How Innovative Education Is Driving $10 Million in Community Growth

[0:00]  what does it mean to be an innovator an influencer someone who is changing our communities today's guest khil Graham is exactly that man we're talking to an amazing individual who is changing how education impacts the Next Generation we're going to talk about the key role of accountability executive function and how we're helping the younger Generations be prepared with the skills that they need to navigate an uncertain future one thing can be certain about this conversation we're going to learn what true Innovation looks like from a Grassroots perspective khil Graham joins the show today guys let's have an amazing conversation let's get to it as Cairo starts to graduate young people and put them in to not only the the community Force but the workforce uh to

[0:50]  see how our students can have tangible effects on their family and the community around economic reform and a community reform you know so when we see kids who are changing the dynamic in their family's Financial structure when they're changing the dynamic in the community structures because they understand being an empowered citizen but being excited about long term being able to say here's the real impact our students have added you know $10 million to the local community Through the jobs that they've created for others and the businesses they've created our students for their families 80% of them who started below the poverty line are now above the poverty line and have families that you know they Define as healthy and functional in our previous conversation

[1:51]  you talked a little bit about how education seems to be one of the only systems where we're not looking for user feedback from the people who are actually going through the system to actually be able to inform what the education process looks like why do you think we've gotten it wrong for so long C you know one of the things that I'm really thoughtful are on is for many years the adults have seen the system is one that we own and children are an output as opposed to children being key stakeholders in the process that they are going through as it evolves and continues to iterate while they're actually going through their education journey and that's a great place for not only feedback but also for finding solutions to problems that we don't intimately experience like they do and

[2:38]  so I think that for many years it's been a place where adults Educators in the system who've got experience just haven't seen the value in the stakeholders of children students going through whether they're younger children in elementary or high school or alumni from k212 who've been through it and can reflect on their experience I'm really interested interested in how you guys are doing things differently you know in our previous conversation we talked about executive function skill sets that these students are going to need to learn and develop early in life so they can be more effective when they're making big decisions and they come across times of adversity why are we focusing on the skill development over just the same Playbook that we've seen for so long yeah we I think we've learned through data that that that Playbook needs to be

[3:25]  refined right and for us building choice and understanding of choice and not only repercussions but strategies to continue to evolve your Reflections on choice is so important because we know as adults we make thousands of choices in a day and over the course of a year the choices add up to not only the experiences that we have but the outcomes that we receive right and if we look at the goal of education is to make students really great choic makers in The Avenues in the communities in the careers they decide to serve you would backwards map differently than if the goal is just for them to learn a standard or to master a certain set of material and I think for us with that being the endgame we want change makers by being able to make powerful choices that both inform them and their lives but the communities and the fields they

[4:14]  want to serve it really pushed us to rethink how we want to model what's going on in our classrooms and how do we want to involve kids in that experience and that families in that experience as well you know it's interesting I've been talking a lot on the podcast recently about the idea that that's I refer to as the instant gratification trap right it's very easy for us in society today to look at younger generations and say you guys want instant gratification from the things you integrate with the things you interact with from all the different tools that you use Uber everything else gives us that instant gratification but when I think about the changes that we're really looking for in our society today our education system can't fall trap to that instant gratification trap either we need to invest into these children so they can be the future that we want to see in our communities and I

[5:02]  think in society we're yearning for that more than ever man yeah you know one of the things I'm cognizant of is the the students and the young people we work with they learned some of that from the adults right and for us it's being really thoughtful around how are we making sure they see the forest beyond the trees and how are we seeing that in the field and knowing that the real win for a student in kindergarten doesn't happen in kindergarten but it happens way after they've left school and some of the foundational pieces build into the experiential pieces that they have through their journey and when they activate that real understanding of purpose and what they want to do how they take all those tools wrap them together into a purposeful and choice filled life and so we see all the not only complexity but the steps along the

[5:49]  way we realize that there's not one test that defines success there's not one Accolade or achievement in their Journey that defines success but it's much more all of the things accumulated together and then being able to reflect on the experience and all the tools they've learned and use that toolkit as purposeful adults purposeful parents purposeful engaged citizens in their Community I want to get a little tactical here and give you the opportunity to articulate how you guys are doing things differently the majority of people who are listening to this podcast right have gone through education we've all have similarities in the experiences that we've been through so what makes what you guys are doing so much different than what we all experience in educ and often didn't really like yeah you know I think at chyros what we really are thinking about is if

