TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

Welcome to Spotlight Chat, a conversation with leaders. Our special guest today on Spotlight Chat is Candy Farthing. She is the chief operating officer of Choral Academy in Las Vegas. You oversee a handful of schools. What is Choral Academy all about?

So Choral Academy is a STEM focused charter school. We have grades kindergarten through 12th grade. And we really focus on supporting every single student across the board in the science and tech area and math and really taking them to the next level and getting them to be as strong as they can be.

What should parents know? If you're a parent in the Las Vegas area, you have different options of school. You can just send your kid, I guess to the school closest to you. You've got other options for charters. What do they need to know when making a selection of a school for a child?

I think as a parent you need to know what are you looking for in your school. There's lots of different opportunities. You know, our school is STEM focused with the science and the tech and the math. There's other schools that have, you know, music or arts background or focus. There's others that have more of a reading focus. And so I think you as a parent need to know what you're getting into and what do you want? What do you want your kid to be engaged in? What do your kids want? What are you looking for? Education.

What are some of the advantages? Why do the people who choose your school want their child to focus on science, technology, engineering, math?

I think, you know, we've got a, we've got a great reputation. You know, our kids, we have kids that have been very successful, you know, kindergarten through 12th grade and score significantly higher on their state test scores and call, you know, getting ready for college prep and everything else. And so we've got a very high reputation. Our kids perform really, really well. It's challenging. You know, I'm actually a parent. My kids are enrolled at Choral Academy and we actually moved out here last year. And it was an eye opener as a parent to see how much my kids were pushed and how much they grow as students at Chorll. So it's rigorous.

And what do your own kids say about. What do they like, what do they not like about the schools?

They love their classes. They've got small classes. There's only about 22 kids in a class. They love their teachers. They like, you know, they're very inquisitive and so they like the science aspect. They like engaging in the hands on activities and doing experiments and having that outlet. But it was, it was an adjustment for them moving out here from Oregon and kind of having. They've got homework, they've got a lot more homework than they've ever had before. So.

And is, is that the key to engagement and not just giving homework, but really making it meaningful or checking up on it? Because there, there has been a movement in the last 10 years of schools being graded almost in terms of, you know, we give more hours of. And that doesn't necessarily translate into more advancement.

So the hours of homework is not the key, I think. What is the homework in? What is it engaging in? It's got to be meaningful, it's got to be relatable, and it's got to have a purpose. So homework for just busy work is not going to do anything. And so it's got to have the purpose behind it.

And what's a typical example of the types of homework, you know, your students are, your teachers are putting out there, for that matter, what your own kids are doing?

I think just the real life experience, you know, so for, you know, for math, when you're looking at geometry questions, you know, actually going around and looking in your bedroom and measuring the different things in your bedroom and putting it together, and then how would you change this if you were going to move your room around? How are you going, how are you going to make it work? And so then you've got the geometry with the, you know, in the real life that you're looking at in your own bedroom, but then moving stuff around too. So it's the real life application of what they're actually doing, which gives it a different meaning to it.

Now we're here today from one of your campuses in the greater Las Vegas area at the Accord Education Summit. What brings you to a summit like this and how do you benefit from Accord?

So what I like about the summit is we have school leaders and teachers from several different states that are all coming together, that all have the STEM focus and background. And I think it's great, you know, as school leaders and teachers to actually connect with the. Each other and talk about what's working at their schools and what's not working at their schools and how to support each other and opening up the conversation about student engagement and student success. You know, that should be the focus of everything that we're doing. So it's a really great time to get everyone together and do different trainings and sessions to think differently about how we're supporting our kids and keeping us accountable to making sure that we're supporting every single kid.

Let's go a little Deeper in this concept of what's working and what isn't working. As a charter school, the theory goes, you're not as dependent on just the status quo, perpetuating the bureaucracy. If something works well, you can do more of it. If something doesn't work, you can eliminate it or de emphasize it. What are some examples of both of those?

As far as what's working, what's working.

