Digital Transformation with Jean-Claude Brizard

When we think about digital transformation, we can't focus on one layer. Think about all three layers and how all can be mutually reinforcing.

Welcome to the Educator Pineapple Podcast, which features trailblazers, pioneers and ed leaders who all started their careers in the classroom. Come hear about topics ranging from digital transformation, data literacy, blended learning, innovation, and honestly, everything in between. So excited to have you join our show. I'm just going to start off with a big warm welcome to my friend and renowned ed leader Jean Claude Brizard. Thank you for being my first guest. You likely don't need much of an intro for many, but for those who don't know him or his work, he's the President and CEO of Digital Promise Global, a global, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization focused on shaping the future of learning and advancing equitable education systems by bridging solutions across research, practice and technology. He's also the former Senior Advisor and Deputy Director at the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, where he focused on PK through 16 education and led several strategies supporting Washington State's educational system. He is also the former Chief Executive of Chicago Public Schools and Superintendent of Schools for the Rochester, New York school district and also had a 21 year career as an educator and administrator for the New York City Department of Ed. In addition, he's a Fellow of the Broad Center, a fellow of PAHARA Aspen Institute, and member of the Aspen Institute Global Leadership Network. Okay, did I miss anything?

No. That's a mouthful. It's a lot. It just means Juliet, I'm just getting old.

Not at all. Come on, don't say that. Obviously you've been in education for quite a long time. I'm super excited to have you here to chat and be my first person. Just to let those listening know, I was on the phone with Jean Claude when we started talking about the podcast and I was like, hey, so would you be a guest? And he said yes right away, which made my day. So thank you so much.

You're so very welcome.

So, as you know, or as you're learning, since this is the first ever episode, everyone who's joining me on the Educator Pineapple Podcast started their careers in the classroom and taught at some point because I really think that I wanted to make sure to bring on to speak those who've been in the classroom, experienced the classroom, and now have done maybe different things, moved and pivoted, but have all had that experience of what that felt like. So what did you teach and where?

So my first teaching job was I was hired as a science teacher in New York City to teach in high schools but ended up teaching at Rikers Island. If you don't know what that is, it's a prison in New York has developed some level of notoriety in recent years, but that was my first teaching experience. Then went to a middle school in Brooklyn, New York. They taught at the high school level but I thought quickly I was a physics and chemistry teacher. But that first experience really was formative for me as an educator.

Did you ever expect you'd be doing what you are today when you were in the classroom there?

No, not at all. In fact Julianne, I never wanted to be a teacher only because my again, when you're a kid, when your parents are teachers, my father was a school principal, my mom was a teacher. You don't really want to do what your parents do do. I mean some of us are different. I really wanted to be, to be an md, a doctor. So I thought teaching was going to be a temporary stop for me. New York City was desperate for teachers. My mom convinced me to go give it a try, at least temporarily because I couldn't get a job as a chemist because I realized that a bachelor's in chemistry does not make you a chemist, you know. So true, so true. But you know, make a long story short when I wakers was sort of formative experience and met a lot of young men who look just like me. One in particular had my sort of physical stature looked like me but had was a drop the fifth grade dropout and did some math with this young man and this young man went from doing basic computation to pre algebra in six months. And he realized quickly how we had failed this young, this young man. So that in the middle school I went to afterwards, you know, is 111 in Bushwick, fell in love with a bunch of kids and then realized okay, I'm going to give this another year, another year, another year. Thirty plus years later, I'm still doing, I'm still in education.

I was going to say every year you're like, oh, just one more. It'll be totally fine. One more year, one more year. That's amazing though. Do you ever keep in touch with any of those students from the initial years?

Absolutely. I mean the, you know, wackers. The answer is no. Many of the kids I was dealing with were moved to maximum security prisons. But IAS 111. Yeah, I mean some of these young people are in their 40s. I was barely 21 when I was teaching. Just want to make sure I set the stage right in my intro but some of these folks on my Facebook feed, we talked to them, I told them all the time. Some were the high school where I was a teacher and became a principal are still friends of mine today. So, yeah, sprinklings of kids throughout my life still very much remain folks I talk to on a regular basis. And one, frankly, recently was with my brother, was an assistant principal in New York City schools, said, hey, this guy said to say hello to you. He goes, tell Jean Claude or tell J.C. buzard. I was his confused physics student. And you know what, though he is a systems engineer, I have some who became electrical engineers, some who went to the Secret Service. So they're all over. One is a professor of physics. One of my proudest stories, one of my physics class when I was a teacher who has a PhD and his concentration was on quantum gravity. So it's wonderful to have seen the progression of these young people, colleagues and friends.

