139. The Future of Education with Dr. Cory Steiner

Our guest on today's episode is Corey Steiner. Corey is the superintendent of Northern Cass Public School District, located in here in North Dakota. As you'll hear, their school district is a consolidated school district of several small towns, and they're kind of physically located, as we would say lovingly, in the middle of everywhere. And the main reason that I was excited to bring Corey onto the podcast and even how I'm familiar with kind of his innovative approach and his staff's innovative approach to education is because our school district here in my hometown, they partner with Northern Cass, particularly related to implementing personalized competency-based learning into our school. So PCBL is what it's called. So I, I knew that Northern Cass was doing creative and innovative things And this conversation, by the way, I'm having this conversation with friends, with people in my community, with, again, we had a recent kind of public situation happen with our school related to a bond referendum. And so this conversation about like what is the future of education, especially for those of us in rural places or small communities, I don't think there's many people that would argue with the fact that small towns, the backbone of their town is their school. That's honestly like not very many people are gonna argue with that. And yet this conversation about what is it gonna look like in 10 years, in 20 years, and where is education headed, I think is a really interesting conversation. And man, oh man, did Corey show up for this conversation. And here's what I'll say. I always feel delighted when I come across a human that prioritizes the human experience the way that Corey seems to, both from an employer standpoint that kind of touches my org development brain, And then from an educator standpoint, which touches my mom brain and heart, it's always stunning to meet grown adults who are from North Dakota or grew up in similar communities to what we're in and still have this really growth-oriented and social-emotional learning like on lock. He's showing up just in a very beautiful, open, vulnerable way. And we talked about that. We talked about what it looks like to lead people like that from an employment perspective. And mostly what it looks like to educate students, or learners as we now call them in this era, for what's to come. I hope that this conversation makes you also feel hopeful and optimistic and encouraged by the youth of today. There's a lot that people say about the youth of today, and he takes on that challenge to reframe or think differently, I think, about what these students, about what these students, the world they're living in and what they're actually contributing. And what kind of future we're going to have. It's a beautiful conversation. So, oh, sorry, I get very verklempt, which is one of my favorite feelings. So definitely felt that talking to Corey. I hope it does the same for you. Enjoy this episode with Corey Steiner. Corey, welcome to the Growing Small Town Show.

Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here today.

Oh, same. Just to again give our listeners a little bit of additional background, our school collaborates with your school., and we're looking at doing education maybe a bit differently. And so do you wanna share with our listeners again where you're from, how big the school enrollment is, some of those things, just to give them some context?

Yeah, so I, I'm the superintendent for the Northern Cass School District. Um, this is my 10th year in the district. If people aren't familiar with the Northern Cass, it's about 25 miles northwest of Fargo. We say we are literally located in the middle of cornfields.

You are.

We serve 6 small communities and those are Argusville, Gardner, Grandin, Hunter, Arthur, and Erie. We're a consolidated school district that without going into great detail, people couldn't decide who was gonna have the school in their town and somebody got mad about it and said, "Fine, we'll put it right in the middle." So they gave land of 80 acres, which is why we're located where we're at. We're continuing to grow. We have 710 learners this year and we'll go above that. Every year seems to be a new record enrollment. And I think one of the things people need to understand about us is— 35% of our kids come from outside the district and make a choice to come to Northern Cass.

Okay, so let's stop there for a couple things. That's awesome, first of all. So again, for our listeners that maybe know our school, we're in Oaks. Again, we are just under 500 in enrollment. That's a huge enrollment for a school located in the middle of nowhere, and like over a third of your enrollment open enrolling to you. Is a big deal. So let's talk about that, Corey. Why do you think that's the case? You know, what are some of the things— I said you're doing, you're doing education differently. Obviously we need to dive into that a bit. So let's just talk about the overall philosophy, what drives the curriculum, what drives you as an administrator, and again, what's ultimately driving those parents to choose your school over the school that's in their own backyard.

There's a few reasons people choose Northern Cass, and it certainly predates my time as a district that was innovative and thought differently about education. So I think you, you see a couple things happen. I think you see parents that say, hey, I had a smaller school experience, I want my kid to have a smaller school experience. The Metro schools are great schools with great educators and leaders, but they just don't want their kids in a building with 1,600 kids. They're afraid they're going to slip through the cracks. Then their next step is, but I don't want to lose the opportunities that they could get in the big schools. And for us, we say we're going to offer big school opportunities in a small school environment. We're going to give your kids almost everything they could get in the big schools, but we're going to know you. We're going to know your kids. We're going to probably know your grandparents. Like, we are going to get down to the fact when you walk through the door, you are going to know that we know who you are. We love you. We care for you. And we're going to do that the entire time you're at Northern Cass. And I think people have seen this place as an extension of their home. And I think that's why people are choosing to come out here. And we've been turning people away. Because we just don't have the room for the enrollment that people are requesting.

So there's so many things to be said about all of this. First of all, you basically, I think, described an educational utopia. I mean, for real, like the idea for people that their class size could stay small. And then let's just be, be really clear about this. You might have that same kind of beautiful balance of school size and opportunity in a private setting. You know, there's a lot of private schools in our state and probably in every state, right? Where if you can pay for it, then you do. Great options obviously isn't available for everybody. To strive for that balance in a public school is pretty cool. It's pretty unique. I think that's, that's special. Before we move on to actually like what makes Northern Cass different, okay, what about on teacher recruitment and retention? What does that look like for you? Because I would guess that you kind of have the same trend happening with your, your staff as well.

That's a really interesting part because we all know that struggle in finding highly qualified educators is tough. It's real. And I know working with Oakes and closely with Anna down there, like it's a struggle to find people that we can get there and that will commit to your communities.

Thanks.

For us, the other struggle is most of our people are coming from the metro area. And you know, when gas is $3 and the roads aren't great even in the winter. The winter's bad.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

So, and I literally have a couple educators will say, I drive by nearly 100 different schools and 30,000 kids to get to Northern Cass. But I will tell you, for the most part, our people are not choosing to leave here and go to the metro area and be in a bigger school district, even though it may be more convenient and a little more cost effective. This year we just did 95% of our certified staff are returning, and they'll say they're returning because this is a family. And they really, the last day of school we have a big celebration and one of our people emailed me afterwards and said, "Northern Cass is all of us." He goes like, "When we say we're part of something bigger, they truly believe that." And I think we've been able to keep really great educators in a system that's very innovative and we ask a lot of our teachers in our district.

