Descriptions of effective teaching often depict an idealized form of "perfect" instruction. Yet, pursuing perfection in teaching, which depends on children's behavior, is ultimately futile. To be effective, lessons and educators need to operate with about 75% efficiency. The remaining 25% can be impactful, but expecting it in every lesson, every day, is unrealistic. Perfection in teaching may be unattainable, but progress is not. Whether you are aiming for the 75% effectiveness mark or striving for continuous improvement, this podcast will guide you in that endeavor.
[00:00:00] Gene Tavernetti: Welcome to Better Teaching, Only Stuff That Works, a podcast for teachers, instructional coaches, administrators, and anyone else who supports teachers in the classroom. This show is a proud member of the BE Podcast Network shows that help you go beyond education. Find all our shows@bepodcastnetwork.com. I Am Jean Taver Netti, the host for this podcast. And my goal for this episode, like all episodes, is that you laugh at least once and that you leave with an actionable idea for better teaching. A quick reminder, no cliches, no buzzwords. Only stuff that works
[00:00:38] Gene Tavernetti: My guest today is Dr. Frank Rodriguez. He's in his 32nd year working in school systems as a teacher, principal, district administrator, consultant, professional developer, and operator of student based programs including after school, tutoring, sports, and summer programs. Frank is the president of Rye School Programs, which currently operates after school and summer programs for more than 4, 000 students in districts across northern Los Angeles County.
[00:01:07] Gene Tavernetti: He is also the managing partner of a professional development group called Schools Next, which, full disclosure, I am a partner in. His position at RISE has given him a bird's eye view of students at both ends of the K 12 spectrum in this post pandemic educational environment. Kindergarteners entering the system who are struggling in ways he hasn't seen in his 30 years working in schools, and first and second year college students, recent graduates, and others at the other end of the K 12 system.
[00:01:38] Gene Tavernetti: who are primary applicants for entry level positions with RISE and his after school programs.
[00:01:43] Gene Tavernetti: This bird's eye view led him eventually to start a new endeavor, Schools Next. A part of this group is doing work to educate parents on understanding the impact of screens on their child's development and to provide some alternatives to what has become a ubiquitous presence in our lives.
[00:02:02] Gene Tavernetti: Individuals Technology. Today we're going to discuss the evolution of this work and focus on the parent education component in particular.
[00:02:11] Gene Tavernetti: Welcome Frank, glad to have you on Teaching Better. Only stuff that works,
[00:02:18] Frank Rodriguez: Thank you. I appreciate that.
[00:02:19] Gene Tavernetti: full disclosure that I'm a part of this group and what that means is that we're pretty familiar with one another. We met 20 some years ago, and we almost know exactly because we met when your son, Pablo was born.
[00:02:35] Gene Tavernetti: So it's always, that's always the benchmark and how old is Pablo?
[00:02:39] Frank Rodriguez: He's going to turn 20 next month,
[00:02:41] Gene Tavernetti: Wow. Okay. So we've known each other for a long time and had a lot of common experiences. But we're here today to talk about parent education and the work that you and your group is doing in that area. But before we talk specifically about that, could you.
[00:02:56] Gene Tavernetti: expand a little bit more on how you got there, that, that parent education was going to be a critical component.
[00:03:03] Frank Rodriguez: Yeah, we started off not even thinking about the parent education piece, frankly, I think, you know, it's a kind of a longer origin story. It'll probably take up the whole 40 minutes. Um, I think if I go back to the pandemic in 2020 our after school program group was one of the, was actually probably the first or the second in L.
[00:03:24] Frank Rodriguez: A. County, which is the biggest county in the country to open up within three weeks of the pandemic shutdown. And so what we did was we, working with school districts, we opened up what we call student learning centers. The student learning centers were places where kids would come, and it was initially the children of essential workers, you know whether it was grocery stores and gas stations or police officers, fire department, etc.
[00:03:46] Frank Rodriguez: And that we opened up for essential workers, children, like, I'm going to say on March 30th, and I think we shut down March 13th. So that tells you how quickly that was. We saw pretty quickly was that kids We're getting the transactional content that was being taught through Zoom, but they were struggling more with a person to person interaction.
[00:04:05] Frank Rodriguez: And so we really emphasize that the people in the class and our staff who was in the classrooms would be interacting with the kids. Closely, and helping them not just deal with the content, but deal with each other. Wearing masks, separating, all these things that were needed of the kids, right? So that was 2020.
