S3 EP1 Student Protagonism: Redesigning Classrooms for Future-Ready Learning with Kapono Ciotti

PODCAST Season 3 EPISODE 1

Dr. Kapono Ciotti 

Quote of the Podcast – 

 Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. -J. Dewey

Introduction of Guest BIO – 

Kapono Ciotti attributes his educational philosophy to his own schooling experience in a progressive, social-constructivist school during his early years in Honolulu, Hawaii. He taught in Honolulu, Hawaii, and Dakar, Senegal, for over a decade before moving into school leadership. Kapono has led schools in the United States and Egypt, where he put into practice the philosophy of "students making the world a better place," shifting school culture to impact-based education practice. His strong belief in education being an act of social justice drives his work. 

Kapono has worked internationally in educational change organizations, leading the work of Deeper Learning and place and culture-based pedagogy, and he is currently the Executive Director for What School Could Be. In these roles, he has trained teachers in over 100 schools and school districts over four continents, impacting hundreds of thousands of students. In addition, Kapono spent 15 years as National Faculty for the National Association of Independent Schools in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice, facilitating national and international learning experiences. As a curriculum writer, he has authored multiple curricula for federal and non-profit programs. His work has significantly contributed to the organizations What School Could Be, The Buck Institute, EdLeader21, The Pacific American Foundation, and many others. Kapono holds a Ph.D. in International Education Leadership from Northcentral University, a Masters degree in Social Change and Development from the University of Newcastle, and a Bachelors of Language and Culture from the Evergreen State College. He currently lives between Hawaii, Cairo, Egypt, and Dakar Senegal.

Interview

Agents of Change: Leaders/Innovators

•  30,000 Ft. View – Why so we, as a society invest in education?
• What drew you to education?
• Let’s talk about the impact of What School Could Be and its approach to change America's education system
• Tell us about the book "The Landscape Model of Learning" which is an essential guide offers the landscape model and its three elements: understanding what students bring to the ecosystem, defining the horizon, and charting the pathway.
• I hear you are doing a survey – tell me more about it
• What are the biggest challenges to you?
• What would you like decision makers to know?

Podcast/book shoutouts

Landscape Model of Learning book, 

WSCB Distinguished School process

WSCB Podcast 

Transcript

Liza Holland [00:00:02]:
Welcome to education perspectives. I am your host, Liza Holland. This is a podcast that explores the role of education in our society from a variety of lenses. Education needs to evolve to meet the needs of today and the future. Solving such huge issues requires understanding. Join me as we begin to explore the many perspectives of education. Kapono Ciotti attributes his educational philosophy to his own schooling experience in a progressive social constructivist school during his early years in Honolulu, Hawaii. He taught in Honolulu, Hawaii and Dakar, Senegal for over a decade before moving into school leadership.

Liza Holland [00:00:48]:
Kapono has led schools in the United States and Egypt where he put into practice the philosophy of students making the world a better place, shifting school culture to impact-based education practice. His strong belief in education is being an act of social justice drives his work. Kapono has worked internationally in educational change organizations, leading the work of deeper learning and place in culture-based pedagogy. And he is currently the executive director of What School Could Be. In these roles, he has trained teachers in over a 100 schools and districts over 4 continents, impacting hundreds of thousands of students. In addition, Caponeau spent 15 years as national faculty for the National Association of Independent Schools in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice, facilitating national and international learning experiences. As a curriculum writer, he has authored multiple curricula for federal and nonprofit programs. His work has significantly contributed to the organizations of What School Could Be, the Buck Institute, Edleader 21, the Pacific American Foundation, and many others.

Liza Holland [00:02:07]:
Kapono holds a PhD in international education leadership from North Central University, a master's degree in social change and development from the University of Newcastle, and a bachelor's of language and culture from the Evergreen State College. He currently lives between Hawaii, Cairo, Egypt, and Dakar, Senegal. Welcome, doctor Kapono Ciotti or Czochi as we might say if you were in Italy. So glad to have you here.

Kapono Ciotti [00:02:38]:
It's a privilege. It's, it's really nice to be here with you.

Liza Holland [00:02:42]:
Fantastic. Well, let's kick off and go right to that 30,000 foot view question of why do you think that we as a society invest in education?

