Florida's Julie Young on Say Yes! How Virtual Became Reality

Albert: [00:00:00] Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Learning Curve Podcast. I’m one of your co-hosts, Albert Cheng, and co-hosting with me is Alisha Searcy. Alisha, what’s up?

Alisha: Albert, how are you?

Albert: I’m doing good. But you know, Alisha, I, I think we need to give a shout-out to Avonlea and I don’t know if our listeners know, she’s the person that’s been doing all the technical stuff- Yes to make this podcast possible. So besides wanting to thank her for that, she just ran a marathon yesterday, A whole marathon … or I forget which day, but recently. But hey-

Alisha: Yes …

Albert: kudos.

Alisha: Congratulations. Incredible. As I learned, 26.2 miles makes up a marathon. That is incredible.

And the fact that she’s still standing is amazing to me. But Av is amazing, so you can’t be surprised. So congrats to you, Av.

Albert: Well, Alisha- Yeah … we’ve got a great show today as well. We’re gonna have Julie Young join us again. Uh, she… we had her on not too long ago. She’s gonna come talk about recent book, Say Yes: How Virtual [00:01:00] Became Reality.

But before we do that, Alisha, let’s chat education news. What caught your eye this week?

Alisha: So I love this article. I feel like I wanna do a little quiz. I know you know the answer, but I’m gonna ask you- … and I’ll make everyone’s work a question. But an article in The Hill asked the question, “Do states that spend more on education get better grades?”

And I know you’re a researcher and you know the answer to this, but what do you think the answer is?

Albert: I’m not so sure that they do.

Alisha: And you would be correct. according to this article the NEA produces this report annually around essentially per pupil funding. They really study a number of things in terms of funding, but in this article, it talks about per pupil funding and the correlation, if there is one to how students are actually performing, and they use NAEP scores in this article to make that correlation or not.

And so there are a couple things, though, before I even jump into it. I think the term per pupil [00:02:00] funding is actually misleading and a misnomer, Because for people who are not in education, when you use the term per pupil funding, it makes it sound like that’s the dollar amount that’s actually going to kids.

It’s not. It really means the total amount of money- That a district spends on education divided by the number of students that they serve

Albert: Mm-hmm. That’s right

Alisha: It doesn’t mean that if a kid is struggling in math that they’re gonna get, you know, additional dollars necessarily because of how much the per pupil funding is.

I wanted to point that out, and I’m sure our listeners know that, And so I also say that to say you think about states like New York, which of course is up there. They’re at the top of the list with a little over $37,000 per student, which in a state like mine, I’m in Georgia, that’s like mind-blowing because we’re closer to, I think the number is 16.

I’ve got to look at the chart again. When I was a [00:03:00] superintendent, it was around 10,000 per kid. And so just the idea of $37,000 per student, again, not that each kid is getting it, but just to know to have that amount of money that’s being spent is incredible. The second thing that I want to point out is many people in my party in particular, and I have to acknowledge this, we talk about how we would fix education if we just spent more money.

But I think this article and this report that the NEA has put out shows that spending more money in education is not going to solve the problem. And so as you look at this list, and I’m going to go over it very quickly because I’m almost out of time New York is number one in terms of spending the most money, as I said, 37,000.

20 on that list is Minnesota at 19,000 per child. But then when you look at the rankings, guess what state is number one? Massachusetts for eighth grade mathematics as well as reading, but when it comes to f- [00:04:00] funding, they’re number four. Another example of that is Montana is number 10 on the list in terms of mathematics ratings.

They are 41 in their ranking but essentially the bottom line is there is no correlation between how much… If you spend more money, then you get better grades. And so I think we need to rethink our conversations about how we do education funding and more importantly, where the money is going.

I don’t think the problem in education is that we don’t have enough money. It is what are our priorities and how is it impacting student achievement. So those are my thoughts on this article but a very good piece, and I would encourage our listeners to check it out.

