I got the thumbs up from Jacob. It means it's busted pencils time.
Hopefully, let it education talk educated educators, talking education class is in session.
Me, Dr. Tim Slecker, Jacob chairman of the boards and Johnny Lupinachi, you know, sometimes
those other places where we, you know, spend our time, Jacob, they, uh, they call in and say,
sorry, you're needed here. I believe you told me he's helping pass the continuing resolution
in Washington, I think. I, something extremely important. I wasn't not, not as important as what
we do here, but occasionally sometimes, uh, things like that happen. And, uh, we make those
accommodations because, you know, educated educators talking education also have the back of
educated educators talking education. So, you know, that's what we do. Jacob though, man,
loving the fact that we get a return guest and always appreciate when we have our return
guest, you listener may remember. And if you haven't remembered, I know Jacob in this podcast
description is going to put the link to the show where we met our awesome guest.
It's Mike Bigley, Superintendent of Whitehall School District in Western,
Mrs. Oh my god, Western Wisconsin. Mike helped launch lift-offs, lift-offs learning,
and that came out of CISA 4, to tackle, you know, the rural, do more with less
reality by building future ready pathways for kids. Um, and all of those things, yeah, we're talking
about, you know, AI and all of the, uh, interesting connections. Mike, welcome back to Busted
Pencils. I got to tell you though, um, we had an interview with the, um, he calls himself at
not the principal, Jacob. No, what was, I know that the teachers are helpers, I believe,
or the teacher, the guide guides, and he's the head. He's the head of school.
Head of schools, and we talked from, yeah, from two-hour learning, what they're doing, you know,
in that school in Austin where, and we don't say this with, with any negativity, but where it's
costing $40,000 a year to send your kid there. And, um, you know, their, their, their wish, though,
is to really, you know, get and create some of the opportunities that they're doing in public
settings. And we said, hey, we said, check it out though. Uh, we know people who are actually pulling
this off and doing the thing in the public. And you're like, you know, you got to meet our
friends up there in Western Wisconsin, Mike Bigley. So, yeah, Mike, I mean, all of the work that,
you know, you guys are, are doing up there in, in Western Wisconsin, rural Wisconsin.
It really reminded us when we interviewed, you know, the Alpha School, um, the two-hour learning,
if going like, guess what? Doing great things is, yes, tied to resources a lot of the times.
But a lot of times it's tied to leadership. And that's what I wanted to come back and go, Mike,
you know, thanks for coming back on Bust of Pencils, but thanks for being such an awesome leader, man.
Well, I appreciated it. And certainly we have a really great team that, that of different
personalities, different skillsets that have really come together to put together the public
version of exactly what you're talking about. So yeah, yeah. So what we are talking about, you know,
too, because we've got more to get to, though, because you've been up to, you know, doing a little
bit of stuff since the last time we talked to, but liftoffs, give us, you know, the new listener
and the return listener, though, just to refresher. What's going on with liftoffs?
Liftoffs itself is a, is a movement of structural change around public education and
primarily rural public education, really geared at redefining what success looks like, then what
structural changes have to be put in place, leveraging all of the emerging technology,
shifting from grading and standards to competencies to show what kids can actually do,
and merging all of those together in a new school system. I think that's really what we're after,
that gets better results more efficiently, and really meets kids where they are. That's really the
challenge, right? And that's the goal. Well, Jacob hearing that too, right? It kind of makes me
think back to it was Chris, the head of schools for alpha schools. Yeah. Some are very similar to
what they're doing at alpha schools. We actually, we get that a lot. You know, this sounds like alpha
schools. I think the good part is is we had this pegged about an hour, a year before we even knew
what the alpha schools were. So I think we're, we're pretty proud of that fact, but I think our,
you know, much like their approach, it comes from doing better for kids, and I think we can't lose
sight of that. Right. Certainly we're committed to educating every kid, right? Not just the kids
that can afford it, and really providing those high caliber experiences and individual growth,
maximizing the human capacity. We use that phrase a lot, and then shifting away from minimal
compliance. So much of what's the least I can do to obtain some arbitrary grade that somebody
in an office somewhere decided this was important. And see, and that's what, you know, lift-offs in
your team, like you said, the partners, the other schools that are involved, but, you know, the
commitment to what you just pointed out, structural change. I can, I can really, I can hear other
people going like, whoa, how did they do that? Because, you know, that's the hardest change is
is that, you know, when you hear people talking about, well, you know, if we didn't have to do,
you know, grading, if we didn't have to follow the bell schedule, if we didn't have to,
and it sounds like your team kind of said, well, what if we don't have to?
