Season 2, Episode 16: Transcending today’s schools through design

Foreign.

It's two weeks in a row. It's great to see you.

Hey, Michael, it is good to see you as well. And I'm so excited to report that our schools are opening. We've been talking about this all year, and it is literally finally happening for us. It was surprisingly emotional to see the pictures and hear the stories from our various campuses. And I'm happy to report the overriding emotion for students and parents and educators was joy. Like, literally pure joy. There's so many important moments. All of the work the team has done on safety, operations, logistics, everything worked and ran smoothly, and people felt and were safe. And the reflections from the students along the lines of, you know, I did more in one day today at school than I've done in the last month at home. I mean, they really illustrate how much some of our students need to be in physical school buildings. And honestly, Michael, it's the most hope that I've felt in quite a while. And so I'm so excited to be here today.

That's awesome, Diane. And first, congrats. Congrats to your whole team, because it's obviously a whole team that makes this happen. But, you know, seeing the winding journey that so many continue to be on has just continued for me to be something else. And, you know, hearing your news there really brightens my own day as well. But these ups and downs, and particularly, you know, then these big ups are a big reason. We obviously started this podcast, Diane, to, you know, to help people through them and to also continue to give some sense of optimism that as we struggle through these moments to parents and educators, that they can see some of these difficult moments as opportunities to innovate and do things better. Build back better, if you will.

Well, that's what we're all about here. And I am really excited for our conversation today, Michael, because I think it's going to be filled with optimism and how we build back better. You know, we have been noticing lately that a few topics keep coming up for us, and we've both been feeling like we want to do a deeper dive on them. And we really want to call back to our first season when we interviewed a bunch of experts to gather their perspectives on how the pandemic has or hasn't influenced their thinking and the opportunities and challenges they see.

And one of the topics that keeps coming up for both of us during these podcasts has been designing for innovation. And we began this podcast with the belief that the pandemic could really be this catalyst for communities to rethink and redesign their schools to not just go back to normal. And I know I speak for both of us when I say we've both been a bit disappointed that so much of the energy has been going to just dealing with the day to day of running schools during this tumultuous time. We've also wondered if communities just don't have the right supports around them and the structures that they need to redesign.

Yeah, absolutely, Michael. And the good news seems to be that the opportunity has not passed us by, so we're a little bit worried about that. But if anything, the need for redesign is more present at schools right now as they consider how to make the most of summer, a call that we talked about last week made by our new Secretary of Education. They are also facing down several years to come where they will have to address the countless student needs that have been created by this incredibly disruptive year. Fortunately, they are going to have an influx of financial resources to support this work, which makes this very timely.

Yeah. And obviously, you know, financial resources coming in brings both opportunity and challenge. You know, are schools going to really leverage those resources for change or will they fritter them away and just sort of go back to status quo? And in a few weeks, just to preview what's coming, as we're going to come down this set of podcasts with experts, we're going to dive deeper into the money questions and try to trace a path that makes sense with Marguerite Rose, who is just the smartest person I know on school finances. Diane.

I am really looking forward to that conversation, Michael. But before we get ahead of ourselves, I'd love to introduce our two guests today. Alon Samood and Jeff Wetzler are the co founders and co CEOs of Transcend Education. I'm going to let them tell us about their work that they do with communities, a concept that came up in our last podcasts. But I will make a brief personal introduction and share that. To me, Jeff and Alon embody the values, beliefs and actions that make me hopeful and optimistic about the future of education in America. I deeply admire both how they have formed and operate their own organization. The Transcend Team is among the most diverse, collaborative, thoughtful groups I know and how they work with communities partners across the nation. And just they're two of my favorite people in the world. So I'm so grateful to be here with them and so grateful that you two have agreed to talk with us today. Welcome, Jeff and Alon.

Thank you.

Glad to be here.

Thank you for joining us. We will kick off with just having you guys tell us just briefly what Transcend does and if and how it's changed at all because of COVID 19 sure.

