Podcasts about mike it

This lively roundtable features hockey fans Mike, Constantine, and Jacqueline as they break down the 2025 NHL Conference Finals. From unexpected losses to bold predictions and favorite hockey movies, their passionate insights and friendly banter bring energy to every play and player discussed.

On this episode of GoalChat, Debra Eckerling talks about Communication with brand storyteller Dave Bricker, Speakipedia; media consultant Paula Rizzo, Listful Living, and connector Michael Roderick of Small Pond Enterprises. The panel, which appeared together on an episode on Pitching last June, are all featured in Debra's new book, "52 Secrets for Goal-Setting and Goal-Getting." Communication is the goal of every interaction. Dave, Paula, and Mike talk about the value of communication, what makes a good vs a bad communicator, and more. What is Communication? - Dave: Assurance that someone else gets us - Mike: It's the first thing we learn but something we never master, we are a constant student - Paula: Give and take. It's listening as much as it is talking Goals - Mike: Reach out to someone you admire and show that you have done your research without expectation of response - Dave: Think about what you can do in terms of producing an outcome for another person that will make you both happy - Paula: Make a to-become list, based on characteristic you admire in others Learn More About Dave Bricker: Speakipedia Paula Rizzo: PaulaRizzo.com/lists Michael Roderick: SmallPondEnterprises.com Debra Eckerling: TheDEBMethod.com/blog Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Kasi Allen, Breaking the Cycle of Math Trauma   ROUNDING UP: SEASON 3 | EPISODE 9 If you are an educator, you've likely heard people say things like “I'm a math person.” While this may make you cringe, if you dig a bit deeper, many people can identify specific experiences that convinced them that this was true. In fact, some of you might secretly wonder if you are a math person as well. Today we're talking with Dr. Kasi Allen about math trauma: what it is and how educators can take steps to address it. BIOGRAPHY Kasi Allen serves as the vice president of learning and impact at The Ford Family Foundation. She holds a PhD degree in educational policy and a bachelor's degree in mathematics and its history, both from Stanford University. RESOURCES “Jo Boaler Wants Everyone to Love Math” — Stanford Magazine R-RIGHTS Learning to Love Math by Judy Willis TRANSCRIPT Mike Wallus: If you're an educator, I'm almost certain you've heard people say things like, “I am not a math person.” While this may make you cringe, if you dig a bit deeper, many of those folks can identify specific experiences that convinced them that this was true. In fact, some of you might secretly wonder if you're actually a math person. Today we're talking with Dr. Kasi Allen about math trauma: what it is and how educators can take steps to address it.  Well, hello, Kasi. Welcome to the podcast. Kasi Allen: Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me. Great to be here. Mike: I wonder if we could start by talking about what drew you to the topic of math trauma in the first place? Kasi: Really good question. You know, I've been curious about this topic for almost as long as I can remember, especially about how people's different relationships with math seem to affect their lives and how that starts at a very early age. I think it was around fourth grade for me probably, that I became aware of how much I liked math and how much my best friend and my sister had an absolutely opposite relationship with it—even though we were attending the same school, same teachers, and so on. And I really wanted to understand why that was happening. And honestly, I think that's what made me want to become a high school math teacher. I was convinced I could do it in a way that maybe wouldn't hurt people as much. Or it might even make them like it and feel like they could do anything that they wanted to do.  But it wasn't until many years later, as a professor of education, when I was teaching teachers how to teach math, that this topic really resurfaced for me [in] a whole new way among my family, among my friends. And if you're somebody who's taught math, you're the math emergency person. And so, I had collected over the years stories of people's not-so-awesome experiences with math. But it was when I was asked to teach an algebra for elementary teachers course, that was actually the students' idea. And the idea of this course was that we'd help preservice elementary teachers get a better window into how the math they were teaching was planting the seeds for how people might access algebra later.  On the very first day, the first year I taught this class, there were three sections. I passed out the syllabus; in all three sections, the same thing happened. Somebody either started crying in a way that needed consoling by another peer, or they got up and left, or both. And I was just pretty dismayed. I hadn't spoken a word. The syllabi were just sitting on the table. And it really made me want to go after this in a new way. I mean, something—it just made me feel like something different was happening here. This was not the math anxiety that everybody talked about when I was younger. This was definitely different, and it became my passion project: trying to figure how we disrupt that cycle. Mike: Well, I think that's a good segue because I've heard you say that the term “math anxiety” centers this as a problem that's within the person. And that in fact, this isn't about the person. Instead, it's about the experience, something that's happened to people that's causing this type of reaction. Do I have that right, Kasi? Kasi: One hundred percent. And I think this is really important. When I grew up and when I became a teacher, I think that was an era when there was a lot of focus on math anxiety, the prevalence of math anxiety. Sheila Tobias wrote the famous book Overcoming Math Anxiety. This was especially a problem among women. There were dozens of books. And there were a number of problems with that work at the time, and that most of the research people were citing was taking place outside of math education. The work was all really before the field of neuroscience was actually a thing. Lots of deficit thinking that something is wrong with the person who is suffering this anxiety. And most of these books were very self-helpy. And so, not only is there something wrong with you, but you need to fix it yourself. So, it really centers all these negative emotions around math on the person that's experiencing the pain, that something's wrong with them.  Whereas math trauma really shifts the focus to say, “No, no, no. This reaction, this emotional reaction, nobody's born that way.” Right? This came from a place, from an experience. And so, math trauma is saying, “No, there's been some series of events, maybe a set of circumstances, that this individual began to see as harmful or threatening, and that it's having long-lasting adverse effects. And that those long-lasting effects, this kind of triggering that starts to happen, is really beginning to affect that person's functioning, their sense of well-being when they're in the presence, in this case, of mathematics.” And I think the thing about trauma is just that. And I have to say in the early days of my doing this research, I was honestly a little bit hesitant to use that word because I didn't want to devalue some of the horrific experiences that people have experienced in times of war, witnessing the murder of a parent or something. But it's about the brain. It's how the brain is responding to the situation. And what I think we know now, even more than when I started this work, is that there is simply trauma [in] everyday life. There are things that we experience that cause our brains to be triggered. And math is unfortunately this subject in school that we require nearly every year of a young person's life. And there are things about the way it's been taught over time that can be humiliating, ridiculing; that can cause people to have just some really negative experiences that then they carry with them into the next year. And so that's really the shift. The shift is instead of labeling somebody as math anxious—“Oh, you poor thing, you better fix yourself”—it's like, “No, we have some prevalence of math trauma, and we've got to figure out how people's experiences with math are causing this kind of a reaction in their bodies and brains.” Mike: I want to take this a little bit further before we start to talk about causes and solutions. This idea that you mentioned of feeling under threat, it made me think that when we're talking about trauma, we are talking about a physiological response. Something is happening within the brain that's being manifested in the body. And I wonder if you could talk just a little bit about what happens to people experiencing trauma? What does that feel like in their body? Kasi: So, this is really important and our brains have evolved over time. We have this incredible processing capacity, and it's coupled with a very powerful filter called the amygdala. And the amygdala [has been] there from eons ago to protect us. It's the filter that says, “Hey, do not provide access to that powerful processor unless I'm safe, unless my needs are met. Otherwise, I gotta focus on being well over here.” So, we're not going to give access to that higher-order thinking unless we're safe. And this is really important because modern imaging has given us really new insights into how we learn and how our body is reacting when our brain gets fired in this way.  And so, when somebody is experiencing math trauma, you know it. They sweat. Their face turns red. They cry. Their body and brain are telling them, “Get out. Get away from this thing. It will hurt you.” And I just feel like that is so important for us to remember because the amygdala also becomes increasingly sensitive to repeat negativity. So, it's one thing that you have a bad day in math, or you maybe have a teacher that makes you feel not great about yourself. But day after day, week after week, year after year, that messaging can start to make the amygdala hypersensitive to these sorts of situations. Is that what you were getting at with your question? Mike: It is. And I think you really hit on something. There's this idea of repeat negativity causing increased sensitivity, I think has real ramifications for classroom culture or the importance of the way that I show up as an educator. It's making me think a lot about culture and norms related to math in schools. I'm starting to wonder about the type of traumatizing traditions that we've had in math education that might contribute to this type of experience. What does that make you think? Kasi: Oh, for sure. Unfortunately, I think the list is a little long of the things that we may have been doing completely inadvertently. Everybody wants their students to have a great experience, and I actually think our practices have evolved. But culturally, I think there are some things about math that contribute to these “traumatizing traditions,” is what I've called them.  Before we go there, I do want to say just one other thing about this trauma piece, and that is that we've learned about some things about trauma in childhood. And a lot of the trauma in childhood is about not a single life-altering event. But childhood trauma is often about these things that happened repeatedly where a child was being ridiculed, being treated cruelly. And it's about that repetition that is really seeding that trauma so deeply and that sense that they can't stop it, that they don't have control to stop the thing that is causing them pain or suffering. So, I just wanted to make sure that I tagged that because I think there is something about what we've learned about the different forms of childhood trauma that's especially salient in this situation.  And so, I'll tie it to your question, which is, think about some of the things we've done in math historically. We don't do them in every place, but the ability grouping that has happened over time, it seems to go in and out of fashion. When a kid is told they're in the lower class, “Oh, this is something you're not good [at]—the slower math.” We often use speed to measure understanding, and so smarter is not faster. And there's some great quotes, Einstein among them. So that's a thing. When you gotta do it right now, it has to be one-hundred-percent right. It has to be superfast. We've often prioritized individual work over collaboration. So, you're all alone in this. In fact, if you're working with others, somehow that's cheating as opposed to collaborating.  We teach kids tricks rather than teaching them how to think. And I think we deprive kids of the opportunity to have an idea. It's really hard to get excited about something where all you're doing is reproducing—reproducing something that somebody else thought of as quickly as possible and [it] needs to be one-hundred-percent [accurate]. You don't get to bring your own spin to it. And so, we focus on answers rather than people's reasoning behind the answers. That can be something that happens as well. And I think one of the things that's always gotten me is that there's only one way. Not only is there only one right answer, but there's only one way to get there, which also contributes to this idea of having to absorb somebody else's thinking rather than actualizing your own.  And I absolutely know that most teachers are working to not do as much of these things in their math classrooms. And I want to be sure in having this conversation that—you know, I'm a lover of education and teachers, I taught teachers for many years. This is not about the teachers so much as the sort of culture of math and math education that we were all brought up in. And we've got to figure out how to make math something more so that kids can see themselves in it. And that it's not something that happens in a vacuum and is this performance course rather than a class where you get to solve cool problems that no one knows the exact answer to, or there's the exact right way, or that you get to get your own questions answered. Things you wonder about. That it's a chance to explore.  So, I mean, ultimately, I think we just know that there's a lot of negativity that happens around math, and we accept it. And that is perhaps the most traumatizing tradition of all because that kind of repeat negativity we know affects the amygdala. It affects people's ability to access math in the long run. So, we gotta have neutral or better. Mike: So, in the field of psychology, there's this notion of generational trauma, and it's passed from generation to generation. And you're making me wonder if we're facing something similar when it comes to the field of math education. I'm wondering what you think educators might be able to do to reclaim math for themselves, especially if they're a person who potentially does have a traumatic mathematics experience and maybe some of the ways that they might create a different type of experience for their students. Kasi: Yeah, let's talk about each of those. I'm going to talk about one, the multigenerational piece, and then let's talk about how we can help ourselves and our students. One is, I think it's really very possible that that's what we're looking at in terms of math trauma. Culturally, I think we've known for a while that this is happening, with respect to math, that—you know, I've had parents come to back-to-school night and tell me that they're just not a math family. And even jokingly say, “Oh, we're all bad at math, don't be too hard on us,” and all the other things. And so, kids inherit that. And it's very common for kids to have the same attitude towards math that their parents do and also that their teachers do.  And that's where I think in my mind, I really want to help every elementary teacher fall in love with math because if we look at the data, I think of any undergraduate major, it's those who major in education who report the highest rates of math anxiety and math trauma. And so, when you think about folks who feel that way about math, then being in charge of teaching it to kids in the early years, that's a lot to carry. And so, we want to give those teachers and anyone who has had this experience with math an opportunity to reclaim, regroup. And in my experience, what I've found is actually simply shifting the location of the problem is a really strong first step. When people understand that they actually aren't broken, that the feelings that they have about math don't reflect some sort of flaw in them as a human, but that it's a result of something they've experienced, a lot is unlocked. And most folks that I have worked with over my time working on this issue, they know. They know exactly the moment. They know the set of experiences that led to the reactions that they feel in their body. They can name it, and with actually fairly startling detail. So, in my teaching—and I think this is something anybody can do—is they would write a “mathography.” What is the story of your life through a math lens? What has been the story of your relationship with math over the course of your life and what windows does that give you into the places where you might need to heal? We've never had more tools to go back and sort of relearn areas of math that we thought we couldn't learn. And so often the trauma points are as math becomes more abstract. So many people have something that happened around fractions or multidigit multiplication and division. When we started—we get letters involved in math. I had somebody say, “Math was great as long as it was numbers. Then we got letters involved, and it was terrible.” And so, if people can locate, “This is where I had the problem. It's not me. I can go back and relearn some things.” I feel like that's a lot of the healing, and that, in fact, if I'm a teacher or if I'm a parent, I love my kids, whether they're my children or my students, and I'm going to work on me so that they have a better experience than I had. And I've found so many teachers embrace that idea and go to work. So, some of the things that can happen in classrooms that I think fall from this is that, first of all, the recognition that emotional safety, you can't have cognition and problem solving without it. If you have kids in your classroom who have had these negative experiences in math, you're going to need to help them unpack those and level set in order to move on. And “mathography” is also a good tool for that. Some people use breathing.  Making sure that when you encounter kids that are exhibiting math anxiety, that you help them localize the problem outside of them. No one is born with math anxiety. It's the math of school that creates it. And if we ignore it, it's just going to get worse. So, some people feel like they can kind of smooth it over. I think we need to give kids the tools to unpack it and move beyond it. But it's so widespread, and I've encountered teachers who were afraid to go there. It's like the Pandora's box. My advice to them is that if you'll open the box and heal what's inside, the teaching becomes much easier. Whereas if you don't, you're fighting that uphill battle all the time.  You know, students will feel more safe in classrooms where mistakes are opportunities to learn; where they're not a bad thing and where they see each other as resources, where they are not alone, and where they can collaborate and really take responsibility for each other's learning. So, some of the most powerful classrooms I've seen where there were a lot of kids who had very negative experiences with math, a teacher had succeeded in creating this learning environment, this community of learners where all the kids seem to recognize that somebody would have a good day, someone else would have a not good day, but it would be their turn for a good day a few days from now. [chuckles] So, we're all just going to take care of each other as we go.  I think some things that teachers can keep a particular eye on is being sure that kids are given authentic work to do in math. It's really easy to start giving kids what we've called busywork, but work that really isn't engaging their brain. And it turns out that that boredom cycle triggers the negativity cycle, which can actually get your amygdala operating in a way that is not as far from trauma as we might all like to think. And so, while it isn't the same kind of math trauma that we're talking about here, it does affect the amygdala. And so that's something we should be aware of. And so, this is something—I think kids should learn about their brains in school. I don't know if it's the math teacher's job. But if they haven't learned about their brains yet, when you get them, I would recommend teaching kids about their brains, teaching them strategies for when they feel that kind of shutdown, that headache, like “I can't think.” Because most of the time, they actually can't. And they need to have some kind of reset.  Another tip, just in terms of disrupting that trauma cycle in the classroom, is that by the time kids get to be third, fourth grade and up, they know who is good at math, or they've labeled each other. You know, “Who's good at math? Who's struggled?” Even if they are not tracked and sorted, they've assessed each other. Sometimes they've put those labels on themselves. And so, if a teacher has the skills to assign competence to those students that may be being labeled as low status mathematically in their classroom—and it takes a teacher that knows their students well. But if you happen to see that a student that maybe has low status with computation, but wow, they are really good at developing the visuals for a math problem, or they're really great at illustrating a story or drawing others out in a collaborative group, but finding an area of competence that's authentic.  Sorry to go on and on. I could sit here and talk to you about this all day, but those are some of the things I would recommend. Mike: Well, I think there's a few things that jump out, and I wanted to take them in little bits. I'm going to try to summarize, and then I want to come back and pick these up a little bit. So, one of the pieces that you named really struck a chord with me, which is recognizing as an educator that I have a story about mathematics that is playing out maybe just under the level of consciousness that bubbles up here and there. When you mentioned the traumatic experiences, my head went back to third grade with multiplication tables, and I can see myself sitting in the seat. And when you mentioned fractions, again, I could see myself facing the board in third grade looking down at a workbook where we were supposed to be adding fractions with denominators that were not common. And I had this moment of just dread in my stomach because I remember just thinking, “I don't know what is happening at all.” And I'll say biographically, I think I spent the first seven or eight years of my teaching career carrying those things with me in the way that I approach students. I knew that they weren't good for me, but I didn't really have a compelling sense of what could be different until I actually took some mathematics education courses and really started to understand mathematics and how children's ideas develop. And it did allow me to decenter the problem for myself and say, “Actually, I can make a lot of meaning out of mathematics.” What I experienced was not mathematics. It was memorizing a bunch of stuff and practicing a bunch of procedures. This idea that decentering where the problem is from the educator or in classrooms from the student, really, really feels powerful. I think it's a huge gift that we can give to our students and also to ourselves. The other piece that I'm really thinking about is this idea of positioning students and finding competency. That really stands out as something that I could attend to as a classroom teacher. I suspect that people who are listening can think about their own class of students. You as an educator probably know who the other kids think of as good at math, and I suspect you also know who they think isn't good at math. Knowing that kids know those stories as well, I could do something about that. I could look at the students who have low status and think about ways that I could raise them up. That feels really tangible. I could take and start thinking about that when I ask students to share their ideas, and I could do that tomorrow. It doesn't take a master's-level course in mathematics to do that. Does that make sense, Kasi? Kasi: I love all of that so much. One hundred percent. You know, when I was observing teachers—and this tended to happen more with elementary teachers just because of their own histories with math as you were saying here—but the difference between saying, “OK, everybody, we get to do math now. Clear your desks!” and “OK, everybody, I know it's hard, but it's time for math. We're strong. We're going to do it.” But there is this underlying kind of, “I don't really like this either, but we gotta do it.” as opposed to “We're going to discover something new today!” And so really just kind of listening to some of those implicit messages in the words that we choose, that's something we can change in a moment as well. Mike: Well, I think you and I could probably go on and on and continue this conversation for a long time. If I'm someone who's listening, are there resources you would recommend for someone who wants to continue learning about these ideas? Kasi: Yeah, absolutely. For me, the OG of this line of thinking is Jo Boaler, who most math teachers will know. She's the first person I ever heard use the word “math-traumatized.” And before I embarked and dove deeper into my math trauma research, I went down to Stanford and met with her, and she was wonderful and encouraging of, like, “Oh, no, no, no. Go, go, go, go. This is great.”  There's a woman named Ebony McGee, who's the founder of R-RIGHTS. [She was] a professor at Vanderbilt. She's doing some work with math identity that I think touches on this subject in a valuable way. I mean, I think this whole area of developing positive math identity is tightly connected to the math trauma work. And honestly, anyone who is doing work around child trauma and neuroscience and how we are seeing the development of the brain is going to provide some interesting resources.  I have to say, my all-time favorite is a book that I believe [...] is out of print, so it might be a thrift books purchase. But Dr. Judy Willis wrote a book called Learning to Love Math. Looks like you might be familiar with it. And I really think she did a lovely job in that book in a way that is absolutely targeting teachers to help us see how these very small actions that we take in the classroom could make a really big difference in terms of how our students see and experience the subject that we care about so much. Mike: I think that's a great place to stop. Thank you so much for joining us, Kasi. It's really been a pleasure talking with you. Kasi: Oh, my goodness, Mike, thank you so much. It's really been an honor to be here. Thanks for having me. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling all individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2025 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

Rounding Up Season 3 | Episode 3 – Choice as a Foundation for Student Engagement Guest: Drs. Zandra de Araujo and Amber Candela Mike Wallus: As an educator, I know that offering my students choice has a big impact on their engagement, their identity, and their sense of autonomy. That said, I've not always been sure how to design choice into the activities in my classroom, especially when I'm using curriculum. Today we're talking with Drs. Zandra de Araujo and Amber Candela about some of the ways educators can design choice into their students' learning experiences.  Welcome back to the podcast, Zandra and Amber. It is really exciting to have you all with us today.  Zandra de Araujo: Glad to be back.  Amber Candela: Very excited to be here. Mike: So, I've heard you both talk at length about the importance of choice in students' learning experiences, and I wonder if we can start there. Before we talk about the ways you think teachers can design choice in a learning experience, can we just talk about the “why”? How would you describe the impact that choice has on students' learning experiences? Zandra: So, if you think about your own life, how fun would it be to never have a choice in what you get to do during a day? So, you don't get to choose what chores to do, where to go, what order to do things, who to work with, who to talk to. Schools are a very low-choice environment, and those tend to be punitive when you have a low-choice environment. And so, we don't want schools to be that way. We want them to be very free and open and empowering places. Amber: And a lot of times, especially in mathematics, students don't always enjoy being in that space. So, you can get more enjoyment, engagement, and if you have choice with how to engage with the content, you'll have more opportunity to be more curious and joyful and have hopefully better experiences in math. Zandra: And if you think about being able to choose things in your day makes you better able to make choices. And so, I think we want students to be smart consumers and users and creators of mathematics. And if you're never given choice or opportunity to kind of own it, I think that you're at a deficit. Amber: Also, if we want problem-solving people engaged in mathematics, it needs to be something that you view as something you were able to do. And so often we teach math like it's this pre-packaged thing, and it's just your role to memorize this thing that I give you. You don't feel like it's yours to play with. Choice offers more of those opportunities for kids. Zandra: Yeah, it feels like you're a consumer of something that's already made rather than somebody who's empowered to create and use and drive the mathematics that you're using, which would make it a lot more fun.  Mike: Yeah. You all are hitting on something that really clicked for me as I was listening to you talk. This idea that school, as it's designed oftentimes, is low choice. But math, in particular, where historically it has really been, “Let me show you what to do. Let me have you practice the way I showed you how to do it,” rinse and repeat. It's particularly important in math, it feels like, to break out and build a sense of choice for kids. Zandra: Absolutely. Mike: Well, one of the things that I appreciate about the work that both of you do is the way that you advocate for practices that are both really, really impactful and also eminently practical. And I'm wondering if we can dive right in and have you all share some of the ways that you think about designing choice into learning experiences.  Amber: I feel like I want “eminently practical” on a sticker for my laptop. Because I find that is a very satisfying and positive way to describe the work that I do because I do want it to be practical and doable within the constraints of schooling as it currently is, not as we wish it to be. Which, we do want it to be better and more empowering for students and teachers. But also, there are a lot of constraints that we have to work within. So, I appreciate that.  Zandra: I think that choice is meant to be a way of empowering students, but the goal for the instruction should come first. So, I'm going to talk about what I would want from my students in my classroom and then how we can build choice in. Because choice is kind of like the secondary component. So, first you have your learning goals, your aims as a teacher. And then, “How do we empower students with choice in service of that goal?” So, I'll start with number sense because that's a hot topic. I'm sure you all hear a lot about it at the MLC. Mike: We absolutely do. Zandra: So, one of the things I think about when teachers say, “Hey, can you help me think about number sense?” It's like, “Yes, I absolutely can.” So, our goal is number sense. So, let's think about what that means for students and how do we build some choice and autonomy into that. So, one of my favorite things is something like, “Give me an estimate, and we can Goldilocks it,” for example. So, it could be a word problem or just a symbolic problem and say, “OK, give me something that you know is either wildly high, wildly low, kind of close, kind of almost close but not right. So, give me an estimate, and it could be a wrong estimate or a close estimate, but you have to explain why.” So, it takes a lot of number sense to be able to do that. You have infinitely many options for an answer, but you have to avoid the one correct answer. So, you have to actually think about the one correct answer to give an estimate. Or if you're trying to give a close estimate, you're kind of using a lot of number sense to estimate the relationships between the numbers ahead of time. The choice comes in because you get to choose what kind of estimate you want. It's totally up to you. You just have to rationalize your idea. Mike: That's awesome. Amber, your turn. Amber: Yep. So related to that is a lot of math goes forward. We give kids the problem, and we want them to come up with the answer. A lot of the work that we've been doing is, “OK, if I give you the answer, can you undo the problem?” I'll go multiplication. So, we do a lot with, “What's seven times eight?” And there's one answer, and then kids are done. And you look for that answer as the teacher, and once that answer has been given, you're kind of like, “OK, here. I'm done with what I'm doing.” But instead, you could say, “Find me numbers whose product is 24.” Now you've opened up what it comes to. There's more access for students. They can come up with more than one solution, but it also gets kids to realize that math doesn't just go one way. It's not, “Here's the problem, find the answer.” It's “Here's the answer, find the problem.” And that also goes to the number sense. Because if students are able to go both ways, they have a better sense in their head around what they're doing and undoing. And you can do it with a lot of different problems. Zandra: And I'll just add in that that's not specific to us. Barb Dougherty had really nice article in, I think, Teaching Children Mathematics, about reversals at some point. And other people have shown this idea as well. So, we're really taking ideas that are really high uptake, we think, and sharing them again with teachers to make sure that they've seen ways that they can do it in their own classroom. Mike: What strikes me about both of these is, the structure is really interesting. But I also think about what the output looks like when you offer these kinds of choices. You're going to have a lot of kids doing things like justifying or using language to help make sense of the “why.” “Why is this one totally wrong, and why is this one kind of right?” And “Why is this close, but maybe not exact?” And to go to the piece where you're like, “Give me some numbers that I can multiply together to get to 24.” There's more of a conversation that comes out of that. There's a back and forth that starts to develop, and you can imagine that back and forth bouncing around with different kids rather than just kind of kid says, teacher validates, and then you're done. Zandra: Yeah, I think one of the cool things about choice is giving kids choice means that there's more variety and diversity of ideas coming in. And that's way more interesting to talk about and rationalize and justify and make sense of than a single correct answer or everybody's doing the same thing. So, I think, not only does it give kids more ownership, it has more access. But also, it just gives you way more interesting math to think and talk about. Mike: Let's keep going. Zandra: Awesome. So, I think another one, a lot of my work is with multilingual students. I really want them to talk. I want everybody to talk about math. So, this goes right to what you were just saying. So, one of the ways that we can easily say, “OK, we want more talk.” So how do we build that in through choice is to say, “Let's open up what you choose to share with the class.” So, there have been lots of studies done on the types of questions that teachers ask: tend to be closed, answer-focused, like single-calculation kind of questions. So, “What is the answer? Who got this?” You know, that kind of thing? Instead, you can give students choices, and I think a lot of teachers have done something akin to this with sentence starters or things. But you can also just say, instead of a sentence starter to say what your answer is, “I agree with X because of Y.” You can also say, “You can share an incorrect answer that you know is wrong because you did it, and it did not work out. You can also share where you got stuck because that's valuable information for the class to have.” You could also say, “I don't want to really share my thinking, my solution because it's not done, but I'll show you my diagram.” And so, “Let me show you a visual.” And just plop it up on the screen. So, there are a lot of different things you could share a question that you have because you're not sure, and it's just a related question. Instead of always sharing answers, let kids open up what they may choose to share, and you'll get more kids sharing. Because answers are kind of scary because you're expecting a correct answer often. And so, when you share and open up, then it's not as scary. And everybody has something to offer because they have a choice that speaks to them. Amber: And kids don't want to be wrong. People don't want to be wrong. “I don't want to give you a wrong answer.” And we went to the University of Georgia together, but Les Steffe always would say, “No child is ever wrong. They're giving you an answer with a purpose behind what that answer is. They don't actually believe that's a wrong answer that they're giving you.” And so, if you open up the space … And teachers say, “We want spaces to be safe, we want kids to want to come in and share.” But are we actually structuring spaces in that way? And so, some of the ideas that we're trying to come up with, we're saying that “We actually do value what you're saying when you choose to give us this. It's your choice of offering it up and you can say whatever it is you want to say around that,” but it's not as evaluative or as high stakes as trying to get the right answer and just like, “Am I right? Did I get it right?” And then what the teacher might say after that. Zandra: I would add on that kids do like to give wrong answers if that's what you're asking for. They don't like to give wrong answers if you're asking for a right one and they're accidentally wrong. So, I think back to my first suggestion: If you ask for a wrong answer and they know it's wrong, they're likely to chime right in because the right answer is the wrong answer, and there are multiple, infinite numbers of them. Mike: You know, it makes me think there's this set of ideas that we need to normalize mistakes as being productive things. And I absolutely agree with that. I also think that when you're asking for the right answer, it's really hard to kind of be like, “Oh, my mistake was so productive.” On the other hand, if you ask for an error or a place where someone's stuck, that just feels different. It feels like an invitation to say, “I've actually been thinking about this. I'm not there. I may be partly there. I'm still engaged. This is where I'm struggling.” That just feels different than providing an answer where you're just like, “Ugh.” I'm really struck by that. Zandra: Yeah, and I think it's a culture thing. So, a lot of teachers say to me that “it's hard to have kids work in groups because they kind of just tell each other the answers.” But they're modeling what they experience as learners in the classroom. “I often get told the answers,” that's the discourse that we have in the classroom. So, if you open up the discourse to include these things like, “Oh, I'm stuck here. I'm not sure where to go here.” They get practice saying, “Oh, I don't know what this is. I don't know how to go from here.” Instead of just going to the answer. And I think it'll spread to the group work as well. Mike: It feels like there's value for every other student in articulating, “I'm certain that this one is wrong, and here's why I know that.” There's information in there that is important for other kids. And even the idea of “I'm stuck here,” right? That's really a great formative assessment opportunity for the teacher. And it also might validate some of the other places where kids are like, “Yeah. Me, too.” Zandra: Uh-hm. Amber: Right, absolutely. Mike: What's next, my friend? Amber: I remember very clearly listening to Zandra present about choice, her idea of choice of feedback. And this was very powerful to me. I had never thought about asking my students how they wanted to receive the feedback I'd be giving them on the problems that they solved. And this idea of students being able to turn something in and then say, “This is how I'd like to receive feedback” or “This is the feedback I'd like to receive,” becomes very powerful because now they're the ones in charge of their own learning. And so much of what we do, kids should get to say, “This is how I think that I will grow better, is if you provide this to me.” And so, having that opportunity for students to say, “This is how I'll be a better learner if you give it to me in this way. And I think if you helped me with this part that would help the whole rest of it.” Or “I don't actually want you to tell me the answer. I am stuck here. I just need a little something to get me through. But please don't tell me what the answer is because I still want to figure it out for myself.” And so, allowing kids to advocate for themselves and teaching them how to advocate for themselves to be better learners; how to advocate for themselves to learn and think about “What I need to learn this material and be a student or be a learner in society” will just ultimately help students. Zandra: Yeah, I think as a student, I don't like to be told the answers. I like to figure things out, and I will puzzle through something for a long time. But sometimes I just want a model or a hint that'll get me on the right path, and that's all I need. But I don't want you to do the problem for me or take over my thinking. If somebody asked me, “What do you want?” I might say like, “Oh, a model problem or something like that.” But I don't think we ask kids a lot. We just do whatever we think as an adult. Which is different, because we're not learning it for the first time. We already know what it is. Mike: You're making me think about the range of possibilities in a situation like that. One is I could notice a student who is working through something and just jump in and take over and do the problem for them essentially and say, “Here, this is how you do it.” Or I guess just let them go, let them continue to work through it. But potentially there could be some struggle, and there might be some frustration. I am really kind of struck by the fact that I wonder how many of us as teachers have really thought about the kinds of options that exist between those two far ends of the continuum. What are the things that we could offer to students rather than just “Let me take over” or productive struggle, but perhaps it's starting to feel unproductive? Does that make sense? Zandra: Yeah, I think it does. I mean, there are so many different ways. I would ask teachers to re-center themselves as the learner that's getting feedback. So, if you have a principal or a coach coming into your room, they've watched a lesson, sometimes you're like, “Oh, that didn't go well. I don't need feedback on that. I know it didn't go well, and I could do better.” But I wonder if you have other things that you notice just being able to take away a part that you know didn't go well. And you're like, “Yep, I know that didn't go well. I have ideas for improving it. I don't really want to focus on that. I want to focus on this other thing.” Or “I've been working really hard on discourse. I really want feedback on the student discourse when you come in.” That's really valuable to be able to steer it—not taking away the other things that you might notice, but really focusing in on something that you've been working on is pretty valuable. And I think kids often have these things that maybe they haven't really thought about a lot, but when you ask them, they might think about it. And they might grow this repertoire of things that they're kind of working on personally. Amber: Yeah, and I just think it's getting at, again, we want students to come out of situations where they can say, “This is how I learn” or “This is how I can grow,” or “This is how I can appreciate math better.” And by allowing them to say, “It'd be really helpful if you just gave me some feedback right here” or “I'm trying to make this argument, and I'm not sure it's coming across clear enough,” or “I'm trying to make this generalization, does it generalize?” We're also maybe talking about some upper-level kids, but I still think we can teach elementary students to advocate for themselves also. Like, “Hey, I try this method all the time. I really want to try this other method. How am I doing with this? I tried it. It didn't really seem to work, but where did I make a mistake? Could you help me out with that? Because I think I want to try this method instead.” And so, I think there are different ways that students can allow for that. And they can say: “I know this answer is wrong. I'm not sure how this answer is wrong. Could you please help me understand my thinking or how could I go back and think about my thinking?” Zandra: Yeah. And I think when you said upper level, you meant upper grades. Amber: Yes. Zandra: I assume.  Amber: Yes.  Zandra: OK, yeah. So, for the lower-grade-level students, too, you can still use this. They still have ideas about how they learn and what you might want to follow up on with them. “Was there an easier way to do this? I did all these hand calculations and stuff. Was there an easier way?” That's a good question to ask. Maybe they've thought about that, and they were like, “That was a lot of work. Maybe there was an easier way that I just didn't see?” That'd be pretty cool if a kid asked you that. Mike: Or even just hearing a kid say something like, “I feel really OK. I feel like I had a strategy. And then I got to this point, and I was like, ‘Something's not working.'” Just being able to say, “This particular place, can you help me think about this?” That's the kind of problem-solving behavior that we ultimately are trying to build in kids, whether it's math or just life. Amber: Right, exactly. And I need, if I want kids to be able … because people say, “I sometimes just want a kid to ask a question.” Well, we do need to give them choice of the question they ask. And that's where a lot of this comes from is, what is your goal as a teacher? What do you want kids to have choice in? If I want you to have choice of feedback, I'm going to give you ideas for what that feedback could be, so then you have something to choose from. Mike: OK, so we've unpacked quite a few ideas in the last bit. I wonder if there are any caveats or any guidance that you would offer to someone who's listening who is maybe thinking about taking up some of these practices in their classroom? Zandra: Oh, yeah. I have a lot. Kids are not necessarily used to having a lot of choice and autonomy. So, you might have to be gentle building it in because it's overwhelming. And they actually might just say, “Just tell me what to do,” because they're not used to it. It's like when you're get a new teacher and they're really into explaining your thinking, and you've never had to do that. Well, you've had 10 years of schooling or however many years of schooling that didn't involve explaining your thinking, and now, all of a sudden, “I'm supposed to explain my thinking. I don't even know what that means. What does that look like? We never had to do that before.”  So maybe start small and think about some things like, “Oh, you can choose a tool or two that helps you with this problem. So, you can use a multiplication table, or you can use a calculator or something to use. You can choose. There are all these things out. You can choose a couple of tools that might help you.” But start small. And you can give too many choices. There's like choice overload. It's like when I go on Amazon, and there are way too many reviews that I have to read for a product, and I never end up buying anything because I've read so many reviews. It's kind of like that. It could get overwhelming. So purposeful, manageable numbers of choices to start out with is a good suggestion. Amber: And also, just going back to what Zandra said in the beginning, is making sure you have a purpose for the choice. And so, if you just are like, “Oh, I'm having choice for choice's sake.” Well, what is that doing? Is that supporting the learning, the mathematics, the number sense, the conceptual understanding, and all of that? And so, have that purpose going in and making sure that the choices backtrack to that purpose. Zandra: Yeah. And you could do a little choice inventory. You could be like, “Huh, if I was a student of my own class today, what would I have gotten to choose? If anything? Did I get to choose where I sat, what utensil I used? What type of paper did I use? Which problems that I did?” Because that's a good one. All these things. And if there's no choice in there, maybe start with one. Mike: I really love that idea of a “choice inventory.” Because I think there's something about really kind of walking through a particular day or a particular lesson that you're planning or that you've enacted, and really thinking about it from that perspective. That's intriguing. Zandra: Yeah, because really, I think once you're aware of how little choice kids get in a day … As an adult learner, who has presumably a longer attention span and more tolerance and really likes math, I've spent my whole life studying it. If I got so little choice and options in what I did, I would not be a well-behaved, engaged student. And I think we need to remember that when we're talking about little children. Mike: So, last question, is there research in the field or researchers who have done work that has informed the kind of thinking that you have about choice? Zandra: Yeah, I think we're always inspired by people who come before us, so it's probably an amalgamation of different things. I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I read a lot of books on behavioral economics and all kinds of different things. So, I think a lot of those ideas bleed into the work in math education. In terms of math education, in particular, there have been a lot of people who have really influenced me, like Marian Small's work with parallel tasks and things like that. I think that's a beautiful example of choice. You give multiple options for choice of challenge and see which ones the students feel like is appropriate instead of assigning them competence ahead of time. So, that kind of work has really influenced me. Amber: And then just, our team really coming together; Sam Otten and Zandra and their ideas and collaborating together. And like you mentioned earlier, that Barb Dougherty article on the different types of questions has really been impactful. More about opening up questions, but it does help you think about choice a little bit better. Mike: I think this is a great place to stop. Zandra, Amber, thank you so much for a really eye-opening conversation. Zandra: Thank you for having us.  Amber: Thanks for having us. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling all individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2024 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

United recently launched Kinective Media, the airline industry's first media network. Its first-party data could change the future of people's travel experiences.  Episode TranscriptPlease note, this transcript  may contain minor inconsistencies compared to the episode audio. [00:00:00] Damian: I'm Damian Fowler and welcome to this edition of the current podcast this week we're delighted to talk with Mike Petrella, the managing director of partnerships at United airlines. In June, the airline launched a new initiative named connective media, which is the airline industry's first media network. [00:00:17] The network will use data from its customer profiles to create a personalized and immersive travel journey. This launch comes at a time when retail media networks have become one of the hottest topics in ad tech, allowing brand marketers to target consumers using retailers first party data. [00:00:35] We start by asking Mike about why United wanted to move in this direction.  [00:00:40] Damian: United's the first travel focused company to develop its own media network called Connective Media by United Airlines, and how is this a boon for the company and its flyers? [00:00:50] Mike: of course, so we consider ourselves a commerce media network, and we distinguish ourselves as a commerce media network. Given retail media, networks are typically point of [00:01:00] purchase, transaction based. The Commerce Media Network embraces the emotion, the journey, the feelings of all parts of the funnel. [00:01:08] So when you think about our users at time of planning, time of travel, [00:01:13] Damian: and signals [00:01:14] Mike: time of destination, even when they're not thinking about travel, we have 108 million profiles. And the beauty of our data is it's incredibly accurate. You have to be Damien to get on a plane. Your name has to be what it is, your address has to be correct, your phone number, and all the other information. [00:01:33] So the breadth of that information, coupled with the accuracy of it, gives us insights and signals that allow us to create these robust profiles of the user. And it's the user at all points. And the commerce nature of this isn't just a point of sale. We are not microtransactions on a consistent, on a constant basis. [00:01:54] Rather, we think about The interaction of the user at the time of [00:02:00] planning, top funnel. At the time of trip, or even time of purchase in an ancillary mindset. Purchase path typically generates a significant amount of revenue. Be it airline tickets, upgrades, any purchase path. [00:02:11] Regardless of whether it is airline ticket or if you're purchasing a ticket to an event, parking, whatever the case is. So for us, it's the ability to take that journey. To be able to identify when the right time to send the right message to the right user is. And that message could be an advertisement, it could be content, it could be nothing because it's not the right time. [00:02:35] But in each of these cases, you can make a use case for any and every brand based on the scale and depth of our data. [00:02:42] Damian: of our data. Fascinating. And you mentioned that long purchase journey, which is, sometimes it can be a long purchase journey, right? For air travel, or it could be short, but you do have a lot of scope within that context. [00:02:54] Mike: It is. I mean, very few people spontaneously book tickets to destinations, right? [00:02:59] And when [00:03:00] you're in that mindset, you're in a planning mindset, not only of the journey, but think about the insights and intelligence we can extract from the signals we receive to say, Well, this person happens to frequent a specific hotel chain, a car rental chain, a ride share company, when they land, they frequent a food delivery service. [00:03:21] Endemic, but then you think the non endemic piece. And this is the beauty of what we do. The lines of endemic and non endemic are completely blurred. To me at least. Because I think about, when you get on a plane, you may be traveling home to return to normality. Which takes you to food shopping, which takes you to the pharmacy, which takes you to the laundromat. [00:03:39] But my point is, I think the idea of always coupling a travel endemic brand or journey with the traveler is only a piece of it. be it on the road or at home. [00:03:50] I may go see a music event. I may go purchase music. I might play music. I may eat pizza. I will eat pizza just to be clear. But my point is, my behaviors [00:04:00] There are some that are going to be unique based on my journey, and others that are going to overlap with when I'm traveling for leisure, when I'm home. [00:04:08] And so, I love the fact that just, we can essentially meet the interests of the customer, which is the centric piece of this, and provide value to our partners as well. [00:04:21] Damian: It's a very clear example of how non endemic works in a retail media network, I think, because, you know, when you think about other retail media networks, often think about the retailer and what it sells, but, you know, with United, it's a different story. [00:04:34] Mike: Yeah, it's the breath of commerce, and that's what I enjoyed. That was like when I came here, it was eye opening. I had an idea, right? But just to see what we can do and really the validation of just how strong our data is and how valuable it is from a customer standpoint. When I say valuable to the customer, it is to spoon feed customers based on their interests. [00:04:57] Cafeteria style doesn't work. There are too many choices. [00:05:00] So if you're in a planning phase and we can bring about certain things that are of, normality to you, booking a restaurant, booking a golf reservation, simply as getting my ride share, it makes the journey easier. It makes it feel like it's Damien Fowler's journey, not just a customer who purchased a seat in one of our planes. [00:05:20] Damian: Yeah, I love that. And I just want to take that point a little bit further. Can you give some more examples of how, you work with brands, whether endemic or, when I say endemic, that would be travel related, right? Or not. and where that media might appear. [00:05:34] Mike: Sure. So today we are, our media network extends from our dot com, our in app, we have digital signage within the airports, be it in our clubs and lounges, gate information displays, on our planes we have in flight entertainment, or we call IFE, or personal device entertainment on your phone, and so as part of United Next, we made an investment to purchase north of [00:06:00] 800 planes. [00:06:01] And within each of those planes, they will be outfitted with the new IFE system. It's meant to be more of an OTT experience versus the current experience, which quite frankly is, it's legacy, it's the 1950s. It's a small screen with limited choices and it's not what we're used to. we envision this opportunity to have a very personalized experience in which you will have your interests displayed on that screen and every person's screen will be different. [00:06:28] Based on that individual. And so, for us, we will be retrofitting our current fleet, with the exception of a couple planes that will be retired over time. And so, over time, we will have screens in all planes on a, personalized basis. And so, for us too, it's, you extend past that, you have email and such. [00:06:47] It's a true omni channel offering, but most importantly, it's the engagement. We have an average of three and a half hour flight time. And so, when you're at home You can get up, use the restroom, go to the kitchen, whatever, if [00:07:00] a commercial comes on. You cannot do the same in a plane. At the same frequency. I mean, yes, you can get up, but the idea of having the ability to engage in an intimate and targeted manner with our users and to be able to show them things of their interest is huge. [00:07:16] Right? And then you think more, in lounges and clubs, It's not going to be personalized. If Damien walks in, if you walk into the club, you don't want to see. Hello, Damon. How are you? Do you need a new green shirt? That's creepy, right? Yes. So again, there's you can think about. the business traveler travels from Monday at 5 a. [00:07:35] m. to 11 a. m. and Thursdays from 4 to 7. So perhaps we put advertisers endemic to that audience. Families travel on weekends and these are generalities. But through research and through signals, we can begin to capture that. And again, the right message at the right time. [00:07:50] Damian: What customer insights will help connect brands with United Flyers? [00:07:54] Mike: So we capture over 120 targetable segments, or signals, I should say. And that [00:08:00] is, a mix of attitudinal, behavioral, lifestyle, and transactional. And today, our audience indexed to the highly affluent individual. Married, college educated, homeowner, household income of 250, 000 plus. And so you'll see in some of our launch partners, Bottega Veneta, which is a luxury brand, McAllen's, a higher end Scotch. [00:08:21] Very good for that audience, but at the same time, we are very diverse in terms of who is on our plane. We, our launch partner was Televisa Univision. 25 percent of the Chicago population is Hispanic. Is it 63 million, Spanish speaking, Americans in the U. S., right? So the idea of just focusing on one demographic doesn't do anyone justice. [00:08:45] very much. Right? Again, speaks to that scale of data. And so, we, there's a use case for every single brand, every single opportunity. We [00:08:56] Damian: that nuance that you can bring to it, to [00:09:00] advertising, is obviously key to this. what strategies is Connective employ to personalize ads and offer that to these different segments? [00:09:08] We are a very privacy centric, privacy [00:09:10] Mike: privacy safe, conservative approach to what we're doing. We sit atop GAM. we work with, a number of clean rooms. any and everything we do is meant to uphold the integrity of that customer's data. we will never sell the data as a stand alone. It'll always be wrapped with media on a managed basis. [00:09:31] And I say that because the sale of data opens up opportunity for bad actors. Then there are bad actors out there. So when it comes down to it You know, we want to ensure that we are keeping our customers, information, and privacy at the forefront. And then, any and everything we do is in a compliant way. [00:09:51] Data collaborations through clean rooms, proper encryption at all specific times, proper measurement and verification. it's a textbook [00:10:00] approach, knowing full well that,  [00:10:04] Mike: party data is currency, you have to protect it, and you have to use it in the right manner. [00:10:09] Damian: And it feels great, right? The work that we did is meaningful. [00:10:20] Mike: It's been overwhelming, honestly. I used to work, I helped startup advertising. com a long time ago, and all its brand names up through Yahoo. And I was always the one vying for a brand's business. To work on a brand site now has been an eye opening experience because you have the problem of choice. And the reception to what we've been doing has been incredibly positive. [00:10:44] and it feels great, right? The work that we did is meaningful. The work that we did is interesting. but we have to be smart in terms of who we work with. I would say the outreach from partners, we always want to maintain a very premium nature for any owned [00:11:00] and operated supply. I think it's important. [00:11:02] Again, the brand integrity for United is paramount. but at the same time, as I said earlier, there's a use case for all brands. And we're always open to exploration and conversations. And then making the right choice based on United brand, based on the value for our customers and for the overall business. [00:11:21] Damian: Now travel has skyrocketed since pandemic times, and that's been well reported. Can you describe the change United has seen more generally in people coming back to the skies? [00:11:32] Mike: the largest airline in the U. S. right now. and it's, it's a great position to be in because people fly United for the experience. [00:11:39] We do not compete with low cost carriers. That's not our model. People fly for the convenience, for the experience, for the opportunity to increase their loyalty status, for the journey in itself. Our app is the number one rated app in the, in, of all airlines, and if you, you know, I'm not sure if you're a flyer or not, Thank you. [00:11:58] If you are [00:12:00] so you see that app is very intuitive in terms of my baggage goes here. My gate is here. And so against personalization, right? It may not be specific. Damien. This is your journey. Rather, you are flying at this airport. Here is where your luggage is. Here's where your gate is. And it's just it's taking those steps to just again lessen the hassle of travel. [00:12:19] And then, as you get on the plane, our flight attendants, our ground crew, our pilots are just top caliber. it's the friendliness that you see. again, the experience extends beyond [00:12:29] Damian: a traveler's standpoint. [00:12:30] Mike: Connected media provides an opportunity for us to gather what we have from our three core pillars. Travel, loyalty, and media. [00:12:39] And it's that flywheel. we are able to ingest signals based on the profiles that we have. And in doing so, you begin to see the traveler profile as it begins to matriculate to an actual loyalty partner. [00:12:52] 39 million mileage plus loyalty partners. We have a co brand card through Chase. Right. We have our mileage plus [00:13:00] partnerships team, and we think about that from the Avis's, the Marriott's, from a travel endemic standpoint, non endemic, even like the away, I guess away luggage is not therabody, things to that effect. [00:13:10] And so, the ability to accrue and redeem miles as transaction. And then, with the credit card, the ability to redeem miles, or accrue miles, I should say, through transactions. As you go through the flywheel, you come to the media piece, which is the connective tissue. To understanding the middle and lower funnel of that transaction, purchase point, brand affinity, options for our users. [00:13:33] And then back to the first part, the emotion, and the journey, and the actual travel. And as we do this flywheel, we have more travelers, which means more signals, which means more opportunities for media, which means more, and it's a self fulfilling flywheel that essentially, again, with the customer in the middle, or the customer is the focus, it's Creates that opportunity to your point of why people are flying more with United.[00:14:00]  [00:14:00] Damian: What kind of feedback have you had from those customers? what are people's experience, what are people experiencing and how are they setting that back to you? [00:14:08] Mike: think the best part is, they've come up and said I'm so excited you're doing this. Never would have thought of this. like you, you're hearing it from the horse's mouth, right? So there's, in an unbiased manner, what I'm most proud of is the fact that we've come out with a legitimate business with a very, very focused North Star, that is focused solely around the customer. [00:14:31] that's unique. And to bring it to market at the speed that we did. With the help that we had from partners and the support that we've had from the industry has been just, has been amazing. Now the [00:14:43] Damian: the idea now seems like a very good one. And you're describing, you're telling me, Mike, how quickly you brought it to market. What, in under a year, really? I mean, it's a good idea. Do you expect that other airlines are going to want to emulate, what you've done here with your media network? [00:14:59] Mike: is [00:15:00] a very savvy airline. They're a great airline. they're doing certain things [00:15:07] with the connect, that we're connecting. streaming from a device to their, seatback screens. They've done partnerships with Walmart Plus and such. Whether they come out with a full scale media network, I'm not sure. but, United and Delta are the top two airlines in the U. S. [00:15:22] And they are a very savvy brand. So, if they come out, I would not be, surprised. I don't know about the others. You know, for me, it's not one's better than the other. It's just where I see the next. In [00:15:35] Damian: In general, while we're on the topic of predictions, when you look ahead to the rest of this year and to next, as you build this offering out, what are the kind of trends you're looking for in terms of that merging of travel and media that you just talked about? The year into next, what trends are you all looking for? [00:16:09] Mike: It's really, when you and I grew up, you had to pay for HBO, you had to pay for ESPN. it's a similar model, and you're seeing consolidation and M& A start in that sector. There's too many choices for consumers. Today, there's 273 retail media networks. That is not scalable, right? Marketers and agencies already have too many choices to make. [00:16:30] and at the same time, the uniqueness of that data, depending on the sectors. It may not be all that unique. I do think there's going to be consolidation. There has to be. And for me, I would expect that. I think we're in a very good position just given the unique position that we're in. And quite frankly, like the three pillars, right? [00:16:53] Scale, accuracy, and omni channel. And we can say we have that with confidence. I would say like, [00:17:00] to your point of expectations, there has to be consolidation. I think the introduction of AI, it wouldn't be a podcast without saying AI. I've already said flywheel, if there's another one I need to say. [00:17:11] But I do think, the introduction of AI into not only the purchase path, but more importantly, the analytics. Right? Humans know which questions to ask. AI will figure out what other questions to ask. And as we constantly feed these models, you're going to have, just from an analytics standpoint, the ability to extract new data, new intelligence, new insights, and we want to be on the forefront there to ensure that, we modernize our offering at a pace that is quicker, than what the industry is seeing. [00:17:44] Damian: Do you anticipate that your media network and what you're offering might have some kind of partnerships with some of those streaming platforms? I'm just thinking. Yeah, it's my job. So, [00:17:54] Mike: So, like, I do. I think there's opportunity for partnership. Yeah. it's the many versus the [00:18:00] power of one. [00:18:00] Damian: Yeah.  [00:18:01] Mike: You have to be selective, right? If you partner with everyone, you partner with no one. So, I think there's opportunities in the travel space. I do think there's opportunities in the non endemic space, too. We're at really early stages, so Honestly, platform side, I'm not used to this much attention. [00:18:21] and I love it. And we brought friends in to build this business. I'm working with my friends. I absolutely love it. And so together we're kind of sitting down and putting our heads together and say, okay, like we got to the starting line. We bust out our asses for nine months and we got to the starting line. How do we run this race and always be the leader? Because there's going to be people coming up after us. And that challenge with one another is great because we're pushing one another to be better. And it's not intense in the sense that like, any conversations with emotion are meant for constructive and collaboration. [00:18:57] And I think we're all being better because we're constantly pushing [00:19:00] one another. But more importantly, we're supporting one another. [00:19:02] Damian: Yeah. you do see some relationships with broadcasters, with in flight entertainment, but I imagine this is going to go. To a different level. [00:19:11] Mike: this is the early stage of the business. This is the exciting part. we're the bright, shiny object right now, and I think it's good to revel in that just to pat yourself on the back and say, Hey, we did it. [00:19:22] But realistically, like complacency doesn't get you anywhere, right? So everyone else has got has gotten to the starting line. There's been 273 other companies that got to the starting line, and some are running the race faster than others, and some are not even on the same course anymore. so for us, I think it's about heads down, and just constantly push. [00:19:42] And to be the best, [00:19:49] Damian: is highly competitive. Do you feel the pressure? [00:19:53] Mike: I don't feel the pressure from the industry. I feel the pressure to deliver. Like, me personally, I hold the bar very [00:20:00] high for myself, and I'm my worst critic. I know what it's like to be successful. I helped launch advertising. com and I can tell you those first five years were by far like the highlight of my life from a professional standpoint. [00:20:11] these last nine months are on par with that. And if I can make the next four years and three months the same or better, I'm going to do everything I can to do it. And if there's 23 years, 18 more years to follow that, great. I hope to retire at some point in my life. But, um, I'm just excited because. [00:20:30] This is real. And it's good. And, will be responsible for our success. So, yeah, I'm really excited about it.  [00:20:37] Damian: thank you so much for these insights. It's been great. [00:20:40] Mike: to speak with you, Damian. Thank you.  [00:20:42] Damian: And that's it for this edition of The Current Podcast. [00:20:44] We'll be back next week, so stay tuned. [00:20:47] Ilyse: The Current Podcast's theme is by Love Caliber. The current team includes Kat Vesce and Sydney Cairns. [00:20:53] Damian: . And remember, I'm Damian. [00:20:55] Ilyse: I'm Ilyse. [00:20:56] Damian: And we'll see you next time. And if you like what you hear, please [00:21:00] subscribe and leave us a review. Also, tune in to our other podcast, The Current Report.

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I chat with Mike Snavely, CEO of Phunware. Mike details Phunware's evolution from a mobile development agency into a thriving SaaS company delivering high-ROI apps to hotels and healthcare providers. Hear how shifting culture from rigid control to empowering autonomous teams with accountability revived success. Key strategic maneuvers included trimming the workforce judiciously and securing capital patiently. Timely decisions breathe new life into businesses' surfaces repeatedly. We delve into crafting a trusting, candid culture. Difficult conversations are promptly addressed and failures learned foster innovation and resilience. I share that I founded such an environment at a former startup. Mike's unique hobby of creatively mapping dream destinations blends work wisdom with life's pleasures, crafting an episode uplifting attendees' strategies and spirits. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Mike Snavely explains the evolution of Phunware from a mobile solution development agency to a SaaS company that specializes in customized mobile apps for hotels and healthcare institutions. We discuss the strategic decisions and cultural shifts necessary during the transition to new leadership at Phunware, including capital injection and reshaping the balance sheet for growth. Mike highlights the move from a command-and-control culture to one that champions autonomy and accountability, emphasizing the importance of empowering team leaders. We explore the significance of building a leadership team grounded in trust, accountability, autonomy, and candor, and how these principles contribute to a positive organizational culture. Mike shares his personal career journey, detailing his long-standing experience in mobile technology and his eventual rise to the CEO position at Phunware. We examine how Phunware fosters a culture of appreciation and collaboration through a Slack channel called Momentum, which recognizes and celebrates employee contributions. Mike talks about balancing professional obligations with personal passions, including the importance of prioritizing family and maintaining a positive trajectory in both areas. We discuss the importance of in-person engagement for building and maintaining key relationships with stakeholders, despite the trend toward virtual interactions. Mike reflects on past experiences and learnings, including the value of having prompt and honest conversations to avoid delays in decision-making and mitigate potential failures. We delve into Mike's hobby of pinning dream travel destinations on Google Maps and how this practice turns travel planning into an immersive and memorable adventure. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Phunware GUESTS Mike SnavelyAbout Mike TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In today's episode, you will meet Mike Snavely, ceo of Funware. In building and maintaining key relationships with your stakeholders, mike shares his opinions on why there is no substitute for being in person to engage on a human level. Mike, I want to welcome you to Building Texas Business and thank you for taking time to come on the show with me. Glad to be here. Thanks for the invitation. So, as the CEO of Funware, let's start by just orienting the listeners to what is Funware and tell us what the company's known for. Mike: Sure so. Funware is a 15-year-old publicly traded company based in Austin, Texas. We build mobile experiences that help hotels and healthcare institutions engage their guests and patients while they're on premises in ways that drive satisfaction and monetization. Chris: Very interesting. So you said the company started I guess in the early 2000s. Mike: Then it would have been in 2009. The company started. It was private for the first 11 or so years of its existence and then we went public via SPAC transaction in 2000. I believe it was 20. Chris: Okay, and it sounds like a fairly niched focus for the company. How did it come to be that the company, I guess, was so focused on kind of those two industries and providing that type of, I guess, service to those customers? Mike: Well, originally it wasn't. So over 15 years, you might imagine, there's been an evolution in the focus of the company, and so the company in 2009 was really more of a mobile solution development agency. So some of the biggest brands you know in the world really selected Funware back in the timeframe to build some of their first mobile apps in the app store. So companies like Fox, the NFL, the Sochi Olympics, wwe, a number of airports and so on were spending a lot of money to build their first mobile application and then to develop their first mobile audience. For lots of reasons and that was two years after the iPhone was introduced. It was actually before the iPad was introduced and so obviously there's a lot of evolution of consumer expectations when it comes to engaging on mobile, and those brands were spending a lot of money in the early comes to engaging on mobile, and those brands were spending a lot of money in the early days to build their first mobile presences. That's evolved over time, and so agencies are really not, they really don't drive the valuation that a SaaS company does, and so we've, over time, evolved into becoming a SaaS company. So we license our technologies. We'll essentially build an app, configuring it for the customer, launch it into the app store and then generate license fees off that app for as long as it exists and is available for download. That's a much better valuation model because typically when our customers get involved with us they stick around. Our retention rate is very high because we drive a positive ROI. So we've kind of followed the evolution of mobile from really high investment work for hire, boutique agency-like development all the way through today where we charge between 50 and $150,000 a year for a given property, whether it's a hotel or a hospital, to have their own mobile app in the app store, to have their own brand in front of their users or guests and then ultimately to develop that one-on-one relationship with that guest or patient in a way that drives repeat business and satisfaction and additional monetization. Chris: That's fascinating. Now you mentioned retention rate. What do you which obviously is very important for success of a company, especially like yours what do you attribute that successful retention rate to? Mike: Well, we do good work and I can make available to you a list and you could even put it in the podcast if you'd like of the apps that we build, or some of the apps that we build. They're beautiful apps. So, number one, we do really high-quality work that all of our customers are proud to have their name on. And then, number two, we drive ROI, plain and simple. For a dollar they put into our solutions, they get between $5 and $50 back, depending on who they are and the specifics of their business. And you know, if I could give you a machine that would, you put a dollar bill in, you get a five or a 50 back out. You would say how many dollar bills can I put in there? Chris: Yeah, no, no, kidding, right Well. I mean, but fundamentally, you mentioned at least you know two fundamental things that is key to customer retention. That's one provide good service. If you're in the service industry, it starts with providing good service and I think an outcome of that is your customer sees a valuable return on the investment for your service. Those are not unique to software but for any kind of service type business right, exactly, that's right. Let's talk a little bit about your. So you're the CEO. The company was founded by others than yourself. How did you come, I guess, to work at Funware and I know just a little bit that you've had this is like your second stint there but give us a little background on your connection to the company and how it was you became the CEO. Mike: Yeah, sure enough. So I've really made a career of pursuing technology trends. So I'm kind of an old guy so I've been in business for a long time. But I started off in offline marketing technologies, sending out snail mail and running telephone centers. Then I evolved into social marketing with a startup in Austin, texas. I then got into mobile and I've been in mobile really kind of on and off ever since. Mobile's a big deal because you've got a device that knows who you are and knows where you are, you tell it all your secrets. It really is an indispensable. It's become an indispensable tool. And so I've really made kind of a career over the last shoot 15 years at this point in mobile. And so I was originally with my first stint in mobile was with a little mobile application development boutique in Austin called Mutual Mobile. That was 2008, 9, 10, 11 timeframe Did something else and then I was recruited to come to Funware by somebody who had worked for me at Mutual Mobile and I said look, we're building out this platform company. We're very interested in having somebody who can really help to drive revenues. Would you be interested in joining? So that in 14, I joined Funware for the first time and I came to run the software business. So I was responsible for all revenues for the software business of Funware from 14 through 16 or so, got to know the company, got to really understand the technologies Actually, a number of the people who were there then are still with the company. Then I went off, worked at a Silicon Valley startup and did a couple of other things, couple of other things. And then, when the founding CEO left in 23, they hired a guy that I had worked with at Mutual Mobile back in the day as the new CEO and he said look, mike, I know that you're great at building businesses on the revenue side. Would you like to come and be my CRO, as I'm CEO of Funware? And he said I'll make it worth your while. So I said no a couple of times and then eventually I said yes. Well, this was September of last year that I rejoined the company and 30 days in the board said look, you know, what we really need is somebody with sales DNA at CEO. Let's try that again. Easy for me to say CEO role. So, mike, would you like to step in as CEO? So I actually I had a buddy who brought me back to be a CRO and then wound up taking this job. We're still friends, we still talk all the time and he was very supportive of that move. But a long story short, I think that the company for a time kind of lost its way in the simple fact of selling, servicing accounts and driving revenues, and that's something I've had the good fortune to develop pretty good skill at, and so now I'm the CEO and I'm going to tell you I think the E in CEO stands for extra. Everything about it is extra, but it really is the best job I've ever had and I'm really enjoying it. I still spend a lot of time working with customers, selling, identifying strategic partnerships and that kind of thing, because I enjoy it, I feel like I'm good at it and it's absolutely critical to positioning the company for growth and valuation, which is exactly my job. Chris: There you go, so let's talk a little bit about that. What are some of the things that you do to build and maintain relationships with those partners, customers, strategic relationships that you think someone listening might learn? Mike: from. Well, it's funny, there's been a real trend away from in-person, and so you and I are meeting today on Zoom. Our business, funware, is essentially 100% virtual at this point, and what I find is there's no substitute for hopping on a plane and going to see somebody, breaking bread with them, getting to know them as a person, understanding what it is they're trying to accomplish, what their hopes and dreams are, what their fears are. Once you get to that point and really just kind of understanding them as a person, and then exposing yourself as a person and say, look, you know, this is what I'm trying to accomplish, mr and Ms, partner or prospect, and really kind of, you know, engaging on a human level, which you know is a whole lot easier for sitting across the desk from somebody, and that's that to me, is is where I spend a lot of my time. I do invest a lot of time in in person, you know, spending time with customers, prospects, partners and the rest of it, and I really just don't think there's much of a substitute for that. Chris: Couldn't agree more. I think that's how, really, until the pandemic, it's how business got done in person. I don't think anything's changed here. I think, especially these days, I think it says so much more that you take the time to do that when you could otherwise, yeah, do a Teams or Zoom call or whatever, and just the human interaction I mean. As humans, I think we're meant to be together, right and interact, and I think that just fosters the relationship. So great advice there. Keeping on that kind of theme you've come back in not in an easy economic time, so let's talk a little bit about managing through kind of some economic uncertain, rising interest rates and all the stuff that's out there in the news. Let's talk about kind of what are some of the things you've done to stay focused and keep your people focused on driving the business forward? Mike: Sure enough. Well, there are some benefits and some drawbacks to being a public and trading company. Of course One is access to the capital markets. That's a benefit, and we certainly have the ability to draw capital out of the markets in ways that don't require us to be as susceptible to excuse me, the interest rate environment, but that doesn't mean that our customers aren't susceptible to that environment. And so we've had to do some things. Selling into hospitality and healthcare, I mean, we're typically selling into pretty big organizations and they have a little bit of a buffer, I suppose, from the ebbs and flows of the economy, particularly when you look at luxury hospitality. I mean, COVID aside, luxury hospitality has really been on a growth tear because of the generation of a lot of wealth on the part of a lot of people and they're wanting to spend it on high-quality experiences. But that doesn't mean that we don't have to be creative from time to time when it comes to pricing a deal or generating terms that are acceptable to the customer. They can digest, they can maybe capitalize the expense as opposed to turning into an OPEX expense and that kind of thing, and certainly we've had to be creative there. When I first took on the CEO role. The company was having a little bit of financial trouble and you could read in our public filings all about it. But, long story short, we were having problems with access to capital and I had to work with my CFO and others you know capital partners to really inject some capital into the company from the market in ways that allowed us, you know, the ability to move forward without paying a lot of interest, frankly. So we were able to kind of reshape the balance sheet in a way that puts us in a great spot for growth today Smaller companies I can only imagine what it must be like if you're dealing with debt financing, distinct from capital financing, and what some of the challenges there must be. We had to make some hard decisions in connection with the recapitalization of the company that had to do with people, in large part because that's our number one expense and those are hard things to do, and I spent many a sleepless night, you know, because I had to do some of those things. But the fact of the matter is that most companies don't cut fast enough and they don't cut deep enough because of those reasons, and it feels terrible, but preserving the company and giving ourselves the ability to go forward and thrive is really kind of the job for the shareholders. Chris: Yeah, and yeah, I agree. I think, regardless of the size of the company, making those people decisions are extremely difficult because, again, we went back to in person and it's human and these people have been with you typically and but it's what they say, right, it is when you have to make the hard cuts, you have to cut muscle and those can be challenging decisions. On the flip side of that, sure, as you come into the CEO role, you are either have or still in the process of building your team. What are some of the things that you do? Processes maybe you've created to help you identify the right people to surround yourself with to further the mission and strategies of the company. Mike: Well, there are two non-delegable duties that the CEO has, in my belief. Number one it's setting the strategy of the company. So we're going to be a SaaS company serving these markets, we're going to drive toward these margins, we're going to deliver in this way, and these are the things that are important for the strategy of the business. Number two is the culture of the business, and so I can't hire somebody to give me a culture. I've got to work with the company to create the culture that we want, and so I'll give you a little bit of a story there. So I have a lot of respect for the fellows who founded the company, a lot of respect for them, because they built something that I now have the good fortune to run and take to the next level. But there was a lot of. They were literally army guys, and there was a lot of army DNA in the company. Now that there's nothing wrong with that, there's nothing at all wrong with that, and the company was successful for a number of years, but and the culture that was built was one of command and control, because that's what the army is Right. Chris: Well, it's not. I'll just interrupt it. That's also not atypical of kind of startup mentality. Right, it's dominant kind of leadership. Got to get it done, got to get this off the ground. Mike: Yep, dominant leadership plus the military background equaled very much a command and control structure, a bit of a cult of personality around the founding CEO, and all of that, you know, paid great dividends. For a long time, I could not be any more different from the founding CEO. I'm not an army guy, you know. And so one of the first things I did when I took on the job is I said look, you know, you know if you're the vice president of sales or you're the vice president of, you know of product or delivery or deployments or whatever it is. You're the CEO of your own business and I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm going to give you an objective and I'm going to give you the flexibility and the support to go and achieve that objective. You need people. You get people. You need investment. You get investment. But your accountability is to go and run your portion of the business as if you were the CEO. I'm not going to micromanage the decisions at all. I'm going to empower you to do the right thing number one for the customer, because then that ultimately becomes the right thing for the company over many observations and so that was a transition that some people are still working through. Frankly, in leadership roles within the company. It's sometimes people get comfortable being told what to do and we just we don't do that anymore. And you know a couple of people have left as a result of that. They did not have that comfort and that's okay because it's not the right job for them anymore. But most people have really embraced the opportunity of agency and empowerment and the ability to kind of run their own part of the business. ADVERT Hello friends, this is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at boyermillercom. And thanks for listening to the show. Chris: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to unpack there, but clearly what you're talking about in my terms are giving people autonomy, but with accountability, which I think is the right way to go. However, organizations evolve over time, just like people. So I think we talk about command and control in the early days. That, for most companies, may make sense, but where this company is now and size and scale, you couldn't do that because there's too much going on and you have to then hire the right people, and the people that work for the company in the first few years may not work, you know, 10 years, 15 years later, because different skill sets needed, right, so it sounds like you've got your hands around that pretty well. Mike: Well, you know, it's always a work in progress, and so one of the one of the accelerants to adopting a new cultural tone is bringing in people, you know right. So I brought in a couple of guys and they are both guys, I'm afraid, who I had worked with a number of times in the past, who I knew kind of got the way that we wanted to run the railroad and who are are the kind of guys who just roll up their sleeves every day and make the most of the day. And, you know, those guys are not only in leadership roles within the company but they're also, you know, setting a tone for the others they work with most closely day to day, and I absolutely think it's working. Chris: That's great. So kind of sum that conversation up for us how would you define the culture of Funware today? Mike: I'd say that we're kind of a restart up, but with all the good elements of a startup, and what I mean by that is that we had a revenue profile that grew, grew and then it kind of dropped off. For some reason I wasn't here, and we're in the process of growing back up and we're getting in the right people who are interested in not only doing great work and serving the customers really well and building a terrific product, but also ones who are embracing the autonomy and the accountability that we're providing to them, and I couldn't be any more pleased with the reception that I'm getting. Chris: Anything special that you've kind of put in place to kind of help foster that type of culture so that you can perpetuate it and see it grow. Mike: Well, we tend to recognize the behaviors that we're looking for, and here's what I mean by that. So you know, somebody will just do a thing right and they'll do it. They'll achieve an accomplishment, whatever that accomplishment may be, and we'll talk. We've got a Slack channel. Slack is a tool we use all day long, every day, and we have a Slack channel called Momentum, and the Momentum channel is really about recognizing the contributions that a person makes, and the deal is that if you put something in Momentum, you've got to recognize somebody else. So you say, hey, a great thing happened, you got to recognize somebody else. So you say, hey, a great thing happened. And I want to thank Bob over here for his contribution to the thing, because Bob, you know, contributed in a way that if he hadn't done that, you know we might not have gotten the outcome that we're looking for. You know that that's something that you see traffic in every single day, that's great. Chris: We obviously I can relate to that we do something similar here at the firm Every single day. That's great, I can relate to that. We do something similar here at the firm, not necessarily on a specific channel, but it's kind of become part of our culture to. We call them core value kudos and it's about recognizing other people not yourself, obviously in efforts that they made and tying them to our mission and values, so that the behaviors and the values marry up right. And then people. It makes it tangible that I want to thank or, you know, congratulate someone for doing X, Y and Z which demonstrated this value in action. Mike: That's terrific. Yeah, I've been in companies that have done that. I think that's something that I may need to reincorporate into my bag of tricks there, for sure that have done that. I think that's something that I may need to reincorporate into my bag of tricks there for sure. Chris: So you know along those lines your software company. I always am interested to know what are you doing to kind of promote or foster creativity and innovation within the company? Mike: Well, some of the things that you know it's interesting, I'm going to I'll give you maybe a little bit longer answer you might be looking for, but there is, and it's really important to kind of separate the day-to-day from the long-term vision. And what I mean by that is that I'm, let's say, a developer and today I have to fix a bug, and I just have to fix the bug because the bug exists and it's in the way of something happening and it's not my favorite part of the job, I'm quite confident of that. Not my favorite part of the job, I'm quite confident of that. Not my favorite part of the job to fix a bug. But there is some long range stuff that I'm really excited about. A big part of what we do is indoor wayfinding and hyperlocal marketing offers, and there are lots and lots of innovations that we're looking at right now, and so we identify people who are interested in innovation. We put together both formal processes for them to say, okay, you're on the R&D team and you're going to be doing this work, but we also give them informal opportunities. Hey, look, I want you to go to Denver to our customer with Gaylord Rockies and I want you to actually go into the physical space that we're trying to map, and I want you to help me figure out a better way to do it. And so that's two things. It's number one, solving a strategic problem for the business, but it's also kind of getting them out of their, since we're all virtual, it's getting them out of their own office, sending them to Denver, take an extra day, engage the customer, do great work, but also enjoy yourself a little bit. So we try to give people an opportunity to get out of the context within which they're working sitting in my home office squashing bugs and get out into the real world where our solutions are deployed in ways that are not only sort of fun but also problem solving. Chris: So you've been in some leadership roles throughout your career, obviously CEO now. How would you describe your leadership style and how do you think it's evolved over the last few years? Mike: Well, I try to work with people. I try to work as best I can. You can't always do that right, but you can absolutely make the investment of time to get to know them, and so I walk into this job. I've got a CFO that I just met very recently, and I had a chief legal officer that I met just recently, and I had a chief operating officer that I had known actually for some time and one of those guys wound up leaving that I had known actually for some time and you know, one of those guys wound up leaving. But you know the other two guys that I had just met. I made it a real point of going to where they were, sitting down with them breaking bread, understanding who they are, what they were trying to accomplish, why they were at the company in the first place and all the rest of it, because it was important for me to understand whether I could trust and whether it was appropriate to invest in these guys. Right and absolutely it was. By the way, I had a couple of gaps in my leadership team and what I did was find people that I'd worked with in the past and I said, look, are you willing to come and work for me again, and the answer in every case was absolutely so, and that's not because I'm the greatest guy in the world or because I gave him a zillion dollars or anything like that. It's because we have, over the years, established a working cadence that's founded on this idea of trust and accountability, autonomy of action and really candor of discussion. There's nothing that the leadership team and I don't discuss in detail and with candor. We're not afraid to tell our truths to each other. We've created what I think is a safe space for us to really talk about what's on our mind and what concerns or challenges we have, or if somebody is all wet, you know, and and that kind of. That kind of culture. The executive table, I think, filters down to the rest of the business in ways that help support the culture we're trying to build. Chris: Yeah, and I was gonna say it sounds like it's a culture of safety to have the hard conversations, but that those conversations are done in a respectful way. Mike: Yeah. Chris: I don't know if there's no better way to do it Right, and it's okay to fail. Mike: And I got to tell you, I used to race, I used to race cars a long time ago and you know, if you don't crash, you're not driving fast enough and so it's okay. It's okay to crash every once in a while because that means you're pushing the envelope, You're trying to get, you know, you're trying to get to the edge of the performance envelope and that's positive. Chris: Yeah, no, let's talk about that, cause I I there. There's always learning, and so I think there's. You know, when you have setbacks or failures, you can learn from them and it can make you better. Don't let it define you. So can you give us an example of more than not the car racing, because crashing is easy to understand as a failure, but in the business world, as a leader something that you felt a failure of yours, a bad decision, a setback that you absolutely grew from, and it's made you better today. Mike: Yeah, sure enough, I think that my greatest learnings are not being decisive enough and not acting quickly enough. And so you know, let's say, for example, I'll give you the example of last company I worked for before. Well, yes, I'll give you that example. So I was working at an AI video startup in Madison, Wisconsin. It was essentially a unit of a publicly traded company that I won't name, but your viewers can certainly look it up. And, long story short, that company is now bankrupt and I don't fault any of the. I don't fault the CEO of that company, which was not me, by the way, in that, but I fault myself. Yeah, exactly, it wasn't me. I didn't bankrupt the company. This was a guy I had worked with before were pretty small, and so what I said was I need this much to make this happen. I was given about half that much and I didn't adequately reset the expectations on how long it was going to take to get that thing done, slash. I should have had probably more pointed discussion about is this worth doing at all, and I didn't do that. And the long story short is that company is now bankrupt for lots of reasons, but the thing that I that my not being as aggressive as I felt like I should have been was a contributor to that. I think it was a small contributor, but you know all that to say that it didn't help. Chris: And so I kind of trace it. I would say the learning for you is kind of having the hard conversations faster right and that's the kind of culture that's terrifically important for me. Mike: So that informs the culture I'm building at Funware, which is like, if this ain't going to work, I just need you to tell me, and I might disagree and I might argue with you, but I will absolutely hear you. I might argue with you, but I will absolutely hear you. It's going to be super important for us to just trust each other enough to be able to have the discussion about you know, without fear. I guess is where I'm coming from. Chris: I understand that, so let's talk a little bit about you know these are important jobs that you've held over the last few years, and as is the current one. I don't like using the term work-life balance, but how do you? Manage work and personal life to try to keep them both going in a positive direction. Mike: Well, I spend a lot of time with my kids. I really, yeah, my daughter. So I'm here in Ohio, I'm spending time with my father and mother, but my daughter came along, my older daughter came along, she's out of school already. I'm going to go next week pick up my younger daughter in boarding school in Colorado, drive her down to Big Bend, where she has never been, and then, you know, spend time with her over the summer. So I mean, it's really about being deliberate about that and working from anywhere, candidly, in my opinion, helps. There's no expectation. I'm going to the office, I'm going to be there during the business day on Monday through Friday, and what I kind of joke is that I mean, I work a lot, no question about it, but I work around my life as opposed to work, as opposed to planning my life around my work, to planning my life around my work. So I might work, you know, 60 hours a week, but that's not going to be five times 12. That's going to be, you know, kind of eight-ish times seven. I'll work every day a little bit, but I'm certainly going to put my kids first and that's just the way it is. Chris: Well, I can identify with that. I think everyone has to find their own way and each job and role requires different things. In different stages of life require different things. So I think that's what people you know should stay focused on, individually as well as the companies to try to make sure you have good people. You don't want to lose them for those types of reasons. People you don't want to lose them for those types of reasons. Yeah, so, mike, this has been a great conversation. Before we wrap up, I just want to kind of get a little bit more less or a little less serious about things. Tell us what was your first job as a kid? Mike: It'd be funny, you should ask. So I'm back in rural Ohio where I grew up. Right now, at my parents' house, as I mentioned earlier, my first job was was am I allowed to say shit on your podcast? Of course, the texas my first, my first job was shoveling hog shit. Chris: Shoveling hog shit for minimum wage and I was nothing that wants to make you go to college and get a degree than that right. Mike: well, the funny thing is that I wound up raising hogs to pay for college. So it was fine to shovel the hog shit, but I was like, if I was fine to shovel the hog shit, but I was like, if I'm going to shovel the hog shit, I'm going to do it for more than $3.35 an hour. I'm going to do it in exchange for a college education. So that's not exactly that way, but that's a big part of how I kind of got off the farm and moving ahead. Chris: I love that, okay, well, yeah, obviously, as we now know, you're from Ohio, but you spent enough time in Texas for me to ask you this question Do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Mike: I love Tex-Mex. I would eat Tex-Mex every day of the week All right. And sometimes I do. I do love barbecue, but the thing is that the best barbecue is something I don't want to wait in line for and I don't want to drive a long ways. If I happen to be by La Barbecue or Franklin's a little bit over their great barbecue a little bit overhyped, or if I want a great barbecue, I'll just treat it as a destination thing. I'll go down to Lockhart or something like that, but I can get absolutely terrific Tex-Mex around the corner from my house every day of the week. Chris: Yes, it was one good thing. You know, I think we living in Texas both are abundant right. Mike: But you're right. Chris: The marquee barbecue, you know, is tucked away in some places. All right, so my last thing is if you could do a 30 day sabbatical, where would you go? What would you do? Mike: Well, I got a bunch of customers who have really beautiful beach resorts so I might go to one of those. Chris: You might go break bread with them there. Mike: Break bread with the customers at the most beautiful resorts in the world. That would be one thing I might do. There are a lot of places around the world that I'd love to see, so I've got a Google Maps layer that has little flags. There are probably 800 flags on that map and I add some every week. Places that I like to go around the world. Sometimes they're restaurants that I read about. Sometimes they're beautiful. You know natural features, like you know mountain ranges, the Painted Mountains in the Andes, or you know beautiful lake I've never been to Crater Lake, things like that so what I'd probably do is find 30 days worth of those pins in an area that I can consume within that 30-day period and I'd just go knock it out. Chris: I love that. I like the concept of keeping track of the pins. Yep. Mike: And there's too many on the map that you know I'll be dead and gone before I get to see all of them. But you know, it is kind of a it's a memory bank for things that have caught my interest and that I do want to experience at some point, if I can pull it off. Chris: Love it. Love it Well, mike, thanks so much for taking the time to be a guest on the show. Really enjoyed hearing your story, and the things y'all are doing at Funware sound really fun, exciting and innovative. Mike: Thanks a lot. Special Guest: Mike Snavely.

Hearst Newspaper's Vice President of Programmatic, Mike Irenski, joins The Current Podcast to explore the value of local journalism and what advertisers need to know about it.  Episode TranscriptPlease note, this transcript  may contain minor inconsistencies compared to the episode audio.[00:00:00]Damian: I'm Damian Fowler. AndIlyse: I'm Ilyse Liffreing.Damian: welcome to this edition of The Current Podcast.Ilyse: This week, we're delighted to talk with Michael Eirenski, the Vice President of Programmatic Revenue at Hearst Newspapers.Damian: Now Hearst has a legacy that goes all the way back to 1887 when William Randolph Hearst acquired the San Francisco Daily Examiner and founded the Hearst Corporation.Ilyse: Only 137 years later, the legacy of the brand continues as the publisher of 24 dailies and 52 weeklies, including papers such as the Houston Chronicle and the San Francisco Chronicle.Damian: Hearst Newspapers has a unique insight into journalism in the U. S. at a local and a national level, even as publishers are under pressure to find fresh ways to fund their newsrooms.Ilyse: We talk with Mike about the value of local journalism and what advertisers need to know about it.Mike: Yeah, so Hearst newspapers has grown a lot. it's funny. I, most people don't know this, is actually 137 year old brand. We've been around, during the same amount of time as some of our friends, down the block or a couple but I think what's really differentiated us is, That, over the [00:02:00] years, we have thousands of employees.We have, award winning content. And, really unique our strong local presence. When people think of. being stale, and I think it's a little bit different here at Hearst Newspapers, is that we've always constantly been evolving. And we take pride in our core product. But I think what is particularly unique is that we have been actively engaging in our local communities over the past dozens of years. And, have really listened to our audiences. So some of the things that, come to light for us is that we are continuing to lean into And we've been [00:03:00] recently as of this year, expanding into, puzzles and gaming. We have, a big comics presence and own, several, large IPs, from Popeye to Betty Boop. And we've also been rethinking about the types of, long form content that we So it's been an evolution over time, but I think what we've really just, continued to lean into is, local community aspect. And we've seen the returns as a result.Ilyse: I had no idea that Hearst is in the IP game so much as it is.Mike: Oh my gosh. I, it's very funny when I first started here, the other side of the floor has a Popeye paraphernalia throughout the office. And I just thought people are really into Popeye. I didn't know that it was anything that we, But it is, one of many, which is fascinating. There's a large video game called Cuphead, which has a Netflix show that is actually something that we also own the IP for. So it's fascinating and [00:04:00] a growing part of our business.Ilyse: Ah, so interesting. Now, with so many, local publications, how does that affect Hearst Newspapers, approach to something like audience segmentation?Mike: Oh, my gosh. It's very funny because each market is completely different. Albany readers that relevant, accurate information that is happening, regardless of where they are.But something we like to say internally is, the national stories are conversations that are being had with everyone, but the local stories are conversations with your friends or your neighbor or your family. And as a result, I think that gives us some level of differentiation. I also joke around that we cover high school sports as if it's the NBA [00:05:00] finals.And while we might not say focus on the Royals, this came up recently, where I was curious in our newsrooms, are we talking about the Royals? Are we providing any content? And the newsrooms have been if the local community isn't really asking for it, that it really isn't, we'll cover it, but it's not just something that we lean into.And I think what I'm very proud of is we stay close to the zeitgeist, but we never follow the zeitgeist. We are really leaning into what our local communities want. And with those boots on the ground doing it, we have just amazing, journalists and, video content creators who are talking to the people.comes out in Ilyse: It's very much community first,Reader driven. Which I'm sure helps when it comes to advertising as well.Mike: Not only our readers react to our content, but also how they react to the adjacent advertising associated to it. And, with [00:06:00] that is something that we're constantly up leveling at the national level and talking to the big brands and agencies on, but just seeing that performance at the local level is a microcosm of the things we could do, but it's very inspiring when you're able to drive business to a small entrepreneur or local business.Damian: Mike, I feel really inspired by, local newspapers. I grew up in Britain and I remember getting the Yorkshire Evening Press. It used to be an evening paper and just that's how I got interested in journalism, just looking at all that.People are interested in what's happening, in their backyard.And at the same time, of course, you get the national stories and international stories in there too. As well as the TV listings that I was interested in. Anyway, I digress. But, that value of local journalism has been, of late, it's been under threat. It's been challenged. And local papers, we've, reported on have basically been, closing newsrooms and the like, across the United States and indeed other countries.But, how do you [00:07:00] think about that, in, in a world where people want local journalism, and how advertisers need those local audiences to advertise too? What's the inherent sort of like challenge and how do you think about that?Mike: Yes, I think about it often. I also think about, coming here is, it's very hard. I don't need to talk myself up or what we do here. but it's a very hard conversation that's being had, our industry touched upon it perfectly. There's a lot of threat and what we've, I think one of the things that makes us unique is that we do, across all of our properties and just Hearst brands, we have the reach. The reach play is not the challenge for us, but it's the ongoing, challenge that we have with advertisers who are looking not to run on it's very funny because people see the value of news, but then you'll talk to an advertiser and I've had advertisers say this to my face that, Hey, we don't run a news.I'm [00:08:00] sorry. We would love to run, but we can't. And, something as a case in point is, the recent eclipse, that, passed over the United We saw from our Eclipse content, when you think of the eclipse, the first thing I did was I went to my, local sites to see where, what time does it start here in New York?Where can I be? Where can I watch it? You can't get that everywhere. And those are the experiences that we are constantly trying to bring to advertisers is that there's a perception with news that it is not brand safe, that you do not want the right, alignment with the news.breaking news content. But the large majority of our content is informative to come, spend with us, we're also trying to challenge them [00:09:00] to think a little bit differently.because I think if we can get past that, I think we're actually going to be funding. The open internet, but also, quality journalism the industry will get there.Damian: That's interesting. Do you think that advertisers minds are being changed a little bit, or is it that there are new tools to offer more nuance in terms of what they can advertise against?Mike: addressability for them and their campaigns, but how do we get smarter about our contextual, And I think what [00:10:00] we're trying to do in partnership with our advertisers is show them that, an article about, again, our high school sports team shooting that basket that won the game is very different from, a gun shooting or some type of gun violence.So those are the parts that we're hoping we can get advertisers to lean into and build with us. But until some of the technology is there, it's gonna be really a very manual, open dialogue that we're having with them. But I think it's changing. I think especially with the cookie deprecating, it, this is my personal feeling is that it's gonna really spring back to the content, to the quality, and to the objectiveness of that content, that's gonna bring advertisers back to us.Damian: There's one more question. You mentioned at the top, the importance of content variety, and you mentioned long form. Journalism and that's another form that's been disappearing un unless it's in national magazines, why is that important and why is a variety of [00:11:00] content an important factor for, a newspaper, publisher, when it comes to finding advertisers to embrace that content and be next to it.Mike: Yeah, it's a great question. What we've seen is the long form content, especially as it relates to the weekends, people really are looking to understand what's happening at the local level, but they're looking for just, I think more than just the two or three paragraphs, about, what's happening there.[00:12:00] They're Spectrum of what is happening at home.And I think that's what's really important for us, is to just show, you can cover the breaking news all day, you can maybe get the hits from, search, and maybe everyone's curious about that advertisers might not want to run against, but the majority of what people are coming to read us on is, what happened yesterday and what should I be doing this weekend?And I think those are things that we can answer for them.Damian: Yeah.Ilyse: Totally, and outside of specific content, [00:13:00] There's been, like, a number of major publications, including the New York Times, that have leaned into the subscription model, especially as, they realize, cookies will be going away, we need to make sure our revenue model is still intact, we need people reading the news, should this be free, it's, we are providing a service, there's a whole list of reasons why, a subscription model has been implemented, and part of that is enlarging, also your footprint through podcasts and other apps, but as we've all seen, not everybody has that kind of scale to do that. What role should advertising play then versus that subscription model?Mike: Yes. Great question. I am a proponent of advertising helps fund the open internet. I will always champion that. And I also say that we have a phenomenal, customer engagement and consumer marketing team that is driving [00:14:00] an amazing subscription business. But I, Looking at the evolution of subscriptions, I think, especially in a market, economic market, that there's a lot of choice now, and especially with things like streaming. I think there's a lot more penny pinching, that is happening. In a past life, I've, really analyzed are people willing to have multiple newspaper subscriptions or are they really just leaning into one and Just have that brand loyalty and something that we've been really taking a hard look at is one, who's subscribing to our Publications but where are they and I think something that we've been taking that look at is it in DMA?Is it out of DMA? So we're catering to that subscription audience. But at the same time, we know there are going to be people that aren't going to subscribe. Maybe they don't have the budget to subscribe and we still want to provide them that same level of quality content and news and informative news.So we've [00:15:00] been a little bit different in that we have two types of, publication formats. We have a free model and a paid model are paid is exactly what it sounds like. It has a lot more of that long form, behind a paywall, investigative journalism, some of that content.  but there's a different type of content that we're sharing that is allowing, people to still stay informed and still, Be engaged in their local community.And what we're hoping is that it will have this flywheel effect where when people see the type of content that we're putting out there,  And that's how we've been thinking about it, and we have a lot of investment on our free model.Ilyse: that note, you mentioned this before that you guys have implemented like more games, and you're not the only ones, looking to gain or find more ways to really gain more first party data, especially as like cookies deprecate. Are there any other [00:16:00] strategies that Hearst is using?I guess looking into to create and build that free content model.Mike: We have a robust first party data set. It's very important to us. I just want to plug that everything the extreme, quality of being privacy compliant and really lean in. We take, we really value the first party data that we have. But with that being To your point, we've been really thinking of different types of experiences that we can unlock for our users., as we mentioned, we have a new site called Puzzmo that if anyone ever wants to play Spell Tower, I highly recommend it. It's an extremely fun game. But what's really great about the Puzzmo site is there's an interactive community aspect to it where you can play games. With your friends, you can time yourself.There's a bit more of a [00:17:00] social activation to it. That we've been really having a lot of fun with and we're seeing the returns back on the well.  And we have, other partnerships that are currently in the works as well that are gonna help, bring different forms of content, like that to, better just help people, understand what they're doing with their time, , with probably a little bit of free time that they have. We just want to help them relax a little bit more.Damian: like that, yeah. I know what you mean, though, about still feeling cooped up. Somehow that pandemic mentality didn't fully go away. I don't know. Mike: It's very true. It's very true. And it's, that's been the fun part. really trying to figure out, I, again, I got, I recently got into hiking because of our content. But just knowing that I can find something to do this weekend, and share it with, friends and family. And Google and there's just a choice. We [00:18:00] help narrow it down for you.Damian: Yeah. Speaking of Google, here's a little segue. We've already mentioned cookie deprecation several times in this conversation.I just wanted to zero in on how you think about that identity conundrum that publishers are facing right now. What are the sort of solves for it that you're thinking about?Mike: Yes. So we've been very leaned into, the identity, I'll call it ecosystem and identity resolution. We are. pretty lucky with that first party data that we do have. Being 137 year old brand and loyal readers we've been collecting this for quite some time. I think we've also been ready for the cookie to deprecate for quite some time.It's been a challenge when things keep getting pushed back, but what we'veIlyse: ready. Sorry. Sorry.Mike: but what really leaning into isMaking sure that, we understand how do we still provide [00:19:00] relevant advertising in a cookie less world. And as a result, we've been leaning into the deterministic side of the house.We have, millions of email email addresses and that we, that people have consented to give us. We're being very smart about it. We are creating opportunities. It's very funny. I think back on newsletters when I first got into this industry, and it was just static creatives that you see when you news.And, but we've been really thinking outside the box of how do we, Utilize these premium more. How do we lean into a newsletter strategy that isn't just, Hey, this is what happened, then I would go into, I would share that we're working really hard on the contextual end as well. because you guys are so local, I think you would be a great source to talk about DMAs. Where would you [00:20:00] say is your largest markets and how do you then incentivize readers?Yes I think about DMAs all the time. I will say that we, while we have, we provide that national reach, I would say our largest DMAs are typically Houston San Francisco and and, Albany, New York. Many, I would say all of Connecticut, just the entire state of Connecticut.We, we have a slam dunk in coverage. But I think what's really interesting, I'll use San Francisco Chronicle as a great example of. And I didn't know this until I really started here, which is people who are reading the San Francisco Chronicle, they're obviously reading it in San Francisco, but a lot of people travel to LA or work in Palo Alto or are traveling all throughout California and are actively reading the Chronicle.And then I have a bunch of friends who've told me this, who are Ex San Franciscans who now live in New York, [00:21:00] who are San Francisco Chronicle subscribers. And what we've been really trying to track is understanding people who have brain loyalty, who want to know what's happening in their community but maybe aren't there anymore.So we've market coverage. And in New York but we want to be there letting them know everything that's happening.So it's been a very fun project of mine, [00:22:00] which is just slicing and dicing the different parts of America to see where are our second, third, large, fourth largest DMAs as it relates to our core key markets. And how do we come up with a different strategy? I think going back to even the whole free, paid, what are we doing with cookies?Of it all is we've actively are looking into the DMA aspect as well to see, maybe paying for a subscription for the San Francisco Chronicle is tough when you're in New York and you're living a busy life. In which case, maybe we do something a little bit different for them. Maybe we provide them different incentives to come back to us.So that's been a something I've been working on actively on the back end, which has been a lot of fun.you see a big surge during an election year?Coincidentally this year has been, normally we do, this year's been a little different. I don't know if it's here in America, at least at a national level, People either have, [00:23:00] already. into the back half of the Damian: That makes sense. Given the fact that there wasn't so much hoopla around primary season, there was no real need for a primary this year, right? On either side.Mike: Exactly. It's, and it's very interesting too, because I think it's thrown some of the political agencies and trading desk for a loop a little bit. there are certain people that we can rely on and we actively are talking to, and even they're like, Hey, I got the money, [00:24:00] but We're doing it laterand uh, you when it comes to budgeting, we budgeted that it would be a little bit more of a stronger year, but I, I think we're hoping that over time, people are gonna pick it back up.Ilyse: Yeah not to resort back to the doom and gloom, but, and bring up a certain Company again. But, so Google recently threatened to remove links and pause investments for California publishers in response to the pending California Journalism Preservation Act, also known as CJPA, due to them having to basically pay a fee to link Californians to news articles. Is this concerning to Hearst at having, of course, properties in California, and if so, why?Mike: I'll say local news is always under pressure. Just over, even ongoing State law as it relates to privacy. I think these are just things that are going to [00:25:00] continue to happen and you know we have to remain steadfast in our position of what we do and forming people and communities as business as usual, but it's something that we are very close to and we are continue to work with a lot of our people Largest partners and the walled gardens to ensure that,But it's something that we just, we, again, it's an, it's another day and another challenge. And I firmly believe we're going to get through it.Ilyse: So Mike, how would you say news blockers are basically an impediment to advertisers? Mike: it does. And I would say it's really from these fourth parties. I think it's the way we're getting tagged, even at a keyword level, lot of our advertisers. Are running if they're not running against an allowless block list on the domain level, which we've had to unblock, we've had people spend with us and want to do a buy with us, and then we later find [00:26:00] out that they, we were on a block list for news.But I think the difficult part as it relates to is someone will not want to run against any type of Donald Trump content or Trump. And. That will get tagged as not brand safe as relates to their advertising buy. But in actuality, the content itself is not brand safe. It's just, I think the, like we, if we said, Hey Trump is the new Republican candidate who needs to is for the candidate that.Content is deemed not brand safe and we remove that we don't think advertiser would run on, but the challenge has been how an [00:27:00] article about Trump being the new candidate versus advertisers, both of those are equal, and we just need to figure out a better way to inform them of those types of things. I always, I again, I'll use shot block list, and we will talk about basketball shots and people shooting three pointers to win games.And that content will be tagged unbrand safe when it's probably the most brand safe community based content that you're going to get. So those are the challenges that we're actively engaging with people on. It's just informing them more about the contextual relevancy and [00:28:00] less on individual keywords and isolation.Ilyse: Awesome.Now, outside of your localized newspapers, how does Hearst newspapers overall market yourselves? Is there a national story you're trying to tell?Mike: Yes, there definitely is. so across newspapers I also will plug, I run a team called Hearst Mosaic we and sell across both newspapers and TV. We have about 86 million uniques monthly. We have a really large audience. We can give you national reach, we can give you local reach, but at the end of the day we can give you performance and we have an engaged audience who wants to hear from you.Ilyse: need to. Damian:and that's it for this edition of The Current Podcast. We'll be back [00:01:00] next week, so stay tuned.Ilyse: The current podcast's theme is by Love and Caliber. The current team includes Kat Vesey and Sydney Cairns.Damian: And remember, I'm Damian.Ilyse: I'm Ilyse,Damian: And we'll see you next time. Please subscribe and leave us a review. Also, tune in to our other podcast, The Current Report, a weekly roundup of what's happening in the world of digital media.