[6:38]  we started from scratch and we said how do we both take things that we know are tried and true in education and take places where we want to test and experiment what would School look like and things that people would notice if you came and walk through our Halls uh there's a lot of freedom of movement in our school you know students we we talk about choice and them having the ability to not work in different sections of the school but also really thinking about what career paths they want to choose what's the pace they want to work on with assignments those are things that we've given a lot more leeway than many other school environments may or may not feel comfortable with or have the structures for and so there might be a student in one class who's working on science because they're really engaged and they took a trip to the hospital and they feel like hey that's a career path

[7:25]  that they want to explore and science is something that they want to get a little ahead on and in that same room we might have a student who is excited about math or reading who got a chance to not only see something through our experiences but through something they learned at home or in the community and they want to accelerate there and so in our rooms we know that personalized learning means that we have to give kids space to make personalized choices and that for us we feel is a real part of the fabric of who we are and also allows for the young people to be more engaged in the experience they have dayto day and so we think that those are some of the pieces that people might see coming through our halls and then also how we build our students up to advocate for themselves because we do want whether you're a middle school student who is learning about how to make choices and articulate what are the things that will help you in terms of the goals you set and the pathway you want to take or if we have

[8:13]  high school students who have a really solid understanding of where they want to go and are talking to us about what courses they might need to take or what kind of ways we can enhance their experience so that they do get more access to those lifelong goals that they have we really want that to be a community and conversational path that we have with students man this this feels so refreshing compared to where we came from in the idea or I would say the overgeneralization that kids don't know what they want and so we have to tell them what path they're going to go down how do you kind of swerve against that mindset because it seems like it's been so ingrained in the education process like you students don't know anything yet you're not old enough to make these type of decisions so how we kind trying to combat some of the haters out there

[9:01]  that might be saying you guys are doing it wrong yeah you know thinking about a customer service mindset and and in a school you have to really Define what your customer base is just like any other industry and for us there was I think a long-term notion that the customer was the parent or the family and that was like the number one place to serve and the only place Ser if parent was happy mom and dad or you know whatever that family structure is then you're doing a great job we didn't articulate what we wanted the customer satisfaction to be for our students and then the reality is number one our students spend the most time with us and what we're saying now postco is students are making purposeful choices on it's School the right place for them and is your school the right place for them and so they've started to really strengthen

[9:49]  their voice around if a school or a school environment isn't for them they will try other options they will start businesses they will name to the public why the school isn't the right place for them and so as that's become an increased reality I think it's pushed everybody to engage with that in different ways I think in our market and with the students that we serve we just wanted to be ahead of the curve and give them the opportunity to have a seat at the table have a voice on things that we know are important to their experience and then we've tracked how that's related to not only them attending school but them being more engaged throughout the school experience this sounds so refreshing to me as we sit here and I just hear the thoughtfulness and the intentionality that goes in into creating an overall experience but also a brand that people want to be a part of there are so many opportunities for

[10:37]  students today to be able to make money in so many different ways and I'm not sure why but there's a a young kid who became really really famous on YouTube because his parents were having him test out different toys that they would buy him turned into a Disney deal this kid's making like 30 million bucks a year and I think there's a little bit of our societal subconscious mind that says a lot lot of parents might be thinking about different Paths of their kids to be able to make a living and just improve their lifestyle in general and so when it comes to the education experience it has to be curated for people to do what they want to do have a good experience and then be able to get the benefit out of the entire process that maybe they'd be able to experience in different areas of life does that make sense yeah I I find myself going back and forth on the notion of you know

[11:26]  when I got in the education field you know almost 20 years ago one of the big things we really grounded on in the reform movement was the idea of college for all and thinking that that would be the equity lens The Liberation lens that we would have to help students who come from backgrounds where they were disadvantage or not receiving the results that the majority was having across our country I think we go 20 years later into the field and it's not necessarily college for all but it's much more the idea of a purpose ful Next Step knowing that college might not be that purposeful next step for a certain student but they should have access to all the things that a purposeful Next Step can entail and so you got to give them the academic preparation where if

