Redefining Readiness: Charting The Course for Education in a Post-Pandemic World

Hello, and welcome to the inaugural podcast Just thinking. My name is Kevin Daugherty. I'm the chief strategy officer for eight zero six technologies based in Plano, Texas. And today, I have an amazing guest, a great friend, an incredible education leader, Doctor. Ray McNulty, I'm gonna let Ray introduce himself to you in the event that some of you don't know him, although I know most of you do. So, Ray, who are you? Oh, Kevin, it's really great to be on the inaugural event of just thinking. And so, yes, I'm Ray McNulty. I'm currently the president of the successful practices network. And the National dropout Prevention Center. Those are two private nonprofits. And over my career, I've been a teacher, a principal, a superintendent in the state of Vermont, commissioner of Education in Vermont, Looked to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as a senior fellow, joined Bill daggett and grew the international center for leadership and education in the model schools conference to what that appeared to be. And and then I left, I because I really needed to learn something about the online world. I went into working with a big online company called Penn Foster. I enjoyed that. Was the Dean at the School of Education at Southern New Hampshire University, and that was that was amazing, gig, so to speak. And currently, then Bill called me back and said I need you to come back and help run SPN again. So we're a studio that kind of builds projects and we go in and we we help school districts and systems, go to lead to the future and take care of the path take care of the present and enable the future. That's kind of our job. Love it. Yeah. So you're everywhere. You were mentioning that you're gonna be key noting, this coming week in Arizona to superintendent speeding. So, I know you're all over the place because I follow you follow you on social media, and I see you everywhere, Ray. Ray, you're talking to lots of educators. And you're hearing the challenges that people are facing. We're, you know, out of the pandemic, but there's still some remnants of COVID and maybe some things that are lingering from the pandemic, but but even more than that, things are changing rapidly. And that's impacting education. So what are some of the main challenges that are being shared with you or that you're witnessing in your travel? Well, you know, there's so many. It's almost the list is getting longer and longer. And I think The reason is that our system has never really been a system that has adjusted. Education has been very stoic and and straight and steady. That was okay when we had the US mail system and, you know, people waited for things to happen, but the world is incredibly fast. It's it's referred to as the Voca world of vol it's volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. And so as we hold on to our present, the world keeps changing. It's kinda like same humans different world. And that problem, now is I think it's accelerated where we see we're seeing education has never rethought about its workforce. It's the same workforce since Little House and the Prairie, one teacher, one classroom. Try to find another industry that has done that over time. We have problems in our structure of our of the way we deliver our work. Learning is totally different. It's It's a it's a very different world. And then as a country, we seem incredibly divisive. There are a lot of people that say, I just want you to teach content to our kids. Out there. And the businesses are saying we need resilient people. We need creative thinkers. We need this. And so there's a there's a nexus there. And sometimes just even saying what what we're trying to we're trying to make give everybody in this in this view of personalized education. We're trying to deliver, personalized education so that we create an equitable educational system. And then there's people that explode over the word equity. And one of the things that we see that I'm seeing more and more of is that, younger parents are recognizing a lot of this. And there there's a real strength out there, there's a study that was done by the Populous group out of Cambridge Mass. They asked people to to schools need to change. And they asked them two questions like that. They said, what do you think do schools need to change? And then they asked them, what do you think the people out there think? What they found was that what they think is schools need to change. Okay. But what they think others think is that they need to go back to the way they were. And it's a very interesting report, but what it basically shows you is that, like, sixty five percent of the people want schools to change. So it's a it's a very it's a very interesting field that they're they're playing with this because I think, you know, sometimes personally, people have an opinion, but they think others that the general populations opinion is different. You know, you've segued beautifully into my next question because, With every challenge, there are opportunities that are presented. So I wanna talk a little bit about the opportunities that you see moving forward for education. Yeah. I think I think I see out there. I see industry wanting to reach out and help education rethink the work that we're doing. I see I see students and there's a there's this students are are teaching us something. What they're teaching us is that After school is all this what they call freelance learning going on. Kids are learning. The learning things they believe are important to them in their future. Right. And they're learning this outside of school. And so schools are now beginning to say, we need to bring that into the school. And we're seeing we're seeing some great dialogue. One of the things we're seeing is schools starting to recognize the need to internally take care of the present, but build a system that can enable the future. Because look, there are things that we are doing today in our schools that are absolutely necessary