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. Dr. Sheldon Akins has spent 15 years inside the education system as a teacher, principal, and special ed director. And he's here to tell you why schools your kids attend might be unintentionally working against them. Not academically, culturally. And if you've never thought about that distinction, this conversation is going to open your eyes. Welcome back to the Supported Learning Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Joe Sebastian. We spent a lot of time on this show talking about how to win the college game, AP scores, and mission strategy, saving money. But today we're going to go upstream because none of that matters if a student doesn't feel like they belong in the classroom they're sitting in. That's why I brought Dr. Sheldon Akins onto the show. Sheldon is the author of Leading Equity, Meaningful Classroom Management, and what are you bringing to the potluck? He is the founder of Purposeful Teaching Academy, host of the Leading Equity Podcast, and former teacher, principal, and director of special education. Dr. Sheldon, welcome to the show. Thank you, Joe. I appreciate you. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So just kind of give us the quick vision of who a quick version of who you are, what's the core problem, and what you're trying to solve in education. Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

So who am I? I am a father first, always, always a father first. There you go. I am also an author and educator. Like I hate the youth, everybody always says a lifelong learner, but it is what it is. I mean, I I am always been one of those people that would like to learn a little bit about everything. So if there's something that I come across that I don't know anything about, I'm gonna do a little bit of research. Uh it's a lot helpful now with AI and Chat GPT and Gemini, all these different products that I could utilize in quick search beyond just a Google chat or a Google search. But that's me in a nutshell. Currently, I supervise a behavior support program here in South Phoenix. I enjoy what I do. Uh I have a great staff and a great team that I work with, and the students, of course, are amazing. So when it comes to like what am I trying to solve? That's a good question because the population of students that I work with right now have been labeled all kinds of things. Uh ADHD, autistic, ODD, like all these, all these different labels that are placed on students. And when you get to know them, you're like, yo, you're a pretty cool kid. You know, you have a story, of course. But what I want to see is us to find a way to remove those labels and just know them as Billy, just know them as Mary, Nancy, whoever, and not worry so much or hone in so much on the labels.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Well, that's America, right? We love our labels, and we uh we put everyone into boxes. That's why I said, like, you know how you know how Japan solved free and reduced lunch? How? They gave everyone free and reduced lunch. They gave everyone lunch. That's how they solved it. They didn't need to say, well, we got these kids, everyone gets one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it kind of brings people, it would be amazing. It would be amazing. Well, we had a little glimpse of it during COVID. Some schools haven't gone, some schools still provide free breakfast, and for my kids' school still provides free lunch, but it's just like, no, we're taking that back now. You can pay your $325, right? And get your slop. So, but it kind of brings us into something I really want to kind of dive into because equity and equality get thrown around a lot and used incorrectly. And we have now seen, not to get super uber political, but we have seen the pendulum swing from one side to the other from equity initiatives all the way back to no, we can't be fair. That just just life sucks. Just deal with it. So equity is a word that gets thrown around a lot. Yeah. And I think a lot of parents hear it and either tune out or get confused. In the simplest terms, what does equity mean in the classroom and in the scope of education?

SPEAKER_01 4:26

I will give you as simple as I can make this. All right. Let's say I'm uh so I was a history teacher. Uh that was my that was. Oh, yeah? Okay, all right. So we're we're speaking to the later. Do you understand? So let's say I want to plan a field trip to go to the local museum, all right? And we I got 10 kids that are in my classroom. I know that's not realistic. We don't have 10 kids these days in our classroom, so but just for the sake of the argument, I got 10 students that I'm trying to take on a field trip. Now, I do the research ahead of time and find out okay, in order for us to get the bus, in order for us to get, you know, lunch, whatever it is, the admission, it's gonna cost about ten dollars per student to go. So if I say everybody, parents for mission slips, everybody bring in ten dollars tomorrow for this field trip, that's equality. Everybody has to pay the exact same thing. However, there may be some students that absolutely do not need that ten dollars uh to pay. They they could they could easily um you know they could pay not only their way, but they could pay someone else's way. So maybe they have $20 that they can bring to the table, which could help someone else out. Uh, maybe someone only needs five dollars, maybe some money only needs one dollar. So there's different levels in which all the students can go and participate in this field trip, but they don't all necessarily have to bring ten dollars in order to make this even out. So if it's a hundred dollars that you're trying to collect, and you can collect that hundred dollars across those ten students, however you collect it, but you still end up with a hundred dollars, that's the equity piece. That's the part where you're saying, I'm gonna look at what are the individual needs of each student that are in my classroom, all 10 students, and look at their individual needs. What is it gonna take for them to get on this bus tomorrow? That is the equitable piece. Well, sometimes, like you said, we confuse everything and just say, Oh, well, let's just let's just charge everybody ten dollars. It's so much easier if we do everything the same or we make it equal. This person pays 10, this person pays 10, this person pays 10, but again, that's not maybe what is needed in that situation.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

And you talk about three types of people when it comes to equity bystanders, advocates, and brokers. Walk us through that. Where where do most educators and parents fall?