Albert: Well, thanks for sharing that, Lucia, and I appreciate your, constant reminders from time to time on the show about the lack of straightforwardness about spending and, student outcomes.

there’s a lot that goes into it- beyond just thinking at this high level view between these two variables. So appreciate that.

Alisha: Yeah. look at our ROI, right?

Albert: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that, I mean, it’s not everything, but it [00:05:00] matters. It does. It, it does matter, as, as, as you say, so, I got a article that I wanna highlight written by Andy I found it on Education Next. And the title is Governors Can Fix Higher Ed. and I, I forget, but we’ve recently been talking about gubernatorial leadership in ed reform. and Smarick actually reminds us about the gubernatorial leadership in the wake of Nation at Risk you know, that 1983 report that really drew public attention to student achievement.

you know, he reminds us that look, I mean, we, we kind of point to No Child Left Behind as this watershed moment where we really started focusing on test scores, but he reminds us that states since the 1980s, you know, governors have been leading on this. the point of the article, though, is he’s calling for governors to have another kind of Nation at Risk moment not with K-12 education, but with higher ed, and he points out some- Mm

ideas about how to do that. So I just wanna flag that article for our listeners to [00:06:00] consider. and maybe just, you know, float the news that I’ll be switching institutions and in the next few months, going to the Ohio State University to be a part of one of these reform efforts in higher ed.

So, anyway, that’s a heck of a way to break that news, but I don’t know- … a good way to have done that. But anyway, check out that article. it’s worth all of us considering as well.

Alisha: Agreed. And so let me say this. I’m so glad that he has brought up this point, and I would argue that, yes, we need it for higher ed and for K-12.

And we would love to see more governors leading on both of those so he makes a great point. And we’re not going to just lose this moment that you are moving institutions and will be a part of some groundbreaking research. So can we also officially congratulate you for moving on in this new assignment at the Ohio State University and the work that you’ll be doing there?

This is pretty outstanding and a very big deal, so congratulations,

Albert: thanks, Alicia. yeah, looking forward to running this show [00:07:00] from that perch. So, thanks for saying that.

Alisha: Very exciting.

Albert: All right, enough about us. We got Julie Young to get to, so- Yes

Julie Young is an entrepreneur, an educator, an innovator, and visionary leader renowned for her expertise in school design for diverse educational models, including virtual, blended, and technology-enhanced learning. She is the author of Say Yes! How Virtual Became Reality, published in twenty twenty-six, and co-editor of Virtual Schools, Actual Learning: Digital Education in America, published in twenty twenty-five.

As the vice president of educational outreach and student services at Arizona State University, and in her former role as CEO and senior advisor to ASU Preparatory Academy and ASU Prep Global, she played a pivotal role in integrating innovative digital strategies into education. Young’s pioneering work began [00:08:00] as the founding president and CEO of Florida Virtual School in nineteen ninety-seven.

And in that visionary role, she not only embraced virtual schooling but helped lay the groundwork for an entire industry. She envisioned and built FLVS into a trailblazing incubator, continually testing and evolving innovative digital learning models while cementing Florida’s reputation as an epicenter of virtual school advancement.

Young led FLVS as its president and CEO for over seventeen years, building one of the nation’s first fully online public schools while exploding enrollment made it the largest state virtual school in the United States. Her transformative tenure set key precedents for the future of education reinvention in the digital age.

Julie, great to have you back on the show. Welcome again.

Julie: Thank you so much for having me. I’m glad to be here today.

Albert: Well, I’m looking forward to about your new book Say Yes! How Virtual Became Reality. [00:09:00] the title Say Yes feels deeply personal. Was this a reference to a moment that you said yes perhaps building Florida Virtual or something else?

Tell us about the title.

Julie: Yeah, so the title has two parts of meaning. Say Yes has to do with the fact that I have rarely and probably never actually planned my next step of my career. But I took the opportunity to say yes frequently when opportunities arose, and oftentimes had little to no idea what I was saying yes to.