Kapono Ciotti [00:02:52]:
Why do we invest in education? I think it's interesting because I would I I'll answer the question with a little bit of soapboxing and another question. I don't think we invest enough in education, and I think the question that, as a society, we still need to answer for ourselves is why should we. Because we do. We certainly do. We don't invest enough in most pockets or in most as as an average, I think in certain pockets, of of the country and, of people who can, we do. So why do we? You know, I'll go back to, what school could be founder Ted Dennersmith, and, what he is so passionate about is, education is the foundation of our democracy, but, you know, even more importantly, our society. Democracy being, you know, the governmental structure that we've decided is how we're going to govern our society, but just at its base level, how we interact as humans, how we build and manage our society. It starts with education.

Kapono Ciotti [00:04:01]:
I think, you know, coming from Hawaii was is where, I was born and on my mom's side being native Hawaiian, I would say that I also have a view a a a maybe more broad view of education than many of my, typical k twelve education friends, in that I really do believe that education is more and is beyond deeper, broader, higher than just what happens in our k twelve classrooms. That, you know, maybe even back to older American values or old old world values of the community being, the school, the one school classroom, everybody in community, being mentor to everybody else. So, okay, let me go back and amend what I said. I think that we don't necessarily invest enough in education, but we are educating. Right? It, whether we're purposeful about it, whether we're thoughtful about it, or whether it happens accidentally because we don't put the right structures in place, we are always growing humans in our society, whether in ways that we want to be or accidentally ways that we wanna be or accidentally ways we don't wanna be. We're always doing it.

Liza Holland [00:05:16]:
I would agree with you, and I think that especially in this day and age when things are changing so fast, our time in the school room is only a blip. We have to be lifelong learners and are constantly learning whether it's in a classroom or not. And I also echo, we are not. We, as a as a country, are absolutely not investing enough in education to make the payoffs what we really want to have. I feel like we're striving really, really hard to win at the wrong game. So what drew you to education?

Kapono Ciotti [00:05:47]:
You know, I think it's a little bit of the cliche of everything you needed to know, you knew, and you learned in kindergarten. 2 things. 1 is both of my parents were educators, so it was a little, predetermined, maybe even genetically. My mom has taught, from preschool through university, and my dad has taught 16 years in high school and 33 years in community college. So, it is a little bit of a family affair, and I grew up in the halls of schools. And so it it just kind of was. The the other thing I would really credit is my the the gift I got of the the early childhood plus elementary experience at a school here in Hawaii, Hana'oli School, maybe describe it as happiest place on Earth. My brothers and I all got the opportunity to to to go there, and I've all commented in, you know, family dinners on Sundays that it wasn't until we left 6th grade for 7th grade that we understood why kids in the movies were trying to cut school because, we just had the most the the most pos it was a place where we wanted to be.

Kapono Ciotti [00:06:53]:
School was was fun. It was exploration. It was discovery. It was friends. It was learning, but learning was not a negative. So I am still in touch with my kindergarten principal, doctor Bob Peters, who is still my educational mentor. We when I was a school leader here in Hawaii, we would meet monthly. Now that I've, you know, moved away, moved back, and have a different role, we still get together about quarterly for lunch, and he still provides amazing, guidance for me.

Kapono Ciotti [00:07:23]:
I think that's the base of it. I think why do I still why am I still an educator? Why am I still working at education might be a question I should answer for myself more often. I think it goes back to the fact that education I'll paraphrase a friend of mine, Ross Wenner, from World Leadership School. Education is humans teaching humans to be human, and it's an ethical imperative of what's needed today.

Liza Holland [00:07:45]:
That is a great quote right there. Very, very powerful. You've had quite a broad array of experiences in your education journey. Tell us a little bit about what it was like to teach in other countries.

Kapono Ciotti [00:08:01]:
Yeah. That's been really interesting. I, I started my I guess, you know, pre being a full time employee teacher, I taught swimming in high school. That was pretty intense, actually. I, I didn't realize how much I learned from being a, you know, summertime, kid swim teacher until later on when you're reflecting back on it. But, you know, 12 years of private Catholic school, some a bunch of years at a a public charter school here in Hawaii, and then, like you said, going out internationally. Actually, I taught internationally before I started at Marinol as well. So I taught a year in West Africa in Senegal and, 6 years as head of school at the American International School in Egypt, where, I I had a really interesting crash course in international education.

Kapono Ciotti [00:08:49]:
It is amazing. I think as an educator that's worked towards inclusivity and a sense of belonging and also as an educator who, has a heart for, you know, indigenous and native education. It was interesting being at the American International School in another country, where many of our students were Egyptian or from from a broad number of countries, but many of them from Egypt and the Middle East. Of of course, tons of American students as well, and students, from from non Middle Eastern countries. But it was fascinating to see the culture of international teaching as well as the potential power of international an internationally flavored education. I think at its worst, international education is is another form of educational colonialism, and I do see that happening. But at its best and I I think our school aspired to be the best, and most schools that I know aspire, to be the best of this. It's an amazing opportunity to give kids multiple toolsets of multiple perspectives to be successful in multiple cultures and multiple settings.

