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 Gene Tavernetti 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.
A little more than two years ago, Dr. Frank Rodriguez brought together a group of colleagues from across the country to discuss an issue he had been encountering in his afterschool programs.
The impact of screens on children and the behaviors that seem to emerge as a result of excessive screen time.
After meeting virtually for several months, the group began gathering in person to more deeply examine the issue, identifying specific challenges schools were facing, and exploring what might be done to mitigate some of those behaviors.
Over time, the work evolved into developing a systematic approach that schools could use to address what we began to see as runaway technology, where technology was driving the conversation rather than serving as a tool to support learning.
Not long after the idea emerged that a book should be written, one that would do more than simply point out the problem.
We wanted to identify the issues clearly and more importantly, outline practical systems schools could implement to address them instead of just saying, isn't this terrible?
We wanted to offer solutions that we knew could work.
That effort led to the book Digital Captives, Helping Schools strike a balance between humans and hardware.
Written by Frank Rodriguez, Donna Smith, and myself, gene Taber.
Today we're gonna talk about that book and we're joined by a friend of the podcast and a respective voice in education, Bart Hoffman, who will guide the conversation as we explore what schools can actually do to address this growing challenge and the benefits educators may gain from reading and applying the ideas in this book.
I think you're gonna enjoy this conversation.
So very excited to have, uh, an old friend Bart Hoffman here today to talk to us about our new book, digital Captives.
So Bart, uh, so happy and and thankful that you're here to conduct this interview with us.
Bart: Thank You
You argue that schools have shifted from producing digital natives to becoming digital captives.
What does that shift really mean?
Frank: we started this work thinking about how students were changing over the course of, you know, the years following the pandemic.
Gina and I are talking and thinking about.
The start, our start of the start of our work together, back in the early part of the century, in 2004, I think 2005, um, how we, the optimism at that point was about how the technology was gonna really transform education and make, and the students were gonna grow up in it in a very healthy way, um, and be, and be digital natives in the way that we were digital immigrants
too.
what happened
in actuality from our perspective is that everything shifted so
fast.
Everything from, social media to, to now ai, but also just the internet and, and quick cut videos.
that really shifted how students think and, and how we do as well, and how we interact with each other.
And at some point it tipped the scales to where they went from being natives to really being.
Captives to the screens, whether the screens be at home, in the phone, in the form of phones and tablets and TV or the, or at school in the form of tablets and Chromebooks.
Gene Tavernetti: in addition to, in addition to that, the, the work that Frank does in his rise after school programs, he was able to see, these differences manifest.
I mean, they were very clear differences, kids not being able to, uh, to pay attention as well.
Executive function were not where, uh, typical five year olds, 10 year olds were.
And so it was, uh, it wasn't just something that we had read in a book.
I mean, Frank was experiencing it every day with his folks.
Frank: Yeah.
And
if I can piggyback on that, actually I'm gonna say that even more than myself, my staff was experiencing it and we were experiencing it from like four year olds through 22 year olds.
Because, you know, we, we employ a lot of 18, 19, 20, 22
year
olds,
uh, in our afterschool programs, tutoring programs, summer programs, et cetera.
And we were seeing that, that they were acting differently in terms of like communication, how they, how they wrote, but also even things like eye contact or how we conducted interviews, you know, shifting to zoom how many would show up in their pajamas on the interviews.
So there was definitely a shift there, but we also noticed it in the programs with like four and five year olds.
Like Gene was saying, that we're having a difficult time.
Assimilating to what the school structures were like, partly 'cause they missed preschool, but also partly because they were coming in, it seemed to us at the time, wired a little bit differently.
So we were having those issues with four, four, and five and six year olds who were like running outta
classrooms
in ways we hadn't seen before.
But also we had like seven and 80 year olds cutting themselves, doing self-harm threats.
Uh, kids that, you know, seventh and eighth grade talk about depression in ways that they hadn't.
So
we know that
something
shifted at, initially, we attributed it to the pandemic.
This is 2022 we're talking about.
As we
got further from that and we got more into post pandemic life, we saw that those things weren't subsiding and that there were some other things tied to it as well that were going on.
Not just academically, but also communication wise and social emotionally.
So I think that, um.
That we saw that something had tipped in the kids and the pandemic was a huge tipping point.
As we got further into the research, we found that really it started prior to
that.
Bart: Could you talk a little bit more about when you realized that technology was moving from augmenting instruction to replacing it?
Frank: I mean, we've been working in schools for together for 20, going on 22
years.
when,
when schools first started bringing technology, I mean, I was a teacher in the 1990s and she was a
teacher in
the 1980s
and we had, you know, like one laptop or one, one, uh, one
desktop
and you played
Oregon Trail
on it or whatever.
Uh, you use it for word processing.
In
the early two thousands, we started seeing, you know, three or four or five
imax
uh, and we talk about this in the book, the evolution of that, how those then got replaced by
laptop.
And then the Chromebook card came in
as broadband expanded, at some point in about
2014. I think that's a
hinge point for us in our book and other books about this as well.
In the work by Jonathan Hyde and Johann Hari, about 2014, there was some sort of tipping point where like all of a sudden all the hardware was in place and what happened right at that point?
If you think back to it historically, and we talk about this I think in chapter one, that No Child Left Behind went away at the end of 2015.
Um,
and what came in to replace it, um, essa, every Student Succeeds Act was a lot more, you know, like personally tailored instruction, less accountability on, on assessments.
Not
that.
You know,
drug
coding accountability is great either.
But once that
shift
happened,
through the
E-Rate, um, funding happened where funding exploded to where every district could have broadband and be able to have 30 Chromebooks on at the same time in every
classroom.
Once those things happened, there was like just this surge of programs that came into classrooms.
And so I think the tipping point was probably 20 16, 20 17.
We didn't realize that at the
time, I think
we realized that after the fact that wait a minute, what's happening here?
And so we shifted in our own programs.
We've shifted away from that into like more just interacting with each other type of work because we've seen the shift happen in the school day, in the afterschool programs and as a result of COVID.
So I think all of those things together really kind of brought it
together.
Gene Tavernetti: And then I think for me, as I was working with, with schools, during COVID, I mean basically I thought I was retired on, you know, March 13th, 2000, and when,
uh.
The interest from the districts were, okay, can you coach us in how to do this distance
learning how, how to do, how to do this, this virtual learning.
And so, the schools got so wrapped up in that, how do we, how do we continue to provide services
to kids,
even though they knew they weren't doing a good job, but
because
of the things that, Frank had talked about.
I mean, there were some schools that would just check out the Chromebooks.
So the kids had, uh, they were available for lessons, and they did the best they could during that process.
But when they came back, the teachers didn't give
it
up.
The
teachers, it was almost like they were doing the same type of virtual lessons, but in person with
the kids.
And so they are the ones that weren't giving up The laptops and the Chromebooks when we, when we came back.
so even though stuff was happening before the pandemic, that distance learning, that
whole,
way to look at, that distance learning really made an impact on, on moving forward.
So
that
really.
that really
showed me the captivity part.
They were, they were captive at that point.
Bart: So in a sense, the pandemic didn't create the problem, it accelerated it.
What became normalized that should have remained temporary?