[00:04:23] Frank Rodriguez: Came back and really back into full gear as after school programs in 21, 22. And we started noticing pretty quickly that there were a lot of mental health concerns, kids cutting themselves in particular. Moving into 22 23, a lot of mental health concerns with self harm threats students threatening to hurt themselves.
[00:04:45] Frank Rodriguez: And so we really started thinking about the mental health component of the post pandemic learner. So, that's kind of the context of the after school programs. But just backing up for a minute I was a, a Vice Principal in the late 90s, 97, 98. was my first year at the elementary level.
[00:05:02] Frank Rodriguez: And I worked at a year round elementary school, which means that we had a group of kindergartners starting in July, a group starting in August, a group starting in September, and a group starting in October. And that was great, because what it taught me, I remember my principal at the time who was a very experienced educator, said, you know, bring tennis shoes 'cause you're gonna need 'em the first week of kindergarten for each of the tracks 'cause you're gonna be chasing a few runners.
[00:05:25] Frank Rodriguez: And she was right. But what I also saw in the course of that month were like, you know, track A that came on in July was that there would be a lot of kids hanging onto their mom's legs that first week of the year. A few runners in every classroom, but by the third week they assimilated and they kind of knew What the expectations were they needed to be going home at the end of the day And they were able to just assimilate and then track b came on in august Same pattern, right?
[00:05:53] Frank Rodriguez: But I didn't know it was a pattern yet until Track C came in September, and then Track D in October. And what you saw was a pretty cyclical kind of expectation of kindergarten behaviors. So that's, that was kind of like my entry into understanding what a typical kindergartner can make the kindergarten.
[00:06:10] Frank Rodriguez: So now fast forward again to 2023, and we started noticing that kindergartners were not assimilating nearly as well. That we had TKers and kindergartners who were 4, 5, 6 years old. Who maybe hadn't gone to any preschool or had been home the whole time and even first and second graders who missed their TK and K years.
[00:06:28] Frank Rodriguez: And what we saw with them was that they were having a hard time assimilating. It wasn't just the first three weeks of the school year. We're talking April, May, and June. We're still having kids running out of classrooms, climbing trees, just really unsocial or if not anti social behavior. So it really started making us think about what did these kids miss during the pandemic that led to this, you know, lack of social awareness, social cues, knowing how to deal with conflict, knowing how to negotiate rules, things like that.
[00:07:00] Frank Rodriguez: So that was one end of the spectrum that I started kind of, Looking at in 22, 23, I'm going to say that school year prior to that, it used to be that we put our newest program instructors in our after school programs with the youngers, with the Ks and ones. Now we put our most experienced ones in K and one, because that's who has the most behavior issues.
[00:07:19] Frank Rodriguez: So anyway, that's one group. Secondly, in our after school programs, we hire a lot of 18, 19, 20 year old recent high school graduates. And just, you know, you mentioned my son who graduated in 2023 from high school. I had a daughter who graduated in 2019 as well. And what we noticed, 'cause I'm the primary, along with my partner, my pri the primary interviewer of new hires into RISE is that the 2023 group, the first group, fully post pandemic that we were hiring.
[00:07:50] Frank Rodriguez: Was very different socially from the 2019 group in terms of how they communicated, being able to look at you, but even knowing basic things like, you know, can you name your cross streets? And so it really made me pause, and I was happy to be done with working in schools other than the school programs.
[00:08:10] Frank Rodriguez: But it really made me pause and think, well, what's going on that is making kids both at the entry of K 12 struggle so much and kids at the, you know, 11th and 12th grade, or 12th grade and post 12th grade struggle so much. At the same time, we saw this looming kind of specter of uh, AI coming on, and schools adopting it kind of, you know, haphazardly.
[00:08:34] Frank Rodriguez: So I started having a lot of conversations with well with you. You were one of, one of the many, but with many Administrators, superintendents other consultants, parents, educators, and asking how are you guys preparing for this oncoming rush of AI, even as you're still learning how to assimilate all the technology that came out of the pandemic and how kids have changed.
