From Traditional to Transdisciplinary: Stephanie Pierott on Education Change

From Traditional to Transdisciplinary: Stephanie Pierott on Education Change

00:00
Daniel
At age 15, my guest, Stephanie. Pierotti knew that she was ready for what was next. High school, wasn't it? And she was ready for a new challenge today. That's a bit of a norm. Not for everybody, but we have programs like dual enrollment where you can accelerate and get experiences in college, graduate a bit earlier and get that credit. But back then, when she was 15, nobody had ever asked that question on campus, and that's really one of her superpowers. Stephanie is for sure a Ruckus Maker, and she's doing some really cool ruckus making work at Arizona State. And we're going to talk about the programs, the future of education, and today's a very open minded, curious kind of conversation. Really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. So I can't wait to bring it to you today. Hey, this is Danny. I am a principal development and retention expert, best selling author.

01:02
Daniel
I host two of the world's most downloaded podcasts, and this show is for Ruckus Makers, which means you've made three commitments. Number one, you've committed to investing in your continuous growth, you're invested in challenging the status quo, and you're invested in designing the future of school. Now we'll be right back after some messages from our show sponsors. Hey, Ruckus Maker, I'll make this quick.

01:36
Daniel
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04:36
Daniel
Well, hey, Ruckus Maker, I am really pleased to have Stephanie Pierotti here with me. She's doing some really cool stuff, and we're about to get into it. She's the director of Arizona State University's shaping.edu community. She leads the transdisciplinary network of other four thousand k to gray education change makers. Stephanie recently created a partnership with Learning Planet alliance, powered by the Learning Planet Institute in Paris and UNESCO, and forges new collaborative relationships with ASU and across universities around the world. She also serves as an advisor to refashioned ventures, pioneers in the refashioning of global apparel supply chains, and as an advisor to the Arizona Stitch Lab, a workforce development initiative that teaches industrial sewing skills to Native Americans. Stephanie is also a lean six sigma yellow belt and a certified sommelier. Welcome to the show, Stephanie.

05:41
Stephanie
Thank you, Danny. Glad to be here.

05:44
Daniel
Absolutely. So at age 15, you decided you wanted to graduate in a year, and can you tell us what was going on there? Tell us that story.

05:53
Stephanie
Yeah, I was just kind of done with high school. I was ready for the rest of the stuff that comes after that. So in order to make that happen, I took summer school classes and worked it out with my counselor that I could graduate early and spent my last semester actually taking some community college classes and high school classes. So that was something that I cobbled together and I'm glad we now live in a world that makes that a little bit easier for folks. So dual enrollment is an option for years eleven and twelve and yeah, there's a lot of different ways to get to where you want to be faster now.

06:38
Daniel
Do you remember if the school did anything to make it easier or more challenging to accomplish that?

06:46
Stephanie
I think the most challenging part was that no one had ever asked the question and no one had ever mapped that out for themselves. So it was forcing the school administration to think a little bit differently and that wasn't comfortable for them. But some of them embraced it and some of them fought me on it. But here I am.

07:08
Daniel
Here you are. I think that's probably a superpower of yours. I'm just still getting to know you. But asking questions right that people haven't asked before seems like that's in your wheelhouse. Are there any absolutely. Questions these days that you're really interested in asking in regards to education?

07:27
Stephanie
I guess so many questions. I think one of the big ones is as we look at democratizing and decentralizing education journeys, why are we doing things the way that we have been for 100 years? If you look back 100 years ago from 2023, that was the first documented instance of a radio being brought into a classroom. So we're still playing by the rules that were put in place before. We have all the technology that we now have and how we best lean into that and best utilize that. I think there's just a ton of questions around that.

08:07
Daniel
Sure. Any thoughts on Chat GPT that you want to share? I know that it's interesting seeing schools respond And especially the schools and systems that are just like, we'll ban it, we'll block it as if people can't access it. I've certainly been leveraging it in my work, but I'm just curious what your thoughts might be.

08:27
Stephanie
I think the sooner you embrace it, make friends with it, and find ways to let AI help you be more efficient and productive, the better you'll be. And I think that when we graduate students now, they're expected to have AI skills and preventing them from using AI isn't going to help them get a job. K through twelve is. I just gave a presentation at an AI conference a couple of weeks ago and the k through twelve folks seemed most dismayed at how this would affect standardized testing. If kids can't write on their own on the fly, how are they going to pass standardized testing, which leads to a whole other series of questions about why standardized testing exists. I think what we need to focus on is really reading our students to be successful in life and their careers and teaching them how to use AI. And using AI ourselves will do nothing but help that.