About the Guest(s):There are no guests featured in this episode. The show hosts are Mike and Torya.Episode Summary:In the latest engaging episode of "The Nightly Rant," hosts Mike and Torya introduce a revolutionary household gadget that redefines home cleaning. The show usually revolves around a sarcastic look at society, but this time we're treated to their personal experience and insights into the world of AI-assisted home maintenance. The hosts discuss the features, benefits, and initial performance of their new robot vacuum, showcasing how technology can make day-to-day chores seamless and more efficient.Mike begins by introducing their new robot vacuum, the Narwhal, which they affectionately nickname puff muncher. This is not your average Roomba; it's a cutting-edge device that not only vacuums but also mops, and does so with an intelligence that left the hosts impressed. They share anecdotes about their initial interactions with the device, its setup, and the hilarity of their pets' reactions to their new "family member." Mike and Torya highlight how this device offers a significant upgrade from their previous vacuum and delve into its AI-driven features that result in a spotless home.Key Takeaways:Mike and Torya have a new intelligent robot vacuum/mop they named puff muncher, which exhibits superior mapping and cleaning capabilities compared to a typical Roomba.This device utilizes AI to detect and focus on dirtier parts of the flooring, elevating cleanliness without constant human intervention.The hosts discuss how puff muncher's design allows it to avoid obstacles, like carpets, during its mopping routine and efficiently pick up debris without getting tangled.They emphasize the importance of maintenance for the longevity of the vacuum and share their strategy to ensure its enduring performance.The conversation touches on the incorrect negative portrayal of North Las Vegas by a realtor in a video, leading to a broader discussion about the impacts of professional conduct online.Notable Quotes:"This thing…well, like, the other thing is, it was dumb… And this thing… It uses intelligence to figure out where the dirt is." - Mike"The floors are, like, squeaky clean. And there's no, like, weird film or residue on them." - Torya"Now I feel like we have an actual intelligent, actual intelligent robot vacuum. Like one that knows what the hell it's doing." - Mike"It's all about the engineering on this thing." - Mike"It's done more cleaning in the last three days than the Roomba did in the two yTimestampSummary0:00:15Introduction to the show and topic of discussion0:00:38Comparison between the new robot vacuum and Roomba0:02:01Impressed by the cleaning capabilities and intelligence of the new vacuum0:03:40Sharing personal experiences of the vacuum's effectiveness0:06:33Discussing the importance of long-term durability0:07:20Funny reactions from the dogs toward the vacuum0:08:06Speculating about AI and potential issues with technology0:08:51Acknowledging the initial setup challenges0:09:03Brief mention of app connectivity issues0:09:15Figuring out how to make the cleaning robot work0:09:41The cleaning robot is more intelligent than the Roomba0:10:02The cleaning robot cleans the house much faster than the Roomba0:10:25The cleaning robot is quiet and doesn't wake people up0:11:40The cleaning robot would be helpful for someone with a baby0:12:36The cleaning robot has smart design features0:12:54Checking back in on the cleaning robot in three months0:13:08Discussing a controversial YouTube video about a real estate agent0:14:14Interacting with comments on YouTube0:15:37Avoiding insults and maintaining composure in online discussions

Rounding Up Season 2 | Episode 15 – Making Sense of Story Problems Guest: Drs. Aina Appova and Julia Hagge Mike Wallus: Story problems are an important tool that educators use to bring mathematics to life for their students. That said, navigating the meaning and language found in story problems is a challenge for many students. Today we're talking with Drs. Aina Appova and Julia Hagge from [The] Ohio State University about strategies to help students engage with and make sense of story problems.  Mike: A note to our listeners. This podcast was recorded outside of our normal recording studio, so you may notice some sound quality differences from our regular podcast. Mike:   Welcome to the podcast, Aina and Julia. We're excited to be talking to both of you.  Aina Appova: Thank you so much for having us. We are very excited as well.  Julia Hagge: Yes, thank you. We're looking forward to talking with you today.   Mike: So, this is a conversation that I've been looking forward to for quite a while, partly because the nature of your collaboration is a little bit unique in ways that I think we'll get into. But I think it's fair to describe your work as multidisciplinary, given your fields of study.  Aina: Yes, I would say so. It's kind of a wonderful opportunity to work with a colleague who is in literacy research and helping teachers teach mathematics through reading story problems.  Mike: Well, I wonder if you can start by telling us the story of how you all came to work together. And describe the work you're doing around helping students make sense of word problems.  Aina: I think the work started with me working with fifth-grade teachers, for two years now, and the conversations have been around story problems. There's a lot of issues from teaching story problems that teachers are noticing. And so, this was a very interesting experience. One of the professional development sessions that we had, teachers were saying, “Can we talk about story problems? It's very difficult.” And so, we just looked at a story problem. And the story problem, it was actually a coordinate plane story problem. It included a balance beam, and you're supposed to read the story problem and locate where this balance beam would be. And I had no idea what the balance beam would be. So, when I read the story, I thought, “Oh, it must be from the remodeling that I did in my kitchen, and I had to put in a beam, which was structural.”  Aina: So, I'm assuming it's balancing the load. And even that didn't help me. I kept rereading the problem and thinking, “I'm not sure this is on the ceiling, but the teachers told me it's gymnastics.” And so even telling me that it was gymnastics didn't really help me because I couldn't think, in the moment, while I was already in a different context of having the beam, a load-bearing beam. It was very interesting that—and I know I'm an ELL, so English is not my first language—in thinking about a context that you're familiar with by reading a word or this term, “balance beam.” And even if people tell you, “Oh, it's related to gymnastics”—and I've never done gymnastics; I never had gymnastics in my class or in my school where I was. It didn't help. And that's where we started talking about underlying keywords that didn't really help either because it was a coordinate plane problem. So, I had to reach out to Julia and say, “I think there's something going on here that is related to reading comprehension. Can you help me?” And that's how this all started. ( chuckles ) Julia: Well, so Aina came to me regarding her experience. In fact, she sent me the math problem. She says, “Look at this.” And we talked about that. And then she shared frustration of the educators that she had been working with that despite teaching strategies that are promoted as part of instructional practice, like identifying mathematical keywords and then also reading strategies have been emphasized, like summarizing or asking questions while you're reading story problems. So, her teachers had been using strategies, mathematical and also reading, and their students were still struggling to make sense of and solve mathematical problems. Aina's experience with this word problem really opened up this thought about the words that are in mathematical story problems. And we came to realize that when we think about making sense of story problems, there are a lot of words that require schema. And schema is the background knowledge that we bring to the text that we interact with.  Julia: For example, I taught for years in Florida. And we would have students that had never experienced snow. So, as an educator, I would need to do read alouds and provide that schema for my students so that they had some understanding of snow. So, when we think about math story problems, all words matter—not just the mathematical terms, but also the words that require schema. And then when we think about English learners, the implications are especially profound because we know that, that vocabulary is one of the biggest challenges for English learners. So, when we consider schema-mediated vocabulary and story problems, this really becomes problematic. And so, Aina and I analyzed the story problems in the curriculum that Aina's teachers were using, and we had an amazing discovery.  Aina: Just the range of contexts that we came across from construction materials or nuts and bolts and MP3 players—that children don't really have anymore, a lot of them have a phone—to making smoothies and blenders, which some households may not have. In addition to that, we started looking at the words that are in the story problems. And like Julia said, there are actually mathematics teachers who are being trained on these strategies that come from literacy research. One of them was rereading the problem. And it didn't matter how many times I reread the problem or somebody reread it to me about the balance beam. I had no kind of understanding of what's going on in the problem. The second one is summarizing. And again, just because you summarized something that I don't understand or read it louder to me, it doesn't help, right? And I think the fundamental difference that we solve problems or the story problems … In the literacy, the purpose of reading a story is very different. In mathematics, the purpose of reading a story is to solve it, making sense of problems for the purpose of solving them. The three different categories of vocabulary we found from reading story problems and analyzing them is there's “technical,” there's “sub-technical” and there's “non-technical.” I was very good at recognizing technical words because that's the strategy that for mathematics teachers, we underline the parallelogram, we underline the integer, we underline the eight or the square root, even some of the keywords we teach, right? Total means some or more means addition.  Mike: So technical, they're the language that we would kind of normally associate with the mathematics  that are being addressed in the problem. Let's talk about sub-technical because I remember from our pre-podcast conversation, this is where some light bulbs really started to go off, and you all started to really think about the impact of sub-technical language.  Julia: Sub-technical includes words that have multiple meanings that intersect mathematically and other contexts. So, for example, “yard.” Yard can be a unit of measurement. However, I have a patio in my backyard. So, it's those words that have that duality. And then when we put that in the context of making sense of a story problem, it's understanding what is the context for that word and which meaning applies to that? Other examples of sub-technical would be table or volume. And so, it's important when making sense of a story problem to understand which meaning is being applied here. And then we have non-technical, which is words that are used in everyday language that are necessary for making sense of or solving problems. So, for example, “more.” More is more. So, more has that mathematical implication. However, it would be considered non-technical because it doesn't have dual meanings.  Julia: So, by categorizing vocabulary into these three different types, [that] helped us to be able to analyze the word problems. So, we worked together to categorize. And then Aina was really helpful in understanding which words were integral to solving those math problems. And what we discovered is that often words that made the difference in the mathematical process were falling within the sub-technical and non-technical. And that was really eye-opening for us. Mike: So, Aina, this is fascinating to me. And what I'm thinking about right now is the story that you told at the very beginning of this podcast, where you described your own experience with the word problem that contained the language “balance.” And I'm wondering if you applied the analysis that you all just described with technical and sub-technical and the non-technical, when you view your own experience with that story problem through that lens, what jumps out? What was happening for you that aligns or doesn't align with your analysis?  Aina: I think one of the things that was eye-opening to me is, we have been doing it wrong. That's how I felt. And the teachers felt the same way. They're saying, “Well, we always underline the math words because we assume those are the words that are confusing to them. And then we underline the words that would help them solve the problem.” So, it was a very good conversation with teachers to really, completely think about story problems differently. It's all about the context; it's all about the schema. And my teachers realize that I, as an adult who engages in mathematics regularly, have this issue with schema. I don't understand the context of the problem, so therefore I cannot move forward in solving it. And we started looking at math problems very differently from the language perspective, from the schema perspective, from the context perspective, rather than from underlining the technical and mathematical words first. That was very eye-opening to me.   Mike: How do you think their process or their perspective on the problems changed either when they were preparing to teach them or in the process of working with children?  Aina: I know the teachers reread a problem out loud and then typically ask for a volunteer to read the problem. And it was very interesting; some of the conversations were how different the reading is. When the teacher reads the problem, there is where you put the emotion, where the certain specific things in the problem are. Prosody?  Julia: Yes, prosody is reading with appropriate expression, intonation, phrasing.  Aina: So, when the teacher reads the problem, the prosody is present in that reading. When the child is reading the problems, it's very interesting how it sounds. It just sounds the word and the next word and the next word and the next word, right? So that was kind of a discussion, too. The next strategy the math teachers are being taught is summarizing. I guess discussing the problem and then summarizing the problem. So, we kind of went through that. And once they helped me to understand in gymnastics what it is, looking up the picture, what it looks like, how long it is, and where it typically is located and there's a mat next to it, that was very helpful. And then I could then summarize, or they could summarize, the problem. But even [the] summarizing piece is now me interpreting it and telling you how I understand the context and the mathematics in the problem by doing the summary. So, even that process is very different. And the teacher said that's very different. We never really experience that.  Mike: Julia, do you want to jump in?  Julia: And another area where math and reading intersect is the use of visualization. So, visualization is a reading strategy, and I've noticed that visualization has become a really strong strategy to teach for mathematics, as well. We encourage students to draw pictures as part of that solving process. However, if we go back to the gymnastics example, visualizing and drawing is not going to be helpful for that problem because you are needing a schema to be able to understand how a balance beam would situate within that context and whether that's relevant to solving that word problem. So, even though we are encouraging educators to use these strategies, when we think about schema-mediated vocabulary, we need to take that a step further to consider how schema comes into play and who has access to the schema needed, and who needs that additional support to be able to negotiate that schema-mediated vocabulary.  Mike: I was thinking the same thing, how we often take for granted that everyone has the same schema. The picture I see in my head when we talk about balance is the same as the picture you see in your head around balance. And that's the part where, when I think about some of those sub-technical words, we really have to kind of take a step back and say, “Is there the opportunity here for someone to be profoundly confused because their schema is different than mine?” And I keep thinking about that lived experience that you had where, in my head I can see a balance beam, but in your head you're seeing the structural beam that sits on the top of your ceiling or runs across the top of your ceiling.  Aina: Oh yeah. And at first, I thought the word “beam” typically, in my mind for some reason, is vertical.  Mike: Yeah. Aina: It's not horizontal. And then when I looked at the word balance, I thought, “Well, it could balance vertically.” And immediately what I think about is, you have a porch, then you see a lot of porches that balance the roof, and so they have the two beams …  Mike: Yes! Aina: … or sometimes more than that. So, at no point did I think about gymnastics. But that's because of my lack of experience in gymnastics, and my school didn't have the program. As a math person, you start thinking about it and you think, “If it's vertically, this doesn't make any sense because we're on a coordinate plane.” So, I started thinking about [it] mathematically and then I thought, “Oh, maybe they did renovations to the gymnasium, and they needed a balance beam.” So, I guess that's the beam that carries the load.  Aina: So, that's how I flipped, in my mind, the image of the beam to be horizontal. Then the teachers, when they told me it's gymnastics, that really threw me off, and it didn't help. And I totally agree with Julia. You know when we do mathematics with children, we tell them, “Can you draw me a picture?” Mike: Uh-hm. Aina: And what we mean is, “Can you draw me a mathematical picture to support your problem-solving or the strategies you used?” But the piece that was missing for me is an actual picture of what the balance beam is in gymnastics and how it's located, how long it is. So yeah, yeah, that was eye-opening to me.  Mike: It's almost like you put on a different pair of glasses that allow you to see the language of story problems differently, and how that was starting to play out with teachers. I wonder, could you talk about some of the things that they started to do when they were actually with kids in the moment that you looked at and you were like, “Gosh, this is actually accounting for some of the understanding we have about schema and the different types of words.”  Aina: So, the teacher would read a problem, which I think is a good strategy. But then it was very open-ended. “How do you understand what I just read to you? What's going on in the story problem? Turn to your partner, can you envision? Can you think of it? Do you have a picture in your mind?” So, we don't jump into mathematics anymore. We kind of talk about the context, the schema. “Can you position yourself in it? Do you understand what's going on? Can you retell the story to your partner the way you understand it?” And then, we talk about, “So how can we solve this problem? What do you think is happening?” based on their understanding. That really helped, I think, a lot of teachers also to see that sometimes interpretations lead to different solutions, and children pay attention to certain words that may take them to a different mathematical solution. It became really about how language affects our thinking, our schema, our image in the head, and then based on all of that, where do we go mathematically in terms of solving the problem?  Mike: So, there are two pieces that really stuck out for me in what you said. I want to come back to both of them. The first one was, you were describing that set of choices that teachers made about being really open-ended about asking kids, “How do you understand this? Talk to your neighbor about your understanding about this.” And it strikes me that the point you made earlier when you said context has really become an important part of some of the mathematics tasks and the problems we create. This is a strategy that has value not solely for multilingual learners, but really for all learners because context and schema matter a lot.  Aina: Yes. Mike: Yeah. And I think the other thing that really hits me, Aina, is when you said, “We don't immediately go to the mathematics, we actually try to help kids situate and make sense of the problem.” There's something about that that seems really obvious. When I think back to my own practice as a teacher, I often wonder how I was trying to quickly get kids into the mathematics without giving kids enough time to really make meaning of the situation or the context that we were going to delve into. Aina: Exactly. Mike, to go back to your question, what teachers can do, because it was such an eye-opening experience that, it's really about the language; don't jump into mathematics. The mathematics and the problem actually is situated around the schema, around the context. And so, children have to understand that first before they get into math. I have a couple of examples if you don't mind, just to kind of help the teachers who are listening to this podcast to have an idea of what we're talking about. One of the things that Julie and I were thinking about is, when you start with a story problem, you have three different categories of vocabulary. You have technical, sub-technical, non-technical. If you have a story problem, how do you parse it apart? OK, in the math story problems we teach to children, it's typically a number and operations.  Aina: Let's say we have a story problem like this: “Mrs. Tatum needs to share 3 grams of glitter equally among 8 art students. How many grams of glitter will each student get?” So, if the teacher is looking at this, technical would definitely be grams: 3, 8, and that is it. Sub-technical, we said “equally,” because equally has that kind of meaning here. It's very precise, it has to be exact amount. But a lot of children sometimes say, “Well that's equally interesting.” That means it's similarly or kind of, or like, but not exact. So, sub-technical might qualify as “equally.” Everything else in the story problem is non-technical: sharing and glitter, art students, each student, how much they would get. I want the teachers to go through and ask a few questions here that we have. So, for example, the teacher can think about starting with sub-technical and non-technical, right?  Aina: Do students understand the meaning of each of these words? Which of these could be confusing to them? And get them to think about the story, the context and the problem. And then see if they understand what the grams are, and 8 and 3. And what's happening. And what do those words mean in this context? Once you have done all this work with children, children are now in this context. They have situated themselves in this. “Oh, there's glitter, there's an art class, there's a teacher, they're going to do a project.” And so, they've discussed this context. Stay with it as a teacher and give them another problem that is the same context. Use as many words from the first problem as you can and change it up a little bit in terms of mathematical implication or mathematical solution. For example, I can change the same problem to be, “Mrs. Tatum needs to buy 3 grams of glitter for each of her 8 art students. How many grams of glitter does she need to buy?” So, the first problem was [a] division problem now becomes a multiplication problem. The context is the same. Children understand the context, especially children like myself, who are ELL, who took the time to process to learn new words, to understand new context, and now they're in this context. Let's use it. Let's now use it for the second piece. So, Mike, you've been talking about two things going on. There's a context, and then there's problem-solving or mathematical problem-solving. So, I believe posing the same question or kind of the same story problem with different mathematical implications gets at the second piece. So, first we make sense of the problem of the context schema. The second is, we make sense of that problem for the purpose of solving it.  Aina: And the purpose of solving it is where these two problems that sound so familiar and situate in the same context but have different mathematical implications for problem-solving. This is where the powerful piece, I think, is missing. If I give them a division problem, they can create a multiplication problem with the same Mrs. Tatum, the art students, the glitter. But what I'd like for them to do and what we've been discussing is how are these two problems similar?  Mike: Uh-hm. Aina: This kind of gets at children identifying some of the technical. So, the 3 is still there, the 8 is still there, you know, grams are still there. But then, “How are these two story problems different?” This is really schema-mediated vocabulary in the context where they now have to get into sub-technical and non-technical. “Oh, well there there's 3, but it's 3 per student. And this, there were 8 students, and they have to all share the 3 grams of glitter.”  Aina: So, children now get into this context and difference in context and how this is impacting the problem-solving strategies. I'd love for the teachers to then build on that and say, “How would you solve the first problem? What specifically is in the story problem [to] help you solve it, help you decide how to solve it, what strategies, what operations?” And do exactly the same thing for the second problem as well. “Would you solve it the same way? Are the two problems the same? Will they have the same solutions or different? How would you know? What tells you in the story? What helps you decide?” So, that really helps children to now become problem-solvers. The fun is the mathematical variations. So, for example, we can give them a third problem and say, “I have a challenge for you.” For example, “Mrs. Tatum needs to buy 3 grams of glitter for each of her 8 art students for a project, but she only has money today to buy 8 grams of glitter. How much more glitter does she need to still buy for her students to be able to complete their art project?” Again, it's art, it's glitter, it's 8 students, there's 3, the 8. I didn't change the numbers, I didn't change the context, but I did change the mathematical implication for their story problem. I think this is where Julia and I got very excited with how we can use schema-mediated vocabulary and schema in context to help children understand the story, but then really have mathematical discussions about solutions.  Mike: What's interesting about what you're saying is the practices that you all are advocating and describing in the podcast, to me, they strike me as good practice helping kids make meaning and understand and not jumping into the mathematics and recognizing how important that is. That feels like good practice, and it feels particularly important in light of what you're saying.  Julia: I agree. It's good practice. However, what we found when we reviewed literature, because one of the first steps that we took was what does the literature say? We found that focusing instructional practice on teaching children to look for key mathematical terms tends to lead to frequent errors. Mike: Yep. Julia: The mathematical vocabulary tends to be privileged when teaching children how to make sense of and solve word problems. We want to draw attention to the sub-technical and non-technical vocabulary, which we found to be influential in making sense of. And as in the examples Aina shared, it was the non-technical words that were the key players, if you will, in solving that problem.  Mike: I'm really glad you brought up that particular point about the challenges that come out of attempting to help kids mark certain keywords and their meanings. Because certainly, as a person who's worked in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, I have absolutely seen that happen. There was a point where I was doing that, and I thought I was doing something that was supporting kids, and I was consistently surprised that it was often like, that doesn't seem to be helping.  Julia: I also used that practice when I was teaching second grade. The first step was circle the keywords. And I would get frustrated because students would still be confused in the research that we found. When you focus on the keywords, which tend to be mathematical terms, then those other words that are integral to making sense of and solving the story problem get left behind. Mike: The question I wanted to ask both of you before we close is, are there practices that you would say like, “Here's a way that you can take this up in your classroom tomorrow and start to take steps that are supportive of children making sense of word problems”?  Julia: I think the first step is adding in that additional lens. So, when previewing story problems, consider what schema or background knowledge is required to understand this word, these words, and then what students would find additional schema helpful. So, thinking about your specific students, what students would benefit from additional schema and how can I support that schema construction?  Mike: Aina, how about for you?  Aina: Yeah, I have to say I agree with Julia. Schema seemed to be everything. If children don't understand the context and don't make sense of the problem, it's very hard to actually think about solving it. To build on that first step, I don't want teachers to stop there. I want teachers to then go one step further. Present a similar problem or problem that includes [the] same language, same words, as many as you can, maybe even same numbers, definitely same schema and context, but has a different mathematical implication for solving it. So maybe now it's a multiplication problem or addition problem. And really have children talk about how different or similar the problems are. What are the similarities, what are the differences, how their solutions are the same or different? Why that is. So really unpack that mathematical problem-solving piece. Now, after you have made sense of the context and the schema … as an ELL student myself, the more I talked as a child and was able to speak to others and explain my thinking and describe how I understand certain things and be able to ask questions, that was really, really helpful in learning English and then being successful with solving mathematical problems. I think it really opens up so many avenues and to just go beyond helping teachers teach mathematics.  Mike: I know you all have created a resource to help educators make sense of this. Can you talk about it, Julia?   Julia: Absolutely. Aina and I have created a PDF to explain and provide some background knowledge regarding the three types of vocabulary. And Aina has created some story problem examples that help to demonstrate the ways in which sub-technical and non-technical words can influence the mathematical process that's needed. So, this resource will be available for educators wanting to learn more about schema-mediated vocabulary in mathematical story problems.   Mike: That's fantastic. And for listeners, we're going to add this directly to our show notes. I think that's a great place for us to stop. Aina and Julia, I want to thank both of you so much for joining us. It has absolutely been a pleasure talking to both of you.  Aina: Thank you.  Julia: Thank you. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling all individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2024 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

Rounding Up Season 2 | Episode 13 – Rough Draft Math Guest: Dr. Amanda Jansen Mike Wallus: What would happen if teachers consistently invited students to think of their ideas in math class as a rough draft? What impact might this have on students' participation, their learning experience, and their math identity? Those are the questions we'll explore today with Dr. Mandy Jansen, the author of “Rough Draft Math,” on this episode of Rounding Up.  Mike: Well, welcome to the podcast, Mandy. We are excited to be talking with you.  Mandy Jansen: Thanks, Mike. I'm happy to be here.  Mike: So, I'd like to start by asking you where the ideas involved in “Rough Draft Math” originated. What drove you and your collaborators to explore these ideas in the first place?  Mandy: So, I work in the state of Delaware. And there's an organization called the Delaware Math Coalition, and I was working in a teacher study group where we were all puzzling together—secondary math teachers—thinking about how we could create more productive classroom discussions. And so, by productive, one of the ways we thought about that was creating classrooms where students felt safe to take intellectual risks, to share their thinking when they weren't sure, just to elicit more student participation in the discussions. One way we went about that was, we were reading chapters from a book called “Exploring Talk in School” that was dedicated to the work of Doug Barnes. And one of the ideas in that book was, we could think about fostering classroom talk in a way that was more exploratory. Exploratory talk, where you learn through interaction. Students often experience classroom discussions as an opportunity to perform. "I want to show you what I know.” And that can kind of feel more like a final draft. And the teachers thought, “Well, we want students to share their thinking in ways that they're more open to continue to grow their thinking.” So, in contrast to final draft talk, maybe we want to call this rough draft talk because the idea of exploratory talk felt like, maybe kind of vague, maybe hard for students to understand. And so, the term “rough draft talk” emerged from the teachers trying to think of a way to frame this for students.  Mike: You're making me think about the different ways that people perceive a rough draft. So, for example, I can imagine that someone might think about a rough draft as something that needs to be corrected. But based on what you just said, I don't think that's how you and your collaborators thought about it, nor do I think that probably is the way that you framed it for kids. So how did you invite kids to think about a rough draft as you were introducing this idea?  Mandy: Yeah, so we thought that the term “rough draft” would be useful for students if they have ever thought about rough drafts in maybe language arts. And so, we thought, “Oh, let's introduce this to kids by asking, ‘Well, what do you know about rough drafts already? Let's think about what a rough draft is.'” And then we could ask them, “Why do you think this might be useful for math?” So, students will brainstorm, “Oh yeah, rough draft, that's like my first version” or “That's something I get the chance to correct and fix.” But also, sometimes kids would say, “Oh, rough drafts … like the bad version. It's the one that needs to be fixed.” And we wanted students to think about rough drafts more like, just your initial thinking, your first ideas; thinking that we think of as in progress that can be adjusted and improved. And we want to share that idea with students because sometimes people have the perception that math is, like, you're either right or you're wrong, as opposed to something that there's gradients of different levels of understanding associated with mathematical thinking. And we want math to be more than correct answers, but about what makes sense to you and why this makes sense. So, we wanted to shift that thinking from rough drafts being the bad version that you have to fix to be more like it's OK just to share your in-progress ideas, your initial thinking. And then you're going to have a chance to keep improving those ideas.  Mike: I'm really curious, when you shared that with kids, how did they react? Maybe at first, and then over time? Mandy: So, one thing that teachers have shared that's helpful is that during a class discussion where you might put out an idea for students to think about, and it's kind of silent, you get crickets. If teachers would say, “Well, remember it's OK to just share your rough drafts.” It's kind of like letting the pressure out. And they don't feel like, “Oh wait, I can't share unless I totally know I'm correct. Oh, I can just share my rough drafts?” And then the ideas sort of start popping out onto the floor like popcorn, and it really kind of opens up and frees people up. “I can just share whatever's on my mind.” So that's one thing that starts happening right away, and it's kind of magical that you could just say a few words and students would be like, “Oh, right, it's fine. I can just share whatever I'm thinking about.”  Mike: So, when we were preparing for this interview, you said something that has really stuck with me and that I've found myself thinking about ever since. And I'm going to paraphrase a little bit, but I think what you had said at that point in time was that a rough draft is something that you revise. And that leads into a second set of practices that we could take up for the benefit of our students. Can you talk a little bit about the ideas for revising rough drafts in a math classroom?  Mandy: Yes. I think when we think about rough drafts in math, it's important to interact with people thinking by first, assuming those initial ideas are going to have some merit, some strength. There's going to be value in those initial ideas. And then once those ideas are elicited, we have that initial thinking out on the floor. And so, then we want to think about, “How can we not only honor the strengths in those ideas, but we want to keep refining and improving?” So inviting revision or structuring revision opportunities is one way that we then can respond to students' thinking when they share their drafts. So, we want to workshop those drafts. We want to work to revise them. Maybe it's peer-to-peer workshops. Maybe it's whole-class situation where you may get out maybe an anonymous solution. Or a solution that you strategically selected. And then work to workshop that idea first on their strengths, what's making sense, what's working about this draft, and then how can we extend it? How can we correct it, sure. But grow it, improve it. Mandy: And promoting this idea that everyone's thinking can be revised. It's not just about your work needs to be corrected, and your work is fine. But if we're always trying to grow in our mathematical thinking, you could even drop the idea of correct and incorrect. But everyone can keep revising. You can develop a new strategy. You can think about connections between representations or connections between strategies. You can develop a new visual representation to represent what makes sense to you. And so, just really promoting this idea that our thinking can always keep growing. That's sort of how we feel when we teach something, right? Maybe we have a task that we've taught multiple times in a row, and every year that we teach it we may be surprised by a new strategy. We know how to solve the problem—but we don't have to necessarily just think about revising our work but revising our thinking about the ideas underlying that problem. So really promoting that sense of wonder, that sense of curiosity, and this idea that we can keep growing our thinking all the time.  Mike: Yeah, there's a few things that popped out when you were talking that I want to explore just a little bit. I think when we were initially planning this conversation, what intrigued me was the idea that this is a way to help loosen up that fear that kids sometimes feel when it does feel like there's a right or a wrong answer, and this is a performance. And so, I think I was attracted to the idea of a rough draft as a vehicle to build student participation. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the impact on their mathematical thinking, not only the way that you've seen participation grow, but also the impact on the depth of kids' mathematical thinking as well.  Mandy: Yes, and also I think there's impact on students' identities and sense of self, too. So, if we first start with the mathematical thinking. If we're trying to work on revising—and one of the lenses we bring to revising, some people talk about lenses of revising as accuracy and precision. I think, “Sure.” But I also think about connectedness and building a larger network or web of how ideas relate to one another. So, I think it can change our view of what it means to know and do math, but also extending that thinking over time and seeing relationships. Like relationships between all the different aspects of rational number, right? Fractions, decimals, percents, and how these are all part of one larger set of ideas. So, I think that you can look at revision in a number of different grain sizes.  Mandy: You can revise your thinking about a specific problem. You can revise your thinking about a specific concept. You can revise your thinking across a network of concepts. So, there's lots of different dimensions that you could go down with revising. But then this idea that we can see all these relationships with math … then students start to wonder about what other relationships exist that they hadn't thought of and seen before. And I think it can also change the idea of, “What does it mean to be smart in math?” Because I think math is often treated as this right or wrong idea, and the smart people are the ones that get the right idea correct, quickly. But we could reframe smartness to be somebody who is willing to take risk and put their initial thinking out there. Or someone who's really good at seeing connections between people's thinking. Or someone who persists in continuing to try to revise. And just knowing math and being smart in math is so much more than this speed idea, and it can give lots of different ways to show people's competencies and to honor different strengths that students have.  Mike: Yeah, there are a few words that you said that keep resonating for me. One is this idea of connections. And the other word that I think popped into my head was “insights.” The idea that what's powerful is that these relationships, connections, patterns, that those are things that can be become clearer or that one could build insights around. And then, I'm really interested in this idea of shifting kids' understanding of what mathematics is away from answer-getting and speed into, “Do I really understand this interconnected bundle of relationships about how numbers work or how patterns play out?” It's really interesting to think about all of the ramifications of a process like rough draft work and how that could have an impact on multiple levels.  Mandy: I also think that it changes what the classroom space is in the first place. So, if the classroom space is now always looking for new connections, people are going to be spending more time thinking about, “Well, what do these symbols even mean?” As opposed to pushing the symbols around to get the answer that the book is looking for.  Mike: Amen. Mandy: And I think it's more fun. There are all kinds of possible ways to understand things. And then I also think it can improve the social dimension of the classroom, too. So, if there's lots of possible connections to notice or lots of different ways to relationships, then I can try to learn about someone else's thinking. And then I learn more about them. And they might try to learn about my thinking and learn more about me. And then we feel, like, this greater connection to one another by trying to see the world through their eyes. And so, if the classroom environment is a space where we're trying to constantly see through other people's eyes, but also let them try to see through our eyes, we're this community of people that is just constantly in awe of one another. Like, “Oh, I never thought to see things that way.” And so, people feel more appreciated and valued.  Mike: So, I'm wondering if we could spend a little bit of time trying to bring these ideas to life for folks who are listening. You already started to unpack what it might look like to initially introduce this idea, and you've led me to see the ways that a teacher might introduce or remind kids about the fact that we're thinking about this in terms of a rough draft. But I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about, how have you seen educators bring these ideas to life? How have you seen them introduce rough draft thinking or sustain rough draft thinking? Are there any examples that you think might highlight some of the practices teachers could take up?  Mandy: Yeah, definitely. So, I think along the lines of, “How do we create that culture where drafting and revising is welcome in addition to asking students about rough drafts and why they might make sense of math?” Another approach that people have found valuable is talking with students about … instead of rules in the classroom, more like their rights. What are your rights as a learner in this space? And drawing from the work of an elementary teacher in Tucson, Arizona, Olga Torres, thinking about students having rights in the classroom, it's a democratic space. You have these rights to be confused, the right to say what makes sense to you, and represent your thinking in ways that make sense to you right now. If you honor these rights and name these rights, it really just changes students' roles in that space. And drafting and revising is just a part of that.  Mandy: So different culture-building experiences. And so, with the rights of a learner brainstorming new rights that students want to have, reflecting on how they saw those rights in action today, and setting goals for yourself about what rights you want to claim in that space. So then, in addition to culture building and sustaining that culture, it has to do—right, like Math Learning Center thinks about this all the time—like, rich tasks that students would work on. Where students have the opportunity to express their reasoning and maybe multiple strategies because that richness gives us so much to think about.  And drafts would a part of that. But also, there's something to revise if you're working on your reasoning or multiple strategies or multiple representations. So, the tasks that you work on make a difference in that space. And then of course, in that space, often we're inviting peer collaboration.  Mandy: So, those are kinds of things that a lot of teachers are trying to do already with productive practices. But I think the piece with rough draft math then, is “How are you going to integrate revising into that space?” So eliciting students' reasoning and strategies—but honoring that as a draft. But then, maybe if you're having a classroom discussion anyway, with the five practices where you're selecting and sequencing student strategies to build up to larger connections, at the end of that conversation, you can add in this moment where, “OK, we've had this discussion. Now write down individually or turn and talk. How did your thinking get revised after this discussion? What's a new idea you didn't have before? Or what is a strategy you want to try to remember?” So, adding in that revision moment after the class discussion you may have already wanted to have, helps students get more out of the discussion, helps them remember and honor how their thinking grew and changed, and giving them that opportunity to reflect on those conversations that maybe you're trying to already have anyway, gives you a little more value added to that discussion.  Mandy: It doesn't take that much time, but making sure you take a moment to journal about it or talk to a peer about it, to kind of integrate that more into your thought process. And we see revising happening with routines that teachers often use, like, math language routines such as stronger and clearer each time where you have the opportunity to share your draft with someone and try to understand their draft, and then make that draft stronger or clearer. Or people have talked about routines, like, there's this one called “My Favorite No,” where you get out of student strategy and talk about what's working and then why maybe a mistake is a productive thing to think about, try to make sense out of. But teachers have changed that to be “My Favorite Rough Draft.” So, then you're workshopping reasoning or a strategy, something like that. And so, I think sometimes teachers are doing things already that are in the spirit of this drafting, revising idea. But having the lens of rough drafts and revising can add a degree of intentionality to what you already value. And then making that explicit to students helps them engage in the process and hopefully get more out of it.  Mike: It strikes me that that piece that you were talking about where you're already likely doing things like sequencing student work to help tell a story, to help expose a connection. The power of that add-on where you ask the question, “How has your thinking shifted? How have you revised your thinking?” And doing the turn and talk or the reflection. It's kind of like a marking event, right? You're marking that one, it's normal, that your ideas are likely going to be refined or revised. And two, it sets a point in time for kids to say, “Oh yes, they have changed.” And you're helping them capture that moment and notice the changes that have already occurred even if they happened in their head.  Mandy: I think it can help you internalize those changes. I think it can also, like you said, kind of normalize and honor the fact that the thinking is continually growing and changing. I think we can also celebrate, “Oh my gosh, I hadn't thought about that before, and I want to kind of celebrate that moment.” And I think in terms of the social dimension of the classroom, you can honor and get excited about, “If I hadn't had the opportunity to hear from my friend in the room, I wouldn't have learned this.” And so, it helps us see how much we need one another, and they need us. We wouldn't understand as much as we're understanding if we weren't all together in this space on this day and this time working on this task. And so, I love experiences that help us both develop our mathematical understandings and also bond us to one another interpersonally.  Mike: So, one of the joys for me of doing this podcast is getting to talk about big ideas that I think can really impact students' learning experiences. One of the limitations is, we usually spend about 20 minutes or so talking about it, and we could talk about this for a long time, Mandy. I'm wondering, if I'm a person who's listening, and I'm really interested in continuing to learn about rough draft math, is there a particular resource or a set of resources that you might recommend for someone who wants to keep learning? Mandy: Thank you for asking. So, like you said, we can think about this for a long time, and I've been thinking about it for seven or eight years already, and I still keep growing in my thinking. I have a book called “Rough Draft Math: Revising to Learn” that came out in March 2020, which is not the best time for a book to come out, but that's when it came out. And it's been really enjoyable to connect with people about the ideas. And what I'm trying to do in that book is show that rough draft math is a set of ideas that people have applied in a lot of different ways. And I think of myself kind of as a curator, curating all the brilliant ideas that teachers have had if they think about rough drafts and revising a math class. And the book collects a set of those ideas together.  Mandy: But a lot of times, I don't know if you're like me, I end up buying a bunch of books and not necessarily reading them all. So, there are shorter pieces. There's an article in Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School that I co-wrote with three of the teachers in the Delaware Teacher Study Group, and that is at the end of the 2016 volume, and it's called “Rough-Draft Talk.” And that's only 1,800 words. That's a short read that you could read with a PLC or with a friend. And there's an even shorter piece in the NCTM Journal, MTLT, in the “Ear to the Ground” section. And I have a professional website that has a collection of free articles because I know those NCTM articles are behind a paywall. And so, I can share that. Maybe there's show notes where we can put a link and there's some pieces there.  Mike: Yes, absolutely. Well, I think that's probably a good place to stop. Thank you again for joining us, Mandy. It really has been a pleasure talking with you.  Mandy: Thank you so much, Mike. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling all individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2024 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

The National Security Hour with Col. Mike and Dr. Mike – It is time for Trump's supporters to find out where he stands, with our republic or with a country whose existence is entirely irrelevant to this republic's national security interests and now questionable ability to survive, an ability that can only be weakened by going to war for Israel or any other two-bit, unessential foreign country in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world...

The National Security Hour with Col. Mike and Dr. Mike – It is time for Trump's supporters to find out where he stands, with our republic or with a country whose existence is entirely irrelevant to this republic's national security interests and now questionable ability to survive, an ability that can only be weakened by going to war for Israel or any other two-bit, unessential foreign country in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world...

Rounding Up Season 2 | Episode 12 – Counting Guest: Dr. Kim Hartweg Mike Wallus: Counting is a process that involves a complex and interconnected set of concepts and skills. This means that for most children, the path to counting proficiency is not a linear process. Today we're talking with Dr. Kim Hartweg from Western Illinois University about the big ideas and skills that are a part of counting, and the ways educators can support their students on this important part of their math journey.  Mike: Well, hey, Kim, welcome to the podcast. We're excited to be talking with you about counting.   Kim Hartweg: Ah, thanks for having me. I'm excited, too.  Mike: So, I'm fascinated by all of the things that we're learning about how young kids count, or at least the way that they attend to quantities.  Kim: Yeah, it's exciting what all is taking place, with the research and everything going on with early childhood education, especially in regards to number and number sense. And I think back to an article I read about a 6-month-old baby who's in a crib and there's three pictures in this crib. One of them has two dots on it, another one has one dot, and then a third one has three dots. And a drum sounds, and it goes boom, boom, boom. And the 6-month-old baby turns their head and eyes and they look at the picture with three dots on it. And I just think that's exciting that even at that age they're recognizing that three dots [go] with three drum beats. So, it's just exciting.  Mike: So, you're actually taking us to a place that I was hoping we could go to, which is, there are some ideas and some concepts that we associate with counting. And I'm wondering if we could start the podcast by naming and unpacking a few of the really important ones.  Kim: OK, sure. I think of the fundamental counting principles, three different areas. And for me, the first one is that counting sequence, or just learning the language and that we count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. However, in the English language, it's much more difficult [than] in other languages when we get beyond 10 because we have numbers like 11, 12, 13 that we never hear again. Like, you hear 21, 31, 41, but you don't hear 11. Again, it's the only time it's ever mentioned. So, I think it's harder for students to get that counting sequence for those who speak English.  Mike: I appreciate you saying that because I remember reading at one point that in certain Asian languages, the number 11, the translation is essentially 10 and 1, as opposed to for English speakers where it really is 11, which doesn't really follow the cadence of the number sequence that kids are learning: 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on.  Kim: Exactly. Yes.  Mike: It picks up again at 21, but this interim space where the teen numbers show up and we're first talking about a 10 and however many more, it's not a great thing about the English language that suddenly we decided to call those things that don't have that same cadence.   Kim: Yeah, after you get past 20, yes. And if you think of kids when they hear the number 16, a lot of times they'll say, “A 1 and a 6 or a 6 and a 1?” Because they hear 16, so you hear the 6 first. But like you said, in other languages, it's 10 six, 10 seven, 10 eight. So, it kind of fits more naturally with the way we talk and the language.   Mike: So, there's the language of the counting sequence. Let's talk about a couple of the other things.  Kim: OK. One-to-one correspondence is a key idea, and I think of this when I was first starting to teach undergraduate students about early math education. I had kids at the same age, so at a restaurant or wherever we happened to be, I'd get out the sugar packets and I would have them count. And at first when they're maybe 2 years old or so, and they're just learning the language, they may count those sugar packets as 1, 2, 3. There may be two packets. There may be five packets. But everything is 1, 2, 3, whether there's again, five packets or two packets. So, once they get that idea that each time they say a number word that it counts for an actual object and they can match them up, that's that idea of one-to-one correspondence to where they say a number and they either point or move the object so you can tell they're matching those up.   Mike: OK, let's talk about cardinality because this is one that I think when I first started teaching kindergarten, I took for granted how big of a leap this one is.   Kim: Yeah, that's interesting. So, once they can count out and you have five sugar packets and they count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and you ask how many are there, they should be able to say five. That's cardinality of number. If they have to count again, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, then they don't have cardinality of number, where whatever number they count last is how many is in that set.   Mike: Which is kind of amazing actually. We're asking kids to decide that “I've figured out this idea that when I say a number name, I'm talking about an individual part of the count until I say the last one, and then I'm actually talking about the entire set.” That's a pretty big leap for kids to start to make sense of.   Kim: It is, and it's fun to watch because hear some of them say, “One, 2, 3, 4, 5. Five, there's five.” ( laughs ) So, they kind of get that idea. But yeah, that cardinality of number is a key principle and leads into the conservation of numbers.  Mike: Let's talk about conservation of number. What I'm loving about this conversation is the way that you're using these concrete examples from your own children, from sugar packets, to help us make sense of something that we might be seeing, but we might not have a name for.   Kim: Yeah, so the conservation of number, this is my favorite task when I have young kids around. I want to see if they can serve number or not. So, I might first do the sugar pack thing or whatever and see if they can tell you how many there are. But the real fun is, do they conserve that number? So, I think back to a friend of mine who brought her daughter over one time, and I had these toy matchbox cards on my table, and her name was Katie. And I said, “Katie, how many cars are there?” And she counted “One, 2, 3, 4, 5 … there's five toy cars.” And I moved them around and I said, “Now how many cars are there?” And she counted “One, 2, 3, 4, 5 … there's five toy cars.” So, she has cardinality of number. However, I kept moving those cars into different positions, never adding or taking any away.   Kim: That's all that were there the whole time. And after about seven or eight times, I said, “Now how many cars are there?” And her mom finally jumped in and said, “Katie, you've counted those already. There's five cars.” ( laughs ) And I said, “No, no, no. This is just whether she conserves number or not, it's a developmental-type thing.” But you know they conserve number when you ask them, “Well, now how many cars are there?” And they look at you and like, “Well, why would you ask that again? There's five.” ( chuckles ) So, then they can conserve number. It's real fun to do that with elementary students who are getting their number sense going and even before they enter school. However, there will be some that may not get that conservation of number until they're 5 or 6 years old.   Mike: Let's talk about something you named earlier. I've heard people pronounce this as (soobitizing) or (subitizing), but in any case, it's really an important idea for people, especially if you're teaching young children to make sense of this. Can you talk about what that means?   Kim: Yeah, so subitizing, I think that's interesting. We work so hard getting kids to count and learn the language and have one-to-one correspondence, and then be able to eventually conserve number. But then we want them to just be able to recognize a set of numbers without counting. And that's when they're really starting to develop some number sense. I think of dice. And if you roll a single [die], we want students to just know that when there's an arrangement of four dice, they know it's four without having to count 1, 2, 3, 4. So the subitizing idea, a lot of dice games, maybe some ten-frame cards, dot cards, lots of things like that can help students develop a little bit more of that subitizing, or recognizing a set of items without having to count those.   Mike: So, when I look at a set of three dots, I can just say that's three, as opposed to an earlier point where a child might actually say, “One, 2, 3 … that's three.”  Kim: Exactly. So, that would be subitizing—just instantly knowing what's there without having to count.   Mike: So, I wonder if we could unpack two other counting behaviors that sometimes pop up with kids when they're combining or separating quantities. And what I'm thinking about is the difference between the child who counts everything and the child who either counts on from a number or counts back from a number. And I'm wondering if you can talk about what these two behaviors can tell us about how kids are thinking about the numbers that they're operating on.   Kim: Yeah, it's so interesting when you have activities like a cup … and maybe you have eight counters and you put three under the cup and you say, “How many are here? Three.” And then you cover those up and you ask, “Well, how many are altogether?” There are some kids who don't have any trouble with counting on 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, but there's other kids who have to lift up the cup and start again at 1. So, they don't have that idea that there's three items under that cup whether you can see them or not. So, it's difficult for them to be able to count on, and we shouldn't as teachers force that on them until they're ready to do it. So, it's a hard concept for kids to get, but especially if they're not developmentally ready for it.   Mike: I think that's a really nice caution because I think you could accidentally potentially get kids to mimic a practice that you're trying to show them, but without understanding there's some real danger that you're just causing confusion.   Kim: And we want to give kids the idea that counting collections and things, it's a fun thing to do. And I know there may be teachers that have seashells or rocks or different types of collections they might count, and we want students to count those and then discuss how they counted them, arrange them. And I'm thinking of this little girl that I saw on a video where she was counting eight bears, and she arranged them first by color, then counted how many there were. And the teacher then went on to use that and make a problem-solving task for her, such as, “Well, how many green bears do you have?” And she would count them. “Well, what if you gave me those green bears? Do you know what you would have left?” And she said, “Well, I don't know. Let's try it.” And I love that because I think that's the kind of idea we want students to have. They're counting, and “I don't know, let's try it.” They're excited about it. They're not afraid to take chances, and we don't want them to think that “Oh, this is difficult to do.” It's just, “Hey, let's try it. Give it a try here.”   Mike: Well, I've heard people talking a lot about this idea of counting collections lately. It seems like we are almost rediscovering the value of a routine like that. I'm wondering if you could talk about the value that can come out of an experience of counting collections and help bring that idea to life for people.   Kim: The idea here is that we want students to get good at counting. And the research is showing that students who maybe don't show one-to-one correspondence when they count out, maybe eight counters, might show one-to-one correspondence when they count out 31 pennies, which seems like it shouldn't happen. But there's research out there that over 70 percent of them did better counting 31 pennies than they did with eight counters. So, I think what you count makes a big difference for kids—and to not hold them back, to not think that “OK, we've got to get one-to-one correspondence before we count this collection of 50 items.” I don't think that's the case. And the research is even showing that these ideas that we've talked about all develop concurrently. It's not a linear process. But this counting collections is kind of a big deal with that. And having students count, again, collections that they're interested in, writing number sentences about their collections, comparing what they counted with another partner, and then turning it into problem-solving questions where they're actually doing what happens if you lost five of yours. Or what happens if you combined your collection with somebody else? And turning it into where they're actually doing addition and subtraction, but not actually the formal process of that.   Mike: The other thing that you made me think about is, I would imagine you could also have kids finish counting a collection and then you could ask them to represent it either on paper or in some other way.   Kim: Exactly. And writing out those number sentences or even creating their own word problems so that they can ask a friend or a partner, it makes it fun. And it relates to what they've done. And let's face it, once you've taken that time to count those collections, you may as well get as much use out of it as you can. ( chuckles )  Mike: Kim, you're making me think of something that I don't know that I had words for when I was teaching kindergarten, which is, when I look back now, I was looking to see that kids could do a particular thing like one-to-one correspondence or that they had cardinality before I would give them access to a task like counting collections. And I think what you're making me think is that those things shouldn't be a gatekeeper; that they actually develop by doing those things. Am I making sense to you?   Kim: Yes. I always thought you had to have the language first. You had to be able to do one-to-one correspondence before you could get cardinality of number, and you needed cardinality of number before you could do conservation of number. But what the research is showing is, it develops concurrently with students; that it's not something that is a linear process by any means. So, when we have these activities, it's OK if they don't have one-to-one correspondence, and you're doing problem-solving tasks with counters. We need to be planning these activities so they're getting all of this, and they will develop it as it fits in the schema of what they're working on and thinking of in their minds.   Mike: So, I want to bring up a set of manipulatives that are actually attached to our bodies, particularly when it comes to counting. I'm thinking about fingers. And part of what's on my mind is, again, to go back to my practice, there was a point in time where I was really hung up on whether kids should make use of their fingers when they're counting or when they're operating on numbers. And I'm wondering if you could just offer some guidance around that.   Kim: Yes. I think again, it goes to that idea that we have these 10 fingers that are great manipulatives, that we shouldn't stop students from doing that. And I know there was a time when teachers would say, “Don't use your fingers, don't count on your fingers.” And I get the idea that we want students to start to subitize eventually and make combinations and not have to count on their fingers, but to stop them from doing it when they need that would be very detrimental to them. And I actually have a story. When I was supervising student teachers, one teacher was telling a student don't count with their fingers. And I saw them nodding their head, and I went over and I said, “What are you doing?” He said, “Well, I can't count my fingers, so I'm using my tongue, and I'm counting my teeth.” ( laughs ) So, coming up with a problem that way, still using a manipulative, but it wasn't their fingers.   Mike: That's pretty creative.   Kim: ( laughs ) Yeah.   Mike: Well, part of what strikes me about it, too, is our entire number system is based on 10s and ones, and we've got a set of them right in front of us, right? We're trying to get kids to make sense of shifting from units of one to units of 10 or maybe units of five. So, these tools that are attached to our bodies are actually pretty helpful because they're really the basis for our number system in a lot of ways.   Kim: Yes, exactly. And being able to come up with even using your fingers to answer questions … I'm thinking, we want students to subitize. So, even something to where there's a dot card that a teacher flashes for 3 seconds, and it's in the formation of maybe a five on a [die]. And you could have students hold up how many there are. And you could do that five or 10 times, with dot flashes. Or you could hold up one more than what you see on the [die]. So, they only see it for 5 seconds and the number's five, but they hold up six. So just uses of fingers to kind of make those connections can be very helpful.   Mike: So, before we go, you mentioned that you work with pre-service teachers, folks who are getting ready to go into the field and work with elementary children in the area of mathematics. I'm wondering if there are any particular resources that really help your students and perhaps teachers who are already in the field just make sense of counting and number to really understand some of the ideas that we've been talking about today. Do you have anything in particular that you would recommend to teachers?   Kim: Yeah, I'll just mention a few that we use a lot of. We do the two-color counters a lot where one side is yellow and one is red. But we do a lot of dot cards, where again, there are arrangements of dots on a card that you could just flash to a student kind of like I've already explained. There's lots of resources on the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics website. That has ten-frame activities. And if you haven't used rekenreks before, I think those are pretty amazing as well—along with hundreds charts. And just being able to have students create some of their own manipulatives and their own numbers makes a huge difference for kids.   Mike: I think that's a great place to close the conversation. Thank you so much for joining us, Kim. It's really been a pleasure chatting with you.  Kim: Hey, thanks so much. It's been fun, Mike. Thanks for asking me. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling all individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2024 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

Listen along as we continue our series looking at the hard sayings of Jesus. Notes//Quotes: Luke 12:4-7 - Mike   It's the age of doubt And I doubt we'll figure it out Is it you or is it me? Age of anxiety Fight the fever with TV In the age when nobody sleeps And the pills do nothing for me In the age of anxiety - Arcade Fire   “Unfortunately, many of us presume that the world is the ultimate threat and that God's function is to offset it. How different this is from the biblical position that God is far scarier than the world …. When we assume that the world is the ultimate threat, we give it unwarranted power, for in truth, the world's threats are temporary. When we expect God to balance the stress of the world, we reduce him to the world's equal …. As I walk with the Lord, I discover that God poses an ominous threat to my ego, but not to me. He rescues me from my delusions, so he may reveal the truth that sets me free. He casts me down, only to lift me up again. He sits in judgment of my sin, but forgives me nevertheless. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but love from the Lord is its completion." - William D. Eisenhower   Acts 10:39-43 “We are witnesses of all that he did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, 40 but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, 41 not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42 And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. 43 To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”     “And therein is an extraordinary paradox, for we live more safely than ever before. Though we are safer than almost any other society in history, safety has become the holy grail of our culture. And like the Holy Grail, it is something we can never quite reach. Protected like never before, we are skittish and panicky like never before…. How can this be? Quite simply, our culture has lost God as the proper object of fear. That fear of God was a happy and healthy fear that controlled our other fears, reining in anxiety…In ousting God from our culture, other concerns—from personal health to the health of the planet—have assumed a divine ultimacy in our minds. Good things have become cruel and pitiless idols. And thus we feel helplessly fragile, and society fills with anxieties…The suggestion that loss of the fear of God is the root cause of our culture's anxiety is a real blow to atheism. For atheism sold the idea that if you liberate people from belief in God, that will liberate them from fear. But throwing off the fear of God has not made our society happier and less fretful. Quite the opposite…So, what does our culture do with all its anxiety? Given its essentially secular self-identity, our culture will not turn to God. The only possible solution, then, must be for us to sort it out ourselves. Thus, Western society has medicalized fear. Fear has become an elusive disease to be medicated. (I do not mean to imply here that use of drugs to curb anxiety is wrong— only that they are a palliative, at times an important one, and not an ultimate solution.) Yet that attempt to eradicate fear as we would eradicate a disease has effectively made comfort (complete absence of fear) a health category—or even a moral category. Where discomfort was once considered quite normal (and quite proper for certain situations), it is now deemed an essentially unhealthy thing. - Michael Reeves   Psalm 8:3&4, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
    the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,   what is man that you are mindful of him,
    and the son of man that you care for him?”   Psalm 96:1–4 Oh sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth!   Sing to the LORD, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples!   For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above fall gods.   John 1:29 “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!"

Rounding Up Season 2 | Episode 11 – Translanguaging Guest: Tatyana Kleyn Mike Wallus: Over the past two years, we've done several episodes on supporting multilingual learners in math classrooms. Today we're going back to this topic to talk about “translanguaging,” an asset-focused approach that invites students to bring their full language repertoire into the classroom. We'll talk with Tatyana Kleyn about what translanguaging looks like and how all teachers can integrate this practice into their classrooms.  Mike: Well, welcome to the podcast, Tatyana. We're excited to be talking with you today.  Tatyana Kleyn: Thank you. This is very exciting.  Mike: So, your background with the topic of multilingual learners and translanguaging, it's not only academic. It's also personal. I'm wondering if you might share a bit of your own background as a starting point for this conversation.  Tatyana: Yes, absolutely. I think for many of us in education, we don't randomly end up teaching in the areas that we're teaching in or doing the work that we're doing. So, I always like to share my story so people know why I'm doing this work and where I'm coming from. So, my personal story, I work a lot at the intersection of language migration and education, and those are all three aspects that have been critical in bringing me here. So, I was actually born in what was the Soviet Union many, many years ago, and my family immigrated to the United States as political refugees, and I was just 5½ years old. So, I actually never went to school in the Soviet Union. Russian was my home language, and I quickly started speaking English, but my literacy was not quick at all, and it was quite painful because I never learned to read in my home language. I never had that foundation.  Tatyana: So, when I was learning to read in English, it wasn't meaning making, it was just making sounds. It was kind of painful. I once heard somebody say, “For some people, reading is like this escape and this pure joy, and for other people it's like cleaning the toilet. You get in and you get out.” And I was like, “That's me. I'm the toilet cleaner.” ( laughs ) So, that was how reading was for me. I always left my home language at the door when I came into school, and I wanted it that way because I, as a young child, got this strong message that English was the language that mattered in this country. So, for example, instead of going by Tatyana, I went by Tanya. So, I always kind of kept this secret that I spoke this other language. I had this other culture, and it wasn't until sixth grade where my sixth-grade teacher, Ms. Chang, invited my mom to speak about our immigration history.  Tatyana: And I don't know why, but I thought that was so embarrassing. I think in middle school, it's not really cool to have your parents around. So, I was like, “Oh my God, this is going to be horrible.” But then I realized my peers were really interested—and in a good way—and I was like, “Wait, this is a good thing?” So, I started thinking, “OK, we should be proud of who we are and let just people be who they are.” And when you let people be who they are, they thrive in math, in science, in social studies, instead of trying so hard to be someone they're not, and then focusing on that instead of everything else that they should be focusing on as students.  Mike: So, there's a lot there. And I think I want to dig into what you talked about over the course of the interview. I want to zero in a little bit on translanguaging though, because for me, at least until quite recently, this idea of translanguaging was really a new concept, a new idea for me, and I'm going to guess that that's the case for a lot of the people who are listening to this as well. So, just to begin, would you talk briefly about what translanguaging is and your sense of the impact that it can have on learners?  Tatyana: Sure. Well, I'm so glad to be talking about translanguaging in this space specifically, because often when we talk about translanguaging, it's in bilingual education or English as a second language or is a new language, and it's important in those settings, right? But it's important in all settings. So, I think you're not the only one, especially if we're talking about math educators or general elementary educators, it's like, “Oh, translanguaging, I haven't heard of that,” right? So, it is not something brand new, but it is a concept that Ofelia García and some of her colleagues really brought forth to the field in the early 2000s … around 2009. And what it does is instead of saying English should be the center of everything, and everyone who doesn't just speak English is peripheral. It's saying, “Instead of putting English at the center, let's put our students' home language practices at the center. And what would that look like?” So, that wouldn't mean everything has to be in English. It wouldn't mean the teacher's language practices are front and center, and the students have to adapt to that. But it's about centering the students and then the teacher adapting to the languages and the language practices that the students bring. Teachers are there to have students use all the language at their resource—whatever language it is, whatever variety it is. And all those resources will help them learn. The more you can use, when we're talking about math, well, if we're teaching a concept and there are manipulatives there that will help students use them, why should we hide them? Why not bring them in and say, “OK, use this.” And once you have that concept, we can now scaffold and take things away little by little until you have it on your own. And the same thing with sometimes learning English.  Tatyana: We should allow students to learn English as a new language using their home language resources. But one thing I will say is we should never take away their home language practices from the classroom. Even when they're fully bilingual, fully biliterate, it's still about, “How can we use these resources? How can they use that in their classroom?” Because we know in the world, speaking English is not enough. We're becoming more globalized, so let's have our students grow their language practices. And then students are allowed and proud of the language practices they bring. They teach their language practices to their peers, to their teachers. So, it's really hard to say it all in a couple of minutes, but I think the essence of translanguaging is centering students' language practices and then using that as a resource for them to learn and to grow, to learn languages and to learn content as well.  Mike: How do you think that shifts the experience for a child?  Tatyana: Well, if I think about my own experiences, you don't have to leave who you are at the door. We are not saying, “Home language is here, school language is there, and neither shall the two meet.” We're saying, “Language, and in the sense that it's a verb.” And when you can be your whole self, it allows you to have a stronger sense of who you are in order to really grow and learn and be proud of who you are. And I think that's a big part of it. I think when kids are bashful about who they are, thinking who they are isn't good enough, that has ripple effects in so many ways for them. So, I think we have to bring a lens of critical consciousness into these kind of spaces and make sure that our immigrant-origin students, their language practices, are centered through a translanguaging lens.  Mike: It strikes me that it matters a lot how we as educators—internally, in the way that we think and externally, in the things that we do and the things that we say—how we position the child's home language, whether we think of it as an asset that is something to draw upon or a deficit or a barrier, that the way that we're thinking about it makes a really big difference in the child's experience.  Tatyana: Yes, absolutely. Ofelia García, Kate Seltzer and Susana Johnson talk about a translanguaging stance. So, translanguaging is not just a practice or a pedagogy like, “Oh, let me switch this up, or let me say this in this language.” Yes, that's helpful, but it's how you approach who students are and what they bring. So, if you don't come from a stance of valuing multilingualism, it's not really going to cut it, right? It's something, but it's really about the stance. So, something that's really important is to change the culture of classrooms. So, just because you tell somebody like, “Oh, you can say this in your home language, or you can read this book side by side in Spanish and in English if it'll help you understand it.” Some students may not want to because they will think their peers will look down on them for doing it, or they'll think it means they're not smart enough. So, it's really about centering multilingualism in your classroom and celebrating it. And then as that stance changes the culture of the classroom, I can see students just saying, “Ah, no, no, no, I'm good in English.” Even though they may not fully feel comfortable in English yet, but because of the perception of what it means to be bilinguals.  Mike: I'm thinking even about the example that you shared earlier where you said that an educator might say, “You can read this in Spanish side by side with English if you need to or if you want to.” But even that language of you can implies that, potentially, this is a remedy for a deficit as opposed to the ability to read in multiple languages as a huge asset. And it makes me think even our language choices sometimes will be a tell to kids about how we think about them as a learner and how we think about their language.  Tatyana: That's so true, and how do we reframe that? “Let's read this in two languages. Who wants to try a new language?” Making this something exciting as opposed to framing it in a deficit way. So that's something that's so important that you picked up on. Yeah.  Mike: Well, I think we're probably at the point in the conversation where there's a lot of folks who are monolingual who might be listening and they're thinking to themselves, “This stance that we're talking about is something that I want to step into.” And now they're wondering what might it actually look like to put this into practice? Can we talk about what it would look like, particularly for someone who might be monolingual to both step into the stance and then also step into the practice a bit?  Tatyana: Yes. I think the stance is really doing some internal reflection, questioning about what do I believe about multilingualism? What do I believe about people who come here, to come to the United States? In New York City, about half of our multilingual learners are U.S. born. So, it's not just immigrant students, but their parents, or they're often children of immigrants. So, really looking closely and saying, “How am I including respecting, valuing the languages of students regardless of where they come from?” And then, I think for the practice, it's about letting go of some control. As teachers, we are kind of control freaks. I can just speak for myself. ( laughs ) I like to know everything that's going on.  Mike: I will add myself to that list, Tatyana.  Tatyana: It's a long list. It's a long list. ( laughs ) But I think first of all, as educators, we have a sense when a kid is on task, and you can tell when a kid is not on task. You may not know exactly what they're saying. So, I think it's letting go of that control and letting the students, for example, when you are giving directions … I think one of the most dangerous things we do is we give directions in English when we have multilingual students in our classrooms, and we assume they understood it. If you don't understand the directions, the next 40 minutes will be a waste of time because you will have no idea what's happening. So, what does that mean? It means perhaps putting the directions into Google Translate and having it translate the different languages of your students. Will it be perfect? No. But will it be better than just being in English? A million times yes, right?  Tatyana: Sometimes it's about putting students in same-language groups. If there are enough—two or three or four students that speak the same home language—and having them discuss something in their home language or multilingually before actually starting to do the work to make sure they're all on the same page. Sometimes it can mean if asking students if they do come from other countries, sometimes I'm thinking of math, math is done differently in different countries. So, we teach one approach, but what is another approach? Let's share that. Instead of having kids think like, “Oh, I came here, now this is the bad way. Or when I go home and I ask my family to help me, they're telling me all wrong.” No, again, these are the strengths of the families, and let's put them side by side and see how they go together.  Tatyana: And I think what it's ultimately about is thinking about your classroom, not as a monolingual classroom, but as a multilingual classroom. And really taking stock of who are your students? Where are they and their families coming from, and what languages do they speak? And really centering that. Sometimes you may have students that may not tell you because they may feel like it's shameful to share that we speak a language that maybe other people haven't heard of. I'm thinking of indigenous languages from Honduras, like Garífuna, Miskito, right? Of course, Spanish, everyone knows that. But really excavating the languages of the students, the home language practices, and then thinking about giving them opportunities to translate if they need to translate. I'm not saying everything should be translated. I think word problems, having problems side by side, is really important. Because sometimes what students know is they know the math terms in English, but the other terms, they may not know those yet.  Tatyana: And I'll give you one really powerful example. This is a million years ago, but it stays with me from my dissertation. It was in a Haitian Creole bilingual classroom. They were taking a standardized test, and the word problem was where it was like three gumballs, two gumballs, this color, what are the probability of a blue gumball coming out of this gumball machine? And this student just got stuck on gumball machine because in Haiti people sell gum, not machines, and it was irrelevant to the whole problem. So, language matters, but culture matters, too, right? So, giving students the opportunity to see things side by side and thinking about, “Are there any things here that might trip them up that I could explain to them?” So, I think it's starting small. It's taking risks. It's letting go of control and centering the students.  Mike: So, from one recovering control freak to another, there are a couple of things that I'm thinking about. One is expanding a little bit on this idea of having two kids who might speak to one another in their home language, even if you are a monolingual speaker and you speak English and you don't necessarily have access to the language that they're using. Can you talk a little bit about that practice and how you see it and any guidance that you might offer around that?  Tatyana: Yeah, I mean, it may not work the first time or the second time because kids may feel a little bit shy to do that. So maybe it's, “I want to try out something new in our class. I really am trying to make this a multilingual class. Who speaks another language here? Let's try … I am going to put you in a group and you're going to talk about this, and let's come back. And how did you feel? How was it for you? Let me tell you how I felt about it.” And it may be trying over a couple times because kids have learned that in most school settings, English is a language you should be using. And to the extent that some have been told not to speak any other language, I think it's just about setting it up and, “Oh, you two spoke, which language? Wow, can you teach us how to say this math term in this language?”  Tatyana: “Oh, wow, isn't this interesting? This is a cognate, which means it sounds the same as the English word. And let's see if this language and this language, if the word means the same thing,” getting everyone involved in centering this multilingualism. And language is fun. We can play with language, we can put language side by side. So, then if you're labeling or if you have a math word wall, why not put key terms in all the languages that the students speak in the class and then they could teach each other those languages? So, I think you have to start little. You have to expect some resistance. But over time, if you keep pushing away at this, I think it will be good for not only your multilingual students, but all your students to say like, “Oh, wait a minute, there's all these languages in the world, but they're not just in the world. They're right here by my friend to the left and my friend to the right” and open up that space.  Mike: So, I want to ask another question. What I'm thinking about is participation. And we've done an episode in the past around not privileging verbal communication as the only way that kids can communicate their ideas. We were speaking to someone who, their focus really was elementary years mathematics, but specifically, with multilingual learners. And the point that they were making was, kids gestures, the way that they use their hands, the way that they move manipulatives, their drawings, all of those things are sources of communication that we don't have to only say, “Kids understand things if they can articulate it in a particular way.” That there are other things that they do that are legitimate forms of participation. The thing that was in my head was, it seems really reasonable to say that if you have kids who could share an explanation or a strategy that they've come up with or a solution to a problem in their home language in front of the group, that would be perfectly legitimate. Having them actually explain their thinking in their home language is accomplishing the goal that we're after, which is can you justify your mathematical thinking? I guess I just wanted to check in and say, “Does that actually seem like a reasonable logic to follow that that's actually a productive practice for a teacher, but also a productive practice for a kid to engage in?”  Tatyana: That makes a lot of sense. So, I would say for every lesson you, you may have a math objective, you may have a language objective, and you may have both. If your objective is to get kids to understand a concept in math or to explain something in math, who cares what language they do it in? It's about learning math. And if you're only allowing them to do it in a language that they are still developing in, they will always be about English and not about math. So, how do you take that away? You allow them to use all their linguistic resources. And we can have students explain something in their home language. There are now many apps where we could just record that, and it will translate it into English. If you are not a speaker of the language that the student speaks, you can have a peer then summarize what they said in English as well. So, there's different ways to do it. So yes, I think it's about thinking about the objectives or the objective of the lesson. And if you're really focusing on math, the language is really irrelevant. It's about explaining or showing what they know in math, and they can do that in any language. Or even without spoken language, but in written language artistically with symbols, et cetera.  Mike: Well, and what you made me think, too, is for that peer, it's actually a great opportunity for them to engage with the reasoning of someone else and try to make meaning of it. So, there's a double bonus in it for that practice.  Tatyana: Exactly. I think sometimes students don't really like listening to each other. They think they only need to listen to the teacher. So, I think this really has them listen to each other. And then sometimes summarizing or synthesizing is a really hard skill, and then doing it in another language is a whole other level. So, we're really pushing kids in those ways as well. So, there's many advantages to this approach.  Mike: Yeah, absolutely. We have talked a lot about the importance of having kids engage with the thinking of other children as opposed to having the teacher be positioned as the only source of mathematical knowledge. So, the more that we talk about it, the more that I can see there's a lot of value culturally for a mathematics classroom in terms of showing that kids thinking matters, but also supporting that language development as well.  Tatyana: Yes, and doing it is hard. As I said, none of this is easy, but it's so important. And I think when you start creating a multilingual classroom, it just has a different feel to it. And I think students can grow so much in their math, understanding it and in so many other ways.  Mike: Absolutely. Well, before we close the interview, I invite you to share resources that you would recommend for an educator who's listening who wants to step into the stance of translanguaging, the practice of translanguaging, anything that you would offer that could help people continue learning.  Tatyana: I have one hub of all things translanguaging, so this will make it easy for all the listeners. So, it is the CUNY New York State Initiative on Emergent Bilinguals. And let me just give you the website. It's C-U-N-Y [hyphen] N-Y-S-I-E-B.org. And I'll say that again. C-U-N-Y, N-Y-S-I-E-B.org, cuny-nysieb.org. That's the CUNY New York State Initiative on Emergent Bilinguals. And because it's such a mouthful, we just say “CUNY NYSIEB,” as you could tell by my own, trying to get it straight. You can find translanguaging resources such as guides. You can find webinars, you can find research, you can find books. Literally everything you would want around translanguaging is there in one website. Of course, there's more out there in the world. But I think that's a great starting point. There's so many great resources just to start with there. And then just start small. Small changes sometimes have big impacts on student learning and students' perceptions of how teachers view them and their families.  Mike: Thank you so much for joining us, Tatiana. It's really been a pleasure talking with you.  Tatyana: Yes, it's been wonderful. Thank you so much. And we will just all try to let go a little bit of our control little by little. Both: ( laugh)  Tatyana: Because at the end of the day, we really don't control very much at all. ( laughs )  Mike: Agreed. ( chuckles ) Thank you.  Tatyana: Thank you. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling all individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2024 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

Episode 38 begins with a discussion about the Episode 38 that never was. ("Sorry, I'm an idiot -- Mike) It ends with a very scary and heartbreaking story from Joe. In between we talk Stock Show, try to figure out when youth golf season is, spotlight the Aledo Barbershop and share out thoughts about the documentary The Greatest Night in Pop. We all recommend watching.

