All right, well, Chantell, thank you for being the first guest on the K 12 Tech Origins series, where we focus more on people’s stories and where they kind of came from, and how they got to where they are now. And know, I really appreciate you bringing out the coming out driving out to the actual like K-12 tech studio here in Valparaiso. So I appreciate that.
Yeah, thanks for having me. The studio is beautiful and Valparaiso is beautiful place. Yeah.
Have you been here before?
Yeah. Last summer, my husband and I brought our three boys over for kind of a little summer long weekend getaway. Went to some of the dunes, and actually, we went to, like, there’s a little arcade place over here. Spent some time just walking around downtown Valparaiso, and just a beautiful place.
Yeah, we really loved it here. I’m very, very, very biased, obviously, you know, growing up in this area. But it’s nice to Chicago’s, like, 50 minutes away.
And then you have the Dunes National Park now and then, you know, all the stuff to do in southwest Michigan. So really, really love it here. And happy hour headquarters is here now. So basically what I want to get into is like, let’s start from like early on for you. Let’s start high school through college. Where was your mindset like, what did you think you were going to go into career-wise? And then what did you study and then kind of talk through that transition?
Sure. Well, when I was in high school, I can honestly tell you that I used to tell people I’d really love to be a teacher, but they don’t make enough money. Yeah, like, I just I had, you know, bigger ambitions than that. I’m going to, you know, go far away from here.
And, you know, Indiana, I’m far away for college. I mean, they’re going to go to the East Coast or the West Coast, and I’m going to study international relations and politics, political science. And, you know, maybe I want to work for like the State Department or an embassy. That’s kind of what I had planned. You know, I started out I just have a love of language and I started out studying Latin at our school in Tennessee.
We moved to Indiana and we didn’t have Latin, so I started studying French, took French for four years of high school, really bonded with my teacher, my classmates. Just the beauty of the language, kind of the melding of the language. And so I knew I wanted to keep studying French as well. But, you know, I guess that’s one of the times that I’ve maybe experienced what might be a setback in life.
But then really, if you’re patient through it and like hold true to your purpose, then you’ll be able to come through on the other side stronger. Because I had plans. I was going to go to American University in Washington D.C. and, you know, it just didn’t work out. My parents were divorced and they had a big court battle going on right when I graduated. And I decided to defer my admission to second semester and really started thinking about like the debt I was going to incur. All of this even with, you know, a great scholarship and then financial aid on top of that. So that gave me some time to kind of like regroup, worked in a factory for six months, But then it turned out to really be a blessing in disguise because I was home, I worked third shift in the factory as an eighteen-year-old.
You know, my grandmother had cancer and I was able to be the one to drive her to the appointment where she found out and then to drive to some other appointments and really get to spend some time with her that I would not have gotten if I would have been in Washington, D.C. And that really kind of put things into perspective to me and like realizing like, what are my core values and what do I think is important?
And I decided to apply to some schools here in Indiana, and I got a full-ride scholarship to Ball State. So. Oh yeah.,chirp chirp! Yeah, that’s right. So super excited about that. And I didn’t declare the education major right away. You know, I kind of was like, I still just don’t know if I can really commit to that, even though I know, like, my heart is there. So I did my first year studying French and all those required courses and then finally decided, All right, I’m definitely doing this. I’m going to be a French teacher. I’m also going to get that English teaching degree, though, because then I’ll be like more marketable. There aren’t that many French teacher jobs out there. And so I finished up that degree and never really thought about technology too much and I started teaching French.
It was a joy. I had that first-year kind of almost under my belt, my high school I worked in Bryan, Ohio, had tuition reimbursement for getting your master’s degree. So I immediately signed up like the first school year wasn’t even over yet, and I was already taking courses. And I remember my college counselor talking to me and saying, Are you sure you don’t want to go on this educational leadership path instead of just the secondary education master’s degree and a first-year teacher?
I’m like, Why would I ever want to leave this classroom and these students and this awesome. I don’t have any interest in doing that. But again, things changed. Like, you know, I got that degree finished up, still teaching, still was having a great time, but we had three different principals in three years and two different superintendents, and that really was a wake-up call to me that teachers deserve better than that. Teachers deserve stability support. They deserve someone who’s going to listen to them and help grow them as leaders, because that’s what I had experienced as a student at Ball State, as a student in high school, you know, I looked at my teachers as those people who were helping grow me as a person, not just in my knowledge of that course and really fortunate with that.
You know, what do you think is like the cause of so much turnover in the principal and like and superintendent roles and even tech director roles, too? Is it is it burnout? Is it other opportunities? You know, why it why is that?
It’s a combination of factors. I think sometimes I think people maybe go into those positions with maybe the wrong the wrong core values, like they’re going into it for money or power. It’s not often, but it does happen sometimes. And those people find that it’s not as fulfilling despite the money. So there’s that. It’s also just tremendous stress and pressure, and it’s always has been. But in this post-COVID world, the stress and the pressure is more than it’s ever been before. There’s this tension. I mean, our job doesn’t end at the end of the day.
Our job doesn’t end. We work on Saturdays and Sundays. We’re answering emails, calls, preparing things for the next week, you know, coordinating calendars, and then dealing with all those. You know, in technology, we get the alerts of, you know, the students who not just are misbehaving on their devices, but those mental health alerts that we see. You know, there’s a famous line, you know, kids don’t lie to Google.
Yeah, they’re really honest. They search for things that they wouldn’t ask in adults. And we really saw that increased during COVID and in the years since COVID just the number of really, you know, cries for help that we’re seeing from students, from the mental health. And you can’t read those. You can’t unhear those things going on, but also know that if our students are dealing with that, our teachers are dealing with, that principals are dealing with that everyone’s mental health has really suffered and we’re all kind of coming out of that together. So I think there’s there’s that burnout that desire to serve and to do right by the people that you serve and balancing that with, you know, your personal life, your family, your hobbies.
