Empowering Educators With Jaclyn Sarnese of elevatEd Classrooms

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You want tech and tacos, Tacos and tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper captains counting beans Contador quentan frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy and coffee my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos el gordo the taco standing puesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean watch the sunset la Jolla shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside, the Tijuana esti be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the Moon SD TechOS with your host, Neil Bloom.

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Welcome to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Neil Bloom, and I am thrilled to have you here on the Tacos and Tech podcast. We interview builders of technologies, of companies, of communities, and we do it weekly, so thanks for tuning in. Every Tuesday, new interview and on Fridays we talk about what's new in the San Diego tech ecosystem from a news perspective. So make sure you join us there as well too. We also have a tech newsletter that comes out every other week@freshbroodtech.com you can subscribe to listen to it without further ado. Enjoy this episode. I am thrilled to have Jacqueline Sarnise, founder and CEO of Elevated Classrooms. Hey Jacqueline, thanks for being on the podcast.

Hi Neil. Thanks so much for having me.

Yeah, no, it's a real pleasure to connect with you, especially through Connect all at the Jacobs center, which I've been a longtime supporter of. This is great to do. Another spotlight of great companies coming out of the incubator there here in San Diego. Do you want to give us a quick overview of what Elevated Classrooms is?

Sure. Thanks again. So, like Neil said, I'm Jacqueline, founder and CEO of Elevated Classrooms, and we are breaking the cookie cutter approach to professional development for today's educator. We are helping them grow from surviving to thriving through a collaborative support approach. We teach our teachers so we train our educators in trauma informed practices through stem, which is science, technology, engineering and math, as well as S E L or social, emotional learning.

Got it. Very cool. So I gotta imagine you've got a bit of an education and teacher background, which we're gonna get to know. But where. Before that, where are you from? Where are you from originally? How did you. How did you get down here in San Diego?

So I am a Jersey girl originally. And you might hear some of that accent come through on a. On a few words there. Born and raised in Ventnor, New Jersey. We. We V. We veterans, we call each. We call it V Hood. Endearingly so. So I always wanted to be a teacher. I, you know, my teachers were my superheroes when I was a kid. And even though there were so many paths in life that maybe tried to steer me away from teaching, ultimately, I think it was always my destiny. So I went down to Miami. So I went to University of Miami in Florida to study biology and education.

Coral Gables, right? Is that where the University of Miami is?

Coral Gables? Yes.

I was just there two weeks ago. Such a cool little place. The Spanish look and architecture everywhere. The hanging moss trees over the streets, like, it's a cool town.

I'm a fan, so fun fact about those trees that San Diego should take note of this. University of Miami prides themselves. I don't know if they still do. They used to pride themselves so much on the upkeep and landscaping of their palm trees that if any student. Well, this was a rumor. I think it was true. If a student got hit in a head or anywhere with a palm frond, that you would get free tuition for the rest of your duration there.

I hope that's true. That's super unique and cool.

And, you know, I walk through the streets of Pacific beach, where I'm currently located in San Diego, and there are palm fronds everywhere. So PB Town council, you know, that would be a fun incentive, maybe incentivize more people to clean up the palm fronds.

Yeah, definitely. So take us through how you were studying biology. How did you make the switch towards education?

So you said your listeners are interested in pivot points, and this is actually a very important pivot point. So I initially was studying biology, and I wanted to do biomedical research. I wanted to help people. And I thought that. I thought I was going to cure cancer, which, you know, what we need people with big dreams. Like, I don't think that. I don't mock that, but my dad passed away at the beginning of my sophomore year of college. And my dad was an educator before he had gone into the casino business. And, you know, When I. I had to take a couple weeks off from school. And maybe some people are going through times like that in the past few years especially, you know, But I came back to. To college, and my professors, my biology professors were not very understanding. I actually had my attendance penalized against me. I don't know if that helped me, like, push over the edge a little bit. And I had a really, like, toxic masculinity advisor in the biology field that he would quiz me on the spot about mitosis, like the cell division. He's like, draw it. And that made me feel like I just didn't have any. I didn't. There was all these negative feelings at the time I didn't really have the words for. But now with all my work with social emotional learning, these negative experiences were slowly just pushing me away. And so I was like, you know what? Let's try education. And I added it as a class just to try out teaching and learning 101. And all of these injustices that existed within the system that I. I lived in, I participated in, I didn't realize. And I. This fire awakened within me. I wanted to fight for education reform. Wow.