That's so amazing. Like, it's just, it's so inspiring to see what happens after, right? Because, like, you know what our students start as where they move to and that they still remember the classroom as well. So, okay, so I did educator pineapple podcast and I had explained to you, I love the analogy of the pineapple. Everyone has a crown, but everyone's always ripening something as well. So what would you say is your crown or superpower? And maybe what is something you're ripening and how has that informed your work?

It's a great question. I mean, people have asked me about superpowers before. I don't know if it's an easy thing for me to actually articulate. So let me. So maybe my superpower is my experience because I've lived at different parts of the system. So prison classroom teacher, middle school, high school principal, superintendent, central office administrator. I have seen the system at every level. And to your description in my bio, I was a funder of education in Washington State, Texas, Tennessee, New York, for nearly four years at the Gates Foundation. Seeing that angle of the work and figure where I sit now, digital promise. Not only do I see work around the future of education, AI in education, what we know is possible around digital transformation and my global view of the work. So we're doing work across the world now. I have a fantastic view of education from every angle, every side. So I have developed a level of what they call strategic agility to really understand the up and downs of the successes and challenges, frankly, in education, both in the US and abroad. So maybe is a superpower, I guess, one last layer to this one, I'm also commercial pilot. I have a habit of seeing the world from 10, 20,000 foot so I'm able to see and I always talk about think of society from that vantage point. So these. So whenever I get caught up in the myopic, I pull back and look at the global so I understand exactly what's going on. I like to say I'm always learning and perhaps what I'm getting better at understanding is the integration of the science of learning and science of development to really understand the intersection of what we know around neuroscience, brain science, we know around social emotional competency development, what we know on academic work and fifthly, even technology. That kind of integration. I have argued that we keep bringing the same playbook to education. The challenges so that has developed my understanding of pedagogy and curriculum, et cetera. At the same time I've come to really understand, come to understand the need to better understand the integration of social services. And they said so again, I think of whole child, perhaps the way the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has defined it and full transparency. My wife's work in Whole Child, which looks at not just academic, social, emotional, mental health, but looks at physical health as well. When I was at the Gates Foundation, I work in Washington State, we looked at the intersection of housing security insecurity and academic outcomes, the impact of community inputs and supports. I'm learning more and more about how important that is to the development of a whole child. We support so much onus on schools and teachers. Meanwhile, there's a lot of factors, frankly beyond their control. So as a community, we have to understand how we need to wrap our hands around our schools and our kids for success. Perhaps I'm still ripening and better understanding how important that is.

I love the fact that you are a pilot and that you also love it looking at things from like the 30k level, because I know we always talk about when we chat, we're always like, let's look at it, zoom out. But then also look at like what are the pieces that have to happen in order for it to actually be successful. And I love that idea of just ripening and continuing learning. That kind of speaks to exactly what we're going to talk about today with digital transformation. I think a lot of times digital transformation is looked at very close with the granular pieces, but it's also sometimes looked at as this theoretical, innovative model of digital transformation. And I think that there's a lot of misunderstandings about what digital transformation is and isn't a lot of times people think digital and they're like, oh, kids are on computers the whole time. And that we're moving away from this whole child approach. When in actuality, when we think of digital transformation in the truest form, we want to think about how all of those pieces and all of those conditions work together. From like, I know we've mentioned the three layers of transformation from like the classroom, the school system and the policy and how those pieces work together both in a macro and in a micro level. So that was a mouthful there, but basically obviously very excited about this. So what would you, for those listening who hear just like digital transformation, what would you actually define it as in your work? Or like why is it important in this moment?