09:34
Daniel
I'm curious why they think that students won't learn or know how to write using AI.

09:40
Stephanie
It's so interesting that there's a lot of plagiarism, detection tools and things of that nature, which you can game that system and ask Chat GPT to rewrite something for you several times and get it to a point where it's less Chat GPT ish. I think that we really need to focus on how we can best utilize that. And Bill Gates released a nice long letter a few months ago about maybe we let students turn in their first draft straight out of Chat GPT. Let's just put our cards on the table. And then they show how they improve it from there. And that's actually what they're being evaluated on rather than the initial draft.

10:26
Daniel
I'm going to look up that article I haven't seen. It sounds really interesting and if we're able to, we'll try to link it up on the show notes. Can I share just three ways I've used it recently? The other day I was super tired and I needed to write an email inviting people to my live Denver mastermind experience that we're having this summer in July. Now, I have written an original work, an eight page letter that explains the benefits of coming. All the stuff you'll get. Why this is an awesome opportunity for school leaders. It's about a six minute read and I say a two minute decision. I said to Chat GPT, take this letter and create an email inviting Ruckus Makers to come. And then I just pasted the whole letter that I wrote in there. Then I took a nap. Stephanie. 20 minutes later I woke up. The email said,Wow, this is really cool. And I would say that I liked about 80% of what it said in terms of my voice and tone and what I wanted to communicate, right. And I revised about 20% of it. Click send. And a number of people applied to the program and are now coming to Denver. So I was able to nap. It captured my voice.
It wasn't perfect. So I revised it and put myself into it. And it was effective because those leaders will now be served right in Denver. And who knows if I was too tired or whatever. I might not have ever sent that email.

11:55
Stephanie
Anything that carves out nap time for you is my book.

11:59
Daniel
Yeah, totally. I tested it with a social post today, so we'll just see how it performs, just about communication skills. And I just wanted to see what it would come up with. And then the other thing I recently did, I asked it to write a white paper that's 2500 to 5000 words, using at least ten sources and talking about the challenges of retaining principles and why our leadership community, the mastermind is a great solution for that. And of course, I'm not going to use everything that it created, but I haven't been creating this report for months. It's a brilliant idea. I haven't prioritized the time. Now it's written and I could revise and work with the team to make it something that we can give away and be proud of. But it found awesome stuff to research and things that I wasn't even aware of. I see it just as a teammate. It's part of the team now and it helps me be more efficient and effective. So this show is about you, but thank you for allowing me to share that.

13:04
Stephanie
I would add to that you should really think about AI tools as ingredients in a recipe. You know what you want to make. Maybe you don't know exactly how to get there, and it can help you. All the various things that you can do with AI can help you get to where you want to go more efficiently. And I would ask people to take a minute and go to Futurepedia. Futurepedia is actually a list of about 1500 AI tools. They're adding new ones every day, broken into about 50 categories. So if there's something you think you might be able to do with AI, go there, find a tool, play around with it. Most of the stuff on there is free. So yeah, just explore.

13:48
Daniel
Unbelievable. That's so cool. And I bet the school response was similar to calculators on the Internet. Like, what is this emerging technology? We do have to figure out how to embrace it. Last time I checked, kids are still critically thinking, the Internet didn't destroy humanity and then calculators like people still do.

14:12
Stephanie
I like to draw that analogy between AI and calculators also, and also Wikipedia. And when Wikipedia came out, people thought that was going to end the world. And it just is what it is. You take it with a grain of salt, you look at the sources and decide for yourself. But really, creativity and critical thinking, as you mentioned, are the two things that the human needs to activate in order to get a product that is truly where it needs to be. And that will never change.

14:44
Daniel
So in 2018, you invited change makers to Arizona State University to discuss the biggest challenges facing education. Do you remember what some of those challenges were? We were sort of talking about some now that are emerging. But yeah, back then, what was the conversation?

15:01
Stephanie
AI was actually one of those, how do we prepare for AI to be a powerful force in education? Another one of those was connectivity. And where we are in Arizona, we have 22 tribes, and some of them have figured this out and some of them need help. And I'm actually doing a tour over the next couple of months with the digital equity institute, a listening tour where we're going to go into the communities and find out what their challenges are. And this is something that the state of Arizona asks for, so we can figure out how to best invest money so people can get connected and be part of the digital universe.

