#382 – Future Ready Schools, with Thomas Murray

If you are listening to the podcast with your instructional team or would like to explore this topic more deeply, here are guiding questions to prompt your reflection:

• How do you define a future ready school?
• In what ways is your school future ready?
• What changes might your school need to make to become more future ready?
• How can you ensure that your teaching remains relevant in preparing students for the evolving workforce?
• How might you use the Future Ready Framework?
• What steps can you take to ensure that new initiatives in your school are research-based and sustainable?
• How can professional learning in your school be more personalized and impactful for educators?
• With AI and emerging technologies rapidly changing education, what are some proactive steps that your school can take to prepare students for a world where adaptability and critical thinking are essential?

• All4Ed (official website)
• The Future Ready Dashboard (All4Ed)
• Future Ready Framework (All4Ed)
• Thomas C. Murray (official website)
• Personal and Authentic: Designing Learning Experiences That Impact a Lifetime (written by Thomas Murray)

#382 Future Ready Schools, with Thomas Murray

AVID Open Access
41 min

Transcript

Thomas C. Murray 0:00 My personal mission is to help schools create environments that I’d want to send my own children to; that’s my own bottom line. We’re here to help really push to make sure is the learning relevant? Is it relevant in 2025 what our kids are doing to prepare them for a world of work that is vastly changing.

Winston Benjamin 0:16 The topic of today’s podcast is Future Ready Schools, with Thomas Murray.

Winston Benjamin 0:22 Unpacking Education is brought to you by AVID. If you’re looking for fresh ideas, meaningful connections, and impactful strategies, check out the AVID Summer Institute, a professional learning experience where good teachers become great teachers. Registration is now open to learn more. Visit avid.org.

Rena Clark 0:44 Welcome to Unpacking Education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education. I’m Rena Clark.

Paul Beckermann 0:55 I’m Paul Beckerman.

Winston Benjamin 0:57 And I’m Winston Benjamin. We are educators.

Paul Beckermann 1:00 And we’re here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 1:05 Education is our passport to the future.

Winston Benjamin 1:10 Our quote for today is from All for Ed website. It states future ready schools help innovative educators ensure that students graduate from high school with the agency, passion and skills to be a productive, compassionate and responsible citizen.

Winston Benjamin 1:33 Paul, what do you think about that quote?

Paul Beckermann 1:35 That’s a pretty good mission statement, right there. I love that being future ready goes beyond the basic curriculum, which is really important, right? I mean, that’s critical, but it goes beyond that to human skills, agency and passion and compassion and responsible citizenship. In some ways, I think those are more important than anything for our students to walk away with, and that does help them become future ready in so many different ways, right?

Winston Benjamin 2:05 I like that. I agree, but I think for me, it’s the Innovative Educator part, right? Because, as educators preparing students, I didn’t even know my teachers thought about anything that we were gonna have to face. My teachers tried to get me into coding when I was younger. Why and how we try to prepare our students is really the step outside of what we’re comfortable with and try to examine how they could be impactful in their futures. And that’s why the innovative is really valuable for me, in that in that quote.

We’re gonna bring in someone who deeply understands that quote a little bit more than the rest of us. We’d like to welcome back our guest, Thomas Rob Murray, for coming back to us. Thank you. Tom, for those who didn’t get a chance to listen before, do you mind introducing yourself to the listeners and giving a general overview of the future? Ready schools?

Thomas C. Murray 3:01 Yeah, absolutely. Well, hey everybody, and thanks for tuning in. Appreciate you being here. And shout out to all the listeners. And just first a quick thank you to all of our listeners and the work that you do each and every day, regardless of what the work is, if you’re serving in a classroom or a building or leading a district or whatever that work may be. Maybe you’re a parent just raising a child each and every day, as I am, and that’s some of the hardest work out there. Just thank you. Thank you for your work.

And so, yeah, so I’m Tom Murray, and I’ve had the distinct honor for the last decade now, which absolutely blows my mind. I still feel it was just yesterday that I was leading in a school district, but I’ve had the opportunity to help lead future ready schools nationally.

President Obama kicked it off in 2014, brought 100 superintendents to the White House and launched a really, the goal is to create an initiative that was going to be sustainable over time. No matter what state, no matter how red the state is, how blue the state is, to be able to do some of the same work. And so personally, for me, I’ve worked, I worked in education for about 15 years before getting recruited to head to Washington, D.C..