So let me perhaps try to describe this in its most fundamental form. So there's a professor at Harvard that often late professor now at this point, his name was Richard Elmore. He often talked about the most important relationship in education is the interaction between teachers, students in content or instructional materials. During the pandemic, there's a lot of colleagues of mine who pushed that there is a fourth dimension to this now, perhaps it's always been there, but that we've come to full realization how important it is. And that's the interaction between families, parents or caretakers. So it's teachers, students, families, caretakers in content because the pandemic taught us how important the home is in being a full partner in that kind of interaction. So we often ask the question then, how will technology really enhance that relationship? How would it create a level of power around that relationship? As you can imagine, it's not just what happens in classrooms, but how the system supports this idea around digital transformation. Let me perhaps step back even more and talk about go back in 15, 20,000 foot why this topic is so important. And a couple of colleagues already began writing about this and one is colleagues at OECD who have been talking about this idea of digital work globally for a couple of years now. And the pandemic has put some of this on steroids. So a lot of people think that the pandemic is a one time thing. So we had disruption. And the latest NAEP results are showing how important school is and how important it is to capture all learning, not just the kind of formal learning see in classrooms. But frankly many of us believe that disruption is going to become the new normal. As one of my colleagues in ASCD recently that a kindergartner, perhaps this is the first experience with education disruption, it will not be their last. And when you look at climate change. There are many who say that the pandemic is practice for climate change. And when you look at what happened during the pandemic, many of us got caught flat footed in terms of really trying to understand how to do remote learning really well or hybrid learning really well. In fact, it was a bit of a disaster, to be frank, in this country. So many of us saw it as disruption. A colleague at OECD, Stephen McCrane, said that the developed world, even parts of the developing world, quickly realized we didn't do remote learning really well and begin to figure out ways to bring kids back into schools in our country. There were parts of our US that kept kids out of school for two years, which was a travesty initially, frankly, in Seattle, we saw a bit of the struggle to do remote learning. And we begin to step in as the Gates foundation to support the work, frankly, in sps. And we saw lots of this around the country as well too. Going back to your question, thinking about that fundamental relationship, the question is what does that look like in the classroom in terms of really supporting and enhancing the teacher's work? Want to be very careful and very deliberate here in saying that this is not about replacing adults or replacing teachers. This is really about putting the human in the center of the work. Right. Making sure that we are the same with the Industrial Revolution. We need to remove some of the drudgery we did in society to really enhance our work in society the same way. I think we think digital technologies done well can really enhance the teaching and learning process. Right. So, Juliet, I'm talking about things like writing instruction. One of our great partners is Quill. It's a nonprofit ed tech company who do a lot of work around writing and AI that really allows the machine to iterate with the students on writing based on the teacher's prompt. But that feeds the teacher information to allow for good case conferencing with the students. So teachers pulling in data right, from the iteration between the student and the AI. But that informs the teacher's work, but removes the need to have to score an essay five or six times, which so many teachers have the time to actually do. So that's one example. Let me pause there for a second if you have any questions.

No, I think that it's really interesting to think about it because this is bringing up some of the same ideas we were talking about with blended learning in 2015. Right. You know, we're not trying to add technology for the sake of adding technology. We're trying to leverage technology to address Instructional challenges and support our teachers and support our students. Right. So how are we able to leverage technologies to better connect teachers with students or better connect students and teachers with the content in a more targeted and relevant differentiated way? Right. So really. And then bringing in the communities so that they're able to engage and collaborate holistically with that. And so what are some. A lot of things that didn't go super well during COVID but we also had some moments of excellence and some things that we could highlight that did go really well, which I think speak to how we can do this better next time. Are there some examples that you would like to share there that you're like, yeah, this was something that we learned and we'd love to replicate or we'd love to scale?

