Relational Learning in the Digital Classroom with Prof. Kristyn Kidney

Well, welcome back to a new episode of MU Talks. Welcome to a new year and to a new episode of MU Talks. Rob Hildebrand is still not with us. Renee and Aline here in the studio of Multnomah University welcoming you to another episode. And today, of course, we have another special guest for all of you. Renee, please help us introduce our guest.

Yeah, that's right.

We're happy to have with us today Kristin Kidney, a Multnomah University professor and the director of Multnomah's TESOL programs. Kristin has been teaching English and teaching teachers of English her whole career. Today she's bringing with her a special expertise on relational learning in the digital sphere. Kristin, welcome. We cannot wait to hear what you have to share with us today.

Thanks so much. I look forward to dialoguing with you because I know we have some other educational experts in the room as well. So this whole season of education has its own unique challenges and a lot of transitions have been taking place. So in my own field, I've just been fascinated by the elements and pieces in that change and in those transitions. And so what I've been digging in deep most, mostly and lately is this concept of relational learning in the digital sphere and looking at how do we translate what has worked well in person to a whole new landscape. Because I think when we first made that hyperspeed jump into virtual, synchronous, asynchronous, high flex, all the different things we.

Tried.

At first it just, for me it all felt so flat, like learning was in this three dimensional sphere. And then it went flat to a screen. And then the more I played, and I think play is how we learn. The more I played, the more I observed, the more I watched my student teachers and my kids teachers and just went to webinars and explored and dug at it, I realized it's not flat, it's a sphere. We have a digital sphere. We have a whole new landscape for engaging and learning. And the, the key to all of it, I think, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is relational learning. Relational learning.

We went straight into it. And I love this. I love this. I being in Multoma for, for a few years now, I have to let people know, especially the people that do not know Professor Kristen, that I cannot think of more people that have influenced and shaped the way I think about pedagogy and about teaching than, than Kristen. There's just a very powerful, very, very powerful approach to education and the way that you run your program. We've done A curriculum redesign for, for the TESOL program. And when I say we, I mean clearly just Kristen. But, but the way, the way the vision came alive and the way that you really think of that learner, it was really unique. I have not seen that before. And I've, I've spent a few minutes in the educational sphere and through discussions, through modeling, through seeing how you approach this, I'm excited for us to explore a little bit of this relational learning. What is it? What's the power of it? How you can unlock it, how you can unleash it? Unleash it. Because I, I, I spending quite a lot of time in online learning, I was very grieved instantly of the, the move to now everybody's doing online. And it just, I was like, no, no, please get out of there. Don't use these terms. Oh, we work so hard for them, to preserve them for so long. And then now everybody's doing it and it moved away from that, and now people are coming out of them be like, well, I don't like online. I don't like learning online.

Right.

So I'm excited. So can. And I know one of the things that I love, love, love working with Kristen. Kristen is that she's very intentional with the words and what they mean and how they mean. So let's, let's teach us and walk us through what is relational learning and how do you, how do we get there?

Yeah, I love words. Being in TESOL is being in Applied Linguistics, and so we can spend all day on a single sound and just, you know when you've read someone's dissertation on the monophthongization of I, and that's literally one sound. Sound, a dissertation on a sound. Like, then, then you know that you're in a place where you love words. But I, I think we start with the word learning because we're taking learning to a new landscape. What. What is it we have to pack in that suitcase? What goes in the word learning? And I think in the beginning, in the early days of online learning, we packed content. Because learning is content. It is. It's just not all that's in the suitcase. Right. The suitcase has room for a lot more in a rich word like learning. So when I say learning, what do.

You guys think of knowing something? I'm giving you this other smiling, if.

You guys can see his smile when he just said learning and then stopped there.

There's more practicing something.

Oh, wow. Interesting.

