But we started realizing when we think about deep learning schools that they’re not just doing one thing, they’re usually doing a cluster of awesome things. So we couldn’t just say, this school is doing really great with equity because all the schools are doing great with equity. It’s just a little different lens on how they were actually doing that or flexible scheduling.

It might just look different, in different schools. So we found that those building blocks were sort of a good catchall for these types of schools, but they were all doing all ten of them really well. Yeah. I mean, I think the other thing that I would say is that I tend to have a soft spot in my heart for schools that really hand things over to kids in ways that most schools don’t think are even possible.

Right. So we profiled a couple of schools in our book, like How to Fit in Christchurch, New Zealand, and one down in Boise, Idaho. Right? That literally kids are driving. They’re learning 100% of the time, basically every day, every week, every month, all school year. And it’s wild, right? Like, you know, there’s not a teacher created curriculum. The kids are basically just showing up, like, what do I want to learn for the next few weeks or months?

And, those places really stretch our thinking about schools as institutions of learning and what kind of experiences we’re trying to create for kids. You know, this is not like we’re dabbling a little bit with a little genius over here or, you know, a little passion project or whatever. Like, this is full blown, like kids just own this whole thing all year, and we just sit back and help facilitate and guide it.

I have a soft spot for instances like this because kids are just blowing it out. Yeah, a visit, a school 21 in East London and it was the same way, like the way the dialog that the kids were having with each other was well above dialog that you would hear in most other schools. The kids were running them and no that didn’t bring down the entire curriculum.

They had coaches and teachers that really acted on the periphery, where the kids were the ones who knew how to engage each other. And honest, deep discussion was very powerful to sit in, listen to them, navigate tough conversations like, should we defund the police? Let’s have them actually break that apart. What that actually looks like. The pros and cons.

So, interesting to see them look at those kind of problems and see both sides and to be able to navigate that conversation themselves with the teachers just sitting there on the side going, good they got it. Yeah.

Q: If, Jayson wanted to answer in your own words, if you could quickly define deeper learning, but also if you ever found a moment where you had a student centric type of learning going on while you were in school.

A: So, Jayson, with your permission, I’ll take first shot at that. So traditionally, school curriculum has been dictated by schools themselves or by policy people. We create these long policy documents at the national level, you know, from the Ministry of Education or the state or whatever, or we adopt some of these curriculum, like the AP program or maybe IB, and they basically tell us what the curriculum should look like.

Right? And historically, many of those curricula have been relatively shallow but very broad. So for example, one of the ongoing complaints in the states is that pick your grade level and pick your subject area. But the curriculum for that is usually, you know, a mile wide and it’s deep and there’s this incredible pressure to cover everything by the end of the year.

So the kids will do well on whatever they have to take. And so, right. And so, you know, the idea of deeper learning is that instead of us going broad there, we actually have fewer things. We say we want kids to acquire during their school experience that those things like the academic content, but they might also be other competencies, like, are you the collaborator?

Are you good critical thinker? Can you use technology fluently? Are you an excellent speaker? And then sort of creating experiences in which kids can go really deep on those and really focus on mastery and depth acquisition, rather than shallow least skipping across the shallow curriculum like, you know, skimming a rock across the lake, right. And then hoping that kids hang on to that stuff.

So that’s sort of the basic idea of deep learning, right? I think, you know, in my own work with schools, talk about sort of four big ideas that are connected to deep learning. One is the idea of cognitive complexity. How do we get beyond mere factual recall precedes order detection to the upper level, richer, more robust thinking skills we want kids to exhibit.

Other components of deeper learning environments could include high levels of student agency and probably working on real world, authentic work, hobbies and technology. Some really meaningful, robust ways. And those come together to create a very different kind of learning experience for kids. So if I want to add anything to that, yeah, Scott does it really well. Great job of encapsulating what that looks like and what that feels like.

I sort of look at deeper learning, like you know it when you see it. You’re like, oh yeah, here it is. This is it. You can tell a deeper learning experience from a deeper learning school. It’s just makes sense. Like walking into one school, you can just tell that it looks and feels and acts different than a school that’s just doing PBL, you know, for an hour or a day.

It’s like, yeah, that lesson is cognitively complex. Those students had agency during that hour and this is all deep learning stuff, but it’s not necessarily spread out to the whole school versus some schools that are all built around this idea of deeper learning. Some of the schools that Scott pointed out in the big picture Learning Network, Expeditionary Learning networks, they just feel different.

