Unifying Forces in Education: How Full Scale Aims to Transform Learning for All

Dr. Beth Rabbitt and Virgil Hammonds

Fullscale Learning

 Quote of the Podcast: 

If you come upon a wall, throw your hat over it and go get your hat.

 Introduction of Guest BIO – 

Virgel Hammonds

Virgel Hammonds, a nationally recognized leader in education innovation, joined the Aurora Institute as CEO in 2024. He brings more than two decades of experience working with young people, educators, districts, and policymakers to advance learner-centered systems. Most recently, Virgel served as Chief Learning Officer at KnowledgeWorks, where he built partnerships with national leaders and local communities to redesign learning systems. Previously, he was superintendent of Maine’s RSU 2, leading five communities in implementing a mastery-based curriculum, and earlier served as a high school principal at California’s Lindsay Unified School District, helping implement a personalized, mastery-based learning model.

Virgel serves on the boards of PBLWorks, Learner-Centered Collaborative, and Jobs for Maine Graduates, and is Board Chair Emeritus of the Aurora Institute. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts Lowell and a Master of Education from Fresno Pacific University.

Beth Rabbitt

Beth Rabbitt is Chief Executive Officer of The Learning Accelerator (TLA) and a nationally recognized expert in education innovation, with more than 20 years of experience across the K–12 nonprofit, philanthropic, and private sectors.

Before becoming CEO in 2016, Beth was a founding Partner at TLA, leading work on educator training systems and research on emerging learning models. Her prior roles include Director of Human Capital at a start-up school system in Newark, Associate Partner at NewSchools Venture Fund, consultant with Education Resource Strategies, and founding Doctoral Fellow at the Harvard Innovation Lab.

Beth is a Pahara-Aspen Education Fellow and serves on nonprofit boards including Catalyst:Ed, GiveThx, and Portland Parks Conservancy. She earned a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an Ed.L.D. from Harvard University. Beth lives in Portland, Maine, with her husband and two daughters and is deeply motivated to create better learning experiences for every child.

Interview

Agents of Change: Leaders/Innovators.

• 30,000 Ft. View – Why so we, as a society invest in education?
• What drew you to education?
• Merger to Full Scale
• Multiple Ps Policy, Practice, Progress, People.
• Time as a resource
• Building community to change togehter
• What are the biggest challenges to you?
• What would you like decision makers to know?”

Podcast/ website/ book shoutouts

Fixable- Podcast

https://symposium2025.fullscalelearning.org/

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. So welcome everyone to the sixth season of Education Perspectives. Our first episode is a great one.

Liza Holland [00:00:37]:
We have Virgil Hammons, formerly of Aurora, and Beth Rabbit, formerly of the Learning Accelerator. They and their organizations are joining forces to become full sail. So let's get curious. So welcome both of you to Education Perspectives. We are so delighted to have you here today. And I want to kick you off and I think we'll start with Beth, if you would, from a 30,000 foot view. Why do you think that we as a society need to invest in education?

Beth Rabbitt [00:01:12]:
Thanks, Liza. It's so great to be with you. Our investment as a society and public education is probably our largest investment in the future of our democracy and citizenship and economy. Public education has for over 100 years been our bet on our collective commitment to investing in our young people as our future. And I think that it's more important than ever as the world is changing with AI, as we are becoming more global, as society is changing so quickly that we continue to ensure that our kids are supported in their development and ready to step in to their leadership for future generations.

Liza Holland [00:01:56]:
Absolutely, Virgil. That's hard to follow up on. But from your perspective, why do you think that we as a society should invest in education?

Virgil Hammonds [00:02:05]:
Well, you know, we're in a room full of educators and of course we believe in the power of the investment in our young people. And I think our world, as Beth has shared it, exemplifies that there's a need for us to continue to develop and invest in our young people to help us overcome the challenges that are before us in today's world and in our future world, and present those opportunities and prepare our young people to be the leaders that they are today and in the future. And, you know, it's. We have this piece that I really appreciate about young people is that there's this unwavering positivity to or optimism about addressing the challenges or opportunities that exist in front of them. And we need more of that. And the more we can provide those opportunities for our young people as they are learning, as they are deepening their understanding of humanity, of those around them, of the opportunities that exist in their community. That all comes as a result of the relationships and the opportunities that we present to them in our Schools and in partnership with our families and workforce. Education is the driving force for the collective impact we're all desire to achieve.

Liza Holland [00:03:15]:
As a, as a society necessary for the society we want to live in. Absolutely. Beth, tell me what was your journey like to come to this point? What drew you to education?

