This is Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk.
Here are your hosts, Dr. Tim Slecker,
and Dr. Johnny Lupinacci,
educated educators talking education.
Wow.
Man, big voice there.
Yeah, it is Busted Pencils fully-ledded education talk.
Educated educators talking education.
Everybody who's listened for a long, long time,
you're like, hey, they got the voice back.
Yeah, man, we got our voice back,
introducing us again, Tim and Johnny.
But, man, we gotta get them in there, Johnny, to say,
and producer Jacob, you know, part of the lineup,
because we love our producer, man.
Jacob, we gotta, we gotta either that,
we can get AI maybe to create a Jacob dubbing
or something like that.
I can just add at the end.
And Jacob.
Yeah, you just hop in there, so.
But thank you very much for wanting to have me included.
Well, you want you included.
It is, you love this.
This is our Saturday show for people listening right now
all across civic media, all of the apps,
all of the radio stations.
And here's the thing, too, right now, Johnny,
not just Wisconsin, but in Michigan now,
all the way across to Minnesota.
Civic media just continues to keep growing.
So listeners out in any of those areas,
if you're here and us welcome, love it,
love that you're with the show.
Johnny, what do you think, man?
Civic media growing.
I mean, I love it, especially being a Michigan boy myself,
you know, I kind of identify with the whole Great Lakes region.
So I was excited that I can tell friends and family,
hey, tune in, Civic media is growing, watch out for them.
And they are doing not only local radio refresh,
but they are doing democracy.
So if you're out there listening,
you can always text us at 608-557-8577.
That's right, if you want to join in
and kind of leave a comment or you have a question
and you just want to, you know,
add your two cents to the stuff.
Tim and I like to chop up and talk about, just call
or text us at 608-557-8577.
But Tim, man, it's mid July, it's Saturday, you know what?
I'm already like covering my eyes when I go into stores
because I saw back-to-school stuff already.
I'm like, are you kidding me?
Are you kidding me?
I still have another month until I go back,
but we're almost to where I have one month left
the off season.
But we're not going to talk about that today, Tim,
because we've got an exciting guest.
Why don't you introduce our guy?
Well, I mean, and that's the thing people have been listening.
It's like, these guys haven't had guests on in a while.
Yeah, we haven't, but you know, it's usually,
we wait because we want to make sure we get
the greatest guest.
And hey, we've got one today.
In fact, Johnny and Jacob, you know, where did we,
where did we come across this guest?
Hey, always are other great guests.
And in this case, Brittany walls up in CISA 4
in Wisconsin, and the hardcore work
that she's doing introduced me to our guests today.
You know, I just kind of read it a little bit.
He is a transformative leader in rural education,
superintendent of the White House school district,
and one of the co-founders of liftoffs,
a bold and growing initiative born
in the rural heart of Western Wisconsin,
sparked by a quiet crisis where rural schools
were being asked to do more with less.
He is.
Mike, Bigley, Mike, you and hopefully
we're going to have Cory co-superintendant
back on the show.
Welcome to Busted Pencils.
And we're here to talk about liftoffs
and all kinds of other things.
But Mike, welcome to Busted Pencils.
How are you?
Doing great today.
Thanks for the opportunity.
Anytime we can talk about what we need to do in school,
it's great.
Well, and that's what's really interesting,
exciting, inspiring about the more and more
of the work that I've been reading into what you all
are doing, Western rural Wisconsin.
Again, we got connected to Brittany.
She just really excited us about the things she was doing.
And she's like, hey, Tim, Johnny, you guys,
you got to meet my team.
We're called liftoffs.
And I remember pushing, Brittany, going,
you need a website, though, man, because every time
we have you on the show, we want to promote it.
And now it's out there.
But Mike, liftoffs, how about just start right there?
I mean, what the heck is liftoffs?
Well, I think it's really a transformative program
that we did a lot of research ahead of time.
