Is this the most exciting time in education history?

"It’s the end of the world as we know it.

It’s the end of the world as we know it.

It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine."

-R.E.M.

The potential for innovation and new solutions to deliver education has never been so high.  Traditional learning models, like those many of us grew up with, are being transformed.  It seems every few months a new idea for learning is being introduced.  In just the last few years, we’ve seen examples such as, distance learning, blended learning, personalized learning, and flipped classroom models take off.  Many in the education world believe we’re just getting warmed up!  I am optimistic because the capabilities technology and the web deliver are creating powerful tools that will continue to advance and become more readily available to everyone. 

During this time of transformational innovation, it is critical we keep our focus on learning and not on technology.  We have to make sure we aren’t just automating education, and/or making it more efficient.  Turning a textbook into a etextbook or moving from delivering a lecture in a class to delivering a lecture on video are examples of what I mean. 

I am passionate about education because I know first hand that education can be the silver bullet for millions of children and their families living in poverty.  Education has the potential to break the cycle of poverty in just one generation.  I believe this because like countless others I’ve met throughout my journey, I am living proof.  

The worry I have is that the education I received isn’t suitable for the world we live in today and not nearly suitable for the world we are constructing.  It’s an absolute certainty that students are going to need more advanced skills.  For example, we often talk about collaboration and global competency skills.  Today, we can work with anyone, anywhere in the world but our schools are still treating students as individuals who must work alone.  What would you do if you were a teacher and two students walked up to the front of your class, handed you a test, and said, “We did this together!”  Why is collaboration cheating? 

We need to make sure their learning experiences provide them the relevance and engagement they need as they build the skills for the future. It’s more than just building digital citizenship skills; they need to become digital leaders. 

In order to make this a reality, we need to focus on three key areas.   

First, we need to make sure schools have adequate broadband access.  We would never run a school without lights or heat.  For many schools, Internet access is considered a “nice to have” commodity, not a necessity.  Yet our education system is preparing students for a world where the Internet is ingrained into higher education, business practices, and our daily lives in general, a world where many of the latest teaching tools run on the web.  

Second, we need to leverage the power and prevalence of the web as we create new learning models.  Most students nowadays are growing up with the understanding that the web is where they go to get the knowledge and resources they are looking for.  By recognizing that how we learned is different than the way our children learn, school leaders can take advantage of the habits this tech-literate generation have developed.  This became painfully clear to me when my daughter and I were buying her a ukulele when we visited Hawaii a couple of years ago.  As we were leaving the store, I noticed instruction books and DVDs on how to play the ukulele.  I asked my daughter if she wanted to pick some up so she can learn how to play (after all, that was how I learned).  She looked at me like there was something wrong with me.  Of course, she doesn’t need an instruction book or DVD.  She is going to learn by watching YouTube videos.  As educators, we are starting to understand the impact the web can have.  Videos, web applications, interactive content, and collective pools of knowledge make the world’s information accessible from multiple devices 24 hours a day seven days a week.  

Third, we have to put tools in the hands of teachers and students so that they can access the rich content of an ever-expanding web.  School administrators need to choose devices that not only give students and faculty access to that content, but that are also pain-free and easy to use.  The devices have to be near invisible so that the focus remains on the teaching and learning, not the technology.  What school leaders need is to think about is what happens when you go from having 30 computers in a classroom, to 30,000 in a school district.  How you scale and how you manage the technology is a critical part of planning how to integrate it into the curriculum.  Just as important, we have to let teachers develop the knowledge, skills, and abilities to take advantage of these tools.  Today’s teachers are the ones who are going to create the new learning models we will use for generations to come!  Great professional development has never been so important.

This is an exhilarating time in education.  I know if we continue to be innovative and open to new ideas, education can be the silver bullet it was for me.  I am looking forward to watching the traditional model expand into engaging and relevant methods that will prepare our students to live in what is becoming the most stimulating and exhilarating time in history!

Ghettosuperstar

“Ghetto superstar, that is what you are

Comin' from afar, reachin' for the stars

Run away with me, to another place…”
- Mya

I recently participated in a Google Hangout interview for a podcast from my home office in Phoenix.  On my wall behind my desk, and in clear view of any video call I’m on, hangs big wooden hand made letters.  They spell “GHETTOSUPERSTAR.”  I was asked about it during the interview and I thought the explanation needed a little more context.  The letters were a Father’s Day gift from my creative daughter who lovingly carved them with a table saw.  The project took her weeks to complete and I’m actually surprised, and very thankful, she still has all her fingers. 