15:42
Daniel
Tell me about this shaping.edu program. Who's it for and what's it for?

15:49
Stephanie
We've got about 4000 of our own Ruckus Makers. These are education changemakers around the world, ranging from education futurists to educators, transdisciplinary educators, students, ed tech developers. We're really looking at how we can collectively change the way that lifelong learners learn and how educators educate. And so we create free resources to give back to the community, to take back to their communities of practice. And in doing that, we hope to foster change.

16:27
Daniel
Brilliant. And leadership is about choosing edges. Something that your program chose is to provide resources for free. So can you tell me about that decision?

16:38
Stephanie
We want to help everyone, not just those that can afford to work in a district, that can afford to pay for specific things, or whether you have budget or not, which it happens to all of this, at some point, you just hit a wall with budget, but you still want to make amazing things happen. By creating these resources, which can be events, they can be toolkits, we have quite a few different things online that you can access for free, and we hope that everyone shares those. That's really the point of it all, is to help everyone, not just specific affluent areas.

17:17
Daniel
Appreciate that generosity. I do have a for profit leadership community that is a part of the program business, but we do like, I'm doing a training tonight on entry plans. There's tons of resources, video training, all that kind of podcast. Right. All these things are free. So very much aligned in that. But sometimes I do have to charge so I can eat. It's all good.

17:42
Stephanie
We're fortunate to be part of the ASU umbrella, but the most of our funding comes from sponsorships, from folks that also want to be change makers. Robots and pencils is a digital innovation agency. They do amazing work with the university and with tons of other clients and folks like that. Microsoft AWS, they want to be part of making education better.

18:07
Daniel
What's the five focus areas of shaping.edu?

18:11
Stephanie
We change them up a little bit each year based on what's transpired and what we see ahead on the horizon. But right now, we're focused on democratizing and decentralizing education journeys. Those are alternative education journeys. So that's kind of curating your own education experience. We're focused on designing learning environments, both physical and virtual. So we have a project that we're building out a futuristic classroom that is AI empowered and that'll be launched this fall on ASU campus. We're also focusing on integrating AI and embracing it and utilizing that. And we have an event coming up this Thursday. AI and higher education, or how I learned to stop worrying and love AI tools. Little shout out to Stanley Kubrick there. And then we have two what I kind of call the softer side of shaping.edu. And those are two integrated components.

19:10
Stephanie
One is holistic wellness of educators and learners in that we're looking directly at the mental health crisis and how we can use technology to address some of the concerns around that. And that sits nicely with our playful pedagogy call to action, which we're looking at gamified learning, game based learning, how esports affects how we teach and learn, and what it means to bring joy back to the classroom. The learning experience for both educators and for learners. In doing that and combining all of those pieces, I think we're looking at how we attract new learners and new educators into the education world. The average k through twelve teacher stays in the classroom for five years now. How can we make that experience more enjoyable for them? So they feel like they're making a difference in wherever they may be. We want learners to continue to learn and really foster creativity and curiosity. And I think that's all part of a big puzzle, that those are the pieces that we're focused on.

20:19
Daniel
If education was more fun, and it had more joy, I think Ruckus Makers would certainly. Well, they are sticking around, but the average educator would certainly be sticking around as well, I like to think that bobs we're putting fun into school leadership. A lot of folks come to our spaces and experiences, depleted, burnt out, that kind of thing, or empty, and I see them leaving with a smile on their face and a little bit of a swagger, I could even say. And we're very playful. You can see behind me folks that catch the video will see it. But those listening to the podcast, I have just a value that I call rule number six, which is a story. The story is first told in the art of possibility, which is a lovely book. But the punchline of the story I'll just share is don't take yourself too seriously. And the work of education, very serious leadership, very serious. Like the content of it, but you don't have a serious leader. That's not too fun. So we play with that and I think people really appreciate it. Can you talk a bit more about just playing in education and why that's so important?

21:39
Stephanie
I think we need to look at this from a couple of angles. One is just interjecting joy into the experience. Because if the teacher is having fun teaching and the students having fun learning, everybody wins. There's no downside to that. And what teacher doesn't want to teach the class that every kid wants to go to and is excited to go to and talks to their friends about. I mean, that's really cool. So I think that's a big part of it. And I think we also need to look at the fact that most kids under 18 play video games every day. Every single day.