[00:08:57] Frank Rodriguez: The post pandemic learner is wired a little bit differently than the pre pandemic learner. How are you going to deal with that? What's your school look like in 2032? Or even five years from now, and most superintendents that I talked to said, we have no idea how to get through tomorrow, you know, we're dealing with staffing shortages, we're dealing with behavior issues like you're talking about, we're dealing with high absenteeism from both staff, classified staff, certificated staff, from parents a lot more antisocial behavior as well, societal schisms, dealing with all these things, we are not thinking of five years from now, and so that's kind of what led us to Eventually start this group schools next to look at how to help schools plan for five years from now, how to integrate technology, you know, intelligently and how to.
[00:09:43] Frank Rodriguez: Really balance social interaction with technology. As I kept on interviewing teachers, I came across a group of technology coaches in one of our school districts, in Lancaster School District. And when I was interviewing them, I asked them, What do you guys think about a detox in kindergartners?
[00:10:03] Frank Rodriguez: In kindergarten take away their technology, just no technology for a year to detox them from the negative influence of, you know, they're on a smartphone at 2, 3, and 4 years old. You see them in the restaurant, you see them at Target, in the shopping carts, etc. And they said, that's a horrible idea. And we thought it was a great idea, but they said it was a horrible idea.
[00:10:24] Frank Rodriguez: Well, why is it a horrible idea? It's a horrible idea because You are punishing classroom teachers who might actually be using technology well, even in kindergarten. They could be using it for diagnostic, they could be using it for grouping, they could be using it for some individualized reteaching while, you know, in smaller groups.
[00:10:43] Frank Rodriguez: So you've got teachers who are using it very well, and you are punishing them because of what's happening before the kids come to school. And that was like this light bulb moment for me, like, oh my gosh, what is happening from zero to five? That is rewiring his kindergartners. We've seen the behavior issues.
[00:11:01] Frank Rodriguez: We've seen the unsocial behaviors, but but what's, what's causing them to go, you know, to be acting in the way that they're acting. And it's a lot of what's happening from zero to five. And so started doing some research on that. You know, we've talked about a number of books, Stolen Focus by Johan Hari and Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt.
[00:11:23] Frank Rodriguez: About how the brain is literally being rewired. And it's one thing for even adolescents and young adults and adults, but when we're talking about 2, 3, 4, 5 year olds who are spending hours on screens, on individualized screens, with no interaction, it's impacting their societal, their social awareness cues, their language development, cognitive development.
[00:11:48] Frank Rodriguez: And so that's what led us to start thinking about parent education. Like how we need to work with the parents, on them understanding this, because technology and social media is insidious, right? And the books that I just mentioned talk about it as well. They they'll give you the free Google Map, so you'll get on your phone.
[00:12:08] Frank Rodriguez: But half an hour later, you're still on your phone. And it's happened to adults, and so as a result, it's happening to the kids as well. And what we had to do was bring an awareness level to parents. So we've developed two modules for parents so far. Module one is Screen time in social media and the impact on your child's cognitive development.
[00:12:30] Frank Rodriguez: And we're
[00:12:31] Gene Tavernetti: I interrupt you for just one second, Frank because you talk about developing a module, and as you describe this issue very eloquently, And, you know very clearly of what the issues are with regards to screen time and the impact of not being able to go to school and get socialized and everything that you just talked about.
[00:12:56] Gene Tavernetti: But the idea, and we're here to talk about parents, but the, important component that I think people need to know listening is that this is not, okay, we're going to parents because many times if you ask teachers, well, well, why is it so hard to teach kids? Well, it's the parents. And then you ask high school teachers, well, how come it's so hard to teach the kids?
[00:13:16] Gene Tavernetti: Well, they didn't learn it in elementary. And so the idea of this group is to go the entire system to talk about from board members to parents so that everybody's in sync.
[00:13:30] Frank Rodriguez: absolutely. Actually I've got a little diagram on my whiteboard here that shows the three big pieces of Schools Next slash RISE school groups, school programs. And that's, one of them is The parents, the parent education piece, particularly from zero to five, but really all the way into high school.
[00:13:48] Frank Rodriguez: But the second piece is working with schools from, like you mentioned, board members you know, to classroom teachers on developing an instructional vision. That integrates technology. We're not luddites. We're not saying, you know, throw it all out. If you do that, you're living in an environment where you're the only ones doing that.
[00:14:08] Frank Rodriguez: You've got to integrate technology intelligently. And so we've got a big component of what we're doing. You know, there's a book that we're working on together as well that addresses that balance instructional day so that it's not the software companies deciding what the school day looks like. It's educators deciding what the school day looks like based on their instructional vision.