So what'd you do? What was the first step, the. The change once you felt that fire?

First step, I. Well, the first step, I guess, is adding that as my second major. So at the University of Miami, I was in the school of Arts and Sciences, which was where the biology degree lied and they had a requirement that you needed a minor. And I had the. I was thinking initially, I guess I was going to minor in education. But I had this one advisor that was so warm and so polarizing from the toxic masculinity I experienced in the biology building. And she actually had made the switch herself from the biology to education. I felt like, right place, right time, and she's like, you know, it's only one more class to get the major and it's student teaching. But I would've had. I had to make a compromise. So my compromise was I didn't take physics, which was fair compromise. I wondered if that was ever gonna come back to bite me and knock on one. It has. Not yet. And then I started getting in the classrooms. Like, I started seeing it and practicing and working towards this idea that I was like, you know what? I'm going to be a teacher first. But that's not my. The end of my story. That's just going to be the beginning.

Super interesting. So you experienced, you know, the classroom in a few states, I believe. Right. Obviously in Jersey. Obviously In Florida. I think you eventually ended up in Pennsylvania. Correct?

Yep. And before. So Jersey, Florida. Back to New Jersey. Pennsylvania. This is Philadelphia, the school district of Philadelphia. Super unique. Just one little bridge away from New Jersey and completely different world. It's just one of the few, it's one of the, the very few states in the country that does not redistribute its taxes to fund public schools. So the city of Philadelphia just gets like an amount every year just because it doesn't matter if there's more students, less students, just because there's actually a show out on TV that kind of shows you behind the walls a little bit too Interesting.

So what were we already starting to see differences between, you know, teacher development and outreach development in different states and school districts and like starting to take notice. Was that already starting to think through and the preeminent building for elevated.

Oh absolutely. And I had all this, I was gaining all this knowledge and being in Pennsylvania, I specifically studied it. I went back eventually for my master's in education policy. Thinking at the time that state departments of education were going to be where I'd end up. Like that's where I thought that this fire was going to take me because states typically have a lot more control over education than the whole country, than federal level. But. And then when I came to California, I just, I guess I was hoping that all of these jobs and policy were going to be awaiting me and it wasn't the case. So that's how I ended up in ed tech actually. So when I first moved to California, I got a job working in science curriculum, digital science curriculum, which I was the United States rep. So again I got in more states and more classrooms. Initially I was in these classrooms for quote unquote technical support, like how to use this app, how to use this digital technology in an in person classroom pre pandemic pre. Like anyone expecting a biological reimagining that would have to happen because of a virus. And a lot of teachers were super reluctant to technology at the time. However, I was really doing a lot of more pedagogy support like teacher training support. And I think what your question about like comparing these different states, while there are so many differences, there were also so many similarities in science teachers classrooms. I was seeing a lot of the same patterns. So I developed this hypothesis that at the time I didn't know it was elevated classrooms. I didn't, it didn't have a name until I did this like brainstorming journey maybe a few months later. But I was like, I don't think the what is really making as much impact as the how in elevating classrooms.

Take us through a little bit more about that. What do you mean by that specifically? And in practice, how are you seeing that?

