Let's Get Personal : the Learning Lab Podcast

Never Stop Innovating: A Conversation with USD 259's Rob Dickson

• Kristin • Episode 36

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As chief information officer for Wichita Public Schools, Rob Dickson oversees technology decisions that impact nearly 50,000 students. In more than 25 years in public education, he's witnessed and helped lead some of education's biggest technological shifts.

From the arrival of the Internet and the rise of social media to today's focus on AI, Dickson has managed to remain focused on one thing: using innovation to improve learning. During the course of his career, Dickson helped launch two online public schools and played a key role in creating Creative Minds, the Wichita Public Schools microschool that opened inside Learning Lab in fall 2024.

In this episode, Rob joins Lydia and Kristin to discuss what role technology plays in K-12 education, why innovating matters and how educators can embrace change while keeping the focus where it belongs, on students.

SPEAKER_00

Hi, I'm Olivia and I'm Kristen. Through our work at Learning Lab, which talks, we get a front row speed to innovation and personalized kindergarten through 12th grade learning. On this podcast, we share stories of how educators and parents are helping kids discover their passions so you can do the same for a child you love. Let's get personal. Hi everyone, and welcome to Let's Get Personal Real Talk about Reimagining Education. Today we are so thrilled to have a very old friend by this point, but for some reason we've waited till now to have him on the podcast. But Rob Dixon, Chief Information Officer of Wichita Public Schools, uh, we can talk about all the things. But thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, thank you guys.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Where do you want to start? Gosh.

SPEAKER_02

Um, so you're you're I mean, I I've actually known Rob forever. For yeah, and I was so young when I started at Anover, and uh like Rob was so nice to me. And I would just call him like once a month and be like, everything is broken. And he was super nice to me. And one time he told me he was helping me because he could tell I wasn't an idiot.

SPEAKER_00

Right. That's why he needs the communications from okay. But that was when you were what what were you for Andover School School?

SPEAKER_05

Director of Technology for Andover Public Schools. I was that uh for about 15 years. Uh I was in that role. Um a little historical context. Uh my mom signed me up for the military when I was 16. And so I wanted to be in the Air Force. Uh, didn't know what I wanted to be, and uh they made me a network engineer. And so uh met my wife in high school. We got married, about celebrate three years of marriage. So exciting. Congratulations. And uh she did not love the military because I was gone all the time, Saudi Arabia, Oman, all those places just after uh Desert Storm. So my uh best friend, his wife was uh Liz Bentley, who was at the time assistant superintendent at our folks. And she said, I'm gonna create this picture for you and I want you to apply for it. So I moved and went to Andover and worked there from the late 90s until 2014 when I moved to Omaha for five years and then did that uh with Mark Evans as my superintendent, both in Andover and Omaha, and then moved back to Wichita in 2019.

SPEAKER_01

And here you are.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

That's so funny.

SPEAKER_02

I just think about like I have kids that are 16, 17, 18, and you as a kid going into the Air Force, which seems like scary. And did they give you like an aptitude test?

SPEAKER_05

Or what yeah, I took an Asbab test uh in high school and tested uh fairly high in in a lot of the areas. I was not a great student though in high school. I will say that. I was in the second half of my class. My wife was valedictorian of her class, so there was a lot of uh differences in our aptitude in high school. Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Um I don't know about that. Um I've known you for a long time, and you're one of the smartest people I know, I think. Wow.

SPEAKER_00

What was it about military that was appealing to you?

SPEAKER_05

Uh probably mm mainly being about something bigger than myself, I think was uh a huge piece. And then also uh it's more about skilling, right? And I think that's where we're moving to as an educational organization right now. It's more about skills and about the life cycle of those skills. Because I think the nice thing about the military is there's a constant iteration of learning and you you have uh you have a trajectory of where you're going to move, both uh whether you're an enlisted person or an officer in aptitude. And um I think in industry we have that generally. Um but you know, in education, I think we've got to model that better because AI and things are changing the skills necessary for those jobs. And because that trajectory is so fast, um, we're moving to a s shorter life cycle of those skills.

SPEAKER_02

That's so interesting. I want to talk more about that later. But I want to stay on like you've worked you worked for three districts. You worked for a pretty like good tenure at each one, five years being the shortest. Yeah. And increasingly larger, is Wichita larger than Omaha?

SPEAKER_05

Uh Omaha is actually a little bit larger. They have 52,000 kids. Okay. But yeah. And Wichita has uh right now about 46,000.

SPEAKER_02

Okay. So you're kind of in like the like the top of the administration in three different public school districts, two different states. And so I just want you to tell people what you learned about public schools.

SPEAKER_05

Um I think you know, the most interesting thing for me is uh knowing the cultures in the different states, right? So, like in Nebraska, it's unicameral. I don't know if people know that. So the state is unicameral. Oh yeah, they have a state center. Uh things get done fairly fast there because they don't have to tr uh transition from house to children. Sure, that's so cool.

SPEAKER_02

Ruby was just telling me. Yeah, I love I just know that until this week. Oh, really? Yeah, Ruby just told me that. Okay.

SPEAKER_05

The funding mechanisms for schools in different states is very different as well. So we could local levy for technology if we needed to in Nebraska. And here it's based on capital outlay. So in Wichita, you know, the Luke, who's in charge of facilities and I kind of barter back and forth on capital outlays is on maintenance of buildings, which is incredibly important. Right. Look at what we're trying to do with our bond issue. But then also technology. And so uh those mechanisms really give a different experience of how you sustain what the experience is going to be, whether that be a physical experience or a digital experience.

