Transcript: Behind the Scenes of EdTech Growth

This interview was originally recorded on July 21, 2023, as part of Leoni Consulting Group’s All Things Marketing and Education Podcast.

Access this episode's show notes, including links to the audio, a summary, and helpful resources.

Elana Leoni:

Hello and welcome to All Things Marketing and Education. My name is Elana Leoni, and I've devoted my career to helping education brands build their brand awareness and engagement. Each week I sit down with educators, EdTech entrepreneurs, and experts in educational marketing and community building. All of them will share their successes and failures using social media, inbound marketing or content marketing, and community building. I'm excited to guide you on your journey to transform your marketing efforts into something that provides consistent value and ultimately improves the lives of your audience.

Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of All Things Marketing and Education. This week I am really excited to be sitting down with Jeremy Dulle. He is a growth strategist, a go-to-market advisor, a business developer, and probably all other things. He's going to get into lots of his experiences. Today we are going to be talking about all things EdTech. How do you grow in EdTech as a business? What's your business strategy? It'll include things on growing your business, what mistakes to look out for, and the careful balancing act of many things, including how do you diversify, but also focus. How do you incorporate educator voices and perspectives, but also keep your eye on the business prize too, and so much more. I am excited. I've been looking forward to this, Jeremy, because I'm like, "I get to pick his brain and he's not going to even care about it because we get to share it with all of you."

But before we get into those topics, let me give you a brief background about Jeremy. As you know, all of my guests are super humble and I think it's helpful for me to tell you about his background. So you don't think he's just some random person coming and talking about EdTech, which we know in our industry, if anyone's been in education and gone through an education schooling system, they feel like they're an expert in EdTech. This is not the case with Jeremy, I swear. So I was introduced to Jeremy through our director of Joy, Porter Palmer, who has the pleasure of being our very first guest on the podcast. So if you want to go back to our first episode, you can see how nervous I was as a podcast host too. So fun kicks there, but I remember Porter reaching out to me and said, "Hey, I just had a call with Jeremy. Jeremy is a good human and super smart. You two should talk."

And so I was like, "Okay, Porter." And when Porter introduces me to somebody, usually I end up collaborating with them for decades it feels like. So we had a call and we kept in touch, and I remember us just gelling and going, "Wow, you're really in it for the good reasons. You're really passionate about education, and I learned so much talking from you." So we finally met at ASU GSV this year, which is a big tech convening in March. That was really fun in San Diego, and I remember us just sitting under the palm trees and talking and feeling inspired and you being so selfless with your time. So I said, "You have to be on the show and you have to tell other people." So I want to welcome you. I still have a little bit to talk about your background, but I'm excited for you to join, Jeremy, but let me get some bullet points in his background.

Because I did promise you he's not just a random person coming on my show. Like I said, Jeremy is a growth strategist. He's a go-to-market advisor. He's a business developer who partners with founders and leaders of education. He has some background in SaaS as well and service organizations. He's all about how do you accelerate growth and impact, and I love that combining of the two. He's had over 25 years of experience as a strategy and management consultant. He's worked with organizations of all sizes, and I like that Jeremy, he hasn't lived in just EdTech. So a lot of the questions we're going to ask is differentiating EdTech from other industries. And he has that perspective because he has worked in many industries and many different business sizes from startups to Fortune 500. He started his consulting career with Accenture and Inforte, am I saying that right, Jeremy, Inforte?

Jeremy Dulle:

That's exactly right, Inforte Corporation.

Elana Leoni:

That's me just being, I don't know the consulting world as much as I should, I feel like. And then after your consulting, you became business development and a customer success leader in healthcare services and education technology. And how Porter knows you is through Discovery Education where she was at the Discovery Education for 10 years and your past crossed, right?

Jeremy Dulle:

Exactly. Porter is wonderful, one of my favorite people, and she always comes with things from an educator perspective, which is great and refreshing and informative to me because my background is in business, so absolutely.

Elana Leoni:

Yes. Well, awesome. I think that in this path of your life, you are now advising early to growth stage education companies on strategy, on business development, and growth operations. And as you do that, I think we have some questions on what do you look for? How do you truly accelerate growth? So I'm excited to get into it. Jeremy, thank you so much for spending time with us today.

Jeremy Dulle:

I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me, Elana. It is been great to meet you and get to know you. In the world that we live in, I think we've spent a lot more time on Zoom together than we have in person, but great to meet you in person at ASU GSV and really spent some authentic time and real conversation time, getting to know you personally and professionally. And I'm thrilled to be on today and talk all things EdTech, entrepreneurship, go-to market, anything you want to discuss.

Elana Leoni:

Yes. Well, let's get into it. So of all of your career, you kind of have some twists and turns. You still dabble in some healthcare, you have some SaaS background, but why are you focusing on EdTech right now? What brought you towards EdTech?

Jeremy Dulle:

I have kind of an interesting path and sometimes you have opportunities in your career to look back at where you've been and try to figure out how you got to where you are. And looking back, for me, my parents were always mission and service oriented. My dad was a superintendent, my mom was a nurse. My sister now teaches I believe kindergartners and first-graders with hearing impairments. My brother works for an education company, so it's kind of in the blood and in the family. I was kind of the outlier in that I started out of school in business with Accenture. It was Andersen Consulting back then, but we rebranded and went public while I was there, and I loved that work, but I kind of taken an interesting path to EdTech. But I did that for almost 11 years, a little over 10 years I think in strategy management consulting.

Loved the work that I did. I got a chance to work with Fortune 500 companies, global companies all over the world. I traveled, I lived in Tokyo, I lived in Helsinki. I did a brief stint in Jakarta, in Singapore and just loved the work. But I did get to a point after years of questions from my family about, "Hey, what are you going to do for other people?" I got to a point where I was lucky enough to come into Discovery Education and really start to work with the partnerships team who was responsible for working with, at this point, large urban school districts, informing digital transformation partnerships and then also working on the customer success side to make sure that the implementations were successful and we ultimately had impact and achieved outcomes for kids in school districts. So it was a neat journey with consulting and then running strategy and business development for a couple of companies, one in healthcare services and then one was an online startup.

My path has been fun in the sense that I've got to work with big companies and tackle really big complex strategic problems in all different countries. And then I've also worked more entrepreneurially with startup companies, and I fell in love with both healthcare and education probably for the same fundamental reason. They're very people and service oriented and mission focused, and I thought, "What a great way to bring the business side, the analytical side into a service space." So that's kind of how I ended up where I am. Being in education to move from consulting and industry and education was an eyeopener for me. I had to learn the whole new language, the lingo of K12 education when I got to discovery and really got a sense to appreciate the challenges of school districts and all the stakeholders involved and the complexities.

And one thing that really struck me that sticks with me today is that when you really go out and you visit schools and you look at classrooms and you see what teachers are doing day in, day out, you realize that some kids are lucky enough to be in a position where they can really learn and they can really absorb. And then there are a lot of kids who really aren't. Their basic needs may not be met. They may have learning differences.

So the big eye-opener for me was, "My gosh, there are many more kids than I ever thought who have challenges. And just getting them to school is a challenge, let alone helping them and putting them in a position to learn." That was the big eyeopener to me and kind of has continued to be a calling. And the last thing I'll say is that all came full circle for me when I had my kids. And then you start to really connect the dots between your career, your personal life, and your calling, whether it be to serve kids or to serve in healthcare. That's a long answer, Elana, to how I got to where I am.

Elana Leoni:

No, it's helpful. And you were kind of dipping your toe in the water of a question I'm going to be asking you soon around the differences of EdTech and how you started and how you had to get up to speed. But one of the things you were talking about was, when you went into classrooms, you realized there were some students that were ready to learn, and there were some students that there's so many nuances and factors that affect their readiness to learn. And I just want to pause there because I was recently on a call and it was with people that are new to K12 education and we make assumptions, and one of the assumptions that was made that if a student isn't engaged, it's a result of the subject matter not being engaging enough.

And I want people that are listening to pause and think about that because I think what I love and also sometimes hate about K12 is that there's so many nuances and there's so many factors. There's not ever a direct correlation because of this, this. And very rarely is it the subject matter's fault a student isn't engaged. I think that's just one assumption that was made. But why don't you talk, Jeremy, a little bit about when you were coming in, what were the mistakes or assumptions that you thought when you're like, "Okay, it worked for healthcare, it worked for SaaS, it worked for Fortune 500."

Jeremy Dulle:

There's a handful of them nuances in education, and it starts kind of just with the language and the focus. It is business language doesn't resonate in education the same as it resonates in other industries. And I think you really have to understand the complexities and the resources that are required to do what school districts do every day to really implement EdTech successfully, get kids into the classroom, make sure they've all eaten, and that their basic needs are met as best as possible. And then really making sure that what you're doing is driving the kind of impact. So I think that's a big thing. It's challenging I think for districts with all that they have going on internally to engage outside organizations. That was another thing, Elana, that I found early on was, "Oh my gosh, there's so many groups that are calling on school districts."

Concurrently, whether it's companies, community-based organizations, taxpayers, you name it. So there's all these different stakeholders and all these different pressures that make the education environment really, really unique from other industries. Another thing I would say is that it's very, very much, and this, I think it has in common with healthcare services, very much focused on efficacy and outcomes. And we've got to get things right in what we do, we have to get right with and for our kids and for our educators. And I think it's the same when you think of healthcare. So there's some similarities and some differences, but I think overall, the sheer number of stakeholders with different, in some cases, different agendas is a big one. The focus on mission and outcomes are also big ones and just the kind of complexity that comes with all of that that we have to understand that leaders and teachers are dealing with every day.

A really shocking thing, Elana, that when I started to get to know the districts across the United States, one of the things that struck me, because I started working with urban districts, that was my first experience was how many kids are in very few of the districts, so it's something crazy. I want to say 60% of our kids in this country are in 10% of the districts. So when you really think about what the big districts deal with in terms of complexities and density of kids and student to teacher ratios, that's the challenge. And then on the flip side, if you look at the rural districts, it's access, it's connectivity, it's all those things. So it was a whole new language and it was fun to dig in and learn it. But it was also humbling when I first started in that I did a lot of listening, at least I tried to.

Elana Leoni:

And that is the ecosystem of say, our top 10 biggest school districts. And as somebody who is starting an EdTech business, it's not necessarily the same amount of effort, but if you get a district, you might as well try to get a big district like LA Unified. But I guess, maybe let's get into this now around sales strategy. So say you have an EdTech company going, "Gosh, I want to target the top 10 school districts," and they're in the majority like everyone else does that too. Is that a good strategy? And maybe it obviously depends on how big they are, can they actually fulfill it? But I guess I see so many EdTechs going to the biggest districts, but the medium size and the smaller ones don't necessarily get targeted in strategies. And what would you recommend? I mean, maybe it depends on their growth size.

Jeremy Dulle:

It is interesting. Almost every company wants to go to the big districts because of the immediate opportunity to be able to scale within. So you naturally get that breadth and a large number of schools and a large number of students for whatever reason, whether it's to support and grow your business or get the numbers you need to prove efficacy of your product. So I think you're right, Elana, almost everybody goes that path. I would say it's not a bad path, but I think there's two big things off the top of my head to consider. One is if you're a company going to the really large districts, you have the implementation chops to make it work. And just kind of reflecting on some of our past conversations, I think one of the things that always strikes me when you ask me questions is the importance of implementation and how difficult it really is, particularly in large urban districts, and not for any of the reason that they're large, they're complex, the kids are all diverse, very different needs, different backgrounds.

And so I think having the implementation chops is important and not just to get started with the partnership, but to be able to sustain the partnership for the life of it and sustain it successfully and show quantitative impact and outcomes, whether it be student engagement, usage of your product, impact on tests, impact on grades, whatever it is. There's anecdotal and there's quantitative. So I think the implementation side is probably the biggest thing to consider and the risk, the risk that comes with all of that. It's interesting though, if you go a step below the largest districts, there are a lot of large suburban districts, and maybe even some county districts fall in this group of districts that are 20 to 40,000 kids. And you still have an opportunity in that middle market to achieve a lot that you would with the big districts and be able to do it in maybe a less risky environment.

From my perspective though, all the districts need attention. All the kids need resources. And so figuring out how you as an organization can address the needs of all students and really address the needs of all districts, even if in some cases you have to do it virtually, there's got to be a model for that. But you're right, I think most companies, their initial kind of go-to market is, "Oh my gosh, can we win one or two big districts?" And I would say it's challenging to win them, but more importantly it's challenging to implement them and get them right and sustain them.

Elana Leoni:

I would say like you said, it's more risky, but it's also a lot more competitive too because everyone else is doing it too. But in my head, I'm thinking it through of the companies I know that sometimes have only targeted medium and small or rural districts and they can't seem to make the jump to big. So it's a bit of a Goldilocks syndrome or something where it's like if you start small or medium, you have a hard time building brand awareness into the big. So I still haven't figured out this, and then everyone goes for the big, so it's more risky and more competitive. But I don't know.

Jeremy Dulle:

You bring up an interesting point though, and this is one I kind of forgot for a second, but the competitiveness is one thing, but I think the attention of large districts, they're so spread out, their attention is so spread out because they're being contacted by so many potential partners and then they've got their own internal challenges to deal with. And then they've got large communities in large cities and large tax spaces. So not only is it competitive to partner with them, but also, their attention is spread very thin. So you need to make sure that you can carry the weight as an organization of those partnerships because districts of that size have a lot of partnerships, so in a way you're looking to get attention and you're looking for them to help carry the load, but they're incredibly swamped and busy. So it's definitely consideration.

Elana Leoni:

And the other point you made around implementation is such a good one because I think sometimes there's an assumption that you might not be, you keep using the word partner, which is a great word, but sometimes you get into EdTech, you're like, "I'm just a tech solution. I'm a vendor. Let me just sell you my product. It's super easy, doesn't require implementation. I mean, who wouldn't know how to use this?" And then it's one and done, and then because it's a government entity, it's going to renew and renew and renew. You want to break that myth down a little bit?