Kapono Ciotti [00:10:12]:
And the kids that we graduate being multilingual, multicultural, it's just an amazing gift.

Liza Holland [00:10:20]:
That it is. That it is. As I was reading your bio, I was thinking I'm wondering, does he have does he speak Arabic? Does he speak French in Senegal? Or lots of, lots of multilingualism when you, when you go overseas. I know we had an an opportunity to live in, in Belgium for quite some time and had to brush up hard on my French, let me tell you.

Kapono Ciotti [00:10:42]:
Yeah. I think, you know, the the the interesting thing at AIS in Egypt where I was head of school is it it it operates fully in English. Yeah. It is an amazing opportunity for kids, from Egypt and the Middle East to operate in a full English environment. And still, the school is firmly embedded in the community, which means that it's an opportunity for kids, not from Egypt to have an integrated experience and not be at, you know, that school behind the walls where it's only only green zone expat kids. It was a really amazing experience. My own kids got a lot out of being there.

Liza Holland [00:11:16]:
Excellent. Excellent. So you are now the executive director of what school could be. For those who may not be familiar with the community, can you tell me a little bit about what the what the whole community is about and what its approach to, changing America's education system is.

Kapono Ciotti [00:11:33]:
Yeah. Thanks, for that introduction there. What school could be, was founded by venture capitalist Ted Dennersmith and, education guru and celebrity, Sir Ken Robinson, and, author extraordinaire, Tony Wagner. And with the help of Posse Sahlberg, you might know Posse as one of the, the godfather architect of the Finnish education system. So we have a really amazing background of how we were founded and the thought that went into what school could be. If I were to summarize it and paraphrase TED, our strong belief is that the school system, as we know it, grade levels, disciplines, English, math, science, bells that, ring and kids move from class to class, the standardized testing regime as we know it. Basically, the structure of school today is one that was at its at in its time, 130, 140 years ago, extremely innovative and extremely successful in a time where the world was shifting from an agrarian economy to, an industrial one. And it was actually, you know, America's industrialists that in typical American style, innovated and led the way and created this really, really cool school system from, ideas around the world and served its purpose really well for about a 100 years.

Kapono Ciotti [00:12:56]:
Knowledge economy came around, and now we're in a data economy. Our data economy is quickly shifting to one that's about to be hijacked by machine learning and AI. We don't know that the name of the next economy that's gonna emerge, but our school systems today, as, you know, many, you know, YouTube videos and and and, in fact, our major asset, the film most likely to succeed, has outlined, our school system today still looks like it did a 140 years ago, And it is not hyperbole. It's not cliche to say that we are today still preparing our kids for 1950, not 2,050, and I would say not even 2,024 anymore. The world around school has changed faster than we're able to navigate, and I don't know any educator who has said anything other than school systems as we know it. You know, outside of a couple outlier, organizations, you know, super nimble schools. Schools feel like aircraft carriers that are hard to navigate, and we are just not set up to make the changes necessary to ensure that we're preparing our kids for, 2,050, let let alone, you know, 2024. What school could be is dedicated to supporting individual teachers, individual school leaders, and school school systems in making sure that we are doing everything we can to create systems that support our kids, in being ready for their future, not our past.

Liza Holland [00:14:32]:
That is definitely a, a massive need in our society moving forward. You're doing a kind of fun survey to, to help to plot that course a little bit. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

Kapono Ciotti [00:14:43]:
We are, and I think your listeners will be, one of the first to really engage with it. What school could be dot org slash survey. Maybe we can put it in the, the description podcast description and a link, maybe.

Liza Holland [00:14:56]:
They are in the show notes.

Kapono Ciotti [00:14:57]:
Yeah. Awesome. What school could be dot org slash survey. It's a fun 15 second survey that helps, specifically educators, but parents and students as well kinda understand what decade their school is really preparing kids for. Encourage y'all to to log on and, participate in the survey. You know, I think most of our schools are preparing kids somewhere from, you know, 1950 to 1980 to, you know, maybe maybe 2,000, maybe today. But very few of our schools are, really preparing kids for their future. I was actually one of the one of the impetuses for, creating the survey, was I was invited to be the professional development leader for Arizona State University's College of Education.

