Ep 11: Beyond the Classroom: What Innovative Schools Can Teach Us

What if the future of education isn't coming but is already here? After spending the past year visiting some of the most innovative schools across the country, we're sharing our findings. From a microschool running on pure curiosity to a project-based powerhouse, the lessons are clear: schools can come in many versions and there is a lot to learn.

Join us for a conversation that highlights:

• What happens when you let kids decide the rules and why it works
• A tour of innovative models including VR-based learning, student-driven education, lab schools, microschools, online programs, and specialized tracks in public schools
• How schools are designing for agency first and academics second, and why that order matters
• The ideas that any school or family can borrow from these models right now

Share your questions, thoughts, or ideas with us at educationevolvedpodcast@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Education Evolved Podcast, hosted by Hakaday Head of School, Dr. Laura Leathers, and Laura Day, Director of Innovation and Collaboration at Hakaday. Together, they explore the future of education and how we make it happen.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Welcome to the Education Evolved Podcast. We are here today to talk about what's on our minds regarding education, what schools currently look like, both traditional schools and some schools that are looking more forward-looking schools and thinking about education in different ways. I'm Laura Leathers. I'm the Eugene McDermott Head of School here at Hackaday, and I am joined by my co-host.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Laura Day. Hello, everybody. Optimus 9.5. That's me.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

And we are going to spend some time today talking about the ways in which education is changing as the world around us continues to change and evolve. We see and talk a lot about technology and what technology is doing to the world and hear a lot about AI and careers and what the future is going to look like. And as a result, some schools are changing, some schools are not changing. And today we're going to have a conversation about that and what that looks like and what we've learned over the past of over the course of the past year. So, Laura, let's get right into it. I have a question before we kind of kick it off and talk about new models of schools. When you think about traditional education and the way schools have looked for a long time, I think about the school that I went to growing up. I went to public high school in New York. I don't know if your experience was similar or not, but when you think about schools and the terms we use to discuss classrooms and education and pedagogy, what comes to mind? Yeah, like a traditional school, similar.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

I bet we had a similar experience. I went to a public high school, same thing. A lot of schools model what the schools look like in the 80s and the 90s. They've actually been similar for a really long time. Maybe like the 60s and the 50s. It's all been a similar thing. And I think what a traditional school in my mind is you go from class to class to class, you take all the basic curriculum you're supposed to be taking. You have lunch at some point with a bunch of people, you are offered extracurricular activities, you have an athletics program, and it's pretty much the same each day. Time is used the same. You go from class to class, class don't integrate, you learn math, then you learn science. That to me is a normal traditional education that we see in most schools, I think, across the country.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

I would agree. And um I think the most jarring part of schools when we talk about them that way is the bell. The bell rings. And even if you're in the middle of the greatest conversation or having the greatest moment of of thought exploration and on the cusp of a big revelation, the bell rings, you pack up your stuff, you go to another class, and you're forced to switch gears instantly. And that's that's just an interesting to thing to think about as we think about how our brains work and when we do our best work, what that looks like. What about um teachers in that environment? When you think about growing up your teachers, what did they do in the classroom? What did that look like?

SPEAKER_02 3:21

Yeah, I think teachers were the experts and told me what I needed to know and what I needed to learn, and then I would do it after they told me about it. And it was more of kind of a one, you know, one teacher to the 30 of us probably in the classroom telling us what to do, what they know about it, and then me trying to do it, and then that happening every single day. And nothing really changing except maybe in a science class where you would get up and maybe do a lab. But when I grew up in public school, there wasn't like project-based learning. It was all very like, I'm the teacher, here's what you should know. I now, as a student, am going to try to do that, and then I'll go try to do it at home. And then my own child in public school now, that's similar. Like they tell her what to do, she tries to do it there, she comes home, tries to do it, and then gives it back to them. And that's every day.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Right. Yeah. I remember massive amounts of content, um, especially as I think about upper school and history classes and writing for 45 minutes constantly. My teacher would write things on the board. It was a chalkboard then, maybe it was a whiteboard at some point in time, I'm not sure. But there would be massive amounts of writing, and then I would write down the same things, and then I would try to go memorize them to then regurgitate them on like a fill-in-the-blank or a Scantron test.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

You got it. Okay. Well, so let's back out a little bit for kind of what we want to talk about today. And I'm interested, since you think a lot about education, and I think there's been a lot of publications too, especially in like the private school space. Like what's happening to education right now nationally, um, and what are we seeing? What are trends and what's going on?