Yeah. And those are. Right. And also, I think incomplete, right. Because there's so much to learning. Learning. When we think of like Bloom's taxonomy, we look at the lowest level, which is not low because it's unimportant. It's because it's foundational. We see knowledge and then understanding and then it moves up to these sort of more synthesizing and application type creating. Yes, yes. And then we also see that that's not the only pyramid. He made other taxonomies that were for the effective domain, things like dispositions and attitudes. And then he made another pyramid, which is skill, where you get into practicing and you look at more of the psychomotor skills is what he was looking at. But I do think there's that distinction between what we know and are all the way up our critical thinking of what we can do with knowledge and then what we. Our disposition, that effective domain and then our skill, what we can practice, what we can do. And so when it comes to online learning, the first thing we started with was what you start with. It's just not what you. It's not done. It's unfinished product. So the first thing to bring into the digital sphere is definitely content and the readings and the videos and things. But we have a relational component to learning that's also necessary. And we've known that for a long, long time. We look all the way back into the 70s with bandora and social learning theory, or we go all the way Back to the 30s with Lev Vygotsky and the zone of praxal development, social constructivist. The we come to where we are today. I'm boring everyone right now, but let me throw some theories and theorists just for the sake of saying this isn't Kristen's opinion. Then we get into situational learning, which takes all that social constructivism and says learning happens in relationship between yourself, your teacher, your discipline and your world. And when you are situated to activate your knowledge in those spheres, then you have a full suitcase and your peers.

Right, right. How much you. How much we learn from each other. And it's, it's very interesting because one of the, one of the biggest challenges that I've seen with online learning so far is that for me, you asked me what learning is. I stopped at knowing because I knew you're going to take us away further. And I wanted to give you that. But it's also fail for me, learning without failing is really not true learning. And the highest form of learning that we think, it's there in the laboratories where people go in labs and they do this deep research that is meaningful, significant, moving the body of knowledge is 100% built on failing 5,000 times and coming with the phone. But that's not how the classroom is set up. And especially in the classroom. It might be, but not the online class. The online class we're trying to. You can only get it right once, and then you move forward the next week and all this. And I think the key to that might be the relational in the sense that there's room over there, the content is preset, is prepackaged. All this, and you can't fail too much because you failed a course. And failing. Apparently you're punished for, not rewarded for. Yeah, maybe the relational is the component for that.

Right. And having room to dialogue before the points fall. I think this is where I. I struggle because that was not my educational. My educational culture was built on good American efficiency that says an overworked teacher has time to grade something once, we have time to practice something once, and we move along. So you better get it right the first time. And what happens with that is when we look at Lev Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, he had this beautiful circle that illustrates so much. Where in the center is what I can already do even without help. No learning happens there. I can already do that without help. And then he has this outer circle that I can't do that. No matter how much you help me, it's going to be your work. Every parent has the story of doing the project for the kid because the project was too hard for the kid. Right. Like the kid didn't do this. So that's the outer circle. Right. No learning happens there because it was beyond what was possible.

And.

And then we have that sweet spot in the middle of what I can do if someone helps me. And that's where learning happens. And that's why learning is relational, because you have to have the helper, whether that's a peer, the teacher, someone in the field, someone in the community. There's lots of places where relationship can come in and help. But if you can already do it without the teacher's help, you haven't learned it.

So.

So how do we structure assignments and structure courses in a way that allows dialogue to happen before points fall? A great example of this is I always get to give my flattering examples. We'll do a whole storytelling session of the things that haven't worked. As we're talking about failure, let me share my success story. Irony there. But I teach a course called Course in Curriculum Development. And in the course, students do one project in 10 steps and every step has a due date with zero points. So that if they have to completely redo that step or if they get to step five and all of a sudden they realize step three needs an overhaul, they have the safety of going back, no penalty, and completely reworking their work until the, the whole thing is put together. And I think that model allows so much feedback and dialogue before grades come, but it also allows feedback that isn't points based. Right. It's not like they're not getting any feedback or they don't know where they stand in the project. They know, but they know relationally because we've talked it through or they've read comments or they've shared it with a peer. There's a lot of places for peer check in. Yeah.