I’ve taught at the elementary level, taught at the secondary level. I’ve been an administrator at the secondary level, administrator and a principal at the elementary level, back over to district office. I obviously couldn’t keep a job, so now I work out of Washington, D.C..

So yeah, so I got recruited about a decade ago, and it’s funny, I still remember that email coming through, and I wasn’t looking to leave. I loved what I was doing. I was in a great district. We had just been featured for the second year in a row on Digital Learning Day, and that was something that my team now runs.

And they reached out at an email, “We’re looking for someone”. My first thought was, “Gee, who do I know?”. One thing led to the next. I didn’t realize it was one of those recruiting type emails, because that’s not too common in K-12. Next thing I knew, I was leaving my school district, retiring from Pennsylvania to go work nationally.

And so it’s been quite a journey, quite an honor. They give me a lot of flexibility and freedom to write some books and to do a lot of speaking across the country, just to be able to work with great schools and districts around the country and truly honored to do the work that we do.

So Future Ready is part of All for Ed. All for Ed started with the quote. Our mission at All for Ed, that’s our home organization. We have a policy side that is working on the Hill every day. They’re working alongside Republicans, Democrats across the board, really, to try and create equitable experiences for our kids.

And so we do that. Our mission at All for Ed really comes down to four core principles and four core beliefs, really around equity, excellence, engagement and empowerment. And really those serve as the foundation for our commitment for transformation.

Future Ready Schools is the practice side of All for Ed, and so we’re more the practitioner side. I don’t want to be on the policy side, right? I’ll support the policy side, but I’m not your policy wonk, right? Those are the folks that I go to that I say, “Tell me a little bit about this”. “Tell me a little bit about that”. “What does this have to do with state policy,” right? And so we’ve got lawyers and others on the other side that they do a lot of work on the hill, and even at the state level, around the policy side, but we are the practice side.

And so at Future Ready, we raise a few million dollars every year to be able to do the work that we do. And so the first thing that I’ll say is there’s no sales pitch. We don’t sell anything. And one of the things that I love is just that. We get to do the work that we want to do, that we believe needs to be done. And we’re not trying to meet some bottom line. We’re not trying to sell a certain number of units. We’re not trying to look at superintendents and trying to sell them something by any means. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, because there’s not.

People always just ask us, “What’s the catch here?”. I can always smile and say, “Hey, there’s no catch”. We get to do this work because we believe it’s the right work to do. Being in the nonprofit space in that regard is not an easy place to be, because the money’s got to come from somewhere, right? You got to keep the lights on.

But we’re proud to work with a lot of grant funders and a lot of folks that believe in the same types of things that we do, creating really relevant experiences for kids. When we talk about equity, it’s become such a buzzword in many places in a negative way, right, especially in this new year, in 2025. But we don’t look at it that way at all. We look at it as access and opportunity for kids. And that’s a hill we are willing to die on. That’s an opportunity to say, “Hey, we, we, we will support kids”. That is the hill that we’re not turning back from, because we believe that kids need the access, need the opportunities for a single sustainable economy. No matter what zip code they call home, it’s what they need. It’s what they deserve.

And so at Future Ready, we come up with a lot of—we’ve come up with working with researchers, really a lot of evidence-based practices—to support school and district leaders, in particular. Everything from librarians to instructional coaches to principals to superintendents, really frameworks and tools to be able to support their work so they can base transformation, really, in an evidence-based method or models.

And so with that, we’re not the fly-by-night. Just go out and buy a whole bunch of stuff, because the district next door is. We’re also not just about the ed tech side of things. Sure, digital learning is something that’s been core to what we’ve done over time, but we’re really about intentional use, intentional practices, deeper levels. I’d love to talk a little bit about that, not just being digital for digital sake.

And so when we look at from a Future Ready and all those different pieces, giving leaders the resources and the tools that are needed, the frameworks that are needed, and the network that’s needed to be able to support transformation in a really sustainable way. Frameworks and tools are really an important part of that. As we can create those kinds of things in an evidence-based way, we can really support leaders.

And so we are certainly not the only ones out there helping to change the world. Lots of great organizations, lots of great places are doing incredible work. Certainly AVID being one, and we are proud to partner with a lot of organizations. And so we always look at it as, in what ways can we collaborate? In what ways can we work together? Because at the end of the day, a child doesn’t care whose stamp is on it. They just need the experience to get the opportunities that they need to thrive and really live life on their own terms.