Right. So again, if, and you maybe didn't know this, but my professional background prior to kind of getting into the community development angle on this work is org development. So what makes companies great places to work? And I think school systems, you absolutely have to have an incredible employment culture to achieve low attrition rate, you know, to have low turnover. Like, that's— it's such a big deal. So what are some of those things that make Northern Cass feel like a family? Like, what, what is it? How do you approach the culture aspect for your, your staff?

That's a great question, and I love your background in org theory. Like, one of the first things I did when I got here 10 years ago is we did the book study Good to Good to Great. And there's a lot of things in Good to Great that have failed, and Jim Collins followed up with books. But for us, it was this idea of you can choose to be great. It's not something that's reserved for the basketball superstar. Anybody who's really achieved greatness has worked really hard at it and been really focused on that. And so I think, one, we have a lot of people with the mindset of, I think we can always do a little bit more. And we talk, you have to be able to live in perpetual beta in our system. You always have to be working on the 2%. Like the solid part in the middle is good, but let's always think about how we can improve and continue to get better. Culture-wise, what are some things we do? I can tell you one of the things, if you asked our educators, they talk about nice bike. And it seems simple, but nice bike. And Mark Sherenbrock is a person from St. Cloud and he does some talking on nice bike. And he talks about the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. And I grew up north of there about, 3 hours so I can remember when the motorcycles will come by, thousands at a time. But he said, you know, you get all these tough bikers out there and they only want to hear 2 words, and that's somebody looking at them saying, "Nice bike." And he said, "It's about ordinary people doing extraordinary things." And so once a month, we actually have an award where we hand the book out and teachers, non-certified staff pass that book to someone and recognize them in a full staff meeting.. And then we say, here comes the public embarrassment. We put a chair in the middle of our staff and people share how they've impacted their life and share their greatness. It used to be like this little 5-minute thing. It's now a half hour. People are shedding tears. Like, people are talking about, you've changed my life. And when we do that, it re-centers us because education isn't easy. And it re-centers us to remember, like, we're doing this for one another and we're doing this for kids. That's been our huge culture piece. We do something really simple called greatness cards, and people always say like, really, that has a big deal? We handwrite greatness cards and we have a goal that's in our strategic plan of how many we'll send to each other, how many we'll send to kids. And I say, go to any graduation party and watch how many of those high school graduates have these cards hung up that they've gotten throughout their time at Northern Cast. Go into my educators' classrooms and they're usually on their doors hung up. Little things like that to say you matter, to say I see you, and to say I respect you are really important. It's small things. It's not necessarily, hey, I'm going to buy you something during Teacher Appreciation Week. I'm going to buy you a bag that you have 1,000 of. It's small little gestures of saying, like, thank you for showing up today.

I love this so much and I would echo everything you're talking about because again, it's not about the cost that's involved in these things, it's about the effort. And then beyond that too, it's like I only will take the effort if I actually believe it matters, right? And so you're, you're actually creating a culture where people are looking for that impact and then it influences you to make an impact knowing that you're wired to look for it. So it's beautiful and it's obviously very rooted in psychology. And that's to me the best, right? You can't just tell people what to do. Greatness cards would be super empty and not validating if the intent wasn't pure. You know what I mean? You could fill out a greatness card. So what? Like, that's not the point.

Yeah, we did it. At one point I said, this is how many you have to send a week because I thought that's how you should do it. And it bombed. And soon after, about a month in, I'm like, stop. Send it if you see it, send it if you feel it. I'm not requiring it anymore. And, and since then it's like flooded because it's very genuine and authentic, which is what you want when you're gonna handwrite and put something in there. Don't make something up. Put something in there that like truly has touched and made a difference in your life.

Right? Oh, love that. Okay. So do you have core values that guide the culture of your school and are you willing to share 'em? I imagine they're maybe even on your website. Can I ask you, are they the same for, are they just like school values? Like, did the students kind of carry those things out too? Because this is what's always, always interesting about education, right? You've got, obviously the culture is created by the staff. I really do believe that if, if your staff and your everybody that works with you, if they're happy and they're fulfilled and they're content and they're motivated and they're, then everything else falls into place. Like I really do. So even, even in a for-profit setting when we're talking about customers versus learners, you can put all the stuff out there to how you wanna interact with customers. If the people doing the work aren't there, then that's where we need to start. So talk to me about that. Do you have kind of core values and what are they?

Yeah, so we've got a couple different things that we do. Well, nobody's doing it wrong, but like we're not big into the word mission or vision. Like we don't use that. That's okay. Because we think people get confused with that. So we, one, we have what we call our why, and we did the work around Simon Sinek. We did a lot of work around that. So like if you walked in our school, you would see everybody's why statement outside their learning center. We do a lot around that. And our why is this idea of like, we believe learners can change the world, therefore it's our job to produce a world-class system. And people will say, "Well, those are just words." And I will tell you, they are unless you do something around that. So you will come to our staff meetings and I'll say, "Tell me when a kid changed the world this week because of something you did." And again, I'm not talking about a kid curing cancer. I'm talking about the kid who ran to the door so they could hold it open for you. That's a change the world moment. Like we have to look for those moments. It's the kid who never turns anything in and then for one week just turned everything in and was really engaged. You know, it's the paraprofessional who saw this kid struggling and went over and helped but didn't need to do that. So, and then when it comes to our values, like we have 3. One is trust, that we have to purposefully build it and never assume we have it. So like, what are we doing to always try and make sure that trust is at the center of what we do? We believe in really authentic relationships. And that's where like we expect that from our kids to our kids. The adults to the kids, kids to the adults, families, like we expect those to be very authentic, not just like you're a parent, I have to interact with you. That relationship means like I need to know something about you. You also need to know something about me. But I think the one that probably sets us apart is we say and we value engaging in innovative practices and we take a lot of pride in that. We want to be on the cutting edge of doing what's right for kids. And to do that, that means you cannot look at a lot of existing systems and expect to see what innovation looks like. So instead of saying like, oh, we need to be like them, we say our comparison is us. We look at us and compare ourselves to what we're doing in terms of innovation. That was kind of a game changer. When people said we value that, what we started to see happen is people taking risks, But probably more importantly is people coming up and saying, I'm really interested in this. What could I do? And now instead of it being like, hey, I'm telling you to do this, we actually see our educators coming and our kids coming to us and saying, have we thought about doing it this way? And that's created a really, really strong kind of linchpin for us to move our work forward.

For sure. So how did you develop that? Like truly, because it always starts with an idea that this is who we want to become. And then I think you speak it into existence with words. But then eventually those words need to either— they need to be supplanted by the actual action. Was there a clear process for how you got there?