So our mission at Transcend is to support communities everywhere to develop and spread extraordinary equitable learning environments. And as you all talk quite a bit about, we believe that that means breaking out of this industrial model of education that is trapping all of us, trapping young people, trapping teachers, trapping administrators, trapping families and communities. And it's funn you referenced earlier. Like people have not yet made the most of this moment and part of that is people have just been so busy dealing with all of the most pressing response needs of COVID But really, even pre Covid, one of the features of the industrial model is that it leaves very little time to step back and think about what to do differently and what is this thing that's trapping us. It's one of this kind of self sealing features of the model itself. We all have to grind so hard just to operate school in that design of school that it leaves no time to think about innovation. Transcend is really here as an R and D supporter of schools to do that kind of deep design work that we see in so many other industries, but that we just have not resourced communities to do in education. We think of ourselves in many ways as a hub for R and D where communities can come and really come together to ask what matters for students? What does that mean for the kinds of experiences we want to develop? What does that mean for the kind of designs we want to build, but also to find models that they can learn and borrow from? Because we know that communities don't have the time and resources nor is it necessary for everyone to build all of it themselves. And so both on the side of supporting communities to actually get going on these kinds of design journeys, but also to find models that can support them and other kinds of supporters along the way? That's a lot of what Trendset works on. Elon, what would you add?

It's a great description and I can dive into any part that seems most interesting for the audience. Dan and Michael Terrific.

Well Elon, why don't I kick it to you with this next question, which is. Diane and I talk a lot about the design process in this podcast, but we'd love to hear from your perspective. Why is that such an important part of what schools need to embrace going forward?

Well, you know that you're speaking our language too, and I would say one principle to ground in is that all learning environments are designed. They may not have a Great design, but they have some organization of decisions that usually have been made over time. And unfortunately, in a lot of cases, they haven't been made with coherence. The design process. The reason why we think it's important is because we believe that the experience that the humans in the learning environment have, students, families, educators, that that experience needs to be rich and it needs to be coherent. And what we found is that it's not possible to achieve that level of coherence without having a very intentional design process where you're asking some of the questions that Jeff named. What is the purpose of school? What are the aims? What are the principles that need to undergird the experience and then making decisions about those experiences and the elements that make those experiences come alive with that alignment. And so, in short, the design process is important because it leads to a design that is coherent. And we found that a design process, when it is community driven, also builds the conditions required to implement that design with fidelity. Conditions like coalition, clarity, conviction in the model. And so for us, that that design process that you're talking about leads to both a coherent design and to the conditions that you need for extraordinary and equitable learning.

That's super helpful. I'm curious to hear from you guys how you even start the process of designing with a school and community. Jeff, you have noted that one of the challenges is, like, school doesn't stop, and our model is so consuming. We're just go, go, going. And so, you know, usually educators think, oh, maybe I get one week in the summer to, like, do my master visioning. And I'm thinking what you guys are describing takes a lot more than, like, a person in an office for a week in the summer. And Elon, you're talking about, you know, the. These conditions that need to be in place. So how do you even start with a school?

Where.

Where do they begin? What does that look like?

There can be a lot of different starting points. So for some. For some school communities, the starting point really is a. That something catalyzes them to say, we are either dissatisfied with the experiences our young people are having right now, or we think something's changing in the world that makes us think that they're going to need something different. Sometimes that could a set of parents who come together with an administrator to be thinking about that. Sometimes that could be someone in a district who starts a book club or a learning group or different things like that. There may also be situations where there's an actually pressing need. So maybe there's a pressing mental health need, for example, that would lead a community to say we don't want to just put a band aid on the mental health issues going on. We want to actually go deeper. Sometimes it may get triggered because there's an instructional need or a learning need or different things like that. So there can be different trigger points. And I think it's consistent with what Elon said about the importance of communities driving the design work. It's important that those trigger points are initiated by communities and finding what the right one is. To your point about how it's time consuming, we have yet to find any way that this can work without some amount of protected time and space. Because if you just try to jam it into literally the schedule that exists right now, there's going to be no time for it. That doesn't mean it. Everything else needs to grind to a halt. There can be release time for teachers, there can be after school sessions. There can be things that can happen over the summer for some intense design sprints and things like that. But the amount of time that is required can also be lessened with support that schools can have as well for the design process. Whether that's support among people who can facilitate design sessions or bring research that's already synthesized to the table around things like future trends or the science of learning and development, or even just hold the pen to capture next steps and figure out who's going to do what. So there is a key role for support to make this something that's practical.