Kapono Ciotti [00:15:46]:
They're the largest college of education in the entire United States. And interesting, ASU, pretty big fan. They are a gigantic large r one, research one, like the top tier research university, yet they are, you know, contrary to what you might think from being so large, really agile and really innovative. And their dean, amazing educational thinker, Carol Basile, introduced me in a really interesting way. She told her faculty, you know, over the summer, Google changed its algorithm to deprioritize everything that's made us as successful as we are, our size, our traditional degrees, the number of degrees, our research, our scholarship, all of that stuff. And Google has repositioned agile badging, micro credential, industry generated learning in their algorithm when you go and look for learning on Google. And everything that made us strong is about to be our weakness. Therefore, if we don't engage in these conversations with Kapono, with what school could be, if we don't, you know, take the survey, and and and figure out how we evolve from it, we will be left behind and our strengths will become our weaknesses.

Kapono Ciotti [00:17:00]:
Evolution is changing and, you know, the traits that made us strong and, survive are about to, maybe make us extinct as organizations.

Liza Holland [00:17:09]:
Well, I tell you, that's very heartwarming to me because I know that, a a lot of our universities are probably going to be the last bastions of

Kapono Ciotti [00:17:18]:
Yep.

Liza Holland [00:17:18]:
Wanting to, to not change. But Arizona, I've I've been really impressed in other areas as well. Their innovation, their national, they are the the hub for the National Association For Civil Discourse and really looking at, at doing some neat things from a building democracy standpoint that I think, honestly, we need to be infusing back into our education because we, we we need to, to be developing lifelong learners that are curious and and wanting to be able to talk to one another. And, that was one of the things that I really liked as I started to delve into the landscape model of learning that you've written talking about that importance of student agency and their their being in much more of a driver's seat. And I would love for you to tell our listeners a little bit more about it.

Kapono Ciotti [00:18:10]:
Yeah. Awesome. Landscape model learning, publication by, coauthor of friend of mine, Jennifer Klein, Jennifer d Klein, and I came out 2,022. You know, the the the short the long story made short on the genesis of the ideas in the book where Jennifer and I were at a conference sitting in the lobby, discussing at that point, I think there was a really big push. It was maybe over a decade ago on access. And, we were like, yeah. Access. Everybody needs access.

Kapono Ciotti [00:18:37]:
This is awesome. And then, you know, something flipped in one of us, and we I forget who it was, and we were like, you know, but access alone isn't enough. Just saying we open doors don't we want all kids to succeed? You know, as a parent, I don't want you to just, like, say as a school, I gave your kid access. I want them to, like, facilitate that learning and at least aspire to facilitate success for my kids. I'm not saying that kids don't have agency in that. In fact, to to the point that you started, we strongly believe that kids have agency in that. And in fact, it's it's it's many of the, you know, packaged curriculums and stuff that's coming out of, you know, these mega publishers, mega software companies that is doing 2 things. It's a de professionalizing teacher for teaching for our teaching teachers.

Kapono Ciotti [00:19:29]:
So I think that's number one point that I'd love to make here is I'm excited about AI. I'm excited about the software tools. This is not an episode on AI and AI tools, but I'm excited, and I hope educators, schools, parents, students are leaning into them and figuring them out, playing with them. And I'm also really nervous that big money, big industries, specifically, you know, the multi $100,000,000,000 a year software and educational publishing business, worldwide is on the precipice. And I I don't say this as a guest. I say this because I have been invited to sit into sales pitches. We, educational leaders, superintendents, principals, boards. I sit on a board, you know, just exited a position as a school leader.

Kapono Ciotti [00:20:16]:
I am currently being marketed by software companies and, publishers who have products that are potentially super exciting if we embrace, as Ross Wenner says, education being humans teaching humans to be human with the power of digital tools at our fingertips or potentially terrifying where I've seen pitches that look like replugging kids into a digital matrix and kids being data points with the AI taking over, you know, all the knowing of a kid, all the decision making, really, and and, you know, selling the decision making that should be in the hands of highly skilled professional teachers, selling it as a as a a a feature of AI that the AI is gonna make these decisions on what's next for kids to learn. So the potential hope that technology and AI brings that I hope we lean into comes with a potential fear that we need to, address. All of that comes down to I'm I'm really passionate about reprofessionalizing education and ensuring our educators are the most most important profession ever to walk the planet. Right? Like, we need to reinvigorate that for our teachers, for our educational leaders. We are all exhausted. Teachers are tired. Educational leaders have decision making fatigue, and and it's not COVID. It's post COVID.

