SPEAKER_00 0:00

You're listening to the Support Ed Learning Podcast, where we challenge the status quo of education and reimagine what learning should be. I'm Dr. Joe Sebastian, and in every episode we dive into critical thinking, Bloom's Taxonomy, educational innovation, and how AI is shaping the future of learning. Whether you're a teacher, parent, policymaker, or lifelong learner, you're in the right place to rethink, reshape, and revive education. So he grew up in Hell's Kitchen in New York City, raised on welfare by a single mom from Argentina. His options were death or prison. Instead, he got his education, joined Google as the second person on their education team, and over 15 years put technology into the hands of 130 million students and teachers worldwide. He's spoken in the White House. He's one of the most quoted voices in education. And today he's going to tell you what your school is getting wrong and what you should do about it. Jamie Cass is here. Welcome back to the Supported Learning Podcast. I'm Dr. Joe Sebastian. Families often ask me how to navigate the educational landscape, college prep without wasting time or thousands of dollars in the process. And the answer usually involves people who have figured it out themselves and figured out the rules of the game. And that's why I'm thrilled that Jamie is here with us today. Again, he is a he's Google's former chief educational evangelist, a role he held for over 15 years, and he's now one of the most sought-after voices on the future of education, innovation, and work. Jamie, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Thank you, Joe. It's a pleasure to be here. Excited to talk to you.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Absolutely. Well, I'm sure you're popular now with where we're rapidly moving with uh AI and education. People reach out to you.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Yeah, it's a it's a hot topic. It's a hot topic.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Right. So I kind of given them the highlight reel. Kind of give me like the 60-second snapshot of who you are and what specific problem you're trying to solve in education.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Yeah, yeah. So as you mentioned, um, yeah, I'm a first-generation American born and raised in Hell's Kitchen, New York. I grew up in poverty, I grew up in violence. You know, this is the old school Hell's Kitchen back from the 70s and 80s. I was actually in New York back in October attending a conference. And I went with my daughter, both my daughter, my two of my kids live in New York. And uh, we went to the comedy cellar and uh listening to comedy, a comedian talk about living in New York. And and the comedian happened to say, Anyone, anyone here grow up in a ghetto? And and I raised my hand and I said, Yeah, woo! He's like, Where'd you grow up? And I said, And this is a young guy, so that's that's important to the story. He's like, you know, in his 20s. And I said, Hell's Kitchen. And he goes, Hell's Kitchen's not uh, and I go, in the 70s. Okay, he was like, Okay, all right, cool. I get I get so so he uh I got the respect from the comedian. He couldn't, he couldn't, he couldn't hammer me anymore. He was ready to like hammer me for not growing up in a ghetto. But uh Hell's Kitchen in the 70s and 80s was not a great place to to grow up. And I through luck, through sports, you know, I played basketball, I was captain of my high school basketball team, through, you know, hopefully some self-intelligence, I was able to, you know, see a path out of there. And it was through education. It was getting graduating from high school, going to college, graduating from a graduate school. And I got the chance to do what I'm doing because of education. And so for me, education is it's a passion thing for me because it it I wouldn't exist today if it wasn't for education.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

So that is well, first thoughts is truly remarkable. Like that, the the the immigrant come up story, right? Stay Hamilton we have now mass distributed that this is something that happens, but you know, we work with a lot of families of immigrants that are coming from Southeast Asia and other places abroad, and they do have some really powerful careers, but it seems like, you know, obviously you're talking about coming up in a lot different socioeconomic background. How did you know education was your way out? Like, because a lot of kids I've worked with, some I've worked in some inner city schools, they're not hip to it being their way out and their path forward or the opportunity presented to them. How did that help you, or how did you know that as a teen that education was your way out?

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Right. And and I think, you know, in a weird way, those those old timers like me from back in the good old days had it easier because there's only one pathway, right? There was it was it was education. Like today, um, you know, I mean, even back then, it was you could be a sports star or a you know a music star or get your education, have a career. Today you can you can luckily start you have more options. You can start a business. You know, so I get why teens today and those in the early 20s want to jumpstart, they want to potentially just start a business, or they just want to get be an influencer or they want to be on YouTube. Like I often talk to students and they want to be influencers. We didn't have that option. Our pathway was either sports and I wasn't good enough to play in the NBA, uh, music and I can't sing, or an education. So you're when you limit those choices, it gets a little easier for you. So education was I saw who was successful, and when you did the research on who they were, education was what made them successful. So that's what I focused on.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

So you said luck shouldn't be a requirement to escape poverty. What did you mean by that?

