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30: Innovating Education w/ Dr. Tony Wagner
22 Plays7 years ago
Today we're joined by Dr. Tony Wagner. Tony is a Senior Research Fellow at the Learning Policy Institute who has served at Harvard University for over twenty years. Tony has worked in K-12 education as a school teacher, K-8 principal, university professor in teacher education, and is the founded the Educators for Social Responsibility. An author of many thoughts including Creating Innovators, The Global Achievement Gap, and Most Likely to Succeed (documentary now available on iTunes) - Tony has been a perpetual driver of innovative educational practice. Tony has been a prime resource for Michael and I for years and we're always thrilled to show new staff and students Most Likely to Succeed to promote project-based learning and transforming the traditional model.
In our discussion, we primarily focus on the need to change education and hope that's on the horizon - specifically the Mastery Transcript Consortium (of which Tony serves on the board.) Our emphasis on grades, unwavering class times, age segregation, and more have led us toward a stale curriculum which does a disservice to students. Instead, why not flip the entire model by reimagining college admissions?
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Patron Thanks
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Things Fall Apart here at the Human Restoration Project.
00:00:14
Speaker
My name's Chris.
00:00:15
Speaker
Thanks for joining me today.
00:00:16
Speaker
To start us off, a special thank you to two of our patrons from Patreon that make this podcast and our work possible, two of which are Jenny Lucas and Annette Laughlin.
00:00:25
Speaker
Thank you so much for your support.
00:00:26
Speaker
You can learn more on our website at humanrestorationproject.org and follow us on Twitter at humerespro.
00:00:34
Speaker
You can also go on our website to find a variety of resources and more pertaining to progressive education.
Guest Introduction: Tony Wagner
00:00:42
Speaker
Today we are joined by Tony Wagner, who is a senior research fellow at the Learning Policy Institute.
00:00:48
Speaker
Before this, Tony had many positions at Harvard University for more than 20 years and was founder and co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for 10 years.
00:00:58
Speaker
Tony was also a high school teacher, K-8 principal, university professor in teacher education, and is the founding executive director of Educators for Social Responsibility.
00:01:07
Speaker
His books, including Creating Innovators and the Global Achievement Gap, as well as his book-turned-documentary, Most Likely to Succeed, describe why we need innovation in education.
00:01:16
Speaker
For Chris and I, both especially, we sort of believe that the term innovation is oftentimes, it's taken as investing in the latest technology or tech tools, swapping out furniture, things like that, which in many ways are not bad, you know, they can definitely help.
00:01:33
Speaker
But a majority of your work focuses on innovation through thought.
Skills Gap and Educational Transition
00:01:36
Speaker
Are there any particular facets from your books and your work in general that you believe are most connected with creating innovators?
00:01:45
Speaker
Well, it's an important question.
00:01:48
Speaker
As you know, I began more than a decade ago talking to senior executives from a wide range of companies about the skills they needed and the gaps they saw, which resulted in the book, The Global Achievement Gap.
00:02:00
Speaker
But as I continued to talk to folks, what I came to understand is that I missed something, that people were still talking about the so-called knowledge economy, but really we were at the dawn of the innovation era.
00:02:14
Speaker
And I hadn't written about that.
00:02:16
Speaker
So I then sought to write another book about what is innovation and most importantly, how do you prepare young people, all young people to be innovation ready by the end of high school, not just, or not, or perhaps instead of college ready.
Innovation in Education: Technology and Creativity
00:02:33
Speaker
So again, I started interviewing folks and it came to understand that there are really two very different kinds of innovation.
00:02:40
Speaker
The conventional thinking about innovation is as you suggested,
00:02:43
Speaker
you know, bringing new possibilities to life, usually involving technology.
00:02:48
Speaker
But there's another kind of innovation that is just as highly valued, and that's about creative problem solving.
00:02:55
Speaker
Now, we can't all be born to Steve Jobs and create a new iPhone, but, you know, we are all born curious, creative, imaginative.
00:03:03
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We all have creative problem solving capabilities that I believe can be nurtured, educated, and developed.
00:03:10
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So to me, that's the really exciting part of what I learned in creating innovators is that there is this other kind of innovation for which we can and I believe we must prepare all young people.
00:03:22
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And it seems like there's a lot of change on the horizon in terms of
00:03:26
Speaker
making that creative problem solving a reality.
Revolutionizing High School Transcripts
00:03:28
Speaker
I'm not sure if everyone that listens to our podcast is familiar, but your work with the mastery consortium seems incredibly promising since being able to redo the college admissions process so it's not focused as much on standardized testing or at all on standardized testing and grading will allow for a lot more innovation to occur.