I've been really fortunate over the last almost 10 years
to be in a partnership with the folks at Ashley
furniture, the Wannock family, the owners of Ashley
furniture, the Ron and Joyce Wannock foundation.
Those folks have taken me all over the country,
taken me to other parts of the world.
In fact, we're going to China in just a few weeks
to really look at what's out there
and what our kids are needing to compete again in that kind
of turn this on now, in terms of revitalizing
what we really needed to do in rural Wisconsin for our kids.
Our kids really see what their families do,
what their extended families do.
They don't really see the world.
So how do we create a globally competitive environment
for them?
And then all of a sudden this little thing
called artificial intelligence popped on the scene.
So we quickly kind of dove into,
how can we leverage the emerging technologies?
AI, the emerging technologies, with our teachers.
Oh, I think that's the key piece of this.
How do we leverage these technologies
with our teachers to really better prepare our kids?
And that's ultimately what created liftoffs.
The quick cooling and I, along with a couple
of other superintendents kind of dove into this scenario
once we were turned on to some of the capacities of AI.
And then we're fortunate enough to meet Brittany and Jay
and Christy and Abby and all the folks at Cease of Four.
And I think we built a transformative team
that are doing some cool things for our kids.
Yeah, I mean, you guys really are.
And again, we typically hear about really doing
cool education things.
And sadly, the focus is typically suburban,
even in the urban centers.
And so what's happening in rural areas?
And so here in rural Wisconsin, and again,
for civic media, having its main heart and soul in Wisconsin,
we always want to make sure that we're bringing the stories
of people that are doing incredible work.
But Mike, I'm thinking, though, too,
it wasn't just that, though, too.
It's this rural, kind of like on the feeling potentially,
I don't know if the word's right, but almost disenfranchised
by the system of support, public education,
and the kind of like, you know, your rural, just do more with less.
Is that overstating?
No, I think that's always the expectation
is we don't have a lot of the resources.
And it's difficult.
It always has been a little bit difficult for us
to get high quality educators.
And as these generations have migrated forward,
we're seeing certainly a migration back to the urban areas,
suburban areas, kind of away from rural Wisconsin.
So as we really, you know, I would love to tell you,
everything we did was based on the great things
that we can do for kids, but some of it was just out of necessity.
We saw the opportunity to leverage the technology,
both to turn kids on, but also to, in essence,
provide something of high caliber
when we couldn't do that with teachers.
You know, or we didn't have content experts.
We had kid experts.
We have a lot of those.
So how can we leverage all of these different pieces
in really again, do a better job for our kids?
And then now that's morphed into some of the really cool things,
which is how do we start looking at human capacity
versus minimal compliance?
You know, we've grown up in an area of minimal compliance.
What's the minimum Mike Bigley can do
to be eligible to play football, you know,
those types of scenarios, right?
What's the least I have to do to get a beat?
Mm-hmm.
And we're really looking at now the competency-based.
How do we do what we do?
And how do we do more?
And how do we remove the artificial limits from kids?
That's one thing I learned in all of our travels
is how artificially and well intended,
but artificially limiting we were to our kids.
Mm-hmm.
Johnny, I love that.
You know, thanks for everything you do, Mike and all.
And we're talking about rural schools, especially,
rural school leadership.
Like, you superintendents, Mike,
I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir when I'm talking to you,
but you have a sense of wisdom.
And you're more than a canary in the coal mine.
You've had, you know, a long history
of working together with community,
have a deep sense of the local and the needs of what kids need
in that community, and having to have done more with less, right?
And in a lot of ways can really we can all learn
by listening to the creative ways that you found,
things like addressing the fact that like retaining
or even having enough highly qualified
and content area educators,
but you still need teachers.
And so how you bridge that gap, especially given,
you know, the unique technologies and the things.
And I'm excited to hear, I'm sure our listeners are,
too, hear more about those exciting things.
But I love the phrase you said about, you know,
moving from minimal compliance to, you know,
excellence and competencies, right?
