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87: 100 Days of Conversations About School
18 Plays4 years ago
Transcripts can be found via our website, humanrestorationproject.org.
Today's conversation is all about 100 Days of Conversations About School! 100 Days is a project by Human Restoration Project, REENVISIONED, Choice Filled Lives Network, and Cortico's Local Voices Network. Simply stated, 100 Days is catalyzing conversations about school in communities across the country. Featuring young people and adults, these conversations about the good life, the school experience, and equity in education are being compiled, shared, analyzed, and presented. We're taking the findings and presenting them to the new Secretary of Education and policymakers across the country.
The process is designed to center the voices of young people and educators - both in the conversations themselves and in the policy and practice recommendations that emerge from the process. We're seeking educators, young people, and education non-profits who are interested in hosting a conversation in their community.
The entire process takes about 2 hours, including the conversation itself. We supply all the materials, the recording space, and walk you through the conversation. Simply go to 100DaysofConversations.org, sign up, gather 2-8 folks, 2 of whom are below the age of 24, choose a time, and host the conversation. We'll take everything from there!
Afterwards, you'll not only get to participate in an important process but also receive a transcript and categorical analysis of what happened - which is so important in figuring out how to reimagine our educational system. It's one thing for us to belabor on the importance of changing ed - yet we must include young people as the most important voices in the conversation.
GUESTS
Dr. Erin Raab, chief strategy and impact officer for Choice Filled Lives Network and co-founder of REENVISIONED who focused her PhD on transforming schooling from competitions and tests to human flourishing and collective liberation
The 100 Days Social Media Team (Olivia Chiang, Summer Freed, Léa Henaux, which also includes Nontobeko Mdlalose)
RESOURCES
- 100 Days of Conversations Website and Sign Up
- 100 Days Facilitation Guide
- 100 Days Analysis Overview
FURTHER LISTENING
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Acknowledgments
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to episode 87 of our podcast at Human Restoration Project.
00:00:14
Speaker
My name is Chris McNutt, and I'm a high school digital media instructor from Ohio.
00:00:18
Speaker
Before we get started, I want to let you know that this is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Jennifer Mann, Abigail French, and Tegan Morton.
00:00:25
Speaker
Thank you for your ongoing
About Human Restoration Project
00:00:26
Speaker
support.
00:00:26
Speaker
You can learn more about Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, or find us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
100 Days of Conversations Project
00:00:49
Speaker
Today's conversation is all about 100 days of conversations about school.
00:00:53
Speaker
100 days is a project by Human Restoration Project, Re-Envision Ed, Choice Filled Lives Network, and Cortico's Local Voices Network.
00:01:00
Speaker
Simply stated, 100 days is catalyzing conversations about school and communities across the country.
00:01:06
Speaker
Featuring young people and adults, these conversations about the good life, the school experience, and equity in education are being compiled, shared, analyzed, and presented.
00:01:14
Speaker
We're taking the findings and presenting them to the new Secretary of Education and policy makers across the country.
How to Host Conversations
00:01:19
Speaker
The process is designed to center the voices of young people and educators, both in the conversations themselves and the policy and practice recommendations that emerge from the process.
00:01:28
Speaker
We're seeking educators, young people, and education nonprofits who are interested in hosting a conversation in their community.
00:01:34
Speaker
The entire process takes about two hours, including the conversation itself.
00:01:37
Speaker
We supply all the materials, the recording space, and walk you through the conversation step by step.
00:01:42
Speaker
Simply go to 100daysofconversations.org, sign up, gather about two to eight folks, two of whom are below the age of 24, choose a time, and host the conversation.
Importance of Youth Voices
00:01:52
Speaker
We take everything from there.
00:01:54
Speaker
Afterwards, you'll not only get to participate in an important process, but also receive a transcript and categorical analysis of what happened.
00:02:01
Speaker
which is so important in figuring out how to reimagine our educational system.
00:02:05
Speaker
It's one thing for us to belabor on the importance of changing education, yet we have to include young people as the most important people in that conversation.
00:02:12
Speaker
On today's podcast, we have Dr. Erin Robb, Chief Strategy and Impact Officer for Choice-Filled Lives Network and co-founder of Re-Envisioned, who focused her PhD on transforming school from competitions and tests to human flourishing and collective liberation.
00:02:24
Speaker
And we also have our entire social media team for 100 days of conversations, whom you'll meet shortly.
00:02:28
Speaker
Erin, we're just going to start off with you.
00:02:31
Speaker
What is the purpose of the project?
00:02:32
Speaker
What do you hope to see?
Project's Goals and Societal Impact
00:02:34
Speaker
What are your aspirations?
