Sean Tibor: Hello and welcome to Teaching Python. This is episode 84, and we are talking all about global CS and how the world and our own learning can be connected together. My name is Sean Tibor. I'm a coder who teaches. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: And my name's Kelly Shusta Pertaz. And I'm a teacher that codes. Sean Tibor: And Kelly, we have a very special guest with us today. Would you like to introduce him? Will Richardson: Oh, yes. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I'm so super excited. He's probably embarrassed how excited I am. But we have Will Richardson, who oh, my goodness. He's just amazing. I've been following him since 2011, not as a stalker, but in conferences and keynotes. We saw you in Monterey. He is working and you're working with. Sorry, I'm trying to remember the global say what you're working. Will Richardson: Homertavan Gar. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Homer. Yes. And you are guys are talking a lot of big questions and you are asking the questions that we and a lot of educators today are still asking. And we are just so excited. We're going to continue to talk about tech for good and building global connectedness with Will and hear his thoughts. Sean Tibor: Welcome, Will. It's great to have you here. Will Richardson: It's great to be here. Thanks for the opportunity. I appreciate it. Sean Tibor: Well, we're going to get started in the same place we always do with the wins of the week. So something good that's happened inside or outside of the classroom. And because it's kind of fun, we're going to make Will go first. Great. So well, something good that's happened this past week. Will Richardson: Oh, man, it's tough these days, right, to find something, especially in the places where we operate, which is basically what's happening in the world writ large. I think if there is one good thing that's happening and it continues to happen, it's that more people are engaging in these conversations around what we want schools to become in the future. And I think I've just seen even this week an uptick in the number of people who are saying we have to have these conversations now. We can't wait any longer. And it's not everybody, obviously, but I think that's a good sign. I think the urgency of this moment is coming through finally and that the challenges are so existential right now to schools that we're finally starting to go, yeah, let's roll up our sleeves and do this. Sean Tibor: I think that's a really good point because I was just reading something the other day where someone had changed their mindset, where they said I used to think about before COVID, early COVID, and now we're at Late Covet, he said. But the problem is that what I thought of as Early Covet, it keeps moving, right? Like last summer in 2020. I used to think that and now I think of that as Early Covet, but we thought it was going on forever. At that point, we have to start thinking differently about what the world looks like going forward because this is such a pivotal moment in our society and in our education. I think they're very closely related. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: 100%. Unknown: Agreed. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: You got to go first, Sean. Unknown: Okay. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: All right. Sean Tibor: Well, my win this week actually kind of comes from last week's win. So we had been talking about some interactions we had had on Hacker News around the role of teachers and learning along with your students and always remembering what it feels like to be a beginner at something and learn something that is really hard to understand. You have to struggle through because it helps build that empathy with our students and that connection with them and helps us be better teachers. And so over the last week, I've been diving really deep, even deeper into a lot of new coursework around a technical topic. And I feel like I'm drinking from the fire hose because there's so much information. It's a lot of new concepts connected to things that I sort of know or that I've known from a long time ago. And I think the win here is kind of the fail at the same time. It's a lot of struggle, and I really don't understand what's going on yet. And I'm working through it, and I'm trying to figure it out, and I can feel that reminder of what it's like to be learning something that is new and foreign and going out outside of your comfort zone. And it's been a really good experience, and I've been enjoying the struggle as I go through this week. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I love that you keep reminding us of that power of yet, because I'm in the same boat with you with my Wynn. I get to learn a lot of things this week. I'm trying to teach a new course to the 8th graders. I've always been teaching the Littles and now Sean has given me the opportunity to teach the 8th graders. And I've taught these kids six and 7th grade, and we've always talked about the power of learning and that we're teaching them to learn, not just to memorize. And these kids know everything that I knew, and now I have to teach them something new. And it's been a really fun experience, which can I just go into my fail from that? Unknown: Sure. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: As I started the lesson yesterday with these 8th graders, I was trying to refresh with Dictionaries and Tuples and, sorry, Will, this is like a Python talk for a second. And I wanted to work with the library with request and access a website because I think the 8th graders are going to be hooked with the fact that they can access a website encoded. And I got in today because I was going to do it the second time, and I was like, I better just check to see if this code works at school. And I got onto the podcast with Sean this morning. I'm like, It doesn't work. I can't get to the website. What's going on? He's like, you're going to have to explain what it means. And I'm like everything and I sounded like a 6th grader, so I'm a little bit freeze because I have to teach this class an hour. But whatever. They know that failure is an opportunity and an option in our class and that I'm okay with failing in front of them, because if we're not vulnerable, then how can we expect them to be vulnerable? So I'm just going to hide my tears and say, we can do this, we'll figure it out. So that's where I'm at right now. Positive and a failure. Sean Tibor: So will any particularly notable sales this week? Will Richardson: Well, aside from getting covet a second time, but I think everybody's failing in that regard right now. It's like I'm trying to stay positive. So let's not talk about those failures because there's lots of things that are failing right now. We could spend the rest of the time talking about that, but let's just move on to the thought work. Sean Tibor: Yeah, sounds good. Okay. So let's dig a little bit deeper. You're one of the co founders of the Big Questions Institute, and one of the key concepts that the Big Institute question fosters. One of the missions is using this idea of fearless inquiry to really ask the important questions to be curious about the world around us, whether that's the world of our school or the world of our world or beyond. Right. Can you tell us a little bit more about this idea, Ferrari, inquiring where it came from in terms of your understanding of it and context? Will Richardson: Yeah. Well, I mean, home and I got together with this work a couple of years ago, and apologies for all the dinging going on, but Homa's background really is in more global competence. Jedi work a lot about justice and race and all of that stuff. And I do come from a technology background, either, even though more of my work right now is about change work in schools. So we just kind of both felt like we were asking a lot of big questions about the world and that we didn't have any answers. Right. So we're not the Big Answers Institute. Right. We want to make that really clear. And that's because the answers are going to be found locally, we think, and they're going to be found only through a lot of serious inquiry. And we use inquiry based learning in schools all the time. And so the question becomes how fearless can we become about the questions that we ask? There are some really easy questions to ask or easier questions to ask. The ones that really matter right now are at the core of our work. So we put out that book, Nine Big Questions that schools must Answer before going back to normal. Right. And we're actually going to come out in a few weeks with a revised edition where it's eleven different questions because we've found a couple more that we think are really important, but it gets kind of fearless and shouldn't be. But you have to be a little bit fearless to go in and say what's sacred in our school right now. What are the things that we don't want to lose? What are the things that are most important to us? You have to be a little bit fearless now to answer truthfully a question like, are we okay? And where is power right now? Who holds power in schools right now? And so these are questions that we think aren't asked, at least out loud a lot and aren't discussed throughout school communities very much. But that all are at the core of who we are as individuals and who we are as schools. And unless we go there, unless we tell some truths about what we're doing right now, what our practices, maybe the dissonance between what we do in schools and how learning actually happens in human beings, unless we go there, then it's going to be really difficult to figure out who we want to become and who we might become in this moment, because I think I said at the beginning, more and more people are coming to the conclusion that what we have right now, as much as we might love it, in a lot of ways, it's not preparing kids for the world that they're moving into right now. And to be honest, and this is like a Kelly fearless truth. Schools weren't built for this moment. Schools weren't built for a time when we have so much access, growing access not everybody, but we are continuing to grow more access to information and knowledge and teachers and technologies and do things on our own in ways that we couldn't do even ten years ago. So that's what it means to be fearless. Now let's roll up our sleeves and really get to the core of our work and let's be honest about what we find there. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: We saw you in Monterey. We spoke at Monterey, and you were keynoting in Monterey virtual conference. And the questions resonated when we got the nine questions booklet. It really resonated with me. But it wasn't until I started really digging in and looking at it through the lens of a computer science teacher of thinking about are we connected? This is an honest and brutal question that I think a lot of CS teachers need to ask themselves after speaking with Richard Colada and the digital for good, are we really connected? Are we really showing the kids the power that comes from technology? Are we showing them how to be connected in the global population and how can we do social good? I guess what I want to get at is like, how do you foresee schools and individual teachers looking for answers or looking for answers to these great questions? Will Richardson: Well, let me just go a little bit sideways on that. Right. I think one of the things about that connection question is it's kind of unstated there, but are we connected as learners? Right. Not just socially? I think that there's a lot of social connection that we have. What I've found really powerful about the last couple of years, home and I have both been doing this, but I actually had the opportunity to facilitate an ongoing weekly Thursday morning at 08:00, a.m. Call for international school heads from around the world that started in March of 2020. And every Thursday, almost without fail, we've taken a couple of breaks. But I think tomorrow's call is going to be number 88 or something in that sequence. Right. And what I really want people even who are in those conversations to see is that for many of them and they'll say this too, it