Yeah. Do you think that there’s a side to it, too, where you get into these positions thinking you’re going to be able to bring change and you realize that change is just really hard.
Change is so hard. I, I always joke with people that I feel like in my district it’s either the technology department or the Department of Education that’s forcing change on the school district. And, you know, a real big part of the job as a principal or as a technology director or even a superintendent, really, more of your job is managing change than anything else.
And that’s not something that they spend a lot of time teaching you in your leadership preparation courses. I have a I did go back and get that master’s degree in educational leadership, and I followed that up with the education specialist license. I have a superintendent’s license and I’m still in school now working on the educational doctorate. And there’s maybe this like little two week window where you really talk about the change management. You know, I really think that’s a skill that’s lacking.
Yeah, I think an example I always hear is, you know, why is in, you know, an educational people bring up like why isn’t like finance taught you know, the kids, you know it’s like, hey, look, I, you know, I even remember coming out of high school people going to like college and like they get out with like $150,000 in debt. They’re like, I didn’t understand. It’s like that should be like taught. I think probably similarly to that with like, superintendents, principals, even teachers, just like, how do we manage change? How do we manage expectations to the students, how you manage expectations to the parents? Because I could see that being such like a burnout issue long term. I know.
I mean, I’m friends with quite a few superintendents and tech directors and stuff, and they’re telling me what their schedule is like. And I’m like, How is that? Unless you’re a very specific person, people are like, really, you know, built up and, you know, they, you know, it’s like going into battle, you know, for them. But for many people and probably people would be really good at the job, it’s so overwhelming. I mean, it’s wild.
And then there are all those opportunities in the private sector, especially if you’ve got the skills in technology. A lot of people can leave their job, work from home and double their salary. Yeah, so it’s really about that purpose like that, that higher mission to really to serve. It’s not about the dollars, it’s not about, you know, the convenience like people who know out really have the passion for your students and communities.
Yeah, I totally agree with that. So French teacher, get your master’s going to get your doctor every year superintendent’s license. So talk a little bit about maybe your interest or maybe your expertise in technology prior to being a tech director and then what were like the next steps to get you into that for your career?
Well, I would never have really called myself like a techie person in high school or even in college. You know, I was able to navigate my way around a computer and, you know, type papers and Internet and, you know, all those things. But I didn’t really have a passion for technology. It was really partially during my student teaching. I had this phenomenal experience that most people don’t get. I didn’t get the teacher left me alone in the classroom and went to the teacher’s lounge.
I had a coach. She was by my side every day. She was, you know, critiquing how I was teaching, but also like praising me and building me up and giving me the confidence to, you know, be in front of students and manage the classroom and she really exposed me. She says, you know, we’re teaching in the middle of like corn fields, right? So how do you bring that experience of the French world to students? The Internet and technology is a way for us to do that, for them to see the different facets of the culture, for them to hear people speaking French. Besides us. And that really kind of lit a fire in me that, okay, I’m going to have to be better at this.
And she had some students, you know, creating things were creating brochures and in the target language in French. And that’s really cool. And I was like, okay, that’s what we need to do. They don’t really teach you too much of that in college, but that’s what I need to do. I started teaching, you know, if you’re a French teacher, you’re the only one at your school. Actually, there’s not a partner. Yeah, I have all of the students. And in a small school like Bryan, Ohio, where I was teaching, you know, student schedules didn’t always work out quite right. So they would give me a class of French one, you know, 25 kids. But then these two kids, French tutors want that in their schedule. So we’re going to put them in the same class period.
And also this one student, French three, won’t fit their schedule. So we’re going to put them in there, too. So I found myself teaching three classes at once, basically. Yeah. And you know, they wouldn’t do that with algebra and geometry, but they think we can manage it because we’re kind of like superhuman French teachers of foreign language teachers. But what I found was technology was the only way that I could really serve those students and serve them well. I was really fortunate we weren’t 1 to 1, but we did have carts and carts of MacBooks available. Yeah, I could have them pretty much any time I wanted. And I didn’t really know about flipped classrooms or blended learning, but I did know enough about using those technology tools that I was able to piece together.
Okay, I’m going to have to pre-record some things for these kids to be doing while I directly instruct these other students. And then while they’re working on a project, I can go conference with these kids who are kind of self-paced through this lesson. And, you know, it wasn’t always perfect because sometimes this took longer than that, but it was really that was really where I said, okay, I’ve got this and I have got to keep learning. I’ve got to learn more. Bryan, Ohio was pretty early in adopting the Google suite for education, so I was using that and a lot of people were, Oh, I can’t do this. It’s new, it’s different. And when the technology director there for showed me that I could see students typing on the document while they were typing and give them feedback in real-time and more than one student could type on the same document and they could work together if you even have to be in the same room.
Yeah, my mind was blown. I was like, This is the way like my students can collaborate all of a sudden for students who are spread over three class periods during the day, they can all be working on the same collaborative document. Collaborative learning? Yeah, just asynchronous.
Yeah. You know, it’s funny. I mean, I don’t know if other people have that experience, but I remember the first time I used the Google document that way where I was typing and I was like, I can share it with them, and then I see them and then their cursor over them and then they’re typing and typing. I remember being like, This is ridiculous. Like as you go from like the word document where it’s like, if you don’t save it, you lost all your work to be like this always saves. It’s in the cloud. I care about that. That was in college That would have been, you know, 2010, 2011, and like, yeah, it was like incredible.
And you’re right for collaboration. I love what you said there, too. It’s like you adapt it. You’re like, Oh, here’s a problem. I’m going to figure out a solution to do that. I think that is such an important aspect and character and somebody who’s going to be a good leader because it’s never going to be perfect. You’re always going to have problems.
