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Scaling Success is a national K–12 education and technology podcast uncovering the people, partnerships, and proven practices behind programs that are working and exploring how their success can be replicated and scaled. Jennifer Womble and Jacob Kantor bring together two sides of the K–12 innovation ecosystem: education leadership and edtech partnership. Scaling Success is grounded in a simple belief: some of the best solutions to education's biggest challenges already exist in our schools. We need better ways to find them, understand them, share them, and scale them.
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[00:01] Patrick Gittisriboongul: I think every organization, every school district needs an AI strategy, and you need an AI strategy now. New levels of productivity, new business models, new educational outcomes, new educational inputs, new student and staff experiences, new workforce tools and skills, new industry strategies.
[00:21] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: We're now entering sort of this next phase of AI, which is more focused around agentic workflows, where AI can now help you build full-blown spreadsheets. It can help you build full-blown Welcome, welcome, welcome.
[00:38] Jacob Kantor: We're excited that you are here to listen. We have 2 special guests with us. We have Sam and Patrick. I'm going to turn it over to them in a second to introduce themselves, but I wanted to set the tone for the episode. We're going to be talking about how Lynwood Unified became the lighthouse district of all AI across the country, and also how a simple conversation turned into a text message thread, turned into cohorts, turned into craziness all across the country for all things AI. But first, I wanted to turn it over to Patrick to really do a proper introduction.
[01:07] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: Awesome.
[01:09] Patrick Gittisriboongul: Hey, Jacob and Sam, good to see you, and Jenn as well. Thanks for having me on the podcast. My name is Patrick Gittisriboongul. I'm the self-proclaimed longest last name you will ever see. I am the proud superintendent of Lynwood Unified School District in Southern California. We have 10,000 students across 12 elementary, 2 middle, 2 high schools. And I've just finished my first year as the proud superintendent of the school district. So shout out to all of the first-year freshman superintendents out there. This has been a great journey for me in my first year as a superintendent.
[01:43] Jacob Kantor: You made it. You made it. We made it. We made it. You're here. You're here.
[01:48] Jenn Womble: The first of many.
[01:49] Patrick Gittisriboongul: The first of many. I got a great board of education. I want to shout out my board as well. So if they're listening, Shout out to the Board of Education.
[01:56] Jacob Kantor: Awesome. Sam, I'm going to turn it over to you.
[01:58] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: All right. Thanks, Jacob. Thanks, Patrick. Thanks, Jenn, for having me. Uh, my name is Sam Canning-Kaplan. I lead US K through 12 go-to-market at OpenAI. I joined the team about 2 years ago directly from Google for Education, where I was at for a solid 6 years. Schoology prior to that. And my whole background has been K-12 edtech and learning management systems. So very happy to be here. And thank you all for, uh, for having me.
[02:22] Jacob Kantor: We have some techie folks on this, let me just say. So for all the listeners, this is a group of 4 very tech-forward folks. Jenn, I'm going to turn it over to you.
[02:33] Jenn Womble: Yeah, so we're really excited this time because what we're talking about is how do we take what looks like from all across the country this groundbreaking district who has established an amazing AI policy, an AI plan, an AI implementation, And honestly, Patrick, from across the country, you're making it look easy. But we know right now people are really struggling with this. We see all kinds of mixed messages in the research, mixed messages in the media. How do we do this? And how do we do it where our parents are happy, the students are happy, the teachers are happy? And so I think we really want to show and kind of hear the story from you of how this all kind of came to be, how this AI initiative started.
[03:16] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: Yeah.
[03:17] Jenn Womble: And I was reminded when Jacob and I were talking that you and I had lunch at COSIN. I think it was Miami, maybe 2024. And I was just talking to you. You were CIO then. How lucky of a district to have you as a CIO also.
[03:32] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: Yeah.
[03:33] Jenn Womble: And we were talking about AI, and I was like, how do you even start with a strategy? Like, at that time, we were like, what do you do? How do you start? And I was so impressed because you literally, like, spilled off a 3-year strategy to me. And I was like, okay, there's something in place here. And so for people across the country who really want to scale and figure out what you're doing as a model and bring it to their districts, how were you thinking about this in the beginning? And then really, what was your strategy?
[04:01] Patrick Gittisriboongul: Yeah, you know, I appreciate that question. Thanks. Thanks for that question, Jenn. And again, as always, I love learning from you and learning from the team at FETC. And so you guys have done a phenomenal job of really building a network of CTOs, CIOs to really tackle these issues all at once. And so you've been at this for the last couple years as well. And so to kind of take a step back, I think when it comes to AI, when it comes to our strategy, I think, you know, first and foremost, AI is— was important because we really saw this as an equity issue. So, you know, in November of 2022, you know, ChatGPT comes out and everyone's using it. All these districts are banning it. And so the question comes up is like, okay, what is this tool? Should schools use it? And the better question that I wanted to ask was, will our students, our teachers, our families have the type of knowledge, the type of access, the type of guidance that allows them to use these tools responsibly and effectively? You know, we've learned from some of the mistakes that we had with social media, and you're seeing the byproduct of those mistakes with social media now where, you know, you get phone bans, you get all kinds of technology bans. And so for us in communities like Lynwood, we can't wait. We can't afford to wait until this technology becomes mainstream and then catch up. For me and for my board and for our community, our students deserve to be early participants in the future, not late recipients, right? So for us, it was changing how people write. It was changing how people create. It was changing how people analyze. how they communicate. You know, I think ChatGPT was one of the first companies to get to 200 million users. And so, for that, you know, AI was something that we needed to start shaping and start putting a strategy around. So, what we first did was, again, we assembled the AI task force. And so, that task force was really to help create responsible use policies, was also to create inclusive environments to make sure that we were creating these policies with people as opposed to them. And so, you know, that's why our AI work has always been grounded in really 3 things. Number 1, equity. Number 2, safety. And number 3, ethics. And so for us, we really wanted to think about student privacy, data protection. You know, we know that some of these AI tools have a lot of biases in them. There's a lot of misinformation. And then, you know this too, as teachers, we're dealing with a lot of Cheating, academic integrity. Are teachers ready for this? And so, you know, many districts ban things in the beginning. And so for us, you know, we formed that task force and like we put together this 3-year roadmap where the first year was gonna be the task force. The second year we would do pilots and we would have teachers start, you know, playing around, exploring, you know, integrating it within their classroom. And then this 3rd year, we were thinking of having students create AI tools that would help them with their own work, with their own tutoring, with their own learning, with their own problem solving. So I think when it comes to putting a maturity model, putting a strategy, I think that's where you have to really build a lot of intention around the type of outcomes you want to expect and the type type of outcomes that you want to have with students. And so, you know, we really want to avoid 2 extremes. One extreme is fear, where you simply block and avoid AI. And the other extreme is hype, where you rush things without guardrails. And so for us, I think there's that middle ground, there's that third path where you have responsible innovation. And I think that's where a lot of organizations, you know, oftentimes They think about this in the binary. We gotta think of this in kind of in the gray area where really responsible innovation is where it needs to be. And so, in a nutshell, I would say create a 3-year roadmap. Think of the maturity model that you want to have. Think of the outcomes that students— you want students to develop along the way. We even work with teachers. We even work with staff. Talk with parents. I did a workshop with parents as well. to at least give them an understanding for what ChatGPT, OpenAI has been doing, you know, for the last, you know, 3, 4 years. And so, and then you come back, you do a lot more care and feeding with that as well because everyone needs to understand that this is changing the economy. It's driving the economy. It's really creating a lot of different workflows, got a lot of different, you know, productivity tools. And so I think that's where our work really becomes powerful. You know, and, and for us too, AI is not just something that students are gonna use. It's gonna be something that they use with purpose. So a lot of that intentionality, a lot of that real problem-solving kinds of things, those are the things that we really want our students to, to experience.
