How to Build A Growth Mindset for Real-World Success

[0:00]  we don't have all the answers there's a lot that Carmen has to continue to work on and I think if we're always working to improve and innovate then we're in a good place if we ever think we're there that's when that's a red flag right um nonetheless I think we work hard to make sure that we are first of all seeing kids and making sure they feel seen and feel heard feel a sense of belonging that is really powerful for just a human being whether they're eight or 18 or 38 right and then within that space and Co I think brought this to light more than anything else did is the mental health and the emotional health of a kid if they're not emotionally present and regulated and mentally healthy it's really hard to learn anything you're not present you're not there so we can't

[0:50]  control whatever trauma or life experiences a kid brings into the classroom but what we can do is recognize it name it and not use it as an excuse but say how do we help you because that is the foundation of those solve skills because whether you have trauma in Life or you've been able to avoid it dumb luck self-awareness self-control and resilience are foundational it's going to happen to you every day in your life sooner or later uh maybe not every day but sooner or later and so how are you going to respond when somebody says or does something you don't like or things happen that are out of your control and so if we we can work with kids in that starting at four five six eight years old makes a world of difference all right guys welcome back

[1:53]  to a brand new episode of the heart and hustle podcast now I'm incredibly excited because I have Aaron Litman here today with me now this is an important conversation because Aaron is the CEO of Carmen schools Aaron welcome to the show man happy to be here thanks for having me Ken this is going to be a great conversation because you know in today's conversation we're not only going to cover why you do this work what your heart and hustle is all about but we're going to talk about redefining education ownership growth mindset real world relevance we're going to talk about leadership and emotional intelligence and we're going to talk about address addressing challenges in modern education but before we kind of get into that man how's your heart doing today it's good it's full it's heavy but it's all right it's uh it's been a it's been a day it has been a day and I think it's really important for us to recognize

[2:40]  that there's a lot of people at the time of recording this who are kind of battling with some of the expectations and the challenges that we're going to be facing kind of like as a society and a country you know I'm not sure what side of the political landscape that you kind of ride on but today is the day post elction day recording this um Donald Trump has just been announced that he's going to be our new president-elect and that's a really challenging time for a lot of people especially when it comes to you know mental health and the sense of community that seems like we need a little bit more today uh yeah I would agree and you know Carmen schools are nonpolitical entity and we have people that work there families that we serve across the political Spectrum for us what matters most I know we'll talk about a little bit is kind of the values that we live by and wanting our students and our staff to see leaders that look and sound

[3:28]  like them and leaders that reflect you know empathy and kindness and a desire to treat people with equity and respect and that's what matters most I think I completely agree you know you being the CEO of such an important institution that's molding the minds of the Next Generation why is this work so important to you Ain how did you get into this space or were there any early I would say life experiences that kind of pushed you down this path sure I'll be upfront I'm a pretty blunt individual um I've always been a bad student uh so I grew up in New York uh my mom was my middle school science teacher phenomenal educator great human um and in her class I did well because I found connection purpose relevance to the the things that she was teaching us um and she allowed

[4:16]  students the opportunity to be curious uh in a lot of classes growing up it wasn't the case and so I acted out I had a big mouth I got in trouble I didn't see the value in what I was doing and so I wasted that time and some of those opportunities and so as I got older always felt the stronger connection of working with kids um and those who have kids as kind of the the priority in their lives but I'm like there's a better way there's a better way for kids to experience school because maybe it's true for you or your listeners definitely true for me that as I got older School became less important and uh I was less motivated and you know you're a kindergartener first second grader you're always excited but sometimes kill that and it should be the opposite how was that experience growing

[5:04]  up with a mom who's a teacher right you perform well in her class but not well in others what were the kind of conversations that you had because I think that there would be at least from my perspective there would be a high standard right for Education were some of those early days kind of challenging for you and kind of challenging for your mom uh they were um you know it's hard to know I'm a parent now so have a better sense um but my kids are better students than I was um but you know every night it was we got Spanish homework we got math homework you got to read you got to do these things I was always naturally uh aligned to Reading Writing social studies so that was easy for me but everything else was a fight and for my mom it was like look you may not like this but this is what you need to do because you need the skills and the mindset and the behaviors to be successful after Middle School After High School after college and I was