So that really refers to just kinda jumping in, taking a risk, and deciding to try something new. And then of course, how virtual became reality really speaks to just the idea of building an industry and having the- Mm-hmm … opportunity to start Florida Virtual School from, scratch. Really, it was just a, a vague idea at the time, and when I said yes to Florida Virtual School, I actually [00:10:00] had no idea what I was really saying yes to.

so the book really is about h- how all this evolved and kinda my story of the last 30 years in virtual education.

Albert: Well, we appreciate that insider explanation the title. But let’s get into the book, which, which as you just said is, is your story. So let’s start with the distinction that you make between remote learning and virtual education.

That distinction matters quite a lot to you. Can you help listeners understand what the difference is and why this matters? I, I assume remote learning is maybe a reference to what happened during the pandemic, but you seem to be making a distinction there.

Julie: Yeah, you know, up until the, pandemic, we would, definitely not be discussing this, especially remote learning.

we often talked about remote working. However this is probably something I have become most passionate about in the last few years, because I feel like the confusion between these two [00:11:00] things did damage to real kids, and it also damaged the reputation of something that had been working beautifully for decades.

Remote learning, as it played out in 2020, in my opinion, was essentially an emergency evacuation. Teachers took what they had been doing in a classroom and overnight attempted to move it into a Zoom room. Same structure, same assumptions, just a different screen. There was no design behind it, no intentionality about how learning actually works in an online environment, and in, in many cases, no real understanding of what students needed to stay engaged and supported from home And I say all that with love because I feel like what we did as a nation to our teachers is, you know, inexcusable in terms of how this all played out.

when you really look at this, [00:12:00] virtual education, what we have been building at for many years, what we have been building at Florida Virtual School, w- since 1997, and then on at ASU Prep Digital since 2017 it’s something entirely different. It’s purposeful. It’s designed from the ground up around the learner.

It uses mastery-based progression, so students move forward when they actually learn something, and not because the calendar says it’s time to turn the page. And, during the, pandemic, that was absolutely major flaw in terms of the execution of the learning process at the time.

There was panic and fear of learning not taking place, and because of that panic and fear, learning in many s- circumstances did not take place. You know, strong virtual education builds connections. It builds human connections in very deliberate ways, and requires that you have a fundamentally different relationship between your [00:13:00] teacher and your student based on coaching and responsiveness, not delivery and compliance.

And delivery and compliance is what we did during the pandemic. So, I will complete this very passionate thought with the fact that, you know, I have said it then and I will keep saying it, virtual education did not fail during the pandemic. Remote learning did, and lumping them together is not only inaccurate, it is genuinely harmful to the students and the educators and to the industry, who deserve these, better options.

Albert: Thanks for sharing that, and, that’s a lot to consider. And what, you know, what you’re discussing really is something different. and with that, I, I wanna ask you to talk about conversation I guess you had with then Governor Jeb Bush telling you, quote, “I’ve taken you out of the box.

Don’t put yourself back in.” So give us the background behind that conversation, and how did that conversation shape the [00:14:00] way you led Florida Virtual School?

Julie: that moment, I’m actually having a few goosebumps here. That moment has stayed with me for nearly 30 years, and I think about it constantly even now.

It would’ve been so easy for us to simply replicate what we knew, how we had been trained in this new medium, this new online environment. But when Governor Bush said that we were only two years into what was essentially still a pilot program, and the resistance was still quite significant.

School leaders were threatened. There were people in positions of authority who either didn’t understand what we were doing or actively wanted us to fail. The pressure to dial it back and make it look more like a traditional school was very real, and it was constant. What he gave me [00:15:00] in that moment was permission.

not just his permission, though that mattered – enormously at the time. He gave me permission from myself. He named something I think I already knew, that fitting back into the box was a choice, and it was one that I did not have to make. So from that point on, whenever we hit resistance, and we hit it regularly, I would come back to that, not as a justification for stubbornness, but as a reminder, you know, that bold ideas require a certain kind of nerve.

y- you have to be willing to stand in the discomfort of being misunderstood for long enough to prove what’s possible. And so that conversation gave me the grounding to do that, not only in that moment, but for the many, many years to come.

