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Empathy to Impact is a podcast designed for educators dedicated to global citizenship education. We explore themes of sustainability, service learning, student leadership, and community engagement, empowering students to create a more just, equitable, and sustainable future.
While educators grasp the “why” and “what” of global citizenship, this podcast delves into the “how”. Through engaging storytelling and student voices, we provide authentic connections to curriculum, and showcase practical tools and frameworks that you can implement in your classroom.
By viewing learning experiences through the lens of Empathy to Impact, we can inspire students to take meaningful steps toward becoming global citizens and transform the culture of education in our schools.
Join us as we amplify the voices and stories of students who take ownership of their learning and make a difference in their communities.
This podcast is brought to you by Inspire Citizens.
Scott Jamieson: Welcome to the Empathy to Impact Podcast.
Scott Jamieson: We are back and visiting the United States of America, and I have a really cool guest for our episode today. His name is Sanjay, and I met him through a group called What Schools Could Be.
Scott Jamieson: If you are not familiar with them, they've got a really cool community thinking about the future of education. It's totally free, and I'm gonna put the sign-up link in the comments. I'm gonna put the sign-up link in the show notes, so you can check them out. They have a program called Eye on Student Protagonism.
Scott Jamieson: And in December of 2024, I dropped in on that call, and Sanjay was the presenter. And I was really intrigued by the work that he's doing. He's a high school student currently, and has…
Scott Jamieson: He is the founder and CEO of something called Role Color Finder, and if you've done a strengths assessment, or have heard a strengths assessment, Sanjay has developed
Scott Jamieson: a really cool application to help people find their strengths, and help them understand themselves as leaders, and really excited to get into a conversation with him to talk about his work, and talk about what he thinks about the future of education.
Scott Jamieson: So before we get started, I'm going to pass over to Sanjay to give a quick introduction.
Sanjay Divakar: Hi, Scott, I'm Sanjay, I'm the CEO and founder of Roll Cloud Finder, as you said.
Sanjay Divakar: I live in Greenwich, Connecticut, and I'm a global citizen. I've lived all around the world. Before this, I lived in India, before which I lived in Dubai. And going to schools in multiple different places really opened my mind.
Sanjay Divakar: on…
Sanjay Divakar: What schools could actually be working on, what's their weak points, and how they can make it easier for students to work together, and how they can be future ready, so that they can teach students what they actually need to know to survive in the world.
Scott Jamieson: Well said, sir, and I… that's something that I spend a lot of time thinking about, and really excited to hear your thoughts as a global citizen, as someone who's spent some time in different parts of the world. But before we get to that.
Scott Jamieson: I want to dig into Role Color Finder, and give you an opportunity to share what that's all about, how it all got started, and why that was something that was of interest to you.
Sanjay Divakar: Okay, so I went to this summer program in UC Berkeley, Over summer of 2025.
Sanjay Divakar: So… it was about a week in July.
Sanjay Divakar: And they would put us in these groups, Based on our leadership style.
Sanjay Divakar: When I mean style, I mean that they would make you take a 5-question test, on a Google form, and someone would manually be grading each one and telling you which team you fit in.
Sanjay Divakar: And they tell you.
Sanjay Divakar: They used colors, so, that's where I got the color idea from, so, I was a yellow, which, which was fast executor, but that was not who I was in real life.
Sanjay Divakar: I… I understood that pretty quick, because they would give you team roles, and they would give you…
Sanjay Divakar: which team you work naturally with, and then I was like.
Sanjay Divakar: I see this issue everywhere, where teams are not working together at all, like…
Sanjay Divakar: At all. So, I was like, why not build a project on this? I had two of my fellow students from the program, help me through building it.
Sanjay Divakar: So we spent weeks and weeks of research, and found that the Bruce Tuckman Five Stages of leadership development, team development, was the, best matrix to base this on. So, forming, storming, norming, performing, adjourning.
Sanjay Divakar: I believe a journey was recently added. So…
Sanjay Divakar: I… me and the team did develop some questions, so we developed first 25 questions, and then a 50-question test. So, in the 50 question, 10 questions for each stage, and in the 25, 5 questions for each stage.
Sanjay Divakar: And that really opened my eye on the possibilities. So, my original idea was just using it there, and then maybe with friends and family.
Sanjay Divakar: And then I was like, what if this is an actual issue teens in schools are facing right now?
Sanjay Divakar: We now have over 10 tests, for students, athletes, coaches, executives, founders, senior office, every type of person. If you live on this planet, there's a role color finder assessment for you.