Jeremy Dulle:

For sure. And this is from my perspective, my experience districts tend to have a discipline around not only how they procure and buy on the front end, but also in terms of how they assess the value of partnerships. And so they will quantify things and they will bounce up usage numbers and other outcome data against their budget, and often they do it annually. And so there's always that chance every year, there's always that need to be able to show the value that you're bringing all the time. And I think at the same time, it's difficult for solution providers. It's also valuable because the districts are protecting the best needs of kids. You're absolutely right. Once you get in, it's not a slam dunk that you're going to stay a hundred percent.

Elana Leoni:

And just for the listeners kind of going, "Okay, this might be just Jeremy and Elana's opinion around what's happening in EdTech." I was just recently reading an article at Reach Capital, Tony Wan, and there's a lot of research to support this, but because we've had such an EdTech boom, if you will, with the pandemic where everyone was grabbing everything, a lot of technology became more accessible, a lot of vendors offered their product for free. So the tech stack for districts got quite bloated, and whether they're slow to reduce the bloat or not, everyone's intention is eventually to consolidate their tech stack and say, "What's working?" Like you said, what are the two things they might evaluated on? What's working?

If you have any kind of efficacy data, anything related to student impact, academic outcomes, we know that that's the holy grail, but there is some scaffolding steps and data points in between it all and what is actually being used, what's being used, the very basic, and you talked about those two, it's being talked about in every single article right now. If you're an EdTech provider, you should be worried just as much as active users as well as growth.

Jeremy Dulle:

At the end of the day though, Elana, it's about the power of the partnership between the district and the solution provider, so it behooves solution provider when they partner to be on the same page in terms of the expectations and how efficacy is going to be measured. So in an ideal world, you have both sides working together as one and agreeing on the outcomes that they're trying to achieve and checking in at different points in time as regularly as possible to make sure it's getting the impact and the results that should. It's like being an entrepreneur, you always have an opportunity to adapt or pivot as needed. So nothing should be a surprise if the partnership is set up right and you have stakeholders lined up from the buyers to the implementers, to the influencers, to the users. Ideally, you should have a path and know along the way what's working and what's not.

Elana Leoni:

Yep. Okay. So let's switch gears a little bit because I know now a lot in your day-to-day is you look at a lot of business plans, pitch decks, proposals that come your way from EdTech entrepreneurs. And for those of you listening, you may be an educator thinking about dipping your toe in EdTech. And if eventually you do that, what does a good pitch deck look like? You may be a startup, founder, or you may be someone in EdTech that's raising additional funding, but I think having Jeremy's thoughts on what are the things that stand out to you of like, "Wow, I may want to work with them." And then what are the flops you're like, "Please don't ever do this. This just makes me stop right in my tracks."

Jeremy Dulle:

Well, first thing I'll say is I like people by nature. I love to work with people, especially people who are passionate about something and they're driven. And I also love ideas. Those are the two things that I really, really thrive on. So I love talking to entrepreneurs because they're so focused and they're taking a risk on something that they really, really, really believe in. So first of all, it's impossible to be overly critical just because of that, because they're putting themselves out there in a risky way because they really wholeheartedly believe in something or they should at least. So I love those conversations. Some things that I would probably stay away from, if that's the question is one is buzzwords. I feel like in education there are always certain words that people use and they feel like they have to use if they're in a conversation or they're in a room and those things are all fine, if you can really connect them to what needs to be accomplished in a classroom or how would that look or who will it impact?

AI is a huge one right now. And you and I were at ASU GSV together and it seemed like everything that was discussed, it had to do with AI. And really it's kind of an ambiguous term. You could argue that intelligence has been built into technology for a long time. It's maturing, which is great, but I feel like everybody wanted to be an AI business. And a lot of investors now are very focused on the space and they have a bit of a fear missing out on the next big idea. And so if you're going to talk about, there's so many of them. If you're going to talk about AI or if you're going to talk about teacher shortages, scalability, equity, have a real connection between what your solution is and what the actual word is that you're claiming that you are, that you're saying that you are I think is really important and break that down into, if you're talking to an education leader, what does that really look like? What does that mean to you?

If you're talking to a teacher, what does that mean, the classroom looks like, parent? Because they're in the day-to-day, so I think that's important. This is something I find all the time, Elana, is very often entrepreneurs build products from their own experience. Which is good and bad. It's good in the sense that if you were a classroom teacher and there was some gap in your classroom that you had a vision to fill and you built something for your kids and it worked, that's fantastic.

You felt the problem firsthand and you lived it, which makes your solution that much more compelling. The challenge with it is there's a lot outside of your classroom of 30 kids. And so I think the big thing is to be able to connect what you're doing and what you've built in terms of your practice solution to your personal experience. Because if you've lived the challenge, that makes it that much more compelling. But also get outside voices. Before you even prototype it, ideally take the idea outside of it to teachers who serve different kids, kids who are way different from your kids, and then slowly expand your net so you've got enough of a sample size or group so that you're comfortable making the investment in the prototype.

Because what could happen is you overbuild a prototype or you invest a lot and then you find that the market for what you're doing isn't as big as you dreamt that it would be. So I think that's a huge issue and everybody, I hate to bring it up, but it's product market fit stuff, and everybody talks about product market fit, but I think it's taking your own compelling experience and getting enough different data points as you build that you mitigate your risk and you maximize your opportunity to make an impact is really a big one. Just a couple more thoughts is...

Elana Leoni:

Just adding to that. I know that all of our attention span is limited as humans, and I love to pause on really good points that you made. And that one is really about user-centered design, design thinking concepts, making sure that if you are not being myopic of your own experience, "Oh, because this is my problem, this means every single educator or admin in the nation must experience it the same way. And so I'm going to build it." And so I just want you to, people that are listening, think about that because even if you're a big company and you have an engineering team, be aware of that bias because sometimes we get into featuritis too of like, "Oh, that would be a cool thing to build." And we always have to validate that it is a product market fit and it is a priority, and potentially it can differentiate you from the crowd of people too.

But it's an assumption I hear over and over again in the market when I'm on calls. I'm on calls, 20 calls a week at least with EdTech people. And I remember a principal telling me, "Well, I didn't do it that way, so that's not going to work for all principals." And I just paused and I said, "Well, I think your point is valid, but let's just make sure that we're not speaking for all of the stakeholder too." And that's really important. So I wanted to pause there. I know you're going into really awesome other stuff too now.

Jeremy Dulle:

No, I'm glad you did. I think asking yourself like how would you do that is probably a great question, and you do that all the time in your work, Elana, but ultimately, how do you pace that? What does that collaboration look like? How do you slowly expand the net? And I do think getting input, building your prototype, and then slowly bringing in more users and doing user-based design and almost thinking about it in terms of, I'd be curious to know your thoughts on this too, but in terms of stages, and the stages are stages of development, stages of rollout, investment. As you expand your net or your web of people that you collaborate with, you also are more comfortable making investments as you go along. And I think that it doesn't fully de-risk it, but it mitigates your risk and maximizes your potential to really accomplish what you're trying to accomplish and get that impact. And I know you do that, or you talk about that a lot in your work too, Elana.

Elana Leoni:

I think if I were investing money as an EdTech startup founder for each feature, I would say, "Okay, let's scaffold it small," kind of like what you're suggesting. And we had a guest on our podcast, and we'll put it in the show notes, Katie, and she's the CEO of Leanlab Education. And what they do is they partner with EdTechs to really, as they do a feature, they really do product validation for each feature and rollout, and they have a methodology that they're working with the target audience and making sure it's truly validated that it's a need, and then how can they optimize it to best fit the need? I mean I know that sounds conservative, but for each feature I would do that and then slowly roll stuff out. I think sometimes we get a little bit shiny object syndrome and go, "Oh my god, there's a whole new marketing out there, cough, cough tutoring. How can I go over there and just develop a product?"

Jeremy Dulle:

Well, it's almost like that lean model, the lean development models, same idea. That's really cool. I think what they do in much needed piece by piece, right?

Elana Leoni:

Yes. Everything, like what I'm learning in life, everything is just, it's slow and steady, slow intentional growth. While we're talking about growth, what are the things you recommend for somebody who is a startup, either startup like beginning seed stage or kind of growth stage? How do they continuously grow in this competitive, weird market?

Jeremy Dulle:

I am glad you brought that up because my brain is going to, how do you strike a balance. Entrepreneurship is a lot about balance. How do you strike that balance between really being really, really focused on solving the problem that you set out to solve versus looking down the road and really thinking about what is it that I need to do to sustain and grow my business? What are the next one or two or three best? I feel like in my experience, the best founders and leaders of entrepreneurial growth companies that I've worked with are the ones that can... The analogy I kind of think of is, they almost zoom out. When you're on a map app, you're on Google Maps or whatever it is, you can kind of zoom out and not only look at your street because you can look at the whole neighborhood, you can look at the city, you can look at the state.

I think the very best people are the ones that can zoom out and see the big picture of the vision and where it could ultimately go in a couple of the building blocks. But then they're also able to zoom in almost painfully close to say, "What are the next one or two steps or three steps that I know we need to take?" And I feel like, and this is me how I've always thought, all the stuff that happens in the middle between the zoom out view and the zoom in view is kind of unpredictable. And I learned that in my consulting career when I started was we would build out, this is before agile methodology. Now, we would build out these multi-year plans for companies and they could be strategy process or technology oriented, and we'd have teams of people who would literally put in every task.

And the reality is usually it's good for the thought, the planning, and the budgeting process, but it usually doesn't work that way. And so I think knowing the big picture and being able to have that 20,000 foot view and then saying, "But what do I need to do right now to be able to get this business to market or to have my first big success," is really, really critical.

Elana Leoni:

Really good metaphor, I would say too. And make sure that when you're on that Google Maps is you're not connecting it directly to China, you're not overselling, right?

Jeremy Dulle:

Right. Exactly. And that it comes from being connected and using your resources wisely. I mean, one of the challenges is we all have limited resources, but when you're starting a company or growing a company, you have really limited resources. So you've got to be able to tap into everything that's at your disposal and do it really creatively to move the business and keep your run rate low. And so I think it's very much about seeing the big picture and then those immediate steps that are right in front of you.

Elana Leoni:

And I like how you were thinking about growth and impact. They can move alongside each other, but sometimes you have to, as a leader, understand when they're in conflict of each other and make the right decisions for your business. I'm wondering for you is where do you see the most sustainable growth? We see different models in EdTech, we see B2C where we're going directly to the teacher, we see B2C where we're going to the parent, we see B2B or B2G to the districts and the schools. And then we see people doing both, right? Everyone asks, and it's the age-old question of do we do top down B2B or do we do bottom up or do we do a combination of both? I don't know. And then it gets confusing. I know this is a hard question because it depends on so many factors.

Jeremy Dulle:

It's a great one. And what I'm finding more and more now is companies are doing both and they talk about their modeling and they're saying, "Well, we piloted with a handful of teachers in some schools, we got some traction." They told their principals about it, or they told other educators, and it's kind of growing a bit organically. Or some are doing a B2C model where they'll put the app out there and they'll market it, social media through communities, parents will latch onto it and they'll get some traction that way. I think the B2C and the direct to teacher models are valuable for a lot of reasons, but two that come to mind are one, getting direct feedback from people who are in the classroom, and especially people who are in different kinds of districts with different kinds of kids and different kinds of technologies.

And that firsthand feedback is great. And then you can also learn a lot from B2C because ideally you can get to a lot of people, a lot of users, and you can measure. You can measure what is it that resonated with them, why did they buy it, when did they buy it, how much did they use it? Are their kids going back to it? If they're going back to it, I don't know if they're being assessed through the tool, are they doing better and better? So there's just a lot that I think you can learn from that. When I was running business development for an online startup years back, somebody said to me once, and it always stuck with me, they said, "When you're starting a company, it's more important that the pace of learning be fast than the pace of growth."

And so I think depends on what stage you're in, to answer your question, Elana, but I think the more data and information you can gather and the more open you can be to adapting and evolving what you're doing based on the input early on is really critical. And of course you got to hit a stage where you grow and you sustain the growth and the business and the infrastructure you've built. The top down model also obviously works, but I think going at it from different angles can be valuable.

Elana Leoni:

And top down is not a jackpot. You can't just bank on signing one big district. And you have to realize, and especially K12 education, it's very relationship driven. I always ask people that I mentor and accelerators and say, "Do you have anyone on your team with K12 experience, anyone that can get in the rooms that may have some contextual relationships already baked in with decision makers?" Because that's so much easier than just cold calling your product, even if it's good. I see really great products being rejected all the time just because those people don't necessarily have an in in the district.

Jeremy Dulle:

Well, and you brought this up earlier, we've gone from, I was reading this article earlier, there is like 900 tools per district on average to now 2000 or slightly over 2000 since the pandemic. There's a lot going on. There's a lot of innovation, there's a lot of noise. I think districts are trying to sift through it all. And at the end of the day, their job is to teach the kids the standards, help the kids learn. And I think we take for granted how hard it is just to do that, let alone look at new products and give feedback and partner in new and different ways. And so I think we just got to be mindful with the fact that there's a lot more innovation out there than a school district or a buyer could possibly consume. In some cases, some of the best solutions that are out there may not be getting the eyes of administrators just because of that point, because there's so much going on.

And I do think we're going to see some more integration and consolidation. You look at HMH acquiring NWEA is a good example of that. You're going to see some consolidation in the industry that may make it a little easier in some ways. And hopefully you will see integration too between solutions and partners and systems and more and more of that. And I think that'll make it easier. And I do think the advanced AI is going to help a lot in terms of personalization and reaching individual kids when they need to be reached and how, and really helping intervene at points where they're challenged. So I think it's interesting, it's fun what lies ahead of us, and I do think it's going to continue to be crazy and there's going to be a lot going on, but I also think there's going to be a lot of innovation to help with things like scale teacher shortages, reaching every individual student. So it's a pretty exciting time, as confusing as it might be.