SPEAKER_01 5:34

Yeah, so a lot of the time it comes down to having to either, if you are most of the time, it's zip code, right? Like, think about the fact that we base our education system on what zip code you live in for most of the country. There are places here in Arizona, we don't have that. You know, you can it's freedom of choice, you can go to any school you want. But in lots of communities, you don't have that choice. You have to go to a school that is in your community, and so your education is based on your zip code. Nothing else is based that way, if you think about it, right? It's not like your fire department has less resources in the ghetto than it does in the high-end area, or your police car. You know, it's not like the police departments drive cruisers in good neighborhoods and bicycles in bad neighborhoods, but for some reason in education, we do that. We give the schools in the bad communities the least amount of resources, the least experienced teachers, and then we expect results to come out of that. So part of it is luck, literally where you're born into. That's luck stage number one. The other luck, and I was fortunate to have some really good teachers in my life. And so, a lot of the time, if you're lucky to have a really good teacher that picks up on your talent or your skills or your intelligence and they push you in a certain direction, that that can mean all the difference in the world. So education shouldn't be based on how lucky you are. And not that luck doesn't play a game or play a role in anything in life, because it does, but it shouldn't be the only requirement.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

That's that is really true. I think we're we're focused on the wrong things too. Having worked in um I've my second year teaching was inner city, DC, and uh we're so focused on the college acceptance rate of those students. Of just it's basically like we we put our money, our philanthropy into making it through the gauntlet of 12 years of education when you think we should probably be doing something from those birth to five till they get to like it seems like there's so many kids now that just have gaps that are almost impossible to overcome. They're so far behind their peers just because of sometimes their background, other circumstances, like you said, luck. Do you think our focus is on the wrong things in terms of where we're potentially prioritizing funding and resources?

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Yeah, I think everything's on the wrong path. I think the whole focus is on the wrong thing because you know, during the pandemic, I lost my mind after the pandemic when the talk of the education world was learning loss. Well, look at all this learning. Like, what are you talking about? What does that mean? What you mean, what you mean is these kids are not ready to take this standardized test that we paid millions of dollars for for our kids to take to see how they did so that we can get funding for the school. That's what that was. That's what learning loss meant. It wasn't my kids learned so much through the pandemic, so much about so many different subjects, but we focus on the wrong thing. We focus on the standardized testing, we focus on memorization, we focus on the things that don't make sense, and and it makes but it makes sense why we focus on them, right? Because, and this is an old business phenomenon, but what gets measured gets done. And so, if what we're measuring is C time, what we're measuring are test scores, what we're measuring to get funding for schools, then that's what we're gonna focus on. And so I can't blame school districts to say saying we need to really make sure that our kids have a high college graduation attendance or have high test scores because that's how we get funding. Until we change that model, then what else are they gonna do?

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Right. So going back to your education, you get through you get through the system. How do you get to Google?

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Yeah, you know, I actually just told a story the other day, which is I graduated from SUNY Brockport in upstate New York. Go to I wanted to go to uh graduate school and keep studying public policy. And one of my political science professors said, Oh, you should have attended, uh, you should have applied to the Kennedy School at Harvard. And this was the advice I give kids all the time, which is listen to the people who are experts in the in the field of education, in your education. I said to him, No, I can't go to Harvard. Kids like me can't go to Harvard, I'd get eaten alive at Harvard, and that wasn't true, but I didn't apply to Harvard, so I ended up going to ASU, going to graduate school ASU, and I have no regrets of my path. But that's an important element, an important lesson, which is paying attention to the people who know you the best to tell you what your potential is and where you're where you can excel. But I ended up going to suit to ASU, graduating with a master's in public policy. Uh, I ended up working for Governor Cuomo back in New York for a couple years, and then and then I ended up working for Accenture for seven years, doing organizational development high tech. That led me through some clients, through other work, that led me through Charles Schwab. Charles Schwab led me to knowing someone at Google and then applying for a job at Google. And I remember driving up the 101 for my on-site interviews at Google, and this is in 2005, when they were still doing the hard questions, like, you know, how many, how many tennis balls can you fit on an airplane, or how many traffic lights are there in the US? Like old school engineering Google. And I'm driving up the 101 thinking, I remember the first time thinking, like, maybe I'm smart, right? You know, forget the fact that I kind of a high school degree, college degree, graduate degree, worked for Accenture, worked for Charles Schwab, worked for the government of New York, did all these things, taught freshman level classes as a senior in college, and none of those things resonated, right? I've written about this idea of like low expectation syndrome, and the worst kind is the one we placed on ourselves. Uh, but I remember Jordan going, maybe I'm smart, and ended up at Google, and uh again, back to luck. This is where luck does play a role. Ended up at Google in 2005 when it was still brand new, where it was only like 4,000 employees, and you can still move around and do things in a very unique way there.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

2000, that's like is that OG Google 2005?

SPEAKER_01 11:53

That's 2005. Yeah, that's you know, what is that 20? 21 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

20 years ago?