Beth Rabbitt [00:03:26]:
The short story is just a real dissatisfaction with the outcomes we've been producing for kids and a deep and fierce belief that we as a collective can do better and should do better. I my own educational journey was as a high mobility student in US public schools with learning difference. And I moved around to lots of schools and systems. I went to eight schools, different schools between middle school and high school and spent a lot of time just wondering like what was I doing? How could I, you know, understand the rules and the goals and get through this experience intact and able to pursue my, my future desires. And I think a lot of kids feel that way. When I got out of high school and into college and had the opportunity to become an educator, what I realized was that for kids like me who were kind of not fitting and, or might have had more instability, my outcome was extraordinarily rare. And I had a whole bunch of privileges as a white female and relatively middle to high income districts to be able to overcome them. And that's not true for the vast majority of kids.

Beth Rabbitt [00:04:42]:
And so I have been spending my career trying to figure out how school systems can actually flex to meet the needs of individual learners rather than forcing children to fit into systems that are going to not work for them. I also believe really deeply in the value of collective impact. I had quite a lot of time in my career getting to work with amazing district leaders and entrepreneurs who are trying different things in classrooms and, and watching them struggle to scale and have greater impact. And I think our sector isn't organized well to learn together and to leverage the brilliance of everyone who's working so hard to actually make the change we need. And so that's why I was CEO at the learning accelerator for about 10 years. And that's why I was thrilled for the opportunity to join forces with the Aurora Institute and specifically Virgil as co CEO to kind of take a bigger swing to make that happen because we need it more than ever.

Liza Holland [00:05:36]:
Boy, I definitely know I'm with my people. Virgil, what about you? What was your journey to full scale like? Oh, wow.

Virgil Hammonds [00:05:45]:
I mean it's. Beth did such a great job of describing that journey in a minute or so. Let's see if I can be as concise. For me, absolutely. You know, our Family came to this country when I was about 4 years old. And that ideal of being able to design your own future as a result of the freedoms and the opportunities that are presented in this country ran deep. And that vision, that hope, that aspiration, that was a strong fire for us while also living the reality of extreme poverty. Being a migrant family moving with agricultural seasons, it was rather difficult.

Virgil Hammonds [00:06:24]:
And that vision continued to kind of hammer at us as we were trying to navigate the complex systems that make up our, our communities then and also today. And so very early on, I had strong aspirations of changing policies, changing structures, and doing so by becoming an attorney. So I had full aspirations, belief that law school was in my cards. That's where I was going. Fast forward to college and I had this kind of moment in my dwindling athletic career where I had to pause and my college coach suggested, hey, the local high schools are looking for coaches. It's a way to keep you in the sport, for you to share your experience and wisdom. I said, you know what, that'd be great. And what I found was just an instant gravitation towards that amazing energy that young people bring and also a realization that there are a lot of young folks, students that are experiencing the similar challenges that I had had as a younger student and as a current student and did an abrupt change to mom's chagrin and said, you know, I got to become a teacher.

Virgil Hammonds [00:07:33]:
I think it's, I think it's important. I love it. And so as I concluded college, this is pre nclb, pre credential requirements, I started teaching part time while I was finishing my master's degree and just deepened my resolve to extend that desired impact I was hoping to have as an attorney in the classroom, really learning from those other educators that had inspired me, that had supported me, and I tried to lean on their lessons, their leadership, and tried to model that in the new classroom and new learning environments that I was serving and supporting on a part time basis. And that focus on policy and changing policy and addressing policy actually came to fruition as a principal and a superintendent, where you actually have the opportunity to shift how our learning communities function, how we can best serve together alongside educators, our learners, our families, our community partners. And so it did require actually that policy mindset to kind of think boldly about how we can leverage, flex and design new conditions, new possibilities through policy, and continue to do that. Now, whether at knowledgeworks and Aurora, now at full scale, really thinking about how we partner with local, state and federal leaders to create those conditions, to create the opportunities we believe that all young people deserve.

Liza Holland [00:08:54]:
I love that. And you already brought up one of the many P's that was in your announcement about this merger. So I'll definitely be getting back to that later. I would love to hear about. Both organizations were doing great work. What inspired you to actually decide to come together under one umbrella to row the boat in the same direction? And we'll start with Beth on this one.

Beth Rabbitt [00:09:19]:
There were a number of factors that inspired this merger. I will note. The Aurora Institute and the Learning Accelerator had been working in parallel for over a decade, trying to support an ecosystem that could create more personalized competency based whole child experiences for kids. But we were working at it from different levels. For the Learning Accelerator, our work was highly practically oriented. We were studying what happens on the ground in schools that are making progress, what are the local barriers and accelerants, how do we actually produce knowledge that people can act on more broadly across the field. And we're increasingly moving into research and thinking about the conditions in which all of that happened, including policy. And I think the Aurora Institute had long been a leader in sort of setting the big field vision for what competency based learning could look like and assembling a really committed base of folks who were driving that work, as well as really helping people understand the policy moves and shifts that might be needed.