In a way, I would say not clear because I don't know if innovation is ever really clear.

It's pretty messy. Yeah.

Yeah. But I mean, ultimately, some of this discussion, it all started about 5, 6 years ago. And it really started at a graduation. And I think this is important to hear this because this was my moment to ask people if we're really doing what was right. So, you know, like Oaks, we're small enough where we can put the slideshow up at the end and say, hey, I'm Johnny and I'm going to NDSU, and everybody claps and cheers. And what I started noticing is any of our kids that said, hey, I, you know, I'm Mike and I'm going to the military, or I'm Chrissy and I'm going to go into the workforce, people would be like, oh, and you could kind of see them lean back and you could sense people thinking that that choice was a failure. And so I asked our staff and I was like, you know, we had about 90% of our kids going to 4-year college. They shouldn't have been, but they were. And we said, is that the metric we want to hang our hat on? Is that— that's not the world anymore that says we need 4-year college to be successful. Like, is that what we want? And our staff said no. Like, if a kid goes through our system for 13 years and says, I'm going to go work on the farm, and they're going to be a taxpayer and go to work every day, like, that's a very, very successful transition through pre-K through 12.

You bet.

And so we said, what does our system need? And we said, well, we need to create choice-ready graduates. So college, career, military, which everybody should be doing. But our job is to provide experiences, not content, not curriculum, experiences so they get their first choice. So I tell kids when they say, you want us to go to college? I'm like, I don't care what you do. I care that you get your first choice. And our job should provide you enough experiences inside and outside the building for you to do that. We kind of looked at each other and said, great, do we understand that means we're going to have to tear down the whole system and start all over with something that people thought was already really good? And they're like, we are. And that, that was the moment when our staff said, if we're not getting what the outcomes we want, then let's start over. And we tore it all down and took a system apart from the bones and built it all the way back up.

So that takes tremendous courage. First of all, let me just commend you and applaud you. Not just you, but your staff, like everybody to say, um, you know, what, what we're doing, it's not that it isn't working. I think the old adage of us, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. My, I always come back with, who determines whether it's broken or not? We need to really talk about that because this is where we get stuck in doing things the exact same way just because we think it's working. Our comfort with it is not an indication of whether it's working. It takes a lot of courage to shake up, especially something as important and critical as education. So, and maybe there's a lot I want to know, but I, I'm so curious how that landed with the parents because it's hard, right? Like you're, and you're talking about a big shift, a huge shift in the way education looks and the way education feels and what they expect, which they expect a bell system and they expect A, B, C, D, F grading scale. It's all of those expectations because it's what they knew and it's what they understand, right? So how did that look? How did that go?

I'm glad you asked. And I would say this is— it's one of the questions everybody asks. And I think our journey to doing this was really unique. But so, yeah, I mean, what's the one thing every parent has in common? At some point they were in school. Yep. And if you say, like, what did school look like?— it's very rarely a different story for most people. Like, fails, grades, did tests, participate in some extracurriculars. I mean, it's just— it's never a different story for the most part. And so the first thing we did when we made our commitment is we held some community meetings. When we went out to those community meetings, I started with a couple of questions. I said, I need you to tell me, what are your hopes and dreams for your kid? And I said, you have to write it on a sticky note. And then we're going to share out, and we're going to have a conversation.. And here's what we found out across the 100 or so people that attended the couple sessions. Nobody said, my hope is my child is the valedictorian. I never had anybody write that down. My dream was for my kid to get into an Ivy League school. I hope my kid makes millions of dollars. Like, nobody was saying any of that. I hope they're a straight-A student. No one. I hope they're happy. Like, I dream that they're a good partner with whatever choice they make in the future. I hope I can have grandkids, but they're an amazing parent. It was all these things that truly are what this world should be about. And I said, what if I told you the current system, I can never guarantee any of that can happen? Because in the current system, I have to worry about content and grades. What if we redesigned a system that actually could allow your kids to become remarkable human beings and they could make the decision to reach those hopes and dreams? Like, would you be willing to sit with us and work with us to redesign and do that? And for the most part, everybody was like, yeah, we would do that. Now, don't kid yourself, through this journey, it's been bumpy. We had a parent advisory board for a full year that like gave feedback. We tried to educate, to take the word out of what we were doing. When we pulled away percentage and letter grades, I mean, I will say, like, I have never been called some of the things that I was called. I mean, I had parents screaming at me saying I've ruined their kid's life, I've taken away their future. And now with where we're at, there's no evidence to support any kid wasn't able to get where they wanted to be. Actually, I think we have a multitude of evidence to say we've provided pathways for kids that people never thought would be imaginable. So the family part was hard. But it was also being very vulnerable to say, yep, we've done some really good things academically, but we have not done what we were capable of to make your kid a really great human being.

This is so rich in, like, my brain. So just so you know, Corey, again, we've never met. We should give a shout out to your mother-in-law, to Marsha, because Marsha, Marsha is the one I— of course I know about your school. Again, we have this cool collaboration between our schools, so I already knew you were doing innovative work. Marsha was like, Oh, Rebecca, you know, you should talk to Corey. And I was like, who? Corey?

Who?

And she told me, I was like, oh my goodness. So again, Marsha gets all the credit, but I really think that this is phenomenal. There's a ton of lessons for the people listening to this. And what I also don't want is for everybody to just be like, oh, I wish our school was like that. Because we're going to get to this, Corey. I think part of the question that I'm going to ask you is to think about the listener, right? And what can we as parents parents potentially do to nudge or encourage. Or if you're a parent in a school district like mine, our school is trying to do some of these innovative things. And I think a lot of times they bump up against the resistance of the parents that are like, why does everything have to change? That whole thing. But I have 3 children. Next year we'll have a sophomore, a 7th grader, and a 4th grader. And so my kids are just right. I mean, again, we're in, you know, 2 different facets of the school now, right? We've got, well, 2 in the the big kid building, and my daughter's still in elementary. So this is super important to me because I don't know, I, I'll just say it and I might get some heat for this too, but I, I think we would all be lying to ourselves if we tried to say or state the traditional way of education is actually preparing our kids for what's to come because we don't even know what's to come, but we know it's not gonna look like what we graduated into. I mean, I graduated 25 years ago or so, like in 1999, it'll be 25 years. I didn't have a cell phone in my hand. I just think that you think about that. And I think so all of us need to be a bit more open-minded and flexible in the way that we're thinking about what education does need to look like. So I just, I can't, I seriously can't credit you and your team and your staff and everybody for having the courage to just say, hey, like, And I love your approach too, to just ask parents. That's the thing. We're not sure what we want exactly. We're not sure what we want you to do, but as soon as it's different, it creates that tension where we feel like it's not right. But if you just start at the basics and ask everybody, we don't care if our children make a ton of money. We don't want 'em to starve. We want their needs to be provided for. But big picture, I think most of us think about it in that broader context, right? Like we want them to be positive contributing members of society. We want them to be happy and well-adjusted and all of that. So I can't applaud you enough for the courage. It's super hard to do when you're in a really conservative state. So maybe let— that's where we should, we should talk for just a moment. How has your innovative approach to education, how has that blended and/or maybe butt heads with kind of the state and their entire setup for what successful school looks like? Our education looks like.