[09:13] Jenn Womble: You know, Patrick, I love that you're focused on intentionality. And the thing that a lot of people don't think when there's early adopters is that they're being intentional. A lot of times they think early adopters are rushing to it and they're doing something before it's ready and they haven't looked at all the interoperability, Or what the different systems and data can handle. How did you decide, kind of going back that task force first, how did you decide who should be on that task force? Because right now there's people around the country who are just at the phase you were 3 years ago. So for people who are just starting this process, how did you decide who should be on there and who you should include?
[09:47] Patrick Gittisriboongul: I think for us, what stands out is that the way that we started, we began with several questions. Number, number one, Like, we didn't start with what school we should buy. We started with, like, what do our students need? What do our staff need? What do our educators need? What does responsible implementation look like and require? How do we protect trust while creating opportunities? So that kind of questioning, that kind of leadership matters because as everyone sees now, AI has moved so quickly. But school systems have to have that sense, that sense of urgency and thoughtfulness as well. So it's important for educators, it's important for leaders to ask those type of questions. It's like, what do our students need? What do our educators need? What does responsible implementation look like? We can go slow to go fast, but at the same time, we want to make sure that we create that opportunity. We protect trust, we build relationships with staff, we build relationships with the community as well. And so like our roadmap, our 3-year journey around AI is really about listening, learning, connecting, understanding, doing things with people as opposed to them. And so that's important for me, important for our board, important for our staff and community is to really be grounded in the voices of our students, our families, our educators, and our staff, because that community in Lynwood, it's a 5-mile radius. 70,000 residents. They all talk to each other. I got a school that is literally like less than a mile away from another school. And so that conversation as part of that larger vision is really important for us as a school district. It's making sure that our story is not just about the technology, but it's about leadership. It's about community. It's about inclusive experiences. It's about making sure that we keep students at the It's really amazing that what you've done.
[11:44] Jenn Womble: I applaud you for including community because I think in areas where community has been first, there has been less resistance and there has been more ability to kind of shape the philosophy of the district because we're kind of all on the same page for this together instead of seeing some of the resistance and adversity. So I really applaud the work that you did there. One of the things that we get asked a lot, and I know Jacob and I talked We talk techie sometimes, but how did you make sure that everybody that was involved in the process understood the technology aspects of it? Like what this was gonna empower, how much bandwidth it was gonna use, all the kind of technology pieces. A lot of our district leaders come to us and say, we don't understand data lakes and we don't understand all kind of complexity. So how do we communicate some of that complexity to our community so that they can actually help empower the school district to move forward?
[12:35] Patrick Gittisriboongul: I think where that's where, you know, in creating what I, what I called the District Kit. So, you know, I put together a district AI toolkit. You can go to districtkit.ai. I think that piece has become foundational for us as an organization because I think in terms of, of like identifying use cases, people really need more clarity around how they're using these tools in their day-to-day. So teachers, they need guidance on what's appropriate, how to use it without compromising their judgment, how to talk with students about responsible use, and how to connect the type of AI to some of their instructional goals as well. Administrators, they need guidance on how it connects to school improvement, how it connects to their communication, how it connects to your assessments. connects to their operations. So, you know, I went to every department when I was an assistant superintendent for technology innovation. I went to every department in my building, which is business, procurement, curriculum instruction, ed services, student services, you know, every department that you can think of. And I met with the leaders and directors in there and said, I asked them, I said, hey, what are some things that you think is taking a lot of your time right now that could be offloaded, it could be automated, that could help save you time, that could help you more efficient in terms of getting other stuff done. And so, you know, identified about 48 different use cases that, you know, we wanted to leverage and that we wanted to identify that we could interact with, that we could chat with, that we can get answers on, that we can get some ideas on. And so that evolved into this districtkit.ai. And so things like strategic planning, things like RFPs, things like board item generators, things like curriculum mapping, differentiation. So you name it, I was trying to identify some areas that our staff, our teachers, whoever it is, could interact with an AI tool that would be as foundational for them as possible, right? That could help meet a need. And so that toolkit, I think, really helped avoid some type of like uneven implementation that can sometimes happen when, you know, you come in and someone says, hey, let's bring everyone in the room. Let's all do this training. Let's go over all of this. And it's like this one-size-fits-all kind of PD training model, right? And so by identifying examples and specific use cases for each population, each group, each individual, I think we're able to create that kind of sense-making, that sense of common language that AI is not about replacing you and your role, but it's about automating some of the Like the workflow that you have. It's about strengthening your work. It's about strengthening your approach, which is why, again, I love the tools from OpenAI. I love the tools from ChatGPT because it really, it helps automate some of that. It helps automate the work that we're trying to do to make the work about relationships, about reaching out to people, about communication, about collaboration even more important than ever, right? So that That area and that aspect of really identifying those use cases, making that part of our foundational work, meeting people where they're at, listening to what their needs are, I think that's where that— that's the work for learning. It's the work for classroom pilots. It's the work for policies. It's the work around school site planning. So all of that is really connected to all the use cases that we're able to identify.