Beth Rabbitt [00:10:19]:
Similarly beginning to do that research. I think both Virgil and I share a real belief that nonprofits, as much as possible, should be working together and, and should be leveraging each other's strengths. We started to explore that. And as we got closer and closer, and as Virgil and I learned more about each other's leadership and the work underway, we began to think really seriously about what would it look like to more strategically collaborate. I think in the fall, particularly following the election, you know, a lot of us working in K12 education began to realize that the. The challenge was getting even bigger and the sector was even more disorganized. And that for both. For me, as a leader at the Learning Accelerator, it was incumbent on me to look for ways to increase our impact and to take the bigger swings that our kids, particularly those furthest from opportunity, need.

Beth Rabbitt [00:11:16]:
In this moment, I'll let Virgil share a bit more. But for me, you know, there was a lot in the merger process that we had to discover, but the decision to come together was super easy from my perspective.

Virgil Hammonds [00:11:30]:
I love how you said that, Beth. Like, the decision to come together, right? Like just the power and the possibility of unification was just one. It was exciting. But Just the idea of being able to serve alongside a leader like Beth that, you know, cares so deeply about the success of all children and the learning communities who serve them. It was an easy decision from the very beginning. But also there's this realization, Liza, that I think it comes back to the classroom and school district leadership where oftentimes you find that you're on this island, right? Like it feels like you're on your own to figure it all out. And oftentimes that's oftentimes the case, right? Even when you have neighbors right down the road who have similar families, similar students, similar challenges. And yet for some reason, we isolate ourselves and we kind of pull the shade down on the curtain or on the window and say, nevermind, it's business as usual.

Virgil Hammonds [00:12:28]:
And we can't think that way, right. I guess if we're really going to think boldly about how we serve and transform systems to better serve young people, families and communities, we can't do that in isolation. And so that's always been a mindset for me. And as I've gotten to know Beth over the last 10 years, I knew that that was also how she functioned. Right. Like, how do we create these bigger tents that allow us to connect, collaborate and design together alongside one another so that we can create this positive multiplier effect for those that we desire to serve, which is our students, our educators and our school systems? And it was clear, coming into the nonprofit world, that those opportunities existed and we should lean into them. Because as Beth shared for both of our organizations, we're really proud of our work and our efforts and our impact. But we also saw the possibilities of how this merger, this unification, can actually create a greater, greater opportunities for young people.

Virgil Hammonds [00:13:24]:
And we think it's important for us to come together as a sector, for us to lean in and design and create a new infrastructure for possibilities. And so sometimes that requires us, as Beth calls it, take that big swing, to use another analogy, is like take a big swing at those load bearing walls that exist in our current paradigms and our current systems and design new structures, a new infrastructure for learning, for assessment, for accountability, for partnership and community. And that's what we're committed to doing and doing so with others across the field.

Liza Holland [00:13:59]:
Boy, and that's such a big task, isn't it? I mean, I look at just in that the short minutes we've been talking, there is so much that needs attention there. It's particularly in the accountability space, right. As far as you get what you measure for and to a great degree Our school systems right now are not measuring for the real outcomes that the workforce needs today. So I'm so glad that you are coming together that way. You, in your press release had a number of different kind of focus areas, and all of them started with P. So I'd love to chat a little bit about that, about policy, practice, progress, people, because it just. It made so much sense to me because you're taking a very, very big task, but putting it into kind of different buckets. That, to me, are really good opportunities to be able to focus on this overall transformation journey.

Liza Holland [00:14:59]:
Beth, why don't you start out with that one? You pick which P. Well, I was.

Beth Rabbitt [00:15:04]:
Actually gonna talk about all of them together, which might not be what you.

Liza Holland [00:15:07]:
Oh, no, go for it. That's great.

Beth Rabbitt [00:15:09]:
I mean, I think in our sector, we're constantly being called to think in multiple directions, right? We're forced to think about, like, what is the challenge right in front of us in the urgent realm? And then how do we also hold a future that doesn't exist yet, but a belief that we can get there? Right. Our school leaders have to hold those all the time. The other dimension is like, do we think about current measures and academics as the focus of school, or can we actually imagine a whole set of broader outcomes and aims and being able to hold those four things in tension almost as polarities, and saying, okay, it's my job to make all of them coherent actually requires, like, focusing on all four of those P's, the practice, policy, progress, and people. Way too often in our sector, we work in. In silos and we become. You know, it's great to have specialization, it's great to have focus. And organizations should become best at what they need to be best at, whether that be one of those P's or a couple of them. But when we don't actually make explicit connection across all four, we are only moving ourselves towards a systemic failure.