SPEAKER_01 6:44

So, well, that's that's a hard question because if you my audience, a lot of them are advocates. So I even say, you know, advocacy, because to me, advocacy is the part where I recognize that there are challenges. I recognize that things aren't aren't fair in a lot of situations, or there there might be another voice that's needed. And so I'm willing to utilize whatever status I have, whatever background or experiences that I have, and use my voice to support others. Okay, that's the advocacy piece. The bystander side of things is where, yeah, I might recognize something, but I'm not gonna say anything for whatever reason. You know, it doesn't make you necessarily a bad person, but sometimes people feel like, you know, if I say something, my job could be in jeopardy, or I, you know, I want to these days, I want to get a promotion, or I want to get to get from here to there. And if I say something in this scheme and whatever's happening in our educational system, this could hurt me. And so as a result, I'm not gonna say anything. That's the bystander side. Then the broker side of things is I have a connection, I have a large network, maybe, and I can connect you with this person to get you what you need in order to get to the places that you need to go. That's the broker side of things. I tend to fall within the audience. I'm sorry, I tend to fall within the the advocacy side of things. I do have a network, I've I've had a podcast for about six years, and so I do find people based off of the guests that I've had on. So I do have a little bit of that broker side of things, however, I tend to play more in their advocacy P.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

So what was the moment that made equity your life's work?

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Yeah, it's funny because I I didn't necessarily know what equity was going through. I went to a college and then got my teacher prep program and everything, and so I thought I knew everything. But once it hits home, like when you go beyond the theoretical side of things and like you're living these experiences, um, I had an instance where fresh out of college, I I had the opportunity to go overseas and teach in the Virgin Islands, and that was just an amazing time. I met an amazing group of people and the culture, community, everything. So I blend in until I start talking. When I started talking, people realized, wait a second, you're you're not from here. And so I had a moment where I didn't learn the customs and culture. I I was very I'm from Texas originally, so I I came over there and people say, Hey, how you good morning to me, or good afternoon, good evening. And I would just say, Hey, what's up? What's good? How y'all doing? And I really thought I was cool. I thought I was like the cool, fresh out of college teacher, but then I had someone pull me to the side and just told me, Look, man, we don't like you. You're being very rude. And I didn't understand what am I doing? Because I'm like, I'm being nice. You said good morning. I said, Hey, what's up? And they said, See, that's that's the issue. If someone says good morning to you, you can good morning back to us. If someone says Will, good evening, whatever time of day it is, you say it back. Otherwise, when you're saying what's up, they're like, Why are you talking to us like this? Why what are you saying, what's up? Like they're saying good morning. We want you, we expect you to say good morning back. Right. I didn't have a framework, or this wasn't taught to me in my teacher class about learning the customs and about learning the community and culture that I'm that I'm serving. I didn't I didn't learn that, at least I didn't have the label for it. And that was that first moment early on when I first started in education, I'm almost 20 years ago. But I've always subscribed to the idea of yes, I could read a book, yes, I could watch a video, yes, I could learn whatever I want to learn, but I had to find the specific needs that are relevant to the students that I'm serving, to the families that I'm serving, to the language that's being presented. I need to learn those things, otherwise, I'm just providing a blanketed educational process or program that is not catering to the needs of our students.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

So if equity is about making sure every kid gets what they need, what are schools actually getting wrong?