Sure. So I didn't want to go into too much all at once. So thank you for. I just want to check in every little bit. I know there's a lot of teacher jargon, some of it's really relevant and transferable, but some of it is very niche. So just relevant. I'm just aware of that. So some of the things I was seeing, even though a lot of teachers in California, Missouri, Georgia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Florida would speak this high level trend, whatever was current at the time about how they're practicing it in their classrooms. But when I would go in, I would really see a lot of the same practices that were around since the 60s, which is open your textbook to page 300. We're going to start by defining these words. Please read these pages. And I'm not going to sit here and say I didn't do that at one point in my career, because I did. And I've talked to my students who are in college and graduated and the pros and cons of that. But that's not high level pedagogy. That's not teaching science. That's not in alignment with anything new or different than what exactly we've been doing for the past 60, 70 years. So every teacher had strengths though. So while I was in there, I would just be able to say, you know, you're starting that lesson so well. Your students are super engaged with what you're doing. They're just getting a little lost in the directions. So is there a way that we can shorten the directions up or maybe create some checkpoints to. So we don't want to lose that engagement. And I found that was really helpful. And that was not something I ever had in the classroom. All one, 100%. Oh, I should say not 190% of my teacher observations as a K, as a high school biology teacher were pointing out my flaws. And the few times that I would ask like how do I improve in this area? I was told that's your professional responsibility to figure out.

Wow, interesting. And that's happening everywhere simultaneously in every classroom, which you know, very hard to, I gotta imagine track engagement around that without I don't know, cameras with AI seeing how students are doing, like which that's a whole nother question. Ed tech conversation we can go down but your went year route go Ahead.

No, it's. Yeah. And this is all pre pandemic. So imagine like how much even more difficult that guy within the next few years.

Yeah, exactly. Right. Tracking engagement and just comprehension. When a completely virtual environment where you. Where half the students, or maybe even more than half, you're actually even seeing their face on camera. Right. Everyone loves to just like do just the forehead shot. I've noticed a lot in K through 12, for whatever reason. Okay, so you're learning all of this. Take us through. Then you know where it. How it actually bubbled up into elevated. Like, when was the real idea come to be that, hey, this is something I need to do? Almost like you're calling.

I feel like, all right, so this is the nitty gritty. This is something, Neil, that I have not said in any public or, you know, online forum quite yet. But I got laid off in December 2019. And I always knew that I needed to share this, but I kind of wanted, I guess I wanted to have a little bit more foundation or resilience under my belt before I shared the neg, I guess the valley, before we get to the peak, which is Elevated classrooms. And so December 2019, I got laid off. And I knew that I was valuable, knew I had skills, I knew I had, you know, a resume that would go places. But I had all these connections and classrooms that I was working. It was my laboratories of innovation. Like, I literally was hands on. And at the time, I didn't realize how valuable that was because since then I've met so many people with much more funding, much bigger organizations that oftentimes offer stipends to teachers to get into their classrooms, and they can't. So I just, I guess I was just living it and doing it. It was like, what's the big deal? I'm a teacher, I'm in classrooms. And I did this, like, brainstorming, brain dumping journey over the. The winter holidays that year. I was like, let me take out everything in my brain that's bothering me. This fire, this, you know, why haven't I been able to find a leader that's. That sees my vision and believes in this value and like, what can I do? And I, I really wanted to just call it Elevated, but they're, you know, a little bit harder to trademark. So the first name was Elevated STEM Teaching and now Elevated Classrooms. Then the pandemic comes about. So I thought at the time that Elevated classrooms would just be this like, side gig, side hustle, if you will. I think the cool kids are calling it these days. And I was still applying for jobs. I was like, I'm going to get a full time job. And then March 13, 2020, I had a meeting with a, a professor at a local university, trying to, you know, network and see what I could do. And we heard about this virus and we like bumped elbows and we were there to talk about a summer program. And we both just kind of looked at each other. Cause we were from biology teaching backgrounds like this, let's not do any summer planning quite yet. And then I just sort of had a feeling that none of my applications were going to go anywhere because all the schools went virtual. So which educational environments were doing hiring in March 2020? So I just kind of like looked in the mirror. I was like, you know what? You've had this mission and this vision for almost 10 years. Like you're the one to do it. And so I stopped waiting for someone else to be the leader and I saw myself as the elevated leader and I went all in.

