Well, thank you, everybody, for joining the K-12 Tech podcast. I am excited today to have Hope Davis on, and I’m really excited to hear your story.
Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. And thank you for taking the time to come into this space with me and allow me to share my story and where I’ve been what I’ve been trying to do, and where I’m going.
Yeah, and you know, we, I do a preview call with everybody. And your story, I think, is going to be one that’s really interesting. And I think you have a really good lens to what you’re looking at education and what you’re trying to solve a big problem that you’re trying to solve. So, I like to start with the softball questions. Why don’t you give me your favorite movie or book and why they are your favorite?
Well, I can give them both real quick. My favorite book is Walden by Henry David Thoreau. I’m not quite as minimalist and as simplistic as I used to be, but that was always a goal of mine to be as minimalist as possible. But for me, the kernel for Thoreau has always been to go confidently into the direction of your dreams and lived the life you imagine. So that’s that’s kind of who I am and what I focus on in my day to day. And that’s really important for me.
The movie absolutely would be The Matrix series, the first one, the first one, and most importantly, we’ll talk a little bit about my teaching experiences. But when I was teaching in the college-level, introductory sociology, the Matrix was the core, the foundation of that course. You can talk about everything when it comes down to structure and the way the world works based on the matrix in my opinion. And so the Matrix is always my favorite.
I was just talking to a friend of mine, and he was talking about like The Matrix was like a one of a kind movie when it came out.
Absolutely.
A deep level of thinking and making you question about like society and and certain constraints. It’s an unbelievable movie, but all three are great. I think they get more and more complicated and like…
Yeah, they do.
You’re like going down different layers. You know.
Yeah.
You know, kind of reminds me, I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie Interstellar, that’s one of my favorites. Like, you get different levels of complexity and then it’s like harder and harder to understand? Right. It reminds me of that.
Yeah. And that’s purposeful, right? Because, you know, I think the thing about the Matrix series is that, you know, when it was done, it was, you know, decades ago. But we I think was the the people who produced that kind of understand that life was going to get more complex and that there were things that were gonna have to look at in different ways.
And so the first one was very simplistic in the sense of the, you know, straightforward. But then as they go down the rabbit hole, as you say, there’s more to be done and more to be seen and more to be thought about. So I just think they are timeless, really. They certainly are.
I love that. And then another thing I’d like to ask people is, what do you do to recharge? What are the extracurricular activities you like to do just to get your mind right and get your body right?
Well, I’m always… it’s very difficult for me because as an entrepreneur and as a business owner, for me and particularly in the field that I’m in with education, I’m always thinking, and so whenever someone asks me something like that, I always say sleep. You know, it’s not that I don’t sleep, but it’s the time that I get to be the most creative in my mind, not because I’m not looking for anything. You’re right.
So recharging for me is also just about at sleep time, just to be able to kind of go away, you know, into the Valley of Knowledge and just kind of separate myself from all of those, you know, external things, kind of getting your head and see visually to just kind of relax. And, you know, I always say, you know, sometimes I’ll say, well, I’m going away for a little while just to work on some things, and I’ll go to sleep, I’ll take a nap or a couple of hours or whatever and feel so much better and recharged and clear when I wake up. And so that’s what I generally do, I mean, I like to read, and things like that, but my go-to was always to take a nap. It’s always about the sleep. Can’t focus on anything besides that,
Yeah, you’re the first person ever to answer with that. And I love that. Are you pretty regimented? Like you like to go to bed at the same time every night and wake up at the same time?
I try, I try. I try to go to bed every night, the same time I know that I get up around the same time. And even though I consider myself a no alarm clock required person because what I do when I say that, I mean I don’t I my life is to the point where what I do for a living is not something that, you know, I like, I need to stay away from. I enjoy what I do. So I don’t need an alarm clock to get me up and going, but I tend to wake up at the same time every morning, regardless of how I slept the night before or whether I went to bed at the same time or not. I’m always up at the same time.