00:03:46
Speaker
Could you just kind of talk about your work with that organization and what you hope to achieve?
00:03:50
Speaker
Sure.
00:03:51
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Well, let me back up a half a step.
00:03:54
Speaker
The fundamental transformation that I see is needed, and there's a number of them, but one of the fundamental transformations is moving from a curriculum that is all about content coverage almost exclusively, particularly at high school, to a curriculum that's far more about competencies.
00:04:14
Speaker
And think kind of the merit badge approach to learning, right?
00:04:18
Speaker
You don't get a merit badge from the Boy Scouts in camping by taking a multiple choice test on the history of camping or the parts of a tent.
00:04:27
Speaker
You actually have to do things.
00:04:30
Speaker
The world doesn't care how much our kids know anymore because Google knows everything.
00:04:34
Speaker
What the world cares about is what our kids can do with what they know.
00:04:38
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And so the real exciting aim of the Mastery Transcript Consortium
00:04:44
Speaker
is to create an entirely different kind of high school transcript to give to employers and to colleges.
00:04:52
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A transcript that really documents the development of competencies.
00:04:57
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In the simplest form, the idea is that there'll be a one-page summary of the, I think, merit badges that a student has earned at a particular school.
00:05:06
Speaker
You'll click on those badges, and then you'll see what were the performance standards the students had to meet to earn that badge.
00:05:15
Speaker
Again, think scouts.
00:05:17
Speaker
And then you click on those performance standards and it will take you to the actual digital portfolio that students have created that really demonstrates their mastery.
Challenges for Public Schools
00:05:28
Speaker
To me, the theory of change here is that we start with the most elite private schools.
00:05:34
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This just began a little over a year ago with about 40 schools.
00:05:38
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Now there are something like 250 schools that have joined, including many of the most well-known
00:05:44
Speaker
private or independent schools in this country.
00:05:47
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The theory being that, first of all, college admissions dictates the high school curriculum and has for a century, more than a century, ever since the Committee of Ten in 1893.
00:05:58
Speaker
And the only way to break that is by enlisting the united support
00:06:09
Speaker
of leading independent schools to push back and say, hey, in effect, you know, you've discouraged us from innovating for decades.
00:06:17
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And we're going to offer you a different way of looking at students.
00:06:23
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Take it or leave it.
00:06:24
Speaker
Of course, you know, these colleges are not going to suddenly stop accepting these kids from these Ivy League, you know, high schools, right?
00:06:33
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So the theory is you use the independent schools to kind of break new ground
00:06:38
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And then you open it up to everybody.
00:06:40
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And I'm really proud and excited to say that as of July 1, the Mastery Transcript Consortium membership is open to any high school, public, private, charter, parochial.
00:06:50
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That's great to hear.
00:06:52
Speaker
I'm curious then, do you see it being at least widely or readily adopted by public schools?
00:07:00
Speaker
And if not, what changes need to happen in order to make sure that occurs?
00:07:05
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The real challenge here is
00:07:07
Speaker
what schools public or private are willing to take a risk.
00:07:11
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And initially we believe that everything has to be choice based.
00:07:16
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In fact, uh, these independent schools that have signed up are going to really be offering two transcripts.
00:07:23
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And the interesting thing is we're saying you can't switch back and forth between transcripts.
00:07:28
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You gotta choose one or the other.
00:07:31
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So it will be a choice based decision for families, children, um,
00:07:37
Speaker
to decide whether or not they're willing to risk having a completely different kind of transcript.
00:07:43
Speaker
With public schools, I think there are gonna be many more challenges to educating parents and kids about the risks as well as the benefits.
00:07:54
Speaker
Public schools, many of them don't necessarily have a reputation they can ride on.
00:08:01
Speaker
And so it may feel riskier and so the adoption
00:08:06
Speaker
process may go more slowly.
00:08:24
Speaker
and all sorts of free resources that we've designed for educators.
00:08:27
Speaker
And if you love what we do, consider supporting us on Patreon.
00:08:30
Speaker
For as little as $1 a month, Patreon supporters receive goodies from being listed in the credits of our resources to early access to what we do.
00:08:37
Speaker
Thanks in advance.
Relearning Assessment Methods
00:08:38
Speaker
Yeah, and I would imagine as well, since the consortium doesn't really focus at all on grades or any of the traditional means of assessment, it's going to require relearning and possibly training for many different public school teachers and administrators, etc., that are so encaved in that old system that they need to rely on really intrinsic motivation to learn, to just create things and make things.