Paul Beckermann 8:58 You mentioned the Future Ready Schools framework, and it’s kind of the heart of a lot of the work that you do on this practitioner side. Do you want to take a moment and just kind of describe, what is that framework? What’s its purpose?

Thomas C. Murray 9:10 Yeah, so the framework came out of research for what are the big bucket areas of transformation that districts have to focus on. The problem becomes, if we leave one of these key—we call them gears—out, it can all come crashing down.

So I’ll walk you through just quickly—we could spend hours on this, but we won’t—just a couple minutes of what the Future Ready framework is. On the outside of the framework is collaborative leadership and inclusive culture. That’s the foundation of it all.

Getting to be in so many school districts in a given year, I can tell you, I’ve never been to a place that’s doing amazing things, that’s totally on fire for kids that doesn’t have really incredible leadership, right? And so with that, the inclusive culture is creating environments where people want to be, creating environments where people can fail, creating environments that have that sense of belonging, where people feel they can go to be a part of something, right? That’s the foundation of it all.

And if you look at the visual of the framework, you can see it at future ready.org/framework, by the way, you’ll see collaborative leadership, inclusive culture, keep the whole thing together. That’s the outside. We call them gears, because just like gears in any sort of vehicle are interwoven. You move one, the other pieces move there as well. And so helping district leaders recognize and really be strategic about, as we’re implementing, as we’re doing things, you change one thing, we’ve got to be really conscious of the other things.

So to work through them: curriculum, instruction and assessment. That’s the heart and soul of what we do. That’s the light blue. If you happen to be looking at it online or maybe in the show notes, take a look. That’s that light blue gear. It’s the teaching and learning side. It’s certainly the biggest one, if we’re gonna put them all out there. We’re not here to say, “Here’s what you need to teach” by any means. Totally understand local control, totally understand and respect differences in states.

We’re here to help really push to make sure is the learning relevant? Is it relevant in 2025 what our kids are doing to prepare them for a world of work that is vastly changing? So we do a lot of work in things pathways and things that we’re seeing so much promise to create to help kids be ready for a workforce that is shifting dramatically.

The second gear, if I just go kind of off top my head, by the way, but if I go in the clockwise order, is personalized professional learning. As I mentioned earlier, we’re really intentional about it. We actually don’t call it professional development now. We’re not mad at you all if you do, by the way, but if you look at any research on professional development, that phrase, what do people think about? One size fits all, hours based accountability, sit and get. What do we know about professional learning that works? It’s that the learning is the heart of what we do. So we are very intentional in the verbiage that we use.

So we call it personalized professional learning. I’ve never met the educator that gets up in the morning and they’re “I can’t wait to be developed today,” right? But learning is the heart of what we do. So personalized professional learning is really that vehicle to change.

The gear that comes next we take a look at is budget and resources, just working our way around the framework. That’s the orange one, if you’re looking at the framework: budget and resources. And resources. In other words, that’s sustainability. How do we make sure that what we’re doing now is sustainable three years from now, five years from now, especially here with the past five years, through COVID and then after COVID, and funding is drying up, and all those pieces that’s front and center on many things.

The gray one that you’ll see there is community partnerships. That’s engaging with our communities, engaging with our businesses, branding our schools, engaging with our churches and our places of worship, and those kinds of things there as well. And how at schools can we really have robust community partnerships? Remember, we can be the hub of the community, but there’s many other community aspects that we want to make sure that we’re working in tandem with.

The green one there that you’ll see is data and privacy. A number of years ago, I testified in front of Congress on student data privacy, and it’s one of those things that both sides of the aisle care about. That’s what I can tell you. And so when we take a look at student data privacy, how do we make sure, as we’re implementing things that are digital in nature, that privacy stays paramount, right? Not too many places say, “We can’t wait to do all the privacy professional learning,” right? Because there’s always so many things that we’re wrestling with, but we mess up one thing one time, we can shatter trust in our community.

If you take a look at the next gear, it’s robust infrastructure, right? Again, that was front and center during COVID. Infrastructure can be on school grounds, making sure kids have access off school grounds as well. In 2014, when we launched at some of our institutes, we started to talk about home access, right?

During COVID, we found that 16.5 million children, disproportionately our Black and Brown kids, could not access the internet at home. Yet, 70% of our teachers pre-COVID were asking kids to do something digital at home, right? So that disconnect there is something that we’ve got to shut that gap down and be really highly aware of that gap.