That’s awesome. So, getting into your story and what you’re doing in education and technology, I think it’s always important to know the beginnings, right?
Yeah.
The what brought you to where you are today and as you like, talk with like, and you see in psychology and stuff, so much of what is ingrained in you happens in the beginning part of your life, and I think that is an important story. So I’d love to hear your story and then your struggle and the standard education system and how you came out of that with the current, you know, lens that you look at.
Well, you know, hindsight is what they say, you know, 20/20. Sometimes I look back and I think that I was really directed in the direction that I was going in purposely. But, you know, I just had a rough life, childhood as far as stability. I mean, I was raised in North Carolina, where I’m at now in the mountains near Asheville. And we essentially moved around a lot. It was almost one of those kids.
We mean, I was, I think I was at.. I would say 16, 16/17 different schools in my K-12 experience, probably more than twice that much, you know. So I never really established or got the chance to this kind of have the normal school experience where I’m just like there and..
What was the reason… What was the reason for the constant movement?
Well, part of it was employment. Part of it was the fact that, to be honest, my mother had suffered with mental illness, and she was the breadwinner in our family. And so when and the scenario for her in her mind said, it’s time to go. We would just go sometimes in the middle of the night.
Obviously, like I said, that would be something that would just kind of take complete ability for me to have any kind of stable life or stable thoughts, you know, like I said, sometimes, I mean, I can just my mother was bipolar and so sometimes she’d just wake up, and she had a great sense of paranoia, and she’d just need to leave. And so we would just leave, sometimes only taking what we had, and sometimes we would leave what we had. And so it was a lot of starting over again. There was a lot of chaos.
There was a lot of feelings of not trusting your own experience, your own thoughts, your own mind, because someone else’s, you know, kind of way out of the circle of a sensibility, I guess you might say. And so that makes it a challenge for a child. And this wasn’t just something that happened, you know when I was a teenager, this was a constant experience. So my entire growth, my entire psychological building, was flawed by that experience. And so coming out of it just, you know, going through a couple of different, you know, those stages where we go through, we say, you know, elementary, middle school, junior high school kind of space and high school.
By the time I got to high school, I was pretty much very much a loner because I didn’t get an opportunity to establish friendships. Right. And so I was also by the time I got to high school, I was not socially developed as well because you’re just not you’re just not establishing long term friendships. So, I was a loner. I was the quiet one. I was the one that was pretty much isolated. And because, you know, you’re going into new school environments couple, three times a year, sometimes your teachers don’t get to know you. Okay?
And so when they don’t get to know you, you know, there’s there’s, you know, God bless teachers, but at the same time, they’re not they’re not perfect. And so sometimes the more difficult students, whether they’re someone like me or someone who’s having outbursts in a classroom, it can be a situation where they just don’t have the energy to figure out what’s going on. And so I would just kind of move through kind of like a ghost in many ways in my school environment.
So, by the time I got to high school, I was done. I would say that I, you know, I consider myself to be academically or intellectually well-developed as far as that, but socially underdeveloped. And so by 10th grade, I had stopped going to class. I had stopped passing courses. I basically was on the verge of dropping out. And by the 11th grade, first semester of 11th grade, I was done. And the only reason why I got to 11th grade is because I had passed just a couple of classes in 10th grade. But actually, there was no reason for me being 11th grade for that moment because I really had not earned that time.
So that’s when I dropped out, dropped out of high school. And I don’t know if I would consider dropping out because I just it wasn’t a process for me. It wasn’t like, I don’t want to go to school anymore, so I’m going to literally drop out. It just seemed like the next time we moved, I just didn’t. No one brought me back to school. So there was a lot of neglect and mental neglect, not necessarily… there was no physical abuse as far as you know, any of the major components that we typically think about. But it was just really just the relationship and the instability and just kind of not paying attention to what I needed.