And artificial limits, not AI, right?
Tim, that's favorite stuff.
But I love that, you know, culturally constructed,
not real, not natural, limits we have on young people, right?
We, I like how you said, you know, these are imposed.
They're made up and they're imposed.
And when you lift them, what kind of possibilities
for our young people emerge?
And I'm sure you've got examples of some really great stuff
as our listener, Mike, too, when you think about that.
What are the assumptions we often have
as grown folks or as educators or even as, you know,
educated educators talk in education?
We all do it.
We make assumptions about what youth can do.
And, you know, I see Mike nodding,
if you're on the YouTube, you see him nodding too.
When we lift those assumptions,
pretty amazing things start to happen from our young folks.
So, so I'm excited to hear more about that.
Thanks for being here and thanks for all you do, Mike.
Yeah, you're welcome.
We have, we've done some really cool things already.
We have an emerging technology lab
that went online this year.
That was funded with help from the Wannock Foundation
and then our local taxpayers,
where that was our first real endeavor
into removing these artificial limits.
So we have anywhere from eight to 12 courses going on
at any one time with drones and robots
and 3D modeling, 3D printing,
automation, industry 4.0 things.
But what we did is we personalized it.
We said, if you have a period in your day, come on over.
We will customize a course for you.
This is no longer when you can fit in our rural school,
our one of everything.
Can you fit into your schedule?
We just say, if you have an hour, come on over.
We'll build the courses.
Our teachers have been phenomenal about that.
And did it ever turn our kids loose?
It really did.
And at the about that same time
as we were building that concept,
we're like, well, then if this is going to work over here,
why wouldn't we do this and everything that we do?
Yeah, that's where I was.
You're talking about that, Mike.
And again, for anybody, Mike and I had the awesome connection
last night, a little pre-interview.
But here, here you're, again, the constraints of,
guess we're supposed to do school,
45 minute blocks history this time.
You know, writing this time.
And, you know, wait, you're interested in what?
Well, maybe we'll have an after-school program
to entice you with that.
I'm hearing from Mike Bigley, superintendant
and the projects and stuff you're doing with lift-offs
is go, wait a minute.
That is one of those imposed constraint systems
right there that kind of rigid bucket type
of scheduling that says, this is how you do school.
And Mike or Johnny, you got something.
I know we got one minute, so Johnny, yeah.
Well, I'll just say, you know, I'm excited about that
because I say it over and over,
our listeners, pencil busters out there.
No, I'm always talking about the difference
between compliance and engagement, you know.
And so I'm elated because Mike is talking about engagement,
the kind of cool ways, the innovative technologies
and capacities when you lift those limits off of young people.
And you start to ditch that compliance model of school
to em exciting things happen that are engaging.
Speaking of engaging, come on back and engage with us
when we return after the break.
Oh, you guys, I love it, mm-hmm.
Oh, yeah, busted pencils fully, let it education talk.
Educated educators, talking education,
talking engaged education, our guests, Mike Bigley,
super-intendent Western Michigan Whitehall School District,
one of the co-founders of lift-offs,
we're going to give people, too, an opportunity to visit,
to let you promote where they should go and find this, Mike.
But, you know, Johnny really hit on something great
right before the break about this idea of engagement.
And Johnny, you put it up there, Western Wisconsin.
Did I say Michigan?
Yeah, it turned me off.
I was like, hey, I'm a former Bronco.
Did I miss something here?
No, no, no, the region of Western Wisconsin, you know, out there.
Which is way better than Western Michigan, frankly.
I think we can all agree on that much.
Easy now, easy now, because we got Western Michigan listeners.
Yeah, we do.
In this, I like those guys.
Yeah, they're not as awesome as Western Wisconsin.
National champs in hockey, come on.
No, they're good.
But this concept of engagement, really, you know,
and schooling has not been real great over the years
for engaging schooling.