Elana Leoni:

I agree. I think, well, one last question on EdTech, and we'll get into some wrap up questions because I don't want to take more of your time, but I know we could talk for hours on this stuff. It's a little bit of a, would you rather, but it's like depth versus breadth. When we think about products, would you rather have a product that is super focused but really good at what it does, and it's not trying to be an all-in-one solution, it just does one to three things really well? Or would you rather have an all-in-one solution that districts go to and it does this, it's an LMS, it's an SIS, it has a Kahoot type of thing? I know revenue potential might be different, but I don't know, this is a hard question to even pose, but when I think about products, sometimes they get into featuritis it because they try to be an all-in-one solution.

And sometimes when you try to be everything, you end up being nothing. But sometimes when you're super simple, you can't get into districts because they only have a certain amount of tech available like for spots. Am I overcomplicating this?

Jeremy Dulle:

I love your question. I love your thoughts on it too. I'm assuming you have a perspective, but my immediate reaction is initially I think you've got to solve a problem. It's got to be focused on solving a big and specific problem that is not universally felt, but broadly felt. And if it's not a problem that is immediate and somewhat sustainable, like enduring, I guess is a better word, then I would say that you could end up being, to your point, you can be everything and nothing. So I think initially focusing on a problem that you feel very confident based on your experience and the input that you're getting from people around you, users, buyers, et cetera, is the key. And then I think you take that foundational thing that you've built and then you build around it.

You look for all the adjacencies or nearby innovations that you can make, and then it becomes a question of do you want to build it or do you want to buy it? And you can kind of put together that ecosystem, which is pretty exciting. I think if you go too broad, it is risky, it's time-consuming. You're investing a whole lot without the confidence that you can execute. So I think again, it's that zoom out, zoom in. I think the zoom out view is to your point, is all those features you could have or all those challenges you could solve and the big vision and then the zoom in is what is the most critical pressing thing that I can do that will have an enduring value? And can I build around it? I'd love your thoughts on it.

Elana Leoni:

No, I think it's spot on. It's like, would you rather build it, would you buy it, or potentially would you rather be bought? And that would you rather be bought, I feel like that's a different strategy on the focused approach. "I do something really, really well that this other company doesn't do. I have a new niche of a market that they want to acquire," that kind of thing. I see it all. I don't know what's better. And I think all of these questions are hard because it depends so much on context and nuance and growth stage and industry and what problem they're solving and all of the things. But it's just fun to pontificate, I guess a little bit hard questions. Why don't we get some closing questions? I know we're reaching time here, but we ask all of our guests this one question, and I love it because although we love education, we know every day it can be quite hard and it can be draining at times.

And especially for the educators listening, we see you. I can't imagine what it's like to be an educator, whether you're in the classroom or running a school, but those days where you have had everything drained out of you. I asked the question of these folks on the podcast, so you can get inspiration of other ideas that you might do to recharge and refuel and get back inspired and show up the next day. So what are the things that you do, Jeremy, that once you've had those days... I had one yesterday where I just told our producer of the podcast, I said, "I just stared at a wall for a solid hour." What do you do to recharge? That doesn't necessarily recharge me.

Jeremy Dulle:

Staring at walls can work. For me, I get a lot of energy out of my family and being with my kids, and I like what I do professionally because it is so closely attached to what I like to do in my personal life. So to me, it's all about being with my family, being with my kids, getting them to where they want to go, and helping them be, I guess, the best version of who they are. That energizes me. And so I like to be on the move. I'm not good at sitting still, so I like to move around and really just see the development and the growth of our kids. I'd say other than that, I like to read when I can. I'm an audiobook guy. I don't like to sit and look at the print, but I do, as I'm moving around, like to read, I'm reading a great book now called The Power Law.

I think the author's name is Steven Mallaby. It's about the venture capital industry and how it grew from the beginnings and where it is now. It's kind of interesting. I like the knowledge. I think it's Shane Parrish does a podcast called The Knowledge Project. That's really good. They always have really interesting people, entrepreneurs on, which is fun. And then the other thing I have to do almost every day is I do my really short, high intensity workouts. We have a little workout gym in our basement and one of my passions is physical activity. So personally, I've got to keep moving to stay engaged and to stay inspired. And it's the only way I can sit in the seat as much as I do. So I like to do these 12 to 15 minute really, really difficult workouts and then call it a day, come up and get ready to do work. Those are all things that are inspiring. There's really not a lot of time left to do a lot else.

Elana Leoni:

But those are all great things. And I could hear people go, "Oh, well, I always wanted to work out, but this guy only works out for 12 or 14 minutes and it seems to be working for him," or that's a great podcast, whatever. Those are super helpful. Jeremy, how can people get in touch with you? And if there's any specific resources you'd like to share, we'll throw them in our show notes as well. And for those of you, we have show notes at the end. You can access them at leoniconsultinggroup.com. So two Gs consultinggroup.com/54, like Studio 54. So those are our show notes, but how can people get in touch with you, Jeremy?

Jeremy Dulle:

I'm pretty simple. LinkedIn is the best. I like to connect with people on LinkedIn. I always respond though. That's probably the easiest way. I like to get to know people individually, I'm not a big poster in terms of being online or being on a lot of social media platforms, but I think LinkedIn is the easiest.

Elana Leoni:

I know that's why I was so excited you said yes to this podcast because you seem to intentionally fly under the radar and do those one-to-one relationships. So I really appreciate you talking, the ability for me to just ask sometimes what I think are stupid, not really well-thought-out questions, but we're still struggling with them, and so I love hearing your thoughts. Thank you so much for joining us. Everyone, in terms of show notes, you can access them at again, at leoniconsultinggroup.com/54. We'll embed the audio, the transcript will be there, all the fun things. And we put related podcast episodes too based on what Jeremy talked about too. So thank you everyone. We will see you next time on All Things Marketing and Education. Take care.

Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode. If you liked what you heard and want to dive deeper, you can visit leoniconsultinggroup.com/podcast for all show notes, links, and freebies mentioned in each episode. And we always love friends. So please connect with us on Twitter at @LeoniGroup. If you enjoyed today's show, go ahead and click the subscribe button to be the first one notified when our next episode is released. We'll see you next week on All Things Marketing and Education.

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Elana Leoni, Host
Elana Leoni has dedicated the majority of her career to improving K-12 education. Prior to founding LCG, she spent eight years leading the marketing and community strategy for the George Lucas Educational Foundation, where she grew Edutopia’s social media presence exponentially to reach over 20 million education change-makers every month.

Jeremy Dulle, Guest
Jeremy Dulle is a growth strategist, go-to-market advisor, and business developer who partners with founders and leaders of education, SaaS, and services organizations to accelerate growth and impact. With over 25 years of experience as a strategy/management consultant and business development leader, Jeremy has worked with organizations of all sizes, from startups to the Fortune 500, to achieve growth through innovative business models, go-to-market planning, partnership development and management, customer growth and retention strategies, and operational improvements.

Jeremy started his consulting career with Accenture and Inforte Corporation, where he partnered with large global companies across industries including Texas Instruments, Caterpillar, Nokia, and Palm and led enterprise-wide programs including business transformation, customer strategy and experience design, departmental reorganizations, and technology integrations. After consulting, as a business development and customer success leader in healthcare services and education technology, most recently with Discovery Education, Jeremy developed a passion for partnering with mission-driven organizations to advance health and learning outcomes.

Jeremy currently advises early to growth stage education companies on strategy, business development, and growth operations. Most recently, he has advised and contributed directly to the growth of mission-driven organizations focused on literacy, digital content & curriculum, learning management systems, executive functioning, tutoring, health & well-being, dropout prevention and re-engagement, and workforce readiness.

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About All Things Marketing and Education

What if marketing was judged solely by the level of value it brings to its audience? Welcome to All Things Marketing and Education, a podcast that lives at the intersection of marketing and you guessed it, education. Each week, Elana Leoni, CEO of Leoni Consulting Group, highlights innovative social media marketing, community-building, and content marketing strategies that can significantly increase brand awareness, engagement, and revenue.

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Transcript: The Power of Student-Teacher Relationships

This interview was originally recorded on May 26, 2023, as part of Leoni Consulting Group’s All Things Marketing and Education Podcast.

Access this episode's show notes, including links to the audio, a summary, and helpful resources.

[Start of recorded material 00:00:01}

Elana Leoni:

Hello and welcome to All Things Marketing and Education. My name is Elana Leoni and I've devoted my career to helping education brands build their brand awareness and engagement. Each week, I sit down with educators, EdTech entrepreneurs, and experts in educational marketing and community building. All of them will share their successes and failures using social media, inbound marketing, or content marketing and community building. I'm excited to guide you on your journey to transform your marketing efforts into something that provides consistent value and ultimately improves the lives of your audience.

Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of All Things Marketing and Education. This week I am excited to be sitting down with Samia Zaidi. She's the managing director of program for Along for Gradient Learning. So Samia is going to talk a little bit more about what Along is. But in a nutshell, if I'm giving you some cliff notes for me, I'm saying it's a free online tool that helps build connections between teachers and students. And she's going to go into a lot more detail about that because what we're going to be talking about today is about relationships, the power of relationships between student and teacher, the student ecosystem in K-12 education and education as a whole, what does that do to school culture, how school culture is so important for the learning environment and the power of student voice. And we're going to get into some nooks and crannies in between as well.

But before we get into that, let me give you a brief background about Samia. So I love talking to educators, and Samia is a former educator. So she currently works for Gradient Learning. She's been there for over six years. She's worked as a school and district coach for Summit Learning, which is part of Gradient Learning, before she transitioned to help launch Along. But before all of this, like I said, Samia began her career as a 6th grade math and science teacher in Oakland, California. Samia also has her MA in Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership Studies from Stanford's Graduate School of Education. Welcome, Samia. I'm so excited that you joined us for this show. Welcome to the show.

Samia Zaidi:

Thank you so much for having me.

Elana Leoni:

Yay! So why don't we get into... Sometimes I love to hear people's story around why education, because there's certainly so many roads you can go to make an impact in this world, and I feel like it bonds us collectively of why we chose this route in education. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your journey to get to education and your journey in education?

Samia Zaidi:

Yeah, absolutely. I definitely have a lot of friends in education now. It's like a huge part of my ecosystem personally and professionally. I can't say I always thought I would end up here, but I'm so glad that I did. When I was in high school and college, especially in college, I was studying political science. I was sort of in that space of I'm not sure what I want to do next, what matters to me, what's important to me. And I knew I wanted to work in a space that had impact. It felt really important to me to look into nonprofits, to look into just systems at large that were going to have impact and to be able to give back. And I just started thinking a lot about what's next for me.

And while I was in college, I ended up talking with some folks from Teach for America, and I actually did do Teach for America coming out of undergrad at Barnard. A huge part of going into that was realizing actually the impact of the teachers in my life and just how critical those relationships were for me and how much that had had an impact on getting me into college, on getting me on the journey I'm on now. I had some of the most amazing math teachers in particular, so I was pretty excited when I ended up getting a placement that allowed me to work in math. But that was really in college feeling like, "I'm not sure what do I want to do, what's next." And sitting down and thinking, "This is a place I really could have impact."

And so, working with folks in Teach for America, I got a placement in Oakland, and I'm originally from Oakland. And so, that felt really important to me as well, that I was able to go back to an area that I knew really well and work in a middle school in Oakland, California. And I ended up staying longer than the time that I did with Teach for America teaching 6th grade math and science, starting out with multiple subjects and then ultimately going back and getting a single subject math credential because by far and away just teaching students math was one of these things where I was like, "If I can get students to love this the way that I love this, I feel like we're going to be in such a better place for how just math is treated in schools." There's so many amazing fun ways to think about math in a project-based setting and the ways that we teach math.

And so, that's really what took off for me. I love teaching science as well, but definitely math is kind of where my heart is. And after I was in the classroom for a number of years, I transitioned and worked in education technology for a little while and ended up back at Stanford for my graduate degree because I really wanted to get back into the K-12 education space and learn a little bit more about the ecosystem, think a lot about policy and leadership studies. It was right after that that I ended up at Summit Learning and at Gradient, is working on our other tools, Summit Learning right out of graduate school.

Literally the day after I graduated, I started at Summit Learning and have been here ever since in a variety of different roles and have just absolutely loved the transition of going from working in a classroom directly with my students to being able to learn about so many other types of education systems, working with rural schools, working with different age groups of students, working in urban settings, in big districts, in small districts, and just having these totally different experiences around the country in the K-12 US education system than I'd had just working in my one school.

And so, that's probably been the biggest learning experience for me through this, is working across the country with folks in such different education settings and seeing how much similarity.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, I would say it dramatically changes your perception and your opinion and just all of your thoughts when I worked at Edutopia and I got to see what happens on a national scale and actually travel to schools across the country and see it in person. Within education, we get so isolated, right? Especially educators that really just close their door and they don't have any idea what they're doing compared to others. And a lot of the times, my job initially at Edutopia was just telling educators how awesome they were. I'm like, "No, what you're doing is truly innovative," but they didn't have that vantage point of seeing all this great stuff happening across the country.

Samia Zaidi:

Yeah, I think that for me was one of those moments too of just seeing so much similarity in the kinds of challenges people faced and the kinds of experiences that were really beneficial, like relationship building, like really impactful curriculums, all of these instructional practices were very translatable, and yet it was also completely different settings that I'd never experienced before. Definitely that element of traveling to schools around the country in those early years when I was at Gradient working on Summit Learning had such an impact being able to actually physically be in those places.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, I can't imagine. I would say what's interesting enough is when we all talk about our favorite teachers, a lot of the times we might get excited about their subject matter expertise, but that's usually not what rises to the top. It's more of, "Hey, this teacher saw me. They believed in me. They made me feel seen and heard." And what I hear from you is you had educators in your corner that did that for you and helped you Along your journey. And now in Along, I love that this product allows that, that it's not curriculum-based, it doesn't necessarily have to. It's like, "Hey, human, you're a human. I'm a human. Let's talk about human things. Let's connect. I care." And I love that. Do you want to want to just talk a little bit about your role at Along and what you've seen so far?

