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114: Showcase: Sora Schools (Online PBL)
12 Plays2 years ago
This is our second “spotlight series” episode where we’re reaching out to schools who are doing intriguing progressive practices that could inspire and influence others to do the same. Each has a twist on how their school is operated, and we’re bringing in students and teachers to talk about it. They’re not all perfect, and they’d all acknowledge there are things they’d change; but there’s so much to learn from these schools as we reimagine education in our communities.
We are joined by students and faculty from Sora Schools, a 7-12 online-only school currently enrolling students in the United States. They're in their third year of operation. Sora prides itself on its project-based curriculum that centers fun, intriguing activities for students, anywhere.
The school is entirely online with a unique schedule that highlights possibilities of virtual spaces. What made Sora Schools stand out to me were the pedagogical shifts they were making as a result of being online. As we highlight in our Virtual Learning Handbook: teaching a remote class can actually bring about community and intriguing pedagogical shifts — it doesn’t have to simply be isolation and replication of what people had to do in-person! Sora is using this virtual space for some really innovative work.
To learn more, we’re talking today with Keegan, an 8th grader at Sora; Angela Anskis, a humanities expert at Sora; and Garrett Smiley, the CEO and co-founder.
*About halfway through this episode I had a new audio setup...so apologies for the random quality difference! The content is stellar still. :)
SCHOOL
Sora Schools, a virtual, project-based school for students in the United States
RESOURCES
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Acknowledgments
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 114 of our podcast.
00:00:05
Speaker
My name is Chris McNutt and I'm part of the progressive education nonprofit Human Restoration Project.
00:00:10
Speaker
Before we get started, I want to let you know this is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Darren Uskianowski, Shannon Oliviera, and Jan Galeeb.
00:00:20
Speaker
Thank you for your ongoing support.
Human Restoration Project Overview
00:00:21
Speaker
You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, or find us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
Spotlight Series Introduction
00:00:42
Speaker
This is our second Spotlight Series episode, where we're reaching out to schools who are doing intriguing progressive practices that could both inspire and influence others to do the same.
Featuring Sora Schools
00:00:51
Speaker
Each has a twist on how their school is operated, and we're bringing in students and teachers to talk about it.
00:00:55
Speaker
They're not all perfect, and I think that they acknowledge that there are ways they could change, but there's so much to learn from these schools as we reimagine education in our communities.
00:01:04
Speaker
Today, we're featuring Sora Schools, a project-based online middle and high school.
00:01:08
Speaker
Sora prides itself on its project-based curriculum that centers fun, intriguing ideas for students anywhere in the United States.
00:01:15
Speaker
The entire school is online with a unique schedule that highlights the possibilities of virtual spaces.
00:01:20
Speaker
What made Sora Schools stand out to me were the pedagogical shifts they were making as a result of being online.
00:01:27
Speaker
As we highlight in our virtual learning handbook, teaching a remote class can actually bring about community and lead to a lot of pedagogical shifts.
00:01:34
Speaker
It doesn't simply have to be isolation or replication of what people are already doing in person.
00:01:39
Speaker
Sora is taking this virtual space and using it for innovative work.
00:01:43
Speaker
Students have two different learning environments.
00:01:45
Speaker
There's expeditions and individualized projects.
00:01:49
Speaker
Expeditions are unique courses that are designed by teachers and students that are traditional curriculum with a more interdisciplinary and interesting twist.
00:01:57
Speaker
So, for example, there's the Science of Marvel, D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, or banned books.
00:02:03
Speaker
These classes are 45 minutes, two days a week, either on Monday and Thursday or Tuesday and Friday.
00:02:09
Speaker
Because the school's online, students have a choice of taking their class in the morning or afternoon, signing up for about two classes a cycle.
00:02:16
Speaker
And a cycle is every six weeks, so students are flowing between a lot of different expeditions over the course of a year.
00:02:23
Speaker
In the other part of their day, students work on individual projects that they develop with a mentor who meets with them at least once a week to guide them.
00:02:30
Speaker
Most of this is asynchronous work on topics that a student is interested in.
00:02:34
Speaker
Then the remainder of time is dedicated to morning and afternoon check-ins, additional one-on-one meetings, perhaps additional asynchronous coursework, some whole school events, and after-school clubs.
00:02:45
Speaker
It's very reminiscent of like a college schedule as students are able to be flexible with their time.
00:02:49
Speaker
They have a lot of breaks throughout the day.
00:02:52
Speaker
It just has that vibe.
00:02:53
Speaker
The schedule is relatively similar for teachers.
00:02:56
Speaker
They typically have four classes a cycle.
00:02:58
Speaker
They meet with students before and after class.
00:03:00
Speaker
They have help in planning the curriculum from experts, and they also help plan out the school events.
Experiences at Sora: Students and Teachers
00:03:05
Speaker
In this podcast, we're joined by three different folks.
00:03:07
Speaker
We're joined by Keegan, who is entering the ninth grade, wrapping up his eighth grade year at Sora.
00:03:12
Speaker
We're joined by Angela, who is a teacher at Sora that you'll hear from in a second.
00:03:16
Speaker
And later on the podcast, you'll hear from Garrett Smiley, who's the CEO and co-founder of Sora Schools.
00:03:31
Speaker
I feel like it's really just a perfect fit.
00:03:33
Speaker
And I love the way that we do our projects.
00:03:35
Speaker
It allows for like freedom and that I get to learn what I actually want to learn about.
00:03:40
Speaker
and like at my own pace.
00:03:41
Speaker
And instead of having to have the schedule or like instead of me having to fit a schedule and fit a specific like path of learning, I can kind of have it fit my desires and my kind of schedule.
00:03:54
Speaker
So I really enjoy that.
00:03:56
Speaker
What is different about this learning environment that you like versus the more traditional school experience?
00:04:02
Speaker
It's just so accepting and compromising, I think.
00:04:06
Speaker
And it just really allows for you to kind of display what
00:04:10
Speaker
you like about yourself and what makes you different.
00:04:14
Speaker
And you can really, you know, choose to engage with the information that you are interested in.
00:04:20
Speaker
It's also just really accepting of like all kinds of people and whoever wants to come, you know, they will be fully accepted into the school and just welcomed by everyone.
00:04:30
Speaker
And yeah, sure.
00:04:31
Speaker
That's great to hear.
00:04:33
Speaker
I'll have more questions for you in a second, but I'm going to turn it over to Angela here.
00:04:38
Speaker
Did you teach in a previous school before you moved over to Zora?
00:04:40
Speaker
So my experience is in traditional public high school, a little bit of middle school, mostly high school.
00:04:48
Speaker
I taught in Title I districts in North Carolina, and then I taught for a year in West Philly, actually.
00:04:56
Speaker
So I was actually thinking about leaving the education field completely.
00:05:01
Speaker
You know, with the pandemic, there's just been so many issues.
00:05:05
Speaker
And I feel like that's like the understatement of the year.
00:05:07
Speaker
Right.
00:05:07
Speaker
But there's been just so many issues and tension in traditional public schools.
00:05:12
Speaker
And I was just starting to become a little bit disheartened.
00:05:15
Speaker
And I think the pandemic highlighted a lot of issues that we see.
00:05:19
Speaker
in public education.
00:05:21
Speaker
So I really, really wanted to make a change, which was sort of heartbreaking for me.