Jeff, I want to double click on that because, well, there's a lot that you just said that is resonating. But I wrote recently about what is called threat rigidity response, basically that when teams see something as a threat, it's great for galvanizing resources to tackle something, but it also freezes people in place and sort of they just start to become very compliance oriented and just sort of like they have to follow the rules almost and implement top down as opposed to see something as an opportunity. And that in order to see something as an opportunity, you really have to take that initial threat framing, take the resources that come from it, because that's obviously important. But then task a separate team almost that has some freedom from the day to day responsibilities to really tackle that. And so something I've been just dying to ask is essentially you just named that as a key condition. I'm curious, can you give a little bit more color of what that looks like, maybe with some examples from schools about how do they get a small group of people to have a Full time job around designing as opposed to implementing what's currently ongoing. Or maybe your team comes in and provides some of that extra ammunition. Just some examples about how a resource strapped school can really carve out that time and space would be great. Elon, do you want to jump in there first?

Sure, yeah. So that protected time and space is, is critical. And you know, in other industries, I think it's worth remembering that that protected time and space for R and D is often not put on the practitioners themselves while they do their jobs. Doctors who were on the front lines of, who've been on the front lines of the COVID pandemic were not charged with coming up with the vaccine. That's a really good point, by the way. And maybe we wouldn't have one if we did it that way. And so it weighs a lot on it. And I'm not an expert at threat rigidity response, although I'd love to learn more. My instinct, and please confirm or redirect me if I'm wrong, is that some of that comes from fear, right? And so the combination of I don't have time and I'm afraid freezes me in place. And so the one solve is to actually literally bring capacity to the table, right? In the form that Jeff said, let's get a group together. And even though you may not have 20 hours this week to engage in it, if you can engage with, if there's a student and a parent and an educator and a principal that can sit together for an hour and we can brainstorm some stuff and then someone can do Some work for 15 hours on your behalf, we start to approach the kind of capacity that the school needs. That's number one. And number two, whatever those moments are that we're able to bring community members together to discuss and wrestle with ideas. Bring the fear factor down, right? So create the space to explore. And that's as much about helping people dream and see a different reality as it is actually tackling and rationalizing some of the very real threats right in front of us. And importantly, I think, you know, not every threat is irrational, right? Not like not every fear is irrational, right? And so being able to help people differentiate. And we saw this a lot in our work with schools as they were managing the pandemic, where it's like, there are some responses that just really have to happen. There are kids that need food and we need to figure that out. We're not going to talk about new pedagogical approaches to reading and there's going to be hungry Kids. So some of those you just got to respond to, and some of them you might be putting more stock in that authority than you need to. And can we disentangle it and actually bring it into the dreaming space? And so, so some of it is giving the permission to let go of certain threats, especially if there's the capacity to deal with this hard work of figuring out a different future.

This is fascinating to me and I want to pull out a couple of threads that you're all talking about and tie them to something Michael and I have been talking about recently, which is the difference between doing to a community and doing with a community. And you know, I will say, as someone who is, is continues to sort of lead a network of schools, Jeff, when you started giving your examples of how this journey can begin, many of them included, you know, parents or community worried about something. And as someone who leads a school system, I literally have a physical response to that because it does feel like a threat to me. Like as a school leader I'm like, oh, there's a problem and parents are going to get upset and angry and like we're going to have these crazy board meetings and it's going to be, you know, newspaper articles. And so what I hear you both saying is there's an opportunity for me to not view that as a threat and for it not to go sideways. Because we've all seen lots of communities where this does not go well and a new design does not come out of it right. And in instead, if I can have the right resources and the right mindset, I can actually take that partnership with families. And partnership would be the key word there, I think, to move forward. So I'm wondering if you guys can talk a little bit about the difference between with and to and like how those pieces come together and like how people like me could maybe reinterpret some of these situations to be, you know, get some of the things that we want to have happen accomplished or something.