I acquired the nickname while I was at Accenture (when it was still called Andersen Consulting).  On many Fridays, I used to write “Jaime rant” emails (before we called them blogs) that I shared with my friends at the firm.  A particular one I wrote, “why I was staying at Andersen,” was a reaction to the number of ‘goodbye’ emails we were all getting from fellow consultants leaving and joining the thousands of start-ups that were booming in the middle of the tech bubble.  I wrote a ‘fake’ email about my decision to stay at the firm and included all the reasons why I decided to stay.  Those I sent it to must have liked it because they forwarded it to their friends and networks.  Before I knew what was happening, it was being read and forwarded by thousands of consultants all over the world.  By Wednesday, the CEO had read it and he decided to forward it to all 70,000 employees with his thoughts on it.  It was a stunning “Jerry Maguire” experience and something I will never forget!  I had to respond to thousands of emails from consultants all over the world.

One of those first email forwards that was passed around and ended up in the inbox of many employees, was from a close friend who added to the forward, “from my friend Jaime Casap, the Ghetto Superstar,” referring to my background and to a song that was hot and all over the radio that summer.  Before I knew it, I started seeing it in emails and hearing it in meetings.

Nicknames come and go (and I had several in my life) but I still use the Ghettosuperstar one because for me,  it has come to symbolize that I should always remember where I came from and how I should always be proud of it.  For the longest time I hid where I came from or how I grew up.  I didn’t lie, I just never talked about it.  I felt people would look at me differently or think of me less if they knew my story.  Speaking to lots of other professionals who grew up like I did, I wasn’t the only one who felt this way.

Whenever I get the chance to talk to a class or a school of students, especially kids growing up in poor urban areas, I take it!  I will always try and make it work (even if we have to do it via video).  Students in these schools get to hear from guest speakers every once in a while at occasions like career days, or parent events.  They get to hear what it takes to be a lawyer, or a doctor, or a firefighter.  They get to listen to how important education is and how hard they have to work if they want to succeed.  I like to talk to them because I am someone who knows exactly what they are going through.  I lived exactly as they live and it’s important for them to hear from "one of their own," to think, "if he made it, then I can also make it!"  

Of course I start with the “what it’s like to work at Google” story.  Students love to hear these stories.  I get a chance to convince them all to go into computer science, engineering, or any of the sciences.  I tell them that if they work hard and get a great education, the payoff in the end will be well worth it.  I do this while I show them slides of people playing volleyball, playing pool, or writing scooters in the office (not something I would recommend by the way – ask me why if you see me).  I get them pretty excited about the possibility of developing a set of skills that create useful applications millions use or solve problems.  Before I start, I always ask them, “how many of you want to be engineers?” It never fails.  Maybe one hand go up, if I’m lucky.  When I’m done, I ask again and all the hands shoot straight up.  One of my favorite memories is of a seven grader who added, “I want to be one RIGHT NOW!”  We need to continue to beat the science drum any chance we get!  We all know the high paying careers of the future will require skills in the sciences.  More importantly, we want to create the entrepreneurs who will create the next 100 million jobs!  These science skills are critical to all our students.

The other reason I talk to students directly is to give them a pep talk.  I believe there are some critical messages they need to hear.  From my own experience, I know they don’t get to hear these messages enough.  I tell them that they should be proud of who they are and where they are from.  I tell them that some folks have low expectations on whether they will succeed and that their motivation should be to prove them wrong.  I tell them that their experiences, what they see in their neighborhood, and the lessons they learn on the street, will all be competitive advantage when they get older.  I tell them that their cultural background will be unique in whatever field they chose to go into.  I tell them that they will have a different perspective, that they will look at problem solving and creativity from a unique point of view.  I tell them to work hard, get a great education, and be successful.  I tell them to go out in the world and be ghetto super stars.

Education as the Silver Bullet

“PS 111 had free lunch

Embarrassed but managed to get a plate

We was kids hungry

Mom's working, I was famished

She getting home late

So I decided now I'm in charge

Either stay full or starve…”

-NAS

I often start presentations with the idea that education is a silver bullet.  I believe the reason we all care about, and are passionate about education, is because we all understand the importance of being educated and what it can do for us.  The idea that “you need an education” applies to all classes and across all the ages.  This is especially true if you are born into a cycle of poverty. 

From my own experience, I know an education can literally change a family’s destiny in just one generation.  In addition to the impact education has to a immediate family, there is a domino effect that cascades across the community.