00:05:25
Speaker
I feel like I almost had like an identity crisis because I was that kid in kindergarten who was like drawing pictures of her future classroom.
00:05:33
Speaker
Like it's all that I wanted to do my entire life.
00:05:36
Speaker
So I taught, you know, for a few years and I loved the kids.
00:05:40
Speaker
It was never the kids.
00:05:41
Speaker
It was the systems that were in place.
00:05:44
Speaker
Um,
00:05:44
Speaker
But I just, I was honestly burnout.
00:05:47
Speaker
I was exhausted.
00:05:48
Speaker
I felt like I gave so much heart every single day.
00:05:51
Speaker
And it just never seemed, it seems like there's always more to do.
00:05:56
Speaker
I never felt like I was doing enough.
00:05:58
Speaker
And I think that burnout is like a really,
00:06:01
Speaker
it's a real feeling that a lot of teachers deal with.
00:06:05
Speaker
And I was searching on LinkedIn for something new and I was like reading about Sora and I was like, there's no way like this is real.
00:06:11
Speaker
Like, is this serious?
00:06:13
Speaker
Like, am I being punked right now?
00:06:14
Speaker
Like this sounds so awesome.
00:06:16
Speaker
And then I ended up getting, you know, an interview and our ethos matched up perfectly.
00:06:21
Speaker
I've always been more into like alternative education methods to begin with and project-based learning.
00:06:27
Speaker
So it was just perfect.
00:06:29
Speaker
And I,
00:06:30
Speaker
It's been almost a year now, and this has just been my favorite job of all time.
00:06:36
Speaker
And I'm not trying to sell it, but I genuinely love my job, and I'm really happy.
00:06:41
Speaker
And that's something that I didn't experience previously.
00:06:45
Speaker
I thought part of being an adult was just...
00:06:48
Speaker
Kind of being stressed out all the time and being worried about going in, having the Sunday scaries, as they like to call them.
00:06:56
Speaker
I thought that was just a part of growing up.
00:06:57
Speaker
I thought every adult felt like that every day going into work.
00:07:01
Speaker
So having this experience is very much like a second chance at education for me, seeing how things can be different.
00:07:09
Speaker
And it's been so rewarding.
00:07:11
Speaker
It's been it's been awesome.
00:07:12
Speaker
I totally get that cognitive dissonance.
00:07:16
Speaker
I just left the, I taught in a public school out here in Ohio for the last eight years.
00:07:19
Speaker
I taught digital design.
00:07:20
Speaker
It was super fun.
00:07:21
Speaker
I love doing the work.
00:07:23
Speaker
However, there is a lot of burnout there from having to constantly keep up with everything and all of the various political forces at work that kind of disrupt your daily life that you have to deal with.
00:07:35
Speaker
And I think it's important to tease apart the idea that
00:07:38
Speaker
individual actions in a system for oneself are not necessarily a bad thing.
00:07:44
Speaker
Like it's completely okay to take care of yourself and still make an impact on people while simultaneously recognizing like, hey, we need to change overall systems that way public education isn't the way that it is.
00:07:55
Speaker
And I think that there's space for folks to learn from a school like Sora in partnership to see a model of how this works that could work in public education, but has the capability right now of making that a large enough step that they could demonstrate it.
00:08:10
Speaker
I think it would be very difficult to sell a school like this in a public ed system right now, but it could get there with that model in place, if that makes sense.
00:08:18
Speaker
But I want to hear more about just what it's like to be in a virtual classroom, because that really is a huge distinguisher.
Innovative Curriculum at Sora
00:08:28
Speaker
What does teaching a day at Sora look like?
00:08:31
Speaker
What is a typical class?
00:08:32
Speaker
We're really lucky, especially with our middle school this year.
00:08:36
Speaker
It was our first year having a middle school at Sora, and we started off with a very small cohort with about 15 students, and now we have about 30.
00:08:46
Speaker
So we've grown slowly, but it has been amazing to do it that way because we've kind of gotten to grow into our roles and just see the middle school grow as we would like to.
00:08:56
Speaker
And I think with
00:08:58
Speaker
Teaching virtually, I just have more flexibility in my day to get things like assessing done and, you know, planning for our expeditions.
00:09:09
Speaker
Having a few different blocks throughout the day where I can do something for myself is awesome.
00:09:14
Speaker
Like sometimes I even take a walk and that's something that I would have never like imagined to be able to do, you know, in a traditional classroom.
00:09:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:24
Speaker
And I know, too, in addition to the project based learning component of all of this, there's also the classes seem to be a lot different than a traditional class.
00:09:34
Speaker
Like I saw there's like a Marvel physics class.
00:09:36
Speaker
There's a there's like a band books class.
00:09:40
Speaker
What kind of classes do you teach?
00:09:41
Speaker
For me, I'm traditionally a social studies educator.
00:09:45
Speaker
I was not happy with having to follow state standards.
00:09:49
Speaker
I'm really into teaching honest history.
00:09:52
Speaker
I think that's the best way to put it.
00:09:54
Speaker
I'm also very passionate about social justice issues as well.
00:09:58
Speaker
So some of my favorite expeditions has definitely been banned books.
00:10:03
Speaker
I loved that expedition.
00:10:05
Speaker
It was back in the fall, you know, mouse was being banned in a Tennessee school district.
00:10:11
Speaker
And a lot of students had questions about that.
00:10:14
Speaker
They couldn't understand how such an important piece of literature that talks about such a crucial time in history, how that could possibly be banned.
00:10:24
Speaker
And we teamed up with our curriculum designers to create an experience to learn
00:10:29
Speaker
just dig into that more.
00:10:30
Speaker
Look at censorship as well.
00:10:33
Speaker
Kind of study law a little bit and just dig into some really awesome classics because if they're banned in some places, they're probably being banned for a reason, right?
00:10:43
Speaker
And there has to be something really good in that book for them to want to ban it.
00:10:47
Speaker
So it was awesome getting to do that expedition and just really look at that issue more closely.
00:10:54
Speaker
It's because it was a current event, you know, and that was really missing for me in public schools and teaching like traditional social studies, just getting to really focus
00:11:03
Speaker
on current events.
00:11:04
Speaker
So band books was awesome.
00:11:06
Speaker
Another thing that we do, sometimes we'll do like interdisciplinary expeditions.
00:11:10
Speaker
An example of that would be the dream vacation expedition we're doing right now.
00:11:15
Speaker
So I teamed up with our STEM expert, Adam.
00:11:20
Speaker
and pretty much what the students are doing is they are researching and creating and trying to sell to us their ultimate dream vacation so our students are doing research on the cultures the languages you know any currency they're also looking at plane tickets to buy what restaurants they'll be eating at they're setting realistic budgets
00:11:43
Speaker
which has been so cool to see.
00:11:45
Speaker
And also a little bit funny too, just seeing the reactions because some students are like, oh my goodness, like I had no idea.
00:11:50
Speaker
Hotels are like $400 a night.
00:11:52
Speaker
They're like, I had no idea that things cost this much.
00:11:55
Speaker
So I think it's definitely been like a little bit of a wake up call too, like learning like, you know, the true value of a dollar.