I don’t know the depth of just going through everything that they’re doing versus one off activities. Yeah. I mean, and I think Jayson is right, you can really feel the vibe. It’s very palpable when you walk into one of these schools. Right? So you see kids who are really driving their own learning as opposed to being so teacher directed or system directed.

They’re working on really meaningful, relevant stuff that’s connected to the real world. You’re thinking in much more complex ways about that work that we typically as kids do. Like when we ask you to fill in a worksheet or do an exam or, you know, very quick essay, and together that aggregate effects, you could easily walk out with your kid with their kids because the work that’s happening there is so robust and amazing.

Mike, for the second part of your questions, I think about my own upbringing as student. I’m old, so I went to school long time ago and I can’t really think of a lot of experiences that I had in school where I had the chance to do that kind of robust learning that we’re trying to profile now. I was very good at playing the game of school.

I was good at giving teachers what they asked for. I got good grades, but I wouldn’t say that, you know, sort of my cognitive load was robust and rich. I would say that I had a chance to direct lane learning very often, other than in sort of very superficial ways, where the teacher threw out a few breadcrumbs for us to know on, but otherwise in this still very tightly scaffolded instruction.

Q: Okay. Thank you for sharing. And you Jayson. And yeah, just thinking about my experience when we visited STEM Chattanooga. So there the school leader Tony Downing just said, hey, you don’t want to talk to me. Here’s the kid. So the kids gave the school tours. They talked about what’s good student, what learning is like for them versus an adult telling another adult what student what learning is like for kids.

It’s a flip, right? Like you’re here’s the agency, here’s the truth, here’s the voice. Because they’re walking you around the school talking to you about what it’s like, what the good things are, what the bad things are, how they do things. And they can clearly describe what their learning looks like and what their day looks like and what they can see.

The through line, which I just find fascinating. I think in deeper learning, the kids see the through line of the learning versus yeah, I’m learning the quadratic formula. What for, I don’t know. I have learned the quadratic formula versus they understand the purpose of each day. Right. And I think some language is important here because when you go to schools they will say that they are student centered.

Right. So we’re not really talking about student centered education because there’s an educator alive. It wouldn’t say student center, but it’s still teacher directed. Right. And so I usually use the term student directed or student driven because it shows that a critical shift in agency, where the kid is learning more of the learning path and outcomes. Right? We’re all student centered and invested in education and care about young people, right?

A: But that’s different from being student driven. We can be student centered and teacher directed. And that’s what most the but not in these deep learning. That’s not that reminds me of the work of Ben Affleck and Allison Zmuda. And they do like they have this whole thing on how there’s like an arrow and you have to shift in between the teacher driven and student driven and how much agency and like, it’s a lever at times.

Right. But really trying to shift that over towards the student agency. And I think student agency is so key to the future of our schools, especially post-Covid. Not that we’re over Covid, but there’s like the after of the effects of that. And I think students are used to or at least want more autonomy and choice in school and in their learning.

And hopefully our schools will start to piggyback on that. Yeah, I agree with that. And as you know, it’s always a continuum, right? It’s always the slider. But I think it’s also student agency around something that’s meaningful. Right. And I think when we talk with a lot of educators, even when they give kids agency, it’s agency within carefully defined constructs.

Right. So like, oh, I’m an elementary teacher and I have centers. So I’m giving my kids agency because they can pick one of these four centers that I created. That’s not quite what we’re talking about here. Right. Because it’s agency within a carefully defined space or it’s on work that doesn’t feel very meaningful to students. Right. Like here’s four different grammar centers.

Pick your grammar center. I’m like, oh, look, I give my kids agency choice, right? But it’s on agency that’s felt as more meaningful and relevant and robust by the kid. And that’s why I also whenever we talk about deeper learning, we also include sort of the cognitive complexity and the Google Authentic Lens, because those are things that make that agency more relevant to our.

Q: So then how do we how might we talk to schools that are getting I want to push back right now for students when the curriculum is more open. Right. Because we know that there are some pushback from different states and different politicians and different parent organizations that are saying, we want our kids to learn, you know what we learned?

Don’t give them choice. What if they decide they want to explore something that’s against my beliefs? Or is, you know, a different religion or a different whatever, like whatever they were going to explore. How do we how might we talk to parents and to naysayers to help them understand the need for choice for children? I like to ask parents, what do they think schooling is for?

