The NorthStar Narrative
The NorthStar Narrative
Balancing Tech and Human Values in Education
Can one decision shape the course of your life and career? Join us as we sit down with Efraim Lerner, an extraordinary visionary who has navigated the dynamic worlds of education and technology. From his formative years in Victoria, Australia, to his current life in London, Efraim’s journey offers a profound look at how cultural contrasts and personal choices can drive growth and inspire change.
These experiences ignited his passion for education, compelling him to advocate for better training and support for educators. Efraim's insights into how technology can empower both students and teachers are a testament to his belief that meaningful connections and high-quality education go hand in hand.
Hi, this is Stephanie Schaefer and you're listening to the North Star Narrative, a podcast from North Star Academy. I want to thank you for joining us. I hope you're encouraged, challenged and motivated by what you learned today. Enjoy the story. Hey everyone, welcome to another exciting episode. I'm really excited to introduce you to a new friend of mine. Just met him today and we've had already a really cool conversation just discussing where we are on this journey of life, and we each have different experiences just like all of you listening have different experiences and yeah, but it's really cool to see each other's stories, and so I'm excited to learn even more about him and to share him with you.
Speaker 1:So today I have with me Ephraim Lerner, and he is remarkable in so many ways.
Speaker 1:He has a unique and inspiring journey that has taken him from the beautiful landscapes of Australia to the vibrant city of London, and he has grown up in a close-knit family and he eventually moved overseas to study and train to become a rabbi. He has a deep commitment to education and he has worn many hats over the years, from being a teacher and a leader in both mainstream and special education to founding his own consultancy company, brine, and a not both mainstream and special education, to founding his own consultancy company, brine, and a not-for-profit called Work Collaborative. He is currently in the process of completing his first book, titled Change Starts here, with his co-founder, shane Leaning, focusing on empowering schools to lead change from within. He lives in London with his wife and daughter and he continues to explore the fascinating ways emerging technologies like AI can help us connect more meaningfully and enhance our humanity, so I definitely want to jump into that and wherever this journey takes us today, while we're talking for a few moments. So thank you so much, ephraim, for joining us today.
Speaker 2:It's such an honor. It's such an honor and a pleasure today.
Speaker 1:It's such an honor. It's such an honor and a pleasure. Yeah, all right. So, um, what we haven't talked about yet before we hit record was London. So I'd love to hear a little bit about London and like what, what do you do on the weekends there? What, what is something for I've never been there? Like what's something really cool that you would like to share?
Speaker 2:London. London's an interesting place. I love the culture. I think there's so much history Growing up in Australia. I would go past buildings and it would be like a plaque saying you know, don't touch this, this is heritage. And we'd look and it was from like the 1800s you know the late 1800s because of the countries that the country of australia, with its city, has only been something in of recent history really, whereas you're going across any random street in london and you go past a building and that building, the building we're living in, be as old as some of the oldest buildings in aust, and it's just.
Speaker 2:I went to the city a couple of weeks ago for a meeting and I was literally just walking through where the cafe was and almost every single building had its own plaque and the street was. One of the first prime ministers in England lived there and worked in another building next door and there was this little office which is pricewater water house, that one of the founders you know. He was working in that little and it's just. You go through all these turns and london has so much of history to it and what I love about that is it brings people together in a very different way than you'd get maybe australia, austral. There's this communal feel where everyone kind of knows each other. That's a feeling I got when I was growing up. You sort of play on the streets with the kids across the road, kick a football, Whereas in London, I think, the city's quite large and there's so much going on and it can be quite isolating at times. But there's also the beauty of it having such a history and being so vast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you probably don't run out of things to do and they're definitely not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's. There's constantly things that are going on. I I usually spend the weekends um with my, with my wife and my daughter. Um, during the week it's quite busy with work, but to be able to sit and spend time with him, sometimes go to the parks over here there's some brilliant, you know, attractions and areas we can go to. I play a lot of tennis I try to at least. So there's, yeah, there's, it's. It's a beautiful city. It really is, and I'm quite grateful to to be in such a place yeah, amazing.
Speaker 1:So what do you miss about australia?
Speaker 2:I think australia has that community feel there's, there's a culture around it. I've also grown up with friends of mine from who I grew up with, from when I was three or four years old, and they're still there. They're still. I go back into the synagogues that I used to go to and I can see people in the same spots almost from when they were there as I was growing up and things haven't changed much, which is is exciting and it's comfortable. But it's also got that feeling of certain areas that when we're speaking about growth and speaking about you know, recently, after I left teaching and I was thinking about where do I go from here? Covid had just started and I was unsure about where things could take it. I was unsure where with, after covid, my, my, we. We had our first child, my, my daughter, and we were unsure about where do we, where do we go from here, like the world that you feel like.