SPEAKER_00

In these in these three districts, though, did you play a similar role of information technology or has there ever been variation? Because currently you're the chief information officer for Wichita Public Schools. Is that what it was?

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And Omaha took it. Very similar. Um, I would say uh title doesn't necessarily uh tell you what your job is.

SPEAKER_03

Ah, that's right.

SPEAKER_05

So what was great in Andover was I was given the flexibility to create instructional technology there, in which uh, if you know Smoke, uh I got to hire her back in 2007, I think, to start instructional technology with Shannon Fisher at the time. And then two years later, uh Mark Evans wanted me to start Andover Academy. And so I started the virtual school with Shannon Fisher initially, and then we hired Mark Templin as the principal, then two years after. And uh Andover Academy is still going today. Uh then I go to Omaha and they already had instructional tech, but then in 2016, I was asked to start Omaha Virtual School. And uh that started in 2016 and is still going today, strong. And then back here, uh, I was about a year in and we shifted instructional tech underneath me and then also shifted Witch Dog Virtual, which at the time only had about a hundred kids. And today Amanda Young leads that with an amazing 600 kids. So yeah, so that's grown quickly. Grown quickly and and done really well. She's done amazing with that program.

SPEAKER_02

I feel like when people think now I want you to define chief information officer for me.

SPEAKER_05

So I would say traditionally it's an operational role, right? So traditionally, a CIO is uh the owner of the mechanisms of information and how it flows. Uh, usually it stays within that realm. I would say I've I've been given the opportunity to do other things like Creative Minds or like uh Education Imagine Academy, the virtual school. Uh I took over the research department last year uh and moved it underneath our AI specialist. So Caitlin Schoen Offer leads our research team, but she's also our AI specialist.

SPEAKER_01

What a cool job for her. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

So then we get to look at how AI could affect data and modeling and answer questions now, which we couldn't have.

SPEAKER_02

I didn't even know 259 had a research team. Yeah. Like, why is it important for locally for you guys to do research?

SPEAKER_05

A lot of it is to tell cause and effect, right? Like, is a particular program that we're putting in place having uh an effective use, right? Are we doing it with uh high fidelity? Um and measurements are important, right? Like we were having a conversation the other day about um, you know, the validity of a program. And it was interesting because typically in our conversations uh when we talk about kids, we talk about building relationships, right? Um the tough thing about measurements is using things like relationships is not a way to measure. And so, like, how do you measure something? Because every program, no matter what it is, needs to have a return on investment, right? What does that look like? Humans in the human condition, we tend to tie things to feelings, right? Or building those relationships. And those are immense factors and have a huge causation towards something being positive or negative, but in the same realm, it can't be measured, right? Because you can't read somebody's mind, you can't understand how they're relational with something. So uh yeah, I think it's interesting to take that on and start to try to define some answers to the questions that we've been asking. Because I think for the first time, you could have an assessment, you could do a survey and you could grab sentiment with AI with less effort, right? Like a fraction of the effort that you did before. Somebody would have had to have read every comment, every so when we think about our listening sessions that we did this last year as a staff, or we think about the build-a-bond, all of those were modeled with AI because it we could turn it around so quickly. And so feedback can be turned around quicker, right? Because you can model sentiment faster. Um I think those are mechanisms that we've never had before and allow us to be agile with qualitative data.

SPEAKER_02

How many school districts do you think are operating like that?

SPEAKER_05

I think they're still in uh like uh a tension of not understanding how to model the data and how to deal with AI. Those the districts that can navigate that in an agile fashion, those are probably few and far between these because I mean, look at the noise in the news around AI.

SPEAKER_02

Especially when it comes to education. I feel like that's like and I mean we're going all the way in the weeds to talk about AI, but can you talk about? I mean, you post about AI a lot on your LinkedIn page, which I would recommend to people. You're a good AI expert. Yeah. Um, but how is it changing education and what kids need to know? Which you started to kind of touch on earlier.

SPEAKER_05

Like if I had to think about, and this is one of the reasons why Creative Minds is so special. I think elementary is shifting to learning by doing, right? There's some kind of merger of Montessori style and project-based learning that kids understand the whole process of uh failing fast. That's why I love esports, and we can talk about esports too. But what I love about both of those mechanisms is that um no one ever solved a problem by just getting the right answer every single time, right? You don't learn until you fail. And the problem with how homework and other pieces of assessment are done now is a pass fail, and it's not a fail until you pass. And I think kids need to build resilience in that because the problems that we'll solve in the future are a higher level order of problems than what we have today, right? So if you look at Arizona University's uh discover uh problem set, there are six uh problem levels. Uh the first one and the second one can be solved with academia because it's one solution to solve that problem. But as you get to level four, five, and six, it's a range of solutions that might not solve the entire problem. Those are the problems that we need to solve as humans because AI can't solve those problems. AI can solve those first two problems really well. Um but as you start to get to those ranges, it's a lot of iteration, right? It's failing. And I think we need to develop our students in uh elementary to be learning by doing so that they fail fast. And then middle school is skill discovery. It's like, what are you good at? What talents do you have? And are those marketable talents? Are they talents that you can build from and that you intrinsically want to build from? Because I know when I'm in flow, right, and I'm working, uh it doesn't feel like work. Right. But I do really good work because it doesn't feel like work. And those are what kids need to figure out.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And then high school is skill development, right?