[00:14:27] Frank Rodriguez: So that's the second component. So parent data is one component. Working with the schools as a second component, and even in our RISE school programs, we have over 4, 000 students in our programs. And this is data that I've shared with you and more data that I've got about For example, childhood obesity, and then with that, type 2 diabetes that happens because of a lot of sedentary behavior resulting from screens.
[00:14:53] Frank Rodriguez: We went over all this data with our staff. Many of our staff are 18, 19, 20 year olds, like I mentioned, and when we had them turn off their phones. So they could, it was like they were giving up a lung, you know, they had a hard time putting their phones away, but we made them go through this information, and we made them reflect on their practices, and we put some things in place at our school program level.
[00:15:18] Frank Rodriguez: I can tell you three right off the bat is we're working on durable skills. You know, durable skills, life skills, 21st century skills, soft skills communication, collaboration, critical thinking, being able to take turns, being able to play games, being able to follow rules, things like that. So we're working on that directly in the after school programs.
[00:15:39] Frank Rodriguez: We are giving them Indoor unstructured time just to be able to play games and learn how to lose and then third is we are cutting out technology babysitting. So no more putting the movie on for 20 minutes at the end of the day every day. Because if you add that up, 20 minutes a day, 180 days a year, You know, we're talking about 60 extra hours of screen time for no reason, for no benefit.
[00:16:08] Frank Rodriguez: Let the kids interact with each other. You mentioned my son. He's worked for us the last couple of years and one thing that he came home this summer and he mentioned was you know, this kid, he was working with six and seven year olds. He said, you know, these kids don't know how to lose. They lose at a game during recess and they throw a fit.
[00:16:27] Frank Rodriguez: They start throwing balls, they run off, they get angry, they hit. And if you think about, again, as a three, four, five year old, you're playing a game on your parent's smartphone or on your own smartphone and you're playing a game and it starts going south on you, you start losing, you just hit reset, right?
[00:16:46] Frank Rodriguez: You just hit reset or restart. You don't have to learn how to lose. And that's what we think that technology, the unstructured, kind of thoughtless turning over of time to technology has done, is that it's really impacted kids in those developments. That those developmental pieces that are so impactful in being able to negotiate, being able to collaborate, being able to work together.
[00:17:10] Frank Rodriguez: So, so yeah, long answer your question, but we are working on this as a whole system. It isn't just the parents, it isn't just the schools, and it isn't just the after school programs for sure. It's all three, three of them together. So,
[00:17:22] Gene Tavernetti: But one of the things that I thought was when you first flew the idea of including parents, a parent component into this school's next system was the fact that you always had a parent component in your after school program. Isn't that correct?
[00:17:40] Frank Rodriguez: we always had interaction with parents in that we We really release students to parents and we talk to them a lot so we always have a really good pulse on what's going on in the community, in the school. We've never had a formal parent education program. This is really the first time. Some of our staff do parent education on the side and some of our program managers do, like, parent university type events, but those are pretty, pretty small, pretty targeted audiences.
[00:18:11] Frank Rodriguez: This is a much broader, it can apply to any parent. And that we haven't done. That, that, that part is new.
[00:18:19] Gene Tavernetti: So what's going to be included in the, in this new part as you're working with parents?
[00:18:23] Frank Rodriguez: So going back to the two modules that I was mentioning mod, one of the modules is screen time understanding, Understanding the impact of screen time and on social media and individualized screen time in particular on students development. And so there's, how do I work through that? How do I provide the kids alternatives?
[00:18:44] Frank Rodriguez: We actually have a pretty cool acronym we came up with for helping the parents deal with, if you're going to take the technology away, what are you going to do in place of it, right? So the technology is I'm sorry, the acronym is SMART, S M A R T, which I know a lot of things use that acronym, but S social interaction, like replace it with social interaction in some way, and I'll give you an example of that is when I have, like, my daughter's 14 and when her soccer team comes over to the house, they know the phones go in a box. And they rebelled the first time, but by the third time they were used to it. So the phones go in the box, and that, so they interact with each other. So S is provides social interaction as a, as an alternative to technology. To the individualized, isolating technology that we're talking about.
[00:19:35] Frank Rodriguez: Moderation. So, there's a lot of data on how much screen time kids are getting, and individualized screen time in particular, like laptops and iPads and.