It sounds to me like you're potentially going
for the education as opposed to schooling.
And Mike, you were talking about engagement.
Give us some examples.
Tell me about engagement and lift-offs
with the lift-off schools.
Specific with lift-offs, we really have our biggest pilot.
We started the year with our eighth grade math kids.
And a lot of our pilots, we get done.
First of all, you talk about eighth grade.
The hardest year, you could absolutely transition into anything, right?
And we didn't hand-select a group.
We took all of our eighth graders, went fully personalized
with an AI-driven tool, supported by a high-quality educator.
So it's the perfect scenario of what that looks like, right?
And what we saw right away was an absolute switch flip.
We're no longer were these kids disengaged.
They weren't sitting there.
They weren't going through.
They were literally looking at, how can we get better?
This is now about me.
I'm owning my own learning.
We use that phrase a lot.
You're now responsible for your own learning.
And quickly, not only were kids progressing very quickly,
but they were working together.
They were teaching each other.
That was one of the rules.
You had to use your tool.
You had to use the lesson in the tool.
You had to use your partner.
You had to use the other kids in class.
Then you could use the teacher.
OK.
And the kids started teaching one another
by about halfway through the year.
We had 17 of our kids already complete all of eighth grade math.
And to mastery, not to minimal compliance.
To mastery, they had to master all of eighth grade math.
Some of those kids went on to finish algebra
inside of eighth grade.
We had kids that had really struggled
forever to be at grade level.
They all went into eighth grade math.
All of them made major progress in eighth grade math.
That was that's probably the most telling piece of this.
And as you can probably tell what I get excited about is,
you're right.
It was about kids learning.
It wasn't about playing school.
Yeah.
Johnny, as a math teacher at heart,
you got to be loving this.
Well, absolutely Tim, what Mike's sharing here,
good educators are out there nodding as they're listening
and parents are nodding as well.
It's like what we know about, especially eighth grade,
developmentally, social learning theory, almost to its detriment.
They're going to listen to their peers
and to ideas that they share amongst one another.
So partnering that with the technologies
that they're familiar with that are part of their everyday life
and empowering them at that age.
Developmentally, it's gangbusters for what can be learned.
And we'll all cringe a little bit
because we will remember our eighth grade math class.
You didn't get to have always these great educators
like Mike's talking about or math party like I got to teach.
It was pretty much the teacher was the center.
They put the problem on the board.
They worked through it and you wrote it in your notebook.
And you were expected to do a ton of them
and be really good at it.
So it isn't rocket science.
It makes sense.
It's exciting.
And when you lift those limits as Mike's sharing here,
students by golly, they're learning.
And I love the phrase Mike, you're using.
You're moving beyond the goal being minimal compliance.
But to a level of engagement that is meeting kids
where they're at.
And that's not meeting them where they're at a lower level.
That's the big shift we have to make as adults as educators.
It's meeting them where they're at in the familiarity,
the kinds of activities they want to be doing.
Talking to one another.
In fact, we always have this assumption
like the students don't want to learn today.
It's like they don't necessarily want to engage the way
we've framed or invite them to what we qualify as learning.
They want to talk with each other.
They want to engage.
They want to ask questions.
They want to seek out answers and share those with one another.
So this is exciting stuff.
Listener, if you're excited about it too,
you can always leave a comment
or you can give us a call or text us at 608-557-8577.
We are here with Mike Bigley, super intent,
rural superintendent.
I've got to throw that on there, Mike,
because I'm really big on that.
I think there's a lot of wisdom you rural superintendents
and your teams have that for the first time
may be in some parts suburban.
And even urban schools have a little different context,
but schools are all being asked to do more with less.
Well, who's been doing that for a long, long time?
Our rural teams.
So Mike, thanks for sharing your knowledge
and wisdom with us here today.
Absolutely.
Ah, Mike, though.
I mean, it's exciting.
You know, what you talked about,
and I know like this is a fast segment here,
so we're up on the clock.
