Thank you for having me.
I really appreciate you being here.
So we know you're in education, so here we are in the Wisconsin Historical Society building,
a place of learning, a place of education.
Any vibes you get coming into this space?
Not necessarily the auditorium space, but the building itself.
One of the first things someone told me about this space is when I first came on campus,
I'm new to campus.
When I first came on campus, it's that you have to go to the Wisconsin Historical Society,
you've got to go see the reading room.
And they were right.
So for me, it's this awesome place of sort of learning and scholarship, and it's been
here really long time, so it's pretty cool.
Is it a space that you find yourself visiting periodically still, now that you're in your
professional?
No, I'm mostly in my office at Anzu, like so many people, but occasionally I stop through
and just sit and do a quick few emails and keep going.
Yeah.
And you work for the Wisconsin Center for Education and Research, give us a sense of
what you guys do over there.
So WCER, which we finally refer to the Wisconsin Center for Education Research as, is an externally
funded research center here at the university, so it goes UW, the School of Education, and
WCER.
So there are roughly speaking 600 researchers who are students, faculty members, academic
staff, and all the supportive people who try to get external money to do good things in
the world around research, evaluation, and development.
So there's lots of projects, everything from early childhood kinds of things, all the way
to studying how to help young people of color navigate getting their PhDs, mentoring those
kinds of things.
So huge range, all research, all education.
Good stuff.
Yeah.
I love getting people to kind of give us a sense of the state of things in their field.
What do you think in terms of the state of education right now?
Maybe even from a teacher's perspective and so forth.
Well, I mean, you know better than anyone, and it has been a rough go with COVID for
everyone at the university level, but also at the K-12 level.
So on the one hand, we kind of think about COVID as over, right?
We're not wearing masks as much as we used to, and schools are in session.
But in my world, researchers who are working with school districts and with higher education
institutions, we're still totally dealing with COVID to tell you, honestly, we're dealing
with young people with mental health issues.
We're dealing with grownups with mental health issues.
We're dealing with big gaps in knowledge that occurred when kids were home from school.
So things are not yet easy, not that they were easy before COVID, but I think the other
thing is it's hard to remember that the world is moving on, but there are still these things
that are lingering for all of us to be paying attention to and trying to deal with.
So what have we learned in terms of how to best teach in this environment, like how
do we get education to where it was prior to COVID?
There was a recent New York Times article that profiled a study that was done.
It was a collaboration, I think, between Harvard, A.I.R., American Institutes of Research,
and N.W.E.A., which is a company, I think they're not for a profit, that creates what
we call formative assessments.
So just short-term regular assessments that are supposed to help teachers in the K-12
environment address what their students are, where they are, and where they need to go.
And that report showed that COVID, the longer schools were closed, the worse it was for
young people.
Of course hindsight is 2020.
People are doing the best they could with the information that they had.
So the federal government saw some of those findings very early on, like as early as the
fall of 2020 and early 2021.
When we all went home in March, you know, sort of K-12 schools went home in March in many
places of 2020.
And they immediately started to try to get funds to states to deal with that situation.
So a lot of that has looked like high impact tutoring.
We see some movement on that, so long-term high impact tutoring.
But there's been some hiccups, I would say, along the way.
We do know that the online learning for the average child is not useful.
You can imagine young people might be more interested in playing a game off to the side
versus paying attention to their Zoom call.
And it's hard for a lot of kids without that interaction, without the facial cues.
All that said, for some kids, the pandemic and being away, I've heard stories, individual
stories where it's been really good for a child, where they were finally getting the
attention that maybe they needed or hadn't gotten.
So I don't think the news was awful for an average child in the country, but overwhelmingly
the conversation in the research community is what are we doing now to remedy the situation.
There are big learning losses that will affect this whole generation of kids, not dissimilar
from the 2008 recession did.
And we know that that has impacted those young people.
Yeah, I was curious to know if there are any aspects of remote teaching that work well
or that may stick around now that things are more normal than they were when this all started.
Like, are there any pieces of that that are going to stick around?
Well, we've seen some things stick.
So for example, when schools have snow days and things like that, some school districts
have chosen to like, OK, everybody has Zoom on their computers.
We've got one-to-one computing in many places, not all places, not all kids.
But then we can say, OK, take your computer home and we're going to do some things remotely.
So that part seems to have stuck in certain places.
I think some of the individualization has stuck here in Madison Public Schools when they've
had maybe not enough teachers to teach, let's say, a gifted class or a class that's meant
to help young people who are a little further behind.
They've been able to have that teacher be centrally located and teach kids across the
district.
So some of that has stuck, I think.
And some of the getting access to really good, like, let's say, an AP course where that might
have been done in a, you know, somebody had to drive or they sent a bus to go pick up
a few children from one district and bus them to another.
That can all be done remotely by now.
So I think that technology were more fluid with that.
I think that has helped.
And I think one other thing is teachers, all of a sudden, were catapulted into needing
to be able to learn to use these learning management systems, so putting all their files
online, the course assignments, those kinds of things.
And so for older students in particular, that stuff seems to have really stuck.
Which is much more like university, you know, when they go to college or something.
Yeah.
And I know part of your mission, you know, is to kind of deal with, you know, the complex
elements of teaching.
I read that when I was looking over some of the publishing's on your website.
What kind of things are we talking about when we talk about complex issues in teaching?
So you know this.