was probably some of the most powerful learning they have ever done, trying to get through the last 18 months now almost two years, and that there was no textbook, there was no curriculum, there was no workshop. You literally had to learn your way through this moment. And you did it because you were connected. You did it because you were connected not only in this community of people who are coming together every Thursday morning, whether it was 100 or 50 or however many of them were doing it. But you did it because you then stayed connected with people and you shared ideas. You were transparent about the learning that you were doing so other people could steal, literally. And people were saying, take this, try this, let me know what happened, which is the way we want learning to look in our classrooms. Right. But when I go back and I ask those folks who say, yeah, it was pretty amazing, I say, well, how does that map to what your kids are doing in your schools? And then almost to a person, they go, yeah, doesn't look anything like it. Right. So the technology that schools used over the last two years changed. And I'll use their quotes there because I'm not sure how much it actually did change, but change the delivery mechanism and change the way we might think about connection. But I'm not sure how many more conditions for powerful learning it created. I'm not sure how many schools really use the technologies at their fingertips to create more relevance, to create more agency, to create more real world problemsolving, and instead simply just kind of use it as a delivery mechanism. So I think that's again, one of the audits or questions reflections that people have to do. And so long winded way to get to your original question. But I think that if we can make some space to even ask questions, like I said, what's sacred, what's really important to us right now, or how do we define learning some schools that we've seen and unsolicited has said to us, we're taking one of these a month. We're just finding some time, even if it's half an hour or we're just doing a jam board. We're just posting it on a Jamboard. And people are just like posting their answers up there. And then we're having some conversations about it. Or one school that I actually worked with took a whole professional learning day and they made it. They went from the macro to the micro. They said, what is sacred about algebra two? They have a conversation about that, which is great. Right. So I don't know. I think as long as people can just engage at some level with these and obviously we want it to be even more formal and a little bit more in depth and then connect those people together, those schools together that are working around that. I think that a lot of people are telling us those conversations are moving them forward in some pretty substantive ways, which is great. I don't know if that answers your question. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: It did. I was going to pause and let Sean. Otherwise, I'll just monopolize this whole episode because I have so many questions to ask you, Sean, if you want to go. Sean Tibor: You know, it's interesting. It's a little bit of a pop culture reference. But my kids have been really into the original Ghostbusters movie lately, right. I have a six year old and an eight year old, and they have really gotten into Ghostbusters and they wanted to see the new movie. And I said, you know what, before we do that, because you're six and eight, I'm going to screen this. I'm going to watch it myself and figure out ultimately I think they need a little bit more time before it's ready. But there's this great scene with the granddaughter of Egon, the most nerdy of all, the Ghostbusters. And she's inherited a lot of that. And they're walking to school and she's having this conversation with her mom, and she's going to a new school. And so the mom, who's not nerdy and not a scientist, that sort of thing says to her, Why are you so upset about going to school? You love learning? And she said, that's, right. I love learning, but I hate education. Right. And that, to me, is kind of that divide that we're really trying to get out with all these questions. Right. And why is it that you can love learning and hate education? And how do we close that gap between those two? Because they should not be that far apart. Unknown: Right. Sean Tibor: And I think that's where the questions about connectedness and being able to connect that desire to learn with the available pathways within education. So if you want to learn here, go learn this, go learn this. Let me help you. Let me find the path for you alongside you. That stuff is not happening. And I think part of it to your point. And I thought here, I want to dig into this a little bit more. Is it's one thing to ask the question without fear. Right. That's often a very difficult hurdle to get over. But then the second part is the fearless experimentation and taking the risks to be able to say, we're going to try these things, and if they don't work, it's going to be okay. Have you, Sean, that kind of risk taking behavior change over the last 18 to 24 months with the result of the change in delivery? Will Richardson: I think the places that had the capacity to do it before the Pandemic were more motivated to do it now. Right. But I don't think that a lot of schools still have the capacity of a certain level of kind of shared language, shared understanding of the world, shared mission and vision, all of that stuff. To me, that's where capacity is. Right. When you all as a school community understand what it is that you're doing and trying to accomplish and that you are committed to getting there. And I'm not sure that there were many schools before the Pandemic who were ready to do that. And so I don't think that that magically happened overnight during the Pandemic, even though people were frantic about it in many cases. I think if you didn't have the capacity before and you have even less capacity right now because it's just the exhaustion and the stress and the anxiety right now are at record levels, obviously, and