Beth Rabbitt [00:16:19]:
And so as we were looking as an organization at, you know, both. The reason why we came together. TLA in practice or in progress? TLA very much about, like, you know, a lot of the people work on the ground. Aurora very much looking at measures. We said, like, actually all of our learning as. As educators, as leaders tells us all of these things happen together. So how can be we be a force for bringing them together across the field, across lots and lots of. Of great people? I will say that, you know, from a personal standpoint, I've always had a practice lens.

Beth Rabbitt [00:16:51]:
We talk a lot about a lot of very big ideas. But unless those ideas are actually happening on the ground for learners, my feeling is sort of like nothing else matters. At the end of the day, we need powerful learning experiences that are targeted and relevant, that are actively engaging, that are socially oriented, that are growth oriented. And doing that actually requires looking at what happens for kids and the educators who are working with them on the ground. And so, practically speaking, that's been a place where the learning accelerator has focused for quite a while and where we are trying now to bring that work into greater coordination with the other areas in partnership with Aurora as full scale.

Virgil Hammonds [00:17:35]:
You know, there's a Beth and I both as. As educators coming together and growing into our roles. There's. I think Beth is right that we're always leading with the practitioner's lens and thinking of practice, how we wear our practice practitioner's hat.

Liza Holland [00:17:50]:
And.

Virgil Hammonds [00:17:51]:
And so if I were to shift these forwards, it's like, how do we capture those catalytic practices that help inform strong, smart policies that can also capture the progress that we locally, statewide, and federally want to achieve in service of the people that we serve? And the piece for us that resonates at full scale is thinking about all of the world, all of the roles within our ecosystem that can help inform each of these areas. Sometimes we think that policymakers, decision makers, central office staff, school leaders, they're the ones who will determine what comes next. But if we think of all of the key players in our systems, our families, our young people, our teachers, our paraprofessionals, what is their role in supporting those practices that help inform the policies that we can help shape our continuous improvement cycles or our progress towards? If we can do that collectively in a very coherent, unified and aligned way around a common shared vision, it's incredible what can happen. But, Liza, you said it earlier, that isn't the easiest thing to do. But you also reside in a state that has made significant progress towards that in Kentucky, where you've created these local accountability models, where you have identified local measures of value and designed learning experiences that Beth referenced that are in alignment.

Liza Holland [00:19:19]:
To those, especially in this space of accountability.

Virgil Hammonds [00:19:23]:
Exactly right.

Liza Holland [00:19:24]:
Yeah.

Virgil Hammonds [00:19:24]:
And the state has created the conditions to say we are going to create a balanced accountability model that takes into account those local measures along with what we're trying to accomplish as a state. And it's an incredible example of these four P's coming together.

Liza Holland [00:19:40]:
I agree with you, and I'm so proud to be in Kentucky where we're really looking at that. And I think that this local accountability piece you were talking about Building community, really. And I think it gives us an opportunity to ask all of society to be involved in the education of our students, not just those in, you know, in schools. Because I think that's what it's gonna take, right? It's gonna be everybody asking our kids better questions and really helping them to be engaged in their learning and be drivers of their learning. But, yeah, just getting back to Kentucky, I think that that, that is a wonderful opportunity. I'd love to talk to both of you a little bit about building that community. You know, we talk about aligning and everybody rowing the boat in the same direction and having a cohesive message, but that too is a huge task. What are you doing in that space? To try to kind of bring everybody together with a cohesive message to our decision makers, you know, be they superintendents or, you know, legislative folks.

Virgil Hammonds [00:20:49]:
Yeah, happy to kickstart there. I think there are a number of opportunities that we are amplifying, highlighting, and leaning into. And you might have seen, and the folks listening to the podcast might have themselves been involved in strategies and supports to create those local measures of value, those local competencies that we believe are critical to the success of our young people and the future of our communities. And we have seen this tremendous uptick around profile of a portrait of a graduate, really extending from local systems to statewide systems to the point where we have about a quarter of our states that have created these statewide profiles that help inform the design of local profiles. And that's incredible to see, because when a state and a local community create those shared visions and partnership with community, that's with families, that's with community partners, workforce, Higher ed, what it's doing is actually creating this commitment towards a common vision and also identifying where there might be new roles in supporting that shared vision. Right. And so it does actually create, as we referenced earlier, a new infrastructure to support those learning experiences that Beth has spoken about, but also creates a very transparent culture where young people, families, recognize and understand where they can go for those experiences, how they can deepen their competencies, how they can receive these enriched learning experiences in school, but also in community and in workforce. That's one, I think, really strong commitment that we're seeing at the local and state level.

Virgil Hammonds [00:22:25]:
And a piece that we also proud to support is bringing the field together to share that collective wisdom and also those lessons learned from these transformative practices. Beth, what would you say?