00:12:02
Speaker
But that has been probably my favorite interdisciplinary expedition, just seeing the students get to piece together all these different parts, you know, with, you
00:12:11
Speaker
the culture, and then looking at economics and government systems, and also just ecotourism and tourism in general.
00:12:19
Speaker
So we do a lot of different expeditions.
Community and Social Interaction at Sora
00:12:22
Speaker
A fun one that we did was history's mysteries, and the students were able to even dig into some conspiracies they might be curious about, or just, you know, mysteries that they have been wondering about.
00:12:34
Speaker
And that was really, really fun.
00:12:35
Speaker
We actually did that around spooky season near Halloween, just to kind of, you know, get in the spirit.
00:12:41
Speaker
So we
00:12:41
Speaker
We look a lot at what the students want to learn and we base our expeditions around that.
00:12:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's super cool.
00:12:50
Speaker
I mean, all that sounds highly engaging.
00:12:51
Speaker
The band books thing to me is heavily appealing as well.
00:12:54
Speaker
I mean, I majored in history, so I started off in social studies and it's highly relevant.
00:12:58
Speaker
We used to always teach on Persepolis.
00:13:00
Speaker
It's cool that you have the opportunity because of the space to do things that you typically wouldn't be able to.
00:13:06
Speaker
And I would also imagine that because of the remote environment, it's easier for you to plan with other instructors because not only do you have a planning period, but it's also like there's less other things that you have to worry about.
00:13:18
Speaker
And you kind of get into that flow state.
00:13:21
Speaker
And I will add on to that too.
00:13:23
Speaker
Something that I felt was missing in the schools I've previously taught at was the support of, you know, having people help you with lesson plans or creating units, making sure it's engaging.
00:13:36
Speaker
And we have curriculum designers at Sora Schools and they collaborate with us directly.
00:13:41
Speaker
Like we can set up a meeting with them whenever we want and they're there to support us.
00:13:46
Speaker
We could even come to them with like the craziest idea, like in the beginning of the year, we're like, we want to incorporate like Minecraft somehow.
00:13:54
Speaker
Like, how are we going to do this?
00:13:55
Speaker
And it ended up being a really awesome expedition.
00:13:57
Speaker
I actually think it was one of Keegan's favorite expeditions.
00:14:00
Speaker
We did civilization creation using Minecraft, which was a lot of fun.
00:14:05
Speaker
I learned a lot.
00:14:06
Speaker
There's still a lot for me to learn about Minecraft, but it's so nice having that support of other, you know, of your peers to make sure that you are creating the most engaging content for the students and making sure that you're just overall creating like the best world-class learning experiences.
00:14:24
Speaker
I think that summarizes really well kind of the academic portion of everything that's going on.
00:14:29
Speaker
I want to toss it back over to Keegan.
00:14:32
Speaker
I want to get into the community stuff, like what it's like relating to your peers.
00:14:36
Speaker
Because I would have, at least from my perspective, I'm sure the number one question that you get about online school is,
00:14:42
Speaker
the FOMO element, the fear of missing out, where it's like you don't have that experience where there's 25 people in a room and you're hanging out before and after school, like all that kind of stuff that we traditionally associate with the school experience.
00:14:54
Speaker
How does Sora help you relate to other people?
00:14:59
Speaker
Do you feel connected to other students?
00:15:00
Speaker
Are you developing relationships?
00:15:02
Speaker
How is that working out for you?
00:15:04
Speaker
Yeah, Sora is actually really good at keeping us connected.
00:15:07
Speaker
I think it's mainly through the Discord.
00:15:09
Speaker
So we have like a Discord server for the entire school and like all the different classes, there's different channels.
00:15:15
Speaker
And so if you ever like know of someone that you want to just message, you can just reach out to them by like searching them up in the channel.
00:15:22
Speaker
And also like just in expeditions, there'll be things like breakout rooms and you can just go into different rooms, talk with your peers and plan like what you're going to do for the project.
00:15:31
Speaker
Sometimes, you know, you're you're put into rooms with specific people and sometimes you can just like kind of hop around and join whoever you want to.
00:15:37
Speaker
And obviously you do kind of have to make an effort to socialize and talk to your friends and the kids in the school.
00:15:43
Speaker
But it comes really easily.
00:15:45
Speaker
I feel like it's presented in such a digestible way that there's always an opportunity for you to connect with people.
00:15:52
Speaker
In some ways, I feel like it being online makes it even easier, especially if you have social anxiety, kind of like I do.
00:15:57
Speaker
And you may not be as physically connected, but it is a lot easier to like, you know, jump into a conversation because it's a lot easier to, you know, just click join on like a Discord chat than it is to like walk over to a group of people that are kind of
00:16:11
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:16:12
Speaker
Shout out to Discord, too.
00:16:14
Speaker
We use Discord in the classroom, and there are a few drawbacks.
00:16:18
Speaker
There's a direct messaging and some things, which I'm sure you had to deal with.
00:16:21
Speaker
But overall, the concept of being able to have even just an asynchronous service where you can
00:16:27
Speaker
have folks talk to each other as a teacher is super cool.
00:16:30
Speaker
Like I like being able to not to be like creepy about it, but I like to see students having discussions with each other and like knowing what they're talking about.
00:16:37
Speaker
Not because like I want to pry, but more just it warms my heart.
00:16:41
Speaker
Oh, like these two people actually like talking to each other.
00:16:44
Speaker
It's nice.
00:16:45
Speaker
It's a good feeling.
00:16:46
Speaker
They also have a system of like student ambassadors and other leadership positions where they will tell kids to like kind of reach out to new students.
00:16:55
Speaker
So like it
00:16:56
Speaker
It's almost like as soon as you enter the school or as soon as you even like, you know, just view one of the classrooms to think about joining the school, you, you know, you're being reached out to by the teachers, by the students, and they're just kind of welcoming you.
00:17:08
Speaker
And it's just like a really loving environment that allows you to be accepted and get connected really quickly.
00:17:15
Speaker
It makes me think a lot about remote work.
00:17:18
Speaker
As employers are moving to remote environments, the trade-off in terms of relationships is, yes, you feel still connected to the people around you, but it also opens up the door for a lot more, in an ironic way, community interaction because you have the ability to move around.
00:17:39
Speaker
Do you find yourself participating at all in community programs because you have the flexibility with your schedule?
00:17:46
Speaker
Is that a thing?
00:17:47
Speaker
Yes, I have a youth group that I meet up with every Wednesday.
00:17:50
Speaker
And then I just have, you know, some friends that I'm still connected with that I can hang out, which I think it is definitely important to stay at least, you know, somewhat connected with people in a physical place.
00:18:02
Speaker
But it's mostly Sora and other online friends that I'm talking to.
00:18:06
Speaker
No, I get that.
00:18:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's interesting to note how in some ways, as long as you approach it with a certain mindset, the remote work model actually can lead to more in-person relationships because you kind of get to pick and choose where you go, as opposed to you being forced to participate just with a very specific cohort.
00:18:28
Speaker
Another question related to attending the school online and building that online community is
00:18:34
Speaker
That's just a logistics question.
00:18:36
Speaker
The school is 7 through 12.
00:18:38
Speaker
I don't know how to ask this question without it being weird.
00:18:40
Speaker
Are you staying home alone all day?
00:18:42
Speaker
Is there any parental concern?
00:18:45
Speaker
I wouldn't care as a parent.