SPEAKER_01 5:00

I think a lot is changing. I think a lot should be changing. We talk a lot about the future and the jobs of the future, and we love the World Economic Forum report on jobs and what that looks like. And what we're seeing is that as technology continues to change, jobs continue to change and evolve. There are, I think we're on the cusp of a lot of jobs changing because of AI and technology. Technology enabling one worker to be able to do much more in the same amount of time because of the computing power that now exists. And so then, how do we as educators think about what our girls need to learn while they're here? How do we start to think about the skills of the future and not just the um information that people need to have when they leave here?

SPEAKER_02 5:52

I I would add too, I think like nationally, it's interesting with markets of schools. Like if you think about the private school market, um, there's lots of different schools that I've been talking to, which we'll talk about here in a minute, but like depending on regionally where you are, private schools are thriving in some spaces and there's not enough school offerings. And in some regions, private schools are closing and are not getting enough students. And there's um a lot of factors to that. I think it's cities that are booming and doing well tend to be tend to need more school options. And cities that aren't doing well, that's the case. And then birth rates are a real thing. There's a lot of data showing there are less kids that are coming. Um, in some communities in the DFW area, you have um older people who are not having children staying in areas, so then schools are closing. I think there's there's more, it feels like to me, shift nationally in schools where like markets have too many schools in one area. Like there's cities that have like 10 private schools and like a 10 mile radius, but the city's not doing very well and the birth rates are down. And so schools are having to really either reimagine what they do or merge with other schools. So there's a lot of really interesting national things happening in schools, which, you know, necessity is the mother of invention. And I think that's what we're seeing with schools from the far end of there are no kids that would go to our schools and there's too many of us, what do we do? To that there are too many kids in our area and there's not enough options. What should we create? And I think we are literally in the middle of that, and it's so interesting to watch.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

And we are in Dallas, Texas, one of the areas that is seeing incredible growth and numbers and population changes. And it's interesting to see the schools that are popping up around here and what that looks like. And I know one of the things you've done this year is you have spent a lot of time visiting schools and um traveling around the country to learn what's new, what's best in education, what's innovative, what's happening, what can we learn from schools and different school models that are doing things differently? What should we grab from them and bring back and think about integrating here at Hackaday? So let's start with what have you been, what have you been seeing? What's popping up and what's cool about them? What's interesting in what you've seen?

SPEAKER_02 8:13

Yeah. Um, wow, I've seen a lot of versions of schools. For me, as I wouldn't call myself a designer, but I do think about when I'm ever solving a problem or trying to learn something, I really like to look at extremes. Um, it doesn't necessarily help me to go to other schools like the school that I work for because I get to see that every day. And I'm really involved here and really know what's going on, and it's obviously a wonderful place. But what helps is when I go to extreme schools, schools that are doing like really different things. And so, what I think for all of you who are listening might be fun for me to tell you kind of the versions of schools that I went to, and then we can talk more specific about what I learned. But I've learned and talked to a school that's completely a virtual reality school that goes all across the country and they send VR headsets out, and then the students follow along from home or from rural parts of the country, um, but all VR related, which is interesting. Um, I have visited schools like an Alpha that has a personalized learning AI time-backed platform, and then in the afternoon puts back all kinds of things. It could be sports, it could be real world application. I've gone to uh lab schools, which is a school that's formed with a university and it's a partnership. So the entire school is about what the academic powerhouse wants to see in a school, um, which is really neat. I've talked to a school and multiple schools that are kind of of the unschooling movement, which is the polar opposite of what we described at the start of this podcast.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Okay. So I'm gonna guess not many of our listeners know what the unschooling movement is. So can you tell us a little bit more about what that means?

SPEAKER_02 9:57

Yeah, and if you're interested, you should Google it. There's like a founding person of it, there's books about it. The concept is that schools have it all wrong, that's what they believe, and that school should be completely driven by the student and that the adult is just there to go with where they go. It feels a little Montessori, but most of these unschools are kind of a conglomerate of people who homeschool their students, but then they come together to do these unschooling kind of you know, they build something or they create something. Um, the one I spoke with is in Pennsylvania on like 30 acres on a farm. Um, and they have students that come there and do a lot of project-based learning that's student-driven. So the idea of what they said to me is they try to get the school out of the kid and and make sure that they don't have any of the same expectations a traditional school would, that they completely drive everything and that the adult is not in charge at all.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

So is it more like a summer camp?

