I started with a suite of courses for speech pathologists, really around the language and literacy. Um, there's a lot of executive functioning work embedded into that framework, but then I, let's see. A few years ago started to talk more specifically about executive functioning and also created a suite of programs around that, but with executive functioning, um, it was not, you know, it's not just something that SLPs. Uh, can work on. It's like it really, so many different professionals work on executive functioning. If you work with kids, if you work with humans, you're working on executive functioning. So, uh, that suite of programs is really more focused. Originally was around those related service providers, but I've expanded it to make it relevant to school leaders as well.'cause I think it's something that really should be embedded in a lot of the, uh, leadership initiatives. Um, and then also I work for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services as a product manager. Um, helping, so I work in the area of prevention and we are building a new caseload management system for the state of Illinois that, uh, helps connect families with services. So yeah, lots of things and, and so all things data, um, and I know you probably have lots of questions about Yeah. All things today.

Jessica Lane 5:04

Yeah, that's such a, a wide spectrum of experience and I'm, uh, I'm really curious how, how you've used data in those different roles, um, and also how, how it, uh, whether or not it was a part of your research and, and what kind of data you looked at for that as well. Um, so yeah, why don't we start at the beginning.

Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan 5:29

Mm-hmm.

Jessica Lane 5:29

Yeah. Your first role and how you had data there, how you,

Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan 5:32

it there. That sounds good. And I think that, um, I felt like I was defending the data a lot in my role, which is not a part of it was'cause I, because I was working on my doctorate at the time. It was around the time when. We were, you know, mostly, like when we did special education eligibility, it was mostly around the discrepancy model. So where it's like, oh, we have to wait and like do this, you know, this evaluation and the standard scores have to show a discrepancy between, you know, and there's all kinds of things, um, about the, uh. Validity of using things like cognitive referencing, like saying, this student, their cognitive skills are, um, or they're, they're, where they're performing is discrepant from their cognitive skills. So all kinds of, all kinds of issues with that model, you know, partly because of course cognition and learning are going to be look commensurate, so. Right. Um, so obviously there were all kinds of issues with that and so. I was on the team in my district that would, would get those referrals for students when we were figuring out what does RTI mean for our district. If we aren't going to solely rely on these, these, uh, standard diagnostic assessments, if we're also going to use data and things like progress monitoring and, and deliver these tier two interventions. And that was also, again, I was, I was in my doctoral program and so we used a lot, um, AIMS web was the tool that we used specifically. Yeah. But I, I found that a lot of the, there was a lot of skepticism where it was like, you know, oh, this student's reading fluency is, is low. So, you know, they needed an intervention and a lot of times the teachers would be like, well, this doesn't make sense like this. This score for this student doesn't make sense. They were having a bad day. They shouldn't be an intervention. They do fine in the classroom, like on all these other assessments, so, well, the test must not be very good and so there was a lot of skepticism around these numbers while at the same time I was in my doctoral program looking at like how, like how do you decide. Uh, like what the reading benchmark assessments should be. Why do we use letter naming fluency and all of those types of things. And so, um. I, I found that sometimes people would have a bad experience with data and then be like, well, it's all, you know, it all doesn't work. And it's like, well, that's not, those screenings weren't intended to be diagnostic. So I would say the first thing was like that you have to help people understand what you can and can't do with data, and set those expectations and almost kind of ease people's minds. Um, yeah, that like a screening, uh, like a district wide screening is to identify partially, I know obviously it's systems data, um, as well, like how is the system doing? Are we, do we have too many students who need interventions and does that mean that we may be, need to look at our tier one curriculum? So evaluating the system, but then also, um, you know, letting people know that and, and actually doing this in practice, which is challenging as well. That, that, that we're not only going to look at this data that like when we're looking at something that's a screening. And that's supposed to kind of flag students, that that's all it is, is like, hey, like, look over here, something's going on. That's, that's not the decision. That is the, Hey, we need to look over here and make a decision. So for that example, I gave, maybe you find a student that didn't do well on an assessment, um, or this, uh, screening tool, um, when we did these district-wide screenings, and then the teacher says, you know what? Like we're, we've looked into this. And that doesn't mean the decision does not mean that the student needs to be in intervention. If I have all this other data, all this, these other pieces of information that show that, you know, maybe this one thing over here, this one data point, um, isn't gonna be our sole decision making point. And so I see people skeptical of, of the data from that standpoint. And um, and I think it was just about like getting people to understand what. Like what these things mean, how do we make these decisions? Um, yeah. And I guess, um, yeah, so I guess that was, that was something that I experienced as well because, and I understand the skepticism because some people do think, they do use things like a diagnostic. Assessment or use one data point to make a decision. And so that's why I do understand what, why people are like, no, no, no, no, we're not gonna use this. Uh, you know,'cause they had this bad experience with where somebody was misusing it. Um, yes. So,