So when we get back, we're gonna kind of give you a hint
so that you don't get one of the infamous Tim bombs
that I warned you about.
Speeding up the amount of learning you were talking about there,
that's reminding me or making me think about some other school
that's saying they can really maximize the amount
of learning done and the reality is,
if you do that, kids have more time to be kids.
Talking about McKenzie Price.
Yeah, Mike, I want to get your comments.
Well, we get back.
On the YouTube, heads are banging.
Busted pencils fully.
Let it education talk.
Educated educators talking education.
Great guests today from rural Western Wisconsin.
In fact, more specifically the White House School District,
one of the co-founders of liftoffs.
He said, you know, bold initiative
in Western rural Wisconsin doing incredible work.
Mike, though, you hinted, well, you didn't hint,
but I kind of drew this.
If kids can finish eighth grade math
before the end of eighth grade,
you're saying so then, therefore,
and what you said, you know, you put them into algebra.
You know, this is making me think
and we've had conversations on busted pencils,
in fact, even with Britney Waltz.
We've addressed this, a person in Austin, Texas,
McKenzie Price, put forward the Alpha School
and the kind of two-hour learning where she said,
hey, you know, give kids AI and personalized learning
and the six-hour school day really becomes a two-hour school day
and then the rest of the day is working with guides
who really are certified licensed teachers,
actually engaging in the things that the kids want to.
Wondering if you're kind of, I don't want to say you're saying
she's right necessarily, but you're pointing out that,
hey, guess what?
Again, the rigidity of the compliance-based system
of 45 minutes of, here's the curriculum,
here's what you do, you're looking at it going like,
well, wait a minute, that's kind of BS.
I think you're right, I think it is.
I mean, even the Carnegie Foundation is starting
to look at the Carnegie unit, right?
And question whether or not seat time,
it was ever a good measure.
I think we have to remember a couple of things too,
as we were designed for a dramatically different outcome,
right?
It was public education was designed to do industry 2.0 things,
not industry 4.0 or industry infinity,
but, you know, we have obviously,
we have looked at the Alpha Schools a lot, right?
We've looked at that model.
It's not what we're trying to do.
First of all, we're trying to do this for everybody,
not just the 40 grand to go there,
but I think we're also looking at,
liftoff's one of the foundational pieces of this is,
is redefining really what we should be doing for kids.
How much of what we were doing was some adult who decided,
and quite frankly, some 60 year old guy like me,
that decides what a kid ought to learn.
And now we've in this convergence of technology and change,
we have to really redefine that.
That's part of that intrigue of this, exactly,
is what can we do?
How much quicker when we personalize,
we've known for 30 years,
personalizing education was the right thing to do.
We just couldn't do it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cool.
Johnny.
Well, no, I love this, you know,
I'm big on like learning theory and things,
and there's a theory out there called the theory U
from auto-sharmer, and it's talking about, you know,
leading from the emerging future.
And it's exactly what Mike just explained.
It's like how, how have major changes,
whether it's in technology or industry, you know,
come to be.
And if we think about schools needing some major change,
and that's a big one like Mike's,
like sharing here today, the biggest one being,
if we meet kids where they are,
like actually center the learning around,
developmentally appropriate things for young people
and newsflash,
something's stay kind of the same over generations,
but something's change, right?
But if we lift those limitations off,
and in the theory U, they talk about that, you know,
if you can imagine the letter U,
that's what that theory U is about.
And at the top of the U on the left,
is where you start to identify kind of what the problem is.
Schools not working for a lot of kids,
or like Mike said, like our goal is minimal compliance,
and we're battling with young people,
you know, to drag them along to reach that.
Okay, so if you enter the theory U,
you're saying as a team, right,
to lead from the emerging future,
where we wanna be, let's drop down into the U,
and let's lift off limitations,
so when we're in the bottom of the U,
we're saying, let's assume that everything is possible.