SPEAKER_01 11:59

21 years ago, yeah. Wow. So 21 years ago, it was old school Google. We had uh the how I started in the education space was I started as a PM working for Google, working for the CIO, and I was going to help run the Google office here in Phoenix. And when we opened up the office on the ASU campus, the the CIO said, Hey, everybody at ASU and their mother is gonna come at you with because he had been there for a number of years. These are all the projects that Google should be involved in. Your job is to like triage those and come up with what the best what the best projects are that Google should get involved in. And when I met with the leadership at ASU and I met with the CIO, a guy by the name of Adrian Sayner, who is a C CTO there at ASU, I asked him what his biggest problem was. And at the time, back to this was 2005, late 2005, early 2006, he said his biggest problem was email. And you know, when he explained it to me, he said, We have an old antiquated email platform system where students have to use a computer, have to be a client-based, has to be on a computer. They get 250 megabytes of hard drive space, so their inboxes are always full, and nobody's using it. And at this time, you know, Gmail is two years old, Hotmail is two years old, and and all the students were using Gmail and Hotmail. And so he was telling me how he had you know Nobel laureate professors in classes trying to get students' email accounts, right? Like, like I'm sorry, your email is hotmama69 at hotmail.com, like you know, it's trying to communicate with his students, and and I think at the time ASU might have been 32,000 students, wasn't that big, or or it was big, but it wasn't what it is today. And and I said, Hey, we got this tool called Google for your domain where we could put ASU on top of the Gmail platform that our your students are using anyway, and we could just launch it that way. And he's like, huh, interesting idea. Got some PMs together, and two weeks later, we launched uh Google Apps for Education. So two of us launched Google Apps for Education in 2006, signed ASU, and then that woke up all the other universities. And I remember walking down the mall at ASU saying, This is what I want to do. This is the future. I want to, I want to help bring technology into education. So the first couple of years it was just working with universities before I had the crazy idea of launching it into K-12. Went to the engineering team. We need a couple of things to make sure this works in K-12. And then I signed, and this this will be the last part of the story. I signed a uh a deal with the state of Oregon for all the school districts in Oregon. And the day we signed this agreement, 23 school districts signed up. So I knew we were on to something. Right. And I remember that day very clearly because there were all these articles, like, you know, Google takes on Microsoft in their backyard, Google takes a shot at Microsoft's business, the Google for Education team fires at Microsoft, like all these 155 articles about how the Google for Education team was like gonna take on Microsoft. And I remember reading these at like one o'clock in the morning going, well, the Google for Education team going to bed because it was literally just me, right? That was that did this. And and that kind of cascaded me into that education space in a way that was permanent because I've been focused on education ever since.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

So you went from a team of two people to 200 and then end up impacting about 130 million plus students and educators. Walk us through how because I've worked in K-12 education my whole life, and I've seen outside salespeople try to come in. Like, what how do you convince people to trust Google with their kids' education?

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Yeah, and I think that's a that's a great question, a great way to frame it because I remember I didn't want us to be a vendor in this space. I didn't want us just to provide email. I wanted us to be a real, true, unique, authentic partner in this space. And the way I got into this was South by Southwest, which just happened. I didn't go this year, but I had submitted a proposal to speak at South by Southwest in 2008. This is a year and a half into working with universities and seeing the trend for K-12. And and I and I submitted a proposal, and the proposal is called uh saving the silver bullet through technology, right? And and my the position was that education is the most important thing that we need to focus on. Technology gives us a way to focus on education in a way we've never been able to do it before. Uh, the internet gives us an opportunity to level the playing field. We should take advantage of that. And Google can do A, B, C, D. And I submitted that proposal and got accepted and spoke at this thing. And my frame for all of this has always been that. It's never been about Google tools are the best. It's never been about like you should you should sell this or sell that. It's always been about how do we take advantage of the technology that's in front of us to create the learning systems that we need for the future that our students deserve. Because, and I've and I've said this many, many times, it's not about just using technology. We know what good learning looks like. Joe, you've been in education for a long time, right? You know what good learning, you know it needs to be personal, you know it needs to be personalized, you know it needs to be project-based, you know it needs to be inquiry-based. We know we have all the research. What I was asking schools to do is take the best ideas that we have in education and then ask ourselves, how do we use this technology? And at that time, it was just literally the internet and communication platforms. How do we use these tools to make those bring those ideas to life? That was the ask at that time. This is even before Chromebooks.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

So, yeah, that's so okay. Okay, now Chromebooks come around, right? So we we actually are giving we there's iPads, there's Chromebooks, there's Google Classroom. Schools bought into the technology very fast. Obviously, we went through the pandemic where it was more mass adoption, but I think we were trending that way anyway. I mean, like I yeah, we were when that was the first time I used Google Docs. I know. So here's my story of Google, because I my first year teaching was 2010, and at the time I had uh what was it called? Was it Wiki Pages? Whatever, whatever it was the Google sites just basically came in and took it. Like it was like a wiki page, right? Right, because I was like, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. But I think Google Docs came very shortly around that time, too. The first time actually collaborating with teachers on Google Docs was like incredible. So that and then we have now there's Google devices, there's Google Chromebooks, everything like that. So, but there's a lot of stuff, a lot of things that have been thrown. We've adopted technology very fast in schools, I don't know, very relatively within the last decade. Did it actually make education better, in your opinion?