SPEAKER_01 10:56

I think it goes back to the equality piece. And it's it's hard. Equity is harder than equality in my mind, right? Because if I can get everybody the same thing, like you said, Japanese and free and reduced lunch, yeah, give everybody this free, free and reduced lunch. That makes sense. It's easier to just do it that way. Yeah, sure, there's funding and economics and finance, all that plays a role. But like here, like you have to qualify for free and reduced lunch because again, going back, some students may not need that free and reduced lunch. Some might need just a free lunch, some might need a reduced lunch, some might be able to bring their own lunch. Mom or dad or whoever can package their lunchables or whatever and bring it to school. So I think when we spend so much time on the equality piece, that's where things can change. But again, we have to pay attention to the individual needs that students have.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

Everyone pays for the fire department, but not everyone needs a fire truck dousing their house down, right? But when you're when your house is on fire, you definitely need the fire department.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

When I call, I need to have them show up, right? Uh same with car insurance, right? We we pay every month for our car insurance to keep our car just in case something happens. But you know, again, it's I feel like a lot of schools, and I always I'm a person that operates on educators, have the best intentions, school policies have the best intentions until you prove me otherwise. So I feel like there's a lot of there's a lot of room for growth, even when COVID was happening. I was like, okay, this is opportunity. We're gonna make some changes now. But eventually things started to go right back to where they initially were. And uh the the obvious, I mean, at the end of the day, our school systems uh mimic, and I wrote about this in my first book. They they come back from our you know industrial revolutional uh days, and it just hasn't really changed from that system, which isn't applicable in 2026.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

So you wrote meaningful classroom management, and the core argument in that classroom management is that classroom management shouldn't be about the rules and compliance, it should be about culture and community. What's the difference and why does that matter?

SPEAKER_01 13:04

So I was one of those, and I've done this myself early teaching days, uh, where you know you spend so much time on compliance, you know, this is how useful to stand, this is how useful to raise your hands, this is how you feel, and I get there should be some structure and order. However, often what happens in these types of situations is it's teacher focused, it's what a teacher expects of a student, uh as what their ideal student should look like, and there's not any real accountability or buy-in from the student themselves. So, what I talk about in that book is the idea of creating a community where you know what, what would make you feel like you belong in this classroom? What are some expectations that you would like to have in the classroom? And what would you what would you expect to do if one of those things that you would like uh are broken, right? Whatever protocol, whatever we come up with as a group. And this is something that we can sign, we could keep it on the wall in front. That is a process where we're providing opportunities for students to have that buy-in that isn't already in place before we even they even show up on the first day of school. Like often teachers already have the rules do this, do this, do that. Uh, this is how raise your finger for cross your fingers for to use the bath and all, like all these things that we typically do, which is universal in a lot of sense. However, there's these are created by teachers and not created by the students. And so I like to try to shift our narrative from the teachers first or from teachers' rules first, but to the students' buy-in and rules first, and that's something that we create as a community.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

This episode is brought to you by supported tutoring, where we don't just help students get better grades, we help them become critical thinkers. Whether it's mastering AP exams, maximizing college applications, or building lifelong learning habits, our expert tutors focused on critical thinking, confidence, and real growth. Head to supportedtutoring.com to find the support your student deserves. So I work with a lot of like high achieving students, a lot of affluent families looking to go to top schools, competitiveness, taking a lot of AP courses, and they might think equity doesn't apply to us. What would you say to that?

SPEAKER_01 15:26

You to me, you just you just described it. Equity doesn't that's just you said affluent neighborhoods and what else?

SPEAKER_00 15:33

Well, you get affluent neighborhoods. I get a lot of immigrant, I got first gen immigrant families as well. Yeah, but they they just think equity doesn't apply to us. What would you say to that?

SPEAKER_01 15:44

I I would like to so those kind of questions I I like to ask more questions because I remember I had a conversation with a principal and I did I did a workshop on bias, and and I did one on it was equity related because and um she said, you know, this is great information, but this kind of like what you said, this doesn't apply to to our students, or or they said something like, Well, we only have a handful of kids in our class that this will maybe be uh applicable to, uh, but the rest of our community, 98% of our students are probably not gonna fall within this category. And I and I always respond, Well, but how many did you need? Like at what point, if you got 100 kids and 98 of them are coming from the affluent and quote unquote don't need equity, and you only have the two, is that not enough? Do you not care about those two students? Like, yeah, if we're thinking about what is the best for all students, I think we can all agree, no matter what side of the political side of life you're on, we can all agree that we want our students to succeed. And if it requires two students or requires an extra hour for this student, or does it if it requires an extra worksheet for another student, then those are things that I feel are important. We shouldn't put a number or a percentage on what qualifies as to when we put focus on students that are in additional needs. So, yes, it's great that you have a high percentage of students that may not need extra time or may not need extra resources or whatever that might look like. But at the end of the day, all students are not the same. And there's going to be some shifts that's gonna need to take place in order for everyone to succeed. So the idea that there is no equity needed, again, I think that that's that's a misunderstanding of what the definition of equity is, and that can go back to what we were talking about initially with my example on the field trip.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

What about AP programs, gifted programs? Do you think there's an equity problem in who gets access to these programs?