00:09:04
Speaker
That's so far different than some schools in the United States, at least.
00:09:08
Speaker
No, it's a very important point.
00:09:10
Speaker
You know, we have acculturated kids to expecting rewards and punishments for learning.
00:09:17
Speaker
And teachers, of course, it's the only system they know.
00:09:21
Speaker
We teachers teach the ways we've been taught.
00:09:24
Speaker
And to disrupt that is extremely difficult.
00:09:27
Speaker
And so you're absolutely right that teachers are going to have to learn
00:09:32
Speaker
a different kind of way of assessing.
00:09:33
Speaker
But what we often forget in schools is, you know, how do people assess in the adult world?
00:09:40
Speaker
You know, do you want to fly with a C-minus hairline pilot?
00:09:43
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No, of course not.
00:09:45
Speaker
There are only three grades that matter in the adult world.
00:09:48
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A, B, are incomplete or they're equivalent.
00:09:50
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We expect competence from professionals.
00:09:53
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That's a B. Rarely, but sometimes, we see genuine excellence.
00:09:58
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Well, that's an A.
00:10:00
Speaker
From my point of view, unless and until someone has achieved a level of mastery, they haven't failed.
00:10:05
Speaker
Their work is simply incomplete.
00:10:07
Speaker
You get a pilot's license when you've shown mastery.
00:10:11
Speaker
You don't fail.
00:10:13
Speaker
You just simply haven't met the performance standard to get your license and with a driver's license.
00:10:18
Speaker
So I think it's really the challenge is to rethink what is the purpose
Embracing Mistakes in School Culture
00:10:24
Speaker
of grading and why do we grade?
00:10:26
Speaker
And
00:10:27
Speaker
And particularly in light of the fact that, you know, one of the core contradictions between the culture of innovation and the culture of schooling is it revolves around this idea of failure.
00:10:39
Speaker
You know, we've created incredibly risk-averse kids who fear failure, right?
00:10:44
Speaker
Because we penalize failure.
00:10:46
Speaker
And yet, when you really think about it, guys, we learn the most from our mistakes.
00:10:52
Speaker
You know, I ask this question.
00:10:53
Speaker
question in every talk I give, how many of you learn more from your mistakes than your successes?
00:10:57
Speaker
Every hand goes up.
00:10:59
Speaker
And it's the same in the world of innovation.
00:11:02
Speaker
Innovation demands that you make mistakes, that you take risks, and that you learn through trial and error or what they call iteration.
00:11:10
Speaker
Rapid prototyping,
00:11:12
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you know, going from 1.0 to 2.0 and so on.
00:11:15
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That's how the world of innovation works.
00:11:16
Speaker
The world of innovation looks a lot more like how kids are learning, you know?
00:11:21
Speaker
You fall off your bike sometimes, so you figure out what went wrong and you do it again.
00:11:27
Speaker
So I think that's really going to be the most fundamental challenge for folks in schools is to, as I like to say, really get rid of the F word.
00:11:40
Speaker
ban the F word in schools.
00:11:42
Speaker
Let me ask you, that's a perfect kind of a segue here.
Self-Paced Learning and Competency Mastery
00:11:46
Speaker
There's something else that I find that when you couple it with mastery learning has a hard time making sense or fitting into a traditional school model and that's self-paced, right?
00:11:56
Speaker
So a lot of our schools, especially more non-traditional schools are seeking out how to make their classes self-paced.
00:12:03
Speaker
But the issue I see when I start assessing this or looking at it is that
00:12:07
Speaker
If you have a self-paced classroom, say for instance it's an English one or just an algebra one, you really think to yourself, well it's self-paced in so far as it can last one year.
00:12:19
Speaker
There are some kids who I think maybe it's going to take them two, three, or four years to really grasp some of this stuff, whereas others maybe only take them a few months.
00:12:27
Speaker
So I feel like when we look at mastery learning and then we look at self-paced learning, the two
00:12:33
Speaker
almost can't seem to coincide together if they're placed inside the framework of a traditional model.
00:12:40
Speaker
Unless I think we- I think it's a great point.
00:12:41
Speaker
Unless you start, unless you scrap the entire, what you're looking to assess is completely scrapped.
00:12:46
Speaker
Well, you know, again, you go back to the model of scouting or, or, or, you know, getting your certification as an airline pilot or as a, as an automobile driver.