And then you come back up the U,
and you might not be able to do all those things
that you assume down at the bottom of the U,
but what the theory has shown us,
as it's been researched for decades,
as you come back up that U,
you have a radically different model,
and amazing things tend to happen.
And I love that,
because that's what Mike is explaining here,
with lift off,
and just the kinds of ways that his team
has really dove into the U,
and said, what are those assumptions
that kind of seem to be in the way,
like what we're doing with our school day, the time?
You know, you can't personalize education for everyone,
that's too hard, you gotta have it similar,
and you know who knows what's best,
is this curriculum over here
that might not relate to our kids at all.
So what Mike and his team has done,
has said, well, let's lift those limitations,
and let's see what's possible,
and certainly some things are non-negotiable,
but you get creative as a team,
and you really figure out awesome stuff,
you give it a try,
and I applaud you, Mike and your team,
because very seldom do we get out of the U,
and give it a try,
and giving it a try,
you saw some amazing things happen
for young people, for learners,
by Godly to do school differently,
then we've done it for hundreds of years,
in this country at least,
and to really personalize it,
and to show that it's possible,
especially possible,
given technologies and examples that are out there,
that I don't wanna say retrofit to your community,
but knowing your community's needs, right?
Knowing the interests of young people,
where they're at, where they're coming from,
what they have access to,
what their day is like,
and then lifting off those limitations,
saying like, hey, maybe we don't need to have math class
at 7, 15 AM for teenagers, right?
Maybe they're better learners
at different times during the day.
What are some things that we know,
actually know about kids,
not assumptions we have about them,
that might help them be better learners,
and bonus help us be better teachers,
and better mentors as adults in these young people's lives.
So this is exciting stuff, Mike.
I just had to nerd out a little bit,
and share with our listeners too,
like, hey, this is also really aligned
with leading theory on how to lead,
and how to produce leaders out of our young people.
And we have to give them the capacity
to be able to do that,
and we've even, you know,
also wanna share it,
we started a pilot in kindergarten,
midway through the year,
personalizing kindergarten.
If you start applying this now,
their entire career,
what do we see for a difference in perspective in kids?
If we've allowed them and taught them to own their learning,
be responsible for their learning,
from the time they are six,
I'm guessing Brittany probably shared with you
with last time when she was on,
the longer kids stay in the system,
by standardized measures, the worse they get.
Yeah, yeah.
We, I don't know if you're familiar with Michael Foul
in a leadership, you know, I mean, his thing, right?
It's like, look, for every year,
a kid spends in school,
their engagement level diminishes.
You know, and you're like,
and like, that's a real live statistic,
we know it exists,
and yet we continue to do school
in the exact form and function
that produces that result.
And so you say,
what are you doing?
Go ahead, Mike.
And we talk a lot about, you know,
the, even you look at our internal staff
and we have a, we're fortunate.
We have a tremendous staff.
A lot of the educators in our area are phenomenal,
dedicated people that have been at a long time,
but they have all been really good at school, right?
I was good at school.
I was good at playing the game,
didn't really engage a whole lot.
I was good at playing the game.
So I think that makes this transition
even more difficult,
but now we're starting to wake up
and we're starting to see the implications
and the impacts that we can have
by making changes.
And that's intriguing to me,
and I've not found an adult yet
that when we start talking about the impacts
of kindergartners like a class of 20 kids,
where a teacher has four of them up at the board,
doing a mini lesson on something,
and they're on two different tools,
plus they're playing in a shared,
or a social environment,
and they're engaged the whole time
without the teacher having to be there.
And we have a tool that will collect their reading.
Listen to them read,
start to sort out what they need for issues,
suggest what the teacher should assign next,
and also record it so the teacher can listen to them.
That's cool.
Oh my God.
It's so cool.
What you're doing to Mike is going,
okay Mackenzie Price for $40,000 a year,
for this special,
guess what?
