Zach Diamond 0:02 Music. Welcome to the modern classrooms project podcast each week, we bring you discussions with educators on how they use blended, self paced and mastery based learning to better serve their students. We believe teachers learn best from each other, so this is our way of lifting up the voices of leaders and innovators in our community. This is the modern classrooms project podcast. Toni Rose Deanon 0:25 Hello and welcome to episode 203 of the modern classrooms project podcast. My name is Toni Rose Deanon they them pronouns a designated hype person here at modern classroom and y'all, I am so excited to be joined by Ken Shelton today. If you have no idea who Ken Shelton is, I don't know if you've been living under a rock, but Ken has done some amazing things when it comes to Ed Tech, when it comes to really amplifying teachers and creating a more inclusive learning environment to better serve all of our students, not just some of our students. And so Ken has been around for a really long time, and I'm just like, super, super excited to continue this conversation now. Mind you, like Ken and I have met in person before, we've hung out, and we've just shared so many stories, and so this is just another way to capture our storytelling and just getting some more insight from Ken. So welcome Ken. Thank you again for being here. Ken Shelton 1:23 Thank you. It's good to be here. Toni Rose yay. I do have to point out one thing you said that I've been around for a long time. I know is that a good or a bad thing? Toni Rose Deanon 1:34 No, it's a good thing because I knew of you when I was back in the classroom. So when I say like around, it's probably like I was in the classroom for 10 years. So I want to say, like, year five, year six, like, I kind of came across your name because I was really into technology implementation in the classroom as well. So I was like, Okay, I know your name. I've read some stuff. I've seen, you know, webinars, and I know when you keynote conferences. And so I've always kind of, like, I never really approached you, which was wild. I never thought about it as an educator. But so, yeah, no, it's a good thing. It's definitely a good thing. Credibility, like, it's just so it's, it's just so nice to be able to be in this, in this shared space with you. I Ken Shelton 2:14 agree. I agree. I'm, I'm, actually, I'm just messing with you because I have been around four minutes. So no, it's good. I'm glad. I'm glad we're here to have this conversation. And as you shared, we have for the listeners, we have had an opportunity to hang out together in person. And so this is just a recorded continuation of wonderful dialog we've had in person. Toni Rose Deanon 2:34 Yes, and y'all Ken Shelton is definitely so much cooler than I'd envisioned him to be, and so it was such a nice, such a nice surprise, right? Ken Shelton 2:44 Okay, good. And wanted to be the opposite, right, right? Toni Rose Deanon 2:50 Because, like, sometimes people's like online presence is so different than their like, in person presence, so it's a really, really nice treat. When it matches, Ken Shelton 2:58 I try to keep it real as much as possible. Toni Rose Deanon 3:01 And I think that's why I really, really, really, like, love just being around you and around like everything that you're doing in education. So thank you for keeping it real, because I feel like we don't get enough of that right. And so all right, before we even get started with this, with this conversation that we're gonna have about future of learning, because there's so much to talk about, Ken, what is bringing you joy currently, Ken Shelton 3:21 Oh, I love the fact that you asked that question. For the listeners, I would love for you all to normalize asking that question of your classes, if you are a site administrator, before you begin any sort of professional development, like, kick it off on a positive note, but not a performative positive note, like legit. So for me, I would say, you know, a number of the things that that are bringing me joy at the moment is the the excitement around using technology in ways that can, when used properly, transform learning experiences for anyone who's listening. There's this thing that you may not have heard of, called artificial intelligence. So I think it's cool with that. I'm also actually you, I believe, saw the session, and I did that. I did it at a recent conference. I don't know if you were in for the whole thing, but it's, it's, it's a session I do on educator wellness, and I'm noticing that there is an increased intentionality around that, which is definitely bringing me joy. Because, you know, there's, there are a number of reasons why I'm no longer in the classroom, and one of which was because I was not well, especially given the environment that I was working in but, but nevertheless, those are the things that are bringing me joy, professionally and then personally. Of course, I am, I am in a privileged position to be able to engage in work that is perfect alignment of my purpose and what brings me joy, and if it's not, I let it go. And so I'm in a unique and privileged. Position to be able to do that. So I get to travel, I get to speak, I get to work with educators. I get to work with a number of different school systems over a more than just the one and done kind of thing. And so my joy with that work is really when you start to see things take hold, whether it be the board adopting a new policy a superintendent or executive cabinet writing a new administrative resolution. Or, my favorite is when teachers, it's like that light bulb. You when you see it, not literally the light bulb, but you see the look on the face of, Oh, wow. This is actually something not only that I can do, but now I see how it can. It can. It can not only make things better for me, but for what I do, and more ultimately, for my learner. So those are all the things I would say are bringing me joy at the moment. Toni Rose Deanon 5:48 And I feel like it's just so great when the universe just makes sure everything aligns, yes, right? Like, personally, professionally, it's just such a a beautiful, peaceful kind of feeling. And I you know we're gonna get to this. I'm sure the educator wellness is such a hot topic right now, because, you know, when you think about performative right? I've heard of some schools spending their dollars on a room with, like, massage chairs, and then call it a day. And I'm just like, whoa. We're completely missing the point here and also understanding that, like, sometimes when those decisions are made, teachers are definitely not in the room to have those conversations of like, hey, what does educator wellness look like for you? What does it sound like? What does it feel like? And then let's create this space together to make sure that you are welcome, well, taken care of, and that you want to stay right. And so thank you for just like naming that. And so Ken, tell us a little bit more about who you are and how you started this education journey of yours, because you've been, I mean, you've been everywhere. It's really cool. Ken Shelton 6:51 Yeah, you know my I love sharing this, because education was not my first choice as far as career, it wasn't even my second choice. My first choice was to play professional football. I was fortunate to play in college, but the math when the math is mathing, the numbers are not in your favor. And so despite many of my college teammates making it into the NFL, I was not one of them. Most of us don't. But nevertheless, after that, because I am based here in Los Angeles, you know, for me, I I've always had a love of being on stage. So the screen, I won't say Hollywood, per se, you know, in air quotes. But you know, for me, it was the whole idea around. In fact, in college, I when I made the phone call to my late father, may he rest in power, letting him know that I was going to change my major from biology, because that fall quarter was when I had to start taking organic chemistry. And I was like, Yeah, this isn't going to mix with football. And so I had to make that call to my dad, basically saying, Yeah, I'm going to change majors. I actually had looked at and wanted to be able to consider change to a theater major, but you can't do theater and play sports. Just not going to have nine college not going to happen. So at any rate, after I didn't make it playing, attempting to play professional football. I did acting and modeling for a very long time. I was in multiple theater groups and things of that nature. And then, of course, came the call that I got from my dad. So when I changed majors, I called him. When it came reached a certain point, he called me. But full disclosure, my dad and I pretty much would speak whether we talk on the phone or text. It was pretty much every day while he was alive and alive. And he said, Look, I know you're enjoying doing the modeling stuff. I've seen you on TV. I've seen this, that and the other yada yada yada, but I got to ask the question, when are you going to get a real job? And so ultimately, because my dad worked in education for a majority of his career. And I do come from not just a family of the educated, but also educate tours. Ultimately, I decided to figure out, okay, what can I do in education that still gives me the flexibility to be able to pursue, you know, when I go on auditions and things of that nature, and so I ended up substitute teaching, but then that's also when my late grandmother, my my paternal grandmother, said, You know, if you're going to do that, you know your family has a history of not settling for just bachelor's