Yeah. This reminds me of like a really important kind of epiphany moment that I had in getting my own degree. And that is I always felt like that paper, that big paper for the class, when I turned it in, I mean my professor had never seen it. Right. I've been working on it all semester. I turn it in, I get it back. And it would always be so crushing that they had things they wanted me to fix because it was over. Right? The class was over. And it was always so disheartening. And I had this moment when I realized my paper doesn't have to be done because the class is over. That actually this is the dialogue. And how much I wish that dialogue could have started earlier in the class so that I could have had that dialogue and then some more and then some more as I moved through it. And I think that that's what I'm hearing you saying and I'm going, why aren't more things structured that way?

Right. It's. And online, I think it has benefits and has these, these blind spots and weak spots where we are dependent on the technology, then the limit of that technology, what it could do. But, but I think it's such an important conversation to talk about relational now. How do we build relations in the digital world?

That is a great question. I think it is safe to say we are still figuring out best practice there. But we have learned so much. My earliest experience with this was probably watching my daughter who was in kindergarten 2020.

Woo hoo. We had one too. We had a kindergartner in 2020.

And let me tell you, kindergarten teachers are huge, heroic and they know so much about personhood and about human development and about how learning happens because they aren't just teaching content, they are forming an entire perspective on what learning is. Students in kindergarten decide who they are as learners and if they like learning or not. And kindergarten teachers are so attuned to how important that is that there was no way that these virtual kindergarten teachers weren't going to be the best of the best when it comes to education and pedagogy last year, right. And so watching my daughter's kindergarten teacher engage in relationship with 5 year olds through virtual learning has so much that you can carry into. One of the things I asked my daughter, knowing I was preparing for the podcast, I was like, so how did you you feel about your teacher and what was relational there? You know, trying to even explain what relational was. But she said, well, my teacher's favorite part of the day was our live check in. And she knew that that was her teacher's favorite part of the day was when she got to talk live to the students. And my daughter, I have to say, she's super special in that she would always hang on after the call was off. You'll know that she's my daughter hang in after the call was off and all the other kids had hung up and she would just talk for like two minutes to the teacher one on one, because she needed the relationship. And my daughter's kindergarten teacher was fabulous about that. But it's the one, making time to check in with learners live, even if you're doing something asynchronous, have some planned check in times where they can just talk and dialogue and then two, being available when students can talk, when they need to talk. I think that's a key piece of it. The other thing I'm learning is that students need the time to talk to each other. So being a little less teacher centered and making space for them to connect. I did some research on the gamification of higher ed and if you don't know what that is, it's not what it sounds like at first. In fact, we're moving away from gamification because it sounds like we just play games.

Yes.

And it's really more about motivational psychology and what makes video games addictive and not using addictive in a negative sense. But what if we could use that habit formation on positive things like education and so things like leveling up and unlocking levels and playing with people and building these teams and a lot of it's on team building. So we did that. We put together a program where our on campus students, our online students, certificate grad undergrad students are in these teams and they meet regularly once a week Check in with each other, they have discussion questions, they resource off each other, ideas for doing observations and volunteer work and completing assignments. And often I'll ask students do you have any questions on this assignment? And they'll say no, we talked about it in our elevation group. We're good, we got some ideas. And I'm like yes. So making space that maybe happens organically in a three walled or four walled classroom, Can I count? Four walled classroom. And then making that intentional. Maybe it happens naturally in a classroom. People turn to each other and just talk and have small talk. That's important for a relational community. So creating that for online just has to be intentional. What is that going to look like? How do I incentivize it? How do I lead it in a way that it replicates and takes off? Those are questions we're asking. But I think for our program right now, what's exciting is to see that the gameful design principles are actually working to make things relational. You think of video games, you don't really think relational. Right. But this is what's working for us.