SPEAKER_02 10:56

Um kind of, but it's also there is academic pieces. So like when you're at an unschool, like the one I talked to, there's a bunch that are connected to this one. Um the k the students in high school actually all take college and um community college classes. So they get a lot of their academic pieces from a community college, and that's how they supplement the unschool, so then they're ready to go to college. And all of most all of their um graduates go to college based on using a community college. Interesting. And um two other, three other, well, four other schools. There's so many cool schools and interesting models. Um there's for-profit schools. Um the perk to that is that they get to make any decision they want. Um if you own the school, you make the decision. And if the right person owns the school, they make great decisions. Um there's online school, uh, Stanford's online school is a very popular one. There's a whole bunch of high schools popping up that are solely online. Um, if that's the right vibe for a kid, you may be in COVID if your kid thro was thriving. Right. Online schools, interesting. Um I think also an interesting model is like ski schools and sail schools. So in Florida for sailing and in Colorado and many other states that have skiing, they use time differently because you have to be outside when it's the sun's out. Right. And so the school's completely flipped. So the day you're sailing and you're skiing, and then the time you do school is when the sun goes down.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

So like instead of doing homework at home, you might do school. Right. Huh.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

Interesting. It's really it's an interesting model to look into. And then um the other piece I'll say is there's a bunch of like programs and tracks inside of school that kids can opt into. I visited a few schools that have like you have a school, but then you can opt in to do a special program inside of that school that maybe is a unique value for the school. Bunch of those out there in public and private. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

I think there are two kind of when I think about all these different schools and all the conversations we've had about different versions of schools, in my mind, they kind of separate out in two ways. And this is probably gonna be news to you because we haven't really talked about this. But there's like the school that covers everything that offers like the entire program. And then a lot of these schools and a lot of these models offer different pieces that then it's up to the parent or the child or the family to figure out how do we craft our own educational journey for our children. So there are like a few different things. Yeah. But I'd like to dig into some of these models if you're okay with that.

SPEAKER_02 13:33

Yeah, let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Um the one that I wanted to start with was the idea of a lab school. Yeah. Can you tell us because then we'll get into like the AI and some of the more technical the schools involving more technology. But what is a lab school? Okay.

SPEAKER_02 13:46

A lab school is a school that is when the school is created, it is a partnership. It really comes out of a university.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

Why? Because the university does research and has best practice in the field of education. Okay. And they believe, and it's a benefit to their faculty because their faculty can send their kids to a lab school.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

So it might be located on a college campus or in close proximity to a college campus.

SPEAKER_02 14:11

Every single one of them is in the uh the ones I visited are dead in the middle of the college campus. Okay. So you get to use the college campus kind of as your classroom, and there's a lot of crossover that happens with the classes in college to the lab school, as well as a lot of faculty send their kids there. But the great part is there's a lot of research being done in a lab school.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Oh, probably that hence the name. Lab school.

SPEAKER_02 14:33

Yes. So it's constantly like a professor wants to study uh one of the biggest um research findings that came out of the lab school, one of them that I've visited that's attached to Carnegie Mellon. Okay. They studied what happens to elementary school kids if you take everything off the walls and declutter the walls. Do they pay more attention or less attention? Okay. And they had a really famous study come out that said kids pay more attention when there's less to look at on a wall. They actually focus better. And that was something they could do because it was a lab school, they had the researchers, and then they used that in their school. So there are these kind of like research models of schools. Um, and there's not that many of them in our country. I feel like there's like 40 of them.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

There's not a ton. So kind of attached to like a college of education or a school of education and some to psychology. The professors are then designing almost mini experiments to conduct with the students and to kind of run through in the classrooms to see if they can then change the outcomes. Yeah. I would assume there's a lot of data that's collected along the way and then analyzed to then see if things are working.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

Yeah. And always. And it's constant. And it and then they share it with other places, right? So then they're a model like this worked. Try it every school in the country. And we've tried it here with our students. So it's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

And this is similar to what we're doing with SMU and our research fellows. That's where that idea came from. So how does how does that come out of a lab school? So just give us two or three sentences on what our research fellows in theory are doing, not their specific projects, but what that looks like and why we kind of took that idea and then dropped it into Hakaday.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

Yeah. The idea is that if you use the researchers and the one and the professors who know the what's best in practice for research, and your teachers decide they want to look into something in their own classroom, then they have an academic person that guides them through that, like you would do on a lab school. So if you want to study what's happening with homework, you would not go far to find a professor who would do that with you. And that's what we're modeling with SMU now.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Very cool. And the the interesting thing about that that I'll just call out is the ability to quickly gather data and pivot, I think makes it interesting for schools as we think through what to try and then how to know if it's working or not. Not in terms of a standardized test at the end of the year, but in terms of maybe a unit of study or a shorter um period of time to then make different decisions.