[16:25] Jenn Womble: And Patrick, we're gonna have to put— and Jacob, we gotta get all this stuff in the show notes. We gotta share all these special kits Because there's no reason a district should be starting from scratch, right? There should definitely be using the resources that you're building, and, and we're so grateful that you're sharing this, this platform. Jacob, I know you and I talked to lots of districts across the country on the regular, and they are— some of them are at different points in this process. Some of them are just now with task force or just with policy. They're just now starting to make some decisions. So I'd love to get to the point of the story where you decided How do you decide what tool to pick for your district? I think, Jacob, you might have a good story about a little bit of— give us some insight here.
[17:05] Jacob Kantor: Yeah. So before we turn it over to Sam, because I want the backstory for how all this came to be on what you guys were hearing and all this stuff, the origin story, as I was reflecting on us recording, I was like, how did we all meet? And then I remembered Patrick sent me a text on a Wednesday evening saying, Do you know anybody at OpenAI? And I was like, I don't think I do. I'll get back to you. And I think I sent a text out to like Los Angeles County Office of Ed, Orange County, San Diego, Riverside, and San Bernardino and was like, hey, random request. Do you happen to know anyone? And I think Wes, kudos to Wes, Orange County was like, I know somebody. Is it urgent? Do you need to know right away? I was like, there's no urgency. I just wanted to connect with somebody to see about a pass-through line to connect a super techie superintendent. And I think, Sam, you and I connected at first and I was like, you could take this or leave this. It's all good. I've like the incoming superintendent that just won CTO of the Year in LA County. There's 1.4 million students there. I was like, I think this is a no-brainer, but like also I'm friends with him. I'm pumping him up. Like, I think this is a no-brainer. And I think you were like, yeah, let's talk. Like, uh, what do we got to lose? Let's have a call. So, I mean, that was the hook.
[18:27] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: Yeah, yeah. You said it's one of the most innovative future superintendents of the country, and we jumped on that. Like, we were so excited to meet you, Patrick, after that.
[18:34] Jacob Kantor: Totally. So we quickly, you know, had a call and talked through all the kinds of things. And I know how Patrick is. Patrick's like, I have ideas.
[18:43] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: How long do you—
[18:45] Jacob Kantor: Patrick's like, I have some ideas.
[18:48] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: Oh yeah.
[18:49] Jacob Kantor: How long do you have? I have some ideas. And we, we got to chatting, and then, you know, uh, full Full circle, we walked the floors of FETC meeting with some folks and now like talk regularly. But like, that was the origin story of how it all came to be. But Sam, I wanted to kind of throw it to you on like, you know, all things cohorts, but even before cohorts came to be and all this stuff, like, I know there's like an origin story back in the day of like, you guys started talking to districts, like free dialogue now, like, stage is yours.
[19:22] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: Thank you. Yes. Um, yeah, so I joined the team about 2 years ago and I was sort of tasked with, let's figure out what districts and schools and educators need, and then we can align what we're going to do to align to what they need. So when I joined initially, we worked off of the assumption that at OpenAI, we worked off the assumption that we do not know better than districts. We do not know better than K-12. We do not know better than educators. So instead of us just launching a bunch of things and claiming that we know, let's actually go and meet with districts around the country, charters, independent schools, you name it. And that's exactly what we did for almost up to a year. And in those conversations, we were meeting with small districts, large districts, rurals, independent schools, you name it, to get perspectives across the US of what do they need from OpenAI to better support their users. To get feedback on what sort of protections are needed, how are they thinking about implementation, and what do they want from tech companies like OpenAI to better support the goals and objectives that they have. So we took no assumptions in this, and it became very clear very quickly what people were looking for. And some of the key themes, just to call that out quickly, would be baseline access. And that privacy, safety, admin controls, and compliance should be free. And should be table stakes. So that was a common theme we heard across the US. Next was data ownership. So schools should own their own data. It should be— PII should be protected. This district data should not be used to utilize the models. We heard that from everyone. Next was managed deployments, right? We don't want to have a system where there's no oversight, there's no ability for admin to have control. So the key themes that came out of that were we need SSO, we need roles, we need permissions, we need data retention.
[21:12] Jenn Womble: Yeah.