Yes, you are always going to have problems. And I really see that as part of my responsibility as, you know, a school district leader and the technology director. What problems are teachers and students having or, you know, what problems are principals having? What problems is my boss the superintendent having, and what can I do that will help solve some of those problems For them, it’s my job to remove those barriers to productivity, to teaching, and to learning that happens in our school district.
Yeah, so you get Google, you get Google Apps for education pretty early. What are the next steps? Obviously, and we’re in Ohio year to year now. It’s MSD Steuben, obviously Angola. What did that look like the next couple of years?
And so I got pretty good at using the Google tools and I was able to help some of my colleagues, the other teachers in our building has they learned to adapt to that new environment. And my husband and I had our first son and I was pregnant for my second son, and the opportunity came up to move to MSD of Steuben County that we live in Angola, where MSD of Steuben County is located, and my 45 minute one way commute turned into less than 5 minutes. Yeah, one way. And again, that’s kind of it was almost a set back.
I was really happy to go to my hometown. But, I took a big cut in pay to make that transition. Just the different pay scales, different states. Okay. But I also had to give up teaching French. The opening was for an English only teacher. But it was also a happy reunion. My student teaching supervisor, the coach that I had, she’s still the French teacher at Angola High School. When I move over there to start teaching. So I do have some colleagues who I know are innovative who are, you know, still, you know, she had been teaching at that point for 30 years, more than 30 years, and she was still learning new things, adapting and really a model for what a good, you know, leader in your school building should look like.
Yeah. So right after our second son was born, I was teaching in Angola and that’s when I went back and got the educational leadership master’s degree and it is just all at once. Yeah, I mean a couple of years process. Yeah. So I went through that and in that time when I came back to teach at MSD of Steuben County, I walked into my classroom and the same like Windows machine that was there when I was doing my student teaching like seven years prior was still in the classroom running Windows XP and there was no Google.
There was very limited bandwidth. I mean, it was bad enough that during state testing, if you weren’t testing, you weren’t allowed to be on the Internet. That was really the situation we found ourselves in. And I got to be a part of the kind of transformation that our school district underwent. We started we adopted Google there, and then I became a leader in offering professional development to my colleagues in my building and to the district. I’ve always been from that first time trying to get students to create content. I taught English Ten and that’s state assessments and a lot of pressure. I looked at my calendar one year, the second year I taught English ten and there are high-stakes tests every month of the school year. There’s a state test, there’s a three times a year formative assessment that we give.
There’s this other you know, and I said to myself, tests are not the only way to assess students mastery of the content that we are trying to teach them and the standards. So I spent a year planning it all out, but I started not giving tests and they had enough tests so instead there were always either performance tasks or content that they created and then shared out. And that was how I assessed whether or not they were mastering the skills along the way. And those were the grades in the grade book. And that was kind of transformative to me too because technology is what enabled me to have, you know, classes of 35 kids all creating content at the same time that 1 to 1 opportunity increased bandwidth.
It was essential and it was it was going so well. I had students completely bought in to the fact that learning could be different with technology. Well, our state had at that time a leader at the Department of Education who really believed in student agency the way I did. And she was starting Hoosier Student Digital Leaders, a little student tech team. And she reached out to me. She said, I see a lot of the things that you’re sharing on Twitter your students are doing so much. Have you thought about starting one of these groups? I was like, Oh, who, me? I’m just… right? That’s what we say. I’m just a teacher and she said, You having this opportunity, just get some students together, come down, and see what it’s about.
It’s free. So I asked some students, Does anybody want to come down with me? 15 kids got up on a Saturday morning to drive to Indianapolis on a school bus with me and we came away and they were really excited. But a lot of those student tech teams were, you know, repairing devices and those kinds of things. And we had a contractor that we were using and there wasn’t really an opportunity. So instead I said, Well, you’re going to be like technology integration. Yeah, because we don’t really have one. You know, technology integration person for our whole school district. Six buildings. You can help in this building. You can help troubleshoot technology problems for teachers. You know, sometimes it’s as simple as you didn’t push the input button on your remote to get the right thing on your screen.
So can we help teachers that way? And can we help them learn how to use the Google tools? And can we offer suggestions and mentioned like this teacher, we did this awesome thing in their class and promote that because that’s something you’d like to see adopted across to this other content area.
Yeah, I love that. You know, it was who was I was talking to somebody yesterday just about, you know, kids. And obviously, you have kids and I have kids. And one thing being a parent that I’ve really loved and gotten to know is that kids, students, they want to be helpful. They want to feel like they’re needed. I think that’s like kind of like looked over a lot of times. And I think you get people to buy in of like, I am adding value even though I’m a ninth grader.
And this teacher like, oh, I can help them with a Google document or Google sheets or, you know, all these different apps. And I like that to get them get them to buy in. And then you have little ambassadors in the classroom, too.
It was going pretty well. I had that little student tech team going. I traveled them all around the country to the summer of elearning conferences, and they gave presentations to two teachers. And it was pretty amazing. When I moved into the tech director role, though, it was a lot harder to keep that going because, you know, I was doing that for free. It was a passion of mine. Yep. And those students were doing it because they believed in what I believed. And I had shown them that you could be different if you adopted technology.
And then when I didn’t have those classroom relationships anymore, you know, those kids kind of graduated and aged out. And there weren’t any of my students who believed who hadn’t seen what I would do. And I was the one passionate. There was no one else to pick that up. Yeah.
You know, because we do the student tech teams, we build those, you know, all across the country and stuff. And what we have found is the success of those programs is based on the passion of a teacher fully. If they’re not passionate about it, they do not succeed. It’s as simple as that. And, you know, I think you’re right. And I think that there’s a sad part to that. And I think really that needs to be a top down kind of push, be like, hey, let’s find somebody who, like, wants to lead this and have that kind of a secondary thing, because we do have some schools that have unbelievable student tech team programs that do repairs.