degrees. And so ultimately, I ended up pursuing my credential and a master's degree as well. And so that's kind of what led me into education, and the whole idea around being loving to you know, my love of being on stage is why I was able to this was back like in 2005 when I first did a presentation at a very small local conference. And I'm like, Yeah, this is kind of my jam. I like sharing what I'm doing and inspiring others. And I. Technically, it's a quote, unquote performance, and at some point I want to get on big stages. And that was back in 2005 so, Toni Rose Deanon 10:08 yeah, I mean, you kind of, you know, when speaking, you really have to engage your audience. And you're so good at that and so and, like you said, right? Like you keep it real, you keep it engaging, and you keep it just 100 if people understand that saying, Ken Shelton 10:21 Yeah, I mean, I do my best, you know, it's I always to be honest with you, and for your listeners here, I always, I always, share with folks, you know that we life is dynamic, and you either want to be continuously learning, growing and evolving, or you will, you run the risk of regression. And so for me, and that's always been the case, you know, I'd say I learned many of those hardcore lessons back, for sure, in college, and it wasn't even limited to sports, but but also from my family as well, given my family history and stuff like that. So Toni Rose Deanon 10:58 yeah, and I'm actually quite surprised that you started out as a substitute, right? I mean, there's definitely that flexibility, but a lot of the times I'm like, Oh my gosh, substitutes have, like, the hardest jobs, because you just come in and out, and it's kind of hard creating these relationships with students as well, right? Just because of, there's not, it's not a consistent thing being a substitute, right? And so that's actually kind of great that you started out like, you know what, I'm going to be in the classroom. I'm in a sub. And it's a great way for you to also be exposed to different content. I know that you and I were talking as well, that you started out with social studies as well. And how was that? Ken Shelton 11:35 Well, so social studies was the first class that social studies was the first certification that I got. But when I subbed, I actually, and that, it's a funny story I love to tell in one of my keynotes. I've actually taught every subject matter and long term. So you're talking at least one full semester, if not a full year. But when I when I got my credential, so my certifications are in secondary social studies, secondary English language arts, and secondary career and technical education. But when I when you sub, you don't have to have a credential specific to a subject matter, for obvious reasons. But you know, it was great because I got you to your point. I got to experience different schools, different classrooms, different grade levels. My thing that I love to share in one of my keynotes is my favorite subject to teach, believe it or not, was art. I love teaching art, and it was more for me with that student population, I taught art as another mechanism for storytelling and and archiving the history of what we see, what we do and what we learn. And here in Los Angeles, it was even easier to do that, because you have so many areas. In fact, here's a cool one. I remember there was with students. As I said, Before we begin, we were doing, I know I did a bunch of different mediums. So we did things with acrylics, we did things with oils, we did things with watercolors. We did things with manipulatives. We did things I didn't have a wheel for turning, you know, like pottery, but so we didn't really do like ceramics, but we did. We had other sculpting things, like sculpting clay and stuff like that, and and again, you think about, like, even as I'm sharing this story with you, I'm like, getting goosebumps. I'm like, it was so cool to be able to do something where I used to say to the students, like, the only this and PE are the classes where you're going to be using your your hands as a part of your learning. Like, I understand writing and typing is but it's different. It's just different. And I remember saying that, you know, art is the one class where, at least for me, the way I would do it is I would, first of all, I wouldn't grade them on creativity. And I actually discourage teachers from even having creativity as a component of any form of assessment, because you got it from one, you got to define it. And two, it's, it's highly subjective, but, but my main point with that was like, I would say, okay, the only things I'm going to grade you on are the the central theme that we're doing. So for example, they did watercolors and we did a, I remember we did a theme where you had to design a landscape representation using watercolors. And I would say in the end, and I would give them like, and the only watercolors you're going to start with are yellow, blue and red. And I don't know if you know or the audience, but those are your three primary colors. So do you see like? Even with that, it's like, not only do I have to use these three primary colors, the end result has to be a landscape. But Mr. Shelton didn't say I can't mix them to create other colors for what I'm going to put it was just cool to watch, watch that whole process unfold. And of course, for me, having a love of art, even myself, it was great, because I'm like, we are going to do this, not me telling. You. So I again, I think in that whole context of having the exposure to all those different classes, I have so many cool stories even share about teaching math as well, it certainly has done several things. Up to, I would say President a one is a majority of my time in the class I taught in a technology lab. So that's henceforth the CTE certification, among other things. But then also, it's where I love to emphasize things like, what are the different ways we can represent story that don't limit us to only what we write? What are the different ways in which we can incorporate creative elements into our learning and learning opportunities across all subject matters. Like I know we don't have a lot of time, but I can even share how I brought up. I remember doing something with students where I said, you may not believe me, but I'm going to sell it to you anyway. Art and math are like first cousins. And then I would have them do, we would do things strictly with shapes. So we would do Cubism and, and I can't remember all the technical artistic terms, but we would do things like that. And I would say, like, okay, so I'm going to limit your your artwork is going to be abstract. It's going to involve using an equilateral triangle. And you can design it however you want, but the only shape that I that we should be able to see in your and your final product is, as is, as varying sizes and and and orientations of an equilateral triangle. And what was cool was, most of them would do things where, if you if you figure an equilateral, equilateral, equilateral triangle, where the base is is parallel to the bottom of your canvas, if you will. A lot of them would do it where it does like a five degree rotation, so it looks like a tunnel. Okay, now you see I'm even using math right now with that? Toni Rose Deanon 17:00 Yeah, no, this is, I mean, this is such a great reminder, too, right? Of like, arts is so important. It's so important. And I know that I've worked in schools where arts was like, the first ones to go firstly, correct, right? Especially if we're like, No, we're only focusing on testing. We're only focusing on getting students ready for testing, college ready, you know, all of that. And it just pains me, because I know that our students had that option to be as creative, to be able to create something that's visually appealing to them, and again, like working with your hand, right? And so it always, like, breaks my heart when people are saying, Oh, it's just art. Actually, it's not just art. Like, it's, it's so beautiful. It's like a whole thing that I don't even quite understand. Ken Shelton 17:45 Yeah, I mean, even with music, music and math, yes, no, beat structure, stuff like that. Kate, rhythm, Cadence, you know, again, it's, yes, yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's tragic, to be honest with you that I would argue, for example, even when I taught art, is, you know, if you go back to the whole concept or the thing you shared around, like testing, is, I bring this up all the time in many of my workshops. Now, as I ask, because there's always, you know, especially in your work, how often do you hear the word literacy used? Okay, so let's even start off there. And I'm sure your audience, I'm sure you all hear it all the time too. But first I always ask people, okay, so how do you define it? And, by the way, how do you define it, and your definition not include the words reading and writing. Okay? So see, that's my first show, and the reason why I do that is because I used to always say to my students, you know, I define literacy in five dimensions, reading, writing, speaking, listening and observing. And I go and one of those five, we use the most, but in education, it's valued the least. And so if you think about it from that context, if you look at if you even consider like me sharing the art example, and I can even share examples in math and physical education, the students would still whatever artwork they would produce, they would still have to title it, and then so, so, in other words, the finished product had to have the title and a brief description so they're still writing, okay, technically. But