Yeah, I mean, so. So there's lots of examples. Right. I think we're still unearthing quite a bit of it. You know, the learning accelerator, for example, did. I think you did some work, frankly, in highlighting some of these great practices happened during the pandemic. It wasn't all bad. There was some really good stuff that came out. And I would encourage people to go on the TLA website to look and see some of those great examples. But aside from that, let me add a few more layers. One is we saw kids who had neurodiverse kids, kids who had disabilities. Some of them thrived during the pandemic because if you think about the ideas of personalization, the idea of getting one on one with students was much better facilitated because of the technology. You can go off to a zoom and create a separate room to talk to a student. All those things I know, for example, in parts of King county in Washington State, parents, you know, were serving refugee students really begin to see and get a view into the pedagogy in classrooms. Right. That they never had before and begin to push on districts to better include their history as part of the social studies curriculum. Right. So, I mean, some colleagues I know, frankly in South Seattle did exactly that and push and work with schools, districts like Highline Schools in making that happen. So that kind of parental input became really powerful to see as well. There are others, frankly, who were building a foundation before the pandemic that really benefited. So give a couple of examples. My colleague, Devin Vodika. Our colleague Devin Vodika, who was getting out of the learner centered work he'd been doing. His schools pivoted seamlessly during the pandemic. It wasn't about technology necessarily, but on orientation, again around learner centered work was really powerful pivoting. It was seamless. Lindsay Unified was another district that began work, I think as far back as 2008 in creating 24,7 access to curriculum, engaging the community in the design process. All these things when the pandemic hit was a huge boost for these places. So there is something to be said about forethought like Menlo Park Public Schools, when you look at the work that was done by Eric Burmeister, superintendent, they always try to be one step ahead. So when the pandemic hit, their sort of teaching and learning innovations just seamlessly move through. Right. So some of these places had the preparation. Other cases, folks really begin to understand and leverage this idea of really integration. And frankly, in some cases we saw black and brown parents keeping the kids out of school because again, they saw some of the challenges. And those places that work with those parents really had a really good time of making that called in 74 that really talks about places that really thrived or kids that thrived during the pandemic. That may be of use to the audience as well too.

Yeah, no, that's awesome. And it's funny you just bringing up the different examples and I think that you can see a through line with the different examples where students had already built a lot of those skills around self directed learning and had already had those foundations there. So that when they have to pivot during the pandemic, they were able to do like the help seeking, the, you know, having agency and ownership over their own learning already. And so having that ability to translate that to different contexts, you know, you can just kind of see in the multiple areas like you mentioned, Lindsay, and a lot of different districts as well, where they were already in that more of student driven learning experience. So I know we kind of went really into the classroom piece, but I know you've done a ton of work around just thinking through the systems and policies and conditions that enable those success. And that's what Digital Promise has been doing a ton of work around. Do you have anything you'd like to share there that would help?

No, it's a great question, Juliana. And one example perhaps is our Verizon Innovative Learning Schools program, Deville's program, which is part of our overall digital equity work. Many of the schools they already built and plan for teacher development, teacher competency and use of technology in the classroom had one on one technology in place in these schools. And kids were really accustomed to taking those devices home. And the parents were quite familiar with the computer and the broadband access, etc. Again, there was no pivoting. I mean it was easy for naturally happen. So we think about what is required to do that. So we talked about the classroom and how important the classroom is. The school principal needs to understand what teachers need to really provide the structures within that school to facilitate some of that work. Right. When you think about the coherence that needs to exist amongst different edtech products, this idea around interoperability is something I know schools care about if the districts care about. So when you think about the work at the district level, is the chief technology officer sitting side by side with the chief academic officer and really providing really good integration. So you think about VeeVee, for example, as a tool. I mean that can only be successful if there is an integration plan at the system level and the kinds of tech support that is required at the district level. So in our Verizon work, for example, we think about district IT support. We think about that integration with the academics and the chief technology office's work. We think about how that central office really understands that their job is to create coherent and to be of service to the protagonist in the classroom, the teacher in the classroom as they support young people. So there's got to be a level of understanding around regulations and system support and to really understand how you design curricula. It is the centerpiece of the work curriculum, pedagogy, how technology is weave then I have seen examples of great technology being delivered to schools and it sits in a closet for months. And when I, when I became a principal, actually before I was an assistant principal in the same school, I discovered in the basement of the school a room, sizable room full of 286s. So those of us who are old enough to know what that is, oh my goodness. I was like, oh my God. Completely obsolete, right. But clearly somebody, well meaning spent a lot of money buying computers and printers, right. But it never left the, the warehouse in the basement because there was no real curriculum integration or thought about how do you leverage the technology to enhance the teaching and learning process. Right. So all that, when you think about learning management systems, right. That became somewhat ubiquitous in the, in the US school district, how do you really make that better? And when you think about companies like power schools, we're trying to create a one stop shop in connecting the work of the guidance counselor, the work of the teacher, the work of the principal, right. In a way that is coordinated to support the student. That can only be done at the school district level. Right. As a plan of cogent technology integration platform for that let me go maybe one step above. When you think about the $65 billion coming to governors and states, to the Biden administration's, the infrastructure bill and the work that the FCC continues to do around bringing dollars into places, folks need to understand a bunch of things like you can bring computers and broadband access to schools, but we've learned that the family has full access. It makes a massive difference when you think about data privacy, when you think about all the regulations that must be followed, the state can provide the umbrella support for that. And when you think about the deployment of devices into school, having a plan for refresh, because I've seen states that purchase very low end technology to schools and then what happens is in the year is obsolete. It also does not provide a kind of powerful computing for powerful learning. I know VR technology is expensive right now, but when you think about what that could do to really enhance say social studies, you can bring, I don't know, take the country, take national park in the us you can bring it to the classroom. You think about even what I used to teach many years ago in earth science, tectonics, very difficult concepts to teach. You can have the kid like if you remember Magic School Bus, you can take the kid there and actually see it. Right?