Frank: I mean,
I think
education being transactional.
We talk about this as well
in the book,
how, to me,
uh, to bar to, to jean, to you, um, who are lifelong educators.
education is
transformational.
And at that point
out of necessity, I mean, we understand we were working in schools.
We were all working in schools at the time on March 13th,
like,
like Jean mentioned, um, it became transactional.
We had to have some sense of normalcy for
the kiddos.
And so
we transitioned into,
um, into the Zoom learning and to, you know, Google meets learning.
Some of that never went away.
We, um, walk into classrooms now.
I think what differentiates our book, uh, from others that are really, that are really well written, but what differentiates us is that we're actually in classrooms.
We were in classrooms together yesterday.
Um, we were in 22 classrooms yesterday.
I sat and planned lessons with teachers on Monday.
Gene tomorrow is gonna go back and observe classrooms, uh, at a high school.
And what we notice is there is such a plethora of material.
There
are so many companies that are vying for that digital dollar.
You know, that it overwhelms teachers' decision making.
And I
think what's happened is that it's become like almost, too much riches.
And I think that's what instead of, instead of like really thinking about what am I trying to achieve with this lesson,
um, it's
become more like, what of all these offerings that I can have digitally can the kids partake in?
And I think that is what should have gone away that didn't go
away.
Bart: So based on all your observations, what most concerns you post pandemic?
Gene Tavernetti: I think it goes back to things that we were doing 20 years ago.
Just, you know, how do we present lessons?
Well, and the way we always talked about, uh, instruction is in
a well-designed, a well-designed lesson, which includes those transformational
elements that, that
Frank was talking about.
So there is the teacher is leading.
Students in conversation, in structured conversation, in lots of checking for understanding, in lots of, uh, making sure that the, the kids are paying attention, which, which wasn't happening again, uh, during, during the pandemic, and which just was just assumed when you had the Chromebook out.
you know, going back to some foundational things that, that, the research that we're, that we're looking at, I mean, it started in the fifties, sixties, that nothing's been disputed,
but,
uh, in this ageist society, there's just no, there is no, uh, institutional memory
for stuff,
you know, every, every 15 years.
It seems like we're starting brand new,
brand
new.
The things that we started out doing when we were working together, talking about, uh,
using, uh, mini whiteboards, you know, to check for understanding.
It's like we go back again.
And never heard of it.
Oh.
Oh, really?
Where did these come
from?
And so, uh, I, I, I think, you know, a lot of what we talk about in the book is, is, has been foundational since the eighties.
Frank: I think, if I can piggyback on that, I think obviously those are all like classroom based concerns and a hundred percent I agree with 'em.
I was telling, uh, Jean yesterday about a post that I came across, um, recently, and it said, it was a post-it
that I wrote in 2015
and I found it in a closet
somewhere.
And
it said in 2000, and I wrote this in 2015, in 2005, we were working
with teachers on using whiteboards
to check for
understanding.
In 2015,
we're working with
teachers on using whiteboards to check
for understanding.
And the question is, in 2025, we'll be using whiteboards.
And the answer was, yeah, that's what we were working on last
year.
You know,
uh, so it's, it's like gene's talking about, it's like the stuff just goes away.
In the book, we talk about, um, two really well-known metaphors in education.
One is a Rip Van
Winkle, you
know, going to sleep and waking up a hundred years later.
And he wakes up and he recognizes nothing.
He looks around, he sees airports and he sees, you know, cars and everything.
He's got no idea what anything is until he walks into a
school and then
he feels like, oh, I recognize this, this is a school.
Right?
So that's one we talk about, but we also talk about the pendulum.
And the pendulum is actually even more well known in these, just these dramatic swings in practice.
now we're seeing some backlash, I think.
And just in the last three days there's been a, an article in the New York Times, About, um, you know, iPads in kindergarten and parents starting to rebel against that.
That was yesterday,
the, the 10th.
Uh, on Friday.
On Monday there was an article in education, uh, next, and it talked about, um, it, it was, uh, called logged in, tuned Out regarding middle school and high school students.
They're on their Chromebooks.
They tune out and we see that in practice when we're in the classrooms like we were yesterday.
And there was another article by the, the gentleman who wrote a Digital Delusion, which is kind of a
companion,
not a companion, but a complimentary book to ours.
And he pat some data about how as schools locked in to more and more digital, the nap scores kind of just hit a plateau and then have, have,
uh, fallen over the last, over the last 10 years.
So that's all instructionally.
And
so what we're seeing now is this pendulum possibly swinging back the other way towards, uh.
Yeah,
like do away with
the screens.
Well, you can't do that.
You know, kids need to be able to interact with technology in a healthy way and which is what we talked about, just having balance.
but I wanna go back to what Jim was talking about in your
question about what most scares you.
And I'll
tell you what most scares me is, is broader, actually the
schools,
um, Johann Hari and still focus talks about this.
Jonathan Hyde talks about an actions generation, but I think to me, the ones that even hit it more on the head are Nicholas Carr,
like
in Super Bloom and, um, Timothy Wu and, in, uh, attention Merchants, and even going back to Neil Postman, uh, in the 1980s,
um,
about how if adult attention spans and ability to
focus and communicate well.
And have multiple perspectives.
If those are going
downhill, then what happens to the next
generation?
You know?
And we talk about that in the book, like a second grader or a third grader who's being acclimated to more and more intensification as far as what will get their attention more and more gamification.
What
will they need in the fourth grade when the fourth, they need more because a dopamine rush just won't be the same, right?
So you keep on accelerating and augmenting that.
What happens when those kids become, you know, voting age?
And what we're getting is very disposable.
Attention
spans, I think
is how I would refer to it.
And I think that's what scares me the most is how do we tackle the huge issues we have, not just in the country, but in the world when we have.
A citizenry in 20 years
who have attention spans of 1920 seconds, which
is what the research shows.
Most recently, they can, you know, college students in a,
I think
it was a 2023 study, they have attention spans of about 20 seconds.
People our age are about two and a half
minutes, but we grew up analog, Right?
What happens when today's second grader
is in college?
What will the attention span be then?
And
when they're running the
country?
So
I think that's what scares me even more globally than
what's going on in the classrooms.
Gene Tavernetti: And And I think something that also
is scary is talking about the, um, the different timeframes.
10 years, 15
years,
you know?
So now we have, uh, teachers, teachers and administrators who since this is so normal, they don't see any dangers.
You know, they have to be, they have to be pointed out.
But once they're pointed out, it's very, it's very clear, you know, that you walk into a classroom and all the laptops are up.
You know, we know the teacher can't see, you know, they're, oh sure there's a monitoring program, but it's just not, it's just not the same.
And so, so much has been normalized and, and it's very difficult, you know, we'll do a staff development, we'll do a training for administrators, and we have to tell 'em, shut your laptops, you know, get off your phone.
And that's
what, that's the,
what we're talking about is, is that issue with kids.
So, so it is, uh, bigger than schools, like you say, it's, it's, adults really have to really have to follow that lead and first of all, acknowledge that they're there as well.
Yeah.
And that it's not okay.
We want things to be okay.
It's not okay.
Uh, but, but we're also competing with, technology companies that are, you know, funded by billionaires and,
and it's just the promises that
they,
that
they make,
uh,
they're
too seductive.