Well, and I'm gonna say like for somebody who does a fair amount of traveling and speaking to other groups and working with other districts around the country, North Dakota is conservative as we are, educationally is actually really opened up the door and been very progressive and took a lot of barriers. And I'll say like we've kind of had the perfect storm. We have a governor who thinks very differently, a Superintendent of Public Instruction who is in the field and is really learner-centered. And then a Department of Public Instruction that went from slapping your hands because you didn't do something to saying, "Please try something, we'll support it any way we can." Like when I'm thinking about big ideas, like one of my first calls is a member at DPI who I consider a great colleague. And I'll say, "What do you think about this?" And she doesn't tell me, "Oh no, you can't do that." She'll say, "All right, let's get a team together from DPI and figure out how we can do this and if we need to pass legislation." When we—

most people don't know that. I mean, so I think if nothing else, like, that's an enormous gift to all of at least our North Dakota listeners, is just to realize that. Because I mean, I tend to generally think like government isn't where you go for new ideas. Like, if I want to pitch a new idea, let's go to the government, right? But to hear that there's that much innovation and open-mindedness— again, forever for our listeners, the Department of Public Instruction is what DPI is— but to hear that, I think it's Again, it's always good to hear from somebody that has a different perspective because sometimes we just, we bucket them into a category that they don't belong in.

So yeah, and I'll say like even there are times when the legislature will pass things that I think like, hey, this isn't having any impact on schools. Why are you passing this legislation? You're passing it because Florida did it. Now it's made its way to North Dakota. But I'll also say like when they're voting on bills to give us the ability to articulate credit from a kid being in piano lessons into our school. Like, that's what it means. Or Boy Scouts. Our kids in Boy Scouts can get high school credit for that. When they've done that, they're not passing it by 1 or 2 votes. Both sides are looking and say, yeah, this is good for kids, and we trust you in terms of like what you're doing for kids. And so I think people need to understand like the barriers that some people say are out there don't exist. And sometimes people use that as a reason to not do things like, "Wow, there's policy against that." Typically there's not. And if there is, there are waivers. We wrote the first waiver in the state to get us freedom on things that now have come around. And I remember when we made the shift to standards-based grades, the legislation in the state said you had to have an A, B, or C. We didn't have A, Bs, or Cs. We went to the legislators. Erin Obam was the one I went to and she said, "Yeah, no problem. We'll get the bill changed." They gotta change. Like, I mean, instantly, and nobody questioned it. Like, those things can happen when we put kids at the center, which we have the right people at times doing that.

Yeah, yeah, that's really special. And I think, again, it speaks to the, the small and local nature of our state too, which is, again, something we, we probably just don't appreciate enough because we, we tend to think that small means less resourced, but in my mind, small means the better ability for connection. It's human to human that things get done like this. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about what school looks like at Northern Cass. Like, so I mean, again, the idea of having a why for every one of your teachers and faculty, having a why, a personal why that they're in this work, I think is beautiful. It keeps people grounded to what they're there to do. And on the worst, hardest of days, which they all, I'm sure, have them because education is really a challenging field. I mean, and it's changed so much. It's changed rapidly in the last 20 years. The difference between, you know, what it was when I was in high school until now, it's just, it's kind of unbelievable and head-spinning almost. So we now have this outlook that we want kids to be choosing and that they get to have their first choice. And you mentioned that you focus on experiences. How and what does that look like day to day?

So, you know, and we still have some things that I would say traditional in terms of our schedule that we're kind of working through. We thought the schedule would shift practices. It doesn't. Don't start with your schedules. Start from the bottom up. Start with your expectations for learners. Start with your practices for educators.

Sure.

I think like if you looked in our high school, for example, we've got a really robust internship program. A few years ago, we hired a director of college, career, and life readiness. That's not a counselor. They actually were in charge of online programming at Jamestown University. And we just said, let's try something different. Like, we want something different with kids. Let's hire someone who has no K-12 experience. It's been just nothing short of miraculous. And so, you know, we're struggling to find non-certified staff. So instead of hiring a non-certified staff to be the library paraprofessional, we've hired kids to do that. So our kids are the library aides. And they're doing the things that our media specialist needs them to do, and they're getting paid to do that. So they're getting paid during the school day, they're getting credit for it. We have kids that we've hired as paraprofessionals that will go down and are co-teaching, not sitting in the back by the kid who's misbehaving, but literally taking small groups of kids and teaching them skills and reinforcing skills.

And I'm assuming, and again, this is, it's a question, but I'm, I am assuming that It's literally also primarily a matching of interests to open positions. Absolutely right. Like, you're not, you're not just saying like, hey, we— because I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna just say what's on my mind. And again, like, everything you do is dicey. Let's just be real. Like, you're in, you're in education. Everything you decide to do, Corey, and you can have the best of intent and it can fall really flat. Yeah, because you're dealing with with little humans, and then there's big humans behind those little humans. But I think instead of this potentially sounding like you're just asking for somehow there to be a subsidy of your labor force and just using your children to do so, you know, you're literally saying like, we have these opportunities within our school, like you said, non-certified staff, and there are kids that are interested in pursuing at least potential careers in this line of work.

Yeah.

So it gives them an opportunity to see it and experience it. I think that's beautiful. It's a beautiful place to start. Yeah. So outside of your school opportunities, what does that look like with engaging in the business communities and the, the business community? I, what I also find fascinating is you're in the middle of a cornfield, so you're not in any of these particular towns. What has that process been like for you and what, how have you found success with that?