We support them through that. We have some where it starts. And then the teacher who started it and was passionate about it leaves and then they’re just like, Hey, we’re on the threshold to do it anymore. So that’s always kind of a bummer. Yeah, that’s amazing. So you’re one of the busiest people I know and you know, I follow you on LinkedIn and you know, the other social media is So how do you balance your demanding role as a tech director and your personal life? And then do you have any tips for people who are really struggling to balance it all?
I guess one big tip is to know that you’ll never really balance it all and that there are going to be times when you’re going to have to do something for your job if you’re passionate about that as well. And there are going to be times when you have to say no to opportunities that you’re also passionate about because your family comes first and really having a partner in that to help support that.
And pick up. You know, there are times when I’m traveling for a week for work for a conference and, you know, my husband is able to hold down the fort and, you know, we kind of plan out together. If it’s not on the calendar. It doesn’t exist. We make doesn’t always go according to plan, but we always make a plan of like the menu for the week, like, what are we going to cook? What nights are we going to be home? What nights are we going to have something to do for the chamber that we’re going to need a babysitter? And then having the support of, you know, other extended family to help with the boys. My boys are still young enough that, you know, one’s in middle school. So you can go for a couple of hours to the grocery store. But there’s no long trips.
So, it sounds like you’re very organized, you and your husband. So do you guys do a weekly meeting or is that just kind of like a daily check in? Like consistently?
Both of both kind of sit down on Sunday and you kind of like think about the week ahead? We try to meal prep when we can. We try to stick to a schedule as far as like, what time do we wake up, What do we do when we wake up? What order of things do we do when we wake up? What does that pick up from school or from the after school activities? What does that routine look like?
So organization is. But I also think, you know, I’m showing my boys that, you know, I that number one, I’m a mom, but I still have a fairly important job and I’m helping a lot of people. And but number two, that helping other people feels good. You know, there are times when we give up time on Saturday or my boys, like I said, they’re still little. But there have been times when years ago, you know, the Chromebooks didn’t come until the week before school started and we have to get them already. So my little boys are out there, you know, taking the Chromebooks out of the boxes one by one and, you know, giving up their time to do that, too. So just learning like they see that in the classroom, they’re like, Oh, I helped get those Chromebooks out of the box. And now everyone has one at school today.
So I love that. I love that you incorporate them into that. Yeah, I, I have my boys here and, you know, different age groups have the ability to do more or less. And my eight, my eight and six-year-old, they can do like 2 hours like a day. But it’s funny, like during the summer scrap Chromebooks and stuff, I’ll give them like the electric screwdrivers and they’re like taking them apart and stuff, and but they love it. Yeah. You know, and I, you know, I pay them like a little bit and they can use it or whatever. But I think that’s like really important because you’re bringing your family along. It’s not like this is my thing. It’s like this is our thing and like, sharing it on that.
It’s our, it’s our community. And that’s where we live. It’s where my husband’s family owns a business, has for a long time in town, does construction and models. And, you know, it’s where we live. It does all the things that we do, whether it’s for, you know, for the school system or for the business or. Yeah, yeah, I’m on the Chamber of Commerce Board. All of those things directly impact, you know, the things that are opportunities that are available for our community.
So I was curious because my wife does a, does a physical calendar, you guys Google calendar people. Okay, Google calendar. Yep. And trying to get her to move because it’ll be just like did you know this is happening. Like if it’s not on my Google calendar, I have no idea what’s going on. And we’ve worked through that.
We said if it’s not on the calendar, it doesn’t exist. And that sometimes bites us because there are times when one of us thinks the other one has put something on the calendar and we actually haven’t and it gets missed, you know, and I think, you know, it’s not the important things like picking up kids from school that never gets missed, but it’s the things like, Oh, I didn’t know you had to sign up for football camp for elementary school kids by this date. We missed the deadline. Yeah. So.
yeah, yeah, I love that. I think that’s good. I mean, just being really detailed in what you’re doing, so. All right, Personal question. Sure. Um, what’s your favorite way to unwind after a challenging day at work?
Oh, there are lots of ways to unwind. Actually, I like to start my morning every morning with two cups of coffee and a workout. If I don’t start my day that way, then it just gets off on the wrong foot. I feel like there’s chaos.
Do you do workout first, then coffee or coffee, then work?
So I don’t use like the pre-workout scoop. It’s like my coffee is my pre-workout, and then I go do a workout. And just within the last year, my husband has started, like joining me in those workouts. It’s fun. It’s really fun. We just work out our basement. It’s like we go to a gym or anything. But that’s one of the things like that makes me sets me up for success for the day. I feel good. I, I know the day is going to be better if everything went according to plan in the schedule and we got that two cups of coffee workout wake the boys up in So that’s like helps me stay sane.
But then to unwind. You know, this may sound silly, but I like to put some music on Alexa really loud and I like to cook dinner relaxing to me. I love to cook. I love to eat. So I like to cook dinner. I like to not have to be the one to do the dishes. And I like to, you know, read a good book. I read I still have a six-year-old. So reading a story out loud, sometimes I have that bedtime routine.
What kind of books are you into?
Well, I’ve been in school most of my life, so the last three and a half years I’ve been working on the Ed.S. And now the book is usually reading not for pleasure. Oh, yeah, but for usually reading for school. But I like to read things. I mean, the reading that I’m doing, especially now that I’m working on my dissertation, I enjoy it. I’m writing a dissertation about the influence of school marketing practices on enrollment because, you know, schools in Indiana, we have open enrollment and I live in an area where enrollments been slowly and steadily declining for the last over ten years now, really.
And I’m really interested in that because I think there are some schools doing marketing really well and they are seeing benefits of that. So I’m trying to investigate whether there’s a correlation there.