00:02:35
Speaker
Just tell us about the project.
00:02:37
Speaker
100 Days of Conversations comes out of really this moment of multiple crises that we're facing as a society right now, not just the pandemic and our healthcare system, but in our democracy, in our schooling system, in our social safety net.
00:02:57
Speaker
And thinking about the fact that we are
00:03:01
Speaker
moving into a moment that brings us beyond triage.
00:03:05
Speaker
We've really been in this moment of trying to address the crises most directly and dealing with the most urgent effects of all of these crises.
00:03:15
Speaker
But we have this moment, particularly with schooling, to think about
00:03:21
Speaker
If we are looking at heading back to quote unquote normal in the next school year, what can we learn out of this moment that allows us to go back to a new kind of normal, not the old normal for schooling?
00:03:37
Speaker
And so 100 Days of Conversations aims to catalyze community conversations all across the country during this first 100 days of the new administration.
00:03:48
Speaker
And the idea is to have people who work together already really get to reflect deeply and listen to one another about what it is we want next, what we've learned out of this moment, and what we really want for our lives and our communities going forward.
00:04:11
Speaker
The process is designed so that the voices of young people and of educators and of families are really centered throughout that process.
00:04:21
Speaker
And it's intergenerational.
00:04:23
Speaker
So the idea is that
00:04:25
Speaker
I always think of this as being that the elder generation holds a lot of wisdom from lived experience, and I kind of put myself
Student Experiences and Perspectives
00:04:34
Speaker
in this generation.
00:04:34
Speaker
And then young people bring the possibility of renewal, of new ways of thinking, and that those really need to be brought together if we're going to be able to move forward in new and better ways.
00:04:49
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, how often do we actually get to hear a conversation at length from people that we don't know who are just regular people attending school, teaching in school, being a parent to kids at school, community members, etc.
00:05:03
Speaker
It's very rare.
00:05:04
Speaker
And by listening to these conversations, the thing that surprised me most was just
00:05:08
Speaker
I don't think I've ever heard a student talk at length about really anything outside of my own students.
00:05:15
Speaker
I don't have kids.
00:05:16
Speaker
So it's just fascinating to hear someone else's perspective to either think the same things I think or offer something that I would have
Social Media Team Insights
00:05:26
Speaker
never thought of before.
00:05:27
Speaker
And it helps us think about, well, what will we change in the future?
00:05:29
Speaker
What can we do?
00:05:31
Speaker
What initiatives can we act on as a result of these conversations, which is where we'll take it further?
00:05:36
Speaker
We'll get that in a second.
00:05:38
Speaker
But I do want to introduce our social media team.
00:05:42
Speaker
So we're going to go around, talk about who you are, why you joined the conversation, and just, you know, what has your experience been like so far in this process?
00:05:53
Speaker
I know some of you have hosted conversations.
00:05:55
Speaker
You could talk about that.
00:05:56
Speaker
Just, you know, run with it.
00:05:58
Speaker
So I'm Leah, and I actually heard about 100 days through my school community portal, where one of
00:06:07
Speaker
the professors at my school posted about it.
00:06:09
Speaker
And I thought it was really interesting and I did some research and then I saw that it was a good opportunity for me to learn more about education and especially the U.S. educational system, which I don't know much about as a European student.
00:06:23
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So I thought it was a good opportunity to know about that and to hear a lot of different voices.
00:06:28
Speaker
I've always been very passionate about education.
00:06:31
Speaker
I've had the chance to have a really great education myself and I've always helped in classrooms and I've been surrounded by educators my whole life because of my parents.
00:06:40
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And so I thought this was a good opportunity to kind of hear everyone's voices, especially youth voices, hear the different perspectives and to see how
00:06:52
Speaker
like what you can make out of these new perspectives and what can come out of it.
00:06:57
Speaker
And then I actually hosted a conversation and that was a really, really interesting and fun experience.
00:07:04
Speaker
I mean, it was with my friends.
00:07:06
Speaker
So I think that made it even more interesting because it was, we talked about stuff that we don't talk about on a daily, or if we do, we never spend a whole hour
00:07:17
Speaker
going into detail about education, what that means to us and what we hope to see in the future.
00:07:22
Speaker
So really having a platform and the time to do that helped us get to know each other a lot better and just opened my eyes to a lot of the opinions that my classmates have and to a lot of similarities that we have, but also the differences that we had in our past educational system.
00:07:39
Speaker
And I think all of them were doing a lot of cool work in education as well.
00:07:44
Speaker
So I learned a lot about that.
00:07:46
Speaker
I'm so curious, like where did the conversation take you?