If you missed the other episodes with thoughtbot Incubator Program partcipants and founders Mike Rosenthal and Chris Cerrito of Goodz, you can listen to the first episode (https://podcast.thoughtbot.com/s3e2incubatorgoodz) and the second episode (https://podcast.thoughtbot.com/s3e4incubatorgoodz), and the third episode (https://podcast.thoughtbot.com/s3e6incubatorgoodz) to catch up! Lindsey Christensen and Jordyn Bonds catch up with the co-founders of Goodz, Chris Cerrito and Mike Rosenthal, where they share insights from their journey during the Incubator program, including the usefulness of the application process in aligning their vision and the challenges and benefits of user interviews and the importance of not overreacting to single user feedback and finding a balance in responding to diverse opinions. They reveal the varied reactions of users to Goodz's product, highlighting the different market segments interested in it. As the Incubator program nears its end for Goodz, Chris and Mike reflect on their achievements and future plans. They've made significant progress, such as setting up an e-commerce site and conducting successful user interviews. The co-founders discuss their excitement about the potential of their product and the validation they received from users. Mike mentions the importance of focusing on B2B sales and the possibility of upcoming events like South by Southwest and Record Store Day. Transcript: LINDSEY: Thanks for being here. My name's Lindsey. I head up marketing at thoughtbot. If you haven't joined one of these before, we are checking in with two of the founders who are going through the thoughtbot Startup Incubator to learn how it's going, what's new, what challenges they're hitting, and what they're learning along the way. If you're not familiar with thoughtbot, we're a product design and development consultancy, and we hope your team and your product become a success. And one way we do that is through our startup incubator. So, today, we are joined by our co-founders, Mike Rosenthal and Chris Cerrito, Co-Founders of the startup Goodz. And we also have another special guest today, Danny Kim, from the thoughtbot side, Senior Product Manager at thoughtbot. So, I think, to start off, we'll head over to the new face, the new voice that we've got with us today. Danny, tell us a little bit about your role at thoughtbot and, specifically, the incubator. DANNY: Yeah, sure. First of all, thanks for having me on, and thanks for letting me join in on all the fun. I'm one of the product managers at thoughtbot. I typically work for the Lift-Off team. We usually work with companies that are looking to, like, go into market with their first version MVP. They might have a product that exists and that they're already kind of doing well with, and they kind of want to jump into a new segment. We'll typically work with companies like that to kind of get them kicked off the ground. But it's been really awesome being part of the incubator program. It's my first time in helping with the market validation side. Definitely also, like, learning a lot from this experience [laughs] for myself. Coming at it specifically from a PM perspective, there's, like, so much variation usually in product management across the industry, depending on, like, what stage of the product that you're working in. And so, I'm definitely feeling my fair share of impostor syndrome here. But it's been really fun to stretch my brand and, like, approach problems from, like, a completely different perspective and also using different tools. But, you know, working with Mike and Chris makes it so much easier because they really make it feel like you're part of their team, and so that definitely goes a long way. LINDSEY: It just goes to show everyone gets impostor syndrome sometimes [laughter], even senior product managers at thoughtbot [laughter]. Thanks for that intro. It's, you know, the thoughtbot team learns along the way, too, you know, especially if usually you're focused on a different stage of product development. Mike, it's been only three weeks or a very long three weeks since last we checked in with you, kind of forever in startup time. So, I think the last time, we were just getting to know you two. And you were walking us through the concept, this merging of the digital and physical world of music, and how we interact with music keepsakes or merchandise. How's my pitch? MIKE: Good. Great. You're killing it. [laughter] LINDSEY: And has anything major changed to that concept in the last three weeks? MIKE: No. I mean, I can't believe it's only been three weeks. It feels like it's been a long time since we last talked. It's been an intense three weeks, for sure. No, it's been going really well. I mean, we launched all sorts of stuff. I'm trying to think of anything that's sort of fundamentally changed in terms of the plan itself or kind of our, yeah, what we've been working on. And I think we've pretty much stayed the course to sort of get to where we are now. But it's been really intensive. I think also having sort of Thanksgiving in there, and we were kind of pushing to get something live right before the Thanksgiving break. And so, that week just felt, I mean, I was just dead by, you know, like, Thursday of Thanksgiving. I think we all were. So, it's been intense, I would say, is the short answer. And I'm happy, yeah, to get into kind of where things are at. But big picture, it's been an intense three weeks. LINDSEY: That's cool. And when we talked, you were, you know, definitely getting into research and user interviews. Have those influenced any, you know, changes along the way in the plan? MIKE: Yeah. They've been really helpful. You know, we'd never really done that before in any of the sort of past projects that we've worked on together. And so, I think just being able to, you know, read through some of those scripts and then sit through some of the interviews and just kind of hearing people's honest assessment of some things has been really interesting. I'm trying to think if it's materially affected anything. I guess, you know, at first, we were, like, we kind of had some assumptions around, okay, let's try to find, like...adult gift-givers sounds like the wrong thing, adults who give gifts as, like, a persona. The idea that, like, you know, maybe you gift your siblings gifts, and then maybe this could be a good gift idea. And I think, you know, we had a hard time kind of finding people to talk in an interesting way about that. And I think we've kind of realized it's kind of a hard persona to kind of chop up and talk about, right, Chris? I don't know [crosstalk 04:55] CHRIS: Well, it also seemed to, from my understanding of it, it seemed to, like, genuinely stress out the people who were being interviewed... MIKE: [laughs] CHRIS: Because it's kind of about a stressful topic [inaudible 05:03], you know, and, like, especially -- LINDSEY: Why? [laughs] CHRIS: Well, I think, I don't know, now I'm making assumptions. Maybe because we're close to the holiday season, and that's a topic in the back of everybody's mind. But yeah, Danny, would you disagree with that? Those folks, from what we heard, seemed like they were the most difficult to kind of extract answers from. But then, if the subject changed and we treated them as a different persona, several of those interviews proved to be quite fruitful. So, it's just really interesting. DANNY: Yeah. It really started, like, you kind of try to get some answers out of people, and there's, like, some level of people trying to please you to some extent. That's just, like, naturally, how it starts. And you just, like, keep trying to drill into the answers. And you just keep asking people like, "So, what kind of gifts do you give?" And they're just like, "Oh my goodness, like, I haven't thought about buying gifts for my sister in [laughs], like, you know, in forever. And now, like [laughs], I don't know where to go." And they get, like, pretty stressed out about it. But then we just kind of started shifting into like, "All right, cool, never mind about that. Like, do you like listening to music?" And they're like, "Yes." And then it just kind of explodes from there. And they're like, "This last concert that I went to..." and all of this stuff. And it was much more fruitful kind of leaning more towards that, actually, yeah. LINDSEY: That's fascinating. I guess that speaks to, especially at this stage and the speed and the amount of interviews you're doing, the need for being, like, really agile in those interviews, and then, like, really quickly applying what you're learning to making the next one even more valuable. MIKE: Yeah. And I think, you know, like, we launched just a little sort of website experiment or, like, an e-commerce experiment right before Thanksgiving. And I think now, you know, we're able to sort of take some of those learnings from those interviews and apply them to both sort of our ad copy itself but also just different landing pages in different language on the different kind of versions of the site and see if we can find some resonance with some of these audience groups. So, it's been interesting. LINDSEY: Are you still trying to figure out who that early adopter audience is, who that niche persona is? MIKE: I think we -- CHRIS: Yes, we are. I think we have a good idea of who it is. And I think right now we're just trying to figure out really how to reach those people. That, I think, is the biggest challenge right now for us. MIKE: Yeah. With the e-commerce experiment it was sort of a very specific niche thing that is a little bit adjacent to what I think we want to be doing longer term with Goodz. And so, it's weird. It's like, we're in a place we're like, oh, we really want to find the people that want this thing. But also, this thing isn't necessarily the thing that we think we're going to make longer term, so let's not worry too hard about finding them. You know what I mean? It's been an interesting sort of back and forth with that. CHRIS: From the interviews that we conducted, you know, we identified three key personas. Most of them have come up, but I'll just relist them. There's the sibling gift giver. There was the merch buyers; these are people who go to concerts and buy merchandise, you know, T-shirts, albums, records, things along those lines to support the artists that they love. And then the final one that was identified we gave the title of the 'Proud Playlister'. And these are people who are really into their digital media platforms, love making playlists, and love sharing those playlists with their friends. And that, I would say, the proud playlister is really the one that we have focused on in terms of the storefront that we launched, like, the product is pretty much specifically for them. But the lessons that we're learning while making this product and trying to get this into the hands of the proud playlisters will feed into kind of the merch buyers. MIKE: Yeah. And I think that, you know, it's funny, like, this week is kind of a poignant week for this, right? Because it's the week that Spotify Wrapped launched, right? So, it's like, in the course of any given year, it's probably, like, the one week of the year that lots and lots and lots of people are thinking about playlists all of a sudden, so trying a little bit to see if we can ride that wave or just kind of dovetail with that a bit, too. LINDSEY: Absolutely. And do you want to give just, like, the really quick reminder of what the product experience is like? MIKE: Oh yeah [laughs], good call. CHRIS: This is a prototype of it. It's called the Goodz Mixtape. Basically, the idea is that you purchase one of these from us. You give us a playlist URL. We program that URL onto the NFC chip that's embedded in the Good itself. And then when you scan this Good, that playlist will come up. So, it's a really great way of you make a playlist for somebody, and you want to gift it to them; this is a great way to do that. You have a special playlist, maybe between you and a friend or you and a partner. This is a good way to commemorate that playlist, turn it into a physical thing, give that digital file value and presence in the physical world. LINDSEY: Great. Okay, so you casually mentioned this launch of an e-commerce store that happened last week. MIKE: It didn't feel casual. LINDSEY: Yeah. Why [laughter]...[inaudible 09:45] real casual. Why did you launch it? How's it going? MIKE: I don't know. Why did we launch it? I mean, well, we wanted to be able to test some assumptions. I think, you know, we wanted to get the brand out there a little bit, get our website out there, kind of introduce the concept. You know, this is a very...not that we've invented this product category, but it is a pretty obscure product category, right? And so, there's a lot of sort of consumer education that I think that has to go on for people to wrap their heads around this and why they'd want this. So, I think we wanted to start that process a little bit correctly, sort of in advance of a larger launch next year, and see if we could find some early community around this. You know, if we can find those core people who just absolutely love this, and connect with it, and go wild around it, then those are the people that we're going to be able to get a ton of information from and build for that persona, right? It's like, cool, these are the people who love this. Let's build more for them and go find other people like this. So, I think, for us, it was that. And then, honestly, it was also just, you know, let's test our manufacturing and fulfillment and logistics capabilities, right? I mean, this is...as much as we are a B2B, you know, SaaS platform or that's what we envision the future of Goodz being, there is a physical component of this. And, you know, we do have that part basically done at this point. But we just, you know, what is it like to order 1,000 of these? What is it like to put these in the mail to people and, you know, actually take orders? And just some of that processing because we do envision a more wholesale future where we're doing, you know, thousands or tens of thousands of this at a time. And so, I think we just want to button up and do some dry runs before we get to those kinds of numbers. CHRIS: I think it also it's important to remember that we are talking in startup time. And while this last week seems like an eternity, it's been a week [laughs] that we've had this in place. So, we're just starting to learn these things, and we plan on continuing to do so. MIKE: Yeah. But I think we thought that getting a website up would be a good way to just start kind of testing everything more. LINDSEY: Great. Danny, what went into deciding what would be in this first version of the site and the e-commerce offering? DANNY: I mean, a lot of it was kind of mostly driven by Chris and Mike. They kind of had a vision and an idea of what they wanted to sell. Obviously, from the user interviews, we were starting to hone in a little bit more and, like, we had some assumptions going into it. I think we ultimately did kind of feel like, yeah, I think, like, the playlisters seem to be, like, the target market. But just hearing it more and hearing more excitement from them was definitely just kind of like, yeah, I think we can double down on this piece. But, ultimately, like, in terms of launching the e-commerce platform, and the storefront, and the website, like, just literally looking at the user journey and being like, how does a user get from getting onto a site, like, as soon as they land there to, like, finishing a purchase? And what points do they need? What are the key things that they need to think through and typically will run into? And a lot of it is just kind of reflecting on our own personal buyer behavior. And, also, as we were getting closer to the launch, starting to work through some of those assumptions about buyer behavior. As we got there, we obviously had some prototypes. We had some screenshots that we were already working with. Like, the design team was already starting to build out some of the site. And so, we would just kind of show it to them, show it to our users, and just be like, hey, like, how do you expect to purchase this? Like, what's the next step that you expect to take? And we'd just kind of, like, continue to iterate on that piece. And so... LINDSEY: Okay. So you were, before launching, even showing some of those mockups and starting to incorporate them in the user interviews. DANNY: Yeah, yeah. I mean, we tried to get it in there in front of them as early as possible, partially because, like, at some point in the user interviews, like, you're mostly just trying to first understand, like, who are our target customers? Who are these people? And we have an assumption of or an idea of who we think they are. But really, like, once you start talking to people, you kind of are, like, okay, like, this thing that I thought maybe it wasn't so accurate, or, like, the way that they're kind of talking about these products doesn't 100% match what I originally walked into this, you know, experiment with. And so, we, like, start to hone in on that. But after a certain point, you kind of get that idea and now you're just like, okay, you seem to be, like, the right person to talk to. And so, if I were to show you this thing, do you get it, right? Like, do you understand what's happening? Like, how to use this thing, what this product even does. And then also, like, does the checkout experience feel intuitive for you? Is it as simple as, like, I just want to buy a T-shirt? So, like, I'm just going to go by the T-shirt, pick a size, and, you know, move on with my life. Can we make it as seamless as that? LINDSEY: And so, you mentioned it's only been a week since it's been live. Have you been able to learn anything from it yet? And how are you trying to drive people to it today? MIKE: Yeah, I think we learned that sales is hard [laughs] and slow, and it takes some time. But it's good, and we're learning a lot. I mean, it's been a while since I've really dug deep in, like, the analytics and marketing kind of metrics. And so, we've got all the Google Tag Manager stuff, you know, hooked up and just, you know, connecting with just exploring, honestly, like the TikTok advertising platform, and the YouTube Pre-Rolls, and Shorts. And, like, a lot of stuff that I actually, since the last time I was heavily involved in this stuff, is just totally new and different. And so, it's been super interesting to see the funnel and sort of see where people are getting in the site, where people are dropping off. You know, we had an interesting conversation in our thoughtbot sync yesterday or the day before, where we were seeing how, you know, we're getting lots of people to the front page and, actually, a good number of people to the product page, and, actually, like, you know, not the worst number of people to the cart. But then you were seeing really high cart abandonment rates. And then, you know, when you start Googling, and you're like, oh, actually, everybody sees very high cart abandonment rates; that's just a thing. But we were seeing, like, the people were viewing their cart seven or eight times, and they were on there sort of five times as long as they were on any other page. And it's this problem that I think Danny is talking about where, you know, we need to actually get a playlist URL. This gets into the minutiae of what we're building, but basically like, we need to get them to give us a playlist URL in order to check out, right? And so, you sort of have to, like, put yourself back in the mind of someone who's scrolling on Instagram, and they see this as an ad, and they click it, and they're like, oh, that thing was cool. Sure, I will buy one of those. And then it's like, no, actually, you need to, you know, leave this, go into a different app, find a play...like, it suddenly just puts a lot of the mental strain. But it's a lot. It's a cognitive load, greater than, as you said, just buying a T-shirt and telling what size you want. So, thinking through ways to really trim that down, shore up the amount of time people are spending on a cart. All that stuff has been fascinating. And then just, like, the different demographic kind of work that we're using, all the social ads platforms to kind of identify has been really interesting. It's still early. But, actually, like, Chris and I were just noticing...we were just talking right before this call. Like, we're actually starting to get, just in the last 12 hours, a bunch more, a bunch, but more people signing up to our email newsletter, probably in the last 12 hours that we have in the whole of last week. Yeah, I don't know, just even that sort of learning, it's like, oh, do people just need time with a thing, or they come back and they think about it? CHRIS: Yeah. Could these people be working on their playlists? That's a question that I have. MIKE: [chuckles] Yeah, me too. CHRIS: It's like, you know, I'm making a playlist to drop into this product. It's really interesting. And I think it gives insight to kind of, you know, how personal this product could be, that this is something that takes effort on the part of the consumer because they're making something to give or to keep for themselves, which is, I think, really interesting but definitely hard, too. DANNY: Yeah. And I also want to also clarify, like, Chris just kind of said it, like, especially for viewers and listeners, like, that's something that we've been hearing a lot from user interviews, too, right? Like, the language that they're using is, like, this is a thing that I care about. Like it's a representation of who I am. It's a representation of, like, the relationship that I have with this person that I'm going to be giving, you know, this gift to or this playlist to, specifically, like, people who feel, like, really passionate about these things. And, I mean, like, I did, too. Like, when I was first trying to, like, date, my wife, like, I spent, like, hours, hours trying to pick the coolest songs that I thought, you know, were like, oh, like, she's going to think I'm so cool because, like, I listen to these, like, super low-key indie rock bands, and, like, you know, so many more hours than she probably spent listening to it. But that's [laughs] kind of, like, honestly, what we heard a lot in a lot of these interviews, so... LINDSEY: Yeah, same. No, totally resonates. And I also went to the site this week, and I was like, oh damn, this is cool. Like, and immediately it was like, oh, you know, I've got these three, you know, music friends that we go to shows together. I'm like, oh, this would be so cool to get them, you know, playlists of, like, music we've seen together. So, you might see me in the cart. I won't abandon it. MIKE: Please. I would love that. CHRIS: Don't think about it too long if you could -- [laughter]. LINDSEY: I won't. I won't. CHRIS: I mean, I would say I'm really excited about having the site not only as a vehicle for selling some of these things but also as a vehicle for just honing our message. It's like another tool that we have in our arsenal. During the user interviews themselves, we were talking in abstract terms, and now we have something concrete that we can bounce off people, which is, I think, going to be a huge boon to our toolset as we continue to refine and define this product. MIKE: Yeah, that's a good point. LINDSEY: Yeah. You mentioned that they're signing up for, like, email updates. Do you have something you're sending out? Or are you kind of just creating a list? Totally fine, just building a list. MIKE: [laughs] No. CHRIS: It's a picture of Mike and I giving a big thumbs up. That's, yeah. [laughter] MIKE: No. But maybe...that was the thing; I was like, oh great, they're signing up. And I was like, gosh, they're signing up. Okay [laughter], now we got to write something. But we will. LINDSEY: Tips to making your playlist [crosstalk 19:11] playing your playlist -- MIKE: Yeah [crosstalk 19:13]. CHRIS: Right. And then also...tips to making your playlists. Also, we're advancing on the collectible side of things, too. We are, hopefully, going to have two pilot programs in place, one with a major label and one with a major artist. And we're really excited about that. LINDSEY: Okay. That's cool. I assume you can't tell us very much. What can you tell us? MIKE: Yeah. We won't mention names [chuckles] in case it just goes away, as these things sometimes do. But yeah, there's a great band who's super excited about these, been around for a long time, some good name recognition, and a very loyal fan base. They want to do sort of a collection of these. I think maybe we showed the little...I can't remember if we showed the little crates that we make or not, but basically, [inaudible 19:52] LINDSEY: The last time, yeah. MIKE: So, they want to sell online a package that's, you know, five or six Goodz in a crate, which I think will be cool and a great sort of sales experiment. And then there's a couple of artists that we're going to do an experiment with that's through their label that's more about tour...basically, giving things away on tour. So, they're going to do some giveaway fan club street team-style experiments with some of these on the road. So, first, it's ideal, provided both those things happen, because we definitely want to be exploring on the road and online stuff. And so, this kind of lets us do both at once and get some real learnings as to kind of how people...because we still don't know. We haven't really put these in people's hands yet. And it's just, like, are people scanning these a lot? Are they not? Is this sort of an object that's sitting on their shelf? Is it...yeah, it's just, like, there's so much we're going to learn once we get these into people's hands. LINDSEY: Do you have the infrastructure to sort of see how many times the cards are scanned? CHRIS: Mm-hmm. Yep, we do. MIKE: Yeah. So, we can see how many times each one is scanned, where they're scanned, that sort of thing. CHRIS: Kind of our next step, and something we were just talking about today with the thoughtbot team, is building out kind of what the backend will be for this, both for users and also for labels and artists. That it will allow them to go in and post updates to the Goodz, to allow them to use these for promotion as people, you know, scan into them to give them links to other sites related to the artists that they might be interested in before they move on to the actual musical playlist. So, that's kind of the next step for us. And knowing how users use these collectibles, both the kind of consumer Good and the artist collectibles that we were just talking about, will help inform how we build that platform. LINDSEY: Very cool. And right now, the online store itself that's built in Shopify? MIKE: Yeah. The homepage is Webflow that Kevin from the thoughtbot team really spearheaded in building for us. And then, yeah, the e-commerce is Shopify. LINDSEY: Y'all have been busy. MIKE: [laughs] LINDSEY: Is there anything else maybe that I haven't asked about yet that we should touch on in terms of updates or things going on with the product? MIKE: I don't know. I don't think so. I think, like Chris said, I mean, we're just...like, now that the site has kind of stood up and we're really switched over to kind of marketing and advertising on that, definitely digging into the backend of this kind of SaaS platform that's going to probably be a big focus for the rest of the, you know, the program, to be honest. Yeah, just some other things we can do on the next front that could eventually build into the backend that I think can be interesting. No, I guess [laughs] the short answer is no, nothing, like, substantial. Those are the big [crosstalk 22:26] LINDSEY: Yeah. Well, that was my next question, too, which is kind of like, what's next, or what's the next chunk of work? So, it's obviously lots more optimization and learning on the e-commerce platform, and then this other mega area, which is, you know, what does this look like as a SaaS solution? What's the vision? But also, where do we start? Which I'm sure, Danny, is a lot of work that you specialize in as far as, like, scoping how to approach these kinds of projects. DANNY: Yeah. And it's interesting because, I mean, we were just talking about this today. Like, part of it is, like, we can, like, really dig into, like, the e-commerce site and, like, really nailing it down to get it to the place where it's like, we're driving tons more traffic and also getting as low of a, like, cart abandonment rate as possible, right? But also, considering the fact that this is in the future, like, large-scale vision. And there's, like, also, like, we're starting to, I think, now iron out a lot of those, like, milestones where we're kind of like, okay, like, we got, like, a short-term vision, which is, like, the e-commerce site. We got a mid-term vision and a potential long-term vision. How do we validate this long-term vision while also still like, keeping this short-term vision moving forward? And, like, this mid-term vision is also going to, like, help potentially, either, like, steer us towards that long-term or maybe even, like, pivot us, like, into a completely different direction. So, like, where do you put your card, right? Like, how much energy and time do we put into, like, each of these areas? And that's kind of, like, the interesting part of this is starting to talk through that, starting to kind of prioritize, like, how we can maximize on our effort, like, our development and design effort so that things just kind of line up more naturally and organically for our future visioning, so... MIKE: Yeah. A lot of different things to juggle. I saw there was a question. Somebody asked what the URL is, but I don't seem to be able to [crosstalk 24:10]. LINDSEY: The same question as me. We got to drop the link for this thing. MIKE: Yeah, getthegoodz.com. CHRIS: That's G-O-O-D-Z. LINDSEY: Get in there, folks MIKE: Yeah, get [crosstalk 24:23]. LINDSEY: And let us know how it goes. MIKE: Yeah, please [laughs]. Any bugs? Let us know. Yeah. I think that those...yeah, I mean, it's a good point, Danny, in terms of juggling kind of the near-term and longer-term stuff. You know, it's a good kind of reminder our big focus, you know, in the new year is going to be fundraising, right? We're already talking to some investors and things like that. So, it's like, okay, yes, as you said, we could tweak the cart. We could tweak the e-commerce. Or, like, can we paint the big picture of what the longer-term version of this company is going to be in a way that makes it compelling for investment to come in so that there can be a long-term version of this company? And then we can build those things. So yeah, it's definitely a balance between the two. LINDSEY: Oh, also, just casual fundraising as well. [crosstalk 25:06] MIKE: Yeah, yeah. LINDSEY: [laughs] MIKE: But it's hard. It's like, you wake up in the morning. It's like, do I want to, like, write cold emails to investors? Or do I want to, like, look at Google Analytics and, like, tweak ad copy? That's actually more fun. So, yes. LINDSEY: Yeah, life of the founder, for sure. All right. So, that's getthegoodz (Goodz with a z) .com. Check it out. We'll tune in and see what happens with the e-commerce site, what happens with the SaaS planning the next time that we check in. But Chris, Mike, Danny, thank you so much for joining today and sharing what's been going on over the last few weeks: the good, the bad, the challenge, the cart abandonment. And, you know, best of luck to you over the next few weeks, and we'll be sure to check in and see how it's going. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at: tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions. Transcript:  LINDSEY: Thank you to our viewers and listeners. We are catching up once again with one of the startups going through the thoughtbot Incubator. My name is Lindsey Christensen. I'm joined today by Jordyn Bonds, who heads up the thoughtbot incubator, as well as our Co-Founders of Goodz, Chris Cerrito and Mike Rosenthal. Welcome, everybody. MIKE: Thanks, Lindsey. LINDSEY: Before we get started, before we put Chris and Mike back in the hot seat, at the top here, Jordyn, we have a special announcement for our viewers and listeners. JORDYN: Application window is open for session 1 of 2024, folks. You can go to thoughtbot.com/incubator and apply. And Chris and Mike can tell you how easy or hard applying was. MIKE: It was easy. It was totally easy. It's a very straightforward process. CHRIS: Yeah, it was way more straightforward than a lot of applications that we've dealt with in the past, for sure. JORDYN: Ha-ha. And if you've got a business idea that involves software but you haven't gotten anything out there yet, come talk to us. We will help you make sure that it's a good idea and that there are people who might buy it, and maybe get you even a little further than that. MIKE: We actually have a friend who's considering applying. I'll tell him applications are open. He's worried his idea is not big enough to actually be a business idea, so we'll see. CHRIS: Even the process of doing the application was really helpful for us because it helped us get aligned on exactly what we were doing, yeah. JORDYN: I love that. And I found that to be true when I was a founder applying to some of these things, in particular, applying for an SBIR grant was one of the most challenging things that we did, but it was so productive. I was so annoyed by it at the time, and then I cribbed from that thing. It actually sort of forced us to make a business plan [laughs], and then, basically, we ran it, and it was great [laughs]. CHRIS: Yeah. I think that was, for us, that was our point where we were like, "Is this idea fleshed out enough to move forward?" And we were like, "Yes, it is. Let's go. Let's do this." JORDYN: So, use the application as a forcing function, everybody. It will help you clarify your thinking. LINDSEY: Yeah. Jordyn, what would you say to Mike's friend who's questioning if their idea is big enough? How do you respond to that sentiment? JORDYN: That is a fascinating sentiment because I feel like so much more often, I am trying to help founders with the opposite problem where they think this thing is so big that they are not thinking about what step 1 is going to look like. They're just, like, in 10 years, we're going to be the next Amazon, and I'm like, "Maybe [laughter]. Let me help you figure out how to get to that giant vision." So, I don't come across the "Is this big enough to be a business?" question as often. And, I don't know, what would I say? I guess I need the details. LINDSEY: It could be a perfect fit MIKE: It could be. JORDYN: It could be a perfect fit. LINDSEY: In a way, that's what you're answering, right? MIKE: Right. LINDSEY: In some of this work. MIKE: That is true. So, yeah, you guys would certainly...just thinking through the process we've gone through the last two months, it would definitely help them flesh that out. LINDSEY: Which is a great segue. MIKE: Great segue. LINDSEY: Chris and Mike, we're actually coming up to the end of your incubator time. CHRIS: It's so sad. LINDSEY: Can you believe it? MIKE: It's gone by really fast. I mean, eight weeks is not a long time, but it has gone by very, very fast. CHRIS: It felt like a very long time in the middle of it. MIKE: [laughs] CHRIS: But now that it's over, it feels like a blink that it's coming to a close. MIKE: I don't know. It's funny. I think we had some note in our retro today that was like, maybe the very end of the year is not the best time to do an accelerator just because you have, like, the holidays kind of jumping in here in the end. So, that might have helped make it feel like a... I feel like the end of the year always feels like a rush anyway. So, I think just life gets a little bit busier this time of year, too, but yeah. CHRIS: Yeah, my gingerbread man decorating game is, like, really down this season because we've been so busy. Tragic. LINDSEY: Chris, can you remind our viewers and listeners who might not be familiar what was the idea that you and Mike have been exploring with the incubator or, like, what did you come in with? CHRIS: So, with Goodz, what we're trying to do is make little, physical collectibles objects that connect back to the digital content that a user loves. The idea being that today, we are awash in these digital files, links, so many things on our desktops, on our phones, on our devices, and it's really hard to tell which part of those are really, really important to us. So, by giving them a presence in the physical world, that denotes that's something that's really important, worth keeping, worth sharing, and showing off to your friends and family. And to start this off, mostly because Mike and I are both kind of music nerds, we're starting off with a music focus, but at some point, we're hoping to move into other realms, too. LINDSEY: And a lot of the incubator, as repeat listeners will know, is focused on really kind of evolving user interviews all the way through and narrowing in on, you know, a core audience, a core market. Mike, how has that evolution been? I think the last time we chatted was around three weeks ago. What has the latest iteration of user interviews looked like in terms of the people you're talking to and even what you're asking them? MIKE: It's been a really fascinating process. I mean, I'm trying to think of where we were exactly the last time we talked to you, but I think we'd probably just launched the e-commerce site that we had been experimenting with putting up. LINDSEY: Yeah, exactly. MIKE: And so, and we really then started cranking on user interviews kind of once that was live. And so, moving away from the conceptual and more into like, "Okay, share your screen. Here's the link. Like, tell me what you think is going on here," and really sort of getting users who had never, you know, never heard our pitch, never been involved with us to sort of try to wrap their heads around what we are and what we're doing just based on that website and trying to sort of make iterative changes based on that. You know, for me, because I had not done user interviews very much in the past, like, it's very tempting, like, you get sort of 1 note from 1 person in 1 interview, and you're like, oh, we need to change this word. That word didn't make any sense to them, or this thing needs to be blue instead of pink. I think, for me, it was like, all right, how do we kind of synthesize this data in a responsible way? And it emerged naturally, which, I mean, Jordyn and all thoughtbot folks said that it would, but you sort of started hearing the same things again and again. And we never really got to a place where, like, you heard the exact same things from everyone. But there were enough buckets, I feel like, where we're like, okay, like, this part really isn't making that much sense to people, or, like, we do really need to, you know, structure this differently to convey. So, it was a bunch of that kind of work over the last three weeks or so and sort of just getting a sense of like, are we conveying our message? It's hard. I mean, it's a new, like, we're not the only people making physical products with NFC chips in them, but it is not the most common, like, product. Like, it is kind of a new category out there. And so, really trying to understand just right off the bat, do people get it? And you get wildly different answers [laughs] as to whether they get it or they don't, which has been fascinating, too. JORDYN: Yeah. [crosstalk 7:12] LINDSEY: Chris or Jordyn, anything to add there? JORDYN: Yeah. You get the best, like, bootcamp in the don't overreact to a single user interview experience in some ways because we [laughs]...it would literally be like, interview in the morning someone says this thing. Interview in the afternoon, someone says the exact opposite thing [laughter]. And you're like, okay [laughs], like, which one of these things are we going to respond to, if either of them? CHRIS: Yeah. It's hard. As somebody with, like, a strong desire to please, it's hard to reign yourself in and want to change things immediately, but it definitely makes sense to do so in the long run. MIKE: But yeah, but, I mean, like I said, I do feel like it kind of came down to buckets. It's like, okay, you're that. I can, like, categorize you with all those other people and you with all those other people. And yeah, I hear you. I'm like, yeah, it's tempting to want to please them all. But I think with this one, we're fighting hard to be like...or we sort of have a philosophy that this product is emphatically not for everyone because, at the end of the day, you get a lot of people who are like, "Wait, you're just putting a link to a streaming playlist on a physical object? Why don't I just text someone the link?" And sometimes that breaks down by age group, like, 18-year-olds being like, "What are you talking about, old man? LINDSEY: [laughs] MIKE: Like, why the hell would I do that? It makes no sense." But it sort of skews all over the age ranges. But then there'll be other people who are 18 or 20 years old who are like, "Wow, I never had cassettes when I was growing up," or "I never got to make, you know, mixtapes or CD-Rs for people." And like, you know, so it's, yeah, it's about finding the people who are the early adopters. As Jordyn has said a lot, it's like, we need to find those early adopters and, like, make them love us, and then other people will come later. CHRIS: I mean, some of the most gratifying moments, I think, are there's been some interviews where people have been so excited that after the interview, they've gone and purchased our products, which is just, like, the coolest feeling ever. LINDSEY: Wow. MIKE: Yeah, it's pretty cool. LINDSEY: Are you open to sharing a little bit more about what those buckets or what those segments look like? CHRIS: I mean, I think there's folks who outright just get it almost immediately, and I think those people tend to be hardcore music collectors, hardcore music fans, Jordyn and Mike, please feel free to jump in if you disagree with any of this. They just get it right off the bat. Then I think there's, in my experience, there's another bucket of people who are a little more hesitant, and maybe they wouldn't buy it, but they seemed really excited about the idea of getting one as a gift, which is really interesting. They're like, "I don't know if I'd buy this, but I'd really like to have one." And then there is another segment, like, which Mike just mentioned, of folks who just don't see the value in this whatsoever, which is totally fair. MIKE: Yeah, totally. I think it's also...I see it almost as, like, a matrix. There's, like, desirability, and, like, technical understanding because people were like, "I technically understand what this is, and I do not want it in my life." Or like, "I get what this is and, oh my God, I have to have that," or like, "I don't really understand what you're talking about, but, man, I love physical stuff. Like, sure I want..." you know, it's like, it goes across those two planes, I think. JORDYN: I will say that it, I think you alluded to this before, Mike, but, like, we're going to run a whole analysis of...because we did a ton of interviews, and we haven't actually done that, like, sort of data-driven thing of like, are there trends in the demographics somewhere that we're not getting? Because the pattern has not been there. Like, someone will talk to an 18-year-old, you know, at 1:00 p.m. who is just, like, "Why on earth would I ever want this?" And then I, like, you know, will talk to a 21-year-old who is like, "I love this." And it's like, why? Like, this is the answer. The thing we're trying to get out now is, like, what is the difference between those two people? It's not a demographic thing that we can see from the outside, so what is it instead? But with consumer stuff like this, often, you don't necessarily...you don't need that in such great detail when you're starting. You just kind of, like, throw it out there and see who grabs it, and then you start to build sort of cohorts around that. And that is kind of what these interviews have shown us is that there are people who will grab it, and that was part of what we were trying to validate. Are there people who Mike and Chris do not know personally who will, like, get this and be psyched about it immediately? And that is, you know, check unequivocally true. Like Chris said, there are people that we were, you know, that we had recruited on this user interviews platform [chuckles] who then just turned around and bought the product because they were so psyched about it. One of the guys I interviewed was like, "Can I invest in your company right now?" Like, during the interview, and I was like, "Maybe?" [laughs] CHRIS: There was, like, another person who wanted to work for us immediately... JORDYN: Yes, great. CHRIS: Which was really interesting and kind of awesome. JORDYN: Yeah, they're like, "Are you hiring?" You're just like, okay. So, it's validating that there are people all over that spectrum. Like, where those trends lie, though, which is, I think, what you were asking, Lindsey, not as straightforward and in a fascinating way. So, we still have a little more, like, number crunching to do on that, and we may have an answer for you later. LINDSEY: That's exciting. Exactly. I'm curious: what are the connecting dots between the folks who are really into it, and how might that impact how you approach the business? MIKE: Yeah, it's hard. It's definitely going to be a niche to start. And so, we got to figure out kind of got to crack the code on how we find those people. LINDSEY: And, Mike, I think you had also mentioned last time that, you know, you or both of you have a network kind of in the music industry, and you've been floating the idea past some people there. Have you been having more of those conversations over the last few weeks, too? MIKE: We have, yeah. Well, so yeah, we've had a couple more just kind of straight-up pitch calls versus like, "Hey, there's this cool thing we're doing," and having those people be like, "Cool. Let's do a pilot." And so, they're ordering, you know, 500 or 1,000 units at a time, which is rad. LINDSEY: Whoa. MIKE: For the first...yeah. LINDSEY: Okay, very cool. MIKE: Yeah. The first two or three of those should happen in January or maybe early February, but yeah, those are done and in production and arriving soon. So, that's really exciting with some cool bands. We won't say the names in case it doesn't [laughs] work out, but it does look like it's going to work out. LINDSEY: And so, it's specific bands that are creating merch for their fans. MIKE: Yeah, yeah. So, we're working with one artist manager on a band that he manages, and then we're working with a record label. And they're going to try with a couple of smaller artists. And so, yeah, it's actually really good for us. One is going to be straight-up sales, most likely, and it's, like, selling these things. And the other ones will be given away as kind of promo items on tour artists, which is also a really interesting use case for us, too, that we're excited about and using them as a way to sort of get email addresses and, like, fans engaged and stuff, so... And then yeah, then I had another conversation, and they want to talk about doing some pilots. So far, like, that side of things is going great. We're sort of 3 for 4 in terms of initial calls leading to pilots right off the bat, which is kind of unheard of from [laughs] my experience. LINDSEY: Yeah, I'd say so. No, a lot of very good signals. MIKE: Really good signals. But then we were able to turn some of those into user interview conversations, actually, as well over the course of the last couple of weeks, which has been really helpful, like, talking to manager and label-type people about what they might want out of a software product that is associated with this because we're not just thinking about making physical products but sort of coupling that with an online toolset. And that part, we haven't gotten as far along as we did with the direct-to-consumer e-commerce, but it's been fascinating. LINDSEY: So, what has been happening with the online shop? As you noted the last time we talked, it was just a baby less than a week-old Shopify site getting, you know, some first hits of people going around maybe putting things in their basket. I'm sure a lot has happened over the last few weeks. What kind of work, what kind of insights have you seen around the site? CHRIS: We've been, I mean, we've been selling stuff at a slow but steady pace. It's been great because it's enough to, you know, because our product really straddles the line between physical and digital; there's a lot of physical aspects to this that we need to figure out and kind of the level of orders that we've been getting have been really...it's, like, the perfect number to think about fulfillment issues, things like what kind of package does this go in? How do we mail this out? Things along those lines, just very basic, practical questions that needed to be answered. But yeah, it's been great. We actually, I mean, we hit our goal for the amount of these that we wanted to get in people's hands before Christmas, which is pretty awesome. And we continue now with the lessons learned. I think our plan is to try and make a push for Valentine's Day because these seem like they would be a great Valentine's Day present: make a playlist; share it with your loved one; share it with a friend; share it with somebody you don't like at all. Who knows? LINDSEY: [laughs] CHRIS: But yeah, that's kind of our next sales push, we think. LINDSEY: The hate playlist. CHRIS: [inaudible 15:40] hate playlist. MIKE: Yeah, perfect. Real passive-aggressive. CHRIS: Just Blue Monday, like, by New Order, like, 14 times. LINDSEY: [laughs] Yeah, every song is just like a sub-tweet... MIKE: [laughs] LINDSEY: About something they've done and [inaudible 15:53] Have you updated the site? Like, how do you decide what gets updated on the site? [laughter] Everyone laughed. MIKE: It was a little haphazard, I would say, there for a minute. But -- CHRIS: We got the site up very, very quickly. And from my perspective, I've been dealing a lot with the physical side of things, just getting great product photos up there, which is, like, something that thoughtbot has actually been super helpful with. You know, everybody on the team is starting to submit photos of their Goodz in the real world and using their Goodz, which is great. And we continued to update the site with that but also making sure our text made sense, refining copy in response to things that people said during user interviews. The checkout process, the process of adding the URL that we point the Good to that, we did a bunch of experimentation there based on what people were saying during user interviews. So, it has been a little haphazard, but we have made a bunch of changes. LINDSEY: Jordyn, has there been any experiment, like, structured experimentation around the site or how you're getting people to the site? JORDYN: Mike actually did a little bit of ad funnel work that I don't think we've, like, even remotely scratched the surface of. So, I wish I could say that was conclusive, but I think we've found a little bit more...here are plenty of sales that are from people that nobody here knows. MIKE: True. JORDYN: So, people are finding out about this somehow [laughs]. But I think it's a little bit, like, word-of-mouth sort of chain of events is our sense so far. I wanted to say, though, about the site, we did get what Chris was saying about, like, this experiment was, in part, about fulfillment and figuring out how fulfillment would work and packaging, and not just messaging and not just closing the sale with consumers, but also, just, like, how do you fulfill these? But one of the really fun things we've managed to do in the last, since we talked last time, which I can't even believe...I feel like this wasn't even a gleam in our eyes for this project, but we managed to get out, like, stood up and out the door, and working in production in the last few weeks is a way for folks to actually assign the URL to their mixtape themselves. Previously, the plan had just been for Chris and Mike to do that, which is fine but a little bit unscalable, right? CHRIS: That was a huge dream or, like, that was high on our wish list. And we didn't think we'd get to it. And it's been pretty amazing that we have, yeah. JORDYN: Yeah, so that was one thing that is an update to the site. So, then we had to do a little bit of, like, micro iterating, on, like, the messaging around that. Like, how do you communicate to people? This is, like, a little bit of an abstract challenge, right? Like, here's this object. It's going to point to a digital thing. How do you tell the physical object which digital thing it's pointing to [laughs]? So, a lot of our recent interviewing has been to sort of get inside the mind of the consumer about how they're thinking about that and how we can best communicate that to them. So that's been a lot of the, like, recent iteration is getting that mechanism stood up and then the messaging around it. CHRIS: It's also really cool because it adds to the utility of the object itself in the sense that now our Goodz, when a user gets one, they can add a URL to their Good themselves, but they can also change that URL. So, it's much more malleable. JORDYN: Which is something that in one of our early user interviews was, like, a hot request [laughs], and we were like, "Someday, someday." And it's, you know, I should actually go back to her and be like, "Someday is today." [laughter] MIKE: Well, yeah, and just as Chris was saying, it just makes it so much easier to ship these out without having to manually load them, and you could sell them, and yeah, retail outlets, like, it just opens up a lot of opportunities for us for them. LINDSEY: And Mike mentioned that some of the, like, kind of future looking aspirations for the solution are, you know, how might you figure out the B2B, like, SaaS aspect of it? Jordyn, is that something that's been explored at all at this point, or is it early? JORDYN: That experiment I just described is actually sort of the link between the two projects. It sort of proves the concept and proves the value in some ways, and it has given us a little bit more visibility into sort of how we're going to execute some of this technical stuff. Like, how easy, how difficult is it going to be? These little experiments all build your confidence around your ability to do those things and what it's going to look like. And so, this experiment absolutely feeds into that question. But I would say it was really this week where we got to have a really fun brainstorming sort of blue sky conversation about that that I don't think would have been nearly as both creative and blue sky or rooted in reality as it was if we hadn't done these experiments and hadn't talked to so many...we had so much work...we could participate in a conversation like that so much more confidently and creatively because all of us had a lot more shared context. So, we really got to dream big, like, what is a SaaS platform built around these physical objects? And I don't want to, you know, I'm not going to give it away at this moment because we had a lot of, like, really cool ideas. It's one part talking to the B2B customer, which, you know, you mentioned earlier, getting what their pain points are, and what they're looking for, what they need, but then also dreaming big about now we understand the technology a little bit more and how it feels to use it. What does that unlock in our brains? The analogy I used in that conversation and that I use all the time is like, the users of Twitter invented hashtags, right? Twitter did not invent hashtags. And so, hey, everybody out there, newsflash: users invented hashtags, not Twitter or something else, if you didn't realize that Twitter was where those things kind of emerged. But there was just a user behavior that was happening in the wild, and Twitter was just very good at making that easier for them, looking at that and being like, "Oh, hey, is this a thing you all want to do? Here, we'll make that even more useful for you." And it was part of Twitter's early success that they were able to do that. And so, that was the kind of thinking we were trying to employ here is, like, now that we have these objects and we understand a little bit more how it feels to use them, you get these second order effects. What does that then make us think of? What is then possible to us that we wouldn't have been able to dream of previously because we didn't quite get it? So, that was really happening this week. LINDSEY: So, as the incubator time wraps up, what are the kind of final activities or deliverables, one, that Goodz wants and you know that they're going to get? What are the parting gifts as we send you out into the next phase? MIKE: Yeah, well, loads of stuff. I mean, we're getting all that code that [SP] Guillermo and the guys worked on to let people set their own playlist settings. And we've got that up in a GitHub repository now. And we've got a bunch of great design work that's all being handed over, like Chris was saying, product shots that a bunch of the team members were taking, synthesizing all the user interviews. We're actually sort of making some kind of final reports on those, so it's kind of more usable, actionable data for us. The whole website, you know, that didn't exist before. And that will sort of continue to grow as the entire website for Goodz moving forward. I don't know. That's a lot. What else was there, Chris? CHRIS: As a result of all that, I mean, one of the things I'm most excited about is now we have a small user base who actually has the physical products that, hopefully, we can get them to answer questions. That's huge for what's coming next. Starting the path towards the SaaS platform, too, it's really helped narrow our scope and think about, you know, how to make that successful or if it will be successful. LINDSEY: Yeah, that sounded like a big discussion this week that I know has been on your minds from the beginning. Wait, the last time, also, you said you were starting to get emails, too. Have you emailed anyone yet, or are you still holding on to them? MIKE: Oh. No, I still haven't sent a newsletter out [laughs], actually, but we have Mailchimp set up. Yeah, no, we've got a good kind of core of our, yeah, early folks on there. We'll start getting a newsletter out with some sort of regularity. We're building up the socials very slowly just focusing on Instagram mostly right now and trying to get back into that game. It's been a long time since I've had to do kind of social marketing stuff. And so, it's a lot of work, as it turns out, but we'll get all that cooking. I think this was just such a sprint, working with the thoughtbot folks and trying to get all this stuff done. Before the end of the year, now we can sort of take a breath and start engaging folks in the new year. LINDSEY: Yeah. Well, so, do you know what you want to do next or what the next phase looks like? Are you going to do fundraising? MIKE: We're certainly going to continue to have some fundraising conversations. We've had some conversations emerge over the last, you know, since we've been in thoughtbot, again, not the greatest time of year to try to be raising a round. But we're also not, like, desperately, urgently needing to do that right this second. I think, you know, part of it is the fundraising landscape, you know, doesn't look amazing. And we're still sort of building out a lot of traction, and sort of every week, there's some new, exciting thing, or we've got some new, big artists who wants to do something. So, I think, in some ways, to the extent that we can bootstrap for a little while, I think we will, yeah. So, we will focus on...I'd like to get back to focusing on, like, B2B sales. I'd like to hit the ground in January and just start talking to a bunch of music industry folks. And thinking ahead a little bit, sort of Q1 and Q2, like, what are the big tentpole events? You know, you got South by Southwest coming up in March. You got Record Store Day in April, or whenever it is. But, you know, there's, like, a bunch of those sorts of things that it's like, oh, let's not let those things suddenly be tomorrow. Like, right now, they're all still two or three/four months out. Like, let's make sure we're queued up for those things and see what happens. And Jordyn has been giving really good advice on the fundraising side where it's just like, just keep getting cool stuff like that and just do almost like little drip campaigns with funders who aren't maybe giving you the time of day or think it's too early, and just kind of keep going back to them. Like, the best excuse to go back to funders is like, "Hey, we just closed this new thing. We just launched this new thing. We just got this thing working. Hey, we're launching with this major band," Like, enough of those happen, and I think the fundraising will happen more organically. It's a strategy. CHRIS: I think we're really lucky in the fact that, you know, now, at this point, we're not talking about vapourware, you know, like, these are actual things that actually exist that, like, anybody could go onto our site right now and buy, which is awesome. And because of that, the product's going to continue to evolve, and, hopefully, our sales record will continue to evolve, too. LINDSEY: Amazing. Well, that feels like a good place to wrap up, maybe. Are you going to hang around in our incubator Slack, the thoughtbot incubator Slack for all our past founders? MIKE: Yes. Emphatically, yes. LINDSEY: Okay. We're holding you to it then [laughs]. CHRIS: I'm excited about that. We met with the other founders yesterday for the first time, and it was a really great and interesting conversation. It was cool seeing how diverse all these projects are and how folks are working on things that we had no idea about and how we're working on stuff that they have no idea about, and it was really great. It felt like a good cross-pollination. MIKE: Agreed. LINDSEY: That's awesome to hear. Jordyn, any final thoughts? JORDYN: [inaudible 26:58] out there listening and watching and want to join this community of founders [laughs], don't you want to have office hours with Chris and Mike? LINDSEY: All right, thoughtbot.com/incubator. You can apply for session 1 of the 2024 incubator program. And yeah, you two, if you have more recommendations, referrals, definitely send them our way. Chris, Mike, Jordyn, thank you so much once again for joining and catching us up on all the exciting developments for Goodz. MIKE: Thank you. LINDSEY: A lot of really cool milestones. JORDYN: I got to say, so much good stuff. And like, you know, just wrapping it all up almost diminishes the impact of any single one of those things that we just talked about, but it's, like, pretty amazing. People out there, apply to the incubator but also go buy yourself a Goodz mixtape. It's cool with playlists on it. MIKE: It's a good point. JORDYN: Give it to your BFF. Come on. LINDSEY: Getthegoodz.com. MIKE: Getthegoodz.com. Awesome. LINDSEY: All right. Thanks, Chris and Mike. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at: tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions. Special Guests: Chris Cerrito, Jordyn Bonds, and Mike Rosenthal.

Unlock the secrets to sales success with Mike Bauer of Delta Defense, the genius behind a team that turned into a $135 million sales powerhouse. In our latest episode, discover how 'humble confidence' propelled his team to unparalleled heights during the 2020 firearms boom. Mike's insights aren't just about seizing opportunities; they're a goldmine for anyone aiming to master the art of sales with finesse.Join Mike and me as we explore the power of communication in sales. Learn how silence can speak louder than words and gain actionable strategies to connect with clients and captivate audiences. Our conversation is your playbook for refining your pitch, potentially your ticket to sales stardom. From storytelling to adaptability, we provide a battle-tested framework—memorize, internalize, customize—ensuring you're armed to forge genuine connections and achieve professional triumphs. Join us for a dialogue that's enlightening and invigorating, as we prepare you not just to meet the bar but to raise it.NOTABLE QUOTES"When we position ourselves well enough amplified by opportunity, when the wave [comes], we are ready to surf and surf." – Mike"Someone who is humbly confident is, you are confident in the things that you have done and that you're doing, but you're humble enough to understand that you always have the opportunity to learn more." – Mike"Being humble is knowing that there's more ahead, that they aren't the cream of the crop, they're not at the very top of the peak." – Philip“I'm a huge advocate of lifelong learning." – Mike"If someone was calling us and it was the wrong phone number, we trained our team to take care of that call and have the one-call resolution, even if that person is calling about something that has nothing to do with our company. So we were truly customer service based first to get those sales." – Mike"Most often, it is not advantageous to correct someone in their line of thinking right out of the gate. I think that it's much better to go down the line." – Mike“We share what we share and if we happen to forget something, if it's not that important, don't worry about it." – Philip"Focus first on what's the main priority at hand . . . and then we can figure out the rest." – Mike"Just focus on them. This is exactly how it is when we go to speak somewhere, and that's where sales and public speaking go hand in hand." – Philip“Getting the local presence, being in person with people, is such a big deal.” – Philip“If you can find a way to talk about something that interests [potential clients] outside of the business that's at hand, you will often be surprised at how much more friendly the business at hand gets.” – Mike“As salespeople, if we can have a conversation around something that interests them? Know, like, and trust—that's going to skyrocket because they're going to see that this guy isn't just here as a salesperson, he's a true human being.” – Mike“You've got to start with being insanely curious.” – Mike“It's not necessarily that you have to have a bunch of facts that you rely on. It just comes down to you naturally having to be curious, with the understanding that eventually you have to get down to business.” – Mike “Have constant curiosity and strive to continue to get better.” – MikeRESOURCESMikeFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/mike.h.bauer.7/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mike.f.bauer/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-f-bauer-293a1b7b/PhilipDigital Course: https://www.speakingsessions.com/digital-courseInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamphilipsessions/?hl=enTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@philipsessionsLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-sessions-b2986563/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therealphilipsessions Support the Show.

If you missed the first and second episodes with thoughtbot Incubator Program partcipants and founders Mike Rosenthal and Chris Cerrito of Goodz, you can listen to the first episode (https://podcast.thoughtbot.com/s3e2incubatorgoodz) and the second episode (https://podcast.thoughtbot.com/s3e4incubatorgoodz) to catch up! Lindsey Christensen, head of marketing at thoughtbot is joined by Mike Rosenthal and Chris Cerrito, co-founders of the startup Goodz, and Danny Kim, Senior Product Manager at thoughtbot. Mike and Chris discuss the progress of Goodz, focusing on the recent intense weeks they've had. Goodz, a startup merging the digital and physical worlds of music, has stayed on course with its initial concept. Mike details their approach to Thanksgiving and the launch of their e-commerce experiment. He shares insights from recent user interviews, which have influenced their approach and understanding of their target audience. When the discussion turns to the challenges of launching and maintaining their e-commerce platform, Mike and Chris talk about learning from analytics, marketing strategies, and the importance of understanding consumer behavior. They discuss the challenges in balancing short-term and long-term goals, and the upcoming fundraising efforts. Transcript: LINDSEY: Thanks for being here. My name's Lindsey. I head up marketing at thoughtbot. If you haven't joined one of these before, we are checking in with two of the founders who are going through the thoughtbot Startup Incubator to learn how it's going, what's new, what challenges they're hitting, and what they're learning along the way. If you're not familiar with thoughtbot, we're a product design and development consultancy, and we hope your team and your product become a success. And one way we do that is through our startup incubator. So, today, we are joined by our co-founders, Mike Rosenthal and Chris Cerrito, Co-Founders of the startup Goodz. And we also have another special guest today, Danny Kim, from the thoughtbot side, Senior Product Manager at thoughtbot. So, I think, to start off, we'll head over to the new face, the new voice that we've got with us today. Danny, tell us a little bit about your role at thoughtbot and, specifically, the incubator. DANNY: Yeah, sure. First of all, thanks for having me on, and thanks for letting me join in on all the fun. I'm one of the product managers at thoughtbot. I typically work for the Lift-Off team. We usually work with companies that are looking to, like, go into market with their first version MVP. They might have a product that exists and that they're already kind of doing well with, and they kind of want to jump into a new segment. We'll typically work with companies like that to kind of get them kicked off the ground. But it's been really awesome being part of the incubator program. It's my first time in helping with the market validation side. Definitely also, like, learning a lot from this experience [laughs] for myself. Coming at it specifically from a PM perspective, there's, like, so much variation usually in product management across the industry, depending on, like, what stage of the product that you're working in. And so, I'm definitely feeling my fair share of impostor syndrome here. But it's been really fun to stretch my brand and, like, approach problems from, like, a completely different perspective and also using different tools. But, you know, working with Mike and Chris makes it so much easier because they really make it feel like you're part of their team, and so that definitely goes a long way. LINDSEY: It just goes to show everyone gets impostor syndrome sometimes [laughter], even senior product managers at thoughtbot [laughter]. Thanks for that intro. It's, you know, the thoughtbot team learns along the way, too, you know, especially if usually you're focused on a different stage of product development. Mike, it's been only three weeks or a very long three weeks since last we checked in with you, kind of forever in startup time. So, I think the last time, we were just getting to know you two. And you were walking us through the concept, this merging of the digital and physical world of music, and how we interact with music keepsakes or merchandise. How's my pitch? MIKE: Good. Great. You're killing it. [laughter] LINDSEY: And has anything major changed to that concept in the last three weeks? MIKE: No. I mean, I can't believe it's only been three weeks. It feels like it's been a long time since we last talked. It's been an intense three weeks, for sure. No, it's been going really well. I mean, we launched all sorts of stuff. I'm trying to think of anything that's sort of fundamentally changed in terms of the plan itself or kind of our, yeah, what we've been working on. And I think we've pretty much stayed the course to sort of get to where we are now. But it's been really intensive. I think also having sort of Thanksgiving in there, and we were kind of pushing to get something live right before the Thanksgiving break. And so, that week just felt, I mean, I was just dead by, you know, like, Thursday of Thanksgiving. I think we all were. So, it's been intense, I would say, is the short answer. And I'm happy, yeah, to get into kind of where things are at. But big picture, it's been an intense three weeks. LINDSEY: That's cool. And when we talked, you were, you know, definitely getting into research and user interviews. Have those influenced any, you know, changes along the way in the plan? MIKE: Yeah. They've been really helpful. You know, we'd never really done that before in any of the sort of past projects that we've worked on together. And so, I think just being able to, you know, read through some of those scripts and then sit through some of the interviews and just kind of hearing people's honest assessment of some things has been really interesting. I'm trying to think if it's materially affected anything. I guess, you know, at first, we were, like, we kind of had some assumptions around, okay, let's try to find, like...adult gift-givers sounds like the wrong thing, adults who give gifts as, like, a persona. The idea that, like, you know, maybe you gift your siblings gifts, and then maybe this could be a good gift idea. And I think, you know, we had a hard time kind of finding people to talk in an interesting way about that. And I think we've kind of realized it's kind of a hard persona to kind of chop up and talk about, right, Chris? I don't know [crosstalk 04:55] CHRIS: Well, it also seemed to, from my understanding of it, it seemed to, like, genuinely stress out the people who were being interviewed... MIKE: [laughs] CHRIS: Because it's kind of about a stressful topic [inaudible 05:03], you know, and, like, especially -- LINDSEY: Why? [laughs] CHRIS: Well, I think, I don't know, now I'm making assumptions. Maybe because we're close to the holiday season, and that's a topic in the back of everybody's mind. But yeah, Danny, would you disagree with that? Those folks, from what we heard, seemed like they were the most difficult to kind of extract answers from. But then, if the subject changed and we treated them as a different persona, several of those interviews proved to be quite fruitful. So, it's just really interesting. DANNY: Yeah. It really started, like, you kind of try to get some answers out of people, and there's, like, some level of people trying to please you to some extent. That's just, like, naturally, how it starts. And you just, like, keep trying to drill into the answers. And you just keep asking people like, "So, what kind of gifts do you give?" And they're just like, "Oh my goodness, like, I haven't thought about buying gifts for my sister in [laughs], like, you know, in forever. And now, like [laughs], I don't know where to go." And they get, like, pretty stressed out about it. But then we just kind of started shifting into like, "All right, cool, never mind about that. Like, do you like listening to music?" And they're like, "Yes." And then it just kind of explodes from there. And they're like, "This last concert that I went to..." and all of this stuff. And it was much more fruitful kind of leaning more towards that, actually, yeah. LINDSEY: That's fascinating. I guess that speaks to, especially at this stage and the speed and the amount of interviews you're doing, the need for being, like, really agile in those interviews, and then, like, really quickly applying what you're learning to making the next one even more valuable. MIKE: Yeah. And I think, you know, like, we launched just a little sort of website experiment or, like, an e-commerce experiment right before Thanksgiving. And I think now, you know, we're able to sort of take some of those learnings from those interviews and apply them to both sort of our ad copy itself but also just different landing pages in different language on the different kind of versions of the site and see if we can find some resonance with some of these audience groups. So, it's been interesting. LINDSEY: Are you still trying to figure out who that early adopter audience is, who that niche persona is? MIKE: I think we -- CHRIS: Yes, we are. I think we have a good idea of who it is. And I think right now we're just trying to figure out really how to reach those people. That, I think, is the biggest challenge right now for us. MIKE: Yeah. With the e-commerce experiment it was sort of a very specific niche thing that is a little bit adjacent to what I think we want to be doing longer term with Goodz. And so, it's weird. It's like, we're in a place we're like, oh, we really want to find the people that want this thing. But also, this thing isn't necessarily the thing that we think we're going to make longer term, so let's not worry too hard about finding them. You know what I mean? It's been an interesting sort of back and forth with that. CHRIS: From the interviews that we conducted, you know, we identified three key personas. Most of them have come up, but I'll just relist them. There's the sibling gift giver. There was the merch buyers; these are people who go to concerts and buy merchandise, you know, T-shirts, albums, records, things along those lines to support the artists that they love. And then the final one that was identified we gave the title of the 'Proud Playlister'. And these are people who are really into their digital media platforms, love making playlists, and love sharing those playlists with their friends. And that, I would say, the proud playlister is really the one that we have focused on in terms of the storefront that we launched, like, the product is pretty much specifically for them. But the lessons that we're learning while making this product and trying to get this into the hands of the proud playlisters will feed into kind of the merch buyers. MIKE: Yeah. And I think that, you know, it's funny, like, this week is kind of a poignant week for this, right? Because it's the week that Spotify Wrapped launched, right? So, it's like, in the course of any given year, it's probably, like, the one week of the year that lots and lots and lots of people are thinking about playlists all of a sudden, so trying a little bit to see if we can ride that wave or just kind of dovetail with that a bit, too. LINDSEY: Absolutely. And do you want to give just, like, the really quick reminder of what the product experience is like? MIKE: Oh yeah [laughs], good call. CHRIS: This is a prototype of it. It's called the Goodz Mixtape. Basically, the idea is that you purchase one of these from us. You give us a playlist URL. We program that URL onto the NFC chip that's embedded in the Good itself. And then when you scan this Good, that playlist will come up. So, it's a really great way of you make a playlist for somebody, and you want to gift it to them; this is a great way to do that. You have a special playlist, maybe between you and a friend or you and a partner. This is a good way to commemorate that playlist, turn it into a physical thing, give that digital file value and presence in the physical world. LINDSEY: Great. Okay, so you casually mentioned this launch of an e-commerce store that happened last week. MIKE: It didn't feel casual. LINDSEY: Yeah. Why [laughter]...[inaudible 09:45] real casual. Why did you launch it? How's it going? MIKE: I don't know. Why did we launch it? I mean, well, we wanted to be able to test some assumptions. I think, you know, we wanted to get the brand out there a little bit, get our website out there, kind of introduce the concept. You know, this is a very...not that we've invented this product category, but it is a pretty obscure product category, right? And so, there's a lot of sort of consumer education that I think that has to go on for people to wrap their heads around this and why they'd want this. So, I think we wanted to start that process a little bit correctly, sort of in advance of a larger launch next year, and see if we could find some early community around this. You know, if we can find those core people who just absolutely love this, and connect with it, and go wild around it, then those are the people that we're going to be able to get a ton of information from and build for that persona, right? It's like, cool, these are the people who love this. Let's build more for them and go find other people like this. So, I think, for us, it was that. And then, honestly, it was also just, you know, let's test our manufacturing and fulfillment and logistics capabilities, right? I mean, this is...as much as we are a B2B, you know, SaaS platform or that's what we envision the future of Goodz being, there is a physical component of this. And, you know, we do have that part basically done at this point. But we just, you know, what is it like to order 1,000 of these? What is it like to put these in the mail to people and, you know, actually take orders? And just some of that processing because we do envision a more wholesale future where we're doing, you know, thousands or tens of thousands of this at a time. And so, I think we just want to button up and do some dry runs before we get to those kinds of numbers. CHRIS: I think it also it's important to remember that we are talking in startup time. And while this last week seems like an eternity, it's been a week [laughs] that we've had this in place. So, we're just starting to learn these things, and we plan on continuing to do so. MIKE: Yeah. But I think we thought that getting a website up would be a good way to just start kind of testing everything more. LINDSEY: Great. Danny, what went into deciding what would be in this first version of the site and the e-commerce offering? DANNY: I mean, a lot of it was kind of mostly driven by Chris and Mike. They kind of had a vision and an idea of what they wanted to sell. Obviously, from the user interviews, we were starting to hone in a little bit more and, like, we had some assumptions going into it. I think we ultimately did kind of feel like, yeah, I think, like, the playlisters seem to be, like, the target market. But just hearing it more and hearing more excitement from them was definitely just kind of like, yeah, I think we can double down on this piece. But, ultimately, like, in terms of launching the e-commerce platform, and the storefront, and the website, like, just literally looking at the user journey and being like, how does a user get from getting onto a site, like, as soon as they land there to, like, finishing a purchase? And what points do they need? What are the key things that they need to think through and typically will run into? And a lot of it is just kind of reflecting on our own personal buyer behavior. And, also, as we were getting closer to the launch, starting to work through some of those assumptions about buyer behavior. As we got there, we obviously had some prototypes. We had some screenshots that we were already working with. Like, the design team was already starting to build out some of the site. And so, we would just kind of show it to them, show it to our users, and just be like, hey, like, how do you expect to purchase this? Like, what's the next step that you expect to take? And we'd just kind of, like, continue to iterate on that piece. And so... LINDSEY: Okay. So you were, before launching, even showing some of those mockups and starting to incorporate them in the user interviews. DANNY: Yeah, yeah. I mean, we tried to get it in there in front of them as early as possible, partially because, like, at some point in the user interviews, like, you're mostly just trying to first understand, like, who are our target customers? Who are these people? And we have an assumption of or an idea of who we think they are. But really, like, once you start talking to people, you kind of are, like, okay, like, this thing that I thought maybe it wasn't so accurate, or, like, the way that they're kind of talking about these products doesn't 100% match what I originally walked into this, you know, experiment with. And so, we, like, start to hone in on that. But after a certain point, you kind of get that idea and now you're just like, okay, you seem to be, like, the right person to talk to. And so, if I were to show you this thing, do you get it, right? Like, do you understand what's happening? Like, how to use this thing, what this product even does. And then also, like, does the checkout experience feel intuitive for you? Is it as simple as, like, I just want to buy a T-shirt? So, like, I'm just going to go by the T-shirt, pick a size, and, you know, move on with my life. Can we make it as seamless as that? LINDSEY: And so, you mentioned it's only been a week since it's been live. Have you been able to learn anything from it yet? And how are you trying to drive people to it today? MIKE: Yeah, I think we learned that sales is hard [laughs] and slow, and it takes some time. But it's good, and we're learning a lot. I mean, it's been a while since I've really dug deep in, like, the analytics and marketing kind of metrics. And so, we've got all the Google Tag Manager stuff, you know, hooked up and just, you know, connecting with just exploring, honestly, like the TikTok advertising platform, and the YouTube Pre-Rolls, and Shorts. And, like, a lot of stuff that I actually, since the last time I was heavily involved in this stuff, is just totally new and different. And so, it's been super interesting to see the funnel and sort of see where people are getting in the site, where people are dropping off. You know, we had an interesting conversation in our thoughtbot sync yesterday or the day before, where we were seeing how, you know, we're getting lots of people to the front page and, actually, a good number of people to the product page, and, actually, like, you know, not the worst number of people to the cart. But then you were seeing really high cart abandonment rates. And then, you know, when you start Googling, and you're like, oh, actually, everybody sees very high cart abandonment rates; that's just a thing. But we were seeing, like, the people were viewing their cart seven or eight times, and they were on there sort of five times as long as they were on any other page. And it's this problem that I think Danny is talking about where, you know, we need to actually get a playlist URL. This gets into the minutiae of what we're building, but basically like, we need to get them to give us a playlist URL in order to check out, right? And so, you sort of have to, like, put yourself back in the mind of someone who's scrolling on Instagram, and they see this as an ad, and they click it, and they're like, oh, that thing was cool. Sure, I will buy one of those. And then it's like, no, actually, you need to, you know, leave this, go into a different app, find a play...like, it suddenly just puts a lot of the mental strain. But it's a lot. It's a cognitive load, greater than, as you said, just buying a T-shirt and telling what size you want. So, thinking through ways to really trim that down, shore up the amount of time people are spending on a cart. All that stuff has been fascinating. And then just, like, the different demographic kind of work that we're using, all the social ads platforms to kind of identify has been really interesting. It's still early. But, actually, like, Chris and I were just noticing...we were just talking right before this call. Like, we're actually starting to get, just in the last 12 hours, a bunch more, a bunch, but more people signing up to our email newsletter, probably in the last 12 hours that we have in the whole of last week. Yeah, I don't know, just even that sort of learning, it's like, oh, do people just need time with a thing, or they come back and they think about it? CHRIS: Yeah. Could these people be working on their playlists? That's a question that I have. MIKE: [chuckles] Yeah, me too. CHRIS: It's like, you know, I'm making a playlist to drop into this product. It's really interesting. And I think it gives insight to kind of, you know, how personal this product could be, that this is something that takes effort on the part of the consumer because they're making something to give or to keep for themselves, which is, I think, really interesting but definitely hard, too. DANNY: Yeah. And I also want to also clarify, like, Chris just kind of said it, like, especially for viewers and listeners, like, that's something that we've been hearing a lot from user interviews, too, right? Like, the language that they're using is, like, this is a thing that I care about. Like it's a representation of who I am. It's a representation of, like, the relationship that I have with this person that I'm going to be giving, you know, this gift to or this playlist to, specifically, like, people who feel, like, really passionate about these things. And, I mean, like, I did, too. Like, when I was first trying to, like, date, my wife, like, I spent, like, hours, hours trying to pick the coolest songs that I thought, you know, were like, oh, like, she's going to think I'm so cool because, like, I listen to these, like, super low-key indie rock bands, and, like, you know, so many more hours than she probably spent listening to it. But that's [laughs] kind of, like, honestly, what we heard a lot in a lot of these interviews, so... LINDSEY: Yeah, same. No, totally resonates. And I also went to the site this week, and I was like, oh damn, this is cool. Like, and immediately it was like, oh, you know, I've got these three, you know, music friends that we go to shows together. I'm like, oh, this would be so cool to get them, you know, playlists of, like, music we've seen together. So, you might see me in the cart. I won't abandon it. MIKE: Please. I would love that. CHRIS: Don't think about it too long if you could -- [laughter]. LINDSEY: I won't. I won't. CHRIS: I mean, I would say I'm really excited about having the site not only as a vehicle for selling some of these things but also as a vehicle for just honing our message. It's like another tool that we have in our arsenal. During the user interviews themselves, we were talking in abstract terms, and now we have something concrete that we can bounce off people, which is, I think, going to be a huge boon to our toolset as we continue to refine and define this product. MIKE: Yeah, that's a good point. LINDSEY: Yeah. You mentioned that they're signing up for, like, email updates. Do you have something you're sending out? Or are you kind of just creating a list? Totally fine, just building a list. MIKE: [laughs] No. CHRIS: It's a picture of Mike and I giving a big thumbs up. That's, yeah. [laughter] MIKE: No. But maybe...that was the thing; I was like, oh great, they're signing up. And I was like, gosh, they're signing up. Okay [laughter], now we got to write something. But we will. LINDSEY: Tips to making your playlist [crosstalk 19:11] playing your playlist -- MIKE: Yeah [crosstalk 19:13]. CHRIS: Right. And then also...tips to making your playlists. Also, we're advancing on the collectible side of things, too. We are, hopefully, going to have two pilot programs in place, one with a major label and one with a major artist. And we're really excited about that. LINDSEY: Okay. That's cool. I assume you can't tell us very much. What can you tell us? MIKE: Yeah. We won't mention names [chuckles] in case it just goes away, as these things sometimes do. But yeah, there's a great band who's super excited about these, been around for a long time, some good name recognition, and a very loyal fan base. They want to do sort of a collection of these. I think maybe we showed the little...I can't remember if we showed the little crates that we make or not, but basically, [inaudible 19:52] LINDSEY: The last time, yeah. MIKE: So, they want to sell online a package that's, you know, five or six Goodz in a crate, which I think will be cool and a great sort of sales experiment. And then there's a couple of artists that we're going to do an experiment with that's through their label that's more about tour...basically, giving things away on tour. So, they're going to do some giveaway fan club street team-style experiments with some of these on the road. So, first, it's ideal, provided both those things happen, because we definitely want to be exploring on the road and online stuff. And so, this kind of lets us do both at once and get some real learnings as to kind of how people...because we still don't know. We haven't really put these in people's hands yet. And it's just, like, are people scanning these a lot? Are they not? Is this sort of an object that's sitting on their shelf? Is it...yeah, it's just, like, there's so much we're going to learn once we get these into people's hands. LINDSEY: Do you have the infrastructure to sort of see how many times the cards are scanned? CHRIS: Mm-hmm. Yep, we do. MIKE: Yeah. So, we can see how many times each one is scanned, where they're scanned, that sort of thing. CHRIS: Kind of our next step, and something we were just talking about today with the thoughtbot team, is building out kind of what the backend will be for this, both for users and also for labels and artists. That it will allow them to go in and post updates to the Goodz, to allow them to use these for promotion as people, you know, scan into them to give them links to other sites related to the artists that they might be interested in before they move on to the actual musical playlist. So, that's kind of the next step for us. And knowing how users use these collectibles, both the kind of consumer Good and the artist collectibles that we were just talking about, will help inform how we build that platform. LINDSEY: Very cool. And right now, the online store itself that's built in Shopify? MIKE: Yeah. The homepage is Webflow that Kevin from the thoughtbot team really spearheaded in building for us. And then, yeah, the e-commerce is Shopify. LINDSEY: Y'all have been busy. MIKE: [laughs] LINDSEY: Is there anything else maybe that I haven't asked about yet that we should touch on in terms of updates or things going on with the product? MIKE: I don't know. I don't think so. I think, like Chris said, I mean, we're just...like, now that the site has kind of stood up and we're really switched over to kind of marketing and advertising on that, definitely digging into the backend of this kind of SaaS platform that's going to probably be a big focus for the rest of the, you know, the program, to be honest. Yeah, just some other things we can do on the next front that could eventually build into the backend that I think can be interesting. No, I guess [laughs] the short answer is no, nothing, like, substantial. Those are the big [crosstalk 22:26] LINDSEY: Yeah. Well, that was my next question, too, which is kind of like, what's next, or what's the next chunk of work? So, it's obviously lots more optimization and learning on the e-commerce platform, and then this other mega area, which is, you know, what does this look like as a SaaS solution? What's the vision? But also, where do we start? Which I'm sure, Danny, is a lot of work that you specialize in as far as, like, scoping how to approach these kinds of projects. DANNY: Yeah. And it's interesting because, I mean, we were just talking about this today. Like, part of it is, like, we can, like, really dig into, like, the e-commerce site and, like, really nailing it down to get it to the place where it's like, we're driving tons more traffic and also getting as low of a, like, cart abandonment rate as possible, right? But also, considering the fact that this is in the future, like, large-scale vision. And there's, like, also, like, we're starting to, I think, now iron out a lot of those, like, milestones where we're kind of like, okay, like, we got, like, a short-term vision, which is, like, the e-commerce site. We got a mid-term vision and a potential long-term vision. How do we validate this long-term vision while also still like, keeping this short-term vision moving forward? And, like, this mid-term vision is also going to, like, help potentially, either, like, steer us towards that long-term or maybe even, like, pivot us, like, into a completely different direction. So, like, where do you put your card, right? Like, how much energy and time do we put into, like, each of these areas? And that's kind of, like, the interesting part of this is starting to talk through that, starting to kind of prioritize, like, how we can maximize on our effort, like, our development and design effort so that things just kind of line up more naturally and organically for our future visioning, so... MIKE: Yeah. A lot of different things to juggle. I saw there was a question. Somebody asked what the URL is, but I don't seem to be able to [crosstalk 24:10]. LINDSEY: The same question as me. We got to drop the link for this thing. MIKE: Yeah, getthegoodz.com. CHRIS: That's G-O-O-D-Z. LINDSEY: Get in there, folks MIKE: Yeah, get [crosstalk 24:23]. LINDSEY: And let us know how it goes. MIKE: Yeah, please [laughs]. Any bugs? Let us know. Yeah. I think that those...yeah, I mean, it's a good point, Danny, in terms of juggling kind of the near-term and longer-term stuff. You know, it's a good kind of reminder our big focus, you know, in the new year is going to be fundraising, right? We're already talking to some investors and things like that. So, it's like, okay, yes, as you said, we could tweak the cart. We could tweak the e-commerce. Or, like, can we paint the big picture of what the longer-term version of this company is going to be in a way that makes it compelling for investment to come in so that there can be a long-term version of this company? And then we can build those things. So yeah, it's definitely a balance between the two. LINDSEY: Oh, also, just casual fundraising as well. [crosstalk 25:06] MIKE: Yeah, yeah. LINDSEY: [laughs] MIKE: But it's hard. It's like, you wake up in the morning. It's like, do I want to, like, write cold emails to investors? Or do I want to, like, look at Google Analytics and, like, tweak ad copy? That's actually more fun. So, yes. LINDSEY: Yeah, life of the founder, for sure. All right. So, that's getthegoodz (Goodz with a z) .com. Check it out. We'll tune in and see what happens with the e-commerce site, what happens with the SaaS planning the next time that we check in. But Chris, Mike, Danny, thank you so much for joining today and sharing what's been going on over the last few weeks: the good, the bad, the challenge, the cart abandonment. And, you know, best of luck to you over the next few weeks, and we'll be sure to check in and see how it's going. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at: tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions. Special Guests: Chris Cerrito and Mike Rosenthal.

Mike Perham is the creator of Sidekiq, a background job processor for Ruby. He's also the creator of Faktory a similar product for multiple language environments. We talk about the RubyConf keynote and Ruby's limitations, supporting products as a solo developer, and some ideas for funding open source like a public utility. Recorded at RubyConf 2023 in San Diego. -- A few topics covered: Sidekiq (Ruby) vs Faktory (Polyglot) Why background job solutions are so common in Ruby Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) Ractors (Actor concurrency) Downsides of Multiprocess applications When to use other languages Getting people to pay for Sidekiq Keeping a solo business Being selective about customers Ways to keep support needs low Open source as a public utility Mike Mike's blog mastodon Sidekiq faktory From Employment to Independence Ruby Ractor The Practical Effects of the GVL on Scaling in Ruby Transcript You can help correct transcripts on GitHub. Introduction [00:00:00] Jeremy: I'm here at RubyConf San Diego with Mike Perham. He's the creator of Sidekiq and Faktory. [00:00:07] Mike: Thank you, Jeremy, for having me here. It's a pleasure. Sidekiq [00:00:11] Jeremy: So for people who aren't familiar with, I guess we'll start with Sidekiq because I think that's what you're most known for. If people don't know what it is, maybe you can give like a small little explanation. [00:00:22] Mike: Ruby apps generally have two major pieces of infrastructure powering them. You've got your app server, which serves your webpages and the browser. And then you generally have something off on the side that... It processes, you know, data for a million different reasons, and that's generally called a background job framework, and that's what Sidekiq is. [00:00:41] It, Rails is usually the thing that, that handles your web stuff, and then Sidekiq is the Sidekiq to Rails, so to speak. [00:00:50] Jeremy: And so this would fit the same role as, I think in Python, there's celery. and then in the Ruby world, I guess there is, uh, Resque is another kind of job. [00:01:02] Mike: Yeah, background job frameworks are quite prolific in Ruby. the Ruby community's kind of settled on that as the, the standard pattern for application development. So yeah, we've got, a half a dozen to a dozen different, different examples throughout history, but the major ones today are, Sidekiq, Resque, DelayedJob, GoodJob, and, and, and others down the line, yeah. Why background jobs are so common in Ruby [00:01:25] Jeremy: I think working in other languages, you mentioned how in Ruby, there's this very clear, preference to use these job scheduling systems, these job queuing systems, and I'm not. I'm not sure if that's as true in, say, if somebody's working in Java, or C sharp, or whatnot. And I wonder if there's something specific about Ruby that makes people kind of gravitate towards this as the default thing they would use. [00:01:52] Mike: That's a good question. What makes Ruby... The one that so needs a background job system. I think Ruby, has historically been very single threaded. And so, every Ruby process can only do so much work. And so Ruby oftentimes does, uh, spin up a lot of different processes, and so having processes that are more focused on one thing is, is, is more standard. [00:02:24] So you'll have your application server processes, which focus on just serving HTTP responses. And then you have some other sort of focused process and that just became background job processes. but yeah, I haven't really thought of it all that much. But, uh, you know, something like Java, for instance, heavily multi threaded. [00:02:45] And so, and extremely heavyweight in terms of memory and startup time. So it's much more frequent in Java that you just start up one process and that's it. Right, you just do everything in that one process. And so you may have dozens and dozens of threads, both serving HTTP and doing work on the side too. Um, whereas in Ruby that just kind of naturally, there was a natural split there. Global Interpreter Lock [00:03:10] Jeremy: So that's actually a really good insight, because... in the keynote at RubyConf, Mats, the creator of Ruby, you know, he mentioned the, how the fact that there is this global, interpreter lock, [00:03:23] or, or global VM lock in Ruby, and so you can't, really do multiple things in parallel and make use of all the different cores. And so it makes a lot of sense why you would say like, okay, I need to spin up separate processes so that I can actually take advantage of, of my, system. [00:03:43] Mike: Right. Yeah. And the, um, the GVL. is the acronym we use in the Ruby community, or GIL. Uh, that global lock really kind of is a forcing function for much of the application architecture in Ruby. Ruby, uh, applications because it does limit how much processing a single Ruby process can do. So, uh, even though Sidekiq is heavily multi threaded, you can only have so many threads executing. [00:04:14] Because they all have to share one core because of that global lock. So unfortunately, that's, that's been, um, one of the limiter, limiting factors to Sidekiq scalability is that, that lock and boy, I would pay a lot of money to just have that lock go away, but. You know, Python is going through a very long term experiment about trying to remove that lock and I'm very curious to see how well that goes because I would love to see Ruby do the same and we'll see what happens in the future, but, it's always frustrating when I come to another RubyConf and I hear another Matt's keynote where he's asked about the GIL and he continues to say, well, the GIL is going to be around, as long as I can tell. [00:04:57] so it's a little bit frustrating, but. It's, it's just what you have to deal with. Ractors [00:05:02] Jeremy: I'm not too familiar with them, but they, they did mention during the keynote I think there Ractors or something like that. There, there, there's some way of being able to get around the GIL but there are these constraints on them. And in the context of Sidekiq and, and maybe Ruby in general, how do you feel about those options or those solutions? [00:05:22] Mike: Yeah, so, I think it was Ruby 3. 2 that introduced this concept of what they call a Ractor, which is like a thread, except it does not have the global lock. It can run independent to the global lock. The problem is, is because it doesn't use the global lock, it has pretty severe constraints on what it can do. [00:05:47] And the, and more specifically, the data it can access. So, Ruby apps and Rails apps throughout history have traditionally accessed a lot of global data, a lot of class level data, and accessed all this data in a, in a read only fashion. so there's no race conditions because no one's changing any of it, but it's still, lots of threads all accessing the same variables. [00:06:19] Well, Ractors can't do that at all. The only data Ractors can access is data that they own. And so that is completely foreign to Ruby application, traditional Ruby applications. So essentially, Ractors aren't compatible with the vast majority of existing Ruby code. So I, I, I toyed with the idea of prototyping Sidekiq and Ractors, and within about a minute or two, I just ran into these, these, uh... [00:06:51] These very severe constraints, and so that's why you don't see a lot of people using Ractors, even still, even though they've been out for a year or two now, you just don't see a lot of people using them, because they're, they're really limited, limited in what they can do. But, on the other hand, they're unlimited in how well they can scale. [00:07:12] So, we'll see, we'll see. Hopefully in the future, they'll make a lot of improvements and, uh, maybe they'll become more usable over time. Downsides of multiprocess (Memory usage) [00:07:19] Jeremy: And with the existence of a job queue or job scheduler like Sidekiq, you're able to create additional processes to get around that global lock, I suppose. What are the... downsides of doing so versus another language like we mentioned Java earlier, which is capable of having true parallelism in the same process. [00:07:47] Mike: Yeah, so you can start up multiple Ruby processes to process things truly in parallel. The issue is that you do get some duplication in terms of memory. So your Ruby app maybe take a gigabyte per process. And, you can do copy on write forking. You can fork and get some memory sharing with copy on write semantics on Unix operating systems. [00:08:21] But you may only get, let's say, 30 percent memory savings. So, there's still a significant memory overhead to forking, you know, let's say, eight processes versus having eight threads. You know, you, you, you may have, uh, eight threads can operate in a gigabyte process, but if you want to have eight processes, that may take, let's say, four gigabytes of RAM. [00:08:48] So you, you still, it's not going to cost you eight gigabytes of RAM, you know, it's not like just one times eight, but, there's still a overhead of having those separate processes. [00:08:58] Jeremy: would you say it's more of a cost restriction, like it costs you more to run these applications, or are there actual problems that you can't solve because of this restriction. [00:09:13] Mike: Help me understand, what do you mean by restriction? Do you mean just the GVL in general, or the fact that forking processes still costs memory? [00:09:22] Jeremy: I think, well, it would be both, right? So you're, you have two restrictions right now. You have the, the GVL, which means you can't have parallelism within the same process. And then your other option is to spin up a bunch of processes, which you have said is the downside there is that you're using a lot more RAM. [00:09:43] I suppose my question is that Does that actually stop you from doing anything? Like, if you throw more money at the problem, you go like, we're going to have more instances, I'll pay for the RAM, it's fine, can that basically get you out of these situations or are these limitations actually stopping you from, from doing things you could do in other languages? [00:10:04] Mike: Well, you certainly have to manage the multiple processes, right? So you've gotta, you know, if one child process crashes, you've gotta have a parent or supervisor process watching all that and monitoring and restarting the process. I don't think it restricts you. Necessarily, it just, it adds complexity to your deployment. [00:10:24] and, and it's just a question of efficiency, right? Instead of being able to deploy on a, on a one gigabyte droplet, I've got to deploy to a four gigabyte droplet, right? Because I just, I need the RAM to run the eight processes. So it, it, it's more of just a purely a function of how much money am I going to have to throw at this problem. [00:10:45] And what's it going to cost me in operational costs to operate this application in production? When to use other languages? [00:10:53] Jeremy: So during the. Keynote, uh, Matz had mentioned that Rails, is really suitable as this one person framework, like you can have a very small team or maybe even yourself and, and build this product. And so I guess from... Your perspective, once you cross a certain threshold, is like, what Ruby and what Sidekiq provides not enough, and that's why you need to start looking into other languages? [00:11:24] Or like, where's the, turning point, or the, if you [00:11:29] Mike: Right, right. The, it's all about the problem you're trying to solve, right? At the end of the day, uh, the, the question is just what are we trying to solve and how are we trying to solve it? So at a higher level, you got to think about the architecture. if the problem you're trying to solve, if the service you're trying to build, if the app you're trying to operate. [00:11:51] If that doesn't really fall into the traditional Ruby application architecture, then you, you might look at it in another language or another ecosystem. something like Go, for instance, can compile down to a single binary, which makes deployment really easy. It makes shipping up a product. on to a user's machine, much simpler than deploying a Ruby application onto a user's desktop machine, for instance, right? [00:12:22] Um, Ruby does have this, this problem of how do you package everything together and deploy it somewhere? Whereas Go, when you can just compile to a single binary, now you've just got a single thing. And it's just... Drop it on the file system and execute it. It's easy. So, um, different, different ecosystems have different application architectures, which empower different ways of solving the same problems. [00:12:48] But, you know, Rails as a, as a one man framework, or sorry, one person framework, It, it, I don't, I don't necessarily, that's a, that's sort of a catchy marketing slogan, but I just think of Rails as the most productive framework you can use. So you, as a single person, you can maximize what you ship and the, the, the value that you can create because Rails is so productive. [00:13:13] Jeremy: So it, seems like it's maybe the, the domain or the type of application you're making. Like you mentioned the command line application, because you want to be able to deliver it to your user easily. Just give them a binary, something like Go or perhaps Rust makes a lot more sense. and then I could see people saying that if you're doing something with machine learning, like the community behind Python, it's, they're just, they're all there. [00:13:41] So Room for more domains in Ruby [00:13:41] Mike: That was exactly the example I was going to use also. Yeah, if you're doing something with data or AI, Python is going to be a more, a more traditional, natural choice. that doesn't mean Ruby can't do it. That doesn't mean, you wouldn't be able to solve the problem with Ruby. And, and there's, that just also means that there's more space for someone who wants to come in and make an impact in the Ruby community. [00:14:03] Find a problem that Ruby's not really well suited to solving right now and build the tooling out there to, to try and solve it. You know, I, I saw a talk, from the fellow who makes the Glimmer gem, which is a native UI toolkit. Uh, a gem for building native UIs in Ruby, which Ruby traditionally can't do, but he's, he's done an amazing job at sort of surfacing APIs to build these, um, these native, uh, native applications, which I think is great. [00:14:32] It's awesome. It's, it's so invigorating to see Ruby in a new space like that. Um, I talked to someone else who's doing the Polars gem, which is focused on data processing. So it kind of takes, um, Python and Pandas and brings that to Ruby, which is, is awesome because if you're a Ruby developer, now you've got all these additional tools which can allow you to solve new sets of problems out there. [00:14:57] So that's, that's kind of what's exciting in the Ruby community right now is just bring it into new spaces. Faktory [00:15:03] Jeremy: In addition to Sidekiq, you have, uh, another product called Faktory, I believe. And so does that serve a, a similar purpose? Is that another job scheduling, job queueing system? [00:15:16] Mike: It is, yes. And it's, it's, it's similar in a way to Sidekiq. It looks similar. It's got similar concepts at the core of it. At the end of the day, Sidekiq is limited to Ruby. Because Sidekiq executes in a Ruby VM, it executes the jobs, and the jobs are, have to be written in Ruby because you're running in the Ruby VM. [00:15:38] Faktory was my attempt to bring, Sidekiq functionality to every other language. I wanted, I wanted Sidekiq for JavaScript. I wanted Sidekiq for Go. I wanted Sidekiq for Python because A, a lot of these other languages also could use a system, a background job system. And the problem though is that. [00:16:04] As a single man, I can't port Sidekiq to every other language. I don't know all the languages, right? So, Faktory kind of changes the architecture and, um, allows you to execute jobs in any language. it, it replaces Redis and provides a server where you just fetch jobs, and you can use it from it. [00:16:26] You can use that protocol from any language to, to build your own worker processes that execute jobs in whatever language you want. [00:16:35] Jeremy: When you say it replaces Redis, so it doesn't use Redis, um, internally, it has its own. [00:16:41] Mike: It does use Redis under the covers. Yeah, it starts Redis as a child process and, connects to it over a Unix socket. And so it's really stable. It's really fast. from the outside, the, the worker processes, they just talk to Faktory. They don't know anything about Redis at all. [00:16:59] Jeremy: I see. And for someone who, like we mentioned earlier in the Python community, for example, there is, um, Celery. For someone who is using a task scheduler like that, what's the incentive to switch or use something different? [00:17:17] Mike: Well, I, I always say if you're using something right now, I'm not going to try and convince you to switch necessarily. It's when you have pain that you want to switch and move away. Maybe you have Maybe there's capabilities in the newer system that you really need that the old system doesn't provide, but Celery is such a widely known system that I'm not necessarily going to try and convince people to move away from it, but if people are looking for a new system, one of the things that Celery does that Faktory does not do is Celery provides like data adapters for using store, lots of different storage systems, right? [00:17:55] Faktory doesn't do that. Faktory is more, has more of the Rails mantra of, you know, Omakase where we choose, I choose to use Redis and that's it. You don't, you don't have a choice for what to use because who cares, you know, at the end of the day, let Faktory deal with it. it's, it's not something that, You should even necessarily be concerned about it. [00:18:17] Just, just try Faktory out and see how it works for you. Um, so I, I try to take those operational concerns off the table and just have the user focus on, you know, usability, performance, and that sort of thing. but it is, it's, it's another background job system out there for people to try out and see if they like that. [00:18:36] And, and if they want to, um, if they know Celery and they want to use Celery, more power to Faktory them. Sidekiq (Ruby) or Faktory (Polyglot) [00:18:43] Jeremy: And Sidekiq and Faktory, they serve a very similar purpose. For someone who they have a new project, they haven't chosen a job. scheduling system, if they were using Ruby, would it ever make sense for them to use Faktory versus use Sidekiq? [00:19:05] Mike: Uh Faktory is excellent in a polyglot situation. So if you're using multiple languages, if you're creating jobs in Ruby, but you're executing them in Python, for instance, um, you know, if you've, I have people who are, Creating jobs in PHP and executing them in Python, for instance. That kind of polyglot scenario, Sidekiq can't do that at all. [00:19:31] So, Faktory is useful there. In terms of Ruby, Ruby is just another language to Faktory. So, there is a Ruby API for using Faktory, and you can create and execute Ruby jobs with Faktory. But, you'll find that in the Ruby community, Sidekiq is much widely... much more widely used and understood and known. So if you're just using Ruby, I think, I think Sidekiq is the right choice. [00:19:59] I wouldn't look at Faktory. But if you do need, find yourself needing that polyglot tool, then Faktory is there. Temporal [00:20:07] Jeremy: And this is maybe one, maybe one layer of abstraction higher, but there's a product called Temporal that has some of this job scheduling, but also this workflow component. I wonder if you've tried that out and how you think about that product? [00:20:25] Mike: I've heard of them. I don't know a lot about the product. I do have a workflow API, the Sidekiq batches, which allow you to fan out jobs and then, and then execute callbacks when all the jobs in that, in that batch are done. But I don't, provide sort of a, a high level. Graphical Workflow Editor or anything like that. [00:20:50] Those to me are more marketing tools that you use to sell the tool for six figures. And I don't think they're usable. And I don't think they're actually used day to day. I provide an API for developers to use. And developers don't like moving blocks of code around in a GUI. They want to write code. And, um, so yeah, temporal, I, like I said, I don't know much about them. [00:21:19] I also, are they a venture capital backed startup? [00:21:22] Jeremy: They are, is my understanding, [00:21:24] Mike: Yeah, that, uh, any, any sort of venture capital backed startup, um, who's building technical infrastructure. I, I would look long and hard at, I'm, I think open source is the right core to build on. Of course I sell commercial software, but. I'm bootstrapped. I'm profitable. [00:21:46] I'm going to be around forever. A VC backed startup, they tend to go bankrupt, because they either get big or they go out of business. So that would be my only comment is, is, be a little bit leery about relying on commercial venture capital based infrastructure for, for companies, uh, long term. Getting people to pay for Sidekiq [00:22:05] Jeremy: So I think that's a really interesting part about your business is that I think a lot of open source maintainers have a really big challenge figuring out how to make it as a living. The, there are so many projects that they all have a very permissive license and you can use them freely one example I can think of is, I, I talked with, uh, David Kramer, who's the CTO at Sentry, and he, I don't think they use it anymore, but they, they were using Nginx, right? [00:22:39] And he's like, well, Nginx, they have a paid product, like Nginx. Plus that or something. I don't know what the name is, but he was like, but I'm not going to pay for it. Right. I'm just going to use the free one. Why would I, you know, pay for the, um, the paid thing? So I, I, I'm kind of curious from your perspective when you were coming up with Sidekiq both as an open source product, but also as a commercial one, how did you make that determination of like to make a product where it's going to be useful in its open source form? [00:23:15] I can still convince people to pay money for it. [00:23:19] Mike: Yeah, the, I was terrified, to be blunt, when I first started out. when I started the Sidekiq project, I knew it was going to take a lot of time. I knew if it was successful, I was going to be doing it for the next decade. Right? So I started in 2012, and here I am in 2023, over a decade, and I'm still doing it. [00:23:38] So my expectation was met in that regard. And I knew I was not going to be able to last that long. If I was making zero dollars, right? You just, you burn out. Nobody can last that long. Well, I guess there are a few exceptions to that rule, but yeah, money, I tend to think makes things a little more sustainable for sure. [00:23:58] Especially if you can turn it into a full time job solving and supporting a project that you, you love and, and is, is, you know, your, your, your baby, your child, so to speak, your software, uh, uh, creation that you've given to the world. but I was terrified. but one thing I did was at the time I was blogging a lot. [00:24:22] And so I was telling people about Sidekiq. I was telling people what was to come. I was talking about ideas and. The one thing that I blogged about was financial experiments. I said bluntly to the, to, to the Ruby community, I'm going to be experimenting with financial stability and sustainability with this project. [00:24:42] So not only did I create this open source project, but I was also publicly saying I I need to figure out how to make this work for the next decade. And so eventually that led to Sidekiq Pro. And I had to figure out how to build a closed source Ruby gem, which, uh, There's not a lot of, so I was kind of in the wild there. [00:25:11] But, you know, thankfully all the pieces came together and it was actually possible. I couldn't have done it if it wasn't possible. Like, we would not be talking if I couldn't make a private gem. So, um, but it happened to work out. Uh, and it allowed me to, to gate features behind a paywall effectively. And, and yeah, you're right. [00:25:33] It can be tough to make people pay for software. but I'm a developer who's selling to other developers, not, not just developers, open source developers, and they know that they have this financial problem, right? They know that there's this sustainability problem. And I was blunt in saying, this is my solution to my sustainability. [00:25:56] So, I charge what I think is a very fair price. It's only a thousand dollars a year to a hobbyist. That may seem like a lot of money to a business. It's a drop in the bucket. So it was easy for developers to say, Hey, listen, we want to buy this tool for a thousand bucks. It'll ensure our infrastructure is maintained for the next decade. [00:26:18] And it's, and it's. And it's relatively cheap. It's way less than, uh, you know, a salary or even a laptop. So, so that's, that's what I did. And, um, it's, it worked out great. People, people really understood. Even today, I talk to people and they say, we, we signed up for Sidekiq Pro to support you. So it's, it's, it's really, um, invigorating to hear people, uh, thank me and, and they're, they're actively happy that they're paying me and our customers. [00:26:49] Jeremy: it's sort of, uh, maybe a not super common story, right, in terms of what you went through. Because when I think of open core businesses, I think of companies like, uh, GitLab, which are venture funded, uh, very different scenario there. I wonder, like, in your case, so you started in 2012, and there were probably no venture backed competitors, right? [00:27:19] People saying that we're going to make this job scheduling system and some VC is going to give me five million dollars and build a team to work on this. It was probably at the time, maybe it was Rescue, which was... [00:27:35] Mike: There was a venture backed system called IronMQ, [00:27:40] Jeremy: Hmm. [00:27:41] Mike: And I'm not sure if they're still around or not, but they... They took, uh, one or more funding rounds. I'm not sure exactly, but they were VC backed. They were doing, background jobs, scheduled jobs, uh, you know, running container, running container jobs. They, they eventually, I think, wound up sort of settling on Docker containers. [00:28:06] They'll basically spin up a Docker container. And that container can do whatever it wants. It can execute for a second and then shut down, or it can run for, for however long, but they would, um, yeah, I, yeah, I'll, I'll stop there because I don't know the actual details of exactly their system, but I'm not sure if they're still around, but that's the only one that I remember offhand that was around, you know, years ago. [00:28:32] Yeah, it's, it's mostly, you know, low level open source infrastructure. And so, anytime you have funded startups, they're generally using that open source infrastructure to build their own SaaS. And so SaaS's are the vast majority of where you see sort of, uh, commercial software. [00:28:51] Jeremy: so I guess in that way it, it, it gave you this, this window or this area where you could come in and there wasn't, other than that iron, product, there wasn't this big money that you were fighting against. It was sort of, it was you telling people openly, I'm, I'm working on this thing. [00:29:11] I need to make money so that I can sustain it. And, if you, yeah. like the work I do, then, you know, basically support me. Right. And, and so I think that, I'm wondering how we can reproduce that more often because when you see new products, a lot of times it is VC backed, right? [00:29:35] Because people say, I need to work on this. I need to be paid. and I can't ask a team to do this. For nothing, right? So [00:29:44] Mike: Yeah. It's. It's a wicked problem. Uh, it's a really, really hard problem to solve if you take vc you there, that that really kind of means that you need to be making tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. If you are building a small or relatively small. You know, put small in quotes there because I don't really know what that means, but if you have a small open source project, you can't charge huge amounts for it, right? [00:30:18] I mean, Sidekiq is a, I would call a medium sized open source project, and I'm charging a thousand bucks for it. So if you're building, you know, I don't know, I don't even want to necessarily give example, but if you're building some open source project, and It's one of 300 libraries that people's applications will depend on. [00:30:40] You can't necessarily charge a thousand dollars for that library. depending on the size and the capabilities, maybe you can, maybe you can't. But there's going to be a long tail of open source projects that just, they can't, they can't charge much, if anything, for them. So, unfortunately, we have, you know, these You kind of have two pathways. [00:31:07] Venture capital, where you've got to sell a ton, or free. And I've kind of walked that fine line where I'm a small business, I can charge a small amount because I'm bootstrapped. And, and I don't need huge amounts of money, and I, and I have a project that is of the right size to where I can charge a decent amount of money. [00:31:32] That means that I can survive with 500 or a thousand customers. I don't need to have a hundred million dollars worth of customers. Because I, you know, when I started the business, one of the constraints I said is I don't want to hire anybody. I'm just going to be solo. And part of the, part of my ability to keep a low price and, and keep running sustainably, even with just You know, only a few hundred customers is because I'm solo. [00:32:03] I don't have the overhead of investors. I don't have the overhead of other employees. I don't have an office space. You know, my overhead is very small. So that is, um, you know, I just kind of have a unique business in that way, I guess you might say. Keeping the business solo [00:32:21] Jeremy: I think that's that's interesting about your business as well But the fact that you've kept it you've kept it solo which I would imagine in most businesses, they need support people. they need, developers outside of maybe just one. Um, there's all sorts of other, I don't think overhead is the right word, but you just need more people, right? [00:32:45] And, and what do you think it is about Sidekiq that's made it possible for it to just be a one person operation? [00:32:52] Mike: There's so much administrative overhead in a business. I explicitly create business policies so that I can run solo. you know, my support policy is officially you get one email ticket or issue per quarter. And, and anything more than that, I can bounce back and say, well, you're, you're requiring too much support. [00:33:23] In reality, I don't enforce that at all. And people email me all the time, but, but things like. Things like dealing with accounting and bookkeeping and taxes and legal stuff, licensing, all that is, yeah, a little bit of overhead, but I've kept it as minimal as I can. And part of that is I don't want to hire another employee because then that increases the administrative overhead that I have. [00:33:53] And Sidekiq is so tied to me and my knowledge that if I hire somebody, they're probably not going to know Ruby and threading and all the intricate technical detail necessary to build and maintain and support the system. And so really you'll kind of regress a little bit. We won't be able to give as good support because I'm busy helping that other employee. Being selective about customers [00:34:23] Mike: So, yeah, it's, it's a tightrope act where you've got to really figure out how can I scale myself as far as possible without overwhelming myself. The, the overwhelming thing that I have that I've never been able to solve. It's just dealing with billing inquiries, customers, companies, emailing me saying, how do we buy this thing? [00:34:46] Can I get an invoice? Every company out there, it seems wants an invoice. And the problem with invoicing is it takes a lot more. manual labor and administrative overhead to issue that invoice to collect payment on the invoice. So that's one of the reasons why I have a very strict policy about credit card only for, for the vast majority of my customers. [00:35:11] And I demand that companies pay a lot more. You have to have a pretty big enterprise license if you want an invoice. And if the company, if the company comes back and complains and says, well, you know, that's ridiculous. We don't, we don't want to pay that much. We don't need it that much. Uh, you know, I, I say, okay, well then you have two, two things, two, uh, two things. [00:35:36] You can either pay with a credit card or you can not use Sidekiq. Like, that's, that's it. I'm, I don't need your money. I don't want the administrative overhead of dealing with your accounting department. I just want to support my, my customers and build my software. And, and so, yeah, I don't want to turn into a billing clerk. [00:35:55] So sometimes, sometimes the, the, the best thing in business that you can do is just say no. [00:36:01] Jeremy: That's very interesting because I think being a solo... Person is what probably makes that possible, right? Because if you had the additional staff, then you might say like, Well, I need to pay my staff, so we should be getting, you know, as much business as [00:36:19] Mike: Yeah. Chasing every customer you can, right. But yeah. [00:36:22] Every customer is different. I mean, I have some customers that just, they never contact me. They pay their bill really fast or right on time. And they're paying me, you know, five figures, 20, a year. And they just, it's a, God bless them because those are, are the. [00:36:40] Best customers to have and the worst customers are the ones who are paying 99 bucks a month and everything that they don't understand or whatever is a complaint. So sometimes, sometimes you, you want to, vet your customers from that perspective and say, which one of these customers are going to be good? [00:36:58] Which ones are going to be problematic? [00:37:01] Jeremy: And you're only only person... And I'm not sure how many customers you have, but [00:37:08] Mike: I have 2000 [00:37:09] Jeremy: 2000 customers. [00:37:10] Okay. [00:37:11] Mike: Yeah. [00:37:11] Jeremy: And has that been relatively stable or has there been growth [00:37:16] Mike: It's been relatively stable the last couple of years. Ruby has, has sort of plateaued. Um, it's, you don't see a lot of growth. I'm getting probably, um, 15, 20 percent growth maybe. Uh, so I'm not growing like a weed, like, you know, venture capital would want to see, but steady incremental growth is, is, uh, wonderful, especially since I do very little. [00:37:42] Sales and marketing. you know, I come to RubyConf I, I I tweet out, you know, or I, I toot out funny Mastodon Toots occasionally and, and, um, and, and put out new releases of the software. And, and that's, that's essentially my, my marketing. My marketing is just staying in front of developers and, and, and being a presence in the Ruby community. [00:38:06] But yeah, it, it's, uh. I, I, I see not a, not a huge amount of churn, but I see enough sales to, to, to stay up and keep my head above water and to keep growing, um, slowly but surely. Support needs haven't grown [00:38:20] Jeremy: And as you've had that steady growth, has the support burden not grown with it? [00:38:27] Mike: Not as much because once customers are on Sidekiq and they've got it working, then by and large, you don't hear from them all that much. There's always GitHub issues, you know, customers open GitHub issues. I love that. but yeah, by and large, the community finds bugs. and opens up issues. And so things remain relatively stable. [00:38:51] I don't get a lot of the complete newbie who has no idea what they're doing and wants me to, to tell them how to use Sidekiq that I just don't see much of that at all. Um, I have seen it before, but in that case, generally, I, I, I politely tell that person that, listen, I'm not here to educate you on the product. [00:39:14] It's there's documentation in the wiki. Uh, and there's tons of, of more Ruby, generic Ruby, uh, educational material out there. That's just not, not what I do. So, so yeah, by and large, the support burden is, is not too bad because once people are, are up and running, it's stable and, and they don't, they don't need to contact me. [00:39:36] Jeremy: I wonder too, if that's perhaps a function of the price, because if you're a. new developer or someone who's not too familiar with how to do job processing or what they want to do when you, there is the open source product, of course. but then the next step up, I believe is about a hundred dollars a month. [00:39:58] And if you're somebody who is kind of just getting started and learning how things work, you're probably not going to pay that, is my guess. And so you'll never hear from them. [00:40:11] Mike: Right, yeah, that's a good point too, is the open source version, which is what people inevitably are going to use and integrate into their app at first. Because it's open source, you're not going to email me directly, um, and when people do email me directly, Sidekiq support questions, I do, I reply literally, I'm sorry I don't respond to private email, unless you're a customer. [00:40:35] Please open a GitHub issue and, um, that I try to educate both my open source users and my commercial customers to try and stay in GitHub issues because private email is a silo, right? Private email doesn't help anybody else but them. If I can get people to go into GitHub issues, then that's a public record. [00:40:58] that people can search. Because if one person has that problem, there's probably a dozen other people that have that same problem. And then that other, those other 11 people can search and find the solution to their problem at four in the morning when I'm asleep. Right? So that's, that's what I'm trying to do is, is keep, uh, keep everything out in the open so that people can self service as much as possible. Sidekiq open source [00:41:24] Jeremy: And on the open source side, are you still primarily the main contributor? Or do you have other people that are [00:41:35] Mike: I mean, I'd say I do 90 percent of the work, which is why I don't feel guilty about keeping 100 percent of the money. A lot of open source projects, when they look for financial sustainability, they also look for how can we split this money amongst the team. And that's, that's a completely different topic that I've. [00:41:55] is another reason why I've stayed solo is if I hire an employee and I pay them 200, 000 a year as a developer, I'm meanwhile keeping all the rest of the profits of the company. And so that almost seems a little bit unfair. because we're both still working 40 hours a week, right? Why am I the one making the vast majority of the, of the profit and the money? [00:42:19] Um, so, uh, I've always, uh, that's another reason why I've stayed solo, but, but yeah, having a team of people working on something, I do get, regular commits, regular pull requests from people, fixing a bug that they found or just making a tweak that. that they saw, that they thought they could improve. [00:42:42] A little more rarely I get a significant improvement or feature, as a pull request. but Sidekiq is so stable these days that it really doesn't need a team of people maintaining it. The volume of changes necessary, I can easily keep up with that. So, I'm still doing 90 95 percent of the work. Are there other Sidekiq-like opportunities out there? [00:43:07] Jeremy: Yeah, so I think Sidekiq has sort of a unique positioning where it's the code base itself is small enough where you can maintain it yourself and you have some help, but primarily you're the main maintainer. And then you have enough customers who are willing to, to pay for the benefit it gives them on top of what the open source product provides. [00:43:36] cause it's, it's, you were talking about how. Every project people work on, they have, they could have hundreds of dependencies, right? And to ask somebody to, to pay for each of them is, is probably not ever going to happen. And so it's interesting to think about how you have things like, say, you know, OpenSSL, you know, it's a library that a whole bunch of people rely on, but nobody is going to pay a monthly fee to use it. [00:44:06] You have things like, uh, recently there was HashiCorp with Terraform, right? They, they decided to change their license because they, they wanted to get, you know, some of that value back, some of the money back, and the community basically revolted. Right? And did a fork. And so I'm kind of curious, like, yeah, where people can find these sweet spots like, like Sidekiq, where they can find this space where it's just small enough where you can work on it on your own and still get people to pay for it. [00:44:43] It's, I'm trying to picture, like, where are the spaces? Open source as a public utility [00:44:48] Mike: We need to look at other forms of financing beyond pure capitalism. If this is truly public infrastructure that needs to be maintained for the long term, then why are we, why is it that we depend on capitalism to do that? Our roads, our water, our sewer, those are not Capitalist, right? Those are utilities, that's public infrastructure that we maintain, that the government helps us maintain. [00:45:27] And in a sense, tech infrastructure is similar or could be thought of in a similar fashion. So things like Open Collective, things like, uh, there's a, there's a organization in Europe called NLNet, I think, out of the Netherlands. And they do a lot of grants to various open source projects to help them improve the state of digital infrastructure. [00:45:57] They support, for instance, Mastodon as a open source project that doesn't have any sort of corporate backing. They see that as necessary social media infrastructure, uh, for the long term. And, and I, and I think that's wonderful. I like to see those new directions being explored where you don't have to turn everything into a product, right? [00:46:27] And, and try and market and sale, um, and, and run ads and, and do all this stuff. If you can just make the case that, hey, this is, this is useful public infrastructure that so many different, um, Technical, uh, you know, applications and businesses could rely on, much like FedEx and DHL use our roads to the benefit of their own, their own corporate profits. [00:46:53] Um, why, why, why shouldn't we think of tech infrastructure sort of in a similar way? So, yeah, I would like to see us explore more. in that direction. I understand that in America that may not happen for quite a while because we are very, capitalist focused, but it's encouraging to see, um, places like Europe, uh, a little more open to, to trialing things like, cooperatives and, and grants and large long term grants to, to projects to see if they can, uh, provide sustainability in, in, you know, in a new way. [00:47:29] Jeremy: Yeah, that's a good point because I think right now, a lot of the open source infrastructure that we all rely on, either it's being paid for by large companies and at the whim of those large companies, if Google decides we don't want to pay for you to work on this project anymore, where does the money come from? [00:47:53] Right? And on the other hand, there's the thousands, tens of thousands of people who are doing it. just for free out of the, you know, the goodness of their, their heart. And that's where a lot of the burnout comes from. Right. So I think what you're saying is that perhaps a lot of these pieces that we all rely on, that our, our governments, you know, here in the United States, but also around the world should perhaps recognize as this is, like you said, this is infrastructure, and we should be. [00:48:29] Paying these people to keep the equivalent of the roads and, and, uh, all that working. [00:48:37] Mike: Yeah, I mean, I'm not, I'm not claiming that it's a perfect analogy. There's, there's, there's lots of questions that are unanswered in that, right? How do you, how do you ensure that a project is well maintained? What does that even look like? What does that mean? you know, you can look at a road and say, is it full of potholes or is it smooth as glass, right? [00:48:59] It's just perfectly obvious, but to a, to a digital project, it's, it's not as clear. So, yeah, but, but, but exploring those new ways because turning everybody into a businessman so that they can, they can keep their project going, it, it, it itself is not sustainable, right? so yeah, and that's why everything turns into a SaaS because a SaaS is easy to control. [00:49:24] It's easy to gatekeep behind a paywall and it's easy to charge for, whereas a library on GitHub. Yeah. You know, what do you do there? You know, obviously GitHub has sponsors, the sponsors feature. You've got Patreon, you've got Open Collective, you've got Tidelift. There's, there's other, you know, experiments that have been run, but nothing has risen to the top yet. [00:49:47] and it's still, it's still a bit of a grind. but yeah, we'll see, we'll see what happens, but hopefully people will keep experimenting and, and maybe, maybe governments will start. Thinking in the direction of, you know, what does it mean to have a budget for digital infrastructure maintenance? [00:50:04] Jeremy: Yeah, it's interesting because we, we started thinking about like, okay, where can we find spaces for other Sidekiqs? But it sounds like maybe, maybe that's just not realistic, right? Like maybe we need more of a... Yeah, a rethinking of, I guess the, the structure of how people get funded. Yeah. [00:50:23] Mike: Yeah, sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to think at a higher level. You know, we, the, the sustainability problem in American Silicon Valley based open source developers is naturally going to tend toward venture capital and, and capitalism. And I, you know, I think, I think that's, uh, extremely problematic on a, on a lot of different, in a lot of different ways. [00:50:47] And, and so sometimes you need to step back and say, well, maybe we're, maybe we just don't have the right tool set to solve this problem. But, you know, I, I. More than that, I'm not going to speculate on because it is a wicked problem to solve. [00:51:04] Jeremy: Is there anything else you wanted to, to mention or thought we should have talked about? [00:51:08] Mike: No, I, I, I loved the talk, of sustainability and, and open source. And I, it's, it's a, it's a topic really dear to my heart, obviously. So I, I am happy to talk about it at length with anybody, anytime. So thank you for having me. [00:51:25] Jeremy: All right. Thank you very much, Mike.

