From Brain Cancer to Bold Action: Andy Bell's Education Revolution

Andy Bell had a life changing event that rocked his world.   And now he's working to change the world of education.  As CEO of Thinkery, Andy shares his vision for revolutionizing education by combining AI technology with joyful learning experiences.

During our conversation you'll learn: 

• how a brain cancer diagnosis gave Bell clarity and urgency about his mission to transform education
• that our traditional education system was designed for industrial era skills, not the critical thinking needed today
• the statistics that show 95% of preschoolers test as creative geniuses while less than 10% of college students do
• how parents can model a growth mindset by learning alongside children 
• about a revolutionary new model that combines formal education with museum experiences 
• how AI can free educators to focus on nurturing creativity instead of delivering content

Check out Andy Bell's TEDx Talk: Education Revolution: How AI and Joy will Transform Learning

You can learn more about Thinkery, a nonprofit organization that celebrates play-based STEAM learning, at this link.  

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Chapters

• 0:00 Meeting Thinkery CEO Andy Bell
• 5:12 Call for an Education Revolution
• 10:01 Personal Transformation Through Cancer
• 16:40 Restoring Joy and Creativity to Learning
• 22:36 Building Community Access to Learning
• 31:40 Revolutionary Learning Models for Impact

Transcript

Judy Oskam: 0:02

Hi everyone and welcome back to Stories of Change and Creativity. I'm Judy Oskam and on today's episode, I'm excited to share my conversation with Andy Bell. He's the CEO of Thinkery, Austin's amazing children's museum. It's all about creativity and learning and play, and Andy had the formula of success early in his career. He knew how to play the game. He followed the rules until a challenging life event brain cancer. It shifted his life, but it gave him purpose and clarity. Purpose and clarity. He'll share how that impacted what we need to be doing to start an education revolution. I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I did. Well, Andy, give us your elevator pitch. Give us a little introduction, if you will.

Andy Bell : 1:02

Yes, thank you so much. My name is Andy Belly bell and my current role I'm the ceo of a, a magical organization called thinkery, where we bring, uh, joyful, hands-on learning experiences to children and families to spark a lifelong love of learning. And that's a good segue to kind of who I am. My pathway has been interesting and nonlinear, but I think that's more and more normal these days. I originally studied engineering and got into the tech world, but my passion has always been in education and in the opportunity that education has to transform lives, but recognizing that there's a lot of opportunities to do it differently and better and more creatively, and being able to focus on that. As a father, I've got two daughters who have grown up going to places like Thinkery and an amazing wife who has been kind of part of this journey. That has led me to really have the opportunity to think about learning and education and the potential for informal learning to partner with formal learning in really impactful ways.

Judy Oskam: 2:24

informal learning to partner with formal learning in really impactful ways. Well, I was so happy to meet you in February when you did your TEDx talk and I do want to talk about that. Your TEDx talk Education Revolution how AI and Joy Will Transform Learning. That's a powerful call to action. If you will, and how we view education and success, can you start by sharing what inspired that message and what you hope people take away from it?

Andy Bell : 2:56

I love that you started with the call to action, because we are in a moment that that call to action is critical. We're facing a lot of challenges in our education system. The inequities are only growing and the approaches that we have taken for a really long time right. We fundamentally have an education system that was designed well over a century ago for a very different set of skills right to help kids be successful in a manufacturing world of you know, following process and instructions and order. Our world around us is dynamically changing at rates that we've never seen and that brings opportunity. But it means our kids need to develop a very different set of skills critical thinking and collaboration and problem solving.

Andy Bell : 3:56

And if we make the focus and changes needed to think about learning differently, we truly can set this generation up to thrive now and in the future. But it's not going to take a small incremental change of an outdated and broken system. It's going to take bold new thinking and leveraging the opportunity that comes with new technology, that comes with AI, to transform our education system. And that really was the focus of that talk and just trying to change the mindset of you know everyone, because it's not just you know administrators or policymakers. One of the most important, you know, people in education are parents and caregivers and they're going to play a bigger and bigger role in out-of-school time learning but also other community spaces like thinkery and libraries, and we have a chance to recognize that learning, you know, doesn't and shouldn't just happen between eight and three in the same four walls, and that sometimes the most impactful learning happens outside of that, if we're intentional about creating those opportunities.

Judy Oskam: 5:12

Well, and you got into this in a weird kind of interesting talk about your journey and you had some real life changes that kind of put you where you are today and I thought that was a fascinating part of your TED Talk and we'll put the TED Talk information in the show notes because I really want to encourage listeners to go and watch your talk. But you really shared a lot about how you got there.