[5:52]  fortunate that all the adults in my life were role models for educational Excellence they had all graduated college most advanced degrees they were living middle or upper middle class lives so I grew up in a privileged community and I knew that education was core to all of that so it was baked into who I was but I fought it man did I fight it man I felt the exact same way I was never a good student I got seas and D's I was actually on the honor rooll the final semester of my high school gradu or my high school um my second year and my mom my mom was so happy I was like I told you I would make it happen for you but it was interesting because I felt disconnected from school you mention you Ed that word intention disconnected from school I felt the exact same way because I just felt like I was never truly engaged in the classroom I couldn't really understand how these things were tied to the bigger picture and I feel like a lot of

[6:39]  students struggle with that in environments where teachers maybe aren't motivated or they just don't have an understanding to why this is important for the future uh I mean I think you hit on something really important and there's no criticism of the educational institutions that prepare Educators but it's a lot of pedagogy or you know um what is the thinking behind why you're doing something what does the research say what is your approach and historically it's been a lot of sage on the stage and students are passive in receiving information and so as a student in the 80s and 90s there wasn't internet access the same way so I had to be a vessel to be filled was the way Ed a lot of Educators looked at it I wasn't ready for that I had questions I had concerns I wanted to talk about it I wanted to have real world relevance and

[7:27]  those things were rarely offered um and now from the internet age on now with AI especially all the information is available in my back pocket so I don't need the information I need to know how to access it what kinds of questions to ask kinds of problems to solve how to understand the difference between fact and biased opinion and then be able to use that to make informed decisions in whatever it is I'm interested in and I think that's a huge pivot for educators last 20 years and that's EX accelerating as we move forward and as a kid I didn't have that there was a I had a revelation I think I was a sophomore or a junior in high school and we were doing a big research project and part of the directions were go to the library use the Dewey Decimal System to be able to

[8:14]  find the information bring the resources back site your work XYZ and I thought that there should be a class about resource allocation there has to be a quicker way than spending my time going down to the library looking through the Dewey Decimal System and then grabbing these I would say Rec articles or passages from these different books but yet the internet is at our fingertips why are we not being taught to use these resources effectively and it seems like that's kind of like a lesson in critical thinking yeah I think you're again I think you're hitting on something that is key to unlocking like the potential for students to engage with school differently so again a lot of Educators well-intentioned hardworking thoughtful humans who are not sure how to give up control and be kind of a guide in the side a facilitator of learning as

[9:02]  opposed to the one controlling it uh and so in teacher education programs that's not really what you do when I was a student teacher the the teacher who I worked with wonderful person ran a good class very traditional they had control and the students were there almost like by accident it was about the teacher when it should be about the kids and so in some schools I've worked at we've used things like GLE a Google search optimization where you can for example if I want to learn about the country of Iran if I'm doing that through a US server I'm going to get us answers if I change the structure so that I am doing it through an Iranian server then all of a sudden the 1979 Revolution wasn't a bad thing it was a moment of great success in Iran so it's about knowing

[9:52]  where to find the information and how to use something like the internet to get accurate information and we don't do that very often because it's not something we're taught in school growing up or something that we're taught when we are preparing to be Educators in college or grad school talk a little bit about why that exercise is so important because this is the first time that I've heard somebody who's in the education space talk about accessing a foreign server to gather information about a specific event or an opportun or you know something that happened in history why is that so important so I go back to what I said a few minutes ago there's so much information out there in the world right when I was a kid I had the library I had magazines and books TV and then siblings and friends who gave me information now you have endless

[10:40]  opportunities to find information but how do you know what's real how do you know what's factual um so you have to know how to ask the right questions so use AI there's a million ways AI is going to be relevant in our lives whether we like it or not it starts with asking the right questions and as you iterate through an AI experience about making the best apple pie you refine your search queries and that gives you better information Google's been around for a long time and they are advanced search options that exist but most people don't know they exist don't use them because they're just used to you know it pre-populates I type in a b and all of a sudden it's Bob Marley baking or whatever I've been interested in and it is a echo chamber of the information that I'm used to searching for the a are

[11:29]  not meant to open it up to the world I have to ask the right questions to do that uh if we don't do that then all that res all those resources are just untapped how do you think about that Echo chamber that was a topic that I really wanted to dive into here today I was listening to a podcast where they were using the exact same terminology but they put it into words of cognitive bundles when we go on to the internet these algorithms and other things are so optimized at showing you what you engage with that when you search things they're going to show you things that are similar to what you've engaged in the past great for finding more things that entertain you but not great for being able to round out your mindset of information what is an echo chamber and why do you think that those are so dangerous for diverse perspectives I think if you start with like an echo chamber in education you know lots of