Beth Rabbitt [00:22:38]:
Yeah, I'll speak a little bit more to kind of the work we'll be doing at full scale. That certainly builds on the legacy and work of the Learning Accelerator and the Aurora Institute. As we are looking across the country, we see so much potential and promise. We probably as a community, while it feels incredibly divisive right now, I think if you talk to families and communities about what they want, there's probably never been more agreement about the importance of us rethinking schooling to really meet the needs of learners, to ensure that learning is absolutely relevant to the challenges our kids are going to face in the future and giving them the confidence and ability to navigate those futures. We are fairly optimistic about the power that exists, but we also see that there's so much energy that's going to waste because people aren't able to make those connections or are solving the same problem or unable to develop the evidence that we actually need. So we sort of see our role as helping to address those challenges alongside the incredible people doing work on the ground and at the level of policy and supportive of kids and families. And so we're really thinking about how do we help spur the development of evidence, both, you know, evidence on student outcomes about what's happening in these environments, because we need more powerful stories, but also the action evidence that helps other people understand what people are doing, how to do it, how to try it in their own context. The second area is we see a lot of need to build kind of greater connectivity and connect the dots across all these efforts.

Beth Rabbitt [00:24:19]:
In some cases simply by showing people the work that's happening already to help them connect with it. In other cases by, as Virgil said, like actually bringing people together where we see shared opportunity. And that sort of leads us to the last area, which actually has historically been a focal point for the learning accelerators, is like, how do we actually create collective vehicles for learning and action? It actually takes energy to come together, to lift our heads up to work across traditional resource lines. And so we have been creating and forming networks around shared problems of practice, shares problems of policy. We just finished wrapping up a year long network of organizations who were focused on how we make a better case for how technology within the core of instruction, used to personalize, used to give kids more flexibility and direct support, could actually be a lever for accelerating the learning outcomes that a lot of the sector is demanding. But also collecting a bunch of other data about all the other things that are happening in implementation as people try to scale. Because the challenge isn't in the invention of the small thing, it's actually in the scaling and the uptake take at a bigger scale across schools. And so we've Been trying to think about what our role would be there and I suspect and would put good money on those types of networks being a really core part of our strategy both for learning and evidence creation.

Beth Rabbitt [00:25:41]:
But actually creating mechanisms for people to work together in ways they can't on a typical basis.

Virgil Hammonds [00:25:47]:
When we do that well, when we capture those new evidence sets and those new practices, those new processes in partnership with networks, we can actually take informed data to help legislators actually create again those policy conditions to further support additional communities that might need that guidance and that structure rather than it become coming something that is top down mandate, it's rather legislation, policy, regulation that's actually informed by local communities. So it's just such a powerful opportunity.

Liza Holland [00:26:20]:
Oh, I love that. And I'd love to get your thoughts folks, because I've been most recently doing several cohorts surrounding deeper learning within the Fayette county school system and just creating this opportunity for teachers to come together. We were lucky enough to be able to compensate them for their time. And the amount of positive feedback that we got for teachers to be able to have some time together to think was just really striking to me. And I got to do individual interviews as well. And the common theme all the way through was the most precious resource for teachers is time. And what we have been doing is adding and adding and adding. In our great striving to do better, we keep piling more things on and teachers are not able to have this time to really think deeply about the experiences that they're creating.

Liza Holland [00:27:21]:
And I wonder what your thought processes are on maybe mixing up how we do schooling as far as it relates to time. And either one of you may go.

Beth Rabbitt [00:27:30]:
I love this question so often first, but I'm sure Virgil will have other thoughts too. There are so many arbitrary barriers that we put in educators roles that keep them from moving flexibly for their own learning and for their students learning. I think that, you know, we talk about our school systems and structures as if they are these fit set things that if we just organize them well enough, everybody will achieve in. But the reality is that school systems are. They are organisms. They are made up of the people who are in them, the kids, the educators, the, you know, system leaders and administrators and the learning of all of those people is what makes a system work or not work. So making the time for educators to learn and to work differently and more sustainably, we actually can improve the performance of the system. We're doing a lot of work right now looking at reimagination of the teacher role, particularly in the age of AI as well as really thinking about.

Beth Rabbitt [00:28:34]:
Virgil referred to this earlier. What are the arbitrary load bearing walls that exist that keep us from doing that? There's a school system that I worked closely with in Chicago called Distinctive Public Schools that was able to create 90 minutes of planning time per day for teachers simply by changing how they were organizing enrichment around lunch. There are those simple solutions and then there are much more future oriented solutions which might be about creating different ways of staffing our schools such that we have teachers playing more specialized roles, that we can have more educators who might be earlier in their career working in more hands on ways in terms of tutoring and small group instruction. And also thinking about teaching as a team sport and particularly where our multilingual and our special education teachers can actually be embedded parts of teams where kids can get that support while they're learning versus being pulled out of group learning to access it. So we have so many different levers, many of them highly pragmatic and doable. We just have to be intentional and we have to recognize the purpose which is creating more time for learning for the kids and the adults.