00:07:48
Speaker
What stood out to you?
00:07:50
Speaker
So one of my friends actually is working on a project of this nonprofit organization here in San Francisco.
00:07:57
Speaker
And their goal is to help teachers, is to create a platform that helps teachers teach better during these new like COVID times.
00:08:07
Speaker
And so they've been doing a lot of research into what it is that children need to learn online and what it's missing with students.
00:08:16
Speaker
online teaching and how we can help translate that to teachers.
00:08:20
Speaker
And so the conclusion that was drawn on to that is that it's the community aspect that's really missing and the community aspect, like a classroom and being all together and just having private moments with your professors or teachers.
00:08:34
Speaker
And that's what we can't really get online.
00:08:36
Speaker
And so it was really interesting to see the ways that they were trying to overcome that issue.
00:08:42
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's so interesting, isn't it?
00:08:44
Speaker
I think a common theme has emerged so far from the conversations I've listened to in these first few has been that that concept of a third space for students.
00:08:54
Speaker
Many adults will have like the coffee shop or the library, the place that they go where they can just go hang out and be with their friends or, you know, do some kind of recreational thing.
00:09:02
Speaker
School.
00:09:03
Speaker
is that place for a lot of people.
00:09:06
Speaker
And the question has to become, well, one, how do we figure out how to make sure that's the space for all people?
00:09:11
Speaker
Because not everyone feels that way.
00:09:13
Speaker
But then two, in the instance where we shift to online or online works better for some people, et cetera, how can we maintain a third space in electronic format?
00:09:22
Speaker
Because I think it's possible.
00:09:24
Speaker
There were a few conversations where people shared, like connecting with people via Zoom and watching stuff together and being with their teacher and just hanging out online.
00:09:32
Speaker
There's a lot we can take away from that.
00:09:34
Speaker
It'll be really interesting to figure out, you know, what's shared.
Student Engagement in Education and Politics
00:09:39
Speaker
Let's move over to Olivia.
00:09:40
Speaker
Hi, I'm Olivia Chang.
00:09:43
Speaker
I'm a high school student in the Bay Area.
00:09:45
Speaker
And what initially drew me to 100 Days of Conversation was
00:09:50
Speaker
two things.
00:09:51
Speaker
One was the educational aspect and one was the conversation aspect.
00:09:55
Speaker
So for the educational aspect, I was really interested in equity in education.
00:10:00
Speaker
And I really wanted to hear about like other student and teacher perspectives on the issues in education.
00:10:06
Speaker
And through listening to conversations and having conversations of my own, I've realized that
00:10:11
Speaker
A lot of people don't have the same resources.
00:10:14
Speaker
Students really want to learn life skills in school and also that we need a lot more learning accommodations for different learning styles in students, especially during quarantine where some people have to stay home and everything is online.
00:10:28
Speaker
It gets really difficult to have like a standard or a good education.
00:10:32
Speaker
And then the other thing was conversations.
00:10:35
Speaker
So something that I've been really interested in throughout high school or the beginning of my high school experience is polarization.
00:10:43
Speaker
And one thing that I think 100 Days of Conversation really helps to address is that I feel that a lot of teens my age don't have the core skill to have a discussion.
00:10:53
Speaker
And a lot of the time when I talk with other students,
00:10:57
Speaker
students and other friends of mine about politics.
00:11:01
Speaker
They immediately get really defensive.
00:11:03
Speaker
And sometimes I don't know when I should speak or when something is too political, for example, that I don't feel comfortable to share my opinion.
00:11:13
Speaker
So I think learning that core skill of discussion is really important.
00:11:17
Speaker
And through hosting conversations, I agree with Leah.
00:11:21
Speaker
I feel like
00:11:22
Speaker
I got so much closer with the people that I actually talked to, especially since they were already my friends, but I really never talked about political issues with them as much.
00:11:33
Speaker
And so I really got to hear their perspectives.
00:11:34
Speaker
I really got to learn from them a lot.
00:11:37
Speaker
Being able to hear others' perspectives about things in an at-length conversation, I think, is needed now more than ever.
00:11:43
Speaker
It's one thing to be on social media and have your 240-character hot take.
00:11:48
Speaker
But when you dive deeper into that discussion, you actually hear what people have to say.
00:11:52
Speaker
For the most part, not always, but for the most part, people relate on a pretty deep level about most core issues.
00:11:58
Speaker
And being able to hear that means a lot.
00:12:01
Speaker
The process itself has a healing property to it for us to learn from each other.
00:12:05
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely agree.