Rounding Up Season 2 | Episode 5 – Horizontal Enrichment Guest: Tisha Jones Mike Wallus: At their best, programs with titles such as “gifted and talented” seek to provide enrichment to a subset of learners. That said, these initiatives sometimes have unintended consequences, sending messages about which students are, or are not, capable doers of mathematics. What if there was a way educators could offer problems that extend grade-level learning to each and every student? Today we'll explore the concept of horizontal enrichment with Tisha Jones, MLC's senior manager of assessment.  Mike: Well, thanks for joining us, Tisha. I am excited to explore this idea of horizontal enrichment. Tisha Jones: I am excited to be here and talk about it. Mike: So, we're using the term “horizontal enrichment,” and I think we should define the term and talk about, what do we mean when we say that? Tisha: When we're talking about horizontal enrichment, we are looking at how do we enrich the curriculum, but on grade level. So, not trying to accelerate into the next grade level. But how do we help them go deeper with the content that is at their developmental level currently? Mike: That's really interesting because when I was teaching, I would've said enrichment and acceleration are exactly the same thing, which, I think, leads me to the next question, which is: What are the features of a task that might be designed with horizontal enrichment in mind? Tisha: So, I like to think about horizontal enrichment as an opportunity to engage the practice standards. So, how do we help kids do more of the things that we think being a [mathematician] actually is? So, how can we get them more invested in problem-solving? How can we get them using tools? How can we get them thinking creatively in math and not just procedurally. And, of course, we try to do that on a daily basis in math, but when we're enriching, we want to give them tasks that raise the ceiling of their thinking, where they can approach things in lots of different ways and push their thinking in ways that maybe they haven't, where they can apply the concepts that they're using to solve interesting and novel problems. Mike: I think that's really helpful because you're really clarifying for me, one way that we could “enrich” kids would be to teach them procedures that they might learn in a grade or several grades that are of beyond where they're at right now. But what you're suggesting is that enrichment really looks like problem-solving and novelty and creativity. And we can do that with grade-level ideas. Am I making sense of that correctly? Tisha: Absolutely, and I get excited because I also think that it's fun working a problem where the path is not clear-cut to get to the answer and try some things out and see what happens and look at how can I learn from what I did to make new decisions to try to get to where I'm going? To me, that's bringing in the joy of doing math. Mike: So, this is interesting. I think that maybe the best way to unpack these ideas might be to look at a specific task. So, I'm wondering, is there a specific task that you could help us take a look at more closely? Tisha: Absolutely. So, we're going to take a look at a task from third grade, and it comes out of Concept Quests, which is a supplemental resource that's published by Math Learning Center, and this task is called “The Lasagna Task.” So, I'm just going to read it and then we can talk about what is it asking kids to do. So, it says, “You need to assume that you like lasagna and would like as much lasagna as possible. For each of the ‘Would you rather…?' scenarios below, justify your reasoning with equations, pictures, or both.” So, that's the setup for the kids. And then there's three “Would you rather…?” scenarios. So, the first is, “Would you rather: a.) share three lasagnas between two families or share four lasagnas between three families? b.) Would you rather share four lasagnas between six families or share three lasagnas between four families?” And the last one is, “c.) Would you rather share five lasagnas between three families or share six lasagnas between four families?” Mike: Ahh, this is so great. There's so much to unpack here to step back and try to analyze this. What are some things that you would want us to notice about the way this task is set up for kids? Tisha: So, there's a few things. The first thing is, I love that there's this progression of questions, of scenarios. I think what's also really important is, when you're looking at this on the page, there's no front-loading here. No, “Well, let me tell you about how to do this.” This is just, “I'm going to give you this problem, and I'm going to ask you to just take a stab at it, give it a shot.” So, what we want kids to do is start to learn, how do you approach a problem? What is your first step? What things do you do to make sense of what it's asking? Do you draw a picture? Do you start with numbers? Do you try to find important information? How do you even get started on a problem? And that's so important, right? That's a huge part of the process of problem-solving. And when we front-load for kids, we take away their opportunities to work on those skills. Mike: So, there's a couple things that jump out for me when I've been reading the text of what you were reading aloud to the group. One bit is this language at the end where it says, “For each of the ‘Would you rather…?' scenarios below, justify your reasoning with equations, pictures, or both.” And that language just pops out for me. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the choice of that language in the way that this is set up for kids. Tisha: Ahh, I love that language. So, I think this is amazing for kids because as a teacher, we've all had kids that come up to us and they hand us their paper and they say, “Is this right?” And when we ask them to justify their response, I think we're putting the responsibility back on them to be able to come up to me and say, “I think this is right because of this.” So now, who is owning what they did? The kids are owning what they did, right? And they're owning it because they've gone through this process of trying to prove it not just to somebody else but to themselves. If you're justifying it, you should be able to go back through and say, “Well, because I did this and this is this and because I did this next step and this is how this worked out, this is why I know my answer is correct.” And I love that kids can own their own answers and their own work to be able to determine whether it makes sense or not. Mike: I'm going to read a part of this again because I just think it's worth lingering on and spending a little bit of time thinking about how this question structure impacts kids or has the potential to impact kids. So, I'm going to read it again for the audience: “Would you rather: a.) share three lasagnas between two families or share four lasagnas between three families?” So, listeners, just pause for a second and think about the mathematics in that question, and then also think about what mathematics might come out of it. What is it about the structure of that question that creates space for kids to solve problems, encounter novelty, and make decisions? Well, Tisha, since we can't hear their answer, I would love it if you could share a little bit of your thinking. What is it about the design that you think creates those conditions for kids? Tisha: So, while there is an implied operation, it's not necessarily an obvious operation, right? I think that it is something that easily lends itself to drawing a picture, which, I think, when students start modeling the scenario, they now have … that opens up all kinds of creativity, right? They're going to model in the way that they're seeing it in their head. They're not focused on trying to divide this number by that number. They may not even, at first, realize that they're working with fractions. But by the end of it, because it's something that they can model, there's still a lot of room for them to be able to find success on this task, which I think is really important. Mike: It seems like there's also opportunities for teachers to engage with kids because there's a fair number of assumptions that live inside of this question structure, right? Like three lasagnas for two families, four lasagnas for three families, but we haven't talked about how large those families are, how many people are in each family. Tisha: How much lasagna there is ( chuckles ). Mike: Yeah! Right? Tisha: Absolutely. So, I think it's also fair to say that maybe a kid would decide that the four lasagnas between three families, those are going to need to be bigger pans of lasagna. So, how are they bringing in their world experience with feeding people and having to make these decisions? There's nothing in here that says that the lasagnas have to be the same size or that the families have to be the same size. So, as they're justifying the way that they would go as a teacher, I'm looking for: Is their justification, a sound justification? Mike: Well, the thing that I started to think about, too, is, if you did introduce the variable that, “Oh, this family has three members and this family has, say, 12. Well, how many lasagnas would you need in order to give an equal share to the family with 12 versus the family with three?” There's a lot of ways as a teacher that I can continue to adapt and play with the ideas and really press kids to examine their own assumptions and their own logic. Tisha: Absolutely, yeah. So, I think that's a really great point, too, is that, there's a lot of room to even extend these problems further. Would your answer change if you knew that one family was a family of six people, so you can even push their thinking even further than what's just on the paper. Mike: I keep going back to this notion of justification. And we've talked about the structure of the problems as a way to differentiate for kids, to really press them on justification. But the other side of the coin is, as an educator, [it] really gives me a chance to understand my students' thinking and then continue to make moves or offer tasks that either shine a light on the blind spots that they have or extend some of the ideas in interesting and productive ways. Tisha: Yes, I would agree with that. Mike: So, I want to play with a couple more questions, Tisha. One of the ones that we touched on right at the beginning was this idea that a task can be characterized as enriching and challenging, and yet it can still be at a student's grade level. And I think that really stands out for me, and I suspect it probably might be a challenging idea for educators to get their heads around, especially if you've been a teacher, and for the majority of your career, acceleration and enrichment have meant the same thing. Can you unpack this just a little bit for the audience, this idea of enrichment? Tisha: So, I like to think about enrichment as, how do we help our students think more deeply? There's so much room within a school year for a particular concept, for example. Like, let's say with fractions. There's a lot of room for students to think about things in ways they haven't thought about or ways that maybe we don't ask them to think about things in the curriculum; that, if we don't give them the opportunity, they're not going to, right? With enrichment, it's like we're giving them more opportunities to apply what they're learning about concepts. The other thing that I think is really important about enrichment is that it isn't just for the kids that may be characterize as being your high-level students. Because enrichment is still important. Problem-solving is still important for all kids. No matter where they are computationally, we want to make sure that all kids are getting opportunities to be problem-solvers, to apply their thinking in ways that work for them and not just the ways that we're asking them to through our curriculum. Acceleration, I think, often applies when kids are just well beyond grade level—but enrichment is really for every single kid. Mike: Yeah, I think you answered, at least partly, the question that I was going to pose next, which was a question about access. Because at least with Concepts Quests, which is the MLC supplemental resource, we would describe this as a tool that should be made available to all students, not a particularly small subset of students. And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit more about the case for that. Tisha: So, if we go back to our lasagna problem, once our kids have had opportunities to read it and make sense out of it, at that point, I truly believe that there is an entry point in these problems for any kid. These are not dependent on computation. So, a student can draw pictures. I believe that all of my students that I've had throughout my years of teaching were capable of drawing a picture to model a problem. Then, I really believe that a good problem can have an entry point for every student. Mike: The other thing that you're really making me think about is, how much we've equated the idea of enrichment, acceleration. We've fused those ideas, and we've really associated it with procedure and calculation versus problem-solving and thinking creatively. Tisha: I think that happens a lot. I think that's a lot of how people think about math. You know, it's who can do it fast, who can get there? But what I think our goal is, is to create students who are not just able to be calculators, but who are able to apply their understandings of multiplication, addition, subtraction, division. They can apply them to novel problems. Mike: Yeah, and the real world isn't designed with a set of “Free set, here's what you should do, repeat directions.” Tisha: ( laughs ) I would love some of those. Where can I find them? Mike and Tisha: ( laugh) Mike: This has been fascinating, and I think we could and probably should do more work on Rounding Up talking about these versions of enrichment that are available for all kids. And I have a suspicion that this conversation is going to cause a lot of folks to reassess, reevaluate, and reflect on how they've understood the idea of enrichment. I'm wondering if we can help those folks out. If I'm an educator who's really interested in exploring the idea of horizontal enrichment in more detail, where might I get started? Or, perhaps, where are there some resources out there that might contain the types of problems that you introduced us to today? Tisha: Well, of course, I have to say Concept Quests. We've put a lot of work into creating some really great tasks. But some other places where you can find tasks that are engaging and help kids to think more deeply are “Open Middle” and “NRICH” and “YouCubed” are just a few resources that I can think of off the top of my head. Mike: Ahh, those are great ones. Tisha, thank you so much for joining us. It's really been a pleasure to have this conversation. Tisha: This has been so fun. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2023 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

Rounding Up Season 2 | Episode 3 – Student Engagement Guest: Dr. Meghan Shaughnessy Mike Wallus: When we say students are engaged in a discussion or a task, what do we really mean? There are observable behaviors that we often code as engaged, but those are just the things that we can see or hear. What does engagement really mean, particularly for students who may not verbally participate on a regular basis? Today on the podcast, we're talking with Dr. Meghan Shaughnessy about the meaning of engagement and a set of strategies teachers can use to extend opportunities for participation to each and every student. Mike: Welcome to the podcast, Meghan. We are super excited to have you joining us. Meghan: I'm excited to be here. Mike: So, I want to start with a question that I think in the past I would've thought had an obvious answer. So, what does or what can participation look like? Meghan: So, I think in answering that question, I want to start with thinking about one of the ways that teachers get feedback on participation in their classroom is through administrator observation. And oftentimes those observations are focused on students making whole-group verbal contributions and discussions, particularly with a focus on students sharing their own ideas. Administrators are often looking at how quiet the space is and how engaged students appear to be, which is often determined by looking at students' body language and whether or not that language matches what is often seen as listening body language, such as having your head up, facing the speaker, et cetera. And as I say all of this, I would also say that defining participation in this way for discussions is both a limited and a problematic view of participation. I say limited in the sense that not all participation is going to be verbal, and it certainly won't always include sharing new ideas. Meghan: So, to give a concrete example, a student might participate by revoicing another student's strategy, which could be really important, providing other students a second chance to hear that strategy. A second example is that a student might create a representation of a strategy being shared verbally by a classmate. And this nonverbal move of creating a representation could be really useful for the class in developing collective understanding of the strategy. The traditional view is problematic, too, in the sense that it assumes that students are not participating when they don't display particular behaviors. To turn to a more equitable approach to conceptualizing and supporting participation, I and my colleagues would argue that this includes learning children's thinking body language, including a focus on written pair talk, and supporting contributions. In other words, moving beyond just having students share their own ideas, having students share what they learned from our classmate. Mike: Yeah. I want to dig into this a little bit more. Because this idea that my read on a child's behavior influences my understanding of what's happening, but also my practice, is really interesting to me. You've really had me thinking a lot about the way that a teacher's read on a student's engagement or participation, it has a lot to do with the cultural script for how adults and children are expected to interact, or at least what we've learned about that in our own lived experiences. I'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit about that.  Meghan: Yeah. One way to start answering that question might be to ask everyone to take a minute to think about how you participate in a discussion. Do you use the sort of listening behaviors that teachers are told matter? Are you always sharing new ideas when you participate in a discussion? You also might want to imagine sitting down with a group of your colleagues and asking them to think about when they engage in a discussion outside of class, what does it look and feel like? Are there lots of people talking at once or people talking one at a time? Is everyone that's participating in the discussion sharing new ideas, or are they participating in other sorts of ways? And further, you might imagine asking those colleagues about their discussions outside of class as a child. What did those discussions look and feel like? One of the challenges of being teachers is that we bring our own experiences and sometimes we don't reflect on what children are experiencing. Children's experiences don't necessarily match our own, and we need to be thinking about changing our expectations or explicitly teaching what it means to participate in particular sorts of ways. Yet another layer of challenge here is a tendency to make assumptions about how students from particular cultural groups engage in discussions. You only know what you know. And teachers need opportunities to learn from their students about how they engage in discussions inside and outside of math class, and to be able to think about the connections and disconnections and the opportunities to leverage. Mike: So, you really have me deconstructing some of the norms that were unspoken in my own childhood about being a learner, being a good student. And what you have me thinking is, some of those were voiced, some of those were unvoiced, but I'm really reflecting on how that showed up in the way that I read kids. So, I want to ask you to even go a little bit deeper. Can you share some examples of where our read on the meaning of behaviors might lead to an inaccurate understanding of students' cognitive engagement or the contributions that they might make to discourse? Meghan: Yeah. Some of it can be thinking about sort of traditional behavior reads in a traditional sense. Oftentimes, when children have their heads down or their eyes closed or they're not looking at the speaker, the child is seen as not engaging or participating. But if we think about it, people have lots of different thinking postures, and for some people having their heads down or closing their eyes is actually the way in which they're thinking deeply about the ideas that are being shared in the discussion. And so, engagement might look for them. They may be carefully tracking and thinking about the ideas, but the way that that gets expressed may not be the way that we traditionally think about what engagement should look like in classrooms. Mike: It feels like there's two pieces to this question about reading behavior and interpretation. One piece that you talked about there was just this idea that we need to have conversations with children. The other piece that I kept thinking about is, how might an educator interrogate their own cultural script around participation? Are there questions that educators could ask themselves or practices that they might engage in with colleagues that would help them take these things that are subconscious and unspoken and maybe raise them up? So, if you have an awareness of them, it's easy to recognize how that's influencing your read or your instructional moves. Meghan: Yeah, I think there are kind of two pieces to this. So, one goes back to the idea that I shared about the importance of recognizing our own experiences in school as a student and our experiences out of school, both as a child and as an adult in discussions and trying to think about what are we bringing to our work as a teacher that we might need to interrogate because it may be different than the experiences of children? And at the same time, we need to be having conversations with children about what it looks like to participate in discussions in different sorts of spaces so that we can learn more about what children's experiences are outside of school. The big idea is to recognize that children's experiences are often very different from our own, and we have to be careful at the same time not to make assumptions that all children from particular communities experience participation and discussion in the same way. This can be highly variable. Mike: I think what's really interesting about the work that you and your colleagues have done is, there's an element of it that's really about taking a step back and recognizing these ideas like cultural scripts that we have about participation and really trying to interrogate our own understandings that we've come to, and then how do we interact with kids. But on the other hand, you all have some really practical strategies and suggestions for educators on how they can use an expanded understanding of participation to create more opportunity for kids. So, I'm wondering if we can talk a little bit about some of those things. Meghan: Absolutely. So, I have a set of four different strategies that my colleagues and I have been working on over time. So, I'm going to start by talking about task selection. Sometimes students' cultural backgrounds and experiences in schools may be at odds, particularly around the work of critiquing the ideas of others. And this can in particular be a challenge when the critiquing is about critiquing the teacher's ideas. So, it leads to this question of, “How can we support students in learning to critique in ways that don't dismiss their own culture and experience?” So, our practical solution to working in this space is that we've used written critique tasks. So, when working with students, we'll show a fictitious person's response to a mathematics task and ask students to do three sorts of things. So, one is to describe the student's strategy in their own words. A second thing is to think about and write down the questions that they have about the student's strategy. And then the third piece is for students to think about and record what suggestions they have for the student and how they would convince the student to use those suggestions. Meghan: So, how does this support participation? Well, it can explicitly support the work of critiquing. It's written, and it allows students to think carefully rather than needing to think on the spot. And thirdly, the student is not a classmate, which can reduce the feeling of confrontation that some students feel when engaging in critique. So, one thing that I want to name with this particular strategy around task selection and using a written critique task, is that we've recognized that the way that critiquing is often worked on in mathematics classrooms may be at odds with some students' experiences with critique outside of school. And so, we're not trying to say that students shouldn't be supported in learning to critique mathematical ideas. That's an important part of mathematical work. But rather we're trying to design a structure that's going to not dismiss students' experiences outside of school, but at the same time give them experiences with the mathematical work of critiquing. Mike: Yeah, the questions themselves are powerful, but it seems like the choice to use a fictitious person is really critical to this task design. Meghan: Absolutely. And as a teacher, too, it really does give us a little bit more control in terms of what is the critique that's going to unfold in that particular classroom. Mike: It strikes me that they're able to engage in the task of critique without that feeling of conflict. Meghan: Absolutely. It really opens up space for students to engage in that critiquing work and takes a lot of that pressure off of them. Mike: Let's talk about the second idea. Meghan: Alright. So, the second strategy is to use a deliberate turn and talk. In discussions, some students are ready to share their ideas right away, but other students need a chance to practice verbalizing the ideas that they're about to share. Sometimes students' ideas are not completely formed, and they need to learn how others hear the ideas to refine their arguments. Further, in multilingual classrooms, sometimes students need opportunities to refine their thinking in their home language, and importantly, they also need opportunities to develop academic language in their home language. So, in a deliberate turn and talk, a teacher deliberately pairs students to share their thinking with a partner, and the partner asks clarifying questions. The pairs might be made based on knowledge of students' home language use, their mathematical understandings, or some other important thing the teacher is thinking about as they engage in that pairing. So how might using deliberately paired turn and talks broaden participation in a discussion? Meghan: Well, first, all students are being asked to participate and have the opportunity to refine their own mathematical argument and consider someone else's ideas. In a whole-class discussion, it's not the case that every student is likely to have that opportunity. So, turn and talks provide that opportunity. Second, turn and talks can support a broader range of students in feeling ready and willing to share their thinking in a whole group. Third, these pairs can also set up students who are not yet comfortable sharing their own ideas in whole group to be able to share someone else's idea. So, a way for them to still share ideas in whole group, even though it's not necessarily their own idea that's being shared. Mike: So, what I'm thinking about is, if you and I were engaged in a deliberate turn and talk, what might it look like if I'm a student, you're a student and we've engaged in the norms of the deliberate turn and talk as you described them? Let's just walk through that for a second. What would it look like? Meghan: So, in a pair turn and talk, it really has the structure of partner A, sharing their thinking, and then partner B being responsible for asking questions about the ideas that they just heard in order to further their own understanding of partner's ideas, but also to provide partner A with some feedback about the ways in which they've been expressing their ideas. So, that's pretty different than what often happens in classrooms where kids are invited to share in a discussion and they actually haven't tried verbalizing it yet, right? And they have no way of thinking about, or limited ways of thinking about, how other people might hear those ideas that they're about to share. Mike: I think the other thing that pops up to me is that another scenario that often occurs in turn and talk is it's really turn and tell. Because one person is essentially sharing their thinking and the norms aren't necessarily that they respond, it's just that they share in kind, right? So, this idea that you're actually engaging with someone's idea feels like an important piece of what it looks like to do a deliberate turn and talk versus some of the other iterations that we've just been describing. Meghan: Absolutely. Mike: Well, I'm excited to hear about the third strategy. Meghan: Alright. Our third strategy focuses on supporting participation through connection-making. So, when you think about a typical discussion in a classroom, opportunities for individual students to make explicit connections between ideas shared, are often pretty limited—or at least their opportunities to verbalize or to record in some other way. Often, only one or two students are able to share the connections. And so, a question for us has been how can we provide opportunities for students who are not yet ready to share those connections in whole group or might not have the opportunity? When you think about the fact that 28 students are not going to be able to share connections on a given day to be able to engage in the making of those connections. So, we have two different structures that we have been exploring. The first structure is really a pair share. Students are paired, if possible, with a student who used a different strategy, who has a different solution. Meghan: Each partner explains their strategy, and then together they look for connections between their thinking. So again, this moves beyond the traditional turn and talk because in addition to sharing your thinking, there's a task that the partners are doing about thinking about the connections between those two strategies. A second sort of structure is really using a stop and jot. In this instance, the teacher selects one strategy for students to be thinking about making a connection to, and then each student jots a connection between their strategy or solution and the strategy that the teacher has selected. And they do this in their notebook or in some other written form in the classroom. And so, these two different structures can support participation by having all students have an opportunity to share their own thinking, either verbally with a partner or by recording it in written form. And all students at the same time are having an opportunity to make connections in the classroom. Mike: I think what's interesting about that is to compare that one with the initial idea around critique. In this particular case, I'm going to make a guess that part of the reason that in this one you might actually use students from the classroom versus a fictitious student, is that connecting versus critiquing our two really different kind of social practices. Is that sensible? Meghan: That is sensible. And I would argue that if you're going to be engaging in critique work just to say it, that part of critiquing actually is recognizing, too, what is similar and different about strategies. Mike: Gotcha. Meghan: Right? So, there is that piece in addition to put that out there. Mike: Gotcha. Let's talk about the fourth one. Meghan: Alright. So, the fourth strategy really focuses on broadening participation in the conclusion of a discussion. So, as we all know in a discussion, students hear lots of different ideas, but they don't all get to share their thinking in a discussion, nor do they all get to share what they are thinking at the end of the discussion. But we also know that students need space to consolidate their own thinking and the questions that they have about the ideas that have been shared. At the same time, teachers need access to students' thinking to plan for the next day, particularly when a discussion is not finished at the end of a given math lesson. With all of this, the challenge is that time is often tight at the end of a discussion. So, one structure that we've used has been a note to self. And in a note to self, students write a note to themselves about how they are currently thinking about a particular sort of problem at the end of a discussion. And a note to self allows students to take stock of where they are with respect to particular ideas, similar to a stop and jot. It can create a record of thinking that can be accessed on a subsequent day by students. If those notes yourself are recorded in a notebook. Again, support students and tracking on their own questions and how their thinking is changing over time, and it can provide the teacher with a window into all students' thinking. Mike: Can you talk about the experience of watching the note to self and just seeing the impact that it had? Meghan: So, it was day one of our mathematics program, and we had done a discussion around an unequally partitioned rectangle task, and students were being asked to figure out what fraction of the hole was shaded. And there clearly wasn't enough time that day to really explore all the different sorts of ideas. And so, Darius Robinson, who was one of the co-teachers, invited students to share some of their initial ideas about the task. And the way that Darius then ended up deciding to conclude things that day was saying to students, “I think we're going to do this thing that I'm going to call a note to self.” And he invited the students to open up their notebooks and to record how they were thinking about the different ideas that had gotten shared thus far in the discussion. There was some modeling of what that might look like, something along the lines of, “I agree with … because,” but it really opened up that space then for students to begin to record how they were thinking about otherwise ideas in math class. So, how might using a note to self-broaden participation in a discussion? Well, first of all, students have the opportunity to participate. All students are being asked to write a note to themselves. It creates space for students to engage with others' ideas that doesn't necessarily require talk, right? So, this is an opportunity to privilege other ways of participating, and it also allows for thinking and processing time for all students. Mike: I think the other piece that jumps out for me is this idea that it's normal and to be expected that you're going to have some unfinished thinking or understanding at the end of a particular lesson or what have you, right? That partial understanding or growing understanding is a norm. That's the other thing that really jumps out about this practice is it allows kids to say, “This is where I am now,” with the understanding that they have room to grow or they have room to continue refining their thinking. I really love that about that. Meghan: I think it's so important, right? And oftentimes, we read curriculum materials, we read through a lesson for a particular day and get the sense that everything is going to be tied off with a bow at the end of the lesson, and that we're expecting everybody to have a particular sort of understanding at the end of Section 3.5. But as we all know, that's not the reality in classrooms, right? Sometimes discussions take longer because there are really rich ideas that are being shared, and it's just not feasible to get to a particular place of consensus on a particular day. So, it is for teachers to have access to where students are. But at the same time to feel empowered, to be able to say, “I'm going to pick this up the next day, and that doesn't need to be finished on Monday, but that these ideas that we're working on Monday can flow nicely into Tuesday. And as students, your responsibility is to think about, ‘How are you thinking about the task right now?' Jot some notes so when we come back to it tomorrow, we can pick that up together.” Mike: Well, I think that's the other lovely piece about it, too, is that they're engaging in that self-reflection, but they've got an artifact of sorts that they can come back to and say, “Oh yeah, that's where I was, or that's how I was thinking about it.” That allows for a smoother re-engagement with this or that idea. Meghan: Absolutely. And you can add on the pieces of notation that students might choose to do the next day as well, where they might choose to annotate their notes with notes that said, “Yesterday I was thinking this, but now I think this” as a way to further record the ideas that thinking changes over time. Mike: So, I think before we close this interview, I want to say to you that I watched you do your presentation in Los Angeles at NCTM, and it was really eye-opening for me, and I found myself stuck on this for some time. And I suspect that there are people who are going to listen to this podcast who are going to think the same thing. So, what I want to ask you is, if someone's a listener, and this is a new set of ideas for them, do you have any recommendations for where they might go to kind of deepen their understanding of these ideas we've been talking about? Meghan: Sure. I want to give three different sorts of suggestions. So, one suggestion is to look at the fabulous books that have been put together by Amy Lucenta and Grace Kelemanic, who are the authors of “Routines for Reasoning and Thinking for Teaching.” And I would argue that many of the routines that they have developed and that they share in those resources are ones that are really supportive of thinking about, “How do you broaden participation in mathematics discourse?” A second resource that someone might be interested in exploring is a research article that was written in 2017 by Cathy O'Connor, Sarah Michaels, Suzanne Chapin, and Alan (G.) Harbaugh that focuses on the silent and the vocal participation in learning in whole-class discussion, where they carefully looked at learning outcomes for students who were vocally expressing ideas and discussion as well as the silent participants in the discussion, and really found that there was no difference in the learning outcomes for those two groups of students. And so that's important, I think, for us to think about as teachers. At the same time, I want to be clear in acknowledging that all of what we do as teachers needs to be in relation to the learning goals that we have for students. So, sometimes our learning goals are that we want students to be able to share ideas and discussions. And if that's the case, then we actually do need to make sure that we build in opportunities for students to share their ideas verbally in addition to participating in other sorts of ways. Mike: I'm really glad you said that because what I hear you saying is, “This isn't a binary. We're not talking about … Meghan: Correct. Mike: … verbal participation and other forms of participation and saying you have to choose.” I think what I hear you saying is, “If you've only thought about participation from a verbal perspective, these are ways that you can broaden access and also access your students' thinking at the same time.” Meghan: Absolutely. The third thing to share, which has been a theme across this podcast, has really been the importance of learning from our students and talking with the children with whom we're working about their experiences, participating in discussions both in school and outside of school. Mike: Megan, thank you so much for joining us. It really was a pleasure. Meghan: Thank you, Mike, for the opportunity to really share all of these ideas that my colleagues and I have been working on. I want to acknowledge my colleagues, Nicole Garcia, Aileen Kennison, and Darius Robinson, who all played really important roles in developing the ideas that I shared with you today. Mike: Fabulous. Thank you so much. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2023 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

The Lack of Open-Mindedness in SocietyMike: You know, there's definitely no shortage of opinions around here.Torya: Is there really a shortage of opinions anywhere?Mike: Well, there's definitely no shortage of them here.Torya: Seems like most people here agree except some idiot, one small group of idiots.Mike: The problem is that the small group of idiots grows bigger and bigger because nobody ever speaks out against them. We're not in California anymore.Torya: Plenty of people speak out against the group of idiots here.Mike: I don't usually see it. The same group of idiots runs the asylum here. They just have some stuff that they've done in the course of the history of the state that has set up perma laws that can't be revoked. It's weird to me that the legislature is dominated by Democrats, but then they elected a Republican for governor against an incumbent Democrat.Torya: Can't you see what people are sick of?Mike: It's just weird, isn't it? It's almost like the voters said, "Alright, the Democrat had a chance. He didn't do such a great job. Let's let the Republican try." It's weird, right?Torya: Better than what California does, which is just keep electing the same idiots over and over again.Mike: Well, it's too soon to tell. The local type of people seem to have their act together. But let's talk about the recent controversy surrounding Alex Jones and Roseanne Barr's event called Reawaken America.The First Amendment and Public PermitsMike: The city granted a permit for the Reawaken America event, which features conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and others. Some people are demanding that the permit be revoked because it's held on public funded property. However, the city has made it clear that they have an obligation to uphold the First Amendment and ensure that all citizens, regardless of their views, have access to public spaces for public expression.Torya: Public safety is the city's top priority, and they are vigilant with third-party rentals.Mike: Exactly. The city's statement clearly states that they are not affiliated with the event and that permits are based on content-neutral and equal opportunity criteria. As long as the criteria and requirements are met, the city does not discriminate against those wishing to lawfully assemble.The Absurdity of Political ExtremismMike: It's absurd how people handle disagreements today. If you disagree with someone politically, they want you to disappear. They want to live in an echo chamber where everyone agrees with them. It doesn't matter if you agree with them on 99.9% of the issues. If you disagree on one thing, they label you as the enemy.Torya: It's ridiculous. People are quick to label others as Trumpenz or libtards based on one disagreement. It's like they can't comprehend that you can have different opinions on different issues.Mike: That's why I appreciate the Libertarian Party's approach. They have their platform, and they want you to mostly agree with it. But they're more accepting of differences on non-essential issues. They understand that people can have different opinions, and that's okay.Torya: Unfortunately, the major political parties are not like that. They want everyone to believe exactly what they believe, and if you don't, they try to shut you up.Mike: It's getting worse and worse in this country. People are losing the ability to have civil discussions and respect differing opinions. It's a dangerous path we're on.The Impact on Future GenerationsMike: I feel sorry for the kids being born today. The direction this country is going is not good. The lack of open-mindedness and the intolerance for differing opinions will only lead to more division and hostility.Torya: It's disheartening to think about the future. People are so quick to dismiss others based on their political beliefs. We need to learn to have respectful conversations and find common ground.Mike: Absolutely. We need to remember that free speech is free speech, even if we disagree with it. We can't let political extremism divide us further. It's time to embrace open-mindedness and respect for differing opinions.Conclusion and Future OutlookIn conclusion, the lack of open-mindedness and the intolerance for differing opinions in society is a growing concern. People are quick to label and dismiss others based on their political beliefs, leading to further division and hostility. It's important to remember that free speech is a fundamental right, and we must respect the right of others to express their opinions, even if we disagree with them. The future outlook depends on our ability to have civil discussions, find common ground, and embrace open-mindedness. Let's strive for a society where differing opinions are respected and valued.TimestampSummary0:00:15Introduction to the show0:01:02Shoutout to a friend's podcast0:01:12Discussion on the abundance of opinions0:02:35Observations on Nevada's political landscape0:03:21Public demand to revoke a permit for right-wing event0:05:42Predicting potential violence at the event0:06:25Political disagreements leading to violence0:08:03Libertarian Party's acceptance of differing views0:08:37Frustration with people blindly following party lines0:12:03Response to criticism of posting government's statement0:12:53Mic drop moment and the fear of disappearing when disagreeing.0:13:40Name-calling and extremism in political disagreements.0:15:15Australian parody of Fox News and their humorous segments.0:16:23The absurdity of focusing on political affiliations rather than issues.0:17:01People's tendency to identify with and announce their beliefs.0:17:28Wrapping up the discussion and signing off for the night.

！！！特別活動！！！ 即日起只要到學英文吧FB留言，就送你「這句英文怎麼說」的紀念明信片～ https://www.facebook.com/ivybar.com.tw 活動方式： 留下任何對 Mike 祝福的話，或是想說的話，並且留下你的電子信箱讓我們聯絡你 活動截止日期：9/22 快速幫你複習一下這集的主題句 ＆ 單字： 天下無不散的筵席 All good things come to an end. All good things must end. 補充學習 一切安好/ 順利 all is well “All is well that ends well.” 情境對話 Duncan：Mike，你怎麼在收拾東西？難不成你也… Mike, why are you packing up your things? It can't be that you're…. Mike：是啊！歡樂的時光總是過得特別快啊。我也要從這裡畢業了。 It's true! Time flies when you're having fun. It's time for me to move on. Duncan：哇！好捨不得啊。但畢竟天下無不散的筵席。祝你一切安好。 No…I don't want you to go. But anyways, all good things come to an end. I wish you all the best. Mike：謝謝。我會帶著大家的祝福繼續前進。 Thanks. I will remember everyone's well-wishes going forward. 小額贊助支持本節目： https://open.firstory.me/user/ckf6dwd77euw20897td87i5wj 留言告訴我你對這一集的想法： https://open.firstory.me/user/ckf6dwd77euw20897td87i5wj/comments Powered by Firstory Hosting

Rounding Up Season 2 | Episode 1 – Practical Ways to Build Strengths-based Math Classrooms Guest: Beth Kobett Mike Wallus: What if it were possible to capture all of the words teachers said or thought about students and put them in word clouds that hovered over each student throughout the day? What impact might the words in the clouds have on students' learning experience? This is the question that Beth Kobett and Karen Karp pose to start their book about strengths-based teaching and learning. Today on the podcast, we're talking about practices that support strengths-based teaching and learning and ways educators can implement them in their classrooms.  Mike: Hey, Beth, welcome to the podcast. Beth Kobett: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here, Mike. Mike: So, there's a paragraph at the start of the book that you wrote with Karen Karp. You said: ‘As teachers of mathematics, we've been taught that our role is to diagnose, eradicate, and erase students' misconceptions. We've been taught to focus on the challenges in students' work rather than recognizing the knowledge and expertise that exist within the learner.' This really stopped me in my tracks, and it had me thinking about how I viewed my role as a classroom teacher and how I saw my students' work. I think I just want to start with the question, ‘Why start there, Beth?' Beth: Well, I think it has a lot to do with our identity as teachers, that we are fixers and changers and that students come to us, and we have to do something. And we have to change them and make sure that they learn a body of knowledge, which is absolutely important. But within that, if we dig a little bit deeper, is this notion of fixing this idea that, ‘Oh my goodness, they don't know this.' And we have to really attend to the ways in which we talk about it, right? For example, ‘My students aren't ready. My students don't know this.' And what we began noticing was all this deficit language for what was really very normal. When you show up in second grade, guess what? There's lots of things you know, and lots of things you're going to learn. And that's absolutely the job of a teacher and a student to navigate. So, that really helped us think about the ways in which we were entering into conversations with all kinds of people; teachers, families, leadership, and so on, so that we could attend to that. And it would help us think about our teaching in different ways. Mike: So, let's help listeners build a counter-narrative. How would you describe what it means to take a strengths-based approach to teaching and learning? And what might that mean in someone's daily practice? Beth: So, we can look at it globally or instructionally. Like, I'm getting ready to teach this particular lesson in this class. And the counter-narrative is, ‘What do they know? What have they been showing me?' So, for example, I'm getting ready to teach place value to second-graders, and I want to think about all the things that they've already done that I know that they've done. They've been grouping and counting and probably making lots of collections of 10 and so on. And so, I want to think about drawing on their experiences, A. Or B, going in and providing an experience that will reactivate all those prior experiences that they've had and enable students to say, ‘Oh yeah, I've done this before. I've made sets or groups of 10 before.' So, let's talk about what that is, what the names of it, why it's so important, and let's identify tasks that will just really engage them in ways that help them understand that they do bring a lot of knowledge into it. And sometimes we say things so well intentioned, like, ‘This is going to be hard, and you probably haven't thought about this yet.' And so, we sort of set everybody on edge in ways that set it's going to be hard, which means, ‘That's bad.' It's going to be hard, which means, ‘You don't know this yet.' Well, why don't we turn that on its edge and say, ‘You've done lots of things that are going to help you understand this and make sense of this. And that's what our job is right now, is to make sense of what we're doing.' Mike: There's a lot there. One of the things that I think is jumping out for me is this idea is multifaceted. And part of what we're asking ourselves is, ‘What do kids know?' But the other piece that I want to just kind of shine a flashlight on, is there's also this idea of what experiences have they had—either in their home life or in their learning life at school—that can connect to this content or these ideas that you're trying to pull out? That, to me, actually feels like another way to think about this. Like, ‘Oh my gosh, we've done partitioning, we've done grouping,' and all of those experiences. If we can connect back to them, it can actually build up a kid's sense of, like, ‘Oh, OK.' Beth: I love that. And I love the way that you just described that. It's almost like positioning the student to make those connections, to be ready to do that, to be thinking about that and providing a task or a lesson that allows them to say, ‘Oh!' You know, fractions are a perfect example. I mean, we all love to use food, but do we talk about sharing? Do we talk about when we've divided something up? Have we talked about, ‘Hey, you both have to use the same piece of paper, and I need to make sure that you each have an equal space.' I've seen that many times in a classroom. Just tweak that a little bit. Talk about when you did that, you actually were thinking about equal parts. So, helping students … we don't need to make all those connections all the time because they're there for students and children naturally make connections. That's their job ( chuckles ). It really is their job, and they want to do that. Mike: So, the other bit that I want to pick up on is the subtle way that language plays into this. And one example that really stood out for me was when you examined the word ‘misconception.' So, talk about this particular bit of language and how you might tweak it or reframe it when it comes to student learning. Beth: Well, thank you for bringing this up. This is a conversation that I am having consistently right now. Because this idea of misconception positions the student. ‘You're wrong, you don't understand something.' And again, let's go back to that again, ‘I've got to fix it.' But what if learning is pretty natural and normal to, for example, think about Piaget's conservation ideas, the idea that a young child can or can't conserve based on how the arrangement. So, you put in a, you know, five counters out, they count them and then you move them, spread them out and say, ‘Are they the same, more or less?' We wouldn't say that that's a misconception of a child because it's developmental. It's where they are in their trajectory of learning. And so, we are using the word misconception for lots of things that are just natural, the natural part of learning. And we're assuming that the student has created a misunderstanding along the way when that misunderstanding or that that idea of that learning is very, very normal. Beth: Place value is a perfect example of it. Fractions are, too. Let's say they're trying to order fractions on a number line, and they're just looking at the largest value wherever it falls, numerator, denominator, I'm just throwing it down. You know, those are big numbers. So, those are going to go at the end of a number line. But what if we said, ‘Just get some fraction pieces out'? That's not a misconception 'cause that's normal. I'm using what I've already learned about value of number, and I'm throwing it down on a number line ( chuckles ). Um, so it changes the way we think about how we're going to design our instruction when we think about what's the natural way that students do that. So, we also call it fragile understanding. So, fragile understanding is when it's a little bit tentative. Like, ‘I have it, but I don't have it.' That's another part, a natural part of learning. When you're first learning something new, you kind of have it, then you've got to try it again, and it takes a while for it to become something you're comfortable doing or knowing. Mike: So, this is fascinating because you're making me think about this, kind of, challenge that we sometimes find ourselves facing in the field where, at the end of a lesson or a unit, there's this idea that if kids don't have what we would consider mastery, then there's a deficit that exists. And I think what you're making me think is that framing this as either developing understanding or fragile understanding is a lot more productive in that it helps us imagine what pieces have students started to understand and where might we go next? Or like, what might we build on that they've started to understand as opposed to just seeing partial understanding or fragile understanding from a deficit perspective. Beth: Right. I love this point because I think when we think about mastery, it's all or nothing. But that's not learning either. Maybe on an exam or on a test or on assessment, yes, you have it or you don't have it. You've mastered or you haven't. But again, if we looked at it developmentally that ‘I have some partial understanding or I have it and … I'm inconsistent in that,' that's OK. I could also think, ‘Well, should I have a task that will keep bringing this up for students so that they can continue to build that rich understanding and move along the trajectory toward what we think of as mastery, which means that I know it now, and I'm never going to have to learn it again?' I don't know that all things we call mastery are actually mastered at that time. We say they are. Mike: So, I want to pick up on what you said here because in the book there's something about the role of tasks in strengths-based teaching and learning. And specifically, you talk about ‘the cumulative impact that day-to-day tasks have on what students think mathematics is and how hard and how long they should have to work on ideas so that they make sense.' That kind of blows me away. Beth: Well, I want to know more about why it blows you away. Mike: It blows me away because there's two pieces of the language. One is that the cumulative impact has an effect on what students actually think mathematics is. And I think there's a lot there that I would love to hear you talk about. And then also this second part, it has a cumulative impact on how hard and how long kids believe that they should have to work on ideas in order to have them be sensible. Beth: OK, thank you so much for talking about that a little bit more. So, there's two ways to think about that. One is, and I've done this with teams of teachers, and that's bring in a week's worth of tasks that you designed and taught for two weeks. And I call this a ‘task autopsy.' It's a really good way because you've done it. So, bring it in and then let's talk about, do you have mostly conceptual ideas? How much time do students get to think about it? Or are students mimicking a procedure or even a solution strategy that you want them to use or a model? Because if most of the time students are mimicking or repeating or modeling in the way that you've asked them, then they're not necessarily reasoning. And they're building this idea that math means that ‘You tell me what I'm supposed to do, I do it, yay, I did it.' And then we move on to the next thing.  Beth: And I think that sometimes we have to really do some self-talk about this. I show what I value and what I believe in those decisions that I'm making on a daily basis. And even if I say, ‘It's so important for you to reason, it's so important for you to make sense of it.' If all the tasks are, ‘You do this and repeat what I've shown you,' then students are going to take away from that, that's what math is. And we know this because we ask students, ‘What is math?' Math is, ‘When the teacher shows me what to do, and I do it, and I make my teacher happy.' And they say lots of things about teacher pleasing because they want to do what they've been asked to d,o and they want to repeat it and they want to do well, right? Or do they say, ‘Yeah, it's problem-solving. It's solving a problem, it's thinking hard. Sometimes my brain hurts. I talk to other students about what I'm solving. We share our ideas.' We know that students come away with big impressions about what math means based on the daily work of the math class. Mike: So, I want to take the second part up now because you also talk about what I would call ‘normalizing productive struggle' for kids when they're engaged in problems. What does that mean and what might it sound like for an educator on a day-to-day basis? Beth: So, I happened to be in a classroom yesterday. It was a fifth-grade classroom, and the teacher has been really working on normalizing productive struggle. And it was fabulous. I just happened to stop in, and she stopped everything to say, ‘We want to have this conversation in front of you.' And I said, ‘All right, go for it.' And the question was, ‘What does productive struggle feel like to you and why is it important?' That's what she asked her fifth-graders. And they said, ‘It feels hard at first. And uh, amazing at the end of it. Like, you can't feel amazing unless you've had productive struggle.' We're taking away that opportunity to feel so joyous about the mathematics that we're learning because we got to the other side. And some of the students said, ‘It doesn't feel so good in the beginning, but I know I have to remember what it's going to feel like if I keep going.' I was blown away. I mean, they were like little adults in there having this really thoughtful conversation. And I asked her what … she said, ‘We have to stop and have this conversation a lot. We need to acknowledge what it feels like because we're kind of conditioned when we don't feel good that somebody needs to fix it.' Mike: Yeah, I think what hits me is there's kind of multiple layers we consider as a practitioner. One layer is, do I actually believe in productive struggle? And then part two is, what does that look like, sound like? And I think what I heard from you is, part of it is asking kids to engage with you in thinking about productive struggle, that giving them the opportunity to voice it and think about it is part of normalizing it. Beth: It's also saying, ‘You might be feeling this way right now. If you're feeling like this,' like for example, teaching a task and students are working on a task trying to figure out how to solve it and, and it's starting to get a little noisy and hands start coming up, stopping the class for a second and saying, ‘If you're feeling this way, that's an OK way to feel,' right? ‘And here's some things we might be thinking about. What are some strategies'—like re-sort-of focusing them on how to get out of that instead of me fixing it—like, ‘What are some strategies you could think about? Let's talk about that and then go back to this.' So, it's the teacher acknowledging. It's allowing the students to talk about it. It's allowing everybody … it's not just making students be in productive struggle, or another piece of that is ‘just try harder.' That's not real helpful.  Like, OK, ‘I just need you to try harder because I'm making you productively struggle.' I don't know if anyone has had someone tell them that, but I used to run races and when someone said, ‘Try harder' to me, I'm like, ‘I'm trying as hard as I can.' That isn't that helpful. So, it's really about being very explicit about why it's important. Getting students to the other side of it should be the No. 1 goal. And then addressing it. ‘OK, you experienced productive struggle, now you did it. How do you feel now? Why is it worth it?' Mike: I think what you're talking about feels like things that educators can put into practice really clearly, right? So, there's the fron- end conversation maybe about normalizing. But there's the backend conversation where you come back to kids and say, ‘How do you feel once this has happened? It feels amazing.' This is why productive struggle is so important because you can't get to this amazingness unless you're actually engaged in this challenge, unless it feels hard on the front end. And helping them kind of recalibrate what the experience is going to feel like. Beth: Exactly. And another example of this is this idea of … so I had a pre-service teacher teaching a task. She got to teach it twice. She taught it in the morning. Students experienced struggle and were puffed up and running around, so engaged when they solved it. Beyond proud. ‘Can we get the principal in here? Who needs to see this, that we did this?' And then she got some feedback to reduce the level of productive struggle for the second class based on expectations about the students. And she said the engagement, everything went down. Everything went down, including the level of productive struggle went way down. And so, the excitement and joy went way down, too. And so, she did her little mini-research experiment there. Mike: So, I want to stay on this topic of what it looks like to enact these practices. And there are a couple practices in the book that really jumped out at me that I'd like to just take one at a time. So, I want to start with this idea of giving kids what you would call a ‘walk-back option.' What's a walk-back option? Beth: So, a walk-back option is this opportunity once you've had this conversation—or maybe one-on-one, or it could be class conversation—and a walk-back option is to go look at your work. Is there something else that you'd like to change about it? One of the things that we want to be thinking about in mathematics is that solutions and pathways and models and strategies are all sort of in flux. They're there, but they're not all finished all the time. And after having some conversation or time to reason, is there something that you'd like to think about changing? And really building in some of that mathematical reflection. Mike: I love that. I want to shift and talk about this next piece, too, which is ‘rough-draft thinking.' So, the language feels really powerful, but I want to get your take on, what does that mean and how might a teacher use the idea of rough-draft thinking in a classroom? Beth: So rough-draft thinking is really Mandy Jansen's work that we brought into the strengths work because we saw it as an opportunity to help lift up the strengths that students are exhibiting during rough-draft thinking. So, rough-draft thinking is this idea that most of the time ( chuckles ), our conversations in math as we're thinking through a process is rough, right? We're not sure. We might be making a conjecture here and there. We want to test an idea. So, it's rough, it's not finished and complete. And we want to be able to give students an opportunity to do that talking, that thinking and that reasoning while it is rough, because it builds reasoning, it builds opportunities for students to make those amazing connections. You know, just imagine you're thinking through something, and it clicks for you. That's what we want students to be able to do. So, that's rough-draft thinking and that's what it looks like in the math classroom. It's just lots of student talk and lots of students acknowledging that ‘I don't know if I have this right yet, but here's what I'm thinking. Or I have an idea, can I share this idea?' I watched a pre-service teacher do a number talk and a student said, ‘I don't know if this is going to work all the time, but can I share my idea?' Yes, that's rough-draft thinking. ‘Let's hear it. And wow, how brave of you and your strength and risk-taking. Uh, come over here and share it with us.' Mike: Part of what I'm attracted to is even using that language in a classroom with kids, to some degree it reduces the stakes that we traditionally associate with sharing your thinking in mathematics. And it normalizes this idea that you just described, which is, like, reasoning is in flux, and this is my reasoning at this point in time. That just feels like it really changes the game for kids. Beth: What you hear is very authentic thinking and very real thinking. And it's amazing because even very young children—young children are very at doing this. But then as you move, students start to feel like their thinking has to be polished before it's shared. And then that gives other students who may be on some other developmental trajectory in their understanding, so much more afraid to share their rough-draft thinking or their thoughts or their ideas because they think it has to be at the polished stage. It's very interesting how this sort of idea has developed that you can't share something that you think in math because it's got to be right and completed. And everything's got to be perfect. And before it gets shared, because, ‘Wait, we might confuse other people.' But students respond really beautifully to this. Mike: So, the last strategy that I want to highlight is this one of a ‘math amendment.' I love the language again. So same question, how does this work? What does it look like? Beth: OK, so how it works is that you have done some sharing in the class. So, for example, you may have already shared some solutions to a task. Students have been given a task they're sharing, they may be sharing a pair-to-pair share or a group-to-group share, something like that. It could be whole class sharing. And then you say, ‘Hmm, you've heard lots of good ideas today, lots of interesting thinking and different strategies. If you'd like to provide a math amendment, which is a change to your solution in addition, something else that you'd like to do to strengthen it, you can go ahead and do that and you can do it in that lesson right there.' Or what's really, what we're finding is really powerful, is to bring it back the next day or even a few days later, which connects us back to this idea of what you were saying, which is, ‘Is this mastered? Where am I on the developmental trajectory?' So, I'm just strengthening my understanding, and I'm also hearing … I'm understanding the point of hearing other people's ideas is to go and try them out and use them. And we're really allowing that. So, this is take, this has been amazing, the math amendments that we're seeing students do, taking someone else's idea or a strategy and then just expanding on their own work. And it's very similar to, like, a writing piece, right? Writing. You get a writing piece and you polish and you polish. You don't do this with every math task that you solve or problem that you solve, but you choose and select to do that. Mike: Totally makes sense. So, before we go, I have the question for you. You know, for me this was a new idea. And I have to confess that it has caused me to do a lot of reflection on language that I used when I was in the classroom. I can look back now and say there are some things that I think really aligned well with thinking about kids' assets. And I can also say there are points where, gosh, I wish I could wind the clock back because there are some practices that I would do differently. I suspect there's probably a lot of people where this is a new idea that we're talking about today. What are some of the resources that you'd recommend to folks who want to keep learning about strengths-based or asset-based teaching and learning? Beth: So, if they're interested, there's several … so strengths-based or asset-based is really the first step in building equity. And TODOS, they use the asset-based thinking, which is mathematics for all organization. And it's a wonderful organization that does have an equity tool that would be really helpful. Mike: Beth, it has been such a pleasure talking to you. Thank you for joining us.  Beth: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. It was a good time. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2023 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

Upcoming Event!How Can Mindfulness Help You Reach Financial Independence?Do you want to reduce money anxiety, but don't know who to trust?Would you like to learn how to set up and manage your own retirement plan?Do you want to know how we create a passive income stream you can't outlive?If yes, join us and learn how to answer the 4 critical financial independence questions:Am I on track for financial independence?What do I need to do to get on track?How do I design a mindful investing portfolio?How do I manage that portfolio and my income over time through changing markets?Learn more: https://courses.mindful.money/financial-independence-bootcampMike Van Pelt is an entrepreneur, author, speaker, and men's life coach leader. He is the founder of True Man Life Coaching and host of the popular men's podcast, True Man Podcast. Mike has served in leadership roles for most of his career, bringing over two decades of engagement and expertise in account management, consulting, and leadership development.Today, Mike joins the show to discuss the work he's doing mentoring and guiding men, what positive masculinity means to him, and why so many men tie their identities to their careers.

無情工商時間～ 賴老師的課程：文法百寶箱上架，lai200 https://lihi2.com/oKcha 快速幫你複習一下這集的主題句 ＆ 單字： 請你自重 （Please）behave yourself./behave一般用法：請你注意自己的言行對小孩子：守規矩、聽話 補充學習 behavior 行為、表現 appearance 外貌、表面、出現 拿出最好的一面、好好表現 be on sb's best behavior keeping up appearances 情境對話 Mike：今天真的好熱喔！我要脫衣服了。 It's scorching hot today! I'm gonna take off my clothes. Duncan：這裡是公共場所欸，請你自重。 Stop it! This is a public place. Please behave yourself. Mike：不會怎樣吧？我有在健身欸。 Ｗhat's wrong? I always hit the gym and I got muscles. Duncan：身材不是重點，重點是那張臉！ It ain't about your body, it's about keeping up appearances. *scorching 炙熱 小額贊助支持本節目： https://open.firstory.me/user/ckf6dwd77euw20897td87i5wj 留言告訴我你對這一集的想法： https://open.firstory.me/user/ckf6dwd77euw20897td87i5wj/comments Powered by Firstory Hosting

Summary:The Nightly Rant podcast celebrates its 500th episode as hosts Mike and Torya reflect on their journey so far. They discuss their love for pets and some of their favorite guests, including Colin, who lost his granddaughter to suicide and now helps others avoid the same fate. The hosts reveal that they record episodes in advance to provide weekly content and have scaled back from daily to one episode a week. They have also launched new content, including a video podcast, and are committed to content creation. The hosts talk about their experience meeting a guest (Sadia) from their podcast in person and bonding over a comedy club. They plan to collaborate with her on a video and encourage listeners to support her. The episode ends with a rant from Torya about a rude person at a Golden Knights game. The hosts express gratitude for their listeners' support and hope for even more fun in the next 500 episodes. They also promote their network's editing, production, and show note creation services. Overall, the 500th episode serves as a celebration of their journey and a reminder of the many entertaining conversations they've had along the way.Timestamps:[0:09:44]: Torya shares her annoyance with people who mistreat their dogs at the park.[0:09:55]: Mike and Torya discuss their approach to playing with their dogs at the park.[0:10:33]: Torya talks about her respect for their cat, Miss Olive, and how she has earned her trust.[0:11:42]: Torya struggles to remember past podcast episodes but reflects on the dark beginnings of their show.[0:12:56]: Mike and Toria discuss their recent episode with guest Sadia and how it marked a personal milestone for Torya.[0:14:15]: Mike notes that their recent guest, Sadia, was the first guest with whom Torya spoke so much, and they discuss their recent visit to a comedy club with her.[0:14:57]: Mike and Torya reflect on the evolution of their podcast, from recording every night to once a week, and their upcoming content creation plans.[0:16:48]: Torya agrees to go on stage at a comedy club if they receive 500 likes on their YouTube video featuring Sadia.[0:17:45]: Mike and Torya discuss their friendship with Sadia and encourage listeners to support her on Instagram.[0:18:58]: Torya recommends that listeners hunt down Sadia on YouTube for her hilarious songs about dicks.[0:19:01]: Mike agrees to include a link to Sadia's YouTube channel in the show notes.[0:19:58]: Torya discusses some of her favorite guests on the show, including Sadia and Brian Little.[0:20:25]: Torya adds Abe From of "The Bitter Truth" to her list of favorite guests.[0:21:03]: Mike and Torya reflect on the importance of mental health issues and discuss a recent guest, Colin, who lost his granddaughter to suicide and turned his grief into a crusade to help others.[0:21:43]: Mike and Torya discuss a guest who they can't stand and who caused problems during a previous appearance on the show.[0:22:13]: Torya goes on a rant about a group of people who cut in line at a Golden Knights event.[0:23:06]: Torya continues her rant about the group of people and their behavior at the event.[0:23:57]: Torya talks about a frustrating experience at a payment booth and a group of people who were too lazy to move around them.[0:24:30]: Mike and Toria reflect on the growth of their podcast and the Yogis podcast network, which offers editing, production, and show note creation services.[0:25:05]: Torya mentions their upcoming video featuring Sadia and their Vegas adventures, and Mike highlights the beauty of the desert in Vegas.Best Quotes:"I just love animals. They're like a passion of mine." - MIke"Life at the time was kind of fucked up. I mean, if you think about it, it wasn't our best part of our life, honestly." - Mike"It's probably the most I've ever talked on an episode." - Torya"If we can get 500 people to reach out to us via email after listening to this episode, I will go up on stage." - Torya"I think he kind of removed himself." - Mike on a guest they can't stand"She fucking goes past me and goes straight up to the person. She knows I was there before her." - Mikeon a group of people who cut in line at a Golden Knights event"The Yogis podcast network has grown out of all of this." - Mike"And don't forget, People 1000 likes on this video on YouTube. And I will make sure that Mike videos my appearance going up for three minutes on Wise Guys." - Torya

Rounding Up Season 1 | Episode 18 – Why Progressions Matter Guest: Graham Fletcher Mike Wallus: Many educators were first introduced to the content that they teach as a series of items on a checklist. What impact might that way of thinking have on a teacher's approach to instruction? And what if there were another way to understand the mathematics that our students are learning? In this podcast, we talk with Graham Fletcher about seeing mathematics as a progression and how this shift could have a profound impact on teaching and learning.  Mike: Welcome to the podcast, Graham. We're glad to have you with us. Graham Fletcher: Yeah, really excited to just kind of play around, uh, in this space with you here talking about math and supporting teachers so that they can, in turn, support kids. Mike: You bet. So, just as a starting point, we're talking about progressions, and we're talking about some of the work that you've done, building progression videos. I have, maybe, what is kind of a weird opening question: How would you define the term “progression” so that we're all starting with the same understanding? Graham: So, when I think about progression, I think a lot of the times as teachers we can become, like, hyper focused on one grade level. And within that one grade level there can be a progression of where things are learned in a sequential order. It's probably not as linear as we'd like it to be, but I think that little micro progression, or sequence, of learning that we see in one grade level, we start thinking about what that might look like over a grade band, over like K–2 or even K–5. So, there's things that happen within certain grade levels, and that's kind of where progressions happen. How do we move kids through this understanding of learning? And it's that progression of understanding that we tend to want to move kids through, where everything's kind of connected. And that's really where I see progressions. Mike: So, I think you're kind of leading into my second question, which is—I love the work that you've put together on your website. I'm unabashedly going to say that this is a great place for teachers to go. But part of what strikes me is that there are a lot of things that you could have done to support elementary math educators and yet you chose to invest time to build this series of videos that unpack the ideas that underlie processes, like counting or addition and subtraction or fractions. Like, why that? Why was that a thing where you're like, “I should invest some time in putting this together.” Graham: So, I guess we're all teachers at heart, and so I start thinking about how I'm in a place of privilege where I've had an opportunity to work with some really amazing educators that I've stood on their shoulders over the years. And I think about all the times that I've been able to huddle up in a classroom at the end of the day and just listen to those people who are brilliant and really understand those progressions and the smaller nuances of what it is to just understand student thinking and how to keep moving it forward. So, I started thinking about, “Well, what does this look like in one grade level?” But then, when I was starting to think about that whole idea, the big piece for me is: Not every teacher has a person that they can sit next to. And so, if I've had the opportunity to sit down and make sense of these things where, like, on a Friday night (laughs) maybe I'm sitting down with some math books, which most people don't choose to do, I enjoy doing that. Graham: And so, if I've had the opportunity to do that, and I'm able to make these connections, I start thinking about those other teachers who, teachers that teach 75 subjects 54 days a week, right? And we want them to focus solely on math. So, maybe just sharing some of that knowledge to kind of lessen the burden of understanding that content. So, giving them like a 60,000-foot view of what those progressions could look like. And then them saying, “OK, well, wait a minute. Maybe I can do a deeper dive,” where we're giving them those [aha moments] that they might want or need to kind of do that deeper dive. And the big piece for it was, there's always talk about progressions. There's always talk about, “This is the content that you need to know,” content after content after content. But very seldom is it ever in a coherent, consumable manner. So, when I start thinking about teachers, we don't have that time to sit down and give hours and hours and hours to the work. So really, just what is a consumable amount of time to where teachers won't be overwhelmed? And I think that's why I tried to keep them at about 5 to 6 minutes; to where you can go kind of light that fire to go and continue building your own capacity. So, that's kind of where it was. My North Star: just building capacity and supporting teachers in their own growth. For sure. Mike: You know, it's interesting, 'cause when I was a classroom teacher, the lion's share of my time was kindergarten and first grade, with a little bit of time in second grade. So, I was thinking about that when I was watching these because I watched some of the ones for younger kids and I was like, “This makes a ton of sense to me.” But I really kind of perked up when I started watching the ones for kids in the intermediate grades. And I think for me it was kind of like, “Ah, these ideas that I was working on in K and 1, so often, I wasn't quite sure what seeds was I planting or how would those seeds grow in the long term—not just next year, but in the long term. I wonder if that's part of what you think about comes out of a teacher's experience with these. Graham: Yeah, I definitely think so. I think finding that scalability in reasoning and relationships is key for students, and it's key for teachers as well. So, for instance, when we start thinking about, in kindergarten, where kids are sitting and they're practicing counting and they're counting by singular units; singular units of 1, where it's 1, 2, 3. Well, then when we start making that connection into third grade, where kids are counting by fractions instead of going ahead and saying, like, “One-fourth, two-fourth, three-fourths,” really focusing on that iteration of the unit, that rote counting where it's one one-fourth, two one-fourths, three one-fourths. And then, even that singular unit that we're talking about in kindergarten, which now is in fractions in third grade, well that begins to connect in sixth grade when we start talking about unit rate, when we start getting into ratios and proportions. So, that scalability of counting is massive. So, that's just one little example of taking something and seeing how it progresses throughout the grade level. And making those connections explicit becomes really powerful because I know, just in my own experiences, in talking with teachers as well, is when they start making those connections. Bingo, right? So, now when you're looking at students, it's like, “OK, they're able to count by unit fractions. Well, what now happens if we start grouping fractions together and units and we start counting by two-thirds?” So, now you start moving from counting strategies to additive strategies and then additive strategies to multiplicative, and seeing how it all kind of grows together. That scalability is what I'm really after a lot of the time, which falls in line with that idea of teaching through progressions. Mike: Yeah, I think one of the things that's really hitting me about this, too, is that understanding children's mathematical thinking as a progression is really a different experience than thinking about math as a set of procedures or skills that kids need to leave second grade with. It feels really different. I wonder if you could talk about that. Graham: Yeah, absolutely. So, working with Tracy Zager—good friend of mine—we've done a lot of work around fact fluency here over the last three, four years, per se. And one of the biggest things that we have spent a lot of time just grappling and chewing on, is when we have students in second grade and they move to third grade, how do we move students from additive thinking, which is adding of singular units, to multiplicative thinking? So, seeing groups of groups of groups. And so, I think when we start thinking about third grade teachers, I'll go ahead and throw myself under the bus here. Like, as a third-grade teacher, when we start thinking about that idea of multiplication, it becomes skip counting and repeated addition. But then no kids ever really move from skip counting and repeated addition to knowing their multiplication facts. Like, I could sit there and do jumping jacks in class, but kids aren't going to know their facts. Graham: So, then what I would do is, I would jump to having kids try to memorize their facts. And just because kids can memorize their facts doesn't mean that they can reason multiplicatively and seeing those groups of groups. So, I think, thinking of that, what [are] those big jumps in the progression from grade level to grade level? That's probably one of the ones for me that really stands out that I know I struggled for. And we always look back and say, “What are the things I wish I knew back then that I know now?” And I think that jump from additive thinking to multiplicative thinking is a really big jump that is often overlooked, which is now why we have kids struggling in fourth and fifth grade and middle school. 'Cause they're still stuck in additive, but we want them to think multiplicatively and proportionally. But yeah, that's one of those big jumps in terms of a progression that we want kids to make. Mike: Yeah, this is a great transition because I think, like, what we've been exploring is, how if I understand what I'm helping kids think about in the context of a larger story rather than a set of discreet things that I need to check a box on, that has impact on my practice. But I almost wanted to ask you, just on a day-to-day basis, what's your sense of, if I'm a teacher who's absorbed this sense of progression either across my grade level or across a larger band of time, how do you think that changes the way someone approaches teaching? Or maybe the way that they set up tasks with students? Graham: Well, I start thinking about learning objectives as they're handed down, and standards. And a lot of the time standards can become, or learning objectives can become, more of a checklist. And so not necessarily looking at these ideas of learning as a checklist, but how do they connect between the grade levels? And so, I think it's important as much as on the day-to-day practice that we're really down in the trenches and we're doing the work and we're making sure that we're meeting those learning objectives, I think it becomes really important that we provide ourselves that space and grace to zoom back out to that 60,000-foot view and say, “Wait a minute, how are all of these connected?” And I think that's a really big piece that maybe we don't always do when we start thinking, even planning, on a day-to-day or a week or a unit. “Where am I going to be able to zoom out and maybe connect some big ideas around an understanding or around a piece of learning?” And I think it can become cumbersome when we start looking at those learning objectives and they're so granular. But I think when we can zoom out and make connections between them, it lessens a little bit of the burden from having to go ahead. “Well, there's just so much to teach, trying to make those connections.” There is a lot to teach, don't get me wrong here. But I think going ahead and making those connections just lessens that burden for us a little bit. Mike: It's interesting, because I think part of what is coming to mind for me is this ability to zoom out and zoom back in and be able to say, “In what way is this relatively granular learning objective or learning goal serving to advance this larger set of ideas that I want kids to understand about, say, additive thinking as they're making a shift to multiplicative thinking?” And the other connection I'm making is, in what way can I ask a question in this moment that's going to actually advance that larger goal rather than—again, guilty as charged—rather than what I've done often in the past, which is how can I help them just complete the task or get this particular thing right? And if by them getting it right in the moment, I failed to advance their thinking, that's a place where I'd want to take it back. Does that make sense to you? Graham: Yeah, absolutely. I think about tasks and really about when I first would start to use problem-based lessons or three act tasks and start thinking about those lessons. Normally it would be, like, “OK, I just taught the task for no rhyme or reason just to see if kids could get the right answer.” And so, for me, the big piece with that is a shift in my own craft, is looking at that task placement. And so, thinking of, “Are you a teacher who learns math to solve problems or are you a teacher who solves problems to learn math?” A little play on words there. And I think by default, many of us were taught to learn math to go ahead and solve the problems. But when I start thinking about this idea of using tasks and why we use tasks, it's to use … well, to quote Dan Meyer, talking about this headache and aspirin analogy where you have a problem that's your headache, and then from that problem, the math serves the headache, that's the aspirin that you need. Graham: So, when we talk about zooming back out, instead of saving the really good tasks for the end of the unit, what would it look like if we put it on day one of a unit? Knowing that the goal on day one isn't for kids to get the right answer, but it's for us to just pull the veil back and see, “Hey, where are my students thinking?” And what I've realized is that when we don't front-end load or pre-teach things, students will usually fall back to the strategy that they feel safe enough. And if you have a student who, say we're in fourth grade and we're playing with two- by two-digit multiplication, if you have a student on day one of a unit who's doing draw all, count all, great, right? That's what they're doing on day one? But if they're still using that same strategy at the end of the unit, that falls back on me. Graham: Like, what have I done to be intentional enough about moving that student's thinking forward? So, even in the moment when students might not be getting the right answer, it might be wrong answer, but it might be the right thinking. And I think at that moment I need to zoom back out and say, “They don't have the answer yet, but I've still got three or four weeks to get there.” So, now that I know what students are thinking, how can I be intentional? How can I be purposeful about asking the right questions, presenting the right activities and tasks to continue to move that student's thinking forward to the end goal? The end goal isn't on day one of a unit. So yeah, I think that's such a great question because I think a lot of the times we feel as if we fall short or we failed as a teacher if kids aren't getting the right answer. But so often there's beautiful thinking that's happening, it just might not have the right answer. So yeah, big, big change in my practice. Mike: We've been talking about the use of the progression videos that you've built, and I think in my mind I've imagined myself as a classroom teacher, as the consumer. And I think that's a really powerful way to use those. My wondering is, if you have any thoughts about how someone who might be an instructional coach or an instructional leader in a building or a district, if you could wave a magic wand, how you wish folks who have that type of role might take and use the things that you've built? Graham: I can share how I've used them in the past. I don't know, I'm sure there's coaches out there that are probably using the progression videos way better than I'm using them. But many times, I've found that when we start looking at individual standards, it's standards out of context. And granted, the progression videos, if I could go back and redo them, I would love to embed much more context into those progression videos. It would definitely lengthen them, which kind of defeats the original purpose of keeping them short and compact. So, now when we show those videos, what's nice is it's not really a coach in that moment talking with the teachers. The coach can now, after the video, say, “Hey, what was new to you? What was something that, that maybe you didn't recognize?” And also, like, “What are you doing well?” There's so much goodness that's already happening. Graham: I think as coaches, we have to be really mindful, like, there's great things that [are] happening with teachers, let's support and lift up those great things that are already happening with our teachers that we're supporting, just like teachers do with students as well. So, I think showing the videos and asking, “Hey, what's the same, what are you comfortable with? What doesn't sit well with you?” Thinking about kindergarten teachers when they see five frames, it's like, “Whoa, wait a minute. I've never really thought about using five frames.” So, just different ways of thinking it to kind of be a catalyst for the conversation, just a launch point. Mike: Totally makes sense. So, I suspect there are some folks who are going to be listening to this who are, like, “Oh my goodness, I want to go check these things out right now. Or I want to think about sharing them with my teammates that I'm working with on a daily basis.” Walk me through how to find these and any kind of advice that you might have for people as they start to initially poke around and look at what's there. Graham: Well, you can jump on my website, gfletchy.com, with my full name, Graham Fletcher. Just one of those things that we kind of went with growing up. I was called “Fletchy” as a kid. So yeah, at gfletchy.com you can look on progression videos, and then right there you'll see five of them. But as you start poking around, I'm going to harness my inner Brené Brown here and just say, “Vulnerability is the birthplace of professional growth.” And so, no one is ever going to get a new idea and go ahead and try it and then it be successful right on that get-go. So, when you poke around there, give things a try. I love reaching out on Twitter, sharing on Twitter, and just kind of growing in that space. Find a colleague. Or if you are a coach, one of the things I love doing is when coaches ask for ideas, go muck about, find a good task, and then muck about in a third-grade classroom with that task and make yourself vulnerable around the teachers you're supporting. Graham: And that really helps build and solidify that relationship where, “Hey, we're in this together and I'm trying to fumble through this just like you, let's kind of work here together. Give me feedback and, and in the end, I think kids win.” I'm a firm believer that all of us are smarter than one of us. And so, I love finding new things, testing new things with a friend, and trying not to lock myself in a silo. So, that would kind of be it in terms of poking around there. Yeah, find an idea and go share it with a friend and see how it works and keep on tweaking and revising. Mike: I love that. Graham, thank you so much for joining us. It's really been a pleasure. Graham: Yeah, it's been great. I appreciate it. And thanks for the opportunity. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2023 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