That’s super interesting because I mean, MSD Steuben’s are great schools and it’s a pretty tight knit area and you guys have so many lakes or so I figured you guys as population would be growing.
Well, the population, the number of school age kids has been declining. Really. That’s because a lot of the people who live around the lakes are retiring to the lakes, so their grandkids come in the summer to visit, but they don’t go to our schools necessarily. But, you know, the state gives us details every year. How many students should have gone to your school but chose somewhere else?
How many students should have been somewhere else but chose you? And, you know, we fortunately always kind have been on the winning side of that. But what factors influence families to choose a different path? It’s not the local school anymore. There are charter schools. There are vouchers that make private schools more affordable, and there are online schools on the rise.
Yeah, that’s that’s really interesting. Do you think a factor of being a I mean, you guys are big enough to have a football team, right? Absolutely. I wonder how much sports programs and like like a good sports program has to do with driving that, too?
Yeah, I, I will tell you, I believe that a lot of families who do choose to come to us, we’re the biggest school in the area and we do have very successful athletic programs.
So I think that is a driving factor, but I don’t think it is the only driving factor. Yeah, the schools really aren’t great at you know, we don’t we aren’t marketers, we don’t have marketing backgrounds and we’re not really good at telling our stories. There’s so many great things happening in schools and unless someone is purposefully showing the public, you know, they’re not inside our doors, they’re not seeing those things, we’re not seeing kids creating, they’re not seeing the awesome opportunities that some teachers are bringing in, the guest speakers and everything else.
Yeah, that’s actually really interesting. I think so. I know you’re probably very familiar with like these new Polytechnic high schools. I’m really hoping that we see more public schools start embracing like project based learning and stuff like that, because I know for me with three kids coming up, that’s going to be really important to me is like, How are you helping my kids adapt to this crazy technology future?
You know? And I think if it’s like, Oh, we’re doing the same thing we were doing 30 years ago, you know, that’s going to be a deciding factor for me as a parent. Like, I want my kids to be able to learn to be in an environment where they’re not just taking a standardized test to see how smart they are.
And I think you’ll see that we have a lot of support at our state level. And that’s another, you know, secret to the success here in Indiana is we’ve always had, you know, strong state support for technology, for innovations in education and there are project-based learning like goals and guidelines for schools. And with the graduation pathways that we have for students now, they have to every student who graduates has to complete at least one project-based learning, work-based learning. There’s another one like it’s service or service learning.
Yeah, it was really cool. We had a really fun experience the last few months, so we have a career center right here and we ended up hiring two kids out of the radio program to help with our marketing and stuff. And it’s a paid position and they’re helping us. You know, they helped us set up the studio and stuff like that. And then we just hired two kids out of the tech program there and they just graduated and they’re working with us over the summer. And it’s like, I so impressed with the skills that these kids had just right out of high school. And, you know, I think as we’re seeing kind of a shift more towards the vocation because there’s so much demand for that, I’m really hoping we see that also on the technology side and stuff like that, too, right?
Like, so give me your favorite hobbies or interest outside of your day to day work.
Well, I told you, like the recreational fitness is important to me. That’s a big hobby. I told you I love to cook, so I like trying new recipes.
Do you have a specific kind of food that you like the most?
Not really. I really like. I like to try new things. I’m not the if are some things that I’ll make again and again, like tried and true recipes. But I really I like to experiment. I like to find a new one. I like to I could probably make that better or I can probably make that a little healthier. How can I adapt that and kind of assimilated into like the taste profile that, you know, and with three kids, some of them are picky than others.
It’s about finding things that everybody will eat and none of them are the same or the same.
Yeah. So you kind of mentioned a little bit about your growing up and stuff. So how has your upbringing and background affected your approach to your current role and maybe you start as early as you want, but, but what has kind of like formed because of this?
Because one thing I’m really pulling from this conversation is you are a problem solver. It’s like, hey, like life dealt me, you know, lemons into lemonade, you know, as the cliche saying, So what’s kind of like formed you into being like, nothing’s going to stop me?
Um, you know, I guess there are a lot of factors, but, you know, I was always like, you know, I was the girl who talked too much. I was the bossy girl, right? You know, I was, I was organizing people and things. And I remember in fourth grade, I think my teacher had just she kind of had enough with me. And, you know, these were my leadership skills. But, you know, you’re kind of the bossy girl or the girl who talks too much or you finish your work early and then other people are distracted because you’re bored and you’re trying to either help them or talk to them about something else.
So she arranged for me to finish my work every day. I would go down to a first-grade classroom and I would help tutor a first grader in Reading as a fourth grader. And I guess you could say that’s where it cemented kind of my passion for education. And it must have gone okay, because then the next year, when I was in fifth grade, the same classroom teacher had me back to help another student and the student who would go on to second grade. The teacher might go and help him even though he had developed some skills and advanced to the next grade level. So trying to solve problems like education and trying to direct energy to things that are going to help people. And I guess that’s really my passion. And if it’s going to help one more person, then you’ve got to do the thing, whatever the thing is.
And you can’t do the thing if you’re like a setback has you, you know, you know, wallowing in self-pity. Or if you don’t have that growth mindset that, okay, it’s not now. It’s not it’s I never it’s just not yet. How do we get to that goal? So I was telling you, I you know, I knew I wanted to be in school leadership, but I wanted to help, you know, all that, whether it was the teachers in my building or now at the district level, I finished that principal licensure with the other master’s degree. And that summer I actually applied for three different leadership positions in our school district. Yeah. And I didn’t get any of them. And that was it was a setback, too. You know, I, I thought, oh, well, is this just not meant to be took those couple of days and was like reevaluate redirect, and instead, I thought, I’m really good at what I do.