Speaker 2:It felt like the world had changed so much. My parents, they were elderly. Thankfully, thank God, they're healthy, they're well, but they're not young and for them to be able to pop onto a flight with all the restrictions that were going on in Australia, it wasn't possible for a long time, so this was their first grandchild, and not being able to see their first grandchild so going back to spend time with them in Australia was a really important step for me. I really felt it was. And when I went back, though, there was this feeling of I can stay here and be back around my comfort zone, but being around people who I really love and care about so deeply and you know my parents, my brother and my closest friends that they live there people I know but there's a level of comfort.
Speaker 2:I know that I won't be able to grow as much, and sometimes, being out of your comfort zone, being in a different city and I think at that point I made that conscious decision I felt like the world, the, the role that I I was hoping that I would be able to play with education, with all the uncertainties following COVID, knowing that there's so much that could be done in the space of education, if I stayed in my comfort zone, I wouldn't be pushing myself, and that was a so I love Australia. It feels like home. Still, there's this feeling that when I go there, when I go watch a football game or I go spend time with friends, that it's what I know. But at the same time, I think there's something special about London or even not only London just being outside of outside of the environment. We grew up in kind of forming our own path and forging our own path. Yeah, that's so good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we got to get out of our comfort zone. If we're going to be lifelong learners and continue to grow, that's so good. All right, tell me a little bit about your life, growing up and how you decided to be a rabbi and then lead in to how you decided education and where you are today. What is your story? What's your journey? Take us on a journey. I would love to share.
Speaker 2:I hope the journey isn't too rocky. It was definitely an experience growing up. I was very fortunate growing up that I was actually born in Israel. When I was born, my parents had their own backgrounds, their own experiences and my grandfather from my father's side was a Holocaust survivor. He had escaped and moved to Australia. My father was born there and he moved from Western Australia to Melbourne and he sort of became more religious through experiences of his own and decided to move to Israel for a short period to study Torah and to connect back with his heritage. And my mother was going through a similar path in the UK, from London and they met in Jerusalem and I was born there and it was growing up. I don't really have many memories of living in Israel because I left when I was three, but I moved from there to Australia and I was really welcomed and embraced by the community myself, my family, we were embraced by the community there and my family grew up in Judaism.
Speaker 2:There's different sects and different types of Judaism. I guess there's conservative Judaism, there's reform Judaism and we can put titles around it. But my parents grew up with a more traditional background in modern Orthodox, whereas a school that they found for us in Melbourne that they thought was the right place for my brother and I was a more ultra-Orthodox Hasidic backing of the school and it was an adjustment. I remember growing up and we'd have Passover and the Hasidic rules and traditions are quite heavy and strict and my parents didn't grow up with that. So just a simple thing they have matzah, which is the unleavened bread, for eight days of Passover and then some people have machine baked but the Hasidic tradition is to have pan baked and it's a lot more expensive and there's a lot more requirements around that and for me that was a massive adjustment to see my friends going to my friends' houses and they'd have that and when they'd come to us they'd come in their little doggy bag like bringing their, because they weren't able to have the matzah that we were having. And I think over time my family became more a part of that community, the Hasidic community, and it's, I think, the Hasidic.
Speaker 2:I'll give a bit of background, just if it's all right. I hope I don't dive too far. But the Hasidic movement we spoke about that briefly just before. But the Hasidic movement started from someone called Israel Baal Shem Tov. He was a leader and people think it's been around for thousands of years. But if we see photos online, you know the, the site, the typical jewish photo of you know the photo that's, that's stereotyped, almost is is the answer. There's some, unfortunately, some, anti-semitic rhetoric, but you've got like you know, it's really a specific looking jew, but there's also and jewish people like, like every other religion, they come in so many different. There's no one set way and I think that the Hasidic movement you'd see it usually when you see a photo and you type it in on Google that you'll see this. You know someone with long side locks and that was from the Hasidic movement.
Speaker 2:But the Hasidic movement isn't that old, it's only been around a few hundred years. And the founder of the movement, israel basham. So he saw people and he saw that they were with this real authenticity, but they didn't have opportunities that we have now with education. And there were people who did have that and they were berating others. And and israel basham, his view was that, no, every single person has a real connection and we can. It's it's not based on how much knowledge you have alone. It's there's. There's something deeper, there's a soul and there's something greater to the purpose that we each serve in this world and everything's for a purpose. The fact that we're speaking right now and someone who's listening to this is is going to be listening to this right now, in this moment in time, hearing the message that they need to hear, is there's a purpose behind that. But for me, when I was and I this, this message is something that I I I hold really dear to my heart that that we have a purpose and we have something in this world that we can give. And we spoke you spoke about it beforehand and everyone's got their journey and sometimes we need to hear the messages that need to be relevant to us in this moment in time. And for me, I think, and my parents, we started to see this more and more with my friends coming over. Yes, it was a cultural element of having our friends over without them having to come in and feel uncomfortable, but also it was sort of our connection was growing and it was a different type of connection.