Jessica Lane 10:32

yeah, I agree. And, and that happens so often. I, I mean, obviously I, that's one of the main things that I talk about is, is the fact that it's been so, data's been so misused and, um, and, uh, we've. We, when we first started collecting a ton of data, we relied solely on that data and, and we were so narrow focused and, um, in our decision making, um, you know, just, and this. This also like leads me to the, the whole idea of like data-driven versus data informed and why I've kind of backed off of that data driven mm-hmm. Into more of that data informed. Yeah. Um, not because I'm picky about words and stuff, but because there's meaning behind those two words. And I think, um, it brings up a great conversation about the fact that, you know, that data doesn't tell the whole story.

Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan 11:25

Yeah. Um,

Jessica Lane 11:26

we're not, we're not letting data drive, we're letting data inform our decisions. At the end of the day. Maybe there's additional context that we need to bring in. Maybe there are additional data points that we need to bring in. Mm-hmm. Um, but, uh, we are not, um, not just just running with that data and, uh, pretending like it tells the whole story because it obviously does not.

Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan 11:49

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, and I think that like, where I get, I feel a little defensive sometimes. I'll be honest, when, and probably I need to spend less time on social media where people are like, oh, it's all about the test scores. That's all schools care about. You know, blah, blah, blah, teaching to the test, all this stuff. And, um, and the one, obviously the area that's on my literacy would be, would be the reading interventions. But I, uh. I've been paying attention to math as well because I think, you know, math teachers are kind of like, Hey, what about us? There's all this attention on reading, which is great, but some of the things that are. Assessed. People are skeptical of them. But again, being a person who was like, okay, what, how did we decide that these measures were meaningful? And they're like, again, just knowing all of the work that went behind certain metrics. Again, when they're used the right way, when they're used to flag students and as one piece of information and this robust portfolio of information that we have about. A student, when you're looking at individual students, um, then they are very powerful. They do, um, do what they're supposed to do. I think what people didn't realize about how something like district benchmark assessing was supposed to work is that it it's about, it's a data point because it has to be efficient. Like how? How would it be possible to do a full diagnostic assessment on every student? We would literally be testing all day, all year, every year. It's not possible. So we do need these short data points to be like, Hey, look over here. Pay attention to this. This school, this, uh, group of this class, this student, it's, you know, with certain data points, it's just supposed to just get our attention and, and get us to take some kind of action or like trigger us to make a decision and look further into something, not, not make a rash decision just based on one thing.

Jessica Lane 14:03

Yeah. Um, you took the words right outta my mouth. I was gonna say, you know, it, it's just a flag to, to, um, to kind of highlight something that we need to look into further and Yeah. Um, and you know, we, I find that it's, it's helpful to think of it as, as the starting point. Mm-hmm. Not the ending point. Yeah. Um, because yeah, I like that. Yeah, because it's, it's, um, like you said, it's that flag and then it, you start from there and then you, you start asking the right questions and eventually you get to some kind of, um, you pull some kind of value from that data regardless of whether or not it shows the whole story. There's some kind of value. Mm-hmm. And, and looking a little bit deeper into it. Deeper.

Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan 14:46

Yeah, absolutely.