it's hard to put into words what is happening to the profession right now. But having said that, there are lots of schools right now who are starting schools within schools, people who are starting new schools on the edges, small kind of micro schools. There's a lot of innovation happening on the edges right now that I think is taking advantage of the connection piece in the ways that we're kind of talking about it here. Right. They see the connection as an affordance for learning and as a way of giving agency that's really at the heart of this. What the technology allows us to do is to pursue our bliss in any way that makes sense to us if we are literate enough to find teachers to help us with that, to vet the information that is in front of us, to publish and to interact socially and out there in those networks and communities that are out there. So there's literacy that goes along with this. But really what the Internet is and what the technologies that surround it are primarily are opportunities to expand the agency that learners have to learn. Schools don't see it that way in many cases. Right. Schools see it as a delivery mechanism, a way of making I love when I shouldn't be kind of laugh at this, but I love when people say, well, we can engage them with more technology. And I go, technology is not the engagement problem. The engagement problem is you're not letting kids pursue things that they care about. You're not letting kids ask questions that are meaningful to them. That's where you have to start. Then the technology can be an amazing amplifier of that work. But you can't just say, oh, let's get them all on iPad so they can do their worksheets. That's obviously not the answer, but that's the way a lot of schools still operate. And all right, I'll give you a fail from this week. I didn't give you one before. I was on a call the other day, a coaching call. We do these mastermind groups. And one of the leaders said, I just cannot believe that my teachers are photocopying PDFs to hand out to their kids. And I'm just like, why can't you believe it? That's the whole thing. We haven't really shifted that much. We haven't really evolved in our understanding of what's possible now. So, yeah, I think that if you had the capacity before the pandemic, if you were engaging, if you were learning community, if you are seeing the world talking about these things at the outset, you probably were able to do some really interesting things and amplify the way that learning happens for students. If you didn't have that capacity, like I said, you may even be further behind it right now. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah. I feel like a lot of our listeners have heard us say this over and over again with all COVID happening, and it really devastating a lot of people's lives and providing a lot of stress on teachers. I think for Sean and I, we were like covet. Yeah. Will Richardson: I know. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: But it was that pivotal moment. Like, I've been MYP and I'm all about inquiry, and I taught design thinking, and I thought I was there. I thought I was there doing what I needed to do. And then COVID happened, and I was like, Holy crap, I'm not doing everything that I could. We talk about learning and everything. And what happened was Sean and I had to do a quick look about are we really focusing on learning during this covet? I'm going to sit on Zoom for 78 minutes and talk to you, and you're going to go with me. And everyone's going to be on that same time. It didn't really work for everybody. Not everybody had Internet connection. Somebody was sick. So we really got that shock to our system. And it was like this big AHA. And I was really happy that a lot of schools got that. So I know that's bad. Will Richardson: But let me just say really fast, I think that there's a semantic issue here, too. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Right. Will Richardson: Because you hear this all the time. Well, there's been learning loss or this remote learning thing isn't working. It's the wrong word. There's been schooling loss, and it's remote schooling that isn't working. And to conflate the two is highly problematic, I think. And I become probably very disliked in some circles for constantly pointing out that what people are talking about is not learning. They're talking about schooling, and they have to own that. They're talking about schooling because there is no learning loss. Learning didn't stop because of the pandemic. We didn't go home. And then kids just didn't learn anything. They learned a whole bunch of stuff. Most kids probably learned a whole bunch with or without technology. Some of it good, some of it not so great. But learning doesn't stop. Right. But the schooling piece is where people are all freaked out about. But they don't want to call it that, I think, because again, they have to own it, then they have to own the fact that it's their systems, their structures, their pedagogies that really have kind of broken here and haven't been very effective. But again, that's fearless inquiry. What are we talking about and how are we talking about it that makes a difference here? Sean Tibor: Well, but that seems like a symptom of the education system in general, especially at its worst. Right. Which is that it's not our pedagogy that's wrong or it's not us as teachers, educators, administrators that's wrong. It's the children who aren't working hard enough or they're lazy or they're not doing what they need to do to be effective learners. And I think that this has exposed a lot of that. Right. If we're willing to take that inquiry, the same people that we're saying, no, the kids are just not working hard enough or they're not learning are the same people who are saying distance learning isn't working either, rather than examining their own distance will. In this case, they say distance learning. Will Richardson: No, that's what I'm saying. Unknown: Right. Will Richardson: Because then it's the learner's fault. Right. It's not the school's fault. Sean Tibor: Right. Or it's the technology's fault. I