00:12:07
Speaker
I think on social media, a lot of the time, we're like really pressured to have a certain political view, especially where I live right now, which is California and the school that I go to.
00:12:18
Speaker
I think many times a lot of people around me have the same political view and like the other political views are really stifled.
00:12:26
Speaker
And it's hard to really talk about politics unless you're in a comfortable, open space.
Driving Change Through Conversations
00:12:30
Speaker
For sure.
00:12:30
Speaker
For sure.
00:12:32
Speaker
Summer, let's toss it over to you.
00:12:33
Speaker
I'm Summer Freed, and I've worked in social media for about six years now in various capacities with nonprofits, student groups, and then currently in a more corporate setting.
00:12:44
Speaker
Really, the idea of using conversations in this kind of organized manner and then to synthesize that, create change going forward, that's something that was really exciting to me.
00:12:55
Speaker
When I was in college, I got a minor in leadership at the
00:13:00
Speaker
a lot of what we kind of covered was, had to do with conversations and asking questions and how that can kind of change people's opinions and how you're going to get a different result if you have a conversation with someone rather than if you just send out a survey.
00:13:15
Speaker
Kind of that idea of getting a pulse check on where are people right now?
00:13:18
Speaker
Like, what are people doing in school?
00:13:20
Speaker
What are they feeling through these conversations rather than just a survey?
00:13:25
Speaker
That was really exciting to me and made me very interested in this project.
00:13:28
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely come out.
00:13:31
Speaker
We'll eventually be publishing like excerpts of these.
00:13:33
Speaker
You can follow our social media accounts and hear what people have to say.
00:13:36
Speaker
And the themes are definitely emerging of this, I guess, human centered educational experience where people want to feel listened to and they want to feel welcomed.
00:13:44
Speaker
And many of them are advocating for that and they want to see that.
00:13:48
Speaker
Before we move on to the next part, we do have one other social media member who can't be here because it's like midnight or 1 a.m.
00:13:53
Speaker
in her time.
00:13:54
Speaker
Yeah, her name is Nonto Mshalose.
00:13:57
Speaker
And Nonto and I used to live in South Africa.
00:14:01
Speaker
And she was one of my students back in the day and is now interested in education and wanted to get involved in this project to learn more about this process and about our education system.
00:14:16
Speaker
Right.
00:14:16
Speaker
I mean, there's an intentional shift here as well systemically to ensure that student voice is not just a side note in the project, but literal a part of the systemic way that we operate what it is that we're doing.
00:14:31
Speaker
So being able to have you all here, honestly, like makes the entire project.
00:14:35
Speaker
It's how we do the things that we're doing and ensure that we're not going in a separate direction from this multi-generational component.
00:14:44
Speaker
So, Aaron, let's talk about that process.
00:14:46
Speaker
Let's talk about what it means to have a conversation by, you know, learning from each other, by talking with each other.
00:14:52
Speaker
Why is it important that we have these conversations at length with both young people and elders, as you referred to them?
00:15:02
Speaker
I know, do I get to count as an elder?
00:15:04
Speaker
I'm not sure.
00:15:05
Speaker
All the generations, all the generations coming together.
00:15:11
Speaker
Yeah, there are really, there are two levels to this process, right?
00:15:15
Speaker
The high level is this idea of the macro of getting everybody to have a conversation, being able to bring those ideas together into shared visions, common themes in this moment of
00:15:27
Speaker
intense division to Olivia's point, right, where there's a lot of partisanship.
00:15:33
Speaker
What do we have in common?
00:15:34
Speaker
What can we pull out that we actually can build on together?
00:15:37
Speaker
So there's this high level, everyone has conversations, we're going to pull that out for policy recommendations and practice recommendations at the end.
00:15:44
Speaker
But then I think the most powerful thing about this process really is that other level is the micro level is the fact that this is designed to
00:15:55
Speaker
at the community level to get people really talking with one another.
00:15:58
Speaker
And that's up a couple of different beliefs about experience that come out of some of my work in social psychology and, and their understandings of humans and behavior change.
00:16:09
Speaker
Um,
00:16:10
Speaker
but it's the transformative power of being able to take time and space for true deep reflection and, and that being deeply listened to is in and of itself healing and allows for new ways of seeing the world.
00:16:26
Speaker
Um,
00:16:27
Speaker
We think that on the whole, again, to Olivia's point, that we are out of practice and that actually we are out of practice of having deep conversations.
00:16:37
Speaker
We're on this, to your point, the 240 character count discussions and issues are nuanced.
00:16:46
Speaker
Experiences are diverse.
Feeling Heard in School Environments
00:16:48
Speaker
And to really be able to move us forward together, we need to have practice in democratic deliberation.