SPEAKER_01 19:11

No. I mean, that's the short answer, is no. And again, and and I've written about this and I talk about this, and I used to talk about this in all my presentations and keynotes, right? Is is all if all we do is the issue, isn't the problem with education wasn't the lack of technology, right? The problem with education was that it was designed for a different era, and what we needed to do was create an education system that is designed for this coming era, and then we use technology to bring those ideas to life, right? Because if you take out the technology and you just need if you go back to education in 1980, for example, and all you do is use chalkboards, chalk, and textbooks and pen and papers, you're still using technology, those are all technologies, whether you realize it or not, fire is a technology. These are all technologies. If all we do is use those technologies, that's not gonna prepare us for the future that our kids face. If you take those tools and replace them with Google Classroom and Chromebooks and Microsoft Word and all these AI tools and don't change the learning models, then all you're doing is prettying up the old technology. It's still a chalkboard, it's still, you know, it's if you're doing homework, right? If you're still sending kids homework home with homework, you're still messing up the what you're supposed to be focused on, right? Like that to me is the issue. It's not it's not the the use of technology. So are we getting better results? Well, what are the results that we're looking for? Are we getting better test scores? Not really in relative terms, no. I mean, they're going test scores have have gone up, graduation rates are gone up. I mean, those metrics are fine, but overall, are these kids building the skills that they need for the future? And the answer there is absolutely not.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

So you see it as we the model, the mode needs to change, the medium has changed, but we're still doing the same old model.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

Right. We're still you we're still using the same old model, just using a different technology to do the same thing. And that to me is the biggest problem. So the biggest issue in in education isn't what kind of technology to use, it's a culture shift. We need to change the culture. We need a culture of innovation and iteration. We need a culture of continuous improvement, we need a culture of hiring the right people for the right role. I mean, all the things that make good organizations great are the same things that we need in education. Technology should just be an afterthought. Technology is just a methodology. You and I are having a conversation, and it's going to be a rich conversation whether there's a camera and an internet access or whether you are sitting here in the studio with me. It's the same, same conversation. This Just a way to make things easier for us to get that to get across that point. But if we're sitting here talking about pizzas, then we're probably not going to fix education. And to me, the content is the problem. The what we're teaching is the problem. The skills that we're focused on is the problem.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

All right. So let's fix education, James. All right, let's do it. So for the last, let's see, this I'm about I'm coming up on 17 years. I have heard 20. Well, we've stopped saying it because we're quarterway through the 21st century, but I've heard 21st century learning skills. I've heard innovative. I've heard remake learning. I've heard redesign the education. So, but you're advocating because you're obviously very passionate about how it did level the playing field, it gave you an opportunity, it provided both equal equal access and equity. It provides some level of resources to kids that don't necessarily are going to have those opportunities. How do we redesign the learning environment, the schools of the current 21st century and beyond, because the model is antiquated?

SPEAKER_01 23:10

Yeah, it's not that hard. Believe it or not, it so things can be can things can be simple and hard to do, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:17