Frank: Tim w talks about this in attention merchants, how things that have become
normalized,
that
were not
like
having
a
phone at the dinner table that just was not
the
norm
before.
Right.
Or, you
know, back in the,
maybe early
2010s, if the phone rang at
church,
you know, the priest might make a joke about it.
Oh, God's calling.
You know, now it's like something
you expect
the
phones
to
ring in
church and it's,
and
there shouldn't be,
but it's become like,
just
normalized, like, like Chino was
talking
about.
So I
think
in,
uh, in chapter four
we
talk
about,
um, creating a
a filter in classrooms for
friction
just
to
slow down and to be
more thoughtful
about
what
we
bring
into classrooms.
When
you're
thinking
about
a textbook adoption,
it takes about a year and a half, right?
To, to adopt a textbook.
You have to put it out to all the different stakeholders.
You have public
viewings of it, you know, do a seance
over it.
And to finally
adopt
a
curriculum.
Or
I can just go online and download an app and have it in front of kids, you know, in a heartbeat.
And, and there's ways
to work
around
district,
you know,
district, uh,
filters and such.
So
we talk about that,
in chapter four
of the book.
We also talk about
how
this happened
in classrooms, in schools within
a
broader digital
immersion.
It
didn't happen in
isolation.
So
I think
part
of what happened is because
we were all
learning
how to to shop
and be entertained
and book our travel and use Google
Maps
and such,
we didn't notice the
same thing
was
going on
in schools.
And that's partly
why
it snuck up
on us, I
think.
And
it wasn't,
uh, I think
maybe it was Johann Hari
who
talks
about it, um, in stolen focus.
That,
what
COVID did.
It's
almost like that frog
that's
boiling in the,
you
know, in
the water.
And it's turning up
really slowly
and it
doesn't
realize What's happening
to it.
What
COVID
did was it turned
the
heat
up really
fast so that all of a sudden those of us that were able
to step out of it afterwards realized,
Hey, something's happened
here.
That
isn't good.
and
I think
that's
what's,
you know, what's led us on this path.
We started talking about
this
three years ago.
Uh, and I'm
glad to,
to
see
that there's
more, I think voices
out
there now saying the same thing.
Bart: I also hear from teachers who report declines in working memory, sustained attention and task persistence.
What does the research say about what's happening cognitively?
Gene Tavernetti: Well,
in digital delusions, uh,
uh, there's a lot of data that that just shows
declining.
Declining cognitively.
I mean, he's pretty, he's pretty bold in how he, how he says that he doesn't talk about a, a learning
loss, but
he just, you know, he's got data that, that
show
where the, you know, this is the first generation that, that is not doing as well as the prior generation, or
at
least
as
well.
so
there's evidence, there's evidence out there, and it's, it's
pretty
indisputable.
Frank: Uh, and I
think, I
think
he,
um, he talked about that
this generation is
the
first one that is
like the,
the
IQ
is actually lower than the parents' generation by about six points in the
last 120 years.
More recently, just
on, on Monday.
I think he came out with that article that showed where
the
NA scores have
dropped
over time.
But I think, so
that's
cognitively, but I think what we're seeing is even
at
the precognitive
level, even
things like, like holding
information and working
memory.
And being able to carry it from that center to that center that has dropped off, you know, or
things like, uh, being able to
lock in to what's on the board and then bringing that information down and copying
it
and
writing down
here
and
then looking back up again.
That has dropped handwriting, you know, because of,
we run
school programs,
we
have,
you know,
students do
things
and
so we have
instant reports
that kiddos write And
we actually have really
good data.
Going
back and comparing
handwriting
from 2014
with handwriting
from
2024 is dramatically different.
Handwriting of a second
grader
in
2014
is about
equivalent with
handwriting
from
a
fourth
grader now.
So there, that's fine.
Motor skills that are being lost as well.
So it is,
there's those things you
can see that you can
measure.
and
then there's
things that
unless
you're
looking
for them,
you know, you don't necessarily see it.
And so we talk about
a little bit of this
in
chapter six.
We talk
about how.
It's
not
enough
to just
focus on
schools.
You know,
kiddos
are in
schools
about
12%
of the calendar
year,
The calendar year is
8,700
hours and the kids spend about
11
or
1200 of it in
So
what
happens to
the
other
6,000
hours
or 7,000 hours?
so
part of
that is,
is working
at
the superintendent and principal
level,
at school leader level, board level, working with everything from
prenatal
education
providers
to,
you know, colleges
and, and really taking a community effort.
Because
what's happening
in schools is
only 12% of the year.
It's
what's happening
outside of it.
Right.
So
in
our afterschool programs and our summer programs, we've actually really done away, unless the kids
are
doing
Lego
robotics, because we
do want them
engineering and thinking in that way, unless they're doing that or they have homework on their Chromebooks,
they're
basically
not on screens at all.
They're interacting
with each other and.
We put
in
place
a couple of
things that we talk about in the book.
One's called pencil practice, where they're actually learning how to transfer information,
how
to
shift
and lock their focus.
We put
in place like learning centers for them
to
have
to memorize
the
directions
over
there are
such, and then I'm gonna do that for
five minutes and
then
go over
there
and
have
a different set
of directions.
'cause they're not getting
a chance to
practice that when they're just going from one app
to
the
next
on their
screens.
And
so
there's a
cognitive decline,
you know, measured
by test scores
and such.
But then below that,
below that,
there's
a precognitive
skills that we're really worried
about.
and We can
think about
ourselves.
you know,
memorizing phone
numbers.
We used to know thirty, forty, fifty phone numbers.
Now
we
know like
maybe
three, and, and Nicholas Carr talked about
this
in
the
shallows.
Very early
book
2010,
talked
about William James
an American
psychologist
who
compared learning, um, to, you
know,
water
cutting
through
the sand
and how water
cuts through a sand
and
it
creates
a channel.
So the next
time
water
comes the same
way, it'll probably find that channel, right?
Same thing's going on with neural pathways.
It's making those channels deeper and deeper
and deeper.
And so once you practice certain things, like
not
memorizing
phone numbers guess
what
your brain's gonna
do?
Not memorize that phone number, especially if it knows
it doesn't
need
to.
And that's
not,
not as necessary,
but things
like
having,
awareness about the environment.
Like one of the things that
we
noticed
very early
on
with
our
staff applicants, you know, again, our 20, 21,
22 year olds, is we
would
ask
them,
um, where do you
live?
Like
the address,
the cross streets.
And
the
reason we needed to know that is so we
knew like
what schools
to place in that, because we had like 35 schools
they didn't
know the cross streets.
I
live
over by
the Circle K.
Like
what do you mean the circle
K
by the Circle
K
behind the nail salon.
Like we have a lot of nail salons, you know, like you need
to know
how
do you find yourself in
a
three
dimensional
space
if you don't
have that sense of space of geography?
So
I think
what we're
losing
goes
well
beyond
cognitive into like some sociocognitive things that
make
us
be able
to,
to, function.
Gene Tavernetti: And I think without an awareness of what,
what Frank's
talking about, we look for technology
to help us
get out of that.
So, so, and I think again, that's where these, these vendors are so good.