Albert: Well, I’d like to h- maybe hear you say a bit more about that maybe in this next question.

You know, [00:16:00] one of your core beliefs is, quote, “Any time, any place, any path, any pace.” So sounds straightforward and simple enough but your contention is that the education system that we’ve, you know, have known for quite a bit is built on exactly the opposite premise. So could you unpack that for us, and, what did it take to fight that system and imagine another way?

Julie: Well, it took everything we had, and I truly mean that. I think we all are aware that the traditional system is held in place not just by habit, but by law, by funding structures- deeply embedded assumptions about what school is supposed to look like. The 180-day calendar, the seat time requirements, grade levels based on age rather than mastery, all of those things are codified, and they are defended fiercely.

They [00:17:00] are the law. So I think one of the most consequential battles we fought was over funding. Traditional schools are funded based on enrollment and attendance. If you aren’t in a seat, then you don’t generate revenue for that school, for that district. You know, the right measure of success wasn’t whether a student showed up, but whether they learned.

And we all know, I think most anyone, including the lawmakers who uphold these laws know, that just because you show up to a school building each day, that does not mean that you are learning. So that was a fundamental reorientation of how the system thought about itself, and it required working with legislators building relationships across the aisle, and being willing to make the case over and over again to people who weren’t really ready to hear it.

We also had to prove it. [00:18:00] So numbers mattered. And I talk about in the book that Florida Tax Watch did an independent assessment on Florida Virtual School. It was the first independent assessment on Florida Virtual School. And lo and behold, and thank goodness, found that our students were outperforming their peers in traditional classrooms, and that changed conversations.

You can debate philosophy all day long, but it’s certainly much harder to argue with results. you know, what it really took was a team of people who absolutely refused to give up. They were just relentless. We were relentless. We had people at every level of the organization who believed in what we were building and were willing to fight for it.

And that culture of commitment was the real engine, I believe, that it took to day after day, year after year, persevere and fight the system.

Albert: Well, speaking of [00:19:00] perseverance, I mean, you started with a $200,000 grant and 77 students but now you serve hundreds of thousands of students across 68 countries.

What was the moment you realized that what you were doing early on was- Going to become something much bigger than just a pilot program.

Julie: I talk about this a little bit in book. You know, there were those moments took place that you went, hmm. And then they built on each other.

And the early one that stays with me was watching students who had been completely disengaged in the traditional schools come alive online. And more goosebumps. But parents would call us and say things like, I don’t know what you’re doing, but my child actually wants to, quote unquote, do school now. And that was not a data point.

That was a human transformation. it really told me we had touched [00:20:00] something real. And so real students and those real moments, certainly early started to make us realize that we might be on to something. And then there was the legislative moment when Florida established FLBS into statute in 1999.

That shifted everything as well. We went from being an experiment in that moment to an institution. And that opened doors to scale that we couldn’t have accessed before. so that was certainly a landmark milestone. But think the moment I truly understood the scope of what was possible was when we started hearing from students in rural districts who had never had access to advanced placement courses or world languages.

These were kids whose zip codes had been determining their ceiling for years. And we were removing that ceiling. And when we [00:21:00] realized that we could reach a student in a small town in rural Florida and that student now had access to the same coursework as a student in an affluent suburb, it struck us, weren’t just building a school.

We were building equity. And one of the most amazing feelings in the world to actually think about the opportunity that we were giving to these students that they had no other way to avail themselves to.

Alisha: Julie, this has been so refreshing listening to you talk, and very inspiring. We happen to be doing a lot of celebrating on this episode, so I wanna begin by just celebrating you, hearing your personal accounts learning about your journey. we’ve had you on the show, of course, before, but one thing that’s always stuck with me is the way you talk about the difference between, like, COVID learning, right, and what was [00:22:00] attempted versus what real virtual learning is.