I love it. So how. Take it back a circle a little bit before you went all in? Because yes, a big inflection point was losing the job. Right. And that was forced, which a lot of entrepreneurs honestly need that kick. You know, they won't do it themselves. That someone needs to rip the band aid off for them, unfortunate or fortunate, when they look back and determine that if that was which way it was back then. No. Like, when did you know you were going to go all in? Like, and not just timeframe wise. Like, what did you feel comfortable with? How far did you progress the idea into an actual business, you know, to say, this is it or was it immediate?

It was not immediate because my whole initial business model was based off in classroom observations, which in as of March 13, 2020, no longer existed. And all of my teacher contacts, all of my friends, my mentors, my peers who I did have great rapport with, were not excited about inviting me to their Zoom classrooms. There were still zoom bombers at the time. Like, there was like so many things going on that, I mean, certainly we could go into all of it, but things were changing rapidly and I needed to change with it. So I pivoted four or five different times in different models. But initially, I guess I really started doing work with informal education providers, the very, very beginning, and doing consulting services to them. Because it wasn't just K12 education that went virtual. It was like you said. I think you mentioned something earlier about employee engagement, employee training. Like every industry needed to pivot. And I got connected to public health organization that was doing public health trainings. Everyone needed to do training of some kind, and they needed to find a way to do it virtually, which I had experience with because I had been working with different states and different countries virtually for a few years, and I had been developing trainings. So a lot of people turned to me, and I also got connected to a STEM camp, and we did a lot of experimenting together, formally and informally. And in that moment, during that time, I was trying to create a training. I guess this is the pivot point. I was trying to create a training to give to K12 schools on how to reopen in person fall of 2020. So it wasn't just California schools. Almost every state was closed for the remaining of the 2019, 2020 school year. And while I was able to create a quote unquote, one size fits all training for, say, the fitness industry or the restaurant industry, my. My heart, my soul, my fire was in K12 education policy, and there was no one size fits all reopening in person plan for K12 education. But there was one consistent pattern across the board. Mental health support. And like you said, that all of the students whose head looks like this on zoom, a lot of times, like during this, figuring out zoom, figuring out virtual classrooms, a lot of people, out of fear of the unknown, they muted their students, they muted their learners. They're muted their whoever's in the room. And I understand mute is, you know, it's a powerful tool. It's needed sometimes. But kiddos as well as adults, we need the people who are developing their voice for the first time, or folks that are adults that need that consistent development of voice. You consistently mute people, that energy's gonna go somewhere, right? In science, we say every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And it might not be obvious where that action's go or that reaction's going, But I knew it was gonna go somewhere. So that at that point, I was like, I'm going all in an elevated classroom as we are needed. And we pivoted to not just be seeing STEM teaching support, but to also be social, emotional, learning support for teachers, students, and the whole educational community. And that's when I was like, I am self employed. We changed the name to elevated Classrooms from elevated STEM Teaching and we offered hybrid. So I was like, I don't know what the future is going to hold exactly, but I know it's not going back to normal for sure.

Yeah, you bring up a good point about muted. You know, they're muted could also mean turning off video so you can't see the student's home environment, which I saw a lot of, a lot of teachers doing. And it wasn't them, it was their district saying, we can't. Almost like ignorance is bliss. We don't want to be caught up in seeing the things that may be happening in households, which, ooh, man, that's rough conversations to be having in that regard in terms of mandatory, you know, everything that comes with that. But we're at a different place now. Obviously it's been, you've been working through an changing environment. What is, what does elevate look like today? Like, what is, what does a program or a rollout look like that you be, you may be working on?