could do so much better if I didn't have Zoom. Right. And I think one of the things that's interesting and kind of getting into this, what's next? I love the question about what is sacred because it's so easily confused with what is familiar or what is comfortable. Right. And we're in this transition stage right now where there's this huge desire to return to whatever normal looks like. And I think that a lot of people, not just educators, but a lot of people are confusing what's comfortable and familiar and makes me feel good, like this never happened with what's actually sacred and important when it comes to education. So as we go forward, are there things that you've discovered or common answers that you've heard to that question of what is sacred as we start to move out of this? Will Richardson: Yeah. And we've actually asked that question. We've been doing some provincial wide work up in Quebec and some other places around the world where we've been asking a question to hundreds of different educators like teachers, leaders, whatever. And you're not going to be shocked to hear the responses are very, very similar. They talk about relationships, they talk about play, they talk about having fun, and they don't talk about assessment. Assessments are not sacred. Curriculum is not sacred. The school day is not. No one ever talks about that stuff. And I keep thinking and this is almost heresy to say. Unknown: Right. Will Richardson: But I think we make this too complicated. I'm not suggesting that there isn't value in learning science and brain science and all of that stuff, but I don't think we just reflect enough on our own learning as adults and then try to think about will what makes it happen for us, and then how can I make those same things happen for kids? It's not rocket science. It really isn't. We just have to be. And I think sometimes we make it complicated so that we maybe feel like we have more importance or whatever else in the role and not hesitate to even say that because I don't want to in any way throw teachers under the bus or suggest that there isn't a role for adults in classrooms with kids. There absolutely is. But that role has to change now. It can't be as a delivery mechanism. It just can't be to cover curriculum and to make sure the kids know it on some test. And so I think that it is about what do we really think matters around learning. And it is relationships. It is relevant. It is having fun at it, even if it's hard fun. That's what you're going through right now, Kelly. Right. It's hard fun. Right. Even though it's failure, it's fun because, you know, you want to get to someplace that you care about that matters for you. So yeah, people don't disagree as to what's the most important thing, and they don't disagree as to what doesn't really matter either. But the problem is that we keep doing all these things that we never bring up as being really at the core of our work. And a lot of that is just narrative. A lot of that is history. It's like you said, comfort. Will Richardson: So I always have a weird question. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: And it's processing in my mind. Will Richardson: Sorry. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: But I love learning. And I know Sean loves learning. Like you said, it's that challenge for me. I don't have a hobby. My hobby is learning. I take every course online. I mean, Barbara Oakley is my superhero, learning how to learn, and we try to pass that off to the kids. And I don't know how successful we are on percentage wise, but I do know we have a lot of kids that can see our passion for learning. Do you ever experience that, or have you seen any good example where you've seen a teacher kind of bottle up his or her passion for learning and be able to disseminate it magically to other students? Because I think that is the key to answering a lot of the questions for me. Will Richardson: I agree. I think that kids need models and that the models should be people who are inquisitive curious, who want to create, who want to problem solve and who talk about that, who are transparent about how they do it. I think everybody loves learning. I don't think there's a human that doesn't love learning. That's the most natural thing that we do. You can't hate it. It's the way that you evolve. Right. So it's not a question of loving it or not loving it, but it's a question I keep coming back to this, but it's a question of the conditions that exist in whatever environment you're in that allows you to pursue learning with love. Right. Or with a real passion. And again, most school environments constrain that passion. Schools, if you think of them as entities, if you think that they have a heartbeat. Almost. Right. They don't want kids to pursue their own passions because that messes things up. It makes it more difficult to get to these outcomes that we have set for ourselves. I'm not 100% in on the whole kids or Widgets type of metaphor, but I mean, still, there is a certain mechanistic environment in schools that kind of pushes kids through this process. So if you tell kids, yeah, go play guitar and learn how to play Santana because you love it, or go and create this game because you love coding and whatever. Right. That's not efficient and it's not in the narrative. And so it's hard to do that. I think the best teachers are those, again, who can create as many conditions as possible that allow the natural learning that humans do to flourish in that particular environment. And the unfortunate reality of it is the unfortunate truth is that schools are set up to make it really hard to do that. Sean Tibor: One of the things that was surprising to me, entering the teaching profession so late in my career, and I hadn't really thought of it because I came in at close to 40, didn't realize how much value was associated with different kinds of learning. Right. That there was this qualitative measure assigned to Will, you can go learn how to play guitar, but then come back and learn some real stuff like math. Will Richardson: Right. Or how to proper grammar math involved in guitar, by