[00:19:49] Frank Rodriguez: There really isn't a recommendation as to how much they should be getting because it's almost like how much soda should you be drinking? Well, you shouldn't be drinking any. But you can drink a little bit and it's okay. So same thing with this, it's like, how much screen time should a two year old be getting?
[00:20:05] Frank Rodriguez: Really almost none, right? They should be getting their cues from the outside world, instead of from a screen. But how much can they get without you, you know really impacting them? That hasn't been determined exactly yet. There are some recommendations from from a couple of different pediatric and psychology associations, but whatever the recommendations are, we are ways for passing them.
[00:20:29] Frank Rodriguez: So the M is moderation. So S, Social Interaction, M, Moderation, A is Alternatives. You know, let's put aside the game, let's put aside the phone, let's play a game, let's go for a walk, let's go for a hike. There are so many things you could do if the R, Role Model, was doing it as well. And that's part of the insidious part of it, is that the parents, many times, are fine with the kids being on their phone, So that they can be on their phone as well.
[00:20:59] Frank Rodriguez: And so the R in the SMART is role models. The kids need to see people who are able to put their phones away and still negotiate life without, you know, without falling apart. And then finally the T is using it as a tool. Recognizing the technology is supposed to be a tool that you're using instead of it using you.
[00:21:17] Frank Rodriguez: So, that kind of encapsulates what we work on with the parents in that module. And the technology and screen time impact on kids. The second module is, we talked about alternatives a minute ago. So what do you replace it with? Well, what it used to be replaced with, or what it was before 2014, was a lot of books, right?
[00:21:40] Frank Rodriguez: And so what we're working on in module number two is creating a literacy and language rich environment at home. So there's stuff going on in school. Some of, we can't, mostly we can't control, but at home you can't control things like how much print do kids see? How many books do you have in the home?
[00:22:00] Frank Rodriguez: Do they see you doing things like making lists and writing them out? Or is everything on the phone? Because if everything is on the phone, then reading is gonna be there as well. And there's quite a bit of research that shows that reading on a screen, your brain does. It doesn't process the information in the same way that reading it on text, partly because you've got, and you've talked about this before in conversations, is so many things popping up around you that the brain is kind of, you know, the eyes are flitting here and there, instead of just focusing on the words on the page.
[00:22:31] Frank Rodriguez: And so so that second module is developing a literacy. and Language Rich Home, where the parents can give an alternative to here, take a smartphone and go sit over there in the corner. So those are the two modules that we're working on, and we're starting to work on them with districts. We have one coming up next week that we're excited about and we'll be really scheduling quite a few parent workshops starting in January.
[00:22:59] Gene Tavernetti: Now, one of the things that has always impressed me about your afterschool programs, and I think the origin story of your afterschool programs and forgive me if I'm not accurate, and you can correct me if it's important, but we're working in a district, and they weren't satisfied with their afterschool program. And so you've been providing professional development for teachers, instructional coaching, administrators, district administrators and really have, we're taking a systems level look at everything. And so they said, Frank, could you do our after school program? And I remember you were wavering like, oh, I don't know, I don't know if I want to do it.
[00:23:43] Gene Tavernetti: But I think the thing that was so different about what you did in the after school program is that you actually brought some integrity to the fact that these kids were supposed to be doing some supplemental schoolwork. And that the provider, the after school providers, were supposed to be working with the kids to provide support for what they were doing at school.
[00:24:05] Gene Tavernetti: And because you knew how the instruction was being done in the school, because you had done that work, you were able to really dovetail and coordinate and make an impact in that after school program.
[00:24:17] Frank Rodriguez: Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. That is pretty much the story. We started with one school, I think 40, maybe 42 students. So now it's what, a hundred fold, 4, 000 plus. But, you know, going back to the pandemic for a second, one of the things that we, and tying it back to this, one of the things that we started doing since the pandemic happened was to hire, New applicants to Zoom because we couldn't do it in person and we needed staff.
[00:24:46] Frank Rodriguez: So we were noticing 2020, 2021, how many applicants were coming on in their pajamas or they were, you know, holding their cat on their laying down in bed. Because again, they had been high school seniors that graduated in 2020, and that was for how you got educated. That was the norm. Many had missed out on first jobs as a result of it.
[00:25:08] Frank Rodriguez: This was the first job they were applying for, and they don't know how to interview. And they don't know how to even answer questions because they haven't done it before. So what we did was, I think in 2022, we turned off the camera. In the beginning of everything when we tell them turn your camera off and turn the camera off and turn your mic off and let me tell you why and then we talk about these experiences that I'm telling you about we had one one was literally shopping at Costco walking up and down the aisles of Costco as she was doing her interview.