Well, and I think there's an awful lot to him around, folks have a lot of perceptions of what
they can and can't do. I think when you, when you take a look at what's what we're really, what
the limits are and what we're required to do, it's not as restrictive as folks think. I think when,
when, when you really, and then, you know, we hear a lot, well, what do people think? Well,
anything that's good for kids, I've not had an adult yet that says we shouldn't do it, right?
It's good for kids. You mean, you mean nobody has shown up and went, wait a minute,
we really want our kids sitting in rows all the time, listening to teachers drone on and on,
and be shamed for not doing well on their standardized tests. We want that for our kids, Mike.
We're right. We want them restricted to a 1950s and 60s model with industry 2.0 technology
and making assessments around depth of knowledge, one in two questioning, right? When we know the
world requires much greater thought process and critical thinking than that. You know, Mike,
when we talk to the alpha school guys, I know we felt a little, it wasn't a problem, but we thought,
oh, we were just promoting a private system of education. How do people feel about that? But
that's not the idea of it. The idea is that when we see good ideas and think people trying new
things, that's what matters because eventually that gets out. Good ideas proliferate and they
make it to the public schools. You guys are leading the way in that. I want to ask you, what are some
of the things for this school year that you're looking at with interest? I mean, what are you trying
this year? Well, we're continuing to find more pilots and more partners around the personalized
learning, you know, the platforms are significant. We're building capacity with our staff. We've really
empowered them to try things. You know, it's not a, it's not a judgey scenario. It's not a catch
scenario. We're hoping that organically folks can learn and really become passionate about what
they can do for kids. So I think we're continuing down that work. We're really diving now into the
competencies. How can we track that? How does that equate to a grade system? How do we work with our
higher ed partners to help them create that same structural change concept? And then how do we migrate
our kids into, you know, that's as much as K-12 is changing. Higher ed is going to change dramatically
as we go forward. So yeah, Mike, I mean, I am in the middle of a conversation at a higher ed
institution where I might have some interest in and, you know, engaging the conversation about that.
And, you know, it is. I mean, for, for some of my colleagues, we see very plainly that the structures
upon which higher education has largely rested, you know, it's, it's, it, those structures themselves,
even that, you know, the three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, class from 10 to 10,
50, three credits over 15 weeks and going, it's like, well, you know, wait a minute. We're talking
about, you know, technology and AI. What happens when, when AI has actually every bit, every nuance,
every ounce of knowledge that that 15 week, three times a day, earth three times a week,
course that you sat there to get that information, you know, I don't need to sit there anymore to
get that information. Right. And more so, more importantly, then how do I use that information,
right? That's the, that's the depth of knowledge three and four type things. So then how do we really
teach kids, first of all, to engage authentically, to collaborate, to communicate, to work ethically
morally, right? And then how do we really get them to start understanding they can solve real
problems that we once thought were impossible? You know, yeah, I think about that and Jacob jumping
in, you know, clarifying me from off, you know, because that happens. But, you know, when, when
the way you, you know, you say that it's like solve problems, you know, and I think what happened
in particular, the old model was there was an assumption that problem solving occurred as a
result of receiving knowledge, you know, it was, it was kind of like everybody really wanted the
goal of education to quote, be critical thinking. But we only ever really, you know, measured your
ability to remember. And we, we maybe got to the critical thinking pieces. If we had time left in
the class period after we did the, the superficial stuff for lack of a better way to say it, you know,
I think that, that piece has become, we've really talked a lot, dug into a lot, how artificially
limiting we were as the adults were the problem. We want to understand engagement problems in kids,
take a look at the adults. Myself included, I did it, you know, we, we talked a lot about what kids
couldn't do. I think our challenge now, so going back to Jacob, what you were asking about this
years, we're trying to find out what the limits of our kids really are. You know, we, we found a new
sensor kit that we're going to pilot with a new company that's a startup and we're doing a pilot
for them and, you know, they targeted middle school, we're going to throw that baby in kindergarten.