Kapono Ciotti [00:21:46]:
It's all of this stuff. Right? So landscape model of learning aspires to reprofessionalize education. It also, at its core to what you said, aspires to give students that agency. And the term we use in the book that I'm really excited about is protagonism, student protagonism. Jennifer brought it back from her work as a school leader and professional development coach in Latin America, comes from, you know, a use in Spanish protagonismo, and it kind of, alludes to what I felt as a student in the elementary school that I, I told you. I really felt like the main character of my educational action film. I was my Jason Bourne. I my James Bond.

Kapono Ciotti [00:22:29]:
And, you know, I I I want you to be your your your Jane Bond, your Eliza Bond. I wanna be Kibono Bond. I wanna be the main character of my own education. But so many students feel like an extra in the movie that is their teacher's class. And so many of our teachers feel like an extra that is, you know, the movie directed by their principal, their assistant principal, their board, whatever it is. Right? And so the book really gives teachers and educational leaders, the tools to build student agency at the highest level possible, which we're we call student protagonism, and it does so, on a landscape. So I guess the the other point I would make is we really believe and we we articulate in the book that I think, unfortunately, in too many ed schools and too many initial student student teacher placements, initial teacher placements, teachers are given the metaphor implicitly, not told this, but implicitly that education is kinda like a racetrack, and we line up August 1st, September 1st, whenever your school year starts. Students show up in their, you know, highly tuned automobiles.

Kapono Ciotti [00:23:40]:
The the principal waves the checkered flag, and the students, they're off for 9 months of a race. And the teachers get to be race directors, and it's this very organized thing. We demand teachers facilitate their classes in this organized thing. You know? Put your next standard on the board, and that would be lovely if that metaphor was true. It would be really good to plan that way if students really did show up at the start of the year all at the same time in the same car ready to go with gas in the tank. But, you know, you and I spend time in schools and classrooms. That's not true. The the metaphor doesn't hold true.

Kapono Ciotti [00:24:13]:
And when we plan for a false metaphor, we end up creating lots of work for us. We end up going after the fact needing to, quote, unquote, differentiate or personalize because we planned for, what we know is not true, the same thing at the same time in the same way for every kid. So landscape model of learning asks us to change the metaphor, and we propose that learning is more like a landscape that, the start of the school. Many kids do join us on the meadow for the very starting day of school, but there's always that one kid up on the hill with a different vantage point yelling at everybody else. Hey. Come join me up here. Look what I see. And there's kids that don't show up on the 1st day.

Kapono Ciotti [00:24:54]:
As we go through, you know, the units and the landscape and we we're we're navigating kids along the landscape, oftentimes as teachers, it feels more like herding cats, shepherding students along the landscape. And, you know, we might have 20 of our kids with us here traversing the landscape, and we look around and where's, you know, little Kapono? He's stuck in a bog. And now I gotta make a decision as a teacher. Do I leave metaphorically leave these 20 kids and what they're doing? How do I have the time to go over to where Kapono is metaphorically, academically? And, you know, do I have the chance do I have the time to get him out of the bog and teach him how to forge the river? You know, give him that skill that he needs to catch up with the class and navigate his own way once I get him to the class. Or many times as a teacher, I just yank him out of the bog, put him on my shoulders for the river for chip for him and plop him with everybody else because I don't have that time. And as teachers, we say, you know, I need the specialist to come and rescue this kid. They need to give him the skills because because we've set up the wrong metaphor. So the book asks us to change the metaphor, plan for the right metaphor.

Kapono Ciotti [00:26:03]:
It provides both that kind of metaphorical thinking and structure around the three elements, but also provides in every element a list of and a how to in strategies on how do we, build student agency through protagonism and change the the metaphor to a landscape metaphor.

Liza Holland [00:26:21]:
You mentioned in there that you have some guiding principles as well because this is a big change, and and sometimes it's hard for people to wrap their heads around a drastic types of change. Tell us a little bit about what people need to keep in mind as they look to make change on this kind of a scale.

Kapono Ciotti [00:26:41]:
Yeah. So I think, the major thing in schools that, I've been inspired from in writing the book and schools that we've worked with since writing the book is, number 1, the time invested preteaching and learning, the start of school or summer planning, the outside of class time teacher prep time, the time we can invest before teacher and kid are engaged in learning is invaluable and must be present to change systems. That doesn't mean you can't change your own classroom as a teacher, but, that up front investment is really important to seeing success. The other thing is there are already strategies that we are already using. I'll give you I'll give you a a really simple example. Most teachers have been exposed specific or elementary to a kwl chart. No wonder learn chart. If you haven't, don't worry about it.