00:16:54
Speaker
So this is a way of creating that practice
00:16:57
Speaker
across the country.
00:16:58
Speaker
And then the third part, I think, to the design of the experience itself is that the questions are designed to be what in poetry they might call beautiful questions.
00:17:10
Speaker
They're not questions about, hey, what would you change about your lunchtime at school?
00:17:17
Speaker
Or, you know, what's going wrong at your school?
00:17:22
Speaker
How would you change high school?
00:17:24
Speaker
They start out with questions of
00:17:27
Speaker
What's a good life?
00:17:29
Speaker
How do we think about what makes a thriving community?
00:17:32
Speaker
What is the role of school in helping to create those good lives and those good communities?
00:17:38
Speaker
And there is a power to asking questions that, first of all, there is no right answer to.
00:17:43
Speaker
Second of all, as you all brought up, that we just don't talk about very often, but actually are core to our human experience in our lives.
00:17:55
Speaker
And that offer us the opportunity to think of new ways and new ways of getting there.
00:18:00
Speaker
That's not the tactic.
00:18:01
Speaker
It's the vision, right?
00:18:04
Speaker
So I think those are.
00:18:05
Speaker
And then I think to your point, Chris, that this whole process centers young people in the conversation.
00:18:15
Speaker
And I think we don't do that enough, particularly considering young people are the ones experiencing school.
00:18:20
Speaker
It blows my mind to think about how little we actually hear about the experience directly from people having it in our school redesign.
00:18:28
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that whole concept of feeling deeply listening to and having conversations at school at length.
00:18:34
Speaker
I'm curious from our any of our social media folks.
00:18:40
Speaker
Do you feel deeply listened to in school?
00:18:42
Speaker
I mean, many of you are either in school or recently out of K-12.
00:18:48
Speaker
Do you feel deeply listened to?
00:18:50
Speaker
Well, I'm in high school right now, and I'm really appreciative that my school really listens to student voice and has a lot of student-led discussions about the school.
00:19:00
Speaker
And I really enjoy, especially in quarantine, the school has constantly been adjusting and changing to accommodate for teachers, students, parents opinions about how school is going.
00:19:13
Speaker
And they have school-wide surveys to ask how, for example, at-home learning is going.
00:19:19
Speaker
And I really appreciate that.
Surveys vs. Conversations for Feedback
00:19:21
Speaker
And I think that that's really important for people to have that since education can really influence your whole life and influence your job, influence your family and everything.
00:19:31
Speaker
And that connects back to what Erin said about how school can really dictate a good life and a good community.
00:19:38
Speaker
So I think that's one of the reasons that I'm really interested in education.
00:19:42
Speaker
It's that equity part and how just having a good education can really dictate where your life goes.
00:19:49
Speaker
I was thinking that in my high school, I thought we were very listened to, I thought, and they also had a lot of surveys and it was a really a process to try and make it better.
00:20:02
Speaker
But then when I came to my university, which is a completely different teaching style, I realized that there's a lot more that they could do to feel, to make us feel listened to because here, every single activity that we have, every single professor or teacher,
00:20:18
Speaker
event that we go to, there's some kind of way for us to give our opinions about it.
00:20:22
Speaker
There's some kind of way for us to kind of shape the process for the next year.
00:20:26
Speaker
And so our school is actively seeking our opinions all the time.
00:20:30
Speaker
Sometimes it feels a bit overwhelming because you don't think that you specifically have an opinion on this one particular event you went to, but they do.
00:20:38
Speaker
And they always ask us about it.
00:20:40
Speaker
And I think that the fact that they're actively asking us enables us to feel a lot more safe
00:20:47
Speaker
than sharing our opinions, whether it be good or bad, and a lot more safe to provide some critical aspects and constructive criticism.
00:20:59
Speaker
So I definitely think that it's something that all schools should try to actively seek.
00:21:04
Speaker
And you could probably start doing that from six or seven years old, just asking kids how they feel in the classroom or what they would like to see happening differently.
00:21:14
Speaker
And it's just little questions that make them feel
00:21:17
Speaker
listen to and you might not realize have a big impact later on.
00:21:21
Speaker
For sure.
00:21:23
Speaker
You're talking my language.
00:21:25
Speaker
I mean, you could walk into the classroom tomorrow with a Google form and just have essential questions like, do you feel listened to here?
00:21:31
Speaker
Do you feel safe here?
00:21:32
Speaker
How can I help you better?
00:21:34
Speaker
These questions that both range from an academic perspective of, you know, am I teaching you effectively to like a social emotional well-being perspective?