[21:13] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: And admin visibility to be able to do this safely and in a responsible way. And then one of the last sort of like technical aspects of this was we need protections built into this. These need to be aligned for FERPA compliance. You need to be willing as a company to sign data privacy agreements, such as the NDPA, which are all across the US. So those were common themes. The biggest ones were that educators should lead these rollouts. These should not be led by tech companies. You should work with us and we should get this feedback and do this together. And that led to the last sort of theme of this, which was everybody across the board says, we can't just get a tool and then just say, good luck, go have fun. That doesn't work for us as schools and educators and all these staff members. So what was requested is we need training, we need support, we need collaboration. We want to work with other school districts. So that is an origin story for all of the feedback that we heard across the market. And again, this was all about over a year. When I first started. So what we did to address that is we launched a couple of different things. The first aspect was ChatGPT for Teachers. What that is, is it is a data-protected version of ChatGPT that's built for K-12 schools. The way that that works is it's staff only, so it's 18 and up. We are not working with students in that product whatsoever. In addition, it's no cost and free, and it gives you access to core models, core tools. Custom GPTs, all of these administrative tools that you need to actually deploy a system as a district. And last but not least, compliance aspects of that. So data protected, cannot train on data, backed by data privacy agreements and services agreements. And we've signed NDPA as well. So that was sort of just from like a product standpoint. And when we built that, we built that directly with educators based upon feedback from both educators, admin, you name it, IT. And that was just to ensure that we are building this in the right way. But that's not enough. Like a product is not enough. So the second aspect of this, and this is where this origin story comes in, how we met Patrick and how we all came together, was we kept back to this theme of we cannot, we cannot do this on our own. We need to support educators. We need to learn from them and we need to build and do this based upon what they need to get what they need done. So on top of this, we decided to launch cohorts. And what these cohorts were, the initial one was, is we wanted to work closely with different school districts, charters, independent schools across the U.S. that were innovative schools and districts that wanted to jump in and start utilizing this. So in this cohort model, we, we had a bunch of districts, charters. Lynwood was excitingly one of our first districts that joined that initial cohort. And the goal of this is that we as OpenAI. would set up structured training. So it includes online resources. We're reading webinars, or we're leading webinars, office hours, all of these different aspects that provide collaboration. But the other part of this is that we wanted it to be an iterative process. Any company or any person that claims that they have everything figured out with AI is not being truthful. So in our first deployments here, we said, we're gonna, we're gonna do this with you all. We want this to be a learning process. We're gonna have lots of moments where we can collaborate, get feedback. And what we will use with this feedback and our learnings together is we will use this to improve how we're training schools, how we're supporting schools, how we're driving this. So it's become a very iterative process. I could talk for hours about this, but that's sort of the origin story of what we've been doing in K-12. So again, A is providing equitable solutions across the US that any district, school, educator can sign up for ChatGPT for Teachers. And B is doing this cohort model to do this responsibly in the long term. And I'll just mention one final thing, just because I think this is deeply important, is that from a lot of these feedback from schools, they wanted to ensure that, again, while this feedback and us doing this in this way is very important, really effective research is equally important at the same time. So as a company, um, in the US, we're not doing any K-12, uh, U-18 deployments in the EDU team, but we've set up longitudinal research studies through Stanford University and partner districts and international partnerships. To do these learning outcomes research and to get better understanding of classroom impact so we can continue to improve from both the cognitive perspective and from a research perspective. So those are just a couple of initial things that we've been working on, but wanted to just lay the groundwork for how we got where we got.
[25:45] Jacob Kantor: Yeah. And what I'll tell you is a year of listening to districts and having conversations and I'll like full circle, turn it over and give some paths to you, but also to Patrick, because when he started as a superintendent, I know your first like 3 months or more was spent boots on the ground meeting with people, listening to people. So I think like you guys are 2 peas in a pod on listening tours there for sure.
[26:11] Patrick Gittisriboongul: I think that the work that OpenAI and Sam that you guys have done with even that cohort model really helped us and helped me in my role as in my first year as a superintendent because It really allowed me to really find priorities as well because we're able to now surface some of the questions that come up around, you know, for us to create this AI literacy framework for the organization and for the school district. So like, you know, we have like essential questions that we often ask is how can we empower our students and staff to excel in AI and in AI literacy? How do we enforce these AI guidelines that protect data? and integrity? And then how can we embed AI literacy within our curriculum? And then how can we engage families and communities in that type of work that we're doing? And then the last one I would say is then how can we ensure that our AI initiatives continue to be sustainable and impactful as an organization and as a school district? So, you know, I just want to say kudos to the folks at OpenAI and you, Sam, and the team because That cohort model really allowed us to surface those questions with that cohort as well. And so everyone is kind of striving towards that same literacy framework, if you will. That's how we've defined it and how we do our sensemaking as an organization as well. So being able to understand it, use it, and evaluate it is really critical. And I really am, you know, I'm really excited about the work that you guys are doing around, you know, research projects as well.
[27:38] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: And we're grateful too. Thank you for joining and just pushing. And, and you, you were— it's very rare to get a superintendent that is this engaged and actually understands the deep complexities of this technology. So we are, are thrilled and honored to work with you as well. And, and thank you for that. That was very kind. Yeah, for sure.
[27:55] Jenn Womble: So I'm, I'm super curious. So Patrick, did you first— because you're using the teacher model, I'm guessing, the one that Sam described. Are, are all of your teachers now using the, the teacher OpenAI model? And then, and then are they being trained? Like, how are you— how did you go in and approach that from getting it from one office to everybody in your district, you know, really employing it.
[28:16] Patrick Gittisriboongul: So full disclosure is that this is even pre-teacher model.
[28:21] Jenn Womble: So, okay, good.
[28:23] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: Cohort 1 was, yeah, pre-teacher models. It was actually the education version, and, and we're— we have a lot of updates that we'll be talking about down the line. But yeah, good content.
[28:31] Patrick Gittisriboongul: Yeah, but, but in terms of, of your question, Jenn, like, I, I think because our district And the way that one of our initiatives is really making sure that AI is embedded within our organization, whether it's from top to bottom, and AI being a tool that we use to make us productive, more efficient, et cetera, et cetera. So, like, when it comes to OpenAI and the tools that we have with them, like, I was looking for a solution because many of our educators, many of our staff was already using OpenAI. They were already using ChatGPT. They were already leveraging these tools. So for me, it was really about not just safety and privacy, but I wanted an organization to take these tools that are made and that people are signing up and round it up and really make sure that as an organization that we have these 3 tenets when it comes to our AI, which is Number one, making sure it's accessible, right? Number two, making sure that privacy and data privacy is important. And then number three is just making sure that we— it's inclusive and responsible. So like data protection, responsible, inclusive, those are the 3 tenets around our AI task force. So kind of rounding that out and making sure that we have the solution and the technology that the industry is using for our teachers, that has been a game changer for us. I can say that now because like it's one of those tools where you didn't know you needed. And now that you have it, it's like, wow, like, okay, great. And I can say that OpenAI and ChatGPT continues to innovate and we're, we continue to leverage some of the resources that are there. So, and then when it comes to training, you know, I often give like my tooltip, my AI tip of the month with our principals. Whenever I do, you know, like speaking engagements with our teachers, there's always a little tooltip that we give. And so we often share some of the use cases that we have that we continue to evolve and establish. And so, you know, we do it slowly, and many of the teachers and many of our staff already come up with their own kinds of ideas. And so, You know, we, we have this AI learning lab model that continues to, to grow. And so, uh, we're just, we, we meet people where they're at.
[31:03] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: Yeah.