the way, just for the record. Right? Sean Tibor: Yeah, none at all. Right. But that's the thing is that there's this association of there's good learning and bad learning, and maybe there's some truth to that. But within the space of education, we've got these hierarchies that we've created, even if it's not explicitly stated, it's the subconscious that there's some learning that's more important than others. And that to me, feels like the kids who get unheard. Right. That question who's unheard it's the kids who are learning all the stuff that's considered not valuable or not real learning and are really good at it. But every time they say, I just learned some guitar or I just learned how to organize an esports League or something like that, there's someone out there who says, well, that's great but how did you do on the algebra exam? Right, right. Will Richardson: Because again, creating an esports League has nothing to do with reading, writing, arithmetic, relationship building, relationships. Right. Because there's probably not a textbook out there on how to do it yet or a curriculum on how to do it, that we can then get everybody through that. I mean, sometimes I worry that I sound too cynical about all this, but I think, look, we're in crisis right now. We're in absolute crisis. I don't think there's ever been a more serious moment for education in the history of our country. At least I can't imagine we are on the edge and a lot of things are breaking. And unless we can get outside of, again, these kinds of more comfortable narratives about what's happened in the past, we're not going to be able to move into the future in ways that are going to prepare our children for what's to come. And we've got to be honest about it. That's another fearless thing, right? It's not a really great future that we're looking at right now. They're going to have a whole bunch of challenges that they're going to have to either solve or deal with and why we're teaching them so much of what's in the curriculum, just in case they may need it someday, because that's the way we started out doing it 100 years ago. It just makes no sense anymore. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I think that's the key, though. I think that's one of the hardest things for school is that honesty. Will Richardson: Because God forbid, if we said. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Hey, listen, we've decided that the curriculum we've been teaching for 65 years or 85 years is really not right, then how does that make us look like? What does that say? As an institution? Who are we? And I think that to me hits it on the head. It's that brutal honesty of saying, okay, yeah, I've been teaching math for whatever amount of years, but, oh, it's not working. Hello. Will Richardson: And you're right. If there's a book called The Human Side of School Change by Robert Evans, that is an amazing book written 25 years ago. But at the core of that book, it is that when you ask teachers especially to change or you implement change in schools, really what you're doing is you're asking teachers to change their own value proposition, to change who they see themselves as. And that's where it gets really hard. It's hard for all of us when we consider being or becoming something that we currently aren't. It's scary, but that's what we're going to have to do right now as educators. We're going to have to become something different. It's not going to happen overnight. But as we kind of change this trajectory of schools and that's another thing that we're kind of saying to people, no one expects you to change your school overnight or in a year or maybe even five years, but you can change the trajectory of your school right now, you can start thinking very differently about where you want to be in ten or 20 years, even though it's excruciatingly difficult to get there. And that really is about who do you want to become? Who do we want to become? And then if we can figure that out, then we can help each other get there. Then we can hold each other up and we can catch each other, and we can nourish each other and support and encourage and all of that. But if you don't have some sense of where you want to get to that's built on, again, some really deep conversations about who we are right now, it's really hard to do it. Sean Tibor: There's also something to be said here, too. And this is, I think, the opportunity the positive way to look at this is that there are two things going on right now that should make this the right time to have that conversation at the right time to have that moment. Right now, teachers are in more demand than ever. Right. We need teachers anywhere. So a teacher that's afraid that they're going to lose their job or lose their position or not be able to take that risk of making the change or asking the tough questions, you know, there's going to be some blowback. Right. It's going to happen that you're going to have somebody who doesn't agree with it. But you're probably best positioned as an individual right now to be a teacher that's asking those hard questions and looking at what can I do to change the trajectory of my school. Unknown: Right. Sean Tibor: Because there's opportunities everywhere. Right. The second thing is for schools and for organizations, whether it's an individual school or school district, like you said, we're right on the edge right now. Right. And you can look at that in one of two ways. Like, one, we're going to fall over the edge and everything is going to blow up and it's going to be horrible. Unknown: Right. Sean Tibor: Or you can look at it and say now is the perfect time to make that change because one, we are on the verge of collapse as an education and under these conditions. So if we take these risks, there's only upside, there's only opportunities to improve. There's only places to go that take us further along that trajectory, because if we don't, there's this price of inaction. So we might as well make the change now while there's the opportunity, while everything is so chaotic and messy, let's make the change now and emerge out of it