[12:12]  an academic future is in their in their path they can go that way but you also need to give them the understanding of the world and the community around them so that they can go and look and see what options they have and I think whether it's with social media with AI with technology in general there's many more doors and Pathways that can be open for the creative mind than we've ever had before and our young people have much more reach with that because they're just exploring it they're open their mindsets are ones of curiosity and wonder much more than many of adults who didn't grow up with a certain technology or not necessarily trust a certain technology you know every kid that I see now has grown up with a cell phone they've grown up with access to Wikipedia different things that just have opened the world for them and I think that that gives them an advantage

[12:58]  and many ways in terms of looking at alternative Pathways that really can not only produce Revenue but also can just give them life satisfaction I want to I want to dive into the idea of the lagered mindset right the people who aren't willing to view this new opportunity of Education through the lens of curiosity and how we can do things differently to be able to provide value do you feel like the majority of the institutions that we're seeing across the landscape of Education might be a little bit slow to the draw which is going to kind of cause some problems for the future generations of people who are entering into the workforce and everything else yeah there's a lot of people who are waiting for quote unquote the new way of teaching the new way of learning to show tangible long-term results

[13:47]  before they adopt right those those late adopters late adapters that we might see and I think the reality is that we've seen over the course of history that when we have the multitud that are waiting to adopt that's going to slow Evolution that's going to slow the reforms that we want to see they're always going to be those people and the reality is we need space for people who want to do things the old way right there are schools that make sense that have different teachings and styles that are 40 and 50 years old right and there are certain students certain families that might find Value in that education the whole idea of having choice for how to educate your child is you can choose things that worked many years ago can choose things that have just been tried for the first time but you and your family can make an informed choice and I

[14:34]  think that we have probably too many systems that feel like they need to wait to see a proof of concept and even when they get that proof of concept they now say well I need to see two I need to see five I need to see 10 years of proof of concept and by that time the child's out of your system anyway right and so how do we make space for smart tests where you can try something new and get a chance to see if it works for a segment of your students or for a certain population of students as opposed to waiting for the whole industry to make a turn and decide that something's the right way to go I think that we just need to do a better job with the kids that we're working with now to provide more of those doors to opportunities to be open I think there's a a key differentiator here in the mindset of decisionmaking versus running experiments decisions feel very solidified they feel very I would say

[15:23]  ultimate in the direction in which we move which is the people who are looking for the one the five the 10 years of data to be ble to reinforce the decision that they made but the experimentation culture is really interesting to me you said something there smart tests what did that mean what was that and so the the whole idea in school form around school Choice Charter Schools lots of those different Notions um that have come up it really is grounded in there were School sites that wanted to identify how to test if something was a need for the community or if this was a certain type of learning style that could benefit their students so that's where charter schools in many ways came from a school or an environment saying hey we notice that this is a gap and we want to be able to test if this type of

[16:13]  Alternative Learning platform or style can help the students that we serve so it's an incubation site for for school testing and for Education reform testing when you think about a smart test you want those incubation sites for really looking at different ways for learning to happen for teaching to happen to have enough of a structure where you can actually use the data and decide if it's something that can be implemented at scale and so a simple example I would always say is you want to have a school you probably need to decide who's going to run the school where the school would be located how many students should the school serve there's certain things you'd want to have on the front end that will help you to do a smart test as opposed to saying we have an idea that we want to have a great school but we don't know where it's going to be we don't know how many kids are going to be there but give us the access to do it and we'll see what happens that could

[17:01]  lead to a lot of delays in being able to run the school in a way that will give you data that's worth while because if one day you got 10 students and the next day you got 200 students you probably don't have systems to serve both well at the same time and so it might hold you back and so I think that idea of a smart test is how do you make the right structures and what we might think of is creating the right box so that whatever the test is has the controls that allow the data for us to be actionable and be able to interpret in a way that's going to meaning to the the field of work we're in why have you become such an innovator in this space I want to kind of give everybody an understanding of your background you spent time in higher education and now we're innovating at a level where we're going to be able to impact Generations in the future but why did we kind of go down this path