Yeah, I think hearing that story just sounds like there was zero continuity from an educational standpoint. And then, like you said, the friendship standpoint. And I think that’s taken for granted in so many ways. And, you know, I thought like I went to a different elementary school, then we moved different middle school and then a different high school. And then seeing even that little bit of effect. And, you know, you don’t it can your friendships can suffer in that way. I can’t. 16 times.
Yes.
It seems like you’re already defeated before you even get there.
Yeah. And you don’t even know at that point. You don’t even know what the norm is for most kids, you know. It wasn’t until I was, you know, past that point as a young adult, and I started to see other students and other people that did not have the same experience that I had because for me, it was very normal.
It was hard, but it was normal. And so you literally start to think that that is who you are and that it’s your fault or that the teacher can’t communicate with you or something like that is something that you’re doing versus the circumstances and the situation you’re in. So this gets really, really complex in a in a growing mind, and it just makes it a lot a lot harder.
Was there any psychology for you in the sense of, like, I like you, like almost like you wouldn’t even want to make friends because of the heartbreak that you knew would probably come?
Yeah. I mean, I think that’s fair. I think that one thing that I, you know, kind of reflect back on and understand about some of the things that I was thinking that I can remember is that you just don’t connect to people because, you know, they won’t be there. Right. You just don’t. You don’t connect the people. You don’t establish friendships. You don’t, you know, move in a space that says anything about permanence because it’s not going to happen. And not even you don’t even get to the point where you are imagining, This is what I would like to have.
You don’t, you know, don’t even look around long, not looking around long enough to be able to know that, wow, they’ve been living here for, you know, I mean, what would be extraordinary for me, you know, they’ve been living here a couple of years. I’ve only been here three months, and I would like to live here a couple of years. That really didn’t count for me until literally middle school when I started to notice that it would be nice to have friends that were around a little longer or be in a click, you know or a group of people. Sports helped me with that. When you start being in organized sports at your school, you start to have, you know, friendships. But at the same time, I always knew that it was going to be disrupted by something.
So I would often try to just get out of sports, even though it’s good at it. I would just often try to get out of it just because I knew that I wouldn’t be around.
Yeah. So 11th grade, you said basically it wasn’t like a catch. No one came to be like, why aren’t you at school? I’m just not going to go back, which is another unique process.
Right. Because, like, you know, you move, and you don’t go back to school. How would they know? You know, you just, you’re just gone. Just fall completely between the cracks when you’re moving around unless you move into another school district or another state. You just become a ghost. Like I said, you just don’t. They don’t know where you are or who you are at that point.
Yeah. You know, obviously, to where you are now, you’ve built a very successful life. What changed? You drop out in 11th grade. What’s next for you at that point?
Yeah, well, you know, what changed for me was to have my own child I believe. I think that was the biggest thing. So, you know, after after after dropping out or whatever you want to call it, just not coming back. The reality is, at some point when I had been out there with my mother, at this point, we were homeless. My parents had broken up for the last time, and I was with my mother, my bipolar mother, and we had, well, we just kind of gone from place to place, homeless, shelter, hitchhiking, some support. And we were up in Virginia.
At this point, she had chosen to hitchhike up to Richmond, Virginia, and we were staying at a homeless shelter hotel kind of thing where social workers were involved. And they didn’t get involved in my life in particular, just to say that you have a minor here. And so the choice was because I was 17 at that point, the choice was to go back to school, which is the new school in Virginia, my high school, which was a very difficult high school because the shelter, which would have been our address, was a pretty rough school.
And of course, I didn’t want to do that and would start a new school and go to a school that was kind of rough, so the options were to go back to school or go to foster care. She would take me. The social workers would take me away to my mother’s. And the third choice was going to the military.
Okay, so three tough choices.
Yeah. So I don’t even know if you could even guess. So you have to go to the rough school. Go to foster care or go into the military. And I chose to go into the military. And so, you know, the military is a structured place. And so what did I need? I needed structure. And so I go from there into the space of being in the military. And I went to one of the I would say, softer military organizations, I went to the Coast Guard. And so I always joke about that. I picked the nicest one.