I two things that, that are very far from what you said that I really appreciated is, is how much we're not learning from kindergarten teachers and how much what they do supports Apollo Free Air's anti banking system, right? That, that a seven year old or a six year old, they already learned by the time they're seven, they already learn how to learn. They already know if they like the teacher or not. They already learn if they actually like what they're learning or not. So they've made those preferences to college and we think they're just a blank sheet of paper and we need some, not we, but some other professors out there somewhere in the world. I don't know who those people are, but the curriculum at least is built in such a way and it is the original sin of the online learning somehow that we've designed the system in such a way that you are just a recipient of the knowledge, the content that I give you, but rather you don't, you can't. I've not created an intentional spaces where you can breed into it and you can influence it and you actually have some things to say. And, and I think it's important. I really like that maybe we should get some kindergarten teachers to actually teach some pedagogy to, you know, how do you form those, those relations? And also Apollo Freire said that if the system doesn't allow dialogue, the system has to be changed. And what kind of system are you Part of, in terms of. Of learning. And I'm not asking you, Kristen, but the person that are. That's listening to us, are you part of a system where there is learning, you know, in whatever digital format you are learning, does it allow true dialogue? Right. Because that. I think it's so important part of the learning experience.

Absolutely. And I love Paulo Ferreira's work and pedagogy of the oppressed or pedagogy of hope. These are freedom, fantastic resources to really rethink. Because education is a culture. Education is a culture, it's a system. And so our educational culture has good things in it. And it has things that can be changed and upended and transformed. And I do think this is a good season to be asking those big dream questions of what do we want to see changed about our educational systems and our culture of education? And having learners who are relationally engaged in their discipline is something I really hope we camp out long on and think through because it's empowering. It's exciting to not just say I'm completing an assignment, but I'm engaging in a discipline, having the kinds of tasks that are relation building beyond the walls of the classroom that engage the whole sphere. We have more access to the world than ever before. And we can dream new assignments, new structures that really access that and harness that. Yeah. I'm thinking in terms of two learners and communities and how we get learners to interact in their communities. There's so much potential now we have students that do observation work, so they just go and watch classes and it's so insightful. But they can access more classes than ever because so many online classes or virtual learning spheres are available to them. But learning happens in lots of ways. Right. Like it's not just classrooms and higher ed. There's churches and ministries that are doing educational projects and we want to think together from preschool, from kindergarten level. But also community based education programs and faith based education programs and higher ed. How do we work together to share. Share what we know about relational learning? These are really big ideas that I think can really take off.

Yeah. So it sounds like you guys have started, right? You started a. I don't like a pilot, a program like you've got. Given it a try. Do you have any stories, like some specific stories that you can share with us of something that either didn't go right that you learned from or an example of it going the way you hoped that it did?

Yeah. So we are in our first semester of piloting our TESOL elevation program, which is our pilot Program for getting students to relate to each other and to communities. And I think we're learning so much. Like, I'm going to debrief the elevation groups next week. So I'll have the great stories next week. Too bad, bad, bad timing on this. But I do think the story that comes to mind is actually a story that took place in a classroom. I taught a night class that was nine hours a week. So it was three hours a night, three times a week, nine hours a week. This was intense.

How many weeks?