SPEAKER_00

I think we've talked about it. And because I have I absolutely agree with that philosophy of I've I am not an expert really in anything, but I have a lot of opinions. My opinion is our little should be learning through play. So kind of through the doing, like you're saying, our middle should be learning through exploration. Let them try, touch, feel, put on the hats of every skill. And then our big kids should be learning through application or like like meaningful skill um application. Um, you saying we were just talking, I think with Audra. I was trying to think about this. We were talking about like, well, how do kids build confidence? Audra Danelle is the founder of The Thread. I don't know if you know Audra. She was on the podcast, but we were talking about emotional agility and how do you build emotionally agile kids? And so then we were talking about confidence and how we were talking about failure and like they need to fail in a like quick loops, but like in a safe environment with supportive people, but and with failing with the problem that is actually meaningful to them, will build their confidence more than because we were talking about helicopter parents and they're just hovering, hovering, so they don't feel any failure. Um and so I think there's a lot of alignment there. And then I didn't know if you there's a TED talk. I think his last name is Brisenho. I don't know if it's Eduardo. I can picture his face, but there's a TED talk about the learning zone versus the performance zone. Have you heard about this at all? Is it like uh when it's just beyond your so zone that like zone of proximal development, yes, that's where we want them to perform. But that typically in education environments, if everything turns into a grade, if every project, every action is a grade, then they are constantly in the performance zone because they don't want to screw up. But as human beings, we need to spend more time simply learning, failing, trying, repeating. And then when the moment is right, or like when the, you know, when it's time to really present my capability, then we shift into the performance zone. But as humans, we should not always be feeling like everything is so critically important that I get it right. Cause that's where the stress and the damage to confidence and um all of those things come in. So just a lot of alignment with what you're saying about.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. And I totally think, like as you're talking, and I'm thinking when you look at the ambiguity in our society today, when everything seems important and you've got to be at that performance level, it's no wonder the anxiety level of literally everyone is because they feel like they have to be at that rate all the time.

SPEAKER_00

And how exhausting that must feel.

SPEAKER_02

And that's what I that's what we love about creative minds of all the high school kids who are academically inclined. I mean, they're just exhausted by the end of high school and they still have to do college. It just keeps going. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But I think that's what's so lovely about creative minds. We observe it quite often in a lot of these unconventional school models is there's a lot more space and just more room for failure or you know, exploration. Um, so it's been fun to watch creative minds do that too.

SPEAKER_02

For wins, you know, it's like like almost like collective wins or public wins where they get to like produce something that other people are recognizing as seeing. Whereas I feel like in like a super traditional school, you're just getting your A on your paper, it's going in your bag, nobody ever so it like helps build confidence. Not only do they learn to fail, but they also like get some public attention for what they're good at.

SPEAKER_05

I think what both staff and students lack is agency on both sides, right? For sure. There's the freedom within the environment for a teacher to do things that they feel like are important for the culture and and the learning environment for their students. And then I think there's an agency piece to students in order for you to own your own learning, you have to have a level of agency to feel confident in what you're learning and the failure within that learning task.

SPEAKER_02

I use that agency word on every single tour I give of Learning Lab because people want to understand like why are these kids happy? Why why you know?

SPEAKER_00

And I do think I mean I would point to that every time. So well, just think about how different it feels to be told yes versus no. Like this is like a parenting conversation my husband and I have is like, are why are our kids acting frustrated or disgruntled? Why are we unhappy? Have we said no too many times today? Because it's just it's exhausting. But if and it happens in education environments too, of like, no, you're doing that the wrong way, or no, sit down, or no, put your shoes on, or you know, whatever, that agency is a lot more saying yes.

SPEAKER_05

So think about that, right? Like, so if that happens too often, then you end up asking for permission for everything.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Learn helplessness.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And just somebody else is gonna do it. So you're teaching them that somebody has to tell you that you can be an innovator.

SPEAKER_05

And the more you get to a job, nobody's gonna tell you exactly how to do your job. Right.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. And then you're flailing. Yeah. Well, that kind of comes back to like, I feel like you are an innovator uh at the highest degree. I don't I don't understand like how you got to be so like you keep making up more responsibilities for yourself. But I mean, it is unusual that the CIO is like over a couple of schools, right? And so why do you think the district just like says yes to you? And how do you like how do you teach other districts, other people in your position to do the same?

SPEAKER_00

Um And we say this as an immense compliment to because I cannot tell you how often Kristen and I have to reassure people, like, no, we do mean it. We do have a public school model in our space.

SPEAKER_02

Like, this isn't Dreamland. Well, and I just always go back to, I mean, first of all, on this podcast, we haven't shared with new listeners what Creative Minds is. So why don't one of you guys tell the story of how Creative Minds came to be? Because I still think about it and cannot believe a large public school district busted out this cool school model in like three months. It was insane. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

You know, I think uh, and and you can talk about this too. Uh it was really like a perfect storm.

SPEAKER_00

It really was.