We're doing it in Western Wisconsin with 20 kids.
We're doing it with kindergartners.
It is possible.
I think that's the other part.
District leaders, education policy makers
that are listening, parents,
neighbors that are listening to this show right now.
What you're hearing from Mike and the team at liftoffs
is, hey, it doesn't have to be the way it always was.
It just doesn't.
And you're given a thought.
Mike, the potential,
I was thinking about this.
So when you're doing this with kindergartners
and either like districts that aren't doing that
or probably looking going,
well, oh my God,
if any of those kids transfer here,
they're going to hate us.
Yeah.
We've had a lot of those conversations.
And even we have a tremendous conversation going on
in our area right now with UW-Stout.
We've engaged with them through our emerging technology
lab, but now all of a sudden,
they're starting to see the impacts
and they're saying, wait a minute,
if we have kids coming in with dramatically different skill
sets, what do we need to do to step up our game, right?
So now we're seeing some true K-16 convergence.
And really, now we start to compete globally, right?
And when we do that for every kid,
now we've given them a fair head start
and maybe we can expect the market to do
what the market does at that point, right?
If we've given them all a starting point
that at least is fair.
And I think, but you're right,
we're our target is to provide a high caliber experience
for literally every kid that wants it.
Not those that have afforded.
Well, check this out too,
and everybody listening,
liftoffslearning.com,
that's L-I-F-T-O-F-F-S learning.com
is where you can get to know more about what's happening
in Western rural Wisconsin.
Mike and his team, and again, Brittany,
and we want to get your colleagues on to Mike,
what you're talking about is so exciting.
It's like we need to do multiple shows
with all of your partners to really experience
what's really happening there.
Because this is a movement that really is,
and what I love is this is a movement of public schools,
of truly public schools.
This isn't a special charter.
This isn't a private.
This is just hard working people saying,
we can break free of these restraints.
And in fact, when we do, look what happens.
Mike, we didn't even get a chance to really talk about this
because I was saying the whole rural
and what kind of got me going,
where Brittany said was an article last week
that came out about the 150-year-old
rural one-room schoolhouse making a comeback.
And we kind of joked around about it here.
Jacob and Johnny and I, it's like,
we talked about a little hustle in the prairie,
kind of like the dunes cap and all that.
And actually, what was neat about the article
was it wasn't about going back to some nostalgia.
It was saying in this one-room concept,
multiple learners cooperatively learning,
teacher with expertise having at their ability
to harness the newest technologies.
So as we're thinking about that, Mike,
I mean, gotta have your team,
gotta have you guys come back.
We absolutely love what you guys are doing.
Again, it's liftoffslearning.com.
Mike Bigley, Mike, thanks for busting pencils with us.
I really appreciate it, thank you.
All right, and when we get back,
you know what that means, Tim and Johnny and Jacob,
we're gonna break this down
and we will not be making fun of Mike Bigley.
Lots of pencils.
When we get back.
You'll be okay if you don't have a pen,
if not.
Yeah, all these and
we should go through customs
but sometimes we don't want work.
Yeah.
I can't play the guitar like that, just wish.
But the pencils fully let it, education talk,
educated educators talking, education, man.
Mike Bigley, liftoffs.
Again, that's L-I-F-T-O-F-F-S learning.com.
Mike Bigley, superintendent, western Wisconsin,
rural western Wisconsin, doing the incredible work up there.
Again, Brittany Walts, CISA 4, made the connection with us.
They've got a heck of a team up there doing incredible work.
Again, everybody in the Wisconsin listening area right now,
you're checking it out.
I mean, check them out and go up and make some connections
because this is something we need to see,
Johnny, I mean, we said they've got a whole team
and we're going to have their whole team on here,
wanted a time and even in groups because we want to keep
this conversation going because Johnny,
what I'm hearing from them is they are truly doing public schools
in a way that you and I have been talking about for years
of saying, what's possible?
It doesn't have to be a drag.