For 10 weeks. So I like, knew my students. I knew them well. They were language learners. I was teaching English and they were just, you know, fantastic group of learners. And we, you would think we would get to the night end of class at 9:30 and be like, we're done. Goodbye, see you later. We always hung out after. We always hung out until the janitor would come along and like, say, sorry, guys, it's time to go, I gotta clean the room and lock up. But we would sit and just talk and practice our language, practice conversation skills. And one of the women was from Central America. And one night she just took a long sigh and she goes, I've found my plastic chair. And I just, I loved what she said, but I had to understand, what do you mean? You seem really happy. And she said that in her country, where she lived, at the end of the night, families would grab their plastic chair, go out in the streets and sit and let the kids run and the animals run and they would just talk and process their day and share life together. And she said, americans don't have plastic chairs. You go in your house, you close the doors, you stay inside. You don't relate. And she said, I don't have friendships beyond this class, not because I'm not friendly, but because there's no structure for that. I mean, she was saying it in her own way, but basically she was saying, I found my plastic chair. It's in this class. I found a place where I can be relational. And I think education at its best is the plastic chair. Looking at opportunities to bring the plastic chair moments. The like, I'm at my best. I'm relating to people. I'm processing life in a community. That's what we can do in an online sphere if we're intentional about it. We have to set times, we have to set schedules, we have to move the content into its place, but also make, make space for just relating to each other, just understanding who you are, what are your goals, hopes, dreams, fears. And how can I come alongside You. You look at, like, even Jesus, who was a great teacher. You know, we call him Rabbi. We miss how beautiful it is that he was referred to as teacher. And he was so relational, but also so intentional in the way he teaches. And he chooses a small group, right? He chooses 12 disciples. I think size is a big thing here when we're talking about online learning, because we're reaching the masses. But if we're going to be relational, there's bandwidth to how big can our groups be? In our community ESL program, we had 80 students this fall. We've served over 1200 students from over 70 different language backgrounds right here in our Portland community through the years with this program. And it blew up. It got really big during COVID because it was easier to attend these free English classes that my student teachers are teaching. They were engaging in these online classes, but we figured out really quick we couldn't have the same class size in an online language class. We needed to have more teachers, fewer students, so that there was more opportunity to practice and more opportunity to work together. So I do think there's examples from Scripture about. I mean, God understands how learners are wired. He understands how we learn. So when we look at Jesus as teacher, I think there are some principles there we can grab from as well.

Yeah. One of my favorite things is that he had 70 in his discipleship program, and retention numbers just really were not there because he ended up with 12. That their answer when he asked, like, why are you not. Why are you not dropping this course? They were like, where would we go? Right? You have the words of life. And I thought that was so powerful. They understood. They. They really saw themselves in him. There was just a relational. That component over there that I think was really powerful. And that always, always stayed with me. People walked on the street right next to Jesus telling a story, right? And I'm thinking, well, that's. There's hope for pastors. They don't feel that they have too many people listening to that, right? They walked. The word of life was walking on those streets. And you can walk past that opportunity without building a significant relationship and learning anything from even the best storyteller that ever existed in Israel. Somebody told somebody asked me, what language did Jesus speak, right? And I was trying to. To think, okay, Aramaic and, you know, and it was like agriculture. He spoke agriculture, right? Every example, like, look at the sky. Look at the thing. You see the grain. You see the right people could understand so clearly what he was talking about and also, like, create a connecting point over there. You were talking about the same things, language. I'm not getting into that world. That's not mine. This is, this is so good. Do you have any other questions, Renee? Because we're about to just go into the rapid fire session.

Yeah, I just have one observation that just keeps bouncing around in my head is. And when you, when you brought in the example of Jesus, I was just like, yes, that's exactly what I'm thinking. And that is that all of this, like, it may be too much to say this, but like the perfect model of what you're saying is apprenticeship, like is that's really where we all learn the best, is in an apprenticeship model. So the closer that we can come to that, the better. And while you're speaking from a teacher's perspective, I'm thinking from a student's perspective. And I want to seek out as close to an apprenticeship model as I can for the things that I want, I want to learn and learn deeply.

Right. And that reminds me of John Dewey's fabulous quote that says we do not learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience. So as we have opportunity for that apprenticeship that come alongside moment, we also want to have time to process that, to reflect on it, to reflect on it internally, but also to reflect on it relationally, socially, to put into words what it is we've seen, how it has shaped us, what we've taken from that. Because it's the reflecting on the experience that, that really positions us to learn to grow those long term synaptic potentiation, you know, things that go on in the brain. We know that all of that takes place when we, we stop and we reflect.