[17:48]  man yeah you know I think it all starts with having a heart and and service mindset for kids you know I I tell people at the root of it all I'm a kid from Brooklyn who really just grew up with a lot of Fortune a lot of people cheering me on and opening doors for me and I want to pay that forward for for the communities that I've been you know blessed to serve and so when I think about Innovation I know that if something has been tried and true to work for every student in every school across the country we would have figured out education it'd be working great everywhere and it would be end the story period right the reality is that we know that it's going to take different thinking to solve what the problems of our time with our schools and the things that we want to do better for our kids and so being a person somebody's got to

[18:35]  stand at the front and you know I see myself as somebody who's not scared to stand out in the front and be a partner for our students for our communities and really be a translator of how do we bring the resources to the table that we think will best support our kids and their families in making the progress in their journey and I think when you simplify it in that way the Innovations whether they're systematic whether they're technical whether they're actually teaching and learning base just give you a place of really holistically understanding the goal is to be better for students tomorrow than we were today and if we want to continue to do that we've got to listen to them we've got to look at data and we've got to be really passionate about pushing through the changes that we think will be best for the people we want to serve I think about moving on a a longer timeline right extending the time Horizon between

[19:25]  the impact that we're trying to have which gives us flexibility to experiment in the now moment to be able to create the incomes later down the road do you ever get looked at as kind of a threat in the space of Education because I speak to a lot of you know institutions and a lot of leaders in education and often they are not as quick nor comfortable with moving at a different pace as you are and I can understand how that could be kind of threatening for some people yeah and and honestly I think when I started I probably was closer to the norm than I am to where I am now where I see myself much more is a person who's got to be courageous for the liberation of our kids and knowing that at the end of the day if you define success and failure by one moment and one indicator it's gonna be hard for you

[20:13]  ever to win the long game and if you really care about kids winning the long game is what we want to do and for me that win comes from being able to say it's not a test it's not a specific skill but it's a holistic experi exp erience and a holistic refinement of the system we have that's going to bring us to where kids get the education they deserve and our communities have the young people equi with the skills they deserve and if you don't believe in that long game it's really hard because the reality is every day there's an opportunity to define success and failure by one specific data point but if that's the only thing you use or the ones that are the common natured ones in testing and you know accountability from the state those are made many times to

[21:01]  have a high floor or a floor at all in terms of what we expect for kids and what we expect for schools we've never made an accountability system that pushes the ceiling of innovation that pushes the what's next for students they're all made with the I think a lot of fear of what will happen if we don't as opposed to what will happen if we try and so we want to be a place where we're trying and we're really pushing the envelope as much as possible I wanna I want to talk a little bit about you man how did you develop this kind of mindset you know what I mean it's incredibly refreshing to sit across this digital table with somebody who has just like such a grounded understanding and everything that we're talking about here but like how did you develop this in yourself if you came from higher education you said that you want once weren't like this compared to how you are now what has the process been like for you yeah you know I like to think

[21:50]  that I stand on the shoulders of giants right I've been really blessed in my career to work with education leaders who not only aren't scared to try different things but also push my thinking and my own reflection on why I not only thought the way I did but I valued certain things you know I could think as early as you know my grandmother who was an education Advocate who pushed me to think about like what was my role in school as a young black man growing up in Brooklyn New York to working for people like Michelle ree who as Chancellor DC public schools was a person who really thought what if we just tried something new and really thought about how we evaluate teachers or how we evaluate school Success in a way that's never been done before like you meet these people and they plant seeds along the way and as

[22:37]  you continue to get experience I call that like watering the seeds because then as those ideas Sprout I can make sense and meaning of them in a different way and it's once you have the sense and the knowledge do you have the courage to act on it and I think as I've gotten more senior and more seasoned in my career one of the things that I said I want my legacy to be is not somebody who carried the ball and decided I was going to do the same thing all the people before me did but was going to try to go a different way try to run a little bit faster and try to be a little bit more thoughtful around what can I do to engage others along that process so that when we finish the game we are in a much different place than we were when we started I want to talk about the role of the teacher in this process now let me level set one of the things that I've recognized is a lot of teachers today find themselves challenged to be able to