then what I would ask them to do back then is, I would say, I want you to also share what was your creative process from assignment, idea, resource, inventory, ie, what resources do I have and what do I need? Execution of your artistic process, and then end result. Toni Rose Deanon 19:36 And sometimes that's such a skill that our students struggle with, because it's not, it's not what we do in the classroom, right? It's just kind of like, you know what? Here's a test. You got an A, yay. That's it. But we rarely talk about the process of learning and how challenging it can be to get to where we need to be, right? And so I think, I mean, this is such an important thing, too, that I often tell educators that i. Work with as well as like, hey, let's this is all about learning. We're not focused really on the grades. Like, grades are a thing that we've always focused on. But we really want our students to learn and to be able to learn, they have to be able to describe an advocate for themselves, right? Describe what type of describe how they're learning the process. First of all, provide options for them to showcase that they're understanding the skills and standards, and then really, just like giving them a lot of autonomy, right? And and I know another thing too that came to mind, Ken, when we were talking is like, when you said that, like art should be across all subject matters, I completely agree with that. Like I feel like sometimes, as educators, I know, speaking for myself, anyway, I always tried to collaborate with other teachers. Of like, Hey, I'm going over this book. We're reading this book because I taught English. We're reading this book in class. These are the themes. How does this kind of align or connect or do something with your curriculum? So I've collaborated with music teachers. I've collaborated with science and social studies teachers, just so that there's an alignment and that students can know, like, Oh, we're learning this in English. We're also kind of covering it in science. That's weird, but like, there's a connection between the classes, right? And I think we got to make time for it. People are always saying, like, we don't have time, we don't have time, we don't have time for anything, honestly. But we, I want to push and say, like, we have to make time for we have to find the time to like, create opportunities for students, to showcase in different ways. Ken Shelton 21:27 I actually argue we do have the time we have to the first thing is the the the self awareness of what are we doing with the time that we know we do have? And so, to your point, I did this. I did it with a school district I was working with where, what a shock to focus on literacy. Okay? And I don't say that dismissively, but I said, Okay, so here's what we're going to do. We went and we did this, and to their credit, they they wanted me to work with them, and it wasn't a one and done, so that that's important to establish. And so ultimately, what we did was I worked with the district coaches, and then I worked with department heads across the entire district from every single content area. And in the initial goal was, how does the district define and provide context to the word literacy? Then each coach and then department head. How do you take ownership of that definition and then essentially repurpose that same definition into context relevant to your content area and your role? Okay? Now, once we did that, now we have, now we've established that baseline minimum standard so that you don't have inconsistencies on what does literacy mean in a fifth grade class in comparison to an eighth grade English language arts class in comparison to an 11th grade trigonometry class? Okay? So, so you have that. So then the next thing was, what are some of the ways which we did this, that we can incorporate commonality of terms that's interdisciplinary. And so even something in terms of like, I remember we did one of the words that I did with one of the high schools was catalyst. And I said, so let's look at let's look at this turn. Let's go to means, and how does it apply in math. How does it apply in science, which is easiest, but also, how does it apply in social studies, which is actually when you start to think about it's actually really not that hard. How does it apply when it comes to the writing process, like and then now, what does it mean for us to not only start to develop consistency of the terms that we're using, so that now, as a learner, I'm hearing these terms in your class, in my next class, in my next class, in my next class, but I'm also not just hearing them, but I'm also applying that word in that context, so that now I begin the process of taking ownership of that vocabulary and vernacular even, and I'm Not only able to use it, but I'm able to explain, oh, here's what it means in this class. Here's what it means in this class. And so the whole idea around that, with with respect to what you mentioned around the time, thing was, it didn't require extra time. It required an analysis and and and a scrutinization of the existing time that we have, and how do we make more efficient use of it. Toni Rose Deanon 24:23 I mean, honestly, Ken, thank you for calling me in on that, because now you know, hearing you talk, I feel like it has been a very deficit mindset for me when I think about like, we don't have time, we don't have time, we don't have time, but in actuality, it's like all awareness, right and intentionality of how we make the time that we have. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ken Shelton 24:40 Let me be clear. I'm not it's not it's not a knock on you by any stretch, because we all we, you know, part of it, and full disclosure, I used to say those things, especially when I talk, we don't have the time, we don't have the time. We have the time because, I don't know, somehow we are inundated with that type of messaging. Well, there's actually, there's two parts. One is, we're inundated with that type of messaging. Thing that becomes so normalized that we just accept it. That's one. But then the other thing is, you know, full disclosure. I mean, think about when you taught. I think about when I taught, like, real talk. There are a lot of things that are that I would say run the risk of being the theft of our time to where, like, for example, I remember this happened at my last school where there was a faculty meeting. I did not leave this meeting happy, by the way, the meeting lasted an hour, and what they did was they proceeded to talk about all the things that we were doing wrong, all the things that we needed to do, and all the things that they were going to start looking for when they do classroom observations. And here's a kicker, they went through all of this and then at the end, they said, We know some of you weren't paying attention, so we're going to take all this and we're going to send it to you in an email. Yeah, see, Toni Rose Deanon 25:57 that's our favorite, Ken, that's our favorite. Ken Shelton 26:00 That's That's my point in not only affirming what you're saying, but you know, for the audience, it's like that was a full hour of my time that was stolen, like what should have happened is the beginning of the meeting. There are some things that we need to be aware of and things we need to do. We are going to encapsulate them and send them to you in an email. You are a professional, and our expectation is you will take the time to read them, and then the next time, we'll have a faculty meeting, we'll start to address some of these things. And if you have any questions, feel free to respond to the email. We'll tabulate those, and the most, the questions that get asked the most, will we? Will? We will respond to those as a group, but anything specific to you, we will respond to you directly. Boom, done less than five minutes. See Toni Rose Deanon 26:47 that, right? And now it got me thinking too. Ken, you know I feel like because I've sat in those meetings and I hate those and my facial expressions, I can't hide them like I just feel and express however I need to express. And I think it's also really ironic that, you know, our educators are expected to engage their students fully, right? And to create like a space where all the kids are attentive and paying attention and excited, right? And then you go to PDS, right? Right, right. And so it's like, okay, I get why teachers continue to teach the way they do. Because we really got to revamp. PD, we got to revamp, like, how, you know, we got to be respectful of people's time. Like, time is something that we can gift people, and it's like, probably the most sacred and valuable gift that we can give people and allowing for folks, or just not even allowing, but just like inviting them in a space where, hey, we're going to talk for like, 510, minutes, and then you have the time to explore, to process, to reflect, to do what you got to do, right? And so it's like, so then I feel like educators can then see, like, Oh, this is actually really nice. Maybe I can do something like this in class, you know. And another thing too, that you know you're talking about finding a commonality of terms as a whole school, right? This makes me think of collaboration again. I know when I was in the classroom, I really felt isolated, as if I were the only person doing this thing and and that's not the case at all. Right? That's not the case at all. And I think again, this has been kind of like expected to normalize that teachers are just on their own, doing the thing, and they're just in their four walls of the classroom, and then understanding