I really enjoy it. It’s not like I dislike what I do. I’ve just got to go back in the classroom and have my best year ever. And that’s exactly what I did. You know, I was still a leader in my building. I was helping my schools through the school accreditation process. That first semester, I continued to do technology training and to present at conferences here in our state about what I was doing. And I was having the best ever. My kids, my students, they’re all my kids. My students were learning and growing. I had been blessed with just an amazing group of students that year I was teaching all freshmen. So that was kind of a change from that high-stakes testing. And I kind of had the directive, You’re going to help them assimilate into the high school and adjust to the high school better.
And that’s because I kind of said, Are you punishing me? Do I have to teach all freshmen? And my principal said, No, no, I think that you’re going to be like the bridge that’s going to help them get across because you’re passionate and caring. And you’re going to ease them into the fact that, you know, high school is different than middle school and we have different goals, but you’re going to help them navigate that path. And I thought what what a nice thing to say to me, whether it’s true or not or whether I was being punished, those kids were fabulous. And towards the end of that semester, we had just finished the accreditation and it went well. Our technology director was leaving. She had only been on the job for six months.
She had worked in our school district before as the technology coordinator had gotten promoted and just found it wasn’t for her. And actually, my superintendent came to my classroom and I was like, Superintendents do not come your classroom. What did I do? I do, what did I do? And he sat across from me at my desk and he said, you know, you’re the go-to person for technology around here. I just saw you lead your school building through the school accreditation process. You’re obviously very organized. You’ve got the student tech team. You’re obviously passionate about the work in technology. I really think you should apply for this technology director job that we’re going to have open. And then when I ended up getting the job, you know, it was one of those things in my mind.
I was like, Wait a minute. So I didn’t get those three other job openings in our district. But now I have a job, which I mean, I think personally is even better than all three of those. And, you know, just kind of keep going through that setback and keep trying to solve problems for people.
I love that. You know, I can relate to that as well. Just in my career, too. It’s been it’s funny how it sometimes feels slow, sometimes like you know why are?, like I had all these opportunities they fell through and then you’re like, well, okay, now let’s get better, you know, and let’s get let’s, let’s grow steadily. Let’s work on foundation. I think a lot of times when it’s a career, I know people are like they get so used to it going so quickly that they haven’t worked on that foundational stuff to make that next step.
And it’s funny, I feel like that was like a lot of how it felt previous to cover. Then during COVID, it was like we have our growth has been fully restricted by just us bringing in good people and training. And that’s where I wanted to always be, is like, hey, like it’s not the fact that we can’t go out and get more. It’s the fact that the actual supply of the people and the caliber of people that we need to do our business is not there yet or they haven’t been developed yet. But you’re right, Like looking back and it’s like, oh, like I was held out and look at this better opportunity rather than be like, Oh, poor me, I didn’t get that opportunity.
No, it’s and then it’s about solving problems for people like proving that you have value in that situation. And part of that is sometimes, you know, knowing that you don’t have all the answers. That was one thing I knew. I didn’t really know what technology directors did exactly. A lot of people still don’t know what technology directors do.
They think I sit at my computer all day or my phone or but it just so varied from day to day. But it’s all focused on, you know, making sure that I keep acquiring the skills that I need to solve their problems and then asking like, what problems are there? When I took over, I knew that in my classroom of 35 kids, only about half of them could get on the Internet at the same time because we did not have the infrastructure built to support that, I knew that I had to hand roster 185 kids for every tech tool because the district was doing no rostering and single sign-on and that was a problem I wanted to solve, you know, and just like things that I don’t as a classroom teacher, things that I saw as pain points if I thought they were a pain point, I’m sure everyone else did too. Or I had conversations with people about those problems. And then how do we solve them? And, you know, just continuing to ask, like, what’s in the way of you being amazing at your job? Yeah, technology-wise that I can help with. What can I say?
Yeah, I love that. So if you could go back in time and talk to your younger self, what, what are, what are some pieces of advice you would give yourself seeing where you are now looking back?
That’s a great question. I think that I would remind myself, like you said to be patient, but sometimes it goes slow and sometimes you go slow to go fast.
Sometimes you have to acquire knowledge, but I would also tell myself, don’t be afraid to try. Don’t be afraid to give that presentation and or apply for the job or, you know, apply for the opportunity, because sometimes it’s difficult to like have the courage to go that next step, but it’s always worth it whether you get the opportunity or not. If you don’t get the opportunity, you’ve done all the work to prepare for it, and that’s made you better at what you do. And if you do get the opportunity, you know, you’ve practiced, you’ve built it up, whether it’s a presentation or a new role, you know, acquiring the skills and knowledge that’s going to set you ahead.
If you set your eye on how else can I help, what else can I do? What else can I learn? And always having an eye to that. I know I don’t know everything I know. I don’t know everyone I know. I don’t know every problem. What can I do to get there?
Yeah. I think one thing that you’ve done really well too, is you build yourself up around people who help other people. I think like anybody thinks like, Oh, I got to do all this all myself. They’re the ones that typically fail because you can’t keep it all and do it all yourself. But I think that’s really, really good advice. So with all people who get into these positions, a lot of people have like a mentor or maybe one or two people that really helped like push you in a direction or really helped you to become an expert. Do you have anybody specifically that you feel like really, really helped? I know it’s hard to leave some people out.
Oh, many people have helped me. You know, I would say definitely. Michelle Green, who used to work at our Department of Education, she works for a nonprofit now out of education, but education adjacent, she was the one who encouraged me to start that.