Like especially up to high school, right? What do you want your kids to be doing at the end of high school? And most parents say the same thing. They want to be courageous and inquisitive. They want them to be ready for college or ready for the workforce, or ready to start asking more questions. Right? Rarely do they say I want them to be able to quote in Old English, The Canterbury Tales, right?

A: Which is funny because I had to do that. I can still do some of those verses. I know Mike, that sounds crazy is old English, but you know, parents will predictably say a lot of the same things like, give me some words that you want for your kids when they graduate. So when you start showing them the data, as far as Scott has, these data points, as far as these kids get into the colleges, these kids are workforce ready.

These kids are ready to pursue a career. These kids are ready to communicate cross-culturally. So those are the kind of skills that we think about when we want to succeed the next step of life. Jason’s referencing some of the data know where to look at colleges and employers, right. Like, do you want another kid who got really great grades by filling out a bunch of low level worksheets?

And basically this teacher compliant? Or do you want a kid who maybe got a little bit lower grades, but has just a boatload of hands on applied experience through capstone experiences, senior projects, service based learning, you know, internships, whatever, right? And you’re going to be hard pressed to find an employer, for example, doesn’t want the ladder to up the format.

I think for me, data, I think a lot about this is that what you’re speaking to is that we don’t want to just substitute one size fits all model or another one, and that what you’re really speaking to is that we need choices and pathways for kids and teens. Right. And so if what you want is a very traditional school experience right there, we should probably have that option for some families.

But we also know that that option doesn’t meet the needs of everybody. And as I always tell my principal, which is your students, if you have a system that takes incredible diversity of community, that walks in your doors every day and treats them all to the exact same experience, you’re guaranteed to fail, right? So what are the other options we’re creating for other kids and other fields?

And some of those are going to be more deeper learning options where kids is not interested in going to college. And I don’t feel like taking algebra two. What I really want is I want to be a hands on treat, right? I want to go out and do some, you know, good applied experience. I might say I want a chance to drive my own learning.

So project and inquiry based spaces or whatever, right. Like we need to create these continuum of pathways and choice options for kids and families. Rather just saying that, oh, we’re just going to replace the old traditional system with another one size fits all system. Because again, we’re going to diversity of our needs of our families. I think that’s especially important, especially when we’re talking about like international students and international children in our schools.

You know, our kids are coming from such a variety of backgrounds and their interests and what they can bring to the table and to the classroom. Sometimes is quite unique. You know, I remember talking about I forget, I think it was we’re doing a thing on it wasn’t on India, but anyway and one of the kids was like, oh, I’ve been there, oh I’ve been there, I’ve been there.

Oh, I went to the museum about this and I learned this, you know, at that location. And so it was just really fascinating to think about the fact that one size fits all isn’t going to fit that group, and turning it over to the students to be able to share their experiences and things of that nature can really be helpful in those kinds of situations.

Yeah. Awesome data. I think this kind of work is also it balances students interests as well as parent and society’s comfort levels. Right? So when we start seeing some schools having different options for different kinds of kids, like I’m think about Kettle Moraine, they have a traditional track, they have a health sciences track, a global track, a perform track and a connect track that kids can opt into and parents can support to say, yes, I want to go into health and allied sciences.

Great. Let’s prepare you for that. Or to say, but I’m not so sure. I’m also really interested in doing a play. Okay, so let’s give you some experiences over here. Right. That’s balancing some of the kids interests with paths that aren’t set out for everyone. The kids can self-select into them and parents can, you know, say, I don’t want my kid to do that.

But it’s giving options and giving kids different chances to explore things that they may not be able to explore until the real world, if you will. Right, right. And those options and pathways are things that schools have traditionally not been very good at. Right? So I think Covid particularly, it’s sort of the brittleness or the fragility of our school models is that we were designed for a certain set of things and a certain set of circumstances, and as soon as those weren’t in place anymore, like our systems cracked, right, and, and sort of exposed some of the brokenness or the fragility of much of what we created.

And that’s true for both schools in the states, international schools, whatever. Right. You know, like some schools and families were better resourced another. So they move that way easier. But the bottom line is it showed sort of where the sort of the structural limitations were of our current systems. Right. And I think what these deeper learning systems schools do is they create space for differentiation and individualization and personalization within structures that don’t break the school.