[00:25:41] Frank Rodriguez: We had another young man who was leading a baseball practice and every so often he would stop the interview and like yell at the students at the players, you know, no, throw to first base. So we had to retrain even our applicants, right? So what we did was we had to turn off the cameras and we kind of go through our mission statement, which kind of goes back to what you were talking about.
[00:25:59] Frank Rodriguez: It's a value added program. And then when we said, these are our expectations, this is a job. It's not a, it's not a gig, you're not doing Uber, you're not doing Lyft, this is not a, you drop in when you want, this is something we expect you to be reliable for, you know, kids depend on you being there, kids develop relationships with you, and if you want to commit to all that, and if you are in a good space to be interviewed, then go ahead and turn on your cameras.
[00:26:24] Frank Rodriguez: So we had them leave, we had them leave the cameras off for the first 10 minutes of the interview. Because we want them to understand that they are not signing up for a daycare. They're signing up for a value added school program. That has, I mean, we've added now these other pieces, but from the beginning we had fitness, we had enrichment, we had the academic support you're talking about, we had um, uh, languages and dance and things like that.
[00:26:49] Frank Rodriguez: But now we've added kind of in response to what we're talking about. We've added durable skills development, we've added language development, and we've added also social emotional learning, so some SEL lessons that they're not really dealing with, like, what the content of the school might deal with, it's dealing with things like how do you communicate, how do you say, how are you courteous, how do you say please and thank you.
[00:27:11] Frank Rodriguez: So it's easy to run the after school programs, well it's not easy because the work is hard, but it's easy to do it poorly. You know, as many things in education. It is easy to do it poorly. It's difficult to do it well. And I'm really proud of the staff that we have and how dedicated they are to that mission statement.
[00:27:30] Frank Rodriguez: So, anyway, thank you for that that segue for pitching our after school programs because I really am proud of them.
[00:27:38] Gene Tavernetti: Well, one of the things that you've described several times implicitly during our talk here today is the idea of embedding content within other content. So it's not, okay, we need to do SEL. So we're going to go get this SEL program. Students or teachers are going to teach SEL lessons.
[00:28:02] Gene Tavernetti: No, we want to embed it in the instruction. Kids need to communicate more. Are we going to have a you know, a separate time when they're going to do? No, we're going to communicate in the instruction so that everything is coordinated. It's part of a system. It's not. Another thing for the teachers to do or for the parents to do.
[00:28:22] Gene Tavernetti: It's where we're incorporating into what they're already doing.
[00:28:27] Frank Rodriguez: Right, and that's part of our work, obviously, with our young staff. Now, most of our young staff are college students themselves. They're 19, 20, 21, and so they're not teachers. And in some ways, it makes it easier to say, Here, you know, do this and they'll just do it. But in our work with schools, we're really working On that as well, as you're teaching a lesson, there should be multiple points for student interaction, right?
[00:28:52] Frank Rodriguez: For student interaction, for teacher student interaction, for student collaboration, and for partnering up, and for deeper knowledge questions. And that's what's lost. When you just turn over a screen to them and say, you know, I don't want to get sued, so I won't say any actually software companies, but that group's doing 30 minutes of that program over there, and that group's doing 20 minutes of that program over there, and they're not, they're interacting with their screens one on one instead of with each other.
[00:29:20] Frank Rodriguez: And so I think the really important part of the work that we're doing with schools and in our book is to talk about that, that you've got the lesson, and the teacher's interacting with the students, and the students are interacting with each other. And it isn't just a one way relationship with the laptop, you know, my, my older daughter and actually now my son as well.
[00:29:40] Frank Rodriguez: They both are environmental policy majors. She graduated from UC San Diego in 2023. And he's studying that as well now, and they were both impacted by a teacher. in a way that they couldn't be impacted by a screen. I don't even know the guy's name. I think his name is Mr. Young, but he's our, their environmental sciences teacher at Canyon High School where they both attended. And he's the one that drove her into it and then she drove our son into it.
[00:30:14] Frank Rodriguez: So that interaction that can't be replicated by a screen. It can't be. And so yeah, you talk about it's not isolated. Communication time here, SEL time here, Durable Skills time over here, and we should all be together. And that's what I think we've gotten away from in schools, and that's what really Schools Next is doing.