Andy Bell : 5:38

Yeah, I, as I mentioned briefly in kind of my introduction, I started in the tech and engineering world but really at the intersection of how technologies can support this new model of experiential learning, and that led me to working for Lego Education and really immersing myself in the power of creativity and joyful learning, and we created some of the most innovative learning solutions, products like Lego, mindstorms, robotics and WeDo and others. And what I learned, that the biggest challenge wasn't in the visioning and the imagining of these products, it was integrating them into an education system that really should have welcomed them. And you know, I kind of I did my best, I did what a lot of people do and like what's the next step and kind of slow progress and kind of moving forward. And you know I have been an overachiever and I you know I loved being successful and kind of getting those gold stars.

Andy Bell : 6:47

Follow the rules, that's right, you know, playing the game that we've kind of been given. And and then I, I had a really challenging life events. And, you know, one day I was completely healthy and felt healthy at least, and the next day, um, after, you know, a series of kind of intense headaches, um learned that I had brain cancer and um, it's you know it's hard to describe how jarring that is. Right, like, um, I think you know you can imagine it, but just in this instant everything just completely flipped upside down and and forces you to think about things completely differently and priorities completely differently and my, my purpose and and and how I want to kind of approach this world. And it gave me this clarity of like, okay, the things that I kind of knew, right, like that were important to pursue and that we needed to do boldly, but were maybe in the back of my mind, of like, okay, those are things that I could do later in life and you know, I'll make progress.

Andy Bell : 8:04

An urgency of like, no like, okay, those are things that I can do later in life and you know, I'll make progress. An urgency of like, no like, let's, let's really prioritize and put energy and urgency into making an impact in areas that I happen to have some background and expertise and and so it really pushed me on a different path and getting, you know, significantly involved and immersing myself in ways that we can evolve our education system and led me to this role at Thinkery and some bold new educational concepts and kind of challenging the status quo concepts. And kind of challenging the status quo and, you know, recognizing one of the things I talk about in my TED talk is that we need to think about this as revolution and not evolution right.

Andy Bell : 8:53

Yeah, we can't just keep pushing uphill, you know, against a system that was never meant for true learning, Like we, we have to rebuild, Um, but I mean the the good news, right, and, and you know, I think part of who I am is just always, uh, seeking the opportunities and possibilities that that we have and and realizing them is the pieces that we need for the future of our education system. They're here, we just need to embrace them and we need to really innovatively think about the model differently.

Judy Oskam: 9:36

Well, let's go back a hot minute, because you had to first deal with your cancer diagnosis and dealing with that on a personal level, your family, your whole being. How did you deal with that first to then get into your purpose and I'm sure kind of clarity in your purpose kind of gave you a mission if you will during that time, kind of gave you a mission if you will during that time. But how did you for people listening who are dealing with a life health challenge like that, how did you do that? I always wonder about people how do you get through something like that?

Andy Bell : 10:17

Yeah, and for those, I mean, it may be a health challenge, it may be another challenge, right, it may be a loss of a job or a family member, right, like I think, um, we're all going to have these, these jarring moments, um and um, you know, I, I, I think the advice that I would give is, um, that everything that you are experiencing and feeling is is okay and, in the moment, like it's all right for it to be a struggle and for the hardest thing that you have experienced, but but to to not pretend that it's not happening or push it away or kind of deal with it. And you know, I'll give an example. You know, our two daughters were pretty young at the time and, of course, we wanted to do everything that we could to support them, but we weren't experts and the strategies we took, it turned out, were completely opposite of what we should do. And we found people who were experts in an amazing organization called Wonders and Worries, who works with kids who have a parent dealing with, you know, challenges and, and I, you know I, as a learner, I needed to get the tools and to understand, like, what's out there and how to go through it.

Andy Bell : 11:46

You know, I personally worked with multiple therapists and folks to kind of help me kind of understand that you know there are things that we can control and there are things that we can't control Right and when we face these significant obstacles, really leaning into like what we can control.

Andy Bell : 12:09

And that helped me lead towards um, you know, focusing my energy on the opportunity and clarity that this gave me to make the most out of each and every day and moment that I had the energy and opportunity to do that right and letting it be okay and in the times that it's not. But looking back now, seven years later, and being in in great health now and part of that coming from just breakthrough medical science and a clinical trial drug and the importance of us inspiring the next generation of problem solvers who are going to help us tackle all of these challenges, really came full circle. Um for me because that has been, you know, kind of my passion and my focus. But um just gave me clarity on um, putting my energy, um into a space that um that I know is is needed and that's um that I know is needed and that's, for me, is where my calling and my purpose really aligned.