And so I just wanna thank you for trailblazing, right? And, and the work that you’ve done over the years. I could hear it in your voice the impact that you know that you’ve made and you’ll probably never know the full impact when you talk about equity and just bringing opportunities to kids who would not otherwise have it.

So just thank you. Kudos to you.

Julie: Thank you. Thank you very much. was, it was a shared ordeal.

Alisha: Yes.

Julie: It was a voyage.

Alisha: Understood. the book is very honest about the internal doubts and the external resistance that you faced. Can you talk to us about how you built a culture at FLVS that could survive that kind of sustained opposition while still staying focused on kids?

Julie: Well, I think culture was everything. I think culture is everything. But going back to that time, culture was everything in the moment, and I say that without any hesitation. You can have the best idea in the [00:23:00] world, but if people around you aren’t grounded in a shared set of values, the weight of the resistance will just eventually collapse it.

And so from the very beginning, we were intentional about who we brought in and why. We hired people who were curious, who were student-centered, and who could tolerate ambiguity change, because change was constant. And so when we think about ambiguity and we think about change, a certain type of person can manage that and others cannot.

And we weren’t looking for people who needed a clear roadmap because we were making the map as we went. And so how we went about interviewing and onboarding was intense, and I talk about that a great deal in the book. We also had to feed that culture constantly. We were a virtual organization [00:24:00] ourselves, which meant we had to find ways to create connection and belonging across distance.

we had to do that for our students, but we had to do that for ourselves as well. And, we spent a lot of time- A tremendous amount of time on culture. We recognized people publicly every chance we had so that all of our staff would know they were real people and that we saw them even though we didn’t see them visually all the time.

This was back when, you know, there were just phones. And where we are today, when we think about where we are today with Zoom and how we operate it could not have been further from the current state. So we created rituals, and those rituals reminded everyone why the work mattered.

So we made sure that student success stories, not enrollment numbers or budget figures, were what got celebrated most. I mean- Mm-hmm … certainly the [00:25:00] numbers mattered. That’s how we were paid. But we spent a tremendous amount of time sharing student stories. And I would ask staff, you know, “Send me your great stories.

Send me your, your successes.” And then I would share that with the entire staff and, and, you know, it got to be a thing. People loved it when their stories were shared with the rest of the team. I think the other thing, too within all of the goodness, I was very transparent about the struggles.

I didn’t pretend things were fine when they weren’t. I think that when leaders try to protect kind of false confidence in the middle of a fight, people can feel it, and it erodes trust. So I would rather say, you know, “This is hard, and here is what we’re gonna do about it, and we’re gonna face it together.”

And thought that was super important, and I think that’s a leadership style issue. I believe that there are some organizations where, you know, at the leadership level, you have all the [00:26:00] information. Information is power, and I think sometimes there’s fear of sharing the reality of the good, the bad, and the ugly.

And I made sure everyone knew that, you know what? We’re in this together. We were created by the stroke of a pen, and we could be undone by the stroke of a pen, and we’re all in this together. So we stayed focused on the why with almost stubborn consistency. We were there for kids. When the debates got noisy, when the politics got complicated, we always came back to the student, always the student, and that was our anchor.

Alisha: Wow. Beautifully said. So you went from FLVS to founding ASU Prep Digital, starting over in many ways. What did you learn from building FLVS that you deliberately chose not to replicate when you started fresh at Arizona State?

Julie: You know, that [00:27:00] is such an important question, and it is one I had to wrestle with, honestly, before I could answer it well.

First of all, getting to spend 17 years at Florida Virtual School, and literally being, given the license to make it up as we went along, and use our judgment to actually tailor an organization to student learning, and all the freedoms that we were, we’re allowed was such an incredible privilege.