Right. So it’s not that we have to have 17 different pathways, because those seem to be what our kids and families are asking us to provide. What we’re doing is we’re creating a structured learning space in which every kid can personalize to the degree that he or she needs to right within that space. And then you have infinite pathways within a structure that accommodates all of that.

So if you want to be on a very traditional path or you want to be in a very divergent path, the school is built from the get go or designed around that from the beginning, right. And I appreciate how Scott is talking about how Covid showed how broken some of the schools were and how they were broken for certain students.

Right. So in traditional schools, we see some students doing really, really well. And during Covid they may not have been able to do so well. We had other kids that were doing horrible and traditional schooling were flourishing during Covid, maybe because they had more choice in boys. Maybe they were able to explore more things on their own because they weren’t told what to do.

Right. So I think we really need to take a step back and say, how were these kids flourishing and under what circumstances and what did that look like? And then how can we make schools more like that for those kind of kiddos? Right. So the key is your flexibility in terms of accommodating personal differences in directions for kids and families.

Right. And so we don’t satisfy that by just saying, like over in AP school or oh, when I school, right, or we’re a Stem school or whatever. Right. Like because the key is how you implement within that to create choice and agency and directness for kids and families. Awesome. Well, I was going to ask you what you thought a dream school might look like, but I think you both kind of answered passion, which is fantastic because I was hoping to end on something super fun and uplifting.

Oh go ahead Scott. My dream school is one where kids are excited to show up every day, right? And where kids are excited to go home at the end of the day at whatever time they’re ready for. And you can’t stop them cheering about the cool stuff that they did. Right? Like, I’m tired of the apathy and the boredom and the game plan, right?

And I think for too many of our young people, we’re just wasting this incredible potential. But the human capacity to do really interesting work, and we just stifle in our systems, regardless of whether traditional school, IB school, AP school, deep or whatever. Right? Like my ideal school is one where pretty much every kid is excited to show up in a set and tell you all about at the end of the day, right?

And can’t wait to go back for more. And we don’t have very many schools. I can say that I agree, like, no, I just want to add another question to that, because you spoke a lot about students, but, who is your dream workers? Who’s working at this dream school? Visuals are there able to answer that? I think that’s a great question.

Especially when we start thinking about the teacher workforce and the stresses that teachers are underneath right now. But what we saw in a lot of the schools that were doing awesome jobs with this, they weren’t just all traditionally trained teachers. I mean, they were community members. They were innovators. They were business entrepreneurs. The traditional teachers were there, but they were also teachers that that were tired of the system not serving all kids.

Right? They were they wanted a place that had more heart. They wanted a place that had more choice and voice for them too. Right. So I think it’s going to be teachers who don’t want to just focus on the content, but want to focus on the student experience. I think we also saw that for at least some of these schools, they did really great job of tapping into the community as a whole and recognizing that for particular learning experience for kids, the ideal facilitator might be a trained licensed educator, but it might also be another student, it might be a parent.

It might be somebody out in the community who has a particular set of competencies or expertise or experience. Right. I remember visiting this one school. We didn’t profile it in the book, but they had a facilities manager groundskeeper who was like this medieval dude and he was into archery and falconry. Right. And the school did a great job with their elementary kids, giving them opportunities to learn from this guy.

Right. Like he wasn’t just the groundskeeper, he was also the cool medieval dude. And you could hang out with him as a third grader and, and, you know, learn about falcons, right. And shoot arrows and, you know, like that’s leaning into your community resources. Right. And figuring out, you know, we got a parent was an amazing watercolor artist.

Let’s bring that parent in to help us illustrate those stories that we just self wrote right. For same age peers. Right. This is the idea of tapping into who’s out there that can help us learn interesting stuff. And some of these schools are really great job. And Locust Grove did that. Like the teachers could pitch ideas that the kids wanted to learn, like discuss it with like falconry and then everything that esoteric, which had been still cool, but, you know, like someone was, really into guitar and like, you didn’t bring that into your social studies class.

So it’s like, hey, I would love to have a guitar club. So they were actually able to bring in their passions into the schools. And the kids love that too. So it was like, it’s teach your passions too.

Yeah, well, you’re both super passionate about all of this, which is fantastic. And thank you for joining us. I know Mike and I were a little nervous because this is our first one, and, the two of you did amazing job.

So thank you very much. And getting to more ask me anything from ISS. Did you learn? Thank you everyone, for tuning in today.