to continue to do. And when I think about that, I think about literacy, powerful literacy skills, We know how to do it. We know how to do it well. We know we should be doing it better. But we're not gonna but there's a lot of things we do in our school that we have to stop doing so that we can make space in our schools for people to do things. And it's it's so interesting because the field of there's a a group of people I'm following They it would they think about innovation by subtraction. How do we make space in our schools? Right? How do we do it? And and we do have this challenge, which I think is an opportunity, which is we have we talk interdisciplinary, teaching. We talk about, personalizing learning. In order to do that, we have to deconstruct some of the the walls in our institutions. And I'm working with a school district, Long Island that the teachers are really leading the way, and they're saying, yeah, we need to, you know, we need to put English and social studies together. But that doesn't mean we have two periods. Let's just take one. Let's let's create an open time so that we can think. You know, you look at a teacher's schedule. It's period one, two, three, four, five. In elementary school, they do the same thing, by the way. They do reading math, so study science. They just don't call it a period, but that's you know, that's really not how our systems should be thinking. So one of the this is kind of a funny way to say it, but one of the opportunities is that we've been doing some stuff for such a long time and they're so outdated, there's great opportunity, I think, for educators and and teams of leaders to think differently about how we deliver this work. I think I think there's a lot going on in that area. So, Ray, do you think people in our educational institutions are really stopping and taking the time to dig deep into conducting a comprehensive needs assessment so that they are really looking at what are the things that we should continue doing that are working really well and consider things that need to be let go of and that sort of thing because you say we we keep doing this, we keep adding on. So would a comprehensive needs assessment and having a really thoughtful process built around that help that? Or I do, Kevin. I I think you you have something there about we need to have a comprehensive look. But here's here is the problem. I think that why that sees a challenge. In most most of our schools in this country are forward focused. They're not future focused. Right? What I mean by that is they look at their previous year, and they say, how can we improve our reading, how can we improve our math? We need to do this. We go, you know, attendance needs to be better. We need to do these. And they look back. Okay. In in my in my mind, and and I learned so much from working at Southern New Hampshire University, Paula Bloch, the president there is an incredibly, he's a genius. And, you know, the school was named the twelfth most innovative company in the world. But but every day, we would challenge the status quo. We he would train us to think about the future. In our schools, we don't do that. We look back. And I'm I've been doing some innovation academies and trainings in schools to teach leaders to look ahead See, you can't build the future by perfecting the past. We have to say, you know, by the way, there are a lot of schools out there that have perfect visions of what they want in the future. But they but they don't build much around it. They look back and continually try to help the system improve. So where I what I think is going on, I started to realize that there's a really interesting strategy called the two loop theory. And actually, the automotive company are using it now because they're still building combustible engines. But they're also building the electric car of the future. They got a group of people continuing to do what they've always done. And they've got a group of people in their institution, in their industry that are doing, building the future. So I work with districts and trying to get them to think that how do we there are teachers in the school that wanna try new things. There are teachers that don't. Right. Here's what I like to say. We need them both. Love it. It's not a war. This is not a war. I need, you know, Kevin, I need you to keep the math department running the way it is. Right. There's two math teachers, three English teachers in this group. We got a group that we're building the future. And we're, and we're gonna do it, and we're gonna slowly hospice one system and launch another system. But it's gonna take time, but the internal culture of a school should be as exciting as it is, you know, to work at Google, you know, to work at a young startup that's trying to get ahead. There is op there is great excitement and opportunity about the future. We need to be the agents of that change. So That only happens when we can realize that, you know, with such a rigid system. It's, you know, bells ring, things happen. Right. And the system just plugs along. You know, the issue is how do we get a little more innovative and creative in our system? You know, you mentioned something about, divisiveness earlier. And the the, you know, polarization that exists in our world and in our schools. And I'm thinking of the work of Doctor. David Hirely who Cree to think he maps and Yes. Work with him for seven David and Larry Alper. Larry Alper. Yes. Two of my favorite people out there in the world. That's right. I forgot that you worked with Larry, but they put together a leadership training. And one of the components of it that Larry used to speak to was how do we make the shift from positional thinking to possibility thinking. Yes. When we establish a position and you just identified a couple of positions here that people have on different things. Whether it's on a term or an approach or whatever. So I establish my position, and I defend it to the death. This is my position, her position, and we ain't gonna meet in the middle. Yep. You wanna be a