Having just been in super rural places in the last two weeks, it’s not always a financial thing. Sometimes it’s just a super rural area, and you hand the kid a hot spot, it’s not going to do anything, right? And so that notion around the access side is just super important when it comes to robust infrastructure, but also staying up with the latest technologies on our technology side.

The other piece there is use of space and time. When we talk about use of space, that’s learning spaces, right? How do we redesign learning spaces so that they’re supportive of learning, and not just that sit-and-get type of one size fits all model? And then the use of time, right? Time is one of the only constants that we have in education, but we can’t make more of it, right? And how do we use time a little bit differently in our scheduling and those kinds of things?

So those are our big bucket areas of change from research. Part of it, and one of the ways that we encourage people to take a look at it, is it’s really a lens for transformation. So if you’re going to implement something, and you’re shifting something in professional learning, you got to ask yourself, what’s the implications for curriculum instruction? What’s the implications for data and privacy? Are there any? What’s the implications for community partnerships? What about sustainability in the budget and resources? Are there things that we have to think about?

It gives us a lens to really balance ourselves, to ask questions. That’s just an incredible use of the framework. Fortunately, we’ve had a few thousand school districts nationwide over the last decade use the framework. A number of states use it in a variety of ways for their strategic plans as well.

Winston Benjamin 15:12 I love that you provide these examples of how individual school states can use the strategic the framework to help design their next steps. But I did something on your website that was, “Oh, I love how that sounds”. And I wanted to think about how we can do that a little more, right? And your organization, it says that you focus on ongoing, effective and thoughtful planning is essential to redesign traditional school systems into centers of innovation and excellence. I love that. How does your Future Ready for School framework help support that statement, and how do schools can hope to align themselves to that statement better?

Thomas C. Murray 15:58 Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for the shout on that. Appreciate that. I look at it personally. My personal mission is to help schools create environments that I’d want to send my own children to. That’s my own bottom line, right? If I can help all schools do that and help move them forward.

The second is, I want to acknowledge that there are so many school districts in our country that are crushing it for kids, that are just doing amazing, amazing things. I think sometimes in these conversations, it’s easy to come across as, “Wow, nobody’s doing well enough”. “Nobody’s been there”. “Our NAEP scores are down”. It’s so easy to cut. Do we have needs? Of course, we have needs. Absolutely we have needs. But in the same sense, there’s so many places doing incredible work for kids.

And so when we look at that, I think breaking down. I’ll take some of those words individually as you share them. Ongoing. We recognize that the changes that we’re seeing in order to be systemic and in order to be sustainable, they have to be ongoing. It’s not this kind of once and done, because the moment we feel we’ve totally arrived, we recognize the world’s. Just look at the changes in AI. Look at the changes of just the economy changes the way that the work over the world of work is shifting, right? And so if it wasn’t ongoing, let’s pretend we arrived five years ago. Well, think about how different the world is five years later. And so part of that around ongoing, it’s this mindset of just continuous improvement, right? Not a new thought. This mindset of what we’re is what we’re doing the best we can do for kids. What are the areas that where’s our average, and how do we continue to improve that average, right? And that’s why that ongoing piece has to be so vital.

The second piece was effective. One of the things that we pride ourselves in from a Future Ready end is really trying to be research and evidence based. How many times have I said that, just in the beginning of this podcast, right? And so we think about being evidence based. That notion of effective is really, really important. And so we try to make sure that we have this research based, try to be really, really effective in it. And so that’s why, when we look at our practice, what is the research we’re grounding it in?

Give you an example. When we look at ed tech, we’ve talked about, what is it that actually works with ed tech? We can be 100% digital, 100% online, 100% using digital tools, and 100% low level learning, and it gets glorified on social media literally every day, right? And when we think about it, that’s not what we’re shooting for, but it’s what a lot of places do. And so on our end, our push is that, well, what is it that actually works?

Technology in and of itself is agnostic. Technology in and of itself is neutral. How we use it works. And when we look at research, what does it show? We take great instructional practices, technology can make the experience better. Here’s the side we often don’t talk about. We take poor instructional experiences, the technology can actually make the experience worse for kids. We often don’t talk about that side.

So we talk about effective. We really are really looking at that research or evidence base to make sure that, how do we know what we’re doing is actually working?

The other piece that I’ll say is thoughtful planning, and that’s this notion of just being strategic, right? Making sure that this isn’t a fly-by-night. We’re gonna hop on the latest bandwagon just because somebody else did, because we see it on social media. We want to be intentional and thoughtful, and that means leveraging the minds of our people. What do our best people think? Making sure that our community is engaged, if they’re the ones that are going to be paying for it, right? And so we want to be really thoughtful in that as well.