[12:18]  schools and organizations are doing similar things and it's easy to focus on what's wrong teachers don't get paid enough the hours are hard you have to be more than just a teacher you have to be a social worker and a doctor and a mental health professional um and it's a lot of times ends up being what's easier for adults and what's best for kids even though that's not what the adults want you just kind of go with the path of least resistance because the job is hard and Great Schools exist all over but we're not always intentionally learning from those experiences or those places that's an education then if you think about the World At Large for whatever reason why people elected Trump over Harris the algorithms that run all the social medias all work on similar algorithms that say great we're going to

[13:05]  give you more of what you're interested in and connect you to more people that see the world the same way you do and then all of a sudden I spend a lot of time online instead of in the real world I'm not having conversations with real people about real things I'm having conversations about what I'm interested in with the same people that are like-minded and then that's it so I think that when we think about how we're educating kids it's seeing all sides of a situation it's asking questions it's being able to say oh keen and I we don't agree but I can respect you without getting into conflict with you and I'm not trying to prove my point of view actually listening to you and then what you said is going to be relevant I'm gonna go out in the world and like find out more information about what Keenan said that I never knew about but if

[13:52]  you're in an echo chamber that does not happen there's I had an amazing CEO out of Indiana on the show um last week his name is Matthew perky and we were talking about the differences between difference and division it's okay for people to have differences because differences means that there's an opportunity for us to seek to understand for us to find out more information about someone's perspective and there's a curiosity that comes along with that on the other side of differences is division where it's US versus them it's the othering that we're so good at here in America how is our education system supposed to cultivate conversations about differences rather than division is that a role that the education system is supposed to play or is that supposed to be just in our public societal lives

[14:40]  I mean I think it has to be both right I mean I was right reading a stat at some point it's something like 20% of a kid's life is at school the rest of it is home Community Family Friends whatever else you're doing so we're a core component but it has to be a partnership between us and the families of the kids we serve um and I think it's hard because there are all sorts of you know culture wars going on in the world if I talk about students who might be non-binary in certain communities or School certain School environments that's you know we can't go there because that's going to lead to all sorts of issues and so whether it's the school board or the administration or the families who are pushing against it it makes it really hard for schools to engage in like authentic transparent conversation

[15:29]  allowing kids a safe space to explore the questions because the kids all have the questions and we need to Foster an environment that allows that and we can but not if we're getting accused of doing all sorts of terrible things to kids because we're giving them the space to ask those questions I think it's that's a really interesting topic because when I think about some of these pressing issues that we see in society especially from like a younger generational perspective a lot of these conversations are open to be had but it seems like our older Generations don't want to infringe or take the responsibility for having that tough conversation and they rather that social media and influencers and other people will have that conversation for them and then institutions like you guys get in trouble for saying it's better for us to have these conversations in person

[16:15]  rather than letting the echo chamber of the internet take this away and then formulate people's own ideas about that kind of stuff yeah I think you're absolutely right uh so it's a double-edged SW it's like we don't want to have the conversation as you know a family or community you do it but follow the certain rules and there's not a lot of schools that have uniformity of thought or such a homogeneous population that everybody sees the same sees the world the same way um and things change all the time an eight-year-old kid suddenly becomes a 14-year-old and identifies as something different than what they did at eight and their parents don't accept it we can't just kind of force that kid to conform if we do usually leads to bad outcomes man and don't we think that a lot of these issues are somewhat just

[17:03]  children kind of expressing and trying to figure out who they are I remember when I was 10 11 12 13 14 years old I was really confused about the world and I was always doing different stuff and looking at different perspectives and it seems like today a lot of these hypercritical issues would be kind of solved with time if we just let kids explore who they are as people and then come back to a baseline does that make sense yeah I think you're it makes total sense to me and look this isn't New You The Human Condition is thousands of years old so you go back to like Roman times know maybe there wasn't as much like Equity or or access for maybe women for example or people of color to engage in in regular Society the same issues existed there that they do now here's one of the things that I think is really important for us to talk about it's like you know when we think about our educational processes we often think about you know algebra chemistry XYZ but