Getting to actually take that learning and replicate it was amazing. obviously the temptation that you have with a successful model is to replicate it. You know what worked. You have that muscle memory, so to speak, and you’re proud of what you built. And FLVS was something to be so proud of, absolutely, no question.

But I had to be disciplined about reminding myself that a new [00:28:00] context demands a new design, and we were absolutely in a new context by being associated and within a university system such as Arizona State University. So one thing I was very intentional about not replicating, was the K12 boundary itself.

We very much thought of our new world as K20 and later, you know, pre-K to gray. So, you know, FLVS was built within the existing structure of a secondary school. Started as a high school. And at ASU, we had this extraordinary partner whose charter is to be measured not by whom it excludes, but by whom it includes, and we live that charter every day.

And so that opened a door to think about a seamless K through 20 pathway, where the lines between high school and college are intentionally blurred. [00:29:00] And we didn’t just wanna build a better high school. We wanted to build a launchpad, and we certainly had the environment to do so. So I was very deliberate about that.

I was also more deliberate about staffing models from the very start. at FLVS, we evolved as we learned with our staffing models over time, and we learned as we went. At ASU Prep- We had the benefit of that experience, and we built structures like the learning success coach role from the very beginning.

Mm-hmm. That is a role that we did not have at FLVS, and, we came in knowing that teachers needed partners to focus on the whole child not just the academic content.

Alisha: So you mentioned um, learning success coach model. Would love for you to talk more about this, but also a compelling [00:30:00] chapter on staffing where you do mention the learning success coach model. Why do you think rethinking who does what in a school is so central to your vision of what personalized learning actually requires?

Julie: it’s a great question, and I think it is because personalized learning is a promise that the staffing model has to be able to keep. And if you think about what I just said, we can talk about personalized learning all day long, but if we are not staffed in order to actually carry it out, you can design the most beautiful mastery-based, student-centered curriculum and model in the world you can build the technology infrastructure to support it, but if you then drop it into a staffing model that is designed for a factory school, then you get a factory school outcome.

And the structure actually will win. And there is constant tension [00:31:00] if you do not have enough people to actually take care of the child. So teachers are extraordinary professionals, but as I said before, I think we have consistently asked them to do too many things at once. They instruct, they assess, they counsel, they communicate with the families, they manage behavior issues, they handle all kinds of administrative tasks, and somehow they still find time to actually get to know each individual student, and hopefully deeply.

That is not a reasonable expectation And it leads to burnout and to students falling through the cracks. there was a moment in time because our model was so intense at Florida Virtual School in terms of how we took care of the student, that we actually talked about the fact that when we hired teachers, that we might only have them for a three-year window [00:32:00] because we pretty much expected that they would likely burn out from the intensity of the job.

So thinking about, you know, when we started over, the learning success coach role was a direct response to that reality. And by creating a dedicated role focused on the whole student, on the relationships and on keeping learners engaged and supported, we were able to then free the teachers up to do what they do best, which is teach, and we were able to ensure that no student was invisible.

The learning success coach title was very specific about the fact that we wanted the title to speak to what that individual was responsible for doing- Mm-hmm … and that was creating learning success. our goal was to truly design for personalization, and so we had to ask a different set of questions.

[00:33:00] not just what will students learn, but who will know them? Who will notice when they’re struggling before it becomes a crisis or they disappear? And who will connect their learning to their actual goals and their dreams? And we felt like that required a different kind of team, not just a different kind of content.

Alisha: Hmm. That’s so good. What I appreciate most about this interview and hearing from you is that your book is as much a leadership story as it is an education story. Could you tell us what you think the single most important thing you learned about leading change in an institution that doesn’t want to change?

Can you just help us solve all of the complexity of K-12 education? Please and

Julie: thanks. Sure. I think This sounds very s- simple, but you have to care more about the outcome than about your own comfort. Hmm. And you have to [00:34:00] be comfortable being uncomfortable. And again, that, that sounds simple, but it’s genuinely quite hard to live.