SPEAKER_05

Like I think um the district Kelly, uh Bielefeld, our superintendent, and Smoke and I were ripe for doing something different. Uh we had thrown out some different models, like an all-girl STEM school and some other models that we thought might work. And this one-room schoolhouse kind of model was something that just took some traction and was very different in the way of building competency and mastery. Uh and some of our systems in public education have been built with uh grade levels. And I'm not I'm not I think grade levels have an importance in measurement, but when you think of competency, we end up promoting the student to the next grade level, and that defines the gaps that are built, right? So this was to try to fix that. And if you stayed with the same teacher multi-years, the relationship is already built. The the gaps are have been identified and can be worked on over time. Uh so there are a lot of things that I think over time we'll research, but it was uh circumstantial that the learning lab was an idea and was being developed at the same time as we were thinking of delivering this. Because I think the experiment the experience would be much different if we tried to do this in a traditional school and transform it, because those systems are in place. And I think having it in a different environment, especially a flexible environment. Lent itself, it shows how important the environment is to lending itself to the learning experience.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah. And that and we so I remember I got off the phone with a very expensive private school that I won't name. And they and I emailed you immediately and I was like, they're doing this. Why can't you do this? And you were emailed like 20 minutes later with like, hey, we have an idea. So to your point of like perfect storm, it was like we were trying to source resonance. You all were talking about this. And then it was like, no, we have you guys had just done a big survey, I think, with families across the school district. So you had good insight with the mixed-age learning and the looping. That was that was what I remember talking about or really feeling when I was designing it was I did that fully immersive PBL program in the basement of FL Schlegel High School in Kansas City. And I remember us, myself and the other teachers, there were four, five of us, and we had 125 kids, ninth through 12th grade in the basement of a thousand-person school. And that, like all the things you're mentioning of like the environment does matter because we couldn't even test that as a good model because the bells were going off. Well, my kids didn't have a bell schedule. We weren't using typical grading. They didn't have a true class. I mean, it was just the opposite in such a way that the kids weren't really ready for. I mean, we were rushing and doing all these things, but that's what I was really excited about to share with any larger institutional or system partner to be like, no, what's the idea to test in a if you have a test vacuum? Like, what is the idea that you could bring? There's no bells here, we provide minimal disruption, you're an independent operator in our space. Like, what is it? And so I just rave about you guys all the time of like, no, they said yes.

SPEAKER_02

They were like, sure. Yeah. And I think, I mean, I I love that we have a public school in here because it's it's the accessibility piece, right? Like the kids that maybe couldn't afford one of our other options, then they can go to Creative Minds and have a great experience. And the fact that you're duplicating that. So kind of talk a little bit about whether it's been successful and why you're expanding the program.

SPEAKER_05

I would say uh it looks very different than it did day one, right? And even very different than it did after the first semester, after the first year. You know, now Olivia's coordinator.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Um I also would say none of this would happen without smoke because the design of the instructional thing, smoke is just like if you don't know smoke, you should follow her because she is That's Diane Smokerowski.

SPEAKER_02

What's her title?

SPEAKER_05

Uh she's my digital citizenship coordinator. Okay. Uh and and digital literacy coordinator.

SPEAKER_00

So But she does so much more than that. I mean great title, but to your point of everybody doing more than me.

SPEAKER_05

Do you think having her as like my sounding board and my partner in education, uh, especially over the several years that we've been able to be together, we play off very well and our talents uh assist in one another. And so um I think that I think from a expansion standpoint, I we listen to our parents, hyper listen to them and respond quickly. Um I think that benefits us because our parents are our best sounding board, right? They also spread the word. Yeah, we don't advertise that much creative minds, uh, yet we still have a wait list. So that shows the the desire that's out there. Yeah um expanding to Benton this next year, uh which will be interesting. Um this will be like a school within a school, an anchor school. And as we begin to expand to other areas of Wichita to meet those local community needs that are there, I think it'll be there will be some things that are uh the same and some things that will be slightly different as we expand to those places.

SPEAKER_00

But but talk about that expansion setup. So you're not trying to take over, you're not trying to make this a hundred person model at these locations. So talk about some of the like design of experience.

SPEAKER_05

I think creative minds will always stay decentralized. Um I think that's a benefit. Um I think the challenge is talent when you look at uh teachers that need to teach in project-based learning because the day looks different. We have about two and a half hours of instruction time, and then the rest of the day is project-based learning. And building that agency that we talk about in staff is a bit of a challenge for them to think outside of the box of these projects that envelop standards that these kids need to meet, especially sixth grade, because we have to meet all the standards in elementary. We do the power standards. So there's challenges there, but um, the talent that we've been able to bring in. I mean, this next year is going to be amazing. I'm so excited. It's gonna be great. I think the biggest thing for me is seeing what the kids create and how they present them. Like it's amazing. Dinner and a show this last year was amazing, right? Last year, when we had all the kids doing innovation programs, where uh yeah, uh, we had a third grade student build a shovel that planted the plant into the ground and fertilized and had to call Johnson's garden centers and like all the things, right? Yeah, but like those things giving kids agency to call a business to get a backing, those are skills. Wait, I they really should be called human skills, not soft skills. Yes, human skills that kids develop that will reward them in life hand over fist.

SPEAKER_00

But back to your point of like agency is about them not waiting for permission. Right. I was fully, fully confident in saying that. I had never made a doctor appointment for myself until I was in college. Why? Because my mom would do it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And I think there is something about them not letting some of these like skills be a big scary thing. Because the longer you put it off, like the scarier, I don't know, maybe it feels.

SPEAKER_02

So calling people feels kind of scary as a kid to have them talk to other adults. You know, I that was just something I made my kids do for whatever reason. I decided it was important. I look at my oldest daughter. I mean, she is like tenacity right there. Like she will ask anyone for anything at any time. And I think, like, well, she's gonna get ahead more than these timid kids that can't talk to other humans.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. Um But Kristen, think about this. Like when I grew up, my mom would say, Boy, leave this house and go play. Yeah. Don't come back until the street lights come on. So I built a social fitness. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

That kids don't build a lot of people. I know. Well, and we've all kind of seen that. They don't and and part of that is like a perception that it's not safe, and part of that is technology and there are all kinds of factors. Yeah. Well, what I was curious is what is it like for you that motivates you to do these innovative learning environments? Because you don't work with kids all day. Like you probably work with some kids through some of your stuff, but your focus is really infrastructure and your staff and things like that. So what is the driver that makes you say, let's start a virtual school, let's start a micro school? Why and why do you think it's important?