And we'll move it up though, instead of moving it down, right? If it's, if it's too high level
for kindergarten, we're going to try it in first grade. Let's go find out where they can start to
really do something with it instead of starting in middle school. And if it's too easy, then we've
missed it, right? Those types of things are, are kind of where we're spending our time.
I love that spirit of, of innovation and trying things and seeing what sticks and, and then being
able to move on from things that might not work so well, instead of being afraid of coming into
those situations, I'm a bit of a history buff. So I know that in the Punic Wars, one of the things
that people talked about is that the, the Carthaginians punished generals for failure, but the Romans
encouraged and rewarded people for success. And that led to sort of the more attitude that you
guys have adopted. I'm wondering, what are some of those artificial or perceived boundaries that
keep people from innovating that you found are actually things that can be changed?
Well, I think there's, there's always the fear of
retribution, right? For, for lack of a better way to say it, or public outcry, or, you know, there,
there are a lot of folks that get pretty beat up every time they try something new, and especially
in the public environment. I think, you know, that's part of our job as leaders to understand that
those are the challenges that we have to throw forward and really jump in. I think those are the
those are the real limits. I think there's also an awareness issue that we have is we're still
living under this fallacy that everything's okay, that our current system is meeting the needs
of our future generations and all those things. And that was a big, you know, we you talked about
doing some, some cool things, right? I had a chance to go to China. Early this fall in, in really
start looking at how unaware I consider myself pretty in tune to what's happening. And I was
blown away and that doesn't happen very often. All right. So, Mike, then you were in China. So,
I got to ask, did they put the the head monitor on you and make you sitting class the measure,
the different type of supreme waves you were having and then feed that back to your personalized
AI tutor? Well, no, we didn't do that, but we were also weren't we weren't able to get into schools.
We are visits. We're all around businesses. All around AI companies, e-commerce companies,
humanoid robot companies, you know, those types of things. But what we really found out is how big
of a challenge we really have. Yeah, I was going to say, so, you know, again, take away that's
silly image. But I know people have seen the image of the Chinese children with the headbands
on and people are like, oh my god, look what they're doing in China. It's like, okay, hold on.
You know, I think where you are going, in which you want us to go, like, okay, here's what's going
on, you know, business, commerce, technology, innovation in China. And as an educator in America
who's seeing that, you're kind of coming back and going, man, we got work to do.
Probably that's a very clean version of what my thought process was. We are getting really,
I mean, we are dramatically behind in terms of this developing concept of what this technology
both is capable of and how efficient and inexpensive it's becoming. You know, we saw
humanoid robots that have some tremendous agility. The ability to be knocked down and get back up.
That's a game changer. You know, with those types of things, you're not in how,
I think one of the things that struck me was the sheer magnitude of the number of people,
700,000 smart robotics companies in China, 600 in the US.
Whoa, wait, 600,000, 700,000?
Yes, that's the, that's the believed number, 700,000 companies. A lot of them are startups.
Sure.
You know, funded by the government, but they also operate in an open source scenario with all of their
programming. We run closed source in this country. Open source, they all work on it together.
They're trying to develop it in a collaborative environment with the idea of improving it.
What a novel concept, right, for us to really think about. And I think the other take away was
is you would think in a communist country, it wouldn't be capitalistic, but it's very capitalistic.
Oh, yeah. Very much so. Really looking at venture capital and being funded that way.
But again, the sheer technology warehouses, completely automated autonomous vehicles running stuff
back and forth nonstop. And that's all coming here. And if we think we're, if think that's not,
we're kidding ourselves. So from an awareness perspective, I think as educators, we have to talk
about that.
Well, I mean, makes me think about, you know, maybe a potential question that people, you know,
maybe are kind of thinking they already know the answer to. And therefore, they don't want to
ask it. But Mike, you're kind of presenting the fact of going, boy, that's going to be the
elimination of a lot of jobs. And what are we going to do with all the kids if they got nothing to do?