too, that like, Okay, here's another skill that we're teaching students, is to collaborate. Well, how about we also collaborate with our peers outside of our classrooms, and then our lives wouldn't be as lonely and as isolating. Because I feel like I agree again, that's something that I just like overlooked him, like, wow, like I'm over here teaching skills. Ken Shelton 28:55 Well, I do agree, but I do bring it up in you know, I don't know if you saw where I recently published an article for Edutopia on the short version, which I can send it to you to include in the show notes for everybody as well. But, and in fact, I can't even tell you the title of the article, is building authentic community during meetings. Okay? And the whole idea around what I wrote is they had posted on one of the socials a question. They said, icebreakers, yes or no. And I said, Absolutely not, no way. And so then, of course, people are like, well, it depends about, like, Absolutely not. I don't do icebreakers. I do community builders. And so then ultimately, they reached out to me and said, well, we'd love for you to expand upon that. Would you be willing to write an article? And I said, Oh, absolutely. I think this would be great. I mean, this is, this is one of my, my jams, and I do this literally all the time with my PD, to your point. And so the reason why I'm bringing that up, and again, I'll, I'll drop a link in the show notes for for you and for the whatchamacallit for the listeners, but, but, but ultimately, the one of the points I make in that is that collaboration should always be voluntary, not voluntold and, and, and, and while I'm in 100% agree with you when you Let's go back to your the time comment. If collaboration occurs in the right environment with the right ethos and the right resources, we can make much more strategically efficient use of our time, and I don't mean us in the sense of efficiency to get more done in less time. I mean, the impact of what you're getting done, you know, I don't worry about, I don't I don't worry about, like, well, if we work together, what would normally take an hour. We can get it done in 15 minutes. Because then I say, well, then what are you going to do with that other 45 minutes? Okay, my thing is, what in that time that we work together, how is a whole greater than the sum of the parts? How are we affirming Who's In Who's in the group? How are we ensuring that whatever gifts they bring to that time and space, those are not only highlighted, but each individual recognizes that there are gifts and their contributions are going to be beneficial to group learning, okay. But with that being said, there are some instances where students and even adults are like, Yeah, this one. I want to do on my own. And that's okay too. But the whole idea being that, I would say, like collaboration, the minute you are voluntold that you have to collaborate, it runs a risk of compromising any degree of cohesion within the group, and I learned that. And full disclosure, I think it's important for to point this out, and for your listeners, I was one of those that bought into the collaboration early in my my classroom career. I'm like, Yeah, new they knew that you do it. And I just remember thinking in terms of, like, how did I feel when I had to collaborate when I was in school, and we all have been there with the following. We did the group project, we all got the same grade, but were the contributions equitable? And of course, the answer is no. And so for me, what I started doing was I got feedback from students back then that are adults. Now that I'm still connected to you on the socials. And I remember some of them would say, like, you know what, I don't want to work with that group. And be like, well, you have to, of course, remember, because collaboration, I don't want to work with that group. And then finally, one of them who, again, he's, uh, he and I are connected on many of the social he's like, No, I'm Mr. Shell. I got to call you out on something. And so, and I shared this side note is, think about the environment that a student knew he could say that to me and knew I would my default was gonna be okay. Now I'm listening. And he basically explained, like, you know, when we do this work together, I think, like, no one there. They don't understand what we're doing. Some don't want to do it. Some are contributing. Some are contributing less. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was just like, Ah, that was me. And again, this goes back to what I mentioned a little while ago about self awareness. Okay, perfect. So I started changing it up. I changed up two things. One is I said I changed up the two areas I changed up. So one is I started having students identify based on the project and the objectives of the project. What existing knowledge and gifts did they have that they felt would would benefit working in a group for the for that project? So the whole idea being, like one of the projects we did that I loved, it's my favorite ones. Oh, this is my favorite project. The theme of the project was stories from the community, but the mechanism was the students had to learn, or I taught them. Rather, they didn't have to learn. They learned the six different styles of documentary storytelling. Okay? Because I said, you've heard a documentary, right? Yes. Do you know there are six different types? No, great. That's my hook. So I would show them examples. I have them defined, and I would say, here's an example, this one, here's an example, this here's the other. The theme of the project is stories from the community. So you are going to work, either you can work on your own if you want, or you can work in a group. And I go, and here's why I'm going to I encourage you to work in a group. And I said you're going to pick one of those documentary styles, and your and your theme is stories from the community, which means you can go talk to a local business owner, you can talk to a family member. You can talk to your friends. You can talk to elder folks in the community. What resources there are parks like like the stories from the community that that's your, that's your that's ultimately your thematic guidelines, but what you do within that is entirely up to you. The ways you're going to be assessed are, is it a story from the community, and did you follow the structure of that type of documentary storytelling? Here's why I recommend you work with one of your classmates. Some of you are probably good writers. Some of you don't like to write, but you like perhaps operating the cameras. And I know many of you love to perform, because I've seen you do it in class. So maybe you want to be in front of the camera. And I would say this all I said, So Do y'all see what I'm saying right now? Y'all hearing me? I'm speaking. Are you listening? And, of course, the kids like, yeah. And I'm like, because they got it. And the whole idea was, you see, I'm not telling you have to do it, but I'm encouraging you, if I like, to be behind the camera. And I know that that's my jam. I'm going to want to work with one of my classmates who is a good writer, because they're now going to do the script. If one of us is like, you know, I really don't not uncomfortable in front of the camera. I And if that's the style we're doing, I'm going to go and recruit one of my classmates to be in front of the camera. So do you see? That's how I created the environment, and I've done many examples, but that's how I created an environment, a collaborative environment, where you weren't told you have to do it, but I essentially designed a condition to say, here's my pitch as to why, if you want to do it on your own, you can, but if you work with a group, here's how I would look at forming the group, and then they took ownership of it. And then the other thing was, and it was great, because I would literally, I literally set up back then I set up a Padlet, and I say, and I said, if you if writing your jam, put your name here. If you love operating a camera, put your name here, if you love being in front of camera, put your name here, if you like one of those things. And you don't feel you're good at it yet, but you really want to do that for this project, put your name over here and put down what it is, and then that's where I come in, and I got you back. And it was great. It was so great. And this is the whole idea, and I share a little bit of that story in one of my talks, because I always share with teachers. I have this thing this talk. It's called Designing authentic learning experiences, and I have a graphic in there that starts off with present, and it's a pathway that kind of goes up a hill, and it goes from present to engagement, to investment, to ownership. And I basically say the goal is not engagement. The goal should be ownership. And no, it's not going to be 100% 100% of the time. But what? What do all four of these things look like in the classroom, and for time's sake, with our recording here, but I literally explain them all, and then I have several examples. But even what I just shared with you, that's one of the examples of, how do I know that the students went from present to engagement? Well, they started asking questions. They were responding to my question. How do I know they went from engagement to investment? Oh, I'm going, I want to do this, and I want to work with with this classmate and this classmate. How do I know a bunch of ownership, the stories they created were of their own, their own idea, their own initiative, and their own in what you might call it investment, but they took ownership of it, because they