Liza Holland [00:29:43]:
I love that. Great answer, Virgil. Any thoughts on that?

Virgil Hammonds [00:29:50]:
Those were great answers and ideas. And I think that the mistake oftentimes we as educators do is we rely on the traditional practices that we ourselves grew up experiencing as learners. And so it's hard for us to shake ourselves free of those traditional practices. And quite honestly, our systems sometimes are not. Sometimes they are set up to measure time and days. And so we have to document the time and the days so that when we create these really new, rich, robust learning experiences, the way our current system is structured, it's really hard to capture that. And, and so for states that are thinking more boldly about how we validate, document learning experiences and time, it's really interesting to see what new ideas are coming to fruition and to add to Beth's recommendations, suggestions or what we're seeing in the field. We've spoken a lot today about power of learning communities.

Virgil Hammonds [00:30:47]:
Imagine how much time we can create for continuous improvement for innovation is if we actually also engaged our parents, our families, our community partners, our workforce partners in these learning experiences. So now it's not just on the heroic shoulders of our classroom educators in schools, but on our learning community at large. Right? Supporting learning experiences that transcend our school walls, that help build upon the great work that's happening in our schools and when we do so in partnership. Right. So it requires us to think differently about master schedule, how we document Learning and validate learning about time, about where our young people are learning. But when we do so, it actually creates additional opportunities for us to create new experiences for the young people we serve, but also for the adults, the adult learners, the adults who are directly working with our young people as well.

Liza Holland [00:31:39]:
Absolutely. And it strikes me that a lot of the skills that we are not embedding in classrooms are actually being picked up by our out of school activities. You know, your girl Scouts and your Boy Scouts and learning to work in teams through sports, performance based types of things in our music and those sorts of things. And I wonder how much of nice and embed some into the classroom, but also to expand outside of classroom time.

Virgil Hammonds [00:32:09]:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean those are all experiences we want all of our children to have. Right. And so how do we create those opportunities and access to those opportunities and then how do we capture those experiences as evidence of learning that are tied to the rigorous academic outcomes that we all believe all children can achieve? And so it requires us to think differently about. Yes, those sports clubs are critical learning experiences that help learners one, apply the learning that they're receiving in their classroom in different contexts. And two, it also connects back to those competencies that oftentimes we see in our profile or portraits of a graduate. Right. But for many learning communities who are thinking boldly about what learning looks like, they're capturing that evidence from those activities.

Virgil Hammonds [00:32:57]:
But also there are times when there are kids that through opportunity to see in workforce, they're having to support their families, they're working after school to ensure they can participate in those activities. How do we we capture those experiences as well and those competencies that they are learning in whatever context, for whatever reason they're involved in, utilize those as opportunities for, as demonstrations of learning.

Liza Holland [00:33:21]:
I think that's fabulous. I saw recently just a clip on social media showing that one school system was giving kids credit for mowing other people's lawns for PE activity. And I thought, you know what that is civic engagement. That is volunteerism. And it's. But physical education all wrapped in one thing. And they were able to think out of the box about giving that credit. That's awesome.

Beth Rabbitt [00:33:44]:
Yeah. The other thing I'm thinking about all the things that you and Virgil have said. How do we create more permeability between what's happening in school and all the great stuff that are accessible out of school. The other thing though that I think a lot about is I haven't times think we're to offer a metaphor, we're telling our kids to train for a marathon by running as fast as they can for eight hours a day.

Liza Holland [00:34:09]:
Yeah.

Beth Rabbitt [00:34:10]:
And we know, like, the nature of getting stronger and getting better requires sort of like productive oscillation, taking rest days, cross training, doing other things, running fast, running slow. And it seems like as a society, we're not thinking about that with regards to brain sciences and kids experiences. We've actually, there's. There is history, historically, great data on what things like getting to participate in music programs, moving our bodies does for kids for some of the more traditional outcomes that people have centered on. But there's also a lot of data that's emerging from our research and others that like kids getting the opportunity to make connection between their academic learning and some of this outside learning, graduate competencies, progressions, actually makes them better at what we're asking them to traditionally do in school because it makes it more relevant, it makes it more motivating, and also gives them a bunch of skills that they might not be getting in that, like, metaphorical run as hard as you can in a direction for eight hours. Yeah, we're seeing some, like, really cool. So we have a set of five studies coming out that we've been working with some pretty progressive virtual and hybrid programs across the country. There's sort of this, like, negative perception that learning virtually or not being in your seat at school every day leads to lesser outcomes.

Beth Rabbitt [00:35:29]:
And not only did we find that all five of these sites had better outcomes, traditional measures than their brick and mortar folks, but also, you know, the opportunity for kids to perceive things like greater agency for kids to take greater control their learning and understand what's expected for kids to be tackling career in college readiness standards. All of those things are correlating what we're hoping for. And so I think as a sector, it's important to, like, not forget about reading and math, because those are important skills, but to think more dynamically and systematically about how those goals are probably held back by our current approaches.