[17:52]  it seems like there's a prevailance or a need for development of soft skills right emotional intelligence it's so much more important helping people understand and navigate the complexities of society today how are you guys helping formulate this next or curate this next Generation to be curious when it comes to their emotional intelligence especially in the education space is that something you guys focus on it is and and I'm not going to you know pretend here we don't have all the answers there's a lot that Carmen has to continue to work on and I think if we're always working to improve and innovate then we're in a good place if we ever think we're there that's when that's a red flag right um nonetheless I think we work hard to make sure that we are first of all seeing kids and making sure they feel seen and feel heard feel a sense of belonging that is really powerful for

[18:40]  just a human being whether they're eight or 18 or 38 right and then within that space and Co I think brought this to light more than anything else did is the mental health and the emotional health of a kid if they're not emotionally present and regulated and silly healthy it's really hard to learn anything you're not present you're not there so we can't control whatever trauma or life experiences a kid brings into the classroom but what we can do is recognize it name it and not use it as an excuse but say great how do we help you because that is the foundation of those solve skills because whether you have trauma in Life or you've been able to avoid it dumb luck self-awareness self-control and

[19:29]  resilience are foundational it's going to happen to you every day in your life sooner or later uh maybe not every day but sooner or later and so how are you going to respond when somebody says or does something you don't like or things happen that are out of your control and so if we can work with kids in that starting at four five six eight years old makes a world of difference and how do we do that how do we prepare the Next Generation to be resilient when it seems like the environment of the economy and Society in itself is always flexing how are you guys kind of tackling that I mean I think there's Simplicity on the other side of complexity right I think it starts with building an environment that is a values based environment so at Carmen our values are empathy growth and belief and we have clear definitions for each of those and those are decided by a

[20:16]  large group of leaders in the organization and they're really intentional about bringing that down to every level and it takes time those values are new for us this year and it will take all of this year plus to build some sort of like consistency there then it's building relationships with kids through the lens of those values then there's structures in place that help so for example at kmen we have advisory and advisory looks different in different places for us it's anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes once or twice every day where we're connecting with kids it's imagine it like The Advisory teacher is your parent at school and that's your family at school that's a place that you can feel safe connect build relationships with others whether they're like you or not and in an ideal environment and Carmen has done this intermittently you have that adviser for

[21:04]  four years so you really are building a family and then once you leave kmen especially in high school that advisor is like a trusted adult that you have forever so having trusted adults that you have a strong relationship with having a space to engage in hard conversations and practice what it means to be uh to having self-control to being self-aware those are key you want to do those classrooms too but it's hard because there are Community District state federal requirements that say hit these like you know goals at the end of the year take these standardized tests puts pressure on administrators and teachers but you can still find that space how you supposed to navigate that right we see a lot of language a lot of people talking about standardized tests have been a way of doing things the old

[21:51]  way right kids don't perform well on them because of test anxiety and everything like that so how are you supposed to integrate a new curriculum to kind of hit on the whole rounding of the human being while also still living up to those standardized tests that are so important I don't think it's easy and I think I think the context in which you are educating kids matters a lot so for example on the East Coast especially at a uh you know wealthy private school like it is high performing colleges is the only answer and so there's pressure on kids uh versus a public charter school like Carmen where we don't select our kids uh we get less per pupil dollars than the traditional Public Schools and we are held to a higher standard because we have to be reauthorized based on our data every 5 years and so the coin of the realm is your success in

[22:38]  those tests plus things that we should be measured on like average daily attendance or certified teachers things like that nonetheless one we know we're never going to get there like think about uh math or an English language arts curriculum there are dozens of Standards okay instead of breadth that's an inch deep and a mile wide go deeper go slower let kids ask those questions and along the way take your time to make sure that they are feeling heard feeling seen feeling safe in their school in their classro if that's happening they're going to be learning a lot more than just checking a box at the end of the year and if we don't hit that same academic you know criteria for that standardized test in year one it will

[23:27]  build and we will have better outcomes for more kids over time but you do have to trust that process a little bit and you have to be intentional and being grounded in those values and their systems and structures and I think the most important part after that is you have to have all the adults in the building on the same page right like you can have your own view of what it is to be a teacher in a school and that's fine but when we're hiring we're hiring for fit over performance and saying all right Keenan you might be the world's best math teacher but you got to buy into what we're selling around what we think about kids and how we're going to approach every day if you do that it's going to be great if you don't want to do that that's okay but go teach at another school because our school our flavors this and so that fit I think is