00:18:46
Speaker
But I know that there are parents that care.
00:18:49
Speaker
I remember during COVID, we had a middle school.
00:18:52
Speaker
And middle school parents did not want their kids to be home alone all day.
00:18:55
Speaker
And it was a whole battle.
00:18:57
Speaker
Is that a concern?
00:18:58
Speaker
And either of you can answer this question, but is that a concern that is brought up or is it just kind of assumed that Sora students are okay with what they're doing?
00:19:06
Speaker
You know, that's a really interesting question, Chris.
00:19:10
Speaker
When I was primarily working with sixth graders at my last school, that was a huge concern.
00:19:17
Speaker
It was a big reason why they wanted to go back in
Upcoming Conference on Progressive Education
00:19:20
Speaker
person.
00:19:21
Speaker
But I think with Sora, if parents
00:19:25
Speaker
I guess parents can make that decision for their child and what works best for them.
00:19:30
Speaker
I think some students are left alone during the days.
00:19:34
Speaker
Others have parents also working at home or parents maybe that stay at home too.
00:19:39
Speaker
I think with a lot of our world just becoming more remote, it's made it easier for a lot of parents to also work at home.
00:19:48
Speaker
So I do feel like a lot of our students have parents either who work from home or maybe they just have a parent who stays at home with them.
00:19:56
Speaker
But we do, yeah, we're mostly seventh and eighth grade.
00:19:59
Speaker
So I would say that it's not really a huge concern for us.
00:20:04
Speaker
But when I was teaching a little bit younger, that was definitely a big concern.
00:20:08
Speaker
But that's
00:20:08
Speaker
interesting, Chris, because I haven't really given a lot of thought to that before, actually.
00:20:16
Speaker
Conference to Restore Humanity is an invitation for K-12 and college educators to engage in a human-centered system reboot, centering the needs of students and educators toward a praxis of social justice.
00:20:29
Speaker
The traditional conference format doesn't work for everyone.
00:20:32
Speaker
It's costly to attend, environmentally unfriendly, and it doesn't allow everyone to engage or have a voice in the learning community.
00:20:40
Speaker
Our conference is designed around the accessibility and sustainability of virtual learning, while engaging participants in a classroom environment that models the same progressive pedagogy we value with students.
00:20:51
Speaker
Instead of long Zoom presentations with a brief Q&A, keynotes are flipped.
00:20:56
Speaker
And attendees will have the opportunity for extended conversation with our speakers, Dr. Henry Giroux, the founding theorist of critical pedagogy, Dr. Denisha Jones, educator, activist, and co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School, and the Circle Keepers from Harvest Collegiate High School in New York City, a student collective focused on social justice.
00:21:17
Speaker
And instead of back-to-back online workshops, we are offering asynchronous learning tracks.
00:21:22
Speaker
You can engage with the content and the community at any time on topics like anti-carceral pedagogy, disrupting linguistic discrimination, designing for neurodivergence, promoting childism in the classroom, and supporting feedback over grades.
00:21:37
Speaker
The Conference to Restore Humanity runs July 25th through the 28th.
00:21:41
Speaker
And as of recording, early bird tickets are still available.
00:21:45
Speaker
It's $150 for four days with discounts available for individuals from historically marginalized communities as well as group rates.
00:21:53
Speaker
Plus, we'll award certificates for teacher training and continuing education credits.
00:21:58
Speaker
See our website humanrestorationproject.org for more information and let's restore humanity together.
Student Projects and Learning Approaches
00:22:09
Speaker
Can you explain a little bit about a project that you've done that you are super passionate about, that you really love?
00:22:15
Speaker
So one project, I feel like this was really unique because I really was allowed to take my own specific direction with it and really
00:22:24
Speaker
learn about something that was pretty far off from what we were actually going over, it feels like.
00:22:29
Speaker
It was like a website creation project.
00:22:31
Speaker
And so we were, our task was pretty much just to create like a website type format thing with like information over like anything.
00:22:39
Speaker
We could pretty much just research whatever we wanted to as long as we were like formatting it in the proper website.
00:22:44
Speaker
And then not only would we get abilities for the actual creation and the coding of the website, we would also get other concepts and stuff from whatever we wrote about in the website.
00:22:56
Speaker
I looked into volcanoes because one of the lists of concepts was geothermal, whatever, I don't know.
00:23:04
Speaker
And so I just I just found myself like researching into all these different types of volcanoes and watching these videos on like, you know, how volcanoes affect the environment.
00:23:12
Speaker
And so then by the end of it, you know, I had like the functioning website, but I was also just like, wow, that was that was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be.
00:23:19
Speaker
And I was just able to, you know, gather up all this information and then present it in a, you know, however you really wanted to with different like pictures and stuff on the website.
00:23:28
Speaker
And I was just able to like learn about something new that I found was really interesting that I had not even really considered before.
00:23:34
Speaker
And another project, we had like an expedition on alien life and trying to see if there could be like a hypothetical other life forms on other planets.
00:23:44
Speaker
We had different project options, but the one I chose was like sending a message to the aliens.
00:23:49
Speaker
And so pretty much what that included is I just kind of came up with like, okay, so here's what I want to send.
00:23:55
Speaker
Like, here's what I would want, you know, aliens to see or whatever.
00:23:58
Speaker
So you could put like music in, different images.
00:24:00
Speaker
And I researched the NASA golden record and kind of took some things from that.
00:24:06
Speaker
And I made it into a video format.
00:24:08
Speaker
where I pretty much just kind of recorded like this voiceover and I would have, you know, different images and stuff of things I wanted to show the aliens.
00:24:16
Speaker
But then I found myself also going into like this different kind of rabbit hole of explaining like how the spacecraft would work.
00:24:24
Speaker
And so I just had a lot of fun making a video of like, you know, what would I send to the aliens and how would I send it to the aliens?
00:24:31
Speaker
And, um,
00:24:32
Speaker
I think I went more in detail than they had asked for, but it was just really fun.
00:24:36
Speaker
And then I would, you know, I shared the video with the advisor and some of the students and they gave feedback and stuff.
00:24:43
Speaker
And I was able to incorporate a lot of different things I found really interesting, not only like the concepts that were listed that I had to include, but also just kind of bringing in other aspects of things that I wanted to include.
00:24:58
Speaker
Keegan is going to be humble.
00:25:00
Speaker
He's done a lot of awesome projects.
00:25:02
Speaker
He's really good with video editing.
00:25:04
Speaker
So I just have to say like Keegan has done some really, really cool projects and just getting to see him incorporate his own interests has been just awesome.
00:25:13
Speaker
Unlike the expert side of things, it's been really great to see.
00:25:16
Speaker
Sorry, I just wanted to throw that in there.
00:25:19
Speaker
That's so nerdy and cool.
00:25:20
Speaker
I love everything about that.
00:25:22
Speaker
That's incredible.
00:25:23
Speaker
The concept of focusing on systems rather than individuals to me is kind of the whole point.
00:25:28
Speaker
The ability to have these systems in place at Sora has allowed you to flourish as an educator, whereas there are plenty of educators that could do the same exact stuff, but the systems are not set up in a way that allow them to do that.
00:25:40
Speaker
And sometimes that causes us to become cynical or apathetic.
00:25:44
Speaker
You might see someone who you may think is maybe like a quote-unquote bad teacher,
00:25:49
Speaker
But really, they have just they've been burned out.