Ultimately, create, as we call it, centers of innovation and excellence, right? Excellence is that bar. We want to make sure that we’re creating experiences that have that high bar of excellence, not just new and different, but then it’s a low level, not just high tech, but then kids don’t think anymore, right? We want to make sure that that excellence, that standard, is certainly there. And so I tried to break that down to make it make a little bit more sense, but I think it goes back to being strategic, being intentional, and make sure that it’s an evidence based that we’re really pointing to to support people.

Paul Beckermann 19:47 I think it’s great that you’re founding yourself in that evidence-based piece. And I really do appreciate how technology can both make things better and potentially worse, because I’ve always been under the mindset that the technology will amplify what’s happening in the classroom. So it can amplify the goodness, but it can also amplify the poor practices. So good call out on that.

I’m wondering, you said you’re not really this policy side guy, but what kind of work is All for Ed and Future Ready Schools doing at the national level to kind of advance the goals that you do have?

Thomas C. Murray 20:24 So a shout out to I also want to give a shout out to Amy Lloyd, our new CEO. She’s an incredible, incredible lady. She actually left the U.S. Department of Education in 2024 to join us. She ran pathways in CTE. She was an assistant secretary, kind of over update, which leads that whole segment.

And so one of the things that I’ll give you an example of the type of thing that we do. We actually post election work with a Republican and Democratic pollster. Where do you see that, right? Republican and Democratic pollster. And I encourage all of our listeners to go to allfored.org and on the home page, you will see these polls, and it’s fascinating, because what we did is we asked the public—it’s one of the largest polls, certainly, in a bipartisan way, ever done—to say, “Where is common ground in education,” right? You go through an election cycle and you’re led to think that nobody agrees with anybody. If you’re on one side of the aisle, you hate the other side. That’s just not true.

And when we pulled the public, what we found, things were fascinating across the board. Let me give you some examples. We’ve been sharing this far and wide, right?

So one example, we asked folks about SEL, social emotional learning. It was under half, about I was 46% or something. If I’m thinking about it correctly, it was definitely under half. They said, “Absolutely school should be doing that,” but which means more than one in two people are, “I’m not so sure that’s the place for schools”.

However, we asked a follow-up question on mental health, and should schools be supporting mental health? Overwhelmingly, people were, “Yes, absolutely”. So what does that mean? It means that our language matters. It means that when we talk about things like SEL, the public on general has no idea. But why would they, right? Why would they?

So what we learned there is seeing that we have a lot of cases of that, of language matters. And so when we talk about things, we’ve got to be strategic. As districts, for instance, if we’re saying, “Oh yeah, we do all this SEL,” to the average parent, they have no idea what that means. But if we talk about, “Hey, mental wellness is important to us”. “We’ve got a mental health crisis in our country, and one of the things that we’re going to do is support our kids in a whole child way, because we know we care about them more than just math, reading and writing,” right? And so being really intentional and strategic in our language matters.

And overwhelmingly, there is bipartisan support. Another thing that was fascinating when we take a look, I was talking earlier about the teaching and learning side, or workforce and pathways. Overwhelmingly, and it was like high 90%, it was 96-97% of Americans agree with pathways and creating workforce type experiences and redesigning high school so kids have some job type skills.

I always say, “Who are the three or 4% that are, ‘No, that’s a bad idea'”? I want to meet those three or 4%. What are we even doing, right? But what it showed was, both Republican and Democrat, both sides of the aisle, they value that. And so as districts, that’s a strategic point, knowing, “Hey, both sides your aisle thinks this is a really good idea”.

I could go on and on about a variety of different topics that show that, a lot of times the jargon and the buzzword bingo that we use in education, folks just don’t know. But again, why would they? It’s not a fault of their own. We’ve got to make sure that we’re talking in ways that make sense, and we can be strategic in talking to the way the voters understand.

There’s a lot more commonalities. We even took a look at, right now, this whole hot topic about the U.S. Department of Ed and should it be eliminated? It was about 80%, 84% I think, of people across the board, 84% somewhere in that—I’d have to pull it up to be exact, I might be off by a few points—supported keeping the U.S. Department of Education. Which means even currently in this political realm, even on the Republican side, the vast majority of people weren’t about just eliminating the Department of Ed. And so again, coming at it in a bipartisan way, because those results were signed off by Republican and Democratic strategist. That’s one example of one thing that we do try to help educate our people, help people be strategic. No matter what state you live in, whether you’re in the reddest area of Texas or the bluest area of Minnesota, right, regardless of where you are. We’ve got to be strategic in our language, but also have to understand, what is it on the whole that the public really does think, and where are there areas of common ground? And let’s build on that, right, in an area, in a time that can be so divisive.