Speaker 2:And I remember a defining moment for me, which was a friend of mine who came from a very religious background. His father was our teacher, he was a rabbi and he would walk past and he would kind of like a missionary, would knock on doors and would help people you know connect more with, with their, with their, with their, their faith. And we're 13 years old and I remember he was walking past my house and I would ask my mom what's going on, why is he, why is he doing this? And she said do you want to join him? And he was quite his, he was quite, he was, he was more, I would say, more introverted and and I guess I had more of an extroverted personality and he heard that I was interested in joining him one week and he's like come along and for the next, like five years, every week on a friday, we knock on different doors and we speak to people, and it gave me this immense confidence and and, more importantly, more personally, it gave me a connection to me as a person and my connection with god and being connected with who I was and why I was doing what I was doing. And, yeah, I think over time, this kind of evolved, this journey evolved and and it got to the stage a couple years later where I had to make a choice.
Speaker 2:My friends were going to to different high schools and you know they were thinking about the last years in Australia and Victoria, which is the state that we lived in, um, they were thinking about their, their next step of their life. But what the school wasn't expecting was there was a severe divide across our class where we had a small class as it was, but most of the families that the children in my class were from were from the children of rabbis and it was usually quite an even split where you'd have you know and and that would allow for the students who were training continuing on to be a rabbi. There was a path to go down that that would be for the rabbi's children. And then there was this path that would sort of allow you know the students to finish high school but you would spend the first, you know 15 years of your life together. But what they didn't expect with our year, that just wasn't't the case. It just wasn't the case.
Speaker 2:And there were a few of my friends who went down that route and unfortunately I think they were involved with some substance abuse and there was issues there and I was having to have this real internal battle with myself where at that age, at 15, 16 years old, having to choose what path I would go down, and I don't think many people who are, who know me well, who might be listening to this, will know this, and it's this feeling. It was this feeling of a huge sense of responsibility and my parents were just the most incredible parents you could ask for they were. My mother said we trust your choice, we give you choices and it's frustrating at the time but, looking back, what a level of trust to give a child. You know it's to be able to say both options and I hadn't. My intention was. I wanted to go to to do what I felt in my heart was right, and not my heart, but my soul, my very being.
Speaker 2:And I realized that if I were to go down the route of going back into the high school where my friends were I'm quite impressionable as a human being I felt like it wouldn't be. I was sensitive or my close friends were the ones who were struggling. I didn't want to be in that environment. So I consciously made that decision to go into an environment that I was completely uncomfortable in. I would say I was quite a good student with English and maths and my Hebrew knowledge, my ability to read Aramaic, you know all the sort of that. I was quite poor and I really struggled and it was not only a personal decision but it was also deeply like uncomfortable to be able to go into that environment. But I chose that way and I knew and I was really proud of it and, yeah, I guess, yeah, a lot of things happened from that point on and I continued going and I really I said, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this for me, I'm going to do this for the right reasons and went down this religious route and was really blessed that I sort of was able to study from early in the morning to late at night for eight years, got to travel around different countries around the world.
Speaker 2:So started in Australia was my. My friends were staying there for two years, but I realized that wasn't going to work for me and I realized I needed to. I wanted to go overseas. I had had some really uncomfortable things that I had to go through to be able to allow that to happen. So collecting some money to be able to cover some of the costs that I wasn't able to, my my parents weren't able. It was just a ridiculous fee to travel abroad, to study abroad, and I think my parents were also sceptical of me leaving so early, and the school in Australia, the seminary, the religious seminary that I was in in Australia, were incredibly supportive and it allowed me to take that jump. But I was the only one who, when I went into that school, that seminary in Canada, in Toronto, only one who, when I, when I went into that school, that seminary in canada, in toronto, um, I was the only one who hadn't got friends from before that was coming in there and I was the only one who was coming from australia or overseas, outside of the us or canada.
Speaker 2:And slowly I think these experiences started to shape me and allow me to see the immense benefit that education could offer and, I think, the relationships. That was something that really struck out to me, which was seeing rabbis who taught me, genuinely caring about me and my journey, as opposed to coming in with a stock standard approach, but also, unfortunately, the opposite, seeing people who weren't like that, educators who weren't like that, and as I went through from from toronto to new york to to london, to I was, I was sent to it as an, like an, as an older student, a student mentor to like in london. At that moment I I started to see the negative side sort of of education where educators with the best of intentions can sometimes chastise a student. You know, tell, tell the student off, but not in a way that they, that the student, feels is from a place of care, but rather from a place of of disconnection. And that for me was difficult, was really difficult to see, and I think that sparked in me a passion towards education.