If you've already listened to our episode on Science with Dr. Jason Stuckey, this is our handful of soil. What we experience right now, when Dr. Stuckey talked gave us a really painful and powerful lesson on how much is involved in one handful of soil and open up a world of world of hurt. Really. In our episode on how little we know. We know, but also how much happens in one handful of soil. We've had one handful of conversation right now about learning. We've scratched, maybe really scratched the surface.

Yeah, we're surface, we're today. But but also getting to some of those really beautiful pieces of what it means to learn.

Yes. And please, if you want to continue this conversation, I want you to know that Professor Kidney has two courses in Monoma plus. So on multimoplus.com if you going to just search, you can go on the search bar and put Professor Kristen Kidney you will find the courses that are there waiting for you to continue the conversation. And now we're going to do a quick rapid fire session, and I'm gonna let Renee start with her question of. Okay. With a question. Go ahead, Renee.

Okay, well, we're at the beginning of the year again, so I want to know, do you make New Year's resolutions?

I mean, as a teacher, though, I think we always have goals in front of us. Right. So I think I enter every single term looking at what need, problem, or opportunity am I going to laser focus on for this term? So not so much like looking at the year and who do I want to be at the end of the year, but looking at it, maybe even just term by term, is there a need, problem, or opportunity that I can invest in? Well, this term. So that's what I always ask.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. I just recently heard this question. I think it's a brilliant question. I'm gonna go for it. If you had a boat, what would you name it? I'm not saying you don't have a boat. Out of boat.

Gosh. You're asking me to come up with a name. With the name I am the word person.

I know. That's why this is gonna be the perfect question for a word person.

Goodness. The first thing that popped into my head was Comenius.

What is that?

Do you know the writings of John Amos Comenius? Of course. I would name the boat after an author because I am a book nerd and because finding a word would take far too long.

Yes.

But John Amos Kolmenius was a Moravian bishop who was also an educational reformer and a language teacher. And one of the quotes I absolutely love by him is that he said, classrooms should be gardens of delight.

Oh.

Wow.

Wow. Okay. If you could, would you go to outer space?

Ooh. You know, my son is so into space right now, I would have to say yes. But he, he is super into space. I think. I think the physical part of it, like, feeling the, the. The G's against my, like, body would be really scary. But I would love the opportunity to go anywhere.

Okay.

Wow. If you could live anywhere, where would you live? I'm asking a Tiso person and a word person. Like boats and traveling live, like. Yeah, if you could live.

You know, I'm such the traveler. Like, I want to just go everywhere without stopping.

Okay.

So, you know, I would live out of my backpack and just go and. But some of the places I've. I've loved living. I loved living in Japan. Lived there for. For Several years. And then one of my favorite places I visited that I would go back and live in a heartbeat is Singapore. I love Singapore. You have a lot of English use in Singapore, but you have a mixing of lots of different Asian cultures. You also have British and expats. You have Indonesian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese. Like, it's. It's Filipino, it's. There's a very interesting blend of multicultural living in a tight space. And I love the dynamic that creates.

Oh, Singapore.

Yeah. When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Oh, so many things. I think originally I wanted to do journalism, and I think I was drawn to it because of storytelling. I love telling stories, which I get to do in my work. But my very first job was with NBC Channel 9 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I was a kids news reporter. I got to write stories and be on camera and I just thought I wanted to do that forever. But. Yeah.

Do you have recordings of that? Do you own stories?

I'm going to hope that I am old enough. That was definitely pre Internet because we mailed our stories into the station.

That makes sense.

Yeah. I'm very hopeful that those do not exist.

Oh, you know, Renee, let's start the work. Let the work start of.

Hopefully I have too many details to make it easy to find.

Oh, here's. Here's my last question. What do you hope is going to be obsolete in 20 years?

Ooh, what would I hope would be obsolete in 20 years? Man, there. There are so many micro frustrations that I'm drawn to just as a working mom that I would like to zap. But, man, I do hope that the disconnectedness of society is something we make obvious. Absolutely.

The time of social media, you mean?