Winston Benjamin 24:53 I love your example, because that really allows me to think through, how do I communicate with teachers, other constituents, board members? So here’s a question that I have for you. How might individual schools and district take advantage of the work you’re doing? You gave an example of the language that was such an easy, quick something that a lot of people can implement. But what might some suggestions and other action steps that we could take to really engage with the work you’re trying to push forward?

Thomas C. Murray 25:12 Yeah, absolutely. So from an All for Ed end, a couple of things. Number one, I gave some examples. If you go to the website allfored.org, you will see a variety of things, toolkits and resources, and things of the poll as an example of things that you can just use, right? That we try to put in these bite-sized chunks to help you understand. We’re actually working—that poll was released not too long ago—and we’re working to create one-pagers for district leaders, for school leaders, of, “What does this mean for me”? “How can we be intentional in these areas,” right? So that’s one side.

On the Future Ready side, we have a lot of resources and tools. So let me give you an example of just one that you’ll find on the Future Ready website. We have a resource called The Future Ready dashboard. It’s well over a million dollars tool at this point. It’s a self-assessment tool that school and district leaders can use on how ready are they to implement certain things with technology.

It uses the Future Ready framework. It’s evidence based. It’s written by researchers to take a look at our districts ready to implement technology. It’s a readiness assessment. So they can go in, they can create a free account. They own their own data, and then they get a report that then puts them in different parts in a rubric and actually gives them a customized score. That they can then go in and say, “Okay, curriculum, instruction, assessments, based on my results, what are some areas that I should begin to work”? “Budget and resources”? “What are some areas that I should think about”? And then we have templates to create action plans and whatnot.

And so that’s one case of a tool that we have, a resource that we have. I’ll give you another one. If you go to the Future Ready website, we have a variety of planning guides, discussion guides. So Demystifying AI would be one, right? AI is certainly all the rage. Everybody’s talking about it, but we’re still trying to figure out, “What does this actually mean”? “What does this look like in teaching and learning”? So we’ve created a guide for school and district leaders to use to be able to ask some questions, have some discussion questions. “What are some examples”? “What are some things that I should be checking out,” just really to support the conversations that are there? And then again, based on the framework and the tools that they can use for free.

And so really, one of the things that I would encourage them to do is go to the website, check out some of the resources, check out some of the tools, and then figure out what works for them. Part of when you’re in a national organization, part of the struggle is there’s times we’ll work with school districts that have a few hundred kids, and then there’s times we’ll work with school districts that have hundreds of thousands of kids. Their needs are pretty different. There’s a lot of similarities, but their needs are pretty different, right? And so trying to create things that both can work with can be a little bit of a challenge, but we try to create things that are also going to be evergreen, that are going to be just as relevant 10 years from now as they are today.

Paul Beckermann 27:59 So you mentioned, when you were talking about your survey, a little bit about workforce readiness and how it seems to be a pretty universal thing that people want to see. One of your newer programs, I believe, is promoting workforce readiness in America’s schools. You want to tell us a little bit more about that work?

Thomas C. Murray 28:15 Yeah, absolutely. And as I shared, our new CEO, Amy Lloyd, oversaw that for the U.S. Department of Education. So we certainly were able to snag somebody who’s got a complete expert in the field related to that. What’s amazing is watching and seeing what districts are doing to help prepare kids for an economy that is shifting, a workforce that is shifting.

When you look at, there are so many facets to this, and this runs so deep, even down to the student debt crisis, right? There’s so much to be said. If we have kids graduating, having no idea the hundreds of thousands of dollars they signed up for, realizing they’re gonna go start in a job that makes 40 grand with $250,000 in debt, where’s the fault there, right?

I’m a parent, and I recognize part of my role as a parent is to help educate my kid on that, but I think about helping kids be able to prepare to make decisions and smart decisions when it comes to that. So when we look at workforce, I think under No Child Left Behind, we pushed a lot of this stuff to the side. And if you weren’t going to this four-year college box, for some reason, you weren’t almost deemed a success in some places.