Sanjay Divakar: That's,
Sanjay Divakar: That's what we think. And now we're slowly expanding into AI with our new AI platform, Roll Color AI.
Scott Jamieson: Super cool. And as an educator, this is something that I have found, that by spending a little time at the beginning of a collaborative project, to build a team, and help teams to work better collaboratively together, to understand what those hidden strengths are.
Scott Jamieson: And to understand what the best roles for people on their team, things that they like to do, things they're engaged in, things that kind of fit their style, can be a huge benefit.
Scott Jamieson: So, a tool like this to help unpack that sounds…
Scott Jamieson: Really valuable to me as an educator.
Scott Jamieson: And it's cool how you just saw this as a problem, and just kind of put on that sort of problem-solver hat.
Scott Jamieson: And say, hey, I can do something better with this. And it's really cool how that's expanded out to fit in just about any role, and help people think about what their strengths are, and help teams to be more collaborative.
Sanjay Divakar: Yeah, that's, what…
Sanjay Divakar: Originally, yes, that's what I did. But now what I understand is, this is gonna sound like a marketing gimmick, but it really isn't. But I first took the assessment, I came out as a red, creative motivator. That…
Sanjay Divakar: Okay. At first, it didn't seem like who I was.
Sanjay Divakar: But then, I looked in deep.
Sanjay Divakar: How do I work with people? I'm vocal.
Sanjay Divakar: Creative motivator. I'm very… I'm an actual born leader. That's something I've known for a pretty long time. Another category that the friends fall into.
Sanjay Divakar: And I'm very vocal.
Sanjay Divakar: Like, very vocal, so… That also makes me fall into red.
Sanjay Divakar: The other types of leaders, the yellows, fast executors, are exactly like me, but more vocal, like, a lot more vocal than me, and they execute a lot faster.
Sanjay Divakar: So, once I realized this, that…
Sanjay Divakar: the system that they had first originally in UC Berkeley was just a bit biased, that because a person was manually doing this, there was really no actual framework behind it.
Sanjay Divakar: So, we did spend some time and make our draw color binder framework based on that.
Scott Jamieson: And this has expanded a lot since then. Like, this is a website that anyone can access. I'm gonna put the link in the show notes so you can check this out, because it's really, really cool.
Scott Jamieson: What were some of the things that you had to learn along the way as you developed this platform?
Sanjay Divakar: So…
Sanjay Divakar: I… I did say I was a natural-born leader, but that doesn't mean I know how to handle a team.
Sanjay Divakar: The first two students that work with me left. Like, left isn't they stopped replying to texts.
Sanjay Divakar: they just stopped. And this was right after we got the first B2B deal signed.
Sanjay Divakar: So, it was kind of a big deal for me.
Sanjay Divakar: But then after that, now, I have a team that I know believes in the idea.
Sanjay Divakar: But my main issue building this was I didn't know how to manage a team.
Sanjay Divakar: It was more like a learn it along the way thing, because…
Sanjay Divakar: Yes, AI was a massive help through everything. Building the first drafted platform, helping me find the right candidates and stuff like that, but there's just some things that AI can't do. Like, AI can't be a leader.
Sanjay Divakar: And in that time, I needed to learn how to be a leader.
Sanjay Divakar: Which is what I was doing as I was gone.
Scott Jamieson: That's so cool. And I love how you talk about AI, and we're gonna get into that a little bit later in our conversation, but AI can't be a leader. AI is support. But we need someone with the vision, and someone to lead that team.
Scott Jamieson: And I think as a high school student, a lot of people probably fall into that category of not really understanding. Like, we put students into leadership positions, but we don't often build the skills that allow them to thrive as leaders.
Scott Jamieson: And I think that leads me to where I want our conversation to go next, is thinking about the future of education. And there was something that you said when I saw you in December that really stuck with me, it really resonated. And you said, the future of school starts with letting go.
Scott Jamieson: What did you mean by that?
Sanjay Divakar: Don't you agree that something feels off at school? Teachers feel exhausted in paperwork and initiatives that multiply, like, really fast. Students are very disengaged in classes.
Sanjay Divakar: Leaders in school groups feel trapped, and everyone is blamed for every single mistake. When everyone is tired and no one is winning, it's usually not a people problem, it's a system problem.
Sanjay Divakar: Schools aren't broken, they're just not optimized enough for how people need to learn.
Sanjay Divakar: Schools are designed to do exactly what they were supposed to do. The system really isn't malfunctioning, but…
Sanjay Divakar: It's functioning for a world that really doesn't exist anymore.