[31:04] Jenn Womble: But I love that you're modeling it, even just the small announcements at meetings and a small thing like that. You're modeling like we can be using this all the time and it's just a part of our way of work, which I think is really helpful in your district. That's amazing. Yeah, for sure. And I love that you picked a tool that so many people already have. And that they were already, you know, comfortable with. And I think your community probably really appreciated that because that's what's out in the workforce. And we know parents really want their students to be workforce ready. We keep hearing these conversations a lot. And then, you know, what are we doing? So my follow-up question to that is going to be, what is the next thing you're thinking about as far as like, we're hearing a lot about academic curriculum and we're hearing a lot about assessment and how AI is going to impact those. So So do you have a plan or a strategy for how those pieces are going to develop with AI?
[31:55] Patrick Gittisriboongul: As AI has just changed this world and OpenAI has been at the forefront of that, I think when it comes to assessment, when it comes to learning, for me, I think that it really can help transform and change the way we, you know, we teach now. You know, oftentimes what I say is instead of assessing the outcome, we now want to assess the process in the same way that, you know, as you build a project, as you build a product, as we all work every step along the way, you know, we should always be checking to make sure that we're making progress along the way. And so when it comes to an assessment, if we're asking, you know, our students to produce a 5-paragraph essay and evaluating that 5-paragraph essay because of this output, shame on us. I think we should be assessing the steps and the process and how kids are interacting with these tools and what questions they're asking, if they're asking the right questions, how they're thinking about the work, how they're thinking about these outputs, how they're thinking about whatever content is being, you know, whatever content is being taught to them. So assessing the process as opposed to assessing the outcome is where I think, you know, many of our instruction and much of our curriculum and assessments needs to evolve into that. I think, you know, we also want to make sure learning doesn't become a distraction. You know, I know that there's a lot of emphasis around screen time, around tech use. I, for me, it's always about making sure that we find the right fit, age appropriateness, making sure that we look at how AI continues to get integrated within what we do. And again, I make no mistake that screen time, all those things, making sure that kids get out, build those relationships, absolutely is a priority for us. Relationships matter. Relationships should be one of the priorities. And that's part of our Vision 2030. Positive development of relationships is at an all— like, that's the main priority. But when it comes to these tools, we want to make sure that it's embedded, it's real world. You know, students should be allowed to use these tools because they're already using it anyways. But, you know, making sure that there's a structure, making sure there's a scope and sequence, making sure that we've identified, you know, the age appropriateness and introducing these tools in a way that creates that capacity. Rather than burdening our teachers and our staff. Those are the things that I'm looking at. Those are the things that I'm seeing in terms of moving forward and around assessment, around screen time, around relationships, around AI use, because it's not going away. And it would be a disservice for us to not make sure that our kids have that capacity to be built around it.
[34:54] Jacob Kantor: You know, A, I got like shivers because there's so smart people in the room that are making me smarter. So thank you guys, friends. Sam, question for you. I know, so Patrick was in the first cohort, you know, in the second cohort there's other friends and like Patrick being like the model district, also the district in LA County that like vets all solution providers because everyone knows Patrick is very— critical is not the right word. You're very diligent and responsive. I'm looking for lots of words that are escaping me, but Patrick is very—
[35:32] Patrick Gittisriboongul: Yeah.
[35:33] Jacob Kantor: good on really assessing tools, right? So Sam, I wonder if you talk about like the second cohort, even like opening the stage for you on like what's next, cohort 2, cohort 3, like what are folks that are listening to like give us everything?
[35:47] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: Yeah, I mean, it's been a, we're doing this as intentionally and we're trying to slow down this process as much as we can so we can be thoughtful about this. So we launched the initial cohort. I think our first cohort was back in November. It was about 17, maybe even up to 19 districts, somewhere in that range. So that was very big. And the learnings that we got from that, this has all been a very iterative process. So the initial learnings that we got from folks out of that were, A, they wanted to learn more from each other, right? So initially we had a lot of content where it was like us leading sessions. We brought in some districts that we had already been working with and they, they shared a lot of trainings throughout this cohort as well. But we found overwhelmingly districts wanted to hear from other districts. Teachers wanted to hear from other teachers. So that, that was one thing that became very clear is that this needs to continue to be educator-led, customer-led, and we're the support mechanism to tell the stories and help people see themselves in their own school in these products so that they can adapt for their own needs. That was very key. The other part of this was the collaborative nature of this. So these are, these cohorts, they're done through online trainings.
[36:56] Jacob Kantor: Mm-hmm.
[36:57] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: But then we have office hours, right? Where folks will join and they'll collaborate. And one of the biggest learnings I had is most of the most exciting things that happened in this cohort happened in those office hours. It would be somebody comes like a CIO or a someone in curriculum, and they would have a challenge that their district was facing. They would bring it to office hours and we would just have like an open door, right? And we would pause and not try to offer any solutions. And we, another district would jump in. They would say how their district has been handling that situation. They would share resources. So, so from that perspective, we learned that we need to be collaborative. We need to allow districts to work with each other, and we're almost the vessel of providing a space for people to do so. So I would say those were key learnings, and we then launched our second cohort. We made it way more interactive. We brought in way more districts and educators to help influence what they learned there. So, so that's been very exciting in that, and that's been, that's really resonated there. The other thing that's come out of this has been really helpful use cases, right? So a lot, a lot of what we've learned throughout the way is initially when these AI products launched, people were kind of just trying to throw paint at the wall looking for, you know, use cases for this. And we've taken the approach here in K-12 of we're going to help guide, we're going to provide the tools and start talking about ways they could use them. And then we'll work with districts to come up with helpful ways this solves for their day-to-day. So common themes that, that I thought was really interesting out of the cohort were things around voice mode and supporting English language learners. Like when you look at chatbots and all these different tools, you're immediately thinking writing and all these different ways you can use them. But what's the reality of the situation that we learned from districts is you have a teacher, there are, a parent comes to visit them. This parent speaks Spanish. Maybe the teacher speaks English. And this parent is invested in their child's education and they want to talk to the teacher. So they come in, the teacher calls the translation line, unable to get someone. They, they try to, uh, you know, check the online service, unable to get someone. So one use case that we learned directly from districts is they're using the voice mode in ChatGPT to say, when you hear English, translate to Spanish or Haitian Creole or Arabic. And when you hear that language, translate back to English. So from this, we've learned a ton and ton of use cases. And what we've done with that is we've been launching tons of online content based upon what we're learning to help support districts in these use cases. So one quick shout out is 2 resources. One is academy.openai.com. We actually post all of our cohort trainings and all of the recordings of everything there. So it's academy.openai.com and you just click the K-12 section. You'll find everything. And then ChatGPT Foundations for Teachers. This is a course that we launched based upon all of this feedback that we've gotten. So schools and educators around the US can learn this themselves. It's an asynchronous course available on Coursera, completely free. And again, that was built directly with educators for educators. So a couple of resources and learnings that we got out of that.