Have you ever played a plumber on a Saturday? They’re doing pretty darn well, right? Can electricians do pretty well? Yeah, they absolutely can, especially when they own their own businesses. And when we take a look at workforce, we look at a lot of the trades as examples of them. But workforce can also be, “Hey, I’m going to go be a teacher”. Workforce can be, “Hey, I’m going to go start my own business”. “I want to be an entrepreneur”. “I want to go be a pilot”. Our goal is to allow kids to ultimately live on their own terms.

And so part of that is giving kids exposure. I think about Cajon Valley in California. They literally start in kindergarten using the RIASEC framework, which has been around for a long time, to help kids to understand who I am as a learner. So I’ll give you an example. “A” in the RIASEC framework is artistic, right? And so even in kindergarten now, it’s not about forcing kids into certain pathways that they don’t have choice. It’s not about that at all. It’s about helping kids to understand who am I as a learner? Who do I want to be? What do I enjoy doing? And if I enjoy those things, in the world of work, what are some of the jobs that exist? Part of the struggle is if a kid doesn’t know the job exists, they can’t really shoot to be that ever, right?

And so many times in our traditionally marginalized groups or those folks, maybe that four-year college might have been out of reach for them. They thought districts are able to be able to say, “Hey, here’s some opportunities”. “Yes, you can go to a four-year school that’s a pathway”. “Maybe you want to go to a two-year school that can be a pathway,” right? And so it’s not about college yes or no, or trades, yes or no, or going to a CTE type of school, yes or no. It’s about opening up the variety of avenues. So a kid can say, “Here’s where I see myself”. “This is where I think I belong, because here’s what I know about me as a learner”.

When I see schools like Cajon Valley start that in kindergarten, so by the time they graduate, they’ve learned about, “Hey, I’m an A,” that means I really like the artistic types of stuff. “So I might want to learn about being a graphic designer”. I might want to worry about things. I have the opportunity to go then do.

And so when I think about workforce in particular, it’s helping kids discover things in themselves that they can learn to enjoy. So they don’t go to college having no idea what they want to do with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and then also realizing, “Gee, that’s not even what I want to do at the end of it,” right? And so going back, and I interwove the college debt piece, and there’s so much more to that, but I believe that workforce, in my opinion, is part of the solution to the college debt issue, by helping kids truly understand what it is that they want to do. And also helping kids understand that it’s okay if you don’t want to go the four-year college route, and it’s okay that that doesn’t have to be for everyone. If that’s not what you want to do in life, let’s discover what it is you want to do so you can ultimately live life on your own terms. Let’s not try and put you in a box where you don’t feel you belong.

I think under No Child Left Behind, that happened a lot. I think we did a big disservice to kids, and a big disservice to the CTE fields and all those kinds of things where we almost looked at it, “Hey, you don’t fit in this box over there”. “You should probably go over there”. What an incredible disservice that was to kids, as opposed to helping them discover their interests, their passions, their strengths, then aligning it to the world of work so then they can eventually love what they do.

Winston Benjamin 32:41 I 100% agree with you. I went to a vocational high school, and there were jobs that I did that I realized I don’t want to do. So to your point, it gives you the opportunities to try and open up and see what is and what isn’t for you, and I really appreciate that.

As we think about right now, you said earlier, five years ago, felt a decade ago, with all the things that happened post-COVID, thinking about the future, all the work that you all are doing, thinking about what’s on the horizon, what topics or areas do you see becoming increasingly important in the next couple of years in education?

Thomas C. Murray 33:24 Yeah. I think just knowing the inner workings of D.C., I think the idea around school choice and competition for public schools is going to be massive, right? I’ll give you an example to answer the question in two-fold.

One, AI is continuing to escalate at such an incredible pace. Check out if you’re listening, if you haven’t heard of Alpha School as one example. They’re already popping up and starting to grow very, very quickly. Their claim is that you come and you learn all of your academics through AI with a facilitator in the room in two hours, and then you spend the rest of the day creating businesses, getting patents, real world type stuff.

I’m not here to promote them by any means. I’m here to say, that’s not going away, and these micro type of schools will become even more competition for public schools, which will create a funding gap, which will even exacerbate some of the funding gaps, especially under an administration that views the privatization of some of those things as a really good thing.

And so I think when you look at the current political climate for that, plus the rapid use of things like AI to be able to shift systems, I think public education needs to be able to say, “Hey, here’s how we’re evolving to create great experiences”. And all I’ve ever served, by the way, is public education. Vast majority of who we serve in Future Ready is public education. So I say it out of love. But if we are not keeping up with the times, if we are not creating relevant experiences for our kids, they’re going to go elsewhere, and a lot of states they have for a long time. But if anything, that’s going to scale and escalate even more quickly.