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Exercising being healthy is a great example. You know how to be healthy, right? I know how to be healthy, but you know, you drive by a Chick-fil-A and it's all over. Like, so you know what to do, right? You know what to eat, you know what to drink, you know how to you know sleep, right? Like how many people don't sleep knowing that it's the most important thing to focus on, right? So just because it's simple, just because we haven't fixed it, doesn't mean there's a complexity to it. I think it's more about will and willpower to do it. So my solution is pretty simple. And by the way, I I don't just preach these things, I practice them. I have three kids. I have a 33-year-old, a 24-year-old, and an 11-year-old. So I like having one every decade, right? So like I retired after the last one. But my 33-year-old and 24-year-old both have college degrees and they're both living in New York City, uh, very successful. My 11-year-old is gonna be a Broadway star. We all know it. That's where she's bound to be. All three of them in 33 years of being a parent, I have never once looked at a report card. I don't look at report cards, I don't look at progress reports. I go to teach a parent conference meetings every single time. I don't miss them, but I don't go to I don't look at report cards because I don't care that you think my kid is a one or a two or a three. I want to know how is my kid building the human skills that they're going to need. And I would argue that all three of my kids have good, deep human skills. So we know what the skills are. They're what I call, you're right, 20, we call them 21st century skills. We've been saying that for so long. We're, you know, we're quarters, quarter way in more than a quarter way into the 21st century. Well, the new word now is durable skills. I like to call them human skills because it separates us from the AI, and yet it doesn't, and we can get into that if you want at a different time, but the human skills are simple. Mastery of self. Can our can a student master themselves? Can they can they manage themselves? Can they manage their emotions? Can they manage their experiences? Can they manage their you know their work? Those types of things. Human skill number two, what I call the ability to to to the thinking ability, the ability to think, systems thinking. Can you think? Can you do divergent thinking? Can you do systems thinking? Can you can you process things? Number three, the ability to learn, which to me, you're gonna rank them the most important one. Can you learn? You know how to learn. And and this one people get wrong all the time. Like I hear people say, Oh, I'm not good with AI, I'm not good with computers, I'm not very creative. And my response is always the same. Can you learn? I always say I this is why I don't have a lot of friends. My response is, no, you've chosen not to be good at those things. Because if you can learn, you can do those things. The the analogy I like to use, the example I like to use is you would never hear me say I'm a bad cook. I don't say I'm a bad, I'm a terrible cook, but I don't say I'm a bad cook. I say I've chosen not to be a good one. I've chosen not to spend my time learning how to cook. It's a choice. And so as when we figure out that learning is a choice that we get to pick and choose, that gives us agency over what we want to learn. And so the ability to learn is the most important one. The fourth one is what I call uh storytelling skills. And by we used to call them communication skills, but that word has some bad connotations associated to it. Everything from written writing and you know, communicating. It's storytelling, it's human. It's can you tell a story? And and basically storytelling and selling is what I call it because you're always selling something. I'm selling you an idea right now. You sold me to come to this podcast. We're constantly storytelling and selling. The fifth one is what I call community building. Can you be part of a community, right? Um, and by community, I mean your class, your organization, your city, your state, your whatever part of a group of people. How are you? How do you collaborate and communicate and integrate inside that community? What is your role in that community? The sixth one is what I call getting shit done skills. Like, can you get things done? Right? Like that that is an absolute critical thing. And then the last one is called what I call mastery of mastery of tools. Like, can you master tools? And it and by tools, I don't mean technology, but it could be technology. But tools could be hammers, tools could be AI, tools could be computers, tools can be whatever. That to me, that's the focus. Helping kids develop those, mastering those skills, right? And then asking ourselves, working backwards, what are the subjects that are critical for our kids to know? And how are they going to build those skills inside those subjects? Not memorize things, not you know, memorizing dates and figures and times, but truly build those skills through the content that we put in front of them. It's not that hard.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

So the answer is we have no shot in hell of actually doing this. That's that's what it sounds like. Let me give you a snapshot of what school looks like today. Because there I I I'm I'm joking, but I I do I mean I 100% agree with what you said. So I think you have two, not to make everything black and white, but you have two system, you have two kids here. You have the kid by the time they get to high school, the system has beaten down, it has not worked for them, and they're extremely apathetic, and they're not optimistic, like they're just they're just school does not work for them. They see zero point in going subject to subject because they don't care. They why do I need this? That's that's that's basically the kid. Why do I need this? And I see that a lot. A lot of those kids usually end up finding purpose if if they're fortunate enough. Like in our school, we do have a pretty good system of getting kids into this, but of like technical technical schools to graduate with some purpose, which might be the most might be the next wave of millionaires, which I try to like wake up, like, listen, AI is gonna disrupt the white collar pretty quickly. They're gonna need plumbers, they're gonna need electricians, but they're very apathetic, they see no value in school. So, like, in terms of one of your one of your principles of being a collective, like being in the community, the social contract, they're not really, they don't care, right? They're like whatever. And then the other one, you have the compliance kid who where you say grades don't matter, because I I I think I'm a terrible educated parent because I I'm I forget that my kids have rapport cards in elementary school. Oh, yeah, okay, cool. You're doing good. Um, they that's all they're chasing, they are chasing the grade, and boy, are their parents chasing that grade for no other purpose to get to this top school, get to the be the and it's like, but they've they forgot to learn in the process because I know straight A students that can't find their way out of a paperback in terms of like you're gonna be a doctor, you couldn't you couldn't follow a simple three-direction process. So, in both those elements, there's mindset and there's learning that's not happening. So, how do we how do we fix that?