Samia Zaidi:

Yeah, absolutely. And just agree completely in this idea that at the end of the day, it really is that feeling of being seen and heard, and like that math teacher who was so impactful to me was impactful because it hit me that math was something I could be really good at, but that came alongside the educator also saying to me like, "You can do this because here's all of the things I see from you. Here's who you are as a person. Here's how you're showing up in this classroom. Here's how I'm giving you opportunities to speak, to meet with me, to come in and build this personal relationship" that actually is then contributing to also your love of that subject matter, your love of that class because you feel like you can really show up authentically.

And it actually reduced stress for me so much in that class because it was like, "Okay, I know I can show up here and this teacher is looking out for me, cares about me, wants to know me." And that then helped me also excel in that subject area. So yeah, that's a lot of what we bring into how we have thought about developing Along.

I mean, I'll just start by saying Along has been an evolution here of thinking about teacher-student relationships and the critical nature of those connections and how we could make that even easier for teachers to be able to do, because we know that this is something that people say, "Yeah, I value this. This is super important to me. I want to build relationships." I think what you shared is completely true, everybody says, "I had a teacher." I think it's a very universal understanding. Everyone had a mentor or a teacher. They can think back to somebody who they formed that strong relationship with, but that doesn't mean it just happens naturally in the classroom every single day or over time. There's so much that goes into actually carving out the time and having the tools and resources to be able to do that.

And so what we've really put together for Along is trying to think about what's the research here about the best ways to form developmental relationships and really set students up on a pathway towards growth to really feel seen and heard and have the tools and resources to be able to grow in school. And so, taking that research and saying things like decades of research that tell us that having at least one supportive and caring adult is such a strong predictor for later experiences in a student's life. And so there's so much impact from trying to solve this problem. And really what we tried to do here was figure out at the basis of forming a strong relationship is starting by opening the conversation, right? It's like I need to actually start with a question. And we like to think about the questions that we have on Along as seemingly simple questions because they are just quick questions, but they get at a lot of depth.

I think one of my favorite questions that we have on Along is, "Tell me about your name." Well, suddenly when I as an educator share with you what my name means and where it came from and my family history, or maybe it is just some inside joke between my parents, I mean, there's so many things I've learned about people hearing everything from family names being passed down to just funny anecdotes, and suddenly I have something that I'm connecting with you about. And so, a seemingly simple question that an educator can open the space for allows a student to step outside of just what's going on in that classroom and say, "Oh, somebody wants to know more about me, about who I am, about how I show up."

And so what we've really seen here is that even just small simple questions like that, short and sweet, actually lead to, over time, asking those consistently and transitioning into other types of questions to get at what motivates students, what do they care about, how are they experiencing the classroom and school, has really allowed for students to feel like "Somebody at school really cares about me." And for teachers, we've had a really funny experience with a lot of teachers saying, "Whoa, it's actually been impactful for me also to just stop and reflect and use these questions myself. I'm learning so much about my students that I maybe wouldn't have carved out the time for or had the exact questions that would allow me to open up." So hopefully that got at the question that you asked.

Elana Leoni:

I mean, you saw me kind of doing some thinky faces and stuff in the video podcast because I was reflecting on my path as a student from K-12 and I didn't ever once have one person ask me about my name. And in some way, it triggered, it made me feel a little sad and it made me rushed these feelings of actually not being seen because everyone mispronounces my name as Elena or Alena or/and, I was so shy and really didn't want to be seen. I didn't believe in myself as a student that I just let people call me whatever. And it contributed to this feeling of just like, "I don't really belong here." I was going through those feelings, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, no one has ever asked my name." So even the littlest things. And I love how all the questions that you have are research-backed, but they're just simple, and over time they become very powerful. Even a small question that can be powerful.

Samia Zaidi:

Totally. I mean, I think I resonate with that deeply as somebody who also my name is constantly mispronounced. And actually, going through the experience of having that question in Along and working with teachers who have used that question with their students, and I use it sometimes in professional development opportunities, I had to actually go back to my parents and ask some questions about the story of my name because suddenly... And then I'm having conversations with my parents that I wouldn't have had otherwise.

I mean, I think it's just such an interesting, clearly the moment you just had, and the experience I've had and all these teachers of like, "Oh, something as small, tiny moments, tiny questions can have a huge impact on opening up conversations, on feeling seen." And I think that's really what we've tried to sit with is, we know there's not more time in the day in school. There's just not more time. There's so much happening. But how do we actually unlock, in really small periods of time, opportunities that could be having somebody go off and have another conversation, feel more seen, be asked a question nobody's ever asked them before about something as significant as their name?

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, I think that there's so many benefits when all of what we're talking about is these questions foundationally say, "Okay, I care about you, I believe in you," but it's creating this foundation for the student to be able to learn. When I first entered education, I don't know why I didn't think about that, but all of the whole child tenants of like, "There's a lot of times your kids are just not ready to learn." There might be a variety of reasons, but the number one thing that can get a student ready to learn, in my opinion, is if you have an adult that cares about you and says, "Yes, I see you."

I used to have a teacher so connected to me if I didn't maintain eye contact at certain times, they'd come up to me afterwards and say, "Hey, are you okay?" And that meant so much to me and it motivated me to learn and I did learn. So I'm wondering with you, you get to see this transformation across schools. What are the benefits that you've seen of any powerful stories or things that if people don't necessarily attribute relationship building to the outcomes that you see?

Samia Zaidi:

Yeah, I mean I think we've had a couple really impactful stories come through and I'm sure there are so many others that are out there. Firstly, we recently did a pilot engagement with Rochester Public Schools in Minnesota where we had a number of teachers try using Along. And then we did a set of surveys to better understand the experience and impact between teachers and students. I think that was really eyeopening for us because we just saw so much transformation when this was done in a way where students and teachers were being asked, "What did this do for you?" Students were able to feel like they had a much stronger connection to their teacher. After just a short period of time, a semester using Along, they already felt like they had a stronger connection to their teachers. And teachers said, "I feel like I can actually openly engage differently in my classroom and help me be more open."

And I think even just small indicators like that have been really impactful for us. And then there's the anecdotes, right? Those are the surveys where we're hearing across multiple students, across multiple teachers, but there's so many anecdotes. I remember early on Along, we were working with a school and we were talking to a student and also the teacher and the student was saying, "I look forward to Fridays. Friday is the day that my teacher is going to post a question on a Along. And that's the day that not only am I going to get asked a question and I sort of know that I'm going to have this exciting moment. I'm also going to get to learn something about my teacher."

I know when I was teaching and the student shared something really similar, you sort of think of your teachers in some ways as they are hidden when they're not in the classroom, they don't exist. And it was always so funny when I would run into a student at the grocery store or something and they're like, "Ms. Zaidi. What? You're not a person. You just exist in the classroom." And I think that would always sort of humanize the experience of like, "Oh, Ms. Zaidi shops for groceries too. She's also doing all these other things." And I remember the student saying that having this experience of getting the question every Friday because the teacher also models answering the question in these longer form responses, depending on the type of question, the teacher would be able to actually answer it and say, "Here's my experience." And so the student's saying, "I'm actually learning that my teacher is also a human being, also somebody who makes mistakes, also somebody who thinks about these things or has strategies I haven't heard before or has a family or just so many different things that maybe they struggle with."

That was really interesting to just hear from a high school student, that they were so excited not only to get asked the question, but to actually have the opportunity to learn more about their teacher directly in that way. And we hear from students constantly like, "I have so much going on in my life, I have so much to share. And so oftentimes just nobody's asking me. I have so much I want to share." And so, actually opening up that line of dialogue is also a place you've just seen a lot of impact and student voice and student agency of just like, "I have a lot of things I want to share if somebody asks me that question and opens up that space where I know that I can share those things."

And the last anecdote I know from my teaching and from a couple of colleagues have shared this with me and some folks that use Along is you get to the end of the day or the end of the week, and if you're teaching 32 students every period or 32 students over the course of a day, so anywhere from 32 to 150 students, you start thinking, "Did I talk to everybody this week? Have I actually... I'm sure that I've had an interaction, but have I actually talked to somebody and asked a question of like..." Even just within a classroom of 32, there's so much going on. And I would sit down and say, "I don't know." And I've heard this same thing from other people.

One of my colleagues who was a teacher for many years would say, "Driving home in the evening, did I actually get to every student?" And the answer is, it's really hard to know. And if you're not carving out the time, it's also really hard to be sure that you're at least having a touchpoint with students. And so that's the last thing we've heard from a lot of educators is, "This is helping me make sure that I at least at minimum, carve out an opportunity to ask a question. I can do way more on top of that. I can make sure that I'm following up and doing all kinds of other things, having check-ins, having hallway moments, following up in class discussions. But at a minimum, I'm making sure that on a semi-regular basis, weekly, biweekly, a couple times a week, I'm checking in with each of my students."

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. So powerful. I would say some of our most popular content at Edutopia when I was there was around those moments to make sure that every student had something that they had feedback on, whether it be those beautiful hallway moments and the greetings or an icebreaker or a brain break at some point where that everyone is participating.

But what I started thinking about when you were talking a little bit philosophical, I don't know, maybe on a Friday I'm feeling about life and what really matters in life, I recently came across a study about the happiest people and the happiest people and why they're so happy. It correlated to the amount of positive, consistent relationships they had in their lives. And it gives me goosebumps saying it because sometimes we all get so caught up in the busyness of life, we deprioritize relationships. And when you talk to teachers, a lot of the times it's why they get into the profession. And it's what keeps them going, is the relationships with their students and with their colleagues and parents and the ecosystem. But fundamentally, we get so caught up in so many things in education policy like this and that and AI and all these things are going to be the silver bullet. But what if the secret to just effective success of students and academic outcomes is all about what they call touchy-feely stuff they can't quantify called relationships? Just what if, you know?

Samia Zaidi:

Yeah, I mean, we just know that students show up differently when they feel like somebody is paying attention to them. And it is one of those things that's like, it feels like the reason that so many people get into the profession and it's also the first thing to get cut out of time being prioritized because it's not the thing that I need to do today within the curriculum or the thing I have to submit or the thing I have to do here. And so without a system or a structure, it's very easy for it to just be really hard to fit into your day organically and authentically for all of your students, right?

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, that's so important. So why don't we get into some myths around relationship building, why maybe isn't something that's talked enough about in education and why potentially it's just not consistently used? What are the things you've heard from either educators or administrators of maybe why it hasn't been a priority or why they haven't been consistently been able to put the emphasis it needs?

Samia Zaidi:

Yeah, I mean, I think everyone agrees, or maybe not everyone, but most folks agree that relationships are critical. And when we talk to people, people say like, "Yes, this is why I got into the profession" or admin saying, "Yes, this is how I want to adopt and create a school culture, organized around strong positive relationships."

But I think what really happens when you're talking about why might this not actually come to fruition as something that's been prioritized is I think there's a common, I wouldn't even say misconception because I think when you really start talking about it, you can identify it, but I think there's just an assumption that this is happening. It's like, "Oh, this is why somebody got into the profession. And so this is going to happen organically and authentically without me needing to do more to make this happen." I think we assume as human beings, we are set up to build relationship to have these types of interactions. You're in the classroom all day with your students. And so, I think there can be an assumption that like, "Okay, well, at a minimum, I'm sure that all these teachers of course care about their students. And so, there's some sort of organic relationship building that's just happening."

And at the beginning of the year, you do Get to Know Me activities and you have these About Me sheets and you learn something about your students. And so I think you get these pockets of time too, where it feels like it's happening. "Okay, we're going to do the team building activity. I had all kinds of inventory surveys with my students and Get to Know You activities." And then things get busy right? When you're a teacher and you have what's called the what fall wall and everything's like that October time and just all these other things, suddenly there's so much going on that it's not that it's not important, but it's just if there's not a structure and a system you kind of carve out for yourself at the beginning of the year to maintain, to build, to pause, to check in, then it's not necessarily happening.

And we're not exactly taught how to build strong developmental relationships. What kinds of questions open up that space? What kinds of actions? Small things like greeting students at the door actually open up the interactions that are going to lead to strong, authentic developmental relationships. And so, the other sort of thing that happens is without prioritization of this and without some sort of carved out time systems and structures, you end up in a situation where you might be forming a relationship, you're asking some questions or you're finding time to make sure that you check in with a student, but you may not have all the resources to do it in a way that help you really form a developmental relationship with students. And so, that's where it's sort of both pieces.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, it's so true when you started talking about the assumptions, I'm like, "That's true." People assume that that happens consistently. But we know educators juggle 10 million things and there's always something new being thrown at them. And I don't even want to talk about standardized testing.

Samia Zaidi:

Oh, my God.

Elana Leoni:

There's so many things that get thrown at an educator that we assume-

Samia Zaidi:

So much.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, that this relationship building is happening consistently throughout, when in fact it falls at the wayside because there's so much going on. And that is a deep assumption, I think.

Samia Zaidi:

And I have so many students, you know? The class sizes are big.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. So why don't we talk about... So with this pilot in Rochester, that was a school-wide deployment, I know there's been other school-wide deployments, but it doesn't necessarily have to be about Along, but when an entire school culture focuses on something as important as relationships, what did you see happen to the school culture as a whole? Because I think this is fascinating because more often than not, I have covered school cultures that are top down, driven from the administrator. They say, "Hey, we're going to do restorative justice, or we're going to do this, or morning meetings" or whatever it may be, it's generally top down. But what I like about something like this is it can be, I don't want to call bottom up because educators aren't on the bottom, but it's like this groundswell beautiful movement that can happen regardless of leadership changes. But what did you see in terms of how it transformed a school culture of every-

Samia Zaidi:

Yeah, and I think this is kind of across a number of different school schools. We've put together some blogs and write-ups also about the experiences in Pasadena at Thompson Intermediate School and also at De Zevala Middle School Middle School where they really prioritized trying to think about large groups of teachers or whole school. And the impacts there are a couple things. I think first and foremost, teachers are able to say, "Oh, this is a priority that my administrator is placing an emphasis on." So to your point about groundswell, it kind of goes both ways. It's like, "I now have the flexibility and freedom to actually spend the time on this because if my administrator is asking me about this and following up about this, I know it's something that I can be focused on." And with an administrator actually supporting it becomes something where there's consistency. It's talked about, it's something that is many teachers and students are becoming used to this as a habit building, routine building thing.