00:25:52
Speaker
They're not really sure where to go next.
00:25:53
Speaker
But if we change the systems, we could potentially unlock that again.
00:25:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:58
Speaker
And you're right by saying sometimes, Chris, too, because I want to say I have met some of the most amazing public school educators who really are trying to change the game.
00:26:07
Speaker
I've seen awesome teachers putting into practice project based learning.
00:26:12
Speaker
And actually, I've seen someone do a variation of the Dream Vacation project-based learning, and that's kind of a little bit where I got the idea for it.
00:26:21
Speaker
So it's definitely not all educators.
00:26:24
Speaker
I have met some of the most amazing, outstanding progressive educators in public school systems.
00:26:29
Speaker
But I think what I mean is like the system as a whole.
00:26:33
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:26:34
Speaker
But I think absolutely there is space to incorporate more of this in a traditional school setting.
Grading and Testing at Sora
00:26:46
Speaker
So Sora has this unique grading philosophy and system that blends together traditional standards and more growth-oriented systems.
00:26:53
Speaker
The documentation of student learning is divided into two parts, abilities and concepts.
00:26:58
Speaker
Abilities are reminiscent of 21st century skills or soft skills, like informational writing, presentation skills, looking at historical sources.
00:27:06
Speaker
They're blanket skills that can be used in a variety of settings.
00:27:09
Speaker
Students are expected to complete a certain number of each ability by the time that they exit either middle or high school, placing their accomplishments into what are called ability books.
00:27:19
Speaker
For example, a student might need to complete 10 presentations and place them in a presentation ability book by the end of middle school.
00:27:26
Speaker
Each expedition has abilities tagged to it so that students know what they can grab from that expedition.
00:27:31
Speaker
Then there's concepts.
00:27:33
Speaker
Concepts are similar to traditional school subjects, which are specific things that students are said to know.
00:27:38
Speaker
So for example, things like elements of the periodic table, math formulas, very fact-based rote things.
00:27:44
Speaker
There's a list of concepts that students should know by the end of middle or high school, and expeditions are again used to understand these concepts.
00:27:51
Speaker
Sora educators did say consistently that their focus on abilities and concepts were entirely on growth.
00:27:58
Speaker
Students are able to resubmit work, they're able to work through things multiple times, they display their knowledge in various different ways, and there's no traditional assessments or mandated standardized testing.
00:28:11
Speaker
What about standardized testing?
00:28:13
Speaker
Is there anything at all or is it just, I know that primarily you have like middle school, like right now, is there going to be any concern about SAT, ACT, like national standardized testing?
00:28:23
Speaker
So that's a great question actually.
00:28:24
Speaker
And that's a question that I think has definitely come up with parents who are interested in SORA schools.
00:28:30
Speaker
We do have opportunities where students can like take like SAT, like practice, like courses.
00:28:39
Speaker
And we do have opportunities for students to practice that.
00:28:42
Speaker
We have a lot of students who end up, you know, going through SOAR schools, like the high schools, normally they'll take the ACT or they'll take the SAT, however, you know, whichever one that they would normally do.
00:28:55
Speaker
And they've had a lot of success with getting into the colleges that they want and
00:28:59
Speaker
And I think the way that Sora kind of sets up their transcript can really help with that because a lot of colleges see that we're doing something really unique here.
00:29:09
Speaker
And maybe it even takes some bravery to try out something new like that.
00:29:13
Speaker
And I think that's something that colleges like to see.
00:29:17
Speaker
But I'm not sure if that answered your question, Chris, exactly.
00:29:21
Speaker
But with the SAT, there are definitely opportunities to prepare for that because that's still important, you know, if you are wanting to get into a college that still asks for standardized testing like that.
00:29:35
Speaker
But other than that, like there really is no standardized testing whatsoever, which I
00:29:40
Speaker
As an educator, that has just been like a huge weight off of my shoulders because I don't feel like I have to make sure the students memorize all of these different parts of the Constitution that they'll forget, you know, like the day after the test.
00:29:52
Speaker
Like everything is very meaningful and purposeful.
00:29:56
Speaker
So it has been just like awesome not having to deal with standardized tests.
00:30:02
Speaker
I think we put a huge emphasis on
00:30:04
Speaker
depth over breadth and the idea like if you're hyper engaged in something and you want to do it and it's fun for you you're going to remember those things and you're going to apply those to other things and likely even though i don't think it's a good measure of academic knowledge you likely will still do just as well if not better on standardized tests because you actually remember those things as opposed to just kind of going through the motions
00:30:25
Speaker
you're probably in the same boat.
00:30:26
Speaker
I remember going through like my science classes.
00:30:28
Speaker
I did well in the test.
00:30:29
Speaker
I know nothing.
00:30:30
Speaker
There is no way I could even get close to doing well in those tests.
00:30:33
Speaker
And to add on to that, I think also what we're teaching students, like we're teaching them like deduction skills, for example.
00:30:39
Speaker
So a lot of what
00:30:42
Speaker
I feel like the standardized tests are asking the students to do.
00:30:46
Speaker
We might have not gone over that exact content, for example, but we hopefully have taught those skills to make it so that students are able to figure out that type of question, if that makes sense.
00:30:57
Speaker
I feel like with standardized tests,
00:30:59
Speaker
A lot of it is also kind of figuring out how to respond to the question.
00:31:04
Speaker
And there's like little like test tricks, I guess, if that makes sense, too.
00:31:07
Speaker
But I think with like the skills that we teach the students, I do feel confident that they could go into a standardized test and absolutely do very well.
00:31:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:18
Speaker
anything else you'd want to add that you'd want folks to hear more about?
00:31:23
Speaker
Anything we didn't cover?
00:31:24
Speaker
So one aspect I like of Sora is that we kind of have a system referred to as like low floor, high ceiling, I think.
00:31:31
Speaker
And pretty much what that is, is that like, you know, you're not given too much of an expectation.
00:31:38
Speaker
Most of the time, at least you're not like told, you know, you have to have this many pages or this many words or, you know, this amount of slides or whatever.
00:31:44
Speaker
You're just kind of given like,
00:31:47
Speaker
topic and like you know some aspects that you need to cover and Then you can you know either have the bare minimum or as much as you want like we had one student that I don't remember what the
00:31:59
Speaker
like actual task was, but it was something about space exploration.
00:32:02
Speaker
And he designed like a full 34 slide exploration to Mars, like describing how NASA could build something to plant a base on Mars.
Sora's Founding and Educational Philosophy
00:32:11
Speaker
And, you know, it just, that system really just ignites the natural desire that we have to learn and takes it, like allows you to take it to whatever level you want and makes you your own
00:32:24
Speaker
determiner of what you really want to cover and how much you want to dive into different topics?
00:32:28
Speaker
I do feel like there's a misconception that it is lonely and not as social.
00:32:34
Speaker
And even from a teaching standpoint, that has not been the case at all.
00:32:39
Speaker
I feel like a close kinship with a lot of my peers who are also experts or just everyone that I work with.
00:32:46
Speaker
And I
00:32:46
Speaker
because we're able to see each other a lot more.
00:32:48
Speaker
We're able to collaborate so much more than in traditional schools.
00:32:52
Speaker
So I have definitely not ever felt like disconnected from my peers or lonely or anything like that.