SPEAKER_05

Oh well, gosh, you're gonna have me go. Like I I think honestly, uh probably was put on this earth to just solve problems. Right. And I think um I think it's rewarded me. And uh I love creative minds. It's like a passion of mine, so I don't feel like it's work. Uh I feel like these are problems that we can solve in public education. I think we've had, you know, a time that the system we we need to rethink of the system in some ways and and how you think of school choice, how you look at how we meet the needs of kids not fitting a certain criteria for us, but us fitting a certain criteria for our families and our kids so that they so that there's a back and forth. Uh because I do feel like um a problem we need to solve as as elementary kids progress, their parents tend to get more disconnected. And so you think of kids living a slower life now. You've read that in several books, right? Where kids are just not reading uh meeting adolescents at a certain age. I think it's we've got to work through these problems with parents, and that requires different systems of communication, different systems of relationships. And um I don't know what the answers to those problems are. They're probably level four, level five problems, right? Everyone require a range of solutions that might not meet the entire problem, but I think it requires all of us to be at the table to do that.

SPEAKER_00

Couldn't agree more. Well, and that's what I was thinking about. You know, Kristen mentioned like it's lovely to have a public school model in our space because of the access, right? It's important to me that we have people from all the different pathways coming to the table: public, private, homeschool, or and and I know it's important for Kristen too. I'm not saying it's not important, but as a vision of our work. Because for what I hear you saying is a strong education is going to be created in partnership with the parents. The parents have to be a partner. And I think maybe that's where we got as a society was like education happens over there, and I'm a parent, I'm gonna be over here, and the gap just got really far. And now we're like it's the pendulum is swinging back the other way to say, you know, no, this isn't the education isn't working for my kid. I need this to be different. And so, how do you bring those things together for the parents to be part of the the uh be an active participant perhaps in their kids' education versus passive?

SPEAKER_05

I do feel like uh when you look at how we have that relationship with creative minds, and then you also look at our future ready centers, those are two great areas of a start and a finish that are highly.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, what if if a kid started kindergarten and creative minds and graduated senior year with a certificate from a future ready track? Yeah. Yeah. Like best public education I've got.

SPEAKER_05

But you look at that, there's a lot in the middle we've got to uh figure out. Yeah, yeah. And I think uh we've got some time to figure that out. But uh yeah, I think there's I think magnets could look very different. I think uh I think a lot of things could look different, but you know, I'm not in charge of all the programming within public schools.

SPEAKER_00

So this might be a hot take and you can be like, Lydia, I don't want to talk about it. Can a Wichita Public Schools has 46,000 students? Is there a scale of school district that is too large to actually serve the kids of its neighborhoods?

SPEAKER_05

There are economies of scale. So I would say there's a I grew up in let me just identify, I grew up in a small district, graduated with 32 people. Okay. The resources in that school were uh negligible, right? We didn't have football, we didn't have a lot of things that I didn't have opportunities for because it was a small school.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

So there are economies of scale. Sure. I think uh I think the challenge is getting large enough that you offer the right number of opportunities, and then there is a level of uh capacity that at such a large level um you probably aren't getting close to grass level. Right? Like it's it's like I we have a great relationship with Microsoft, but the challenge with Microsoft is sometimes the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, right, right.

SPEAKER_05

And many times our folks are pointing those out.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_05

Uh in the same way, I think in uh very, very large districts, county districts, other, you know, in other states are whole county districts. The challenges in those are you're reaching so different populations, right? If I think of a Florida, I have rural populations of sub-districts, and then I've got urban. And if you look at the problems in both urban and rural, they're very different problems. Yeah. Poverty in a urban district is very different than poverty in a rural district. And they need different supports and systems. Um so I think that's a complicated answer.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

But I think yes, you need some size to give opportunities.

SPEAKER_01

Correct. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And then at some point, the size is so large that uh you lose the window into a classroom.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Well, and at a certain scale, so it's like agency is like the theme of the day, right? If the system is set up in a way that even with the economies of scale, you're not giving agency to the people who are closest to creating the impactful experiences for the people, whether it's a teacher in a classroom or a building principal or whatever, they're very they have a very small community right there in front of them. If if everything is held at the top, if you will, then then we can't we can't innovate or evolve or be flexible or agile with the people in our space because the system's not set up for me to do that, right? But I would think there's good leadership that does do that. It's just it's an intentional.

SPEAKER_02

It's totally possible for districts to allow educators to have agencies without like giving up standards.

SPEAKER_05

I would even identify as more complicated than that, though, because as people choose not to retire, then you end up having uh a workforce that has such a age discrepancy of experience.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_05

So I've been in education a long time. I brought internet to Andover for the first time.

SPEAKER_03

Like it's huge laser.

SPEAKER_05

I remember plugging in the internet for the first time, bringing the first router into Andover. I remember registering our email address for the first time. I remember sending an email out for the first time. I have that compare contrast, right? Of what it looked like before internet and after the internet. I also have a compare contrast before social media, after social media. I uh have a compare contrast to AI before AI, after uh at least chat box AI. And so when I think about our educators coming in, they don't have that compare contrast. Yeah. Some of our educators do. And so they understand that there are old mechanisms of education that we need to let go of that that aging workforce might have an issue with letting go of.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And then a new workforce coming in. And so you see everything in the middle too. That complex there's complexity to that problem because of that.

SPEAKER_02

Think about the difference in like a new teacher coming in today, what they experienced as a student versus like what some of our need to retire educators want.

SPEAKER_05

But their compare contrast, like I think of my elementary is what I compare, right? Yeah. It's not so even with my own daughters, right? I have 28-year-old, 26-year-old, 23-year-old. Their experience is slightly different from one another. But it's not fair to me to compare my education to theirs.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_05

And yet as humans, we do that.