knock down drag out because I I'm here and I'm defending my position. And I love the fact that they proposed the idea of taking whatever the issue or topic is and just start generating the questions around it. Don't try to solve it. Don't go to solution. You and I talked about this a little bit earlier. Yeah. We did. Let's just throw the questions out there that come to mind. Without any judgment, without any, you know, pre consideration, just get it all out there. And I've seen power in this working with leadership groups just getting the questions out there and think about the possibilities. Because like you said, if you're looking back you're you're bound somewhat by the past, and it holds you back because you're you're not you're not allowing yourself to go fully to possibility thinking. You're thinking possibility, but this happened in the past. So, you know, I gotta kinda temper that a little bit. Well, but, you know, what's so interesting thing is in the world today, most of what we have to deal with are not problems. Problems have solutions. Problems are you find a solution. Right? What we're dealing with are these polarities, these conundrums, these messes. Right? So I'll give you a couple of just and and those you must navigate People are looking for you to make an answer, but there is no answer. You have to navigate it. Alright? So just think of the one cons this is one concept in I just pushed it into my head, but teacher responsibility for learning and student responsibility for learning. What's the answer to that? Well, well, guess what? That's a polarity. That is something you must navigate. On in this with this educator, you're gonna have to spend a little more time on the fact that they have a response, more of a responsibility. On the with some of these kids, man, gonna have to have a more responsibility. It's not a black and white issue. We are facing some of these things. And when so I work, and I love the work that David and Larry are doing, and the work that I lay in, lean in on is this polarity work where we We we we talk to people a lot. We sit down and say, you know, what are the people saying that are resisting a new initiative, a new policy? What are they concerned about losing? You know, what do they value about the way things are? Right? And then the people that, you know, wanna do something new, it's like, what's the chronic problem they're trying to solve? Like, What's the difficulty? You know, one of the most exciting possibilities, you know, and and and what are the dreams that people have about how things could be? Those kind of conversations are important. And and one of the things we must do, and I I am I have been wrong in the past about this. You know, I would be working with people and I'd say, oh, those are the toxic people, and these are the, you know, these are the golden retrievers. Those are the you can't make one the enemy or the other. You need them both. And actually, they have very good reasons. So when I think about some of the transformation we're doing, I I I think about the fact that there's always a group Kevin, you know this group, like, I call them the golden retrievers that always like to jump on a new idea. Right? But then there's a middle group that you might come up with an idea, and they're not gonna jump on a The reason is they have to see it being implemented in their system. So they have to see it. They don't have the they don't have the mind for it. They wanna see it being done. So then you have those people. Then there's another group of people that believe what they're doing is getting the best results, and they won't want to change until they see some other results from this new way of doing it. Right. You know, and if and if you can think about that that kind of work, what you end up doing is You end up slowly moving and bringing people on board. You know, you'll get the vast majority. You'll never get everybody on board, but, you know, that's a that's a lot of what the polarity work is about is that, you know, there's there are there are things we need to bring from the past to the future with us, and there's things we need to let go. Right. And And that's another thing. We're not we're not really good at letting go. We're not really if if there's a program, we we wrap it in, you know, plastic wrap and make sure it can't get wet. And it it's laminated, and it's there forever. We have got to clear. We've gotta clean out some of the messes that we see. And, you know, what I do see, which is interesting, is a lot of some not a lot, but many higher ed institutions now are starting to say, like, like, SNHU, you know, they take their their degree program and say, well, why do they have English every year? They've had English for twelve years. Then they come in, we gotta give Why isn't everything embedded if you're a business degree? It's all part of business. Right? So you can now get a degree in less than four years and three years at two and a half years. You don't need a lot of things. But so I I see some recognition of that, and I think we have to do it in the K twelve world too. Well, I I love that you use the word laminate. We used to say in our trainings that, you know, with the elementary teachers, if you stand still long enough, They will laminate you too. So Yes. They will. It's terrible. Yeah. But, you know, what we have to realize is that any one time in our institutions There is a weight. The weight of the past holds us back. Yeah. There is a push of the present. Mhmm. Right? And then there is a pull of the future, which is trying to pull us into the future. And those three those three big, I wanna say those those forces, we need to understand. And I we don't I don't I've never well, I shouldn't say never. It's rare that I sit in the school district where they're talking about what do you think the future of learning should be? And asking teachers to think about the future. It's always about, do you know what happened last week? Did you know what, you know, and we gotta fix that? So we we have to start to have