Jessica Lane 14:49

Yeah. So, um. What about as you move on, what, what was the, so we've talked a lot about using it in terms of, um, classroom state assessments. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Um, let's talk a little bit more about your research then.

Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan 15:06

Yeah, so what my, my area of research was, um, so I guess my, my dissertation topic and then where I, where that led to a lot of the, the programs that I've developed since then was around building vocabulary and metacognition. Um, and. The, um, some of the things that I had to do for, for my dissertation research was figure out how do I take this very abstract concept of vocabulary and, uh, define it in a way that I can measure it for in a meaningful way to see if you do this intervention. Does it make a difference? So informing practice, but also, um, I, I think that sometimes when you're, when you're thinking about training staff and, and when you have to train staff to do some kind of a strategy, that maybe is something that a therapist would do that maybe you wanted. Take this intervention that could be relevant to a group of students who need specialized services and then scale it to, uh, a teacher or other, you know, group of, of professionals. You also have to be able to define what you're doing. And I find a lot with the, uh, interventionists, the clinicians, the data and the defining the intervention go together because a lot of times what they're really stressed about when it comes to. Both language and executive functioning, which are very challenging to assess and understand in a way that gives you hard numbers and is meaningful and all of those things. Um. That a lot of times what I tell them is actually start with your intervention. And that's really what I had to do because I had to define, like, like for example, what I was doing was I was using this tool, um, the, the specific name brand product that I was using for my dissertation research was called the expanding Expression tool. But what speech pathologists refer to it as is semantic feature analysis where you're using like. Self-questioning to define and describe attributes of words, like what's the category, what's its function, what do you do with it? All of those things. And then you can essentially use that protocol to like come up with data points. So what I had to do was figure out like. How do you measure if they said, uh, a certain number of attributes about a word to indicate that they have more robust vocabulary knowledge? How do you come up with a number to determine the, um, both the quantity and the quality of the attributes they're describing? So I actually had to use. Um, or what I did was look at some of the standardized tools that were out there for some of the diagnostic language assessments that we have, and then created this protocol. And what that did was allow me to do my data collection for my dissertation, but it also is the protocol that I used to train the teachers that delivered the vocabulary intervention. And then it's also what I use to train a graduate assistant to do implementation fidelity. To see if those, um, teachers were actually doing the features of the intervention, um, correctly. So on a very, like, I, I feel like that it starts micro where you're defining what you're doing. You're coming up with a way to measure it, both for, uh, is this interve? Like what is this intervention? Um, and then are the students making progress? But also can we scale this intervention and see if somebody else can do it, and are they doing it to Fidelity? So there were. Multiple pieces there. And this I was doing for the purpose of my dissertation to see like, is this an effective vocabulary technique that we could use that, uh, you know, could be useful for a clinician or a classroom or however we, you know, want to apply it. But also it's something when I'm, uh, coaching and working with clinicians on, um, trying to get a language intervention or an executive functioning intervention. More practiced in their school beyond what they're doing in their therapy technique, um, or their, their therapy room. I use this concept as well because if you can do this, what I just described at a micro level, then you could scale that across multiple teams. And so there's lots of data collection opportunities, um, woven into it, but also it's about the training, the implementation, and defining what best practices are.

Jessica Lane 19:47

Yeah. Oh my goodness. That's fascinating. Um, and, uh, I, I don't blame you for wanting to take that and make it into something more because there's so much there and so much that can be so valuable, um, beyond the dissertation, so. Mm-hmm. Um, so you then took that information and, and translated it into a course. Um. For, uh, SLPs, right? Yep. Mm-hmm. Yep. And then the, the next course then was the executive functioning course. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about the executive functioning and mm-hmm. How, how you use data in, in that circumstance.

Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan 20:28

Yeah. So, and yeah, exactly like you said, um, that semantic feature analysis technique is something that I teach to my SLPs. Obviously, it's not. Like, lots of other people could use it as well. Parents could use it, right? Teachers could use it. All, all of those things. But with executive functioning, um, what I, what I talk, so obviously there's, there's strategies for teaching executive functioning. There are things that you can do both in a, um, small group intensive setting to kind of prepare kids and help, help them get better at strategic planning and self-awareness and all those things. And then also things that. Like people in less structured environments or like classrooms, parents, you know, things that you can be doing that need to be embedded across the board. So there's, there's all those types of things that I talk about in the executive functioning program, but where people tend to get stuck, like clinicians, interventionists, who are very good at that micro level. How do I intuitively make decisions on the spot based on like. It's not that they're not using data, but like you have to think, take in all this information about nonverbal cues and, you know, how is my client responding and, and all of those types of things that are sometimes hard to define. And I, I find that a lot of times it's, it's. It, it's not that it's difficult for them, not that they can't do it, it's just that their brains aren't, they're not thinking in that context of like, how do I define this? And to explain it to somebody else. And that's, I would say, one of the biggest shifts or, or things that I really like to, that I, that I think is a very important shift for somebody in that role, like the direct provider role to make, if they do want to be seen as, as a leader. And so there's. With executive functioning because you like, you can't effectively address it by just doing the, what clinicians refer to as the pullout model where you pull the student out of the room. You really have to be doing that coaching. So I do focus on the direct, what do you do with the student in front of you? But I also focus on all of those things that I just described with my dissertation for how do you define what you're doing? How do you take this protocol that you've developed and you know really well. And define it and document and figure out how to scale it. And then figure out how to do kind of your, your mini pilot and create this little, like this asset that you have that you can then share with other people. And in order to do all of those things, in order to do a pilot, you have to define what you're doing. So you can say. This worked with this small group of people. Me, like I'm the SLPI teamed up with my, you know, the psychologist and the special ed teacher, and we created this thing that worked really well for our students, and now we wanna share it with the fourth grade teachers that get it done in their classroom. Well, you need, you need data to do that. So you need to be able to define what you're doing and come up with those protocols, um, so that you can kind of, I would say what you might refer to as formative assessment or. Um, some kind of a non-standardized, but maybe a hybrid, qualitative, quantitative tool that you can use to go to your administration or your colleagues and say like, Hey, this, we did this thing over here. It worked really well, and we'd like to show it to you because of. You know, you've been mentioning that you've been having X, Y, Z challenges. We think this would really help with that. So those types of things are, uh, I address that in the executive functioning program as well, because people will get stuck with the implementation and the effectiveness of, they're just focusing on like something that's more siloed.

Jessica Lane 24:20

Yeah. Oh my goodness. I love that so much. Especially as, um, as someone who's worked a lot with, um, MTSS in the past mm-hmm. And, and has struggled to, um, to kind of like conceptualize what that means in terms of behavior. Mm-hmm. How to. Take what we know, um, works for one student or a small group of students and make it more of like a tier one intervention. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Or strategy across multiple classrooms. Um, and I, I found that, that, um, shockingly that has come out the most and my work with secondary schools Interesting. Um, and determining how to, um. How to create, how to work on strategies that are relevant to the grade as a whole or the, yeah, the school as a whole, because the content is so specific to the class.

Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan 25:24

Yeah.

Jessica Lane 25:25

Um, so it's very, very difficult to work on content related strategies or academic strategies because, you know, if we're looking, um, at math, like there's algebra and geometry, those are very different subject matters. So, um, so what is it that we can work on that's going to be beneficial to those students in all of those classes?

Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan 25:46

Yeah.

Jessica Lane 25:47

Yeah. So, uh, it's, it's so, I'm so fascinated by everything executive functioning and the work that goes behind that and how to, how to teach that, um, is mm-hmm. Is, uh, there's a big gap in that in education. Yeah.

Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan 26:05

Agreed.

Jessica Lane 26:06

Yeah. So it's so valuable. Yeah. Um, but, so as we think about, uh, okay, so we've talked about your previous positions and, and your, and how you use data in your dissertation in the courses. So in your position now, how are you using data, um, if at all, or it, does it have a place in, in your position right now?

Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan 26:27

Um, yeah, absolutely. So, um, so I'm a product manager for, for DCFS and so. This is, it's a new, a new position at DCFS. Um, it's like, it's more of, it's definitely not a social work, a social work term. It's like an IT term. Um, but um, but yeah, so what I do, uh, really is serve as the liaison between the social work side and the IT side to make sure that. The programs that the IT professionals are building.'cause that's, that's my whole team to make sure that it's gonna meet the needs of, of what the, what the social work side needs. Um, so, um, shockingly you'll find that sometimes social workers and IT professionals. Have a difficult time communicating with each other because they have completely different terminology that they use a lot of acronyms, uh, in both places. You could say the same thing about special ed, but, but yeah, part of my role is. Uh, you know, really, um, helping them design both their, there's the caseload management system, but also when you're creating the caseload management system for really anything. This could apply for education as well. And you're figuring out what fields do we need for our reports, what kind of descriptions and, you know, narrative descriptions are we putting in here. What, what fields are we entering in information and which ones are dropdowns and which ones are check boxes and which ones are open fields and what, what are the fields and how does this form populate into this form? Because we have a lot of forms that we have to fill out. So when you're thinking about all of those things, um, you also have to be thinking about reporting in your mind because if you design something and you say, okay, you know what, like. Like this is just gonna be an open narrative field, and then you wanna pull specific data points into a report so you can see what's going on statewide. Well, if that's, all of that is buried in case notes based on the capabilities that we have right now, it's very difficult to tell when certain things happened. And I would say that. The biggest thing or like the biggest need, and I would, this, I would, would apply to education as well. I would say any kind of, uh, social service, public service agency where, you know, we're using funding to deliver services to the public and we wanna be able to capture what we did. And, and so I'd, I'd say that that's the biggest thing is like. How do we enable the people who are doing this work in the field to have, have the tools and the resources available to them that they can stay compliant and like remember what their protocols are because. Your, your caseload management system can be scaffolding for the workers. Like what questions do I have to ask? What, what things do I need to remember to fill out for my, uh, you know, this family that I'm serving? Well, if you have this in a paper checklist or something like that and you have to go in paper files versus you've got like a digitized system that can kind of guide you through it. Well, that's gonna be a very different experience for you. But then on the flip side of, okay, like I was out working with the family and like things happened, they, you know, shared information with me and we have to document this progress. We delivered this service and then, you know, we're gonna, you know, get reimbursed for this service so that we can do more services and all the different things that need to happen. We, again, you have to capture. What you did. And so there's, there's all kinds of decisions that, that go into that with just both capturing the narrative, very descriptive things that you might need to do when you're out, like working with humans, but then also trying to do it in a way that also allows you, like these people in these leadership positions to look at a bird's eye view at a state level and figure out like. Hey, across the entire state of Illinois, here's this pocket where this certain event is happening more often than others. Like, we need to go over here and figure out what's happening. Like, do we need to do some additional training or is there a team that's like, you know, performing really well and we wanna see what's working well and like, you know, use that as, as an opportunity. So, uh, those are a lot of the conversations that we have.

Jessica Lane 31:09

Yeah. That's so interesting. Um, and, uh, I, I'm curious, when, when did they, was it recent or, um, was it before you came on board that they switched from doing just like paper, pencil to a more digitized system?

Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan 31:27

Um, so there's it, um, I mean, at the, there's some systems that are being used now, like, so there's a, there are digitized things, um, but the system is, you know, it, you know, it's out of date. Um, I would say it's. It's very sturdy for what it is. But again, it's, it's been there a long time and there's like multiple systems that work together that don't sync up the right way. And so when you're like, this system's supposed to sync with this person, here's the start date of this, you know, event. And it says it's different over here because, uh. You know, it didn't get entered at the same time because you've, you've got like somebody in this office over here doing something and somebody in this office over here and like, you know, all those kinds of things. But there's still a lot of things, a lot of, like a program got added and they weren't, like, it's a new program, they're not in the system, so they have to do certain things by paper. So I would say it's a work in progress and it will continue to be a work in progress, but, um, we're, we're trying to get as many. Like as many parts of the system updated as possible. Um, I guarantee you like there will still be people doing certain things on paper and, uh. I mean, sometimes that just, it just happens. But, but yeah. Yeah. It's, that is, I would say that's the biggest shift that, that I had to make from doing something, doing things by myself as a small lean team, which you feel like, oh, I'm, I'm so small. I don't have a lot of resources. If I go to a bigger organization, I'll have resources. And sometimes, sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. But also it's like. You know, steering the Titanic versus steering a rowboat, you know, like you Yes, yes. Just getting all of those changes in place. It's just, yeah. For me, I'm like, oh my gosh. It's so like, you have so many different people that you have to tell about things or consider when you make decisions and yeah, it's. What, what's the, uh, the, the more positive way to say it is if you wanna go fast, go alone. If you wanna go far, go together. So that's the more, yes. That's the more optimistic way of looking at it, I guess.

Jessica Lane 33:46

Right, right. Um, yeah, and I can relate that to education as well when it comes to trying to, um, and we talked a little bit about this week. Mm-hmm. I was actually on Karen's podcast, um, and we had that interview yesterday. Um, and we talked about how like it's so hard for people to make decisions when they're in those silos. It, it takes that, yeah. Someone who can see the whole picture. Yeah. But then that person has to be able to get everyone to move together, which is also very challenging. So.

Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan 34:21

Oh yeah. Oh my gosh. I can think of so many things right now where I'm like, oh, I need to talk with this person, and if I wanna do this, then yeah. I, we don't have time to unpack all of that right now, but, yeah.

Jessica Lane 34:34

Right. So is, yeah. I see the, the, the parallels there. Definitely. I wanna talk just a little bit about, um, bouncing back to culture and I, we talked about, you know, uh, trying to get people from using paper to using a digital system. Yeah. Um, and how hard that changes. Um, yeah. So I'm, yeah. So I'm just like curious in your experience, um, what is. Led to the, the defensiveness. Um, we've talked about the skepticism, um, the fear or just like the, the overall like hesitation to Yeah. To do, to experience that change.

Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan 35:16

Yeah. Um,

Jessica Lane 35:17

yeah. I'm curious what you think is, is the, the driving force behind that.

Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan 35:22

There's, yeah. A lot of things I could say about this, especially about the culture, but. Um, and, and again, I've only been, I, I'm, I'm still relatively green. I guess you could consider. I've, I've been with the state since, uh, December, 2023, but there's still things where like you're interacting with someone and you're like, oh, wow, like. Oh, yeah, that's, that's a cultural thing, you know, with like, how, how things work in a big agency or a big organization. But I would say that it's, it's like you walk into a situation and, and like you're new and somebody reacts in a certain way. They get defensive or they, um, not defensive, but they, like, I'm, I'm trying to think of an example, but. I'll, so I'll, I'll use this as an example. And, um, like, so I was in a situation where I was, I was building someone for something for someone, or like proposing how we were going to build something for someone. And I knew that this, these other people were the ones that were gonna be using it or in the daily operations don't necessarily know about. What's possible from the IT side because they're just in there like trying to figure it out, trying to do their job the old way, the way that we've always done it, which is very manual in spreadsheets and, and this, this form that's attached to an email and, you know, uploaded here and, you know, CC'd to a million people in a very. You know, like this is the, this is the way that it's done now, and I am in a situation where I have to think innovatively and be like, here is a better way we can do it. I'm going to, because I'm not the one that has to be dealing with this in a day in and day out. Like I have the bandwidth over here to. Remove some of those barriers for you. Um, I come into this situation with this mindset of like, I've, here is a draft of a thing for you, and, um, this is like, what's your feedback? Help me, like poke holes in this. Like, tell me how we can make it better. Like, is this gonna work for you? You know, wanting to be more iterative. Um, and collaborative and some, like, sometimes the response that I get is kind of like, oh, okay, so this is how it is now. Like, like, uh, they, they thought that the decision was just made for them. And I think that I'm like, oh, that's a cultural thing. Yes, people are used to doing something. Come having someone come in and just like. Rip the bandaid off and have them do a completely different way or have it be a different way that they were supposed to be doing it for six months and no one told them, and now they've gotta re like, redo work. So I'm like, oh, like that, that's a cultural thing. So, um, I, I just, I don't think you can completely avoid situations like that, but you always just kind of have to like, you know, dip your toes in a little bit and read the room and, and figure, figure out like. You know, what is, what is the culture here like around data and big changes? And I would say in education sometimes it's like, you can also tell, like there's, you can tell when the leadership has been a little bit too authoritarian because then people are like, okay, I guess, I guess this is how it is now. And you're like, no, I want feedback. But then there's the other way around where maybe the leadership has been a little too permissive and hasn't set boundaries and people have been allowed to just kind of do whatever they want and then they're it. You get a like, well, this is the way I do it. This is the way it's always been done. And then they don't wanna make it a change. So like it's, yeah, it's just constantly. Reading the room, seeing what, figuring out what reaction you're gonna get. And, and I mean you can even within the same department, the same division, have teams have completely different cultures as well. Um, have different grade levels within the same district, act completely different. Um, so there's all all kinds of things there. There, yeah. There was some other skepticism things. I think in the leadership positions, you have to just be the, the one to be like. Uh, like figure out how to see where people are at and, and like establish the trust or establish the boundary.