00:12:57
Speaker
Nobody's timing you.
00:12:58
Speaker
Nobody's saying you got to do this by a certain age.
00:13:02
Speaker
or in a certain number of hours, you get, in effect, a certificate of mastery when you show proficiency.
00:13:13
Speaker
I think a high school diploma should be a certificate of mastery where students have shown proficiency in a variety of both required and elective competencies.
00:13:23
Speaker
Now, let me be clear.
00:13:24
Speaker
This is not content versus skills.
00:13:28
Speaker
The only way to learn how to think critically, for example,
00:13:31
Speaker
is by being challenged with rich and challenging academic content.
00:13:37
Speaker
So I believe academic content still matters.
00:13:40
Speaker
Students need to know stuff, but skills matter more, competencies matter more.
00:13:46
Speaker
And something we haven't talked as much about is that motivation, I think, matters most.
00:13:50
Speaker
And so the idea of not sort of having time to
00:13:55
Speaker
or age cohorts having to master a certain thing by certain times.
00:14:00
Speaker
We're really motivating students to go at their own pace, to not feel as though they have to perform under pressure because some kids do that well.
00:14:10
Speaker
Others simply don't.
00:14:11
Speaker
They freeze up.
00:14:13
Speaker
And it's a completely different learning environment, as you pointed
Fostering Intrinsic Motivation
00:14:16
Speaker
out.
00:14:16
Speaker
Yeah, and building off that motivation idea, something I'm curious about then is how do you go about ensuring that the mastery consortium, really any kind of college admissions doesn't become, I don't want to say too much of a gold standard because I don't think that, I think that students should aim towards doing very well at competencies, but there's also this unnerving, low social behavioral trait that many of our all A students have, which is obsessing
00:14:44
Speaker
over getting into the right school or obsessing over getting into college.
00:14:49
Speaker
And that's, it's kind of almost motivation for the wrong reasons.
00:14:53
Speaker
So I'm curious how you go about navigating that with also this new system as well as how it currently stands.
00:15:00
Speaker
Well, I think a competency-based approach tends to encourage and reward intrinsic motivation to a greater extent that you, you,
00:15:12
Speaker
You feel yourself acquiring competence and proficiency, and that tends to be its own reward to a very substantial degree.
00:15:20
Speaker
And let me be clear, this new transcript isn't just for colleges.
00:15:24
Speaker
It's, I think, equally valuable for employers.
00:15:28
Speaker
You know, a lot of kids and growing number may decide that college is no longer the return on investment that it once was.
00:15:35
Speaker
We've got 43% of our recent four-year college graduates underemployed.
00:15:40
Speaker
What does that mean?
00:15:42
Speaker
Too many of them are BA restas, BAR tenders, kids with BAs who aren't earning BA wages and can't pay back their very considerable debts.
00:15:51
Speaker
So I think we're going to find a lot of kids sort of saying, well, you know, maybe not college or maybe not right away.
00:15:58
Speaker
And, you know, I want to get some merit badges that equip me to go out and get a decent job out of high school.
00:16:04
Speaker
That's what Spanish kids do.
00:16:05
Speaker
You know, it's very interesting.
00:16:07
Speaker
Fidlin, which is, I believe, the highest performing education system in the world,
00:16:12
Speaker
gives students a choice beginning in 10th grade.
00:16:15
Speaker
You can follow a conventional academic curriculum, which is very explicitly prepares you for the university, or you can follow a career technical education curriculum, which more particularly prepares you for a job.
00:16:31
Speaker
through internships and mentorships and so on and it also enables you to go to university but the point of the second choice is that you you're really qualified to get a very good job right out of high school and nearly half of all finished kids choose the second uh path and it's and it's not there's no stigma attached to it and you can frequently sort of cross back and forth to which
00:16:58
Speaker
you learn all this material, all the book learning of what is of this and what is of that and taking tests and the history of, but then it's time to put your hands to it.
00:17:06
Speaker
And when the rubber meets the road, you don't have any experience in that field.
00:17:10
Speaker
So all these people ahead of you or behind you rather, who spent their life doing what you were reading about are getting these jobs and you're sitting there frustrated because the only way to get experience is to get a job, but the only way to get a job is to have the experience.
00:17:24
Speaker
So
00:17:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's one of the good news possibilities of this new transcript because kids could do internships as a part of showing or developing a proficiency for one of their merit badges.
Internships and Work Experience Value
00:17:42
Speaker
And schooling suddenly is no longer confined to the classroom or confined to 180 school days a year.