[23:26]  get the results that they believe their student should be getting because of some of the invisible I would say barriers like the standardized tests and everything else that we see in a lot of the Public School Systems so what is the role in influencing the next generation of these great leaders and thinkers from your guys's perspective that might be a little contrarian to kind of how we think about Educators in maybe the public space or in different systems yeah uh giving teachers a seat at the table for the evolution of the work that they do it's going to be critical to to solve not only the national teacher shortage but if we dig deeper the quality teacher shortage is happening because we're CH in many places we're trying to fit a round peg into a square hole you know you think the world has changed in the last five years in so many ways but in

[24:14]  many places they want teachers and teaching and learning to look the same way it did preco all of those different constitu and considerations right and so for me I go to the grounding of if you give a person a seat at the table then you can start to learn things and you can start to have them be active participants in the change process one of the things I think about most with the role of the teacher is what do we want them doing in the classroom do we want them to do that idea of like Stand and Deliver where they're the person at the front pointing at the chalkboard with the piece of chalk and the pointer for an hour to students and students take notes and don't really talk much do we want them to engage in in Collective discourse in the room do we want projects to be done with a sense making throughout the learning and the

[25:01]  engagement with a pro with with a project and for us we lean more on the lad where we want our teachers to facilitate learning experiences as much as possible and we know that that comes with the idea of you do have to have common standards that you work towards and you've got to make sure that there's interventions in place for students who need particular supports but growing in a world where you know even if you look at higher ed higher ed is changing in terms of what's happening in classrooms and what kind of role do they want teachers and students to have in their experience because the choice that we see students making many times is decide if higher rate is for them or if it isn't and if they're making that choice the higher ed environments had to change I think you're seeing the trickle down now and we want to be ahead of that curve and saying how do we create experiences that will make our teachers feel empowered to really lean into to

[25:49]  the things we need to do with our students on the other side in the public sector in public education we know that there's still a lot of standard operating procedures that need to be done for the sake of accountability compliance and those things and so we're continuing like every everybody else to try to test how to balance those things I think for us we want to have teachers at the seat at the table we want to be really thoughtful of what are the things that are most important to people coming in the profession relationships with students the opportunity to engage authentically and enthusiastically with materials and content with them and creating shared experiences that's what many teachers get in and stay in the field for how do we build as much time for that for them as possible and then look at the other things that were a part of the traditional teaching experience and say what if we do it differently and being okay with finding

[26:38]  out some answers along the way the teachers who are coming into the space let's say Millennials genz Alpha who's going to come after them are they prepared to teach in the same fashion that we're talking about or are they having to make an adjustment as they come through the education process standard through higher ed yeah so I think that there's a duality here because in one side teachers are coming in with more of those executive functioning skills in many places like because they've been in the world they've engaged with technology they've had to be more collaborative in their school experience and in their world experience than many people have had to do in previous generations on the other side there aren't as many people going through the traditional teaching pathway going to a teacher's college a higher education

[27:25]  program being a teaching assistant then coming up that's not happening as much in the field you know in my in my opinion and I think part of that is there's more choices for what kind of opportunities and options young people can do as they're building up what's the career of choice they want to have and they enter the workforce and so you know I tell people all the time here in St Louis that you know in a world where a person can work at Amazon or work at Uber or do different things to earn a livable wage going into the classroom where you're going to have accountabil you're going to have to work obviously with a lot of young people who many days can be challenging right you're going to have to build skills that take time and perseverance and commitment to do and we need to do a better job in selling the

[28:12]  why behind that being a purposeful choice because it is a world where you know people switch career Pathways people are open to trying new things but also if it doesn't feel right trying something else and teaching is one of those professions where you know sad but true you got to give it time right it's like no can't you got to give it time to work it's not necessarily going to be a thing that immediately comes into place and you know all of a sudden you figured it all out it sometimes takes years to people to really get that that momentum they need and in the world we live in many people have the tools we've got to make sure we build the relationships build the the connection so that they give it time to mature and those tools can turn into outcomes for young people how are you thinking about your role in inspiring the next generation of these great leaders to be able to be a part of this vision that you're casting