Mike Isaacson: Lügenpresse! [Theme song] Nazi SS UFOs Lizards wearing human clothes Hinduism's secret codes These are nazi lies Race and IQ are in genes Warfare keeps the nation clean Whiteness is an AIDS vaccine These are nazi lies Hollow earth, white genocide Muslim's rampant femicide Shooting suspects named Sam Hyde Hiter lived and no Jews died Army, navy, and the cops Secret service, special ops They protect us, not sweatshops These are nazi lies Mike: Welcome to another episode of The Nazi Lies Podcast. Today, we're talking about the lying press with Jonathan Hardy, professor of communications and media at the University of Arts, London. His most recent book, Branded Content: The Fateful Merging of Media and Marketing, explores the world of branded content, particularly native advertising or sponsored content–longform marketing copy made to look like news items. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Hardy. Jonathan Hardy: Thank you, Mike. It's a pleasure to be here. Mike: It's great to have you. So I'm really excited to talk about marketing with you because that's the industry I'm in now, and I do have some ethical issues with some of the techniques that we use. Now I write in the B2B space, selling services to business owners and officers, so I don't super have a problem with what I do–you know, manipulating business owners into buying things. So reading your book, what comes up again and again is that most of these marketing techniques aren't new, but the digital age has made them more invasive and persistent. Can you talk a bit about how digitization has changed the advertising world? Jonathan: Sure. Well, it's done so definitely in a great many ways but I'll talk about some key ones that really relate to the work I've been doing on branded content. In the 20th century, through most of the 20th century, we had a model that I call advertising integration with separation, which means that the advertising appeared in the same vehicles as media. When you looked at a magazine or a newspaper, you turned the page and it's editorial, you turn the page, it's advertising. Or the adverts that appeared between programs on television and radio. So we had integration, but often some quite strict rules and strict practices that kept advertising and media separate. So what we're seeing in the digital age is an intensification of two tendencies which face in opposite directions. One is towards integration, so advertising getting baked into media content and integrated with it; product placement all the way through to influencer marketing, branding content and so on. But the other trend is disaggregation, advertising getting decoupled from media. Because essentially in the digital age, advertisers didn't need–as some of them put it–to pay the premium prices to put their ads in media content. They could track users around the internet. So these are trends going in opposite directions obviously, right? One is about integration, the other one is about disaggregation. But I argue that they have one really common power, which is that they indicate the growing strength of marketers over media. Media that rely on advertising revenue are having to become more and more dependent, satisfying advertisers who want to integrate their content so that people will engage with it. And they're also desperate because of these other trends of losing ad revenue coming from disaggregation to kind of, again, appeal as much as they can. So what we're seeing is a strengthening of marketer power in the digital age. Mike: So my intention with this episode was to give a deep dive into how things like the Cambridge Analytica scandal could have happened. To start, let's get some technical details. We're talking mostly about inbound marketing today. So before we get into advertising techniques and stuff, what is the difference between inbound and outbound marketing? Jonathan: Sure. Well, I'll talk about that, Mike. But we should acknowledge there's some confusion here, because these terms are not always used to talk about the same things. I think one really valuable aspect is this idea of push and pull, right? If you're pushing out messages, this is known as outbound marketing. You're sort of pushing your message out to reach people. If you on the other hand create great content that people come to you for to engage with, that's pulling. And that's known as inbound. So, so far, so good. That makes sense to me. But this is used in other ways too, and I think that illustrates actually a broader point which is that marketers, not surprisingly, are often in a competitive struggle to be on the side of the new and the innovative, and not the old and the tired. So some versions of inbound and outbound marketing I think get a bit problematic here. Because outbound in some versions is kind of associated with scattergun marketing. Right? The opposite of inbound as highly targeted aiming at particular people. And I don't really buy that. You know, marketers sometimes talk about spray and pray, for instance, you know? Chucking out messages. But quite honestly, most of the time modern marketers don't do that because they can't afford to do that. So I don't really buy the argument that outbound is untargeted. I think that's misleading. What's a bit more helpful from all of this, and actually quite a crucial issue, is if you like the challenges for a thing called push marketing. The challenge is when people are not engaging with traditional advertising forms and pushing them out, and the need to come up with more engaging content; either because it's more entertaining or it's more informative. And I think that aspect of inbound is important. Mike: So when it comes to inbound marketing, it's all about the buyer journey or the marketing funnel. Can you talk a bit about the theory behind the marketing funnel? Jonathan: Yeah, sure. I often test this out on students, but if you were studying advertising in the 20th century, you might have come across a model called AIDA, which was a mnemonic, helps you remember some important fundamentals. AIDA stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. And it kind of summed up this idea of what's called in modern terms, a marketing funnel or a customer journey. Sort of how if you're a brand, people start off with awareness and then become more interested and motivated all the way up to purchase. That's essentially what the marketing funnel means. Just to relate it to branded content for a moment, it was often argued in the past that brands branded content, which means content that's produced or funded by brands, was particularly associated with that early stage–building brand awareness. But if you speak to people in the industry, they say it's not really true. Branded content is the content that serves people right across the customer journey. So if you think someone becomes more interested and they want to find more information about the product, for example, I think they're right and I think that's– We're often thinking about a new world where brands are involved in kind of thinking, "What are the information needs? What are the communication needs of consumers at every point?" And engaging with it. And amongst other things, that's breaking down some old divisions between what we might call advertising and customer services. And as an academic, I'm really interested. I'm critical of a lot of what's going on, but I'm interested in how that speaks to a changing world and convergence across communications. Mike: Where I work, we definitely use branded content across the buyer journey and we use different kinds of content for different points along the journey. So for instance, we do more informative content for when you're in the awareness stage. Whereas when you're in the purchasing stage, we hit you more with salesy content. Because that's the point where you're trying to just hear about the benefits and decide upon a final product. Jonathan: Yeah exactly. Mike: Can you talk a little bit about the software that's used to track customers? Because that's something that I don't think most people are aware about, the CRM software. Jonathan: Yeah. CRM means customer relations management software. Some of your listeners might be aware of software like Salesforce, which tracks relations between a company and its clients, or including its prospects. So yeah, customer relations management is a huge area. One of the things I looked at interestingly was the annual reports of what are called the holding companies. These are the really big groups that own advertising agencies and PR agencies. And they've been in a battle for survival and for their presence in companies, and they're often fighting alongside companies like Accenture who are offering companies all sorts of other data services. So it's a kind of interesting world in which the traditional advertisers are maneuvering to cover more ground because that ground's becoming more and more important to companies. And definitely, all the data around customers and other people in the chain is a really important battleground for these firms. Mike: Okay, and we'll talk a bit about what gets fed into the CRM in a bit. So the company I work for, we do exclusively owned media and digital ads, pretty much all inbound with an occasional email campaign here or there. But there's other forms of digital advertising, too. Let's start by talking about what owned media is. What do advertisers mean when they talk about owned media? Jonathan: Okay. This is content that's produced and published by the brand or the marketer themselves. It's got a really long history. In the United States at the end of the 19th century, the farm implements company John Deere had a magazine called The Furrow, for example. So what we now call contract publishing by a brand. Lots of other examples; the Michelin Guide to restaurants, the Guinness Book of Records, and so on. Brands have been involved in producing their own content for a long time, but this really got turbocharged in the internet age. With the early internet, brands started to create their own websites and web pages. They've now moved right across social media, for example. And some brands have become essentially media companies. So a brand like Red Bull, which is involved right across kind of music, sports, etc, is producing content of all kinds to support the brand. Your listeners, again, one of the models that's really helpful for students and might be of interest to your listeners is called PESO. PESO stands for paid, which is a term for advertising essentially, right? The brand pays and controls. Earned, which stands for traditional public relations. You work in PR, you write a great story or a feature, it gets carried by the media, you didn't pay. That's called earned media. The S is for shared. Used to be called viral, but shared is a much nicer word for things that get moved and amplified across the internet and social media. And then the O is owned. And what PESO tells us is, these things are still separate but they're overlapping and converging in the middle. Mike: Right. So the problem with owned media is that you have to get it in front of people. What are the various ways that advertisers try to get their own media to an audience? Jonathan: Well, I'm just gonna... If you don't mind, I'll just pick up this word 'problem', Mike, because it might help to explain where I come from on these issues. I think the industry is essentially looking for how to do marketing better, right? And quite a lot of people who are in academia, in universities like myself, are really asking and answering the same question. Their aim is really to help marketers do better and do research on it. And I call all of that affirmative. So the problem from that framing is how can we do this better? How can we learn how to be more effective? But I would self-describe myself as coming from a critical tradition, a tradition of critical political economy. And we ask a different question about “problem.” We say, "Are there problems in the way communications are organized and delivered? Are there problems for communication users? Are there problems for societies? And if there are, if things aren't great out there, let's identify them, understand them, and think about how to change them." So when I come to questions of problems, that's really the kind of dominant lens that I look at them. But obviously like anyone in order to understand things better, you've got to listen to everyone in this space; to industry practitioners, and I work a lot with them. So that's just a wider framing, but actually to answer your question. Well, it's interesting because historically, they've struggled. Right? Brands have kind of invested in great content and then found surprise, surprise! People aren't always interested in going to corporate websites and finding this stuff. So part of this story has been brands producing content that they need advertising, social media advertising, to say to people, "Hey, we've done this. Here's a snippet, but come and look at the full amount." That's an interesting feature. But essentially, in this space brands would say, "Well, you've got to produce material of value back to this language of sort of pull. People have to be engaged, entertained, and/or informed. Those are the key things you need to do to solve the problem." But the other thing we'll come on to is when the marketing messages get disguised and buried. Just to give you another take on problems, I think there are problems about brand's own content. Sometimes that can be really entertaining and I enjoy it like anyone else, but there are problems essentially because it's a brand voice. And sometimes that brand voice can be louder than other voices. And that essentially is an issue. But actually, I see less problems with brands and content compared to the material that's weaved into media content: sponsored, editorial, native advertising, and so on. Mike: Okay. What about things like SEO, SMO, paid search, display ads? That sort of thing. Jonathan: Sure. SEO, search engine optimization, is a practice of trying to improve your ranking traditionally in search results, but in wider areas of content so that it gets visibility and people engage with it. Right? Because we all know people don't turn mostly past the first page of search ranking results. And as I know you know, this divides into what are called relatively good practices and bad practices, sometimes referred to as white hat–in other words, everyone does this to try and be effective–and blackhat, which is nefarious 'don't do this'. What that sums up is a cat-and-mouse game between marketers and agencies and the platforms, because the platforms are concerned to ensure the integrity and quality of search results because they depend on that trust and therefore want to move some of these black practices off to the margins, if not get rid of them entirely. But we should remember, of course, these platforms are not just there to serve the consumer. They're there to generate ad revenue. And some of the tensions that play out in that space are important to note, too. But I'd say for me, again, there's a whole literature on how to do search engine optimization and if you were teaching people how to be marketers, I'd certainly say they need to understand that. One of the bigger concerns for me is about awareness. How aware are consumers of things like sponsored search results? There was some really important research done by the UK regulator for communications, Ofcom, which looked at young people and found that a majority of them couldn't recognize the difference between sponsored listings and so-called organic ones. Only a third of young people aged 12 to 15, for example, knew which search results on Google were sponsored, were adverts, or organic. That's a really, I think, important issue and an ongoing issue. Mike: Yeah, especially when it comes to children. Let's dig a little deeper into SEO. What kind of techniques do content producers both in media and advertising use to boost their search engine results? Jonathan: Oh, wow. There's a lot of terms and some great names out there to describe some of this stuff: keyword stuffing, cloaking, bait and switch. What they really have in common is artificially enhancing the value of your content without the intrinsic worth and value that would come from people's clicks and engagement. Okay? So there are a whole series from mildly artificial through to downright criminal and exploitative means to do it. One of the more serious, for example, is this great term brandjacking, where someone acquires or otherwise assumes the online identity of a brand for the purposes of inquiring their followers, their brand equity as they say. Mike: It can be less than that too. It can just be, for instance, putting a brand's name as one of your keywords in paid search. That's brand jacking too. Jonathan: Exactly, Yeah, exactly. Mike: Yeah. So keyword stuffing, this idea of throwing search terms into content. One other thing though that bothers me a little bit where I work is the way that we go after keywords. The content that we write is pretty much exclusively based on whether there is search for it. And so as a result–I guess in the aggregate–you end up with huge patches of knowledge that just are not covered by free media. Jonathan: Yeah, I agree. I think one of the fundamental questions here is, "What about brand voice in a world where that voice comes with resources that are not widely shared?" Right? In order to be a marketer, you have resources of money. And money buys you the chance to speak. Not everyone in our world gets the chance to speak and be heard, but brands can do it through their money. Now, of course there are small brands, there are radical organizations who advertise. But we also know that the concentration of voice is often in the hands of the concentration of wealth. Which means some people, some brands, some interests, some ideas get privileged over others. And that is a really fundamental concern and it drives, for me, this issue of saying, "Well, what's the settlement for society between communications and brands?" In the old world, I mentioned the 20th century, we had some settlements. We had some rules which said, "We're going to really make sure that you know this is an advert and we're going to keep some controls on where advertising appears and how much appears and what's advertised." And the digital age is throwing up challenges all the time because new spaces, new opp,ortunities emerge for brands. And the rules are often some way behind. So those are the, kind of fundamental issues. I think voice is a really good term to use to get into that. Mike: Right. So in addition to the black hat and white hat, there are gray hat techniques which kind of straddle the boundaries of marketing ethics. One example is the subject of your book, which is native ads, sponsored content, advertorials. So, what are these? What is sponsored content? We've talked about it a bit, we haven't really defined it. Jonathan: Sure. Well, lots of different forms. But what's common to a lot of the forms I examined is in the way the industry would describe it, that the advertising is blended into the media environment in which it appears. Okay? The advertising is integrated and blended in. And I think a good way in is–building on what I was just saying to you, really–is to start by asking some questions about payment and control. Those are really key elements in tracking this story. In the old world, we had advertorials in newspapers and magazines. We still do, of course, but they're a feature of the old world. And the brand paid and controlled the content. It was an ad, but it was an ad that started to blend in to its surroundings. But what's happened in the digital age is that's taken off across all media. So we have native advertising as a term for adverts, which are also paid for and controlled by the brand, but are coming into your newsfeed on mobile social media and so on. Then we have sponsored content. And here, things get a bit more complicated because these questions of payment and control get widened. Because sometimes the brand pays and controls, sometimes the brand pays and the media, the publisher, or an influencer for example says, "No, we control the content." And sometimes it's a blend of both. And fundamentally across that spectrum, we don't have clear and consistent labeling that is readily understood by people to know exactly what's happening here. So we don't always know when a brand paid and shaped content in this space, and that's a fundamental problem. Sorry, but can I just put in–I don't know if this will be helpful or not-- but an example I was going to give from the UK is that we have a London paper called The Evening Standard. And an investigation by an online publication, openDemocracy, discovered that Syngenta, which is a US agribusiness firm, was paying for favorable editorial in that newspaper. But those stories weren't being clearly labeled as paid for and sponsored by Syngenta. And obviously, that's a big deal because Syngenta was at the time being sued by a large number of American farmers, which of course didn't feature in this more positive coverage. So here we have some problems of labeling and identifying content, we have some problems of what kind of story gets shown, but we also have an issue which goes to the heart of this where the brand could pay but the publication could say, "No, we're in control. So we don't have to label that as an ad." Mike: Right. And there's also the other problem of advertisers' control over media in general, where if there's an unfavorable story they could have it pulled. And we've seen instances of this, too. Jonathan: Yeah, it's funny. And just to share with you, sometimes when you're talking to students particularly as a professor, it's good to show them that you may make mistakes, too. So I shared the fact that, you know, I'm in a tradition which has seen advertiser influence on the media as essentially a negative force, right? And looked at, kind of, "Well, when does this happen? And how does it happen? And how is it resisted?" You know, sometimes it's resisted because journalists say, "We're not going to have it." Chrysler company told American magazine editors it wanted to be told when they were putting its ad next to content it thought was controversial. The American Society of Magazine Editors said, "We're not doing that. We stand up for free media." So, those kinds of stories. But I said to the students I have to update this. Because we're in an era where advertisers are using their power and clout, sometimes for positive and progressive ends–ends that many of you might agree with. So you know, Unilever doing an ad ban on Facebook. The current ban or semi-ban, if you like, in which one of these major holding companies Omnicom is, quote, "Advising its clients,” so it's not quite a ban, but it's advice, “not to advertise on Twitter because look what Musk is doing, who knows how this is going to play out." So in its language, it's concerned with brand safety. It's advising marketers to produce a boycott. So what I'm saying is I come from a tradition which sees advertising influence as negative. You could argue and it's important to recognize there's some positive things happening in these stories, brands doing good, right? Calling out hate speech and racism and xenophobia. That story, of course, isn't just because those brands are angelic. It's because they've been put under powerful pressure from campaigns, from #StopHateForProfit in the US, Sleeping Giants, we have Stop Funding Hate in the UK. ANd also, frankly there's still a problem. Because however good they do, they still have enormous power and they can still use it in unaccountable ways. But anyway, there's a story that just acknowledges that it's sometimes complicated. Mike: So native advertisement's gone beyond traditional news media in the digital age. Where else do we find sponsored content? Jonathan: Well, we find it right across what we could call audio-visual. We've had a long history of product placement in films and television programs but, you know, there's some big questions about where that's going next. Amazon is a company that sells things, but it's chock full of audiovisual content, sponsored brand videos, and so on. So as this world evolves, as we get Amazon's Alexa and audio marketing, we're going to have more and more content in which there's a brand role and a brand presence. Another big example is the Beta Verses. I was at a recent conference with advertising lawyers and they were kind of half-jokingly saying, "What's going to happen in this world? Are people going to walk around in T-shirts with #AdOn if it's sponsored? How is the brand presence going to be seen and identified?" And again just on this, I'd like to go back to something that was written in 1966. The code of the International Chamber of Commerce is kind of the big international code, the self-regulatory code for marketers. And it said, at the time, "Advertisements should be clearly distinguishable as such, whatever their form and whatever the medium used." Again, I like to share with you and my students, that's great language. That includes TikTok. It was written in 1966. It's really clear what it's asking for. And it went on to say, "When published into medium post that also contains news and editorial opinion, an advertisement should be so presented that the consumer can readily distinguish it from editorial matter." That's interesting because it didn't even need to add that second sentence. It's just indicating that it really underscores the importance in some of our media like news and editorial that it really matters that we can trust the content and it's not an ad. That was 1966, I don't think that describes the world today, I don't think that rule even in its current form holds, but it does exist to call on. Mike: Yeah, I know. We now have companies that are flooding their own reviews with positive reviews to boost their rankings on Google and stuff. I do want to talk about something that skeeves me out in what I do, and that's ad retargeting. So, what is ad retargeting? Jonathan: Retargeting ads are a form of online targeted advertising that is served to people because they visited a particular website. We all know this, you kind of go to a website, look at a pair of shoes, go on to some other websites, and you're being flooded by adverts for those shoes. What on earth is going on? And the answer has been third-party cookies. So to introduce another term, cookies are bits of data that get put onto your browser, so they can then follow you as you move around the rest of the internet. And those so-called third-party cookies are sold for advertising purposes; they build up a profile of you so that you can be advertised to. And that's essentially what's gone on in retargeting. Now, the world of cookies is undergoing a change at the moment, which is interesting. But all your listeners will know this experience, as you say, of ad targeting. And it's still very much present in our experience of the internet. Mike: Yeah. So basically the cookies originally were intended, as I understood it, to allow websites to remember what you have, like in your shopping cart on digital marketing or on a digital storefront. And they kind of morphed into this weird thing where they can now track you across the Internet and add things to your profile so they have more and more information about you. Okay. Jonathan: Yeah. Well, there's an important difference, Mike. The first type you're talking about is called first-party cookies. And the important thing is, again, many of your listeners will say, "Actually, some of what they provide is quite helpful to me." You know, you go to a website, you put something in a shopping basket, you don't want to pay for it. But when you come back to that site, it's still in your shopping basket, right? That's a cookie that's controlled by the website itself. And often, frankly that can be a help to us. It's still collecting data. It still raises privacy issues.But it's often helpful. Third-party is different. For example, you go to a publisher who signed up to Google's AdSense. You go there because you want to read a story, but what gets put onto your browser is a third-party cookie. And that is being used to sell advertising to reach you. Mike: The third party being AdSense, right? Jonathan: Yeah. Mike: Okay. So let's talk a little bit about market research. How have market research techniques advanced in the digital age? Jonathan: I mentioned there's this challenge to third-party cookies. And that's been driven by a number of factors. It's been driven partly because with more use of mobile, people are on different devices, it's harder to track them. It's been driven by privacy pressures which have led to important new regulation, particularly for us in Europe. And I'd say that from the UK, we don't know exactly what's going to happen next. In fact, we have a government that's probably going to relax rules that apply in Europe. But from 2018, Europe said, "You need permission to collect cookies." And there was a really deep intake of breath across the advertising and marketing and platform industry saying, "This is going to destroy the model of internet advertising." So you need permission, and we have strong rules now that demand it. As I understand it in the US, there's no federal-level regulation. But there are states–California is an example–which have brought in new rules for consent to kind of strengthen privacy and protection. So, third-party cookies are on the slide. And to answer your question about data, one of the things that is becoming more and more important is so-called first-party data. So companies, brands are collecting as much material as they can about their customers so that they can market to them. So we're seeing a huge industry growing up around digital data in the areas of customer data, financial data, and operational data. Mike: In addition to collecting their own market research data, businesses can also pay for data. So, what kind of marketing data are businesses and ad agencies buying? Jonathan: What marketers are interested, as I say, in customer, financial, operational, derive from different sources. So yeah, they're buying up to create a richer tapestry of their clients and potential clients from their own data first party and from third-party data. And we're seeing the whole ecology of advertising and marketing and media changing with the growth of these firms that are basically data harvesters and data brokers. Mike: And are advertisers the only one that are buying these data. Jonathan: Certainly not. Political movements and organizations who want richer data on consumers to target them are also absolutely buying up this data too. Mike: Okay, so now I think we've discussed is everything you'd need to know to understand how the Cambridge Analytica scandal worked. So let's talk about it. So unlike the UK, the US did not have widely publicized hearings regarding Cambridge Analytica, so a lot of my US audience will probably be unfamiliar with what happened. So before we get into the details of how the scandal worked, big picture, what was the Cambridge Analytica scandal? Jonathan: Well, I like to think of this as kind of a bundle of scandals actually because it involved failures across quite a range of organizations. Cambridge Analytica, this company that gathered and used data and sold it on to political campaigns, but other players too. I mean, it's one of the biggest scandals for Facebook. So essentially what happens–and this as a practice goes back to 2015–is a Cambridge-based researcher puts out an app which collects the data on US Facebook users. But not just them–the people who willingly took part–it accesses the profiles of all their friends and family. So in the end, data on about 87 million Americans–about a quarter of the whole Facebook audience in the US–were collected. Mike: Can you describe the app that they put out? Jonathan: Yeah. Sure, Mike. The researcher was called Aleksandr Kogan, and he put out an app called This Is Your Digital Life. It was a psychological profile app in June 2014. Either way, one group that comes out reasonably good from this story and I'm particularly proud of this or pleased about this because it is close to my heart, was the Ethics Committee at Cambridge University, because that rejected an application by this academic and also made the damning judgment that Facebook's approach to consent fell far below the ethical expectations of the university. In other words, it was deeply unimpressed with Facebook's provision. But of course having said that, we could say Cambridge University has questions to answer because this was still an academic who undertook this work. So it was an app, people who took part gave consent, but they didn't give consent for their entire network to be data scraped in this way. The crucial thing about the scandal is that data was then used and sold on to right-wing politicians in the US in various forms, to Ted Cruz for his presidential campaign, and later for Donald Trump, because it produced rich, detailed profiles of American voters, which allowed micro-targeting. And we've seen this more and more, but it's a kind of early example of what kinds of micro targeting can be done. In other words, you identify a voter who's going to be particularly triggered by rights to own and carry a gun, for example, but you trigger a different message to a different voter to mobilize them. And often those messages can be actually flat contradiction that can be at odds, but it doesn't matter. It's whatever works to build your political coalition. I think the other thing just to highlight from this is this is often framed as a digital story, but it's older and broader than that. It's about power and money. We've had lots of lobbyists who engage in political campaigns and, again, we might all agree it's okay to promote your candidate and do marketing techniques. But it's not okay to do the dark arts of demolishing a candidate through fake news and misinformation, for example. Some of your listeners might be interested; I'm in the UK, I have a great shoutout for the Channel 4 News, a public service news channel which did amongst other things, an undercover investigation in which executives from Cambridge Analytica are sort of bragging, because they don't think they're being filmed, about how they've intervened in democratic elections. It's a deeply disturbing portrait of how money and power can be used to undermine democratic processes. Mike: Okay. And Cambridge Analytica wouldn't have been nearly as successful with what they did without the plethora of right-wing content farms pumping out slanted and misleading news content. Talk about the online ecosystem that existed in 2015-2016 that allowed these websites to thrive. Jonathan: Yeah, one kind of crystallizing example, again some of your listeners will remember, was an infamous example of a Russian organization called the Internet Research Agency, which spent thousands of dollars on social media ads and promoted posts in an effort to influence the US elections in 2016. So misinformation, fake authors, pretending to be Texans when you're actually in a content farm as part of the kind of quasi-state corporate world of Russia.  How did that all happen? It partly happens because of the deeper logics and business models of the internet, right? You know, promoting controversy and hate, driving traffic and engagement. It happened because of lax rules on who's the source and sponsor of marketing messages. Lots of things caused it but yeah, that was the ecosystem at the time. And I think, again, before we just jump to the digital, this happens because of money. And so much of the right which can often appear to be kind of grassroots is, as we know, funded by very rich corporate donors who often don't like to be particularly transparent about who they are and how they operate. And the left progressive forces, which are more rooted in popular movements, in the end have less resource. We don't have the power of capital. We have the power of trade unions and collective work, but relatively weakly resourced. And that's a key issue. Mike: And the content farming, it wasn't just from the Russian state, it was also private sector too. I mean, there was money to be made here. So can you talk a bit about how that was profitable? Jonathan: Yeah. Well, if you generate clicks, if you produce clickbait, then the algorithmic world recognizes success at the levels of engagement and eyeballs, and that can be monetized. We should remember that's often not the primary motivation for political campaigns, it was information, disinformation, and mobilizing people to vote for candidates. But yeah, there's an economy built around it as well which meant advertisers became very aware that they were often not choosing to support right wing publications because of the way the algorithms were driving traffic towards popular and shared content. And that's one of the reasons we saw the first wave, if you like, of boycotts and withdrawals from big brands like– big companies, rather, like Unilever who were being advised that their brand safety was being compromised by the sites that were appearing on and that many of their consumers were deeply unhappy about hate speech being connected with their advertising and advertising dollars. Mike: Yeah. So one of the things that happened too as a result of these boycotts was that major social media and search platforms kind of reformed their algorithms to try to suppress this misinformation from proliferating. So, how has the digital media landscape changed since the 2016 presidential election and since Brexit? Jonathan: Well, as I say, I think we should recognize that it's often been civil society power, political power, these campaigns that have forced marketers to divest. This hasn't just come from corporate voices; it's come from popular campaigns which absolutely deserve recognition. But as I say, I think marketers using their power for good is all well and good, if you like, but it's still an exercise in a marketer's power. And that power is ultimately private and in my view, unaccountable. I mean, a defender would say, "What are you talking about? The market decides that consumers don't like it. That's a powerful force on brands." To which you could say, "Well, consumer power does matter." Right? Ad blocking is a really good example of consumer power in this world. But consumer power is dispersed, it's not concentrated. And it's not sufficient very often to challenge corporate power and interests. So these are all arguments, essentially, for a much stronger public regulation of communications because it shouldn't be left to private power to regulate itself. But nor, however important it is, can we rely on consumers only, you know? Like other people, I believe in the importance of media literacy and better education so we can find our way through this world and decode it, but I also don't think the burden of responsibility should lie on consumers. It should be a principle. If you're big and you're in a communications space, then you act responsibly, and public regulation is the only way to kind of underpin that that is actually done. Relying on self-regulation from powerful forces in this world is not enough. Mike: Yeah. Especially when the advertising techniques are constantly changing and evolving, you can't expect consumers to be privy to new ways of reaching them. So we've talked about various advertising techniques, let's talk a bit about their social implications. What are the consequences we're seeing from the proliferation of owned media? Jonathan: Sure. Well, I like to sum up the whole world of what I call branded content around three problem areas. The first key problem area is around consumer awareness–this principle that we should know when we're being sold to. And that gets the lion's share of attention, actually, from all parties to the discussion. And that's important. It's about labeling and disclosure and identification. But I argue that that attention tends to displace two others. The second big area of concern is around the quality and integrity of the media. I don't think there's enough people in this world who are speaking up for the importance of having media spaces that are free from commercial influence and interference. So that's the second area. And then the third area, which I think is really where the radical voices come in, where the critical tradition I'm part of comes in, is this notion of marketer's power of voice. You know, the significance of a world in which the ability to pay can give you a louder voice. It's not to say we can wish that away, but it is to say that it's a way of thinking about historically that societies have put limits on that. They've said, "This is where advertising can appear. This is how it can appear." And I think we need a conversation about what those rules should be for the 21st century because at the moment, we're in a bit of a hybrid of old rules that are weak and don't work, and new spaces that are opening up. So for me, that's the call of my book, really, to say, "These are deep problems. This isn't just about surface-level techniques; this isn't just about new tools in the marketing toolbox. This is a much more deep reconfiguration of the space between commercial voices, advertising, and communication space, and we need to work out what the rule should be. I put a call in for saying we really need to have a discussion about what a 21st century version of separation–keeping media and advertising apart–would look like. And I say that because of course we can't put it all back in the box, we can't come up with a solution that would have worked in 1960 and say that's going to do it. It isn't going to do it. But I think that's a really key discussion to be had. Where should we be seeking a world which is free or freer from commercial influence and interference? How are we going to create that? How should it be configured and organized? Mike: Yeah. Going back to owned media, I mean, the owned media dominates search results now. It's basically impossible to look something up online unless you're finding it through Wikipedia without having to use corporate blogs. And there's always a limitation to that, right? There's always a wall where they will not give you more information than is necessary to hook you to their services, right? When I farm out my content to freelancers, I actually specifically instruct them that the reader should come away knowing what to do, but not how to do it. And so there's a technique to writing instructional articles that make you feel more helpless, and that's definitely what we aim for in our copy, which I take particular pleasure in making business owners feel helpless and so on and whatever. So let's talk about native. Jonathan: Can I just say, I think that's such an important point and I agree entirely, and it shows that, kind of, you know, this isn't a simple change where we can easily identify the before and after. What you're describing is a kind of world where more and more content comes from an interested party and is underpinned by money and monetizing it as a driver. And we know historically we've relied on content to come from other quarters, right? I'm very proud to work in a university world because that's a world that defends the idea of, "Well, actually we should ask questions that are important for society, not the sponsor, not the company." So that's one side. We've traditionally had media in various traditions, you know, a free press in the US standing up for the idea of independent and impartial, know the advertisers can't call the tune because then we lose something really precious and what it means to do journalism. And all of those alternative sites are weak because for me, this all comes down to these questions of resource, money and power as a way in, so they have relatively less. What are we going to do about it? Well, in Europe some of us defend and advocate for public service media, but also for new forms of public service community media, non-profit, hyperlocal, because those are really important spaces where that other content gets produced. I don't know about you, sometimes it's depressing that we don't link up the networks more effectively. Why don't we have publications that pull together all the non-governmental organizations and civil society groups who are producing great content but can't always get it out to wide audiences? We don't have a very great tradition of connecting the content with the vehicle to promote it amongst, if you like, the left and progressive causes. But plenty of people are thinking about how to do it. And yeah, absolutely, it comes through to other solutions. We need to defend and extend public media–what I call in Europe, public service media. And do that in new ways, too, because some of the old ways have been– Well, PBS in the States and all the problems of corporate funding kind of shrinking what gets said in that space, so a lot to fix too. But I think that's a really important part of the solution. We need non-commercial media, and have to work out how to support and develop it to create that kind of other kinds of information. Mike: So by that same token, open-access journals I think are also really important, too. The fact that so much media now is putting up paywalls, all these academic journals are charging $30-$40 to rent an article, and there's just really no way to get free information that isn't paid for in some way. So let's talk about native. What is the effect of sponsored content on the public? Jonathan: Let me answer that by an example I show my students, which is an Exxon advertorial in the New York Times. Exxon paid for an editorial which said, "Guess what? The solution to the climate crisis isn't the removal of fossil fuels. It's smarter use of our assets." That sums up for me some of the greatest dangers, which is sponsored content amplifies voices who can speak with partiality because they're advocating for themselves, but undermines independent journalism in the process. To give another example, Facebook, as you know, has paid huge sums into lobbying and influencing politicians in Europe because it senses danger, right? Europe has created some quite strong rules on data privacy and on cookies as we discussed earlier. Facebook took out 20 ad-sponsored content items in the British newspaper, The Daily Telegraph. So it sets up stories with charity bosses who say Facebook is great without disclosing that they're financed by Facebook. It has people saying what great things it's doing to kind of cut content, even though it's been pushed out just after the Christchurch massacre, which of course was relayed for hours on Facebook and other social platforms before it was taken down. That's the problem with sponsored content, it strengthens and amplifies voices. And of course there are other problems; it's disguised; it's hidden; people aren't aware of it. We should know who the source of our content is. In fact, just be interested to talk to you because you're working in journalism. I think one of the things I grapple with but would really like to see more debate out is about the disclosure of sources. Now, I know from the Human Rights tradition and so on the absolute importance of protecting a journalist's sources. Because we don't get good stories if journalists can't protect whistleblowers and others. But we need something which protects that important public interest right. That gives readers better guidance to what the provenance, you know, what's behind the story. We could have ingredients in food and drink, but what were the sources? And in particular, we definitely need to know when there's been a paid source underlying a piece of content. So what drives me in that debate is one of the things that happened in the UK was we had a debate about political advertising on Facebook, which said we should be told better when there are political advertising. But that was running alongside another debate about how to save the British press, which was saying let's have more native advertising. So we've had contradictions and gaps in the way these issues have been treated. And I think we should recognize what's happening underneath, which is we don't always know the interests and sources behind our content. And we should do. Particularly when it's either a political voice or a commercial voice. Mike: Yeah. And I want to give a shoutout here to Corey Pein and his book, Live Work Work Work Die, where he talks about how the tech world typically, they don't really concern themselves with following rules and regulations. They just kind of do what they do and then just once regulators catch up to them, they hope they've made enough money where the fines or penalties or whatever is insignificant to how much profits they've made. And we see that with what happened with Facebook and I guess Twitter to some extent where they weren't regulating political advertisements at all. At least in the United States, political advertising has certain rules for financing and stuff that you have to report it and stuff like that. And so in the 2016 election, that was just out the window. And that's been fixed. Facebook now requires that political advertisements are registered as such, and they only get served in certain ways. All right, so there are regulations in place regarding advertising. What safeguards exist to protect the public from nefarious advertisers? Jonathan: I think just to respond to what you were saying, these are kind of almost the deeper myths, the deeper stories that have been told. The story that internet innovation was somehow kind of natural, inescapable, has-to-be-done-this-way. You want change and all these great services, this is what comes with it. It's going to be driven in these ways, we're going to move fast, we're going to trip over the old rules. I don't know about you, I think that is a myth in the making and it doesn't stack up, and it's already fragmenting and under pressure. So when Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg gets into US hearings in the likes of Cambridge Analytica, he has to say something different at that point. He has to say we do stand up for privacy and consumer protection. The problem is he doesn't fully deliver, and perhaps the bigger problem is the grand-sounding statements are there to reassure investors and markets and other stakeholders, but behind the scenes, Facebook carries on paying millions into lobbyists who go and influence politicians to make sure the rules are kept as weak as possible. So that would be my summary. In the space that I've looked at, native advertising and so on, we see a kind of mixed progress. So just taking the United States, 2015 Federal Trade Commission comes in with new rules and guidance on native advertising. And the rules are certainly an improvement: they're sharper; they're clearer. But what happens? Compliance by the industry remains low. Some early studies found 70% of marketers within I think a year of the new guidance weren't compliant. It got a bit better. But all the latest studies show right across publishing or influencer marketing, there's a compliance problem. There's that lobbying problem I mentioned. So the big marketers say, "Yes, we want to be responsible and transparent, it's in our interests that consumers know they've got ads." But actually then go and lobby. And the kind of thing they lobby over is to say, "Leave it to us what the disclosures should be." So what happens is consumer awareness is very low. Lots of the academic studies in this area have found awareness rates of about 10%, right? People being able to fully identify ad-sponsored content in news publications, for example. And it remains very low. So these industry people are kind of saying, "Well, leave it to us. We need to be fitting for the platform." And the result is consumers have low awareness and are confused. And people like me in this debate and in my book say, "We should call this out. We should have– If the objective really was consumer awareness, then we should move to clearer and more consistent labeling." And why I perfectly accept Instagram and Facebook are not the same thing and TikTok is not the same thing, if we had much more consistent labeling, we'd be in a better place. So one of the things I've argued for in Europe, for example, when we have product placement on television, unlike in the US it has to show a sign–a P sign to tell you that there's product placement. And not just at the end of programs as you're used to where the credits roll very quickly, but before and after each ad break. So why don't we have a sign, a hashtag ad, or a B sign for branded content across all branded material? I think that's an important argument to have because I think we're going into a world which is going to become even less recognizable as these new forms and formats emerge. Mike: Okay, so we've talked about some of them already, but what kind of policy gaps do you see with respect to marketing and media? And what do you think we should do to patch them? Jonathan: Well, I must just say it's a lovely time to speak to you and your audience about this because we've just started–I'm very proud of this–a three year research project which is looking into the rules and regulation of branded content. So we have what's called a Branded Content Governance Project and we're looking at the United States, Canada, Mexico, the UK, every country in the European Union, and Australia to kind of track what the rules are and what we can learn from that to do better. When I map this, I see the forces sitting in four areas. There's regulation, public regulation. There's industry self-regulation, when it makes its own rules. There's the power of the market, ad blocking, for example. And there's the power of civil society arguing for better. And I think we're at a point where self-regulation by the industry is failing. And that's becoming recognized not just by activists if you like, but by governments too. So we need a new settlement. And I think that needs a strengthening of public regulation as I've outlined. But I think all the elements need to work together. And that means putting pressure on companies to actually do as they say and strengthen their own self-regulation. Mike: Okay. Let's talk a bit about the stakes. So given the current digital landscape, what do you see the internet looking like if policy does not catch up with advertisers? Jonathan: Yeah. Well, that's a great question. Pretty chastening one, isn't it? There's a famous moment in 1994 where the chairman of Procter & Gamble, Edward Harnes, gets up and does a speech to the American Association of Advertising Agencies. And it basically says, "Hold your nerve. Things are happening, digitalization is about to happen. You could get slaughtered. The digital world could help people bypass ads and evade them. But if you keep your nerve, you can dominate this space." And I don't know about you, Mike, but I feel he was right. [chuckles] We knew this was happening in the early internet, the commercialization of the internet. But that corporate model and that corporate dominance is dominant. It's strong. However, I think we always need to look for sources of hope. And if it's dominant, it's also contested. There are forces challenging it, whether those forces are kind of carving out space for public media as we discussed, or whether like I am with others, we're kind of arguing for the rules to be improved on behalf of consumers and society. So I think we're losing, but classic Gramscian and optimism of the will is required. And to recognise all the things that are being done to highlight the problem and think through solutions. Whether that's very local ones like– I mean, something we haven't mentioned I think is very important is kitemarking, right? Small publications, non-profit or low profit saying, “We're going to signal what standards are to readers." And that's good for the publication but I think it also is good for awareness. It says, "Well, yeah, why is this publication different from these other commercial ones?" Because this is how it engages with advertisers. So I think that's all really important, too. Mike: All right. Well, cool. Well, hopefully, we can save the internet. Thanks, Dr. Hardy, for coming onto the Nazi Lies Podcast to talk about the lying press. The book again is Branded Content out from Routledge. Thanks again, Dr. Hardy. Jonathan: Thank you. Mike: If you liked what you heard and want to help us pay our guests and transcriptionist, consider subscribing to The Nazi Lies Patreon. Subscriptions start as low as $2, and some levels come with merch. If you don't want to commit to monthly donations, you can give a one-time donation via PayPal.me/NaziLies or CashApp to $NaziLies. [Theme song]

Mike Brevoort, Chief Product Officer at Gitpod, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss all the intricacies of remote development and how Gitpod is simplifying the process. Mike explains why he feels the infinite resources cloud provides can be overlooked when discussing remote versus local development environments, and how simplifying build abstractions is a fantastic goal, but that focusing on the tools you use in a build abstraction in the meantime can be valuable. Corey and Mike also dive into the security concerns that come with remote development, and Mike reveals the upcoming plans for Gitpod's local conference environment, CDE Universe. About MikeMike has a passion for empowering people to be creative and work together more effectively. He is the Chief Product Officer at Gitpod striving to remove the friction and drudgery from software development through Cloud Developer Environments. He spent the previous four years at Slack where he created Workflow Builder and “Platform 2.0” after his company Missions was acquired by Slack in 2018. Mike lives in Denver, Colorado and enjoys cycling, hiking and being outdoors.Links Referenced: Gitpod: https://www.gitpod.io/ CDE Universe: https://cdeuniverse.com/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: It's easy to **BEEP** up on AWS. Especially when you're managing your cloud environment on your own!Mission Cloud un **BEEP**s your apps and servers. Whatever you need in AWS, we can do it. Head to missioncloud.com for the AWS expertise you need. Corey: Have you listened to the new season of Traceroute yet? Traceroute is a tech podcast that peels back the layers of the stack to tell the real, human stories about how the inner workings of our digital world affect our lives in ways you may have never thought of before. Listen and follow Traceroute on your favorite platform, or learn more about Traceroute at origins.dev. My thanks to them for sponsoring this ridiculous podcast. Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud, I'm Corey Quinn. I have had loud, angry, and admittedly at times uninformed opinions about so many things over the past few years, but something that predates that a lot is my impression on the idea of using remote systems for development work as opposed to doing local dev, and that extends to build and the rest. And my guest today here to argue with me about some of it—or agree; we'll find out—is Mike Brevoort, Chief Product Officer at Gitpod, which I will henceforth be mispronouncing as JIT-pod because that is the type of jerk I am. Mike, thank you for joining me.Mike: Thank you for insulting my company. I appreciate it.Corey: No, by all means, it's what we do here.Mike: [laugh].Corey: So, you clearly have opinions on the idea of remote versus local development that—I am using the word remote development; I know you folks like to use the word cloud, in place of remote, but I'm curious to figure out is, is that just the zeitgeist that has shifted? Do you have a belief that it should be in particular places, done in certain ways, et cetera? Where do your opinion on this start and stop?Mike: I think that—I mean, remote is accurate, an accurate description. I don't like to emphasize the word remote because I don't think it's important that it's remote or local. I think that the term cloud connotes different values around the elasticity of environments and the resources that are more than what you might have on your local machine versus a remote machine. It's not so much whether the one machine is local or remote as much of it is that there are infinite numbers of resources that you can develop across in the cloud. That's why we tend to prefer our cloud development environments.Corey: From my perspective, I've been spending too many years now living in basically hotels and airports. And when I was doing that, for a long time, the only computer I bring with me has been my iPad Pro. That used to be a little bit on the challenging side and these days, that's gotten capable enough where it's no longer interesting in isolation. But there's no local development environment that is worth basically anything on that. So, I've been SSHing into things and using VI as my development environment for many years.When I started off as a grumpy Unix sysadmin, there was something reassuring about the latest state of whatever it is I'm working on lives in a data center somewhere rather than on a laptop, I'm about to leave behind a coffee shop because I'm careless. So, there's a definite value and sense that I am doing something virtuous, historically. But it didn't occur to me till I started talking to people about this, just how contentious the idea was. People would love to ask all kinds of fun objections to this where it was, “Oh, well, what about when you're on a plane and need to do work?” It's, well, I spend an awful lot of time on planes and that is not a limiting factor in me writing the terrible nonsense that I will charitably called code, in my case. I just don't find that that idea holds up anywhere. The world has become so increasingly interconnected that that seems unlikely. But I do live in San Francisco, so here, every internet is generally pretty decent; not every place is. What are your thoughts?Mike: I agree. I mean, I think one thing is, I would just like not to think about it, whether I can or can't develop because I'm connected or not. And I think that we tend to be in a world where that is moreso the case. And I think a lot of times when you're not connected, you become reconnected soon, like if your connection is not reliable or if you're going in and out of connectivity issues. And when you're trying to work on a local laptop and you're connecting and disconnecting, it's not like we develop these days, and everything is just isolated on our local laptop, especially we talk about cloud a lot on this podcast and a lot of apps now go way beyond just I'm running a process on my machine and I'm connecting to data on my machine.There are local emulators you could use for some of these services, but most of them are inferior. And if you're using SQS or using any other, like, cloud-based service, you're usually, as a developer, connecting to some version of that and if you're disconnected anyway, you're not productive either. And so, I find that it's just like an irrelevant conversation in this new world. And that the way we've developed traditionally has not followed along with this view of I need to pile everything in on my laptop, to be able to develop and be productive has not, like, followed along with the trend that moved into the cloud.Corey: Right. The big problem for a long time has been, how do I make this Mac or Windows laptop look a lot like Linux EC2 instance? And there have been a bunch of challenges and incompatibility issues and the rest, and from my perspective, I like to develop in an environment that at least vaguely resembles the production environment it's going to run in, which in AWS's case, of course, comes down to expensive. Bu-dum-tss.Mike: Yeah, it's a really big challenge. It's been a challenge, right? When you've worked with coworkers that were on a Windows machine and you were on a Mac machine, and you had the one person on their Linux machine forever, and we all struggled with trying to mimic these development environments that were representative, ultimately, of what we would run in production. And if you're counting costs, we can count the cost of those cloud resources, we can count the cost of those laptops, but we also need to count the cost of the people who are using those laptops and how inefficient and how much churn they have, and how… I don't know, there was for years of my career, someone would show up every morning to the stand-up meeting and say, it's like, “Well, I wasted all afternoon yesterday trying to work out my, you know, issues with my development environment.” And it's, like, “I hope I get that sorted out later today and I hope someone can help me.”And so, I think cost is one thing. I think that there's a lot of inconsistencies that lead to a lot of inefficiencies and churn. And I think that, regardless of where you're developing, the more that you can make your environments more consistent and sound, not for you, but for your own team and have those be more representative of what you are running in production, the better.Corey: We should disambiguate here because I fear this is one of the areas where my use case tends to veer off into the trees, which is I tend to operate largely in isolation, from a development point of view. I build small, micro things that wind up doing one thing, poorly. And that is, like, what I do is a proof of concept, or to be funny, or to kick the tires on a new technology. I'll also run a bunch of random things I find off of JIF-ub—yes, that's how I pronounce GitHub. And that's great, but it also feels like I'm learning as a result, every stack, and every language, in every various version that it has, and very few of the cloud development environments that I've seen, really seems to cater to the idea that simultaneously, I want to have certain affordances in my shell environment set up the way that I want them, tab complete this particular suite of tools generically across the board, but then reset to that baseline and go in a bunch of different directions of, today, it's Python in this version and tomorrow, it's Node in this other version, and three, what is a Typescript anyway, and so on and so forth.It feels like it's either, in most cases, you either get this generic, one-size-fits-everyone in this company, for this project, approach, or it's, here's a very baseline untuned thing that does not have any of your dependencies installed. Start from scratch every time. And it's like, feels like there are two paths, and they both suck. Where are you folks at these days on that spectrum?Mike: Yeah, I think that, you know, one, if you do all of that development across all these different libraries and technology stacks and you're downloading all these repos from JIF-hub—I say it right—and you're experimenting, you tend to have a lot of just collision of things. Like if you're using Python, it's, like, really a pain to maintain isolation across projects and not have—like, your environment is, like, one big bucket of things on your laptop and it's very easy to get that into a state where things aren't working, and then you're struggling. There's no big reset on your laptop. I mean, there is but it takes—it's a full reset of everything that you have.And I think the thing that's interesting to me about cloud development environments is I could spin one of these up, I could trash it to all hell and just throw it away and get another one. And I could get another one of those at a base of which has been tuned for whatever project or technology I'm working on. So, I could take—you know, do the effort to pre-setup environments, one that is set up with all of my, like, Python tooling, and another one that's set up with all my, like, Go or Rust tooling, or our front-end development, even as a base repo for what I tend to do or might tend to experiment with. What we find is that, whether you're working alone or you're working with coworkers, that setting up a project and all the resources and the modules and the libraries and the dependencies that you have, like, someone has to do that work to wire that up together and the fact that you could just get an environment and get another one and another one, we use this analogy of, like, tissue boxes where, like, you should just be able to pull a new dev environment out of a tissue box and use it and throw it away and pull as many tissues out of the box as you want. And they should be, like, cheap and ephemeral because—and they shouldn't be long-lived because they shouldn't be able to drift.And whether you're working alone or you're working in a team, it's the same value. The fact that, like, I could pull on these out, I have it. I'm confident in it of what I got. Like for example, ideally, you would just start a dev environment, it's available instantly, and you're ready to code. You're in this project with—and maybe it's a project you've never developed on. Maybe it's an open-source project.This is where I think it really improves the sort of equitability of being able to develop, whether it's in open-source, whether it's inner-source in companies, being able to approach any project with a click of a button and get the same environment that the tech lead on the project who started it five years ago has, and then I don't need to worry about that and I get the same environment. And I think that's the value. And so, whether you're individual or you're on a team, you want to be able to experiment and thrash and do things and be able to throw it away and start over again, and not have to—like for example, maybe you're doing that on your machine and you're working on this thing and then you actually have to do some real work, and then now that you've done something that conflicts with the thing that you're working on and you're just kind of caught in this tangled mess, where it's like, you should just be able to leave that experiment there and just go work on the thing you need to work on. And why can't you have multiples of these things at any given time?Corey: Right. One of the things I loved about EC2 dev environments has been that I can just spin stuff up and okay, great, it's time for a new project. Spin up another one and turn it off when I'm done using it—which is the lie we always tell ourselves in cloud and get charged for things we forget to turn off. But then, okay, I need an Intel box one day. Done. Great, awesome. I don't have any of those lying around here anymore but clickety, clickety, and now I do.It's nice being able to have that flexibility, but it's also sometimes disconcerting when I'm trying to figure out what machine I was on when I was building things and the rest, and having unified stories around this becomes super helpful. I'm also finding that my overpowered desktop is far more cost-efficient when I need to compile something challenging, as opposed to finding a big, beefy, EC2 box for that thing as well. So, much of the time, what my remote system is doing is sitting there bored. Even when I'm developing on it, it doesn't take a lot of modern computer resources to basically handle a text editor. Unless it's Emacs, in which case, that's neither here nor there.Mike: [laugh]. I think that the thing that becomes costly, especially when using cloud development environments, is when you have to continue to run them even when you're not using them for the sake of convenience because you're not done with it, you're in the middle of doing some work and it still has to run or you forget to shut it off. If you are going to just spin up a really beefy EC2 instance for an hour to do that big compile and it costs you 78 cents. That's one thing. I mean, I guess that adds up over time and yes, if you've already bought that Mac Studio that's sitting under your desk, humming, it's going to be more cost-efficient to use that thing.But there's, like, an element of convenience here that, like, what if I haven't bought the Mac Studio, but I still need to do that big beefy compilation? And maybe it's not on a project I work on every single day; maybe it's the one that I'm just trying to help out with or just starting to contribute to. And so, I think that we need to get better about, and something that we're very focused on at JIT-pod, is—Gitpod—is—Corey: [laugh]. I'm going to get you in trouble at this rate.Mike: —[laugh]—is really to optimize that underlying runtime environment so that we can optimize the resources that you're using only when you're using it, but also provide a great user experience. Which is, for me, as someone who's responsible for the product at Gitpod, the thing I want to get to is that you never have to think about a machine. You're not thinking about this dev environment as something that lives somewhere, that you're paying for, that there's a meter spinning that if you forget it, that you're like, ah, it's going to cost me a lot of money, that I have to worry about ever losing it. And really, I just want to be able to get a new environment, have one, use it, come back to it when I need it, have it not cost me a lot of money, and be able to have five or ten of those at a time because I'm not as worried about what it's going to cost me. And I'm sure it'll cost something, but the convenience factor of being able to get one instantly and have it and not have to worry about it ultimately saves me a lot of time and aggravation and improves my ability to focus and get work done.And right now, we're still in this mode where we're still thinking about, is it on my laptop? Is it remote? Is it on this EC2 instance or that EC2 instance? Or is this thing started or stopped? And I think we need to move beyond that and be able to just think of these things as development environments that I use and need and they're there when I want to, when I need to work on them, and I don't have to tend to them like cattle.Corey: Speaking of tending large things in herds—I guess that's sort of for the most tortured analogy slash segway I've come up with recently—you folks have a conference coming up soon in San Francisco. What's the deal with that? And I'll point out, it's all on-site, locally, not in the cloud. So, hmm…Mike: Yeah, so we have a local conference environment, a local conference that we're hosting in San Francisco called CDE Universe on June 1st and 2nd, and we are assembling all the thought leaders in the industry who want to get together and talk about where not just cloud development is going, but really where development is going. And so, there's us, there's a lot of companies that have done this themselves. Like, before I joined Gitpod, I was at Slack for four years and I got to see the transition of a, sort of, remote development hosted on EC2 instances transition and how that really empowered our team of hundreds of engineers to be able to contribute and like work together better, more efficiently, to run this giant app that you can't run just alone on your laptop. And so, Slack is going to be there, they're going to be talking about their transition to cloud development. The Uber team is going to be there, there's going to be some other companies.So, Nathan who's building Zed, he was the one that originally built Adam at GitHub is now building Zed, which is a new IDE, is going to be there. And I can't mention all the speakers, but there's going to be a lot of people that are really looking at how do we drive forward development and development environments. And that experience can get a lot better. So, if you're interested in that, if you're going to be in San Francisco on June 1st and 2nd and want to talk to these people, learn from them, and help us drive this vision forward for just a better development experience, come hang out with us.Corey: I'm a big fan of collaborating with folks and figuring out what tricks and tips they've picked up along the way. And this is coming from the perspective of someone who acts as a solo developer in many cases. But it always drove me a little nuts when you see people spending weeks of their lives configuring their text editor—VIM in my case because I'm no better than these people; I am one of them—and getting it all setup and dialed in. It's, how much productivity you gaining versus how much time are you spending getting there?And then when all was said and done a few years ago, I found myself switching to VS Code for most of what I do, and—because it's great—and suddenly the world's shifting on its axis again. At some point, you want to get away from focusing on productivity on an individualized basis. Now, the rules change when you're talking about large teams where everyone needs a copy of this running locally or in their dev environment, wherever happens to be, and you're right, often the first two weeks of a new software engineering job are, you're now responsible for updating the onboarding docs because it's been ten minutes since the last time someone went through it. And oh, the versions bumped again of what we would have [unintelligible 00:16:44] brew install on a Mac and suddenly everything's broken. Yay. I don't miss those days.Mike: Yeah, the new, like, ARM-based Macs came out and then you were—now all of a sudden, all your builds are broken. We hear that a lot.Corey: Oh, what I love now is that, in many cases, I'm still in a process of, okay, I'm developing locally on an ARM-based Mac and I'm deploying it to a Graviton2-based Lambda or instance, but the CI/CD builder is going to run on Intel, so it's one of those, what is going on here? Like, there's a toolchain lag of round embracing ARM as an architecture. That's mostly been taken care of as things have evolved, but it's gotten pretty amusing at some point, just as quickly that baseline architecture has shifted for some workloads. And for some companies.Mike: Yeah, and things just seem to be getting more [laugh] and more complicated not less complicated, and so I think the more that we can—Corey: Oh, you noticed?Mike: Try to simplify build abstractions [laugh], you know, the better. But I think in those cases where, I think it's actually good for people to struggle with setting up their environment sometime, with caring about the tools that they use and their experience developing. I think there has to be some ROI with that. If it's like a chronic thing that you have to continue to try to fix and make better, it's one thing, but if you spend a whole day improving the tools that you use to make you a better developer later, I think there's a ton of value in that. I think we should care a lot about the tools we use.However, that's not something we want to do every day. I mean, ultimately, I know I don't build software for the sake of building software. I want to create something. I want to create some value, some change in the world. There's some product ultimately that I'm trying to build.And, you know, early on, I've done a lot of work in my career on, like, workflow-type builders and visual builders and I had this incorrect assumption somewhere along the way—and this came around, like, sort of the maker movement, when everybody was talking about everybody should learn how to code, and I made this assumption that everybody really wants to create; everybody wants to be a creator, and if given the opportunity, they will. And I think what I finally learned is that, actually most people don't like to create. A lot of people just want to be served; like, they just want to consume and they don't want the hassle of it. Some people do, if they have the opportunity and the skillsets, too, but it's also similar to, like, if I'm a professional developer, I need to get my work done. I'm not measured on how well my local tooling is set up; I'm sort of measured on my output and the impact that I have in the organization.I tend to think about, like, chefs. If I'm a chef and I work 60 hours in a restaurant, 70 hours in a restaurant, the last thing I want to do is come home and cook myself a meal. And most of the chefs I know actually don't have really nice kitchens at home. They, like, tend to, they want other people to cook for them. And so, I think, like, there's a place in professional setting where you just need to get the work done and you don't want to worry about all the meta things and the time that you could waste on it.And so, I feel like there's a happy medium there. I think it's good for people to care about the tools that they use the environment that they develop in, to really care for that and to curate it and make it better, but there's got to be some ROI and it's got to have value to you. You have to enjoy that. Otherwise, you know, what's the point of it in the first place?Corey: One thing that I used to think about was that if you're working in regulated industries, as I tended to a fair bit, there's something very nice about not having any of the data or IP or anything like that locally. Your laptop effectively just becomes a thin client to something that's already controlled by the existing security and compliance apparatus. That's very nice, where suddenly it's all someone steals my iPad, or I drop it into the bay, it's locked, it's encrypted. Cool, I go to the store, get myself a new one, restore a backup from iCloud, and I'm up and running again in a very short period of time as if nothing had ever changed. Whereas when I was doing a lot of local development and had bad hard drive issues in the earlier part of my career, well, there goes that month.Mike: Yeah, it's a really good point. I think that we're all walking around with these laptops with really sensitive IP on it and that those are in bars and restaurants. And maybe your drives are encrypted, but there's a lot of additional risks, including, you know, everything that is going over the network, whether I'm on a local coffee shop, and you know, the latest vulnerability that, an update I have to do on my Mac if I'm behind. And there's actually a lot of risk and having all that just sort of thrown to the wind and spread across the world and there's a lot of value in having that in a very safe place. And what we've even found that, at Gitpod now, like, the latest product we're working on is one that we called Gitpod Dedicated, which gives you the ability to run inside your own cloud perimeter. And we're doing that on AWS first, and so we can set up and manage an installation of Gitpod inside your own AWS account.And the reason that became important to us is that a lot of companies, a lot of our customers, treat their source code as their most sensitive intellectual property. And they won't allow it to leave their perimeter, like, they may run in AWS, but they have this concept of, sort of like, our perimeter and you're either inside of that and outside of it. And I think this speaks a little bit to a blog post that you wrote a few months ago about the lagging adoption of remote development environments. I think one of those aspects is, sort of, convenience and the user experience, but the other is that you can't use them very well with your stack and all the tools and resources that you need to use if they're not running, sort of, close within your perimeter. And so, you know, we're finding that companies have this need to be able to have greater control, and now with the, sort of, trends around, like, coding assistance and generative AI and it's even the perfect storm of not only am I like sending my source code from my editor out into some [LM 00:22:36], but I also have the risk of an LM that might be compromised, that's injecting code and I'm committing on my behalf that may be introducing vulnerabilities. And so, I think, like, getting that off to a secure space that is consistent and sound and can be monitored, to be kept up-to-date, I think it has the ability to, sort of, greatly increase a customer's security posture.Corey: While we're here kicking the beehive, for lack of a better term, your support for multiple editors in Gitpod the product, I assumed that most people would go with VS Code because I tend to see it everywhere, and I couldn't help but notice that neither VI nor Emacs is one of the options, the last time I checked. What are you seeing as far as popularity contests go? And that might be a dangerous question because I'm not suggesting you alienate many of the other vendors who are available, but in the world I live in, it's pretty clear where the zeitgeist of my subculture is going.Mike: Yeah, I mean, VS Code is definitely the most popular IDE. The majority of people that use Gitpod—and especially we have a, like, a pretty heavy free usage tier—uses it in the browser, just for the convenience of having that in the browser and having many environments in the browser. We tend to find more professional developers use VS Code desktop or the JetBrains suite of IDEs.Corey: Yeah, JetBrains I'm seeing a fair bit of in a bunch of different ways and I think that's actually most of what your other options are. I feel like people have either gone down the JetBrains path or they haven't and it seems like it's very, people who are into it are really into it and people who are not are just, never touch it.Mike: Yeah, and we want to provide the options for people to use the tools that they want to use and feel comfortable on. And we also want to provide a platform for the next generation of IDEs to be able to build on and support and to be able to support this concept of cloud or remote development more natively. So, like I mentioned, Nathan Sobo at Zed, I met up with him last week—I'm in Denver; he's in Boulder—and we were talking about this and he's interested in Zed working in the browser, and he's talked about this publicly. And for us, it's really interesting because, like, IDEs working in the browser is, like, a really great convenience. It's not the perfect way to work, necessarily, in all circumstances.There's some challenges with, like, all this tab sprawl and stuff, but it gives us the opportunity, if we can make Zed work really well in for Gitpod—or anybody else building an IDE—for that to work in the browser. Ultimately what we want is that if you want to use a terminal, we want to create a great experience for you for that. And so, we're working on this ability in Gitpod to be able to effectively, like, bring your own IDE, if you're building on that, and to be able to offer it and distribute on Gitpod, to be able to create a new developer tool and make it so that anybody in their Gitpod workspace can launch that as part of their workspace, part of their tool. And we want to see developer tools and IDEs flourish on top of this platform that is cloud development because we want to give people choice. Like, at Gitpod, we're not building our own IDE anymore.The team started to. They created Theia, which was one of the original cloud, sort of, web-based IDEs that now has been handed over to the Eclipse Foundation. But we moved to VS Code because we found that that's where the ecosystem were. That's where our users were, and our customers, and what they wanted to use. But we want to expand beyond that and give people the ability to choose, not only the options that are available today but the options that should be available in the future. And we think that choice is really important.Corey: When you see people kicking the tires on Gitpod for the first time, where does the bulk of their hesitancy come from? Like, what is it where—people, in my experience, don't love to embrace change. So, it's always this thing, “This thing sucks,” is sort of the default response to anything that requires them to change their philosophy on something. So okay, great. That is a thing that happens. We'll see what people say or do. But are they basing it on anything beyond just familiarity and comfort with the old way of doing things or are there certain areas that you're finding the new customers are having a hard time wrapping their head around?Mike: There's a couple of things. I think one thing is just habit. People have habits and preferences, which are really valuable because it's the way that they've learned to be successful in their careers and the way that they expect things. Sometimes people have these preferences that are fairly well ingrained that maybe are irrational or rational. And so, one thing is just people's force of habit.And then getting used to this idea that if it's not on my laptop, it means—like what you mentioned before, it's always what-ifs of, like, “What if I'm on a plane?” Or like, “What if I'm at the airport in a hurricane?” “What if I'm on a train with a spotty internet connection?” And so, there's all these sort of what-if situations. And once people get past that and they start actually using Gitpod and trying to set their projects up, the other limiting factor we have is just connectivity.And that's, like, connectivity to the other resources that you use to develop. So, whether that's, you know, package or module repositories or that some internal services or a database that might be running behind a firewall, it's like getting connectivity to those things. And that's where the dedicated deployment model that I talked about, running inside of your perimeter on our network, they have control over, kind of helps, and that's why we're trying to overcome that. Or if you're using our SaaS product, using something like Tailscale or a more modern VPN that way. But those are the two main things.It's like familiarity, this comfort for how to work, sort of, in this new world and not having this level of comfort of, like, it's running on this thing I can hold, as well as connectivity. And then there is some cost associated with people now paying for this infrastructure they didn't have to pay for before. And I think it's a, you know, it's a mistake to say that we're going to offset the cost of laptops. Like, that shouldn't be how you justify a cloud development environment. Like—Corey: Yeah, I feel like people are not requesting under-specced laptops much these days anymore.Mike: It's just like, I want to use a good laptop; I want to use a really nice laptop with good hardware and that shouldn't be the cost. The proposition shouldn't be, it's like, “Save a thousand dollars on every developer's laptop by moving this off to the cloud.” It's really the time savings. It's the focus. It's the, you know, removing all of that drift and creating these consistent environments that are more secure, and effectively, like, automating your development environment that's the same for everybody.But that's the—I think habits are the big thing. And there is, you know, I talked about a little bit that element of, like, we still have this concept of, like, I have this environment and I start it and it's there, and I pay for it while it's there and I have to clean it up or I have to make sure it stopped. I think that still exists and it creates a lot of sort of cognitive overhead of things that I have to manage that I didn't have to manage before. And I think that we have to—Gitpod needs to be better there and so does everybody else in the industry—about removing that completely. Like, there's one of the things that I really love that I learned from, like, Stewart Butterfield when I was at Slack was, he always brought up this concept called the convenience threshold.And it was just the idea that when a certain threshold of convenience is met, people's behavior suddenly changes. And as we thought about products and, like, the availability of features, that it really drove how we thought about even how to think about you know, adoption or, like, what is the threshold, what would it take? And, like, a good example of this is even, like, the way we just use credit cards now or debit cards to pay for things all the time, where we're used to carry cash. And in the beginning, when it was kind of novel that you could use a credit card to pay for things, like even pay for gas, you always had to have cash because you didn't know if it'd be accepted. And so, you still had to have cash, you still had to have it on hand, you still had to get it from the ATM, you still have to worry about, like, what if I get there and they don't accept my cards and how much money is it going to be, so I need to make sure I have enough of it.But the convenience of having this card where I don't have to carry cash is I don't have to worry about that anymore, as long as they have money in my bank account. And it wasn't until those cards were accepted more broadly that I could actually rely on having that card and not having the cash. It's similar when it comes to cloud development environments. It needs to be more convenient than my local development environment. It needs to be—it's kind of like early—I remember when laptops became more common, I was used to developing on a desktop, and people were like, nobody's ever going to develop on a laptop, it's not powerful enough, the battery runs out, I have to you know, when I close the lid, when you open the lid, it used to take, like, five minutes before, like, it would resume an unhibernate and stuff, and it was amazing where you could just close it and open it and get back to where you were.But like, that's the case where, like, laptops weren't convenient as desktops were because they were always plugged in, powered on, you can leave them and you can effectively just come back and sit down and pick up where you left off. And so, I think that this is another moment where we need to make these cloud development environments more convenient to be able to use and ultimately better. And part of that convenience is to make it so that you don't have to think about all these parts of them of whether they're running, not running, how much they cost, whether you're going to be there [unintelligible 00:31:35] or lose their data. Like, that should be the value of it that I don't have to think about any of that stuff.Corey: So, my last question for you is, when you take a look at people who have migrated to using Gitpod, specifically from the corporate perspective, what are their realizations after the fact—I mean, assuming they still take your phone calls because that's sort of feedback of a different sort—but what have they realized has worked well? What keeps them happy and coming back and taking your calls?Mike: Yeah, our customers could focus on their business instead of focusing on all the issues that they have with configuring development environments, everything that could go wrong. And so, a good example of this is a customer they have, Quizlet, Quizlet saw a 45-point increase in developer satisfaction and a 60% reduction in incidents, and the time that it takes to onboard new engineers went down to ten minutes. So, we have some customers that we talk to that come to us and say, “It takes us 20 days to onboard an engineer because of all the access they need and everything you need to set up and credentials and things, and now we could boil that down to a button click.” And that's the thing that we tend to hear from people is that, like, they just don't have to worry about this anymore and they tend to be able to focus on their business and what the developers are actually trying to do, which is build their product.And in Quizlet's example, it was really cool to see them mention in one of the recent OpenAI announcements around GPT4 and plugins is they were one of the early customers that built GPT4 plugins, or ChatGPT, and they mentioned that they were sharing a lot of Gitpod URLs around when we reached out to congratulate them. And the thing that was great about that, for us is, like, they were talking about their business and what they were developing and how they were being successful. And we'd rather see Gitpod in your development environment just sort of disappear into the background. We'd actually like to not hear from customers because it's just working so well from them. So, that's what we found is that customers are just able to get to this point where they could just focus on their business and focus on what they're trying to develop and focus on making their customers successful and not have to worry about infrastructure for development.Corey: I think that really says it all. On some level, when you have customers who are happy with what's happening and how they're approaching this, that really is the best marketing story I can think of because you can say anything you want about it, but when customers will go out and say, “Yeah, this has made our lives better; please keep doing what you're doing,” it counts for a lot.Mike: Yeah, I agree. And that's what we're trying to do. You know, we're not trying to win, sort of, a tab versus spaces debate here around local or cloud or—I actually just want to enable customers to be able to do their work of their business and develop software better. We want to try to provide a method and a platform that's extensible and customizable and gives them all the power they need to be able to just be ready to code, to get to work as soon as they can.Corey: I really want to thank you for being so generous with your time. If people want to learn more, where's the best place for them to find you, other than at your conference in San Francisco in a few weeks?Mike: [laugh]. Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate the banter back and forth. And I hope to see you there at our conference. You should come. Consider this an invite for June 1st and 2nd in San Francisco at CDE Universe.Corey: Of course. And we will put links to this in the [show notes 00:34:53]. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. I appreciate it.Mike: Thanks, Corey. That was really fun.Corey: Mike Brevoort, Chief Product Officer at Gitpod. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an angry comment detailing exactly why cloud development is not the future, but then lose your content halfway through because your hard drive crashed.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.

Rounding Up Season 1 | Episode 17 – Asset-Based Approach to Assessment Guest: Tisha Jones Mike Wallus: When you look at the results of your students work, what types of things are you attending to? Many of us were trained to look for the ways that students were not understanding concepts or ideas. But what if we flipped that practice on its head and focused on the things students did understand? Today on the podcast, we're talking with Tisha Jones, senior adviser for content development at The Math Learning Center, about building an asset-based approach to assessment.  Mike: Tisha, first of all, thanks for joining us. We're thrilled to have you with us. Tisha Jones: I'm really excited to be here. Mike: I have a sense that for a lot of people, the idea of asset-based assessment is something that we might need to unpack to offer, kind of, a basic set of operating principles or a definition. So, my first question is, how would you describe asset-based assessment? What would that mean for a practitioner? Tisha: I think the first part of it is thinking just about assessment. Assessment is a huge part of every school that is in this country. So, there are formative assessments, which are ongoing assessments that teachers are doing while students are considered “in the process of learning”—although we know that students really are never not in the process of learning. And then there are also summative assessments, when we want to see if they have demonstrated proficiency or mastery of the concepts that they've been learning throughout that unit. But when we're thinking about assessments, oftentimes the idea of assessment is that we are looking for what students don't know. And asset-based assessment means that we're taking this idea and we're flipping it, and we're saying, “Let's start by looking at what students are showing us that they do know.” And we're trying to really focus on the things that our students are showing us that they're able to do. Mike: So, that's a lot. And I think one of many of the things that's going on for me is that that's a pretty profound mind shift, I think, for a lot of folks in the field; not because they necessarily want to look at their students as a set of deficits, but because most of the training that a lot of us got actually was focused on “What are the deficits?” Tisha: Most of the training when we're talking about kids casually, or with our colleagues or administrators, we're often worried about, “Well, our kids don't know this. Our kids are struggling here.” And that really becomes the way that we see our students, right? And our kids are so much more than that, right? And our kids are coming to us with knowledge, and we can forget that when we're only focused on what they don't know. Mike: There's a great quote that you're making me think about. It's from the 14th century, and the person has said, essentially, “The language that we use becomes the world that we live in.” And I think that's a little bit of where you're going, is that deficit-focused language kind of lives in the DNA of a lot of either the training that we've had or the structures of schools. And so, flipping this is a mind shift, and I think it's really exciting that we're talking about this. I have two things on my mind. I think one is, let's talk about the assessments themselves first. So, if I want to start thinking about using my assessments in an asset-based way, if we just think about the assessments themselves, be they formative or summative, tell me about what you think an educator might do with the assessments that they're using, whether they're coming from a curriculum or whether they're some that they're designing on their own. How should I think about the assessment materials that I have, and are there ways that I should imagine shifting them? Tisha: That's a great question. I think that when you're looking at your assessments, you may or may not need to change them. They might be fine the way that they are. But the way to know is when you see the opportunities kids have to give their answers, what is that going to tell you about what they understand? So, if you have, for example, a problem that is computation, if you have a problem that has just asked the kids for an answer, or if you have a problem that's multiple choice, what are you learning about their thinking, about their understanding from what they put on the paper? Now, I'm not saying don't ever use those questions. They have their purpose. But that is really what I am asking you to do, is to think about “What is their purpose? What is the intention behind the questions on the assessment?” So, are there ways for you to open up the assessment to give kids more ways of showing what they do understand as opposed to limiting them to saying, “You must show something in this way” or “You're either right or you're wrong”? Mike: Yeah, that really hits home for me. And I think one of the operating principles that I'm hearing is, regardless of what assessment tools you're using, creating space for kids to show you how they're thinking is really a starting, foundational, kind of, centerpiece for asset-based assessment. Tisha: Absolutely. And I want to also add that I'm talking a lot about paper and pencil because we think about assessments as paper and pencil. But assessment's also not just paper and pencil. Assessment, especially formative assessment, it's your conversations that you have with kids in class. As far as I am concerned, there is no better way to know what a kid's thinking than to talk to them. Talk to your kids as much as you absolutely, possibly can. Ask them so many questions. Mike: Well, you're bringing me to the second piece about the assessments themselves. One piece is, create space, regardless of whether it's a question in a conversation or whether it's a question in a paper-pencil assessment or what have you, for them to show their thinking. The other thing that it makes me think is, part of my work as an educator is to look at the questions and say, “What are the big ideas that I'm really looking for? And what is it that I'm hoping that I can understand about children's thinking with each of these questions that I'm asking?”  Tisha: Yes. Mike: Beyond just right and wrong. Tisha: Yes, this is hard work. But this, to me, is not extra work. When you think about a gap, sometimes that can feel very disheartening. It can feel like, “I can't close it. My kids don't know this. They're never going to get it.” It almost just drains the joy of teaching out. This is the job, and this is the part that I am hoping we can all get excited about. I am excited to know what my kids understand. I feel like that gives me a better entryway to being a better teacher for them. If we can start to shift how we think about assessing our students to looking for what they know, to me, that feels very different. It feels different for your kids, and it feels different for you. It's much more fun to walk into a classroom thinking about what my kids know than what they don't. Mike: Yeah. And I think you're hinting at the next place that I wanted to go, which is, there's the assessments themselves and both how I use them and how I make space for kids to show their thinking. And then there's “How do I approach the things that kids are showing me in their assessments?” And I think that feels like another one of these mind-shift pieces where, what kept coming to mind for me is, if you and I and a colleague or two were sitting together at a table and we were teaching third grade and we had a set of student work in front of us, part of what I'm thinking about is what would a conversation sound like if we were really taking an asset-based perspective on looking at our students' work? What questions might we ask? What kind of a process might we use to, kind of, really focus on assets as opposed to focusing on deficits and gaps? Tisha: So, as we're looking at the work, I think the best place to start is, if we're talking as colleagues, “What do you see that the kids know? What are they doing well?” Whether you're talking about one kid or whether you're talking about a group of kids or your class collectively, “What are they doing well?” And for me, even just sitting here across from you saying this, that feels like a much brighter place to start. I'm like, “OK, I'm into this conversation about what my kids know,” and I would then start to say, “OK, and how can we build on what they know?” Mike: Ooh, I love that. Keep talking about that. Tisha: So, if we're looking at say, fractions, and we're kind of at the beginning, we could come in and we could say, “Oh, our kids are just not getting it. They don't know anything about fractions.” And that feels very defeating. But if you start with, “OK, well, I can see that they can partition into half, great. OK, so can we get them to fourths? Can we get them to eighths? How about thirds? All right. Can they get it on a rectangle? Can they get it on a circle? Can they get it in this context? Can they get it if it's a sharing situation?” Right? Now, we're brainstorming all of these questions of what can they do next. Mike: And those are actionable things, right? Like … Tisha: Right.  Mike: … in addition to saying, “This is what kids are doing,” thinking about “What I can build from” actually leads to action, it leads me to a path of instruction, and that does feel really different. Tisha: So, if we are here and we take the perspective that our kids don't get fractions, then that could bleed into our instruction in a different way. So, instead of now thinking about what we can do next and how we can keep building them up, we may be thinking about how do we need to water things down? How do I need to make things easier? And we want to make sure that we are not taking away rich mathematical opportunities from our students because our perspective is that they're not able, they have deficits. We want to instead think about “How do we build them up? How do we still make sure that they're getting these rich mathematical problems and opportunities in class and being able to grow them in that way?” Mike: Love that. So, one of the things that really just jumped out, and I want to come back to this because I think the language is so darn important: This idea that an asset-based perspective leads to thinking about instruction as “building upon.” That just seems like such a practical, simple thing. But boy, shifting your mindset and approaching it the way you described it, Tisha, that really does feel profoundly different than a lot of the data conversations that I've sat in over the years. Tisha: At that point, we should be stopping to think, “What do they need next?” But it's hard to make that [determination] based on saying, “Well, they don't know this.” It's much easier to think about what they need next if you're looking for what they do know. And you can say, “Oh, I can make some connections to that and move them maybe even just a little bit to a little bit further, help them take another step.” Mike: It strikes me that what I don't hear you saying is, “We can't acknowledge that there's sometimes going to be a difference between what kids understand and our ultimate goals for them.” That can still be true, but we're looking at their starting point as the starting point and the next steps, rather than just only saying, like, “The gap is this wide.” And even using the language of “gap” is challenging, right?  Tisha: Absolutely.  Mike: Because we're trying to say, like, “Our job is to build, not just to measure.” Tisha: Well, and when you think about talking about a gap, it almost feels like it's the kids' fault.  Mike: Uh-hm.  Tisha: But right now, in our conversation, we are talking about where the responsibility is.  Mike: Oh! Yeah! Tisha: And the responsibility is on me to keep thinking about “How do I help this kid grow?”  Mike: Uh-hm. Tisha: “How do I keep helping this kid grow in their math understanding?” It is not uncommon in elementary schools to group or classify kids based on their abilities. And coming from the best place, right? Like, we're all wanting to help our students. I believe that everybody wants to help their students grow.  Mike: This conversation has really got me thinking a lot, and I suspect that anyone who's listening is in the same place. I'm curious, if I'm a person who's new to this conversation, if these ideas are new, I'm wondering if you have any recommendations about where someone could go to keep learning, be it, uh, a book, a website, something along those lines that could keep me thinking about this and exploring these ideas? Tisha: A good place to start is a book called “The Impact of Identity in K–8 Mathematics: Rethinking Equity-Based Practices.” And that is an NCTM publication. Mike: I love that one. It's fantastic. In fact, I've read it myself. We'll put a link to that in the podcast notes. Tisha: That would be great. I think that it's a great resource for thinking about assessment and just equity-based practices in general. Mike: Fabulous. Tisha, it was lovely having you on. Thank you so much. Tisha: Oh, it's been so much fun. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2023 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

Cavs Radio Analyst Jim Chones previewed Game 5 with Bill and Mike - It's Do or Die - Win Or Go Home - Mitchell Needs To Get Hot - Bench Needs To Get Hot - Out Hustle The Knicks

  Rounding Up  Season 1 | Episode 15 – Productive Ways to Build Fluency with Basic Facts Guest: Dr. Jennifer Bay-Williams  Mike Wallus: Ensuring students master their basic facts remains a shared goal among parents and educators. That said, many educators wonder what should replace the memorization drills that cause so much harm to their students' math identities. Today on the podcast, Jenny Bay-Williams talks about how to meet that goal and shares a set of productive practices that also support student reasoning and sense making.  Mike: Welcome to the podcast, Jenny. We are excited to have you.  Jennifer Bay-Williams: Well, thank you for inviting me. I'm thrilled to be here and excited to be talking about basic facts.  Mike: Awesome. Let's jump in. So, your recommendations start with an emphasis on reasoning. I wonder if we could start by just having you talk about the ‘why' behind your recommendation and a little bit about what an emphasis on reasoning looks like in an elementary classroom when you're thinking about basic facts.  Jenny: All right, well, I'm going to start with a little bit of a snarky response: that the non-reasoning approach doesn't work.  Mike and Jenny: ( laugh )  Jenny: OK. So, one reason to move to reasoning is that memorization doesn't work. Drill doesn't work for most people. But the reason to focus on reasoning with basic facts beyond that fact, is that the reasoning strategies grow to strategies that can be used beyond basic facts. So, if you take something like the making 10 idea—that nine plus six, you can move one over and you have 10 plus five—is a beautiful strategy for a 99 plus 35. So, you teach the reasoning upfront from the beginning, and it sets students up for success later on.  Mike: That absolutely makes sense. So, you talk about the difference between telling a strategy and explicit instruction. And I raised this because I suspect that some people might struggle to think about how those are different. Could you describe what explicit instruction looks like and maybe share an example with listeners?  Jenny: Absolutely. First of all, I like to use the whole phrase: ‘explicit strategy instruction.' So, what you're trying to do is have that strategy be explicit, noticeable, visible. So, for example, if you're going to do the making 10 strategy we just talked about, you might have two ten-frames. One of them is filled with nine counters, and one of them is filled with six counters. And students can see that moving one counter over is the same quantity. So, they're seeing this flexibility that you can move numbers around, and you end up with the same sum. So, you're just making that idea explicit and then helping them generalize. You change the problems up and then they come back and they're like, ‘Oh, hey, we can always move some over to make a 10 or a 20 or a 30' or whatever you're working on. And so, I feel like, in using the counters, or they could be stacking unifix cubes or things like that. That's the explicit instruction. Jenny: It's concrete. And then, if you need to be even more explicit, you ask students in the end to summarize the pattern that they noticed across the three or four problems that they solved. ‘Oh, that you take the bigger number, and then you go ahead and complete a 10 to make it easier to add.' And then, that's how you're really bringing those ideas out into the community to talk about. For multiplication, I'm just going to contrast. Let's say we're doing add a group strategy with multiplication. If you were going to do direct instruction, and you're doing six times eight, you might say, ‘All right, so when you see a six,' then a direct instruction would be like, ‘Take that first number and just assume it's a five.' So then, ‘Five eights is how much? Write that down.' That's direct instruction. You're like, ‘Here, do this step here, do this step here, do this step.'  Jenny: The explicit strategy instruction would have, for example—I like eight boxes of crowns because they oftentimes come in eight. So, but they'd have five boxes of crowns and then one more box of crowns. So, they could see you've got five boxes of crowns. They know that fact is 40, they—if they're working on their sixes, they should know their fives. And so, then what would one more group be about? So, just helping them see that with multiplication through visuals, you're adding on one group, not one more, but one group. So, they see that through the visuals that they're doing or through arrays or things like that. So, it's about them seeing the number of relationships and not being told what the steps are.  Mike: And it strikes me, too, Jenny, that the role of the teacher in those two scenarios is pretty different.  Jenny: Very different. Because the teacher is working very hard ( chuckles ) with the explicit strategy instruction to have the visuals that really highlight the strategy. Maybe it's the colors of the dots or the exact ten-frames they've picked and have they filled them or whether they choose to use the unifix cubes and how they're going to color them and things like that. So, they're doing a lot of thinking to make that pattern noticeable, visible. As opposed to just saying, ‘Do this first, do that second, do that third.'  Mike: I love the way that you said that you're doing a lot of thinking and work as a teacher to make a pattern noticeable. That's powerful, and it really is a stark contrast to, ‘Let me just tell you what to do.' I'd love to shift a little bit and ask you about another piece of your work. So, you advocate for teaching facts in an order that stresses relationships rather than simply teaching them in order. I'm wondering if you can tell me a little bit more about how relationships-based instruction has an impact on student thinking.  Jenny: So, we want every student to enact the reasoning strategies. So, I'm going to go back to addition, for example. And I'm going to switch over to the strategy that I call pretend-to-10, also called use 10 or compensation. But if you're going to set them up for using that strategy, [there are] a lot of steps to think through. So, if you're doing nine plus five, then in the pretend-to-10 strategy, you just pretend that nine is a 10. So now you've got 10 plus five and then you've got to compensate in the end. You've got to fix your answer because it's one too much. And so, you've got to come back one. That's some thinking. Those are some steps. So, what you want is to have the students automatic with certain things so that they're set up for that task. So, for that strategy, they need to be able to add a number onto 10 without much thought.  Jenny: Otherwise, the strategy is not useful. The strategy is useful when they already know 10 plus five. So, you teach them this, you teach them that relationship, you know 10 and some more, and then they know that nine's one less than 10. That relationship is hugely important, knowing nine is one less than 10. Um, and so then they know their answer has to be one less. Nine's one less than 10. So, nine plus a number is one less than 10 plus the number. Huge idea. And there's been a lot of research done in kindergarten on students understanding things like seven's one more than six, seven's one less than eight. And they're predictive studies looking at student achievement in first grade, second grade, third grade. And students, it turns out that one of the biggest predictors of success, is students understanding those number relationships. That one more, one less, um, two more, two less. Hugely important in doing the number sense. So that's what the relationship piece is, is sequencing facts so that what is going to be needed for the next thing they're going to do, the thinking that's going to be needed, is there for them. And then build on those relationships to learn the next strategy.  Mike: I mean, it strikes me that there's a little bit of a twofer in that one. The first is this idea that what you're doing is purposely setting up a future idea, right? It's kind of like saying, ‘I'm going to build this prior knowledge about ten-ness, and then I'm going to have kids think about the relationship between 10 and nine.' So, like, the care in this work is actually really understanding those relationships and how you're going to leverage them. The other thing that really jumps out from what you said, this has long-term implications for students thinking. It's not just fact acquisition, it's what you said, research shows that this has implications for how kids are thinking further down the road. Am I understanding that right?  Jenny: That's absolutely correct. So just that strategy alone. Let's say they're adding 29 plus 39. And they're like, ‘Oh hey, both of those numbers are right next to the next benchmark. So instead of 29 plus 39, I'm going to add 30 plus 40, 70. And I got, I went up two, so I'm going to come back down two. And I know that two less than a benchmark's going to land on an eight to that.' Again, it's coming back to this relationship of how far apart numbers are, what's right there within a set of 10, helps then to generalize within 10s or within 100s. And by the way, how about fractions?  Mike: Hmm. Talk about that.  Jenny: ( laughs ) It generalizes to fractions. So, let's take that same idea of adding. Let's just say it's like, two and seven-eighths plus two and seven-eighths. So, if we just pretended those were both threes because they're both super close to three, then you'd have six, and then you added on two-eighths too much. So, you come back two-eighths, or a fourth, and you have your answer. You don't have to do the regrouping with fractions and all the mess that really gets bogged down. And it's a much more efficient method that, again, you set students up for when they understand these number relationships. When you get into fractions, you're thinking about, like, how close are you to the next whole number maybe, instead of to the next 10s number.  Mike: It strikes me that if you have a group of teachers who have a common understanding of this approach to facts, and everyone's kind of playing the long game and thinking about how what they're doing is going to support what's next, it just creates a system that's much more intentional in helping kids not only acquire the facts, but build a set of ways of thinking.  Jenny: Mike, that's exactly it. I mean, here we are, we're trying to make up for lost time. We never have enough time in the classroom. We want an efficient way to make sure our kids get the most learning in. And so, to me that is about investing early in the fact strategies. Because then actually when you get up to those other things that you're adding or subtracting or multiplying or whatever you're doing, you benefit from the fact that you took time early to learn those strategies. Because those strategies are now very useful for all this other math that you're doing. And then students are more successful in making good choices about how they're going to solve those problems that are, oftentimes—especially when, I like to mention fractions and decimals at least once in a basic facts talk because we get back, by the time we get into fractions and decimals—we're back to just sometimes only showing one way. The sort of standard algorithm way. When, in fact, those basic facts strategies absolutely apply to almost-always-more-efficient strategies for working with fractions and decimals.  Mike: I want to shift a little bit. One of the things that was really helpful for me in growing my understanding is, the way that you talk about a set of facts that you would describe as ‘foundational' facts and another set of facts that you would describe as ‘derived' facts. And I'm wondering if you can unpack what those two subsets are and how they're related to one another.  Jenny: Yeah. So, the foundational facts are ones where automaticity is needed in order to enact a strategy. So, to me, the foundational fact strategies are, they're names. Like the doubling strategy or double and double again, some people call it. Or add a group for multiplication, and the addition ones of making 10s and pretend-to-10 strategies. And in those strategies, you can solve lots of different facts. But there's too much going on ( laughs ) in your brain if you don't have automaticity with the facts you need. So, for example, if you have your six facts, and you're trying to get your six facts down. And you already know your fives, like, automaticity with your fives. Then that becomes a useful way to get your sixes. So, if you have six times eight, and you know five times eight is 40, then you're like, ‘I got one more 8, 48.'  Jenny: That's an added group strategy. But if you're not automatic with your fives, this is how this sounds when you're interviewing a child. They're going to use add a group strategy, but they don't know their fives. So, then they're like, ‘Let's see, five times eight is 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 40. Now, what was I doing?' Like, they can't finish it because they were skip-counting with their fives. They lose track of what they're doing, is my point. So, the key is that they just know those facts that they need in order to use a strategy. And that, going back to, like, the pretend-to-10, they got to know 10-and-some-more facts to be successful. They have to know nine's one less than 10 to be successful. So, that's the idea is, if they reach automaticity with the foundational fact sets, then their brain is freed up to go through those reasoning strategies.  Mike: That totally makes sense. I want to shift a little bit now. One of the things that I really appreciated about the article was that you made what I think is a very strong, unambiguous case for ending many of the past practices used for fact acquisition—worksheets and timed tests, in particular. This can be a tough sell because this is often what is associated with elementary mathematics, and families kind of expect this kind of practice. How would you help an educator explain the shift away from these practices to folks who are out in the larger community? What is it that we might help say to folks to help them understand this shift?  Jenny: That's a great question, and the real answer is it depends, again, on audience. So, who is your audience? Even if the audience is parents, what do those parents prioritize and want for their children? So, I feel like [there are] lots of reasons to do it, but to really speak to what matters to them. So, I'm going to give a very generic answer here. But for everyone, they want their child to be successful. So, I feel that that opportunity to show, to give a problem like 29 plus 29, and ask how parents might add that problem. And if they think 30 plus 30 and subtract two to get to the answer, whatever, then that gives this case to say, ‘Well this is how we're going to work on basic facts. We're building up so that your child is ready to use these strategies. We're going to start right with the basic facts, learning these strategies. These really matter.' Jenny: And the example I gave could be whatever fits with the level of their kid. So, it could be like 302 minus 299. It's a classic one where you don't want your child to implement an algorithm there, you want them to notice those numbers are three apart. And so, there's this work that begins early. So, I think that's part of it. I think another part of it is helping people just reflect on their own learning experiences. What were your learning experiences with basic facts? And even if they liked the speed drills, they oftentimes recognize that it was not well-liked by most people. And also, then they really didn't learn strategies. So, I feel like we have to be showing that we're not taking something away, we're adding something in. They are going to become automatic with their facts. They're not going to forget them because we're not doing this memorizing that leads to a lot of forgetting. And bonus, they're going to have these strategies that are super useful going forward. So, to me, those are some of the really strong speaking points. I like to play a game and then just stop and pause for a minute and just say, ‘Did you see how hard it was for me to get you quiet? Do you see how much fun you were having?' And then I just hold up a worksheet ( laughs ). I'm like, ‘And how about this?' You know, again, that emotional connection to the experience and the outcomes.  Mike: That is wonderful. Since you brought it up, let's talk about replacements for worksheets and timed tests.  Jenny: Um-hm.  Mike: So, you advocate for games as you said, and for an activity-based approach. I think that what I want to try to do is get really specific so that if I'm a classroom teacher, and I can't see a picture of that yet, can you help paint a picture? Like what might that look like?  Jenny: I love that question because [there are] lots of good games and lots of places. But again, like I said earlier, this thinking really deeply about what game I'm choosing and for what. What do my students need to practice? And then being very intentional about game choice is really important. So, for example, if students are working on their 10-and-some-more facts, then you want to play a game where all the facts are 10-and-some-more facts. That's what they're working on. And then maybe you mix in some that aren't. Or you play a game with that and then they sort cards and find all the solve the 10 and more, or [there are] lots of things they can do. They can play concentration, where the fact is hidden and the answer is hidden and things like that. So, you can be very focused. And then when you get to the strategies, you want to have a game that allows for students to say, allow their strategies.  Jenny: So, I'm a big fan of, like, sentence frames, for example. So, [there are] games that we have in our ‘Math Fact Fluency' book that are in other places that specifically work on a strategy. So, for example, if I'm working on the pretend-to-10 strategy, I like to play the game fixed-addend war, which is the classic game of war, except, there's an addend in the middle, and it's a nine, to start. And then each of the two players turns up a card. So, Mike, if you turn up a seven, then you're going to explain how you're going to use the pretend-to-10 strategy to add it. And I turned up a six, so I'm going to, I'm going to do this then I'll, you can do it. So, I turned up a six. So, I'm going to say, ‘Well, 10 and six is 16, so nine and six is one less, 15.' I've just explained the pretend-to-10 strategy. And then you get your turn.  Mike: And I'd say, ‘Well seven and 10, I know seven and 10 is 17, so seven and nine has to be one less, and that's 16. Jenny: Yeah. So, your total's higher than mine, you win those two cards, you put them in your deck, and we move on. So, that's a way to just practice thinking through that strategy. Notice there's no time factor in that. You have a different card than I have. You have as much time, and we're doing think-aloud. These are all high-leverage practices. Then we get to the games where it's like, you might turn up a six and a five where you're not going to use the pretend-to-10 strategy for that. You've got to think, ‘Oh that doesn't really fit that strategy because neither one of those numbers is really close to 10. Oh hey, it's near a double, I'm going to use my double.' So, you sequence these games to, if you start with one of those open-ended games, it might be too big of a jump because students aren't ready to choose between their strategies. They have to first, be adept at using their strategies. And once they're adept at using them, then they're ready to play games where they get to choose among the strategies.  Mike: So, you're making me think a couple things, Jenny. One is, it's not just that we're shifting to using games as a venue to practice to get to automaticity. You're actually saying that when we think about the games, we really need to think about, ‘What are the strategies that we're after for kids?' And then make sure that the way that the game is structured, like, when you're talking about the pretend-to-10, with the fixed addend. That's designed to elicit that strategy and have kids work on developing their language and their thinking around that particularly. So, there's a level of intent around the game choice and the connection to the strategies that kids are thinking about. Am I understanding that right?  Jenny: That's it. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And a huge, a lot of intentionality so that they have that opportunity and a no-pressure, a low-stress, think through the strategy. If they make a mistake, they're peer or themselves usually correct it in the moment, and they get so much practice in. I mean, imagine going through half a deck of cards playing that game.  Mike: Yeah.  Jenny: That's 26 facts. And then picture those 26 facts on a page of paper. And then, and again, in the game that you've got the added benefit of think-aloud, and then you're hearing what your peer has said.  Mike: You know, one of the things that strikes me is, if I'm a teacher, I might be thinking like, ‘This is awesome, I'm super excited about it. Holy mackerel, do I have to figure these games out myself?' And I think the good news is, there's a lot of work that's been done on this. I know you've done some. Do you have any recommendations for folks? There's of course curriculum. But do you have recommendations for resources that you think, help a teacher think about this or help a teacher see some of the games that we're talking about?  Jenny: Well, I'm going to start with my ‘Math Fact Fluency' book because that is where we go through each of these strategies, each of the foundational facts sets and the strategies, and for each one supply a game. And then from those games they're easily adaptable to other settings. And some of the games are classic games. So, there's a game, for example, called ‘Square Deal.' And the idea is that you're covering a game board, and you're trying to make a square. So, you get a two-by-two grid taken, and you score a point or five points or whatever you want to score. Well, we have that game housed under the 10-and-some-more facts. So, all the answers are like 19, 16, 15, and the students turn over a 10 card and another card, and if it's a 10 and a five, they get to claim a 15 spot on the game board.  Jenny: Well, that game board can be easily adapted to any multiplication fact sets, any other addition. I like to do a Square Deal with 10 and some more, and then I like to do Square Deal with nine and some more. There's my effort, again, to come back to either pretend-to-10 or making 10. Where they're like, ‘Oh, I just played 10 and some more. Now we're doing the same game, but it's nine and some more.' So, I feel like there's a lot of games there. And there is a free companion website that has about half of the games ready to download in English and in Spanish.  Mike: Any chance you'd be willing to share it?  Jenny: Yeah, absolutely. So, you can just Google it. The Kentucky Center for Mathematics created it during Covid, actually, as a gift to the math community. And so, if you type in ‘Kentucky Center for Math' or ‘KCM math fact fluency companion website,' it will pop up.  Mike: That's awesome. I want to ask you about one more thing before we close because we've really talked about the replacement for worksheets, the replacements for timed tests. But there is a piece of this where people think about ‘How do I know?' right? ‘How can I tell that kids have started to build this automaticity?' And you make a pretty strong case for interviewing students to understand their thinking. I'm wondering if you could just talk again about the ‘why' behind it and a little bit about what it might look like.  Jenny: So, first of all, timed tests are definitely a mistake for many reasons. And one of the reasons— beyond the anxiety they cause—they're just very poor assessment tools. So, you can't see if the student is skip-counting or not, for example, for multiplication facts. You can't see if they're counting by ones for the addition facts. You can't see that when they're doing the test, and you can't assume that they're working at a constant rate; that they're just solving one every, you know, couple of seconds, which is the way those tests are designed. Because I can spend a lot of time on one and less time on the other. So, they're just not, they're just not effective as an assessment tool. So, if you flip that. Let's say they're playing the game we were talking about earlier, and you just want to know can they use the pretend-to- 10 strategy?  Jenny: That's your assessment question of the day. Well, you just wander around with a little checklist ( chuckles ), you know? Yes, they can. No, they can't. And so, a checklist can get at the strategies, and a checklist can also get at the facts like how well are they doing with their facts? So, once they do some of those games that are more open-ended, you can just observe and listen to them and get a feel for that. If they're playing Square Deal with whatever fact, you know. So, what happens is you're, like, ‘I wonder how they're doing with their fours. We've really been working with their fours a lot.' Well, you can play Square Deal or a number of other games where that day you're working on fours. The fixed-addend war can become fixed-factor war, and you put a four in the middle. So adaptable games and then you're just listening and watching.  Jenny: And if you're not comfortable with that approach, then they can be playing those games, and you can have students channeling through where you do a little mini-interview. It only takes a few questions to get a feel for whether a student knows their facts. And you can really see who's automatic and who's still thinking. So, for example, a student who's working on their fours, if you give them four times seven, they might say, ‘Twenty-eight.' I call that automatic. Or they might, they might do four times seven, and they pause, and they're like, ‘Twenty-eight.' Then I'm like, ‘How did you think about that?' And they're like, ‘Well, I doubled and doubled again.' ‘Great.' So, I can mark off that they are using a strategy, but they're not automatic yet. So that to me is a check, not a star. And if I ask, ‘How did you do it?' And they say, ‘Well, I skip-counted.' Well then, I'm marking down the skip-counted. Because that means they need a strategy to help them move toward automaticity. Mike: I think what strikes me about that, too, is, when you understand where they're at on their journey to automaticity, you can actually do something about it as opposed to just looking at the quantity that you might see on a timed test. What's actionable about that? I'm not sure, but I think what you're suggesting really makes the case that I can do something with data that I observe or data that I hear in an interview or see in an interview.  Jenny: Absolutely. I mean this whole different positioning of the teacher as coaching the student toward their growth; helping them grow in their math proficiency, their math fluency. You see where they're at and then you're monitoring that in order to move them forward instead of just marking them right or wrong on a timed test. I think that's a great way to synthesize that.  Mike: Well, I have to say, it has been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much for joining us today.  Jenny: Thank you so much. I am again thrilled to be invited and always happy to talk about this topic.  Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability.  © 2023 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