Yeah, so I mean, that's one thing where we're a little bit lucky because we're close enough to the metro area to be able to engage there because even in our small communities, there's not a lot of businesses, but For example, we've had kids doing John Deere University at our local implement dealer and getting their certification. So when they graduate high school, they'll be ready to be a diesel technician or go to college and get the formal degree. So we're doing that part. I had a young lady, it was Downtown Yoga, it was a startup in Fargo. She was their social media director for the startup and did that. We had Bushel kids doing internships at Bushel, going in and getting paid to do that. I've had kids go into TNT Fitness and do work there. So we can find a place for a kid. One you always hear is, "Well, medical will never do it." We placed a kid in a chiropractor's office. And he is going next year, after next year, he's already in chiropractor school. He's going, like, he found out that is exactly what he wanted to do. We've also had kids get placed and come out and say, like, "I'll finish," because we commit to what we do. But I'm not doing that. I don't want that. And so like, that's been a part of this. Like, yeah, it's not just to fill our workforce. I mean, our kids that run our help desk for technology choose to go in there. A lot of them then, if they go to NDSU, are placed in the tech desk and not needing any training. They've told us like, your kids are ready to go and provide support. So it's kids identifying they want to be in there. It serves something for the school. But ultimately does create kids that are choice ready because of those unique experiences. I mean, even every 5th grader in our building goes on an out-of-school job shadow for a full day.

Can we stop and talk about that for a second? Yeah. So is this all coordinated through this person that you hired?

It's coordinated through our director. Our counselors play a big role. So our elementary and secondary counselor are playing a big role in that because it's not small to send out 50 or 60 little kids out into the community. And then it's also working with educators and families. So it's a very, very coordinated effort among a lot of moving parts. It's amazing what they do when they send those kids out.

You and I, I'll have to, I'll have to follow up with you because again, like, I'm sitting here, I'm in the office where our Chamber of Commerce is. I currently have economic, I do economic development here. This is a key piece that we feel, I think, has been not completely absent, but just it, we haven't been able to find, like, get our feet under us in kind of a coordinated way, because it's a ton of moving parts like you just said. Is there education or training or kind of support that you offer the businesses to do this? Because again, you can't just like send a 5th grader into a local business and be like, hey, here's your 5th grade person for the day, and they're like, what do we do with them?

Yeah, they, they've built out really good expectations, and then they're communicating with the businesses. Same with their internships, like You know, we want to make sure the internship is the right fit for the learner as well, not just putting the learner somewhere. So our director's going out and meeting with them, they're showing them expectations, we're signing MOUs, then they're doing multiple evaluation and check-ins. So I mean, it's not a, "Hey, you're there, good, we'll talk to you soon." It is a partnership and we make that very clear. Like, I don't need my kid from our school to come in and sweep your shop.

Yeah, we're starting to show up.

There's plenty of sweeping that can be done around here. We always say, What's the thing you always wanted to do and couldn't do because you just don't have the manpower? Give it to our kids. And some will say, well, they can't do that. And I'm like, well, you couldn't either. Like, you've not been able to do it either. So what is it going to lose if we give our kid a chance to solve a problem that you have that obviously isn't top level there, but it's something that's more low hanging? So we just ask them to think differently about the kids we give to them and have them come in their businesses.

Yeah, there's so many benefits of a robust internship program like you're describing, Corey. One of the primary things is that it's connecting students to the opportunities that exist in their own backyard. So if a kid does decide— because I personally have zero problem with students leaving this community to, you know, again, like they graduate, they decide to leave, they go on and they pursue whether it's 2-year degree, a 4-year degree, or they go away because they want to get different experience. The loop that we're not closing oftentimes though is to make sure that they realize that when and if you're ever ready or willing or wanting to come back, there's probably a place for you here, right? Because that story is different now than it was when I graduated from high school. And I get— sometimes I get flack for saying that because it's like, oh, well, you thought you were too good for Oaks. And like, no, that's not it at all. Just everything that I anticipated myself doing didn't The way that I work now, the fact that you and I are talking over Zoom, for crying out loud, that didn't exist when I graduated from high school, right? So I think along with that, it's that constant reinforcement of just what our Main Street could look like with you in it, student. They get a real sense of that. And I think it's super special. Again, I also, from an economic standpoint, there's all of these small businesses that if they don't have children of their own, that wanna come back and run them, you can actually identify earlier, like pre-succession planning. It spurs on and can actually really aid in succession planning. And you can groom that child, support that child or that young person to eventually decide to take it over.

Let's be honest, like if you provide this really amazing experience in your schools for 12, 13 years, if somebody's there for that long, aren't people more likely to come back and want their own children in the schools?

That's right.

If it was a terrible experience, boring, traditional, nothing out of the ordinary. Why can we blame people for saying, listen, I want something different for my kids. I didn't have a good experience. So that's part of it is like you have to give people a reason to want to move back and people will move because school systems are great.

You are touching on something. I'm going to thank you for that. I've never actually said that or even really thought that. Like specifically related to the school, but you're, you're absolutely right because we all kind of know it. And when I say we all, it's the people that talk about economic and community development all the time. It's that there's this pocket of ages where people start to get a little bit older. Like we don't expect necessarily that our 20-year-olds will return. Sometimes they are, and it's awesome when they do. We have that kind of happening right now in Oaks, but it tends to be that they get into their late 20s, maybe they start, and again, these are generalities, I understand, but it's when you maybe have a child or a couple of children and then you start thinking about this exact thing, like, what do I want their growing up experience to be? And a school is a huge part of that. And you're absolutely right, not a single parent would ever make the decision to bring their kids back to an environment that they hated unless they didn't have the ability to leave the community.

And you're right, that's part of it too, is like, I know people are really good at blaming kids today. Yes. And I tell them like, so you're blaming somebody who's a product of the society you created. Like when you say, well, kids are on their cell phone, who bought the cell phone for them? Who lets them have it at lunch? Like I sit in meetings with educators and I'm like, hey, let's just put our phones away and just interact for a little bit. So like it's time to stop blaming kids when they want to leave when we've not created the kind of community that they want to stay in or come back to.

That's a beautiful thing to discuss for a moment. Maybe the question I'll ask you is, how long have you been an educator, Corey?

This is like year 25, so, okay, I, I have an answer for you.

Yes, I want to know that answer because I think again, it's— there's challenges always, and how we talk about them and where we lay blame, quotes, like you just said, where we put the onus of the problem is a huge factor in whether or not we productively, positively, or hopefully move forward. So are kids different now than they were when you started? And if so, how? And if not, why?