[40:02] Jenn Womble: Okay. That's amazing already. I think teachers will jump on that because what we're hearing from all the research is that people want to learn more. Students want to learn, parents want to learn, teachers want to learn. The fact that you all are creating this incredible hub of information is really an amazing resource. And I want to turn and ask you a little bit about that too, because we think about ChatGPT and OpenAI in the United States because that's where we all are and we're living here, right? But we're hearing all this news from Estonia and from Singapore where your product is in every single school. school in the country. And so I'm hearing some whispers about some pretty amazing research that, you know, the Stanford SCALE Institute is doing and other folks are doing. How are you kind of hoping to take that data that's being collected in schools and other places in the world and maybe helping in America and help that research here and, and what we can do for schools here as well?
[40:57] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: Absolutely. No, that's a great question, Jenn. Yeah. So again, acting on this intentionality with the education portion of this company. We did, we did not want to just launch student products, right? In K-12 and education in the US. What we wanted to do is we set up these longitudinal research studies. And in countries like Estonia, you know, where it's very Ministry of Education led, it's very structured. They have tons of teams involved. And this has been a very methodical, structured, collaborative process. In some of those instances, they've been deploying to some older high school students, right? And the goal of this is that they want to train these students and get them using these tools, but they want to do this in a very monitored way, in a very research-backed way, with their own influence over these models and the outputs of which these students are getting. You know, it's not the consumer product, right? It's a very different product. So what's been set up there is that it's long-term research to understand how the models impact learning. How they impact learning outcomes, how they can be optimized to better support students. And it's all done through a cognitive science, learning science standpoint. There's some resources if folks want to look this up. It's called the Learning Outcomes Toolkit. It's available online if you want to read about that research. And the end goal of all of this is, of course, making sure we're doing things the right way, responsibly, and done through research. I can't predict the future of where this will all go, but we are doing very monitored research in those types of places and And it's been very helpful to drive where we go.
[42:29] Jenn Womble: I just, yeah, I want to applaud that work because I think the foundation, the research is the foundation of everything we do, you know, in learning sciences. And I love that you made the distinction. And Jacob and I are always talking about this, the difference between consumer technology and educational technology and how it's a very clear difference between what those are, what's, you know, grounded in pedagogy and in real research and what we're using in schools and districts is very different than commercial products. So I think the research you're doing could really be leading the way and, and really kind of changing the dynamics of education. Because Patrick, you mentioned we've gotta change and redesign our learning structures to match AI in the future. This arrival technology is, you know, here to stay. It's gonna change and evolve our workplaces and what the students are doing. So Patrick, I'm gonna ask the, the, the million-dollar question. At what point do you start getting students involved and having students use these tools?
[43:22] Patrick Gittisriboongul: I think you need to start now. Students are already using these tools. They're already using the consumer-based tools. And so I think by making sure that we have the right policies, the right guardrails, the right assessments, the right learning objectives, the right activities in the class, I think that's where we need to start. You know, for me and for our organization, I think the most underrated use case is really helping teachers get started. Right? And so some of that hardest, the hardest part of the work is when, you know, teachers have this blank page or whatever it is, a blank lesson plan, a blank message. And so getting teachers started, getting our staff started, you know, with the first draft, with the set of options, I think that type of like friction, if you will, can get reduced by just getting started. I think that type of work, again, teacher, The teacher can have that professional judgment. The teacher still knows students. Teacher still decides what is instructionally appropriate, what's age appropriate. If this is an activity that maybe we shouldn't use AI, but maybe we can use something in person, right? And so I think that's the most underrated use case is really strengthening the type of differentiation that our educators and our teachers are looking for. And so that came up not just from me, that came up from the work that we have with our teachers and our staff and our students as well. So Students also want to be able to have agency to create their own tools as well. And so we've already done that too, where students are able to create their own chatbot or their own GPT, their own solution that allows them to meet their own needs. So that gets them some more agency as well, because all of that takes time. It can really create that scaffolding, that type of extension that many, many times, oftentimes that our kids often need as well. And so Again, all this work doesn't replace good teaching. We want to make sure that kids are empowered to really have ownership in their learning as well. And I know that having access to these tools and being able to create their own GPTs and their tools makes learning much more meaningful and productive for them too.
[45:26] Jacob Kantor: And Patrick, on that same wavelength, what do you think the most underrated AI use case is for district leaders? I know you built 45 use cases for your own district. Like, what's the one thing that you, like, you cannot live without now? Like, I know you're doing board prep. I know you're doing all that side of the house. Like, what's one thing if it went away tomorrow, you would be like, oh my gosh, I'm going to pay for this right now. Who's got it?
[45:54] Patrick Gittisriboongul: Okay, so proofreading.
[45:57] Jenn Womble: Yes.
[45:59] Patrick Gittisriboongul: I hate to say it, but Proofreading for me is, is like the best use case right now. It's like the most underrated. I've written something. I've, I've drafted something. Proofread this for me. That's, that's the only prompt I give it. Proofread.
[46:19] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: So.
[46:19] Jenn Womble: I, I also like to ask it, what did I leave out?
[46:22] Patrick Gittisriboongul: Yeah.
[46:23] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: Yeah.
[46:23] Jenn Womble: Because sometimes I don't realize I forgot something or I left something out. So proofreading and, and what did I leave out? Or is there any bias in what I wrote? I think that's super interesting too.
[46:33] Patrick Gittisriboongul: Yeah, I love that. But, but that's the— I would say that is the most underrated use case is proofreading the work.