Just so you know, I was in the Army for 12 years. Yes.
I probably would not have survived in the Army. But, you know, because in general, you know, I did not want to be this was a choice, you know what I’m saying? And it’s not like I said, I want to go into the army. I did not want to go into the military at all, but being in that experience, the military gave me a little structure, but it also gave me a little separation from my mother and some of her issues, to be quite frank. And in that time, I got married, and my daughter got divorced pretty quickly after I had my daughter.
But my daughter’s influence certainly was different for me, and so when you have a child, I must say that I never thought of myself as anything other than a reflection of my mother until that point. And then I suddenly had someone that was needing to have a reflection, right? And the reflection that I wanted to be was more than what I was right. And so that was the change. And so from that point on, I started out a little bit late in my life. Additionally, early teens going to college first community college because, again. I’m at this point, I’m a high school dropout, and I have a GED to get into the Military, but had no real… I had no good credits to get and GPA to get into a good school.
So I started community college, worked my way from community college into university, and then eventually earned my bachelor’s in sociology up in Ohio at Cleveland State University. And then, I went got a master’s degree from Kent State University in criminal justice, and then came back home to North Carolina to start a Ph.D. program in sociology here at North Carolina State and almost finished it. But there’s a whole other story behind why I didn’t finish it.
But it was the right decision. But all of that just kind of brought me into the educational place that it’s kind of weird that I wound up in a place that I didn’t have a lot of experience in when I mean that, you know, obviously being not being in school, not being in the classroom. But here I am back into education.
That is quite a journey.
A long journey. Yeah.
You know, I think a lot of times the military it is is not looked at properly. I honestly when a lot of people talk to me about my career, I wouldn’t do it again. I had to start from the beginning, but I’m really glad I did. And I think for anybody who isn’t super clear on what they want to do next step in their life out of high school like military is a great place for that. You get structure, you learn about leadership, learn about leadership.
There are great benefits for college, paid for. I paid for all of my college, and then I got to learn a lot about corporate structure and accountability. And I just think I think it’s an underrated place for people to go when, when, when they just need that period of time to get structure in their lives.
Right.
And just for you and then just from that and you know, I, I have four kids. You’re right. Like, if you’re thinking about yourself, you have a kid, you’re like, now my life is about giving them a better opportunity than I had.
Right.
How much that can change your life. And it’s incredible that you were able to do all of that out of your circumstances. And that’s I think that’s such an important lesson for people, no matter your circumstance. Like, you do have the ability to get yourself to a better place. It’s unbelievable.
Yeah, I just feel like, you know, I talk about it today and it’s like, you know, I’m proud of my journey. But I also tell people that, you know, one of the things that I work so hard for, any deal that I’m in right now is because I tell people all the time that, yes, I did make it through. And I’m fortunate in that way. But it was so much harder, so much harder because of the things that I had to go through. I’m happy where I’m at, but I know that it’s such a journey based upon the opportunities that I did not have or the foundation. I didn’t have a home structure, and I didn’t. I didn’t have the some of the educational resources, and I didn’t have some of the assistance and I did not have as a student or, you know, having someone be able to see that I was struggling and respond to that. It just made it so much harder to get through. And I just don’t want that to be the case for some other kids.
And so I really work hard to kind of go full circle for me. And I think I’ve said it to you that, you know, my healing is also a part of healing other people. So it’s kind of easy for me to do what I do because I know that part of it is being able to kind of brush some of the edges off of what I’ve been through at the same time, and as I went through this space helping other people.
Yeah, that’s amazing. And getting into this next section too, of how did that story amplify your passion specifically for teaching in high school and then early college students, that being your focus and those students facing the nontraditional challenges?
Yeah, well, I had to kind of go a little bit more divergent into what happened when I came back to North Carolina to go into my graduate program at North Carolina State, Ph.D. And because I was pretty much a loner, I really enjoyed the idea of being a graduate assistant, just kind of research and reading and things like that. Some reason when I saying that jokingly, because obviously there was a greater plan, I was sent into the classroom.