Hoosier Student Digital Leaders or encouraged me to help moderate a Twitter chat back when that was a big thing here in Indiana or to take that next opportunity. And then she worked for Candace Dodson at that IDOE. Yeah. And Candace, just always, you know, she encouraged me. She mentored me. I remember the first time I met her in person, she just came and sat at my table at one of those summer of learning conferences. And I kind of was like, That’s Candace. And she just talk to me the entire lunch and asked me how I was doing and congratulated me. I won a little scholarship for my classroom to buy some equipment at this conference, and she said, Oh, I saw your video. And I’m like, Oh, video. So and then seeing her in a real position of leadership, not just at our state level, but as a national influencer and building other, you know, other educators of all in her.
light. Yeah. And then my student teaching supervisor, you know she really taught me is that you never stop learning. You never stop growing, you never stop helping. And she was really the leader in that school building, the teacher leader in that school building, who was the first one to reach out to a new colleague. She was the first one to bring somebody a baby present when they had a baby. You know, just that leading with kindness and rice is one of the leaders in our school district. I watched her substitute teaching when she was a classroom teacher and kind of teaching alongside her in that substitute capacity issue and principal principal assistant superintendent. She always led people first. But then in the technology world, you know, here in Indiana, who really blessed I started myself up for the CTO to be mentorship program that we have here.
So I got the job as a technology director. And Pete Just yeah, Adela Dickey, Don Chase, those are all people in our state who really, you know, showed me that collaborative nature that we have. And then, you know, making kind of lifelong friends with the people I lean on most now, people like Nick Williams and Bill Stein. And, you know, those are, you know, we couldn’t do the job if we were all in our own little silos. And we’re really, really blessed to be connected really well here.
Yeah, Indiana is really unique. You know, obviously, we go to conferences kind of all over the U.S. It’s funny because I talk with other vendors that are there and HECC is like one of the best conferences that we go to. It’s like, Oh, these people are all here to learn like very and like it’s like such a collaborative even the HECC list is like very, very active.
And it’s funny because there are some schools in Indiana that aren’t a part of that and it’s obvious. It’s like, Oh, like you guys don’t do this thing. It’s like very normal practice in, you know, in Indiana, HECC listers, CETLs, CTOs stuff and it’s just yeah, it’s, it’s like, yeah, the community around technology in Indiana is very unique and something to be learned, I think from a lot of different states that maybe haven’t embraced that don’t have that collaborative kind of effort. So I agree. Okay, So we all have books, movies or music that resonate with us or maybe have changed the way we think Do you have maybe a book or maybe a movie or something that’s like you remember that like leaving maybe a scene in your mind, like a change.
So many books. I was a voracious reader in school. You know, I would go to the library in the summer two or three times a week and so many books. But I think that’s part of it is just like the more you read, the more you get exposed to other ideas and other ways of thinking, other cultures, other events. But honestly, I’ll tell you one thing that I’ll never forget that was really kind of life-changing for me was when I went to France for the first time.
Yeah, like seeing not just like the Eiffel Tower and all those things, but I took my students into during my first year of teaching, took them on the second year of teaching because I’m a crazy lady like that. Took my students to France for ten days and I took them. I had not been before I took them to Normandy. Wow. And my students were just they were amazing. They were in awe. They could have spent the entire day in the museums and on the beaches and seeing things. And when we got back to Ohio, they all agreed that that was hands down their favorite experience of the trip. It wasn’t the Eiffel Tower. It wasn’t. It wasn’t castles.
They said that meant more to them than any other experience that they had had. And that to me was like I was able I mean, it’s a huge, huge deal, but I was able to offer that opportunity for them to really have a cultural understanding of what had happened. Because when you’re a French teacher, yeah, it’s pretty amazing. You get to teach culture and history and colors and numbers all in the same classroom. So that experience really changed me and really just showed me like the more you can expose people to something outside of their comfort zone or outside of their immediate world, it will build in them a desire to know more.
Yeah, it’s interesting. They going to France. I wouldn’t have thought like Normandy would have been the thing that really stuck out. But I guess when you think about the magnitude of what was being done there, it’s like, Oh, this is like, so, like moving. Yeah. Um, what is your favorite movie? I want to know.
My favorite movie is Before Sunrise and the trilogy. It’s from the nineties. It’s mostly conversation. It’s not a lot of action. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, they meet on a train and spend one evening together in France, and then they go their separate ways. But then there’s a follow-up like a ten years later, and then ten years later they eventually get married, have children, and um, very dialog focused.
And I love those movies. I love, I love words. Yeah. I love everything about language and words and the communication that happens. And that’s part of what I tell people. Why I love technology is because if you think about it, in a school district, nothing runs without us. Yeah, lunch in the cafeteria doesn’t get served. Rooms aren’t heated and cooled, the busses don’t have the right routes to drive. if there’s a new student and we interface with all of those things, not just the instruction that happens in the classroom. So we’re kind of like that great connector that makes communication happen between all of the operational pieces of school and the instructional pieces of school. And it’s our job to take all of those like, dissimilar things and make communication happen.
Yeah, I love that. Um, yeah. Do you ever watch the series Anne of Green Gables? I did, yeah. I grew up watching that, but that made me think of that. It’s like it’s very much more like dialog story. And then they do that like ten-year, ten-year tenure thing. Yeah. And I feel like that’s you don’t see that very often.
I think it’s hard to kind of keep the same cast for that long really is. Yeah, but I love that. So with your insanely busy schedule, how do you ensure time for personal growth and learning for yourself?
Well, part of that is again, I’ve been in school most of my life. It seems like my husband would tell you you have been in school your entire life. So that’s part of the personal growth is, you know, I’m taking those courses. I mean, those cohorts of people, I’m learning more. A part of it is the connections with those professional organizations, IN CTO council COSN, um, you know, I’m on the boards for both of them now. And, you know, the amount of resources that they put out is astonishing, you know?