Ooh, you know what? I am working on at least two proposals, maybe three right now. So I walk through that process normally. I get connected to either a teacher or a school administrator who comes to me with an issue and some pressing challenge. Sometimes they know exactly what it is. Sometimes they're like, I have an exact budget for social emotional learning, professional development, and this is exactly what we want. Or a lot of times they're going to debrief, you know, brain dump all of their experiences. And it's my job or elevated classroom's job to package that and to sort it into one of our offerings. And so that's when we come back with a proposal. And the proposal that we come back with would look like one of individually or a combination of what we call elevated SEL or elevated Social emotional learning, which that is usually group professional development sessions that we would offer for that school and community. We also offer elevated STEM that's going to be science technology teaching focused, whole group for a science department or say a grade level team perhaps that wants to bring more science into their multidisciplinary class. So those are our professional development group session offerings, the SEL and the stem. And then we also offer elevated coaching. And that's one on one in classroom observation. So far we've done only in person, but we don't want that to only be in person. We would love to be able to grow the online coaching as well as hybrid offerings. And that's what I was saying before about being able to point out what teachers do really well first. So our model is confidence first, then competence second, which results in happier classrooms that thrive or the. And then the last, I guess line that we have is elevated consulting. And this is usually more admin level focused school level principal or an administrator that wants to design a new program. Let's design a new STEM program. We're also, that's like perhaps even train the trainer programs that could be consulting. We would either propose one or a combination of those different things. And yeah, so for example, we may do one launching group session of like the whole teaching staff and we may go over the whole social emotional learning model together. And then we may have some small group offerings like I was saying before, like individual grade level teams or individual subject specific specialist teachers, like the science teachers versus say the English and math teachers. And then we would have perhaps some of those classroom observations to, to feed into our overall assessment of how well this program is working if we make it an iterative process. Because like I said, one size does not fit all. So even though we do have models with elevated classrooms, we find ways to fit our model to our audience, our K12 school or school district that we're working with. And then we usually have some sort of last group session to wrap up as a whole group. Because we at elevated classrooms we believe internally and we train externally that people first, people before policies, people before profit, confidence before competence, social emotional learning before stem. I can go on and on, but I'll stop.

Oh good Maxim. So when so you starting this rolling it out? When did you know you wanted to be surrounded by other businesses and business resources like Connect All? Like how did you even start learning about it? And take us through kind of going through it a bit as well.

So one of your former podcast hosts or podcast guests, Rita. So she and I, she was a Connect all graduate. I think she was maybe this exact time last year, perhaps like right after she graduated, she was on and she and I got connected through the San Diego STEM ecosystem, which I, I also became a member and a leader upon moving here because I was member of the Philadelphia STEM ecosystem and I didn't have any contacts when I first moved here. And I have been a leader in the ecosystem for some time and I, I'm still connected, but I was ready to take that leap from science education support to business support. I felt like I had a really great connection of people. I had a really great understanding of the need for STEM support in the region and I wanted to learn how to grow as a, an entrepreneur because I can create programs for days, but I didn't understand finance or marketing or you know, all of the other parts that come into business. And so between her Ritika and Jasmine Sadler from the STEAM collab and then there's a few other folks, so just basically powerful females that are, they bridge the gap between business and STEM education. Alongside me.

Awesome. Another podcast guest we had, Jasmine Sadler, who we love as well as another one, Jasmine lafleur as well, who I would imagine you maybe know as well too. Or not yet.

Yes, from Greater than Tech and I do. I owe her a calendar invite. She sent it to me. She's doing great things. I haven't connected with her as much yet as I have with the other one, but I'm ready to to connect with her more one on one for sure. She's doing amazing things with drones and.

Yeah, no, we love it. No, the stem, you know, entrepreneur ecosystems who leaders who you just mentioned. It's incredible to see what you guys are building and doing and I'm so glad we've been able to have conversations with each of you now on the podcast. So take us through where, where are you going to be in a year? Like where are you headed, what you've been through? The through, you know, a business incubator now which I got to imagine kind of helped it impact your thinking process how to run a business a bit. Where are you hoping to steer the ship now?