SPEAKER_00

Because we're seeking for the comfort and familiarity. I I hear what you're saying, and I don't disagree with it. It's kind of a question like communities are built. Um, oh I went to an emotional agility of training. It doesn't matter. But the it was on a campus that talked about being a modern elder, right? Like it is our responsibility as part of a community to be elders to everyone who is coming behind us. So there's some there is value in those kind of historians of each building, if you will, who can say, hey, here's what it looked like before social media and here's what's after, so that we don't overskew.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_00

So that was a question I had for you because we kind of hear this and see this in different ways with families who come through the door and different founders that we work with. How do you talk about balancing digital influence in the education experience, whether it's devices, instructional technology, AI? I mean, like how how do how do you think about that? How does the school district think about that?

SPEAKER_05

So uh we have new guidelines. Uh we present them to KSDE. I love them because we worked with our parents. Uh, I have a tech committee that has parents on it. Um we got a lot of feedback. Um and we worked with our union, teachers union on those. Um I think what's important is thinking about intention. Um it's unfortunate that so many have grabbed on to time because um I could tell you this like spending 30 minutes on YouTube and spending 30 minutes creating a video for feedback of a project that I'm working on, like 30 minutes is too much for YouTube. Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_00

Well, it depends. What am I doing with my YouTube video?

SPEAKER_05

If I'm just doing YouTube shorts and a team scrolling, right?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, those I hate those. So anyway.

SPEAKER_05

So so it's intention, and I think building that intention, right, is important. I also think um there are many hours of the day that we don't have access to students and we don't have control over that time.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And we need to educate, because I I would even tell you, as a as a technology leader, no one taught me how to be a parent in the age of social media.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_05

There wasn't an organization. We didn't know what we were doing. It was an experiment, right? Uh same way with AI. Like who will own that to help educate parents on AI and its effect for them personally, but its effect on them as a parent.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And I think those are things we've got to wrestle with as a society. Um and but that's building that relationship with the person.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_05

Uh because I think, you know, any time that you can assign uh intelligence a task, which you can today, wasn't available before, um, then it's building wisdom and that's a live shared experience. And so helping parents navigate helping their kids build wisdom is very different than an intelligence.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And I think those are the things we've got to teach our parents. Um and I think hopefully we figure that out over time.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah. There and there is so much. My my rule with crew, I don't know if we were talking about this earlier. Crew has a summer work plan. Crew is six. That's my son. He's seven. Oh. So it's seven. Um but with him, I tell him all the time, I'm like, honey, I know you didn't get to choose for me to be your mom, but this is this is who you get. Um, but he has to do 20 minutes of Khan Academy Kids math every day and 20 minutes of Khan Academy reading, and he's gone to his reading specialist over the summer. But it's just he can, there's so much value. I don't know, it's kind of a relief to me as a parent of a small child, is I don't have to be an expert in everything because there's so many great education tools that, you know, Khan Academy Kids is talking to him about his math as he's doing it and doing that real-time support in a way that, like, yes, I could do that. I almost didn't become a I didn't become a teacher, to be clear. I was a teacher, but didn't go to school to be a teacher because of fourth grade math infractions. And I was like, I'm out. I can't do it. I was a I was a pal for a fourth grade class and I was like, I can't, this is not my bucket. But that tool has the context, the content to coach a second grader on math. Like I can let them do that, but for an appropriate amount of time or what, you know, whatever our family is agreeing to.

SPEAKER_02

So you're saying the district did not put time limits on that, or they did?

SPEAKER_05

There's not time limits. It's like uh uh I would say recommendations, right? Okay.

SPEAKER_02

Is it by activity or is it uh you kind of define the activity, right?

SPEAKER_05

Is it curation or is it consumption?

SPEAKER_02

So it's what the activities do. I like that. Yeah. That's interesting. So do you think I mean it's probably an obvious question, but do you think that kids need time without technology? I mean, you are like a tech guy.

SPEAKER_05

I mean, I take time without technology, right? I think there's a balance. Here's what I would say it's a how, right? Technology isn't good or bad, it's it's fire. So it's fuel. So fire can be good to cook things with, right? But fire can also destroy in the same way that technology's like that. Here's what I would say is that are you building your learning experience intrinsically with the technology? And are you creating greater capacities for learning in a digital environment? If that's true, like I would say with esports, that's amazing, right? You're building skills, right? The learning is continuously happening. If the learning isn't happening, no matter it, let's say I'm outside, I'm just standing in a field, I'm not learning anything. There's no value to standing in a field. But if I'm learning how to plow, right, and plant something and grow something, there's value.

SPEAKER_03

Right.

SPEAKER_05

I have the fruits of the labor. And you do the same thing in uh technology with AI, right? If I'm being assisted in tutoring or doing con, right, to to learn math, is my capacity growing and am I learning? That's a great activity to do. No matter if it's technology or not.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

It's looking at the activity that I think is a the important piece. And are you growing from that? Because if you're not, it doesn't matter what the activity is. You shouldn't be.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Well, let's talk about esports then, because that's kind of a hot take too, right? Um talk about your love of esports. Talk about balancing maybe that type of technology for a kid.

SPEAKER_05

So let me preface uh when we first put eSports in our high schools, we got these uh bikes that we partnered with Zwift on. And uh because a kid under 18 can get a free Zwift account. So we recommend that if you game for an hour, you bike for 15 minutes.

SPEAKER_01

Oh yeah, I like it.

SPEAKER_05

So there's like the stop, right? So you're not sitting in a chair the whole time. I think what's fascinating about simulation, which is what you're in esports with. Uh because when I grew up I had a Nintendo, right? It was uh Nintendo. The same experience every level, right? As you're memorizing the level.