Mike was just seven years old when he lost his father to kidney disease, and many years later he learned that he was at an advanced stage of the inherited condition called polycystic kidney disease (PKD), and his kidneys were slowly failing. 2019 was a very challenging year and Mike experienced multiple medical issues. He knew he needed a transplant, and that the waitlist was long and with no guarantees.  Mike started researching how to go about receiving a kidney from a living donor, and he came across resources from “The Big Ask, The Big Give,” a program of The National Kidney Foundation. Asking for a kidney can be awkward, and using social media is a whole different world for someone who never used Facebook, so Mike needed a champion. In this episode he shares how before he asked for a kidney, he had to ask for help, and navigate the pandemic at the same time.  Meanwhile, Mike's niece Andrea had never thought very much about donating an organ until she heard Uncle Mike's story. In the second part of this episode, Andrea shares with us how she came to the realization that she could do something significant to help. She also discusses how gifting a kidney has opened up a new and unexpected richness in her life, including her involvement with Kidney Donor Athletes, and a recent trip to Mount Kilimanjaro.  FULL TRANSCRIPT ⬇ With host and series producer Rolf Taylor.  Resources mentioned during this episode:  The Big Ask, The Big Give, NKF   www.kidney.org/transplantation/livingdonors  Kidney Donor Athletes    www.kidneydonorathlete.org/  Kidney Transplant Conversations is underwritten by Veloxis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. All views and opinions expressed in the podcast reflect those of the participants and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Veloxis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Excerpts “I'm not very media savvy, let's put it that way. I don't do any social things on the internet because I'm an old guy. They said find someone to be your champion. My daughter-in-law volunteered for this project.” – Mike “What happened to me was a miracle because if you look at kidney transplants for people my age, it's really low, when I got my transplant, I was 69.”  – Mike “The next words she said were “I'm approved as a donor for Uncle Mike. It just came out of the blue! We had no idea that she went through all these tests. She didn't want anyone to know in case she could not help.”  – Mike “It has been one of the best things that I have done in my life. I'm just so grateful for the doctors and for science and for all the support that I was able to find. I was so blessed to be able to give this gift.”  – Andrea  © Project Advocacy, 2022 - 2023

Description: It's time to win with training! Mike Connell, MRA Learning & Development Instructor, is here to ensure you are engaging in the current top-of-the-line training practices. We'll go over training opportunities for companies, how to keep people engaged during training sessions, and how the evolution of training affects you and your success.  Key Takeaways: "If you want to have success, figure out what things you need to do every day that will lead to that success."  Keep generations in mind when training - think about background, experience, and motivators.  Training is a two-way street! Participants have as much as an active role as the instructor.  Resources: Learning & Development  MRA Membership  About MRA  Let's Connect: Guest Bio - Mike Connell  Guest LinkedIn Profile - Mike Connell  Host Bio - Sophie Boler  Host LinkedIn Profile - Sophie Boler  Transcript: Transcripts are computer generated -- not 100% accurate word-for-word. 00:00:00:01 - 00:00:03:10 Hello everybody and welcome to 30 minute Thrive, 00:00:03:10 - 00:00:06:20 your go to podcast for anything and everything HR. 00:00:06:21 - 00:00:09:22 Powered by MRA, the Management Association 00:00:09:23 - 00:00:12:23 looking to stay on top of the ever changing world of HR? 00:00:12:23 - 00:00:14:18 MRA has got you covered. 00:00:14:18 - 00:00:17:15 We'll be the first to tell you what's hot and what's not. 00:00:17:16 - 00:00:21:03 I'm your host, Sophie Boler and we are so glad you're here. 00:00:21:04 - 00:00:23:01 Now it's time to thrive. 00:00:23:01 - 00:00:25:17 Welcome to this episode of 30 Minute Thrive. 00:00:25:17 - 00:00:29:18 We're happy you're here, and I'm excited to talk about training to win today 00:00:29:18 - 00:00:31:00 with Mike Connell. 00:00:31:00 - 00:00:33:20 He's our learning and development instructor here at MRA. 00:00:34:04 - 00:00:37:15 And if you aren't familiar with Mike, he has over 30 years 00:00:37:15 - 00:00:41:14 of professional experience and has been an entrepreneur and manager 00:00:41:14 - 00:00:45:19 in manufacturing, banking and asset management, real estate, 00:00:46:03 - 00:00:49:22 franchise restaurants and powersports dealerships. 00:00:49:22 - 00:00:53:23 And in addition to being a learning and development instructor at MRA, 00:00:54:07 - 00:00:58:06 Mike has also coached high school and college football for over 20 years. 00:00:58:15 - 00:01:01:06 So he comes with a lot of experience and today 00:01:01:06 - 00:01:04:06 he'll really be highlighting his coaching and training background. 00:01:04:15 - 00:01:06:21 So thanks for being on the podcast today, Mike. 00:01:06:21 - 00:01:07:22 Excited to talk with you. 00:01:07:22 - 00:01:10:06 I am as well. Cool. 00:01:10:06 - 00:01:11:05 Well, I want to start off 00:01:11:05 - 00:01:15:07 by asking how you really incorporate your coaching background to your training. 00:01:15:13 - 00:01:19:03 I think the thing that's probably closest between them is I'm 00:01:19:03 - 00:01:22:06 a proponent of individualization, so 00:01:23:22 - 00:01:25:01 even though, you know, 00:01:25:01 - 00:01:27:20 I might have 60 football players 00:01:29:00 - 00:01:31:16 and you know, generally as a football coach 00:01:32:05 - 00:01:36:02 between high school and college 15 to 22 year old young men. 00:01:36:15 - 00:01:39:07 So a lot of similarities in that regard. 00:01:39:07 - 00:01:40:12 But still, 00:01:40:12 - 00:01:44:16 you know, kind of individualizing what they're teaching, what we're doing. 00:01:45:09 - 00:01:46:18 Same thing in the classroom. 00:01:46:18 - 00:01:51:22 You know, I obviously I've got 20 people in their managers or leads. 00:01:52:17 - 00:01:55:17 They all in different backgrounds, experiences, things like that. 00:01:55:17 - 00:01:59:01 So I try to incorporate a lot of things that will 00:01:59:17 - 00:02:03:15 potentially provide the learning for everyone there. 00:02:03:15 - 00:02:08:21 So flexing the different communication styles, 00:02:08:21 - 00:02:11:10 you know, just different folks, how they communicate, 00:02:11:23 - 00:02:15:12 motivation, you know, why they're there and what they're trying to get out of it. 00:02:15:12 - 00:02:18:12 And so I'm trying to figure out, you know, what that is 00:02:18:14 - 00:02:21:13 and give it to them whenever possible. 00:02:21:13 - 00:02:22:20 Yeah, absolutely. 00:02:22:20 - 00:02:25:14 So we'll be talking about coaching and training today. 00:02:25:14 - 00:02:29:13 So can you kind of give a little overview on the difference between 00:02:29:13 - 00:02:32:13 coaching and training coaching? 00:02:32:13 - 00:02:34:19 It's funny because probably in the last ten years 00:02:34:19 - 00:02:38:03 I see all these books on leadership and management. 00:02:38:03 - 00:02:40:22 It's coaching coaching coach at your own term. 00:02:40:22 - 00:02:45:05 And I think a lot of ways it becomes the catch all, you know, where it's like 00:02:45:11 - 00:02:49:04 that's sort of everything we say, Well, that's conflict management or that's 00:02:49:07 - 00:02:50:16 where everything's kind of coaching. 00:02:51:15 - 00:02:52:15 I would say 00:02:52:15 - 00:02:57:07 probably the biggest commonality in the way I view them is, 00:02:57:07 - 00:03:01:17 you know, whether it's coaching or training, it's making someone better. 00:03:01:22 - 00:03:06:00 Number one is whether it's football or management training, it's 00:03:06:00 - 00:03:07:11 participation sports. 00:03:07:11 - 00:03:12:08 So I always tell all the classes before we begin, I have two rules. 00:03:12:18 - 00:03:17:08 So and the first one is this is participation, right? 00:03:17:08 - 00:03:18:21 This is not a spectator sport. 00:03:18:21 - 00:03:20:12 So we're going to participate. 00:03:20:12 - 00:03:24:08 So obviously football, that's the key to their spectators, 00:03:24:08 - 00:03:26:11 but they're just not on the team. Right. 00:03:26:11 - 00:03:28:11 Very similar in that regard. 00:03:28:20 - 00:03:32:23 When people are trained, they need to have responsibility 00:03:32:23 - 00:03:34:09 for their role in it as well. 00:03:34:09 - 00:03:37:09 I'm no different than a player, You know, in executing, so 00:03:38:07 - 00:03:40:18 I think that's similar in those regards. 00:03:40:19 - 00:03:42:02 Yeah, for sure. 00:03:42:02 - 00:03:45:19 When we're talking about training, it's really evolved over the years. 00:03:45:19 - 00:03:51:18 We're now we have remote training options and in-person and hybrid options even. 00:03:51:18 - 00:03:55:11 So how do you think it's really evolved over the years 00:03:55:11 - 00:03:58:17 and has it become more of a necessity now, would you say? 00:03:58:17 - 00:04:00:13 Or what are your thoughts on that? 00:04:00:13 - 00:04:04:09 Well, so before I was a trainer, when I was a manager, 00:04:04:09 - 00:04:07:09 especially a young manager, somebody thought it was a really good idea 00:04:07:09 - 00:04:10:21 to make me a manager in my early twenties, I don't know what they were thinking. 00:04:10:21 - 00:04:13:02 That's a great idea. To tell you the truth. 00:04:13:04 - 00:04:18:06 So, I mean, what it was is it's very similar to a lot of people. 00:04:18:06 - 00:04:22:00 I, I had success in a role. 00:04:22:02 - 00:04:25:22 So you know, typical is okay well you're good at doing the job, 00:04:25:22 - 00:04:29:22 so why don't you lead Some people do without necessarily 00:04:29:22 - 00:04:34:05 recognizing totally different skill set, leading people versus 00:04:34:10 - 00:04:38:21 you know, I was good at selling who's good at some of the things I did there. 00:04:38:21 - 00:04:39:12 And so 00:04:40:14 - 00:04:41:02 I think as 00:04:41:02 - 00:04:45:19 far as training and evolving in that, you know, I've been the trainer here 00:04:45:19 - 00:04:48:22 for five years and so, I mean, we just went through code. 00:04:49:03 - 00:04:51:23 So obviously there is some evolution there. 00:04:52:02 - 00:04:57:03 We were essentially a 99.9% in person training operation 00:04:57:11 - 00:04:59:21 to going 100% virtual. 00:05:00:04 - 00:05:03:15 And we like to joke in our department that we have a five year plan 00:05:03:22 - 00:05:08:21 to get to maybe 25 to 30% virtual. 00:05:09:05 - 00:05:14:09 And the five year plan became a five week plan and it went 100%. 00:05:14:09 - 00:05:16:22 So I would say that was obviously a big thing. 00:05:16:22 - 00:05:21:07 But I think even prior to that and over the years, I was always, 00:05:21:18 - 00:05:25:09 I would say, like a learning junkie, something I learned from my dad 00:05:25:20 - 00:05:30:16 if he was the most unbelievable, self-taught person I've ever. 00:05:30:22 - 00:05:33:18 I mean, he was always just learning and open to that. 00:05:33:18 - 00:05:36:20 And he was he was a self-taught engineer, which is not very typical. 00:05:37:09 - 00:05:39:04 And so and he was an entrepreneur. 00:05:39:04 - 00:05:40:22 And, you know, his 00:05:40:22 - 00:05:44:08 dad wasn't a business owner or anything, so he had to learn a lot of that. 00:05:44:18 - 00:05:49:01 So I think probably the biggest difference and I even hear it 00:05:49:01 - 00:05:53:12 now, some of the older participants will come in, our class will offer about 00:05:54:18 - 00:05:56:22 they'll they'll refer to the classes like a seminar. 00:05:57:04 - 00:05:59:16 They'll use certain weird lingo. Yeah. 00:05:59:17 - 00:06:04:14 And also that well, like this seminar, I'm like Jay or, you know, it's 00:06:04:14 - 00:06:08:01 sort of like the webinar saying people will call our Zoom training webinar. 00:06:08:01 - 00:06:09:01 I'm like, This is not a webinar. 00:06:09:01 - 00:06:11:03 And so for everything. 00:06:11:03 - 00:06:13:17 So I think a lot of it is people are used to more 00:06:13:20 - 00:06:16:22 in the past, maybe a little bit more of the seminar thing 00:06:16:22 - 00:06:21:19 where there was a spectator element and we just that's not our brand. 00:06:21:19 - 00:06:25:13 We don't, you know, adult learning methodology, right? 00:06:25:13 - 00:06:26:20 You involve the learner. 00:06:26:20 - 00:06:29:15 So I think 00:06:29:15 - 00:06:31:17 I would have loved a lot more of that. 00:06:31:17 - 00:06:33:21 I got value training. 00:06:33:21 - 00:06:35:00 I did that. 00:06:35:00 - 00:06:38:19 Several things that I actually teach now that we share at MRA 00:06:38:21 - 00:06:42:05 are things that I learned, you know, from folks long time ago. 00:06:42:10 - 00:06:44:08 But I think it's a little different how we. 00:06:44:08 - 00:06:45:12 Yeah, talking about. 00:06:45:12 - 00:06:48:16 And you just mentioned your older participants 00:06:49:00 - 00:06:52:15 and we've actually had a lot of conversation on the podcast. 00:06:52:20 - 00:06:54:06 Generational differences. 00:06:54:06 - 00:06:57:08 And so how does that really play a role in training? 00:06:57:08 - 00:07:01:01 Like how how do you train for different generations? 00:07:01:09 - 00:07:04:22 I like to say with generations, if you actually lay out 00:07:04:22 - 00:07:09:05 everything that we think is generational and I used to do this 00:07:09:05 - 00:07:13:00 activity in the classroom, we had a class where we can teach 00:07:13:00 - 00:07:16:06 and specifically on generation and people would go around 00:07:16:06 - 00:07:17:11 and they would write things 00:07:17:11 - 00:07:20:19 they think of with different generations on flip charts. 00:07:21:03 - 00:07:24:00 And then I would have them go back around and I would say, 00:07:24:00 - 00:07:28:06 I want you to mark next to each one what's actually 00:07:29:01 - 00:07:31:19 what you think is a true generational difference 00:07:32:04 - 00:07:35:14 versus mature and not maturity 00:07:35:14 - 00:07:38:21 and immature versus mature, but just like time on the earth. 00:07:38:23 - 00:07:41:11 Yeah, mature and experience and all that. 00:07:41:20 - 00:07:46:06 And it was crazy because we would have 75% of the chart would be mature 00:07:46:20 - 00:07:50:12 where yeah that's not really right You know, you take my baby boomers, 00:07:50:14 - 00:07:53:16 you know, we think of certain things that we would say younger all, well, 00:07:53:19 - 00:07:56:15 you know rebellious teen will listen to authority and all that Well, 00:07:56:21 - 00:07:58:22 anybody paying attention to the 1960s, 00:08:00:02 - 00:08:02:21 it's a lot of stuff of rebellion and that going on. 00:08:02:21 - 00:08:06:17 So I think a lot of the stuff we think is 00:08:06:17 - 00:08:10:01 generational has more to do with just how much experience. 00:08:10:08 - 00:08:15:07 So when people come in the classroom with some of those differences, 00:08:15:07 - 00:08:17:12 I think a lot of it is 00:08:19:04 - 00:08:22:16 a lot of it is sort of their expectations and experience. 00:08:22:23 - 00:08:27:19 And so what I try to do is, number one, just understand. 00:08:27:19 - 00:08:30:09 And now it's a little easier for me because I do have a little bit of that 00:08:30:09 - 00:08:33:22 shared experience with, you know, folks who've been around for a while. 00:08:33:22 - 00:08:37:14 And so I remember the command and control bosses, 00:08:38:00 - 00:08:41:16 the ones that come in and I say that because I said so. 00:08:42:15 - 00:08:45:20 And whereas younger people, that's maybe a little more foreign, 00:08:46:02 - 00:08:48:16 you know, it's a little bit more collaborative environments. 00:08:48:16 - 00:08:52:03 And then and so just sort of working to 00:08:53:14 - 00:08:55:10 some might say, to 00:08:55:10 - 00:08:58:19 try to bridge that gap is 00:08:58:19 - 00:09:02:21 I don't really necessarily buy into the old school, new school. 00:09:02:21 - 00:09:03:22 You know, we hear that a lot. 00:09:03:22 - 00:09:06:03 Like, yeah, old school, new school. 00:09:06:03 - 00:09:09:16 What I say is there's things we've gotten away with in the past, right? 00:09:09:16 - 00:09:14:08 So when unemployment is double digits, people move jobs. 00:09:14:08 - 00:09:15:09 It's a little different, right? 00:09:15:09 - 00:09:17:09 We haven't had that for the last few years. 00:09:17:17 - 00:09:21:10 Definitely an employee market in terms of their services. 00:09:21:12 - 00:09:24:05 And so we do things different because of that. 00:09:24:07 - 00:09:27:10 I think good leadership has always been good leadership right 00:09:27:12 - 00:09:28:06 through throughout time. 00:09:28:06 - 00:09:31:02 And so I try to bring, no matter what the generation or try 00:09:31:02 - 00:09:34:09 to bring the training back to what's what's just the right thing we should do. 00:09:34:09 - 00:09:36:00 Yeah, that's a good point. 00:09:36:00 - 00:09:40:12 So this next question is probably a hard one to answer because there's probably 00:09:40:12 - 00:09:45:09 so many things, but what is really your favorite part about training 00:09:47:06 - 00:09:47:21 or coaching? 00:09:47:21 - 00:09:49:11 Others. sure. 00:09:49:11 - 00:09:51:18 I like the people 00:09:52:20 - 00:09:54:12 I would love to say. 00:09:54:12 - 00:09:56:16 So I've been in a lot of different industries. 00:09:56:16 - 00:09:58:14 It's when you read my bio. 00:09:58:14 - 00:10:01:12 Yeah. Wow, insane. 00:10:01:12 - 00:10:04:06 Who would ever have a career like that, right? 00:10:05:06 - 00:10:09:07 And part of it is so looking back, I'm not a, you know, the widget. 00:10:09:07 - 00:10:12:06 And is that still a term? Yeah, right. 00:10:12:14 - 00:10:13:14 I'm not a widget. 00:10:13:14 - 00:10:15:18 I can get excited about anything. 00:10:15:20 - 00:10:19:16 I got an economics professor gave us this, you know, thing. 00:10:19:16 - 00:10:22:22 It's how a pencils made and and a particular reason 00:10:22:22 - 00:10:25:01 why you had to read that book. It's like two pages. 00:10:25:01 - 00:10:26:07 It's. It's amazing. 00:10:26:07 - 00:10:28:23 I mean, there's 17 different products and all this. 00:10:29:06 - 00:10:31:04 I'm get excited about anything. 00:10:31:04 - 00:10:36:05 I've always considered myself on the people side, on the relational side. 00:10:36:12 - 00:10:38:07 And so obviously that's 00:10:38:07 - 00:10:42:12 why I moved into management, you know, business ownership and that, 00:10:43:01 - 00:10:46:08 but not because I'm I can get passionate about any product. 00:10:46:08 - 00:10:48:12 For me, the thing that's constant is people. 00:10:48:12 - 00:10:51:08 And so with training, it's the same thing. 00:10:51:08 - 00:10:54:09 I get as much sometimes 00:10:54:09 - 00:10:56:22 more from them than than vice versa. 00:10:57:15 - 00:11:00:04 I love that it's different. 00:11:00:04 - 00:11:03:00 Every year is different. People in the classroom. 00:11:03:00 - 00:11:07:10 I go out and do on sites at companies and get to meet people and just, 00:11:07:21 - 00:11:12:00 you know, and so many similarities at same time running, conflict, 00:11:12:04 - 00:11:15:05 all things, miscommunication, all that. 00:11:15:12 - 00:11:17:13 But just the people element is so different. 00:11:17:13 - 00:11:19:12 So I yeah, I love that part. 00:11:19:12 - 00:11:24:05 And kind of going off of this question do you have any fun stories you can share 00:11:24:05 - 00:11:29:17 like success stories from people you've helped or coached or trained? 00:11:29:17 - 00:11:33:06 My favorite thing to have is when people contact me 00:11:33:12 - 00:11:35:22 like linkedIn to enter through email and they're like, 00:11:36:17 - 00:11:40:19 not even like, Hey, it was a great class, but I have this problem. 00:11:41:00 - 00:11:41:17 Can you help me? 00:11:41:17 - 00:11:43:15 You know, just interested what you think. 00:11:43:15 - 00:11:46:09 And I eat that stuff up. I love it. 00:11:47:14 - 00:11:49:22 And I 00:11:50:05 - 00:11:54:05 probably the one that to this day, the class I taught that had 00:11:54:05 - 00:11:58:19 the most universal is not what you would necessarily think 00:11:58:19 - 00:12:01:21 because you think conflict management or coaching, you know, this kind of stuff. 00:12:02:03 - 00:12:05:22 So I had a company i did training for and their HR Manager 00:12:05:22 - 00:12:10:15 actually was in a class we teach here and half day class called business email. 00:12:10:19 - 00:12:11:08 Okay. 00:12:11:08 - 00:12:14:11 And he was in there and he comes up to me at the end of class, he goes, 00:12:14:11 - 00:12:19:03 we have to do this in our company cuz we got lots issues, right? 00:12:19:04 - 00:12:19:14 Yeah. 00:12:19:14 - 00:12:23:21 And I would say you get offenders, just people who do like this stuff, 00:12:23:22 - 00:12:25:18 like the reply all yeah, right. 00:12:25:18 - 00:12:29:20 From everything or CC everybody in the company is we got lot. 00:12:30:06 - 00:12:33:01 So it's just you know can you come out and he said, but here's the challenge. 00:12:33:01 - 00:12:35:20 We have 75 people I want to put through this training 00:12:36:07 - 00:12:38:14 and our room fits 25 00:12:39:01 - 00:12:43:12 and I don't have the budget to do three half days. 00:12:43:12 - 00:12:45:14 Can you do a one hour version? 00:12:45:14 - 00:12:47:19 I was like, that's that's a lift. 00:12:47:19 - 00:12:48:12 No, that's. 00:12:48:12 - 00:12:50:13 A little bit sorry, Let me see. 00:12:50:13 - 00:12:51:13 I'll work it out. 00:12:51:13 - 00:12:54:20 It's a little more presentation, but there's still some interaction stuff. 00:12:54:23 - 00:12:56:16 But I'm like, okay, let's hit the highlights. 00:12:56:16 - 00:13:00:15 And we went through I got done with that class 00:13:00:15 - 00:13:04:07 and I imagine there was four, six months after another company 00:13:04:07 - 00:13:07:02 also sent some of their other managers to other training. 00:13:07:02 - 00:13:11:12 I heard more positive feedback about a business email class. 00:13:11:14 - 00:13:15:23 Yeah, Mike It's changed the culture, how people aren't doing the stuff 00:13:15:23 - 00:13:18:04 that drives me crazy. Yeah. Anymore. Right? 00:13:18:08 - 00:13:19:07 It's all these things. 00:13:19:07 - 00:13:21:18 And I thought, well, it's communication, right? 00:13:21:18 - 00:13:22:14 I mean, even though we call it 00:13:22:14 - 00:13:25:09 business email, it's really like communication issue. 00:13:25:14 - 00:13:29:10 And so I would say I get a lot of great feedback, but that class to this day 00:13:29:10 - 00:13:33:07 just stands out as the one probably like you changed their company culture. 00:13:33:10 - 00:13:34:12 Well, that's got to be a great feeling though. 00:13:34:12 - 00:13:36:18 You'll all be like, What was it? 00:13:36:18 - 00:13:37:09 It does. 00:13:37:09 - 00:13:39:22 just of all the classes. Business email. 00:13:39:22 - 00:13:42:15 One hour presentation, right? 00:13:43:01 - 00:13:46:04 Yeah, well, it has a great effect on people. So. 00:13:46:23 - 00:13:50:16 So how do you really keep people engaged in your trainings? 00:13:50:16 - 00:13:52:15 How do you keep them interesting? 00:13:52:15 - 00:13:56:08 Like you said, some of them are half days, some of them are full days. 00:13:56:08 - 00:14:00:16 How do you keep people energetic to learn throughout the day? 00:14:01:21 - 00:14:04:06 Well, one thing and you can probably if you talk 00:14:04:06 - 00:14:08:02 to any of the instructors around here, we would all say the same thing. 00:14:08:02 - 00:14:11:18 We're tired at the end of the day, so you have to bring your energy. 00:14:11:18 - 00:14:13:10 Yeah, that's a big part. 00:14:13:10 - 00:14:16:03 And one of the things for me and this is just something 00:14:16:03 - 00:14:20:06 I bring from management, I'm not necessarily that, you know, 00:14:21:07 - 00:14:24:10 hi, you're bouncing off the walls and I'm not. 00:14:24:15 - 00:14:26:00 Eeyore either, right? 00:14:26:00 - 00:14:28:01 I try to be pretty consistent. 00:14:28:22 - 00:14:33:15 I think the biggest thing is, is I'm having conversations with people. 00:14:34:01 - 00:14:38:01 So probably the biggest thing I would say in in the sessions 00:14:38:01 - 00:14:41:11 I do is we're just we're working through material. 00:14:41:18 - 00:14:42:06 Right. 00:14:42:06 - 00:14:48:00 But I told the classes, you know, I want all the questions. 00:14:48:23 - 00:14:51:20 I don't want everybody leaving here with something that didn't get asked. 00:14:52:06 - 00:14:54:09 And I tell them this, trust me, I'm good enough. 00:14:54:09 - 00:14:55:13 I'll get us back on track. 00:14:55:13 - 00:14:55:18 Yeah. 00:14:55:18 - 00:14:58:03 And hopefully, you know, we'll get there. 00:14:58:17 - 00:15:01:23 But the biggest thing is, you know, it's interactive. 00:15:02:03 - 00:15:07:18 So we are I'm asking questions, looking for those interactions, 00:15:07:18 - 00:15:12:23 those answers we do a lot of obviously with adult learning, we do activities. 00:15:13:01 - 00:15:13:08 Right. 00:15:13:08 - 00:15:16:04 Well, I just start a class this week on conflict management. 00:15:16:04 - 00:15:20:10 I literally hand them scenarios and sit down in groups 00:15:20:10 - 00:15:25:14 and they role play out conflict and so we do 00:15:25:14 - 00:15:28:22 a lot of things that keep it interactive and then we debrief those things. 00:15:28:22 - 00:15:31:01 But I think the big thing is just, 00:15:31:06 - 00:15:34:17 you know, don't to me, it's not a stage anymore. 00:15:34:17 - 00:15:35:13 It's not an event. 00:15:35:13 - 00:15:37:13 It's just it's training. 00:15:37:13 - 00:15:38:11 It's coaching. 00:15:38:11 - 00:15:41:06 It's no different than I would do one on one with somebody. 00:15:41:13 - 00:15:43:04 It's just with a. Group of people. 00:15:43:04 - 00:15:43:21 Yeah. 00:15:43:21 - 00:15:45:21 I like the point that you brought up on. 00:15:46:19 - 00:15:49:19 The participants have to bring their energy to like it's 00:15:49:19 - 00:15:54:02 a two way thing, you know, like if you want to attend a training, 00:15:54:02 - 00:15:57:17 you got to be ready for it and do your homework and prepare for it. 00:15:57:17 - 00:16:00:10 And if you want to get a good outcome from it. 00:16:00:10 - 00:16:01:17 So that's a good point. 00:16:01:17 - 00:16:06:18 Well, they're managing people, so you're not going to sit down and coach 00:16:07:04 - 00:16:11:01 one of your employees just, hey, come on in here. 00:16:11:01 - 00:16:13:10 Let's just have a random conversation. 00:16:13:10 - 00:16:14:21 You have a plan. 00:16:14:21 - 00:16:16:20 So I have a plan when I walk in the class. 00:16:16:20 - 00:16:20:15 But at the same time, my plan includes a lot of flexibility 00:16:20:15 - 00:16:24:20 because every class is different and I think people can tell 00:16:24:20 - 00:16:28:02 when you have that, people can tell the difference between can training. 00:16:28:02 - 00:16:30:22 And I think that's really MRA's this is what we do. 00:16:30:22 - 00:16:33:17 Our instructor staff is unbelievable. 00:16:33:23 - 00:16:39:09 We, we, we might teach the same material, but I don't know that 00:16:39:09 - 00:16:44:03 we ever teach it exactly the same way, because every class is different. 00:16:44:03 - 00:16:46:22 As we close out our episode for today, 00:16:47:12 - 00:16:49:22 the title of this episode is Spring Training. 00:16:49:22 - 00:16:51:08 It's time to Win. 00:16:51:08 - 00:16:54:23 So how would you say that you train to win? 00:16:56:03 - 00:16:58:06 That is an interesting question. Yes. 00:16:58:20 - 00:17:02:05 So I've never had winning as a goal. 00:17:02:05 - 00:17:04:00 I actually think it's terrible. 00:17:04:00 - 00:17:06:21 Winning as a result, training to win, 00:17:07:11 - 00:17:10:04 managing to win, whatever you are. 00:17:10:04 - 00:17:11:23 PARTICIPANT Anybody in it. 00:17:11:23 - 00:17:15:07 What I tell them is do the things that lead to winning. 00:17:16:04 - 00:17:17:05 In football. 00:17:17:05 - 00:17:19:09 There are situations where 00:17:20:21 - 00:17:24:00 at the end of the game we lost a game 00:17:24:07 - 00:17:27:10 and I will tell the team you played a tremendous game 00:17:28:06 - 00:17:32:21 and there are other games where we won by 38 points and I'm not happy 00:17:33:10 - 00:17:37:13 because we should have won by 50 because just level and the talent there. 00:17:38:00 - 00:17:43:06 I don't ever gauge it on anything but for my people, right? 00:17:43:06 - 00:17:46:17 So because I know if I'm a good manager or if I'm a good coach, 00:17:46:17 - 00:17:50:21 I know what the levels and abilities of my people are. 00:17:51:03 - 00:17:54:20 So sometimes the scoreboard is your worst enemy 00:17:55:02 - 00:17:57:05 when it comes to coaching or teaching 00:17:57:08 - 00:17:59:07 because you look up and you're like, Hey, we won the game. 00:17:59:07 - 00:18:03:17 It's great and it's like, But does that mean you actually did your best, right? 00:18:03:17 - 00:18:06:00 There are some situations where in football 00:18:06:00 - 00:18:08:01 you just weren't talented, right? 00:18:08:06 - 00:18:12:22 There's some cases where I've coached employees that are so easy to coach. 00:18:13:04 - 00:18:16:12 You know, I've coached those rock stars where it's literally 00:18:16:17 - 00:18:21:18 I could be a semi terrible manager and they're still gonna have success. 00:18:21:20 - 00:18:22:17 And then I've had people 00:18:22:17 - 00:18:27:00 that took every ounce of every technique and everything that I knew. 00:18:27:06 - 00:18:31:03 So for me, if you want to win, if you want to have success, 00:18:31:10 - 00:18:36:19 figure out what things you need to do every day that lead to that. 00:18:37:01 - 00:18:39:15 And then what happens, happens. 00:18:39:15 - 00:18:42:14 And yeah, do I believe in KPIs and measurements? 00:18:42:14 - 00:18:44:04 Yeah, I was in manufacturing. 00:18:44:04 - 00:18:46:19 Clearly, we have to have those, 00:18:46:19 - 00:18:50:03 but those measurements should be based off of the things you're doing 00:18:50:03 - 00:18:53:18 on a regular basis, not just that thing at the end of the year, the month. 00:18:54:01 - 00:18:57:02 So it's just, you know, coach your folks, 00:18:57:12 - 00:19:00:00 you know, lead by example, 00:19:00:02 - 00:19:03:20 do those things all day, every day lead to success. 00:19:04:01 - 00:19:06:06 And then scoreboard is what the scoreboard is. 00:19:07:06 - 00:19:09:14 Oh, well, that's great advice to anyone. 00:19:09:14 - 00:19:10:22 So thank you for that 00:19:10:22 - 00:19:14:19 and thank you for being on 30 minute Thrive today and sharing your knowledge, 00:19:14:19 - 00:19:18:23 your background, your expertise on coaching and training. 00:19:18:23 - 00:19:23:03 So if you liked our chat today, make sure to share this episode. 00:19:23:03 - 00:19:27:05 Leave a comment review or rating in Consider joining MRA. 00:19:27:05 - 00:19:29:10 If you aren't a member already. 00:19:29:10 - 00:19:30:14 We have all the resources 00:19:30:14 - 00:19:33:08 you need in the show notes below, so take a look at those. 00:19:33:18 - 00:19:38:01 And we've also included Mike's bio email and LinkedIn profile. 00:19:38:01 - 00:19:41:16 So if you want to get in touch with him, sure, he'd be happy to connect 00:19:42:17 - 00:19:44:00 all of them that. 00:19:44:00 - 00:19:46:15 Thanks for tuning in and we will see you next week. 00:19:46:22 - 00:19:49:16 And that wraps up our content for this episode. 00:19:49:17 - 00:19:52:21 Be sure to reference the show notes where you can sign them to connect. 00:19:52:21 - 00:19:54:12 For more podcast updates, 00:19:54:12 - 00:19:58:07 check out other MRA episodes on your favorite podcast platform. 00:19:58:07 - 00:20:03:06 And as always, make sure to follow MRA's 30 minutes Thrive so you don't miss out. 00:20:03:07 - 00:20:06:06 Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next Wednesday to carry 00:20:06:06 - 00:20:07:21 on the HR conversation.  

Rounding Up Season 1 | Episode 13 – Keep Calm Guest: Nancy Anderson, EdD   Mike Wallace: We often ask students to share their strategies. But, what does it look like to uncover and highlight the reasoning that informs that strategy? Today on the podcast, we'll talk with Nancy Anderson, a classroom teacher and professional learning developer, about strategies to elicit the reasoning at the heart of the student's thinking.  Welcome to the podcast, Nancy. I am so excited to talk to you today. Nancy Anderson: Thank you. Likewise, Mike. Mike: I'd like to begin with a quote from your article, “Keep Calm and Press for Reasoning.” In it, you state: “Mathematical reasoning describes the process and tools that we use to determine which ideas are true and which are false.” And then you go on to say that “in the context of a class discussion, reasoning includes addressing the strategy's most important ideas and highlighting how those ideas are related.” So, what I'm wondering is, can you talk a little bit about how eliciting a strategy and eliciting reasoning may or may not be different from one another? Nancy: So, when we elicit a strategy, we're largely focused on what the student did to solve the problem. For example, what operations and equations they might have used, what were the steps, and even what tools they might have used. For example, might they have used concrete tools or a number line? Whereas eliciting reasoning focuses on the why behind what they did. Why did they choose a particular strategy or equation? What was it in the problem that signaled that particular equation or that particular operation made sense? And if the strategy included several steps, what told them to go from one step to the next? How did they know that? And then similarly for the tools, what is it in the problem that suggested to them a number line might be an effective strategy to use? And lastly, listening reasoning sort of focuses on putting all those different pieces together so that you talk about those different elements and the rationale behind them in such a way that the people listening are convinced that the strategy is sound. Mike: That's actually really helpful. I found myself thinking about two scenarios that used to play out when I was teaching first grade. One was I had a group of children who were really engaging with the number line to help them think about difference unknown problems. And what it's making me think is, the focus of the conversation wasn't necessarily that they used the number line. And it's like, ‘Why did this particular jump that you're articulating via number line? What is it about the number line that helped you model this big idea or can help make this idea clearer for the other students in the class?' Nancy: Exactly, yes. So, when I think about reasoning, I think about different pieces coming together to form a cohesive explanation that also serves as a bridge to using a particular strategy for one particular problem, [and] as a tool for solving something similar in the future. Mike: So, I have a follow-up question. When teachers are pressing students for their reasoning, what counts as reasoning? What should teachers be listening for? Nancy: Broadly, mathematical reasoning describes the processes and tools that we use to determine which ideas are true and which are false. Because mathematics is based upon logic and reasoning—not a matter of who says it or how loudly they say it or how convincingly they say it, but rather, what are the mathematical truths that undergird what they're saying? That's sort of a broad definition of mathematical reasoning, which I think certainly has its merits. But then I think about the work of teaching, particularly at the elementary level. I think it's helpful to get much more specific. So, when we think about elementary arithmetic, reasoning really focuses on connecting computational strategies to the operations and the principles that lie underneath. So, in the context of a class discussion, when we have a student explain their reasoning, we're really trying to highlight a particular strategy's most important ideas and how those ideas are related, but in such a way that others can listen and say, ‘Oh, I get it. If I were to try the problem again, I do believe that's going to lead to the correct answer.' Or if it was this problem, which is similar, ‘I think I can see how it might make sense for me to use this approach here with these slight adjustments.' So, do you want to take an example? Mike: Yeah, I'd love to. Nancy: So, for example, in a first-grade class, there might be a class discussion about different strategies for adding seven plus eight. And I think in a lot of classes at one point, the teacher would likely want to highlight the fact that you can find that sum using doubles plus one. So, in this particular instance, if a student were to talk about their reasoning, we'd want to encourage that student and certainly help that student talk about the following ideas: the connection between seven plus eight and seven plus seven, and the connection between their answers, namely because the second addend has changed from seven to eight, and noting the connections between the second addend and the answers, namely, if the second addend increases by one, so, too does the sum. And finally, we'd want to emphasize what it is we're doing here. Namely, we are using sums that we know to find sums we don't know. Nancy: So, that's an effective example of what reasoning sounds like in the elementary grades. It's very specific. So even though reasoning is the thing that allows us to move from specific examples to generalizations in elementary mathematics, it's oftentimes by really focusing on what's going on with specific examples   Mike: Uh-hm. Nancy: … that students can begin to make those leaps forward. Some of my thinking lately about what I do in the classroom comes from the book ‘Make It Stick,' which talks a lot about learning processes and principles in general. And one of the points that the authors make in the book is that effective learners see important connections, for whatever reasons, sometimes more readily or more quickly than others. So, what I try to do with my teaching then is to say, ‘OK, well how can I help all learners see those relevant and important connections as well?' Mike: Absolutely. So, it really does strike me that there are planning practices that educators could use that might make a press for reasoning more effective. I'm wondering if you could talk about how might an educator plan for pressing for reasoning? Nancy: One thing that I think teachers can do is anticipate, in a very literal sense, what is it that they want students to say as a result of participating in the lesson? So, I think oftentimes we, as classroom teachers, focus on what we want students to learn, i.e., the lesson objective or the essential aim. But that can be a big jump from thinking about that to thinking about the words we literally want to hear come out of student's mouths. So, I think that that's one shift teachers can make to thinking not just about the lesson objective as you'd write on the board, but literally what you want students to say, such that when you walk around and you sort of listen in on small groups, those moments where you say like, ‘Oh yeah, they're on the right track.' And then I think another key shift is thinking more towards specific examples rather than generalizations. Nancy: So, as an example, suppose that in a third- or fourth- or fifth-grade classroom, students were talking about fraction comparison strategies, and the teacher had planned for a lesson where the objective was to determine if a fraction was more or less than a half by using the generalization about all fractions equal to a half. Namely, that the numerator is always half of the denominator. So, that certainly could be something that we might see in, you know, teacher's guide or perhaps in a teacher's planning book. But that's different than what we'd want to hear from students as the lesson progressed. For example, I think the first thing that we'd want to hear as the students we're talking, is a lot of examples, right? The kinds of examples that are going to lead to that key generalization. Like if a student was talking about nine sixteenths, I think we'd want to hear that student reason that nine sixteenths is more than half because half of 16 is eight and nine sixteenths is a little bit more than eight sixteenths. Nancy: And so, what's effective about that kind of planning is that it alerts you to those ideas when you hear them in the room. And it can then help you think about ‘What are the pieces of the explanation that you want to press on.' So, in this case, the key ideas are finding half of the denominator, connecting that value to the fraction that is equivalent to one half, and then comparing that fraction to the actual fraction we're looking at so that we can bring those key ideas to the fore, and the ideas become a strategy for students to use moving forward. Mike: You're making me think about two things kind of simultaneously. The first is, I'm reflecting back on my own practice as a teacher. And at that time, my grade-level team and I, we tried to really enact the whole idea of anticipating student strategies that comes out in ‘The Five Practices' book. But what you're making me wonder about is, we went through, and we said, ‘Here are some of the ways that children might solve this. This is some of the strategies.' The step we didn't take is to say, ‘We know that there are multiple ways that children could attack this or could think about this, but what's the nugget of reasoning? What would we want them to say in conjunction with the strategy that they had so that we were really clear on if a student is counting on to solve this problem, what's the nugget of reasoning that we want to either press on or encourage. If their direct modeling, again, what's the nugget of reasoning that we want to press on. If they're decomposing numbers? Same thing. So, really it makes me think that it's helpful to anticipate what kids might do. But the place that really, like, supercharges that is that thing that you're talking about is, what's the thing that we want them to say that will let us know that they're onto the reasoning behind it? Nancy: Exactly. And I think the conversations you're having or have had with your colleagues reflects where we are with the field generally. I think that the field of mathematics education is at a place where, for the most part, we're on board with the use of discussion as a pedagogy. I don't think that it's a tough sell to convince a lot of folks that students should be spending some amount of time talking. But I don't think that we as a field are nearly as clear on what to do next. And again, as you alluded to with ‘The Five Practices' book, and while I would certainly agree that all of these are important aspects of classroom talk, I think that they skip over this essential idea of pressing for reasoning. Namely, staying with the student beyond just their initial explanation so that their ideas become clear, not just to others, but also clear to them. Mike: I love that. I want to go in a direction that you started to allude to, but you really got to in, in your article. This idea that there's a certain number of questions for follow-up that can really have a tremendous impact on kids. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that. Nancy: My article and more broadly, my interest in press for reasoning, is motivated in large parts, uh, by my professional interest in figuring out, you know, what it is about discussion that makes it such a powerful tool for learning. So, although we have enough empirical evidence to support discussion as an effective pedagogy in math class, we as a field are much less clear in knowing which of the aspects of discussion are most efficacious for learning. What are the mechanisms of student talk that help students learn math more deeply? I had the good fortune many years ago to find some compelling research by Megan Franke and Noreen Webb and their colleagues at UCLA who did some digging into press for reasoning. And through their studies, they have shown that follow-up questions, questions that press students to clarify and strengthen their initial explanation, are associated with students giving more robust and more accurate explanations. Nancy: What their research revealed is that it takes two to three specific follow-up questions in order to either have the student say, more math and more accurate mathematics. So, I think about that so often in my work in the classroom because so often I'll ask a student to explain their reasoning and because they're learning, the explanation comes out either partially correct or partially complete, and I need them to say more. And I might ask them the first follow-up question and either they or I suddenly start to worry. The student might think, ‘Am I saying something wrong? Am I totally off track here? Uh, I'm not really sure why I did what I did.' And then I, of course, as the teacher, I'm so worried about, ‘Am I putting the student on the spot? Am I losing the rest of the class?' And in those moments, I hear myself say, ‘Two to three follow-up questions, two to three follow-up questions,' as a way to remind myself to stay with the student. That if we really do believe that students learn by talking, then it only makes sense that we should expect them to need more than just one turn to get their ideas out in such a way that are clear and accurate to them as well as to the listeners. Mike: So, that's fascinating, Nancy. I think there's two things that stood out from what you said. One is, as a classroom teacher, I appreciate the fact that you acknowledge that feeling of, ‘Am I losing the class?' [It] is something that always exists when you're trying to question and support. But I think the thing that really jumps out is, we have research that says that this actually does have a tremendous impact on kiddos. So even though it might feel counterintuitive, staying with the press for those two to three questions really does have a tremendous impact. I'm wondering what it might sound like to take a student's initial response and then follow up in a way that presses for reasoning. Nancy: So, suppose a fourth-grade class is working on strategies for multi-digit multiplication, and one particular strategy that the teacher would like to emphasize, or showcase, is compensation. Namely, how we can change one or both factors in a multiplication to create an easier computation and then make an adjustment accordingly. For example, we can multiply 19 times 40 by thinking about 20 times 40, and then subtracting 40. Let's suppose that students are working in groups and—on this computation—and the teacher overhears a student talking to their partner about how they use this exact strategy, and briefly checks in with the student and asks, you know, if they'd be willing to share their strategy with the whole class. And the student agrees. So, the teacher calls on the student to tell us, ‘How did you compute 19 times 40?' And the student says, ‘Well, I did 20 times 40 minus 40, and I did that because 20 times 40 is easier.' Nancy: Great. So, we've got some ideas on the table, and so now let's unpack. So, maybe the first question to ask the student is for them to interpret 19 times 40. What does that mean? Literally, it says 19 times 40, but can they give a context? Can they provide an interpretation of that expression with the hope of getting the idea out that we can think of 19 times 40 as 19 groups of 40. And similarly, 20 times 40 as 20 groups of 40. So, once we have the idea of groups of a number out there, can the student tell again why it made sense for them to think of 20 times 40? Why is that easier? Then another follow-up question to ask is, ‘Well, what's the connection between changing that first factor to 20 and subtracting 40?' Because if you think about it, if you're a listener who's unfamiliar with compensation, that's a pretty big leap to go from changing the first factor by one to a second step of subtracting 40. Huh? Mike: It sure is. Nancy: ( laughs ) Right? Like, how does changing it by one mean you subtract 40. And so, here the students can talk about the fact that we found 20 groups of 40, which is one too many groups. So, we compensate by subtracting 40. So, those are some follow-up questions that I think we'd want to ask. Mike: This example just makes so many connections. I'm struck by the fact that, simultaneously, that press for reasoning is helping the child who came up with the idea really build a stronger vocabulary and a justification, and at the same time, it's actually providing access to that strategy for kids who didn't come up with it, who maybe kind of wondering, ‘What? Where did that come from?' So, really it's beneficial for the child who brought the reasoning to the table and to everybody else. The other thing that jumped out is, even in that question where you said, ‘Can you offer this in context?' That's kind of connecting representations, right? Like the child was articulating something that might show up in equation form and asking them to articulate that in a contextual form. [That] is actually a way of challenging their thinking as well. Nancy: Exactly, yes. For many students—and, unfortunately, many more adults—symbols are just that, their symbols. Yet, we who engage in mathematics know that many times symbols are linked to not just one representation, but several, that there's certainly a literal interpretation of any kind of symbol string or numeric expression. But then we can interpret what those expressions mean by connecting back to the different meanings of the operation. So yeah, like you said, Mike, there's two things going on here at least: Helping the other students learn about this particular approach and trusting that it works, but also to helping the original speakers see what it takes to convince others. And in this case, part of that includes the fact that, ‘Oh, when I talk about multiplication, it's helpful to remind people that multiplication refers to putting groups together. Or that it's helpful to think about multiplication in terms of putting equal groups together.' Mike: Well, before we close the podcast, Nancy, I typically ask a question about resources because I suspect for some folks this conversation is one that they've been thinking about for a while. And for other folks, this idea of thinking past strategies toward a reasoning might be a new idea. So, I'm wondering if you'd be willing to share resources that you think would help support people maybe taking this conversation we've had and deepening it. Nancy: Sure. So, my work in this field rests upon the shoulders of many brilliant mathematics educators and some of whom, uh, are people I admire from afar, like Megan Franke and Noreen Webb and their team at UCLA. And still others who I've had the honor to work directly with and learn from, uh, over the past 20 years. And two educators, in particular, are Suzanne Chapin and Cathy O'Connor of Boston University, who are a mathematics educator and applied linguist, respectively. Mike: I adore their work. I'm just going to cut in and say, I'm excited for the resource you're going to share because I've read some of their stuff and it's phenomenal. Nancy: They were kind enough and generous enough when I was very new in the field to invite me to collaborate with them on a book called ‘Talk Moves,' which is essentially a teacher's guide to facilitating productive math talk. Many years ago, Cathy, Suzanne and I worked together on a research project where we were using discussion in elementary math classes in the city of Chelsea, Massachusetts, and we realized that there really wasn't a how-to guide out there for doing this kind of thing. So, from our work together came the book ‘Talk Moves,' which is now in its third edition and includes written vignettes in the book showing composite examples of teachers and students using ‘Talk Moves' to learn more mathematics, but also includes a set of video clips that were filmed in actual math classes with real-life teachers and real-life students using productive talk moves, including press for reasoning, to help students talk about their reasoning and respond to the reasoning of others. It's a very user-friendly guide for people who want to dig more deeply and see what this thing called productive math talk looks like in action.  Mike: So, I'll add to your plug. I read that back when I was teaching kindergarten and first grade, and it actually had a huge impact on my practice and just understanding at a granular level what this could look like. Nancy, thank you so much for joining us. It really has been a pleasure talking with you today.  Nancy: Oh, it's been a real pleasure for me too, Mike. Thank you so much for having me. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability.  © 2023 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org 

Rounding Up Season 1 | Episode 12 – Open Tasks Guest: Dr. Kim Markworth Mike Wallus: Lately, terms like ‘rich tasks,' ‘multiple entry points,' and ‘low floor,' ‘high ceiling' are being used so often in the world of mathematics education that many educators are confused about their meaning. Today we talk with Kim Markworth, director of content development at The Math Learning Center, about what these terms look like in practice and how they support student learning. Welcome to the podcast, Kim. It's great to have you. Kim Markworth: Thank you, Mike. I'm really honored and excited to be here. Mike: I would love to start this conversation by talking about what it means for a task to be open-ended and have a low floor and a high ceiling. So, is there a way that you think about these terms that might help educators clarify their meaning? Kim: That's a great question, Mike. In truth, when we think about these terms, they're really all interconnected. And I don't know that anyone has really settled on meanings. And lately there's been a bit of a transition from thinking about low floor and high ceiling to low floor and no ceiling at all. And so, when we think about the variations across continua, this really contributes to how we look at tasks and what we appreciate about tasks. And so, when I think about open-ended, this might correspond with high ceiling or no ceiling. We could keep going with the task. There's not really a defined ending point, uh, but instead many pathways where we could take this task further. And when I think about multiple entry points, this might correspond with low floor. And there [are] so many different ways to approach or enter a task. And rich task, probably my favorite term of them all, corresponds to what we've maybe called a problem historically, where we don't have an anticipated solution path or maybe we haven't solved something like this before. We might have multiple solutions to the task. We might have multiple solution paths or viable strategies. We could have opportunities for extension or generalization. And I love tasks that have an unexpected twist or a need to think about something in a unique way, like where your first inclination, your intuition, might be wrong. And all of a sudden you're like, ‘Ooh, this is really something that I wasn't expecting.' Mike: Can you share an example or a few examples with folks who are listening? There's so much that you said just there about the nature of these things. Are you OK telling us a little bit about one or two of them? Kim: Yeah. One task I'm really excited about is a new third grade task that we've been working into our new curriculum. And this task is positioned at the beginning of a unit on multiplication. And so, for third graders, this is really an introduction to multiplication task. And I'm going to apologize to the audience here because this really does require some mental visualization, but I'm going to describe this image that third graders look at, and it involves a pet store. And so, if you can imagine a pet store and going into a pet store, then we have a dog bone display, and these dog bones are hung on three hooks and Annie took, there are two packages—so that the back package isn't visible because it's behind the front package. So, three hooks, two packages per hook, and in each package there are eight dog bones. And those eight dog bones are arranged in a four-by-two array. Kim: And finally, one additional detail here. Each package is labeled $12. And this is a problem-posing situation for kids where we put this image in front of kids and ask them to think about the different mathematical questions that they might ask about this particular image. So ultimately, the question that we ask them to explore is ‘How many dog bones are on display?' Once you have that image in your head, I want you to be thinking about that final question. And the numbers right now are kind of irrelevant for this discussion, but it's highly unlikely that it's something that kids will already know.  Mike: Hmm.  Kim: So, this is a problem-posing situation for the third graders. It's asking them what mathematical questions could you ask about this particular display? And ultimately, we're going to direct them to how many dog bones are on display, but they could explore other questions with additional time. So, how much for all of these dog bones? How much per dog bone? If you had a given number of dogs, how many dog bones would each get? And so, this to me is a task that is open-ended. We could go multiple ways with this, although we are going to focus in the classroom on a particular question. But it's also rich in that kids are going to connect with it, especially if they've been into shops like this. It has multiple entry points. And so, in a lot of ways it really connects to these different terms that you've brought up earlier. Mike: It's interesting because as you describe it, particularly the fact that there's a visual component to this, it really comes clear how there are multiple ways that a child could think about the question or attack the question that you asked. Is there any role for number choice in thinking about how to design a rich task? Kim: Yeah, the numbers are really important. And it's fun to play with different numbers and see how they pan out. And so, in thinking about the dog bone task, we want to keep the numbers accessible. So, when I think about a single peg or a single hook for the dog bone packages, I can think about eight plus eight. And from where kids are coming from, eight plus eight should be accessible. When I think about what I'm seeing with the dog bones, I'm seeing two groups of four in each of the packages. And so, that's a nice way looking at doubles that students might find useful, but I'm also looking at three packages of eight. And so, I could add eight plus eight plus eight, which could bring the teacher very easily to a three times eight multiplication expression. One that is manageable and a great way to introduce multiplication, the times symbol where we're going with all this, but one that is also still accessible for kids to be thinking about as repeated addition. Kim: Ultimately, the numbers get to a final answer of 48 dog bones, and you could think about this in terms of six times eight. But kids aren't going to know six times eight, at least not very commonly in this point of an early introduction to multiplication. But there's various ways that they could get to the eight. We ultimately landed on these numbers: 2, 4, 8, 16, but also this additional number 3, which as a separate prime number really throws some additional mathematical thinking into the mix that elevates the task itself. There's things that are critical to be thinking about as you imagine this task and how it might play out instructionally. It's really important to think about how this stands in the curriculum sequence. So, it is introductory, it's using numbers that the kids are probably not going to know off the top of their heads—related multiplication fact and an answer—but the numbers themselves might elicit different strategies, and the visual might elicit different strategies. And all of this connects to the commutative and associated properties for multiplication and how they might play out with student thinking.  Kim: And so, it's all connected. All these pieces really fit together into what I think is a really interesting and engaging task for students. It's challenging enough, but it's also very accessible simply by counting, kids could count what they see. And the context is engaging for kids as well, because they might be thinking about displays that they've seen and how this corresponds to trips to the store that they've had. Mike: Part of what you've got me thinking, Kim, is there's the design of the task and then there's the element of how a teacher might go about facilitating it. And I think, I want to come back to that, too, because I heard you not only describe the task—the way that it was designed—but you also described some of the ways that a teacher might introduce it, some of the things that they might pose to kids. I wonder if you'd be willing to talk a little bit about facilitation and some of the things about facilitation that can bring a task to life? Kim: So, one of the things that I like to think about in implementing tasks, Mike, is the very intentional letting go, that kids need time to think. They need time to explore. I think all too often as teachers, we have this desire to go in and help and direct. And sometimes we just need to back off and let them think about the different ways that they might approach that, those different entry points, and let them explore and let them take the time to do that. And so, one of the things that I always used to describe to pre-service teachers was the walk away. That I would go up and talk to a group or talk to some partners working together and listen to what they were doing and maybe pose an additional question and then I'd walk away. I didn't want to hear their answer right away. I wanted them to talk about that amongst themselves. But if I stood there, they would start talking to me. And so, I would walk away, move on to a different group, come back later and hear what their thinking was. But it creates that space for letting kids explore, think about, and also not feel the pressure to be getting to a particular answer in a particular timeframe. And I think that's really important for kids to have that freedom. Mike: Yeah. It also strikes me that you're reframing your role for kids, too, in the sense that by walking away, you're sending the signal that ‘I actually have confidence that you and your partners can think about this and reason about this.' Kim: Absolutely. It is putting some power, some agency with the students themselves. ‘You are capable of doing this, you're capable of thinking about this. You do not need me here to be your sounding board or the mathematical authority.' Mike: Kim, can you talk a little bit about the idea of entry points? I'm wondering for teachers in the field, how would you actually define an entry point? What does that look like? Kim: I'm not sure I have a good definition for it, but I do have an analogy, and I would compare it to on-ramps for highways. And when I think about on-ramps, we can all get on the same highway, but we might do it at different places, and we might make choices for where we get on based on our current location or what we know about the on-ramp. But as long as I have a workable vehicle, I can do it. And maybe that's our prior knowledge. But unfortunately, often kids, they don't think that they have a workable vehicle or teachers might even underestimate the child's vehicle that they have. And so, I've probably gone far enough with this analogy, but kids come onto that mathematical highway at different places with particular problems. And I think making sure that we as teachers, as educators, as curriculum designers, that we're thinking about all those different possibilities for getting into a problem and knowing that we can all go to the same place regardless of where we've gotten on. Mike: That's really helpful. So, if I'm an educator and I'm designing a task, or even if I'm facilitating a task that comes with my curriculum, what guidance would you offer to folks to ensure that there are entry points for kids? Kim: I think it really depends on the mathematics and what you're trying to accomplish. And so, with this one in particular—the dog bones visual—I might be asking myself, ‘Can I do it without multiplication since this is an entry point for multiplication. Can I do it without that or could I do it with basic counting skills?' And so, are those viable entry paths open for kids if they don't have where we're going with the task already in their toolkit? When I think about ensuring that there's entry points, I like to think about stripping away the expectations for where you want to go with the task, really allowing kids to have that freedom for exploration. And it's the variety of entry points that leads to the multiple strategies. And when you have multiple strategies, you can make connections between and among those representations. And then you've got something really robust. Or I might go back to that term rich task. And so, it's about can they do it without where you're going, that mathematical goal, and however they encounter that or engage with it, does it still connect to other strategies that will bring them to your mathematical goal? Mike: That is really helpful. What that has me thinking is we have heard in the field about the idea of the five practices and anticipating. But this is a little bit of a twist on that in the sense that you're evaluating the task and saying, ‘What's possible for a kid to get into this task?' I love the example of multiplication. So, for example, if I only have partial or emergent understanding of multiplication, can I still work my way toward an answer to that? And if the answer is no, then what? Kim: Right? But you mentioned partial or emergent understanding, whereas I think this task, actually, you can get in with no understanding of multiplication. I can look at three sets of eight dog bones, add eight plus eight plus eight to get to 24, and then the teacher has that to latch onto to say, ‘We have another way of writing this. I can write three times eight to represent eight being added three times.' And so even that visual structure leads us to something that we can hook on to, to bring forth the connection to multiplication. Mike: I think that's helpful because it means that there's a value and there's a utility to having ways of doing this that you can ultimately connect to the place where you want to go, right? Kim: Yeah. And I think there's opportunities for that kind of reasoning or openness throughout math education; imagining what we can do with tasks to really not just ensure that there's entry points, but value those entry points as really important connections to all students' prior knowledge and where we're going mathematically. Mike: That totally makes sense. Kim: If we can't imagine that our kids are capable of problem-solving and engaging in challenging tasks, then they won't be able to imagine that themselves. And so, in a way, we have to pass along the agency by sometimes just believing ourselves that, ‘Yeah, maybe they can do this,' and giving them that time and seeing what happens. Mike: Before we close the conversation, I'm wondering if you have any resources that you think would help someone listening to this conversation deepen their understanding of designing or implementing rich tasks? Kim: I think the best way to really think about task design and build your own facility is to do some rich tasks and just engage with them as a learner. So, one of the resources that I frequently turn to is the NCTM journals, both old and new. They have really good problems in there. And you can sometimes take one of those and change it in a way that is making it more challenging or making it a more generalizable situation. There's various problem-solving publications. I could certainly plug my own books, ‘Problem Solving in All Seasons' (K–2, 3–5). Mike: I have read it, Kim. Kim: ( laughs ) Mike: I would absolutely recommend it. Kim: Another resource that I love is ‘NRICH.' It's a website NRICH, which is nrich.maths.org. Those are just incredible tasks that really get you thinking in various ways about, [some] good problem-solving experiences. So, what I would recommend for teachers or other people who are interested in this, is to really do that mathematics and then reflect on what made it interesting for you. What surprised you? Were there twists? Were there things, stuck points where you had to get past? And then also to extend the thinking by asking yourself something like, ‘So does this always work? Or when does this work?' And how could you apply the mathematics to more broad situations? And finally, I think it's really important for teachers to put themselves in the minds of their students and sense what might excite them or challenge them. Mike: Thank you so much for joining us, Kim. It's really been a pleasure talking to you. Kim: Thank you, Mike. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2023 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

Rounding Up Season 1 | Episode 10: Asset-Based Learning Environments Guest: Dr. Jessica Hunt Mike Wallus: Take a moment to think about the students in your most recent class. What assets do each of them bring to your classroom and how might those assets provide a foundation for their learning? Today we're talking with Dr. Jessica Hunt about asset-based learning environments. We'll talk about how educators can build an asset-based learning environment in their classrooms, schools, and school districts. Welcome to the podcast, Jessica. Thanks for joining us. Jessica Hunt: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here today. Mike: Well, I would love to start our conversation asking you to help define some language that we're going to use throughout the course of the podcast.  Jessica: Sure.  Mike: I'm wondering if you can just describe the difference between an asset-based and a deficitfocused learning environment. Jessica: I think historically what we see a lot of is deficit-based thinking. And deficit-based thinking focuses on perceived weaknesses of students—or even a group of students. And it focuses on students as the problem. And as a result, we tend to use instruction in an attempt to fix students or to fix their thinking. So, an asset-based learning environment means focusing on and beginning with strengths as opposed to what we think kids need or how to fix them. So, this means viewing kids as able and recognizing that the diversity of their thoughts, their culture, their experiences—all of these things are valuable and can actually strengthen and add meaning to classrooms and to instruction. I think assetbased learning environments involve a shift in our own mindset as teachers. And, of course, what we hope results from that is a shift in our practice. We talk a lot about growth mindsets for kids. I think I am referring to growth mindsets that teachers have about kids. We can ask, ‘What do students know and how can I use that? Or how can I build upon that through my teaching?' I've never met a kid that didn't bring something to instruction. Every student that I've met [has] had strengths that they bring to mathematics classrooms and to communities to expand their thinking and also that of their peers. Mike: It's fascinating listening to your description. I find myself thinking about how deficit-based many of the systems and structures … Jessica: Yeah. Mike: … and practices are, even though we do these things with positive intent.  Jessica: Yeah.  Mike: Can you just say more about that? How do you see deficit thinking filtering into some of the systems and then impacting the learning environments in our kids? Jessica: Sure. I think two ways that I see deficit thinking filtering into driving—and driving systems in classrooms—involve things like time and priorities. Time and how it's used in classrooms and schools is one area that deficit thinking can impact in a big way. How are systems recommending that teachers actually spend their time with students in the context of a particular day or a week or even a unit of instruction? And I ask that question because I think that it's one thing to state that we have asset-based approach. Yet it's quite another to consider the need to develop meaningful habits within classroom spaces that can really promote student strengths. Mike: So, one of the things that you just said really struck me, which is this idea of habits in the classroom. I'm excited to hear what you're going to say about that. Jessica: I think one of the key habits that we have in asset-based learning environments is this idea of listening to kids. I've never met a student that didn't have viable and valuable ideas about mathematics. The key for me is having the time and space to uncover and understand what those are. So, we've got to have a way to listen to students' thinking. When we do that, when we understand the reasoning and the strengths that they're bringing, that supports us in selecting instructional tools and strategies that leverage both their individual strengths and those that they bring to the group in order to promote learning. Mike: Let's pick up on that a little bit. This idea of listening to kids and understanding their thinking and understanding of what it means about the assets that they bring. For a person who might be listening, help them form an image of what that might look like in an elementary classroom. Talk to me a little bit about on a day-to-day basis, how might this idea of listening to kids or attending to kids' thinking—and really considering the assets—how might that show up? Jessica: One way it shows up is this focus on learning. And before I go on with that, I want to talk a little bit about how learning and a focus on it is a little different than focusing on performance. So, focusing on performance as opposed to learning, risks looking at change as something that's fast and quick as opposed to something that grows and endures. So, part of focusing on learning means that we're looking more at the process as opposed to only examining quick outcomes or products of what students are experiencing in classrooms. It's actually interesting to think about that in terms of educational equity because there's some research that actually suggests that performance gains don't necessarily equate to learning gains. Mike: I think that's fascinating. You're making me think of two things. One, and I'm going to reference this for people who are listening, is ‘Taking Action,' which is NCTM's work. Really trying to say what do some of the really critical principles of high-quality education look like in grades pre-K through 5? And they have a really specific focus on attending to what do we want kids to learn versus simply what's the performance. Jessica: Yes, absolutely. Mike: I also just wanted to key in on something you said, which is that performance can be short-lived, but learning endures. Jessica: It sure does. If we want to focus on learning, it means that we have to be intentional in our classroom practices. And I also think that links to a lot of things. Like you brought up NCTM, and a lot of the things that they advocate for. I think there are some natural linkages there as well. So, for me, being intentional, one key part of that is ensuring that students are doing the thinking so that teachers can listen to and promote that thinking. So, we want the placement of the learning and the thinking on the students for a good percentage of the instructional time. We want to ensure that we're immersing students in content rather than simply presenting it all the time. And I think another part of that listening involves positioning students and the ideas that they're bringing forward as competent. So, I think, together, what all of this means is that we're supporting students to make meaning for themselves, yet definitely not by themselves. Jessica: Teachers have an intentional, key role. And part of that intentionality involves things like slowing down and thinking carefully about how to structure learning experiences. And taking more time and planning and ensuring that students have access to multiple ways to engage in and represent and express their thinking with respect to those tasks and activities that they're using and drawing upon to learn. And I think that asset-based learning environments allow for that intentionality. It allows for that time and space and planning. And in teaching, it allows for that immersion and thinking and listening and positioning of students as the sense-makers, as the doers and thinkers of mathematics. Mike: I think the connection that I'm making is this idea that there are some shifts that have to happen in order to enable asset-based listening and intentionality. One of the things that comes to mind is it really starts with even how you structure or imagine the task itself. If you're posing a problem, that problem isn't accompanied by a ‘Let me show you how to find the answer.' That actually allows kids to think about it. And there might be some divergent thinking, and that's actually a good thing. We want to understand how kids are thinking so we can respond to their thinking. Jessica Absolutely. Mike: That's a big contrast to saying, ‘Let me show you a task, let me show you how to do the task.' It's pretty difficult to imagine listening in that kind of context because really what you're asking them to do isn't thinking about how to solve it. Does that make sense? Jessica: It sure does. And I think for me, or a hunch that I would have, is that that also goes back to this whole idea of teaching and listening and maybe even assessing, if you will, for what we think kids need versus what they're bringing us versus their strengths. I see some connections there in what you're seeing. Mike: Let's talk about that a little bit.  Jessica: Sure.  Mike: Particularly assessment, I think when I was getting ready for this episode, that was the first thing that came to mind. I found myself thinking about previous PLC meetings or data meetings that I've had where even if we were looking at student work, I have to confess that I found myself thinking about the fact that we were looking at what kids didn't understand versus what they did understand. And I tried to kind of imagine how those conversations would've looked from an asset perspective. What would it look like to look at student work and to compare student work and think about assets versus thinking about what do I need to remediate in the type of thinking that I'm seeing?  Jessica: Uh-hm. I hear you there. I think it speaks to something that if we really want to build assetbased learning environments, we need to make some shifts. And I think one of those shifts is how we look at and use data and assessment. Primarily, I think we need to assess strengths and not needs. I heard that a lot as you were talking. How can we focus on assessing strengths and not needs? I say that to a lot of people and they're like, ‘What's the difference?' ( laughs ) Or, ‘That seems so small.' (laughs) But I think it winds up being a really big deal. If you think about it, trying to uncover needs perpetuates this idea that we should focus on what we see as the problem, which as I mentioned earlier, usually becomes the students or particular group of students. And I think it's very problematic because it sets us up as teachers to keep viewing students and their ideas as something that needs to be fixed as opposed to assets that we can build from or learn from in the classroom. Mike: Yeah. One of the other ideas that we've talked about on this podcast in different episodes is the idea of relevancy and engagement. And it strikes me that these ideas about listening to kids for assets are pretty connected to those ideas about relevancy and engagement. Jessica: Yeah, most definitely. I think, again, figuring out, we sometimes call this prior knowledge, but I look at it as when kids come to school, they bring with them their entire experience. So, what are those experiences and what from their eyes are things that are relevant and engaging and things in which they are passionate about themselves? And what do they know about those things? And how might they connect to what others in the classroom know about those things? And how can we, to borrow a term, how can we ‘mathematize' those things ( laughs ) in ways that are beneficial for individual kids and for the community of learners in our classroom? Like, how can we make those connections? I don't think we can answer those types of questions when we use assessment from this place of, ‘What don't students know?' Or ‘How can I get them to this particular place?' If that makes sense.  Mike: It does.  Jessica: I think we can ask those questions from a strengths-based lens that is curious about and passionate about really getting at, again, this whole experience that kids are bringing with them to school. And how we can use that to not only better students learning, but better the classroom community and maybe even better the mathematics that kids are learning in that community. Mike: Absolutely. Jessica: That's, that's interesting to think about. Mike: So, you started to address one of the questions that I was going to ask, which is, I'm imagining that there are folks who are listening to the podcast and they're just starting to think about what are some of the small steps or the small moves that I might make? What small steps would you advise folks to think about if they're trying to cultivate an asset-focused learning environment? Jessica: It's an interesting question, and I would suggest putting into practice some of the bigger ideas that we're getting at in asset-based learning environments themselves. And the first is, look at your own strengths. And when I say who I'm referencing there, it can be a teacher, it can be a school, it can be a district. If you look at your own strengths first, look at how your practices, your structures, your priorities are uncovering and using strengths. And if they're not, why not? Kind of looking at what's there, what capacities do we currently have that we can build on toward asset-based learning environments? And I think I would pair that with just a commitment to, to action, if you will. You know, start small, but start now. If you're a classroom teacher for instance—I tend to go to that ( laughs ), that grade size a lot ‘cause I still very much, uh, identify as a teacher—start with one task or one day, or part of a day, where you can slow down and use your instructional time to listen for kids' strength. Jessica: What brilliance and valuable ways of reasoning are they sharing with you? And what kinds of activity or task or environment did you need to put in place to uncover that? What did you learn about it? What did you learn about yourself in this process? So, we learn about kids and then we learn about ourselves. It becomes sort of this beautiful back and forth between students and teachers where we're all learning about ourselves and about each other. And I think that learning piece is the third thing that I would suggest. Again, going back to let's focus on learning. Let's celebrate our own learning as teachers and schools and districts and et cetera. Reframing your practices and structures will take time. That's OK. But learn to celebrate the steps that you and your communities are taking toward this asset-based model of instruction. And know that, again, you know, when we work to do that, we enable kids as mathematical thinkers and doers. So, we take that problem off kids, and we place it as a challenge in our instructional design, in our experiences and our interactions between teachers and students. So, I think for me, I would really invite folks to take those small steps, uncover your own strengths, learn to listen, and celebrate your own learning. Mike: Before we conclude the episode, I'm wondering if you can recommend any resources for someone who wants to continue learning about an asset-based approach to elementary mathematics? Jessica: Yeah. There [are] so many good examples of this. I think about my own learning as a teacher and a teacher of teachers, ( laughs ) and a researcher. And I think about things like cognitively guided instruction or the work of the The Dream Project in early childhood or even TODOS, where I know they provide a lot of wonderful examples of asset-oriented resources. I'll also do a shameless plug ( laughs ) for my, for my own book, you know, myself … Mike: Plug away!  Jessica: … ( laughs ) and Jenny Ainslie put together, called, ‘Designing Effective Math Interventions: An Educator's Guide to Learner-Driven Instruction.' And that book came off of a project that I did with, uh, National Science Foundation support, where we looked at kids' thinking over time and designed some tasks and activities to support conceptual understanding of fractions. But there are those. Alnd, and so, so many more. But those are the ones that come to mind immediately. Mike: That's fantastic. And we'll share links to those things with the podcast.  Jessica: Great. Mike: I want to thank you so much for joining us, Jessica, it's really been a pleasure talking to you. Jessica: Oh, thank you. It's been an immense pleasure talking with you as well. And thank you for inviting me. I really appreciate it. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation. dedicated to inspiring and enabling individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2023 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

Mike Evans is the Founder of GrubHub, and the author of “Hangry: A Startup Journey.” Mike founded GrubHub in his spare bedroom and grew it into a multi-billion dollar food delivery business that's a household name. After leaving GrubHub, he founded Fixer.com, an on-demand handyperson service focused on social impact, and providing full-time work for well-trained tradespeople. Mike shares what he learned from raising a startup to IPO, biking across America, and writing “Hangry.” He believes it is necessary to create a business not just to make a profit, but to be powerful levers for social change.   https://bit.ly/TLP-340   Key Takeaways [2:27] Mike loves cycling and getting around places by bike, but not quickly. After the GrubHub experience, he rode his bike across the country. Later, Mike and his wife rode across Austria. They hope to ride across another country soon with their daughter. Mike tells what he likes about electric bikes. [4:41] As GrubHub grew from a few employees to 2,500 employees over 12 years, there were two things that increased his anxiety and made it challenging to live. [5:14] The first challenge was the fact that there are a lot of competing interests: shareholders, employees, diners, and restaurants and it was hard to balance them all. There's no scenario where everybody wins 100%. There are tradeoffs. It was a tightrope walk to do. Mike started seeing the company making different choices as it grew beyond him. That was challenging to see. [6:09] The second challenge was hiring. As a business leader, you either hire your friends, or the people you hire become your friends. Sometimes you have to make decisions that are not the best outcomes for your employee-friends. When you have to let people go that you like, you cannot recover those friendships. They're gone. You can't fire somebody and then go hang out with them. [6:37] It should be hard to fire someone. You can't be good at firing people and be a good leader. It should never get easier. You should care a lot about the people you work with. The competing interests, and having to fire friends took a toll on Mike over the course of a decade. [7:53] Contentment is fleeting, especially for entrepreneurs who start from a place where “something is broken in the world and I'm really annoyed by it.” Mike doesn't think contentment was ever in the cards for him. An entrepreneur has to see the world with an expectation that it could be better than it currently is, which is not a good recipe for contentment. [9:45] Mike believes it's important to have a personal definition of success that other people or factors don't define. Other people won't necessarily agree with it. Mike tells how he defined success all the way up through GrubHub's IPO. Other people told him the IPO was his success, but that wasn't Mike's definition. Your definition of success gives you a North Star for one aspect of your life, business. [11:11] You also need personal definitions of success for your relationships, family, faith community, and civic community. Then you need to do the hard step of making tradeoffs between them. Work/life balance is elusive because it's impossible to achieve. You have to make tradeoffs. The best you can do is say “I have a clear-eyed picture of what I want from a family perspective,” and make choices explicitly. [12:03] If you don't choose explicitly, things happen to you instead of you making choices. That's what causes imbalance, frustration, anger, and disappointment. Your definitions of success change during your journey. As you approach your goals, the goalposts move. It's a destination and a journey. It's not one or the other. As we do hard things, we change, and therefore our goals change. [12:54] Sometimes we fail. If you're not going to be able to accomplish a goal, continuing to have it as a goal is only an exercise in frustration. Be able to say “This isn't working; I'm going to go try doing something else.” Whether you succeed or fail, your goals change. Success is a larger concept; it's the accumulation of goals over decades. [13:54] Mike compares how he feels about goals today with what he might have felt at age 24. One of the themes in his book is Think Bigger. Don't set your goals low. When Mike launched GrubHub, he just wanted to pay off his student debt. He missed the opportunity to embed the value of “Do right by restaurants, no matter what,” in the DNA of the company. At 24, he only wanted to make money. [14:37] If Mike had struggled at age 24 with the decision about doing right by the restaurants, there might have been a better outcome over the decades. [16:17] Starting GrubHub and taking it through the IPO involved thousands of decisions of Mike letting go. On Day 1, Mike owned 100% of GrubHub with 100% of the responsibility for it. On the day Mike kicked off on his bike ride across the country, he had 0% of the responsibility. He had a few shares in GrubHub for six more months. His hack was to give up first the thing he hated most — scanning menus! [18:14] Mike's first hire, a graphic designer to scan menus, went on to create the brand which ended up in two Super Bowl ads. He started scanning menus but had an opportunity from being in a high-growth startup. He ended up having to delegate. Once you hire your first employee, you get your first investor. Lean in on that and enjoy it! [19:31] Accepting reality is a paradox for an entrepreneur. You have to have enough arrogance to say “The world is broken, it needs to be fixed, and I'm the only person who can do it,” and you have to have the humility to listen to your customers and employees about what you're doing right and wrong, and how to adjust. Arrogance and humility do not “play nice” together. Mike doesn't always get it right. [20:28] If you put a document in front of five people, they're all going to start editing it. Don't put a press release in front of anybody but the people who have the responsibility of doing the press release. One way to keep micromanagement from happening, to allow people to delegate, is don't put the work product in front of them before it's done. Don't give people editing access. [20:54] Not micromanaging starts with not being in there to edit things. Trust people to do their work. Tactical things like that help you to let go of the small decisions. [21:33] Mike's book has a humble tone, but the exclamation point at the end is, “I had a fricking IPO, folks!” Mike captures in the book the paradox of arrogance and humility needed to run a startup well. [23:18] Mike had done week-long backpacking trips and liked being out in nature. On one of those trips with his wife, he went to Grand Tetons National Park and camped. He saw people riding in on bikes and setting up tents. It was the TransAmerican Trail cross-country bike tour going through the park. Mike thought biking and carrying a pack on a rack was a way better idea than hiking with a backpack! [24:14] The bike tour sounded like a very accessible adventure. It was accessible because he did it in 90 fifty-mile bike rides, not one 4,500-mile bike ride. His first day was just 25 miles. One thing Mike learned is that it starts with the first mile. The best training for Week Two is Week One. The best training for Week One is to go slow. Don't try to eat up the miles in your first week. [24:54] Anyone physically able can ride 10 miles on a bike. You can do that and you can take lunch and you can do that again. And that can be your whole first day. You build up until you're riding 100 miles in a day. The decision for Mike was just following something he was interested in doing. He quit his job to ride his bike across the country. It was a very clear decision for his life. [26:18] Mike kept a journal of his bike ride, on MikeEvans.com. He used those notes in Hangry to write about his bike trip. The trip reinforced something for Mike: the idea that you don't do it all at once. When he looks back, yes he did a 4,500-mile bike ride. Day to day, he woke up every morning and made the decision to start pedaling a mile. [26:51] Long-haul hikers say, “Don't quit at the end of a long day. Wait till the morning, when you're fresh.” A lot of people feel like quitting when they're tired. When you wake up in the morning you see you can do another day. That was true for Mike in business, as well. He kept at it because he had a bigger mission he was trying to accomplish. [28:14] Mike's purposes for his bike trip were to reflect on what he had accomplished, how he did it, and how he felt about it, and to consider what he was going to do next. That led to the creation of Fixer, the on-demand handyperson business. The handypersons are full-time employees, trained from scratch. He wanted to create a business with social benefits built-in: great employment with a path into the trades. [29:11] Mike's first decision for the bike trip was to buy a recumbent bike because he wanted to look at the horizon instead of the ground. He already had a tent. He rented a van and drove it down to Virginia Beach. One thing that helped is that the Adventure Cycling Association publishes TransAmerica Trail bike route maps so he ordered a set of maps and joined their online community to talk about the ride. [31:51] Starting a business is ugly and hard. It's filled with self-doubt and recriminations. To succeed, you have to make tough choices and a lot of people judge you for those choices. Mike also judges GrubHub and where it went after he left from the IPO and how it became a poster child for the gig economy and not great for restaurants. That is frustrating to Mike. [32:21] It felt to Mike that it was important to tell the whole story and how businesses are huge levers for social change, whether you want them to be or not. When Mike was intentional about that at GrubHub, it was beneficial for restaurants. When that intentionality left the business, it was not as good for restaurants. [32:40] Mike's goal with Hangry is to show the idea of changing the world by creating a business. He wanted to make it accessible and he wanted to elevate the importance of being intentional about creating the change you want to see in the world through the business. It's not a thing you can do after the business is done, through charity work. You have to create the business as a lever for social change. [33:21] Hangry is mostly about trying to take what Mike learned and letting other people learn from it and live their lives, whether as an entrepreneur, a business leader, or an executive in a company and do their work in such a way that the communities in which they operate benefit from what they're doing. [34:11] The book is called Hangry, so Mike isn't happy and pleasant the whole time. He's snarky about exclusionism. Silicon Valley is great at drawing circles and saying “You can't come in.” Cyclists do it, too! There are lots of groups that draw a circle and say, “You're not allowed inside this circle.” Mike says that Silicon Valley is particularly good at excluding anybody who's not a white male. There's a better way. [34:52] Democratizing the startup culture, democratizing the process, and demystifying the hero narrative that people use sometimes, make it more accessible to people. There's an urgency to making our world a better place for our children and grandchildren that sort of raises the bar for what success looks like at a business. It can't just be making money anymore. [36:27] The catalyst for creating Fixer.com was trying to get a handyperson and having to use “the phone app” on his phone. He wondered who uses that anymore! He started looking into it. The work that tradespeople do in the economy right now is typically great. Scheduling, communication, and billing are not done well. They're inaccessible. [37:23] It's hard for people to enter the trades unless they have an uncle or father who shows them how to do things. It continues the bias against women entering the trades. Entry-level handyperson jobs are good-paying jobs. They're also stepping stones to becoming an electrician, a plumber, a roofer, or a mason. It was the same problem he saw with food. You can't order things online and it's annoying. [37:54] He wanted to make handypersons more accessible, but he found there just aren't enough tradespeople. So he figured that by training people from scratch, they would get quality and wrap it in modern packaging. You schedule online and ask for someone to be there at 11:00 a.m. and the handyperson shows up by 11:00 a.m. They're highly trained, and they clean up after the job. [38:45] Mike uses the service himself, even though he's pretty handy. [40:00] Fixer.com has hundreds of applicants for every job position that they open. They target people who are working in food service, grocery, and retail and invite them to have a career instead of a job. Fixer.com pays people while training them. It's easy to get people on board. People in the service field don't have the flexibility to set their hours and schedule, which is hard in this job climate. [40:48] The adoption of working from home as a norm is damaging to people who don't have that flexibility and it creates a two-class society. Seventy-five percent of the people at Fixer.com are tradespeople, not office workers. At some point, they will have 10,000 tradespeople as full-time employees. Mike is concerned about issues of equity and expectations around time. [42:34] Mike explains why he picked a business model that's hard and hard to copy. It is intentional and it makes his company the competition that everyone else worries about. He's building a multi-billion dollar business that will be hard to compete with. [43:51] Mike's listener challenge: “I would love it if everybody would buy the book. … If you want the summary line, it's this idea that businesses affect the communities in which they work, and being intentional about what that impact is, is really, really important.” You're going to be juggling competing priorities, but it's still useful even if you're considering a socially beneficial impact for every decision. [45:19] Closing quote: Remember, “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work.” — Daniel Burnham   Quotable Quotes “I'm not like one of these fast people who are always racing along the Lake Path in Chicago. Seeing the country; getting places at 10 mph is great. … After the GrubHub experience, I rode my bike across the country.” — Mike “Electric bikes are great. They really create access for people who might not otherwise physically be able to do it. And so I think they sort of democratize our bike trails. I'm a big fan of electric bikes.” — Mike “It should be hard to fire people, anyway. … You can't be good at firing people and be a good leader. I think those two things are totally mutually exclusive. It should always be hard. It should never get easier. You should care a lot about the people you work with.” — Mike “The difference between an entrepreneur and a miserable grump is that the entrepreneur actually does something about it. So, I'm not sure it was ever in the cards for me to be content.” — Mike “[An entrepreneur] has to see the world with an expectation that it could be better than it currently is, which is not a good recipe for contentment.” — Mike “I think it's really important to have an internal, personal definition of success that's not defined by some external factor.” — Mike “Sometimes we fail. If you're not going to be able to accomplish a goal, continuing to have it as a goal is only an exercise in frustration and self-punishment. So being able to say, ‘This isn't working, I'm going to go try something else,' is also important.” — Mike “People often ask me ‘What's the most strategic hire that you can do first?' … Forget that! Hire somebody to do something that's the most annoying thing to you. And then you start to get the benefit of ‘I don't have to do every little thing.'” — Mike “Don't put a press release in front of anybody but the people who have the responsibility of doing the press release. One way to keep micromanagement from happening, to allow people to delegate, is don't put the work product in front of them before it's done.” — Mike “The tone of the book is humble. I tried to be self-reflective in the book, but the exclamation point at the end is, ‘I had a fricking IPO, folks!' which is not a humble thing. I'm kind of bragging.” — Mike “Anyone physically able can ride 10 miles on a bike. You can do that and then you take lunch and you can do that again. And that can be your whole first day. And then by the time you hit the Rockies, a 100-mile day is like, ‘Oh, yeah, I've been doing this for weeks!'” — Mike “There's an urgency to making our world a better place for our children and grandchildren that sort of raises the bar for what success looks like at a business. It's not just making money anymore. It can't just be that.” — Mike “Picking hard business models, that are necessarily hard, to create value for customers is a really good defense against competition. What we're doing is hard and so it's hard to copy. And that's very intentional.” — Mike “The thing that really sucks about competition is it's not in your control. But … you can choose to pick a business model where you have to have some grit and some hard work and some thoughtfulness and some talent to make it work. … And then you are the competition.” — Mike “Businesses affect the communities in which they work, and being intentional about what that impact is, is really, really important. … it's still useful even if you can't make every decision toward a socially beneficial impact if you're considering it for every decision.” — Mike   Resources Mentioned Theleadershippodcast.com Sponsored by: Darley.com Rafti Advisors. LLC Self-Reliant Leadership. LLC Mike Evans MikeEvans.com GrubHub Fixer.com Hangry: A Startup Journey, by Mike Evans Race Across America (RAAM) The Appalachian Trail The Pacific Coast Trail Grand Tetons National Park TransAmerica Trail cross-country bike tour Adventure Cycling Association Blue Ocean Strategy  