[00:30:34] Frank Rodriguez: And we're starting with the parents because, By the time they get to kindergarten, if you've wired them the wrong way, they're going to really struggle having those interactions, right? So um, that's where the parent dead piece really dovetails nicely to the work we're doing with schools and in our after school program.
[00:30:52] Gene Tavernetti: it's exciting. I'm glad to be a part of it. I'm glad you, you reached out to me. There is so much more, I think, that we can do in schools that teachers, you know, have the impact that you just described with Mr. Young, but they, you know have, have impact on kids, not by teaching additional programs.
[00:31:12] Gene Tavernetti: By good instruction that includes all those things that, that you talked about and those things that we know make well rounded kids is there anything else that you'd like to share with regards to the programs,
[00:31:27] Frank Rodriguez: well, I think, you know, we've talked about this before um, We're not anti technology. I think we are pro smart use of technology and I think parents understanding that, educators understanding that, I think it's really important that, you and I talked a while ago about really when the television back in the 50s came into the American household.
[00:31:47] Frank Rodriguez: households worldwide. It changed the dynamic of interaction in the house, right? It went from sitting in a circle around the radio to sitting facing a screen. It's an amphitheater type seating and that was the norm, but it was a shared experience, right? People typically had one TV in the home. It was a shared experience.
[00:32:06] Frank Rodriguez: So yeah, TVs probably were a detrimental first step, but they were at least a shared experience. They'll go into the movies with a shared experience. What's happened? There's a great book that we've talked about before. Bowling Alone came out in 2000 that talks about how we're already showing isolationist, individual isolationist tendencies, like kind of just not mingling, not socializing with each other.
[00:32:33] Frank Rodriguez: And so that kind of set the recipe perfectly, set the environment perfectly for the iPhone in 2010, getting the forward facing camera. And then Instagram and Snapchat and all of that. And what we've seen is, starting in 2014, the happiness curve that has shown that the happiest people generally in industrialized countries were young people, coming out of the pandemic are the most depressed and anxious people.
[00:33:03] Frank Rodriguez: You know, the ones that, that should be at the prime of life are the ones that are the most depressed and anxious and I'm not going to say it's causal, but there's a high correlation with the fact that's also who spends the most time on social media. And so everything we're talking about, whether it's with parents or with schools or in our after school programs, we understand is happening in a bigger societal context.
[00:33:24] Frank Rodriguez: So we're not saying turn it off and put it away and never use it again. You wouldn't be, you would then be isolating yourself as well. Last weekend we were watching the World Series and my nephew was a very good baseball player, varsity, pitcher of the year in his league as a freshman. And his girlfriend, who's a cheerleader at the same school, were sitting there We're all watching the game, we're by the beach. When I was a high school freshman, I would have said, let's go to the beach and get away from the adults, right?
[00:33:52] Frank Rodriguez: You would have as well. They're sitting there side by side for three hours during the baseball game. And by the way, we're Yankees and Dodgers fans, so we are all into the game. They're sitting there side by side on their phones, and every so often they will share something from their phone with each other.
[00:34:09] Frank Rodriguez: And that was the whole of their interaction for three hours. And I almost made a comment except his mom is sitting right next to them. She's on her phone. So go back to the R in smart role models. It's hard to say you are at the beach. You got the World Series on Yankees and Dodgers first time in 43 years.
[00:34:29] Frank Rodriguez: That's our teams we all root for and you're looking at your phones. It's hard for the mom to say that when she's doing it as well, right? So bigger point is societal context is We've got to take a step back, but we also need to act as educators with the understanding that this is going on. And if we just say, turn it off, then we are, you know, we might as well be yelling in the wind because nobody's going to listen to that message.
[00:34:53] Frank Rodriguez: It needs to be, how do we do this smartly? How do we use it as a tool and not be used by it? So I think that's the message for, you know, at every level of the work that we're doing both together and separately, is that we need to. Be smart about this. We can't just say turn the computer off, turn the TV off, turn the programs up.
[00:35:13] Frank Rodriguez: There is good use for technology. Technology can be really impactful in classrooms in a very targeted way. and so that's, I think the broader message,
[00:35:22] Frank has a question for Gene
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[00:35:22] Frank Rodriguez: but I've got a question for you.
[00:35:24] Gene Tavernetti: Okay.