And I think that isn't it's a legitimate question that we have to do, you know, that we have to
think through. But I brought up earlier the problem solving. We can solve some things leveraging
technology with human resources that we've never been able to solve. We know we're going to have
power issues, right? We're going, if we continue to build data centers that are going to run the AI,
you know, and we're still talking about relatively infantile AI, we're not talking about artificial
superintelligence yet. You know, those types of concepts, we're going to have to redefine, you know,
we just literally had a conversation here yesterday about the trades, right? Traditional trades,
rough trades for lack of a better way to say it. I don't like that term because they're highly
skilled, right? Right. But I think if you don't have a blend of emerging technology into those
trades going forward, that's where the loss of jobs is going to come. That that point, I'm glad
you brought that up because yeah, that is actually one of the, you know, pathways that I'm working on
currently is with, yeah, I never really had heard the word rough trades, but looking at particularly
carpenters right now and getting them enrolled into higher education and bachelor degree programs,
and then specifically talking to them, building a program based on what they're also seeing,
and that is they surveyed, you know, all of their members who are members of the Carpenters Union,
here in the, in the Northeast, and one of the top areas that they want in higher education
is more technology. And because, you know, I was talking to one of their, you know, one of their
leaders, and he said to him, you know, working on a construction site, it's truly skilled labor,
as you say, it's not rough, but to maintain the skilled part is to recognize that they have to
move up with the technologies now that will be coming into play because you really then do end up
becoming like truly, you know, left behind as a laborer. Right. And going back to Jacob's question,
you know, what are we working on this year's, we really need every one of our kids exposed to
emerging technologies, not just the kids who are into tech, right. If you don't understand
sensor technology, if you don't understand the way that your social media data is being tracked
and how that's being used to influence your thought process, all of those things have to be taught
going forward, sensor technology, robotics, automation, basic pneumatics, basic electronics,
that has to become fundamental in our skill system, or in our school system, our skill sets,
I think that in, so now you go back to the liftoffs model, right. We need to free up time in the day,
we need to accelerate the effectiveness of our core instruction so that we can free up more time
for that applied learning, that integrated learning, technology blended into mathematics,
technology blended into science. Yeah. Well, you know, and just to get a reminder too, is that
you said you really weren't in China with education, it was with industry partners. I mean,
that was the big kind of startup, if I remember, in the Whitehall area, was your connection and
your school district's proximity to a big company, right. Yep, with Ashley Furniture, absolutely,
and the Lonick family, and certainly they're the folks that took me to China. Okay.
You know, the opportunities, again, that, you know, it's one of those things, you talk about
restrictions, right. I would never as an educator be able to fund that trip, but these folks were going
for their own business purposes, had the willingness to take somebody like me along.
I think that that perspective, though, is invaluable now, in the ability to talk about that,
in show kids this type of technology, robotic dogs, which we thought were kind of, you know,
we didn't really know what to think of those, till you understand there are hundreds of thousands
of them deployed with the military and fire suppression, police scenarios, safety scenarios,
truck lots, they can RFIe truck inventories, you know, explosive scenarios. You get all kinds of
different things, and these things are four, five thousand dollars. They're not, you're not talking
100,000 dollar pieces of equipment. Wow. You know, say about, no, guide, Mike.
Well, I'm, no, I'm just, you know, that, that concept is something that we need an awareness on,
and, and we're, we are, we're falling behind, and we can't even afford to catch up.
The four times the number of people, and that's just in China, we're not talking about India,
Europe, South America, all of those other places in the world, we have to, to figure out a way to,
to really be critical thinkers, be creative with all of these technologies and solve some
no problems. What I was going to ask Jacob is, you know, if he was thinking, okay, robotic dog,
that could be a really great next pet for you, Jacob. I was thinking about how when I was about
eight years old, they had a very terrible robot dog toy, those very popular around that time.
But around that same time that those robot dogs were becoming popular for kids, I think about
2010 or so. I remember that's when we all recall that job posting started to say, you got to know
how to use Excel, you got to know how to use Microsoft Office, all that whole suite of tools.
And thinking about if you were somebody who in the 90s had a good grasp of how the internet
worked and how these tools worked, what a leg up that was instead of being someone who in 2010
was like, I better learn how this internet thing works. With your experience going to China,
I'm wondering, did that give you any insights into ways, maybe not right now,
but planning or thinking about how to change the process? How do you start teaching elementary
school kids in a way that sets them up for a world that's a bit different? I think you just touched
on where I'm going to go, Jacob is we're not teaching them anything anymore. We're getting out of
their way. We're giving them opportunities to learn. We're enforcing that. We're facilitating,
you know, we've talked a lot and I probably will offend some folks. We've talked a lot in this
career or in my career about the love of reading. We don't talk about the love of learning.