created the stories themselves. And it wasn't anything where I had to there was no, and I always say this, like more often than not, when we think in terms of students and engagement. In order to get students engaged, the catalyst for doing that, oftentimes, is coercion. You need to be engaged. You. I need to see you working. See that I didn't have to do any of that. Toni Rose Deanon 38:05 Yep, yep. Ken Shelton 38:06 And now let's go back to what you and I were talking about a little while ago. Remember the literacy, reading, writing, speaking, listening, observing. All five of those are in varying degrees. In that project, all five you had to do a treatment, which is a summary of the project, like it's the whole idea. I to use football term. What I say to the students is your treatment is your game plan, like you have a playbook. So those are our resources, but you don't play the same team every week. So we had to go through and say, based on our playbook, which, for me at UCLA, was pretty thick based on this, what are the plays that are going to put us in a better position to win against this opponent, and what modifications do we need to make to those in order to do that during the game? Your treatment is, what are the resources that we have? What is the story that I want to tell? Who's my intended audience, and what's the you know, for documentary, what's the problem? Justification, or excuse me, what's the problem? How do I know it's a problem? What's a potential solution and what's needed for that solution to be operationalized? That was all in treatment. Then they write the script, if there's if there's dialog, then they had to do storyboarding. Then they had to film, then they had to take all that raw footage, and now you have to edit it. Then you had to do some of them. They had to do voiceovers. Well, voiceover is also in that script. Then some of them would they added, you know, music to it for to add to the emotional response you would get to what you were looking at. But you see all five of those areas of literacy. And my thing back then was like, Yeah, you ain't gonna find that on no test. But I would argue which one's more effective. So I said I was one of my favorite projects. Toni Rose Deanon 39:50 Oh my gosh, Ken, I swear this is why I just really love being in this space, because you're literally expanding my brain. And I mean. The concept of ownership, like, that's where we want our students to be. I really appreciate this, because I don't think I've ever thought of it that way, where it's like, present, engagement, investment and ownership. So that's like, brand new to me, or maybe I have come across and I'm just being reminded. But thank you again for that, because ultimately, we really want our students to own their learning, right? And then, you know, you're thinking about, like, oh, which was more effective testing, or like, doing all of these the skills that they need, honestly, in the real world, right? I know, gosh, I can just hear like, naysayers being like, but you know, we have observations, and that's tied to test scores. And you know, for me to get a raise, my test scores have to be like this, so then I have to really rigid with my testing, with my testing skills and strategies and all that. Like, what do you say to that? Ken Shelton 40:52 I mean, they're not wrong. I I don't listen. I don't it's definitely not my jam to dunk on teachers, because ultimately, a lot of the things, a lot of the policies that we are essentially forced to adhere to, are being developed or implemented by people who don't do what we do, can't do what we do, and didn't even take the time to ask us any of the questions on what It is that we do and what is that we need to most effectively do what we do. So I think the whole idea around that, to me, is the following, is to recognize and not gaslight educators into, oh no, you can do it because, you know, you just it's the right thing for the kid. I get it, trust me, I was in that environment. I was at one of the schools I worked at was we did not meet our goals for a couple of consecutive years for the testing. So then they put the school on what was called program improvement, and we were, I was at that school long enough to where we were pi three. And so to put that in context, if you become pi five, it means that you didn't meet your goal for five consecutive years, you are at risk of being taken over by the state. Now, of course, you see me speak. I troubled the narrative, and I was like, Oh, really, I'd love to see an example of where the state has taken over a school district and it's ended up better as a result of that. Oh, okay. And of course, that didn't go over well. And then, of course, then they bring in all these quote, unquote experts who are going to tell us how to do our job better. And I was like, you know, I don't, I don't look I always try to, I always try to operate with a degree of grace that if, even if they don't work in my environment, is there something tangible that I can take from our interaction and utilize it. But back then, my also my lens was, how much are you really going to be able to help me when you either have no experience teaching in a middle school environment like this, many of the factors that are adversely affecting the students here are social factors, not learning factors. Okay? And I'll give you an example of one. 90% of the students at that school were bused in, meaning that a typical day meant that the student is going to spend a minimum of two hours on the bus, our coming to school, an hour going home, minimum. If it's a Thursday or Friday, is longer. So you have all these external social factors going on. But and of course, when the people would come in, and I didn't have the terminology then that I do now, they would gaslight us big time. No excuses. You have to do this. Yeah, but you do know that the kids are on the bus. I don't care. No excuses. You have to do this. That was the gaslighting, because it was the whole idea around you're intentionally dismissing reality. You're obfuscating the truth of the environment that we work within, and you're doing it in a way that is, it's gaslighting. And for the audience, if you don't know, gaslighting is the simplest definition of gaslighting, is psychological manipulation, because that's what they were doing. They were telling us that we were not doing our jobs as well as we could. Henceforth, we're getting poor test scores, but also intentionally ignoring the environment that we were working within and doing the best we can. And yeah, there's always room for improvement, but, but my whole thing is, you can't, you can't simultaneously say you need to do better, while also not acknowledging that. I've got students that are coming to school. They're getting their typical day is you have to get up before 6am to get in the line for the bus to come to school. You're not fed. Okay? You're sending all this time on this uncomfortable bus sitting in traffic here in LA to get to school. Now you're expected to learn six different subject matters over the course of just under six hours. So. You might get a little bit of social time, by the way, your first meal is the mid morning snack that's composed of a high fat, high sugar pastry and a high sugar, concentrated orange juice. And if you have any money, you bought soda and chips, and that's what you had in the morning because you weren't fed. Then you have lunch, then you have a couple more classes, and then you get right back on the bus to go back home. So going, circling back to your comment for the teachers that are in those environments, I hear you. I see you. My encouragement to teachers that I've had conversations with about that is, how can we think in terms of creative that allows that, that that that unleashes your your gifts as a as an educator, and the potential for your students within that very narrow, within those very narrow guardrails, like I'm going to acknowledge that that's the environment, But, but what I want us to do is be thought partners, to see what are the things that we might be able to do in this. Because we, we don't want you don't want to just give up and I get it. And this goes back to a conversation you and I had about, you know, what we talked about, about educator wellness, like that, cycle right there. What you just talked about, here's one. Here's a big data. I'd love to see every environment of which this the the educator workforce, is constantly gaslit into doing more with less. And that's a common term that I hear, you need to do more with less, and I'm like, No, not gonna happen. You can't. You can't. That's like telling me I need to be able to pour more water out of what's already an empty cup. Okay, so there's nothing more than 100% so you have to do more with less. You know you're being evaluated or being scored, and even sometimes your salary is tied to your test scores. But you can't give the students the answers, and you can't give them the resources that that directly correlate to the test. I even have a story. We don't have the time. I even have the time even have a story about that with one of the schools I worked at. In fact, I'll share with a very snippet. Side note is it was that school we need to improve test score. You have a test score, great, then we should teach you the test and they were like, No, we can't do that. I'm like, No, don't get it twisted. I played football if I wanted to do better at football. I didn't go swimming. I did more football. If you want better test scores, then I'm going to teach to the test. Oh, that's a problem. Yeah, it is. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about the fact that teaching to the test is not, it does not that's not learning, that's coercion. Okay? So at any rate, my point, the big data I would love to see is in environments where you have that situation occur is, what is the overall job satisfaction of the educator workforce? What is the overall joyful you know, it's, it's what I call, as a gf, the joy factor. How? How much? What is the efficacy rating of the teachers? Not not them, but do they feel like, like you're an educator as wellness, one of the most definitive I know this from conversation, one of the most definitive ways an educator wellness is compromised is a lack of awareness of the efficacy of what they're doing and and it goes to a thing I learned from a very close friend of mine, Mandy Fraley, it's, it's not what You're doing, it's how you feel about what you're doing. And so think about how that directly correlates to what you shared around. I'm in this environment, and of course, the big thing I want to see is, what's the attrition rate after three years? Toni Rose Deanon 48:33 I mean, I got nothing. All I'm doing is just shaking my head in agreement, just because, like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes to all right? And another thing that, something that I've been sitting with too, is, you know, this whole being coerced, right? And conforming. I was definitely not that teacher that conformed. I always kind of pushed the limits, one of right? So one of the things that another guest that I were talking about is like, we ask for we don't ask for permission. We ask for forgiveness later, if necessary. And I know that I've been penalized for that right of like, oh, you're not doing it this way. And then, I mean, it gotten to the point where they didn't even offer me a contract because they just didn't agree with what I was doing. But then, come to find out that my test scores were really great because my student and I wasn't teaching to the test. It was just the fact that, like Yo my students and I are having a good time. We are going over the standards, the skills. We're doing it in a different way. We're not teaching to the test, we're doing it in a much more meaningful way. And so, yeah, it's just, it's just wild out here in this, in this education world. And so I'm just really excited to be having this conversation with you, because, again, just reminders, right or even like, strategies on how we can better be aware of what our practices are, and then being aware of the environment as well that we're in. And you know, this whole thing of, like, do more with less. I also, I'm like, What? No, you can't do that. There's no way. So I. We say, like, just do less. We always just do less, say less, like, be less, right? Because, like, we're always trying to overwork everyone, and that's just not fun for anyone. And so the joy factor goes down. I mean, I love that this just kind of circled back into this educator wellness, right? Because even with our time, want to be respectful of time, because I know a lot of the times we take up people's time, and then that educator wellness goes down because we don't have that that we don't we took away those time and wasted the time for people, right? And then just even thinking about, like, collaboration, thinking about just just bringing in more joy honestly, and having our students own their learning, as opposed to us coercing them, and gaslighting, right, being gas lit. And then you using those, those things that are being done to us, to our students, because it trickles down. I think, of course, right? Like, it definitely trickles down. So Ken, like you and I can literally talk for hours and hours on end, which, again, I absolutely love, Zach Diamond 51:01 hey, there listeners. This is Zach, we have some learning opportunities that I'd like to tell you about for this upcoming week. Do you want to connect with educators of color who are creating a more student centered learning environment? Join the monthly shades of excellence. Meet up on Monday, August 26 at 7pm Eastern and second. Are you looking for ways to make your learning more interactive. We're partnering with goose chase to talk more about creating scavenger hunts and more on Wednesday, August 28 at 6pm Eastern, registration for both of those events will be in the show notes, of course, and just another quick reminder that our podcast is now on YouTube, so you can find that link in the show notes as well. Head on over, give it a like, subscribe to modern classrooms. And now let's get back into it with Toni Rose and Ken. Toni Rose Deanon 51:52 I do want to also share with the with the listeners that you, you recently co authored a book, and you know, we had mentioned artificial intelligence, which is a word I'm sure nobody knows. So do you want to just give us a spill about this book? Because I think it's you and Dee literally covered some stuff that are not really talked about when it comes to AI. So yeah, let's, let's do a quick spill on this so that our educators can be can can know about this. And, you know, we have a book book club now at MCP, and so I'm hoping that this will be one of the books that we read as well. But yeah, go for it. Ken Shelton 52:31 Yeah. I, I hope you all do a book club so for the audience. So I co authored a book with my brother from another mother, Dee Lanier And the title of the book is the promises and the perils of AI and education. The subtitle is ethics and equity have entered the chat. And so I'll give you, give you a little background of the Nexus from idea to publication. So I've been around edtech for a long time, and me being a black male educator, it's, it's extremely rare that I would see anyone who looks like me within the EdTech spaces period. We can even extrapolate that to education as a whole, but, but for me, I'll just leave it in the niche area of edtech. And so there was a time, you know, after, I would say, not too long after November of 2020, 22 and the reason why I use that month is because that's when chat GPT was released to the masses. It existed before that, but that's when it was became available to the masses. And we noticed that that, you know, and I've seen this pattern, because, as you shared at the beginning, and I've been around for a minute, so we noticed a pattern of not just people talking about artificial intelligence, but more specifically, who was talking about artificial intelligence. And nobody that was talking about it looked like me or Dee, nobody that was talking about it looked like a majority of the students that attend public schools in the United States. And so it took on the narratives were more of a confetti, or, as Dee likes to say, blowing kazoos and all those sorts of things around it's amazing. It's going to transform education. It's this, it's that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it's not to diminish some of the excitement around that, because there, and I bring this up early in the book, there's this thing called the hartner the Gartner hype cycle, and it applies to technology, where there's this initial excitement that is almost to the point of a euphoria that leads to a Peak. Then there's, it's called the trough of disillusionment, and then it goes and then it starts to plateau out. So we were in that, that that rise of the euphoric gravitation towards it. And so ultimately, my thing that I've always said all along is, you know, you what you want to do, and you even alluded to it with your time as a teacher, is you. So you don't want others to speak for you. You want to do your best to amplify your voices within the spaces and the time that you do have. And so I was bringing up stuff, my approach of it was, I think it's great, but I also think that we need to be looking at the whole picture. I don't want you to tell me, you know, it's like, like, like, bacon, a cake. You know? I don't want to just eat the cake. I want to know what ingredients are in it. I want to know what was the process to make it, but what was going on was, oh, there's a cake, and let's just eat it. It's sweet, it's good, it's yummy. Yeah, great. And so ultimately, I started trouble in the narrative. That's how I roll around things like, you need to understand how AI systems work. You need to understand that there's bias embedded in these systems, you need to understand what the data sets that are using. You need to understand that the tech bros are primarily CIS, hetero, white men, okay, and that and that that's not that's important factor, because they tend to engage in what's called in group bias, meaning they're looking at providing funding for hiring and and bringing on key decision makers who look like them. And that manifests itself in the design of these of tech systems and how the tech systems work. And so the same thing. It applies with Google search, and so it applies in the AI context. But of course, I'm the only, at the time, I'm the only one who's saying these things and and typical of somebody whose perspective is adjacent to the prevailing narratives or the existing Zeitgeist and educators, it was like, ah, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. And you know, and I embrace the word radical, because to me, radical thinking means that you're not thinking like everybody else, which is called the bandwagon effect. So nevertheless, Dee and I had a long conversation where I was just like, I'll put it to you this way. Dee is such a great friend that sometimes our phone conversations are honestly their therapy sessions, because he and I are while we are different, we are similar in the fact