[28:58]  the why that we were just kind of talking about yeah um I think about that more than ever now when I when I started in education leadership you know maybe a decade ago a big part of it was what I call like Technical and adaptive leadership like can you be the person to help your people get skills can you be the person that helps your people solve problems now I think more about inspirational leadership and how do you give people conviction to go on a journey because that's what education is that's what life is in many ways you're going on a journey and in leadership you need to bring people along with you right and so for me not only do I think about how do I do it but how do I build that skill in the people under me many of you have been promoted because of their technical expertise their ability to adaptively solve challenges that come

[29:46]  up in their work stream the next level up is how do you collectively invest others to go with you right you think about the role of a teacher who has to inspire a class to go on a journey versus a principal who has the inspire a school to go on a journey every level up you still need that inspiration because the journey is building the right behaviors again and again and learning from the challenges that come up and I think that if people are invested in that that's where we will see the education game really move forward because we got to get past the number we got to get past a specific skill or or having the classroom look a very certain way to saying we've got to be willing to explore and listen and iterate and get people collectively invested in that Journey because when they're invested in the journey then the group has power as

[30:34]  opposed to just an individual feeling like they're isolated on their own if you could go back to a younger version of yourself and have a five minute sit down and give that person a piece of advice on how they should navigate the future things they should lean into or things that maybe they should avoid what advice would you give to them you know I probably would remind myself that it's okay to listen you don't have to have an answer right away and be okay with saying I don't know just as fast as you can be okay with saying I know and I want to work on this like that idea of reflection that idea of being a deep thinker is something I value much more now in my career I actually schedule it

[31:21]  to have it on my calendar to have time to think about things as opposed to when I was younger there was a rush to be right there was a rush to be the first to answer the first to do the first to action and I realized now as I've gotten a little bit you know wiser i' like to think that you don't have to be first if you're going to do it right and that's the way where the thoughtfulness the consideration the being able to reflect on things has become more impactful in me in the career and I think if I knew that a decade ago or even farther it might have you know given me a space not really to make better choices but to help other people make better choices hindsight is 2020 you know being able to look back in the past and say hey I would have done this differently is a a big exercise and maturation but also an exercise in being reflective on

[32:08]  how we can do things differently in the future if you don't mind me asking some of those rushed decisions if you will what did those represent in your career if you feel okay Sharon yeah I think you know in looking at being a young leader you know one of the things that was really important to me was status right do do people see me as a higher cheaper do people see me as somebody who can be promoted or who is leading in the in the industry or the field at the time and so that hunger to achieve which I think many you know young people in their in their career are are trying to prove thems that led me to make choices that looking back I probably might have done some things differently and specifically in like how I showed up in a space how collaborative was I how much of a

[32:55]  listener and a person who want wanted to really experience learning from failure would have happened a lot faster I had to get comfortable myself to know that it's not about being seen as the best it's about do you intrinsically know that you given the best effort and that you're always willing to get a little bit better for the people you serve because that's excellent to many ways trying to be better than you were before and learning along the way on like how to build better systems better behaviors that help people and I think that that's a part from me that I've learned along the way that comes from you know making some choices and then being able to reflect on them and think about how you could do it differently I'm interested in how you view yourself and your identity right when we're a high achiever often we tie our identity to the work and the

[33:41]  outcomes that we produce as I've gotten older I've really started to try and focus on the element of me being able to separate Kenan from the business from the work from the podcast everything else just like that that I do and so how have you been able to keep those two things separate because it's really important that we don't become engulfed in the identity of the work that we do yeah you know I think one of the interesting things that sets in as you you get older is there's a different sense of mortality right when you when you get upper an age and you're like you know I'm I'm getting close to 40 I'm 38 now and you know I look at like differently than I did when I was 18 and one of the things I ask myself is you know what's the Legacy that I want to be known for and I realiz realiz now that a lot of the Legacy and the things I want

[34:30]  people to Value about me have very little to do with work outcomes like you know it's not about you know what was the grade of my school in you know 2015 or you know how many accolades I got in any given year but it's much more what kind of person was I how did I show up in the space for people how did people see me as a person who cared about the whole them and not just the work them or you know whatever it might be and so I think I Val more of those things over time and one of the things that's been healthy for me is you know you get to the point where you're not you're not chasing a title anymore you're chasing purpose right and I think I'm at the point in my career where purposeful work is the most important work I can do and the most important work I'm interested in I think if I stopped today in education and decided to do something