Kapono Ciotti [00:27:44]:
It's kind of a typical elementary tool of a certain generation that we have, you know, 33 columns on a on a on a chart table. What do you already know? What are you wondering about? And then as we go through the lesson or unit, what now have we learned? And we chart that for for for students. So, it is at its essence one of the simplest tools. It's a tool that many teachers already use or know about. And, in the book, we give lots of ways to leverage a really simple tool to support student protagonism, to support our three elements of the landscape, the ecosystem, understanding who is in the room, the horizon, crafting goals that are specific to our community and our students, and pathway, making sure that we're personalizing learning even within standard, units or standardized, systems that that that are, beholden to standards.

Liza Holland [00:28:40]:
You know, that may be simple, but it is so incredibly powerful, and that would scale to any level of student. I don't care if you're a PhD student. That type of a reflection is gonna be powerful for you.

Kapono Ciotti [00:28:54]:
And, you know, we've Jennifer and I have just, came back from, just came back. It seemed like a time warp. Jennifer just came back from Colombia recently, and we were both in Colombia, where we were doing some the country where we were doing, work with this. And then I just came back from, just outside of Seattle working with the Northwestern Association of Independent Schools using these strategies with educators. So, like, it doesn't matter if you're in preschool or 10th grade. It also doesn't matter if you're a a youth student or an adult that these strategies work. And I also think, you know, to the school leaders who might be listening. I I just I I had a conversation with somebody recently about us as as leaders needing to model, And then we paused for a second as it's not even modeling, because modeling assumes that we're doing it, like, fakely with us as adults so that we learn how to do it with kids, or we're doing it in this, like, petri dish with us as adults, so we know how to do it with kids.

Kapono Ciotti [00:29:51]:
Actually, it's about us genuinely engaging in the right ways. When I do professional learning as a as a consultant with schools, I'm very clear that I'm not a speaker. I'm a facilitator. I as a teacher, I'm I will not sit through another hour of professional development where I'm sitting and hearing somebody lecture at me on how I shouldn't lecture kids for an hour. Like but we do that to ourselves all the time. So it's not even about educational leaders or educational systems modeling this with educators so that they can use it with kids. It's about us living these tools. Right? So, actually, the last whole section of the book is leading the landscape and how to implement it.

Kapono Ciotti [00:30:32]:
And that whole last section is how do we use this in our faculty meetings? How do we use this in our, our board boardrooms and our senior leadership teams and our our grade level meetings? Because, again, it's not modeling. It's the same tools that we use to explore discover learn the same things we do to understand who's in the ecosystem. Our first element of the landscape to to develop our horizons and our goals, our second element, and to customize our pathway, personalize our pathway, our 3rd element, hold true for a a 4 year old student, an 18 year old student, or, an adult teacher or a leader.

Liza Holland [00:31:09]:
Absolutely. And I think there's so much power in that to that kind of symmetry of learning, of allowing teachers to experience what we're hoping that they can create in their classrooms to be able to take more of a coach and facilitator role, allow these kids to be able to drive their own learning a bit and stop and ask the question. Okay. We're doing this. This is what you know so far. What are you still interested in? What are you wondering about? How can we pursue that? And, you know, there's always ways to be able to take kids down that interest road and still hit the, you know, the the learning targets that they've listed.

Kapono Ciotti [00:31:53]:
I completely agree. And I think oftentimes teachers are like, oh, you're talking about I gotta have a a space unit for Liza and, you know, a a dinosaur unit for Capone because that's our interest. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about, like, what are humans truly curious about? How do we ensure we're spending time to answer the question why? I was a high school socialist teacher for over a decade, 12 years, and teaching, world history. And the world history, you know, you can literally be rich and famous. You can be, you know, mother Teresa and a saint. You can you can you can change the world and not know, you know, the Roman emperors in chronological order. You don't need to know about ancient Greece.

Kapono Ciotti [00:32:33]:
There's, like, all of these things that we teach in oral history that you actually don't need to know about. However, it was incumbent upon me as a world history teacher to ask myself and then ensure that I'm teaching through that lens of, like, why? Why is this important? I believe it's important. I've learned lessons as a human being from the Roman Empire, from the fall of the Roman Empire. Like, we're we're on a precipice of, all the, things that look like the collapse of the Roman Empire politically right now. Are there are we learning lessons as a society on, you know, rhetoric and speech and politics and civic engagement? And if we're not, as a world history teacher, I needed to figure out that why and that imperative of everything that we're doing.