SPEAKER_02 17:00

And there's like so much growth potential for the teachers. That's something I saw when I was going to these lab schools. The teachers are pretty excited because they're I went into the library and uh the librarian had the statement for their research project they were working on, because in lab schools, most of the teachers are researching something. Okay. And the librarian was trying to get like third through fifth grade boys to read more. And that was what uh he was studying. And so he was like, so you go in and you actually see actively like what they're studying, and it comes from a real place, which is cool.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Very cool. Um, you talked a little bit about schools that exist within other schools. What does that mean? What is that? Do you have an example of what that is for our listeners?

SPEAKER_02 17:37

Aaron Powell Yeah, there's a couple places that I visited that I'll I'm happy to chat about. Um one was in Fort Worth, and they have an honors program that a kid can opt into, and they do it their entire high school career, and it takes up about half of their experience, and it's more humanities-based. And they learn um English and history, and then they do kind of like a culminating project. To me, it's almost like when you get your PhD and you have to defend it and you learn about it, and then at the end you defend it, and then you write about it and you publish it if you want. It's the same thing a lot of schools are doing where they're building that kind of track into a high school experience where you learn something kind of special, and then you either write something and defend it, or you do a real-world project of that thing you care the most about, and that's kind of your senior capstone. There's a lot of capstones out there.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

Maybe some different coursework along the way, or a different way of navigating through the upper school experience, something like that, more like an honors college that you would see at a university, at a large state university, or something like that. Yeah, just like that.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

And you would take a a handful of your classes with the nor the school that you were in. Okay. And then you have like a part that you pop out and do. Um mostly high schools are doing this. I didn't see any middle schools that are doing this. I think it's high schools, public and private, have a lot of these programs.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Okay. Interesting. And then um online schools, I feel like online schools that captures a lot of different things and a lot of different models because there are some like we partner with One Schoolhouse, which is an online school, and our girls can opt to take a class through One Schoolhouse, and that's completely online, but it's just one class. Um, but is there a way to fuse that together into a full education, or are there schools that are entirely online and you sign up and you take all your courses online? And what type of student do you think would thrive in that environment?

SPEAKER_02 19:35

That's a good question. I'm throwing the what type of student back at you, but I will tell you that there are varying versions of online schools, right? Like you can take one class at night because you want to take it, and then it goes on your transcript at your school that you already go to. And then there are some that put the entire school experiences online and they try to build community and you build friends. And I think a lot of students who end up doing that, um, some are homeschool and some have other like passions and things they want to be doing. And so then if a school is online, you can kind of choose when you take it. The Optima school that I mentioned, the VR that's virtual reality headset school, okay, has really interesting things they're doing because you know there's some teacher shortages happening, especially in rural parts of our country. And what they've started doing is sending VR headsets to public schools that are having trouble hiring, let's say, a chemistry teacher.

unknown 20:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 20:26

And then the chemistry teacher in Florida, that's part of their network, has everyone log on and teaches the class. And so you actually get the chemistry experience wherever you are online, but it's taught somewhere else, which I think is a really in real time? In real time, yeah. You would log in at, you know, ever everyone who is available from 12 to 1.30 would log on to do this class, and some can do it asynchronously, meaning they could do it at night. But some actually go live and they actually get to interact with a teacher somewhere else because the shortage happens in those districts.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Right. The the shortage is thinking about that and a way to leverage that when a shortage is happening is really interesting because I know sometimes a school will have a specialty teacher, like a chemistry teacher or a physics teacher who's um on leave or they have an open position that they haven't been able to fill. And do you get a substitute in there or a long-term sub who just kind of goes through the textbook with the kids, or do you connect that group of kids to a chemistry teacher who's very adept at teaching the content somewhere else through technology? It's an interesting way to think about filling some of these holes that could exist.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