Yeah, I think, and, and this is no fault of anyone, they are so much better than like I was. And people are— they think so differently. They don't want to regurgitate information because they know there are things out there that do that for them. So they like I always tell kids about encyclopedias. Like I said, yeah, we— that, that's where we got our information, but the moment they were printed, they were outdated. So you were always using information that was never up to date. Kids want to learn differently, they want to think differently, and they want opportunities to engage with their community and solve real problems. They are different in a great way. You'll hear people say, well, now they have mental health struggles. I don't think that part is as different. I think that's different is we know better. So now we have to do better. And I think mental struggles have always been there for kids. Yeah, they might be more pronounced now, but now we know more about that and we understand the stigma around mental health needs to go away. So we're doing more. People say, "You have a therapist on your school?" I said, "Yeah, 4 days a week we have a therapist onsite in our school." And they're like, "Well, that's kids, something wrong with them." Nothing wrong with them. What they do is they also know they need to take care of their heart as much as they do their head. And they're willing to say when they're struggling, where back when I was growing up, you just didn't say those things. So there's a vulnerability with kids today that too many people see as a weakness, and I see as an opportunity for a better and different future for our country and society. They are more gifted than I have ever seen in my career.

Cory, I am so glad to have met you. I honestly could not agree more. And for me, when I think about this whole conversation and how important it is, and we're, we're talking about the future, we're talking about these amazing humans, young humans that are gonna eventually lead us, right? All I wanna do is encourage the adults to come along for the ride because we are, we are not dead yet. I'm not dead yet. So therefore there's still something that I can do about these things and actively pursuing social emotional growth for myself and encouraging that in the people I do life with. To me, that's where it's at. I agree with you, and I also understand how much easier it is just to say kids are lazy, kids are entitled, kids have too much. Okay, if— and I always just say, okay, if, if you say so, because that's going to be the attitude you carry into everything. Fine, go about your business. But I don't want that attitude in my school. I don't want it in my teachers. I don't want it in my administrators. And I don't— we don't have it, by the way. Like, just shout out to Oaks Public Schools. Like, we don't, we don't have that they don't blame children. And so I think one of the challenges here is that it's, again, I can't commend you, your staff, and all educators truly enough. Like, it's such hard work because you have this beautiful perspective and then you get heat from parents, right? So what are, what else are you intentionally doing to kind of maintain and preserve, you said it before, authentic relationships with the parents? Because we're all human, Corey. And I think that the biggest challenge is that we, while we all grew up, a lot of us, again, depending on how old you are, talking about your feelings wasn't something we did, but we certainly had them because we were still just human. And now we're encouraging kids to be whole everywhere they go, right? Like in school, at work, you're gonna be whole. And this is why my work in org development, it doesn't seem that different because companies need to let people be whole too. Yes. It's no different. So let's talk about this, that dynamic and your embracing of this and if there's been any kind of perceived clashing with—

You know, I mean, I'll say we're really fortunate, like our community and our parents are very supportive. I mean, there's some that will come and say, I don't agree with everything you guys are doing, but I trust that you love my kid and care for my kid. Like, so people will say like, I don't think the way that you guys, the model of learning, I think there should be more tests. It's, you know, you stand up in front of the group and lecture, which we do very little of, hardly any. We do lots of coaching for small groups and conferencing one-on-one with kids. We give kids the ability to move at their own pace. It's not an online-driven thing. It's still led by really great educators. But like, we invite parents in. Like, we do site visit days. Parents come in and see. Like, we'll let you walk with our kids. They get to ask our kids questions. They get to do panels. They get to talk with educators. Getting them in to see it so that they understand, like, what is happening here is different, but it's also impactful and the outcomes are really strong. When they can hear a pre-K kid talk about their learning, and I've had parents call and say like, "Hey, my pre-K was talking about the standards they're working on, but they also talked about Mrs. Crinkey coming in and working on them being a good friend." Like, I'm sitting there thinking, that's a beautiful conversation people are having at home. You know, I think we have a social-emotional learning class that high schoolers work, and then those high schoolers go out and train other educators on how to run connection circles. One of our greatest PD days is our high school kids are sitting with us at PD leading connection circles, and people are very vulnerable with them, with one another. Like, we, we try to show our parents that's what it is. When we do our State of the District address, kids always present at the State of the District address. Talking about something they've done, like the Able Games, where our kids are working with our intellectually disabled kids and they're doing PE and making it very inclusive. We're having those kids talk about that experience. So part of the issue has been the narrative has been controlled by people outside, and we just say, no, we're going to control the narrative. We're going to admit when we're wrong because we're going to still screw up things.

Absolutely. Yeah.

But we're also going to sit with you and show all the amazing things that kids are doing and that our group is doing and that we couldn't do it without them as well. It's been a really great partnership, not perfect, but really strong.

Well, I think what you're demonstrating— I'm familiar enough with education, like the 4 Cs of 21st century learning, right? Like, we'll see if I remember them all. So communication, collaboration, creative thinking, and what's the fourth?

Communication, collaboration, creative thinking. Now I'm drawn completely.

I know I am too. It'll probably— it'll come to one of us. The point being that those are— so I always think about the fact that, you know, the goal, especially because whether children or students, learners, go to 4-year degrees or they go on to any sort of post-secondary education, eventually they're going to land in the workplace.

Yeah.

In the workplace, those things are what matters. Those, those things are what drive their productivity, and those are almost more relational skills. And so I think it's really cool. You're, you're creating a learning environment, or at least from my perspective, you're creating a learning environment where teachers, they have authority, but they're not seen as this imposing figure of authority because that power differential doesn't look like that in the workplace either. You know what I mean? Like you have a boss, you have a boss, the buck stops with your boss, obviously, but your boss will be most happy with you if there's that collaborative creative, supportive back and forth. And so I just think, again, it's just really anchoring down into the humanity that each of us brings to the table and learning how to negotiate those things.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. Like, it used to be when, when we were growing up, like, the teacher's the authority and that's all there is to it. And now what we've seen is, yes, the teacher still can be, you know, is the adult. They still need to be the adult in there.

Correct. Yep.

What if they could co-facilitate learning experiences? Wouldn't that be great for kids? But also great for the adult. We have a model where I have people co-facilitate learning experiences and they're very independent. Man, they are amazing. Like I have a young man who half of his day was doing that and the other half of the day he's a farrier. He's making horseshoes. He was getting credit for his math class making horseshoes and has his plan. That was his choice one to go through. And because that differential wasn't me,— or the coach telling them what to do, it was them working together. That relationship completely changes the outcome. So, we have to get to a place where educators are not about giving out information and the holders of like something magical, but we simply facilitate learning. And that is hard. People will say, "Well, it's easy." It is very difficult to be a facilitator of learning and not just a giver of information for sure.