00:21:42
Speaker
perspective, whereas do you feel like you're treated in a fair way, that kind of stuff.
00:21:47
Speaker
And when you hear that kind of feedback, that really is what guides your next steps.
00:21:52
Speaker
And when you have this power of deep listening, where you hear from a lot of students at once and kind of a critical way, but in a meaningful way, it helps guide your practice a lot better than probably most books will or research studies.
00:22:07
Speaker
It will directly inform what you can do next.
00:22:11
Speaker
Before I move on, Summer, did you have any thoughts?
00:22:13
Speaker
I think it's really interesting hearing from both of you that you did feel pretty, like, listened to a degree in high school, since that was not really my experience.
00:22:22
Speaker
And for context, I graduated from high school in 2013.
00:22:24
Speaker
So I don't know if stuff has changed there since then.
00:22:29
Speaker
But kind of like you were saying, Leah, at a pretty young age in elementary school, that was, like, before college, that was kind of the last time that I remember having
00:22:41
Speaker
collaborative sort of discussions like, okay, what kind of environment do we want in our classroom?
Effects of Educational Experiences on Inclusion
00:22:47
Speaker
What topics are you interested?
00:22:48
Speaker
What do you want to study?
00:22:50
Speaker
And then once I got to middle school and high school, it was kind of, I don't remember at all ever really being asked kind of what I thought about the experience.
00:23:02
Speaker
So yeah, very interesting to hear that that's sort of the stuff you're having.
00:23:06
Speaker
Yeah, that was my experience for context.
00:23:10
Speaker
I graduated
00:23:11
Speaker
Not that long before.
00:23:12
Speaker
2009, I graduated high school.
00:23:14
Speaker
So yeah, I don't know.
00:23:15
Speaker
Maybe someone was in the water before like 2013.
00:23:17
Speaker
But based off of conversations I've had with most educators, I think that's... Oh my gosh, Chris, you're a baby.
00:23:23
Speaker
I am, I'm young, yeah.
00:23:25
Speaker
30 this year.
00:23:27
Speaker
Can I ask one follow-up question?
00:23:29
Speaker
I'm wondering, I think Summer, you're still working on hosting a conversation, but for Leia and Olivia, what was the difference for you
00:23:39
Speaker
Between the conversation that you had with 100 Days of Conversations and the experience you have right now of being regularly listened to through surveys, et cetera, was there any difference?
00:23:50
Speaker
Or what do you think is the, there's probably values and pros and cons for both?
00:23:54
Speaker
I think that a survey doesn't get to the heart of the matter as much as a conversation might.
00:24:00
Speaker
And you don't, sometimes you fill in a survey because you have to.
00:24:04
Speaker
And well, this conversation is something that you're,
00:24:08
Speaker
everyone is really participating in because they want to be heard.
00:24:11
Speaker
And so although a survey is a good way to get some opinions, I think it doesn't get as many deeper and more meaningful opinions that a conversation might.
00:24:22
Speaker
And conversations also, yeah, a survey is a one-way streak.
00:24:28
Speaker
So a conversation, actually, you bounce off each other's ideas and you make some connections and you
00:24:36
Speaker
listen to other people.
00:24:37
Speaker
And so from that listening, there can be more, I don't know, like active engagement and more, more can come out of it, I think, than a simple survey, a survey would be good, because you can get opinions from a lot of people.
00:24:52
Speaker
but I don't think that you would get as much depth.
00:24:55
Speaker
Yeah, I agree.
00:24:56
Speaker
I think that especially with having a conversation, it allows everyone to reflect on their own education, but also what they can do to improve their education and to improve education for others.
00:25:08
Speaker
So I think being able to listen to other people and really having a time to think allows you to time to just think about
00:25:16
Speaker
just education, not about school lunch or anything like that, like a focused conversation.
00:25:23
Speaker
And also, I agree that especially with surveys, it's centered around one specific topic.
00:25:31
Speaker
For example, what should the school lunch be?
00:25:34
Speaker
Or how can a certain conversation change in the classroom?
00:25:39
Speaker
But just having an
Encouraging Open Dialogue in Schools
00:25:41
Speaker
open-ended conversation where you can, like Leia said, bounce off ideas and
00:25:46
Speaker
Think critically really allows for a bunch of different solutions and a bunch of different issues to be addressed.
00:25:53
Speaker
Right.
00:25:54
Speaker
There's nuance.
00:25:55
Speaker
It's kind of like the exact same way that if you take a multiple choice test,
00:25:59
Speaker
it's definitely a lot quicker.
00:26:01
Speaker
But if you have a conversation with someone about what it is that they know, chances are they know a lot more than they're putting on the paper.