Liza Holland [00:36:12]:
But I tell you, I've been so excited about this particular podcast for a long time. I've got so many questions for each of you, but I would love to get your thoughts on this. You gotta get an A. You gotta get an A at full tilt type of culture and how that is playing out in the massive anxiety that we're seeing in students. And yet one of the things that we really need to, you know, not all portraits are coming up with this, but the ability to be resilient and adaptable and those types of skills are so incredibly important. And I'm just wondering how do you think that we might be able to feed back into our systems that it's okay to fail, that it's okay to try once and iterate and try again and maybe even try again? Because I think that piece of the puzzle is causing a lot of the massive anxiety. And if they would relax more, they probably would be doing better on the traditional measures as well. So I don't know which of you that appeals to, but please feel free to give me your thoughts.

Beth Rabbitt [00:37:18]:
I can speak a bit from personal experience here. So I almost dropped out of high school in my senior year. I'd say 80% of which was because of the challenge that you are stating. I had some pretty significant things happen within my family, got behind, had been on a pathway, as I said earlier, where my goal was get through school to get to the other side and fell really far behind and nearly didn't make it through. And so I think we have to both recognize that not only are we like not giving kids the best chances possible, but we're undermining our efforts by increasing anxiety, but also creating feelings of like kids can't learn or can't hit the bar. I think that, you know what's interesting to me is I do think we are seeing movements of the classroom level towards more mastery based approaches, you know, opportunity revisions and extraordinarily hard by the way, with existing time resources we have. Yeah, but I mean I think that we are actually hosting a conversation, our upcoming symposium about grading for equity and the ways that our grading practices actually affect everything from student stress to attendance to actually inaccurate captures of what they are able to do. And I think that kids, the first time a colleague said to me, the first time we grade kids give kids a grade on papers.

Beth Rabbitt [00:38:42]:
The first time they realize they could be less than. And this is an area where I think we really need to do some soul searching and also look at it as a key barrier to why we haven't made progress. What's also interesting is the history of A to F grading. The intention was good, actually. It was a mechanism that was designed to standardize feedback to kids and families about learners at a time when we actually had more mastery based context than we did now. The tutorial approaches to schooling and what we've done is we've standardized them and made them so you not connected for formative use for students and families to get better that they're, you know, we've got to actually like what might get us from point A to point B will not get us to point C. And we need to start abandoning some of those things.

Liza Holland [00:39:27]:
Yeah. Virgil, what are your thoughts?

Virgil Hammonds [00:39:30]:
I knew Beth was. I'm grateful that, Beth, you brought in your story because it's such a powerful, real reality for so many of our young people, and we just don't. We oftentimes don't recognize it or don't bring it into the light. So, Beth, so thank you just for sharing publicly and being vulnerable in that way. But both of you are so right. I mean, this whole idea of failure while learning, it. I mean, learning is a series of failures. It's just inherent.

Virgil Hammonds [00:39:56]:
I mean, there was this. You referenced a video on Social of young people receiving, you know, utilizing their community service to neighbors and the yard work through as an evidence of learning. Right. And. And that is so true. And you know, there's. There's this old adage that I saw on Social that I hadn't seen in a while, but just fail, right? First attempt in learning. Right.

Virgil Hammonds [00:40:15]:
It's just part of the process. Right. And for some reason, we have this real cutthroat mentality that it's. We have to prepare people, people for the real world. Well, they're still in school, so how about we just get them ready, prepare them for the rigors of the real world. But they're still just kids, right? Let's just talk about brain science and the learning sciences and lean into that heavily so that we do prepare them for the rigors of the real world. And when folks bring that up to me as a practitioner who has served in learning communities that have made commitments to ensuring that all learners achieve at. At mastery at competency levels prior to advancement.

Virgil Hammonds [00:40:55]:
This was a tough one for many of us to understand that mindset, that it's okay to have our learners, to hold our learners accountable to those rigorous learning experiences, but also give them the opportunities to reapply their learning, to redo, to recheck as they're learning, deepening their understanding that they're actually going to apply it at deeper, more rigorous levels. And the reality, too is we do that as adults, right? Which professional certification are we not allowed to retake if we don't pass it the first time? Give me one.

Liza Holland [00:41:27]:
Exactly. They don't exist, right?

Virgil Hammonds [00:41:29]:
So let's do the same for our young people when it's not as high stakes, right. It's just part of what we call learning. And our assessments are more formative than they are summative. Let's really think about how we can help our young people really understand where they are, what they need to accomplish to achieve and to progress to that next level and do so in ways that are far more positive than many have experienced.