And I think one of the things that was really impactful at one of the middle schools in Texas was really thinking about the impacts in even the hallways or the anecdotes you're hearing from students saying like, "Now I just feel more seen and I feel like there's somebody who's actually checking up on me." I think having those advisory structures or just spaces in my first period classroom or these other places could be really great opportunities for this, but when you're seeing it system-wide, it's also you're catching all of the students they're able to have... Everyone has somebody who's asking them something. And when we go back to kind of that early conversation about how having one trusted adult is really a huge indicator, that's where you're trying to get to, right? Is like, "Does everyone at least have one trusted adult?" And when you start to see wider implementations, be that school-wide or grade level wide or just a handful of teachers who are all going in on something, you're able to make sure that every student is covered.

And that's where you start to see the impacts in the hallways. You start to see the students sort of organically saying, "Oh wow, I have a teacher who's regularly checking up on me." And some of what we're looking at moving forward is what is the actual impact on referrals. We've been in conversations with some schools about, "Have you seen a decrease in overall referrals? Or what hallway behavior is like? Or how students overall are showing up in the classroom"? And that's where some of that Rochester data across a number of different schools where teachers piloted we're saying, "Yeah, we're actually seeing ourselves be able to show up differently in the classroom."

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, that's really interesting. I would say I once went to a school in Boston, and I remember going in the back of the teacher's lounge and they had this magnet board and they had all the students' name on the board. That was their way to keep track of students to make sure that at least one staff member had connected with that student in the week. And teachers, I love that we get stuff out, we make sure that things are organized and stuff, but what they're ultimately trying to do is a reactive touch point. And I liked it because it was new and innovative at the time, but they didn't have a consistent behavior built into the day-to-day school. And it just reminded me of sometimes we Jimmy Rig things and it's cool to be able to have response to intervention and look and see how can we help people Along, but what if you can proactively, consistently connect with a student and you know every teacher is doing it? That's magic, right? You don't need magnetic boards or meetings or anything like that, right?

Samia Zaidi:

Yeah. And it was interesting, when I was coaching schools as they went into remote learning during the beginning of the pandemic and it was this like, "We're going to have to totally change up how we do things," I remember we're so stressed about what's going to happen with the academics and how are we going to move our lesson plans over here and what are we doing with this piece of curriculum.

And then sitting down with administrators... And this was really where Along really was born out of, but sitting down with administrators during that period of time who were like, "Okay, but I'm worried about what this is going to do for students feeling like every single student has a touchpoint." And I remember just going through and saying like, "Let's just go back to basics here. Let's just make a list of every student and did someone check in with them this week." And I think this was this moment for folks to say, "Wow, we can pull everything back for a second and just get back to the basics here? Did we actually get to every single student? Did somebody call them at their house this week or check in with them on a Google Meet or a Zoom or something during one of the classes, stay after, or ask them a question."

This was in the early days as we were just starting to ideate about what it would look like to focus something on Along, and a lot of it was those conversations of like, even just going back to the basics of the magnetic board or the getting to every student, but it was like, "Oh, having this sheet of every student suddenly shows you, 'Am I getting to everybody?' I need to make sure." That's what's going to matter during this really chaotic time period where everyone's feeling uncertain, is that at least they know somebody is checking in with them from the school and we can divide and conquer. Like, "I, as the administrator, can get to 10 kids and you as the math teacher can get to your 15 over here. And we'll divide and conquer and make sure that, in addition to everything else, we're at least having a touch point with every single one of our students."

Elana Leoni:

I would say the biggest elephant in the room, and I'm hearing people in my ear right now kind of saying, "Oh yeah, this all sounds great. Kittens and unicorns, this is great Samia and Elana, but I don't have time for this." We talked about how much an educator juggles in their day to day, but I would argue, and I know you would potentially argue the same thing, is that you don't have time not to do this. And that what we've seen and I've seen is that if you invest this time consistently, it will decrease your time on student engagement and managing the classroom in terms of classroom management. And all of the things that used to be hard sometimes becomes a little bit smoother when people feel seen and they feel cared about. But do you want to address the time thing because it is showing up consistently. And whether you do one question a week or one question a day, it takes time to do that. So how do you combat when people say, "I can't make time for it"?

Samia Zaidi:

Yeah. When we originally talked to educators during the development process, folks said, "I have about 30 minutes max an hour a week that I can devote to just purely focusing on relationship building," we really use that as an anchor in the early days of Along of what would it look like to build something that was efficient enough that it didn't take hours and hours and hours of time. And I think what you said is very true, right? This pays dividends. A small amount of time pays dividends. But I think what we think about in tech in particular is we cannot replace with technology the human interaction at all, like the craft of teaching, the craft of relationship building. But what we can do with tech is make it more efficient.

And so, when we are dealing with these questions of time, it's A, finding the smallest possible actions that we can take and then using technology to actually superpower those actions. We're not taking away the interaction between the teachers and the students, but in fact, just giving you a tool that hopefully makes it faster to do that tracking, right? We said, "Have I gotten to every student?" Well, suddenly it's much more easy for me to see which students I've talked to when. "How am I going to find all these questions? How am I going to have a structure for this?" Well, we've taken that out of the puzzle for you. The question is ready to go.

When you're getting ready to share your answer, if you're doing a video response or an audio response, we've provided you with some talking points to get started. There's all these small ways where we've said, "Okay, let's make this as easy for you as possible so that this really is like you ask one question as the educator and it goes out to all of your students or a group of students, whoever you need to send it to, but it feels then like a one-on-one interaction between you and that student. They're able to just come back to you directly even though you recorded maybe one video for your 32 students."

And I think we're considering, as we move forward, other ways to just continue to make this even more efficient. What would it look like to have other question types and ways of interacting in the classroom? Everything at the response to teacher feedback, like research and teacher feedback, but, "This is what's taking me too much time. This is where I need it to be a little bit more efficient." That to me is where technology plays a huge role, because you're actually able to say, "I can take that action that you're having to do repetitively and make it more efficient for you and take none of the craft out" because the way that you then follow up with students based on what you learned... What you learned is what pays dividends, right? It's like twofold. It's opening the door and asking the question, the seemingly simple question that you start the conversation.

But then it's, "What did I actually learn from my students?" And a huge part of the next step that happens off of technology is also now that I know all these different things and these students feel more seen and they can show up differently, that's where I can also use that to pay dividends because suddenly my lessons, I might incorporate an interesting anecdote about things I know students are interested in. I have something I can follow up on with another student. I'm noticing a trend across my classroom of something that everybody is struggling with recently, and I can address that." And so, there's all these ways that it's actually providing you with an opportunity to adjust your classroom instruction and shift the way that you think about operating in your classroom just from a small investment that hopefully we can superpower.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. So like personalization, understanding what students have prior knowledge in certain subjects and helping them build on it. There's so many opportunities to be able to do that.

But since you talked about the role of technology, let's shift over there for a second because there's a lot of people on this podcast in EdTech, and then we have some educators also listening. And if you're an educator listening, I know we got deep into the product of Along, but I would like you to just pause and think about are there ways... Whether you use Along or not, I want you to think about, "Am I prioritizing relationships?" I know this is kind of towards the end of the school year now, but when we think about the next school year, "How can I prioritize, systematize, even operationalize, make sure I show up consistently for my students?"

And it doesn't have to be big. If you've heard anything from Samia and what she's talked about, it's the small little moments that add up. So I just would love to leave you with that, of, "What are the questions I can ask?" Along certainly has free questions-based bank that you can go into. But I'd love for you to reflect on that, because whether you're a new educator or a veteran educator, your relationship and your experience has changed you. So let's get back to basics and I'd love to hear for your reflections. You can tweet us or reach out to us. But for the educators, I really hope that you walk away with a mind shift on the role and the importance of relationships.

For the EdTech folk listening, you all are like, "Okay, I get it. Relationships are powerful. How does this relate to me?" And I'm hoping that you all can, now that we are going to get into the technology part of the conversation, think about your own product, think about your own marketing, think about your own sales. How does relationship building in an industry that is very driven by relationships, how is that incorporated into your product? How is that incorporated into your outreach and interaction with educators to insert their educator voice and feedback? And then how is it incorporated into your sales strategy?

I mean, I'm going to get bigger, and Samia, we're not going to talk about all of that. But I'm curious for you, how would you recommend EdTech where it's so focused on AI and there's all this talk, the scared talk about replacing educators and stuff that we know isn't true, but when we see all the new EdTech developing, do you have thoughts on how to integrate in relationship building within tech? There's this dichotomy, I feel like, we always talk about and it becomes overly hyped up. But how do you work into what you've known with Along into where you see EdTech developing in this ecosystem?

Samia Zaidi:

Yeah. I mean, I think broadly it's some of what I already shared about, what are the things that a teacher is so uniquely positioned to do and just an educator is like there's so much there in being able to actually be the person who deeply understands that student, who deeply understands their content area and the skills that they're working with students on in terms of critical thinking. There's so much that an educator is best trained in to actually have those interactions with students and work with them. And I think what we've seen is what are all of the other things that surround that that could be made easier, could be made slightly more efficient, could be giving somebody like, "I don't have to go off and research a bunch of things"?

I think one of the things we did at Along is partner with organizations who are experts in these areas. We said, "If we're going to build these questions, let's partner with folks like Character Lab, the Search Institute." We have a whole list of partners on our website of people that we partnered with to say, "You guys are best suited to do some of these things." We partnered with researchers. We take the feedback directly from educators as we're building.And I think that is what I would say to folks working in EdTech is, work directly with the teachers. Really think about what are their needs. Hear from students, hear from administrators.

When we've gone back and talked to administrators, they've shared, "Here's what's challenging for me about prioritizing this." And I think they have given us some of the best insights and being able to then have that research piece and across all of that saying, "Okay, well for the technology, now that we have that foundation, what are the parts that people are saying, 'It would just be easier for me if this could be faster, more efficient. You could help me make this part of my job a little bit easier so that I could really focus. I have the right data in front of me. Get me the right data, help me collect the right data. Help me get access to the right things and put them in front of me in a way where it's easy for me to use it and I don't have to spend 20 extra minutes going off and looking for something'."? And that's where I think technology just plays such a helpful role.

Elana Leoni:

Yes. Yes, 100%. And because like all industries, education is constantly evolving. So what you found when you were talking with educators and students, and shout out for you all because I know that you even co-developed questions with students, which was awesome, so really co-creating and actively soliciting feedback consistently.

But what I see sometimes with Edtechs is they'll go in and they'll maybe get that feedback and they're like, "Okay, great. We know what the challenge is. We know the problem to solve." But when I hear you speaking, it's always this evolution. It's like, "Hey, what we're hearing now, what we're hearing now, we're always thinking about how we can streamline, operationalize, and fit needs for the educator today." And that's something as an EdTech if you're listening, is, "Do I have processes in place? Do I have partners in place to consistently get their voice in, get their feedback in and use it?" Actually use it. Don't give lip service to educators. They know and they say, "Don't waste my time. I actually want you to act upon this feedback as much as you can." But that's what stood out with me because it's a field that's constantly evolving and you can't make assumptions that what worked five years ago or right after the pandemic, is it going to work right now too?

Samia Zaidi:

Yeah.

Elana Leoni:

So I know we're all fired up now. We could talk forever about this, and we kind of have, but I would love to be able to close out with you on a topic of inspiration. You get to see very inspiring moments in educator's lives and students' lives, but I know that this field is hard. It's a hard challenging field, and that's why I always open up in the beginning of like, why education, why now? But when you do have those hard days or you just feel drained, what are the things that you do to personally, I don't know, rejuvenate and say, "Gosh, tomorrow I'm feeling better. I'm going to go at it because I've had this time to charge my batteries." What inspires you?

Samia Zaidi:

I think two things. The first would be spending time outside. I am a big trail runner and I am actually probably newer to trails than just running in general, but just being able to truly get away from everything and feel completely back out in nature. And there's something about trail running in particular where every step is different. There might be a tree branch in the way, there might be rocks. You can't really just go. You kind of have to also pay attention to what's happening. And so, it allows you to sort of turn your brain off from other things because I'm able to really prioritize and focus in on like, "Okay, I'm taking in the scenery and I'm making sure that my steps, I'm not going to fall." And so there's this whole experience of that that really helps me feel inspired and rejuvenated at the end of the day of just fully disconnecting.

And then within work, after really hard days, sometimes I look at the calendar and think about other folks on my team, and I think about, "Can I join upcoming calls that we're doing with educators?" I would say that's the other thing that just really inspires me, and I'm always pushing other leaders to do the same thing, is don't get disconnected from the work. It's really easy to have 50 Zoom meetings in a week with all these different people and coordination and so many things happening, but actually hearing the stories from educators and talking directly to administrators or teachers is the thing for me that also helps just remind me of what we're doing and why we're doing it.

Elana Leoni:

Yes, really powerful. I think that, number one, when I talk to founders and people, they feel almost starved at times. And if you're a person working in EdTech now and you're like, "Gosh, I really want to join calls, but we don't have them," that inherently is a problem in itself. And that's a moment to pause, reflect, and say, "How can we actively embed educator voices?" Because what Samia is saying is it keeps her going, and I bet you she's not alone. I bet the whole organization would thrive with educator calls.