[24:16]  really important because changing the mind of an adult is a hard thing to do I'd rather spend our resources on kids this is interesting to me because it seems like especially in the world of educ from everything that I see from like the social Optics of it it seems like we have less and less teachers who are interested in coming into the space so when you're hiring for fit that seems really interesting to me because not everybody's going to be the right fit to teach these kids which seems kind of like the opposite of what youd be looking for which is really interesting to me well I think you know empathy is our first core value and I think that's huge because life is GNA happen right we had our quarterly data day our whole network team comes together 250 people once a quarter to talk about the goals that we set and how we're tracking

[25:03]  towards those goals how we can support teachers in the work and the work is hard and there are so many things outside of your control and there are so many teachers in environments where well-intentioned people are running those schools or those districts but you forget what it's like to be a teacher and so for us it starts with empathy and saying to every candidate who work who wants to work in our school every employee chooses to to work at Carmen hey these are the things that are non-negotiable around our values what we believe about children how we ask you to engage with one another assume the best seek to understand be Solutions oriented right lead with empathy if you're down with that and you are willing to grow in that you're going to be a happer human working in schools and we are going to

[25:51]  be able to better support you and then ultimately like in any job you're going to see more success feel better about the impact you're making and even though you're not making as much money as you want to because you just aren't you go home every day and you're like all right damn I feel good about the work I'm doing and I'm where I'm supposed to be and I might not be able to do this for 30 years but I could do it for five or 10 and a lot of teachers are in environments where that's not happening and they get burned out in one two three years and then they're out and they're not going to come back what is the objective of what we're trying to what is the outcome that we're trying to accomplish when it comes through putting these kids through kmen is it to go to higher education is it to have the transferable skills to be able to be effective in the marketplace what are you guys really focused on I'm gonna

[26:38]  throw it back at you for a minute and then I'll answer right I'm not avoiding the question uh what do you want when you were 15 18 years old what do you think you wanted or needed to be a successful human I think I needed the skills that were going to make me effective no matter what place I applied myself to it wasn't so much about higher education but I need to know how to be successful on the other side of that and I feel like that's why I didn't get along with the education process so well is because I couldn't create that connection but that's just me personally I think certainly there's a personal side there's always the individual component but I think what we're about at Carmen is creating a life of choice and opportunity for students whether they're going to be first generation uh in their family to go to college great or they want to be

[27:26]  uh jumping into a career and making you know 60 70,000 when they're 18 19 years old great for us it's about a choice a life of choice and opportunity and being able to add value as a as you build a family as you come back to a community as a leader in your community to make the world around you a better place whatever that means for you you can't do that very well if you can't do basic math if you can't read and write if you can't make your thinking visible in a way that shows the value you bring to an employer or even if you're going to be entrepreneur on your own you still have to be able to communicate your vision and then execute on it or rally others to help execute on that if you're able to do those things and by the way have self-awareness self-control and resilience with the ups and downs in

[28:13]  life you're successful whether you whatever your career choices are and so for us at Carmen that's key and a big pivot that we're making now is we're 18 years in 18 years ago 2007 the world looked very different and like a lot of high performing public Charters it was college orost and we have a really I think we could hang our hat if on one thing it's on the success of our kids graduating from high school getting to and through college and doing so with a little or no debt because of their own accomplishments but I think what's happened in the last few years and it's happening more and more is a lot of kids are saying college is awesome and I want access to it but I want to go to Career first because how many 18-year-olds know what they want to do in college I was a history major I

[29:00]  know what I was doing English Majors out there some kids are like yep I know exactly what I want good for them most don't so if career is a first step or family Dynamics are pressuring them to make some money right off the bat okay then it's our job to give them exposure so they know what's out there and then by the way in their back pocket they have college access if they want it or need it later I mean this comes back to the point of having that trusted adviser those conversations that you have through your education and process get the conversation started about what do you want to do because that answer is going to be different for every student and everybody and I feel like that's one of the things that I was missing in my educational process is no adult ever sat me down although I went to an incredibly well-known academic focused High School all guys Catholic school I never had