Speaker 2:And when I finished my training in South Africa so I moved from London to South Africa I spoke to the head rabbi. He was a Danish rabbi and I spoke to him about this feeling of I want to make a difference in education. I felt there's some amazing educators but there is also, unfortunately, some educators who don't have that. And when I left london there was experiences that I went over to the run white person around the school and I asked them how could you have educators in these positions without the right training, the right support to allow them to see some of the impact that they were having where students were leaving and leaving religion because of really negative experiences? And it wasn't a once or twice thing, it was happening quite regularly and I said I want to be able to hopefully be there, to be able to, to have a positive influence on what education could be the positive and, yeah, that was a really sort of long-ended experience that that that sort of I'm trying to trying to capture.
Speaker 2:But for me that was what sparked my interest in life, my passion towards education, and then from there it was this feeling of, well, now that I've, now that I've sort of finished and been around, I was able to then do some work in sydney and then travel for a month or two during the high holidays and then move to lond. And one of the students who I was in in London, I was quite close with him. He recommended his sister and I got married. It was, he knew me, it was like one of. We called it a shirach, a match, and we, while I was in London working as a rabbi in a small community, I was able to, I got engaged and then that role ended and I was able to.
Speaker 2:I got engaged and then that role ended and I was, where do I go from here? And I knew that education was sort of where I'd want to go and I think for me that was a really big push and that was kind of the point where I shifted from an idea of getting involved or doing it teaching informally, which I'd been doing for a few years before that, to actually being in the classroom and seeing that in play. I can continue, but I don't know if this is yeah, this is what you had in mind with the last part.
Speaker 1:No, it's good hearing your story and I'm thinking a lot of questions along the way, but then you kind of answered them. So yeah, keep going. So tell us about what you did as a teacher, like what was your you know daily work as a teacher educator, and then how has that led you now to really wanting to help other educators in emerging technology?
Speaker 2:It's great. For me, it seems like this is a great point, great point of where I felt so I'd come in from this place of real, real desire to make a difference, to make an impact. Um, I'd also I kind of went through a bit of an existential crisis in my mind where I'd come in from this point of we've been trained to be community rabbis and it it was expected almost for me to go into that role and I started to see my passion more to education. It wasn't less or more, it was just different, and I realized that was just as valid, if not more valid in my mind. And there was that journey that we spoke about. I feel like that was a journey as well for me, but I went to it. I loved working with students with special education needs and I got an opportunity to work with students with specialized needs, special education needs and I got an opportunity to work with students with specialized needs, special education needs and I started my first day, I remember, and I learned about the students. And then I came in and there was this massive curriculum and I felt there was this pull from one end to teach the curriculum which I needed to teach, and there was also this pull to to connect with each person and their strength and each child and, especially considering where they were coming from, they had negative experiences. A lot of them had been in mainstream schools and only now, in high school, did I have an environment where it was more personalized and more specialized and I really deeply wanted to connect with the students before I started teaching them content. I wanted to understand their strengths, understand where they could feel confident and ready, as opposed to feeling like they were being spoken at instead of being spoken with, and that perspective, really, I think it encouraged me to think of ways. But what I would do is I'd just spend hours at night creating these tailored and personalized learning plans for every single student, and it would take hours for me and I'd go to bed at two. I was studying as well. I was studying my master's in education alongside that in the evenings and I'd go to bed at one or two or three in the morning and come in the next day and I just realized it wasn't sustainable and what I had to do was I had to think of a way and I knew this was in my mind. It was really a path forward. How could we allow the students themselves to have agency within their own learning agency within their own learning experience. So giving them ownership of the specific parts of the class would make sense. But how do I do that without spending the whole night having to prepare those lessons? And I think it was just one day.
Speaker 2:I was walking past a computer and someone was was using a specific tool and I don't think they know today how powerful that tool was at the time or is right now, but it had ai enabled in it and it was eight years ago. It was quizlet. It's quite well known in america. It's it's and we were learning vocabulary words from the bible and we're translating them and we were having to. And the difficulty was some of these students had dyslexia, some of these students struggled with at the visuals, some of these students struggled without the auditory. So how could I make it more versatile and how do I do it that every single time I don't have to recreate the same content and quizlet? What was amazing about quizlet was it allowed me to be able to input data from a google sheet or a microsoft excel document and put that information on, and the students themselves could choose how they coloroded it for breaking it down for vocab words or translating it with their voice or choosing a picture that they identified. And because it was AI, we learned every single time. Anyone around the world, if we were to go right now on Quizler, we'd type in those words. I would say could be wrong, but I would say because we created so many words over the six years I was teaching there, we created probably over 1,200 sets. If you were to type in a verse from the Bible in Hebrew, chances are you'd probably get the right translation from one of these students.
Speaker 2:And the moment that really shaped that was there was a student with. He was a selective mute. He didn't speak in the classroom. He was a really funny, um, just a really, really good character. He is a really good character. He's now, like you know, evolved into this amazing adult, but it was when I first started teaching there and he wouldn't just speak in the classroom. He had unfortunate experiences with adults and those experiences I didn't think gave him the confidence to speak openly in the classroom. So he'd write down and we'd have these funny games between us, but he wouldn't speak.