That's what we have to get to. You know, that's not our job. I don't believe to teach the love
of reading. That's families, that's parents, that's social opportunities, right? We need to teach
kids how to read and we need to teach them to want to learn and then we can get out of their way.
I was going to say, Mike, I was going to be like, wait a minute, you are teaching. You're teaching
truly how to learn. I mean, yeah, don't take away because and that is, you know, when you talk
to any teacher who has crossed over into that realm where they know, you know, they've entered a
space with their students where there's something happening that's different than just transmission.
It's when they've moved into that where it's like, okay, we're exchanging ideas and going back
and forth because we're learning, we're learning together and I think that's the other thing,
you know, great teachers create those learning opportunities, right? You know, teachers,
become more valuable than ever. You know, because it's about the passion for learning because
when we were all growing up, there was this belief that a finite set of information if provided
correctly and we were willing to learn it would create a scenario we could be successful for the
bulk of our lives, right? That's no longer the case. This stuff is changing 10X scenarios, right,
over and over again. So we really have to teach kids how to learn and relearn skill sets.
You know, in another important thing that we've worked with our partners at UW-Stout and
Western Technical College, Ship of Alley Technical College, to build a degree program in automation
leadership. It's competency-based. It doesn't necessarily matter where you get the competencies.
They could come from work. They could come from high school. They could come from technical school
and they can come from the university. You meet the competencies. You get the credits.
Now, we're starting to empower people to want to learn and work and add value to society all at
the same time. Okay, we better keep this secret because somebody out there is going to be like,
make them stop because all of a sudden, every public school is going to want to do that and
I hope so. Right. I've got so many more ideas and things to go and our time always goes
way too quickly when we're with you. Just, you know, put even a teaser out here. Jacob,
I wonder what a, you know, Mike Bigley and liftoffs, maybe with a couple of the alpha people,
show together to be talking about, you know, what's happening between, I think that could be a
really great show where a lot of people could do a lot of learning. Jacob, it'll be the biggest
event since Mike Tyson and Jake Paul went at each other with their different teaching methods.
So I can't wait for that. That'll be great. You know what? Yeah. In fact, you know, instead of
everybody being excited about bad bunny, it's a super bowl, man. We can, you know,
alpha school and liftoffs together on busted pencils, you're true half time super bowl
opportunity. So much going on there. Mike, definitely though to put it out there.
The number one thing I keep seeing is that, yeah, and Jacob asked the great question, you know,
kindergarteners, how do we know when things are going to be so different? And that reality is
probably more stark than ever that the number one thing I'm getting and seeing and I think this
really was always good advice. But the best preparation for the future is learning how to learn.
Yes. It's essential. It is the new essential skill. And we can't wait for someone to teach us.
Think of the economics. 27 relers now is the latest statistic, whether that's valid or not,
but even if it's a half, even if it's half that, complete relers. If you spent two to four years
in school as an adult, every time you had to relearn something, you're 80 years old and you haven't
worked yet. You know what I mean? I think we have to understand those things, but that passion for
learning is something we need to spend our time and energy on. So, you know, and I think there's
a lot of conversation right now that centers around educating only chunks of our kids. And that is
disastrous for our country. And I will say that till the day I am no longer here, it is
disastrous for our country as if we don't educate every child to their maximum capacity.
That's the bottom line. And if we fail, then we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Well, man, I'm going to go there. Mike Bigley, liftoffs. Thank you for busting pencils with us.
Again, Mike. Oh, I really appreciate it. I appreciate the opportunity. It's fun to talk to you guys.
Yeah, we love it. And now it's time for your moment of zin.
The history of any country presented as the history of a family
conceals fierce conflicts of interest, sometimes exploding, most often repressed between conquerors
and the conquered masters and slaves, capitalists and workers,
dominators and dominated in race and sex.
Thanks for listening to busted pencils. Friday, yes, producer's choice Saturday, one full
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