SPEAKER_01 30:25

Right. It's I here's here's the sad part it's gonna fix itself because those things have been true for the things that you just mentioned, those two kids have been true for a long time. Actually, my 11-year-old cares deeply about her grades, even though she knows I never look at a report cards. She cares, she cares. Um, sometimes a kid cares, but but those scenarios, like the kid that doesn't care and the kid that cares, have been around forever. The difference is that when they graduated, there was stuff for them to do. That is no longer going to be the case. My job at at Accenture, my entry-level analyst job. So, my I'll tell you what my first job at Accenture was. So getting into Accenture is not as like the Navy SEALs of corporate America, not the easiest place to get a job. But when you get in, you get build out at the time, you know, this is 30 years ago, build out at like, you know, $400 an hour, which today's rate is probably like $1,600 an hour. A partner would meet with a client or two clients, and they'd get together and they'd scribble things down and they create a strategy, and then they'd give it to the analyst, a brand new analyst, and they'd say, Hey, take all these notes and make a strategy deck out of this, right? That used to be a job that took a high level of intelligence to be able to do. Does that exist anymore? No, right? That job doesn't exist anymore. Does the entry-level engineer job exist anywhere? No. So, to your point about white-collar jobs, AI is coming to take those jobs. So we're gonna have to deal with this one way or the other. And you're starting to see this already. All these graduates who are told to learn how to code and be programmers, they're all working at Chipotle because they can't, there's no there's no entry-level coding jobs anymore. So, so the point is that it's the universe has a way of slapping you in the face, right? And so Mike Tyson's famous quote uh everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face, and we're about to get punched in the face.

SPEAKER_00 32:25

So Google Google eliminated the role after 15 years. So they said the position wasn't vital. Why were they right? Why why did they do that?

SPEAKER_01 32:41

Well, I so so I think I was done, I was done at Google. You know, you can only be somewhere you either move up or move out in most organizations, right? And I I was not interested, I was really good at building a career and not having to deal with people reporting to me, right? Uh huh. Having small teams was always my goal. But like the idea of like going from where I was to like a VP level and managing four or five hundred people is not something I was interested in. I also saw Google as a company that was chasing the wrong thing. And I actually, when I left Google in 2020, I said it was a dying company, and I was right in 2020 because they were chasing the cloud market that Amazon already owned. And so what they did, and back to culture, they brought in all these external people from Oracle and from Sun Microsystems and from Microsoft and Amazon, and they brought in Net 12 people and it changed the culture at Google. And so I didn't want to be there anymore. There wasn't really anything else for me to do. And to be honest with you, for the 15 years, it was a struggle to prove my value to the effort that we had because education wasn't a money-making thing for Google for most of the time that we were in education. And yet today, I think most of the calls I get and the inquiries I get from people are around this idea of evangelism and storytelling. Like having a great idea is awesome. Taking a great idea and converting it into a great product is awesome. Selling that product, putting it on the marketplace, very hard. And so I was able to master a way of doing that in an authentic, unique way. And now I'm getting calls from people asking me to help them figure out how to do the same.

SPEAKER_00 34:30

And so I'm doing that work with a number of organizations today.com to find the support your student deserves. And you've said that you don't you care less in what people or what kids say. The kid you said that kids shouldn't say what they want to be when they grow up, but they should be what what problems they want to solve. And so I hear that a lot. And I ask why? Like, you know, it's like, because I think, you know, I thought I grew up in a bubble. I grew up in Western Pennsylvania. I I thought there was doctor, lawyer, teacher. That's why I thought the only jobs were out there. It's, you know, like, and you know, had I known, like, until I actually got out and saw the world, but like it's it's it's funny because you know, the earth is the earth has become flatter. Like I work with kids from all across the country and I still hear those same conversations of engineer, doctor. Right. Yeah. Do you even want to help me?

SPEAKER_01 35:59

Is this from kids or from the parents? Is that from the kids or from the parents?

SPEAKER_00 36:02

I think I think it's I it's kind of one and the same, right? Like uh it's mainly from the parents, but the kids don't have a good why. Like, I I'll tell you, I've probably been on maybe over a thousand calls in my short time in business with with parents and students, and I've probably could cowl on my hand of a handful of times where the why is like compelling of why you want to do it. It's just because I mean, you know, it's seen as a good job. And I'm like, the why has to go deep. And then you put that coupled with the high-stakes pressure to get into a top school. And I'm like, why? Why do you need to go to Harvard to be a doctor? Or why do you want to be a doctor? I love that you focus on problem solving because I think that actually was an avenue in K-12 education that happened, but has been hijacked by the PB, the other PBL movement, project-based learning. And so I don't I don't see project-based learning authentically done enough in schools. It's more just activities, and it's not actually like we're not trying to solve a problem. Real project-based learning is problem-based learning. We're trying to solve a problem that we don't know the answer to. It's not create a diorama. Here's the requirements. It's literally, hey, there's this problem in society. Take the skills you learned in my class and apply them. So, how do you, I mean, I guess how do you you speak on that a lot? Like, will you want to add more to that? What do parents need to hear in that?