So, in a college environment, I was teaching courses, and that’s when I realized that I really enjoyed being in that space. And I found what I considered to be my calling was teaching. And so I spent several years I taught down in Atlanta at Spelman College, and I taught here in North Carolina at NC Wilmington. But when I started to see where few people like me in those classrooms and those college classrooms, when I say people like me, obviously I taught at Spelman which is a black women’s college predominantly. So it’s not about race or gender.
It’s about people like me who were going through. Right. And so I realized that, okay, you’re doing good work here in university level, but you’re not seeing people like you because they never get here, you know?
Yeah.
It’s just a hard, harder road. And you’re not seeing those students. So that’s why I went. Some people would say back, but I went to teaching in high school that environment because I realized that that’s where that’s where the drop is. That’s where that moment where someone cares, or someone is able to help them with resources is so important. And it’s nice to be in a college environment. It’s a very good point to have a career. But again, I wasn’t seeing myself and I, I wanted that opportunity.
And so that’s why I went back and started teaching in high school environments. So those students that I came across teaching in a high school environment, as an English teacher, those students were reflections of me. And so I got to, like I said, heal a little bit. But also be part of an education process that was fluid but structured and just paying attention to students and helping them through and service, which is what we’re all about. We’re about service.
It’s amazing, and like for you probably with your story what was a unique approach that you took towards those students that had a similar kind of maybe not an exact story of yours, but the students that you would say have those nontraditional challenges. Can you can you talk a little bit about maybe some little things or big things maybe that you were doing to try and engage those students that maybe you didn’t see when you were going through school?
Well, I think the biggest thing is just to operate in a way. You know, you stay within your curriculum requirements and so on and so forth, but you want to stay in a space where your students feel like they’re seen and that they’re heard. And that may sound cliche, but that’s really the foundation of who we are as human beings. Right? And so I just always had a very classroom that was part of that lost what you’re seeing and you heard.
And whatever or whatever constraints or restrictions or, you know, developments that we have from a curriculum standpoint has to always come from there. And giving students the freedom to be creative and to see themselves in the work event if the work does at an upper level seem to be about them. It’s always about them because they’re the ones… they are the ones that are taking that education out the door, you know, and bringing them into the world. And so just making sure that they’re seen and heard in the classroom has always been important. And the constraints of a curriculum provided for our particular grade level is just really important.
And so, but also, I never really you might think that my childhood experience might flow into the classroom. I never really talked about that with students because I think it’s inappropriate. I really do. It’s just too much, you know? So I didn’t feel like that was the way to do that. What I just believe is just just being a teacher that, you know, pays attention. I’ve had situations where students have taken remedial courses with me and where that was the spaces where I didn’t necessarily think that that was part of my direction. Most of my English courses were upper level classes, English three, English for junior and senior English.
But doing things like, you know, working in the remedial side of it where students having difficulty were where they need a little assistance. So I just kind of stretched myself out to go in those spaces so that I could give back and serve in those ways as well. But just, just making them seen and heard is just an important part of who I am. As an individual. And certainly, it was part of that for me as an instructor and a teacher.
So specifically, as we’re working into what you’re doing now with project leader, are you obviously you’re you’re a Google education certified teacher and all of these things how did your position transfer more into technology, and then what skills are you seeing that you believe are required to have that creativity and proficiency in the real world that you’re not seeing that you weren’t seeing with your students?
Well, there are again, there’s always a converging point for me when it comes down to how things play out. And during my college experience, when I was in college, I had a mentor was just he was in urban studies. And so he’s focusing on the general situation of individuals and in urban environments. And he retired and went into technology, and this was many years ago and the day that he retired, I mean, I just loved him as a mentor.