00:33:00
Speaker
And the relationships that I have formed this year are definitely the strongest that I formed out of my entire teaching career, just because I've been given the opportunity to spend that time with a student one-on-one and really get to know them, which would have been my dream at a traditional school.
00:33:16
Speaker
And I think that's every teacher's dream, right?
00:33:19
Speaker
To be able to get to know a student super well and get to spend one-on-one time practicing certain skills with them.
00:33:25
Speaker
So that's something that I just absolutely love about Sora.
00:33:28
Speaker
Like the systems are in place where we can do things like that, you know, learn, learn,
00:33:33
Speaker
what the student's all about, what they need specifically.
00:33:36
Speaker
So I think that's really important.
00:33:38
Speaker
I don't find that it's isolating at all working remotely.
00:33:41
Speaker
In fact, it's the most social job I've ever had.
00:33:45
Speaker
So I just wanted to add that because that was something I was worried about.
00:33:49
Speaker
know going from well i guess last year i was um online because of covid but i always liked being in person before it wasn't that so i was sort of worried about missing that like social connection but even for staff they have events on like friday kind of like a friday happy hour situation where we can just hang out chill talk about the week and having those experiences and just like our awesome community coordinators are always like thinking of like fun activities for staff to do as well
00:34:19
Speaker
It's really fun.
00:34:20
Speaker
It's like it's a great environment to be a part of.
00:34:30
Speaker
And now here's Garrett Smiley, the CEO and co-founder of Sora.
00:34:34
Speaker
Garrett grew up in a military family and attended every type of school, traditional schools, religious schools, schools with uniforms, progressive schools, and online schools.
00:34:43
Speaker
Eventually, he ended up at a prep school in Texas that he didn't like so much.
00:34:46
Speaker
And as a coping mechanism, he began schooling himself on how schools could run and what he could do different.
00:34:52
Speaker
He didn't like having to cram before tests or attend lectures despite doing pretty well on standardized tests and getting the grades that he needed to.
00:34:58
Speaker
He much preferred teaching himself through YouTube and other online tools.
00:35:02
Speaker
In college, Garrett majored in computer science and mechanical engineering, joining a learning community where he founded a non-profit that focused on game-based learning and financial literacy that worked with foster kids.
00:35:12
Speaker
Here he implemented ideas that would eventually become further developed at Sora,
00:35:18
Speaker
A transformative education is possible.
00:35:20
Speaker
Let's just start there.
00:35:22
Speaker
There's a sequence of events that one can go through and that kids can go through that radically changes their lives and their future trajectory.
00:35:30
Speaker
Let's just start with that.
00:35:31
Speaker
Education can be deeply impactful.
00:35:35
Speaker
Usually that happens, and I know you said your audience is mostly public school educators, but unfortunately, usually it happens in high budget schools with tons of resources, right?
00:35:49
Speaker
That doesn't have to be the case, in my opinion.
00:35:52
Speaker
I think we can do 80% of the impactful work that's done in those $50,000, $60,000 a year schools in the constraints of the average per pupil cost in public school education.
00:36:08
Speaker
For the under, let's call it $15,000 that most independent schools or public schools have access to,
00:36:15
Speaker
So the reason why we believe that is one, progressive principles are what the world needs going forward.
00:36:23
Speaker
And they happily dovetail with the development of technology and the fact we can be a global school that's online and give access to not only the spread of conversations that happen when you're a global school.
00:36:38
Speaker
Right now, we're only in the US, but our aspiration is to be global.
00:36:40
Speaker
But also just when you do things like develop your own LMS like we have and talk about how we can create opportunities for pathfinding and interventions and all this stuff that's usually very intensive with paperwork and humans, but computers can help us, right?
00:36:56
Speaker
And we're looking at...
00:36:58
Speaker
Google and all these big companies that are now recognizing that also high-fidelity work can happen online.
00:37:04
Speaker
So why can't high-fidelity world-class education happen online too and be accessible to students who simply don't have a school within their 10-mile radius that believes in these progressive principles?
00:37:16
Speaker
Sure.
00:37:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:17
Speaker
And it's interesting because your model is
00:37:21
Speaker
both a virtual school, but also one that focuses on progressive pedagogy, which those two things tend to not be paired together.
00:37:29
Speaker
When I think virtual education, I think like credit recovery school or worse in some cases.
00:37:37
Speaker
So could you talk a little about the inspiration?
00:37:39
Speaker
Like when you say progressive, what do you mean?
00:37:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:42
Speaker
And so actually I usually lean away from the word because everyone has a different opinion about what progressive means.
00:37:49
Speaker
And so I'll just ground in some of the SORA beliefs and you can decide how progressive or non-progressive that is given your paradigm.
00:37:56
Speaker
So I believe that agency is
00:37:59
Speaker
is one of the most important things we can instill in a student.
00:38:03
Speaker
I believe that learning should be integrated, should be interdisciplinary, not by per-subject bounds.
00:38:09
Speaker
I believe having diverse friend groups and conversations is deeply important to children's development.
00:38:17
Speaker
I believe that kids should be exposed to different content.
00:38:22
Speaker
Not everyone should learn the same things because diversity of thought is what makes innovation happen and what makes the world great.
00:38:29
Speaker
So those are some of the things we really try to lean into.
00:38:32
Speaker
I don't mean, and this will probably frustrate some of the audience, I don't mean shoes optional, right?
00:38:38
Speaker
My friend
00:38:39
Speaker
Peter Hutton from Beaver jokes that most people think progressive means shoes optional, that people are, we don't have any standards for ourselves or it's inherently easier.
00:38:52
Speaker
I don't mean any of that, right?
00:38:53
Speaker
I just mean the education project, what we're pushing for.
00:38:57
Speaker
Yes, it should be difficult.
00:38:58
Speaker
It should be quality.
00:38:59
Speaker
It should be ambitious.
00:39:01
Speaker
But simply the design criteria is different than a traditional school.
00:39:06
Speaker
The difference between something like the Dewey Lab School versus like the Subbury Valley School, the difference between really like traditional progressive ed, which is more based around like the whole child approach, holistic education, interdisciplinary education, but still has a standardized model for what they want students to do.
00:39:28
Speaker
There's a lot of wiggle room in there, but there is an overall idea.
00:39:31
Speaker
And I totally get that.
00:39:32
Speaker
That's something that I've had many conversations about with colleagues because we do have a lot of folks underneath the umbrella of Human Restoration Project that are unschoolers or self-directed educators.
00:39:45
Speaker
And personally, I do see that value in everyone having a common mission and vision for what they want to happen.
00:39:52
Speaker
And there being some things that challenge learners, that maybe have them come to terms with some things they might not normally be exposed to.
00:39:59
Speaker
And I think that that's a pendulum that is a constant battle and a constant conversation.
00:40:03
Speaker
Yeah, I think something that's important for us all to have as a starting point, and this is a hotly contested thing in progressive education, but I push against this romantic view of the child that assumes just throwing them in...
00:40:19
Speaker
to their own levels of self-direction and society and modernity that they'll come out as this actualized adult.
00:40:26
Speaker
I just don't think that's super realistic.
00:40:28
Speaker
I think that we need to nurture that and help them get to that and have design criteria that's intelligent for a post-industrial economy that we have in much of the world now.