Oh, you have a problem.
Your kids aren't performing well in this.
We got an app.
We
got
a platform.
And so again, the
the irony is, really
shows the captivity.
Like, like, we've got a
problem
caused by this, but the same people are gonna help pull us out, which doesn't happen.
Bart: Could you explain screen inferiority in reading comprehension?
Frank: Yeah.
So Johann Hari
talks about
that in
stolen focus.
Um,
and it's, there's
quite
a
few studies
by
now
that
have shown it that,
because
when
we read,
we
are
tracking
left
to
right,
right?
And
if
we're
reading
a book, things don't pop
out at you.
You're not expecting
things
to
pop out
at you.
Um, there's
a tactile connection.
There's, There's, a connection to the
brain
that
is different
than when we
read on
screens.
When
we
read on
screens,
we're reading, uh, we're skimming and scanning
more.
We're expecting
more things to,
to be
going on with
the, with the,
the
text around
it.
And
so
what his.
Book
shows
is
that
by the time the
kids
are in
third grade,
um, there's about,
about a two thirds of
a
year loss if they're
reading
primarily
on screens
versus reading
primarily,
on text.
and
then that,
that carries, you know, that carries, and we
see that
there's actually
a,
an
article in,
um, I'm sorry, not an article, a quote in the book
from
a
teacher,
who,
you know, she
taught
for
37 years college, a
reading
specialist
and a
college professor.
And,
uh,
she, in a
college class,
she would
give
the, the students
first
day
of class,
a
fourth
to sixth
grade text
just
to see where they were.
And she
said that
over the
course
of
the last 10
years,
there's been a
steady decline.
And their
ability
to read college students' ability to read
fourth
to sixth grade text because
they're
very good
at skimming
and scanning.
They're
not as
good as
that linear
reading
and that
internalizing of
it, I mean,
so it's, it's numbers, it's numerical, you know,
Johann Hari
talks about that,
but we
see it every day
and
we see
it with,
you know, like, like
Kathy
did in the
Gene Tavernetti: you
know.
And
I think also some of the, some
of
the interventions for students, older students who aren't,
uh,
reading
well are based on, you know,
having this
book
in front
of them.
Be learning how to annotate, learning how to ask questions, learning how to, uh, uh, read for prosody.
I mean,
you know, all of
these
things.
Can't
do
it with
a screen.
You just,
you
just can't.
Uh, big, a big push now
is to get
novels back into, into, secondary
classroom or in all
classrooms.
And again, that
has
to be, you gotta be holding,
you gotta be holding
that paper and that paper book
to
be able to do it.
So
I, I think there are just some
things that screens
you
can't
do
we just have to
fess up to that.
Frank: There's a
um, uh,
Barbara King
Solver's book, the Bean Trees,
came
out like in 88 or so, 89, and it's like, it's been passed on in my family.
Every, everybody's
read
it 'cause I have to read it
in
school
' cause she's from Tucson.
And I went to U of
A
and then my son had to read it.
My daughter, I had
to
read it.
Now my
youngest
is reading it and I came,
came
into
a
room
last week
and she was
listening to
a,
something
being read.
And then I
looked at her
and she's got the book
in
her
hand.
It's the
bean Trees.
Um, and
I said,
what, what are
you
doing
there?
And she said, I'm
I'm reading a
book.
And
I said,
no, you're not
reading.
YouTube
is reading.
And she
said,
well,
I'm
following along.
And she's
like,
but look,
I've annotated
it.
So she
understood
that really
she
had to have some sort
of
tactile
connection
to it.
But I told her, you know, you need to actually
be doing the
effort.
Of
having
your brain make
those,
make
that
decoding,
and then,
and
then turn that into
comprehension.
because otherwise
it's not
the
same
level,
not the same level of comprehension.
So,
even
kids
who are like,
you know, pretty bright
and
doing
the work,
even
the
tactile
work of
it
will
fall, fall
into
those traps
of
what's
the
easiest way
to do like Gene
was saying,
the,
the
digital
companies
will say, here,
we'll help
you
do
it.
So
like
in our programs
after
school,
we've told
them,
we
don't
want
you reading
on, you
know, on
the screen
anymore.
Take the
kids
outside,
sit under a
tree and read
a book
for
the same
reason.
They
need
to
hear the
modeling and
they need to, they need to make that connection
in a way
that we
walk
into
kindergarten
classroom sometimes
and
kids
dunno how to
turn a page
' cause
they're
so used to just swiping,
you know, On the iPad.
So there's
something being lost there for sure.
Bart: Why are lower achieving students seeing the steepest declines?
Gene Tavernetti: It
gets back
to,
um,
uh, instruction.
I mean,
it,
it's hard
not to
leave instruction as, as the most
important variable,
which, which I think research, again,
for the past
50, 60 years.
That's one of the, that's one of the, the primary, variables.
And,
and
to be honest,
it's
how to teach
is
not
taught
in
programs
and teacher prep
programs.
In fact, again,
during
CO. You
know, we don't want to blame
COVID for everything,
but they can be blamed for a few things.
I
mean, there were
teachers who
got their credential never
having
set foot in
a classroom.
And so, um, the, the programs, they don't train
teachers.
but
they educate
teachers
about things.
And so they don't, they don't learn how
to teach a lesson,
but
they read
about
different
ways to
teach lessons.
And so I think there's just a,
a
dearth
of,
uh,
of
education
for,
in
pre-service.
Frank: I think
also the, I mean
to
to your question
about
why the
kids who were struggling the
most are struggling more.
we
dedicate
the book to kids who
need to be taught.
You
know,
there are some children who,
who
can
go to the
library on
their
own
and they're fine.
And
we
see
it now
when we
walk
into
the classrooms.
like yesterday
I was
telling
the administrators
I was with,
like,
you
can
tell that the
screens have
made, have
made
the
self-directed kids
continue
to
be
active
learners and
those
who
wanna opt out cannot opt
out.
It's much harder
to
do
that
when
there's
that interaction
with the
teacher,
teachers
modeling, doing
guided practice,
and
making
the kids accountable
moment to moment.
I think
that's
fallen off.
You know,
And I
think
because
that
accountability
has fallen off,
that relationship
has fallen off
between
the teacher
and the, and
the students.
I think that
that's been a
big piece
of it.
But going back,
even
like
Gino was talking about
the
1970s and eighties,
Ruby Payne,
uh,
framework, for Understanding Poverty,
if
you remember that
book, uh,
from, I think it was
the late eighties,
talked about
how
the single most
important
thing
we do as
far
as instruction
is the modeling
Because
the modeling is where you
demystify the learner.
I
mean,
I'm sorry, the
learning.
It, it
makes it,
it makes
it
quit
being magic and
it
becomes, oh, I can
do that too.
And that
with the
modeling
falling
off,
that
demystification
has fallen off.
And I
think
you
see
a lot
of more kids
having
this
learned helplessness
because
they're
not getting that anymore.
So
I
think
that's
why we're seeing the steep declines.
And
again,
the numbers
show
it.
Uh,
we
talk about
this in, in
chapter
one, the Rip
Van Winkle piece,
that instead
of
coming from
the past,
he had
come from
the future.