better and stronger than we were when we started. Will Richardson: Yeah. And thanks for the reminder, Sean. Really, as you were saying, I was going, you're absolutely right. I mean, what are they going to do, fire you then? What are they going to do? Right. That's a little bit glib. Right. But I'm reminded of a conversation I had probably I don't know, it must have been six, seven years ago now with a Superintendent in Missouri who was in a city school district that had some pretty high performing schools and yet then had some schools that were just like terrible. And he basically said he was telling the story how we went to one of these really terrible schools. And he said, we're just blowing it up. We're just doing everything differently. And they did. They just changed the whole thing. And there was no blowback from anybody because it was terrible. You know what I mean? It's like you go to a high performing traditional school and you say, oh, you know what? We're not going to do grades anymore or you know what? We're not going to do this anymore. Parents will be like, but in this school, they were like, whatever you want, because this is definitely not working for my kids. And I think you're right. Maybe we're kind of at that point right now where it's just gotten to the point where it's like so dire and so just difficult that we can say, what do we have to lose here? It can't get much worse. And again, many parents will tell you, no, don't change the recipe here because it's working for my child. And those are mostly privileged schools whose only goal is to get kids into high performing universities and colleges. But that's not the most of schools in this country and in the world. Right. There are a lot more schools that could probably look at it and just go, screw it. Let's just change it because this is a moment. So, yeah, thanks for that reminder. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: That is a good one. So don't get mad at me, Sean. Sorry. I have a person here, our counselor. Will Richardson: She got hooked to you. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: We introduced you as well at the Monterey Conference, and she watched you and she's like, oh, my God, he's our new counseling hero. Much pressure. I know, but she asked this question or asked these questions for you. So this is not on the script. Sorry, but she wants to know or love to hear his updated thoughts on how pandemic is impacting kids. What new opportunities is it bringing? And do you have any book or recommendations about these parents raising teens through this time or give her some help as a counselor because she's the one that's getting the concerns from the kids with anxiety and stress and loneliness and fatigue. It's a big question. I'm really sorry. Will Richardson: Thanks for the softball. I really appreciate that. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Anything homer? Will Richardson: Yeah, let me call homer. So there's no question that the mental health, the state of mental health for almost everyone, but especially for kids right now, is really dire. They're hurting in lots of different ways that are obvious and then in lots of ways that they're just kind of keeping inside and not really sure how to deal with. I think that one thing that's been interesting. I posted actually yesterday on LinkedIn, a post that said, what are you going to stop doing? Right? Because if there's ever been a moment where less is more, it's right now. So what are you not going to do anymore? And actually, I talked a little bit about a coaching call that we were on where people struggled with even answering that question. I don't know, they were all about, well, we're going to give more support. We're going to build in more counseling, we're going to build in advisory. We're going to do, we're going to do all this stuff. And I said, yeah, that's great. But what are you going to stop doing? And I still think that that's something that we have to really ask ourselves right now as schools, what can we take off the table? What really isn't that important right now? For the sake of the mental health and spiritual physical wellness of our children and teachers, what do we stop doing? I'm not sure that there are any great resources that I've come across that kind of speak to that. And I feel the pressure from the question and the way you've phrased it. But yeah, I do think that adding advisory, if you don't have that is really important. Making time for that, to let the kids get together, even if it's 30 minutes a week, and just talk to one another and just be with one another and be able to just talk about what's happening in their lives teachers the same way. Right. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I'll save you because I have your LinkedIn because I wanted to share that. Will Richardson: Because I read this yesterday and I was like, oh, my God. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: And the last paragraph, I think hit home. And I'll forward this too to her. Will Richardson: Okay. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: But it says because when people are in crisis, when our teachers and our students are totally under it, there's likely not a lot of great learning happening in the first place. And I was like, wow. So it's like right now, certainly choosing less really is more. And that's what you posted on the LinkedIn that you were referring to. So we'll put a link on our show notes because I thought that was really powerful. If we're all in this crisis, if we're all feeling stressed, we have teachers that are wanting to move to Ed tech startups and Ed tech sales. And I keep thinking to myself, if every teacher moves to edtech sales and Ed tech startups, who's teaching the kids and who are you selling to? Will Richardson: Right? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: We can't all just leave education because it's hard. But we do need to reflect on how to make it easier or better, not necessarily easier. Will Richardson: And what's really more important to us as educators, learning loss or life loss. And I don't mean life as in death, but I mean life as in the loss that comes when you're depressed and anxious and stressed and all of that stuff. And if you're choosing learning loss over that other thing. You totally don't get the equation there. You just totally don't get the calculus. And so, yeah, I think maybe we should start talking more about life loss rather than learning loss. And maybe we kind of center it that way. Maybe that's my next LinkedIn post. Who knows? Will Richardson: Will look forward to it. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Sorry to put you on the spot, but she begged me. Sean Tibor: And I know we're getting towards the end of our conversation here, so I think maybe we can just wrap up by sharing some things we've been reading or learning ourselves lately that might be useful to the audience. So any books you've been reading, any new YouTube channels, anything you've discovered that is enriching your learning experience? Will Richardson: Well, if you don't mind, I'll plug. We just put out a new free download called it's titled The Ten Books Educators Must Read in 2020. If you go to Bigquestions Institute and you look up at the top line, you see free stuff. There's a link that you can get to that. I think that the book that has been most on my mind the last few months is a book by Margaret Wheatley titled Who Do We Choose to Be? And it's a book written not for educators specifically, but for leadership. And I think that she manages to describe this moment in some very accurate and unsettling detail that then forces you to think about. Okay, so what do I do? Who do I want to be here now? What do I want to do? And one of the things that she talks about is that leaders now need to be able to create what she calls Islands of sanity, which I love that metaphor. We're doing some work around helping schools and helping school leaders, like, figure out what that means for them. But it is about doing less in a lot of ways, and it is about getting to what's sacred in a lot of ways. But that book has really had a huge impact on the way I'm thinking about this moment. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Very cool. I'm at a loss for question. Go ahead, Sean. Sean Tibor: Kelly, do you have any books to share on your side? I think you've been reading lately. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I don't have any books Besides the one I shared last week. But I guess if you're stressed and lonely and sad, I have a new robot that I'm ordering. He's called Emo E-M-O. He's the coolest AI desktop pet with personality and ideas. And he's the vector with the skateboard. And he's got multiple sensors, cutting edge text. He's a cool desktop friend. So all those teachers, if you can find somebody or a parent or get a grant to get this guy, I think it's coming out. But he's a loyal companion. So if you are at home and you have to teach from home, maybe you can get yourself an email. I don't know. I think we could always turn to a bot they do have those seals that are really cuddly for the elderly. So that is one of my finds this week. Sean Tibor: Well, my book is a little bit lighter on education and pedagogy, but I read a book called The Greatest Beer Run Ever over the last week and just this amazing story. It's a nonfiction story, although I'm sure there's some embellishment going on. But it's the story of a guy at the peak of the Vietnam War who is a civilian who snuck into Vietnam to go bring the guys from his neighborhood a beer from home. And I just really enjoyed the story. And I admire the kind of daring of doing this, the idea that why not? It's a wild idea. Let's go see if we can do it. And just the kind of sense of adventure, but done out of a sense of kindness and love and respect for the people in his neighborhood that were going through it. And I just really enjoyed the story. So from not necessarily a teaching perspective, but just from an enjoyable adventure. It was a great book, and I think they're making a movie out of it at some point. But the book is quite entertaining. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes, too. Will Richardson: Probably not any learning that happened in that story either. Sean Tibor: What was phenomenal was I don't want to give away too much. But he ended up spending considerably more time there than he originally expected, right? He thought it was like, I'm going to get in for a few days and get out again, and things happened. And he ended up learning a lot about the culture of Vietnam, the history of Vietnam, people that he talked to. So even in the middle of this wild adventure, there's definitely learning going on. So to your point, learning never really stops, right? Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Never does, or you never know where you're going to learn things from. Hey, with permission, I'm adding a new quote to our wall. I really want to just emphasize this quote because it really resonates with me is are you in an environment that allows you to pursue learning with love? So thank you for that one. I'm definitely adding that to the many quotes that we already have written on our wall. And I just want to remind students that if you're not comfortable learning here, tell me what I need or tell me what we can do in order to make this place a place where you can learn with love or pursue learning with us. Sean Tibor: So thank you so Will, thank you so much for joining us this week. We really enjoyed speaking with you. Hopefully we can do this again soon. We will, of course, keep following all the amazing things that you're doing and keep thinking about the questions that you've posed and come up with questions of our own. But we just want to say thank you. It's been a pleasure to have you on the show and it's given us a lot to think about and consider that are as well. Will Richardson: It's been a lot of fun. Thanks very much and sincere best wishes on your work moving forward. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Thank you. Sean Tibor: Thank you so for teaching Python. Kelly Schuster-Paredes: This is Sean and this is Kelly signing off.