conversations about the three big weights on us, you know, the push of the present, the weight of the past, and the pull of the future. Right. You talked about how we we get stuck and certain ways of doing things, even even terms. And I'll I'll never forget when I first met you over a decade ago. And you, talked about the shift from pedagogy to Udagogy. And I I've had so much fun using that term because Still today, people are not familiar with it. They think it's an odd term. They don't know how to spell it, but I but I like you to speak to it a little bit because I I wanna get it into the more common vernacular. Yes. So Yeah. Well, you know, yeah. I'm I'm I'm feeling like, you know, that When I when I meet with groups of educators to talk about the future of education, I ask them the within the first five minutes. I'd like you to talk at your tables and tell me share when you learn how you learn. And, they sit around, and I'm gonna tell you, Kevin. It's, you know, this you could bet a lot of money on this. But when you're with educators, If you have a room at three hundred, you're gonna see ninety percent of them are gonna say who's in college, and that's what they say. They start they learn how to They've been in they were in K twelve systems for thirteen years. And the problem is is that in schools, students when they're born, young children when they're born, they learn all on their own. They come to and and they're they're learning machines. The scientists will tell us that infant is a learning machine They learn a language without even going to school. Right? They learn all these things. They come to school, and I'm not I'm not beating up our profession. I love my profession, but here's what we do. We say, okay, sit down. I'm gonna teach you something. And this is how you learn to to math. And this is how you and we tell them what to do, when to do it, how to do it, when to turn it in, we don't let them evaluate it. We evaluate it, which is a real mistake in our in our work, because this is the getting into the Utiegogoji andragogy thing, which is that's pedagogy where you take control of learning and the student needs the teacher to learn in the world today, we have got to we've got to bring them to the point like you and I and every adult out there learns through Andrew Goji. You you know when you don't know something. Mhmm. When you don't know something, you know how to attack it to learn it. And you don't need to take a test to learn understand it when you're an adult. Right? To just think about that. Utagogy is this transition where you develop the learner's capacity to know how to learn and to be on their own. And to apply what they understand and to assess their work. So, you know, most, we need our students to self assess more if they were so that they're open about it. Like, you know, I'm really having a hard time with this, mister Dorothy, and I need some help. Instead, they hand it to you and say, wanna try to tell me what's wrong with it. You know, it's it's really the heart and soul of being a contributing member to our society is not how much you know. It's it's it's your ability to learn things when you don't know something and you're confronted with And I think the capacity that that whole focus, I think, is critical. You know, Utagogy is a great field. It's self directed learning. It's how you become a learner. And by the way, I think I think educators are getting this. I think we're seeing that that movement to more personalized learning. That will be important. But we have got to get our kids involved in assessing their own work and in sharing their own work and talking about it. And, you know, I mentioned that populist study in that popular study, they asked parents whether how their kids should be assessed. The vast majority of the parents say, by an educator, with assessments that they build and not my standardized testing. Fine. So they want their students to be able to defend their learning They want their students to be able to explain their learning. These are the most important things, and that's really where we need to be. Is that helpful? I mean, like, this whole learning engineer thing. Yes. You know, educators really need to be the engineers of learning and not the teachers of learning. They need to design it so that learning happens. And when I started thinking the way about that idea that I shared with you, I was saying the job of the I used to say this, The job of the teacher is to educate the students so that they do not need the teacher. Nice. And and that's the hand off. The gift that every teacher can give their students is to have it be that I've given you something now that you can do on your own. Yeah. It's fun like that. Well, well, Ray, this has been an awesome conversation. And, I always enjoyed the opportunity. We have to visit with each other. Before we round out, is there anything else about which you're just thinking that you care with the, audience of this product Yeah. I'm just thinking about this. And I love the title. Just thinking. I'm just thinking. I believe that educators have been trained, and they have always been program oriented. We're gonna launch a program in the school systems, and everyone's gonna take part in And I think we need to shift away from that. And our educators need to be more process oriented. It's a process oriented world It's not a product, a program oriented world. It's a process. And I think that, you know, that has got to become one of the big trainings that we do. I I I really believe we need to retrain our educational workforce. I think and I think they're ready for it. I really do. Educators we want to be helpful to kids. And I think the way to get that done is to rethink how we train them. Love it. I I so appreciate you, Ray, for your thoughtfulness. For your leadership and most importantly for your friendship. So thank you for your time today. Thanks very much, and I'm so honored. Can't wait till we see each other face to face. Soon. That'll be fun. It'll be soon. Alright. Take care, my friend. Bye bye.