[29:50]  that one-on-one attention for somebody to ask Keenan what do you want out of the next level and I feel like it's that simple question that starts the mind and the gears running in somebody's mind about what do I want to do with the next step is college for me do I want to go career first do I want to go travel and do those type of things that's an interesting conversation but there's also a lot of responsibility that we put on the younger kids to be able to make those type of decisions but I don't think it's unwarranted no I don't either and I think it's really hard like again uh I came from a place where my family went to college so my mom walked every step beside me did a lot of things probably enabled me a little to make sure I had access to college a lot of kids don't have that and instead of saying to parents well that's your fault how do we walk with parents to help them help their kids so K and I point a lot to our College and Career Team uh so we

[30:37]  have college transition coordinators who work in schools with kids and then we have post transition coordinators who work with kids once they leave kit to really F make sure what do you want to do here are some options what's the right fit for you hey I want to go to NYU because I'm interested in film awesome does your family going to support you traveling across the country like that think about the cost of going back and forth think about the cost because at the end of it you got scholarship money but you're still going to owe X is that worth it or is it better go to these other options because you like film a lot but you're not sure it's a career and so helping I like big I like small I like this kind of weather I want to be in a place that there's other people that look like me versus I don't care about that and all of that is part of the calculus and so we do a good

[31:25]  job of walking kids through that and helping families especially think of a family 75% of our students are at x a lot of them their families immigrated from a South American country Mexico they may not have graduated high school they may not have gone through 8th grade they may not speak English navigating the US system is foreign so their kids have to be the Emissary so to your point a lot of pressure on the kid so those kids grow up fast but they still need their parents to help them they need their parents to support them so what can we do to make that happen we're not perfect at it but I think it's an area of strength for us first of all where was Carmen when I was going through school because some of these conversations would have been incredibly warranted I mean I've had some amazing leaders I recently had this guy on the podcast named Kevin Irvin he went to a school in the Bronx ended up going to a charter school that was very well funded

[32:12]  and got straight A all the way through school got into I want to say four or five different Ivory League schools but unfortunately never went because he couldn't fill out the fast information he filled it out incorrectly no funding for school went through a completely depressive episode and ended up finding his way and working in the public school system in a different way but he was the perfect example of somebody who was a first generation college student was smarter than can be but obviously didn't have the opportunity to take advantage of the next level of Education because his parents didn't know how to go through that process either this is a family experience for so many people which I think is really important to recognize yeah I think it absolutely is and first of all you seem like you're doing just fine so I'm not worried about you but what could what could have been done before you got to this point to help it make it easier right Fe did not

[33:01]  have to fight so hard to get where you wanted to go and sometimes we can't control that but I think we can help make the path a little bit easier for kids no doubt so here's a question we've talked you mentioned AI a couple times here today now when artificial intelligence through open AI um dropped in November of 22 it seemed like the education systems had two reactions one was keep this away from our students they're going to cheat plagiarism is going to go through the roof the other side was maybe we should explore what this technology me could mean to help our students do more more efficiently which side of the camp are you on and what do you think AI means for the education space well I'm definitely on the camp of it's a tool if we don't take advantage of it it's going to pass Us by and we're going to be short changing our kids right you know I used to work in as

[33:49]  a teacher before the internet was ubiquitous um and saw the value of it so AI is clearly like that on crack right I mean it is next generation level power and I think instead of being afraid of it I'm no expert in it but what I know is that it can make the life of a teacher a student anybody easier so whatever it is that like will help you navigate School navigate the areas in your life that you're weaker and you're a bad riter you're not necessarily the most creative uh you're bad at directions whatever the case may be take advantage of it so how do we sprinkle AI into what teachers are doing every day instead of saying like oh man Keenan's going to cheat and have ai plagiar his essay say okay how do we have him use AI

[34:38]  to write his essay and then that's a starting point for him to then modify it that's draft one he asked the questions right now how do we go to version two three and four that he has to do it's his voice he's the one doing the research it's just like a lot of times when I teach writing we use Wikipedia it wasn't the end all be but it was a starting point right go to wiki read about Keenan Hart understand his story because you want to write a narrative essay about him great now let's build off of that I think I'm simplifying it but I think AI is a tool that you can use in that sort of way plus a million ways I'm not smart enough to think about I mean but it starts with that that mindset of curiosity that we have to be able to explore and see what this could mean to us rather than saying this is either good or this is bad and I feel like it's right in the middle where the