So during the Connect all at the Jacobs center program, two main things I took away were one efficiency. So I was spending time in so many places and being able to do like a time inventory and being more goal oriented and the secondly is looking at our finances and how to grow to what my vision is which allowed me that those learnings as well as being the first place winner of the Connect all at the Jacobs Center's Union Bank Startup Pitch competition, the prize funding that we are receiving from that allowed us to just hire eight new consultants and trainers to deliver our services. We just trained them last week. We are going to have an amazing full summer with trainings all over the country and locally. Here we have half of our staff is local in San Diego, half of our staff is remote throughout the United States. A year from now we are going to have a small team of full time employees in addition to our wonderful consultants and we are going to be a leader in education policy. People are already turning towards us more and more and more every day. Not just for services but for the guiding and redesigning of educational policies for 2022 and beyond or 2023 and beyond. Because this is next year. So yeah, I'm not forcing it, I'm just allowing. We're radiating what we believe in and finding people that have shared visions and if they don't see what our value is yet, in a year they will.

I love it. Well, I'm so excited We've gotten to tell your story on here, but more so to talk about, you know, the change you are affecting, which we're really excited to see one happen in fruition here in our San Diego because selfishly, we want to see the change happen in our own town, but we know it's needed, you know, nationwide and globally too. So super cool about that. You're building in San Diego, therefore you know our legendary taco scene. Do you have a favorite taco place?

I have so many favorites, but I. I am going to narrow down to one. So when I first moved here, everyone made me try them all to decide. So this is a very calculated stem design process approach to taco in San Diego. I'm going to have to go with taco surface crispy tacos.

Ooh.

As a Jersey girl, I had never seen what a hard taco is supposed to look like until Taco Surf's Crispy Tacos in San Diego and Pacific Beach.

Oh, yeah. Life changing, life changing. I have had so many post surf California burritos from Taco Surf, but I haven't had their crispy tacos. So adding it to the list as a great one to try and knowing your scientific method, which I would imagine you only tried crispy tacos at every place, only to make sure there was only one. There's one control and one variable. I appreciate that, the diligence you've done on this answer.

Yeah. And you know, California burritos, I do have a different recommendation. Same location, but taco wise, definitely tacos are for me.

Yeah, I guess we'll have to spin up an entirely different podcast with some cool iteration about California burritos, because that is a whole other conversation. Okay, but give us your two favorite California burrito spots.

Okay. My number one is La Perla. It's across the street from Oscars, which Yelp tells you is number one. And I fully disagree. La Perla is better. There's going to be less line and it's going to be authentic. Number two. Well, I think it probably would be taco surf. Oh, no, there's a Rigobertos.

Oh, yeah, definitely. All in a good little spot too. So really, you go to Oscars for ceviche, which is a nice little, you know, aperitif. You then go to Taco surf for the crispy tacos and maybe a California burrito for the roll for the road as you're walking to Rioberto. So sounds like we've got a whole day planned in in pb. I love it.

Let's just hope it's. You gotta get in there. Well, it's. If you're listening to this during May gray, find a sunny day or come out in July.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or just the afternoon when it peaks out a little bit. But Jacqueline, thanks so much for being on the pod. Really enjoyed getting to know you and your story through here and, and all the best. So thanks again.

Thank you so much for having me again, Neil, and letting me tell my story. Elevated classroom story. And yeah, let's make San Diego, let's elevate the tech scene and the edtech scene in San Diego for the country.

Let's go. Awesome. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to the Tacos and Tech podcast. You can find all of our episodes on fresh foodtech.com as well as on Twitter at Tacos and Tech Pod. Also follow Fresh Breed Tech on all of your social platforms and make sure to share and give a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify or Google Play. Thanks again.

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