Sanjay Divakar: So, this system is working, just not for the world we're in.
Sanjay Divakar: So the world was designed for schools which had stable careers, slow change.
Sanjay Divakar: Scarce information and where obedience actually mattered. There weren't designs, there weren't flaws in the way it was made.
Sanjay Divakar: They were built for an industrial economy. We don't live in that anymore. Education made sense when future was actually predictable. But now, who knows, in 10 years.
Sanjay Divakar: We might not have podcasts where a human is interviewing me. It could be an AI.
Sanjay Divakar: Don't you agree?
Scott Jamieson: For sure. I think so much of what you're saying is true. I think that if we look at schools, we do a lot of the same things that we've been doing in the past 50 years, and we live in a very, very different world.
Scott Jamieson: And schools have been a bit slow, and reluctant, perhaps, to change, and to look at new ways of doing things. And…
Scott Jamieson: I think letting go of certain things that are no longer relevant in 2026 is not such a terrible idea.
Scott Jamieson: So, what might be some Nick… sorry, go ahead, Sanjay.
Sanjay Divakar: Yeah, you can go.
Scott Jamieson: What might be some next steps for schools to help modernize and be future ready?
Sanjay Divakar: AI. That's gonna be the main thing. Then they need to understand that the pace of change has accelerated beyond what any curriculum cycle can capture or predict.
Sanjay Divakar: We cannot forecast the skills needed 5 years from now, let alone prepare students for jobs that don't exist yet.
Sanjay Divakar: And success no longer follows a single ladder. It branches, loops, and reinvents itself constantly. And going back to AI, it's not a stress topic.
Sanjay Divakar: It reveals how fragile our assumptions have become, but the misalignment runs deeper than just technology. It's the way that we think about it. Right now, my friends… so, we have meetings coming up next week.
Sanjay Divakar: And my friend thinks that using AI to study means you're depending way too much on AI.
Sanjay Divakar: The study guides that our teacher gives us are so complicated that using AI to break it down for you makes your life so much easier, but that's considered cheating.
Sanjay Divakar: Using AI to help you make a citation on an essay? Cheating.
Sanjay Divakar: Then, what's not cheating? If I have a question, and the due date's tomorrow, the teacher's not gonna reply within an hour.
Sanjay Divakar: So, what do I do?
Sanjay Divakar: The first thought is go onto chatgpt.com, see what I can get done.
Sanjay Divakar: But that's considered cheating.
Sanjay Divakar: We keep adding and subtract… subtracting. Every time something feels broken, we add another solution, another program, another initiative, another mandate.
Sanjay Divakar: But we need… we're stacking solutions on top of assumptions we've actually never questioned. We don't know if that's a problem that's gonna be… so, I'm a freshman. We don't know if the programs they're adding are actually gonna be relevant when I graduate.
Sanjay Divakar: When I'm a senior, or when I'm in college.
Scott Jamieson: Yeah, there's no way to predict, and I think that's the biggest challenge for school leaders, is how do we…
Scott Jamieson: prepare for an uncertain future. And it's something that schools are struggling with, but I think you're right, we're leaning into some things that have worked in the past that may no longer be relevant.
Scott Jamieson: And I think that students are definitely seeing that. I think teachers are seeing that and feeling that. And you're absolutely right, that we can't just keep adding and adding and adding, because we don't have more time.
Scott Jamieson: How do we get the most out of the time we have in education?
Sanjay Divakar: So, we need to first understand that letting go is not giving up.
Sanjay Divakar: It's releasing outdated assumptions. It's abandoned… it's not abandoning learning, obviously. And it's definitely not lowering standards. Letting go is how systems make room for more alignment.
Sanjay Divakar: Making sure that students are actually knowing what's important.
Sanjay Divakar: Schools are afraid to let go of control over every variable. Uniform pacing, the assumptions that students should all move through the content at the same speeds regardless of readiness. And a one-size-fits-all success.
Sanjay Divakar: Not every student learns the same.
Sanjay Divakar: And, most resistance isn't about learning, it's about fear.
Sanjay Divakar: Which is what the schools need to bake through.
Sanjay Divakar: And if we don't let go, burnout becomes normal. Disengagement gets blamed on the people.
Sanjay Divakar: And innovation happens outside the system, making trust erode. So, when systems refuse to evolve, people leave, mentally or physically. And right now, you see that a lot at even our school. Most students are there physically, but they're never there mentally.
Sanjay Divakar: And now, when they turn 16, they just drop out.