Yeah, happy to start and Elon, jump in. But I mean, I think the essence of two way community, just to start with that part of the question, I think is when someone, whether that is an external organization like Transcend or any other external organization or a government agency or a policymaker or even a system leader, feels as though they know what's best for the students and families in a community and essentially just makes that call and imposes that. And I think we've seen examples of that over time in education. It usually doesn't go well and it doesn't go well, I think, for two reasons. One is it's hard to know the right answer from a distance, and two is even if it is a good answer, you need a sense of coalition for it to actually be embraced and sustained. And so I think the essence of doing with starts just with a deep, deep belief that expertise lies everywhere in a community, that young people and their parents and families are experts in themselves and in what their hopes are and what their dreams are and who they are as people and what their identities are and what their interests are. And you can't design a learning environment without that expertise. I think, to me, that's the essence of designing with. And then that unfolds to say, all right, then how could you have a process where people are not actually deeply collaborating on, sharing their expertise and exploring different options and different things like that? And I think what we have found over and over again is that when you do that, the community collectively has a greater sense of ownership of what's going on, but also makes just tons of better decisions. I mean, just one small example, even in Covid, a lot of what we did was to work with communities initially on just designs for hybrid learning or remote learning. And one of the questions that we often asked schools when we worked with them was, have you run this plan by parents? And that's a very. You know, that's a very low bar for what we're talking about with designing with. I mean, that's. That's. I will just say that's more like getting feedback and input. But surprisingly, a lot of. A lot of schools had not run their plans by parents. And it's not a. It's not a point of blame because it's just such a crazy time to be able to make all different kinds of decisions. But often the answer we got back was, no, we haven't. Do you think we should? And our answer always was, yes, you should. And invariably, parents surprised them with this actually would not work for us if this was the. So that's just a very small micro example, but hopefully that illustrates a little bit of the spirit.

But, Jeff, exactly what you're saying. I'm just gonna once again resonate as the school leader. In this time, it felt like it was my job to stand up and figure out how we're gonna make it through this pandemic and find the. And so it's not surprising that that was the mindset of these leaders, and then how great that you all were there to just help them see that differently and change that dynamic. I'M sure in a really powerful way.

I was just saying one quick thing back to the design process. To the extent that these design journeys towards reinvented schools are multi year, the more that that folks can proactively have the structures where it's not a one off but just a common practice to have a team of people where you're garnering that expertise for so many places. These insights happen in a reactive way rather than embedding a community design process over a number of years. And so I just think it's going to. We just talked about and how we set the design process up to begin with.

It's super interesting to hear you both talk about it and I think it brings up two issues that Diane and I are both curious about. I'm going to start with one and then we can circle around to the other afterwards. But I guess it's the thought that occurs to me is I'd love to hear you talk about the process of iterating in a school community with students and parents who have existing expectations about what school should be like. Or I mean, you both sort of alluded to it, right? The leader comes up with this great idea, says we're going to do X and then sort of I'm going to bring it from on high and show them how it is. And then the parents and children sort of say, wait a second, that's not going to work. And I think it's often interpreted as well, we just want it the way it was. What's been your experience though in that? And when you're designing with, as opposed to, to, if you will, does that dynamic change at all? Jeff, why don't you start?