Liza Holland [00:33:17]:
That why in that context, I think, is so important. How many students have you ever I mean, all through growing up, I remember. Why do we have to know this? Why do we need why are we learning this? And if you as a teacher are not prepared to answer that question, I don't think you're really doing your job. But, yeah, that's that's so exciting. And I think that, it's it's great to hear that there are some real pathways being opened and whatnot. Obviously, this is a huge ship to turn, like we were talking about. But tell me a little bit about the biggest challenges that you see in trying to move our existing school systems into a a more powerful facilitative classroom.

Kapono Ciotti [00:33:59]:
What are the challenges in moving the existing school system into this this type of model? Is that what you're asking?

Liza Holland [00:34:05]:
Yes.

Kapono Ciotti [00:34:06]:
Lots. Nothing insurmountable, though. I would say the biggest challenge is not being aware of the problem. So, you know, what school could be which we say, you know, we need to prepare kids for 2015, not 1950. I think that, the learning loss fever that hit after COVID has been a little bit of a red herring on this whole thing. And and I I wanna be careful with this because there is learning loss. Learning loss is real. We should be paying attention to it.

Kapono Ciotti [00:34:37]:
I'm glad the money was there. I'm glad there it's been shown that they know that money well spent has done some really good things with with student learning. I do want my own kid to learn grammar or, you know, reading, writing. I want my own kids to learn the algorithms of math. And if you look at historic data versus, okay. So let's start with here. During COVID, test scores did go down. There is a couple anomalies.

Kapono Ciotti [00:35:04]:
Interestingly, there are a couple school districts that during COVID, test scores went up. Question mark. We might wanna ask ourselves why the kid's not going to school and make test scores go up in those districts. That those are anomalies. Okay? But there weren't enough that the anomalies anomalies should be looked at. As a whole, though, test scores went down on average 2 to 3%. Some districts, some areas, maybe a little bit more, but there was a drop. So now if you look at the graphs that have been in the news for learning loss and have been showed to us as educators, I actually have a slide that I I use in in keynotes.

Kapono Ciotti [00:35:41]:
It's yeah. The press zooms in on 10 points of the scale. So, again, back to, like, us as humans, are we data savvy human beings? Is that a skill that we're teaching in in school that we're leading? We're not. Right? We're whereas my friend, Andrew Ho from Harvard, says humans are weak to numbers. We see numbers, and we just melt under them. Right? We are being shown in the press, in the media, zoomed in of 10 points of a 300 point scale showing this meteoric drop. Right? And being like, oh my god. Freak out learning loss.

Kapono Ciotti [00:36:14]:
There is learning loss. I'm not saying there's not. You know, of 3, 4, 5 points is a huge amount of learning loss. It is. We we we know that. Yet the the the the the freak out graphs that were being shown are not the reality. Now you zoom out to NAEP scores. You zoom out to these standardized test scores from their inception till today, and you can see that, for example, during no child left behind, when we stopped doing I might be hyper hyperbolic here.

Kapono Ciotti [00:36:42]:
When we stopped doing basically all art, when we reduced PE to nothing, when we reduced recess time, when we stopped when science became a once a month thing, when social studies became a once a month thing, and we dumped everything into drill and kill reading and math. Our scores went up on average 2%. Then you look at the most disruptive years of education ever since we had the modern education system. Spanish flu, the modern education system wasn't around then. We had one school classrooms. We had apprenticeships. We had governesses, educator educating, you know, the the privileged prince and princesses of the world. This k twelve school system that we see today wasn't there during the Spanish flu.

Kapono Ciotti [00:37:24]:
We've you know, in the most disruptive years ever of education, we dropped only the same amount. So we drop everything. We go up 2 to 3%. We stop going to school for 2 years. We drop 2 to 3%. And when we come back, if you actually ask teachers in the field, they will tell you, yeah. I'm really concerned about learning loss. But you ask them, like, what are you really concerned about? They always they go to to behaviors.

Kapono Ciotti [00:37:49]:
They go to the social emotional. They'll go to, like, executive functioning skills. My kids don't even know how to be with each other. They don't know how to act. I'm spending so much of my time with discipline. I'm disempowered by the school system to support. You might hear teachers say a deal with the discipline, but at its core, it's support the right decision making, support executive functioning skills, support me as a human being, as a 5 year old being mentally the right 5 year old, as a 16 year old making 16 year old right decisions. Right.

Kapono Ciotti [00:38:19]:
And having that those supports around there, whether or not your community, you know, social emotional learning can be a loaded word, but or a loaded term. Right. But making sure that we are students of character value, right decision making, right executive functioning skills with, all of those those things in place. I think you if you talk to teachers, that's what they would say is missing today. So I would say to go back and give you an answer actually to your 2 questions, I would say anything that we can do in schools, bring back and also aspire to more of students leading their own learning. How do we increase student protagonist? Which means not just giving students random freedoms, but developing students as actors of their own learning. You don't get to be Matt Damon if you don't know how to be a professional actor, and you don't need to wait till you're in high school to do project based learning. These types of skills, learning how to make your own decisions as a learner starts early childhood.