Love the Magic School Bus.

Yes. So policy structures that support the kind of work the district needs to do. District supporting the ultimate unit of change, which is what's happening in schools.

You know, like just hearing all of this, and I know that we've talked about this a lot, a lot of it comes down to partnerships and alignment across all of the pieces. So really making sure everybody has the same goals in mind, the same focus on what they want to achieve, that they're not just like bringing in the technology and letting it sit there. But they're like, this is why we need it. This is the challenge we're facing, this is the gap we're filling. And then how do you make it sustainable so that everyone knows they're on the same team and they're all working towards the same goal. Right. And kind of hitting the elephant at the point where they can help. And so it's just like I hear, you know, there are some systems that have set up some of these things, probably gone through some growing pains doing that. But I think we're probably at this moment where we can, by sharing those stories and sharing what has worked and what hasn't worked and like where there are those pivot points, we can help others leapfrog during this time so that they don't have to go through those same points, right? I mean, just one of, just one of the big things is just having the CTO and the teaching and learning working together on the same goal is such a huge piece in a system. Because then you're saying this is what's in the classroom and this is how it can build teacher capacity or how it can impact student learning. Not just that it's working, that it's in there and it's running the places.

I've done the best job, frankly, having really included the educator voice, the practitioner's voice. The folks have to use this stuff, need to be in the room so they can inform the policy work or the structural work that's being done. The other thing that really is important too, and it's happening in places like Dallas, Texas where you're looking at even cutting edge technology. So one of the things that I'm excited about and watching what's happening in the space is the reinvention of the student record. So that might sound really technical and wonky, but you think about it right now, it's really one to two dimensional system that the institutions own. You think about a system that honors all learning, way of capturing learning in multiple modalities, that it becomes part of the record, the student record that is owned by the students that can ultimately connect to not just K12, but to higher ed and ultimately to in the workforce. So you have a learner employment record that is owned by the individual. By the way, this is not pie in the sky. It is happening now through the US Chamber of Commerce. Walmart is doing some of this right now with the upskilling of frontline workers. And in Dallas is happening in the school district, in higher ed institutions through the Green Light project. So lots of folks are thinking about this and we are in the middle of it. It's an exciting construct that can bring capitalistic based education to interview. That can begin to be a bit of a Trojan horse to really fundamentally shift the way in which we think about learning and capturing learning.

I was going to say, I think that's the biggest thing is it's just shifting the way we engage students in learning too with the idea of a growth mindset. And not just like you're getting grades and what does that grade mean? What have I achieved? You know, and really trying to Translate that through K12 and beyond. So that again there's. I mean Dallas does amazing personalized PD for their educators too. Right? So they're not just looking at the K12, they're like, how do we actually support our teachers in the same way so that they're able to identify what their crown is or what they're ripening, you know, or what their, what they want to be working on and so that they can be super focused and get that targeted content that they need to take the next step. So I know we jumped around a lot from what we had planned. So I want to make sure that I hit on everything that you wanted to share around your digital transformation work, and especially at Digital Promise and what you've been doing there around this. Is there anything you'd like to add? Just I know that you guys are doing some research and writing a paper and all of that good stuff. Is there anything you'd like to share there where it's kind of capturing and codifying some of these topics we were talking about?