SPEAKER_01 37:30

So let's let's break down that question because I think it it's part of a group of questions. And so what I used to say, what I used to say is let's stop asking kids what they want to be when they grow up and instead ask them what problem they want to solve. And and and it doesn't have to be a social problem, it can be how to make more money, how to make how to make a better phone, how to make better import export processes. Doesn't really matter what the problem is, but what's the problem that you want to solve? And then the second question, and this is the this one way or the other, and you're starting to see this already. All these graduates who are told to learn how to code and be programmers, they're all working at Chipotle because they can't, there's no there's no entry-level coding jobs anymore. So so the point is that it's the universe has a way of slapping you in the face, right? So that's those things we don't we do a terrible job helping kids figure that stuff out. And the formula and the formats that we currently use to do that are terrible, and we can get into that because uh aptitude tests are 200 years old and there's and has no diversity or neurodivergency in it, and self-reporting assessments are are BS because everyone sees themselves in a better light, right? You you you live in Pittsburgh. If I asked you what's driving like in Pennsylvania, oh my god, driving is terrible. It's terrible to drive around Pittsburgh. If I ask you what kind of driver you are, oh I'm a great driver. Same thing with schools, schools, all schools suck. How's your school? Well, my school is great, so self-reporting doesn't work. So we can get into the self-reporting stuff in a minute. But the second question, how do you want to solve that problem matters? How do you want to take your talents, your gifts, your experiences, and solve that problem? And then the third question is okay, cool. What do you need to learn to solve that problem? What are the knowledge, skills, and abilities you need to build on to solve that problem? And when you can focus on that, so if you say, I want to be a, I wanna, I I want to solve the problem of space exploration, cool. How do you want to solve that? Uh, I want to be an astronaut, really? Can are you good, you know, in zero G gravity? Are you good with you know going to the Navy? Are you good with being a test pilot? All these things that go associated with that. Yes, you are cool. Okay, what do you need to learn? Or then you need to go to the naval academy. You need like there's a pathway when you create that, that kind of thing. But to me, the most more important than what problem you want to solve, the question of how do you want to solve it? And I'll tell you, this is a true story, and you can ask my daughter about this question. You can ask my daughter about this, but um, and and this is a story for you can clip this for all the parents that you're gonna you're gonna talk to. My daughter came to me and said, This is when she's at ASU. My my kids went to ASU. To your point, they didn't need to go to Stanford. When she said, I'm gonna be a business major, I said, Oh, okay, which is you know, which I would assume for a majority of your parents is like a dream for your kid to say, I want to be a business major. I'm like, Cool, tell me more. And she said, Well, I looked at jobs because she's practical, and I think I want to focus on business marketing because that seems to be the closest to what I'm good at and what I want to focus on. And I said, interesting, okay, cool, not paying for that. I said, as a parent, as an immigrant, as a as a first generation American, the first person to ever go to college in his family, said to the second kid to ever go to college, I said, nope, not paying for that. If you go to school and you are a film major, if you are go get an art degree, I will pay for that. Which is unheard of in the realm of parenting. Why? Why did I say that? Why did I say that? Because this kid had been making movies on anything that she can find since she was five years old. What does she do? What does she do today? She's made two movies and owns her own movie studio in New York City. She's been doing, she's been she's worked at Courageous, she's worked at CNN, she's made all the fake news that you watch. She's done all that work in video and film because she's always wanting to do that work. She's talented. My son, my my middle kid, my 24-year-old, when he was in college, he came to me and said, I think I'm gonna be a political science man. And I'm like, political science? You don't even know who the governor is. No, and I you're not doing that. Why? Because this because I know, I know every politician in the state. The two days before his younger sister was born, we had a political event here for the governor in my house. This kid has never shown the take the day he asked me, uh, the day he told me he wanted to be a uh a political science major, one of my best friends, Ruben Gaango, was running for senator in Arizona. Did he ever come to me and say, hey, I want to work on a political campaign? Hey, can you connect me with these guys? Hey, can you do no, never, never? So that's not so my kids told me who they were going to be by me observing them, right? Not by me wishfully thinking that they're gonna be doctors and lawyers, by actually looking at their talents and their skills and their and and where they shine and and what they do. And now, what is he doing? He's doing customer engagement stuff for a financial company, which is perfect for him. So, to all parents, pay attention to your kids, not to your world, not to your friends and what your friend, like, so that you can go to a soccer camp, be like, oh yeah, little Johnny's going to Harvard and studying medical and law. That's all bullshit. Helping kids understand who they are and what they care about. That's where their passion and happiness will come from.

SPEAKER_00 43:08

So we learn by doing, is what you're essentially saying.

SPEAKER_01 43:11

My 11-year-old, my 11-year-old just starred as Fiona in her school musical, right? And since she was three years old, I knew that this kid's gonna be like 16, gonna be like, okay, I'm going up to New York, gonna go to Broadway, and we're gonna be like, okay, bye. Kids, if you're lucky to know, if your kids are lucky to know to have a passion, right? Then let them follow that passion. Let them let them see where that drives them, as opposed to you driving where you want them.

SPEAKER_00 43:41

I wish we I wish we blocked out another hour. I want to end on this then. Education and AI. Should parents be excited or terrified?