22:14
Daniel
Even kids that are 44, almost 45.

22:17
Stephanie
Yes. Big kids, little kids, all the kids. It's really important to think about the expectations that kids have coming into a class about how quickly they get feedback, how they're used to working with teams, which is some part of a lot of video games as well, and then also thinking about the type of progress that they're used to making within a video game. They want to see that instant reward and they want to know that they've moved on to the next thing. So they want their accomplishments marked. And that really needs to be part of how we teach and learn. But it's also fun. They're having fun, they're having a good time, and that's part of what draws them back to playing video games. So with all that in now, that's what we're exploring, how all those pieces work together.

23:11
Stephanie
And I'm working with a group out of Colorado called professors at play because it seems at some point, I think really, in middle school, high school, this happens, play stops being a priority. And we can look at our friends in nordic countries who prioritize the time at school for being for work and then after school for play and connecting with their community. It's not so much the case in the state. I think we need to interject fun wherever we can into the learning experience and get people excited about learning.

23:44
Daniel
For sure. Anytime I play, I realize that a lot of my epiphanies and light bulb moments, it's because my subconscious is chewing and sorting out. The big challenges that I face. And all of a sudden it's like, oh, I got the answer. And that's because I took time to, again, not be always efforting through everything and putting in more hours and stuff, but allowing my brain to wander or whatever. And then all of a sudden, the brilliant idea I want is there. Yeah, for sure. Getting the juices flowing. I know that you really care about mental health. And resiliency and retention. For the Ruckus Makers watching or listening, what's something that just really practical they could do on campus to prioritize mental health, resilience and retention?

24:34
Stephanie
I think that our folks at Sandy Hook have a great program in which they tell people to just say hello. It's the simplest thing. So you see somebody who might look a little lonely. And I'm sure a lot of us have seen that report that came out about the epidemic of loneliness from our friends in the federal government. And it's just a little small thing, but absolutely just say hello to people. If somebody's looking a little put out, try to connect with them. I think that will solve a lot of problems. And there's an AI tool that I just discovered over the weekend called PI. PI, okay. And it's a personal AI chat bot, and it's focused on wellness, and it asks you questions that you would. It's a little bit like being in therapy, I guess they're asking. Some probing questions. And if you're just frustrated about something and feel like you need to vent or just seek another opinion on a particular topic, then that tool is there for you and it's free. I think we'll start seeing more and more tools like that from AI that will be helpful. But if you encounter someone that's struggling and maybe they don't feel comfortable talking to you could direct them to an AI tool that they would feel probably safer. Open up to.

26:06
Daniel
That's absolutely fascinating. I'm doing this two year mindfulness and meditation certification because I think that's a great way to serve especially leaders in our community just creating that space. Ages ago, 2016, we read a book called Search Inside yourself, which was about this Google engineer, Chad Ming tan, who helped start Google but then started teaching the most popular, I guess, class on campus, which was like mindfulness. So long story short, I think what you're talking about is just saying hello acknowledges somebody's humanity. We get so busy. With the work and the tasks and all the stuff, and live inside and forget there's all this going on. What are we working for? And if you forget the human beings. It's a good point. appreciate you bringing that up.

28:20
Daniel
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29:22
Daniel
Ruckus Makers can pilot Teachfx with their teachers. Visit teachfx.com/betterleaders to learn how. That's teachfx.com/betterleaders. If you're a leader who is passionate about creating more engaging and impactful learning environments, executive functions for every classroom is for you. Many teachers find themselves spending too much time on managing their students, which leaves little time for actual teaching. But executive functions for every classroom offer a solution. It provides teachers with practical strategies to help students develop critical executive functioning skills. When teachers create a predictable and empowering learning routine, every student on your campus will become more independent, focused, and better equipped to succeed academically. That's what you can expect on your campus when you implement the system as described in executive functions for every classroom. So head over to organizebinder.com book to get executive functions for every classroom. Grab it for yourself and all your teachers. [email protected] book I want to check in.

30:42
Daniel
During our pre-talk, there was a program launched in the global cafe in April. And so if that did still launch, what was that project all about? And if not, we'll just move on.