Yeah. And I’m really blessed that in my school district I am able to go to a lot of conferences and a lot of other professional learning. But part of the secret of that, it’s not really a secret, but usually if you’re willing to give a presentation, it’s either free or discounted for your registration. Yeah, and it’s not really that. I just do enjoy teaching and it’s kind of an opportunity teach again. But if you’re willing to help share your knowledge and be a part of that community, you get to go to more things because your money goes farther. I always encourage people you think you might not think you’re ready, but I’ll help you. We can co-present or I’ll help you some practice or, you know, whether that’s teachers in our district or just other colleagues around the state, that those in-person meetups and those relationships and learning that happens in-person are really difficult to replicate in a virtual space, even though we have that learning going on, too.
So I think it’s essential that we still make time, even though I might have to have my Chromebook and my second screen over here and I’m solving a problem back at the district while I’m while I’m learning in person that I can’t give up that in-person learning for professional growth.
Yeah, I love that. I think that’s really important, just always continuing the education So to kind of close out this episode, um, I love your story and there is so much demand for good technology leaders in the schools.
So what piece of advice would you give to either a current educator or a teacher or someone maybe who’s part of the tech staff team? What piece of advice would you give them to either, number one, start working on now or things they should concentrate on to start building towards, you know, the position that you’re in?
Well, it’s no secret that most of the technology directors, not just here in the state, but across the country, are nearing retirement. Wow. COSN has said, according to their annual survey, one in three technology leaders is going to retire within the next five years. And so there’s there’s a need to build that capacity AND that pipeline. And I think here in Indiana, we’ve been blessed this coming up year will be the 10th cohort of our CTO to be technology leader mentorship program.
And it’s not just for people who are currently in technology directors, it’s people who may be aspiring or wanting to learn more. We’ve had people go through the program who are, you know, instructional coaches in the school district, people who are network administrators in their school district, um, from both of those backgrounds. But in order to do this job well, you really need to have both of those pieces. You need to understand the educational environment. You need to understand all of the technical and budgetary and operational needs of the school district in your department, but you also need to be a leader. Yeah, that means, you know, we do a book study in the CTO to be program of Maxwell’s 360 Leader and it talks a lot about people think that a leader is someone who directs people.
Yeah, that’s one style, That’s one facet of leadership. It’s the traditional one we think of. But if you’re a good leader, you’re going to lead across to your colleagues and you’re going to allow them to lead you and learn from each other. And that could be your colleagues in technology, but it’s also your colleagues within the school district. I have to work very closely with the maintenance director to make sure that everything is taken care of for our school district, also the curriculum director. But it’s also leading up your school board and your superintendent probably aren’t very technically savvy and you need to be able to give them the right amount of information that you know at the right time in a way that they will understand it so that they’re prepared, because part of your job is to make them look good.
So I would tell those people, number one, every encounter that you have, whether it’s within your own department or with your boss or in your school district, is an opportunity to be a leader and to really seize those opportunities to have that problem solving, people first, customer service mindset and number two, start looking into Cosn. That’s really that’s our national organization. It’s the only they offer, the only accredited certification because people who come to this background from so many different pathways and they have a framework, they know what works. There are ten essential skills and they do encompass that leadership and that instructional environment and the operational and technical piece, you know, start reading more, sign up for newsletters.
Even if you don’t respond to things on the HECC list, make sure you’re reading through what’s happening, be involved and aware. And, you know, we’re looking for people to join some committees for the CTO council next year. So for all the COSN member districts, you don’t have to be the director, right. We’re going to have an emerging technologies committee really focusing on A.I. as well as other emerging tech. Yeah, we have a membership committee to help the member experience, have a professional learning committee. So you know, how can we help keep growing our knowledge and skills together? What opportunities, webinars, workshops, etc. are out there? And then we’re going to have a Diversity Equity and Inclusion committee because again, if you look at the landscape of technology leaders, they’re mostly men and they’re mostly older and they’re mostly white men.
And we know that that’s not what our students look like. Yeah, and our students need to see themselves represented in the leadership of the school districts and in the leadership in your community. Yeah. And, you know, leadership in the world. Not that there are quotas or anything like that. Yeah, but that you need to be aware that there are underrepresented groups. But everybody’s involved in diversity. Is everyone, including those older white males who are most of my colleagues that can be part of the solution there too?
Yeah, that’s got to start young too. I mean, even when kids are in high school. Okay, is this an area you want to go into? I think that’s going to be a really big push because I I didn’t even know was one in three are retiring in the next five years. That’s wild and COSN is national, too. So it’s not just Indiana. It’s kind of all over the place across the country. Well, that’s incredible. And that’s really, really good advice. I think particularly one thing that you said you did is you helped on the ground floor at your school by just helping with professional development yourself. You know, you said it was volunteer.
It’s like that’s probably a great place for like, hey, send some support tickets my way so I can help. We’re like a couple of rooms away from me or something is start small, too. It’s one of the best piece of advice I got is it’s not sustainable to grow rapidly. It’s sustainable to grow slowly and methodically and just like, hey, each month find one little thing you want to improve on and do that. And by the end of the year you’ve improved on 12 things.
And, um, those goals and, and then, you know, tracking progress, that’s how we get better.
100%. Well, Chantell, thank you so much for making the trip and your time for this episode. I’m just really excited for your story and I’m sure in the next five years it’ll look so much different. But I appreciate your service to education and all that you’ve done.
Thank you! I appreciate the partnership that you’ve been offering school districts and feeling supported.
Well, I appreciate it. Thanks.
In Episode 33, Hope Davis, MA, CHC takes us on a journey from personal challenges to leading educational innovation at Teach Tech U. Discover how her experiences fueled a passion for transformative technology in education, shaping the future with Project LEAR. An inspiring conversation for anyone intrigued by the power of tech to change lives. […]
Listen now
With guest speaker Marsha Maxwell, PhD, CETL, join us for a reflective journey on the advancements of AI through the years, focusing on how we can further develop these technologies to bridge educational divides.
Listen now