SPEAKER_01 43:54

Relate so two things about that. Related to that, relate to what we just talked about, which is this. Being a lawyer is going to school right now to be a lawyer is the worst idea you could ever imagine. And I'm not the only one saying this. Because all entry-level law is going to be done by machine learning. Going in and being a doctor is a bad idea because there'll be senior people that manage systems, but like it's kind of like getting into the Uber in New York City, right? Uh, you get into an Uber at the airport in New York, and the Uber app will say, these are the directions to get to your destination. And the Uber driver will be like, I'm not listening to that. I know, I've been here before, I know how to go. And you're like, no, no, follow the instructions, follow the thing, right? Doctors are gonna be like that. Like, you're gonna tell me that you, doctor, that barely paid attention in school, are gonna know more than this, then these four data centers that compiled all this information and came out with a diagnosis. You're gonna tell me you don't think that's what it is? No, so those jobs are being replaced by AI. And so here's the flip, right? Which is yes, AI is coming to take our jobs. Flip that to, hey, guess what? AI is coming to take our jobs. Isn't that great? Because what's the point of work? What was the why do we work? Do we work? We work to make money so that we can buy things, so that we can live, so we can survive. If we can not have to do some of the process work, some of that boring work, but if we can find work that enriches us, that fulfills us, that brings us joy and make money doing it, and let the AI engines take care of all that other stuff, absolutely let's go do that. Right. And so there's gonna be some churn and all that, there's gonna be some dystopia before we get to utopia, but that's all again up to us to manage. And then the last thing that about AI and education is, and this is what scares me, and why I'm talking more about this, is because I'm starting to see the patterns of closure. I'm starting to see state legislatures trying to ban technology in education. I'm starting to see screen time being banned in schools, and the problem is that we are at the cusp, because it's not happening yet, but we're almost there, where AI can help us bring what I would consider the nirvana of education, which is personalized learning, right? Before we got to system learning, school systems, how did we learn? We learned through apprenticeships, right? If I was a stone masonry person, you worked with me for 20 years before you can go do it. It was one-on-one learning. All right, right. If I was a writer, you were my apprentice, my editor, my researcher for 10 years before you went on and write, wrote, wrote on your own. We took that model, we took that apprenticeship model, and we said we need to scale that almost McDonald's style to 30 kids in one classroom at a time and teach them that way, right? We now have an opportunity to go back to personalized learning. We got halfway there with the current technology, which is we can personalize inputs, we can personalize like what you're looking for, what you're searching for, with the information you want, but you couldn't personalize the outputs. AI can give us the opportunity to personalize the outputs. And so you and I, if you if I had to by state law learn algebra, right? Then if if an AI engine can teach you a certain way and teach me a certain way and make it unique and individualized so that we both learn at different paces and in different ways, right? That's the benefit of AI. We're almost there. Some of these AI companies are still replacing current systems. Some of them are thinking about it a little deeper, but again, what gets measured gets done. So until we start measuring outcomes, right? A thinking student, uh a well-defined student with with goals, until we start getting to a place where we can identify those human skills and the and the mastery of those human skills, AI can help us personalize both inputs and outputs, and we're almost there. So I would ask parents to hang on until we get some of the stuff right.

SPEAKER_00 48:21

Well, I love that. I'd I would love, I would love, Jamie, if I know you're a busy guy, but I would love for you to come back and we could carry on this conversation. It's been a it's been a pleasure, honestly. This is this is great.

SPEAKER_01 48:32

Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate your time and and anytime, anytime you want to talk more, any topic, bring it up. We'll talk, we'll talk.

SPEAKER_00 48:39

That's awesome. Well, I appreciate it. Try not try not to enjoy the sun too much out in Arizona as I'm in Gray Skies Pittsburgh.

SPEAKER_01 48:47

But uh we'll see you next time on the I don't I don't know, I don't know what the weather is like there, but here it is uh it's great, it's it's 20 degrees of snow. Oh, I'm sorry, and what's the what's the wind chill factor? It's probably worse than that, right?

SPEAKER_00 49:00

It's horrible. My my wife has seasonal depression all the time.

SPEAKER_01 49:04

Oh, so here it's 77, but with the windshield, it's 79.

SPEAKER_00 49:09

Yeah. I'm sure you're not it's a real tough life. I know. It's tough. Jamie, thank you. Appreciate it, and uh, we'll see you next time on the supported learning podcast.

SPEAKER_01 49:19

Thanks, Joe.

SPEAKER_00 49:22

Thanks for joining us on the supported learning podcast. If today's conversation inspired you, challenged you, or sparked a new perspective, be sure to subscribe and share with a fellow change maker. We'll be back soon with more voices, more insight, and more ways to elevate the future of learning together. Until then, keep learning and keep pushing the conversation forward.