[35:25]  answer is especially in a space like this because you have a younger gener ation of people who are used to using these tools generative AI conversational AI tools they're coming and they're not going anywhere and so we need to adopt or adapt the way in which we integrate these into the experience of Education which I feel like is awesome I agree so here's my here's the last topic I really want to kind of Riff on I mentioned a little bit about it seems like through the social Optics that we have less and less teachers who are coming into the space how are you thinking about casting a vision at kmen plus all the other things that you're doing that gets this next generation of teachers is inspired to come in and contribute so much of their time and their energy and do this hard work to impress the next Generation on how they need to be influenced it's a heavy question uh well so there are some things that are just you know right timing so at Carmen for

[36:13]  example we've never had our own um facility and we do for an elementary school but that's recent but we're building our own facility for the first time um and it'll be an 1100 person high school and we're able to design it super To Nuts the colors the windows the layouts the size of classrooms you know how kids are going to go through lunch the the wiring the it all of it so that makes for a better environment for a teacher because for most of my teaching experience I worked in places that had no AC right that intermittent heat would work the windows didn't work the all sorts of stuff right so having an environment that is conducive to teaching and learning and respecting the profession I think is really now we don't have all of our schools

[36:59]  like that we'll have one like that and then we'll build off of that I think showing respect to Educators if I'm answering your question correctly showing respect to the profession and to Educators and saying look we're not going to overburden you but we're also going to be real this is not a nine-to-five job I don't know at least in the first few years of education Any teacher who can do it by showing up at 7:30 and leaving at 3:30 and that's it so let's be real with our Educators about what it is that the job entails let's listen to what they need and be empathetic to the their life experiences let's not nickel and dime them on things like parental leave or mental health Le from time to time knowing that we also have to operate school every day even though they need that break uh let's make sure that we are investing in teachers and coaching them in a way that

[37:46]  makes them better supports their growth and impact and provides I wouldn't say upward Mobility but not everybody wants to be a teacher for 30 years some might want to Pivot into HR into Administration leadership you name it how are we building internal Talent pipelines that say we see your skill sets we see your passion how can we help you get there and by the way if you don't want to keep doing it at kmen that's okay if that means you're going to leave us after two three or 10 years let's maintain a positive relationship and let's help you get where you want to be as opposed to it being this scarcity mentality of there's not enough Math teachers out there so we got to steal them and borrow them and pay them more to manipulate the system we're still going to them out so it won't really matter in the end again I think that respect for education is powerful and I think the funding is really a big deal

[38:37]  right in Wisconsin There's Been growth there and unfortunately it's become a partisan Endeavor where right now the Republican side of the legislature seems to be open to funding non-traditional schools like a public charter or a voucher school um better than they have in the past but I don't want it to be about you your political party and I don't want it to be Charter versus public versus private not every charter school is good it's not a silver bullet not every public traditional public not every private is good um but there are certain conditions that allow for a successful experience for a teacher and a kid we don't have them all but we're working on it and there are many examples of them around the country so instead of being fearful and saying well well yeah but you're stealing from the um public you know traditional pie it's

[39:26]  like hey you're serving kids well you're growing good teachers let's borrow from you we see that in all sorts of Industries we should be seeing that in education too man I completely agree well I mean it's easy to understand Aaron why you are the definition of heart and hustle because of how much energy and how much time you're putting into this space and just the passion that comes with impressing and influencing the next generation of not only students but also the people who are in the classrooms educating and pouring so much into this next Generation man is something that I'm incredibly appreciative for you know one of the traditions we have here on the podcast as we kind of land the plane is our previous guest want to ask you a blind question now this is really interesting so what things right now give you hope and what are you most

[40:14]  optimistic about in your space that maybe you weren't five years ago I love that question and good stick um before I answer it I do have to say this I don't want to I don't want to be remiss I'm the the least important person in my organization everybody else does the work like in that work every day and they are who matter and my job is to support them make them feel seen and growing so like I'm truly I don't matter they matter I just get to be the face right um in terms of what makes me optimistic it's always the kids it's easy kids are kids no matter the environment they come in their optimism their res their short memories for things that are bad or relationships that go sour their

[41:02]  curiosity their enthusiasm they keep me young whether it's music or it's Social Media stuff or it's pop culture they're the ones telling me about it and then I'm cooler because of them so endlessly optimistic every day is different every day is exciting every day is brimming with what good could come um and so kids are amazing well love man that's a beautiful place for us to be able to put a bow on today's episode once again Aaron Litman thank you so much for joining us man the definition of heart and hustle brother thank you so much for joining me man I really appreciate it