Sanjay Divakar: So…
Scott Jamieson: And that's a big problem, and I think we have been seeing that for a while, is when we see… we have content in class that's not relevant to students, or they don't see the purpose, they don't see where that's going, it's really hard to generate that engagement.
Scott Jamieson: And having students have more of a say in what they're learning in school, I think is a good first step there. Also, I like how you're talking about how students learn differently and don't learn at the same pace. One-size-fits-all education is something that
Scott Jamieson: we can move away from with technology. We don't need students to all be doing the same thing at the same time, and…
Scott Jamieson: skilling up and finding ways to take advantage of some of these new platforms and taking advantage of AI to do this can be a huge stress release, I think, for teachers. And it just takes a little bit of learning, a little bit of professional development, for sure, to lose that fear.
Scott Jamieson: And recognize how these tools might be helpful. And certainly something I've seen as a trend through 2025, so many conferences talking about how teachers might take advantage of AI. And I think it's starting to… we're starting to see
Scott Jamieson: new mindsets towards it. Because you were talking about how AI, in a lot of cases, is viewed as cheating.
Scott Jamieson: And I think that leads me to my next question.
Scott Jamieson: What are schools getting wrong when they're thinking about AI?
Sanjay Divakar: So, overall, AI is not the only problem. The problem is that they are adapting.
Sanjay Divakar: So, they should not be thinking on how we do… how we fix the school. They should be thinking about what would we design if we were starting the school today.
Sanjay Divakar: So, forget everything that's built, the schools that have been here from 200 years ago, forget all of that. If we were starting from scratch today.
Sanjay Divakar: What would we do?
Sanjay Divakar: And in that, AI would be a large part of it, because
Sanjay Divakar: AI is replacing most jobs here.
Sanjay Divakar: Marketing, sales, a lot of it.
Sanjay Divakar: You can get an AI receptionist for 40 bucks a month.
Sanjay Divakar: A job that you pay people to do 5,000, 10,000 bucks a month to do, you can get it for 40 bucks.
Sanjay Divakar: That's the difference.
Scott Jamieson: Big difference, for sure.
Sanjay Divakar: And they also need to get to this mindset that letting go is not loss. It's evolution.
Sanjay Divakar: It doesn't start with better answers, it starts with better questions.
Scott Jamieson: I love that. I think that's something that I've been talking about for a long time, is that I was a math teacher.
Scott Jamieson: And we spent so much of our time in math classes doing computation.
Scott Jamieson: And that's the one part of a question that computers can do.
Scott Jamieson: We need to ask better questions. We need to turn that question into a math question. Then, yes, we need to do some computation, but why not use technology to help us with that, and then turn those answers into a real-world solution.
Scott Jamieson: So, I think asking the right questions is such a great place to start with this. And recognizing that… you talked about earlier that AI isn't a leader. AI is not going to generate those questions necessarily, but it might help us to brainstorm. It might help us to formulate some ideas.
Sanjay Divakar: So, upon AI, is there…
Scott Jamieson: Yeah.
Sanjay Divakar: AI is a good servant, but a terrible master. If you use it to overrule you, you're not gonna…
Sanjay Divakar: Studies show that it literally eats your brain, if you use it as a muscle. You need to use it to do work for you, not
Sanjay Divakar: Tell you what to do.
Scott Jamieson: And Jay, can you give us a personal example? I know you use AI a lot in the development of Role Color Finder. Can you share a little bit about your personal relationship with AI, and how you've used it as
Scott Jamieson: Almost a partner and an assistant with the work that you do.
Sanjay Divakar: Okay, so, I'm gonna give you a direct example today, okay? This afternoon, I hired a new assistant.
Sanjay Divakar: And… I was giving them work on Trello, which is a task management platform.
Sanjay Divakar: I just tell AI that they need to log into these platforms, give me a Trello card on it, give them the steps.
Sanjay Divakar: how to do it, the description, the title of the cello card. All of it.
Sanjay Divakar: But, if I were to do that myself.
Sanjay Divakar: Yes, it would not take me much time, it would take me 10-15 minutes. It took me 30 seconds to do the AI.
Sanjay Divakar: And I was able to get 3 done within 2 minutes.
Sanjay Divakar: So, that's one example, and in the development of Roll Cloud Finder.
Sanjay Divakar: So, right now, we're moving out of AI softwares for development.
Sanjay Divakar: But even for hiring the team, I just upload the resume of the person I'm hiring, and I give it the job description, and it will tell me if they're a good hire.
Sanjay Divakar: And, I have this AI that joins my meetings, and it will tell me on an interview if they're a good candidate to hire.