00:40:41
Speaker
But we shouldn't just assume that children in their...
00:40:45
Speaker
in their current states are able to shepherd themselves there.
00:40:49
Speaker
Yes.
00:40:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:50
Speaker
It only works in an environment where the students have the proper supports at home and have been raised in an environment where they kind of already have perhaps an inclination for social and societal justice, or at least like understanding a perspective building.
00:41:05
Speaker
Because I don't think most folks that are involved in the progressive education field would be comfortable with saying like, hey,
00:41:10
Speaker
Kids that, you know, grow up in environments, let's say that are racist.
00:41:13
Speaker
So just like raise themselves and everything will turn out great because we've seen what will happen with the growth of violent extremism amongst young people where they don't have that nurturing
Adapting Educational Models
00:41:23
Speaker
voice.
00:41:23
Speaker
They don't have that person there to help guide them.
00:41:27
Speaker
It's interesting because you've basically, from a systems thinking approach, by turning the model on its head and forcing it to be online, you have to look at a lot of these other elements of school, which by default is going to make them more engaging because I can't trap people in a room.
00:41:46
Speaker
I mean, I guess I could force them to be on Zoom, which has happened during remote learning.
00:41:50
Speaker
But if we were going to be human-centered, if you will, or progressive about it,
00:41:55
Speaker
we would not want that to be the model.
00:41:57
Speaker
And I think that when you're alluding to the fact that YouTube is a place that we can learn a lot of very interesting things, I think that's been touted a lot in a lot of innovation circles.
00:42:07
Speaker
It's true with support.
00:42:10
Speaker
It's one of those things where we need to mirror the model of understanding, look at all of these great tech platforms that exist and things that we can learn about.
00:42:20
Speaker
How can we change the system of education so that teachers can support that learning?
00:42:25
Speaker
And based on the conversations I had with Angela and Keegan, the way that it's been flipped through project-based learning is fascinating.
00:42:33
Speaker
And it's obvious that folks have the time and the dedication and the interest to explore things that they're interested in while simultaneously developing the whole child.
00:42:44
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:42:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:45
Speaker
I love that framing that I want to say, get it out there right now.
00:42:50
Speaker
And I think most people agree with me, we just don't talk about it enough that education is not a content problem.
00:42:55
Speaker
Great curriculum helps so, so, so much, especially interdisciplinary curriculum, integrated curriculum, very important from my perspective.
00:43:03
Speaker
But that is not the problem, right?
00:43:06
Speaker
We have the internet.
00:43:09
Speaker
High quality content is ubiquitous.
00:43:11
Speaker
Genius, quote unquote, or kids who are on fire about solving social issues, whatever, is not ubiquitous.
00:43:16
Speaker
So clearly, it's not a content problem, right?
00:43:20
Speaker
we've isolated that variable.
00:43:23
Speaker
So what is education?
00:43:25
Speaker
We should make sure that teachers have the time and space to do things that humans, since education is fundamentally a human process, humans are good at.
00:43:34
Speaker
And the rest computers can take care of.
00:43:36
Speaker
Content, YouTube videos, lectures,
00:43:39
Speaker
Not that they don't have a place.
00:43:40
Speaker
It's just silly that we are spending all of our time on those things and not on the truly effective relationship support unblocking that teachers are good at.
00:43:51
Speaker
They just have no time to do.
00:43:53
Speaker
The work is especially interesting from a remote standpoint, just like it is for remote work, because you can attract teachers and students from anywhere to go to your school.
00:44:02
Speaker
And I'm imagining because it's online, there's some pedagogical shifts that are happening because you have to be that way in a remote environment.
00:44:09
Speaker
For example, it's difficult to know what students are doing.
00:44:11
Speaker
You can't just track what they're doing.
00:44:12
Speaker
Certainly, you could do like surveillance type stuff, but that's not what you're doing.
00:44:16
Speaker
But remote is very different.
00:44:18
Speaker
Having students access this in this way, do you think that this model is something that's going to be spread or is it something that is only for a certain type of student?
00:44:25
Speaker
I think it could be for everyone.
00:44:27
Speaker
So like remote work could theoretically be for everyone.
00:44:32
Speaker
It requires a certain executive functioning skills, certain...
00:44:40
Speaker
some people thrive in an in-person environment because it provides more structure.
00:44:48
Speaker
It provides more oversight.
00:44:53
Speaker
It provides all these things.
00:44:54
Speaker
And for some people early in their career or just kids to, you know, go back to the initial analogy, some of the kids themselves do require more of that, a watchful eye, honestly.
00:45:07
Speaker
And so I think, you know,
00:45:10
Speaker
remote school could certainly be the solution to most kids' schooling needs, but it does require a certain floor, a certain competency, a certain amount of self-regulation.
00:45:23
Speaker
And so I think many people saw this in COVID as well, but I think to your discipline question, it just requires a different perspective on what discipline means.
00:45:34
Speaker
So you just have to, an assumption at the heart of,
00:45:40
Speaker
our curriculum and the schooling experience itself is that you're competing with Twitter, right?
00:45:46
Speaker
You're competing with whatever on the other tab and you need to be able to create an engaging environment and you need to, you cannot just assume that we're going to lock kids in a chair, watch them so that they don't get on their phone.
00:46:02
Speaker
And I would argue that never really works anyway.
00:46:05
Speaker
The kids' minds are elsewhere.
00:46:06
Speaker
I know mine certainly was in school.
00:46:09
Speaker
I was thinking about literally everything but what was going on inside the class, even though my eyes were directed forward.
Technology's Impact on Education
00:46:15
Speaker
But in a remote school, kids have access to all the tabs, so you better be engaging them.
00:46:21
Speaker
You better use frequent breakout rooms.
00:46:24
Speaker
You better do experiments, labs, jigsaw sessions, debates.
00:46:30
Speaker
You better be doing these active learning things or you're wasting everyone's time.
00:46:35
Speaker
And plus just the...
00:46:38
Speaker
the output of school not only is this true in a remote environment where like proctoring tests and everything get a little more difficult i'm sure we're all aware of the videos and and just the general memes kids were sharing during covet about how easy it was to cheat because literally every student was they were cheating beforehand as well but in covet it was
00:47:01
Speaker
Ubiquitous is even an understatement.
00:47:04
Speaker
And plus, we're going into this next evolution of like GPT-3, right?
00:47:10
Speaker
We're creating these technologies.
00:47:12
Speaker
For those who are unfamiliar, computers are now able to have natural discourse with people.
00:47:17
Speaker
And you can copy and paste a prompt, like a short form response from any of yesteryear's homework assignments.
00:47:23
Speaker
And the computer will answer and get around plagiarism detection.
00:47:27
Speaker
So we have to evolve quickly.
00:47:31
Speaker
maybe eventually.
00:47:34
Speaker
But I just think it's really important for teachers to recognize that the disciplinary, the structural violence of schools that worked, quote unquote, maybe in the past century are breaking down in front of our very eyes.
00:47:46
Speaker
So whether it's remote school or not, we're gonna have to rethink what proving competency mastery means in school for the 21st century.
00:47:55
Speaker
Yeah, what you just said really resonates with me.
00:47:58
Speaker
It makes me think of, and listeners to this podcast will probably hear me talk about this all the time, but a study by Dr. Susan Engel.