I think that call, that challenge, creates an opportunity. I think that challenge creates an opportunity for school and district leaders to say, “What are the things that we know our community loves, that we need to continue to build on, that people stay here for”? “Let’s not get rid of that, but what are the ways, and what are people leaving”? “And if people are leaving, what are they leaving for that we’re not offering that, maybe we need to change up and shift our systems to do something different”?

Winston Benjamin 35:23 I appreciate that you’ve dropped a lot of things for us to think about throughout this entire conversation, but it’s time for one question, what’s in your toolkit?

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 35:36 Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? What is in the toolkit? Check it out.

Winston Benjamin 35:42 The topic of today is dealt with a lot of things. Paul, what’s in your toolkit? What are you taking away with today’s conversation?

Paul Beckermann 35:52 Yeah, I’m gonna encourage people to go out to futureready.org and check out the frameworks that Tom was talking about. I think it’s good to note that there’s not just one framework. There’s a bunch of different frameworks. There’s one a variation for district leaders, one for principals, one for technology leaders, one for instructional coaches, school board members, librarians, so leading in different ways and being influential in different parts of the school process. Check out the framework and see if there’s something there that can help guide you and your group as you seek to innovate in your schools.

Winston Benjamin 36:26 I like that. I’m gonna be selfish and double up on. Check out the past episode we had with Tom so that you can get a foundation about what the work is, how you can really think about the time to be intentional in your strategic planning, to support your school’s endeavor to improve, right? So it’s not a one-day do that. It’s a long time. It’s thinking and continuously improving.

Tom, what’s something you want us to take away and put in our toolkit, our tool bag?

Thomas C. Murray 36:56 I think one of the pieces that I’ll say, that I didn’t mention, is the importance of our people. People First, always, right? And when I think about that, it’s the people that are going to always have your back but will also lovingly challenge you.

And so if you’re listening to this podcast, when I think about my toolkit, it’s about people first. It’s about those people that will love and support me in the hardest of times, but those people that will also challenge me when my lens has been shifted or my lens needs to get back on track. And so I would encourage those folks that are listening to make sure you’ve got those people in your corner that will lovingly challenge you, but also pick you up when needed.

Winston Benjamin 37:34 Good.

Paul Beckermann 37:36 That’s almost, that’s almost a one thing, Winston. So I think we better jump into our one thing.

Paul Beckermann 37:52 That one thing. All right, one thing time. Winston, you can go first. What’s your final thought for the day?

Winston Benjamin 37:59 This hit me like a ton of bricks. Stop using jargon. Make sure that you’re saying the thing you want to say, that somebody who’s not inside education can actually agree with us, because there’s common ground. I want our kids to not be mentally hurt. It’s the same thing you do. So figuring out how to say the same thing is really important.

Paul Beckermann 38:22 Other than my toolkit item, which is to check out the Future Ready frameworks, I kind of was hit by what sounded a little bit a T-shirt moment when Tom was talking before. He said, let kids live life on their own terms. And I feel this work of the Future Ready Schools and these frameworks are really intended to empower our students and our kids so that they can live life on their own terms, because they would have what we call it, AVID, opportunity, knowledge and the skills that they need to be successful as they go into the future and be future ready, right? All right. Tom, you get a shot here too. What’s your final thought you’d like to leave our listeners with today?

Thomas C. Murray 39:02 So I’ll leave them with my very first words of Personal and Authentic, my last book that says the work is hard, but our kids are worth it. The work that you’re doing each and every day is ridiculously challenging, and I see that and recognize that. But the kids that they serve, the children that we serve, the communities that we serve, they’re worth it. And so just a word of encouragement. Especially this time of year, especially as they’re navigating the challenges, stay true to who you are. Stay true to your core. Keep loving on those kids, and the work is worth it.

Winston Benjamin 39:33 See, sometimes you get somebody to just drop the mic and you don’t gotta say nothing else. You all are doing good work. We appreciate you all. Have a good night.

Rena Clark 39:44 Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin 39:49 We invite you to visit us at avidopenaccess.org where you can discover resources to support student agency and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future ready learners.

Paul Beckermann 40:01 We’ll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education.

Rena Clark 40:06 And remember, Go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin 40:10 Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann 40:12 You make a difference.