Sure. I mean, I think that maybe it might be worth unpacking. What are some of the conversations that happen in the design process? Because I think that might illuminate some of the issues in your question. One of the conversations that we have a lot is where's the world going? Because we know that at least part of the purpose of education is to prepare young people to navigate the world. And if you're going to navigate the world, you need to know how the world's changing. So we spend a lot of time exploring what are the trends, what are the economic trends, what are the job trends, what are the climate trends, what are the justice trends, et cetera. And when we explore those trends, we ask the question, what does this mean for what young people are going to need to be able to thrive in this world and contribute to the world becoming even better? And when People really sit in those trends. They come to the conclusion that young people need something very different than what the industrial model of school was designed to give them. Young people are going to need to be not just solving problems, but finding problems and finding what the next problem is and working collaboratively and all the things that Summit does so well and I know you all know so much about. We also spend a bunch of time exploring what does research say about how learning actually happens? What is the science of motivation? What is the science of cognition? What is the science of development or individual variability? Very quickly, people realized, if you were to design a school that truly honored the science, it would look very different than the school that we're all participating in and running right now. Then there's lots of conversations that we have that just derive from following students around and seeing what their actual experiences are today and asking, what do they wish for, what do they want, etc. So all of these different kinds of provocations ultimately lead people, I think, themselves to realize we want something very different, and there's ideas. And then, of course, you can expose people to different kinds of learning environments. Let's visit Summit or let's visit a Montessori school, or let's visit any number of other kinds of things or even learning environments that are not schools and see what that does in the first place. And I think that. I think the ultimate sign of success. We heard from a superintendent recently who described to us that when they were done with this whole process and they had a vision for what they wanted to try, she was deeply scared to try it because it was risky and it was different. It would require a ton of change. But then she thought to herself, what's actually scarier would be to go back to what we were doing before, when you have those differential levels of that, that the fear of actually going back to what we had before versus the fear of all the change that can unlock the energy that we're talking about here among many different people.

Yeah. And just to add one more thought to that, what Jeff is describing, I would phrase as a community that's designing together is a community that has to be learning together. And they're learning from students, they're learning from inspiring places to visit. They're learning from the science of learning. They're learning from. From future trends. And if that learning is happening together, then it really is hard to go back, because everyone was there when you had the discoveries. Right. This was a discovery you had at a conference somewhere as a system leader that, like, maybe I just won't mention that you actually all listen to the kids say, I don't feel like my identity is being respected and I have any agency in this school. And now we actually have to do something about it because there's going to be a lot of people unhappy for us to not act right. And so, you know, a community designed together is a community that learns together.

Wow, that's really, it's, it's insightful and it's, it's part of that hopeful idea of shouldn't schools be learning communities? I mean, isn't that the idea that somehow as grown ups we know everything we need to know and we're not going to continue to learn? And I often think about how much I learn from the youth and how we don't listen. They generally have the answers. We just have to listen.

I totally agree.

Which I think brings us to our last question here. We could talk forever with you guys, but at least for today, which is we as a system of educators, we often take this very data driven approach to things. And, and especially now when we have federal data and state data and like data and rankings and data and more data and more data. And I'm not sure that that drives your work. And my sense there's much more storytelling and narrative in the design work. And so I wonder if you guys could talk about that. What's the importance of, you know, talking about real experiences and embedding that into the work? How do you experience that?

I can start. I think your question has so many layers to it and could be taken at a very, very deep level all the way to questions of what counts as valid knowledge. And there is a lot of, I think, important discussion emerging right now in the field of what is valid data and whose experiences count as legitimate. I think we could have a whole conversation about the ways in which white supremacy culture has infused the discourse about data. But we think about stories as data too, and lived experiences as data too. When we step back and think about the total range of possible experiences and data that could be informing something, the kind of data that we typically talk about, of standardized test data is just such a small narrow slice, even though that has gotten so much weight and attention in the education discourse. But when a young person is describing what their day to day experience is in school, that's data. And when a parent is saying what they hope for, that's data as well. And so we try to open the aperture around data and also, also simultaneously bring a lens of critical reflection on how are we listening to the data as well. And what's the listening that we bring both transcend and a community in its design process so that we can mine the wisdom that lives, as you said, Diane, in students and in families who know so much and have so many of the answers. But then at a different level, we also talk about stories as an important source of inspiration, because when one community is wrestling with something, if they can grasp onto what happened in another community and how did they get break through that barrier, that can be a huge unlock. And so we invest a lot in storytelling as well, literally as an input into the design process too.

Yeah. And just to add one last thing, when we think about if the goal is extraordinary and equitable learning everywhere, our definition of that includes the outcomes, some of which are. Can you read and do math? Those are important outcomes. We're not saying they're not important, but it also includes the experience of school. That's not necessarily. Neither of those are fully measurable by metrics, but there is evidence of impact. I'm just reminded that the John Dewey like, like, education is not preparation for life. Education is life itself. Like, what that calls us to do is say, you know, experiences matter in and of themselves. And so it's not just about broadening the outcomes we care about. It's actually about broadening our conception of what's important, which includes both the outcomes and the experiences of school themselves.