that we're both black male educators. And there's things I can say to him that don't require an explanation, and all he responded in a typical conversation with him will be like, dude, man, I got to tell you something. And so then I'll process I'll process it, and I'll tell him, and then at the end, He'll either be like, yep, or I already know. And so there's a couple of stories in the book that are in alignment with that one, for time's sake, I won't share the whole thing, but it's a story of what happened to me at the airport in Hong Kong. I keynoted a conference in Vietnam this past February, and something happened to me with the facial recognition security wind gates at the Hong Kong Airport. Yes, and so I'm not going to give it away, because I want y'all to see it in the book. But I wrote the whole story is in the book. I can't I think it's in chapter five. But my point with this is that I texted Dee and I said, bro, I'm at the airport here in Hong Kong. I have to tell you the story I'm going to include in a book, but I will tell you it involved facial recognition software as the first entry point into the security area, and he just responded and said, I already know. So that's our dynamic. So ultimately, we both were like, We can either continue to amplify our voices and scream from the mountaintop, or we can put it on wax and amplify it and make it accessible to others. And so ultimately, the process was, because we do a lot, we have, we have a podcast that, and then in the podcast, right now, the episodes that are listed, I'll give you some of the background as to the the the idea and the implementation of what we ended up being in writing for each chapter as well, but, but, but, because we have such rich dialog, we said, Okay, well, let's start recording our conversations. We use text, convert speech to text, then we do and we're transparent in the book on how we use artificial intelligence to do the initial cleanup of the speech to text. Then we started doing our writing, and we go through everything from the process of how we use AI as a component to the writing. But here's the key, we still hired a copy editor, and it still has a lot part of the delay of our publishing of the book was, and I agreed with this too. Was our copy editor said that as she was reading a book when we wrote our personal narratives as a way of an entry point into the content of each chapter, that's where she was drawn in the most. So we want she wanted more of that. And so again, this is where you go back to the whole idea around writing an AI and all the fear mongering around cheating and plagiarism and yada yada yada, you can't plagiarize AI and you're not cheating using a digital resource. And we have a whole section on the key ethical questions to be asking when it comes to using that. But my point around that was these personal narratives are your are our lived experience entry point into. The the most salient points were making per each chapter and for the overall book. And so then we Yeah, and so we recently published it, and it was on, it was a number one new release for almost a month in and it was interesting because we have it available as a Kindle, a soft cover and a hardcover, and it was a number one new release in all three for almost a month, then it was top three best seller. And I know it's still on the best seller list, but, you know, it's summertime, so it's dropped out of the top 10 for now, and hopefully it'll go back in. And we're actively working on a study guide that we're going to publish, because our whole thing was like, Okay, people are going to read the book, which is great. People are going to want to do book clubs, which is great. And I said to him, I would love it if I could be a participant with them, with their book clubs, because there are things that we wrote that I'd want to one hear what people are receiving from it and and I'll add one other layer the book. The dimensions of the book are designed, where the margins are extended. For two reasons we went the margin extended because we wanted people to actually be able to write in the margins, in sections of here's what I'm thinking like, the whole idea being instead of having a whole bunch of sticky notes, which is fine, also, we wanted to be able to write in the margins. And for those of us that are of a historically scooted and marginalized identity, think about what that subversive messaging is around we're going to write in the margins so we're going to fill in. You see that? Okay? Toni Rose Deanon 1:01:27 Yes, I love that. I love that. Yeah. Ken Shelton 1:01:29 So that was our idea around that. But then also I was like, even since I since we can't be active participant with all these book clubs, what can we do to bridge that gap now, henceforth the study guide. So that's going to come out soon. And yeah, and you know, it's, it's great. It's been the the reception has been exactly what we had hoped. It's, it's certainly served as a major thinking catalyst around everything from development of AI policy in schools or school systems to being much more, much more acutely aware of how these systems are built. I've done a lot of consulting with districts, and especially district leaders, on the types of questions they should be asking of the developers of these platforms. I've talked to a lot of educators around how you know everything from what does it look like to use AI in an ethical capacity, what does how can we use AI to ensure digital equity? How can we ensure digital literacy with the use of AI, knowing that bias is embedded in the systems and it's not always going to give you a credible, reliable and confirmable result? You see, this goes back to the literacy part, see, so, yeah, so buy the book, but yeah, it's great. And our cover art, we tell the whole story about our cover art and how we use AI as a creative resource, because we had this is important to include for our recording. So we had an idea of what the cover art was going to look like, and so he and I, Dee and I both use several different AI image generators, and we played around with the prompts that we were using. Again, this is literacy. And we had a Google slide deck where every time we would do a prompt, we would copy and paste the image, and then we would copy and paste the prompt that we used. And it's interesting, because in one of the workshops I do on using image generators, I show here's where we started. Look at what the visual result was, and look at what we wrote, and then I take people through that whole process of you notice how the language is kind of shifted. You notice how the images have changed. You notice how that same prompt in one yielded completely different visual results in another, and the whole idea of being that we use it as a creative mechanism to get close enough to the point, and by the way, it never did exactly what we want. But then what we did was we hired a visual artist and said, Here's what we here's our idea for the cover art. Here's what we use AI to get close enough to it so you have a visual starting point. And here was a prompt that we use. And so then ultimately, the cover art on the book did, and this, this is where I dismantle the argument around what AI is going to replace humans. Number one, not necessarily. And number two, nor should it? Because even though we use AI as as, as an as a component of the process to publication, we still have to have human hands and human eyes on it always, always. And so the finished product, you know, we hired, we did hire a copy editor, but even the cover art, that cover art has been in the hands of two different visual artists. Toni Rose Deanon 1:04:40 It's such a beautiful cover. I'm gonna put this in the show notes as well. Yeah, so you can access it. It's such a beautiful cover. Ken Shelton 1:04:48 Thank you. And when you all when you get the book, if you read Dee's conclusion, he explains part of that cover art process, and he also goes into the concept of effort. Futurism and yeah, and the thematic meaning behind the cover art, yes. Toni Rose Deanon 1:05:05 Oh, okay, I'm so excited. You got to let me know when the study guide drops, because I think as soon as we have that, I'll definitely plan around having this for a book club, because I think this will be such a dope thing. And of course, you're always welcome to, like, just listen to the conversations that teachers have about the book in our community. Anyway. I would love to do that, yeah? Because then, I mean, it would be really great, great to just get that, you know, kind of feedback and be like, Oh, this is what they're getting out of that. That's not what I meant. And so like, having those conversations is going to be really, really dope. Ken Shelton 1:05:39 Yeah. I mean, honestly, the question that I asked, because there were some folks at a recent conference that had the book, and they, you know, Dee and I did a lot of book signings, and I was so my, my, honestly, I was most keen on the two things. One very close friend of mine, he was like, you know, I've read through your book, and I'm working my way through it again, and I've written a bunch of notes. And I was like, Oh, can I read your notes? Because, of course, they're henceforth writing in the margins. Because I was like, I want to know what he was thinking at this thinking at this section. And then the other thing for me is the question I always ask folks is that, as you're working your way through the book, please share with me, indeed, I want to know what most resonates with you, either in a section in the chapter, Evo. And overall, like for me, it's not, I think the