Speaker 2:And when I started to realize that quizlet could record like learn the ai could learn the recordings and it could use that in different contexts. I asked the students to create do funny words, because I knew that would. That would get him but get him involved in it, get him excited. And he listened to that and he I left the classroom because I wanted him to feel safe. I was right at the front, the door, and I told him you can speak into. You know the microphone recording, whatever it was. I still had my computer with me and he and he would record and he'd leave funny voices and then he'd notice that and his voice started to be heard in the classroom and over time he got more comfortable speaking in the classroom and there was therapists who did a tremendous amount of work with that.
Speaker 2:But this seeing this child like emerge into this confident you know it was always there with that confidence but being able to feel comfortable and safe in the environment, um, one of my final years teaching there I got to see him present, you know, at the end of the year's graduation and these moments they really shaped for me. This is an opportunity that we can use ai or technology to get the most out of our humanity. Um, and I was really fortunate I got to from there I got into sort of leadership roles and I ran the sixth form, which is the equivalent, I guess, of the final two years of school, and it was during covid. And again I didn't know how I was going to monitor how students were going to be, their mental health, their well-being, how could I keep in touch with each one of them. And I realized, if we use, if we listen to them and we gave them a platform to share about how they were doing and check in and just put those that information, that data, in a way that's, you know, accessible and then we use ai to get insights from that, without putting names, without putting personalized information and keeping it local, we can get deep insights and we could start to notice also when students were maybe patterns in, in falling off or when they won't come into class, and with covid, when we were online and offline, it was. It was an amazing opportunity to really and I started to see this is huge. This, this ai piece, is not just something that only a few people should be seeing, it's something that worldwide.
Speaker 2:But I didn't know, because I was in this religious orthodox jewish boys school, high school, I didn't realize that my knowledge of it, or ai, was not the norm, that not everyone in the world was thinking or speaking about ai and I started doing.
Speaker 2:I realized that those decisions that were being made would bring in consultants, would bring in people who are, who are, you know, experienced, but they would make decisions about us and it would take away our confidence as educators and it would take away this, the, the voices, the culture, the religious.
Speaker 2:For us it wouldn't at in that school it was those religious values that we were so precious to us that someone who was coming in as an outsider couldn't understand and couldn't appreciate. And they were coming in with their expertise but they were losing a part of our soul when they would come without advice and they wouldn't see the value that those in the grounds could provide. And I felt this like a consultancy approach could change, where it could really think about each individual. And I started doing work with the schools and I went part-time and went full-time then to working with schools locally and now more globally to speak about this idea and the work collaborative side is is the philosophy behind that. I think it's what we believe is that schools should really feel, and parents and everyone has a unique perspective that they can offer, but if we make decisions about everyone without listening to them, how can we come together to long-lasting solutions?
Speaker 1:yeah, wow, fantastic journey. An excellent example with your student in Quizlet eight years ago. You know how powerful tools can help students step out and flourish and bloom. So, yeah, I so enjoyed listen to your journey and, um, yeah, you're a great storyteller. I filled in a lot of gaps before I could ask the questions I'm sorry I spoke so much.
Speaker 2:I would love to hear, like, if there's anything specific with that. I feel like I would love to to help or explain.
Speaker 1:Yeah no, I think it's right on. I mean that, knowing people, the connection that you do have for you is how do you balance maintaining human values and that connection while incorporating emerging technologies like AI into your work? And so how are you continuing to do that? I think you gave us an excellent example, but how are you training educators, schools eight years later, with an enormous amount of tools that can be super overwhelming?
Speaker 2:it's a great question. It's such a good question and it's a question that I think forces us as educators whether we're involved with those tools or not to really ask ourselves what is, what is the purpose of of these tools in the first place, and what are they coming to fit in? I think if the tool is driving the decisions and the conversation, as opposed to the tool being a facilitator, something that can allow us to get more from what we're already trying to do our vision, our values, our connections then I think that's where that balance is so hard to get right. And if I were to dig in a little deeper into that, what do I mean? Because this seems very abstract, but I think regularly we have these. We regularly have these decisions that we have to make day in, day out, and there's so much pressure that we experience day in, day out from whether, as a parent, you know, as a parent, the decisions we have to make. Which school where you know homework, how do we balance the emotional needs of our child at the end of the day, in the beginning of the day, when they come back from school, how do we connect better with our school? So there's this collaborative communication.
Speaker 2:I think those are fundamental areas where, if we plug on AI to technology, confusion and overwhelm, ai will create more confusion and overwhelm.
Speaker 2:Ai is a really powerful tool that can drive us really quickly towards somewhere, but if we're going in the wrong direction, I think there's a real danger that we lose track of where we started from and where we're aiming to go, whereas I think if we have a real clarity as to why we are doing what we are doing, so, for example, if we have a school or an environment whether it's homes at home, or whether it's online or whether it's in a typical schooling environment where there's a real sense of clarity as to what we want that child to get when they walk through our doors, that's not academic, that's not because academic is changing as well.