Judy Oskam: 13:33

Well, I'm sure you must have thought something like if not, if not when, why not now? And if not who, why not? Me, you know, because taking the lead in this this is you're talking about a massive educational shift and a mindset shift into what we think of education. And I'm at the university level and there are changes needed there too. But I always tell my faculty back to the education part is remember K through 12, your students have been in a box, if you will. They've been in a very structured environment. They come to the university and we say get out of the box, be creative.

Judy Oskam: 14:07

Especially in my area, we teach media communication, digital media, journalism, pr. We say be creative and sometimes the students don't really trust. They ask things like what size font do you want on the paper, what size, how many pages do you want? You know they're used to that structure. How do we, how do we take your sort of mindset that you went through with your, with your health challenge, and how do we change that at at the local and global level when we're talking about an education system?

Andy Bell : 14:41

And just to put a an put an exclamation point on what you're saying. There's fascinating but not surprising research out there of testing for creativity and levels of creative genius and the data and the studies show that four and five-year-olds and the data and the studies show that four and five year olds the percentage of kids at this age that test as creative geniuses is over 95%, and so it's not that we need to teach kids how to be creative kids how to be creative, but as you track their progression, you know, in middle school, that number drops significantly by the time they get to you. In higher ed, it's under 10% of students test as creative geniuses, and so I think a huge part of what we do is, you know, stop removing creativity from learning in their lives and really embrace that exploring and tinkering and failing and learning from that failure is an opportunity, instead of saying that what's important is memorizing a set of facts and hitting, you know, this test metric as we move forward, which our system is structured around, and right now, a lot of that needs to happen outside of our formal classrooms. And so, yes, we need to make significant changes in our formal education and, you know, at Thinkery and other organizations, we're doing professional development to help teachers, who are superheroes, right, like they are the stars of the show, but they're in a system that doesn't allow for them to tap into their strengths.

Andy Bell : 16:38

And, and so you know, I think there are just really important experiences that can happen outside of the school day, in after school programs, at boys and girls clubs, at places like thinkery and libraries, and summer camps, and FIRST robotics, and you know, just all of these countless areas, while we are also working with those that have the opportunity to make changes inside of formal education, and we're at a transformative moment where AI and the rate of growth can help us achieve the change that we already know we need, and I think that's what's interesting, and I think that's a big piece of how we can accelerate this change quickly, because this has been a problem we've known for a long time.

Andy Bell : 17:34

There's a lot of people that have worked on this, that are passionate about it, that agree with what I'm saying, and we just haven't made progress, and so what's going to be that dynamic, you know, forcing function, and I think AI has an opportunity to do that, but only in the right environment, right where we're thinking about this community-centric approach and recognizing that the most important piece is joyful learning and bringing joy to learning, and back to learning.

Judy Oskam: 18:04

Talk about joy a little bit because I love that. I love that that was part of your TED Talk and talk about why joy is so crucial to making all of the pieces fit together.

Andy Bell : 18:15

Yeah, if you look at, you know kids today and students today and what they're going to see in their careers. The truth is, we have no idea what the jobs of tomorrow are going to look like. Exactly right, we know there's statistics from MIT that already 60% of the jobs of today didn't exist in 1940 and an even larger percentage of the jobs of tomorrow don't exist today. What we need to focus on is preparing our students to be learners and to be lifelong learners, and the best way to do that is to create a love for learning. They're not just going to have multiple jobs, they're going to have multiple careers, and if we can embrace the natural creativity and desire to experiment and to tinker and to learn and have that be the through line in all of our experiences, then that is going to set our students up to continue to do that throughout their lives and that, at the end of the day, is how we're going to help ensure students thrive today and also in the future, in this world of endless possibility.

Judy Oskam: 19:41

Well, I love how you really give a shout out to the parents, and it's not just you send your child to school and expect all the work to happen there, all the work, the love and the joy. What can parents do? And talk about what you did with your kids? How did you sort of get? What did you do with your daughters to make things, to make them lifelong learners?

Andy Bell : 20:06

Yeah, I think it's essential that we're proactive as parents, right, and one of the challenges is that we come from the system that we know needs changing and you are just very likely to replicate what you have gone through, what you have gone through, and so I don't want to trivialize how challenging what I'm saying is to completely change and adopt a different mindset.