It's smart and Optima's growing rapidly because there's a need and it's a really smart use of virtual reality.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

Very cool.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

I think.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

Um, one last version I want to talk about is um you had mentioned Alpha School and Alpha School and several other models use online learning platforms to um Educate students to transfer the curriculum, math, English, language, arts, maybe some other subjects, all done online, and then the rest of the day is open for projects, project-based learning, other experiences. We've seen some of them pop up here in North Texas, some sports academies where you can do online learning for two hours in a very compacted block of time, and then use the rest of your day for sports practice. Let's say you're a competitive baseball player. Then you can play baseball for six hours a day and still get home in time for dinner, as opposed to spending your full day in school and that taking eight hours and then going to practice for four or five hours and getting home at 9 p.m. Yeah. So what are you seeing in that space?

SPEAKER_02 22:52

It's interesting. I got to visit a good amount of the of these schools, and I'm going to visit another one next week, the Alpha model. So it's interesting how Alpha has built these schools because it's all based on a thing called Time Back platform. So you can go look at that online if you're interested. You can just Google that. That's the back end, backbone of this whole idea. Um Middle schoolers take two hours on it. It's personalized to the kid. So if you're a sixth at sixth, you're in sixth grade and you're at an eighth grade math level, it meets you where you are and you just keep growing. If you're in sixth grade and you're at a second grade math level, it meets you there and it grows you. So the personalized piece of that intrigues me and is very interesting. The high school students take three hours of class, and you can put that wherever you want because it's a platform and they're taking it and they're getting the core they need for whatever state they're in. After that, that's where it's kind of interesting and exciting. Sports are a thing because the sun's still out and you can be outside. Um, a new school that's popping up in Dripping Springs, Texas, is gonna be all outdoor based. So it's like a juxtaposition that everyone pushes back. I don't want my kid on a computer all day. Okay. The entire second half is all outdoor ed, outdoor adventure-based learning. Okay. So you're kind of like balancing being online. Um, a lot of the ones that you've probably seen around alpha, the alpha schools, is the real world projects. So a kid has a podcast that's gone viral, or a kid's, you know, built a business. And for the right student, it gives them the kind of real-world workshops that they build in, and then they get to run with that. And the schools are interesting because they all look very unique. They don't look like a traditional school, most of them, the two or three I've seen. Okay. Um, and I think there's something to that.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

As we think about schools that use an online platform for the delivery of the educational content, what does that mean for the teacher? We've talked about the teacher in a traditional school, and the teacher has all the information and is telling the information or relaying the information to the students, and then the students regurgitate it. If all of your information is online, what is the teacher doing?

SPEAKER_02 25:06

Yeah, what's the human doing? And I think that you can see this in a couple of the models we've discussed, where even the unschool movement, right? Like what is the teacher doing? They've changed the name at a lot of these schools to either facilitator or guide.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 25:20

Because the philosophy at a lot of these schools is the per the adult is not teaching anything. They're guiding and facilitating the student. So when a student has an issue, they're there and they're kind of more trained as a coach or a um someone who's a motivator. Okay. And that's more the role, I think, of the adults on the campuses of the schools that we're talking about. They're more you're hiring for someone who's a a master motivator. Um, when you hear about alpha, they hire people who are motivational speakers to be the adults in the room, not like a science teacher as much, because their job is not to teach the subjects. They're there to motivate and project plan and support and incentivize, is a big part of what they do. And that's the shift. It's you're a coach and you're moving around coaching, you're not teaching.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

Okay. So it's not the transfer of knowledge that is occurring from the teacher to the student. It's more motivational and guiding the student on their own learning journey.

SPEAKER_02 26:22

Yeah, which is a different person than someone who is a traditional teacher.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Absolutely. What um what are your main takeaways as you think about all of this? What do you think about as a parent, as an educator? What should our parents out there be thinking about for their own kids?