Speaker 2:There's so much around the world that is changing but if we don't know what we are trying to do for that child when they walk through our doors, then if we throw in, it doesn't have to be only technology, it could be in people. If we throw in consultants, are we throwing coaches? Are we throwing before we've even got that clarity as to what we are and what we represent and what we stand for and what we want each child to gain from when they walk through our doors.
Speaker 2:Let's say it's a k to 12, setting you know, and they're walking through when they're four or five or six year olds and they're leaving when they're 12 or 18 years old. What values do we want them to walk away with? What do we care about that we want them to be able to to and and that's not in conflict, doesn't conflict with who they are as an individual that's alongside them. It's something that we know they're going to be able to walk away. These skills, creativity, critical thinking, faith, culture, god, like there's so much that a school will want from that child, and every school will be different and every environment will be different, and what we see is valuable, I think, is at the heart and center of that. But the moment we bring on technologies, it can create confusion, it can create frustration if it's not for a specific purpose.
Speaker 2:And I think with ai, I think what I've noticed is when ai is there to support us to, for example and I use this example on on on a news that I sent out a couple of weeks ago my father has an incredible I think he has an incredible memory. He's very humble. He won't ever say that, but I remember one time where he lost his phone book and for me he speaks to people the whole time he calls. And he lost his phone book and it had probably a few hundred numbers in it and I remember sitting with him and it must've been around when I was 14 or 15. And he would ask me to sort of dictate to him and said can you just write down the number he gives me, the number he remembers it from, you know, from from his, from his memory, and he asked me to dictate it and then takes a piece of paper and he goes and he slowly starts to recreate his phone book and I was just so impressed how does he remember all these numbers? And then phones started to be more advanced and we could save numbers and I started to notice the numbers I remembered from when I was a kid. They, they were, they.
Speaker 2:I didn't remember them as easily and my father still. He doesn't know how to use his phone so well and he knows all his numbers still, and I think that's what we're seeing happen sometimes is that it can really support us in ways. I don't think his knowledge of numbers, his memory of numbers, is any less valuable, but it's a specific skill set that he's honed and developed because of the era that he grew up in and he was working in, whereas for me I just put it on my phone. I don't think about it sometimes and I don't remember the numbers I probably should remember. If I remember my number, my wife's number, I'd be quite proud. Whereas in the past I probably had and I think that's just a simple technology, but imagine if we had that to remind us of my father's birthday or my mother's birthday, my brother's birthday if I got those that you know.
Speaker 2:A little notification that helps me do that doesn't make it less personal that I'm connecting with my father or my mother or my brother, but I might not have been the top of my mind but that reminder and then I can go on to canva, for example, and use the ai features to create the perfect card that I know will speak to them with the words that are really deeply heartfelt and get the spelling checked and everything done and it'll be a lot quicker and a lot more efficient. But it's still got that connection. I think that's where, in my mind, technology can really help us. And in a classroom setting, I think if we had those personalized learning experience which everyone seems to be speaking a lot about the idea, but if that aligns with our values and allowed us also to get the balance right where we're. Also, we don't want everything to be given to our children or our students in a silver platter. There's a benefit in them. Learning happens not in a place of knowing everything, it's a place where there's discomfort and I think, with faith as well, there's that feeling where there's discomfort and it's, I think, with faith as well. There's that feeling of there's if we felt we have everything, then, like we've spoken about before, we're filling up our buckets but not necessarily doing, you know, we're not connecting for the deeper purpose. There's this feeling of of ourself being the focus, as opposed to what we can bring to the world, and I think that that piece, for me, is so crucial is because if we get ai to create all these lessons and or worse, I think, in my mind, if we, if we get them to be stuck in front of a computer for the entire day and not feel comfortable working with each other or or spending time on the field, you know, or outside, or outdoors, or interacting with each other, we, we can create.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately, and this is this is god forbid, this is not where, where we want it to go, but technology can really create narcissistic, self-centered human beings are, you know, are self-indulgent and constantly thinking about what they can, you know, what they can get, but I think that that's a really negative way, you know. But if we look at the positive, if we can really get that balance of developing skills, thinking about a humanity where we don't hire people only for their job but for who they are as an entire human being and the role that they can give. Whether they're 16 years old or they're 80 years old, everyone in society can start to think about what they can contribute together in a different way. So for me, that humanity piece with technology, I think, is it's such a crucial conversation now because we are at this turning point.