[35:17]  else I could look back and be proud at much of the work that's been done and that I left it in a better place than I found it right I think that when you're in that space ites some of the pressure off of I have to be seen as an achiever because I see myself as an achiever and I know that I've had impact on lives and tried to continue to support people and so in the outside perspective that I might have looked for validation for or from previously I feel a lot more comfortable just walking in my own path that hits home for me I'm going through a lot of the same process now so I just turned 34 at the time of recording this last Friday and I've just been thinking about the Legacy that I'm thanks man um the Legacy that I'm going to be able to leave behind and the purpose of the work that I do now is really important you know one thing

[36:04]  that's interesting about our generation is we came from the before time I mean before the internet before the explosion of social media before all this other technology how are you kind of thinking about the wildness that is innovation with things like artificial intelligence and everything else that plays a role in education today because there's two camps that I always see when it comes to AI when Educators think about it they're like no because you're going to forge all your homework you're going to be using it to cheat XYZ or the other side is this can be an accelerator to help us do things differently and do different types of knowledge work how you thinking about artificial intelligence and the role it plays in education yeah I think for me I'm excited to explore how whether it's AI or just advanced technology in general

[36:55]  can help us do better things for kids and I'm also willing to and excited to explore what are the safeguards we need to have in place to maximize the impact I don't think that one side totally has it figured out and is correct but I do think that there's a pathway that we need to be willing to engage on to be able to ensure that we figure out how to use these things in a way that bolster young people's experiences in the classroom outside the classroom you know I think in a world where we're worried about is a kid gonna cheat on a paper that's that's a very restriced world right because you know truth be told many kids aren't writing papers in the same way we're asking kids for presentations together we're asking kids to be able to do oral presentation we're asking for a lot more things than just write a paper and then turn it into the

[37:42]  teacher and you know many of our young teachers don't necessarily have the experience of reading 40 papers that they had to grade to bark up right so that's one way but on the other side of just saying let's do whatever we want I think we've seen whether it's through social media and in other places with AI that it's a tool that if not used productively can have the potential for harm just like any other tool right and I think that we want to really have a engaged conversation around what are the best ways we feel to use it now and how can we test if it actually is adding value to the experience because it's not going away right and when things aren't going away I think we've got to engage with them authentically and have a mindset of curiosity and saying let's see what can be true and then what are the questions we need to be asking along

[38:28]  the way to ensure that we're learning the right lessons I heard an awesome conversation the other day on Joe Rogan's podcast there's an individual named chamath he was one of the original early um employees at Facebook and they were talking about the role of artificial intelligence and education and Chamas said something that really caught my attention because it seemed like it was spoton he said Educators teachers in the future are going to be one of the highest esteem positions in Society because they are truly going to teach our children how to think when you have tools like artificial intelligence that can get things done instantaneously how we critically think about solving problems is going to be so fundamentally important in the future and I thought that that was not only a nod to the

[39:17]  critical role that our Educators play in our children's life but the sustained future and necessity for these teachers to help us think differently in the future as technology kind of takes away a lot of the Redundant tasks that we have to do every single day what do you think about that you know I I'm excited for a future where we continue to hold our teachers in high esteem you know my my hope is that that trickle down because I could see that being the world of higher ed you know relatively quickly within a generation right because the reality is when the job market changes highed has a respond tech technical education has to respond that's just the nature of the workforce how fast can we get that into K22 where we really start to push the envelope for how we're teaching kids how we're Building Systems

[40:04]  of accountability that really reflect what we want kids to be true and know when they can get all the answers in chat gbt right how do we now push them to be thinkers as opposed to technical system owners right and I think that's going to be something that hopefully policy hopefully communities can urge for so that we can have that trickle down effect happen happen as soon as possible because I do see even the changing in our schools where we need our teachers to have those really deep intellectual questions just as much as they're building the foundational skills for kids and the more we can both value those in lots of ways compensation and you know different Avenues to make sure that the best people want to stay in that field but also make it a critical way we think about the work the better