SPEAKER_02 26:40

There's so many models and there's so much going on. Like for me, it's just kind of fun to see because I think for schools for so long didn't have different any different models to look at. And now I've named nine in a matter of four minutes. Um, and it's fun to watch and it's fun to think about, and I always say this like, think about your kid. What do they thrive doing? Do they like school? And that's what we talk about in a lot of our other podcasts. Like, you know, I think a lot of our students really love being here, and that's awesome. That means it's a great place for them. But a lot of you who have kids at home, there might be other things that they want to do. I mean, maybe they're the next, I don't know, like babe roof of baseball or whatever, like, or they want to be outside all the time. I mean, I think there's a lot of choice and a lot of things you can look into, and I think that's what's interesting. And I also think there's so much that other schools can learn from each other. Like I said, like I don't spend a lot of time going to schools like Hackaday, right? Because I can't learn much. But when I went to the schools I'm naming, wow, I mean, you could research inside of a school, you could think about what pieces of personalized learning could look like. You could think about what projects could be. Like, there's so much or how time is used at Vale Mountain School. Like, there's just a lot to understand when you're thinking about school that you could build back.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

I'm really curious to see how the personalized learning piece plays out over the next few years as um AI systems continue to change and evolve and get better. What does that look like as a modality of content delivery? And how do schools, should schools take that and think about integrating that into their current way of doing things? Um, does it free up any time? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. What parts are well suited to online learning, what parts are better done in person? I think all of this gives us a really unique opportunity to spend some time reflecting on what we're doing, what's working, and what might be better in a different form, or what are different ways of doing things.

SPEAKER_02 28:40

And we don't know if this works. Like this is so new that we don't know does this land with students. I mean, my instinct, just to go on record saying I think a human teacher is key to learning. And I think there's a lot of data that shows if there's a human teaching you in front of you with you being a part of your learning process, you're gonna learn way better than if you're staring at like a purple cartoon character bouncing around on your computer. Right. So humans matter in teaching.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

And I think the thing we see here at Hakaday and other places is that the relationships with the humans matter. It's it, that's it. Relationships with your teachers, your relationships with your advisors, the human connection, the feedback that you get from teachers, the guidance that you get play a key part in the education of our girls today.

SPEAKER_02 29:28

Couldn't agree more. All right, everybody, it's fun time. Fun question. We're gonna do one fun question. And the fun question is what was your favorite school that you ever went to, Dr. Leathers? And why?

SPEAKER_01 29:43

That is a good question. And I am going to need a second to think about it. Why don't you go? What was your most fun school you ever went to and why?

SPEAKER_02 29:56

College was my favorite school. I did not enjoy school very much because I need a purpose and a reason to be learning things.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 30:08

And I love real-world application of learning, and it wasn't in my school experience in Arlington, Texas. Right. I was regurgitating and I wasn't great at regurgitating. And I also like, if I'm not into something, I don't really try very hard. Okay. So that was my experience. And then I got to college and um I went to a Jesuit school. So a lot of my learning was connected to the community. And I just like lit up. I was like, I did so well in school. Um, and I loved it because the learning felt real to me. And um, I had small class sizes, and I remember all the projects that I got to do, and that changed me as a learner, and I really loved my college experience.

SPEAKER_01 30:47

Okay. Um, okay, now I have an answer. Good. My favorite school that I ever went to as a learner was um elementary school. Oh. And I will tell you why. Good. Because I loved to read. Yes, you do. And I we did a lot of worksheets in elementary school, as far as I can remember. And I was really fast at doing worksheets. I bet. Um, which doesn't surprise many people. And so I would finish all the worksheets, and I remember my teacher would either have me grading other people's worksheets for real. This is so on brand. This is so on brand. And when I was done with that, they would let me read. And I thought it was the greatest thing ever. I could go to the school library, I could get all the books I wanted, and then I could just sit at my desk and read while everyone else was doing their worksheets and figuring it out.

SPEAKER_02 31:32

That's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 31:33

So I spent um this will not surprise anyone, a lot of time at the school library and at the Shelter Rock Public Library growing up. That's mom used to take me pretty regularly. I was allowed to check out 25 books. Goodness. And I would check out 25 books every time and then go back two weeks later and return them. Wow. So it's funny that um our favorite pieces of education really tie back to who we are today. No question. Right?

SPEAKER_02 31:59

It is exactly who we are as humans and like what we like do with our time.

SPEAKER_01 32:03

Exactly. So very good. Well, thank you all for listening. Hope this has been interesting and helpful and um is definitely a thread that you will continue to hear as we continue our conversations. Um, what is happening to education in the world? How is it changing? How should it be changing? And what can we learn from what's changing around us is one of our favorite things to talk about. So thank you all for listening to the Education Evolved Podcast. As always, you can email us at education evolved podcast at gmail.com with questions or comments or ideas for future episodes. Thank you all.