This week we're exploring the fascinating and controversial topic of flat earth theory....again. This ancient belief, once relegated to the fringes of society, has seen a resurgence in recent years thanks to the power of the internet and social media. On this episode, we'll take a deep dive into the history of the flat earth movement and examine the arguments made by its supporters.  We'll explore the evidence (or lack thereof) supporting the idea that the earth is not a globe, but rather a flat, disc-shaped plane. Whether you're a believer or a skeptic, you won't want to miss this revisit. Join us as we challenge our assumptions about the world around us and explore the flat earth phenomenon. Did we change our minds? *Intro sound clip features comedian Dan Cummins If you have any questions or topics you'd like to see the society cover, please reach out at Contact@hushhushsociety.com   You can find all our audio, blogs and drop sweet ratings at www.hushhushsociety.com Find our Video Content on our Rokfin Leave us a review on Apple, our website, Podchaser or GoodPods You can grab Hush Hush merch and help support the show on Patreon Link up with the society on social media:   Facebook   Instagram   Twitter    Join our Discord and chat with us   TRANSCRIPT Flat Earth 2   [00:01:00]  Dave: Greetings, Hushlings. Welcome back to the Hush Hush Society Conspiracy Hour. Mike: Where we journey into the world of conspiratorial mysteries and dark truths Dave: I'm Declassified Dave Mike: and I'm Mystery Mike and as though is we're joined by our fellow globetard Slick Fronk Sanders. Fronk: The Earth is probably round how you doing? Dave: it's going. Are things going around today? Mike: Quick question flat Earthers. How do boomerangs work on your flat plane? Fronk: Boomerangs are flat.  Dave: that got him. If you didn't notice today, we returned to the great debate in this episode. Is the Earth round? Is the Earth flat? Fronk: Hushling's, uh, in case you weren't [00:02:00] aware, we visited this topic in season three and completely shat all over the flat plane and we believe we should revisit this mother of all modern conspiracies, seeing as though it's such a big part of conspiracy culture. Dave: it's getting even bigger, even though you guys probably most definitely are gonna take a second dumping in this one. Mike: not as bad as the first. Dave: Not  Fronk: Yeah. We'll see. We'll see. Mike: we've discussed how there are different phases to being a flat earther. I'm guess I'm still in stage zero and we were in stage one in May of 2021. let's go up around to stage two But before we search for the horizon and fall off the flat plane and search for God in the sky under the spotlight sun, you can always find us on our social medias, Facebook, [00:03:00] Instagram, and Twitter Dave: You can also find everything hush hush society on our website, www.hushhushsociety.com. From episodes to links to merchandise, and the ability to drop a review or leave us a voicemail. We hope we get some after this episode. Mike: Hmm. Please do. Dave: Yeah. Fronk: And we keep mentioning that we are now also a video podcast. You can not only. To us, but you can watch us, you can see our faces. You can get that expressional action that you might not get from just an audio recording. And to find those episodes, you just gotta go to Rock Fin. It's, it's very simple. Rock fin.com. There's even an app. And in the search bar you just put in Hush Hush Society. You'll find us nice and easy. And there you can find all of our videos. you hit the notification button. You get notifications when our videos come out. Check it out. Mike: And just one last thing before we move on to the flat plane, we just [00:04:00] want to give a quick shout out to our newest patron, Gabrielle May. Thank you so much. We appreciate you. Fronk: Just in case you're new to this, we're gonna do a quick little recap for you on what Flat Earth theory is, and essentially, in a nutshell, the earth is flat rather than round. Pretty self explanatory, although it's made its appearance throughout history. The theory gained popularity around 2009 and has continued to grow ever since. Dave: It is regarded as one of the most controversial conspiracy theories in existence. Why claim that our earth is flat and not a globe easy? That's because it looks flat and feels flat and is surrounded by 200 feet of ice blocking us from traversing across an infinite plane or falling off the edge. Sounds correct, right? Fronk: I mean, yeah, that's what I've been made to believe. That's that's what it seems like Mike: Yeah. Riding on the back of a turtle through the cosmos, but the cosmos [00:05:00] doesn't exist, so where's the turtle going? Anyways,  according to believers, NASA and the ruling elite protect the ice walls from people attempting to climb over and fall from the disc. Can't make it up. They also believe that earth's gravity is an illusion, and that objects are driven up by a mysterious force called dark energy, rather than spinning and being stuck to a surface, Fronk: But on the other hand, there are countless photographs, videos, and images from astronauts and the International Space Station that kind of seem like evidence to show that the Earth is round. But these are not considered real evidence and are allegedly faked by the government or the ruling elites Dave: Now before we move on, flat, earthers already pissed off at our description in the beginning, Fronk: probably. Dave: we wanted to pull you in, but we'll make it as [00:06:00] fair as possible with some of the talking points that we're going to go over.  Now, Hushlings, there is the flat Earth Society as well as thousands of others from around the globe in groups. In addition to independent researchers, even though there is evidence to contradict some of these arguments, they are dismissed as fabrications of around earth conspiracy, along with stars, planets, galaxies, space, and gravity, all being a part of the facade of where we live. Mike: That is my biggest thing when it comes down to a debate between a flat earth and someone who believes that we live on a globe, is that it always results. In a flat earth are saying, well, that's what you've been told. You've been lied to. You're believing a lie that's being told to you, which is the old faithful of all conspiracy theorists, is that you're being lied to. That's all well and good, but at what point do you turn around and say, the [00:07:00] science is being lied to you. Nasa, we know lies to us. We know they fabricate images. We know what they do. But again, that's more of an argument that NASA is filled with bunch of liars. But at what point do you look at it maybe there is evidence that it's a globe or maybe there is evidence that it's a flat plane. There has to be a certain cutoff point where you stop saying, well, you're being lied to. That's what they want you to believe. That's what they're fabricating the science. They're fabricating this. They're fabricating that. How, and this has always been my issue, how do you talk to a flat earth and say, what piece of evidence would it take for you to say that it's a globe Dave: Pictures. Mike: pictures? , but then you show them a picture of this is what our earth looks like. It's a globe. Or you show them video or you show them anything. Well, that's been fabricated. It's always like this deniability to go against what they believe in. Like you, you have to deny [00:08:00] it. You have to deny it because it shakes the entire foundation of what their belief system is, especially when it comes to a flat earth. But then they always revert back to, that's what the Bible says. That's what the Bible says. I'm sorry, we, we've been over the Bible many times. We all know that it's been changed a thousand times and it's a book.  Fronk: not only that, but that's what they're making the Bible say. That's what certain people are interpreting the bible to say, and you can make the Bible say a lot of different things depending on how you decide to interpret it as a person. And if you're interpreting it as, they're telling me about the flat earth and so be it, Dave: This episode is gonna focus a little bit more heavily on some of the things that Mike and Fronk just mentioned, talking about NASA and the why would they lie and why would they fake and indoctrinated us as kids to believe that it's a ball. , and these are major [00:09:00] talking points that I've learned over the last year and a half since we've done this, other than just the physical evidence. We have the physical evidence if you're going to go by the, mainstream. we'll go through a bunch of stuff. I think we'll talk about religion too. So Mike, save those nails, buddy. Mike: We'll look into some of what we just listed and more throughout this episode, and it strongly suggested you listen to our first crack at this crust to understand where some of the historical beliefs come from and a lot of other things about this theory, mainly the science. But let's give this another oscillation, shall we? We're gonna literally hit some of the proposed theories and then firmly spit some facts. be prepared to, uh, confirm or deny your belief. Fronk: Before we completely dive into the flat plane, we're gonna talk about the planet as we've been taught in a traditional sense. Our Native [00:10:00] Earth is a terrestrial rocky planet, correct? Yes or no? I mean, whether it's flat around truth,  It has a dynamic and active surface with mountains, valley, canyons, you name it. All the different geographical structures and a variety of other features. It has water covering 70% of its surface, as well as harboring thousands of life forms, and it has a unique orbiting satellite arm. Dave: it has a circumference. Remember this number Hushlings 24,901 miles. And it shares our solar system with eight, sorry, Pluto, eight other planets and is rotating at around thousand miles an hour while orbiting our home star. Now this is where flat Earthers start to deny our existence on a spinning ball. we're orbiting around our sun at 67,000 miles an hour, all while zipping around the center of the Milky Way, roughly at [00:11:00] around 490,000 miles an hour. And the biggest claim, you can't feel it.   Mike: Well, that's just what we're taught in school. Unfortunately, most of us didn't escape the clutches of the Rockefeller Education System. There's that name again. Yep. He created the General Education Board in 1902 at the cost of 129 million. It's a lot of money back in 1902. It's a lot of money today and provided major funding for schools across the nation and was very influential in shaping the school system. Also, he's quoted as saying, I don't want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers. Sounds like my pause. Fronk: And that speaks some deep truth because school does indoctrinate the nation into the trap of society. Once you hit like 10th grade, you're already filling out college applications, colleges that you're gonna be in debt to for the rest of your life, that you're gonna have to work for the majority of [00:12:00] your life to pay off for that job that you'll be working for the rest of your life. And it's this endless cycle. So that's definitely perpetuated by some global elitist. I get that to an extent, maybe the indoctrination portion of it. Dave: Well, from the beginning. Which classroom have you ever been in that didn't have a globe?    Fronk: In 1928, John D Rockefeller Jr. Financed an expedition to the South Pole as a British secret service. Agent Rockefeller knew perfectly that no South Pole existed, but people were curious about the true shape of the world. From 1956 onward, Antarctica was completely controlled by the Pentagon. Hence the Antarctic Treaty. And anybody visiting this chunk of land without permission was shot on site. Admiral by who we've talked about extensively, died mysteriously in 1957 and perhaps had a timely demise before he could tell the truth about what the South Pole. Mike: When it comes to the[00:13:00] Antarctic treaty and being shot on sight, who is shooting these people on sight? Fronk: Snow snipers. Those drones from Star Wars that landed on Hoth Mike: , that's a lot of land to patrol in order to watch for people.  Dave: remember. Antarctica is 5.2 million square miles as well. Mike: That's what doesn't make sense to me. You're gonna be shot on sight and that's another part of the Antarctic treaty that I also don't understand. Who is physically stopping you from going there? The only thing that's physically stopping you from going to Antarctica is it costs a lot of money. To either charter a boat that would go there. most people don't go there. Most charter boats don't go there. You could do a flyover, but that's only partial. Who is physically stopping you besides your bank account? Dave: I did see a video recently of some guys on a boat that were stopped. I think they were stopped by the New Zealand Navy [00:14:00] or the Australian Navy, and they were turning him around and you can see like. Ice in the distance or something like that. And I don't know if there was just like an iceberg that was out there that they were near, but the allegations on TikTok was got turned around at the bottom of the world, cause I believe it's, there's some degree, and I'm gonna sound uneducated saying this, but I don't know the degree, I think, but there's some degree at the bottom of the world. That you can't go. But the Antarctic treaty, it contradicts itself because the Antarctic treaty was supposed to be a demilitarized zone. No military stuff. No commercial, nothing. It was supposed to be strictly for research. Fronk: So why is the Navy there? Of who? New Zealand? Dave: It was either New Zealand or Australia Fronk: So what is the New Zealand or Australian Navy doing there? Dave: Well, they're close to Antarctica Fronk: Yeah, but isn't a non-military zone. Dave: But there's only military scientists maybe not all military scientists. You got like, Noah [00:15:00] scientists and stuff, and I'm sure NASA is down there, the Nazis, they're all down there. You know, you  got everybody. Antarctica looks like a continent to me, and there's a lot of pictures of it. And are they fake? I am. I'm not on the plane, so I don't know. . Why would it matter and why would they lie? The largest argument of why these elites would lie to us is most likely there's more land, more resources, maybe even unlimited resource. And lands beyond the ice shelf or walls, as well as the suppression of how powerful of beings we are, which can kind of be a different argument that has nothing to do with flat earth as well. thoughts on that? Fronk: I could get behind both of those points to an extent in the shoes of a flat Earth, for example. Yes. If you told me that there was unlimited resources, we're talking oil, we're talking the purest water in the world. We're talking minerals that are used to power the world's [00:16:00] electronics, whatever, energy generating methods that we might have unlimited supply of that which would completely destroy not only the US dollar, but the world economy, which is what the alleged elites thrive off of. And if it's not money that they thrive off of it is leaching our fucking energy. And we've talked about that a lot. And if we were to unlock some sort of crazy. Secret about ourselves or humanity as a whole. That might be incredibly enlightening to a lot of people or disturbing. I could see it going either way, but if, if a bunch of people woke up and they were incredibly enlightened, that could be bad for the reptilian negative energy blood suckers. Dave: I don't think it would go well for anybody. I think we always do ask this question a lot when we talk about this as is, would it change our everyday lives? And we usually say no, but it would, because we [00:17:00] probably have a massive economic shutdown. religions would collapse. There'd probably be some type of total anarchy that would happen and then we'd have our own epiphanies of being like, not really upset that I was wrong, but shit I was lied to as well, part of the Doy group. And that would be a shitty day. would it end everything for me? No, it would change everything for sure. But I think the unlimited resources part, I could see somebody hiding that, , we did talk about Admiral Byrd and Admiral Byrd went through, supposedly into the hollow earth, could he have misinterpreted and gone through a crack and found more land. Who knows? In the writing The Iron Republic, written by EW Barrington and published also in 1902, another one of that year with the education system. It was published in Florida Magazine, and it said that an explorer went through a crack in the ice walls and found an advanced civilization after being lost for over a month at sea. So that [00:18:00] means he went through the ice walls and there was more ocean,  Mike: Have there ever been any, any pictures or video of the ice wall or beyond it? Fronk: Uh, people take pictures of. Ice shelves and try to say that they're the ice walls, but at the same time, those could very well just be ice shelves or very large icebergs Mike: Makes sense. Makes sense.  Dave: I wanna see a flight going around the whole whatever, 76,000 miles it's supposed to actually be. Just banking around the whole rim. But you can't go there because the military will shoot you down in a de militarized. Mike: I still think that there's plenty of ways to get there. And we talked, who do we talk with? That had went to Antarctica? Was it Mark Fronk: on a cruise with like their father. Yeah. Mark O'Connell. Yeah. Dave: Yep. Mike: O'Connell said that , he went to Antarctica with his family. Dave: San Diego Padre's pitcher's there right now.  Fronk: Yeah, but he, he also mentioned that it was like the only [00:19:00] part of Antarctica that they'll let a civilian on and it's like this tiny little peninsula and they've got the little, novelty pole.  Like you could go up and touch it and take a picture with it. Yeah. And they got little stuff, penguins and shit. Dave: could it just be a simple explanation why we don't bring people there? One, you'll die  Fronk: , yes, it's very extreme terrain, there's tons of extreme terrain that we're allowed to go to that you would probably die in if you weren't very well equipped. Mike: Yeah, it makes sense that the only reason that they would be stopping people from going there, besides the massive, endless amounts of resources that they're hoarding from us, would be that they just don't want people going out there and fucking dying.  This brings up another allegation that even the word extraterrestrial means extra terra or more land. Trying to hold some weight to the notion this has been taught to us. We see in the film The Next Level by David Weiss. [00:20:00] He meets with an older woman named Ruth. She's 102, God bless her, from Connecticut, who was in tears claiming that she was taught flat Earth in school, in Hamden, Connecticut, and now feels vindicated and better because of his truths. Dave: she was like, lost it. Mike: like real, real emotional about it. Dave: Yeah. Really emotional about it Mike: Okay. We just mentioned the Rockefeller education system and him saying that he doesn't want a nation of thinkers. He wants a nation of workers. , in the 1920s, if she was taught that the earth was flat, She would've been learning from that education system. Dave: True. Yeah, but I don't think that there's actually, I've looked and looked and looked and couldn't find any definitive evidence that was saying that they actually taught that in schools. Because even in 2022 curriculums across the country are not the same, even across the [00:21:00] same states, depending on the size of your state, they're not the same, especially when you get to advanced levels like college professors are teaching what they want within that curriculum, How in 1920 were they all taught the same thing when there was still tons and tons and tons, tons of schools. , that's the thing that gets me,  she's 102. Could she have just been like, yeah, I saw that once and she saw it on a cartoon in the seventies while she was in her sixties,  Fronk: nonetheless, I do find it difficult to wrap my head around because it was David Weiss who did that interview or whatever, and he brings up a lot of stuff about flat Earth. I listen to a bunch of his talks and shows that he went on to and whatnot, and he brings up all of these points and , he tells people to just, look into it. You gotta look into it yourself. You gotta do your research. , you go to do this research and obviously if you're looking into stuff like this, you're not going to [00:22:00] Google. You're not using Bing, like the go to search engine for anything that you can't find is duck, duck go. And he's been saying that Duck, duck go is starting to censor things of this nature. So, like Dave, I went looking for what the global education was like in the 1910s, the 1920s, and. Again, like you said, no definitive proof. Is it a censorship thing or is it the fact that it was just not taught as flat in the 1920s? Dave: There's also allegations that say that, it was the thirties and even in the sixties through certain education systems. , I almost bought David Weiss's app now. David had contacted us and let us know how he thought about us. I think in the next level, , it almost looks like somebody's trying to sell something and maybe this woman really did feel vindicated Ruth if she's still alive or not. but I don't know, check out the next level. It's an interesting take on flat earth and [00:23:00] there's a bunch of other proponents that I'd never even heard of that have some interesting talking points. Mike: my beef when it comes to David is he did reach out to us. He reached out to us a couple times, especially after our flat Earth episode. And essentially just berated us through email it's the usual argument that I, especially for some odd reason am on the receiving end of arguments with flat earthers is just yelling and anger and just being pissed off consistently. and he was not too happy, as Dave said with how we covered it in our talking points. He said, oh, it's the same talking points. Well, it's the same talking points with flat Earthers too. you talk about the Bible, you talk about nasa, you talk about, it's like, it's, it's the same talking points because we're talking about the same fucking topic.  Of course we're gonna have our sides to it and of, and flat earthers are gonna have their sides to it. It's just the way that it is. That's how you have constructive. [00:24:00] Conversations that go back and forth with conflicting beliefs. Dave: I feel like it's a lot of frustration that , you're just not getting it. Fronk: I feel like he rails Coke and like smashes Globes in his free time, like buys globes from Goodwill and just fucking destroys them in the parking lot and then drives home  Dave: beats them with Louisville slugs. Just smack. Smack.  Mike: I can't wait for our next email correspondence after this one. Fronk: dude. It's not gonna be an email. It's gonna be a voice message and he is gonna be all fucking jacked up out of his mind.    Dave: Before we move on to like the major talking points we gotta talk about what Mike mentioned earlier where a lot of the stuff that is talked about goes back to biblical cosmology and creationism.  Mike: Yeah. And that's always been my biggest talking point with discussions with flat Earthers is explain it to me I will give you my counterpoints and you'll give me your points and we can go [00:25:00] back and forth, but complete your, persuasion of trying to make me see that it's a flat plane. Complete your argument without using the Bible. Every single fucking time. Every single time it ends in, well, it says this in the Bible and it says this, it always ends up being that let's put it this way. I've never met a flat earth that wasn't also at the same time a Bible thumper. Dave: I've met two types. I feel like there are conflicting points to, flat earthers even they step on each other's toes a little bit. They might not, not get along, but I think there are some folks that definitely don't believe in the biblical cosmology and it's just a physical thing. But every time you go back to, if it's a physical thing, that's a structure that's not a planet. It brings me to the question, even a non-religious person. It brings me to the question, well then we're talking about who created it, [00:26:00] not just the science of planets and, gas and particles coming together for, from a accretion. We're talking a whole different thing. Now. We're talking about, well, if it's a structure , and this is not what we think it is and this is not what I think it is, then it had to have been manufactured structure. We build structures. using that type of verbiage, brings even me to being like, , now we're in the religious realm or the faith realm. Fronk: You want me to blow your mind right now? you know what's easier than creating a whole universe writing fucking lines of code. Bam, bam.  Mike: Yeah, there it is. There it is. We should just bring all arguments of flat earth back to simulation theory. Fronk: That's where I, that, yeah. Prove to me that it's even physical and then maybe I'll consider whether, the shape is round or flat. Dave: Let's talk about curves. Fronk: Right. All right. Let's talk about the voluminous crevices and curves that our mother Earth provides. Right. The idea of a flat [00:27:00] earth stems from a number of viewpoints, and the most fundamental is to rely on one's own sense, to determine the true nature of one's surroundings. The world appears flat. Clouds, bottoms look like they're flat. Water looks like it's flat, and the sun moves. The stars are always the same positioned exactly how they always were, and all of these sensory cues indicate that we do, in fact, live on a flat. Dave: I'm not an astrophysicist and I'm not a  Fronk: Are you  sure?  Dave: Maybe, maybe, maybe in my other existence, the 500 of 'em. I'm a failed astrophysicist, but I do have a telescope and I've had it for quite some time and I'm pretty good with it. And it's Fronk: the fuck? Dave: eh, the stars not moving. I know that there's a difference between absolute, uh, motion. A difference between [00:28:00] relative motion, and I'm pretty sure that the way that the stars move, but their whole argument is, is that since everything's spinning at astronomical speeds every night, we would see different stars because we're just whipping around and seeing different things. So why are the stars the same? And it does get you thinking, well, why are the stars the same? Well, I'm not a professional astronomer, so I can't really explain that. But I would say it has something to do with relative motion where everything's moving in conjunction instead of just this vortex of insane speeds..  Fronk: In my peanut globetard brain, I'm more so thinking the speed of light and how long it actually takes for the light from the stars that we're seeing to travel here. I mean, yeah, we've been seeing the same stars for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, but at what point were those stars emitting that light? How long have those stars been dead for, and how long is it gonna take for us to see new stars again? [00:29:00] I can't answer any of those questions for you, but I'm pretty sure that's. Dave: Valid point. Mike: Also in the grand scheme of time, humanity has been around a fucking blink in universal time. again to Fronk's point here, we're seeing the same stars because we're living 80 years and that's it. As opposed to the billions and billions and billions of years that the universe has existed and that that light has traveled and those stars have either been born, exploded, died, and disappeared. , we're seeing nothing, nothing. Dave: Well, that goes back to you being an insignificant being and that being suppressed. There's that argument. We'll have that later. We'll fight about it. Mike: there, there won't be an argument. We are insignificant beings.  Even if you took it back to a creationist argument, we are fucking insignificant. We are insignificant, we're [00:30:00] nothing. If we were something we would still commune with Gods, we would still commune with universal spirits. We would be. Something more than fucking meat sacks traveling through the world going, oh, I wonder what job I'm gonna have next, that I'm gonna work fucking 40 hours a week at and pull in a menial salary and take care of my 5.2 fucking kids, and then eventually retire at the ripe old age of 70 years old. And that's my life. How special am I Dave: Well, that's the system that you're locked in. Mike: system or not? Even if I had no job, even if I was just wandering, enjoying my life, going to these wonderful, exotic places, just doing everything that I wanted to do. At the end of it all 70 to 80 years, that's what I get. That's fucking it. in those 70 to 80 years, when am I seeing God? When am I [00:31:00] seeing a hint of any extraterrestrial, any, any extra dimensional, any religious, fucking spiritual guide? Anything. Anything.  when I'm not, fucked up on drugs, Dave: psychedelics. Fronk: God tier moment. Mike goes, have you ever given an ant food? Throw that bitch in there.  Dave: A lot of people see that as negative, and I don't really see it as negative that we're that insignificant. It's kind of the same argument that I make about the flight paths, which we'll quickly touch on is, well, the, the plane has to keep dipping down to keep going. Have you seen how small a plane is to how big the earth is? Mike: That's one thing that they don't understand is fucking perspective. You don't understand  perspective.  Dave: I'm glad you brought that up because what Frankie said a couple minutes ago about viewpoints perspective, seeing, if the clouds appear flat, water is flat, that's called using an empirical approach or an approach that relies on information [00:32:00] on your senses.  What's your feeble little human garbage eyes can see? And if you can't see the curve, then it doesn't exist. They use mathematics. I am. Stupid with math. The math is if the earth is round, there should be a degree of curvature, eight inches per mile squared. one mile would be eight inches, two miles, 32 inches, three miles, 72 inches, four miles, 128, and so on.  128 inches is about 10 feet of curvature. So that would be, four miles away now? 10 feet. A considerable amount when you're looking at a boat on. Water the water line to the top, say, let's say an aircraft carrier is probably 60 to 90 feet. You'd have to be at least around 20 miles to not just see the flight deck of that ship going over the horizon.  Then you got the whole, you got the bridge, you got everything else. You got all the radar you're probably looking at 120 feet at least to the top of, all of the structures on that ship. How many miles is that? . That's the thing. Another thing with the insignificance is [00:33:00] that we're tiny as fuck. Like how can we see anything? If you're five foot 10 and you're looking at something how far are you actually gonna see Mike: but what about the Zoom, Dave? What about the Zoom? Some of those cameras, they can zoom way, way, way, way in. They take those cameras and they zoom, zoom, zoom, and they go, well, that city is 150 miles away. There's no way that I should see it because of this curvature. And this camera is picking it up perfectly. So how do they work? Dave: I think they use the Chicago skyline for example. And I didn't do the experiment and look on Google Maps , and see the different distances, but you gotta remember the Sears Tower, whatever the fuck it's called now, it's like well over a thousand feet tall. and they're like, well, you can see the whole thing you. In those pictures that are shown as examples, you cannot see the entire Sears Tower. There is hundreds of feet of displacement in Chicago. Like New York has a [00:34:00] very tall fucking skyline. But you could still see those buildings and they're there, and on top of it, you're getting atmospheric disturbance. You're getting a layer of almost a mirage layer.  Mike: Dave was just going over the math of the entire situation, it's 67 feet per 10 miles. Now, before we move on, we have to mention that there are ball earthers or globes or globe tards that do argue that this equation is misused by flat earthers. And is the equation of calculating a parabola, not a full sphere. Dave: The guy who said that this is Misused was something that was found on the Michael Stata podcast and apparently himself and another guy that were on there, one was like an F 18 pilot, and then he's got certain hundreds and hundreds amount of hours as being a pilot. he had mentioned that the equation was misused and used the parabola as an example, that you're talking [00:35:00] about something like this instead of something that's a full circle even if you're talking about it on the curve, , it's still a parabola, even on that surface. Even though the equations are right and the math is right to calculate the curvature of the earth with its circumference that's known.  Might not be accurate. And uh, who did that? Aristophenes did that. And I know Flat Earthers is gonna say that guy didn't even fucking exist. which maybe he did, maybe he didn't. That was 2000 years ago. Who knows? Fronk: just to be fair to the flat earthers, right? We can't nitpick what false history we believe and don't, we do tend to say that history could have been falsified many times. If history has been erased at any point in time there is the possibility that this dude was made. Mike: using this model, a person standing on a spherical surface with eyes five feet, 11 inches above the ground, can [00:36:00] hypothetically see the ground up to about three miles away, but a person at the top of the Eiffel Tower at 896 feet can see the ground up to 36.6 miles away. Dave: Well, they're higher in altitude, Mike: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.  Dave: but the argument is that you can't see using the calculation, you wouldn't be able to see because it's dipping. I think the argument is wrong, and I'm not a mathematician and I'm not good at math, but from what my I see is that almost like some of these people are seeing it smaller than what it is. I don't think they're really getting how big this thing is and how small we are. So even at a 900 feet, Yes, you can see almost 10 times as much in distance, but you're also almost a thousand feet in the air,  Mike: Again,  perspective.   Fronk: If the degree of the [00:37:00] curvature is found to be the same everywhere on earth's surface, and the surface is in fact large enough, the constant curvature demonstrates that the earth is a. Now what about water? James Underdown, executive Director for the Center for Inquiry, Los Angeles worked with the Independent Investigations Group, a nonprofit dedicated to investigating exceptional claims using scientific methods. A boat based target with horizontal stripes was used in one of these tests. Dave: He's quoted as saying we sent a boat out on the water, and the farther it goes, the more the stripes disappear. That was supposed to demonstrate the curvature of the planet, but most flat earthers disagreed generating considerable debate. The biggest reason for these arguments with flat earth, obviously it comes from flat Earth, Dave(David Weiss), and it's all about perspective, as we said. The ground would never obscure distant objects on a flat earth. It should be possible to see all the way to the edge of the [00:38:00] world, right? That is the question that we would be asking. The answer we get is the atmosphere is opaque. Now, using the vernacular atmosphere is almost a conundrum in itself, and you ask, well, why did you use that? Well, we don't have another word for it.  Mike: Why not just make up a word like you fucking make up your own beliefs?  Just fucking do it. Just do it. . Make up a new word. It's very easy. It's done every day.   [00:39:00] Ad break [00:40:00]    Mike: Let's move on to another major fight in this, the position of the sun, sunrise and sunset. In case you were wondering, the sun is always above the Earth's surface in both models, Yet in the flat model, it travels in circles around the Earth's north pole, which is also, its. The seasons are caused by the expansion [00:41:00] and contraction of these circles. What about latitude?  Dave: What about latitude? I mean,  that would  Mike: about latitude  Dave: right? Mike: Hmm. Dave: The largest circumference of latitude on this planet would be the equator. Correct?  Mike: Yep. Dave: And then you have the tropic cancer and the tropic of Capricorn. The midpoints. I don't know that seems pretty, easy to explain. Maybe I'm just stupid. Could  be,  Mike: Globetard Dave: yeah. Fronk: Fucking idiot. Do some research Mike: Look into it. Fronk: where, show me where, show me where I could read about this that isn't on the app.  Mike: In the Bible, Fronk: Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. Here we go with the fucking Bible again. Mike: and books from the  17 hundreds  Fronk: They considered the sun to be much closer than 93 million miles and possibly even as far as 3000 miles or as close as 300 miles and moves in a circle or a helix pattern because the earth is supposedly accelerating upward, obviously toward the sun [00:42:00] at 9.8 meters per second because they don't believe in gravity, and that explains gravity away. with that being said, the sun must also be accelerating in the same direction as this hypothetical earth vortex. Make sense? You guys got that? Dave: instead of us spinning with things spinning around us and us spinning around something else and then that spinning around something else, which is relative there's a really big graphic that's always shown on every documentary, every video, and it's like the sun being shot out of a. With everything else just like around it, it looks like a DNA strand, most globe tards, know that that's not how motion works with celestial bodies. that one got me and always gets me, is every time that's shown. I'm like, oh God.  Fronk: other astronomical bodies moving in such a pattern? We have like really high powered telescopes Mike: Because space is not real.  Fronk: [00:43:00] Oh, shit. I forgot. I'm, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You got me.  Okay. All right. All right. Right. All right. Dave: no space. No space. We have to remember that throughout this whole episode, there's no space. Fronk: Yes. Yes. Mike: if you take space out of the equation, introduce God in the Bible, and just ignore all known fucking science for the past like 300 years, you can be a flat earther. Fronk: wait is it no space or it's just the sun and the moon and the earth, or , is it None of that and it's just plain earth with our spinning moon, sun clock sort of thing happening, Which one is it? Do flat earthers believe either the barrel bore theory or the plate theory? Dave: Everything's contained in a system. Fronk: It's one in the same Dave: and everything above us is, I guess, the abyss, because there's a lot of arguments that, like with this Artemis program, whether it's fake or not, we'll talk about NASA in a little bit, but whether it's fake or not, Rockets [00:44:00] don't work in a vacuum apparently. but they're actually using, their own inertia to move in a vacuum. But I guess things don't work that way according to some. That brings us to sunrise and sunset. I don't want to get too far into this cuz this can take hours and hours and hours to argue about, let's talk about sunrise and sunset real quick.  Fronk: Unlike a bunch of these other points, the day and night cycles are actually kind of easily explained on a flat plane. The sun theoretically would move in circles above the North Pole. Or around the North Pole, and when it's over your head, it's day, and when it's not, it's nighttime. The light of the sun is then confined to a limited area on the earth, right? Because it's right above you. This claim never held any weight for me in particular because it can be debunked with science.  On top of this, all of the planets and stars aren't actually what they appear to be like [00:45:00] big rock balls in space or giant balls of gas, but they're actually luminaries. Yet. We also hear a lot of people say, well, we don't know what they. Dave: Stars and planets are one of the biggest things that cannot be explained yet. We can explain them with telescopes. We've been talking a lot about movement. We have to talk about heliocentric model, which is the one that we supposedly live in and not the geocentric model, which is the one that flat earthers live in. When we are confronted with the question of how the earth is able to orbit the sun, and it's not a sphere it's pretty simple. The earth actually doesn't orbit the sun, as we've been saying. This is so, because instead of the sun being the center of our solar system, our planet is actually the center of our solar system or controlled environment. Mike: In reality, we have Helio Centrism, also known as the Heliocentric Model. It's the astronomical model in which the earth and planets revolve around the sun at the center historically, [00:46:00] Helio Centrism was opposed to geo centrism, which placed the earth at the center. now we've hit the firmament. Fronk: In the cosmology of the flat earth. The disc shaped planet is covered by a dome whose edges stopped just beyond the roughly 145 foot high ice wall of Antarctica. And these stars are fixed on this dome while the sun and moon, which are only about 31 miles in diameter, revolve about a 3,100 miles above the earth. Dave: Now, as we said before in biblical cosmology, the firmament is a vast, solid dome or semi solid dome created by God during his creation in the first six days To divide the primal sea into upper and lower portions so that the dry land could appear, which surrounds the earth or frozen water, I've heard this a lot with the biblical cosmology stuff, is that it's explained during day one, day two, day three, and they even say in the Bible, God created the firmament. I [00:47:00] believe it's on ver bran's headstone, as we've mentioned previously. I think it's a lot of wordplay and interpretation,  Mike: We also mentioned back in Hollow Moon, if you've listened to that episode about the Zulu tribe, where the firmament or atmosphere rained down to earth.  Our flat earthers saying that the sky is liquid possibly. Clearly, we know that the Earth's atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.9% argon and 0.1% of other gases. Dave: Now, quickly, recently, I've heard a lot of arguments in quite a few different shows and videos not just one proponent, but multiple proponents on this theory. And a lot of 'em will say, well, the atmosphere itself is just a different version of water as it is up in space, a whole different version of water. Because they use the example of if you go to the deep oceans or certain lakes, there's different [00:48:00] salinities of water. You'll have heavier water on the bottom, different pockets of water. the atmosphere works the same way and they say, because it has the same elements in it. Now, if our atmosphere is made up of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, yes, there's hydrogen in that, because if we need water, we need H two O, which does happen in the atmosphere, Fronk: shit. That's why they sent U-boats to space it's water. Dave: oh. Fronk: Oh, Dave: That's it.  You got me.  Mike: done. We're done.    Final thoughts, boys? Fronk: Thank you Hushlings. Dave: Yeah, that's it. Mike: Okay, so we're talking about the firmament currently. Now I just want everyone to know the actual definition of a firmament. So the firmament is the vault or arch of the sky. The firmament isn't necessarily something that is physical. It is something that is viewed. the [00:49:00] arch from one horizon to the other is the sky. That is the firmament. So when everybody's saying, oh, firmament, they're talking about the firmament, they're talking about something that's physically there. No, that's a viewpoint. The firmament refers to horizon. To horizon. The arch of the sky as you see it from one end of your viewpoint to the other Dave: Makes sense. There's a lot of that too, where it said that you're, uh, you have a personal viewing bubble and I think that's misinterpreted as what you're actually, what you can see you go up a 1500 foot mountain, you look around, you can see 360 degrees.  Mike: that's your firmament. Dave: that's your firmament. Fronk: One bar from Suicide Boy's last album. One of them goes Dome. So good. I think she think the earth is flat mouth like the fucking firmament. She got my eyes rolling back. There you go.  Mike: it says it all. Fronk: [00:50:00] It says it all, it says it all your, your mouth has a firmament. Mike: Show me what that firmament do. Fronk: land ho. We have hit the ice walls and the absence of the poles along the edge of our local area exists a massive 150 foot ice wall. This ice wall is on the coast of Antarctica, and The wall is absolutely gargantuan, made up of solid water, ice that surrounds our world and holds our world's oceans in.   And the South Pole does not exist, whereas the North Pole is just a giant mountain called a hyperly that you can't visit. Dave: The ice walls were discovered by Sir James Clark, who was a British naval officer and polar explorer who was amongst the first adventure to Antarctica in an attempt to determine the position of the south magnetic pole between 1768 and 1779. [00:51:00] Upon confronting the massive vertical front of ice heat famously remarked. Mike: "It was an obstruction of such character as to leave no doubt in my mind as to our future proceedings for we might as well sail through the Cliffs of Dover as to penetrate such a mass. That's what she said. It would be impossible to conceive a more solid looking mass of ice. Not the smallest appearance of any rent or fisher. Could we discover throughout the whole of its extent and the intensely bright sky beyond it, but too plainly indicated. The great distance to which it wreaths, southward " Dave: apparently it took him three years or so to do one of the journeys and he circumnavigated the globe at 77,000 miles. what if he did it three times and did [00:52:00] 77,000 miles? That's the one thing that I've always thought is that, was it one trip  Fronk: And he just didn't know Mike: But again, in the 18 hundreds, let's say that this guy goes and he encounters an ice shelf, would he not think that was an ice wall? Dave: yeah, Fronk: like, oh shit. Well this is the edge of the world I suppose. Mike: there's no going past this. My ship can't go through that. Dave: I mean, yeah, that would be logical. Mike: I think this is what we said in the first one, a lot of these arguments for a flat earth revert back to like this 18 hundreds knowledge. Let's look at this book from the 18 hundreds. Look, they mentioned the firmament. Let's look at this. they talk about ice stones and blah, blah, blah. Fronk: The future is a lie. . The truth lies in the 18 hundreds. Reject modernity, Now all of this would of course, imply that Antarctica isn't at all what they say. And we've [00:53:00] mentioned this quite a bit about the Antarctic treaty already and the Antarctic bases and all of the secrets that they hide and you can't go there. You're not allowed There. Only scientists. Yeah. That's where they're hiding the edge of the.  Dave: Let's board a plane real quick and try to go to Antarctica. I know we say we can get there by ship, but two major arguments about airplanes with the flat earth theory is one, there's no round trip flights to Antarctica. And I think we covered this briefly in our first one where we had said, Antarctica fucking sucks. And that's probably why there's no round trip flights and how a lot of the Southern Hemisphere flights cannot be explained. And I believe we went over that a lot in our first episode. And I still stick by all of what I thought about that. Now, the other question that comes up with this theory  one, can you see curve in a commercial aircraft? And two, the aircraft always has to be pitching nose down after a [00:54:00] certain amount of time. Those two arguments come up major in this theory. So I wanna get your thoughts on do planes always have to tip downward as you're flying? Cuz you've all been on flights before, Fronk: No, the plane isn't nose diving or it doesn't feel like it anyway. It doesn't seem like it's nose diving by any means. Dave: but you would feel it. You can feel drop in altitude when you're starting to descend and you feel that, whew, almost that weird weightlessness when they drop a couple hundred feet or a thousand feet pretty quickly. You can feel turbulence, obviously. , I don't think that it necessarily pitches downward after a certain distance because I think, like I said earlier, planes are tiny and the earth is huge. So I don't think there's that much effect of a plane having to move when it's floating on top of a surface of air. Fronk: If a plane pitched downwards while at like max [00:55:00] altitude, wouldn't it just start losing altitude? Wouldn't you just be going towards the ground or am I being peanut brained? Dave: If planes were going in the straight path following the Earth's curve, then they would fly off into space. That's what they say. And I think it's simpler than that. Planes fly in a certain area from 35,000 to 50,000 feet, especially commercial aircraft in a certain layer of air that's thinnest. Which is why they can move as fast as they can, but I don't believe that they're pitching because they're so tiny that everything is going to appear flat at 35,000 feet cuz the earth is so big. Mike: , they're maintaining a certain altitude from the ground, so they're not pitching anything. They're just going with the natural atmosphere of the earth. Dave: Gravity.  Mike: Yeah.    Dave: The plane thing never, never made too much sense to me, especially with the flying off into space. If you didn't compensate for curvature, it's because the Plains Center [00:56:00] mass is always perpendicular with the ground and the plane is so insignificantly small. That you will not notice those changes. You notice left and right banks on planes, , you take a direction moving towards another city, you see it, you feel the whole plane go and you're looking towards the ground. If you're ascending, you feel that inertia you're getting pulled up into the air, especially on takeoffs. Or if you're descending, you feel that, oh, the pilot goes, we're gonna be descending in a couple minutes, and all of a sudden you feel that that drop, you feel that motion left, right, and vertical but you don't feel those nudges that they say that they're doing. So I don't think that that happens. I just think the center mass of that plane is fighting against gravity to keep it up. It's a boat in the sky. Mike: even if they did, that's a continuous compensation. So it's not like they're flying a certain distance and then going, oh, well I'm eight inches above where I was before. I need to adjust. Even if that was the truth, they would just make manual [00:57:00] adjustments as they went. So over that period of time, a half inch, a quarter inch, whatever you wouldn't even be able to tell in the first place if that was the case. Fronk: And that would only be if you were flying like across the world. I'm sure it's even less so if you're flying from somewhere on the east coast down to like Minnesota or something, it's gonna be even less noticeable if you're traveling somewhere that local. Dave: You're only traveling a couple hundred miles. Fronk: Yeah, exactly. Mike: I'm sure the figures are out there, but how many flat earthers are from America versus from the rest of the world? Dave: Good question. Mike: just wondering. Dave: I don't know the answer to that. I would say there's a lot in America. America is a very conspiracy driven country at the moment, and flat earth boils down to every other conspiracy. If you believe wholeheartedly in this, you believe everything else, the lies, everything is fake. Your entire [00:58:00] existence is fake. that's from what I get Fronk: That sucks. And then, and then from that point where do they go with that? They yell at other people about it or We're gonna briefly go over the eclipse aspect of flat earth theory. Now, we all obviously know what eclipses are. That's when the moon aligns with the sun and the earth and blocks out the sun. You know the deal. and remember that the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun. It's also about 400 times closer to the earth than the sun is. Is that coincidence that this astronomical phenomenon happens? Uh, Dave: Well, I can tell you from the flat earth side that that is almost impossible.  Mike: It's pretty impossible either way. Like it's pretty coincidental. I will give it to them that when you're talking about the sun and the moon being these like perfect distances and these perfect sizes and these per that's intriguing to say the least. I will give them. Dave: Which we did go over[00:59:00] Hollow moon theory if the moon was placed here, it was placed here on purpose, but then that would give weight to some type of, maybe not creationism, but some type of external control or external observation, which I think all of us are on the fence with that.  That could be, it could not be, Mike: Again, prove to me that any of this is real Dave: So there's two types of eclipses. There's solar and lunar eclipses. Now, the way solar eclipses work is that the moon orbits in between the sun and the earth. And when that occurs, obviously the moon blocks out the sunlight. You see the corona bought a bing. You have a solar eclipse, and the moon also casts a shadow on the earth. Now, a lot of the times it's told that the moon can't cast this little tiny pin prick shadow that goes across the earth. But if the moon is relatively 200,000 miles away, why couldn't it?  Mike: According to flat Earth theorists, this astronomical phenomenon is [01:00:00] actually a glimpse of a mysterious shadow object that orbits the sun and occasionally passes in front of the moon. From our point of view, could it be planet X Nibiru? No. This object is known as the anti moon. That's new Dave: another random object in our solar system. We could go on and on about eclipses, but we have to talk about one of the biggest fallacies of our education system. Gravity, Mike: not real. Dave: not real. Now, one of the most well agreed upon theories is general relativity. And it is the theory of gravitation developed by our boy Albert Einstein, who was apparently a conman according to flat earthers. And between 1907 and 1915, he figured all this out. The theory of general relativity says that an observe gravitational effect between masses results from their warping of space time. Gravity is still just a theory to us. I guess we can all be on the fence [01:01:00] on it cause we really don't get it. And I think scientists have , admitted that they don't get it,  Mike: Well, didn't recently they say that they had to like rework that entire thought process for some discovery that they had found that the theory of relativity had to be, had to be rethought or it was not necessarily wrong entirely, but partially, I guess., it had to do with the way that a black hole was working, where for the first time they saw a star coming out of a black hole. Fronk: Yeah, I saw that it was being regurgitated. They saw light coming out of a black hole. That's right. Mike: Things are happening, man. Whether you believe in space or not, it's. Pretty wild. Fronk: Newton's love gravitation states every point Mass attracts every single other point mass by a force acting along the line intersecting both points. I don't know what that means. The force is proportional to the product of the two [01:02:00] masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Exactly. That's what I've been saying this whole Mike: Sounds about right. Thanks boys. Well, what is gravity? According to this theory, it's stated that the earth isn't pulled into a sphere because the force known as gravity exists in a greatly diminished form compared to what is commonly taught, which is that we're being pulled down to the center of the earth while. The flat Earth is constantly accelerating up at a rate of 32 feet per second squared or 9.8 meters per second squared. As we had previously mentioned, this constant acceleration causes what you think of as gravity, but it's actually caused by a universal accelerator known as dark energy or Etheric wind. Never heard of Etheric wind. That's interesting, Fronk: time's that post Taco Bell shit's my etheric wind. Dave: [01:03:00] Furthermore with this we hear words like density and buoyancy a lot in these theories arguments, which is why things fall to the ground that are heavier and explains rockets, which are thought to actually be filled with helium and have a pyrotechnic show. that proves that all things fall at 9.8 meters squared.   Dave: All right boys, we're getting towards the end of our flat earth expedition here. But we have to go back in the sky. That brings us to rockets and satellites. As we just mentioned. Proponents of flat earth theory believe that satellites totally exist, but cannot be seen from the ground and are actually held in the atmosphere by helium balloons. Hence why NASA is the largest consumer of helium and they sometimes crash into the planet, which we call them weather balloons. And I guess that would explain the weather balloon phenomenon.  Fronk: Satellites in low earth orbit are constantly fighting gravity. According to science, some are geographically fixed and keep their [01:04:00] orbit by balancing two factors, their velocity, which is the speed required to travel in a straight line and their gravitational pull to the earth. To resist the stronger gravitational pole, a satellite orbiting closer to the earth requires more velocity. And of course, we're not going to get out of this debriefing without a little bit of NASA sprinkled in that bitch. Mike: Yes, good old nasa, our friends over there, professional cgi. It's widely assumed that humans have never left the Earth's atmosphere. In fact, we've never left earth and entered space because we lack the ability to do so in the first place unless you're a Nazi and a U-boat. Most of what society has been taught about space is completely made up or greatly exaggerated. By the government and or the elites. There's also the claim that humans have never landed on the moon. I'm with that, and that the infamous moon landings witnessed by the entire world in [01:05:00] 1969 were a sham. Fronk: Okay. I'll give them that. A major claim is that any pictures from the Apollo 11 mission that show that our planet as a sphere in the distance were fabricated by the government and nasa and NASA's mission is not to hide the shape of the earth or trick people into thinking it's round or anything else of the sort. Dave: Well, that's what NASA says, right?  We obviously know that there's some type of space travel conspiracy, whether it's more advanced or it doesn't exist. Possibly Nasa's mission is to create the illusion of space travel in order to, cover for the military, and their dominance in space. One thing we forgot to mention that I thought of real quick when you guys were talking is the quick notion on gravity. There's a lot of flat earthers that will say, well, can you jump, when you jump off the earth, you a hundred, 200 pound person jumping off the earth. Do you come back [01:06:00] down? And was it easy to jump? Then why is gravity so strong? Fronk: that's the whole argument of like, why does Gravity hold our planet's, oceans On  Dave: Yeah. Yeah. If it can  hold all this water and all this mass,  why can you jump off your roof and hit the ground? Mike: Because there is a different pull depending on the mass of the object.  Dave: Mike wins a gold star Fronk: gold sticker for you. Mike: boys, let's get into our final thoughts. Everything that was on Reddit, we've been through, we've done this whole thing. I wanna know the final thoughts as we get into stage two of becoming a flat earth. are we now believing that gravity is not real? The sun is a, lamp and uh, and we live on a flat plain, surrounded by an ice wall. Dave, are you a flat earther? Dave: No. sadly, I am not a flat earther. I think it's an [01:07:00] interesting theory that opens up a lot of more conspiracies and there are some valid questions, but I think a lot of it has to do with our lack of actually being able to see things because we are restricted beings. Uh, the one thing about flat earth theory that I find really fascinating is the suppression of information, the hidden things. And I think that's the conspiratorial part that really pulls me, believing that it is a different shape or an infinite plane or a snow globe, or, flatterers is gonna get so mad at me for saying that because we don't believe it's a snow globe. It doesn't look like a pancake. They all have different theories and a lot of it goes back to religion. A lot of it goes to creationism. A lot of it goes back to every other conspiracy you've ever heard of. So for me, still, I still think we live on a planet. the definition of planet is what we live on. Is it a perfect sphere? I think that's proven that it's not a perfect sphere.[01:08:00] I'm not a scientist, but I've done research and research and research and supposedly it takes up to two weeks or so to become a flat earth. I've been doing this research since like the end of July, and I'm still not convinced. wanted to give it a fair shake. Didn't wanna be a douche bag. Would invite any flat earth to come on and talk to us. We'd love to have you on, but You didn't get me yet. Mike: I will take my final thoughts, a complete left turn here. I don't care. I don't care whether it's a giant paella pan or if we live on a dodge ball. I, I don't care. I don't care. Maybe it's the blue pilled part of my brain that still exists. I don't give a shit. It doesn't change anything. I'm still gonna wake up in the morning and have to go to work, have to pay my taxes, and eventually I'm gonna fucking die. That's just the way that it is. I don't care if we live on a flat plane, I don't care if we live on a globe. It's just the way that [01:09:00] it is. but I don't think that we live on a fly plane. I'm just gonna say that I don't think that I, I do think that there is a lot of cover up of our former history. That much I believe is true. I do believe that NASA is filled with a bunch of liars and they do fabricate things including, setting up these videos where they're watching astronauts float around, but the water stays in a cup. That's an interesting one. , I do think that they do composite images together and they are a bunch of liars that I completely agree with. . I love you whether you're a flat earth or not, but no, it's a no for me. Fran, give us your final thoughts. Did you become a flat earther in this episode?   Fronk: No, I didn't. , I'm not gonna go off on a limb and say that I tried to give flat earth theory, the benefit of [01:10:00] the doubt, but I tried to stay open-ended, especially towards like the beginning of the episode. I was just trying to like see it from both sides and I still do to an extent. And you're right in saying that their best argument is the space shit and nasa, but, that can't be all you're going off of here, because that, lends to so much other shit besides just the shape of the planet.  And not only that, if you're like sold on the shape of the planet, then you've been deceived. You know what, I'm gonna pull a flirter and tell you what you've been taught on. The internet is wrong, and it's all code. You've been tricked into thinking that what we live on is physical and that it has shape. There is no shape. I've never even been out of the country. You can't even convince me that Australia's real, let alone the, the, the fucking shape of the  Mike: you're partial flat earther because they don't believe that Australia is real either. Fronk: [01:11:00] Oh, no. Australia's not real Mike: listen, if you're in Australia and you, uh, you live there full time, reach out to us. Send us an email. Even better a voicemail, because I just want to hear the accent. Send us a voicemail and say, Hey, yeah, I exist. I'm here. This is a real place. Dave: Clearly they exist. They're number three on our Spotify Mike: That's right. Thanks Australia. Fronk: No, I, I never tried to doubt Australia. It was a metaphor, but Dave: Our Hustralians down under, Mike: That's hilarious. Dave: , if we offended you we're sorry. Well, I partially am. Mike: I, I, listen, I tried this episode. I think that I was better than the first episode. I didn't sit there and say anybody was an idiot or any of that stuff. like I said, you believe what you wanna believe, but on, at the end of the day, I don't think that it really matters. Fronk: And if it makes you feel [01:12:00] special, by all means,

Rounding Up  Season 1 | Episode 6 – Cultivating a Positive Math Identity  Guests: Nataki McClain and Annelly Rodas  Mike Wallus: Today I'd like to start our episode with a bit of a thought exercise. I'd like you to close your eyes and picture your childhood self, learning math in your elementary school. What are some of the memories and feelings that come to mind? And when you reflect on those memories, what do you think the unspoken messages you may have absorbed about what it means to be good at math were? And then maybe most importantly, how did those early experiences with mathematics shape your belief about yourself as a doer of math? Today on the podcast, we're talking about identity; specifically, math identity. What is it? And how can we as teachers shape our students' math identities. Let's get started.  Mike: Well, hey, everyone. Welcome to Rounding Up. I'm excited to have our friends Nataki and Annelly joining us today. And I think I'll just start by welcoming the two of you. It's great to have you on the podcast.  Nataki McClain: Hi, Mike. Thank you for having us.  Annelly Rodas: Thank you, Mike.  Mike: Absolutely. So the two of you are currently curriculum consultants for the Math Learning Center. And I'm wondering, before we get started with the topic of the day, can you tell us just a little bit about your teaching background and your experience in education? And, Nataki, I'm wondering if you'd be willing to go first?  Nataki: Sure. Well, I have been in education in some capacity for about 25 years. I spent 16 years in the classroom. Fourth grade was my favorite year of all time. And then I've spent eight years as a math specialist. This past year, I am now a curriculum consultant for the Math Learning Center.  Mike: Annelly, how about you?  Annelly: So I started my career as a pre-K teacher at a head start program, and then I moved to the New York City public school system, where I taught second grade and fourth grade. Later, I had the opportunity to work as a math coach at my own school. And I supported pre-K to eight.  Mike: Fabulous. Thanks to both of you. So let's jump into the topic of the podcast: Cultivating a Positive Math Identity. Getting ready for this, what I found myself thinking about is that there is so much conversation in the field right now around math identity. And CTM has position statements about the importance of supporting a positive math identity. There's a ton of research that validates that need. I think I'd like to start by just asking you, from your perspective, how would you describe math identity to a listener who's new to this conversation?  Annelly: I think that it is important to understand that math identity is our own personal view on how we engage with mathematics, right? And it has to do with our disposition and our beliefs on our mathematics ability. I know for me, this topic is really close to my own personal journey in mathematics because I grew up thinking that I was not a math person and that changed with my experiences really late in life. So it has become my mission that kids get to experience math in a different way, and that they feel comfortable engaging with mathematics.  Nataki: And Nelly, um, I have to agree with you. I share a similar experience in that, I guess in my elementary school days, I didn't think of math as something that you got to either enjoy or not. It was just kind of, it's just there and you do it and you learn it. But then in high school I did not have a positive experience. I was made to feel like math was not my thing. And so, Mike, to address that question about what is math identity, it really—to Nelly's point—it really is how you view yourself as a mathematician. And again, my experience in high school was such that I did not feel like I was a mathematician. So to everyone's surprise, when I go off to grad school I'm studying math and now I'm working at the Math Learning Center, right? It's kind of a big deal. And I think it's important that everyone feel like a mathematician.  Mike: Yeah, gosh, you know what you two are saying, I suspect that it resonates with so many people who, whether they're teachers or parents or folks who are just kind of going about living their lives, think this resonates so much. I really resonate with what you said, Nataki, about this idea that math was just there.  Nataki: Uh-hm.  Mike: It was about a series of procedures that you do quickly and that you try to always find the answer as soon as possible. And get it correct the first time. And if you didn't, that meant something about who you were, what your ultimate capacity as a mathematician was.  Nataki: Uh-hm.  Mike: And I think for a lot of folks, that really shapes their belief about what school math is and what math is in general.  Nataki: Absolutely.  Mike: Yeah. So I'm really curious, when you think about the resources that helped you all build your understanding of math identity, what are some of the kind of seminal pieces of work that helped you begin to think about this idea?  Nataki: Well, Anelly and I are reading this book. It's called ‘Choosing to See.' It's written by Pamela Seda and Kyndall Brown. And I have found that this is a relevant resource, especially to our work at the Math Learning Center, because it focuses on equity specifically in the math classroom. And as you're reading it, hopefully you'll find, like we have, that the authors do a really good job in describing those instructional strategies that help teachers to build positive math identities for students. Right away in the introduction, Kyndall Brown outlines a framework for the principles that guide equity, agency, and also identity in the classroom. And he uses an acronym. I see you care. So it's I, the letter C-U-C-A-R-E. And that stands for Including others as experts; being Critically conscious; Understanding your students; Using Culturally relevant curricula; (Assess), activate, and also to build (on) prior knowledge; Releasing control; and Expecting more. And the idea here is to be intentional about what you see, to also be compassionate and purposeful enough to respond. And when we allow this mindset to be prevalent in our classroom, it really does help to support a positive student math identity. But it also serves as a guide to help the teacher understand what, particularly, is at stake. Annelly: And I love that resource. The two of us are, are reading that book and always have conversations about it. But I also think that a starting point for a teacher should be examining their own journey with mathematics, right? Like I talked about how I didn't feel as a mathematician. And I taught, at the beginning of my career, I taught the way that I was taught: very procedural. Expecting quick answers. And the more I started putting my students at the center of my teaching, I started realizing that I was not meeting the needs of all my students. So I would say another research—and I'm going to do a plug in here for our blog—'A Summer Dive into Teacher Math Identity.' That might be something, like a starting point, right? We have to examine our own thinking and our own role before we can create those opportunities for students to develop a positive math identity.  Nataki: I like that, Annelly, that's a good one.  Mike: Hmm. Yeah. I think one thing that jumps out for me is, it would be hard for me to imagine that there's a lot of people who disagree with the aspiration of helping children build an identity about mathematics. That's positive. But I think what's hitting me is you all are kind of highlighting that there are actual practices and things that one does that actually helps build that. And, Annelly, I think I'm really struck by the statement that you made, where you said, ‘I realized that I needed to put kids at the center of my instruction.' And I'm wondering if you can just talk a little bit about, for you, in your journey as a math educator, what did it look like to do that in your classroom?  Annelly: What happened to me was that I started exploring my own math identity at the same time as I was teaching. And one of the things that I noticed is that for me, I need processing time and I needed visuals. So I started playing with that in the classroom to see what my students needed, right? I started bringing in visuals, and we started thinking about—I started thinking about—like, processing time for my kids, giving them time to think, slowing down their thinking. And that made a huge difference for my kids. And it provided a lens where I was pushed to, to think about and really pay attention to, what are the other things that they need? How can I open up space for them to share their thinking? And also, where are the opportunities for them to develop that agency as well? Where they can feel like, ‘I can tackle this,' even though it's hard.  Mike: Hmm. Nataki I, I was going to also offer, like, from your perspective, what did this journey look like for supporting students?  Nataki: Well, kind of similar to Annelly, you know. When I, when I am reflective of my own experiences as a math student, but also reflective in my practices as a teacher, one of the things that I noticed that was missing is the element of fun, right? And also how that fun factor makes room for accessibility. When students start having fun, then the math is accessible to them. And so one of the things that I can say that absolutely was consistent in my classroom, is that we were having fun. Now, of course, fun looks different for different people. And for me, it wasn't just, ‘We're being goofy and being silly.' But fun meant that we are enjoying thinking about the math, doing the math, talking to our friends about the math, looking at math in different ways. In fact, I remember many days when we were at recess and students would come up to me with something that they'd noticed on the playground, right? Being that, ‘Oh, you know, Ms. McClain, that this merry-go-round is a circle. And it's going around and around and around and around. And it spins in the same, in the same distance from the center all the time.' That's something that I didn't teach them. It was something that they noticed because they were having fun on the playground. And they were able to bring in the math concepts from the classroom into their own fun spaces. Mike: You know, one of the things that I find myself thinking about is a really old piece of research. And gosh, I forget the actual researcher. But this idea that teaching is a cultural experience, right? That there are certain cultural narratives around mathematics education that exist just under the surface for lots of people. They're the scripts that they learned when they were in childhood. And that's the picture that shows up in people's heads when they think about math education. So part of the work really is offering kind of a counternarrative to that cultural script. Where I'm going with this is, my cultural script is: Teacher stands in front, shows me what to do, we practice it, and then I go and I sit and do 15 problems, and then two story problems at the end. And that's kind of the cultural script.  Nataki: Right.  Mike: And I suspect that it's fairly difficult to make that kind of cultural script fun. So it makes me wonder, ‘What did your classroom look like to make things fun?'  Nataki: Well, one of the things that was really important to me is that students could see themselves in the math that we are doing. So there wasn't a division problem that wasn't accessible to all students in the beginning, right? So we had to make it accessible. And then I would always find ways to turn everything into a game. To provide, again, that level of fun for kids. So whether it's that I've watched a game show like ‘Jeopardy' … well, ‘How could I use this game show to create a math lesson or a math event or an experience for students?' And so sometimes I could do that in the planning stages. OK, thinking about the content that I wanted students to learn, and then, ‘How can I make it fun? How can I make it engaging?' And then sometimes it just happened in the moment. You know, if you read the room and you discover that, mmm … they're not really having a lot of fun. And again, fun looks different for different people. And for me, I knew that it was fun when all students were engaged and all students had access to the learning.  Mike: So you all are really making me think about the fact that part of building identity is task structure, right? The way that you design tasks, the context that you provide that helps kids connect to it, and also really knowing your kids and knowing the fact that if I'm in second grade, you know, having the agency to actually use some of the materials and have choice around that, that's part of being fun, right? I have a question for you. When you all think about the fact that you also supported a Bridges implementation, what's your lived experience with the places where you see opportunities for building math identity within the structure of the Bridges curriculum. Um, how did that play out for you? How did that connect to the story that you're telling about your own journey?  Nataki: Kids would come barging in the room expecting Number Corner to happen. They were just so excited to discover the next pattern. Or, what are we collecting this month, right? And then, I mean, talk about fun. Work Places was just a natural place for that fun to happen. So I would say Number Corner and Work Places were the places in which I saw kids just really engage. And it was also a great time for teachers to help build that math identity in students, right? To offer supportor just to be there next to students, watching them as they're playing the Work Place games. Those were two components where I saw the most where students really were engaged and having a lot of fun. And not only students. Cause I have to admit that I might have been on a couple of floors, and I might have been caught playing a couple of games, and laughing and chuckling myself ( chuckles ).  Mike: ( chuckles ) Annelly, how about for you? Because I know that you actually, you were not only a Bridges teacher for quite a while, but you also supported the implementation in your building. Annelly: I think that something that we saw when we implemented Bridges was the opportunity to allow kids to show their thinking. And I think that was so big, right? Like in thinking about, ‘There are so many subtle ways.' Like when we ask kids, ‘Can you show me eight on your number rack,' right? We're not dictating how they should think about it. They're jumping in and creating their own strategies and their own learning. And I think that that's an important way to develop that math identity. Because we are telling kids, ‘You can do it. You have all of the skills to do this.' So I see it in that. I see it also in, when we ask kids to write their own math problems—this is something that I've been thinking about a lot—like, when we give kids the opportunity to become authors in the math classroom, we want to hear their ideas and their strategies.  Nataki: Uh-hm.  Mike: How does the role of the teacher shift in a classroom that's really supporting a positive mathematics identity? Part of what's on my mind is that idea of a cultural script, where the teacher is the knower and the place where all of the knowledge lives. And then it's really just kind of beamed out to the kids. What's the shift? If I'm trying to just reconceptualize what teaching looks like in a classroom where I am actively building a positive math identity for my students, how would you describe that?  Annelly: Like, I think that, for that I'm going to connect to my years when I was a coach. I used to love going into classrooms where I wouldn't know where the teacher was.  Nataki: Right.  Annelly: And it's even physical, right? The teacher is not in the front of the room. The teacher might be, like Nataki said, on the floor, playing with the kids. Or at a table, meeting with them. And I think that's a sign that shows you how the teacher is moving away from a teacher-center into a more of a student-center. Also, when we can see kids thinking. Where we can see strategies being named after kids. Again, it seems as something so simple, but it's so powerful for them. It gives them validation that what you are thinking is important. I value your strategies. I used to say, ‘Even if they take you down to a rabbit hole value, their thinking … ‘  Nataki: ( laughs )  Annelly: ( laughs )  Mike: That is really powerful. And, Nataki, how would you answer that question?  Nataki: Everything that Annelly said, I 100 percent agree with. I also think where there are opportunities to ask questions of students, to take those opportunities. Particularly when you have a student who doesn't always get to shine in the class, you know, when that student does something that you think the entire class should hear, find time and find moments to highlight that again. That's giving the student a different feeling about math and a different feeling about where that student finds himself or herself in that math classroom. It makes them feel like they are a mathematician. So I think asking questions and finding moments to allow all students to shine.  Mike: You know, I'm trying to put myself back into the world of a classroom teacher. I wonder if for a lot of folks, part of the hesitation is this fear of, what happens if kids say something that quote unquote is wrong or incorrect? And especially if that happens publicly in front of other children. I think there's this hesitation on the part of people. Because, again, the cultural script is, ‘I'll correct that and show you and tell you exactly what to do.' And I wonder, when you've been faced with that spot where you have used questioning, you've been building discourse, and something just comes out of left field … When you think about a classroom again, where you're supporting identity, what does it look like in that moment for a teacher who's working to support identity, and they have some information that kids are putting out that they're concerned? Like, what do I do?  Nataki: Right.  Mike: Yeah, tell me about your thinking on that.  Nataki: Before we start to build discourse, we need to take some time at the very beginning to build a classroom community where everyone in the room feels free to share their thinking. No matter if it's quote correct or incorrect. And I always find opportunities to kind of press more when those incorrect answers come out, because we can learn a lot from those incorrect answers. We don't just learn from the things that are right. We learn from the things that are incorrect. So can you tell me more about that? Or maybe we could write the ideas on sticky notes and revisit them, right? If there are conjectures, which we talk a lot about in our classroom. Conjectures are always meant to be proven right or wrong, not just in that moment, but for as long as we are in the classroom. We're going to be thinking about the conjecture that Sally made. And the students love—and it's fun for them—when they can prove or disprove Sally's conjecture. That's fun for them. But because we've built the community, it's safe to do that.  Annelly: I love that, Nataki. I think that also creating a culture where it's OK to make a mistake and also modeling from teachers, right? Modeling that, ‘Oh, I made a mistake.' But what I love about math is that I just think, ‘Cross it out and, and kind of like, think about it again.' The one tip that I will give teachers that are just starting with math discourse, and they're afraid to get into gray areas: Do a turn-and-talk and listen to your kids before you ask them to share. And then you can kind of like select which kids are going to share, and you know where they're going. The other thing is that you have to do the math before you do the lesson, right? So that you know where they can go. One of the things that we used to do is, uh, we used to sit down and think about all the different ways that kids can answer a question, like a problem string. What are all the different ways kids can tackle problem strings? And then that gives you kind of like the foundation, right? Granted, you might have some kids that want to be really creative, and they might break it apart into ways that you were not even thinking about. But I think those two are, like maybe two tips, that open up the space for kids to share their ideas.  Nataki: And, Annelly, I think that's an important thing to mention because that anticipation of student responses that comes in the planning. And so it's important for teachers to remember that planning is part of your teaching. That we just don't show up and just start teaching, right? That there has to be some thought that we're giving to the anticipated responses.  Mike: Yeah. I mean, I think when you say that you, gosh, I'm so glad that we talked about this question. I mean, a few things jump out: 1) the idea of positioning student thinking as not being immediately judged right or wrong by the teacher, but as an opportunity to actually build an understanding, to actually have kids justify, to have kids turn to one another and talk about, ‘What is your understanding of this?' And then to build the conversation. So again, it goes back to agency, right? Nataki: Uh-hm.  Mike: You are not the source of right or wrong. You're actually asking them to engage in thinking about that. But I think, Annelly, I'm really keying on what you said earlier about the idea that you have to anticipate where kids might go, because it actually means something. Regardless of whether they've arrived at the correct answer or whether they've arrived at something that shows partial understanding, they're telling you something, and you can use that place to help build an understanding for the whole group. Cause if one kiddo says it, it strikes me that there's probably a fairly good amount of other kiddos who might be thinking the exact same thing.  Annelly: And I think that's another way to build that math identity when we tell them, ‘It's OK if you just have the beginning of an idea' …  Nataki: Uh-hm.  Annelly: … right? ‘Can you share with us? And we can build on that.' Because what Nataki was saying before: We have the power to position kids in a positive light with the rest of the class …  Nataki: Uh-hm.  Annelly: And that it's also so important.  Mike: I just want to thank the two of you for joining us and sharing your thinking. One last question, I think before we have to close things out. You know, if I'm a listener, we've covered a lot of territory in the last bit. If I'm thinking about taking some steps in my classroom, where do you see opportunities for people to get started? Particularly if they're using the Bridges curriculum.  Nataki: I'd say one of the first places—not only a teacher, but any person in, in a school building could start—is taking a look at the blogs that are posted about math identity. One of the blogs, I think Annelly mentioned earlier is, helping teachers to be reflective of their own math journey. And I think that's an important step. So reflection, I would say, is a great place to start. And it starts perhaps by reading the blog.  Annelly: I would say don't be afraid to have conversations with your kids. And letting them lead some of those discussions.  Mike: Hey, thanks so much to both of you for joining us today. It was really a pleasure to hear your thinking and to have you on the podcast.  Annelly: Thank you, Mike, for having us.  Nataki: Yes. Thank you, Mike. This was a lot of fun. But listen, next time … can you bring cookies?  Mike: Hey, you got a deal, my friend. Thanks so much.  Nataki: Thank you. Bye now. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by the Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability.  © 2022 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org  

Rounding Up Season 1 | Episode 5 – Learning Targets Guest: Dr. Rachel Harrington Mike Wallus: As a 17-year-veteran classroom teacher, I can't even begin to count the number of learning targets that I've written over the years. Whether it's writing ‘I can' statements or developing success criteria, there's no denying that writing learning targets is an important part of teacher practice. That said, the thinking about what makes a strong learning target continues to evolve and the language that we select for those targets has implications for instructional practice. Today on the podcast, we're talking with Dr. Rachel Harrington from Western Oregon University about creating powerful and productive learning targets. Welcome to the podcast. Rachel Harrington: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Mike: Sure. So I'd love to just start our conversation by having you talk a little bit about how the ideas around learning targets have evolved, even just in the course of your own teaching career. Rachel: I started out as a pre-service teacher in the late '90s and got a lot of practice in undergrad teacher education, thinking about writing those objectives. And we were always told to start with, ‘The student will be able to … ,' and then we needed to have some skill and then it needed to end with a percentage of performance. So we need percent of accuracy. And so I got a lot of practice writing things that way, and we always were very strategic with our percentages. We might say 80 percent because we planned to give them five questions at the end and we wanted four out of five to be correct. And then we could check the box that the students had done what we wanted. And I felt like it was really critical. We always were kind of drilled into us that it must be measurable. You have to be able to measure that objective. And so that percentage was really important. Rachel: In my experience though, as a teacher, that, that didn't feel as helpful. And it wasn't something that I did as a classroom teacher very often. As I transitioned into working in teacher preparation, now we have shifted the way we talk about things. Instead of saying a learning objective, we talk more about learning targets. And we talk about using active verbs that, when we phrase the learning target or the learning goal, it's using a verb that is more active and not so much ‘Student will be able to … .' And so we might use verbs like compare, explain, classify, analyze, thinking more about that. And then, rather than thinking about an assessment at the end, with five questions where they get four correct, we want to think about multiple times throughout the lesson where the teacher is assessing that learning goal and the progress towards that goal. Sometimes those assessments might be more classroom-based. Other times you might be looking more at an individual student and collecting data on their progress as well. But it's more progress towards a goal rather than something that's met at the end of the lesson with a certain percentage of accuracy. Mike: You named the thing that I think stood out for me, which is you're moving from a process where you're thinking about an outcome versus what's the action, be that cognitive or in the way that students are solving. The focus is really on what's happening and how it's happening as opposed to just an outcome. Rachel: Uh-hm. And I feel like when I started in teacher preparation, the standards were a little more siloed by grade level. It was sort of like, this is what we do in fourth grade and it starts and ends in fourth grade. Whereas with the Common Core State Standards, we see these learning progressions that stretch across the child's whole math experience. And so I think that's shifted a little bit the way we think about targets as well and learning goals and whatever title you've given them. Now, we don't think so much as, ‘What are you accomplishing at the end of today?' but sort of your progress across a learning progression and, and what progress are you making towards a longer-term goal? Mike: I think that's a really profound shift though. There are two things that come to mind: One is really thinking about how that impacts my practice as a teacher. If I'm just thinking about what happens at the end of today, in all of these little discreet iterations, versus what's the pathway that the child is on, right? I'm really interested in, how is their thinking shifting? And that the end of the day is not the end of that shift. It's really something that happens over time. Does that make sense to you? Rachel: Definitely. And I think it's really critical when we're teaching in a mixed-ability classroom, and we're thinking about children making progress at their own pace and not expecting every child to learn the same thing every single day, but we can have individual goals for our kids. We can have ideas about, as long as they are making progress in their math journey, then we're going to be OK with that. And we're helping them in that progress. And I think it's also more evidence as to why curriculum needs to cycle back to previously taught concepts because those concepts may or may not be mastered by all the children or understood by all the children at the end of the lesson. We're going to keep revisiting it. And children get multiple opportunities to think about this idea, and they will make progress on their own at their pace. Mike: Well, that's in stark contrast to my own childhood math experiences. You got through your unit on fractions in fourth grade, and… Rachel: Yep. Mike: ... if you didn't get it, well … Rachel: So sad. Mike: ... good, good luck in fifth grade! Rachel: ( laughs ) Mike: ( laughs ) Um, but it's really an entirely different way of thinking about the child's development of ideas.  Rachel: Yep. I remember teaching multiplication of fractions on a Monday followed by a division of fractions on a Tuesday. It was really just like, you know, when we moved past this idea that multiplication of fractions is a procedure that, that students will master. Then we need to start thinking about it as happening more than just on Monday. Mike: We've already started to address the second question I had, which is: What are some of the pitfalls that schools and teachers might fall into or might encounter when they're thinking about learning targets?  Rachel: I think some folks have put pressure on teachers to take the idea of a learning target and phrase it into an ‘I can' statement or a student-friendly language—which, I am not at all opposed to the idea of making things into student-friendly language. I think that's actually really critical in math class. Mike: Uh-hm. Rachel: But I think it can be problematic. When we start the lesson with an ‘I can' statement, are we giving away the ending of the lesson right at the beginning? Mike: Yeah. Rachel: Are we taking away their joy of that discovery and that excitement of finding out this, understanding this new concept? I don't want to remove that magic out of math class by just saying, ‘Hey, I'm going to tell you the ending right before we get started.' And I also worry a little bit that sometimes those ‘I can' statements and those things that we put up on the board at the beginning of class are done under the guise of ‘holding teachers accountable,' which I think is a phrase that is very ( chuckles ) problematic.  Rachel: I tend to err on the side of trusting teachers; that they can be trusted to know what they're doing in the classroom and that they have a goal in mind. And I assume that they are planning for teaching without telling me exactly and explicitly on the whiteboard that they are doing that. But I also recognize that the presence of that learning target or that ‘I can' statement on the board at the beginning is an easy thing to check off. All of the different things that are happening in math class are really complex and really hard to understand and notice. And it can take years and tons of experience before we're able to notice all the things that are happening. And so as an administrator that maybe has limited experience teaching mathematics, I could see where it would be difficult coming into the classroom and really being able to recognize what is happening. You might look around the room and be like, ‘Is this some kind of birthday party? What's going on? All these kids are cutting things out and gluing things. This doesn't look like math class.' Rachel: But if I can see that statement written up on the board, that's something that's kind of concrete and measurable. I also just think this idea of capturing learning as a daily objective can be problematic, especially when we're thinking about building really complex ideas in mathematics. You know, that's not going to happen in one lesson, in one session of curriculum. It might build over multiple days. It might cycle back into multiple units. And so we need to make sure that students are developing alongside their peers and, but maybe not out at the same pace. And I think that's OK. Mike: Yeah. You made me think about a couple different things, Rachel. One is the idea that the way that learning targets have been kind of introduced into classrooms really feels more like compliance as opposed to something that has value in terms of your instructional practice. And I, I've lived that world, too, as a classroom teacher. I think the other thing that really hits me from what you said is, I started thinking about whole-number multiplication, right? If I'm just thinking about the end product—meaning students being able to perform multiplication—there's so much richness that has been missed ( chuckles ) in that process. Rachel: ( chuckles )  Mike: I mean, we're trying to help children move from thinking additively to thinking multiplicatively. You're going to move along that kind of continuum of understanding over time. Honestly, I would say it shouldn't happen in one day. Rachel: Yeah. What can you really learn in just one lesson? And learn, not, I wouldn't say just perform a skill. Mike: Yeah. Rachel: I think skills, performing a skill and memorizing an algorithm, that is something that can be taught in a really concrete chunk of time, potentially. But the real conceptual understanding of what's happening with multiplication—how it's connected to addition, how it's connected to geometric concepts and things like that—that all comes and builds. And I feel like it also builds in fits and spurts. Some kids are going to make a big leap at one point and then make some smaller steps before they make another big leap. It's not a linear progression that … Mike: Right. Rachel: … they're going through. And so we have to allow that to happen and give room for that to happen. And if we say everyone in the class will do this by the end of the lesson with this amount of accuracy, we don't make room for that to happen. Mike: Yeah. I think what you're highlighting is the difference between what I would call like a learning goal and a performance goal. And I'm wondering if you could help unpack that. Because for me, when I started thinking about learning targets in that framework, it really opened my eyes to some of the places where I'd gotten it right in the classroom and some of the places where, boy, I wish I had a do-over. Rachel: Yeah. I think the language that the National Council of Teachers in Mathematics has brought to us, is this idea of contrasting performance goals with learning goals. And I find myself turning to the ‘Taking Action' series of books. Specifically, K–5 when we're thinking about elementary. There's a chapter of that book I have found to be really powerful. Sadly, I think it's one that we can sometimes gloss over a little bit in our reading. Because for some folks, they look at that and they say, ‘Well, I don't choose the learning goal. My curriculum chooses the learning goal or my school district tells me what the learning goal is.' But when you really look at what a learning goal is, as opposed to a performance goal, that's really not what's dictated by your curriculum or by your school district. And so in the 'Taking Action' book, I think they do a really nice job of contrasting the difference between a learning goal and a performance goal. And I would say a performance goal is sort of what I described earlier when I was talking about ‘The student will be able to … ' Mike: Uh-hm. Yeah. Rachel: … at a certain amount of accuracy. So, an example. If you do have access to the book, it talks about ‘Students will solve a variety of multiplication word problems and write the related multiplication equations.' And (given) that, I could see that as the type of thing I would've written maybe with a certain amount of accuracy ( laughs ) at the end of it. And I would've given them maybe five word problems and then assessed if they could get at least four out of the five correct equations. And so that's a really good example of a performance goal. And, and they talk about this idea of a performance is, what is the student doing? What's something that we can look and observe and measure and count.  Mike: That's so hard though! Because what's missing in that goal is ‘how'!  Rachel: Right.  Mike: You know ( laughs ), like …  Rachel: Or ‘why'! ( laughs )  Mike: ( laughs) Or ‘why'! Right?  Rachel: Yep, yep.  Mike: Like when you actually look at the student's work, what does that tell you about how they arrived there? And then what does that tell you about what that child needs to continue making sense of mathematics? You gave an example of a performance goal around multiplication and word problems. What might that sound like as a learning goal instead?  Rachel: So an example of that same—probably aligned to the exact same standard and the Common Core State Standards—would be that students will understand the structure of multiplication as comprising equal groups, within visual or physical representations, understand numbers and multiplication equations, and connect those representations to equations. So that learning goal really describes what you're hoping the students learn. Not just what they do, but what do they carry forward with them as they move into more and more complex mathematics? I think you'll also recognize the verbs in there are much more complex. In the previous performance goal, we talked about students solving and writing. They're solving, and they're writing. But in the learning goal, we're looking at understanding, connecting, and representing those different ways of thinking about it and bringing them together. Putting those pieces together. And again, that might be something that develops over a long period of time. They might be working on one piece of it, which is looking at an array and connecting that to an equation. But maybe later on, they're connecting the context of the task to the equation. Or they're taking a context and recognizing, ‘Wouldn't an array model be a great way to solve this? And wouldn't an equation model be a great way to solve this?'  Mike: Uh-hm.  Rachel: And that's really developing over time.  Mike: Yeah. I was just going to say, you mentioned ‘Taking Action.' The, the chapter on learning goals is actually my most dogeared, uh, chapter in the book. I want to read you something that I think is really powerful though. Very first chapter on learning goals, the way that they describe it is: ‘Identifying what students will come to understand about mathematics rather than focusing on what students will do.' I've read that, underlined it, highlighted it. And I've got a Post-It note on that page because I think it just fundamentally changes what I think my role is as a teacher in preparing and also in a moment with children.  Rachel: Yep. It's not so much about, they're going to be able to cut this out and do this thing and perform this action. But it's really, what's the purpose? Why are we doing this? Why would they cut that out? Why would they do this action? What is that contributing to their long-term understanding? I do appreciate NCTM's guidance on this. I think they're leading the pack. And this is really cutting-edge … Mike: Yeah. Rachel: … thinking about how we set goals for our classroom. It's not commonly held in the field or applied in the field yet. Mike: Uh-hm. Rachel: But I think folks are really starting to understand its importance. That if, as we change the way we teach mathematics and the outcomes we expect for students, we have to start thinking differently about how we set up learning goals. We can't keep having these performance goals and expecting what's happening in the classroom to change. If we're really going to go towards the type of instruction we want to see in a classroom, we've got to think about learning goals instead of focus so much on just performance. Mike: I actually had a chance to talk to DeAnn Huinker, who's one of the co-writers of ‘Taking Action,' and she used the phrase, ‘What are the mathematical conversations you want children to have?' And I was really struck by, like, that's a really interesting question for me to think about if I'm thinking about my learning goals. But even if I'm just thinking about planning and preparing for a lesson or a unit of study. Rachel: Definitely. I don't think that's something that's thought a lot about. I mean, I might see for my students and their lesson plan: ‘Turn and talk to your neighbor.' But if you don't really think carefully about what kind of conversation you want to happen during that turn and talk … . Or I'll see in their lesson plan that ‘We will have a discussion about students' various solutions.' And what does that mean? You know, what's going to happen in that time? What's the point … Mike: Uh-hm. Rachel: … of that time? I can't remember who, I think it was Elham Kazemi that said something once about, ‘In math class folks will present,' and it's like that old football cheer, you know, ‘stand up, sit down, clap, clap, clap.' That's what we do in math class. Mike: Yeah. Rachel: We have kids stand up, we sit down, we all politely listen, and then we clap. And that's it. We move on. But if you really focus on those conversations that you want kids to have, what are the interesting things that you want them to be thinking about? That's a complete shift in how we've taught math. Mike: Yeah, it really is. It makes me think about, on a practical level, if I'm a person who's listening to this podcast, what I might be starting to think about is, ‘How do I take action'—no pun intended—'on this idea of thinking deeply about learning goals, integrating them into my practice?' And, for me at least, the first place I went when I read this was to think about shifting what I did in my preparation and my planning. Rachel: Uh-hm. But I think when it comes to planning, we need to be thinking, first of all, kind of the three parts that ‘Taking Action' talks about, is setting a goal that's clear. It should be clear in your mind what the children are learning. And so that can take some reading, right? It can take reading through the session, reading through the overviews, thinking about the learning progressions, always keeping your eye on that mathematical horizon, making those learning goals clear. But then also thinking about the fact that I am situating those learning goals into a learning progression. And I'm thinking about what this lesson that I'm doing on Tuesday, where does it fit in the math journey? So that makes me think about two things. First, what is this lesson building on? What foundation do these students come with that I can build on? But then also, what is it leading toward? Rachel: Where are we going from here? And what is the important role that this idea we're looking at today plays in the whole mathematical journey? And then using that as your foundation for your instruction. So if you're finding that the activity that you had planned isn't meeting that learning goal. So it isn't helping you with this clear understanding of what you want them to know. If it isn't helping build toward something that you want them to be able to understand, then what are the changes you need to make? Mike: Uh-hm. Rachel: What are some things you want to adjust? Where do you want to spend more time? How do you add those conversations? Things like that. Mike: Uh-hm. I think you led back to the thing that I wanted to unpack, which is: I worried that at different points in this conversation, people might think, ‘Well, they're just suggesting that learning goals or learning targets don't really have a role.' We're not saying that. We're saying that they really stretch over time. And I think your description was really elegant in thinking about, what does this session contribute to that larger goal of understanding the meaning of multiplication? What is the intent of this session in helping that development proceed? Rachel: Yeah. What is the big idea? What is this leading towards? Because if you don't see it, then that's when you, as a teacher, need to make some decisions. Do I need to do more reading? Do I need to do more understanding about this particular content area? Do I need to adjust the lesson itself? Is there something that I need to change or add or incorporate so that it does play a stronger role? Plus, you know your students. So if we're thinking about this session being a part of a learning progression, and it's building on something they already have, if you feel like maybe they don't have what they need to engage with today's lesson—now I'm going to think about some ways to reengage them with this content. I think especially over the next few years, that's going to be critical. But yeah, I definitely agree with you, Mike. Cause I think NCTM, the authors would say the first thing about a learning target or a learning goal is that it has to be clear, and it has to guide and be the foundation for instruction. And so, they're really important. It's just maybe the way that we've talked about them in the past hasn't been helpful. Mike: Yeah. The other place you bring me to, Rachel, is the idea that if I'm really clear on my learning goal, what is it that children will come to understand? And where is this lesson situated in that journey? That actually has a lot of value because I can think about, ‘What are some of the questions that I want to ask to try to either assess where kids are at or advance their thinking?' Or when I think about what children might do, ‘Which kids do I want to strategically highlight at a closure?' So I think understanding that learning goal really does have value for folks. It's just a different way of constructing them. And then also thinking, what do you do next? Rachel: And I also think, again, I'll take this back to the idea of assessing those learning goals. 'Cause I do think assessment and goals cannot be separated. You're going to always be thinking about that, right? Why set a goal if you don't have any way of knowing whether students are making progress towards that goal? When you establish them in that way and you think about them as less of something that's going to be accomplished by the end of this session, we allow room for students to progress at different ways and learn different things in the class. And then that's when we can have those rich conversations at the end, when we're drawing things together. If every child's going to do everything the exact same way in my classroom, then there's no opportunity for interesting conversations. The interesting conversations happen when kids are doing things differently and making progress in different ways, and heading in different directions towards the same goal. Rachel: Then we start learning from each other. We can see what our partner is doing and try to understand what they're doing. That's when interesting math happens. And I want to encourage teachers to feel confident in thinking about these as the idea of a learning goal. And even starting to incorporate this into student-friendly language. You know, a learning goal doesn't have to be written as an ‘I can' statement for kids to be able to understand it. And I also want teachers to feel confident in their abilities for advocating. Um, when they see learning goals being used in a problematic way, when we see pitfalls and things that we talked about at the beginning happening in their classroom—be confident in your abilities and your knowledge and what you know is best for students. You know your students better than anyone else does. The teacher does. And you know how to think about those individual needs and the individual growth of each child in your classroom. Rachel: So rest assured in that confidence. But go to the resources that are available to you as well. When you're struggling with the idea of where these lessons or these concepts or these ideas you're teaching fit, go to the learning progressions, go to the ‘Taking Action' book, go to the NCTM resources. Um, read your session overviews in your curriculum. Have conversations with your colleagues. Have conversations with the colleagues that teach grades above you and grades below you. That's really critical if we're think about taking away this silo idea of teaching mathematics, we need to start thinking about have these conversations across grade levels. And, and knowing, you know, if you're struggling with where this idea is going, talk to the teacher who comes next. And even just ask them, ‘What reason do you think a child would need to learn this?' Mike: Yeah. Rachel: You know, and then they might be able to help you see where it fits in the progression. Mike: Well, and I was going to say, look at the scope and sequence and notice, where do the ideas come back? How are they coming back? How are they being developed? And then the icing on the cake would be to do what you said. Let's take a look at how this manifests itself in the next grade or perhaps in the grade prior. Rachel: I think that's also a role for math leaders in elementary and in the building instructional coaches, that's a vision that they can help teachers with 'cause they get the opportunity to be in multiple grades in multiple classrooms. And they also have more space to read through the progressions, and they might have more time for those sorts of things. And so I want to push math leaders to be doing that as well. Not just the classroom teachers, help your teachers to see where these ideas carry across into future grades and how they build on previous content and facilitate those conversations. Mike: Yeah. You know, I'm so glad that you brought that up. Because it makes me think about, there are some things about the way that we've organized education that just, are givens, right? We have primarily grade-level classrooms, right? And so, I taught first grade for eight years. I intimately knew my first-grade standards. I did not clearly have a vision of necessarily how that was going to play out in second grade and third grade and fourth grade and so on. And I think that's one of the inadvertent problems that we're stuck with is, if we don't have a vertical understanding of: How are these ideas going to support children over time? It might be easy to say, ‘Well, I just need them to be able to do X by the time they get out of third grade.' Not really understanding that, actually I need to have them understand X, so then they can, in fact, understand all these other concepts that are coming. Rachel: I've just seen this year, so much, what is happening in fifth grade is dictating how you understand algebra. You know, it's like … Mike: Yes! Rachel: … what we see in the fifth-grade standards. If you are not really understanding those concepts, you might be OK for a little while. And then once you're into your algebra classes, you're realizing that all of that foundational knowledge came from what you learned in fifth grade and what you understand about rational numbers. And so, I totally agree. I don't think we've done a good job in education in general of those cross grade-level conversations. But I think we're getting better with this idea of having instructional leaders, instructional coaches that are really there to support the instruction … Mike: Yeah. Rachel: … that's happening. So I know I work with math leaders and that's one of the things I really encourage them, is not only should they know the entire curriculum or continuum, but how are they helping their classroom teachers understand that? 'Cause I think there's a lot of power in having a teacher spend eight years in first grade and really knowing those standards intimately. But there's also some value in, in once you've taught third grade going back to first grade and realizing, ‘Wow, this is where it was all going.' Mike: Absolutely. Yeah. I had a role at one point where I was a K–12 curriculum director for math. Rachel: Oh, yeah. Mike: And it was the most eye-opening experience because, as you said, you recognize how, if kids walk out of elementary school without a deep foundational understanding—and if it's just really a surface set of performance skills ... wow—that catches up with kids when they get into sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. Rachel: Yep. For sure. And those concepts become more abstract when we start this idea of variables and thinking about things algebraically. That if you didn't have that foundation in the concrete, the abstract is too much. It's too much to ask of kids. And so then we find ourselves reteaching and wondering, ‘What happened?' And yeah, I just, I wish more conversations were happening across those grade levels.  Mike: Absolutely. Well, thank you again, Rachel.  Rachel: Yeah!  Mike: It was lovely to have you. I think a lot of folks are going to find this really helpful, and maybe validating in the experience they've had. And also a vision for what they might do in the future. And hopefully we'll have you back at some point.  Rachel: I'm always here for you. ( laughs )  Mike: Thank you so much. All right, bye bye.  Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability.  © 2022 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

Emily Ahlin, Diocesan Archivist joins us and is sick.0:55:   Emily got sick camping and then led our diocesan young adult retreat.1:25:  Common question.  1:35 Emily responds:  And it's unexpected.2:20:  What are some factors that distract us?2:40:  It's not dis-similar to other walks of life.3:05:  Mike asks a different question, but it's not about the collection.3:50:  FD ask a question:  What are you expecting?4:15:  Other denominations do this differently.4:50:  Liturgy is work.5:20:  Maybe it's not emotional or instantaneous.5:45:  Mother Teresa gives us a good example.6:15:  Understanding what's going on is key.6:35:  Mike: It's easier when I have a role.  How male!7:10:  FD:  Everyone does have a role!8:00:  Are you tired after Mass because of how you entered into Mass?8:25:  Crticial response:  How do we respond when Liturgy isn't performed well.9:00:  Patrick Lencioni has good books on this.9:15:  FD talks about one of the things we're planning for the Eucharistic revival.10:00:  Many don't know what's going on at Mass.10:20:  Emily's young adult group in Pittburgh watched Bishop Barron's DVD series on The Mass.11:15:  FD's experience with his friend from Campus Crusade for Christ.12:20:  Scott Hahn on Eucharist and Passover.13:40:  Emily cough count.13:50   Fr. Kevin Irwin's 101 Questions and Answers on the Mass.14:20:  Deacon Bill Ditewig's thoughts on the "General Instructions."16:05:  Good to have someone who knows how to do Liturgy.16:35:  FD's Exam on the Mass for Altar Servers. 16:55:   People have a desire to know more.17:10:   On transcendentals!18:05:   Emily like's truth.   FD is drawn to beauty.  Mike to goodness.19:10:  Fruit of Mother Teresa's prayer.19:20:  Cough tally.19:55:  World Youth Day is coming.  Join us!21:10:  Catholic Creatives21:30:   Church Search goes to St. Ann's AKA Communion of Saints.21:55:  7 coughs23:55:   This week's gospel on Zacchaeus 