I mean, the important note is that as an organization, we're not trying to eat the entire elephant that we've got amazing partners in, like you, Juliana Learning Accelerator in Innovative. Other people ISTE who are taking through parts of this and lots of great exemplars overseas like oecd, like I said, has been talking about some of this in a more global sense for a while. But the idea of Thinkway is very simple, well, seemingly complex. When we think about digital transformation, we can't focus on one layer. You have to think about all three layers and understand, frankly, how all can be mutually reinforcing. There is a litany of edtech products showing up in schools, showing up in our homes. I've had three young boys and a daughter in college. I can tell you, I see a lot of it. Some of it shows up to their friends. But trying to create the kind of coherence within all of that noise is important. It's going to keep happening. Dee Hawk, the founder of Visa in Visa International, talks about this idea of organic growth. It sort of talked very early on about even cryptocurrency. We think about the way in which these products are showing up in schools. They're coming through teachers, they're coming to the school system, they're coming through kids, themselves with parents. So that kind of creating a level of coherence around this for the teacher and students, important. But at the same time, the district policies in practice, that needs to focus both on protecting young people as well as fostering innovation are important ways to think about this. Right. A few more things that you'll see. So again, we're writing two papers. One is going to focus on digital equity, which we think is foundational for this kind of work. Otherwise you're going to have haves and have not, right? You're going to get the kids, my kids, maybe your kids, or the kids of middle income families are getting access to all these wonderful tools and the kids who are historically excluded from full participation are not going to get access to this. So we have to think about equity. Equity is a central piece of this as well too. Making sure we're designing for all kids, including kids who are neurodiverse, who have disabilities, et cetera, all that needs to be part of how we think about this. Making sure we have full accessibility. That's part of the design and policy and structure work to support every student in our classroom. So one of the constructs that we have at Digital Promise is called the Learner Variability Navigator. It's a structure used by 12,000 teachers a month that is reaching dozens of countries around the world that really helps a teacher, again through this use of text technology, lean and learn from the learning sciences and the science of development and bring that to their classroom lessons. That is being integrated as an API into learning management system. So it reaches 50 to 75 million users. So it brings the old adage of personalization and puts it on steroids and brings on the sciences into all of that. So a big part is as digital primaries, we really want to inform the work of tech companies, the work of superintendents, to make sure again that amazing products like VEE shows up in a way that's integrated properly in the classroom to be leveraged. So the paper, one on digital equity, one on digital transformation, will highlight so much of this, but do so in a way that paints a picture. The first paper is really being written for policymakers, governors, state education chiefs, superintendents. The second, frankly, is for those people and frankly the public at large. Because this part of the second period is a push inside a bit of an alarm to say, hey, we got caught flat footed, let's not get caught again the same way. There is a solution here to actually address.

So one of the big things I wanted to do with this podcast was that so many times we listened to listen to podcasts and we get expired and we get excited, but then it's like, so now what? So what do I do now? Especially as those listening who may not have the connections or the ability to reach out to someone to ask more questions. So for every podcast, I'm going to ask for the guests to share something to put in our bank. So whether it's an exploration bank, a Partnership bank, an application bank. So something that those who are listening can continue that conversation can learn more. I know I'll definitely be including the two papers. So digital transformation, digital equity. So we'll make sure to put that on our site so that those who listen can actually learn more about those two pieces. And then I also will include some of the learning accelerator showcases on some of the learnings during remote learning and what were some of the highlight, some of the excellence that did happen during that time. I know you mentioned article for 74, is that right? So I'll get that from you.

Yes, we had one from the 74. We just pitched a primer now hopefully will come out soon on this idea of digital transformation that should be followed by this full paper.com this year.