Andy Bell : 20:40

But fundamentally, that's what we're going to have to do and you know, if I could put a you know, a simple message on what that looks like, this is true for teachers, for parents, for all of us who need to be seen as educators.

Andy Bell : 20:56

You know, we come from a model where there's just this expectation that we need to know everything and with that, then when you get questions from your kids, when you get questions from your students and you don't know the answer to that, then that puts you in an uncomfortable spot where maybe you don't embrace that as a learning moment and you're modeling that it's important to know the answer it's not important to learn how to find the answer and to embrace a growth mindset.

Andy Bell : 21:31

And I think that growth mindset fundamentally, is core to how parents need to model embracing learning alongside your child and with your child and taking every question that they ask of wonder and inquiry because I guarantee they're asking those questions and to learn with them and to explore and to embrace, whether it's, you know, a simple project that you do at home, or whether you know a simple project that you do at home, or whether it's finding environments that embrace these types of experiences as you move forward.

Andy Bell : 22:19

And that's where, you know, I think the intersection with AI is interesting, because we now have the ability to get some of that subject matter expertise that we often think of as what's essential for an educator to just, you know, rotely deliver in one direction, and so we can access that information in a very engaging way as kind of a partner. And then, parents, you know we can just focus on creating this environment of learning and growth and, you know, kind of embracing this opportunity to explore and, similar to you know, what many amazing teachers are doing today and how we want to create kind of more opportunities for teachers to do that in the future.

Judy Oskam: 23:15

Yeah, I love that and I know and I always say asking the right questions is key rather than knowing all of the answers, and in my TED Talk I talked about that a little bit and about take action and figure it out along the way. So you're not going to know. And education is not about having all the right answers. It's about finding the strategies and the tools to then embrace. That's great. Well, I know sometimes parents might be thinking well, I don't, it's just me, what can I do? But taking your kid to the thinkery and places like that, and let's, let's get back to that a little bit. I mean, have you had a moment at the thinkery that really kind of you know hit you and you're thinking this I am in the right place here. Have you seen the impact it's had on parents, children and teachers?

Andy Bell : 24:13

I have and it's the most amazing experience to see the light bulb and that spark happen. And I had seen the impact of Thinkery through my kids' experiences for many years and when I came on board as CEO really recognized that we knew the impacts that these types of experiences have and in fact we've been doing research with UT Austin for 15 years to kind of show how these experiences, especially in early learning and elementary learning, can spark and set you up for success and also how we support parents and kind of caregivers. But what was clear was that we weren't reaching those in our community who had been furthest from opportunity, those in our community who have been furthest from opportunity, and so we put a lot of intention and focus on how do we remove barriers to the programs and experiences at Thinkery but how do we also bring those experiences out into the community and especially for those that haven't traditionally had the same opportunities? And something that has been a through line in my career and in my kind of leadership style is the power and importance of collaboration. I really come back to the African proverb if you want to go far, go sorry. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together, and so we really put understanding how we could work with community-based organizations that had been transformational but may not have Thinkery's specific expertise in play-based team learning and work together. And so our partnership with Boys and Girls Club is an incredible example and the work that they are doing to impact the lives of kids and the success and graduation rates, but knowing that you know their expertise again wasn't in this type of a learning environment or experience.

Andy Bell : 26:38

We co-developed a new after school program where Thinkery developed this play-based STEAM curriculum that gets delivered at every Boys and Girls Club site across Central Texas, so over 25 different sites, and at the end of that and it's my favorite part of every single week, the Boys and Girls Club buses pull up at the Thinkery and these kids take the projects and the work and the learning that they've done, and a lot of times it's, you know, not just the first time they've been to thinkery, but sometimes the first time they've been to a museum or any place that has this wonder and awe and magic and seeing them apply you know this creative genius that they have inside of them in this new environment and make those connections and recognize that that space is their space and that you know that sense of belonging and the importance of, you know, turning a place like thinkery into a welcoming environment for every child and their families.

Andy Bell : 27:49

And as part of that program they then get they get memberships to Thinkery right. And so you know it's through incredible donors and funders that make programs like that possible right, so that program is funded by an incredible local company, national Instruments. But others right provide the dollars that help us open those doors, our open door initiative, and have access to those programs and scholarships to our camps. And those are the moments that you get to see the magic and the awe and the wonder that sparks that love for learning that you know. We know we need to then add fuel onto that fire, but it has to start with that spark.