SPEAKER_00

And you know the secret passageways here and here's the code.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, it's almost like math, it's deterministic. Yeah. And so uh in those deterministic values, I would just remember what I needed to do the next time and repeat that to either quicker, right? Better. Um in games today, they're adaptive. So the environment changes, the conditions change, the players change, their their skill levels.

SPEAKER_02

I don't even know if I knew that, Rob, because probably the last time I played a video game was when I was playing the Nintendo.

SPEAKER_05

So if you look at a game like Overwatch or Valorant, right? There's five or six players in a team and you have to learn teamwork in community.

SPEAKER_00

And I think that's a big difference. Yeah, that's right. Like the team engagement.

SPEAKER_05

So like my Valorant kids at West or at East High, they've they've even determined their own short-handed language that they use during tournaments, and they build that language, right? It's like a and they do this tapping noise with their with their speaking of like what they're doing to help strategize, right? Of where they're think of the conditions that you have to do to develop a language between your teammates that is shorthanded.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Right? Like all the aspects of that. And it's not just strategy, right? Like we have uh we have our uh screencasting, right? Where you shout casting, where our kids actually learn how to talk about what's happening in the game and they're talking about that. So uh there's video production, there's all these different jobs that esports goes for. And I go back to if we're not allowing our kids to go out and play unsupervised, right? Like I grew up, how can I build an environment that kids could build some strategy and capacity skills and collaborative skills? Uh and I think esports is a great uh rendition of that, right? Uh I know when we first started at IST or ISC, uh, we have our arena there, and West High in their first couple years had so many kids that we provided a uh lab for each school to have their esports in. And West High would, those kids would find their way all the way to ISC to practice in our arena because they had 80 kids trying out for varsity. And you can't do that in a 20 student lab. So having a strategy class like our gaming concepts class, because we teach strategy in that class, like it's a highest taken elective in our high schools.

SPEAKER_01

I believe it.

SPEAKER_05

And so you look at those, it's meeting kids where they're at, right? If they're not learning social fitness through, you know, unsupervised learning, then we're trying to build those capacities in a in a simulated environment.

SPEAKER_00

And of course, the naysayers are saying kids don't need to spend time on video games. They're like so like you're you still get a lot of feedback like that anymore.

SPEAKER_05

I would say the more and more kids get because like I think we've had our 13th kid get a scholarship in college. Um I think more you see the connection to post-secondary, I think the better. Um because I do think there are think of we don't teach situational awareness in academia.

SPEAKER_01

Right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

How what societal situations have you been in that you need situational awareness in the last 10 years? A lot.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, like all of them.

SPEAKER_05

I mean like so how how do you build situational awareness? Well, right, you could do that in esports when the the ecosystem, the environment changes, the players change. It's building situational awareness. And I think um those are some skills that we don't measure today, right?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's true. That's true. Um well, I always like to ask people. Oh no, I'm sorry. I got one more question.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

And then I'm gonna ask you another question. We've talked about esport. Let's go back to let's go back to some guidance. How do you feel or the district feel about the phones being banned for the upcoming I'm kind of torn?

SPEAKER_05

Uh I believe distraction is bad. So there is a component of it, right? That I'm glad that we have less distraction in schools. Um I think we'll find, you know, uh likely I I've been watching the the Australia Australia because they banned last year.

SPEAKER_02

And so you saw Is that the first place that banned ahead of the streets? I want to say, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

So I so watching them, uh there was an initial bump, right? And kids dealing with their addiction to the screen.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, I believe that.

SPEAKER_05

And so you'll see probably this bump in behaviors and then it go down. And I I would like to figure out some way of what balance looks like, right? Because I think you can't just take it away and because there's also time that we don't have those students, right? So hopefully we could build an educational digital literacy and citizenship program with parents to help them understand what balance looks like as well. Yeah. I'll be honest with you, like I need to have better balance with my kids in their 20-something years.

SPEAKER_00

Well, and to be fair, I think all adults would be like, yeah, I probably am on my phone too much.

SPEAKER_02

It's certainly addictive. I I uh like argue with my husband, who's an English teacher about this topic all the time. I just don't love it that the state came in and said it. Like if Wichita made that decision, like it was just too much for the kids in the Wichita district, yeah, then that's one thing. Um, but as a high school teacher for 30 years or whatever, that my husband has been, he is so relieved. Like Kithy feels like it's the best thing that ever happened. And so it's I see both sides of it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

I would be interested. Like I that measurement is called is attention, right? So uh if you've read, uh I'm trying to remember what the book is. I I could find the quote. Uh so in 20 or in 2004, the attention span was uh two minutes and 42 seconds. Um it's gone down to about 40 seconds, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And so I think minus less than that.

SPEAKER_05

If there was a way for us to measure attention to figure out what balance looks like, because I think I think you could get it to there, but it would take some long-term strategies to figure out what balance looks like. And it might even look different for different people, right? Based on their attention spans. But I think attention is one of the things that we need to figure out and measure because as you think about learning and the capacity for is it short form learning, or can you go down long-form learning paths, right? Then you start to think about our systems, right? If attention span is 40 seconds right now, right? What does the effectiveness of a 50-minute period look like or a block period look like? Yeah, and is there effective? So then it's less about technology, it's more about identifying the right thing we should be measuring, which is attention.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. Well, I remember I graduated in 2009. And I remember I graduated high school in 2009. Um and I remember how so like I feel I got my first cell phone, I think in 2007. 2006, 2007. My parents' rule was like, once you started working, you could have a phone. Um, and that was like it was like a no-key and a brick. God, there's a great phone. Anyways, you drop them all. You can have this until they come and create a city. I dropped it from the top of a roller coaster and on the ground that it still worked. Promise. That's Frontier City. But I just remember how like distracting it was because as a student to have a peer, and to be very clear, I got, I was skilled enough at texting, T9 texting, I could do it under my desk, looking fully engaged and still texting whoever I needed to text. But I just remember how distracting it was to be a student and have like administrators come in the room and grab a phone from a kid because they were walking by. I mean, I that's my fear. Or just how do you, how do you not discipline it? I just how do you operationalize that in a way that is actually not more distracting, you know? But maybe it won't be maybe it maybe there's ways to solve for it that won't be the same as what it was back then.