Sanjay Divakar: So…
Scott Jamieson: Right, and at the end of the day, that's advice, but it really comes down to you as the leader. It's gonna give you some additional information, whether it thinks that person is a good fit for the job, whether it thinks the interview went well.
Scott Jamieson: But at the end of the day, you're the one who's making those decisions. And I think that's really the important piece here. It's adding some information, it's giving you some tools you didn't have, and information you didn't have otherwise, but at the end of the day, it comes down to you as the leader, what kind of decision you want to make moving forward.
Sanjay Divakar: Yeah, that's kind of what I'm going at, but if you want a direct example.
Sanjay Divakar: I'm gonna throw out the first example that comes to mind on why AI is not a good leader.
Sanjay Divakar: If you ask AI, I'll do it right now, on the meeting, I'm gonna open… ChatGPT.
Sanjay Divakar: And I'm gonna ask it… What are your thoughts of Shibata bread in three words?
Sanjay Divakar: So, it's gonna give, 3 words.
Sanjay Divakar: that are good about bread. So, Shabbatra bread in three words.
Sanjay Divakar: So, it says, Crispy, airy, honest.
Sanjay Divakar: Those are 3 things that make you want to try it. But if I say, Terrible.
Sanjay Divakar: Dry.
Sanjay Divakar: And,
Sanjay Divakar: Horrible.
Sanjay Divakar: Of course, these are the three words I think of it.
Sanjay Divakar: It would say, fair, brick-like, crumbly, disappointed. It agrees to everything.
Scott Jamieson: Hmm.
Sanjay Divakar: Click.
Sanjay Divakar: If I told it the Earth was flat, I would agree with that, with just a bit of prompting.
Sanjay Divakar: So…
Scott Jamieson: I'm really curious if it thinks bread is honest. That's really interesting. You have 3 descriptors, that's a really interesting one to pick. But yeah, you're right, it's gonna almost, like, be a…
Scott Jamieson: like an echo chamber. It's gonna agree really quickly with the direction you're going, which maybe isn't necessarily always a good thing.
Sanjay Divakar: Sometimes, when, if I'm treating it as, like, a business posture.
Sanjay Divakar: I want you to disagree with me. If I have a bad idea, like.
Sanjay Divakar: I want to build a product on, I wanna build a massage gun and a roller color finder. If I tell it that, and it's gonna say it's a bad idea, and then with just two more prompts that it's a good idea, it will give me the full design layer on how to build it.
Sanjay Divakar: So… it needs to… you need to understand that AI is…
Sanjay Divakar: an enabler. But it's not something that can…
Sanjay Divakar: think on your behalf. Human thinking plus artificial intelligence is human intelligence.
Scott Jamieson: That's a good way to put it, because it was humans who programmed AI, and the biases we sometimes see when we're doing searches, or when we're kind of working with AI, are as a result of human biases. And I think we definitely need to understand this isn't the solution to everything.
Scott Jamieson: How do schools find the balance? Like, we've talked a little bit in our conversation about some upside and some downside.
Scott Jamieson: How do schools navigate all of this? And again, it's a very quickly changing landscape. AI is evolving as we talk here. How do schools navigate this and make the most out of this tool while still tapping into the human potential that's in our school?
Sanjay Divakar: So, my… the easiest way I put this across is think of AI as a calculator.
Sanjay Divakar: Before calculators existed, they have to do everything by hand, literally everything. Now schools agree that calculators help.
Sanjay Divakar: It gives you the answer sometimes. It always gives you the answer, but you usually need to put in human thinking to get that.
Sanjay Divakar: But instead of typing out the math equation, that is what we call AI prompted.
Sanjay Divakar: School needs to have courses on AI prompting.
Sanjay Divakar: Which… Helps the student understand that
Sanjay Divakar: Using AI prompting to get an answer is not cheating.
Sanjay Divakar: If my, if my test says calculators are allowed.
Sanjay Divakar: And this question is 8 times 3.
Sanjay Divakar: Me and the calculator are gonna get the same response, which is 24.
Sanjay Divakar: But…
Sanjay Divakar: If, my teacher says no calculators allowed, and I do it by hand, I'm also gonna get 24.
Sanjay Divakar: The typing it in onto the calculator is what gives me the answer. But that's not considered cheating.
Sanjay Divakar: You need to understand that there's a limit where AI is cheating.
Sanjay Divakar: Yes, if it's a massive essay, like a final, you should probably write it yourself.
Sanjay Divakar: But you might need support here and there, and that's where AI is.