I am a first generation American, born in Hell’s Kitchen, NY and raised by a single mother who illegally emigrated from Argentina.  My mother spoke only Spanish so I showed up at PS 111 for kindergarten and had no idea what anyone was saying.  English is technically my second language.  I grew up on welfare in a nasty environment where I saw my first murder at 10 years old.  My friend’s mother killed her boyfriend with a kitchen knife in their apartment two buildings over.  We were having a sleep over at my place that night but we were supposed to stay at his place.  I was shot at when I was 15, had a loaded gun shoved into my mouth when I was 16,  and went to more funerals in high school than most people go in two life times.  Crime and drugs were just part of my every day experience and Hell’s Kitchen was the proud birthplace of crack.  I saw my first vial three years before it showed up on the cover of Time as a “ghetto epidemic.” I didn’t need Nancy Regan to encourage me to “just say no,” I figured out all on my own that I didn’t want to spend my evenings at Grand Central Station “taking care” of commuters in the men’s room for a few dollars to buy my next hit.  Many people I grew up with hopelessly tried to support their new habit.

I think one of the reasons it’s so hard to break the cycle of poverty is human nature.  You just don’t know how terrible everything is.  You just think everyone lives like that.  If you take someone from a “normal” situation and put them in that environment, I believe they would do whatever they could to get out!  When all you know is poverty, drugs, death, and violence, you just live in it.

My mother did work out on Long Island and in the summers, I would go spend weekends there while she worked.  I got to see what was actually normal and I wanted in.  I wanted to get out of Hell’s Kitchen.  I recognized education was my silver bullet and because of it, my two kids do not need to experience life the way I did.  The cycle is broken.

When I was a kid, I used to wake up without electricity.  My mother couldn’t or sometimes wouldn’t pay the bill and I would go days without having electricity.  My 11 year old wakes up and complains that he has to suffer through a system update on his PlayStation 3, before he can play Call of Duty online with his friends on his 55 inch 3D TV.  He is already asking if we can start visiting the colleges he is interested in.  The cycle is broken. 

My daughter, a second year student, never asked if she had to go to college.  She just always assumed she would and even before she picked her college, she was strategizing where she was going to go to graduate school.  The cycle is broken.

The impact isn’t only felt by my family.  It is felt by my community.  Education is what makes us better and it is supposed to be the equalizer in the American dream.  Get educated, work hard, and you control your family’s destiny.  That’s what I bought into and it worked for me and countless others who grew up just like I did.

Today, this idea is in serious trouble.  Lots of recent data suggests that the achievement gap between rich and poor children is getting wider, which of course threatens the idea of education as a silver bullet.  I’m afraid this could just become the norm, accepted culturally as just the way things are.  If this happens, we’ll never be able to capitalize on the amazing potential education has to change families.

A NYTs article by SabrinaTavernise, “Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor Studies Say,” points out that in long term data, researchers are finding, “while the achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period.”  They point to a study that shows the gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students has “grown by 40% since the 1960s.”  The gap is also getting dangerous in college.  Researchers looked at two generation of students from both high and low income families.  One generation from the early sixties and the other form the late seventies.  For high income students, the number of college graduates went from one-third in the first generation to more than half in the second one.  For low income students, the college graduation rate went from five percent to nine percent.  The gap got wider.

Clearly, parental influence goes a long way.  My children have had education and learning hammered into their heads.  They are in my school everyday, where I question their assumptions, ask them for data to support what they say, and push back on their ideas and theories.  They are getting a great education, no matter what school they go to.  A lot of time and money is spent on their development.  A few of the findings in the article didn’t surprise me but made me very nervous that we are no where near closing the gap.  A University of California professor found that high income children start school with 400 more hours of literacy activities than poor children.   They also point to how much money parents are investing in their children.  They found over the last 40 years, affluent parents have increased their spending on their children’s learning activates by $5,300 a year (adjusted for inflation).  Meanwhile, those on the lower scale of economic prosperity were only able to increase their spending on these actives by $480. 

So you have to ask yourself, how exactly will a poor child succeed under these circumstances?  I know we don’t have all the answers but we have to keep at this.  This isn’t a poor issue or a ghetto issue.  This is a national issue.  There is a unreasonable amount of data that points to the high school diploma as the magic line.  We have to at least get students to that line, especially those who are growing up in the cycle of poverty and despair.  A lot of this work has to take place in the early years.  By the time they drop out, we all recognize we are too late. 

Every month, 50,000 Latinos turn 18.  If we use the most basic acceptable statistics about drop out rates, 20,000 of them are turning 18 without a high school diploma, each month.  We know that students who drop out of school are more likely to be unemployed, earn lower wages, have higher rates of public assistance, likely to be single parents, have children at a young age, more likely to become criminals, and like many of the kids I grew up with, end up in jail...or dead.

How long do you think that will be sustainable?  Education as the silver bullet is part of who we are.  Our nation’s identity is made up in large part by the concept of opportunity.  If you give me the opportunity, I will succeed.  We need to restore that concept in education and give every student access to those silver bullets.