[46:40] Jenn Womble: Are you using any of that data to do your strategic plan, Patrick? I'm just—
[46:45] Patrick Gittisriboongul: We are. We are. We are. We're doing a lot of that to, to really synthesize some of the work that we have with our local control accountability plan, with, you know, just some of the stuff that's publicly available. Because, you know, we know that the members of the community are gonna look at that. They're gonna probably go put it through ChatGPT or some type of AI tool, and they're gonna wanna synthesize it for themselves. So we wanna make sure that, to your point, Jenn, to anticipate that we also wanna take it through some type of synthesis or analysis to at least give us some of the themes, some of the, you know, the language that we need to make sure that we also address because Like for us, sensemaking in public education is really like, for me as a superintendent, it's a priority because we use a lot of education jargon. Oftentimes we let it, we alphabet soup heavy and members of our community, they may not have that same language. So that type of sensemaking, that type of understanding is where I think it could really help really help create and eliminate those— that friction, eliminate those barriers. Communication is key in my role.
[47:58] Jenn Womble: And clarity is kindness, right?
[48:00] Patrick Gittisriboongul: Yeah, absolutely.
[48:01] Jenn Womble: Coming from a district. And you know what's interesting? I think, Sam, we're gonna throw this one to you because a lot of misconceptions are out there about AI. So what is one thing, Sam, like what's one misconception you would love to like clarify about what we're doing with artificial intelligence and education?
[48:18] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: Because I think there's a lot of misconceptions Yeah, honestly, I think there's sort of just in the general public, there's a perception that schools are just, you know, just implementing these tools. There's no oversight. They're not planning for this. They're just opening everything up. And that overwhelmingly has not been what I have seen. And Patrick, I agree with, I think in the beginning you were talking about 3 different types of sort of how folks innovate in different types of districts. I agree with that wholeheartedly. What I have seen here from across the country is this is vastly different, dramatically changing technology that have gotten folks, right, right? They're, they're nervous about this. They don't know where to start. So there becomes all this sort of perception that schools are just throwing things at the wall and trying to see what fits. What I've seen overwhelmingly is that schools have, many schools have been cautious and taking their time, but districts have been incredibly thoughtful. They've been bringing in committees of educators exactly as Patrick is doing. And I've been seeing, like, for example, through these cohorts that districts have been doing this in a very thoughtful and slow way and slow by the meanings of intentional. So, I mean, that, that's been one thing that I've seen across the board. And yeah, honestly, like, that's been one of the misconceptions that I've, that I've addressed.
[49:34] Jacob Kantor: Sam, on that wavelength, um, how do people find out more info on the cohorts? How do they find out more info on how to enroll their districts? Like, Where does somebody go that's listening that says, I want some more info. I might not be ready right this second, but like, I'd like more info on how to get this done.
[49:53] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: We're going to have a lot of announcements over the next many months. So there'll be a lot more of exciting announcements coming out about ways to engage, new trainings, things like that. Where I would recommend that most districts start is first look at ChatGPT for Teachers. Look at that and explore that, the data privacy agreement, all of the capabilities there. That's a great place to start. Another recommendation I would have if you're looking to get started with these tools and you just want to see some use cases, see some trainings, see guides, we have tons of resources. Go to academy.openai.com and go to the K-12 section. We have it broken out by administrators, IT, teachers, educators. So different types of breakdowns and different types of content that's aligned for many. So I would recommend starting there. And then follow our, on LinkedIn, OpenAI for Education, or you can follow our blog as well. We will have consistent announcements and a lot more coming, particularly around training and resources going forward. That's the best place to start.
[50:53] Jenn Womble: And things are happening so fast. I mean, Sam, of those of us who are still on X and following the tech bros and the updates that are happening on, you know, AI every single day and night. So the tools that are coming out, right? And everything that's happening, teach— some teachers are feeling like super overwhelmed. So what is amazing and what I hear both of you talking about, which is so encouraging to me, and if I'm hearing you right, it's been about human connection and collaboration, human teachers working together to rebuild assessments and rebuild learning, collaboration together, building more student agency, bringing more curiosity and creativity. Like, the things that both of you are talking about are like building a dream school. Like, really, it's That this is a big misconception that people are trying to do AI and it's stopping that cognition and all of this development. So when you're kind of thinking ahead to what's next, and I'll go to you first, Patrick, what are you trying to focus on next, Patrick? Now we have this technology, but what's the next piece of the focus? What should we be thinking? What are you thinking about next?
[51:57] Patrick Gittisriboongul: Yeah, I think I may have alluded to this earlier about sensemaking. I'm really focused on really 2 things. Number one, coherence. Across the organization, across students, across staff, across the community. And then the third is really deeper implementation. You know, for us, you know, as part of the Vision 2030 work that we're doing, our AI work is not treated as a separate technology project. So the question that we often ask is, how does AI support students? How does it support teachers? How does it support our principals? How does it support families as part of that?
[52:30] Jacob Kantor: Yeah.
[52:31] Patrick Gittisriboongul: part of this long-term vision. I'm really focused on making sure people feel supported. As you mentioned earlier, it can really feel overwhelming, Jenn, and it's changing so quickly. There's so many different tools. People are talking about token maxing now as a new buzzword. And so because these tools are changing so quickly, I feel like my job as a superintendent and our job as district leaders is to really create That type of clarity instead of confusion. You know, as part of my leadership truths that I often say is, you know, communication prevents chaos. That type of communication, it can really prevent that chaos, can create that clarity. And so communicating the purpose, communicating our whys, reinforcing our guardrails, sharing examples that we've done with, you know, Cohort 1 and with OpenAI and ChatGPT. Listening carefully to educators and our students and our families. And so those are the things that I'm thinking about in terms of our next chapter of what AI learning could be and what AI literacy could be and what AI fluency could be and what AI proficiency can be within our population and within our organization. Because that's where I think, because these skills, these type of tools, this platform is taking the economy by storm. It's, it's really like it would be a disservice to our students if we're not preparing them for that world.