So thank you so much for all of your thoughts, your insight, your passion that you bring to education. I really appreciate it. I would love to continue the conversation. I know people may want to reach out to you. If there are ways that people can get in touch with you, is it via email or social? Why don't you go ahead and let them know all the ways?

Samia Zaidi:

Yeah, of course. On our website, just on along.org, we have multiple different ways to reach out to us, be that our Instagram and our Twitter and even our support team. And then for me directly, if folks want to reach out just to talk more, definitely to me via email, it's just szaidi@gradientlearning.org. My door is always open to talk to folks who are thinking about these types of things and really focused in on problems they're trying to solve in education.

Elana Leoni:

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. We're going to have you in on again at some point and just go even deeper in relationships.

Samia Zaidi:

Thank you so much.

Elana Leoni:

[inaudible] stop talking about relationships. And for people that know me, my entire business is formed on relationships. It's the power of it, it's the authentic interaction, and that's what matters the most in life.

So again, thank you all for joining us. You can access this episode's show notes at leoniconsultinggroup.com. So that's Leoni, L-E-O-N-I, consultinggroup, two Gs, .com/51. We are now past episode 50, which is a huge thing for us. So backslash, the number 51. We're going to have detailed notes. Samia is going to send some resources if they're appropriate too. You'll be able to listen to this podcast and also access the transcript. So thank you all so much. We will see you all next time on All Things Marketing and Education. Take care.

Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode. If you liked what you heard and want to dive deeper, you can visit leoniconsultinggroup.com/podcast for all show notes, links, and freebies mentioned in each episode. And we always love friends, so please connect with us on Twitter @LeoniGroup. If you enjoyed today's show, go ahead and click the subscribe button to be the first one notified when our next episode is released. We'll see you next week on All Things Marketing and Education.

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Elana Leoni, Host
Elana Leoni has dedicated the majority of her career to improving K-12 education. Prior to founding LCG, she spent eight years leading the marketing and community strategy for the George Lucas Educational Foundation, where she grew Edutopia’s social media presence exponentially to reach over 20 million education change-makers every month.

Samia Zaidi, Guest
Samia Zaidi is the Managing Director of Program on Along for Gradient Learning, which is a nonprofit education organization founded and led by educators who are driven to bring communities, schools, and families together in pursuit of meeting the needs of every student. Over her six years with the organization, she worked as a school and district coach for Summit Learning before transitioning to help launch Along. In her current role, she ensures that educators are supported to use Along in their classrooms so each student feels seen and known. Before Gradient Learning, Samia began her career as a 6th grade Math and Science teacher in Oakland. After teaching, Samia worked in education technology and received her MA in Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership Studies from Stanford’s Graduate School of Education.

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About All Things Marketing and Education

What if marketing was judged solely by the level of value it brings to its audience? Welcome to All Things Marketing and Education, a podcast that lives at the intersection of marketing and you guessed it, education. Each week, Elana Leoni, CEO of Leoni Consulting Group, highlights innovative social media marketing, community-building, and content marketing strategies that can significantly increase brand awareness, engagement, and revenue.

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Transcript: Building Classroom Confidence for Social Justice

This interview was originally recorded on April 14, 2023, as part of Leoni Consulting Group’s All Things Marketing and Education Podcast.

Access this episode's show notes, including links to the audio, a summary, and helpful resources.

[Start of recorded material 00:00:01

Elana Leoni:

Hello and welcome to All Things Marketing and Education. My name is Elana Leoni and I've devoted my career to helping education brands build their brand awareness and engagement. Each week, I sit down with educators, EdTech entrepreneurs and experts in educational marketing and community building. All of them will share their successes and failures using social media, inbound marketing, or content marketing and community building. I'm excited to guide you on your journey to transform your marketing efforts into something that provides consistent value and ultimately improves the lives of your audience.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of All Things Marketing and Education. This week, I am really excited to be sitting down with AnnMarie Baines. She is the founder and executive director of the Bay Area nonprofit organization, The Practice Space. She's going to tell you a lot more about that and we have a lot of questions around it because her new book kind of surrounds this. But in a nutshell, it elevates underrepresented voices through public speaking education and supports young people and adults in building confidence in their voices. I love it so much. I'm almost done. I'm in chapter seven.

Today, we'll be talking about building confidence in the classroom, specifically using public speaking, oral communication skills, creative projects, and project-based learning as some levers for equity by amplifying diverse student voices. I know that feels like some jargon and lots of word. We will kind of scaffold you in, go deeper, go section by section, but we're talking about really all things equity, public speaking, and really anywhere in between that intersectionality of social justice, all of the things.

If you are an EdTech professional thinking about, "Well, this might not be appropriate for me," it will be. There is so much goodness in this book and what AnnMarie is doing. We will be connecting it to your day-to-day. And as an educator, we will talk a little bit about all of the things, but I would say get the book. It's called Amplify Student Voices. It is made for you. There are so many step-by-step plug and play modules in there. I'm like, "Gosh, if I was an educator, I would be bookmarking the entire chapter here."

Welcome, AnnMarie Baines. I am so excited to have you on the show.

AnnMarie Baines:

Yay. Thank you for having me. I am so excited to talk about this work.

Elana Leoni:

Yay. I guess I should tell the audience that we know each other from the George Lucas Educational Foundation. I spent eight years at what we call GLEF and we were at the Edutopia arm and you were at the Lucas Education Research arm. You were there for...

AnnMarie Baines:

Four years, yeah.

Elana Leoni:

Four years. Why don't you tell the audience how did you get there and what were you doing a little bit over there, too? Because I think it helps with your educational journey of how you ended up founding The Practice Space.

AnnMarie Baines:

Yes. It's interesting, because when I talk through all of my different roles that I've held throughout my career, it sounds really random. But for me, I think the main through line through all of my work has always been about voice, about helping people be themselves, and really understanding how people create an identity for themselves in the world. That's always ever shifting, including my own path. My work really started as a special education teacher in the Boston Public Schools. In that work, I was actually sent there by a professor in my education policy program who was like, "You have no business being an education policy if you haven't been in the classroom, so you need to go into the classroom first."

And that was fantastic advice by the late Tom Hare, a special education research professor. I did the Boston Teacher Residency and had a wonderful group of students who were labeled with disabilities. But at the same time, when I was interacting with them on a daily basis, you almost couldn't really tell that there was any reason they should be in my class. I had that classic classroom in the basement, all the way excluded and separated from everybody else. I had my little group of 10 students.

What was really wonderful was when they were able to express their stories and all the things that were really important to them, that was when they really could shine as opposed to trying to fit into someone else's mold. I was always really fascinated by what do people look like in and out of the classroom. Their voice really is the way that they bridge all of those different contexts and situations because your voice is how you express your identity and who you are.

I jumped from there and did a PhD in learning sciences and focused on identity development for students with disabilities and followed them for two years. They called me the spy in the settings that they really loved, but also in the settings in school where they were really struggling. So, really trying to understand how different learning environments played a role in their identity development as someone who is smart and capable or someone who is labeled as disabled.

It's interesting, because going from all of that and the work in the classroom and education psychology, I started then kind of figuring out, "All right, where am I going to apply this kind of study in work?" And so my first attempt was at San Francisco State, working with first year teachers. I really loved that work but hated the traffic and the driving in the Bay Area.

From there, after a few years, I jumped over to, as you mentioned, Lucas Education Research, just trying to get a sense of where is the next direction of education. And specifically in project-based learning, how are people able to not just separate themselves of who they are in and out of school, but bring themselves into the classroom through projects, through engagement? I'm always excited to think about how to bridge those gaps. After that, I founded The Practice Space that we'll talk about in a little bit. But again, trying to figure out where we can put this knowledge about how people learn and how people learn with each other in classroom environments really to the test so that people can be themselves on purpose.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. I know you said it doesn't really make sense, your career jumps, but it does. It really does [inaudible 00:06:30] about that thread. What I love about this theme is it really resonates in your book, too, and it doesn't just apply to our young students,.it applies to everyone because we're always on this journey. It's like, "What is our unique voice and how do we embrace that rather than shy away from it?" That might be kind of these underlying things that get us to say, "Oh, maybe I should be embarrassed about this. Maybe I should hide away. Maybe I should be more like other people." And I love that, even in your career, you're really trying to find out not only what gives you joy and where is your passion and curiosity, but where you can make the most impact and find your unique voice in that all.

AnnMarie Baines:

Yes. Because there's always a struggle between your setting and your situations. Your relationships are going to shape you and are going to change you, but at the same time, not losing yourself in that and still being able to figure out how to make your own choices. Choice is a big theme in all of my work. It's just helping people figure out what choices they want to make, whether it's their voice or how they want to express themselves or sometimes in career path or being able to make a choice about what kind of public speaking best suits them.

Elana Leoni:

Yes. I know a lot of your work has never been really about, "We're just focusing on this one type of school or this one type of kid," especially in Lucas Education Research. I know from the work in your practice space is you're working with so many diverse, beautiful voices coming from different backgrounds, different school structures, different home environments. I loved when you all talked about the work you were doing around project-based learning is you were never saying, "Hey, we want to find studies that project-based learning works only for AP kids in this environment". It was all about, "Let's make sure it works for as many kids as possible and in many environments and in many subjects." All of the things around it. And that gives you such a more well-rounded... How can we make this adaptable and inclusive as possible?

AnnMarie Baines:

Definitely. Well, I think sometimes the default in education can often be the individual and what is wrong with the individual or how can we fix the individual. And it's the same thing in public speaking. People think about, "Well, me as an individual I have imposter syndrome," or "That person just is a good speaker and that person isn't." As opposed to what you're saying and what I say in the book and throughout my work is that it's much more complex than that. There's curriculum that's involved that can make a difference for individuals. There's environments that can make a difference.

My bias is always towards universal design for learning. So how can we create an environment where everyone can really thrive and make their own choices and be able to be themselves? Instead of I'm an imposter, how can I then create a culture and the conditions where no one is an imposter? I think being able to think about that collectively as opposed to trying to fix individuals is always going to be more effective, whether it's public speaking or education.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. And just applying this a bit to all over stakeholders in education, we certainly see that show up in students in a myriad of ways. We see it as educators. I mean, how many educators have told me that they're not doing something that is worth talking about? I look from an Edutopia lens where I was working and seeing teachers around the nation and saying, "What you are doing is truly amazing and I need you to know that." But it's just this imposter overly humbleness within educators, I see that. And then within EdTech professionals, there's a lot of people that maybe transfer over into EdTech that don't have an education background. Or they may be educators as EdTech professionals now and don't have that tech background and they have these self-limiting beliefs that turn into imposter syndrome.

AnnMarie Baines:

Yes. Well, we all want to feel like we can belong and that we matter and that our work and our voices are important. And so I think being able to think about, "What are the barriers to that? Why are our voices not welcome or important in certain settings?" And then therefore, what can we do to address that, especially as facilitators, as educators, to create space where people can really be able to be themselves?

Elana Leoni:

Yes. Great transition because I was just about to ask you about The Practice Space. We've mentioned it a little bit. I know you were talking about how you founded it and when was that moment where you decided to go full into the practice space. But why don't you tell our audience a little bit about what it is and what do you hope to achieve with this organization? I know we're going to talk a little bit about the book that talks about your work as well.

AnnMarie Baines:

Yes. It's a privilege to be able to pursue your passion. The Practice Space has definitely been my passion and it was my passion even when it was sketches and scribbles in notebooks. The Practice Space is a nonprofit in the San Francisco Bay Area. We're based in downtown Richmond and our focus, as you mentioned before, is really about how can people build confidence and community through their voice. And in the process, how can we elevate underrepresented voices through more public speaking education?

In our work, we actually do work with both speakers and facilitators. We help speakers, both young and old, as young as eight and as old as in their 80s, think about how can they speak up and be themselves. We help people with presentation, with debate, with storytelling, because how we define public speaking is any interaction you have with another person. So, get rid of that idea of the public speaker on a stage with thousands of people in the audience and you're at a podium and you're all by yourself. Instead, it's about the act of voicing your identity out loud and being able to express yourself and have that resonate with people and be able to connect with other people, because communication is deeply human and all about connection.

Throughout our work, we have some workshops, we do some online work, but we also partner with local schools, with local organizations to help people with where they're struggling in public speaking or how we can help them have their first positive memory of public speaking. We go into elementary schools, we're in high schools, and we go into those businesses and companies and help people. But then on the facilitator side, that is where the book is really coming in. That's our work with educators to help people actually create more spaces for youth voice because we can't do this work alone.

And if anything, The Practice Space really shouldn't exist if we really have education that's prioritizing oral literacy development as a really important thing. We actually go and we coach teachers. We have a upcoming curriculum coming up that's a full year speech and debate course at the high school level for English learners, and trying to create open educational resources that help facilitators and educators create space where people can voice their opinions because it's not just on the speaker. It's all of us; the listeners, the speakers, the facilitators.

Elana Leoni:

It feels like what you're saying is, at the end of this, I don't want just our typical picture of an Ivy League school or whatnot and the typical speaker on the podium with that polish, that is a certain type of person that's born to be a public speaker. You are debunking that whole thing and saying, "We're all human. We all have this ability." I think somewhere in our lives, whether it be from your socioeconomic background, your race, your gender, whatever it may be, you are taught things and at times you are silenced.

You go into your first chapter of the book talking about how some youth voices are silenced. I wanted to just read one of the things that you say in here because I think it's really powerful. But in the first chapter, you focus on youth stories about what it feels like to be silent and you actually elevate their voices and you say, "Please don't skip these because these are really important." I loved how you integrated the voices. I took a point because you told me... It's like, "AnnMarie said don't skip these." And they were so powerful, including your own stories.

You say that you use stories to root yourselves in the honest reality that we will never know unless we ask young people and offer them space to answer. I think, in education everywhere, we assume so much. We really need to just approach it with a curious lens of, "Why do you think this?" You have these little scaffolding exercises to get people used to public speaking and used to getting them to ideate around what they would talk about. The more the relationship builds with either the facilitator or the educator and the student, I found that's such a beautiful thing.