right question is not whether you like it or not. The bigger question is, what components are resonating with you? What is it getting you to think and based upon that, what might it get you to do? That's what I want to know, because there's that we bring up in there that I know some people won't necessarily agree with. And my whole thing is, what we wrote is not up for agreement or disagreement. We wrote is our stories and our perspective now, and I've had people come and try to speak to me about that. And I use that lightly, because I would say there have been a couple of times where I've been verbally accosted, and I just say to people, listen, if you don't like what we wrote, then just don't read it. But what's not going to happen is, you know, there this whole idea of, there's two sides to every argument there may be, but not every side deserves to be heard, especially if you're operating in bad faith, Toni Rose Deanon 1:07:14 especially especially that, yeah, yeah, no, I'm I'm stoked, because I know that I had spoken to Dee before it was published, and he was also really excited about it. So I was like, Oh my gosh, this is gonna be a whole vibe. So I'm I'm excited to dive into the book. I'm excited to just be like, Ken, what did you mean by this? Or like, Oh, I got this. This is really expanding my brain. Is something I never thought about. So I'm really excited to you, that conversation with you, okay, so what do you hope to see in the future, and what goals do you have? And I think you've been kind of sprinkling that in in the conversation, but I guess it just kind of summarize, again, like, what do you hope to see in the future? Ken Shelton 1:07:53 I mean, I think a recentering around the many of the things you and I've talked about in this, this recording, there needs to be a recentering around the wellness, you know, it's a there's a statement that I used to use in Keynote called which is in the ma i language, and it translates to, are the children? Well, are assuming and how are the children? I extend, expand that to the adults like you can't expect the best out of people if they're not at their best and they're not well. And so this hyper focus on applying strictly numerical assessments to learning is not it's not. There's a reason why you are seeing the attrition rates you are now, and it's not sustainable. So for me, what I hope to see and is, is more open and transparent dialog around educator wellness, not the performative stuff as you and I have shared. And you know, don't, don't tell teachers, just go do yoga and you know, and I'll add another one, and I'm writing about this in one of my other books is this whole idea around focus on the positive, focus on the positive, focus on the positive, keep it positive. You know, all smiley faces and balloons and, you know, borrow from Dee's cazoos that runs a greater risk of a gaslighting tactic called spiritual bypass, which means, yeah, which means that you are so hyper focused on the positive that you run the risk of overlooking legitimate needs and concerns of the people and so. So for me, it's, you know, how can we how, you know, how might we approach not just learning but our own wellness from a community aspect? You know, one individual is not well, then my argument is the community is not well, and I learned that's a lesson I've learned from a lot of work I've done with indigenous peoples, both inside the US and outside the US. I think that's that's been my the gift that I've received, honestly, probably, definitely, if not, number one, number two gift I received working education is the privilege I've had of working with Native peoples in various. To the world. And you know, my big thing is, in even in that context, is your people have been around these lands or on these lands for 1000s of years, so clearly, you've done something right? I'm going to just listen and learn. I know y'all brought me in for me to talk, but I this is, I believe, in a communal aspect. So I will talk and share, but I also am here to listen and learn as well, because if I'm not in this proximity to you, then I would never have this opportunity to learn. And that's one of the biggest lessons I've learned from my work with native peoples, is this whole idea around a community approach to wellness, making sure that that that every each and every component of the collective is as well and so. So that's one, and I think the other one is, you know, we are a number of years removed from covid ish is a re centering and a reassessment of the fact that technology, technology isn't the answer, but it is part of the solution. And that's, that's kind of like my I don't know you want to call a catchphrase, but because this whole idea around, oh, here's a problem, let's throw some tech at it. Still got to support the people. Still got to have a PD, if you're throwing tech at it, how do you know that's the tech that's needed? And how do you know that that tech will dismantle the barriers towards that's why I said it's not the answer, but it is part of the solution Toni Rose Deanon 1:11:21 when done well. Ken Shelton 1:11:23 Done well. When done well means, are you including responsive and personalized professional growth in the context of distributing digital resources? Are you identifying what the objectives are around that? Are you identifying what the learning growth expected is expected around that? How does that how does that correlate to the experiences you want students to have? How does that dismantle the predictability of outcomes? How does that dismantle barriers that exist for students whose identity factors are across one they're going to be intersectional, but also across a myriad of things, whether it be race, social class, language, gender identity, sexual orientation, geography, ability, cognitive ability, but you start looking at all those factors, how does that tech remove any, anyone or combination of any of those barriers towards a learner realizing their full potential? Toni Rose Deanon 1:12:17 Yes. I mean, it just goes back to what we were talking about before, right Ken, awareness and intentionality. Bingo. It's beautiful. Okay, so I'm sure our listeners are like, Okay, how do I get more of Ken? How can our listeners connect with you? I know you're pretty active on social, and you're just, again, like, very busy sharing your knowledge and also just dropping gems and strategies for folks to think about and to implement, right? So how can our listeners connect with you? Ken Shelton 1:12:43 Yeah, I mean, the bank. I do use the socials. I'm, I'm gonna put this on the recording. I'm going to start sending out a newsletter quarterly. Oh, snap. Toni Rose Deanon 1:12:53 Okay, okay, Ken Shelton 1:12:55 I get bogged down in what do I have to say that that's worth putting in a newsletter, and how frequently should I send it? So I'm gonna, I'm gonna roll quarterly. Toni Rose Deanon 1:13:04 Okay, I love that. I Yes, Ken Shelton 1:13:06 keep it, keep it, keep it brief. Keep it, you know, at least a value and and I'll call it something like the ken quarterly. No, because it has a nice, you know, alliterative component to it. But at any rate, I am on a socials. I have my website, which is Kenneth shelton.net, and and I would just say, as your listeners, you know, I do have the privilege of being on a lot of stages, and I hope to continue to do that, ideally that they will be an attending, in attendance of a conference that I have the privilege of being a speaker at and going back to what you shared earlier. Don't be shy. Come and say hi. I love saying hi to folks in person. So I'm, I am, by no stretch, and introvert at all. I'm very social, and so I I, let's, let's say hi, and let's, let's take a selfie together. And if, if you happen to have read or started reading a book. I'd love to hear thoughts about it in person as well. So Toni Rose Deanon 1:14:04 yes, and y'all listeners entryway, right? If you've never, if you were not exposed to Ken's work, now you can be like, sliding in those DMs, right? Be like, Hey, Ken, I heard you on the podcast. That's your starting point. Because that's, that's all I do. Also, I just be like, just, you know, shoot your shot. Nothing wrong with that. Ken Shelton 1:14:24 You missed 100% of the shots you don't take exactly. Toni Rose Deanon 1:14:27 That's how I'm like, let me just shoot my shot wherever. It'll all work out eventually. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much Ken for sharing your experience and expertise with us, like per usual, as usual. I really just love, love, love, hearing from you, learning from you, just talking with you. And so listeners, remember, you can always email us at podcast at modern classrooms.org and you can find the show notes for this episode of podcast at modern classrooms.org/ 203, so we will put Ken's website and the show notes as well. So you can easily access that. We'll have this episode's transcript uploaded by Friday, so be sure to check back to access those. Also, we are asking our listeners to leave review. This podcast has been helpful and supporting you to create a human centered learning environment through a blended, self paced and mastery based model. It does help other folks find it. Also, we're going to be on YouTube, so find our our audio and short cast on YouTube for modern classroom and so thank you all for listening. Have a great week, and we'll be back next Sunday. Ken, I appreciate your grace, your patience, your expertise is overall you as a human being. I really just appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Ken Shelton 1:15:38 Thank you. What a privilege you.