[53:58] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: And I can, I can answer as well. What we're focused on for the future has been, you know, consistently taking these learnings from these cohorts, continue working with educators, continue working with schools and districts so we can better optimize our training and support and how we're supporting this unbelievably important segment. So that's been number one, and that's always top of mind of everything we do. And we're launching another cohort, so that's exciting. Something I'm thinking about that's top of mind right now is we're now entering sort of this next phase of AI, which is more focused around agentic workflows. You know, one of our tools that we launched, Codex, right? If you've looked online, it's— and for just listeners out there, the best way to describe it is ChatGPT.
[54:41] Patrick Gittisriboongul: Yeah.
[54:41] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: is your thought partner, right? It's your chat partner. It's used to brainstorm. You use Codex to build, use Codex to do. So we're entering this new phase, right, where AI can now help you build full-blown spreadsheets. They can help you build full-blown slides. They can build agents. They can build, help you adapt. And you can have an agent just for curriculum development that's directly aligned to your curriculum, which is a very intense technology. So what our current purpose is right now is we're exploring ways of how can we provide these tools in an equitable way, right? For schools and districts around the US. And B is instead of, again, saying we figured it out, we know exactly how Codex works in K-12, it'll be continuing to work with our cohorts, working with our amazing partners like Patrick, to get a better understanding of how these tools work for them and how we can support educators in achieving those goals. That's what I see as our, you know, the intense thing we're working on for the next 90 days.
[55:38] Jacob Kantor: Amazing. Both of you guys, I'm so impressed by the level and the themes in this episode. Don't mind me, I take notes while I listen and I talk, right? So like some of the themes in this hour we've had was going on listening tours and not knowing, not thinking we know everything ourselves, right? There's others that are doing it. There's others, there's great examples. Another is relationships, right? The 4 of us on this call a year ago probably didn't really even know each other. Patrick, maybe 2 years, but you know, like the relationships blossomed from working together, trying to solve mutual things that we were seeing in the market. And then also just this whole ecosystem of support, right? Around like not just looking at the teacher, but also looking at the administrator, also looking at the family and like Patrick's example of like, You know what, we have a small, big, little town and there's 10,000 students, but like parent A is going to talk to parent B at a different school. And if that parent's not happy, that other parent is not going to be happy soon too, even though they were both happy before they started talking, right? So this ecosystem of support really being there. And, you know, one quick question for both of you guys as a, as a final question as we wrap is, If there's a superintendent, cabinet member, technology leader, edtech solution provider out there, like what's one action you'd encourage them to take regarding AI this month, this week, today?
[57:08] Sam Canning-Kaplan - 1: My biggest recommendation is to someone that's never used the tools, I would say you have to just play with the tools and get an understanding of what they are. You know, we've all, you can listen to many trainings and theories and pie in the sky theories. The best way to understand what these tools are to actually try them. And I would say as a theme from this, the best way to actually learn how this is impactful is to do this with a group of other people, right? If you're a board member, bring in some educators, bring in some admin, work on things together, run a workshop. Actually utilizing the tools will better inform your strategy long-term because it's hard to determine what you're going to do if you haven't tested these things out. So I would say that collaboration, continuously work with others and learn from others. That's what I would recommend.
[57:54] Patrick Gittisriboongul: Yeah, I think for me, I think you said a word there, Sam, around strategy. I think every organization, every school district needs an AI strategy and you need an AI strategy now. New levels of productivity, new business models, new educational outcomes, new educational inputs. new student and staff experiences, new workforce tools and skills, new industry strategies. So I think developing that AI strategy, developing your roadmap, developing what the maturity model can look like for your organization, for your school district, to me, that is the most critical aspect of any organization. The work that we are doing, you should start now. Policy, resources, solutions, System requirements, having a response plan, making sure you have fact sheets, making sure you have a roadmap. What does capacity look like? What are responsible guidelines you want to establish? How does this align to your curriculum? How do you expect to communicate to your families and community? And how do you sustain and measure impact? That's a lot, but that's part of that AI strategy for you as an organization.
[59:08] Jacob Kantor: If Patrick just overwhelmed you, let's put it, if you're listening and you're wondering where to start, take one action, have one conversation, play with one tool, talk to one person, set up one relationship, share this with one person, right? Like that, it is as easy as, you know, you can be a consumer of this or you can actually start to play around with it and be And the power will be in your hands. So we thank Patrick, we thank Sam. Thank you so much for joining us. We're super appreciative of your time, but also the friendships that we've built and the collaboration. And we thank you both for being the model for really for others to look to as if they're out there and they're just starting their journey or they've figured it out and looking for their next steps in how to make their districts better or actually bring their districts into the next kind of stage of AI. We thank both of you guys for And Jenn, I'll leave it to you to close us out.
[1:00:10] Jenn Womble: And we're going to say we're going to put all these resources in the show notes because we've given away a lot of great resources, a lot of great links today. I want to thank both of you, not just for the work you're doing every day, but for being a model and leading the way across the country because we owe this to our children. This is really the future. This is going to impact in ways that we don't even know yet. It's hard for us to even imagine. But the fact that you're out there doing the work every day and creating the model and creating the cohorts to have these conversations and willing to share. I mean, thank you, Patrick, so much for giving us the inside scoop. Leaders sometimes are a little bit afraid to share behind the curtain, and you have really given us a lot to think about and what strategy really should look like. And I'm really, really thankful for what you're doing. So thank you, not just for us, but thank you for what you're doing for Thanks for listening to Scaling Success. Some of the best solutions to education's biggest challenges already exist in our schools. We are uncovering the most impactful implementations in education to share with you and scale for the future.
[1:01:19] Jacob Kantor: If this episode sparked an idea, pass it to one person who could use it— a superintendent, a tech leader, a teacher, a parent, teacher or a partner working alongside a district. That's how good ideas travel.
[1:01:30] Jenn Womble: And if you know a program that deserves this kind of deep dive, tell us. We're building a national repository of ideas and frameworks worth scaling, and we want yours in it.
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[1:01:54] Jenn Womble: Great ideas, proven practice, greater impact.
[1:01:59] Jacob Kantor: I'm Jacob.
[1:02:00] Jenn Womble: And I'm Jenn.
[1:02:01] Jacob Kantor: See you next time.
[1:02:02] Jenn Womble: On Scaling Success.