Leading change means accepting that you will be misunderstood It means you’ll be criticized and sometimes actively undermined by people who are threatened by what you are doing. And so the natural human response to that is to pull back, to soften the edges, and find accommodations that make the discomfort go away.

Well, I didn’t do that. We did not do that. The leaders I have admired most, and the ones I tried to emulate, are the ones who could hold the vision steady under the kind of pressure without becoming rigid or dismissive of the people pushing back. you had to listen to them, you had to understand them.

But I learned very quickly that resistance is information. Mm-hmm. The resistance [00:35:00] tells you where the fear is and where the stakes are the highest, and where you need to build those bridges rather than just fully forward. And that was important. And we read a book together called A Complaint Is a Gift, and really tried to get all staff’s attitudes and focus on the fact that, you’re not hearing about the resistance, then you’re very likely not seeing the forest for the trees.

I think the other thing I’d like to add to this is that I also learned that you cannot lead change alone, and that people closest to the work almost always see things you can’t.

I was never the smartest person in the room at FOVS, and I didn’t need to be. What I needed was to build a team of people who were smarter than me and, trusted enough to tell me when I was wrong.

And that I could [00:36:00] truly feel confident had my back, and that we collectively wanted the same things. We wanted the same outcome. And so, once we built that trust and we were truly staying focused on the student, when the arguments got complicated and the politics got loud, again, we would just always come back to the student, and that clarity of purpose, I think, was the most powerful leadership tool I know and that we had.

Alisha: Wow. That is exceptional. Thank you.

And the book is called A Complaint Is a Gift?

Julie: Yes.

Alisha: I love that.

Julie: It’s it is really a great book about how to receive feedback and how to, you know… A, a lot of us want to avoid that.

Alisha: Right.

Julie: And so we, you know, really had a cultural attitude of seeking it-

Alisha: Ooh, that takes a lot of courage [00:37:00] and vulnerability and transparency.

Thank you for that. great leadership lessons. Phenomenal. My last question I’m really interested , in hearing your thoughts here. As you look at where AI and emerging technology are taking education, what gives you hope and what is keeping you up at night?

Julie: Ah. Well, I think both answers come from the same place, honestly, which is the sheer speed and scale of what is coming.

That gives me hope, and it also definitely keeps me up at night. What gives me hope is that AI has the genuine potential to make personalized learning a reality for every child, and not just the ones whose families can afford tutors or specialized programs like we had. The ability to identify exactly where a student is, what they need next, and how to reach them as an individual, and to do that at scale, [00:38:00] is something educators have dreamed about for generations.

I know we did. It was our original intent. We did, I think, an incredibly amazing job of personalizing learning with no tools. And, we were doing our best to approximate it. And AI can take it to a level that we couldn’t have even imagined in 1997. So that is something that gives me hope.

I’m also hopeful about the possibility of credentialing informal learning. I really believe that for the first time we are close to being able to recognize and validate the learning that happens outside of the classroom, and the skills a student builds through a job or a passion project or some kind of a community experience.

And I think that has enormous implications for equity and gives credence to the fact that learning takes place everywhere. [00:39:00] And what we have had difficulty doing as educators and in, in our education space is being able to codify that, and therefore we haven’t been able to use it to the fullest extent.

Now what keeps me up at night is that the same tool that could democratize learning could also widen the gap if we don’t get the design right.

Technology has never been inherently good or bad. It reflects the intentions and the values of the people who build it and deploy it. And if we rush AI into classrooms without the same care and intentionality- That we brought to building quality virtual learning, I think we will repeat the mistakes of the pandemic.

We’ll call it innovation when it is actually just an acceleration of some of the same old inequities. I hope that educators and leaders who are paying attention right now, and who [00:40:00] understand that design matters as much as the tool, will have the courage to say yes to the possibilities while staying really grounded in what’s always been true, which is that, you know, learning is fundamentally a human endeavor, and the relationship between a caring adult and a curious child is something no algorithm replaces.