[40:52]  it is going to be for young people I believe I want to give you an opportunity to call your shot like Babe Ruth where are we going to be at in let's say the next 3 to 5 years with Kyros and everything else that you've been working on man yeah you know I'm excited as Cairo starts to graduate young people and put them in to not only the the community Force but the workforce uh to see how our students can have tangible effects on their family and the community around economic reform and Community reform I think that's some of the things that I want to track because when we talk about making change makers it sounds really good you can put it on a t-shirt but how do you quantify that and make it something that

[41:39]  you can fully understand so that you can backwards plan from it you know so when we see kids who are changing the dynamic in their family's Financial structure when they're changing the dynamic in the community structures because they understand being an empowered citizen I'd look forward to being able to have that white paper in five years says here's the impact of our school because I think many of us tie the impact to things that we can control which are test scores and you know attendance rates and those things that we try to control as much as possible when even those we don't have real control over but being excited about longterm being able to say here's the real impact our students have added you know $10 million to the local community Through the jobs that they've created for others and the businesses they've created our students for their families 8 % of them who

[42:28]  started below the poverty line are now above the poverty line and have families that you know they Define as healthy and functional right and being able to have those type of data points which really talk to the change that's longterm and that will have a lasting effect for Generations is what I I hope we start to build the knowledge base on and that we continue to prioritize in our work and hopefully encourage other schools to really redefine what success is for the whole human being that they get the privilege of working with you guys start it here first so in the next couple years when we get that white paper that's released and you know khil talks about all the things that he just called the impact on the community how they're changing the structure of everything that they're impacting which is so multiplicative I can't wait for that to come out man as a part of the tradition here on the podcast the last thing we

[43:14]  have is a previous guest wants to ask you a question their question was what qualities do you believe are essential for building trust and loyalty in your team as a leader wow I've been been living this process for a while I would say you know two things come to mind for me the first is empathy but I think that being a person who deeply believes in in the power of empathy goes a long way to build trust because you then get a chance to not only look at the person beside you or the team alongside you but also look at how your interactions with them lead to behaviors and outcomes right when I when I show up a certain way other people respond to that and have an empathy that

[44:01]  that's a process of learning for for both sides becomes important and so I think that being a person who's mindful of do you have an empathetic experience to other people's experience other people's learnings other people's Journey can help them buy into trust for you I think the other thing to build trust that I think is is foundational is vulnerability right and it has to start with the leader right if the leader can't be vulnerable around not being perfect being a person who Embraces learning being a person who wants feedback and is going to act on it when received that becomes really hard than to build that in others because they don't see it in you and so I think being vulnerable you know one of the things you know me and my team do in our our weekly meetings is we have a failure of the week and I make sure to go in that

[44:49]  process just like everybody else and it's usually with one of them right and I have to own that I didn't either show up in a certain way or didn't accomplish something that I was really eager to accomplish and we talk about failing forward right and how can we not only talk about that but how are we going to leverage it to be better and I think things like that show and build trust because they allow for the team to see you as a human and for you to see them as a human and to know that as long as we're on a journey together we will be better each and every day because we're not only push each other but we're going to care for each other when we stop and slip and fall and I think that that builds the type of teams that can last in any type of field and that is the trth definition of leadership um earlier in this week I recorded a podcast episode with another guest named Chris Nelson he's the uh CEO of Freedom service dogs he helps

[45:36]  veterans get four-legged battle buddies and we talked about what the definition of alpha was and his question for a guest that came before you was how can you prove that vulnerability helps you show up as a different but more effective leader and the elements of you just interweaving vulnerability into this that is the true definition of what an alpha is today from our perspective is being able to show that you don't know everything being able to ask for help and being able to admit when you were wrong and so khil man I just want to say thank you man so much for coming on the podcast you inspired me but everybody else who tuned in watched and listened today I know has learned a lot about the movement the impact and the change that you're creating with our most important generation man so I just want to say thank you so much I appreciate you for having me as a guest

[46:23]  this has been a blast for me and I'm always up to talk about how we can be better for our kids and better for our community well there we go guys we'll catch you in the next episode that's a wrap