Scott Jamieson: I think it comes back to asking better questions. Will Richardson, who talks a lot about the future of education, talked about, you know, if you're getting upset with students using ChatGPT to do their assignments, stop giving them assignments that it's so easy for ChatGPT to answer.
Scott Jamieson: Another example of this, good friend of mine is a head of school, and he was in a staff meeting with his high school teachers, and said to them to exchange summative assessments, to exchange tests.
Scott Jamieson: And they were allowed to use AI
Scott Jamieson: to see if they could ace that test in a discipline that they weren't familiar with. So imagine giving a language teacher, HL math assessment, or vice versa, asking them to do a language assessment. And a little outside their wheelhouse, I know that I probably would struggle in certain disciplines, and said, hey, use AI and see if you can ace this.
Scott Jamieson: And it really comes down to reimagining what we're asking students to do, reimagining what assessment looks like.
Scott Jamieson: And asking better questions, and this is an opportunity for us to Be reflective as educators, and…
Scott Jamieson: to think about how we apply our learning in a meaningful way, and that's gonna be more, like you talk about, more of a partnership, where we're using AI as a tool, where AI just can't give us those answers. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Bloom's Taxonomy, but thinking about, like, some really basic stuff at the bottom of this pyramid.
Scott Jamieson: Or just looking for knowledge answers, like your fill-in-the-blanks, or sort of vocabulary-type questions that AI can do with the snap of fingers. You know, maybe those aren't the kind of questions we need to be asking anymore.
Scott Jamieson: And I think schools have an opportunity here to think about how we do ask better questions to get students thinking deeper and going a little bit further as a result of having this new tool. I think your calculator analogy is fantastic.
Sanjay Divakar: Yeah, so, while that's one side of it, one more side of it is…
Sanjay Divakar: This is gonna sound like what every kid says and, claims that school has too many subjects for a student, but I totally agree with this. If one teacher can't teach all subjects, why is one student required to learn all subjects? Yes.
Sanjay Divakar: On one side of it, the teacher has learned all those subjects before. They specialize in one. Why can't a student do that?
Sanjay Divakar: Why can't they specialize in one subject, but also learn the other subjects just shorter? In my school, all classes are 55 minutes long every day. What if, if I wanted to major in math, I have 2 hours of math class, and 55 minutes for the rest?
Scott Jamieson: Oh man, Sanjay.
Sanjay Divakar: specialization field.
Scott Jamieson: I could not agree more. I think we are in a spot where not…
Scott Jamieson: where everybody doesn't need to learn everything. And I think we realize that, you know, not everyone is going to use the fundamental theorem of calculus. In fact, a lot of people are not. And what if.
Sanjay Divakar: As a child, You might need to learn numbers, addition, subtraction, your ABCs, maybe. But… After…
Sanjay Divakar: 6th, or maybe even 7th grade, or even transitioning just into high school. They should be allowed to… like, in college, you should be allowed to major in a specific subject that they focus on, and one of those subjects should totally be AI.
Scott Jamieson: Couldn't agree more. I think that's for sure. You talk about being able to write a good prompt. I think that's really what's holding students back with using AI, is the difficulty in understanding how to
Scott Jamieson: get a good result from a good prompt. But also, like, let's go bigger and think, like, what if we were to reimagine graduation requirements?
Scott Jamieson: And not have this sort of lockstep where we have to have this many credits of English, this many credits of math. And yes, there's value there. Yes, we want to, like you talk about, we want to have a basic understanding of all these different subjects, but what if we could do more specialization?
Scott Jamieson: What if we could focus more on things we're passionate about, things we want to pursue in the next step beyond high school, while we're in high school? Obviously, there's gonna be some fear around this. This is, like, a logistical nightmare, I'm sure, for schools, as we think about making this transition, but…
Scott Jamieson: What if, rather than getting caught up in all those things that are the problem with this, what if we look ahead and say, what if we got there? What if we had a more personalized program in high school where students would…
Scott Jamieson: Be able to have more autonomy, have more voice and choice, have more say in the design of the learning they're doing.
Scott Jamieson: then I think a lot of really cool things happen. We certainly are going to level up engagements in a situation like that. We are going to have students more excited to be in school, getting into some really interesting learning that's something we might not, as educators, have imagined.