00:26:07
Speaker
So it allows us to engage in a much more complex, meaningful thing.
00:26:12
Speaker
That's not to say that surveys are bad.
00:26:14
Speaker
It's just that there's a reason for both, for both reasons.
00:26:18
Speaker
I have one more question for you, Summer, which is thinking back, or even right now, if you had a conversation with your friends from high school, how do you think the 100 days of conversations would go?
00:26:27
Speaker
Like, what do you think would be brought up?
00:26:29
Speaker
So, okay, backtracking a little bit.
00:26:31
Speaker
I attended a public magnet school for the last few years of elementary school, which is where I made the friends who then were my friends through the end of high school, essentially.
00:26:43
Speaker
And I think kind of seeing that difference between from the slightly more collaborative and, you know, asking students what they're interested in shift to middle school.
00:26:56
Speaker
I remember that was...
00:26:58
Speaker
kind of a culture shock for some of us.
00:27:00
Speaker
I remember like teachers saying, it's like, oh, those Athenium kids, they don't know how to raise their hand.
00:27:05
Speaker
Cause we came from like having discussions to, you know, raise your hand to answer the question.
00:27:11
Speaker
So I'm curious to see if people wanted like that sort of environment to continue and kind of like what Olivia and Leah, you've said about not having conversations about education until you had a reason to.
00:27:27
Speaker
I don't know.
00:27:29
Speaker
Yeah, I don't really know what people wanted or what people would have liked to see.
00:27:32
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm really not sure.
00:27:34
Speaker
And I kind of want to have that conversation with them now just to see how everybody else felt about our high school experience.
00:27:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's a meta point to be made right now, which is by not having the conversation and by having a fairly restrictive school environment that doesn't open to those conversations, you have no idea.
00:27:53
Speaker
They might have liked it.
00:27:54
Speaker
They might have not.
00:27:57
Speaker
But I would imagine that just by going through the process, you're going to at least welcome a more positive reaction to someone's schooling experience, despite anything else that might be going on.
Partnership with Local Voices Network
00:28:08
Speaker
So it's fascinating, right?
00:28:09
Speaker
It's really interesting.
00:28:11
Speaker
Let's move into, Aaron, the post-conversation.
00:28:15
Speaker
So we've had the conversation, the process is really cool.
00:28:19
Speaker
And afterwards, we've made a fantastic partnership with Local Voices Network, which is through Cortico, to analyze the conversations.
00:28:25
Speaker
What will educators, students, community members be able to do with those tools?
00:28:29
Speaker
What are they used for?
00:28:30
Speaker
This is such a cool partnership and really allows us to take this project to the next level.
00:28:35
Speaker
I think there are two things that come out of the Local Voices Network partnership.
00:28:41
Speaker
First of all, they have an AI transcription software.
00:28:44
Speaker
So when you sign up, you sign up to partner, then you find a few young people and a few adults and you get together.
00:28:54
Speaker
You pick a time and you sign up on our Calendly basically for a time, which will send you automatically a Zoom link that auto records the conversation.
00:29:03
Speaker
That way you don't have to deal with downloading or uploading or kind of figuring out how to deal with the auto files.
00:29:10
Speaker
That gets uploaded to Local Voices Network and it auto transcribes it.
00:29:17
Speaker
We are going to have a collection of hundreds of these conversations and their transcripts from all across the country.
00:29:23
Speaker
And having those transcripts means that we can analyze them.
00:29:26
Speaker
I'm a qualitative researcher by training.
00:29:28
Speaker
I have my PhD in education.
00:29:30
Speaker
Is that we can analyze them for themes.
00:29:33
Speaker
We can look at what comes out of this in terms of saying something meaningful.
00:29:40
Speaker
from everybody's conversations.
00:29:42
Speaker
But even more exciting to me is that Local Voices Network allows us to democratize the meaning making process.
00:29:51
Speaker
And I know as a researcher that
00:29:54
Speaker
The power is really in whoever gets to say what was important about what came out of the conversation afterwards,
Analyzing Conversations for Insights
00:30:03
Speaker
right?
00:30:03
Speaker
That's where the real power lies is who gets to say what was important.
00:30:08
Speaker
And what's amazing about this is every single participant gets access to those transcripts and they can go in, make highlights.
00:30:16
Speaker
We're going to have a couple of workshops along the way for analyzing and highlighting and making meaning out of the conversations, which means that
00:30:24
Speaker
young people, families, and educators throughout the entire process will be involved in saying what was important about what came out of their conversations, which then can inform our policy and practice recommendations.