SPEAKER_01 17:46

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, if you look at the numbers, especially gifted programs, we don't see a lot of folks of color in there. Gatekeeper uh gifted programs are often gatekeeper programs, you know. It's it's and even AP, I would argue. Some teachers will say, Hey, I'm teaching this AP class, and they will personally invite students to enroll in their class for next semester, next quarter, whatever it is. But they don't they may not ask all students or invite all students. Uh, a lot of parents aren't familiar with the differences between honors and APs and general ed programs, and so they aren't always privy to those conversations. And again, if we're reaching out to families or we're reaching out to parents, those things need to be talked about. Some students come from homes that are uh, you know, parents are educated to a certain level. Maybe they have higher ed, maybe they have postdoc, whatever it is. And so they might be familiar with this AP language, they might be familiar with honors classes or gifted programs. They might actually be seeking these things while there's another subset of group of students that aren't as familiar, but if you just told them about it, or if they had just just knew a little bit more, they would understand the the importance of being able to take these kind of classes. We can even talk about how AP classes aren't always offered in every single school, right? So certain rural schools may not have access to dual enrollments, they may not have access to gifted programs. So these are things that we see are unequal in a lot of ways, and there's definitely a lot of equity issues there.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Well, I would agree as well, and it ranges from state to state, from school to school, but you actually talk about how schools ask diverse students how to assimilate rather than belong. That's the potluck metaphor. Break that down for us.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

So it's funny because my initial original title that I wanted to have for this book was Don't Bring Box Macaroni to the potluck. Because here's the thing when we think about a potluck, somebody brings in this dish, somebody brings in that dish, somebody brings in another dish. And I've been a person that has always enjoyed potlucks. And however, sometimes there's dishes that that someone brings that may not get touched or it's barely eaten as opposed to the other dishes out there. Well, I those were listening, I know some follow me because sometimes people get stuck on the whole box macaroni and they'll say, Well, I like box macaroni. And sometimes that's all I had to do. I want folks to stay with me on this one here. Okay. But if we bring something to the potluck and it's boxed macaroni, it's often fat, something quick. It's not a lot of intentionality when it comes to the meal itself, right? You just warm up some water, boil some water, put some noodles in for a few, and it mixes a little the powder actually in. That's not the type of approach that we want to have when it comes to education, right? We want to bring our best dish. Okay. We want to bring in something that we we can quote unquote put our foot in. And if that's not something that we're bringing, we're not bringing the best for our students. So this book that I wrote is for school leaders because at the end of the day, your school leader is your chief equity officer. If they have a lot of the access to the finances uh when it comes to professional development, when it comes to who you're hiring, there's a lot of control and a lot of emphasis that is placed on the school leader or administration as a whole. And that's why I always recommend that whenever you're bringing something to the quote unquote table, you are bringing your best, not something that is a quick rush. Oh shoot, we have hot luck tomorrow. Let me hurry up and do something real quick. No, we're we were very intensive, we got the ingredients, cooked it from scratch, whatever it is, but we're really putting a lot of emphasis into it.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

I like that. Um It is it is interesting 'cause like I did you teach in Texas primarily or did you teach in Arizona? I taught in a few places. I've taught in Virginia and in uh

SPEAKER_01 22:00

I I did take a little time in Louisiana, Oregon, and in Idaho, and then now I'm in Phoenix.

SPEAKER_00 22:07

And so like my I've I've taught in probably ever virtually every setting. Like I've I've taught I taught in the South and North Carolina. It was a military school. You know, um military families, black white families, um, not a ton of other outside of outside of diversity. I've taught in very rural schools, taught in a special education school, taught in the suburbs, uh, taught internationally uh too. Or well, student taught Brit uh Budapest. Um but I my longest tenure was in Fairfax County, Virginia, and we were actually a majority minority school. Uh we didn't have a major we didn't have a majority. So it was like we had 55 different nationalities represented, and it was so diverse. It was crazy, it was crazy. Like to meet kids from all over the world was really, really cool. Um but in terms of that like assimilation, um, that metaphor that you talk about, it was it, it it just never seemed it seemed like kids were just kids in that in that school, at least from my perspective, the classroom. It was not like I'm like, it's the only place in the world that you could literally have a kid from an Indian family and a kid from a Pakistani family sit next to each other and be best friends, and there's nothing, there's no animosity, you know what I'm saying? Like they just they're just they're just teenagers in this school where and they just happen to be, which is a cool thing, which I think is like what I think is the best of America. But when it comes to like I've taught an inner city DC charter school and it's funny because that was a 99.9% African American population. But when we going back to that original thing about labels, we had kids on different tracks, like and I and I literally heard it and I caught myself at one point where I'm like, is that what it just comes down to? It's like you shouldn't be acting like this, you're an honors kid, right? And it's like, but what was the difference between the honors? It's just we it was a label we put on this kid, and all of a sudden that's the expected behavior, and that's the and so like to the equality side, why are we not just saying all these kids can all these like you said, all these kids are can be high achieving, they all have the ability to learn and grow. And I I think the system of education kind of pushes us into fixed mindsets and into those boxes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