Yeah.

Oh, man. You know, one of the hazards of social media is I feel it's so much like road rage, isn't it? Like in Road rage happens because you're interacting with a machine rather than the person in the machine. Like, face to face, we would never be that way. But machine to machine, we become that way. And I feel like that's what social media is. It's machine to machine, rather person to person. So I have. I hope we find a way to hear each other's song. I teach phonology, so I'm all about intonation and how we carry meaning in the expressiveness of our voices, which is something that gets lost in the digital sphere. I'm getting back into my content. Look at me. I'm supposed to be interpersonal now it's all interconnected. But we have students, instead of doing discussion forums, upload videos so they can hear each other's song in the discussion forum. They can hear the tone and passion of one another in what they're saying. So I hope that we move away from the typing to each other and get back into the person to person speaking to each other.

If you need students to do practicum on sounds during my road rage, let me know. I can just drive in the back because poor land.

Oh, we are a traffic city, aren't we?

Yeah. Portland is just different. It's a different type. It really is a different type because I, I developed road rage in Chicago. Chicago is just a different type of driving, but Portland is really unique. So if you need somebody to do practicum on phonetics and sounds that are going on through Portland traffic.

Driving is a culture too, is it not? And I think one of the things we see in our in Portland traffic is how many people have moved here from other places and they're all using their driving culture. So it's a multicultural drivers. Yes, it is scenario out there.

And it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. It should be as non cultural.

Appreciate the diversity on our roads. Like, I'm like, oh, I wonder where they're from.

And you know what changes that diversity, which is fascinating to me. One inch of snow. Portland. Or. Or rain. Rain. Portland. Right. Okay. You know what? That road rage kicked in. Renee, thank you for keeping me.

We're bringing back last question.

Do you have a lot of questions?

I have the most important question.

Oh, here we go.

What is the best flavor of ice cream?

We've never asked that before, Renee. Oh, you go ahead, Kristen.

Can I just say, I have really. And only once, but very much enjoyed squid ink flavored soft serve ice cream.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for coming. We had such a good podcast episode.

Until then because it makes a story, right? Like, I went to a place in Hokkaido, Japan that served exactly three kinds of ice cream. Chocolate, vanilla, squidding, and how do you.

Not order the squid ink?

Thank you.

Thank you. You have to order it.

That is the exact line that comes next in the story is, how do you not order squid ink when you're at a place that only serves those three options? And what is the psychology of somebody who's going to order vanilla at a place like that?

I was just about to answer your question. How do you not order this? Two scoops of vanilla, please. Can you not touch this squealing in the process of scooping that. Like I'm I am the vanilla guy.

Are you really?

Oh, I would not. I would.

I would.

And.

And my favorite thing would be that I would enjoy my vanilla ice cream watching people that eat squid, like, you know, like, just watching them and be like, I wonder what they're going through. Right. But I would just enjoy that. Just very beautifully bland.

I'm gonna take a wager that I'm the only one that will answer that most important question with squidding.

Would you go for squid, Renee? Would you?

Absolutely.

You would have tried it?

Absolutely. Wholeheartedly.

Our wonderful audience is learning about cultural differences in many ways, from traffic to ice cream. Kristen, I cannot thank you enough for joining us on.

It was a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for the dialogue. I. I feel like I learned, too.

Yes. And you. You've. You've learned how to teach more on MU talks, but what an important conversation. And I'm very thankful that you came and. And shared a few thoughts on the foundational role and the important role that that relational learning plays, especially in the digital, because we really tend to forget. We think. We think technology, we think content. We try to figure out it works, and we don't think of building it on how learning really happens. So thank you for that. I really appreciate it. Renee, thank you for leading us with. With conversations and everything that you've had to share today. And we cannot wait to get Rob back. I give him a shout out every sing. Once again, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. And the views and opinions and the brilliance that you've heard, although it is connected somewhat with Mono University, does not represent the views and opinions of Mono University.

It.