Speaker 2:We're at this point where around the world, there's a teacher retention and recruitment crisis. Where it's in the western world especially, it's hard to be able to, you know, and if we gave space for the teachers to actually fill the role that they can fill in and trust them on that and give them space to be able to do that and the leaders to be able to lead and the parents to be able to share their insights and the students to be able to share what they want to do in their learning journeys, well, having the technology, the people who make the technology as a part of the conversation, as opposed to separate to that conversation, I think it's crucial, but the very part of it, if we have clarity as an organization or as individuals, to what we're doing, and I think technology can serve us to be, better, to to be and I mean by better, I mean better, better connected, better in tune.
Speaker 2:Um, and there's so much there that's good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, you're a great communicator, really articulated well, I think, the hope of what you want the future of education to look like, and I think that's the hope of a lot of people and maybe they just can't articulate it yet, um, but it's in their hearts and minds. So let's look at practicality. As you're consulting, training, helping educational leaders, teachers, what are the next steps you're giving them? What are you practically? What's their homework? How do they dig in and make this hope for the future a reality?
Speaker 2:I think there's two in my mind. There's two important things I would like to say. I think the message to an educator or a parent or a teacher listening to this, or a leader, even a student who's listening to this I don't know who knows who will hear this message but you already have so much, you already have so much that is of immense value that you shouldn't discredit or discontinue or feel is lacking. You know yourself and you know your purpose and what you can offer and what you can contribute, and anchoring yourself on that and then thinking about how a technology like ai could support, to enhance that, I think is really crucial. It's a message that I feel ai, the conversation about ai, can be very it can be quite tense in the sense that before we've even had the real conversation about what ai could serve us, the conversation is about whether we believe AI is good or bad. I don't think AI is the real conversation. I think the real conversation is what's behind the scenes, what is it serving? What do we want to do on our own without bringing in AI? I think that's a really crucial message. I think people need to hear as well that they are so far ahead of where they think they might be. We're thinking about a world with these possibilities, but don't throw out what you've done, don't discredit it. There's immense value to that and I can make your life easier and it can make your your life in some ways more difficult and more challenging. There's data. By using our data, we could be without realizing we could be giving it over to, to detailed personal information about our children, our students. There's dangers there. There's huge dangers, but there's also immense value that we have before. That is what we, and we can be conscious in that conversation. So, as a leader thinking about policy, listen to people around you, think about your strengths that you already have. Don't throw out anything. Listen to what you've got and then think, and then consider what might be extra or unnecessary, but also think about what may need to be retained and held as the most valuable asset, which is soul of what you're doing. That's the one side, and the other side, I think, is also having a play with AI in a safe environment, with something that is Because AI.
Speaker 2:I think it could be very easily confused with just another buzzword or another fad, but I think what the real power of AI is is a new intelligence that we've never experienced before in human history, that we've never experienced before in human history that we've got accessible to us, that we don't need a coding background, we can literally just type in a few words or speak to, and it will be able to give us insights. And this is going to be the future of humanity, whether we like it or we don't. It's going to play into it, whether it's consciously or subconsciously. We'll see how it's going to impact us. It already does.
Speaker 2:It gives us choices to what, what music we might like and what emails we might send or what, what you know what, what our interest might be. It's impacting us, but we can be more conscious of that and the impact that they can have on us by knowing what the technology actually is. It's not just another educational technology tool, but rather a new sense of how we can operate as human beings, with each other, with what we do. So those are the two points that I think I would say are fundamental to that question.
Speaker 1:I believe those are incredible next steps and I love how you're pretty much aligned with your friend, marissa, who introduced us, and how, on our podcast a couple of weeks ago, she shared yeah, teachers, don't throw out what you have created, you can just add to it, you can adapt it. And so how both of you are saying the same thing Don't throw out and look at what you've already created, what your values already are, and build on that. And so, yeah, that's great, and I love that you are consulting with educators and helping them see this and find that. And so, everyone listening, you definitely might want to check out, if you find out that you need some help listening, you definitely might want to. You know, check out, if you find out that you need some help, how FRIM can come along and help you. But also, it's got a book that's not out yet, but Change Starts here. What is the core message of your book and how is it going to be able to help schools lead change from within?
Speaker 2:The book is something I'm so excited for and it's more than in my, my mind. It's more than just a book. It's not my own, like you mentioned. It's something I've been able to work with an incredible educator, an incredible human being. Shane Leaning is the host of Global Ed Leaders Coaching Done Well, there's a few, there's two podcasts that people can your listeners, if they want, they can check out, but his he's someone I deeply, deeply admire and I'm so privileged to be able to work alongside. He's been in touch with myself, the two of us have been, we've been speaking and I just it was a simple linkedin message. I just joined linkedin.