Kapono Ciotti [00:39:27]:
I visited a couple years ago an early childhood classroom where preschool kids, 34 year olds, at the end of the end of their year, end of the school year, were prompted by the teacher to start a discussion and held a student facilitated led discussion for 20 minutes.

Liza Holland [00:39:45]:
That's phenomenal. I mean, it can be done. I visited a a kindergarten classroom this year. They were doing design thinking and use applying it to their, their their science models and whatnot and creating new developments and and and roller coasters and all kinds of different things. I think there's a couple of things to be said is to not over scaffold your kids. There's value in that productive struggle. There really is. And we have eliminated so much of it from the from our kids' childhoods, trying to be protection and keep them safe.

Liza Holland [00:40:23]:
We're also not letting them get scuffed up and learn how to figure things out on their own. So this has been such a fabulous discussion. I feel like we could continue to talk for days. But, my final question would be, what would you like decision makers to know? And you can define that however you'd like to define decision makers.

Kapono Ciotti [00:40:43]:
Yeah. I would like decision makers to take the survey, what school could be.org slash survey and first figure out what, you know, where their schools are really preparing kids for. I would like them to know that they are about to be, if they aren't already upsold on potentially powerful and hopeful digital and AI tools, that they need to explore the use of those tools in a way that reprofessionalizes and honors the professionality of teachers and humanizes students and gives us as human beings, technology as a tool. And be very careful that we're not plugging in educators or students into a new metaphorical matrix or ignoring these tools because we will be left behind if we're not embracing this AI tools. Other other places, other countries, other systems will be using technology and AI. It is extremely powerful. The answer is not blindly plugging human beings into this, nor is it ignoring it and being, you know, purposeful Luddites and and trying to ignore technology. I think that's number 1.

Kapono Ciotti [00:41:53]:
I think number 2 is that it is possible and it is probable that we create students as protagonists, students as, actors of their own learning, and in doing so, solve the problems of discipline that are our excuses for not giving kids control, that we put ourselves into a self fulfilling, never exiting cycle of students can't. Therefore, I clamp down. Therefore, students can't. Therefore, I clamp down. Therefore, students can't. That there are pathways out. Those pathways out of that recurring cycle are obviously too much for short podcast today. Would encourage people to check out landscape model of the landscape model of learning book.

Kapono Ciotti [00:42:44]:
Check out my really good friend Joy Marchese and the work she's doing in positive discipline and, other really cool resources as well that, when students and educators are the main actors of their own learning and their own professionality, we have a joyful and productive school environment. And that, you know, there are a very few but high leverage things that we can do that will make a huge difference. I'll I'll end end with one thing that what school could be, we've, the the survey, is a precursor to a really cool process and protocol that we're rolling out called peak school distinction. Peak is our acronym for purpose. P is for purpose. E is for essential skills that are, of learning. A is for student agency, like, protagonism, and k is for deep retained and applied knowledge. The k is for knowledge.

Kapono Ciotti [00:43:40]:
And so this peak school distinction is a protocol that we're going through with schools and districts. If, your listeners listeners are part of a school or district that is already doing really cool things, we would love to hear from you and confer to you a badge of distinction. What school could be, as you know, as, you know, powered by some really amazing minds, Ted and Sirkin Robinson and Tony Wagner and Posse Sahlberg and crew. And we would love to, you know, work with you to confer to you, peak school distinction to distinguish yourself from, you know, other organizations. And if you wanna work towards that, if you're actively working towards it, we would love to be your nonprofit partner, in providing, the the ongoing professional learning and strategic planning to get there.

Liza Holland [00:44:28]:
That is fantastic. And I'm gonna have to give an extra shout out to the community at what school could be. You do not have to be a teacher. You do not have to be an administrator. You just have to have some sort of interest in education, and it gives you access to an incredibly thought provoking community of, folks that are looking to move education forward. And so it doesn't cost you anything. Sign on and, and become part of what school could be. Capone, thank you so very much for joining me today.

Liza Holland [00:44:59]:
Really appreciate your time.

Kapono Ciotti [00:45:00]:
Thanks for having me. I appreciate you too.

Liza Holland [00:45:04]:
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Education Perspectives. Feel free to share your thoughts on our Facebook page. Let us know which education perspectives you would like to hear or share. Please subscribe and share with your friends.