So I was helping him carry his stuff out to his car. And I said to him, So what are you doing now? And he said, I’m going into technology and start writing software programs and so on and so forth. He said, This is where this is, where the world is going, right? And so I said, okay, this is where the world is going, but you know, what about the people in the Urban Studies program that you were kind of leaving behind and he said, Well if you want to make a difference in this world, you’re going to have to focus on technology. And if you’re not going to be left behind. And so then, it always stuck with me.
And so that part of that came into that part of me as an instructor and as a teacher in the classroom. Just understanding that technology is not just Snapchat back in the day, not just TikTok. Today, it is more about how you control your own creative merits. So my professor, he initially just basically told me that in order to not be left behind, you’re going to have to focus on technology because that is the future. And so, for me, using technology in the classroom has always been part of that focus. And so I don’t believe that technology is just about Snapchat back in the day or TikTok now.
I think the use of technology, whether it’s in the classroom or for people who are using it out in the real world, guess to the outside world, it’s important for them to be able to see that technology. So it’s a part of the creative mind and that’s that’s where I’m always at when it comes down to technology. And so when it comes down to what I was initially saying about students being seen and being heard, part of being seen and being heard is a two-way street. You know, I can see you as a student. I can hear you as a student, but unless you show me something and unless you say something, I can’t. Right.
So, for me, using technology in the boom of technology is that connection to be able to say that some students are able to use that creativity to make themselves seen and heard in the classroom or in the world in general. One of the things, and I know as an instructor, as an educator, is that students who are visual learners and who are learners who focus on, you know, their ability to touch and to manipulate things tend to be the hardest to deal with in the classroom. And part of the reason why is because our curriculum is set in such a structured way that we don’t give a lot of time; we don’t have a lot of time for that kind of learning.
Yeah.
And so because of that, those kinds of students, you will see when you talk about students who are having difficulty, they often are those kinds of learners. And so it just turns out that’s the perfect space for me because I want them to, you know, express themselves, you know, visually and to touch and view, you know, manipulation. I want them to be able to move, you know, and I think you and I talked about this one point about how, for you, that was one of those challenges.
You just needed to move in a classroom, just you could not sit still, and some for for most students, that’s where they are. And so when you see a lot of students who are kind of restricted or set back in their academic progress, many of them are learners that struggle in those ways. And so technology, if you use technology as the creator of, you know, the place that your mind can create and spaces, then you’re allowed to be seen and be heard in many ways that are really important and really critical for students who may not have some of those resources that we often talk about as being just normal for kids.
Yeah, I fully agree. And I think now AI is a big talking point. I just think the ability to retail-specific educational plans towards students who have different apps, you know and different capabilities and be huge, and it just just for the future. So getting into what you’re doing now, right? I’ve read on how Project LEAR embodies your commitment to genuine and student-focused education and those who.
Right.
And what Project LEAR is?
Yeah, Project LEAR grew from a lot of my own experiences in the classroom, but it focuses on … the parts of LEAR are location engage, activate, and retain so Project LEAR is about having those students where we find those students since the first part- the locate part where we find them where they are. You know what is the person’s you know situation where they’re moving a lot, are they in the district or they’re out of the district and trying to get back into a school system that they are comfortable with, which would be the one that they just left. Right.
Their friendships and their spaces that they’re up with. So finding them in the spaces where they exist and then engaging them and letting them know that someone is there and someone is ready to assist them in getting back into where they need to be. And so the activation part is simply just making sure they understand that engagement. They understand that they’re connected to something greater than themselves, sometimes greater than their family structures.
They have an opportunity to, you know, imagine and create a life that they imagine and then retaining. And so the retaining part is for them to be in the school system and the school district they are in. And that’s what we want to focus on. If the retaining part is just steering them to focus to maybe go to a community college, attempt a GED program, and getting involved in a CNA program or some kind of other technology program, we want to do that. And so we utilize that as our foundation. So that certainly comes from where I come from, which is to say that the idea of no student left behind is so much more powerful for my mind to think about that these students are just left behind, but not because of grades. They’re left behind because of their home life and their structure that connects the school system. And so locating students is always been a part of that for me. And Project LEAR begins with the location.