Speaker 2:I was getting excited about the possibilities of where this could go, but the philosophy, the fundamentals of how we see people within our organizations was still something I was struggling with and I realized that I could speak about these technologies. I can go into schools, I can go in, but at the core, how can they be ready for these types of change? How can they feel confident and self-assured that they can even have these conversations together? And what we realized was, from an organizational point of view, that organizational coaching is usually or coaching, I should say, or consulting has often been geared towards leaders. But how can we gear it more to organizations that they themselves can come together. A leader can facilitate it, or parents or teachers or students can be a part of those conversations to lead change meaningfully within their environment, to allow for these conversations to happen. And the book is not coming in from a top-down approach and saying this is all the answers, but rather it comes from a coaching methodology, which is how can we ask the right questions, how can we have conversations that can allow us to be vulnerable and to feel safe with each other and to really understand the value that we have, without even realizing it within our own teams or within our own homes? How can we allow individuals to feel like they've got the confidence in our, in our environments, to feel safe to, to be a part of their own journey, their own part of what they can contribute towards shared goals, shared shared ideas? So the book is it's got a model in it that we're hoping to launch. It's called work collaborative and afterwards I'll show you the link to that and it's it's this open source model. It's a model for change that we take the reader through through eight stages and it's constant. Change is constant, it's always happening, it's always around us. But how can we create an environment that allows this to happen?
Speaker 2:And we, as consultants or coaches or whoever we might be, we will never know the context of the school. So if I'm speaking right now to a leader or educator who's listening, they might, they might say oh, you know, this message is great, but how am I going to bring that to my practically, to my, to my environment, my culture? I'm a rabbi, I'm coming from a jewish, you know jewish background. But there might be someone who's listening who has a very different background, a different context with what's going on. I'm coming from London, they might be living in a different country. How do I make sure that I and I will never be able to understand that fully because I'm not there, I can't ever live someone else's experience. But they can and they'll have deep insight from the people who are in that environment. So how can we allow them to be able to ask those questions together and create an environment that can do that on their own? So change starts. Here is very much.
Speaker 2:Our goal with shannon is to start that conversation, just to give the questions, the prompts that can allow those educators, those leaders, those parents, the students to think about their role and how they and and how can we do this as a community as opposed to in separation? Because unfortunately, we offload so much of our knowledge before. The same way, we were speaking about technology. We bring in technology before we understand where it can fit into our environments. We bring on outsiders, external experts, who can offer us wisdom, but when are they coming in and how can we make? It's not are they coming in and how can we make? It's not about making change, but how can we make change with us? How can we change, make change meaningful, how can we make change relevant to us here, in this space, in this moment in time?
Speaker 2:And that's and that's and that's what we're hoping for. We're not. We're not hoping to to roll out the book as a sort of a book that we, that they close, the reader closes and that's it. They leave it on their on their mantle or on their fireplace and come back to, maybe a couple years later if they're interested. Oh, that was an interesting book, but rather we want it to be something that they can open up and ask this question. So it's got 40 questions in five for each stage and each question is not the question, whatever questions could be asked, but it's rather there as a sample of the question that can really start a conversation, and we're aware that there's a lot of nuance there and we won't have the answers. And it does not have heavy research, because that's not the purpose of it. The purpose is just to give the context to them.
Speaker 1:That's good. Yeah, thank you for how you're challenging people and beginning more conversations, encouraging those, because that's been the most fun of this time in education, I think, and for me, just personally getting to know people, hear stories, find out where their conversations are taking them and then collectively, how we see that happening across the world, bringing people together. So love it all. Right, how can our listeners get in touch with you? I've got two websites.
Speaker 2:I've got the website for the consulting that we that we do, and I've also got a website that's for the work collaborative, which is this open source, and we'd love for people to get involved. There's information about the book, um, but the best, probably the best way would probably be on my linkedin, because I make a this open source and would love for people to get involved. There's information about the book, but the best, probably the best way would probably be on my LinkedIn, because they can message me. Please reach out. I really like conversations. I don't I don't shy away from from having you know if you have a question, if you want to ask, please get in touch and I'm happy if you.
Speaker 1:That's probably the best way through LinkedIn, and I'll send you the details after, but that's, yeah, I think that's probably the best way to reach out, all right, well, it's been such a great time getting to know you more and hearing your journey and your story, and I think we might have to do a part two to learn a little bit more, yeah, about your faith and where you've gone on that journey as well. So I look forward to us talking more, because we both have different backgrounds, different life stories and just, yeah, maybe even a little debate on some of the scripture.
Speaker 1:I'm always looking for a good conversation. Yeah, lovely conversation. So, yeah, thank you so much for just spending so much time with me today it's such a pleasure and such an honor.
Speaker 2:I'm deeply, deeply touched to be able to be a part of this and I know, just as a human being human to human I'm so like. We spoke about divine ordination, things that meant to be, and we we're in these moments together and we're just blessed to be able to have connected with you and to be on your podcast and to share, and I'm looking forward to the part two.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you so much for listening today. If you have any questions for our guest or would like information about Northstar, please email us. At podcast at nsaschool, we love having guests on our show and getting to hear their stories. If you have anyone in mind that you think would be a great guest to feature, please email us and let us know. And don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on upcoming stories.