Scott Jamieson: just taking advantage of that creativity. I'm so excited by this idea, as you can tell. I think this would be so, so cool for a school to try out. But there's gonna be really kind of that brave step to help schools get there, to really have that vision, but also help our parents to understand. This is going to be something that's very…
Scott Jamieson: foreign to them. A lot of our parents and outside community are sort of comfortable with our current model of education. It's something we've always done, you know, they had to do
Scott Jamieson: trigonometry in high school, so students should probably still have to do trigonometry, even if we can't really explain why we need to do trigonometry in 2026. And how do we get past that? How do we even get to a place where we have more flexibility
Scott Jamieson: creativity and freedom as we think about pathways in high school. I think there's a lot of cool things that can happen, but also a lot of resistance. And obviously some logistical challenge with the way schools are set up, and the, you know, the factory model of education help… does not really play into this type of flexibility.
Scott Jamieson: What might we do? Like, what might be a good first step? You talk about if we could design a school from scratch. It's one of my favorite prompts as I started meeting with teachers.
Scott Jamieson: What might be some concrete first steps to help schools to…
Scott Jamieson: Shake off the industrial model of education and make some concrete steps towards something, this kind of vision that you have for education.
Sanjay Divakar: So, first step is after the foundation years, All subjects are optional.
Sanjay Divakar: Which subject you take should be optional.
Sanjay Divakar: If you want to major in math, then take math, sure. But…
Sanjay Divakar: what am I gonna do learning about quadratics?
Sanjay Divakar: Right now.
Sanjay Divakar: it's not like I'm gonna need to do math when I'm driving, when I'm doing my business.
Sanjay Divakar: To an extent, yes, it's necessary. Addition, subtraction, multiplication. All of those are good. Foundation here is very important.
Sanjay Divakar: But after the foundation years, You need to understand that some people don't need everything.
Sanjay Divakar: And schools expect you to be this perfect student. They give you 3 hours of homework a night per class.
Sanjay Divakar: And they tell you to get 10 hours of sleep a night, which is literally impossible. And they give us this much time, plus we have family, we have friends, and if you think about me, I have a business.
Sanjay Divakar: If you include all of this, the amount of time I have to do homework is Very loose.
Sanjay Divakar: And, like, the traditional way of working, like…
Sanjay Divakar: Today, we have midterms next week, like I said, so… and today, my teacher gave me a 33-page packet that we're gonna work on in class and in homework. 33 pages in a week… of math.
Scott Jamieson: That's a lot.
Sanjay Divakar: Yeah.
Sanjay Divakar: It's, it's, it's a lot.
Sanjay Divakar: But… Why? Like, what am I gonna do with scope-intercept form?
Sanjay Divakar: How is that gonna help me?
Scott Jamieson: I hear what you're saying, and I think, yeah, I think there's some opportunities here.
Scott Jamieson: What about those who would say that are maybe students who…
Scott Jamieson: haven't found, like, you've clearly found something that you are passionate about, and I think that in our time knowing each other, I think we can both honestly say that you're not a typical freshman.
Scott Jamieson: And… what about those students who haven't found…
Scott Jamieson: what they're passionate about yet. Or, as they get into high school, as they start freshman year, they're not real sure what it is they want to pursue.
Scott Jamieson: What about those students? How do they navigate this new system that you're thinking about?
Sanjay Divakar: So, this is an idea I've had for a bit now.
Sanjay Divakar: Schools should have inbuilt angel investors. It sounds like a very long stretch, I know, but…
Sanjay Divakar: Think about this. As a student, you start your own business, but no one takes you seriously online. No one does. No investor, no consumer, no one does.
Sanjay Divakar: So, you struggle, you got money together, you bootstrap your idea, which is what I did. No investor online would take me seriously, so…
Sanjay Divakar: I bootstrapped the entire project. What?
Sanjay Divakar: What if the school was able… I know students at school who have their own businesses, and it's either them or their parents funding it.
Sanjay Divakar: What if there was a school program which helped you start your own business?
Sanjay Divakar: Like, the school will see the idea, just like they see an application to join, and they will invest in the student.
Scott Jamieson: Wouldn't that be cool? I think that's a really awesome idea. And…
Sanjay Divakar: But I don't think that's an idea that's gonna be executable, that's just like…
Sanjay Divakar: It's just, like, the dreamland of schools, but if you want to think about an actual first step for getting everyone passionate about something.
Sanjay Divakar: Schools should cut down on the amount of programs they have, cut down on the amount of homework they give. I know my friends who have so many ideas, but they don't have time to pursue them.
Sanjay Divakar: So, just… Give them time.
Sanjay Divakar: time.
Scott Jamieson: Yeah, I think there's an aspect of well-being here that you're getting at, and you talk about the amount of hours in the day. We can't find more.
Scott Jamieson: And if we just keep piling on and piling on, and for sure, we talk about well-being in schools, but it's not always there in practice. When we think about 3 hours of homework or 33 pages of math in a week.