He had come from 2034
and
told
educators
in 2014,
Hey
guys, I've been to
the future
and
you spent about
$40
billion
a year,
um,
to
get
more
and
more digital
into classrooms.
And
what you're
gonna
see
is
that the high
achieving kids,
they'll do about
the same,
but your
low
achieving
kids,
they're gonna tank.
Like, who would
buy that?
Nobody
would buy
that if
we knew it
in
20
14,
20
15.
We're
realizing it
now
in 20
25,
20 26.
But
I think
that, um, it's
gonna continue.
Earlier
when
you asked
the question about
what
scares you the
most,
I think it's this bifurcation that's
There was
an article
in
New York Times
regarding reading
habits.
People who
are reading
still
are reading more.
But the
number of people who
didn't read
a single
book
in
the
US in
20, in,
20, 24, I think it
was,
was over
50%.
You
know,
so
those of
us that read,
read
more.
' cause
there's more
to
read.
Those of
us
that don't
read
have chosen not to,
there's this big bifurcation happening
that's
gonna
open
up
that inequality
gap even
more.
I
Bart: So thinking about the future then, if this trend continues, what are long-term implications?
Frank: There's
a
good quote
from
a
superintendent.
in,
at the end
of chapter one,
where we
talk
about
there's alternative
paths to this path
that we're on.
And
this particular
superintendent,
really
well regarded,
she, um,
was
like
the, she got the Technology
Administrator
award
of the
year
in California
a few years back.
So
she's
very
pro tech,
but
she
said,
if
this
trend
continues,
we're gonna go
obsolete.
And we're
really worried
about when
we
first started
having
these conversations
two and
a half
years
ago.
It
was
really regarding
the place of
the
mainstream
school
and
mainstream public school
and where that's
going.
And
I
think,
you
know,
coming out
of COVID in
particular,
we're looking at
virtual
schools, you know, homeschooling,
alpha
schools.
There's
all
these schools
that
are
becoming
alternatives to schools, right?
We
feel
like
there's
a really important
place in, in America
for the mainstream neighborhood,
public And
that's
what
I
see
as being
a big concern,
is
that the
more we
hollow that out,
the
more that
it becomes like,
well, if
we're
gonna go
to school
and
watch
a screen,
my
kid can
do that
at
home.
Why
send
him to school?
You know,
we
continue hollowing
that out
till
at
some
point
we hit a tipping
point
that we
can't
get back from.
'cause, you
know,
every year
at, if attendance drops, if enrollment
drops, your funding drops,
gets harder
to fund.
Therefore it gets,
it's
like
you're
running
up a
hill
backwards.
And
so
I think
that
that's what
is a really
big cause for
concern
down this path
that we're
Anjanette McNeely: on.
Gene Tavernetti: And it's interesting
how schools.
are
in competition.
The, you know, our, mainstream
public schools
are in competition
with
charters.
And so they are running,
you
know, how
can
we
provide
what
the
charter's providing
and
what's a
charter,
usually providing
more tech.
And
so
they get
onto this
this treadmill
and they
don't know
how
to
get
off.
And
as
an administrator
it's hard to,
to
back away and say,
well,
wait a second,
maybe we're
not doing the
right
thing.
Maybe
all
these things that I was
cheerleading for,
uh,
weren't quite
the best
thing to do for kids.
So,
so
everybody has
some,
uh,
readjustment
administrators,
parents thinking as
Frank talked
about,
thinking about what happens at home,
how we,
how
we interact
with
our children.
I
think we just have to, you
know,
eat
a big piece
of humble pie
and
say,
we
made a mistake.
Bart: Yes.
You share that learning is fundamentally social.
So how has device heavy instruction changed the social experience of school?
Gene Tavernetti: it's just taking it away.
I mean, you walk into a, you walk into a classroom and everybody's
got
headphones on and looking at a screen,
where's
the interaction?
And
so then,
uh, I'm
gonna
go off on
a tangent here.
We could go off, you
know,
on
AI
to where
now we get
interaction with
ai.
AI
can be
our friends,
which has been
very
scary
for folks.
So we
lose skills.
We
don't know
how
to
make friends.
We don't know how to, to interact
appropriately.
all
of
those
things
contribute
to the
answer being
more tech.
You
know,
we'll
we'll give them some
interaction with the tech.
Frank: yeah,
we'll give 'em an
AI friend.
You
know, there's a,
there's a couple of examples
that
are
in
the
book
and a
couple that didn't
make it,
uh,
that
were
great.
Interview,
interview
quotes
from teachers
the teacher, uh, I
think a
Spanish teacher Um, the
kids
are on their screens
and, uh,
she's six
feet away
and they
will
send her a message
on
the, on
the, device
instead
of just raising the hand and
asking
the question.
She
said,
Tim,
I'm
right here.
You
can ask me the
question.
Oh, nevermind.
And they're
not comfortable
having
that interaction, like
with the
adults.
But
you
know, like
Jean said, you walk into the
classroom and
you
can almost measure
without even
looking.
are
they on screens or not,
because of how
quiet.
it is.
a
lot less interaction.
And Jonathan, he talked
about as an anxious generation,
he's a
professor
at
NYU, right?
Um,
how
those last five minutes
before class started
would
be
the
most
bubbly
time
in
his lectures.
Everybody's talking to the person next to them, what they
did on
the
weekend or whatever,
or
whatever
test is coming
up.
And
now
it's the quietest
time.
It's
the
quietest time
because
everybody's on
their
phones.
And
the
same thing
I
think
happens
in
schools
that
allow phones.
what
used
to
be
the
most
bubbly
time, the
most,
you know,
the
most
interactive
time,
the
periods
right before,
right
before
a
class
started,
or,
or, uh, maybe the in the
passing period
had
become very
quiet.
Everybody's
walking
with their
head down.
so the
social
interaction piece
that's being lost
is
being
lost
in
the classroom during,
during
guided practice, during
closure, during
checking
for
understanding because
it's being done by the bot.
and
it's
being
lost outside of
the
classroom as
Bart: Are there any other things that teachers are telling you about student communication, resilience regulation?
Frank: Yeah.
I
never
had heard
the term
dys reg
dysregulation
before
until
about
two
years ago
about
the
ability to, to
kind
of center
themselves and
find how to, how to
behave.
So definitely
we've heard that.
I
think we
see
it
in our
programs as
well, that, that, all
the
pieces
you
asked
about are happening.
Gene Tavernetti: Well,
and I
think something else
that, that, we've been doing for, for quite
a long time, that the technology has exasperated,
We
have
to
have a
program
for everything.
The
kids don't communicate.
They
don't, oh,
SEL
let's have
a,
let's have
a new program.
And, uh,
kids don't
have
self-esteem.
Well,
we need a new program.
And so we
have
all
of these
programs
that are
supposed to mitigate
again,
the issues that
are being exasperated by
the, the,
uh,
the technology.
But we don't go to technology.
We
don't
remove technology as an
answer.
We bring more
technology in.
And, and
it's just,
that's the, again, we're captive.
Our thinking doesn't move beyond
Frank: There's a, there's a good chapter in
the book,
uh,
that our,
our third,
uh, author
who's not
here
today,
' cause
she's
actually in a
school,
again, what I think
makes us different.