00:17:48
Speaker
You know, it can be summers, it can be vacations, and students can document their learning those times.
00:17:53
Speaker
You know, it's really interesting.
00:17:55
Speaker
Increasingly, employers are saying they really don't care whether or not you have a degree.
00:18:00
Speaker
They want to know about your work experience.
00:18:01
Speaker
They want to know about your internships.
00:18:05
Speaker
And so having internships as a part of your learning, I think, has become incredibly important and is a real competitive advantage for many young people.
00:18:16
Speaker
This work that's being done with the Mastery Consortium, I mean, all of it sounds absolutely fantastic, and I can't wait to see it come to public schools, but I'm curious how and if it's reaching any audience or targets in schools that are from low-income neighborhoods, considering that a lot of times when we see low-income neighborhoods, the schools that enter there are the radical opposite.
Involving Low-Income Schools
00:18:39
Speaker
They're some of the most traditional charter schools.
00:18:41
Speaker
Is there any kind of outreach towards neighborhoods that probably need it most?
00:18:46
Speaker
Not all charter schools that serve economically disadvantaged kids are the so-called no excuses charters.
00:18:53
Speaker
Sure.
00:18:53
Speaker
High Tech High serves kids about 50% on free and reduced.
00:18:58
Speaker
Two-thirds are from minority backgrounds.
00:19:01
Speaker
In fact, there's a consortium called the Deeper Learning Initiative that represents 10 networks of schools that serve predominantly low-income kids.
00:19:13
Speaker
Envisions, Edvisions, and others.
00:19:16
Speaker
And many of them have shown great interest in becoming members of the consortium.
00:19:23
Speaker
In fact, High Tech High, I believe, was one of the very first public charter schools to join this past month.
00:19:29
Speaker
So I'm glad you mentioned High Tech High.
00:19:31
Speaker
Your work that you've done with High Tech High, your documentary and book, most likely to succeed, I kind of wanted to just ask a quick, well, this is not going to be quick at all, but maybe your answer is.
00:19:44
Speaker
No education question conversation really.
00:19:46
Speaker
Yeah, and honestly that's extremely true.
00:19:49
Speaker
Is it possible to convince traditional educators, educators that are seeped in very traditional values, to adopt ideas such as the mastery transcript and letting kids have a great lot of autonomy
00:20:05
Speaker
and power in their learning.
00:20:07
Speaker
What is your response normally to the people that tend to naysay or put down your documentary and book most likely to succeed?
00:20:16
Speaker
You know, I respect their criticisms and skepticism.
00:20:20
Speaker
I've long believed that you've got to listen carefully to the skeptics because frequently there are idealists who've been burned.
00:20:26
Speaker
Whom you don't listen to are the cynics.
00:20:28
Speaker
And there's a real difference.
00:20:29
Speaker
And you can hear it in the tone.
00:20:31
Speaker
But
00:20:32
Speaker
Let's zoom out just a little bit.
00:20:35
Speaker
We are a highly risk averse profession.
00:20:37
Speaker
The temperament of many teachers is to not be risk takers.
00:20:41
Speaker
And that's not a criticism.
00:20:43
Speaker
It's simply an observation.
00:20:45
Speaker
You know, we didn't go into teaching because, you know, we like the thrill of the chase and the high stakes stuff.
00:20:53
Speaker
So that's point one.
00:20:55
Speaker
Point two, all of the ways in which we're trained
00:20:59
Speaker
sort of continues to increase risk aversion.
00:21:02
Speaker
We're isolated in our work, guys.
00:21:05
Speaker
And, you know, isolation is the enemy of innovation.
00:21:08
Speaker
It's the enemy of improvement.
00:21:09
Speaker
Somebody who's isolated alone all day, every day, with no opportunities to bounce things off of peers and colleagues is going to be even more risk averse.
00:21:18
Speaker
Teams will consistently take smarter, more thoughtful risks than will individuals.
00:21:23
Speaker
So it is a structural problem here as well as a problem of disposition or temperament.
00:21:28
Speaker
And finally, you know, we teachers, as I mentioned earlier, teach in the ways we've been taught.
00:21:34
Speaker
That's not our fault.
00:21:35
Speaker
It's all we know.
00:21:36
Speaker
You know, you're not going to change your teaching because you've read a book.
00:21:39
Speaker
I'm sorry, or seen a movie.
00:21:41
Speaker
It's not going to happen.
00:21:42
Speaker
We need many, many more existence groups or laboratories for educational innovation.