Scott Jamieson: Like, that doesn't really seem like we're valuing the well-being of students, and allowing them to pursue what they're passionate about, allow them to be young people and have
Scott Jamieson: a thriving life as a kid, and I think we sometimes lose sight of that in our highly pressurized academic world.
Scott Jamieson: And that's a big challenge, and I think being able to think about that, and like you say, it comes back to that idea of letting go, and how we can strategically abandon. That was a term that, A.J. Craybell, he's an American,
Scott Jamieson: An American educator who works with school boards, and that's one of his favorite terms, is strategic abandonment. How do we strategically let go of some of these things that maybe don't fit anymore in 2026?
Scott Jamieson: And I'm hoping some people are thinking…
Scott Jamieson: I'm hoping that some people listening to our podcast are thinking about maybe some of those programs that don't really align to their school mission anymore, and maybe aren't as relevant, or maybe aren't as engaging to students, and maybe just thinking about a little bit of pruning to start with within their academic programs.
Scott Jamieson: To help us to give students more time to follow what they're passionate about.
Scott Jamieson: Create opportunities within the school day to have that extended time for students around passion projects, and around maybe starting a business, and having some space to be entrepreneurs, and having some mentors, or even angel investors could be looking at our alumni community.
Scott Jamieson: who may be candidates to be involved in something like this. I think there's a lot of possibilities that you've uncovered here.
Scott Jamieson: Is there anything else that you'd like to share with our listeners that I haven't asked the right question to allow you to share, Sanjay?
Sanjay Divakar: Hmm.
Sanjay Divakar: School is a good enabler, but understand that it should not be your entire life.
Sanjay Divakar: Until you turn 18.
Sanjay Divakar: Have a social life.
Sanjay Divakar: Have your passion projects, And…
Sanjay Divakar: Dream big, and if you don't dream big, you're gonna be stuck with a 9-to-5 job your entire life. Your entire life.
Scott Jamieson: Great advice. I love the idea of dreaming big. And I think that's… this is a great opportunity to do that, when you're a young person, and really, we often talk about, you know, anything is possible, and it's true, I think, but there's work that goes behind that.
Scott Jamieson: Like, you've done some really cool things, but it's been a lot of work to get there. And I think that's important to recognize. And I think it's really cool. So, I want to ask one more question. There's something that came up in… when I was…
Scott Jamieson: Sorry, I'm gonna restart that so we can edit it out.
Scott Jamieson: There's something that I want to ask that came up when you were presenting on Eye on Student Protagonism with what schools could be. And you talked about during the pandemic.
Scott Jamieson: And I think you were in grade 5 at the time, if I remember correctly. And you're talking about some of the stuff that you were reading at that time, and I found it quite fascinating. And I wonder if, just before we go, if you could share some of those titles. Remember, this is you as a grade 5 student.
Scott Jamieson: What are the things that your… I think it was your dad who had you reading during the pandemic?
Sanjay Divakar: So, I read Principles by Ray Dalio, Sapiens by, Yuval Noel Arari, Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert D. Kiyosaki, Shut Up and Listen by Tillman Farida, and,
Sanjay Divakar: Like a Virgin by Richard Branson,
Sanjay Divakar: Trey, anything else? No, I think that's it, yeah.
Scott Jamieson: Yeah, that was so cool. Like, for those of you who know some of those books, this is Sanjay as a grade 5 student. So, again, not your typical student, perhaps, but really inspiring to connect.
Sanjay Divakar: I'm just letting you know that I was woke up at 5am by my dad to read those books, and I was… I was never a reader. I never liked reading.
Sanjay Divakar: But, yeah, my… this year goal is to read at least 5 books.
Sanjay Divakar: So, I'm starting off with reading a book by Russell Brunson.
Sanjay Divakar: So, yeah.
Scott Jamieson: That was cool. And a big shout out to Sanjay's dad for inspiring him through some of these cool authors.
Scott Jamieson: Sanjay, thanks so much for joining us on the Empty to Impact podcast. This has been a fascinating conversation.
Scott Jamieson: I love talking about… I love talking about the future of education, and especially with young people, like someone like you, who's a freshman in high school, has such creative ideas, and I think that if we really want to move forward with schools and thinking about the future of education.
Scott Jamieson: we need to involve young people like Sanjay in these conversations. So thanks so much for sharing your thoughts, and I'm really excited for this episode and to share with our listeners.
Sanjay Divakar: Thank you, Scott.
Scott Jamieson: Alright… I forget… Turn off our recording.