So I truly am an advocate of AI, and it’s already here, and I don’t believe that we should keep it out of our classrooms. I think we have to learn how to bring it into our classrooms with intentional design.

Alisha: Well said.

So before we let you go, we would love to hear an excerpt from your book.

Julie: Well, that makes me happy. I would love to read an excerpt from my book. This was hard to choose somewhere, something that, you know, a, a certain excerpt. But I am on page 48 and [00:41:00] 49 under Unboxing Imagination. “Imagine this scene. It was the first meeting for the Orange County team.

We gathered at a round table and I placed a piece of paper in the middle of the table with the word student written on it in bold letters. ‘ Let’s play a game.’ I could feel the eyes roll. ‘ This game is a series of what ifs. There are rules. First, think big, dream big, and forget about your training. No small thinking allowed.’

There was silence. ‘ Second, play the game not as a teacher, but as a parent, a big brother or sister or aunt or an uncle, a godparent, maybe even a caring neighbor. Have a particular child in mind, one you care for very deeply. Third, forget all the rules. Assume there are no rules.’ That one threw them. More silence, [00:42:00] but at least they were listening.

‘ Ready? Let’s play.’ I dove in. ‘What if we didn’t have to follow the traditional classroom structure? What if we could design a school that combines the nurturing, close-knit feel of an elementary school with the high standards and innovative practices of a private secondary school?’ What if school doesn’t have to start at 7:00 AM when a child’s brain and body are not attached, nor end at 2:30 or 3:00 in the afternoon when it’s time for football practice?

What if when a student approaches the end of a semester or school year with the dread of a failing grade, the student could just keep learning rather than accept failure because time is up? And the most important what if, what would happen if we flip the switch, putting students, not adults, at the center of every decision?

What would change? The room [00:43:00] fell silent again. I had put a lot of thought into the way forward before that first meeting, so the prolonged silence was concerning. To be fair, none of us had ever had the freedom or flexibility to voice such questions or to dream about alternatives. A paralysis initially gripped the team until it slowly dawned on them that they had a license to reinvent education, and the grant represented a clear expectation that they would.

Finally, Phyllis Lentz and Sharon Johnston, both veteran teachers of the highest caliber, responded almost in unison, “Everything. Everything would change.” Truer words were never spoken.

Alisha: Julie, thank you so much for being with us. This has been a great interview, great hearing your insights and your, journey and your lessons about leadership.

Learned a whole lot today, so thank you so much for being with us.

Julie: You are very, very [00:44:00] welcome. Thank you.

Albert: Well, Alisha we just had one of these episodes again where we got to hear from Julie. I know she’s been on before, but as a school leader with all that experience you know, it’s amazing to, to kind of hear her story and, Yeah … have some lessons to be learned as we think about Everfall

Alisha: Yeah, and I think what was slightly different, and I appreciated it, is just kind of the personal journey that we heard more about.

You know, she’s been at this for a very long time, and so to hear her lessons learned stories from the field, if you will and continuing to make those distinctions, right, about virtual education I think were really important and powerful. So great interview.

Albert: Well, that’s gonna bring us to the end of our show.

But before we bid you farewell, let me leave you with a tweet of the week. This one comes from the Progressive Policy Institute. Quote, “The new Workforce Pell Program offers a critical opportunity to expand registered apprenticeship, one of America’s most effective earn and learn [00:45:00] pathways.” An article from Brio Mano.

so check it out. And then check us out next week for another episode on this podcast. We’re gonna have Professor Kevin Gutzman. He is a professor and former chairman in the Department of History at Western Connecticut State University, and the author of The Jeffersonians: The Visionary Presidencies of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe.

So Alisha, thanks for joining me again.

Alisha: Yes.

Albert: Pleasure as always.

Alisha: Always great to hang out with you.

Albert: Yep. And for the rest of you, have a great one. We’ll see you next week.

Alisha: Yes. Take care.