So, finding students so that people will say, I don’t know where they are; they slip through the cracks, they moved, but they didn’t give us a forwarding address. Those kinds of students. And certainly, if you go back to my experience when we moved no one asked where she was. Right. You know, it’s just I’m gone. And so that’s why it’s the first part of that locating. And we use technology. What we use there, you know, mapping and use, you know, some of the technology resources that we have when it comes down to phone services and things like that. And so we do our best to find them.
But the bigger part, once we find them, is to get their families and the children this and something that we can do to understand that there’s more for them than just what they’re currently living in. And so that’s how project LEAR fits for me. But it also is how it came to be just just understanding that we have a great body of students that are left behind because we just don’t check in on them. We understand as educators, and this is part of the systems of structure that are a little bit frustrating for me. And as former educators, we tend to focus on students when they are viable for testing, focus on them when they’re viable for evaluations of your teaching ability, but when they’re not in that process.
Those two main processes, we tend to forget about them and they become, you know, we all want to bring them back into the classroom because they’re going to ruin our, you know, our evaluations and our scores. And so we can take care of those kids, but we choose to often not. And that’s why I’m driven based upon my own experience, just about seeing that happen in the classrooms I’ve been in as an adult as well.
Yeah, I love that. That’s interesting. I’ve never heard in education, technology, anything really like this. And I think you’re right. It’s an under it’s almost like an out of sight, out-of-mind problem, probably for many people of like I don’t even know that this was that big of an issue.
Right.
I wanted to talk next about the work that you’ve been doing with the DEI initiatives in education and then why you think it’s really, really important for the inclusive learning environment.
Well, and it is again, I connect a lot to where I come from. And so, I cannot specifically say to you that my experience was based upon my upbringing in our household of persons of color. I cannot say that. But what I can say is that based upon our societal norms and our structures, that a lot of the kids that we come across and I have come across as an educator and come across with our company have been persons of color, and they are deeply, deeply affected by systems of struggle and systems of oppression that are very, very real in their lives. And so what we have to kind of… that it does not make everyone comfortable and live in a meritocracy as far as how we see things and say, you know, hey, if you’re given an opportunity, you can have that opportunity. You are if you have and do what you need to do, you will be successful.
I have that perspective as well, and as I said just a few moments ago. Yes, I am successful, and what I went through made it a lot harder for me. So what we have to do when it comes down to equity and inclusion is we have to kind of see those systems of struggle that are in place that make it a lot harder for certain children, certain students, to be seen in a way that allows us to focus on their growth, their education and when they fall. That’s the biggest question for me. When it happens, when they fall, what do we do? How do we respond? So it’s not to say that, you know, you have to create programs that don’t deal with reality. Part of the reality is that there will be students that will struggle, and they will be environments that are difficult and some ways more so for some children. And so when that happens, how do we respond?
We have to have the same kinds of systems in place to assist those students as well. And I think DEI is one of those places. And again, it makes some people uncomfortable, but I’m certainly not uncomfortable with the idea because I see it every day. The proof is in the pudding. It is needed equally in our society. So I want to work with it.
Yeah, one question I had because you talked about, you know, you were living in the mountains of….
North Carolina.
North Carolina, and then you were in Virginia, and you kind of had both of those worlds. Do you see any similarities between urban environments and connectivity and the deep mountain areas or more rural areas and them not being equally represented in education? And what I mean by that is just like them being an unreal, unrepresented group or them struggling more? I don’t know if you’ve seen any similarities.
I think the similarities are there. I think. I don’t think that there’s for urban environments and rural environments. I think that you know, we still have some of the same problems and challenges. They may look just slightly differently, but I think they’re still the same. I think we can generalize certain things about poverty and about homelessness, about food insecurity, and things like that that are just across the board. You know, they just look at us in another environment. But I think the challenges are still there.