We're actually
in
schools every
week.
But
she
wrote
a
chapter on durable
skills and
integrating those
into
the lesson design.
and then to really
making that be
not
an
add-on program,
but
like,
you teach
a lesson and
you integrate
these skills, right?
You
integrate communication,
collaboration,
critical thinking.
It's not
an aside
and it's
not
a
program.
It's something
you just do
as
part of
your
lesson design.
probably
my
favorite part of
the book
is
the
superintendent
speech
at the end of
and
the
superintendent kind of
is compared
to
a superintendent
in the prologue
of
the book,
who
was
the
gung ho in 2014.
The
setting
is 2014
for the prologue.
Very gung-ho, very
like,
you
know,
let's get
this,
let's
get
this,
we
gotta
get a screen
in front
of every kid.
The
superintendent
in
2034,
which is the, which
is where the epilogue
is, says, we're not gonna do that.
We're gonna dial back.
We're gonna use 'em when, when
we need.
' 'em, But
they're
not gonna dominate our lives.
We don't like what we're seeing with our kids.
And
he
talks about durable skills and communication and collaboration and all of that.
And, and the super fictional superintendent says, um,
not that long ago, computer science
majors were like
the
exploding
major.
Right?
And
colleges
across the country,
some
of
those
kids
can't find a job now
because AI has
taken
that
away,
right?
We
need
to make the kids
durable themselves.
And
it's
not so
much the content,
it's not so much
the program
It's having
those skills
where
they
get to
adapt
and
interact
and
communicate and
collaborate.
That
is
missing.
And
it's not bringing in,
you know,
let's
add
on
an
SEL
program
or whatever.
It's, let's
integrate
it
into what the kids are doing every day.
Very
difficult
to
do if they're on screens
three or four hours a
day.
Bart: So if you were advising a superintendent tomorrow, what's the first move toward balance
Gene Tavernetti: by digital captives?
I, say
it
as a
joke, but you know, as Frank said,
this, is
what's
different about this book
is that
the three of us
who were
involved in this
book.
We're actually working in schools
in
the
aughts.
I never said
that
before
in
the aughts.
We,
were
working and seeing this,
seeing
this work, seeing, seeing,
uh,
what we
talked
about
actually
doing
this work,
you
know, that I'd be, you know
Frank
used
to you'd be at, be in your district doing,
doing that
work.
So we know that
it's
not enough to
identify the problem.
You
know, what, what can
we
do about
it?
It's
gonna be
as
difficult
to
get out
of the
problem
as
it
was
easy
to get in.
But
there
is a roadmap,
and
I
think
that's,
that's
the power
of, of this
book.
There
are
so many folks,
in
the
consulting
business who
like to go in and walk around and
say, ah, you
need to do this, you
need to
do
that,
but
how do you do it?
And
I
think that's
a big
difference
in, in, this book.
Frank: Yeah, I
think
we
spent, we spend basically
the intro
and
chapter
one
presenting
the problem
and
then,
uh, two
through
six
how
to,
how to get
out of that, And
so so
yeah,
read
the
book
would
be the
first
thing.
But
I
think
secondly, it
would
be
like,
let's
go to your
classrooms.
Let's
go
walk
20
classrooms randomly
and
let's just look
at
how engaged are
the students
with
only
one
variable?
Are
they
on screens or
not?
And
what
you're
gonna
see
is
the
more they're on
screens,
the less engaged.
um,
and I don't
need
a, you
know,
a
double
blind
experiment
for
that.
We can
just go
and
walk
into
20
classrooms, or probably
any school in
the
country
that,
any
mainstream public
school in the
country that,
purports
to
be
balanced
and we would see it.
Bart: So what does healthy intentional tech integration actually look like then?
Frank: that's a good
question.
We
were just having
a
conversation
yesterday actually with,
uh,
regarding
how to
use AI to
help us write,
um,
lessons.
that
integrate, collaboration, communication And everything
else.
It's not saying,
I'll
start
by
saying, what it's
not,
Um,
it's
not
like
taking the
Chromebooks away.
You
know, it's
not
that
the
kiddos are gonna
need
'em, they're gonna need
to
be
able to
every
day
we
use
it, we use email.
We
do,
fa uh,
video
conferences.
We're using technology
right now.
Right.
Um,
we're
gonna
put
this
out on social
media
so
we know that we need
to use
the devices.
What healthy
is,
it's
not the default.
The
default
is the
human interaction.
So I'd
be looking at
a
classroom
at
the
elementary level,
let's
say
you know,
the
kids
are
not
on
it
more
than
10%
of
the time
in the
primary grades.
There's
actually, in the
superintendent speech,
in chapter six,
he
gives
this theoretical,
like
graduated,
uh,
digital model
Where
in
kindergarten, first grade,
second
grade.
Kids aren't on, but like 10,
20% of the time,
by
the time you get to high school,
maybe 40% of the
time,
but
it's all
always less than the contact.
They're having human to they can get
the screens at
home.
They
shouldn't, but they
can.
What they can't get at home, at,
at home
is
the
the interaction
with 29 classmates.
Right,
They
can't
get
that.
So that's
a
part
that
I think
would be
a
a key piece in the balance,
Gene Tavernetti: you
know, and, and
many times,
uh,
as
administrators
we're afraid
to
make these
changes.
What's
gonna happen
if we do it?
You know,
when
the kids,
when
we
have convinced a
teacher
to try
a
lesson without
screens,
it's
almost like a sigh
of
relief.
The
kids are so happy
not
to
be on
the
Chromebook
all
period.
Or a big part of,
a
big
part
of
the
period.
They
miss it.
They miss it.
And, And,
that's
that transformational
things that
we're
talking
about.
And,
and
we learn from other people
and
we need
to have
that,
to
have that
contact.
We
are, um,
uh,
we're
stealing
that.
we
just
have
to
have
some,
some courage to try things.
Frank: I
was
in
a in
a math classroom,
an
alternative
education site.
Um,
kids are used to just being on the right?
That's, that's the nature
of an alternative
ed site
a lot
of the
And
we
convinced
the teacher to try
out
a
math
lesson
just six
kids
in
the class.
And
they,
you
know,
she
taught the lesson.
She had
a, a
hook
that
connected to
real life
learning.
She had an objective,
she
taught
the
big idea.
I think it was like computing simple Yeah,
that's
what
it
was.
And
it
was, the hook
was like,
if you have money in
the
bank, uh, what do you
have
2%
interest or 4%
Uh,
and
then she
modeled
and
the
kids did
guided
practice
using
the whiteboards from
2005
or prior to,
and
at
the
end
of
the
lesson,
we're
gonna
sit
down and
debrief the
lesson.
And
the student,
had
walked
out and walked back in
and she
said,
miss, can
we do that again
tomorrow?
Yeah.
The teacher
said,
The
teacher
said,
uh,
did
you
enjoy that?
And she's like, yeah, I
like learning.
You know, So I
think
that
there's,
that,
that's
a
huge aha,
but
we
gotta
convince the teacher to go
back
and do
it
again tomorrow
because
it's
so easy to
not,
right?
yeah, that, that,
uh,
that was
like a
really
telling
moment for me,
both for
what
Gene was
saying
and
for
how
hard
it is
to break those
habits
that have become ingrained in the last
three, 10 years.