Uh it's it's funny that you you said that because going back to the program that I work in, and again, these are all students that have IEPs that have a behavior issue, and so a lot of times the label of my students at the school is they can't they have issues learning because of their behavior. What they don't know is I have several students that I certify for a gifted program. And the reason why they're not in a gifted program is because of this behavior challenges that they have. But some of those behavior challenges that they may have might be because they were just bored in the general ad population. But when they test it, they test it as a gift, you know, at the gifted level. So there's a lot more to the story than we just see numbers or just statistics. Anytime you do whatever research or data that you're getting, it needs to be quantitative and qualitative information and not just from one side or the other. So yeah, it's if we were to operate on, like you said, yes, you might take this class or you might be acting this way, but our biases start to kick in, and kind of like what you said, oh well, you're supposed to not act this way because you're from this household, or you're from this neighborhood, or you have this honored class, or you there's always a reason why we believe somebody shouldn't act the same, act a certain way based off a stereotype or whatever biases that we have created. And I've done this too. I'm not just saying it as if I probably all yeah. I do, I do, I do, and and and that's something that I work on as well. And anytime I get, you know, people call me out like Sheldon, you're being biased, or you know, that's a stereotype, whatever it is. And I say, you know what, you're right. Because as a human being that does training, that does workshops and things like this all the time, I still am a human being at the end of the day. That's why I was saying, um, doc, that I tend to try to lean on people have the best intentions until you prove me otherwise. But at the end of the day, I can't read anybody's minds, and I can only go by actions that I'm seeing.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

Well, yeah, I mean, I think we all we all can have our own biases, and the part of that growing up where we grow up with limited exposure or a lot of exposure to what other other people, other cultures. But it kind of comes down to it, it's it's crazy. You've probably seen it as a special education director is school to school is the populations can be different in terms of advocacy. You have a more affluent, more knowledgeable population, more litigious, knows how to navigate the system for their kids to get all the resources and maybe even beyond what is necessary to provide a free and appropriate public education. And then you got kids that might not be as literate in the policies and procedures of IDEA that maybe intentionally, maybe unintentionally, the school doesn't provide all those opportunities as a system. How do we fix education's equity access for our students?

SPEAKER_01 27:21

Uh, it it's gonna require a lot of advocacy work. Um, and it's gonna take some of those affluent folks, for example, maybe uh supporting other uh folks. So that's that's the advocacy piece. So let's say I am an individual who is privy to legalities and uh has a better understanding of what's out there and what resources. Uh it's funny because I I just interviewed someone on Sunday about something similar, this topic, and she mentioned how she ran a program for her district where she had a couple schools, uh, students from each school, and they basically visited each other's school. And the disproportionality between the resources that were available at one school versus the resources that were available at the other school. However, the students that were at the school that was well resourced, they were like, this is not fair. Like, we we have so much more in our school. Y'all should have the same things that we have. Y'all should have access to the same amount of resources, um, all the technology that we have. Like, how come y'all don't have it? And so she worked with these groups of students, and and they basically wrote letters to their uh clergy, uh, not their clergy, to the uh Congress folks. And eventually they got a law passed. Uh, a new bill that was pushed. This is in Chicago, in Illinois. Um, and they got a new law that was passed where they could uh I don't have it in front of me, but it was basically the distribution of the educational funding was more on an equitable standpoint. So that didn't happen overnight. She said it was about a nine years uh of work, but it's something that she recently published, it's something that I see can work. Uh the problem is we have to stay at it. So you're gonna hit some walls, you're gonna you're gonna hit you know some nose, and you're gonna get pushback. But if you stick into it and you stay with it and you have again voices, especially voices that are coming from the side that might be more affluent or might have more resources if they're supporting as well, that can make such a difference.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

So, speaking of the pushback, right? Could we could play devil's advocate and say teachers might say I treat all my students the same? That is fair. Why is that an actual problem?