Promoting Educational Innovation Labs
00:21:48
Speaker
That's why, you know, I think it's so important to know about high tech high and deeper learning initiative and these other networks, because I see them as doing educational research and development.
00:22:00
Speaker
They need to be far more widely known and understood.
00:22:03
Speaker
Ted Dintersmith, my colleague's new book is called what school could be just out.
00:22:09
Speaker
And what he did was travel to every state in the country with a movie to show it and met the most incredible educators.
00:22:16
Speaker
And his book is a very hopeful kind of, uh, description of many of the interesting and wonderful things that teachers are doing all over this country.
00:22:27
Speaker
The other thing I want to let your folks know, your audience, is that as of today, most likely to succeed is on iTunes.
Documentary Announcement: Most Likely to Succeed
00:22:36
Speaker
Everybody who's been dying to see it and hasn't yet shown it in their school, which they really should, by the way, can now rent it or buy it on iTunes.
00:22:46
Speaker
Final question for you.
00:22:47
Speaker
Is there a particular topic or topics that you think should be standardized?
00:22:51
Speaker
And by topic, I don't mean skills.
00:22:53
Speaker
I mean traditional content.
00:22:55
Speaker
Like, is there a certain thing that you think is useful for everyone that should say the same?
00:23:00
Speaker
Let's talk about the math curriculum.
00:23:02
Speaker
I think having all kids learn
00:23:05
Speaker
algebra or let alone even calculus and all that stuff is a total waste of time because you never use that math in everyday life.
00:23:12
Speaker
Never.
00:23:13
Speaker
Not even engineers use that stuff anymore.
00:23:15
Speaker
I mean, come on, when was the last time you factored a polynomial?
00:23:18
Speaker
Sure.
00:23:18
Speaker
Or solved a quadratic equation, right?
00:23:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:21
Speaker
Having said that, it is to me crystal clear that every student
00:23:28
Speaker
needs to know statistics, probability, estimation, computation, and be financially literate.
00:23:34
Speaker
Sorry, so sorry.
00:23:35
Speaker
One more to branch off that.
00:23:37
Speaker
What is the response when the answer to that is, but as much as I would like to do that, there's state testing.
00:23:44
Speaker
There's mandatory state testing.
00:23:46
Speaker
There's mandatory, you know.
00:23:48
Speaker
Of course we have to talk about that.
00:23:49
Speaker
I mean, I think our accountability systems
00:23:53
Speaker
are the biggest obstacle to innovation.
00:23:56
Speaker
College admissions is a serious obstacle.
00:24:00
Speaker
State testing is even worse because it incents bad teaching.
00:24:05
Speaker
It incents teaching to tests that are predominantly multiple choice, special recall tests that measure absolutely nothing about college, work, or citizenship readiness.
00:24:16
Speaker
They are an abomination.
00:24:18
Speaker
And we've got to...
00:24:20
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really work together as professionals and band together with community leaders, business leaders, and parents to say, we need accountability 2.0.
00:24:29
Speaker
Hold us accountable for what matters most.
00:24:32
Speaker
Hold us accountable for students mastering core competencies instead of passing ridiculous tests.
00:24:40
Speaker
Well, your work is what truly matters.
00:24:43
Speaker
I just write about it.
00:24:44
Speaker
I don't teach anymore.
00:24:46
Speaker
Educators like yourselves who are willing to take risks, willing to collaborate, and willing to try to kind of communicate more broadly to peers who are going to make the real difference.
00:24:55
Speaker
Thank you so much.
00:24:57
Speaker
I've written six books on education.
00:24:59
Speaker
I have no new arguments to make, but I have lots of stories to tell.
00:25:03
Speaker
So, you know, I'm telling the story of how this kid
00:25:07
Speaker
who was told he shouldn't come back to his middle school, was a high school dropout in his senior year, and then dropped out of two colleges before finally finishing and going on to actually get a master's and a doctorate from Harvard.
00:25:21
Speaker
How did that crazy kid, who is me, survive and thrive?
00:25:26
Speaker
So I'm writing a memoir, a story of my early learning as well as my first decade of teaching.
00:25:32
Speaker
And I'm having a blast in it, and I suspect that there are a lot of folks like you who may find something in it of use.
00:25:44
Speaker
Hope you enjoyed this podcast.
00:25:45
Speaker
We want to connect with you and hear your thoughts.
00:25:47
Speaker
Follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Medium, and other social media, and be sure to check us out on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.
00:25:54
Speaker
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