Bart: What questions should leaders be asking before adopting new tech, especially ai?
Frank: Well,
there's
a
whole
chapter
on
it,
and
it's,
um, it's called,
uh, using
the
educational
vision or
instructional vision as a filter.
Um,
and that should
be question
number
one is what's
our purpose
here?
As
in
whatever
school
district, there's a fictional school district
called
Irving
School District in the beginning,
what is
our purpose in
the Irving
School District?
What
is
our mission,
our vision?
that
should be
the first filter.
Does
it fit
the
vision
or
not?
If
in
our vision we
say we want
kids who can collaborate,
kids who
can
communicate well, who can
sustain
focus,
who
can read deeply?
Is
this
program doing that?
Let's
say that
it is doing all
those
Then
the
next
question
is,
okay,
what's
it replacing?
Right?
So
that's,
it's always
an
opportunity.
Cost question
is
you
only
have six hours in a day.
How
good
must
this program be
Tola to take some of those
six hours, right?
Because I
mean those, that's
the
most valuable
resource that schools have
is
that
time
with the
kiddos.
And
if you're
gonna take some
of
that
time
away and turn
it over
a screen,
boy
it
better meet your vision.
It
better meet
your
instructional program.
Um,
and then
better
be
doing
a better job of
it.
Um, one last quote.
I know you wants to jump in on this one as well, but from the same Spanish teacher actually, she was talking about, when
you're in a
Spanish
class,
um, or any
language class
you
practice,
right?
well now
you can
practice with
a
bot
instead of practicing with a person.
And
what
the
teacher was
talking about
is
just
how,
much
more formulaic the
practice
is.
Now,
in the past, you know,
you
would,
make
eye to eye
contact.
You
practice
whatever
the phrase is.
You're
learning,
you,
you
giggle,
you embarrass yourself
a
little
bit,
but
you learn from
that,
right?
You
learn
to
deal
with embarrassment.
You learn
how to.
Put
yourself out
there
a
little bit.
But when
you.
getting
that feedback
from
a
screen, it's only, it's only really assessing were you correct or Um, so I think back to your question of what should superintendent ask themselves?
I think it's that it's like, what is being lost besides the time, besides does it fit into our vision?
The, it's a, it's like, what are we losing by, by turning to this program instead of having that human
Gene Tavernetti: you know, and I, and
I think the whole vision thing, there's probably people rolling their eyes,
oh,
we're
gonna have
another vision.
But, but this is
really
an important,
criteria to make
those decisions
because
it's
not like
you're, you're,
uh,
a
new text
adoption that you have a year to do it, and you have all this time because these people
are
coming
out with these apps, you know, one, one after another.
So you have to have some sort
of grounding
to make these decisions, and you have to
make them fairly quickly.
Because you have teachers all that.
They found
this one,
they
found
that one, and then
the one that they gave up that platform, guess what?
They
just have a super improved version.
And so if you aren't grounded
in
what
we
are all about,
you
know,
instructionally,
you're gonna just
flounder
every time, every time we have one
of those issues.
And when
the decisions
aren't made
and they
aren't
clear
to
the teachers,
they
just
think, oh,
there's
capricious.
They,
oh, they're anti-tech.
They're, no, we have to,
we
have
to
have that
vision.
Does this
match
the
vision?
And
it has
to
be
expressed
how
this,
this
decision
was
made.
Frank: Yeah.
Dr. Smith
was in
a, in
a
elementary school
recently, Donna,
just
in
a
morning
walk in two hours
at an
elementary
school.
They, she,
she
and the administrator
that
she
was
walking
with
came across 12
student
facing
apps
that
hadn't
made
their
way
through
any sort
of district
filtering system.
You
know, these
are
apps
that,
that
are, again,
if
student
facing
or
are
taking student time, but
in some
cases
they even
require
like
student
personal
information being entered into
And,
um,
the
administrators
were shocked.
But I
think one,
one
truth
that we've learned
is,
you
know,
going
back
to
your fictional
superintendent,
uh,
and you asked
like,
what
would you
advise
a superintendent
on
is, maybe
the very
first
thing
would
be,
I
want you to
estimate
how
many
minutes
we're gonna
see
students
are
on screens.
And
almost
always,
it's an underestimate.
Yeah.
And
I.
think
If
you
follow
like
at
the
secondary level,
you know, kids go
from period
to
period,
follow
a
cohort of kids the whole
then
you'll get
a real
understanding about, oh man,
it's
true.
They're getting this
in period one, this in
period
two, this in
period
three.
And
some
of
the programs
are good, but
they
should
be
supplementary, they should
not
be
replacing,
right.
They,
they,
they
should be
augmenting, they should not
be
taking the place
up.
And
in
many
places
it's actually become the instruction
Gene Tavernetti: or
a
substitute for
instruction more accurately, I think.
Bart: Makes sense.
If we get this right, what could schools look like five years from now?
Frank: Well,
that's
what started
this
whole thing
was I was
asking
people,
you
know, in positions like
yourself,
what
does this look
like in
2032?
And
in some of the responses
that
I
got,
uh,
that
we got were
like,
2032, I wanna make it
to next,
next
week,
you know,
because
it
was tough
coming outta the
pandemic,
right?
With
the kiddos
running
for
the
hills like we were talking
about,
and
the,
The mental
health
concerns and teachers,
uh,
worried
about
get coming
back
as
well.
So
it
was
really
tough in that
setting.
20
22, 23,
24.
So
we're
asking that,
but
I think,
uh,
you know, chapter
six
and
then the
epilogue really
talk
about,
um, what
they should look like if
What
it should look like is
standards based, intentional personal
instruction
in the
classroom
with
durable
skills
being built,
technology
being used
in an,
in
an augmenting
manner.
But outside
of
that,
there's
connections
going
on
with,
you
know, local parks
and
rec
in
Nicholas
Bloom,
uh,
Nicholas Carr's
book,
super
Bloom, he
talks
about
the decline
in, in youth,
Um.
You know, sports
league activities,
scouting
church
activities,
something like
800 hours a
year for the average
teenager
in
the last
10
years.
Decline
in terms of interacting
with
others.
So
it
would
be not just
what's going on in the school,
in our
vision, in
our
hope, the school
becomes a catalyst for a community wide and
it might
be asking
a lot,
especially
like
in really
large districts and really big
urban areas, but definitely you can be a hub.
can be
a hub where like, you know,
restaurant
nights in this community Thursday is no
screens today.
Gene Tavernetti: Something else that I think
is gonna
be happening
in,
in the public schools
is, um, uh, especially when we're
asking schools to have an instructional vision there will be
a lot
of schools of choice.
because that's
one
of
the things
that,
that
we have found out
or that we're
competing against, is all of
these
charter
schools
that
pop up with an emphasis with, with
something.
And I,
I, I
think that,
I think that's good that, that we have choice, but
we have
to
be
sure that
it's, we're
protecting
the kids
the
way that,
the
way
that
Frank
just,
talked about,
unless,
you
know,
the, the, uh,
you know, we've
got these, these alpha schools, alpha School
now,
unless
you
just
choose
that for
your
kids,
but
we need to, you know,
be really
clear about
who
we are
and,
and who we are is
the
way Frank
described
it
right now is
not,
a bad place to
be
in the marketplace.