Awesome. And then is there anything else you'd like to add to that bank to just kind of help people who are maybe like looking at what does this look like in the classroom, what does this look like from policy? Anything else you'd want to add to that bank?

Absolutely. So there's a lot of emerging work in what is often referred to as computational thinking. So it's less. Well, it's not less technology, but it really is geared toward the kinds of skill sets that kids need to really do well in post secondary and frankly access the newest, most sort of next generation jobs that we see. But that requires again the ideas of understanding how to leverage powerful technology and what that means in terms of curriculum and instruction. So for example, you think about what does math look like in early learning? What does STEM look like in early learning? How do you teach the concepts of data science in a high school or middle school course? Things like pattern recognition. So myself and colleague at Digital Partners have written articles on computer science on computational thinking. We have a full bank on computational thinking on our website that folks should look to. So it is related. It's not about, but it's about to your point, the integration of the skills in everyday lessons in every subject area in our schools and that really propels a young person to really sort of adapt to and understand and be able to access the best skills moving forward. Last thing, one more layer to all this, which is also part of our learning variability is a lot of concern around student welfare, student well being. Right. And they are concrete solutions and concrete ways of identifying some of the trauma we're seeing in our schools. Right. And part of our a few of us have this worry that given the newest NAEP scores that we're going to see a lot of drilling Kill in schools. A lot of push to drill math into these kids heads without really fully addressing the trauma that was experienced in the last couple of years. So there are tools within our site, within other people's sites that we point to that can be part of the design that leverages again the idea of leveraging technology to bring solutions to the hands of a teacher, to also to inform the teacher's discussion with a parent. That makes sense as well too. That's really important to think about.

That's awesome. So I will definitely be putting together a list and emailing you so that we can kind of make sure it's all ready. And so one last thing is at the end of every presentation or every webinar, I always say I always do a post it promise because I think that a lot of times we get super excited about these conversations, we get inspired and then we go back to our life with our children and work and we just kind of keep going. So I'd love to know if you have a promise to yourself based on this conversation that you'd like to do tomorrow, next month, next year. And I will do the same. And if you want, I can start with mine because I've already got it. My post it promise actually I'm going to write it down is I want to learn more and my handwriting is really bad about the Green Light project because I don't know about it. And I love Dallas ISD and I love Kristen Watkins. So that is mine. You can't even see it with, with my light.

One. Maybe add to that. It's not really Dallas ISD that's pushing is it's independent work that's part that is connected to Dallas ISD but also connected to the Commit partnership in Dallas. Because as you can imagine, that construct is not just about the K12 system, but it's K12. It's higher education, it's workforce. So you need an intermediary who is bringing all these pieces together. So Green Light is part of the Dallas commit's support and work for the ecosystem, the county that is Dallas.

Even better. See, I need to learn all about it. What is your post it promise, Jean Claude?

You know, so if it's okay, I take a little more time to explain my posted promise. One is that we're going to write, writing these two big papers as digital primaries. We're not about pontification, we're about doing right. We call ourselves a research to practice partnership kind of organization to write these papers. But we're also going to help demonstrate what it looks like in practice. So, for example, deal transformation, we're going to create a set of services and we are a nonprofit. We get funding from amazing foundations in the government. We want to support systems like our lead in demonstrating what is possible in highlighting these great exemplars. So that is my promise to take what we are espousing in these papers, both around equity and around transformation, and actually put it in play to showcase to the world and not to come back and say, this was the paper, this is an exemplar, and this is what they're doing. So that kind of through line want to make sure that people see and understand. So it's not just imposition paper and pontificating and we walk away from all of it.

No, and I love that. I mean, you know me, I'm all like, what are the granular pieces? How can we put into practice? How can we translate it? Because it's all about not like copying and pasting, but being inspired and having a launch pad that you can then build off of in your current context and so that you can actually learn from others.

Awesome.

Thank you for joining me and kicking off my first podcast. And thank you to all those at home in the car, etc, for listening. I appreciate you and please reach out if you have any questions, comments, feedback and everything in between. And Jean Claude, do you have anything else you'd like to share?

No, this was fantastic. You're an amazing moderator, so I appreciate the opportunity. Juliana, thank you so very much.

Thank you. Thank you so much for coming.