Both your answers just there just bring back to mind for me my mentor, Clay Christensen's teachings and thoughts. Sorry, I'm getting a little emotional. It would have been his 70th birthday when this is released, so. You know, he always said, God didn't create data. Humans create data. And we did it to try to understand the world as best as we can. And we can only do so imperfectly, which is why we need data. And that data is not just an artifact from a stat book or something else, but every single piece of information that we produce is data. And that's what you all are pointing to. And I just appreciate you guys making that point and sharing it. So, as we wrap up our time together, something Diane and I always do is step back and end each podcast with a few words about what we're reading and listening to and watching. And, Jeff Alon, we'd love it if you'd share with us what's got your attention right now, perhaps outside your immediate work. And then Diane and I can do a little reflection as well. But, Jeff, why don't you go first? You're on my screen first. And Then alon, you can go next.

Happy to. I'll say something I'm listening to. And then a book. There's a podcast that a friend of mine named Antonio Sanders has recently launched called the Promised Land, and it is just a beautiful set of stories, speaking of stories of people all across the country who are doing the real work of racial equity and really deep personal work. And the podcast just goes so. Gets so personal and gets so deep. And every episode that I listen to just pushes me and inspires me as well. And so that's a podcast I would really recommend to lots of people. And then there's a book that recently came out in the topic of our field called the Education we need for a Future We Can't Predict by Professor Thomas Hatch at Teachers College. And he really brings a global lens into how schools change and has a lot of insights about why things don't work, which is as important as any, you know, as any other kinds of stories. So I'll stop there.

Those are good, Elon.

I'm gonna go the fiction route and share that. I am reading foundation by Foundations by Isaac Asimov, which fast forwards the world in, I think, maybe 10,000 years, where it seems that Asimov has correctly predicted where we would be today on the cusp of artificial intelligence and robots taking over the world in both good and bad ways. And I found it both alluring but also informative about, you know, when we talk about skating to where the puck is going, it feels like he made a massive provocation with that series of books.

Can I make a confession now that Sal Khan gave me that book several years ago and I still haven't read it. So this is.

Now you pushed me.

Yeah, now you pushed me on to drum it back up. But no, that's great from both of you. I'll just share that. I just finished reading Mike McShane's new book called Hybrid Homeschooling, which, of course, felt quite topical given these current times, but it's actually not really at all about COVID 19. It's much more about the growing trend of homeschoolers attending schools in a regular, substantial, and structured part of the week. And so parents still have control over that schooling experience, but there's really a stronger community aspect that often takes place in traditional school districts, actually. And for me, many of the individual stories of parents that they told were quite fascinating. And I will confess, Diane, that given my own last 13 months with my daughters, parts of it really resonated with me. What's been on what's been in your list.

Well, this is the time of year where I really start thinking about next year in terms of our organizational priorities and how we organize ourselves to meet them. And in this year of upheaval, it really has me returning to our core values and our culture as an organization. And so as a result, I have pulled off my shelf and am nose deep in Reinventing Organizations, a guide to Creating Organizations inspired by the next stage of human consciousness. That is a mouthful. I've pulled it out because I think it adds a really useful and let's be clear, provocative perspective as sort of counterweight to what we are so accustomed to in traditional organizational structure. It offers some real food for thought as we see seek to create what I like to think of as this sort of third way approach to organizations, this multidimensional approach, which is kind of the theme of what we try to do here in general. Michael so that's what I'm reading this week.

Yeah, it's perfect. Perfect. And I'll so two things that I got to bring back on the list that I haven't made my way through that I'm getting called out on. But just look, that'll do it for today. But alon Jeff, just huge thanks to both of you for being here. I mean, you all have so much wisdom to offer and Diane and I, I appreciated benefiting from it today. So thank you so much for joining us and all of you listening. Thanks for joining us as well. We'll be back next time on Class Disrupted.