00:48:06
Speaker
She is a child developmental psychologist.
00:48:08
Speaker
She had a group of, I believe, first-year teachers, teachers in training, going through the program.
00:48:15
Speaker
She had them go off to different schools, and she said, hey, I want you to write down if students are engaged or not in all of these different classrooms.
00:48:23
Speaker
The teachers went and
00:48:24
Speaker
class to class.
00:48:25
Speaker
They were documenting what students were doing and recognizing engaged versus non-engaged behavior.
00:48:30
Speaker
And they got back into the class with Dr. Engel and they said, Hey, here are all the things that we saw for engagement.
00:48:35
Speaker
We saw kids sitting up straight.
00:48:37
Speaker
They were looking at the teacher and
00:48:39
Speaker
They were paying attention.
00:48:40
Speaker
They were quiet.
00:48:42
Speaker
And at the end of this, Susan Engel was like, hey, that's not engagement, actually.
00:48:46
Speaker
What you're describing is compliance.
00:48:48
Speaker
Those are all things that look like perhaps someone's paying attention.
00:48:52
Speaker
But frankly, they might just be afraid of getting in trouble or they might just be looking like they're paying attention.
00:48:59
Speaker
To be engaged is to ask questions or take things on on your own or maybe you want to go out and –
00:49:05
Speaker
I don't know, start a project over what you learn if you're going up to the teacher after class and wanting to figure out more about something.
00:49:10
Speaker
It's a lot more in-depth and involved and a lot more difficult to design for than compliance.
00:49:16
Speaker
I think just compliance-based education is doomed.
00:49:20
Speaker
Whether you want to engage in learning in a more traditional way or a more progressive way or whatever.
00:49:27
Speaker
And I think obviously progressive education is ahead of the curve on this transition.
00:49:31
Speaker
But you cannot suppose, like you're saying, that learning outcomes are correlated with compliance anymore.
00:49:39
Speaker
It's just not only is it absurd from a pedagogical perspective and what's happened in the classroom in a learning perspective,
00:49:44
Speaker
it's also just not what society is demanding, right?
00:49:48
Speaker
We're not an industrial economy.
00:49:50
Speaker
We're a post-industrial.
00:49:51
Speaker
We're a service economy, an entrepreneur economy.
00:49:53
Speaker
And the design criteria of compliance, which drove much the last century or two of schooling, is just hilariously out of date.
00:50:03
Speaker
And then when you layer on technology onto it, it's unbelievably easy to bypass and be undetected.
00:50:11
Speaker
What you're describing, it reminds me a lot of the same debate that's been occurring in schools now, I guess, for maybe one or two decades involving Wikipedia, the idea of cheating versus a tool.
00:50:22
Speaker
I've always been a huge proponent of using Wikipedia.
00:50:25
Speaker
It's one of the most fact-based, peer-reviewed topics that you could possibly come across on the internet.
00:50:30
Speaker
Certainly, there are a few problematic things in terms of the politics that appear on there and people trying to edit their spin, but not really that much different than some of the things you might come across on any website on the internet or any research study.
00:50:45
Speaker
Wikipedia is very well mandated.
00:50:48
Speaker
Despite that, it's still not common for a professor or for a teacher to say, hey, you're allowed to cite Wikipedia because of the ever-flowing, changing nature of it.
00:50:57
Speaker
That said, there's a similarity there to AI writing.
00:51:01
Speaker
It's a tool.
00:51:02
Speaker
Obviously, it's not going to probably replace creative writing at any time soon, but it can be a tool that's utilized to help you come up with prompts or figure out things that you might want to write about or even just get you started.
00:51:13
Speaker
In the same exact way that any tool is being used, you have to have critical thinking skills.
00:51:17
Speaker
And I think this exemplifies the concept of the goal is not to reinvent the
00:51:24
Speaker
ways to get people to do the traditional metrics of learning.
00:51:27
Speaker
The goal is to reinvent the actual learning itself.
00:51:31
Speaker
We need to try to dive away from the idea of write a five-paragraph essay about this and move more towards, well, what's an authentic project that's going to involve you writing where you may write five paragraphs, you might write less, or you might even write more.
00:51:46
Speaker
That is going to be a much different task, and it's not going to require just the concept of, can I write in five paragraphs, and then that'd be the end of it.
Learning from Private Innovations
00:51:54
Speaker
I will actually say for the short term, there are ways to adapt to make your test or your assessment less, quote unquote, cheatable, or at least to make kids demonstrate their competency.
00:52:06
Speaker
And I think real world products, just having multiple modalities or having a debate in oral defense combined with this, combined with a real world project, there are certainly ways for kids to demonstrate
00:52:20
Speaker
their competency, even with things like these AIs, which by the way, are not the future of AI.
00:52:26
Speaker
It's literally there.
00:52:26
Speaker
Like I could pull up the other tab and, and ask, Hey, write a script about progressive education.
00:52:32
Speaker
I can use this podcast and read it to verbatim.
00:52:34
Speaker
I won't be super strong, but anyway, these tools exist.
00:52:37
Speaker
So there are ways for our assessment to evolve, but I think,
00:52:42
Speaker
eventually there won't be.
00:52:43
Speaker
And let's just get at the heart of the issue.
00:52:46
Speaker
Instead of taking away phones, how do you create motivated learners?
00:52:51
Speaker
You connect their learning with their purpose.
00:52:54
Speaker
You have to respect kids.
00:52:56
Speaker
I can't remember if we spoke about this last time, but you have to respect kids enough to have conversations about the world and their budding worldviews and
00:53:03
Speaker
why what they're doing connects with the learning because the the cliche but i do believe it's true is you're only cheating yourself right like the classic thing sure us adults realize that and a lot of students that just doesn't connect because i'm cheating myself to what ends i don't value what you value i don't value what you're asking me to do because we've never had the conversation about why it's important or perhaps schools have to get comfortable with the fact
00:53:30
Speaker
Kids do not value those things and that's okay, right?
00:53:33
Speaker
So where's the line between the things kids have to do?
00:53:35
Speaker
Where are we going to allow flexibility?
00:53:37
Speaker
These are really important conversations for us to have, but I think at the heart of it is just recognizing that we need to design our schools around creating motivated learners, which is all about having kids develop a worldview and then connect their actions to that worldview.
00:54:03
Speaker
Again, I want to thank Sora for appearing on our podcast.
00:54:06
Speaker
As you've heard, there's a lot of intriguing things going on in this space.
00:54:09
Speaker
We recognize that Sora is a tuition-based program.
00:54:12
Speaker
It's not a public school.
00:54:14
Speaker
And we simultaneously believe that we need to have and support public schools, where you have thriving public schools, while also learning from private programs like this.
Conclusion and Future Suggestions
00:54:23
Speaker
In a perfect world, public schools will be able to emulate these ideas and implement them into their own virtual programs, then innovate and try out new things.
00:54:31
Speaker
However, it's a flawed system.
00:54:32
Speaker
It's difficult for a public school system to do this.
00:54:34
Speaker
It takes a lot of risk.
00:54:36
Speaker
Therefore, to me, schools like Sora help show us what's possible.
00:54:39
Speaker
Thank you again for listening.
00:54:41
Speaker
If you have an idea for what school we should cover next, visit humanrestorationproject.org and let us know.