And I think I honestly, even adults learn that way the best. Literally just had a conversation with a gentleman this morning. We were talking about the difference between like being at a conference in a conference setting where it's thought leadership primarily versus jumping in and doing something and activating a transformation that belongs to the participant. It's designed by the content provider, and that's kind of what we're talking about, a facilitated learning experience. Was designed by oftentimes the teacher, right? And sometimes, like you said, maybe co-facilitated, but it was designed to create something. The transformation belongs to the learner, whether they're a child or an adult. And so, yeah, like you said, like backing off, there's like this weird surrender that has to take place in that environment. Yeah. And when I say weird, it just means you're not as controlling, but humans can't be controlled. And if they are, we're not getting a pure self-motivated, self-directed result. You know what I mean? We, if you're the teacher, you can get students to do dang near anything. And same with a boss, same with a parent. But it, there's, it's different when it's intrinsically motivated versus punitively driven, right? Like you don't do this, you get in trouble.

Mm-hmm.

You can get compliance versus commitment, I guess is the point, right?

That is like the part I, I love that you just said is, is we, talk a lot about that. Like, we don't do anything in our building based on consent. We don't vote on things. We do it on commitment. Can we commit to doing what's best for kids?

Yeah.

And if that's good for kids, it'll be good for us as adults. Can we commit to doing what's going to work for one another? And you're right, control. In our system, you have to be okay giving up control because those that have really embraced this and done amazing things are ones that are like, this is going to be messy, it's going to be chaotic,, but the end thing is going to be something that I couldn't have even imagined. And we have educators who have taken their course and said, you know what, kids, what do you want to learn? Okay, good. You have 6 weeks, start going. And they are coaching and facilitating this learning. And every kid in the room is doing something different, but they're doing it towards an end standard to say, like, hey, here's the competency I developed. And that's one of our next big steps is, like, let's focus on critical reading in every area instead of we're gonna just focus on reading in ELA or we're gonna focus on social studies. But you said it, I mean, you said it earlier and I wanna make the point. We have a lot of people who are really good at social studies in jobs and have never used a social studies thing in their job. And I'm a former social studies teacher. A lot of people that were really good at math that aren't using math right now in their job 'cause that's not the way they went. Like when we get to the understanding that it is about skills, when we call it our Portrait of a Learner skills, about skill development through experiences, that's what shifts the building. That's what shifts the experiences. And when people say like, "Oh, kids these days," I'm like, "Well then why don't you try something new? How's it been working? Like how is it working right now for you? And if you're complaining about kids, then maybe just change the system." So I just think we have a lot of people doing really great work in education and I think people that are working really hard, but I think shifting a system is difficult, but that's not evidence it's wrong. And I tell people that, they'll say, well, this is gonna be really hard. True, but hard is not evidence it's wrong. There's not a correlation there. Sometimes hard means yep, and it's gonna produce a really great outcome too.

Right, right. Okay, so there's a couple things. First of all, I remembered the fourth C, it's creativity.

Creative.

So creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking. When you were talking about the creative things they're doing, I was like, oh, that's the fourth C. So I'm sorry, I just had to say it because I was like, we're gonna have to make a note in our show notes that we do know the four Cs. So that's one thing. Second thing, like listening, listening to this, this idea that you're actually, you know, what you're fundamentally doing is changing the system of education. How and where and how do you see the ultimate, because one of the things that I've struggled with, and again, as, as a parent myself, that we've moved to numbered grading, right? So it's a, it's a numbered scale, you know, 1 through 4. When colleges, especially if you've got a kid that's going to go to college, right? When they're still demanding the products of the traditional system as the entry, like how we get into school, right? It's ACT and SAT, it's a GPA. Those kinds of things. There's— this is a two-part question. If— do you see that a shift in kind of those standards to get into school will shift to maybe accommodate or appreciate your approach to secondary learning? That's one. And then the second question is, do you think that there will be a time when your portfolio of learning— like, it's less about just those measured outcomes, but it's like every experience that students will be kind of gathering all of these creative experiences that they've gotten in education, and that becomes part of their transcript, in quotes, right? Like the idea of a transcript will totally shift from you took learning and you hit your basic stuff, but to more of almost a portfolio of work. Do you think that's on the horizon for us?

Yeah, I'm glad you asked those. So I'll kind of answer both those because I think they're both really important questions. The college thing is really interesting, and here's what I'll tell people, because we went around and met with colleges when we made the change in grading to make sure that it wouldn't hurt our kids in terms of scholarships and entry. We have letters of support from Concordia, NDSU, MSUM, Valley City State, UND, like all of them. And all of them said, like, honestly, it's fine, it's not a big deal. They wanted a GPA, which we didn't like, but we said, if that's what you need, great. But here's what I think people don't understand is we're letting colleges dictate. Colleges need our kids. A lot of them are on life support right now. You bet. Like they're struggling. And so I tell people we're gonna produce a different learner in a different way and they're gonna have to figure out a way to take it. And I actually think in North Dakota, they've been at the table the last probably year now having conversations of like, how can we embrace personalized competency-based learning? Which leads to this idea of the transcript. And we work with a group called Mastery Transcript Consortium which is this idea of a portfolio model. The— yes, we're going to guarantee that when a kid graduates, they'll have the things they need academically, but we're going to give you this portfolio telling you exactly the experiences the kid has had with all this evidence of their learning. And the big thing colleges have said, well, we don't have time to look through all that. And they said, well, if you did look through that and you made entry contingent on that, would you have a better retention rate? Because that's the issue in college. It's not getting in, it's retention. They lose their money when kids go away, not getting in. So we're creating, we're working right now on a mastery transcript model and a narrative transcript that we eventually want to get to the point where we tell our local colleges, this is what you're getting. You're not getting a traditional letter-number transcript, you're getting a mastery transcript. And our expectation is you're going to take our kids because our kids have the skill set to be very successful in their system. So yes, we're moving that way, but if it's just us, colleges aren't going to change. We need more people to jump on and say, like, you want to keep the ACT score, that's your choice, but is that really telling you who's going to be successful? Or would this portfolio of experiences guaranteeing this kid has the ability to advocate and be accountable and adapt Which would serve you better? I know the answer to it, and I think they do too. But there's going to be a lot of systems that are going to have to change. And I've got a meeting with a couple universities in the next few weeks to talk about, like, will you partner with us when we make this shift and make this change? And a couple of them are like, let's sit at the table and have a conversation how to do this. So I think we can do it, but colleges don't get the choice. They don't get to dictate anymore what happens in K-12. We should dictate what happens at their level.