Judy Oskam: 28:35

Well and does. Is it ever too late to to find that spark? Is it ever too late to embrace a creative growth mindset?

Andy Bell : 28:44

Absolutely not.

Andy Bell : 28:45

So I love that question . Right, and I think in this lifelong learning moment and we get to see that because we really think of ourselves as a family museum, not just a children's museum.

Andy Bell : 29:00

And so you know, you see the adults come in and the caregivers, and we're just as focused on helping them understand the role they can play in learning.

Andy Bell : 29:11

So, instead of sitting on the sideline in the wall and, you know, watching their kids interact, how do we give them prompts that they can give their kids so they can learn together? And you start to see those walls that we've put up and those, you know, mental constructs of oh I can't be creative and play anymore. Fall down and get involved in learning and engagement. And you know we equally hope that that helps puts a different mindset of their inner child that has been there for a really long time to come back to embracing creativity and learning. And you know I do some some guest lecturing at the UT McCombs Business School and you know even talk about creativity in a boardroom for a company and for executives, and you know just that mindset is so essential um that we really recognize, uh, the importance of um thinking outside of the box and thinking differently and embracing the opportunity to be creative in a lot of different environments.

Judy Oskam: 30:36

Yeah, I love, love that and I'm teaching a graduate class now on creative problem solving and mass communication and I'm going to ask the students to listen to this interview because this is a good catalyst for them to maybe do a quick visit to the Thinkery.

Judy Oskam: 30:54

You know, they're not too old, but I think that's fantastic and I think people it sounds like what you do too is you give people permission to be creative. Those parents that are on the sidelines, you give them sort of the okay to jump in and re-engage with their creative self. You know.

Andy Bell : 31:15

That's right, and it's a virtuous cycle, because that permission and engagement then connects back to what we were talking about before, which is, you know how parents can play an active role in learning, because they now then need to model that in how they're engaging with their child, and so it's really an important part of how we will see a larger transformation.

Judy Oskam: 31:41

Well, speaking of transformations, what's Andy Bell going to be doing in the next five years?

Andy Bell : 31:58

doing in the next five years. I am passionately committed to helping showcase and continue to build and evolve these models that are changing kids' lives and families' lives and the community's lives, and I think for me, you know we have started some incredible new programs. So, for instance, you know an example of a innovative new model that Thinkery has undertook that really is a revolution is a partnership that we have with one of our local school districts, dell Valley ISD, and they are a hundred percent title one schools, but a really innovative school district and an incredibly vibrant community, but a community that's been underserved for so long. And we decided, okay, we have to do things very, very differently. And so together we decided to commit to a new learning space that during the day, is a child development center, and we overlaid and infused a thinkery neighborhood museum into that child development center.

Andy Bell : 33:11

So every child benefits in a formal learning environment from everything that we're talking about, and all of the teachers in the district use this space as their hub for professional development. But then, outside of the school day, it becomes a thinkery neighborhood museum where families gather and communities gather and teachers, and so this model is very new and revolutionary and different. And so not just what impact can it make in that community, but how do we study this and other new models and show the impact and data and how do we think about scale of those in a larger way and mindset? And there's some incredible organizations that are thinking about scale and so you know, as we have these individual areas of success, you know we need to be really thoughtful and studying what are the elements that are key, what is the impact and then how do we use that knowledge to influence the future dollars that are going into schools and programs and learning so that that can have an even bigger impact learning so that that can have an even bigger impact.

Judy Oskam: 34:35

That's a big job that's more than five years but I'm so excited to see what you do next, andy.

Andy Bell : 34:38

Thank you. Well, I've been inspired by all of your work and thought leadership and the importance of creativity and communication and thinking differently and having the opportunity to have this conversation and to share and to learn from others who are doing such great work, and so just really appreciative for everything that you are doing as well and for the opportunity to have conversations like this.

Judy Oskam: 35:06

Well, thank you. Thanks for joining us today. Appreciate it, my pleasure, thanks, thank you. Thanks for joining us today.

Andy Bell : 35:10

Appreciate it my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Judy Oskam: 35:13

And thank you for listening to Stories of Change and Creativity. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Andy. Be sure and check out his TEDx talk. I'll post it in the show notes. If you enjoyed today's episode, I'd love it if you could leave us a five-star review. It really helps more listeners find the show. And don't forget, if you've got a story to share or know someone who does reach out to me at judyoskam. com, I would love to hear from you.