Better here that you think traditional schools aren't doing that you figured out, okay, we're getting good feedback, let's invest more in that or let's spend more time or bring in more teachers on that. On the other hand, are there things you've tried and you just didn't get much of a response from students or parents and you decided to de emphasize that the next year?

So I think with charter schools in general, it's a school of choice. And so I think that's part of, you know, I think that that offers more options for parents. And I don't think it's one size fits all. And I think that as a charter school, what's worked well or helped us be successful is looking at what unique needs are for our kids and what our population is. And I think we have to identify what are our core values and expectations that we all believe in that's going to be consistent across all campuses. You know, this year we actually expanded, we opened two new campuses. So part of our struggle is then also looking at what do we need consistent across all of our campuses, but then what needs to be unique for each of our campuses? Because we have different populations and demographics at our different campuses. So I think it's a balance of what is working well, what isn't working well, why is it not working well, and then how do we improve upon.

That and how do you adjust accordingly? Because different parts of the country, there can be different career paths. A lot of people in the New York City area, they want to go into their parents. Industry of finance and math might be even more important. That's not exactly the industry you're most known for in this area. How do you factor in available jobs, number one? Number two, how do you factor in the career backgrounds of your families you serve? Because someone who comes from a family where no one's ever been past 12th grade may have just as big of ambitions as someone who is third generation medical doctor, but their background and options they've been exposed to might be different. How do you counter, how do you take all of that into consideration?

So as far as a different background of Parents and expectations of their kids leading in the future. I think with that, it's important to have that conversation from the ground floor. You know, starting in kindergarten, I think you talk about careers and what they mean and what do you want to do. And I don't think that any, I mean, at that point, no dream is unattainable, but what is it going to take to get there? And helping the kids see that they can achieve that and maybe if their parents didn't achieve what they wanted to do, you know, they, that's okay. What held them up, what stopped them? So let's talk about that starting in kindergarten early on and help support those dreams and ideas. Because if the kids have the grit and the belief in where they want to go and what they want to do, they're going to be successful. So we've got to support those dreams and ambitions.

Your schools are new, young. We're in one of the campuses now and it's beautiful. It looks fantastic and sparkly cleaned. So you don't have a track record of, you know, 40 years ago someone came in and now they're the CEO of Boeing. But what have you heard from some students, some of your earlier students who have been in for a while, what are they accomplishing now? How is your teaching, your culture? Help them get to the next step in their dreams.

So, and I actually am new, I actually just transplanted from Oregon myself about a year ago. So I'm still new within our system. But I know that we have had, for example, we had a senior last year that had a over a 5.0 GPA and a scholarship to MIT. He had a track record and he has an ambition to be a doctor. I believe we have some of our former kids come back and want to be teachers here and want to educate our kids and work with in the same school that they went to school in. And so I think it's across the board, I mean, of where they want to go and what they want to do.

But certainly there are parents listening right now and say, a scholarship to mit, that's my greatest dream. My kid would be set for life and not end up with a quarter million dollars of debt for the tuition. So that's fantastic. What else do your students want to do? What are their plans? Do they mostly aspire to be the next Steve Jobs? Do they want to work in the aerospace industry? Where else do you see their dreams and their ambitions?

I mean, our kids are just like any other kids. They've got dreams across the board. You know, from maybe being an astronaut to being a lawyer, to being a doctor, to being a teacher. And so I think that it's our job to help help them pursue those dreams and help them see what it's going to take to get there. And we start that at an early age with the conversations and the career readiness and life application. You know, a lot of our high school kids spent their summer working in the fields they want to work in and having that experience to see is this really the direction I want to go and what is it going to take to get there? So the more experiences they have that earlier on, the more direction they have when they get to college.

If you are a student or a parent trying to figure out where should you go to school next year, you may want to find out more information about the school. You can go to the website that is CASLV.org, we'll link to that in the show notes as well. Again, 3ws CASLV, the school is Choral Academy. And special thanks to our guest, Candy Farthing, who is the chief operating officer at Choral Academy. Thanks for being our guest today. Thank you for listening to Spotlight Chat, a conversation with leaders.