Well, what I love about this, Corey, I first of all, just again, bravo. Like, it's so courageous to take this on. And right now they aren't going to have a choice. And I think that's a super important thing to remember because for the longest time everybody went to 4 years. That was like literally the expectation. And that's why, that's why going back to the very first place we started in our conversation, graduation, a kid says, I'm going into the workforce and ever— you can feel kind of the deflation in the room. That's not going to happen anymore because it's no longer just the expectation that everybody should go to a 4-year college. And so colleges and universities do need to figure this out right alongside you in high school and secondary education. It's super, super exciting. And I'm so honestly honored and humbled and just thrilled beyond all measure that you are right here in our state. Because I think if North Dakota— I mean, what a cool opportunity for North Dakota too. We have a bunch of open jobs just like lots of other states. And if we can be, if we can be a forerunner in innovative education, I think it can unlock a lot of the problems that we have for workforce attraction too.

I agree with you. And I like, I love that you're lifting up this conversation about economic development because economic development and what's happening in our schools cannot be mutually exclusive.

And they have— They can't be and they aren't. Yeah, right.

Correct. So I love that, like, we finally have some people that are seeing that we can do this work together and should be doing this work together and that, like, our doors in our schools should be open for the community and the doors in our business should be open for the kids. So I have great hope for the future because of what I see happening in our schools and for what I'm starting to see happen in our communities. And I just, I'm thankful that you're doing that work. Please know it's not going unnoticed. It's greatly appreciated.

Well, thank you. It has to be an intentional partnership and it can be hard. We put our blinders on a bit. I think all of us do this and we get really focused on what we need to do. And sometimes we just need to look up and remember, you know, that we really are all in this together. So on that note, to wrap this up, the question I want to ask is, again, I told you that people that are listening to the show, sometimes they're public officials. Most often they're not. They're people just doing good work in their communities. If there was one thing you would encourage all of our listeners to do to either support or engage or again, not push their local school district, I wouldn't because I don't— that's not, that's not our role, right? But the engagement with them, like what should they do? What's a good first step if they feel inspired by this conversation and they want their school to potentially look at what you're doing in Northern Cass? How and where do they start?

Yeah, I think that's a great question. You're right. Like, if you go in and say, hey, you're not doing this right, we need to do it. Like, they don't need to be Northern Cass. Like, Oaks doesn't need to be us. They need to be Oaks. Like, every community has their own special needs. What I would tell them is, is you go into the school and stop saying, like, I can come speak to a class. No, say, hey, is there some learning experience that's going on that I could help facilitate that experience? Or that I could learn alongside the kids. Like, I want to understand how learning takes place, and then I want to see how I can help do that and make it very authentic for kids. So how do they truly partner? I get a lot of people that will say, "I'll come in and talk." I love it. Great. That has very little bearing after they walk out. But when I have somebody come in and say, "For the next week, I'm going to come to this class and I'm going to sit beside kids, help them, do the work with them," that's a game changer. So I would say like, ask them how can they help facilitate learning experiences in the school? How can they learn with kids when there's something they're interested in as well?

Love that. So then the last question, very last question, is if a school, any school professional, a teacher, anybody in a school is listening to this and they think, oh my gosh, I want to see more of that happen, what can they do within the walls of their school?

Well, one, just try something. Like, that's the thing I hear. Like, well, I just don't know what it looks like. Yeah, that's the beautiful part of this. We didn't either. We had no idea this is what it would look like 6 years later. I don't know what it'll look like at the end of next year. That's part of the reason I love this job so much. Try just the smallest little step of finding one area you can give control to kids. Like, that's it. Just like, okay.

Surrender control.

Yes. Like, okay, I always give them this information. Hey, give them 3 or 4 videos to watch. Let 'em pick, let 'em make a choice, and then talk to them about their learning and ask them, how did that choice? And then you'll get to the point where kids will be like, well, I chose this 'cause it was best for my learning. Like, I listen to kindergartners tell me why they make choices for their learning and how it's best for them. So if a teacher will just say, I'm gonna give this to kids and I'm gonna ask 'em why they made that choice, and then you coach them to make choices that's best for their learning, not because of my friends, not because it was easier. Like, it's, that's the first step. A, B, why'd you choose A? Because of my friends. Great. Next time, A, B, why'd you choose A? Nope, because of my friends. Why would you make that choice when it's best for your learning? Like, that's probably the first step I would give for school districts to do.

That's a fantastic takeaway for educators because all you're talking about is agency. I get really fired up about agency because I, again, I talk to a lot of adults that don't realize they have agency. You know, like nobody gives you your agency. You have it. You have it because it's yours. And choice is your agency, right? And I think too, you're also touching on something that I think is so important in our smaller schools and smaller school districts and small communities where the pressure to conform is really overwhelming. And I'm not even talking just peer conforming, but like what your parents want you to do, what your church wants you to do, what all your parents, friends want you to do. You know, you can get really overwhelmed by that. And ultimately, your life is for you.

Conformity can be easy.

Oh my goodness.

It's easier for schools. It's easier just to say, yeah, let's just do it the way we've always done it. But man, like, the world doesn't need conformity right now.

It doesn't. And it never will. It never will again. I think, you know, the Industrial Revolution, right, that all happened. We created the workforce we needed with the way that we were teaching them. And now we need people with full agency, fully turned on to all of their unique gifts and talents. Right. Like, that's all I want to see in a community to think of how much brighter and more beautiful our communities will be if everybody shows up giving the best of what they personally have been given.

Yeah, I think the most beautiful thing a society does is create something that makes it not needed anymore.

Yeah.

Like, like the industrial model was really an amazing thing that happened. And the best part is you didn't need it anymore because you changed the world. Like, that's what I hope we can do with education.

Well, you are doing a phenomenal job. And this was honestly, what a rich conversation. People are going to be honestly really blessed by this conversation. I'm sure of it. It'll be interesting to see what we get for feedback on this one, right? Because I know it's, it's tricky, especially when we're talking about students and learners and kids, right? We just, The one thing we got to just keep coming back to is we all want what's best for them. Let's always, let's try to not let our personal, like, we dig in too hard, then we're losing sight of kids, that we're losing sight of what we all have agreed that we care about. So you're doing phenomenal work. Your school's lucky to have you. Your parents are lucky to have you, all your faculty. It's really, really impressive. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. We're getting somewhere and I think we are going to change the world. So I'm excited about this.

I will be watching carefully. That's what I can tell you. Thanks so much, Corey.

Yeah, thank you.