[00:35:25] Frank Rodriguez: When we started doing this work about a year ago you mentioned, you know, we always had threats, right? We had.
[00:35:32] Frank Rodriguez: You remember being in school and there being the sirens going off and do the bomb thing where you got underneath the desk because the desk is gonna stop a nuclear war uh, a nuclear bomb. Um, And at the time you thought this is just another threat but it'll be contextualized in time. What are your thoughts on that as we've dug into this feature in the in the last year?
[00:35:53] Frank Rodriguez: Do you think that this is just another threat or do you think that it is a little bit more invasive?
[00:36:00] Gene Tavernetti: well, my frame, which I view everything in education has to go, has to do with instruction, teacher efficacy, teacher autonomy, in a sense, and as I saw the use of technology, You know, as you described it in the classroom is that I saw the technology being the boss of the teacher, you know leading the teacher around and so what that meant was, as you described earlier, you know, there might be 3 or 4 different platforms being used for different things in the classroom and that it's so difficult.
[00:36:33] Gene Tavernetti: To mitigate all the issues that you brought up you know that just by setting things aside for a time, setting those things, being the screen time and recapturing the person to person interaction, the adult to student the things that, kids need to learn, you know, being able to to have a role model in learning how to do these things. So I I did a lot of thinking, you know, I've done a lot of thinking about that. I guess because I was focused on all these things that we talked about. I see the impact more. And, you know, you have to defer to someone like, like you who sees you know, has a longitudinal view of the behavior of students that, yeah this is going on.
[00:37:19] Gene Tavernetti: So that's 1 thing. The other thing that became clear to me, and it was in your R of your, you know, being a role model is, you know, how important that the, teachers and parents as role models, they have to buy into this. And one of my, one of my favorite stories is about probably apocryphal, about a mother bringing their child to talk to Mahatma Gandhi. And they said Mahatma, I, you know, I need you to talk to my son. I'm having trouble with my son. And he said, well what's the trouble? Said, well, he's just eating way too much sugar. So he told the mother come back in a week and I'll talk to your son. So the mother comes back in a week and brings him to the Mahatma and the Mahatma looks at the son and says, stop eating sugar. And the mother is upset, says, that's it? That's all you're going to tell him? Why didn't you tell him that a week ago? Says, because a week ago I was still eating sugar. And so we have to understand emotionally what we're asking people to do. So I guess that means that, you know, that we have to, you know, have limited our screen time.
[00:38:31] Gene Tavernetti: You're 18 and 19 and 20 year olds have to limit their screen time because to teach that you have to understand emotionally what that person is going through.
[00:38:41] Frank Rodriguez: Yeah, that's a really good point. I love that. I love that story as well. And I think, you know, we're not pitching anybody else's books here too much, but that Stolen Focus talks about that, the Johan Hari book, how if we don't slow our brains down, it can be overwhelming and anxiety producing.
[00:38:57] Frank Rodriguez: Yesterday, during the election coverage, there was a time when they cut away to a commercial, and I was like, I had two screens on, and I was doing some work, and I had the TV on, And then I looked, it went quiet. I don't know if you saw it as well. I looked up at the screen, and it was a countdown, and it said, This 30 seconds of quiet is brought to you as a gift.
[00:39:19] Frank Rodriguez: And it was just a, and it was just a countdown. And it caught your attention because it was quiet, not because it was loud, you know. And I think that is, like, what you said is if we've got to understand the context of how everybody else is living as well. But boy, if we don't stop, if we don't have parents take a step back and see what's happening to their three year old because they're on that smartphone, then it takes something like that to make you realize it sometimes that there is so much noise and it's hard for us to tell people to stop it if we don't stop it ourselves.
[00:39:58] Gene Tavernetti: Right. I think that's a great place to, to end this conversation. I really appreciate you spending time and sharing your thoughts about this. I think it's important work and I'll have to have you come back and talk about some of the impacts sometime.
[00:40:11] Frank Rodriguez: Thank you. Appreciate that.
[00:40:12] Gene Tavernetti: All right.
[00:40:14] Gene Tavernetti: If you are enjoying these podcasts, please give us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts, and you can find me on Twitter, x at G Tabernetti, and on my website, tesscg. com, that's T E S C G dot com, where you'll get information about how to order my books, teach fast, focused, adaptable, structured teaching, and maximizing the impact of coaching cycles.
[00:40:42] Gene Tavernetti: Thank you for listening. We'll talk to you soon