30:53
Stephanie
We're actually launching it this Thursday. So that will be a place where we can go to continue the conversations. So for instance, we're doing an event this Thursday about AI and higher ed. And what do we do after that? Everybody's having conversations. We don't just want to cut them off and send people on their way. We'd like to have them continue the conversation. Share resources. So as we're talking about books and articles and things like that, we can drop that in there. And as we're working on a project together, we have folks all over the world collaborating on developing these free resources. And we're now part of the Learning Planet alliance and UNESCO and Learning Planet Institute. And to have that breadth and depth of knowledge around the world, let's capture that. Let's bring everybody together and give them a space to chat.

31:51
Stephanie
So that's really what it's about. And everything in there is. All the illustrations in there are hand drawn because I think that adds a level of humanity and authenticity, and that's the vibe that we're going for. So it's a little bit of shenanigans and a lot of authenticity. You blend that together and you have people having fun collaborating with each other.

32:13
Daniel
Sounds very fun. So that's launched Thursday. If you're catching the video, then check that out. If you listen to podcasts, it's already happened. But if folks go to Shapingeduasu.edu, they can get involved right in the next ones. Is that correct?

32:28
Stephanie
Okay, that's where to go. There's a direct link on the site to the cafe, and the idea of calling it a cafe is about you can stop by for four minutes or 4 hours and really enjoy connecting with people that share your passions, learning something new, reading a couple of articles, finding out about a new book, all that stuff can happen in there and you can make friends around the world.

32:56
Daniel
I love it. Last question before I get to the ones I ask all my guests. I'm just curious about the power of what if thinking. I like to say the play saves principles. They struggle with cultures and people. That'll never work, right. Ruckus Makers. They figure out how to hear people's objections, challenges or whatever, and actually create the path to accomplishing the dream by turning around those challenges and then actually build the capacity of their staff to be more open minded and curious. But, yeah, how do you approach or leverage what if thinking?

33:35
Stephanie
So we're all about solutioneering. And to me, solutioneering is a blend of future thinking, constant improvement, human centered thinking. We put that together and we come up with solutions. So as we're discussing challenges that are out in the world or on the horizon, we ask people to reframe those challenges as how might we? Questions. And rather than what I like to call navel gazing, just, oh, this is terrible. And what are we going to do? Let's actually come up with solutions to get to where we want to be and work backwards from there. I think that's really the power of the shaping community, is that they can come together and find other people that share that passion for making education better, and we can do that together.

34:27
Daniel
Awesome. All right, we made it to the last three questions. The first one is about your school marquee. If you could put a message on all school marquees around the world for just today, what would your message read?

34:39
Stephanie
I think I would put, Ruckus Makers are changing the world.

34:44
Daniel
All right. Approved. I approve that message for sure. Brilliant.

34:51
Stephanie
In addition to that, I would stay curious. Because curiosity and resilience are just really what life's all about.

35:00
Daniel
Absolutely. And Stephanie, if you were building your dream school, right, you were not constrained by resources. Your only limitation was your ability to imagine what would be the three guiding principles. Building this.

35:22
Stephanie
I would say the first one would be to embrace nature. I would want the school to be biologically designed and connect the folks inside the built structure with nature as much as possible. Natural light, sunshine, plants, all of the things that we need to center ourselves and be creative and happy. The other part of it would be community, I think finding ways for people to connect, whether that's in a team structure or a classroom structure, or allowing the actual educators to connect as well, and finding ways for them to work together, that would be a big part of it. And curiosity. I would reflect on what's on the marquee out front. And make sure that people are nurturing their own curiosity and creativity.

36:13
Daniel
Brilliance. We covered a lot of ground today, Stephanie, of everything we discussed. What's the one thing you want a Ruckus Maker to remember?

36:22
Stephanie
You are not alone. There is a community of folks out there that share your passion and want to work together to make education better around the world. So stay strong and persevere, be resilient and be curious.

36:41
Daniel
Thanks for listening to the better leaders Better Schools podcast Ruckus Maker. How would you like to lead with confidence, swap exhaustion for energy, turn your critics into cheerleaders and so much more? The Ruckus Maker Mastermind is a world class leadership program designed for growth minded school leaders just like you. Go to betterleadersbetterschools.com/Mastermind, learn more about our program and fill out the application. We'll be in touch within 48 hours to talk about how we can help you be even more effective. And by the way, we have cohorts that are diverse and mixed up. We also have cohorts just for women in leadership and a BIPOC only cohort as well. When you're ready to level up, go to betterleadersbetterschools.com/mastermind and fill out the application. Thanks again for listening to the show. Bye for now and go make a ruckus.