SPEAKER_01 29:45

That's not true. We don't treat all our kids the same. I'm just saying, like we're human beings, we're human beings, you know. Like you've been in education, you were a history teacher. You you never had a student come up to you and ask you who's your favorite teacher, or sorry, who's your favorite student? And you say, Oh no, no, I don't have a favorite. We're all my fans, right? If you say you got kids, right? They're all your favorite kids. Okay, so at the end of the day, the reality of it is you don't treat all your students the same. And honestly, honestly, I I don't want you to treat all your kids the same because again, that's an equitable, that's an equality situation. Yeah, okay. If I treat all my kids the same, I'm giving them all the exact same things. However, if I'm intentional with what I'm doing, I am paying attention to Johnny's needs. If I treat Johnny the same way I treat David, that's gonna be an issue. But if I say, okay, Johnny needs this, David needs this, I'm not treating him both of them the same. So I don't want you to treat them the same. I want you to pay attention to their individual needs and make sure that their individual needs are met. If David needs extra time, if Johnny has an IEP and his IEP say these are the goals that that Johnny needs, that's what I want you to pay attention to. And those are the things that I want you to support Johnny with, and the other things are the things I want you to support David with. You have to differentiate your instruction. You cannot say I treat all my kids the same, but I differentiate at the same time like those don't even go together.

SPEAKER_00 31:15

Doesn't go to you are also an edu epreneur. I think that's an entrepreneur that's an education. So you build a podcast, a consulting business, you've written books. What have you learned about taking this message outside the traditional system?

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Um, I enjoy it. Um and I and I'm always learning. I again, I'm I'm a person that I don't I don't believe I know everything. Uh every now and then I I come across something that I'd never thought about, never never knew existed. My goal in any of my trainings and work that I do is not to be a gotcha, not to make anybody feel bad or guilty for who they are. Uh it's just more of bringing perspectives and thoughts that they may not have thought about. Because as you mentioned earlier, we tend to have our view of the world based off of maybe where we grew up, our social circles, things we watch on TV, things we read in newspapers, right? Those tend to shape our view of the world. And so I can't personally speak uh of the challenges that women might have because those aren't lived experiences that I'll ever have. There's other areas in life that I just won't not be able to experience. But I could try my best to try to empathize with them. And that's what the community that I kind of create, try to create anytime I bring in uh workshops or any type of work that I do as an entrepreneur. Uh, is just to try to get people together and try to think about things that maybe you didn't think about. Um, and again, I assume that you had the best intentions, but uh there's some things that you might want to consider that you may not have thought about.

SPEAKER_00 32:49

Love it. Can we move into lightning round as we wrap this up here? So this is like five questions. This first thing that comes to mind, but no need for explanation. All right, all right, Dr. Sheldon. One book every educator should read.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

Leading equity, becoming an advocate for all students.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

There you go. Worst advice you hear given to teachers right now.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

Anything related to getting caught up. Uh, I'm gonna give you some time in your classrooms to get caught up. There's no such thing as getting caught up, there's always more to do.

SPEAKER_00 33:22

One thing parents overthink about their kids' school experience.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

Uh, right now it's homework. Uh, parents wonder why there's not homework or wonder why there's too much homework.

SPEAKER_00 33:34

If you could change one policy in every school in America tomorrow, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 33:38

I would get I would get rid of uh uniforms. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

What's the does your school have uniforms?

SPEAKER_01 33:46

Let them come as a we have uniforms, but we're not we're not we're we're not sticklers. Like it you can show up. I mean, as long as it's just not out of, you know. If you had the general gist of the uniform, it's acceptable.

SPEAKER_00 34:02

What about what's the next big shift coming in education?

SPEAKER_01 34:07

I think we're gonna put more emphasis on AI uh as far as how it's being utilized. Uh we we still have educators that are uh have all kinds of trepidations behind AI and it's cheating and all this. I think it's it's gonna be embraced uh at some point rather soon.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

Got it. Well, Dr. Sheldon, this has been an awesome appreciate your time coming on. Absolutely. For those people listening that want to find out more about everything as to know about you, where can they find you?

SPEAKER_01 34:42

Uh they can go to my website, purposeful247.com. They can also follow me on Instagram at Sheldon Akins, and that's e-a-k-in-s. All right.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

So, Dr. Sheldon, thank you again for coming on, and thank you for listening to the Supported Learning Podcast. See you next time. 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.