Beth Rabbitt [00:41:53]:
To just add super briefly, I referenced a podcast in the form for this called Fixable by Frances Fry and Anne Morris. It's a fantastic podcast for those who are interested in human psychology and supporting performance. I think there are two things that I'm thinking about. The one is failure is good, but we need to learn to fail smartly in our systems to hold ourselves accountable for acting on learning. We've looked at many classrooms that are competency based in progression where kids are failing but actually not getting the best follow through that would help them learn from their mistakes, to reflect and move quickly. I think there's something to think about there both at the level of the student and the level of our systems to really drive towards like how do we fail smartly and quickly rather than, you know, like failing without. Without learning, which I think actually can happen. The other thing is like in holding these goals so high, we actually reinforce a fear of failure to point of like perfectionistic tendencies to choose not to fail over choosing the very highest possible outcome.

Beth Rabbitt [00:43:04]:
I think we're sort of stuck in that cycle. So I think we should just be embracing more failures and tell more stories about it so we can all get smarter faster.

Liza Holland [00:43:13]:
Oh, I agree with you so much and I think that it really breeds in risk aversion and that's what I'm hearing on the employer side as well. As far as, you know, new graduates, not just from K12, but from higher ed as well. Just being tentative and just not wanting to solve problems on their own and not wanting to take initiative, all these types of things. I think that the system has baked that in. So I'm really glad to hear you talk about that as well. Obviously you could probably tell it's one of my pet peeves. Oh goodness. Well, we are coming kind of towards end of our time here and I think we've done a fair job of talking about some of the challenges that you're facing.

Liza Holland [00:43:55]:
But if either one of you would like to kind of expand upon that, what really are the biggest challenges that you're facing, especially as a new organization like this?

Virgil Hammonds [00:44:04]:
Well, Liza, perhaps a subtle shift from the challenge and refocusing that more on an opportunity and a piece I really appreciate about your questions is you did just that is highlight where there are opportunities for us to shift our thinking, our practices and our potential impact and a piece that we want to continue to amplify and create is the spaces, just as you're doing for those you are inviting to your podcast is we want to do the same in our firm commitment to convening educators like yourself, leaders like yourself, folks that help inform the research, the policy, the practices that can best serve young people, families and communities. And at the end of October in New Orleans, we're hosting our annual symposium with people just like you that care deeply about learning from others, amplifying new practices, new technologies, new strategies that will help us serve our learning communities in new and rich ways. And we're grateful for that opportunity. You can@fullscale.org, you can see a bit more about our symposium, but also learn more about the opportunities and research and policy that we're striving for.

Liza Holland [00:45:18]:
I'm so glad you brought that up and I will make sure to drop that link in the show.

Beth Rabbitt [00:45:22]:
Notes super brief. I love Virgil's optimism.

Liza Holland [00:45:26]:
You know, we have to put that way, right?

Beth Rabbitt [00:45:28]:
You have to put it that way because there's no way through it. But through I do think, you know, we have in terms of defining Full Scale's next three to five year strategy. We've been talking to leaders across the field about our work, about what they're seeing, what the opportunities are. And you know, in thinking about the question of like why aren't people moving or how do we get, how do we disrupt, you know, these normal ways of working. We had one colleague who just said things have been pretty well disrupted over the last six months. We are not functioning well. People should move forward as quickly as possible. I think that would be a call I'd give to listeners is identify how to move forward amidst the chaos as quickly as possible towards the systems and outcomes we want for our kids.

Beth Rabbitt [00:46:17]:
Because in some ways out of chaos creates this opportunity that we should all link arms together and act on.

Liza Holland [00:46:25]:
Boy, I agree with you 100%. And let me just ask that follow up for you. What would you like for decision makers to know, especially in the context of this environment?

Beth Rabbitt [00:46:37]:
This may sound glib, but we don't need federal permission to direct our resources to the students who need them most.

Liza Holland [00:46:44]:
Not glib at all. Facts. Good for you. Virgil. How about yourself? What would you like decision makers to know? And you get to define decision makers however you'd like to.

Virgil Hammonds [00:46:53]:
We have got to listen more, right? We have got to learn from those that are directly in the field, right? And there's take this opportunity to learn, to come back and be a learner and engage those that are directly serving our families, directly serving our young people. It's critical now more than ever.

Liza Holland [00:47:14]:
Marvelous. Well, both of you, thank you so very, very much and congratulations on full scale. I'm so excited to see what you do moving forward. And we'll have to probably do another podcast in a year or so to see where this has all gone, but I want to thank you both very much for being a part of Education Perspectives today.

Beth Rabbitt [00:47:36]:
Thank you.

Virgil Hammonds [00:47:37]:
Thank you, Liza. I appreciate it. Thank you, Beth.

Liza Holland [00:47:41]:
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.