AnnMarie Baines:

Yes. So much of public speaking education is really about relationship building, and the relationship has to start with conditions of safety and bravery, but also it develops over time when you can actually hear someone's voice. And what's interesting... As you mentioned, our nonprofit is really tackling the problem of silencing and at all age bands and in the workplace and in schools and outside of schools and trying to tackle that problem from a fun and comfortable place, where it actually can be enjoyable to speak up and tell your story.

That sounds like something really small, but one thing that I see when we work with our eight-year-olds, they are so excited to tell their story. It's like, "Okay, tell me about a time when you were hot," and they start telling all these stories and you can't even stop them, or "Tell me about a time when you went on a road trip," and they just can't stop telling their story.

As people get older, what I notice is that people start summarizing their stories. They are afraid. Actually, I'm even battling that right now in this conversation. It's like, "Well, don't go on for too long, AnnMarie. Don't ramble. Don't go into too much depth about that story because no one wants to hear that." So many of us actually encounter that feeling that, "Well, no one really wants to hear my story." And what I wonder is, where does that come from? How do we start learning this?

In our work, I start seeing it in fourth and fifth grade. Just as early on and in interviews with students, we actually hear students say like, "My story is not important." That's one thing that I hear a lot. Another one that I hear is, "No one will want to be my friend if I tell my story." I think the desire to belong and that worry and fear of judgment is at the core of why people fear public speaking, and it's at the core of, "My story doesn't matter."

And I also see that in education where sometimes we'll be talking with educators about how to weave in storytelling into the classroom. For teachers who are humanities teachers, that is very obvious because they do storytelling all the time. But I wonder sometimes why it's hard to weave in stories all the way through the curriculum, because I think what it tells people is that if stories are how you express who you are, and we don't have time for that or we have to move on or other content's more important, the implicit message we hear is all of this, all of the rest of this education and content is more important than a student's identity and who they are. And that's not a message we want to send.

I think asking ourselves that first question about when is a person's personal experience relevant to the content in education, when is it really important in order to drive understanding and connection and learning? Those are some of those first questions that, I think, the answer is story.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. It just reminded me because we have the connection of working at the George Lucas Educational Foundation. George would always say, and it was one of my favorite quotes from him, is that "educators are innately the best storytellers." And he would say that with utmost pride. Can you imagine one of the best storytellers in the world, saying that educators are uniquely positioned and are some of the best storytellers he's ever encountered?

That just hits me every year when I look at teacher appreciation and look at all the quotes from him and stuff. It really hit home. When we think about storytelling, not only as educators being able to tell your own story and connect and foster those relationships, but if you are in the world of EdTech, it's really important for you either as a leadership or the brand to tell your own story, to really make sure that whatever you do, you talk about your why, you talk your role as it relates to the why of where you're going.

In other conversations and podcasts, we'll put in a link in the show notes. We have talked with Katie Test and she talks specifically about how you can weave in storytelling, how you can make sure that you're embedding in your mission and your why, and also your personal journey as it relates to the company. I don't want to get too much of on a tangent, but let's get into some practical, for some of those educators that are saying, "Yeah, yeah, this all seems nice. I'm head nodding. I get you, AnnMarie. But how do I actually do it in the classroom?" Are there some tips or tricks just to get started that you don't have to be full debate that you can integrate in some public speaking, little tips, maybe exercises regardless of the classroom and the time that they have? I know that's a hard one, but you have some really great recommendations in the book, too.

AnnMarie Baines:

Yeah. Our method that, which is articulated in the book, is called Expression-Driven Teaching. And the idea is an expression driven teaching is that, in order to develop diverse voices and with diverse ideas and be able to help students own those ideas, we need to facilitate a lot. We need to facilitate the relationships, the skill building, their growth, and all of the communication fundamentals, and even facilitate a lot of student choice. All of my activities are always about incorporating student choice so that they can pick up a starting place that works for them.

A couple of things that are written in the book, there's some bigger projects of how you can use public speaking as kind of more of the traditional kind of big project. But one thing that I think is really important is doing a lot of public speaking. Doing little five-minute drills whenever you can. I mean, even if it's Wednesday Story Day, and Friday, you can have another theme as well. A couple of these little five-minute activities that you can do is really all about helping students commit to different ideas and be able to commit to a point.

For instance, this or that is a little warmup that I like to do, where you're just throwing out inside or outside. You can do it in pairs or you can do it as a whole group and you just have to pick a side and say one sentence about why. Then it's really about that practice of "I'm going to commit to something and I'm going to explain a little bit of a reason." And you can ramp that up over time and have them try to speak for a minute or speak for two minutes, because being able to have little time goals can be really helpful as we're developing a new skill.

Another one I like for debate warmup is "Yes, and?" Sometimes I'll do a silly prompt and I like doing really light prompts, where it's very clear that there isn't a right answer. Gorillas make great pets and then it's like, "Yes, and they also love bananas. Yes, and..." So then you're practicing building on other people's ideas. That can be a good little discussion tool as well. And you can do the flip side and do, "Well, on the other hand," and then practice disagreeing with other people. Those drills really... I mean, they can take one minute, two minutes. Those are really, really easy ones to do. Then on the storytelling side of things, I like to do, "Tell me about a time when." Just having everybody in the class invite a story from someone else. "Tell me about a time when you saw something scary," and then everybody tells stories to each other and they switch and could be really good for team building. I could go on, but it's also in the book, too.

Elana Leoni:

And that's what I love, though, because sometimes we get in these conversations, we get very theoretical, and we start saying, "Yes, there's importance for fostering a sense of belonging and student confidence and incorporating student feedback," but we don't really get into the nitty gritty on how. And I'd like people to be able to walk away with, "Gosh, there's just a couple of cool ideas I can integrate right away without reading a book, without going anywhere else." Like yes, and, I love that. I've done some of those drills as it relates to design thinking and improv, and I know that those all kind of intersect really beautifully.

AnnMarie Baines:

Definitely. My other life as a singer and performer and voiceover person. I like being able to pull in those types of activities, and I would encourage any other educators who have other artistic backgrounds or also sports, too. There's a lot of parallels between athletics and yoga and pilates and things like that, and developing your voice because you need to practice little things consistently over time to be able to build the muscle. Breath is really important. Even having a moment where everyone has to take a deep breath in and then out, it's really important for...

We like to tell students like, "Athletes and singers warmups. Speakers have to warm up too, so we're going to do some warmups now." And we do physical stretches because you don't want to be super tense. In order to be yourself, you have to be relaxed. One thing that's nice is when you have a routine of any kind, you can gradually release it to the students. Actually, by the third week of these routines, the students are leading it at that point, at any age in our programs at the practice space.

"All right, who's going to do the stretches today? Who's going to do the tongue twisters?" They love that one because it gets people laughing. And then I'm free for the first 10 minutes of every lesson, which is always really nice.

Elana Leoni:

That is awesome. I see how when you said, "Dare I say," this could be fun. Yes, all of these warmups are fun. And if you just continue that momentum and saying, "We're just having a fun conversation." It might be structured if it's debate, it may have some twists and turns, but there's this element of fun and finding the way that you would respond your unique voice versus anyone else's and encouraging them to do that. I wish I would've been encouraged earlier to have my own voice rather than trying to be like everyone else around.

It was such a breath of fresh air reading it, because I hope and I know that all the communities that you're working with and the students you're working with, they're building their own confidence and they're proud of who uniquely they are every day more and more. I'm wondering, as they start building their student confidence and really figuring out who they are, how does that evolve into them giving feedback into teaching practices? Do you have tips or have you seen moments of, "Here's how educators can..." As you start doing this, this will naturally come, so here's how you can start adapting your own practices to what they're giving you feedback for.

AnnMarie Baines:

Where the students are giving feedback?

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. More of student ownership. As they start loving this, I'm sure you have some great stories in there where students are owning their own voice and choice and saying, "Gosh, if we could do it this way," or "I really love it when this or whatnot." When educators are facilitating and moving with their students' growth, how can they start accepting and incorporating that into their teaching practices?

AnnMarie Baines:

Yeah. One big belief of mine, and I talk about this in my TEDx Talk, is that I think it's really powerful when we're learning something new to start with a template. But then we can't just stick with that template, we need to be able to break it. Students are really good at breaking templates, which I love. One thing that I start them off with student leadership is starting to lead those routines. But again, they're leading the routines that I've created at that point, so they're still kind of following a template at that point. And then also starting to coach each other. I give them a few directions about, "Here are the types of things to look for when you're looking for a good speaker." And I ask that question constantly throughout the year, because as they see more good examples of speakers and they start to learn more, their feedback gets better.

But I usually start off with helping them learn how to give good positive feedback. Because the worst thing, and almost everyone has had this comment, is that you say um too much. I think personally, that isn't a horrible thing. I think, if it's distracting, then maybe it is taking away from the message. But it shouldn't be the ultimate and first thing that people hear, "You say um too much," Because then it's telling people to silence something or, "Oh, you speak too fast." And now it's like, "Okay, this is squashing your voice." But instead, I think, beginning speakers and young people need to start actually with, "What are all the good and special things that they see in each other?" Even asking them to point out what part of someone's story was memorable? What's going to stick with you? What are you going to remember?

So rethinking some of those reflection questions can help. To your question about when can teachers start to help students break the template, I think once they start getting peer feedback routines in place and warmups in place, after that, I usually will ask them, "All right. So our goal today is to practice our speeches for our upcoming presentation somewhere. What's the best way to do that?" And sometimes they will just come up with a lesson because they've seen it happen, and so they actually create a lesson.

Actually, this is one of our offerings at The Practice Space. We coach students on how to create lesson plans so that then they can start coaching and we hire high school students to coach in the elementary schools, so they are learning to pass this along. I had a great conversation with a student yesterday who is just graduating from high school and he's been helping at the middle school that I've been working at. And he's like, "Ms. Baines, can I have this program next year? Can I lead this one with an assistant coach as a paid employee of The Practice Space?" I'm like, "Yes, yes, absolutely."

I think the goal is to not just make this something in the classroom, but something really real. This is going to be his job during college and now he's owning it. It takes a little bit of time, but starting with those routines and then helping release that so that then they can start breaking that template.

Elana Leoni:

I love how you mentioned... because I went straight into how do we incorporate student feedback into teacher practice. But you took it in the more logical way and you do it in the book around, "How do we get first students to listen and how do we get educators to listen to students' feedback." Listening is a skill. And then how do we transform that listening into positive feedback that's constructive and doesn't silence them more so. When I read certain things in the book, I was like, "Oh, that's really good. I should incorporate that when I give feedback." it's not as simple as a compliment sandwich. You have really good nuanced stuff in there.

I am wondering. We talked a little bit about specific ways that educators can amplify student voice in the classroom. We talked a little bit about how student ownership of voice and choice can lead them to actually provide feedback and work and co-create with educators in their own practice. But I'm wondering on the other people in the education stakeholders, the parents, the care caregivers, the community, how do you fold them into all of this? What are some best practices that you've seen that have worked that really help move the needle with what you're trying to do?

AnnMarie Baines:

Yes, it's one thing that I just love is to create community around voice and make it so that having a voice is something exciting. It's special. I mean, everybody wants to be seen, but I think not all of us want to risk being seen, making a mistake in front of an entire group, and really high stake settings when you've never spoken before. All of a sudden you have to be seen in a really high profile way. I think what's really exciting and what helps our community events work really well is all of the preparation that students are doing over time leading up to it. They're still a little nervous, but they're excited to speak for people. I think public speaking requires a public, so you need to have those different public opportunities to practice your voice.

But I like, and this is a special education teacher in me, scaffolding as much as possible. I might start off by inviting a parent or two into the classroom and that's it. Or then like, "All right, we're going to weave a parent meeting and you're going to share out and all." It's a little bit more high stakes there. And then, "All right, you're going to present to someone else's parent." Coming from my own experience and the students' experience as well, presenting to your own parents can be some of the scariest audiences. My mom didn't see me do speech and debate until very, very late in my high school career and even then only once. I think starting to ramp up to that as one of the more high stakes settings can work well too.

By the time we get to our big community events, students are speaking for at least a hundred people or more. I like being able to even have some choice and differentiation in those events. For administrators out there, I don't think that students always have to just speak to the entire group. So it's not just a panel, it's not just a keynote speech, but how can you make an open house out of it, where you can have little groups in individual classrooms with maybe five people and a student is speaking to those five people? because then it's giving students different entry points to be able to voice their opinions.

That was something I always loved. As a side note, it's funny when you asked about my path. I just talked about the professional path, but really what started all of this was being on the speech and debate team in high school. I was really scared, because so many of my students now, I pictured me having to debate in the movies on a stage in front of everybody and then having to lose in the middle of everyone, like a spelling bee or something like that. Debate tournaments, there's only an audience of your two opponents and a judge, so it's like three other people. I think that was a really important thing in my mind to be able to start speaking for parents, start speaking for bigger and bigger audiences gradually over time.

Elana Leoni:

I love the story you shared about your own personal journey and how you had that goal. And what was it, the tournament at UC Berkeley? And at the end of it, you were at the judging panel. Why don't you tell that story? Because when I read this, I was like, "No, don't say that to her." [inaudible 00:34:26] because I feel like it talks a little bit of... We've been skirting over the issue of silencing and I think I want to get a little bit deeper into that, but I'd love for you to tell that story quickly.

AnnMarie Baines:

Yeah. As I mentioned, I did speech and debate in high school. I was very reluctant. My friend Audrey made me do it and I'm so grateful to her for that, but it was really being part of a team that was really important and also going to some really great debate camps and getting instruction over time. I spent two years losing every round in debate. I was much better at speech. That part came naturally because it was acting and all of that, but debate was this little challenge for me like, "Oh, I can't speak spontaneously." No, you can." There's a way out of that. I shouldn't just say I can't, so I worked really, really hard.