00:30:37
Speaker
Also just looks really cool.
00:30:40
Speaker
It has the ability, even if you're not someone that has a research background, that the AI actually figures out the core themes.
00:30:48
Speaker
Like it will tell you, hey, this is what they were focusing on here.
00:30:51
Speaker
They were talking about like the environment in this section.
00:30:55
Speaker
And you can easily find that in different parts of the thing.
00:30:58
Speaker
It might not come to the conclusion for you.
00:31:00
Speaker
But it will certainly give you the overall topics and make it easy to figure out what's going on, as well as those conversation highlights can be shared not only with the people in the conversation, but they work like Google Docs.
00:31:12
Speaker
So you can share them out, show them to other people.
00:31:15
Speaker
On this podcast, I tend to be very critical of ed tech because of some interesting data policies and a lot of neoliberal gains.
00:31:23
Speaker
But I will say that based off of Cortico's data consent policy, our own data consent policy,
00:31:30
Speaker
There's nothing weird being shared.
00:31:31
Speaker
You can opt out at any time.
00:31:32
Speaker
We only collect first name, last initial.
00:31:35
Speaker
All the conversations are private on the platform until someone shares them out, like a section of it, I should say.
00:31:41
Speaker
And again, the core component of this is giving the tools to students and educators to share their own ideas, as opposed to us taking this data and selling it to
Ethical Use of Conversation Data
00:31:51
Speaker
someone.
00:31:51
Speaker
In fact, the data that we're collecting is non-commercial.
00:31:54
Speaker
It can't be sold.
00:31:55
Speaker
So by contributing to this effort, not only can you kind of participate in the larger 100 days of conversations initiative, you can also focus just on your school, you could collect, you know, 10 conversations at your school and analyze them yourselves and see what comes out of it for free, which is pretty darn interesting.
00:32:12
Speaker
Yeah, I think that brings up a great point, Chris, because we're working with a number of communities and statewide efforts where people really want like a whole district wants to think about their family engagement and student engagement process through this process.
00:32:29
Speaker
And so they're hosting multiple conversations and then we're going to help them with their batch of conversation at the end of that to make sense of it.
00:32:36
Speaker
I think the other thing that's important, which you touched on, is that we have a consent policy, and it's very clear, and that every single participant needs to be part of it.
00:32:44
Speaker
We thought a lot about making sure
00:32:46
Speaker
Again, the power is in the hands of participants.
00:32:49
Speaker
So everybody has access to that in advance, but also signs it before starting so that they know that only their first name and last initial can be shared, that kind of what this can be used for, which is basically only exactly what we've told you all, which is these goals of this project, right?
00:33:09
Speaker
Which I think that was...
00:33:11
Speaker
Both of us from different lenses care a lot about making sure that our consent and data policy processes are clear and
00:33:19
Speaker
well informed and protective.
00:33:21
Speaker
Right.
00:33:21
Speaker
I mean, the future of ed tech is using technology to democratize and make a better future as opposed to making a profit.
Engagement and Participation Call
00:33:27
Speaker
And this conversation piece is meant to do just that.
00:33:30
Speaker
We're here just to listen to people and we're using some tech tools in order to do so.
00:33:35
Speaker
That's the best of both worlds.
00:33:38
Speaker
I'm sure that works.
00:33:40
Speaker
So with that being said, does anyone else have anything to add?
00:33:42
Speaker
Have we missed anything?
00:33:43
Speaker
Anything you want to throw out there?
00:33:45
Speaker
I think just getting the
00:33:48
Speaker
Yeah, the input of people who are currently in the system, currently experiencing school is super important because even in this conversation, I realized, wow, I've been out of school for a long time.
00:34:00
Speaker
I barely remember what was going on there.
00:34:02
Speaker
And especially with technology and everything changing so fast, it's essential to kind of have those opinions and see what it's like from the inside because I don't think it's possible to really
00:34:19
Speaker
to still what that experience is without hearing from people who are experiencing it.
00:34:23
Speaker
I think another thing about the benefit of just having a conversation is going back to the self-reflecting thing, just being able to see what you'd want to change in the educational process and then giving your opinion will help other people's education become better and also your own become better.
00:34:43
Speaker
So just even thinking about education and thinking about
00:34:47
Speaker
what's good in your education, what some other people may not experience and some things that you think would better your education.
00:34:55
Speaker
And having, if you have the resources to have this conversation, you can definitely help other people in the process.
00:35:07
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to Human Restoration Projects podcast.
00:35:10
Speaker
I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education.
00:35:14
Speaker
You can learn more about progressive education, support our cause, and stay tuned to this podcast and other updates on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.