I
think a
lot of
people
would
choose
that,
but
like many, like many charters
or,
you
know,
they
start
out
in a certain
way
and
then
they
devolve.
So
I
think
we
have to
be
very careful
about,
uh, about maintaining that, that instructional vision
so
that
people
have an expectation of, you know, you come to here in this school
district, this
is,
this
is what
you're gonna get.
And,
you
know,
and
it's
okay.
You know, if you
want
your
kids
to
be on
screens
eight
hours a day,
you know, then it's, this place isn't,
isn't for you.
But, but I think, you know, because of,
of
how
effective
we
know we can be
with the, with the technology
to
augment
quality
instruction, I, I think, I think we can create some good product.
Frank: I
think,
um,
the
book is really
augmented,
um,
by
teacher
interviews
that
we
did.
We probably
did
like three
dozen
teacher interviews, uh, k
through
college across the
country,
small
districts,
huge
districts,
uh,
suburban districts,
urban districts, rural
districts.
one
of
the things
we
noticed
is that
a
lot
of
teachers
talked
about
parents starting
to push back
On the amount of screen And
in
some.
Districts
where
the
te the
teachers
we
interviewed
for
one particular subset of questions,
we
needed
them
to have been in
the
classroom teaching the
same
grade
or close
in
a similar
socioeconomic level,
20
14,
20
24. 'cause we
were
asking
questions like comparing, comparing,
you know,
student, behaviors
and such.
and
what
we
heard
from them is
that
the
same
parents who in
2014
for
their older
kids
were
advocating, you
know, more
and
more
and
more,
you gotta catch
up.
We gotta catch
up
by
2024.
We're saying
for
their younger
kids,
let's
get them
off
too much
screen time.
Um,
the
same
parents.
And so
I think
that
there's
a groundswell
and
it isn't
just the books,
it isn't
just
digital
delusions.
It isn't just
ours.
It
isn't
just
the
articles
in the, in education next and in in New York Times,
I think
that
parents
are
seeing
it.
Um,
we
were
doing some research just for promotional
purposes.
We
found a
Facebook
group.
that's
like
reduced my kids'
screen
time,
something
like
that.
280,000
members
of parent members in the
us.
I mean, That's
a
pretty big group.
There's
a,
there's
a
groundswell
for
it.
So I
think that,
um,
like
Jean said,
if
you want
your
child
to
have that, you're gonna definitely
have
the option if you
want it to be
on
a screen for six, eight hours a
parents
didn't
choose this.
They didn't choose what
we're seeing right now.
And that's what we need to walk back,
is
that
if they want that choice, they can
have
it.
But this isn't what we should be doing
in the mainstream public
Gene Tavernetti: And I, and I
think the big
a big takeaway
is nobody made this choice.
It just happened.
Bart: just happened.
Yeah.
I've really appreciated this conversation.
In closing, I'd like to ask you what gives you hope?
Gene Tavernetti: you know, there
is A reaction.
Unfortunately,
it's another pendulum swing, from all
of
these screens to
no screen
time.
That's
not,
that's
not
sustainable,
That's not reality.
That is not where we're going.
so I, I, I think
the
fact that there are 280,000,
I think that there are people,
you
know, stepping, stepping forward.
Uh, that
gives
me hope.
what diminishes
that,
that hopefulness
a
little
bit
is
that
it's
always an overreaction.
you
know,
we,
we can see that
in,
in
many of the things that are going on,
like in schools of choice right
now,
where in states where they could take their kids someplace else.
The question
is,
what
happens?
What happens to the
students
that, that, have
special
needs?
They
don't worry about
them,
you
know,
but
that's something that, again,
this
is
going
back to institutional memory.
This isn't new.
You
know,
we have these,
these
things
in
place
because of
who we
were
before
and we
need,
and we needed
to get better.
So,
what
gives me
hope?
More
people
thinking about,
um,
you
know,
there's a better way
to
do
education
Frank: I
think
Jean
might
be
more
hopeful
than
me,
but,
um,
talking about
the
institutional
memory,
you
know, there, if
you go back,
at
least as
far
back
as
Madeline
Hunter in the sixties and
seventies, uh,
the
Effective
Schools movement,
uh, Ronald Edmonds,
uh, Marzano
the nineties and
two
thousands,
the, and now his
evaluation
center,
the
19 90,
90,
schools,
the
the New Teacher
Project
Teach
for
America,
which
is how I started How
I
got into teaching.
we,
we
know
that
there's an alternative path
that is actually
a very
good,
Path and, and, and
we
know
how,
what
we should be doing in
The
question
that
Ronald
Mond's, uh, the effect of schools movement task is
how
do
we feel
about the fact that we haven't so
that's the
hope.
The hope
is
that
we
know
what we've gotta do.
My
concern
is,
and this is
part
of
our
parent
education
series,
' cause
we
also
do parent
education,
which
is actually another piece
of
it that I think
is something we
do that nobody else we're also working with
the
parents,
is
that
I'm
not
gonna
name any.
companies.
I
don't
wanna get su
we
don't want, we
don't
want to
get
sued.
But,
you
know,
in,
uh,
in the prologue of
the book where the
superintendent is
really pitching, we're
gonna
go after this money
and
we
need
to
get
a
screen
in front of
every kid.
He talks about,
getting
a particular
type
of
laptop
into every child's hand because
the
digital
companies are being great social
citizens.
They're
helping the kids get
access
to the
screens.
They're
helping
write
the,
the common
core
assessments, you know, smarter balance in
the park.
and
later
on
we
found
out
that
some of
those
same
companies
were
data mining those
kids
as
young as four years
old.
So
I, what
gives
me
pause is that,
that
there's
a villain
on
the
other
You
know,
it
wasn't
a
conscious
choice
by
schools to go down this path.
It was
this
broader
digital immersion,
but
there was
a
conscious
choice.
So folks
who
are
data
mining,
four
year olds,
five year
olds.
They
who
were giving
free
email
access,
let's
say.
But
then data mining
what
the
kids
were
writing so
that
they
can market to them a
few years
later.
There
definitely is a
villain in this, And that's what gives me but
hopefully this
groundswell, you know, the senate hearings that we're seeing now,
there's
gonna
be enough of a.
not a not a
revolt, but,
but
a pushback.
And I do hope that to Jean's
point
that we just don't go so far the
other way that then we
then
lose,
you
know,
it
just becomes
that pendulum again.
Gene Tavernetti: I
think
just the
of
who we
are
in the United
States,
you
can't tell
me
what to do.
And then you
have,
uh, you know,
I don't know
how many school districts you worked in a, in a small school
district
For a while
and
they
had
a
school
board
and
they didn't
want
anybody telling them what to do.
And so
it, it, it's,
it's
difficult
who
we
are,
who
we
are
is
our strength
and who
we
are
is,
uh, makes
anything
changing
education
difficult.
Bart: Yes.
Well, thank you both so much.
Gene Tavernetti: Thank you.
Frank: Thank you Bur yeah.
Gene Tavernetti: yeah.
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