You know, I think that’s a really interesting kind of the last thing I wanted to dig into is what you’re trying to do. I think is something very new, especially incorporating technology and scaling that. Looking forward, what are your aspirations for developing the human-centered software that you’re working on? Yeah. And where do you think it’s going to be like, you know, I know because we developed software, it’s extremely hard and kind of… What’s your dream with that and where do you see it kind of going and continuing?
Well, here’s what frightens me about our society right now. When it comes down to technology, I think that we are moving away from human centric software. I think we are focusing on the algorithm now, and the algorithm just when we are in our team meetings, we have conversations about process. We talk about project LEAR and how that process goes from ELA to art. Hope And how we engage our team with district teams. And we talk about how often the disconnect is what one of our team members said, that people are getting stuck in the process. Right. And so we had a conversation about what that really looks like and what that meant.
So I’m getting stuck in the process as you take away your humanity, you take away your thought process, and you basically say, I have this job, and that’s it. Right? And so when you come to me, and I do this, then I’m done. Right. And so getting stuck in the process, the process may be seven or seven or eight different steps, But if your step is number one or number three and you’re stuck in the process, drop and say, I’ve done what I need to do, then you don’t connect to number two or number four. You just do what you do. And I believe algorithms are teaching us to do that more so than not in our society right now. They basically saying, you know, if you put these components in this part, put this component in this part, then this is what you’re going to be.
That takes away our creativity and my thought process. And so, for me, developing human-centered software is really about the totality of the holistic piece of looking at a student and looking at what they need, but more importantly, not just what they need, but what you’re able to give and how you document that, how you think it through. So if you look at an algorithm and the algorithm says this student is more likely to be absent today. Okay, great. Now I pause because what does that do? Nothing. Yeah, that’s the end is more likely to be absent today. It means nothing when it comes down to that child’s life, that child’s experience, and the next quarter of next semester. Just says he’s going to be he’s likely to be absent. And if he’s not absent, what do you do? Good job. “Good job, Johnny. You’re not absent today.” If he is absent.
Well, that’s what we expected. You take away all of the humanity in the thought process that happens when you think, well, why is John not here today? And if he’s not here today and he comes back next week, great. How can we keep him here? Right? And so when I design software that focuses on how we keep track, and that is what the software that I have developed is called Trax when I talk about software and say, how do we keep track of students? Which is the thing that I focus on in my life and my career is not letting students fall through the cracks.
Yeah.
So when we think about how do we document and how do we keep track of students? You can’t be algorithm-based. You have to be human-centric. You have to put yourself in a holistic process instead of saying. My job is just to note that Johnny did not come by school, but that my job is more than that. My job is to address what’s going on in his life. My job is to address what happens next week, and more so and so if we focus on algorithms, we’re going to be lost. AI can never be the thing that replaces our creativity and our process.
You know, we can utilize it. But I’ve never seen or thought about or computer program or software piece as being out of my control. It’s always been a way to kind of blank page my brain and build upon what I’m trying to accomplish now. And so we have to stay grounded can utilize these tools. We have to stay grounded in our humanity and continue to develop programs that help us stay that way and to stay connected to people who are really, really reaching out and trying to they’re trying to get help from us, and we just need to stay committed.
Yeah, I love that. Hope, thank you so much for being on The K-12 Tech Podcast. I loved your story and your passion for not.. really trying to fill in these cracks so these students don’t fall through them. And you’re committed to that. And I’m so excited to see what the next couple of years hold as this becomes more and more popular, hopefully in our schools, and it’s kind of a lifelong generational-long effect it could have. It’s like just like your life, the generational effect it can have and just thank you so much for sharing your story.
I appreciate it. I appreciate taking the time. And I just want to say that, you know, the next couple of years are very critical for our education process because of our technology, because of AI and because of the things that we’re thinking of and that they want in the sound of my voice hears a plea it’ll be to keep it human-centric in the midst of the technology innovation and that’s true innovation when human beings have some say in view about where technology makes sense.
Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.
Thank you! Appreciate it. Thank you.
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