Jessica Lane 39:57

Yes. Absolutely. And I love, um, you, you dropped two big words there. Iter, iterative, if I can say them. Yeah. Narrative and collaborative. Yeah. Um, and that's so true. And that's, you know, when I speak to leaders about rolling out new, new initiatives or new procedures for their schools, I'm constantly talking about like. Get feedback. Get feedback. Make sure that people understand that when you push this out and push it out with a small group too, at first, you know, do a little pilot run. Yes. Yeah. And, and, um, and make sure that they understand that it's not, this is the way things are right now. Mm-hmm. It's, let's try this. Let's see if it works and how we can make it work best for all of us, because there could be some reason that you need to communicate to them, um, for the change. So that's also a big part of it, is making sure that you're communicating the reason behind it. But yeah, iterative and collaborative spot on. Um, and I'd love to kind of end on that note too, because that's such a perfect note to end on. Yeah. So, um, let's talk a little bit, of course, I'll have a lot of your contact information in the show notes and I'll make sure to put links to your courses in there as well. Um, is there anything else that you want to highlight for people anywhere else that they might be able to find you? Um, if they have additional questions.

Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan 41:23

Yeah, so they can, people can connect with me on LinkedIn, people can listen to my podcast, uh, defacto leaders, and also listen to our interview with you about building trust and data culture, which will be live in July 20. 25. Um, and let's see, so yeah, that's defacto leaders.com to, to listen to defacto leaders or on all of the directories. And then if people want to learn more, let's see. I've got a couple resources for executive functioning, so I have a free guide. That just goes through the different roles of people on a school team relating to executive functioning, so people can get that guide at Dr. Karen Eck brandon.com/ef schools. And I do have a, a paid course, which is a seven day course for school leaders. Who wanna learn how, uh, this the first steps in developing an executive functioning implementation plan for their school teams. And they can learn more about that course at dr karen duda branan.com/school leaders. And when I say school leaders, I don't just mean administrators because really teachers, therapists, they can all be school leaders as well.

Jessica Lane 42:43

Yeah. Oh my goodness. I love that. And we'll make sure to include the links to all of that in the show notes as well. And just a huge thank you. This has been such a fascinating conversation and although your position now has taken you kind of out, I mean still within the world of education, but yeah, out of the schools and out of the districts, um, there's still so much parallel there and such. Yes,

Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan 43:05

absolutely.

Jessica Lane 43:06

Such a unique conversation. So, um, I appreciate you so much for coming on.

Dr. Karen Dudek-Brannan 43:11

Thank you for having me.

Jessica Lane 43:12

Yes, of course.