For two years, I was really on this road to learning how to do debate. Then there was this turning point in my sophomore year, where all of a sudden everything came together. It just clicked. I was just practicing so much at this point. I say all of this to say just how long and hard I had been working up until this point. I was getting ready to try and qualify for the Tournament of Champions. And to do that, you need to do really well at two prestigious tournaments, like national tournaments. I had already gotten one of those previously and this was the last chance, the last opportunity to try and qualify.

I had made it to the octafinal round and I had a panel of three judges and I thought I did... I was so ready and I was so prepared and I finished and it was just one of those moments where I was like, "Yes. Yeah, I got it. I did it." The first judge who was a woman voted for me. The next judge was a very experienced debater and listed off all these reasons why the other opponent won, so it's two-two at this point. Now, the last judge had to really reveal his opinion and he just said, "I wrote this in the ballot, but you're just too aggressive for a girl."

In that moment, I mean, I was stunned. And then afterwards, I just burst into tears and my team all rallied behind me and it was really great to have that encouragement and for coaches. But it's really something... It stuck with me first. Also, I had it in writing, too, and he said [inaudible 00:36:55] he really emphasized at this point that you're too aggressive for a girl. Now, that was in 2001. I'm still coaching at my same high school, by the way, and they're a partner of The Practice Space. That's really fun for me 23 years later.

I hear students go through the same thing. I've heard students get feedback about, "Well, you should really get your hair straightened because it's more professional. The way you have your hair is not professional," and that's for a number of Black students. I also have heard girls get comments about what they're wearing and their dress. To be fair, in tournaments we are always doing trainings about implicit bias and equity and how you need to set that aside and just listen to what students are saying. But it's amazing just how many people only comment on how people look and how they're supposed to sound. "You should smile more" is one that is constantly a piece of feedback that students get and, "You shouldn't speak so fast."

I think some of it... When I meet judges, not all of them have this evil intent. I meet them and it's almost like that's all they know how to say. That's the only key piece of feedback they know is to be able to fall into these patterns of, "You should look like everyone else." And to your point about silencing and equity, I think public speaking is a really good indicator about whether you really have equity in classrooms or in the world, because are you actually able to speak at all or are you silenced? Are you invited to speak? But also, are you listened to? Are you heard or are people only judging you from the outside?

Also, is your message able to connect with people or are you saying something totally new that no one understands? I think that also gets to diverse experiences as well. I think using it as a little test of how equitable is your space is... Who's speaking? Who gets to speak up and how are they received?

Elana Leoni:

Yes, and who is not speaking. In your book, you talk about all the reasons why people may not be speaking and how you can invite the conversation to learn more about why is that. And just don't take it for granted that... Everyone, like you said, really around fourth or fifth grade, I didn't realize it was around that time, is where they start having all those self-limiting beliefs imposed upon them based on who they are, what they look like, how they act, what their disability may or may not be, all of the things around it. I do recommend anyone who... Even if you don't think that public speaking is something you want to incorporate into your classroom, there's so much lessons to be gained or around student confidence, voice and choice, and just the little bit of exercises that you put in around it. It is so beautiful.

I know we can talk about this book for quite a bit of time, but I'd like us to switch gears on one of the things we always talk about in this podcast that's around technology. Although your book isn't really about technology at all, I do know you know the space. You've been in education for quite a bit. You've been in the classroom. I'm wondering around technology as it relates to supporting student voice and participation. There's so much out there. There's AI now. There's all the things surrounding what we could be doing with technology. What would you like to see the technology play a role in to help elevate student voice and confidence in all the things we were talking about?

AnnMarie Baines:

Yes, I have a couple of thoughts. I think, for one thing, if you take the phrase "public speaking" and just replace it with the word communication, I think there is a more direct connection in folks' brains about communication and technology, because technology is often used to help people connect with one another and communicate with one another. I often see a relationship between using technology to help students prepare their ideas and then having them express those ideas out loud. Because when we are just writing things, I think it can be a struggle to make that jump to actually have to express yourself out loud. Also in this era of AI, I think being able to express your ideas out loud and having more oral assessments in the classroom is really the way we can encourage and assess original thought.

It was interesting. And just as a side note, I was coaching a group of young debaters, and all of a sudden they were reading out a speech and it didn't sound like them at all. And they had just put it into ChatGPT and they were reading it out loud and it put everything together, but the debate quickly fell apart after that because you're only allowed to prepare your first speech. The rest of it is spontaneous and is just based on what your arguments are and how you defend your thinking. I wouldn't want a student to feel prepared and then not actually be prepared at all and have their ideas fall apart. Because ultimately in the real world, they're going to have to defend their thinking. I think using technology in preparation for speaking can be helpful, but not in replacement of speaking.

That's one thing. And then I think the other is... I've said this throughout this podcast, but I'm always a big believer in scaffolding productive struggle. So not using technology to avoid struggle, I think is, very important, but instead using it to scaffold hard things. For instance, we'll use in our curriculum podcasting as the first unit for students, especially English learners. We have a course that we're piloting now for English learners. Being able to talk about your own personal stories in your own home language and have that be recorded and listen to asynchronously where people can actually just jump on and listen to all these different stories.

It means [inaudible 00:43:10] there's kind of this bank of who students are and what they care about. You can have that be a routine in the class and having little listening parties can be very cool, but it's a lot less scary to record yourself unless most students say that they hate their voices. But I think getting used to your voice is important. And then after that, we start having them stand up with scripts and they act and they do theater. And then after that, all right, now we're going to speak on the spot some more and we're going to do more debate. And that's a little scarier, but we're scaffolding it with the help of technology at the front end.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, those are great points. I recently had a conversation with my friend, Tony, over at Reach Capital and we'll put those in the show notes as well, a link to that podcast. But he talked about the role of technology, especially Chap GPT could be... Also, you said it could be great for preparation. He used it as a way to reflect as well, so maybe imagine your students putting in all of their debate if they were written, some parts of their speeches. They'll start to understand patterns and say, "Gosh, I do do this. Is this my own voice or is this a pattern I want to break?" Being able to just reflect upon it and understand your own unique voice was a beautiful way to use machine learning and things because... You're right. It spits out generic things and sometimes it spit out stuff so generic you're trying to fix it to put your voice in and you're like, "Oh, this will take me longer to put my voice in than just do it myself."

Exactly. The part that scares me and worries me is just when... I mean, so much of us are really scared and nervous about putting ourselves out there and speaking up. Then when we use something like ChatGPT, we're giving our voice away. I think being able to use it to help instead of replacing the act of speaking up is really important, but I think that also takes education as well. So not letting it take away your voice, but instead help you on the front end or the back end and be able to have enough confidence.

But I think I see people... And this is the part that worries me, I see people getting really excited because ChatGPT and AI... It doesn't stumble. It doesn't have those doubts. It doesn't hesitate. It doesn't have ums and so I think people get excited because it sounds really good when they can put things together. It's like all the adult students who come to me and say they want to sound professional or they want to get rid of their accent and things like that. I think I try to reframe that because we don't want to get rid of ourselves. We want to be able to scaffold the process of feeling more confident, being yourself.

Elana Leoni:

It was reminding me and take me back of when I first discovered... And this is old school, but you'll be with me here. It's like I first discovered the encyclopedia and I would have to do a report on a giraffe. I'd go in and I'd look in the encyclopedia and I'm like, "This is beautiful. It's written perfectly. Why can't I just use this?" What you talked about, though, is the role of technology being able to help you along with your struggle. I thought that was beautiful, and especially for those in EdTech wondering about, "How do I design a product for a user experience that's going to make the learning experience the most robust for students to make the learning stick?" You don't just want to give it to them, right? You want the students to be able to struggle but not struggle so much that they give up too. But that's the first time I've actually heard someone ever say that in that way, so I wanted to point that out.

AnnMarie Baines:

We actually have debaters who are debating the responses on a topic put out by ChatGPT. You can also argue against the tool, so debate the robot kind of exercise can work really well.

Elana Leoni:

I know we are running it time, AnnMarie, but one question we ask all of our audience at the end, especially our audience that are deeply ingrained in education and yourself so passionate about what you do. I know there are days where you probably feel just a little bit drained. You do great things, but you are in the work. You are in challenging situations every day. When those days you just feel drained and you feel like, "Don't talk to me," how do you refuel yourself? How do you get back the next day full charge and get excited and get ready to go? Everyone's got either activities they do, things they listen to, watch. What are the things in your life that get you re-energized?

AnnMarie Baines:

My husband and I have our little routine as we... We really miss this during the pandemic. We're glad that it's back. Every month, we do a race just of any kind. He's kind of a crazy ultra runner. I don't run quite that long of a distance, but every month we have a race. Being able to be outside and be in community with other runners is really exciting. It also keeps me honest because it takes time to get ready for those. I would say running is one for me. And I've started doing some strength training, did my first pull up, yay, last December, and trying to keep that up. Feeling good in my body is very important. Being able to not just sit down but get moving. So, that's one that's really important to me.

I sing in choruses and in the car and that is a good release for me, too. And then I watch way too much television and I do a lot of baking when I can. I think sometimes for myself, when I'm drained, I usually notice a pattern that I haven't had time to do all of those things. So, being able to carve out space... For me it's 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM is a pretty important hour for me when I can fit in some of those things, and just sometimes also not having a plan is also important. I also decompress by having a few times when I don't have a plan.

Elana Leoni:

Nice. Now it makes sense because there was a quote in the book from The Great British Bake Off. She's either a baker... I know a lot of people just watch the show because it's fun, too, but now it makes sense.

AnnMarie Baines:

I really like competitive reality shows, mostly food-oriented, but also still a Project Runway fan.

Elana Leoni:

Yes. Yes. Well, AnnMarie, thank you for coming on the show. How can people listening get ahold of you, contact you, whether it be at The Practice Space or learn about your book?

AnnMarie Baines:

Our book is available on Amazon and at our publisher, ASCD. It's called Amplify Student Voices, as we've mentioned. Definitely grab a copy. It came out in January, so it's still fresh off the press. Our website is www.practice-space.org. Our website has some free resources on it, also has a book page, but also has a partnerships page. If you want us to either do private lessons with you or maybe join your company for a workshop, we do online workshops, but also in-person ones as well. That's a good way to get ahold of us. There's a contact page there as well. Also, we welcome any inquiries at all, even if it's just a conversation that we want to have. Definitely want to welcome that as well.

Elana Leoni:

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us, AnnMarie.

AnnMarie Baines:

Can I also say, actually, social? I almost forgot. Social media is also a great way to reach us. We're at @tpsnonprof-... No, sorry, let me start that again, @tpsnonprofit.

Elana Leoni:

So T as in Tom, P as in Peter, S as in school, tpsnonprofit?

AnnMarie Baines:

Yes, tpsnonprofit, The Practice Space.

Elana Leoni:

The Practice Space. Awesome. Don't ever forget the social, it's important for me, as you know. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. Like I do every time when I close these conversations, I'd love for you to pause and think about some of the really critical things that AnnMarie talked about. And even if you want to just reflect personally and say, "What's my voice? How am I reflecting on my own personal voice and journey and identity as it relates to education? Am I allowing myself the ability and the space and the safety to grow? Am I in a place that is encouraging my voice and my unique place?" There's all these beautiful things that can come out of this.

If you're an educator, there are so many practical things you could walk away with. And then from an EdTech perspective, I'd love for you to think about especially the question on tech and how do we use tech strategically to really guide and elevate and give and support student voice and confidence for all students, not just a certain type of student.

Thank you all. I mentioned the show notes a couple of time in the episode. Here's where I get to give you the URL. It is leoniconsultinggroup.com. So it's Leoni, L-E-O-N-I, consultinggroup, two Gs, .com/fifty. Annmarie, you are our 50th episode, so [inaudible 00:52:34] ice cream sandwich or something. But on those show notes, we will have all the things that AnnMarie talked about, the transcript, the audio, and all the resources she mentioned. thank you all for coming. We will see you next time on All Things Marketing and Education. Take care.

Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode. If you liked what you heard and want to dive deeper, you can visit leoniconsultinggroup.com/podcast for all show notes, links, and freebies mentioned in each episode. We always love friends, so please connect with us on Twitter at Leoni Group. If you enjoyed today's show, go ahead and click the subscribe button to be the first one notified when our next episode is released. We'll see you next week on All Things Marketing and Education.

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Elana Leoni, Host
Elana Leoni has dedicated the majority of her career to improving K-12 education. Prior to founding LCG, she spent eight years leading the marketing and community strategy for the George Lucas Educational Foundation, where she grew Edutopia’s social media presence exponentially to reach over 20 million education change-makers every month.

AnnMarie Baines, Guest
AnnMarie Baines, PhD, is the founder and executive director of the Bay Area nonprofit organization, The Practice Space, which elevates underrepresented voices through public speaking education and supports young people and adults in building confidence in their voices. In addition to over 20 years of experience coaching public speaking in West Contra Costa, California, and Boston Public Schools, she has held faculty positions at San Francisco State University and UC Berkeley. She is a two-time winner of the competitive Title Nine Pitchfest Nonprofit Edition, and a Los Angeles Times Inspirational Woman nominee. Growing up in West Contra Costa as the daughter of a Filipino immigrant, AnnMarie became deeply dedicated to her community and committed to equity as a Deeper Learning Equity Fellow. She was a program officer at the George Lucas Educational Foundation, where she applied her expertise in curriculum, project-based learning, and professional development. AnnMarie received her PhD in learning sciences from University of Washington, her teaching credential from Boston Teacher Residency, and a master’s degree in education policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

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About All Things Marketing and Education

What if marketing was judged solely by the level of value it brings to its audience? Welcome to All Things Marketing and Education, a podcast that lives at the intersection of marketing and you guessed it, education. Each week, Elana Leoni, CEO of Leoni Consulting Group, highlights innovative social media marketing, community-building, and content marketing strategies that can significantly increase brand awareness, engagement, and revenue.

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