About MikeBeside his duties as The Duckbill Group's CEO, Mike is the author of O'Reilly's Practical Monitoring, and previously wrote the Monitoring Weekly newsletter and hosted the Real World DevOps podcast. He was previously a DevOps Engineer for companies such as Taos Consulting, Peak Hosting, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and many more. Mike is originally from Knoxville, TN (Go Vols!) and currently resides in Portland, OR.Links Referenced: @Mike_Julian: https://twitter.com/Mike_Julian mikejulian.com: https://mikejulian.com duckbillgroup.com: https://duckbillgroup.com TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at AWS AppConfig. Engineers love to solve, and occasionally create, problems. But not when it's an on-call fire-drill at 4 in the morning. Software problems should drive innovation and collaboration, NOT stress, and sleeplessness, and threats of violence. That's why so many developers are realizing the value of AWS AppConfig Feature Flags. Feature Flags let developers push code to production, but hide that that feature from customers so that the developers can release their feature when it's ready. This practice allows for safe, fast, and convenient software development. You can seamlessly incorporate AppConfig Feature Flags into your AWS or cloud environment and ship your Features with excitement, not trepidation and fear. To get started, go to snark.cloud/appconfig. That's snark.cloud/appconfig.Corey: Forget everything you know about SSH and try Tailscale. Imagine if you didn't need to manage PKI or rotate SSH keys every time someone leaves. That'd be pretty sweet, wouldn't it? With Tailscale SSH, you can do exactly that. Tailscale gives each server and user device a node key to connect to its VPN, and it uses the same node key to authorize and authenticate SSH.Basically you're SSHing the same way you manage access to your app. What's the benefit here? Built in key rotation, permissions is code, connectivity between any two devices, reduce latency and there's a lot more, but there's a time limit here. You can also ask users to reauthenticate for that extra bit of security. Sounds expensive?Nope, I wish it were. Tailscale is completely free for personal use on up to 20 devices. To learn more, visit snark.cloud/tailscale. Again, that's snark.cloud/tailscaleCorey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and my guest is a returning guest on this show, my business partner and CEO of The Duckbill Group, Mike Julian. Mike, thanks for making the time.Mike: Lucky number three, I believe?Corey: Something like that, but numbers are hard. I have databases for that of varying quality and appropriateness for the task, but it works out. Anything's a database. If you're brave enough.Mike: With you inviting me this many times, I'm starting to think you'd like me or something.Corey: I know, I know. So, let's talk about something that is going to put that rumor to rest.Mike: [laugh].Corey: Clearly, you have made some poor choices in the course of your career, like being my business partner being the obvious one. But what's really in a dead heat for which is the worst decision is you've written a book previously. And now you are starting the process of writing another book because, I don't know, we don't keep you busy enough or something. What are you doing?Mike: Making very bad decisions. When I finished writing Practical Monitoring—O'Reilly, and by the way, you should go buy a copy if interested in monitoring—I finished the book and said, “Wow, that was awful. I'm never doing it again.” And about a month later, I started thinking of new books to write. So, that was 2017, and Corey and I started Duckbill and kind of stopped thinking about writing books because small companies are basically small children. But now I'm going to write a book about consulting.Corey: Oh, thank God. I thought you're going to go down the observability path a second time.Mike: You know, I'm actually dreading the day that O'Reilly asks me to do a second edition because I don't really want to.Corey: Yeah. Effectively turn it into an entire story where the only monitoring tool you really need is the AWS bill. That'll go well.Mike: [laugh]. Yeah. So yeah, like, basically, I've been doing consulting for such a long time, and most of my career is consulting in some form or fashion, and I head up all the consulting at Duckbill. I've learned a lot about consulting. And I've found that people have a lot of questions about consulting, particularly at the higher-end levels. Once you start getting into advisory sort of stuff, there's not a lot of great information out there aimed at engineering.Corey: There's a bunch of different views on what consulting is. You have independent contractors billing by the hour as staff replacement who call what they do consulting; you have the big consultancies, like Bain or BCG; you've got what we do in an advisory sense, and of course, you have a bunch of MBA new grads going to a lot of the big consultancies who are going to see a book on consulting and think that it's potentially for them. I don't know that you necessarily have a lot of advice for the new grad type, so who is this for? What is your target customer for this book?Mike: If you're interested in joining McKinsey out of college, I don't have a lot to add; I don't have a lot to tell you. The reason for that is kind of twofold. One is that shops like McKinsey and Deloitte and Accenture and BCG and Bain, all those, are playing very different games than what most of us think about when we think consulting. Their entire model revolves around running a process. And it's the same process for every client they work with. But, like, you're buying them because of their process.And that process is nothing new or novel. You don't go to those firms because you want the best advice possible. You go to those firms because it's the most defensible advice. It's sort of those things like, “No one gets fired for buying Cisco,” no one got fired for buying IBM, like, that sort of thing, it's a very defensible choice. But you're not going to get great results from it.But because of that, their entire model revolves around throwing dozens, in some cases, hundreds of new grads at a problem and saying, “Run this process. Have fun. Let us know if you need help.” That's not consulting I have any experience with. It's honestly not consulting that most of us want to do.Most of that is staffed by MBAs and accountants. When I think consulting, I think about specialized advice and providing that specialized advice to people. And I wager that most of us think about that in the same way, too. In some cases, it might just be, “I'm going to write code for you as a freelancer,” or I'm just going to tell you like, “Hey, put the nail in here instead of over here because it's going to be better for you.” Like, paying for advice is good.But with that, I also have a… one of the first things I say in the beginning of the book, which [laugh] I've already started writing because I'm a glutton for punishment, is I don't think junior people should be consultants. I actually think it's really bad idea because to be a consultant, you have to have expertise in some area, and junior staff don't. They haven't been in their careers long enough to develop that yet. So, they're just going to flounder. So, my advice is generally aimed at people that have been in their careers for quite some time, generally, people that are 10, 15, 20 years into their career, looking to do something.Corey: One of the problems that we see when whenever we talk about these things on Twitter is that we get an awful lot of people telling us that we're wrong, that it can't be made to work, et cetera, et cetera. But following this model, I've been independent for—well, I was independent and then we became The Duckbill Group; add them together because figuring out exactly where that divide happened is always a mental leap for me, but it's been six years at this point. We've definitely proven our ability to not go out of business every month. It's kind of amazing. Without even an exception case of, “That one time.”Mike: [laugh]. Yeah, we are living proof that it does work, but you don't really have to take just our word for it because there are a lot of other firms that exist entirely on an advisory-only, high-expertise model. And it works out really well. We've worked with several of them, so it does work; it just isn't very common inside of tech and particularly inside of engineering.Corey: So, one of the things that I find is what differentiates an expert from an enthusiastic amateur is, among other things, the number of mistakes that they've made. So, I guess a different way of asking this is what qualifies you to write this book, but instead, I'm going to frame it in a very negative way. What have you screwed up on that puts you in a position of, “Ah, I'm going to write a book so that someone else can make better choices.”Mike: One of my favorite stories to tell—and Corey, I actually think you might not have heard this story before—Corey: That seems unlikely, but give it a shot.Mike: Yeah. So, early in my career, I was working for a consulting firm that did ERP implementations. We worked with mainly large, old-school manufacturing firms. So, my job there was to do the engineering side of the implementation. So, a lot of rack-and-stack, a lot of Windows Server configuration, a lot of pulling cables, that sort of thing. So, I thought I was pretty good at this. I quickly learned that I was actually not nearly as good as I thought I was.Corey: A common affliction among many different people.Mike: A common affliction. But I did not realize that until this one particular incident. So, me and my boss are both on site at this large manufacturing facility, and the CFO pulls my boss aside and I can hear them talking and, like, she's pretty upset. She points at me and says, “I never want this asshole in my office ever again.” So, he and I have a long drive back to our office, like an hour and a half.And we had a long chat about what that meant for me. I was not there for very long after that, as you might imagine, but the thing is, I still have no idea to this day what I did to upset her. I know that she was pissed and he knows that she was pissed. And he never told me exactly what it was, only that's you take care of your client. And the client believes that I screwed up so massively that she wanted me fired.Him not wanting to argue—he didn't; he just kind of went with it—and put me on other clients. But as a result of that, it really got me thinking that I screwed something up so badly to make this person hate me so much and I still have no idea what it was that I did. Which tells me that even at the time, I did not understand what was going on around me. I did not understand how to manage clients well, and to really take care of them. That was probably the first really massive mistake that I've made my career—or, like, the first time I came to the realization that there's a whole lot I don't know and it's really costing me.Corey: From where I sit, there have been a number of things that we have done as we've built our consultancy, and I'm curious—you know, let's get this even more personal—in the past, well, we'll call it four years that we have been The Duckbill Group—which I think is right—what have we gotten right and what have we gotten wrong? You are the expert; you're writing a book on this for God's sake.Mike: So, what I think we've gotten right is one of my core beliefs is never bill hourly. Shout out to Jonathan Stark. He wrote I really good book that is a much better explanation of that than I've ever been able to come up with. But I've always had the belief that billing hourly is just a bad idea, so we've never done that and that's worked out really well for us. We've turned down work because that's the model they wanted and it's like, “Sorry, that's not what we do. You're going to have to go work for someone else—or hire someone else.”Other things that I think we've gotten right is a focus on staying on the advisory side and not doing any implementation. That's allowed us to get really good at what we do very quickly because we don't get mired in long-term implementation detail-level projects. So, that's been great. Where we went a little wrong, I think—or what we have gotten wrong, lessons that we've learned. I had this idea that we could build out a junior and mid-level staff and have them overseen by very senior people.And, as it turns out, that didn't work for us, entirely because it didn't work for me. That was really my failure. I went from being an IC to being the leader of a company in one single step. I've never been a manager before Duckbill. So, that particular mistake was really about my lack of abilities in being a good manager and being a good leader.So, building that out, that did not work for us because it didn't work for me and I didn't know how to do it. So, I made way too many mistakes that were kind of amateur-level stuff in terms of management. So, that didn't work. And the other major mistake that I think we've made is not putting enough effort into marketing. So, we get most of our leads by inbound or referral, as is common with boutique consulting firms, but a lot of the income that we get comes through Last Week in AWS, which is really awesome.But we don't put a whole lot of effort into content or any marketing stuff related to the thing that we do, like cost management. I think a lot of that is just that we don't really know how, aside from just creating content and publishing it. We don't really understand how to market ourselves very well on that side of things. I think that's a mistake we've made.Corey: It's an effective strategy against what's a very complicated problem because unlike most things, if—let's go back to your old life—if we have an observability problem, we will talk about that very publicly on Twitter and people will come over and get—“Hey, hey, have you tried to buy my company's product?” Or they'll offer consulting services, or they'll point us in the right direction, all of which is sometimes appreciated. Whereas when you have a big AWS bill, you generally don't talk about it in public, especially if you're a serious company because that's going to, uh, I think the phrase is, “Shake investor confidence,” when you're actually live tweeting slash shitposting about your own AWS bill. And our initial thesis was therefore, since we can't wind up reaching out to these people when they're having the pain because there's no external indication of it, instead what we have to do is be loud enough and notable in this space, where they find us where it shouldn't take more than them asking one or two of their friends before they get pointed to us. What's always fun as the stories we hear is, “Okay, so I asked some other people because I wanted a second opinion, and they told us to go to you, too.” Word of mouth is where our customers come from. But how do you bootstrap that? I don't know. I'm lucky that I got it right the first time.Mike: Yeah, and as I mentioned a minute ago, that a lot of that really comes through your content, which is not really cost management-related. It's much more AWS broad. We don't put out a lot of cost management specific content. And honestly, I think that's to our detriment. We should and we absolutely can. We just haven't. I think that's one of the really big things that we've missed on doing.Corey: There's an argument that the people who come to us do not spend their entire day thinking about AWS bills. I mean, I can't imagine what that would be like, but they don't for whatever reason; they're trying to do something ridiculous, like you know, run a profitable company. So, getting in front of them when they're not thinking about the bills means, on some level, that they're going to reach out to us when the bill strikes. At least that's been my operating theory.Mike: Yeah, I mean, this really just comes down to content strategy and broader marketing strategy. Because one of the things you have to think about with marketing is how do you meet a customer at the time that they have the problem that you solve? And what most marketing people talk about here is what's called the triggering event. Something causes someone to take an action. What is that something? Who is that someone, and what is that action?And for us, one of the things that we thought early on is that well, the bill comes out the first week of the month, every month, so people are going to opened the bill freak out, and a big influx of leads are going to come our way and that's going to happen every single month. The reality is that never happened. That turns out was not a triggering event for anyone.Corey: And early on, when we didn't have that many leads coming in, it was a statistical aberration that I thought I saw, like, “Oh, out of the three leads this month, two of them showed up in the same day. Clearly, it's an AWS billing day thing.” No. It turns out that every company's internal cadence is radically different.Mike: Right. And I wish I could say that we have found what our triggering events are, but I actually don't think we have. We know who the people are and we know what they reach out for, but we haven't really uncovered that triggering event. And it could also be there, there isn't a one. Or at least, if there is one, it's not one that we could see externally, which is kind of fine.Corey: Well, for the half of our consulting that does contract negotiation for large-scale commitments with AWS, it comes up for renewal or the initial discount contract gets offered, those are very clear triggering events but the challenge is that we don't—Mike: You can't see them externally.Corey: —really see that from the outside. Yeah.Mike: Right. And this is one of those things where there are triggering events for basically everything and it's probably going to be pretty consistent once you get down to specific services. Like we provide cost optimization services and contract negotiation services. I'm willing to bet that I can predict exactly what the trigger events for both of those will be pretty well. The problem is, you can never see those externally, which is kind of fine.Ideally, you would be able to see it externally, but you can't, so we roll with it, which means our entire strategy has revolved around always being top-of-mind because at the time where it happens, we're already there. And that's a much more difficult strategy to employ, but it does work.Corey: All it takes is time and being really lucky and being really prolific, and, and, and. It's one of those things where if I were to set out to replicate it, I don't even know how I'd go about doing it.Mike: People have been asking me. They say, “I want to create The Duckbill Group for X. What do I do?” And I say, “First step, get yourself a Corey Quinn.” And they're like, “Well, I can't do that. There's only one.” I'm like, “Yep. Sucks to be you.” [laugh].Corey: Yeah, we called the Jerk Store. They're running out of him. Yeah, it's a problem. And I don't think the world needs a whole lot more of my type of humor, to be honest, because the failure mode that I have experienced brutally and firsthand is not that people don't find me funny; it's that it really hurts people's feelings. I have put significant effort into correcting those mistakes and not repeating them, but it sucks every time I get it wrong.Mike: Yeah.Corey: Another question I have for you around the book targeting, are you aiming this at individual independent consultants or are you looking to advise people who are building agencies?Mike: Explicitly not the latter. My framing around this is that there are a number of people who are doing consulting right now and they've kind of fell into it. Often, they'll leave one job and do a little consulting while they're waiting on their next thing. And in some cases, that might be a month or two. In some cases, it might go on years, but that whole time, they're just like, “Oh, yeah, I'm doing consulting in between things.”But at some point, some of those think, “You know what? I want this to be my thing. I don't want there to be a next thing. This is my thing. So therefore, how do I get serious about doing consulting? How do I get serious about being a consultant?”And that's where I think I can add a lot of value because casually consulting of, like, taking whatever work just kind of falls your way is interesting for a while, but once you get serious about it, and you have to start thinking, well, how do I actually deliver engagements? How do I do that consistently? How do I do it repeatedly? How to do it profitably? How do I price my stuff? How do I package it? How do I attract the leads that I want? How do I work with the customers I want?And turning that whole thing from a casual, “Yeah, whatever,” into, “This is my business,” is a very different way of thinking. And most people don't think that way because they didn't really set out to build a business. They set out to just pass time and earn a little bit of money before they went off to the next job. So, the framing that I have here is that I'm aiming to help people that are wanting to get serious about doing consulting. But they generally have experience doing it already.Corey: Managing shards. Maintenance windows. Overprovisioning. ElastiCache bills. I know, I know. It's a spooky season and you're already shaking. It's time for caching to be simpler. Momento Serverless Cache lets you forget the backend to focus on good code and great user experiences. With true autoscaling and a pay-per-use pricing model, it makes caching easy. No matter your cloud provider, get going for free at gomemento.co/screaming That's GO M-O-M-E-N-T-O dot co slash screamingCorey: We went from effectively being the two of us on the consulting delivery side, two scaling up to, I believe, at one point we were six of us, and now we have scaled back down to largely the two of us, aided by very specific external folk, when it makes sense.Mike: And don't forget April.Corey: And of course. I'm talking delivery.Mike: [laugh].Corey: There's a reason I—Mike: Delivery. Yes.Corey: —prefaced it that way. There's a lot of support structure here, let's not get ourselves, and they make this entire place work. But why did we scale up? And then why did we scale down? Because I don't believe we've ever really talked about that publicly.Mike: No, not publicly. In fact, most people probably don't even notice that it happened. We got pretty big for—I mean, not big. So, we hit, I think, six full-time people at one point. And that was quite a bit.Corey: On the delivery side. Let's be clear.Mike: Yeah. No, I think actually with support structure, too. Like, if you add in everyone that we had with the sales and marketing as well, we were like 11 people. And that was a pretty sizable company. But then in July this year, it kind of hit a point where I found that I just wasn't enjoying my job anymore.And I looked around and noticed that a lot of other people was kind of feeling the same way, is just things had gotten harder. And the business wasn't suffering at all, it was just everything felt more difficult. And I finally realized that, for me personally at least, I started Duckbill because I love working with clients, I love doing consulting. And what I have found is that as the company grew larger and larger, I spent most of my time keeping the trains running and taking care of the staff. Which is exactly what I should be doing when we're that size, like, that is my job at that size, but I didn't actually enjoy it.I went into management as, like, this job going from having never done it before. So, I didn't have anything to compare it to. I didn't know if I would like it or not. And once I got here, I realized I actually don't. And I spent a lot of efforts to get better at it and I think I did. I've been working with a leadership coach for years now.But it finally came to a point where I just realized that I wasn't actually enjoying it anymore. I wasn't enjoying the job that I had created. And I think that really panned out to you as well. So, we decided, we had kind of an opportune time where one of our team decided that they were also wanting to go back to do independent consulting. I'm like, “Well, this is actually pretty good time. Why don't we just start scaling things back?” And like, maybe we'll scale it up again in the future; maybe we won't. But like, let's just buy ourselves some breathing room.Corey: One of the things that I think we didn't spend quite enough time really asking ourselves was what kind of place do we want to work at. Because we've explicitly stated that you and I both view this as the last job either of us is ever going to have, which means that we're not trying to do the get big quickly to get acquired, or we want to raise a whole bunch of other people's money to scale massively. Those aren't things either of us enjoy. And it turns out that handling the challenges of a business with as many people working here as we had wasn't what either one of us really wanted to do.Mike: Yeah. You know what—[laugh] it's funny because a lot of our advisors kept asking the same thing. Like, “So, what kind of company do you want?” And like, we had some pretty good answers for that, in that we didn't want to build a VC-backed company, we didn't ever want to be hyperscale. But there's a wide gulf of things between two-person company and hyperscale and we didn't really think too much about that.In fact, being a ten-person company is very different than being a three-person company, and we didn't really think about that either. We should have really put a lot more thought into that of what does it mean to be a ten-person company, and is that what we want? Or is three, four, or five-person more our style? But then again, I don't know that we could have predicted that as a concern had we not tried it first.Corey: Yeah, that was very much something that, for better or worse, we pay advisors for their advice—that's kind of definitionally how it works—and then we ignored it, on some level, though we thought we were doing something different at the time because there's some lessons you've just got to learn by making the mistake yourself.Mike: Yeah, we definitely made a few of those. [laugh].Corey: And it's been an interesting ride and I've got zero problem with how things have shaken out. I like what we do quite a bit. And honestly, the biggest fear I've got going forward is that my jackass business partner is about to distract the hell out of himself by writing a book, which is never as easy as even the most pessimistic estimates would be. So, that's going to be awesome and fun.Mike: Yeah, just wait until you see the dedication page.Corey: Yeah, I wasn't mentioned at all in the last book that you wrote, which I found personally offensive. So, if I'm not mentioned this time, you're fired.Mike: Oh, no, you are. It's just I'm also adding an anti-dedication page, which just has a photo of you.Corey: Oh, wonderful, wonderful. This is going to be one of those stories of the good consultant and the bad consultant, and I'm going to be the Goofus to your Gallant, aren't I?Mike: [laugh]. Yes, yes. You are.Corey: “Goofus wants to bill by the hour.”Mike: It's going to have a page of, like, “Here's this [unintelligible 00:25:05] book is dedicated to. Here's my acknowledgments. And [BLEEP] this guy.”Corey: I love it. I absolutely love it. I think that there is definitely a bright future for telling other people how to consult properly. May just suggest as a subtitle for the book is Consulting—subtitle—You Have Problems and Money. We'll Take Both.Mike: [laugh]. Yeah. My working title for this is Practical Consulting, but only because my previous book was Practical Monitoring. Pretty sure O'Reilly would have a fit if I did that. I actually have no idea what I'm going to call the book, still.Corey: Naming things is super hard. I would suggest asking people at AWS who name services and then doing the exact opposite of whatever they suggest. Like, take their list of recommendations and sort by reverse order and that'll get you started.Mike: Yeah. [laugh].Corey: I want to thank you for giving us an update on what you're working on and why you have less hair every time I see you because you're mostly ripping it out due to self-inflicted pain. If people want to follow your adventures, where's the best place to keep updated on this ridiculous, ridiculous nonsense that I cannot talk you out of?Mike: Two places. You can follow me on Twitter, @Mike_Julian, or you can sign up for the newsletter on my site at mikejulian.com where I'll be posting all the updates.Corey: Excellent. And I look forward to skewering the living hell out of them.Mike: I look forward to ignoring them.Corey: Thank you, Mike. It is always a pleasure.Mike: Thank you, Corey.Corey: Mike Julian, CEO at The Duckbill Group, and my unwilling best friend. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry, annoying comment in which you tell us exactly what our problem is, and then charge us a fixed fee to fix that problem.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Rounding Up  Season 1 | Episode 4 – Multilingual Learners for Success  Guest: Dr. Erin Smith  Mike Wallus: Multilingual learners represent approximately 10 percent of the U.S. K–12 student population. And they're the fastest growing subpopulation of students in the United States. That said, multilingual learners have been and continue to be underserved in mathematics. Today, we talk with Erin Smith, a mathematics education professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, about ways to support and position multilingual learners as competent doers of mathematics. Hey, Erin, thank you for joining us today on the podcast.  Erin Smith: Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm really happy to be here.  Mike: I was really fascinated by one of the concepts that you talked about your article. You referenced the idea of positioning, and I'm just fascinated by that because I think it has so much potential for how we support students' math identities. Can you explain positioning and how you suspect it could impact students in the classroom?  Erin: Yeah, absolutely. So positioning is a concept from positioning theory, which was developed by Rom Harré and Luk Van Langenhove. So when we talk about positioning or a position, we are really referring to a metaphorical position that you have in a conversation. So it's not necessarily like where your body is physically present, but a metaphorical position. So in the theory, they say that your position that you have impacts what is socially appropriate for you to do and say in an interaction. So in a classroom teachers and students have different positions. Teachers can do things that students can't. They can discipline students. They determine the classroom configuration. They select the tasks that students get to engage with. And in a lot of cases, teachers also get to select who gets to speak in the class, who gets floor time. So each of these decisions that teachers make can impact opportunities for students. And so when I think out positioning in particular and how useful it can be as a lens to look at how we as teachers position certain kinds of students in our classroom, and how we can use our position in the classroom to really call out the strengths of historically underserved students in mathematics, and then use that to position them as leaders in the classroom, while simultaneously also just challenging deficit narratives about who can do mathematics, who can be successful in it. And really what does it mean to do mathematics.  Mike: You know, as you were talking, what struck me as positioning in some ways related to the status that a student either has been assigned or assigned to themselves. Is that a fair comparison?  Erin: Yeah, absolutely. So in positioning we talk about both the positions that we take on ourselves and the positions that we assign others. So there is a lot of agency in that, both from a teacher perspective—like you have a lot of agencies to think about positioning—but also students can challenge the positions that you give them. And they have a lot of agency in that. So if a teacher positions a student as lacking some mathematical competency, the student can challenge that positioning by trying to demonstrate their competencies.  Mike: It's interesting because I think when we shift this to talking about multilingual learners, my suspicion is that part of the challenge that we've had is that multilingual learners have been positioned as less mathematically competent. And the strategies that you're suggesting are actually ways that we can counter that prevailing positioning or status.  Erin: Yeah. So we, in positioning theory, talk about storylines and these stories that permeate both at a larger, broader societal level, but also at a smaller individual level. So when you're talking about these stories that already exist for multilingual learners, more broadly in more social narratives, they're often really deficit-oriented. And so we can use our position as a teacher in a classroom to challenge how a particular student has been positioned in the past and also create spaces for them to carve out new stories. I think one of the things that I would like to clarify is in positioning theory, refer to them as storylines and thinking about how there are these different storylines that exist both at a societal level, but also in your classroom and at the school level that can influence the ways that you interact with students. So for instance, we have a lot of storylines about math mathematics in the U.S., what it means to be successful in mathematics. So as a teacher, you've got those storylines and your students also have those storylines that they might be drawing on. And so as a teacher, just being cognizant and aware of all these different storylines that might be percolating around and circulating, and you can help craft those stories and really call out or bring to the forefront the ones that you think are very valuable and important.  Mike: You know, it makes me think of two things. I mean, one is part of the role and part of the work is interrogating the stories that you've brought or that you've absorbed about students or different groups of students. And the other is maybe being clear about, what are the stories that you want kids to leave with, as you just said.  Erin: Yeah, I would agree that we're not walking into a classroom or an interaction with this blank slate. That's like, we have all these things that are entangled in ourselves that we're making sense of and negotiating and navigating in these interactions.  Mike: Absolutely. You know, there's a quote that really jumped out for me when I was reading your article, and I'd just like to read it aloud. ‘Some people may think that multilingual learners must be proficient in English before participating in mathematical discussions. This is not the case. And ultimately puts students mathematical learning on hold.' Can you talk about why you felt it was important to address this misconception?  Erin: Oftentimes we, as teachers, conflate language competency with math competency. And I've even done this myself in my former life as a math teacher. So we might assume that because a student is at their early stages of developing a language competency, that they're also at the same time at the early stages of developing their math competencies. And we know that's just not true ( laughs ). That's not how math and language learning work. They occur at different speeds. And one does not indicate a competency in the other. And so I think it's really necessary and important to call out this assumption and also provide readers with an opportunity to reflect on like, ‘Am I holding this assumption? Am I holding some of my students back? Am I doing harm for them because I'm cutting off mathematical learning opportunities because I'm conflating their language competencies with mathematics.'  Mike: Sure. So I think one of the things that also jumped out for me was the ways that teachers can set multilingual learners up for success. And one of the strategies that jumped out is the idea of rehearsal. And I'm wondering if you could talk just a bit about what you think rehearsal might look like in an elementary classroom. Erin: So rehearsals are really a great strategy to help multilingual learners prepare to present their mathematical ideas to the whole class, especially if they are demonstrating some hesitancy or maybe they're from a culture where standing up and presenting your ideas in front of the class is not a norm. And so in an elementary classroom it might look like telling one of your multilingual learner students in advance that you want them to come to the board and share their strategy with the class. And you give them some time to rehearse and practice what they're going to say. So that could be something like you and this student are just having a conversation, and they're getting a chance to practice like that with you. Or it could be that they're practicing with a peer. It could also be something like you're asking them to write down what it is they want to say, and maybe they also have that scaffold if they need it, when they walk to the front of the classroom. You know, one of the things also that I think is really nice about this is that it doesn't need to be used in a way that is really targeting and calling out the multilingual learner, saying that they specifically need the support. And you might give your whole class, maybe a couple of minutes to like, OK, ‘I want you to practice. If you were gonna come to the board and share your strategy, what would you say? I want you to practice that with your partner or your group table mates.'  Mike: Absolutely. Like great practice for everyone even if you're intent, as a teacher, is that you want to position one of those students or set them up to successfully share their thinking.  Erin: Right, right.  Mike: So one of the other things that I thought was really interesting is—and again, I think it feels like a strategy that is particularly powerful for multilingual learners, but just good practice—you really highlighted the idea of assigning student ownership to mathematical ideas when there's a conversation happening. So what does that mean and what might that sound like or look like in a classroom?  Erin: So assigning ownership means that you are publicly acknowledging the mathematical ideas that a multilingual learner possesses. I've seen teachers do this in a range of different ways. It might be something as simple as, we're having a Notice & Wonder routine and a student shares their noticing, and I'm writing their name or initials on the board. So that idea is linked to that student. That doesn't take a lot of extra work for me. It could be referring to a strategy as a student strategy, like asking the class who else used Marco's strategy and asking students to raise their hands.  Mike: Uh-hm.  So you're naming that Marco's strategy. It could be asking your students to write story problems and then putting their name next to it. So like, this is Mary Ellis' word problem that she wrote. And so you're publicly acknowledging this student has created this word problem. When teachers assign ownership of mathematical ideas to students, they're really using that as an opportunity to shift mathematical authority in the classroom off of them and on to students. And so when students have those opportunities where they become authors of mathematics, it can positively impact their mathematical identity. And it also can encourage them to continue coming up with mathematical ideas and being willing to share those mathematical ideas publicly.  Mike: Absolutely. So one of the last strategies that really struck me was something that I've seen teachers do. And I think I've done it, too, but I'd never actually had words for it. You talk about this as something called the prefacing statement. Can you explain what a prefacing statement is and why it's powerful and maybe even what it might sound like?  Erin: Yeah. So in one of my research projects, I was examining this teacher's practice, and she did this, and I noticed her doing this. And then I try to think of like how to name and capture this. So I landed on prefacing statements. And I used that word to refer to what a teacher says before a student shares their thinking or their strategy in front of the class. And so the teacher is using that as an opportunity to set the stage for the student who's presenting. And it also cues the class into what is important about what the student is going to share or (is) unique about it. And so, for example, I've seen a teacher do this, where she selected a multilingual learner to come to the board to share their strategy. And the teacher says, ‘I selected Mohammed's strategy because he drew a really efficient picture.' And so, naming in advance, like, ‘He drew this efficient picture. I want you to look at this and notate how great this is and how representative of an efficient picture this is.'  Mike: Yeah, I mean, in that case kind of really pointing out to them, ‘There is some feature that I want you to attend to,' and then also assigning the ownership of that to the student.  Erin: Right, right. So another way it could go is, like, ‘I selected Shin Hin's work to share because he represented his thinking in three different ways. So really calling out what is important mathematically about what the student is sharing. And I think that's really the important piece of, like, you really want to be specific about what it is that you're calling out in your prefacing statement, in terms of what does it mean mathematically? And what about this is a mathematical strength?  Mike: I mean, in some ways, as you say that, it really plays two roles: You're actually helping kids to attend to really specific, small, grain-size features of either the thinking or the representation that are important. And again, you're assigning the contribution clearly to the student that you're talking about.  Erin: Yeah, exactly.  Mike: Uh, you know, as I was reading this, I'm struck by the fact that these strategies have the potential for a couple things. On an individual child level, they have the ability to help a child reposition themselves or to think differently about their mathematical identity. But just on a classroom level as well, they really have the ability to push back on some of the narratives that we were talking about earlier, where marginalized kids have a particularly low status in a classroom, their ideas are kind of preset to matter less. And this is really a way to use some really practical strategies to push back on that.  Erin: Yes, absolutely.  Mike: So one of the things that jumps out is that, in addition to being powerful strategies that you can use in the moment, it seems like these are things that you might actually begin to intentionally plan when you're setting up a lesson.  Erin: Yes. So one of the things that I think is really important about understanding that there are a range of ways that you, as the teacher, hold power in the classroom. And you can leverage your position to create opportunities for students and also publicly acknowledge their competencies. So in planning, you should be considering, ‘How am I going to ensure that I'm productively positioning multilingual learners in my classroom?' And then, ‘What are some specific things I can embed in my lesson to ensure that happens?' So, for example, if you—going back to the earlier stuff—if you want one of your multilingual learners to present their strategy at the board. And you know from some prior classes that they're a little hesitant and reserved, so you might intentionally carve out the last five minutes of the student exploration stage for students to rehearse what they would say to a class. And so you're building in that time into your lesson and being very intentional in that work. And this might also align to your goal that you might have, that every student shares their strategy at the board. And so that's going to help you achieve that goal for each of your students. I think another thing that's important to keep in mind more broadly is that it's important to hold the same expectations for multilingual learners in your classroom as you do for your other students. And so this is also another way to think about, ‘What are some things that I can do as a teacher in my classroom to ensure that, 1) I'm holding the same expectations. And 2) I'm providing appropriate scaffolding that's going to help the student reach those expectations.'  Mike: Absolutely. You started to hint at the next thing that was on my mind, which is that positioning isn't necessarily just something that happens via language. It happens via some of the other decisions like creating space and time. Are there other things in your mind that really support the idea of positioning students in a classroom?  Erin: Yeah. I think every decision that we make as a teacher can be an opportunity to position. So in thinking about just the physical space of your classroom, who is sitting where? How are seats figured? Who is sitting with who? Where do you, as a teacher, position your body in the classroom? How we structure our lessons, what kinds of pedagogical practices we decide to use … the kinds of questions that we ask. Are we asking really open-ended questions? And who are we asking those of? Are we asking those open-ended, rich questions of multilingual learners, or are we only reserving specific kinds of questions for them? Towards the end of the article, and I try to emphasize, like: We position in every interaction. We are constantly negotiating these positions, both within ourselves, the way that we position ourselves, but also how we're position and how they're responding in turn. We can use these situations to really think about the kinds of stories that we want to foster for each of our students. So what can I do in the classroom to tell a productive or a positive story for this student in mathematics?  Mike: Hmm. That's powerful. One of the questions I think that I wanted to ask before we close , ‘If someone were listening to this podcast and they wanted to continue learning about support from multilingual learners, or even the idea of positioning more broadly, are there particular resources that you might point them to?'  Erin: Thank you so much for this question.  Mike: ( laughs )  Erin: ( chuckles ) Um, I would first direct them to my recently published book with my co-authors, called, ‘Teaching Math to Multilingual Students, Grades K–8: Positioning English Learners for Success.' So it came out in 2021, co-published by Corwin and CTM. So that would be like a really good first place to look. And it's designed for teachers to really think about their practice and their own positioning of multilingual learners. And so I think the next step would be really engaging in some professional development with scholars who have been thinking about and doing some work with positioning in general, and then maybe directing more towards some of the original work of positioning theory as a way to kind of get a hold on, like, these different concepts of the theory.  Mike: Oh gosh, this was super fun. Erin, thank you so much for joining us today.  Erin: Thank you so much for inviting me. It was a pleasure talking with you today. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by the Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability.  © 2022 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

Rounding Up  Season 1 | Episode 2 – Posing Purposeful Questions  Guest: Dr. DeAnn Huinker  Mike Wallus: Educational theorist Charles De Garmo once said, ‘To question well is to teach well. In the skillful use of the question, more than anything else, lies the fine art of teaching.' Our guest today, DeAnn Huinker, is one of the co-authors of ‘Taking Action: Implementing Effective Mathematics Teaching Practices in Grades K–5.' We'll talk with DeAnn about the art and the science of questioning and the ways that teachers can maximize the impact of their questions on student learning. DeAnn, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you.  DeAnn Huinker: I'm happy to be here, Mike. I'm looking forward to our conversation today.  Mike: So, I'd like to start by noting that NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) has identified posing purposeful questions as a high-leverage practice in ‘Principles to Actions,' and then again in 2017 with the publication of ‘Taking Action.' And I'm wondering if you can make the case for why educators should see purposeful questions as a critical part of this practice.     DeAnn: Yeah, certainly. Let's just jump right in here. As we think about purposeful questions and why we as teachers need to be more intentional and strategic in the questions we use … I was honored to be a member of the writing team for ‘Principals to Actions.' And in writing that document, we were really tasked with identifying a set of high-leverage teaching practices for mathematics. We reviewed the research from the previous 25 years ( chuckles ), and it was really clear: There's been a lot of research on teacher questioning. And what are the characteristics of effective questioning. So, as I think about making this case for purposeful questions, a couple things come to mind. First of all, researchers have estimated that teachers ask up to 400 questions each day in the classroom. I mean, that's more than one question every minute for the entire school day.  Mike: That's incredible ( sniffs ).  DeAnn: ( chuckles ) I know. That's a lot of questions. Also, if we think about it, it's not just how many questions we ask, but what questions. Because that depth of student learning is really dependent on the questions we ask them because our questions prompt them to consider and engage with the specific mathematical ideas that we're helping them to learn. The other thing I'd like to add to this, is that our questions also set the tone for what it means to learn and do mathematics.  Mike: Hmm. DeAnn: Are we asking questions about getting answers or are we asking questions that let students know we value and respect their inquiries into mathematical ideas into problem-solving, and that we really are about helping them make sense of mathematics? I think it's essential that we critically examine the types of questions we ask and how we can use them to best serve our students.  Mike: That's a really interesting way to think about it. That the questions we ask are really signaling to kids, ‘What is mathematics?' In some ways we're informing their definition of mathematics via the questions that we ask.  DeAnn: Yeah, I absolutely agree with you.  Mike: Well, I think one of the most eye-opening things for me to think about lately has been just learning more about the different categories of questions and the different purposes that they can serve. So, I'm wondering if you can briefly sketch out some of the types of questions teachers could put to use in their classrooms.  DeAnn: So, in ‘Principals to Actions,' we really looked at a lot of different frameworks that people have established over the years for questioning. And we kind of boiled it down to four specific types that are particularly important for mathematics teaching. One is to gather information. For example, can students remember the names for different types of triangles? Another is to probe student thinking. This is when we want them to further explain, elaborate or clarify their thinking. Uh, third type—which is my favorite category—are questions that make the mathematics visible. In other words, these are questions that prompt students to consider and explicitly discuss the underlying math concepts. Or that we want them to make connections among math ideas and relationships. Let me give you an example. If I were going to ask students to explain how to represent 3 × 5 with an array, they would have to consider more deeply the meaning of each of those numbers and that expression, and how that would connect to the representation. So, we're really getting at the mathematics there, not perhaps the problem or tasks that cause them to think about 3 × 5.  Mike: I see. I see.  DeAnn: Fourth category [is] questions that encourage students to reflect and justify. And I think of these as the why questions. Why does it work to solve 4 × 6 by adding 12 + 12? So, those are the four categories that we identified in ‘Principles to Actions.' But since that time, in the ‘Taking Action' book at the elementary level, my co-author and I decided to add a fifth category, because these questions really are emerging in classrooms often. So that fifth category is asking questions that encourage students to engage with the reasoning of other students. Many people refer to these as talk moves. For example, if we think about these talk moves that teachers use in their classrooms or that we need to use more often in our classrooms, an example would be, ‘Who could add on to what Mateo just said?' Or another example would be, ‘Could someone describe or put into their own words the strategy that Jasmine was just telling us about?' Those talk moves are the ones that really get students to listen to and start to have conversations with each other.  Mike: It's interesting because what comes to mind is, there are multiple reasons why that's such an important thing to do in the classroom. In addition to engaging with the reasoning, what it makes me think is it also gives the teacher the opportunity to position a child who may potentially have been marginalized as someone who has math knowledge or whose ideas are valuable.  DeAnn: As I was thinking about talking with you today, Mike, I got thinking about that same idea, which is how do we use questions to position students as capable and as having mathematical authority? And I think this is actually a new area in mathematics education that we need to explore in research further. Just by saying, ‘Can you repeat what Jasmine just said?' I'm actually marking her idea as probably something we should all listen to and consider more deeply.  Mike: Absolutely.  DeAnn: I definitely agree that we can use questions to position students as capable in math classrooms, which is something that's greatly needed these days. And that also helps students develop a more positive math identity in themselves and even fosters their math agency and capability in the classroom.  Mike: So, for me at least, personally, my perspective on questions really changed after I read the ‘5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions' that was written by Margaret Smith and Mary Kay Stein. And after I read that, I really found myself investing a lot more time in preplanning my questions. So, what are your thoughts about whether or how teachers should approach preplanning questions?  DeAnn: In the five practices model, the first practice is to anticipate. This involves anticipating student responses to the kind of key math task of the lesson, and also planning questions so that you, as the teacher, are ready to respond to your students.  Mike: Uh-hm.  DeAnn: Practice of anticipating is preplanning. And I would strongly suggest having those questions written down on a piece of paper so that we are ready to refer to them during the lesson, because it's going to keep us on track, and it's going to give us those tools to help press students to talk more about the mathematical ideas that we want to surface.  Mike: I think part of what really is illuminating for me is, we're anticipating how students might think, and then really, we're digging into what's a response that can help advance their thinking regardless of the angle that they're coming at the task from. So, it's, in some ways, what we're talking about preplanning questions, is really kind of a differentiation strategy to some degree. DeAnn: Perhaps we want to talk a little bit more about the use of the math teaching practice talks about asking both assessing questions and advancing questions?  Mike: Yeah.  DeAnn: So, let's dig into that a little bit.  Mike: Yeah.  DeAnn: The teaching practice from NCTM says we should be using purposeful questions to both assess and advanced students' reasoning and their sense-making about important math ideas and relationships. So, assessing questions are those that really draw out students' current understanding and strategies. And then advancing questions are those that really move students forward in their thinking and understanding—and pushes or presses them or pulls them along towards those learning goals for the lesson. So, that has probably been one of the main things that has really evolved in my thinking in working on ‘Principles to Actions,' is thinking more deeply about these assessing questions and the advancing questions that we need to be posing in our classrooms.  Mike: It strikes me that of the two—they're both important. But it may be that planning advancing questions is the more challenging task for an educator. Talk to me a little bit about preplanning or thinking in advance about advancing questions.  DeAnn: Certainly. So, first as we think about assessing questions, those tend to be more the recalling information, probing student thinking.  Mike: Uh-hm.  DeAnn: As teachers, I think we're pretty good at that. We can all say, ‘Well, how did you think about that? How did you figure that out?' But the advancing questions are much more difficult because that means we, as teachers, have to know: Where are we going with this task and what's the math we want? So, in thinking about this … Or, for example, I was recently working with a group of teachers. And what they did is they worked in grade-level groups and even preplanned the questions they were going to use in an upcoming lesson. And it was really true that yes, assessing questions they had. But we took a lot of time to kind of unpack and think about these advancing lessons. So, I'm going to kind of share, like, three steps here to think about this.  DeAnn: One, you really need to know the math learning goals for the lesson because the advancing questions need to be about the mathematics students are learning. Two, it's helpful to work through the math task that the students are going to be doing in the lesson cause that's going to help you anticipate and approach the task and think about, ‘OK, what might be happening in their work?' And then third, we can preplan those questions that should be specific to the task, to the anticipated student work, and most importantly to the mathematics.  Mike: Uh-hm.  DeAnn: If you can do that with someone, it's so invaluable to brainstorm and bounce ideas off each other.  Mike: I was thinking about what you were saying. And it's striking the difference between an advancing question that's, as you said, about the mathematics that we're trying to advance, versus a question that might move a child toward mimicking a strategy for a right answer right now, but that isn't actually in the long-term advancing the mathematics that we want. That really, for me, is jumping out as something that … it's a line that we want to help people see the difference between those two things, particularly in the moment. And I think that's why, as you were talking, DeAnn, the idea of, let's write some of these things down so that we have them on hand. Because in the moment it's often difficult to make those kinds of judgements when you're in a public space with a whole bunch of children in front of you. That's a superhuman task at some times ( chuckles ). So, there's certainly no stigma to writing it down. In fact, it's a strategy that makes a ton of sense for teachers.  DeAnn: Yeah, definitely agree. There's nothing wrong with having those questions on a piece of paper, on a clipboard, carrying that with you, pausing, taking a moment. ‘What might be some questions I want to ask here?' I mean, asking questions is really a skill we develop as teachers, and we need to use tools and resources to, kind of, help us.  Mike: Well, I was going to say, the other thing that's really hitting me, DeAnn, is the connection between the learning goal and the question; how clearly we see the learning goal and the different levels of progression that kids will make as they're approaching the learning goal. And advancing means recognizing the meaning of a child's thinking at a given time and thinking about what's the next move, regardless of where they're at. Move children toward that deeper understanding.  DeAnn: Yeah. Perhaps it would be helpful if we share some examples.  Mike: Let's do that.  DeAnn: All right. So, assessing questions—as we were talking, it's like, ‘Tell me about your thinking? Can you explain your picture to me? Can you tell me about the tape diagram you drew and used to solve this problem?' Just getting into that kid's thinking and where they're currently at. But then the advancing questions really move students' thinking forward. As you were saying, kind of along this continuum. So, we have to be ready to guide them, kind of step by step, to kind of scaffold that thinking, right? So, I might ask a question, ‘What equation could you write for that problem?' Maybe they got the answer, but what would be an equation they could write? Because perhaps my learning goal is to help them make a connection between those different representations, the context and the equation. I might see that a child has written an equation, but then I might say, ‘Could you label what each of those numbers means in your equation?' Because I really want to make sure they understand the mathematical meaning of each of those numbers.  Mike: Absolutely.  DeAnn: Just asking kids questions, like ‘How are your strategies similar or different?' That's also going to make them think a little more [deeply]. So, all of these advancing questions, really the goal is sense-making and more depth of understanding.  Mike: That totally makes sense. I'm wondering if we can pivot a little bit and talk about the types of teacher moves that might accompany an assessing or an advancing question? What might I do after I ask an assessing question, as opposed to say, asking an advancing question?  DeAnn: So, with assessing questions, the goal of them is really to understand where the student is currently at. So, I would ask an assessing question, and as the teacher I would stay and listen. So, we could assume students are working individually or small groups.  Mike: OK.  DeAnn: So, I might ask an assessing question of a child or a small group and stay and listen because I'm trying to figure out, really to understand, what they did ( chuckles ) and why they did that. Whereas an advancing question, I would be more likely to pose the question to the individual child or small group and then walk away and say, ‘I'll be back in a minute or two to see what you've done or what you're thinking about.' So, it's kind of like giving them time to pause and ponder and consider that question. Mike: This is fascinating because I wonder if for a lot of people that might feel counterintuitive, that you would pose the advancing question and walk away. Tell us a little bit more about the why behind that choice.  DeAnn: Our goal really is to help students become independent math learners in the classroom. By asking the question and then saying, ‘I'll be back in a couple minutes; think about that or show me what you've done,' we want them to be able to figure out how to proceed with a task on their own so that they don't become dependent upon us as teachers. But they really develop that agency in themselves to try things out, whether they're right or wrong, but at least that they're making some progress in the task.  Mike: You know what it makes me think, DeAnn, is that asking an advancing question and walking away might feel foreign to the educator, and it might at least initially feel kind of foreign to the child as well. But over time, it will start to feel like the culture of the classroom, and the child will actually get to a point where it's like, ‘Oh, my teacher believes that I have the ability to think about this and come up with an idea.' And that's a real gift to a child. It does what you were talking about earlier, which is: Question sets the culture and helps children think about what is it to be learning about math.  DeAnn: Yeah. We've also talked about that other type of question to encourage students, to engage with the reasoning of each other. That also really helps with those advancing questions and that tone in the classroom. Cause you could ask a question as a teacher and then say, ‘Why don't you talk with each other for a while about this?' Or ask one student to explain to another student some of their ideas. So, we can, again, use those talk moves when students are working in partners in small groups to learn from each other.  Mike: I'm struck by the idea that this conversation we're having about questioning is also really pretty tightly connected to, how do we support children when they need to engage with productive struggle? And I'm wondering if you could talk about the connection between high-quality advancing or assessing questions, and helping kids manage and engage in productive struggle at the end.  DeAnn: Thinking back to ‘Principles to Actions,' we identified eight high-leverage teaching practices for mathematics. And one of them is using purposeful questions. But another one is supporting productive struggle. So, the connection I think you're kind of alluding to here, Mike, really is they go hand in hand. We can use our questioning to encourage students to persevere in the mathematics that they're doing. But those questions, again, [mean] we are, first of all, trying to understand where the student is at by asking those assessing questions. And then we can encourage them to kind of, like, this bridge, right? With those advancing questions we're trying to get them to consider some of the mathematical ideas that might actually not even be on their horizon for them right now. So, if we say, ‘How could you put this fraction on a number line?' Or ‘How do you know this fraction is greater than or less than one?' We're asking a question to really make that math idea visible and to get them to consider it. And then we're pausing and giving them time and space to consider it and figure out how to proceed on their own. If I, as a teacher, tell them what to do next, that means I'm owning the math, I'm being the authority, and I'm not valuing struggle as part of the learning process.  Mike: Mm, yes. Yes, absolutely. Well, before we close, I want to dig into one more question type. And this is the one that I think really is just kind of transcendent. It transcends the task at hands and digs into students' understanding of big ideas. And it's the one that you would describe as making mathematics visible. Can you talk a little bit about the importance of these types of questions and perhaps some examples that would help people kind of envision what they look like in an elementary classroom?  DeAnn: So, you asked about these questions [that are] really making the math visible. As I think about that, what comes right to mind is a fascinating study conducted by Michelle Perry and her colleagues. They actually looked at the questions and examined very closely the questions teachers ask in a first-grade classroom for mathematics. And they compared the questioning of teachers in Japan, Taiwan, in the United States. Well, unfortunately they found that teachers in the U.S. ask significantly [fewer] questions that require high-level thinking than in Japan and Taiwan. In fact, teachers in those countries tend to ask questions that transcend the problem at hand. I love that phrase. The question goes beyond the surface of the task to really transcend that problem at hand, to get at the underlying math ideas, math concepts, and connections that we want students to make. And they found that teachers in Japan and Taiwan went beyond the surface to really make the math visible for students to consider. And really kept students engaged at higher cognitive levels of thinking.  Mike: That is fascinating. What it reminds me of is, I think it was Jim [James] Hiebert and [James] Stigler wrote about the idea of the mathematics classroom as a cultural activity, in that there's this kind of underlying script of what it means to be a student or a teacher in a mathematics classroom. And I think what we're really talking about in some ways is the role of questioning in building a different vision of what a mathematics classroom is or what it means to be an educator of mathematics.  DeAnn: Yeah. I think that ties right back to our earlier sharing about productive struggle. We think if students don't know the answer quickly that it's our job to step in and tell them how to do it.  Mike: Uh-hm. We're almost coming full circle though, in the sense that I think the promise of high-quality questioning—be it assessing or advancing—is that we're really, by considering the ways that students might think about a task and then considering the ways that you can assess that and advance their thinking from wherever they may be, we really are helping teachers see a different way. And I think that's the power of what you're describing when you talk about strong questioning, DeAnn.  DeAnn: Yeah.  Mike: So, we talked a little bit about what to do next. But I would love for you to take a moment to weigh in on the question of wait time. What are your thoughts about wait time and its value and how that can work in a classroom to support children?  DeAnn: So far today, we've been talking a lot about like the types of questions that teachers ask. But the implementation of those questions is also something we need to think a little bit more about. So, [there are] two types of wait time. Wait time is when I ask a question as a teacher, and how long do I wait until I call on a student? The research on wait time really shows that as teachers, we tend to wait less than a second.  Mike: That's incredible.  DeAnn: Yeah. We provide no processing time to our young learners to really formulate those ideas in their head and then be able to share back. So, just by reminding ourselves to pause for 3 seconds makes a huge difference in the learning that goes on in a classroom. Those 3 seconds, what happens is we find out that more students will respond to our questions. The length of students' responses increases. And those questions or those responses from students where they say, ‘Oh, I don't know,' decrease. So merely waiting 3 seconds makes a huge difference. And as teachers, we just don't deal well with silence, and thinking time, and processing time. So, I think it's always a good reminder to just monitor the amount of time we give students to process ideas after we ask a question.  Mike: You know, as a person who works in math education, when I'm at a dinner party or in mixed company with people, and I ask them, ‘Tell me about your memories of elementary school mathematics.' There are a few common things that always come up. One is typically, as I'm sure won't surprise you, the idea of memorizing my facts. And the other theme that kind of goes along with that is this sense that I wasn't good at math because I didn't know the answer right away. And the connection I'm making is, maybe that's because we didn't give you enough time to actually process and think. If we simply expand our time and give kids 3 seconds or 4 or 5, rather than 1, how different would that experience of mathematics be for children? How many folks would actually feel differently about mathematics and maybe, perhaps, not associate mathematics with just being the first and being the fastest to find the answer.  DeAnn: So, again, we're talking about using our questioning to kind of establish that tone and the expectations in the classroom about what it means to learn and do mathematics. And we shouldn't be in such a hurry ( chuckles ) for students to respond. We as adults need our processing time. Our young learners, [who] are first encountering many of these new ideas in mathematics, we need to give them time to think and to process and make connections before we expect them to respond to any of our questions.  Mike: The piece about 1 second is just so striking. It's odd because I suspect people imagine that by coming back that quickly, they're actually supporting the child. But you're actually doing the opposite ( chuckles ). You're teaching them: One, if you haven't had it in a second, what's wrong with you? And then two: You're also fostering dependency. It's fascinating how, what I think comes from a desire to help, is actually debilitating. DeAnn: It really speaks to the need to reestablish not only norms for students in our classrooms, but really for ourselves as teachers.  Mike: Definitely. Well, I just wanted to say thank you so much for this conversation. It's really been a pleasure to have you join us and hopefully we'll have you back at some time in the future.  DeAnn: And thank you, Mike. I've really enjoyed talking about the importance of purposeful questions for teachers to consider more deeply in their classroom practice.  Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability.  © 2022 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

Do you ever daydream about living abroad? Once the reality of paying the bills hits, most of us let that dream die. But that dream can happen — it's possible if you want it badly enough and you work for it. If you're committed to this dream, work towards it — and eventually, you'll find yourself in a new adventure!  In this episode of The Pollen Podcast, Diana joins two of her closest friends, Emily and Mike, in Italy and talks about their journey to living abroad in the Czech Republic. But it's not all fun and romance though! Emily and Mike share their struggles and some of the cultural barriers they've experienced living abroad. Remember: we won't get everything we dream of at first, but the more we work at it, the closer we'll get.   Listen to this episode to gain the insight and courage to live abroad!  Create your own creative entrepreneurship story of clarity, professional confidence, and profit. Join Diana's 90-day group course Camp Clarity and learn everything you wish you already knew, like how to land dream clients, harness the power of social media, and make the money you deserve. Learn more here. 

Mike Simmons, a real estate investor, author of the book Level Jumping (linked below), has shared the stage with some of the greats like Gary V. Has made over $1 million in profits in 12 months!! He knew he wanted to invest in 2003, and bought his first flip in 2008....why did it take so long? Like a lot of people starting out Mike was afraid to tell his spouse because of the difficult conversation. It wasn't until he finally decided he was tired of allowing fear to be his excuse that he dove in. Today, Mike shares his inspiring story of how he left his job, entered the real estate world professionally to begin wholesaling and flipping houses. Episode Links: https://www.mikesimmons.com/ Level Jumping   --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today with me, I'm joined by Mike Simmons, author, CEO, business coach speaker, and we're gonna be talking about Mike's business, wholesaling and flipping houses, and what we should be aware of if you're going to get into either of those businesses. So let's get into it.   Mike Simmons, what's going on, man? Welcome to the real estate investor.   Mike: Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.   Michael: Oh, my gosh, no, the pleasure is all mine. Super excited to have you on and really excited for our conversation today. So Mike, I know a little bit about your background and a little bit about what you do but for all of our listeners who are not familiar with you, give us a quick and dirty who you are, where you come from, and what is it that you do in real estate today?   Mike: Yeah, no problem. So, you know, I always say that my background is probably the least remarkable. I didn't sell baseball cards, I didn't go around the neighborhood looking for lawns to mow or things to do. I was a normal kid, probably on the lazy side. You know, and my parents were, we're in the automotive industry, and we're very blue collar Michigan, right. So the life that was displayed before me through example, and through explicit, you know, direction from my parents, and the Blueprint was, you got you finish high school, you go to college, or just as maybe even more preferable, you get into a union factory type of environment and it's very secure and you work there for 30 to 35 years, and you retire and you hopefully save some money and you scrimp buy and that's how you that's how life goes. That's just life. That's what people do, that's normal. Yeah, there wasn't one single person in my family or anybody on the horizon that was doing anything remotely entrepreneurial. So I did that I went to school, I went, I finished high school, I got a job with UPS, Teamsters, my parents could not have been happier with me being in the Teamsters and I went down that path, and I got married young, and I was working at UPS and like, unfortunately, UPS is a great company.   But there are injuries that happen because people you know, lift wrong and all that and at 25 years old, 24 years old, actually, I couldn't get out of bed in the morning without going to the chiropractor three times a week as a 24 year old, otherwise healthy man, oh my gosh and I knew I couldn't retire from there, because I was already almost too hurt and crippled to do the job I had to do at that time and I was in my early 20s and so I got another job in the automotive industry. It was a desk job and I started working there and this was, we were the mid to late 90s at this point and the automotive industry, like most industries, were starting to decline starting to have some problems. We were heading toward 2000 where a lot of bad things happen and in, you know, people think about tech and what happened if tech the big boom that happened. But the same thing happened in the automotive industry, essentially, we went from, you know, booming industry to many, many suppliers, going out of business struggling, it was really bad for a while and so I had to look around and ask myself, and I'm one thing I'm good about one thing I one of my superpowers is I'm a very honest, and I can I can very objective about myself and part of that is because it can be a tough thing to do. It's most people I don't think are, are objective about themselves and I'm not saying this to brag, I'm gonna tell you why I'm objective, and it's gonna kind of be like a poor, poor guy. My dad was a Marine, and, and he made it real clear what our shortcomings were on a daily basis as kids and so I have no problem. being real, honest, in a way that say, these this is what I'm not good at.   This is what's not great about me, like I'm very aware, I'm very easy for me to for me to figure that stuff out and so I asked myself at this point in the automotive industry, and things were declining, I didn't have a college education. I would I hire me if I were without a job and I was in the position of HR and I was, you know, somebody like me was across the table. What is there anything about me, that makes me more hirable than the 1000s of people who've been laid off over the last few years and it was easy. There was nothing about me that was remarkable. I had no college experience and I had very little practical experience. So why hire me when there's so many really, really talented people that were being laid off because of the industry. So went back to college, got a degree and I was working I'm kind of fast forwarding a lot, but I got my degree and I doubled my income. Like the minute I retire, graduated, the minute I graduated, I got a job, which literally was twice the annual salary and I was like, here we go, baby. There's no stopping and so just to kind of illustrate how that went, so I went into a company, it was automotive and I was working there for about six, seven years and at one point, it's seven o'clock at night and it's everyone had gone except my team. Everyone had gone home for the night, obviously, it was a five o'clock, most people were gone. It was seven 30 and I'm in at work and there are our client is there too, because there was something going wrong with our program that we are working on and he's there and in we're discussing the problem, and the guy gets really agitated the client, I'm not going to say which automotive company I'm talking about, but it rhymes with board.   Break company, I have an F 150. But he gets in my face and basically start screaming at me like dressing me down, like very much, really like when I was a kid like my dad did write down. Yeah and he was and it was seven o'clock at night. We're all working overtime. We're all clearly busting our butts to solve the problem and he gets in my face. They're screaming at me and he's the client, right? He's a big client and I can't really say anything back, except I'm really sorry. We're working on it and after he walked away, I went to my manager who was there too and I said, what are we doing here? What is happening right now? Why are we here? I'm getting screamed at we're doing our best, like there are issues I get it but nobody, nobody was negligent. We just have we have things that have happened, and we're working through but why are we still here? We should be at home and he said to me, I'll never forget, you need to get your priorities straight and I thought you are correct. I absolutely do, I have young children at home, I have a wife at home. I've been working overtime all week on this project. I didn't say this but in my mind, I'm thinking, you are correct, my priorities are wrong and from that point, I decided to take my side hustle that I was doing, which was real estate, flipping houses not doing a particularly great job at it, but just kind of stumbling through it and I said that is going to become my career priority. My priorities need to get dialed back to my family and make sure I'm at home and I'm spending the evening with them. I'm eating dinner, putting my kids to bed but from a career standpoint, that now becomes my focus and I will get my priorities straight and so he essentially put me on the right track. Inadvertently, he obviously was referring to work priorities but it worked the other way and so I from that day, I started making my side hustle, my main focus and I will say I a year later quit my job and the first year that I was in business and real estate full time that listen to this, this is true and I did this math, the first year that I was in business full time for myself as a real estate investor, my company's gross profits were equal to the total sum of my salary for the previous 25 years that I was working for somebody else, year one, which was a million dollars, I made over a million dollars in my real estate and over the years, like I'm talking going back to 18. When I started working right, I was making very little money and in the middle, I wasn't making a ton toward the end, I was making more but if you just take the average, which is about $40,000 for me, and you times that by 25 and is $1 million. My company grows that in in one year.   Michael: That's crazy, Mike! So where did you take it from there? I mean, are you still flipping houses today where you focus exclusively on that? Give us give us the insider scoop?   Mike: Yep… Yeah, good question. So I was flipping houses. When I was working full time, my wife and I were flipping houses and like I said, we weren't doing a particularly great job of it because she worked full time as a teacher, I was working full time plus as an automotive person and we were getting flips done. But we weren't particularly profitable, like we should have been. We didn't have any processes in place. My wife is extremely risk averse and so I kept trying to do more and do it faster. And she was slowing like brakes, brakes, brakes, right because she was nervous that we were getting ahead of ourselves and she probably saved me from really screwing up bad in the beginning. But at some point, she said, You know what? This is great and you clearly love it. I don't love it as much as you do. In fact, this is making it hard for me to sleep and it's making me hard for me to focus on my day job with the kids and I'm a teacher and that's what I do and I love you, I love the I love real estate but it's the roller coaster, the mental roller coaster is too much and I really would rather you go on without me and let me pull back and I'll just cheer for you from the sidelines and I totally support you and this isn't a negative this is actually a positive I just trust you to do it better without me and I did in and that's when things started taking off because I started doing way more activity like before we would get a house under contract. We would get it quoted out, you know, we would renovate it, we would put up for sale, we'd go through the wholesale process closed, check in the bank, before we started looking for the next day and that's not really a that's not how you scale anything, right?   So when she backed out, I was like, okay and I started putting offers in on multiple houses a day, like I was putting offers on everything and I started getting multiple deals at one time and so I had to learn how to raise money and I had to learn how to manage groups and what a forced me to do was, it forced me to come up with a process in a system that was repeatable and could handle scale. Before that, nothing we did was scalable, is all very manual, we'd go to Home Depot, we'd pick new colors for the walls, we'd pick out different cabinets, different flooring, like everything was custom to the house that we were working on and what I realized was really, really good house flippers who do it at scale, okay, and I'm not talking boutique flippers, who go into a town and they buy a $3 million, you know, historical home, and they like, put it back together with love. It's I'm not talking about that I'm talking about the people that are flipping 20-30 at 100 200 deals, they are not falling in love with every single house and going in there and making it the route, right, it's turning burn a little bit and so I learned how to turn and burn a little bit more in my business and scale it in a in a way that had systems and processes. But I still hadn't hired anybody. It was still just me, what changed the game for me and that changed the game for me in terms of, you know, a racing analogy, but, and again, this is not like I said all this in front of my wife as early as like the last month I've said all of this and she 100% agrees but she was like the governor in a race car, right? They put the restrictor on there. So you can only go so fast. Once that got pulled off. I pushed the gas all the way down to the floor, and I never stopped like, and so things just go faster when you're doing that much volume and back then, you know, now we're talking about 2014 ish timeframe. It was easier to get deals, I'll be honest, like, as someone who coaches people in real estate, I'm not gonna lie. It's harder now than it was back in 2014.   Still possible now, but it was easy back then. So I was getting deals off the MLS and it was going pretty fast. Fast forward another year or so and it started to get harder to get deals off the MLS and I was struggling a little bit and so I had to do some research and figure out and I was I was going to all the meetup groups and I was asking all the other house flippers like, where are you guys finding deals like what's happening? Where are you guys getting your volume from and they were all like, man, it's hard, like we're not getting deals like we're struggling and I'm like, Well, where are you looking? Where are you trying to find deals and everybody said the MLS everybody. I only knew one wholesaler in my market and I reached out to him. I'm like, Dude, I know you're not buying off the MLS. So where are you finding deals? He's like direct mail, I'm going direct to sellers and I'm like, what do you mean, go direct to sellers? How do you do that and so I took him out to lunch. He gave me the down and dirty playbook for how to do direct mail is what I was doing at the time and I started doing that and the deal flow started happening again and I started building and what I realized was and there's a whole story behind it that we don't necessarily have to get into but I changed my model from house flipping to wholesaling and it wasn't because of that guy. To finish in a nutshell, I was overly dependent and this is a huge mistake that new investors make all the time. I was overly dependent on one contractor and one realtor, they were everything the realtors, he found all the deals for me and they ran the numbers and they told me what was a good deal and my contractor was my only contractor and he basically made her are broke my rehab and on the same project as chance would have it. The realtor missed the numbers pretty badly and my contractor started flaking.   Now if you flip houses or renovate houses, or you have rentals, and I say my contractor flake, you probably don't need more information than that you go I'm with you, my contractors flaked too, right. But essentially, he stopped showing up he started charging me for things that he wasn't doing. He started making up half truths about stuff that he did do and so I was forced it and by the way, I was getting deal flow because I was direct mail, right. I had to let both these individuals off my team, to say the least and I had no backup plan and so as these deals were coming in, I reached back out to my wholesaling friend, I'm like, What do I do? I don't know how to wholesale. Can you just tell me what that even means? Like, what do you guys do and he again, gave me the down and dirty playbook and I called a house flipper friend of mine who I had recently talked to and he's like, I can't find anything and I said, Hey, man, I got this deal under contract. Do you want it for 110,000 at the time, that was the price 110,000 he's like, let me take let me look at let me look at the numbers coming back in 10 minutes. He's like I'll take it, I got it under contract for 95,000. I made $15,000 in like 10 minutes and In Michigan at that time, a normal flip 15 to 20,000 is a good flip number. Right, profit. Yeah and I was like I made almost the entire profit with a phone call. That was cool and probably a lot easier sold.   So much easier to do. No, by the way, no contract, right? No realtors. So I got another deal under contract. Ironically, it was also a contract for $95,000 and it was in a similar neighborhood. I called the exact same guy and I told him the exact same thing. I've got a deal for 110,000 It's yours. He said, give me five minutes. Call me back, he said, I'll take it. This all happened within four weeks to deal. I was like, I felt literally talked about love at first sight. I was in love with the model of wholesaling and so I switched my model over to wholesaling and I started, I started scaling it up and what really changed everything for me though, because although I was scaling up and I was starting to have some success, I still wasn't really running it like a true business I was I was a little bit scattered, I was a little bit unfocused and I joined a mastermind, a friend of mine at the time who lived in California, he had a podcast, and I knew him just through podcasting, and I was listening to his podcast one day, and at the end, he signed off, thanked his guest signed off, and I was doing dishes actually, at the time in my house and I saw I let it go, it was it's just kept going because I wasn't able to turn it off. My hands were wet and if it was over, he goes, Hey, if you're still there, I want to let you know about this very exclusive opportunity. I am pulling together some of the best real estate investors from around the country. We're going to form a mastermind, we're going to share ideas, we're going to help each other it's going to be awesome. If you want to get involved, you know, send me an email, whatever.   So I did $25,000 mastermind. Well, I $25,000 bazillion dollars to me at the time, but I was I was doing wholesale deals, right and at the time $25 was like two wholesale deals because I was averaging around 12 $13,000 per deal and I thought, I mean, if I surround myself with these people, will I do two more deals as a result of the relationships and the knowledge that will be exchanged. It seemed reasonable that I would and so I joined and I met someone their mentor, more than one person, but one person in particular, who laid out his company, he just laid it out. This is how I run my company is exactly what I do is what I did right and wrong over the last decade and he had the company I wanted and I said to him, his name's Andy, I said, if I if I see what you did, and I see what you're telling me, I should do and I totally agree with you. But you took you 10 years if I knew everything that you know now, and I apply it proactively. Couldn't I condense that timeframe? Like could I do any year and he said, I don't see why not? That's exactly what I did and I sort of came up with this term that, that I didn't think about a much until I've said it on podcast, and people resonate with it but I think the most powerful thing you can do in business is to use other people who are successful use their hindsight, which is 2020, as they say, right, as your foresight and so I used Andy's hindsight, all the things he did right and wrong, as my foresight going forward and I was able, that's what I was telling you that first year that I was doing the full time because I applied all of Andy's principals and I went from doing a couple of deals here and there to 10 to 15 deals per month and scaled up to a million dollars in that first year.   Michael: That is amazing and so right now your business is focused exclusively on wholesales, are you still doing flips?   Mike: Historically, it's always been wholesales but recently, and I have a business partner to its which is a whole story in itself kind of interesting about hiring and identifying talent. But so my partner and I have started strategically buying properties outright and then doing in Michigan, what we call them land contract, or we basically play the bank, we own the property, and we sell it to them and we hold the note as a company. So we started doing a lot of that. So we do like 100 deals a year, but half of those or more, but at least half would make fantastic land contract deals for us and so, and because of you know, COVID kind of showed us this a little bit and over the last several years that we've been in business, every business has ups and downs every industry has, you know, markets go up and down, right. So revenue kind of fluctuates and we thought how do we level that out a little bit? How do we make the valleys much higher, you know, so they don't go down and so we're doing a lot of this land contract stuff because it's every it's like you know, monthly recurring revenue and so we make the valleys much shallower and the peaks are still there. So we're probably wholesaling half of our deals and the other half we're buying inland contracting out…   Michael: Okay, let's dig into land contracts live because it's just not something I know very much about and we always joke on the podcast that we get to ask self-serving questions of our guests... So walk our listeners through asking for a friend walk us through like how land contract works and why it's so wide, so interesting.   Mike: Yeah, it's pretty straightforward but the concept and I'll kind of give you a peek, like a little bit behind the curtain here, right? The real like mechanics or the real like logic behind it. Me and my partner both as of a year ago, I had about 25 rentals, okay, which I have sold recently and I did it for a couple of reasons. Now, because rentals aren't great, they're great and actually, the rents are higher now than even when I sold them. So rent rents are going up, which is awesome. But for me, I bought them really, and I bought them like 2015, most of them and so the equity in them was very tempting to tap into and I recently have started doing lending on a grander scale, like I've scaled up my lending company, and I wanted to put that equity, that money into my lending company, it's just more of my focus now. But so what we're doing with land contracts, and why one of the reasons why we love them is unlike a rental, we are not responsible for any maintenance, any vacancies like we are, what the bank is to your mortgage, we get the mortgage payment, regardless of whether or not they have a leaky roof or whatever has to happen, right, we don't have to deal with any of that stuff and what we're able to do at least in Michigan, this doesn't work necessarily everywhere, the same way, because the rents aren't high enough in the house prices aren't low enough for to work in a lot of areas.   But for us, if you take someone who's living in a neighborhood, and they're renting, and let's just say they're paying for the sake of round numbers, they're paying $1,000 in rent, okay and they're renting a certain level house in that neighborhood, I can buy a house in that neighborhood that maybe is a little bit in distress that I can go in and buy it inexpensively and put some work into it and if someone were to buy that house with a traditional mortgage, especially a year or two ago, when rates were like high twos, low threes, they could buy that house and their mortgage payment might be $600, right, right. But they can't get approved for a mortgage for whatever reason, right? They have bad credit, or whatever it is, right? But I can buy that house, I can renovate it, and I can sell it to someone and really the pitch to them is listen, you want to own a home, and you're not currently in a position to get approved for a mortgage through a traditional mortgage company. But what if you could have homeownership, and you would pay no more than you were paying when you were renting, right still give me $1,000 give or take. But you own the home and you can build equity and in three to five years you can refinance out at a lower rate and you can own the home and probably drop your payments a little bit. Is it important enough to a person to own the home? If they're if all things being equal rent 1000 I have to pay this company 1000 for the house, but I own the house. That's what we do we buy the houses now, the reality is the interest rates are a lot higher than what you might get at a mortgage company, right. But we're also taking a bit of a risk. These are folks that have defaulted on things in the past and their interest and their credit scores are not great, but they have homeownership at this point and if so they if they have a down payment, and they want to own a home, we can get them into a home for no more than they would pay to rent a home in that neighborhood and three to five years, the goal for them is to fix things in their life and be able to refinance out at a lower rate and move on forever and then. So we're typically an average deal for us might be, you know, we buy it for 50. The ARV is 100, we put 20 into it. So now we're into it for 70 and we sell it for 85, right, we're still a little undervalued. So they're getting some instant equity, they have home ownership but when they go to refi in three, five years, we're getting a $15,000 check or whatever it is at that point, right. So in there's no calls from tenants, and there's no vacancies and none of that stuff. So that that's the that's the allure for US interest…   Michael: Interesting, I mean, isn't that similar, like rent to own or is it different?   Mike: It's similar, but they're not renting, right? a rent to own it, depending on how it's structured. Obviously, you can have some portion of the rent go toward whatever, but you still own the house, right? You still own the house as the person who's having that rent down. We don't own the house, necessarily. We own it, just the way the bank owns your house when you have a mortgage, right. But we're never getting calls from the city for law for Tallgrass. We're not getting calls about the maintenance issues or whatever. We don't have to worry that they didn't, you know, they left and they didn't finish their contract like it's a mortgage and if they if they don't pay their if they don't pay their mortgage, then we will foreclose we can foreclose on them.   Michael: Yep, interesting and so that like when you place these tenants into the home, there's a recorded sale that happens and so you're literally just playing bank, interesting…   Mike: Yep, just playing bank. Yeah, because we both had rentals, both of us and like I said, rental they're awesome but there's just a different level of responsibility for us playing the bank than then playing landlord and that's just what we're choosing to do. We both of us have rentals and it's, it's awesome. I rentals have been fantastic for me. It's just, it's not what we're doing now and we were just like, gonna get rid of the rentals and just wholesale. That's it but then this model presented itself, somebody we mutually knew in the industry is kind of like, hey, I'm doing this and they're doing it in Texas and it works down there too. I don't know that it would work in Los Angeles or San Diego or I don't know that it would probably not as well because the house prices but if you have house prices that you can get a house in a nice in these are like safe blue county collar neighborhoods, we're not talking about like war zones, but by any means I wouldn't buy a house there but in a nice blue collar brick ranch neighborhood, if you can get a house between 50 and 150,000. It could work when they start getting up to a half a quarter of a million, it just doesn't work as well anymore. You can't, the numbers don't work out.   Michael: Okay, okay. Good to know and just out of curiosity, I mean, how many folks end up refinancing out of your mortgage and then truly then own the house versus how many what percentage defaults or you have to go through that?   Mike: Really good question. We started doing this, like, eight months ago. So okay, I don't know, we don't have a loop. Yeah, but the friend of ours who kind of introduced this concept to us. He said about half of them refi out. Very few defaults, very few defaults because it's home, you know, people it's their home, right? They don't default, like they do necessarily on a lease, because it's not as transient. So according to him very few defaults. But we also screen people pretty well to like you would with a rental, like we're not just letting anybody in there, right? If they clearly have a pattern of defaulting on everything they've ever done, we could expect to default to we're not special but people have certain circumstances where their credit cut takes a pretty good hit but it's you know, it's something that is understandable, or it has a you know, story behind it. That makes sense. So I'm not expecting a lot of defaults, how many people will refi out? You know, our plan is to be a little bit more proactive with helping them with credit repair right now, we're not really getting involved in that but I suspect as we do get more involved with helping with that, that the number of people who actually refi out will probably go up, you know, so I don't really know right now how that's gonna go down. We'll see, we'll see how that goes. I don't know. Sure…   Michael: Okay, we'll have to have you back in 24 months to see. See what that looks like…   Mike: For sure, for sure.   Michael: Awesome. Well, Mike, let's shift gears here just for a moment and talk about wholesaling because, I mean, like you were mentioning a bit ago, it's no surprise that deals are a bit tougher to come by today. I think in the industry as a whole it's probably no surprise that wholesalers don't have the best reputation out there. Yeah, so I mean, I have I'm going to share kind of my thoughts on I think what makes you different but curious to get your thoughts and share with our listeners, me what makes you different as a wholesaling company and then what are some things that people can do to protect themselves from the not so great actors out there who are wholesalers?   Mike: The problem with wholesaling and the reason why it can get a bad name Is it is it is advertised and when I say advertised, I mean if you go out on the internet and say how do you become a wholesaler? Should I be a wholesaler? It's billed to people as this no money, no experience and that's how you get started in the industry…   Michael: And no risk…   Mike: Yeah, no risk. You get this, like, this mentality of this person who thinks they're just gonna roll out of bed open up their eyes, and money's gonna pour through the windows of their house if they're a wholesaler and it's not true, obviously. So you asked me what I do that makes me different. Here's what anyone can do to make their business different, but it doesn't it's not, you know, just for wholesaling but you have to run it like a business and a lot of wholesalers are very transactional in their thinking. They only care about the cheque they're getting next they don't care about future checks. They don't care about consistency, or predictability of their of their business and so they treat wholesaling, like this little dirty act they have to do before the real serious business comes along and in the reason why a lot of wholesalers get this bad reputation also is because there's something called daisy chaining in real estate, and most real, most wholesalers I'm doing air quotes if you guys aren't watching.   The reason most wholesalers or a lot of wholesalers have this reputation is they're not really wholesalers as much as they are what's called daisy chains and a daisy chain er is okay I'm a wholesaler I market to sellers I go into a seller's home. I create rapport and trust and in understanding of what's happening. I get a purchase agreement with them and I take that purchase agreement and I market it out to the other real estate investors in my community and some person who sees this takes the pictures, they take the text, and they mark up the price and then they send it out to a bunch of people, a lot of times a lot of the same people at a higher price and it's like called them and so you call them and you say, hey, I'll take it because you didn't see my marketing, you saw their marketing for whatever reason, you say, I'll take it. They don't even know me and I don't know them. But they're representing that they have this this deal under contract and meanwhile, I'm working with my buyers and I come to an agreement with a buyer and then this person calls me who's was also marketing up my contract and says, hey, I want to buy that house and I go, I've already sold it. Well, he's already told his buyer that they can have it for that price. But I already sold it because I have it under contract. Now he has to go back to the buyer and say, sorry, we have to back out of this deal, right and so it looks like a wholesaler is a really bad business person, bad guy, dishonest, whatever, misrepresenting himself, but he never had the deal and so that happens that's runs rampant. That's a real epidemic in the wholesaling world. So you also asked me, How do you tell the difference or how do you how do you avoid the bad ones?   The first question is that because I get people who send me deals, and frankly, I'll look at them if some other wholesaler finds a deal, and they were they offer it out at a price that my company might be able to land contract that house and we want to buy it, we'll do it. So the first question I asked them is, do you have this under contract yourself or are you representing somebody else and a lot of times they do and sometimes they don't? Sometimes they say they do and I say good. Then before I would buy this, I would need to see the agreement between you and the seller, your company in the seller, what's the name of your company, and I verify this stuff because if they don't have it under contract, I don't even care if they say, yeah, it's not me. But the guy who has under contracts a good friend of mine, and he gave me exclusive rights. I want to talk to who has entered a contract always deal with the person who has an order contract with the seller, with the seller, right? All right, that's, that's key. That's huge and we don't, we don't allow daisy chaining, we don't ever allow people to market out our deals, we only market them out and so all of our buyers know, we've told them several times, if someone if we're marketing a house and you see the same house being marketed by someone else, believe me when I tell you, they're not authorized to do that, they will never be able to sell it to you. So and as a wholesaler, I always make sure that I'm dealing with the end buyer, not a middle person, right? So if someone comes to us, though, and says, hey, I've got a buyer, and they're gonna, they'll pay you this much money and it makes sense for us. We'll give them a check like, well, we'll compensate them for bringing that buyer. But we're not going to we're not going to be what's going to be all transparent, we're going to let everyone know what's happening and so transparency in the wholesale process is important between us as the wholesalers and the buyers total transparency. Now, I'll say something that your audience may not love. There is not total transparency between us and the seller and does that mean that we're lying to them? No, it's not it doesn't. But here's what I always tell people to illustrate my point. Nobody loves or trusts me more than my mother, nobody.   My mom has heard me explain what I do as a wholesaler 1000 times and she has been all ears like she's could not be more dialed in to hurts her baby boy and what he does, and she's so proud and so happy and she's listening intently. But if you call my mom and put her on the air right now and said, Could you please explain to me what your son does? How he does it? She wouldn't know she might even tell you. I'm a realtor. She just doesn't know. It doesn't make sense to her. It's just it's too obscure. Right? So when we're in a seller's home, we don't say to them, Mr. Mrs. Seller, I know you're under a lot of duress. You have to move maybe there was a death or divorce or whatever there was right? Something happened in your life is spiraling. Here's the deal. I want to sign a contract, saying that I'm gonna buy your house, but I'm not buying it. I don't even know who's gonna buy it. I don't know where the money is coming from. I don't know who's gonna show up at closing. I'm not even sure if I'm gonna be able to close. Can we sign the deal now? It nobody would say yes. Okay and that's an a character characterization of what a wholesaler does. But on some level, it's facetious, but it's sort of true, right? I'm signing a contract. I don't exactly know who's going to buy it. In my case as a wholesaler and what I think makes what I do ethical is I have the financial backing to buy any house that I put under contract. If worst comes to worst, I can buy it right and that's not that doesn't come in the beginning. new investors don't always have that luxury. But what you can do as an investor and where you can be transparent and you should be transparent is do not sign a contract and imply or explicitly state that you will for sure be closing on the house without exception, you can't say that in most cases.   So what I say is some version of this, Mister seller, when I came here I was prepared to offer you $100,000 for your house, that was the highest number that I was authorized to offer you, you cannot go below 110,000 That is your lowest, that's the number. That's the gap, right… You want 110 minimum, and I was maximum allowed to offer you 100 but here's what I would like to suggest. Let's sign the contract for 110. Okay, I'm gonna go back to my investors and people who make decisions and help me buy these houses and I am going to see if there is interest at that price, I anticipate that there is not going to be but there very well could be but at the very least, if you can give me two weeks to talk to my investors and go to bat for you, and try to make them understand now that I'm here, I see this house is very nice. I didn't know is this nice but it is a very nice house. I think I can get this done but give me two weeks and I will come back to you in two weeks or less by the way and I'll tell you one of two things either, we can't pay 110 and so we need to rip this contract up and just part as friends, because we all knew that that was a possibility or we're going to move forward at this price and everything is good and I guarantee you will close. Okay, can if you couldn't give me two weeks. Now, if you don't want to do that, I totally get it. If you go to a realtor, they're going to want you to sign it like a three month contract where they get three months to market your house. I just want two weeks and if it takes me two days, I'll come back in two days. Either way, I'll be totally honest with you and it will be up to you what we do from that point we rip up the contract or not. It's totally up to you. Is that? Is that something that you can live with just for a week or two and nine times out of 10? They say yes. Now, when I when I go out now I am going out to my buyers and I'm saying hey, I got this this opportunity who's interested, right? If I get crickets and it's like, nope, nope, nope.   Then usually we'll try to figure out what our buyers would pay, right? That's the next question. Okay, you don't want it? It's fine. But what would you pay for this and we start getting that feedback and so we can go back to the seller and say, listen, I was right. 100,000 is the best we can do but I'm totally willing to rip up this contract because you want 110 or we can talk about a reduction or, or the or we get buyers that are like, yeah, I'll do it for that price. That's great, right and it's a little better than we thought and we go back and tell the seller, hey, if we go out to our buyers, and we find out that 110 is a really good price for us still, we'll still make the money we thought we were going to make we always go back and say we'll honor the 110 because I think that's the question I would be thinking in my mind if I'm listening to this interview? Well, what happens if they get really great offers? Do they still always go back and try to get that lower number? No, we don't. If we can make what we thought we would make or pretty close to it, we'll pay a higher price, right? We're, my goal here is to get to heaven not to make an extra $5,000, right. So I'm not trying to be a bad guy. But the key is the ethical wholesalers versus not the ethical ones, prepare the seller for the potential for a renegotiate or a cancellation up front and so when we go back, how often are they irate because we come back and say, hey, we can't do the 110. Almost never, because we very thoroughly explain what we're doing and we prepare them that we may have to come back and discuss the reduction or cancellation. The people honestly, they just want clarity.   They just want to know what's going to happen. What people get mad about are surprises. So when you say oh, great 110 done deal. I can't wait to close with you in a few weeks. This is so exciting and then you come back in three days and say we have to cancel the contract. They're mad 100% of the time, because they weren't you're not clear on what was happening. You surprise them with bad news and nobody likes being surprised with bad news but when you come back and say, hey, remember when we talked a week ago and I said this? Well, we can't do the 110. You know, we tried nine times out of 10 they're totally fine and honestly, seven times out of 10. They say well, what can you do and then we have that discussion. So, man, it's all about setting expectations.   Michael: Yes, 1000 times yes, as funny as you were going through kind of your pitch. I was like, Oh yeah, like that makes sense. That's such a different, like feeling that I got as you were giving as you were giving that Spiel than what I was expecting or than what I've experienced with wholesaler. So I mean, kudos to you and your team. It's clearly it's clearly working for you, so keep up keep up the great work.   Mike: Well, honestly, we have gotten deals, where and I know that sounds cliche, but I swear to you, this happens all the time and it we only know that when people tell us right so my guess is it happens more than we even know but we get deals where they got a higher offer from another wholesaler. But because we come in and we are professional, and we do address their concerns, but we wholesaling is not really about buying houses. It's about solving problems and again, sounds cliche, totally true. You can figure out what their pain point is and you can focus on that the sale of the house is secondary and I know that because we've had sellers tell us listen, we had somebody come along and offer us more than you guys, but we're not going to sell to them, we're going to sell to you because we believe you, we believe what you're saying and we like working with you. So professionalism matters and just to illustrate that point, underline it real quickly, one of our reps went into a house one time, and he was talking to a seller and they were going through the whole thing, it was like halfway through the meeting, and then knock on the door, and the seller says, oh, I forgot.   There's another investor or another, whatever. They call them coming in another person who wants to look at my house and my rep was like, oh, okay, and he kind of stood aside and a guy came in, my rep looked outside, and he saw the guy was driving a Mercedes, nothing wrong with that Mercedes fine but he left it running. He was wearing a suit, he came into the house, briefly said hello, and started walking around, pointing out all the flaws in the house, this is all this has to be replaced. That's no good. Nobody wants that and he shot a number at her with what he would pay and said, think about it and he got in his car and left. Like, everything that guy said, that wasn't verbal screamed, you are not that important to me. I'm way too big of a deal for you and I don't even have time to turn my car off. That's how little I think about what is your situation. I'm just telling you what I need and what I want and what I'll give you and I'm out of here, right and understandably, the seller was floored. She's like, that was the rudest thing I've ever seen, like, that was awful. I feel so like, offended by that. Yeah and of course, my rep was like, yeah, I would be offended too, right. Like, I agree with you. They're horrible. We're great. Let's get back to talking about how great we are. So it matters, like paying attention to their pain points, and not being all about the number. If you start talking about price right off the bat, you can almost guarantee you're not gonna buy the house. Yeah, if you start by listening, and addressing their problems, and let the sale be last. It'll work out for you much, much better.   Michael: I love it, I love it, I love it. Mike, we could go on, I think probably for days talking about this stuff but I want to be very respectful of your time and get you out here. For anyone that wants to learn more about you, your processes your business, where's the best place for them to do that?   Mike: Yeah, thank you for that by the way, I appreciate it. The best place to get a hold of me would be at my on my website, https://www.mikesimmons.com/ . If you go on mikesimmons.com, you can find anything about me and also my podcasts. I have a podcast called just out real estate. You can find the link to that on my on my website as well.   Michael: Right on…   Mike: Which you were on right, you were my guest.   Michael: We had a lot of fun.   Mike: Yeah, we did.   Michael: Well, Mike, thank you again for coming on and sharing so much wisdom with our listeners really appreciate it and I'm sure we'll chat soon, man. I look forward to it.   Mike: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.   Michael: Likewise, talk soon.   All right, everyone. That was our show a big thank you to Mike for coming on. Super, super insightful stuff. I learned a ton about the wholesaling business and wholesalers in general, and some really great questions that we as investors can be asking wholesalers to protect ourselves from the downside. So as always, if you liked the episode, feel free to leave us a rating or review wherever it is you get your episodes, and we look forward to seeing the next one. Happy investing…

In this latest edition of Sales Transformation, Collin Mitchell will be talking outside sales with expert survivor Mike O'Kelly, whose experience of around 20 years in enterprise and pharma sales has given him the tenacity to survive and outlast everyone else in the business. Mike will be sharing his personal experience and will be explaining why it is very important to invest in training your people over and over for better survival.Join Our Free Podcast Community HERE!Want to solve a leaky sales funnel? Get Signup for your Free RevenueGrid trial HERE! Want Your Reps Hitting Quota in 2022? Get Your Wingman Free Trial HERE!HIGHLIGHTSMike's sales storyMike's sales trainingOutside sales experienceInvest in training and re-educationQUOTESMike: “I know how to create solutions for people. And that's really what I think sales is. It's finding solutions to people's problems and doing it in an efficient manner that gives them the most value for their dollar.Mike: “I'm very passionate about outside sales. I love it. I think it's fantastic, and I think there's a cancer, where people are giving up on sales too quickly.”Mike: “It's all about the process. says after the initial training, because initial training is kind of a roadmap, but guess what, once you get to a certain destination, you need another map.”Mike: “I think individuals should invest at least 3% to 10% of their annual income in re-education.”Connect with Mike and find out more about him in the links below:Mike's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-o-kelly-44ba352b/RithmAI LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rithm-ai/RithmAI Website: https://www.rithmai.com/Surviving Outside Sales Podcast: https://pod.link/1582694946Connect With Collin on LinkedIn Want to Start, Grow or Monetize Your Podcast? Book a Free Strategy Call HERE!