It doesn't have to be boring.
And in fact, some of the criticisms that come out
about crappy public schools, hey, here's an example.
Rural, too, rural going, they're blown it up, man, Johnny.
Absolutely, Tim, and I don't want it to distract
from the fact that our schools are underfunded by and large,
and it's not saying like, here's an example of how you can do less
with more, so you should be able to.
So I just want to put that, you mean more with less.
Yeah, that's what I mean.
I don't want it to be like an example
of rationalizing what I'll just call unjust budget cuts
that have damaged the learning environments for kids,
especially kids with high needs.
But at the same time, we've talked about this a lot.
You got to hold space for the creativity
and the genius of what I'll call rural school district wisdom
right now, that they have a long history of not only
these budget cuts hurting them, cutting deep for their community,
but they have a not a wait and see approach.
They're being really proactive for a long time
on how can we do things differently?
So I want to stay making sure we are advocating
for the adequate, I'll just call the just funding
for all students in our states, right?
But at the same time too, to do these exciting things,
you can do both.
You can properly fund the way we know
and way we're learning, kids can do better in schools
and in fact, schools can do better
to support kids doing that in schools.
So just a little caveat as we kind of wrap the show up.
I just don't want to make sure our listeners
we're not here advocating, hey, budget cuts have hit
and here's an example of how you can do more with less.
We should be funding all of our schools adequately,
but given this kind of context, Mike and his team
and I'm sure listeners out there probably have examples as well.
If you want to call or text us at 608-557-8577,
share those stories with us.
We can amplify the awesome stuff that you're doing
in your district or in your school,
and maybe you're an educator,
maybe you're a parent, or maybe you're a leader like Mike,
a school superintendent who's saying,
you know what, there's some assumptions about kids learning
that we're just gonna get rid of,
and we're gonna strive for engagement.
And everybody out there, if you aren't paying attention
to that, we want you to be,
because everybody knows you can go toe-to-toe
with a person smaller than you,
and they're gonna win in numbers every time in schools.
Our young learners, right, they are, you know,
wired up to resist, and they have every right to.
Like, you know, the way we do schools
often isn't structured in a way that supports them
as engaged learners.
Yeah.
You know, it's imposing compliant learning,
and compliant learning, you know,
I hate to always be that guy,
that nerd who turns to science, right?
But what we know from learning science
is that engagement is a deep level of learning.
It, you know, it stokes the fires of passion
and creativity for not only young people,
but for all ages, but especially for young people,
whether those young people are kindergarteners,
eighth graders or 12th graders,
it's the key to their success.
Yet time and time again, we do school in a compliant model,
right, where it's like, hey, you meet what we set the framework
and either fit into that or fail,
and that just doesn't work.
So, I'm glad that we have these examples
in this ongoing conversation.
Absolutely.
Reminds me of our guest, Ira David Sokol.
Guess what, schools were designed to fail,
and what they're doing in Western Wisconsin.
They're designing schools for success,
and now it's time for your moment of zin.
Indeed, it is impossible to be neutral in a world already moving
in certain directions, where wealth and power
are already distributed in certain ways.
Neutrality means accepting the way things are now.
Thank you, pencil busters, for listening to today's broadcast
with Mike Bigley, and if you want to grab more Busted Pencils
podcasts, we'll just go on over to Apple, Spotify,
or wherever it is, you get your podcasts at,
but you can always get those podcasts at civicmedia.com
or at our website, bustedpensils.com,
and you can find great Busted Pencils content.
Like today's show, on Mondays for Home Room,
on Wednesdays for class and session,
and every Friday for producer Jacob's Choice,
and of course, pencil busters.
You could tune in next Saturday,
and listen to the Busted Pencils weekend broadcast,
on Saturdays at 3 p.m. Central time,
across all the civic media networks,
for one hour of your favorite blue collar scholars,
Tim and Johnny, and keep Busted Pencils.
Thanks for watching!