SPEAKER_05

But so like if you if you're tacking tackling the problem from the edges, then it's just taking away the device. If you want to tackle the attention problem, then it's I mean, engagement in a classroom is the highest level, then right, is the highest measurement.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

And then you begin to measure engagement within that classroom to know what mechanisms I need to do to make sure that a kid is consuming the right learning and moving forward with our growth. And it's less about blaming the device, right? It's more about how can I steer attention from a student to the learning target. And I think that's I think that's something that we'll have to that we'll be challenged with. Because what happens when you take away the device and learning still isn't happening?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Are we measuring the wrong thing?

SPEAKER_01

Mm-hmm.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Well, I think that's a really fair point.

SPEAKER_00

Well, and I I I I think I think your point that you've mentioned about Australia first is really important because it I can be the most engaging teacher in the world, but that attention need with their devices, that addiction is very real. Like I could be have been, I don't know, doing a million things in my classroom and I would still have kids who did not care. I I I think that's important to remember too, is like you're absolutely correct of like we are going to have to rework habits here and and really relearn what it means to have attention and not needing the constant affirmation from whatever we're playing on uh using on our phone. Okay, here's my question.

SPEAKER_05

And are you okay living in boredom?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Like what is moving like you think of creativity. I it happens in boredom.

SPEAKER_03

This is a trigger word for my husband.

SPEAKER_05

Creativity happens in boredom. Yeah. And how do you how do you build the capacity for somebody to be okay in boredom?

SPEAKER_02

I think that's so true. I get my ideas when I'm like on a walk where it's just not but I mean, the last time that I had a day that I did not have back to back, I mean, even for adults. Yeah. And and it is like a travesty that our kids aren't going outside to play.

SPEAKER_00

Right. Oh, come crew knows that it that's for whatever reason, that is a trigger for my husband and I. Like, do not come and tell me that you're bored, or I will I will find something for you not to be bored with, and you're not gonna like my choice. Um, so crew know, like he starts to say it and he's like, never mind. I'll just go outside. Um, but he has cousins right next door. So usually he's like, I'm gonna go see what Samson's. Your kids are getting the 1980s. But he had experience. He went and found a box the other day and used our little cardboard cutter to make like he made a cardboard sword for his dad, me, Lila, and him. And then have like a whole, it doesn't matter. But I was just like, see, this is great. You're cutting up cardboard. Um okay, the question I always like to ask people who are working in education uh innovation spaces, such as yourself. Um what are your non-negotiables? What are the things you will not compromise on, the hill you will die on?

SPEAKER_05

You know, I think uh I think giving kids a chance I think is important. Uh I think the one thing that I love about public education is um we teach every kid. And uh you know, I gr I grew up in a family that you know, I my mom may have made six thousand dollars the entire year, right? So we grew up in a poor family. And I think if it wasn't for the educational system, I wouldn't have the opportunities that I have now. But I think of all the kids in our society that they didn't get to choose the environment that they grew up in. And for me, the non-negotiable is education, is that uh for that kid to get and see themselves outside of that situation. And I think for me that's the that's the passion and the flow. Um and that's what I love about our country is that we give every person an opportunity. And uh I that's what I love about public education.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. No, I love it makes me think about when when I was uh when I went to UMKC, I was a trustee scholar, and as part of that program, we had to do these monthly things. And I remember um Operation Breakthrough as a nonprofit there. It works in a very, very, very poor zip code of downtown-ish Kansas City. You can drive down Main Street, I can picture um the area. But this nun works with these kids. Um, and she like had a student one day who was like really upset because he was like, Why is my life this way? Why do I not have money for things? And she talked about it as like MMs. She's like, Some kids are born with more MMs than others, and you don't get you don't get to choose, but you still have MMs and what can you do with like what you have? Um, and I think about that all the time too, because education is such a foundational identity forming experience for each person that if we aren't creating spaces where every kid is seen and every kid is given a chance, then that is why they grow up and feel like they don't have something to contribute. Um, so I love that. It's a really good, really good non-negotiable. We we agree. All kids deserve an education that works for that works for them. Like we were imaging. Okay. Anything else you want to share with the people?

SPEAKER_05

Oh, you know, uh, check out Creative Minds, check out uh Future Ready Centers, anything that you see uh that we're doing, I I think we're doing some great things here in Wichita Public Schools. For sure. I think uh I think it's a tribute to how a whole community can make something intentional for students. Yeah and uh and can really change. And I I've seen it in the tenure that I've been here and I see it happening more and more.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02

You guys are innovating.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Well, thank you for saying yes to being part of Creative Mind. And well, and the podcast, but just for not saying no when we reached out to be like, hey, what's what's the thing? What are you gonna bring to Learning Lab?

SPEAKER_05

I appreciate the relationship. I think it's been great. It's been awesome dealing with it.

SPEAKER_00

We love having it here. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks, Rob. Awesome. Thanks for watching.