You've been a student.
Let's pretend there's 25 kids in front of you.
They can be 10 year olds.
They each have different.
I've been a substitute teacher.
I've been there.
Yep.
Yes.
That's a relaxing job.
Oh, very relaxing.
I think kids are so good to the subs, right?
Oh, they treat us like the real thing.
I just have it as being like a, you know, a professional wrestling.
They have the referee, you know, he's counting, he's doing this and telling the verse and
go, nobody listens to that referee.
Nope.
That's.
And they know you're not going to be there tomorrow.
It's like whatever.
But you know what?
Most of the time I am the other tomorrow, because when I go there, they know that I can
control that classroom and they bring me back.
And once I get the trust of those kids, I learned that they do.
Oh, they'll totally listen.
They totally will.
They also learn, too, that a lot of the times, whatever control I did have in that
classroom was kind of based on how much control the teacher who rose that classroom.
You got it.
How much they had.
What norms were in place, what sort of routines, like we sit down when we come in and we open
our book.
Yeah.
And I'm sorry that you're giving me flashbacks to my substitute teaching days, but that brought
back memories there.
Oh, well, so at any rate, the substitute teachers face this.
And long-term teachers face this, too.
Twenty-five different kids are in twenty-five different places.
Of course, there are patterns in where they are, like let's say you're teaching science
or you're teaching journalism, right?
But you have to figure out.
I want them to move over here to this goal.
I want them to understand, for example, how the media shapes society.
That's a big goal.
And the question for you as a teacher is how do you get twenty-five different humans there
given where they are, develop those relationships?
So when we study teaching, we try to measure, I think, three big aspects of the complexity
one is the relationship between teachers and kids.
And kids and kids, because those relationships matter a lot, too, for learning, right?
If I'm not safe, I mean, if I'm worried, this happens, especially at certain grade levels.
If I'm worried, my friend next to me is going to make fun.
I mean, that's going to be much harder for me to learn in that classroom, right?
I won't take risks.
Right.
No learning requires risks.
So we pay attention to relationships and we try to understand the complexities there
and those intersect with the management things you were talking about.
What do we do when we come in?
How do we get called on?
Do we raise our hands?
Do we just speak out all these routines that are about classroom organization?
And then we pay attention to instruction.
So on that, how to get them to learn the role of the media?
So what topics do you introduce for a second and third?
What ways do you engage them?
So those things all intersect with one another in teaching.
They're confounded with one another so we can't pull just one apart and say, oh, only relationships
matter or, oh, only classroom discipline matters.
We know that those things are related to one another.
Like you said, even in your little story.
And so figuring out how to measure...
I'm sorry.
He's still dramatic.
He is your dramatic experience being a substitute.
But yeah.
So those are some of the complex things we try to measure both with human eyes and then
with some other ways.
We can ask students what they perceive and older students are very good at telling you
what they notice.
We know when teachers have high expectations of them and they tell you.
And they respond to that?
Well, you know, the best.
Yeah, I was a former high school teacher and I'm the mother of three sons.
Kids know a lot.
We don't give them credit for knowing as much as they know and paying attention.
And on the one hand, they may like, you know, I can't believe it's due to why this or why.
On the other hand, they actually realize what achievement looks like in the world.
They know the people that they respect in the world.
And they know that by doing nothing, they're not going to achieve those things.
So yes, I've taught rural kids in the South.
I've taught kids here at like, yes, they want to be held to high expectations and supported
to meet those expectations.
Yeah, I come from a family of teachers.
My mom was a teacher taught here in Madison for, I think, almost 40 years.
And I saw the iron fist and my friends who had her in class, they saw that iron fist,
you know, and I, you know, and I think that's probably instilled in me in terms of the expectations
I have.
And I, you know, I actually went to the same high school she taught at East.
And I remember her getting into it with one of the students and the student called her
something that we can't say on PBS.
Okay.
And back in those days, you could probably get away with this, but she opened the door
and said the same thing back to him, you know, and she would never let those kids control
that classroom, you know, and I know things are a lot different now and things are just
done in a different kind of a way.
But it was certainly a learning experience, you know, for me.
But I think in your mom's case, and I would say in my case as a classroom teacher and
maybe in your substitute teaching days too, kids actually need us to be in charge.
They need grown-
I think so.
They need grown ups to be grown ups.
I think so.
Period.
So, you know, at home, that isn't to say they need to have an iron sister.
There's lots of ways to accomplish goals.
It's not that.
There's not one way.
But we, there actually need to be grown ups in charge of buildings and in charge of
classrooms.
Yeah.
I get the sense they mirror what they see and what's expected of them.
You know, even, I think even I'm probably guilty as a, as a teen of, you know, as they
say, give them an inch and they take a mile sort of thing.
It's the nature of being a young person, right?
Yeah.
I think do we, and we chatted about this a little bit when you were on the black and
white series with this, would, I forget the year now, because the time's running.
But who do we, who do we blame for our failures in the classroom in terms of, you know, how
the students are doing and how the, you know, teachers may not be able to cope and those
sorts of things?
You know, I suppose the answer depends on who's answering the question.
Because your, your answer might be different than mine might be different than my 81 year
old father's, right?
But I think one of the hard things about being a teacher, I still work with teachers.
We're socially friends with teachers.
One of our closest family friends is a, is a principal of an elementary school.
And I think what I will say is all of us are to blame for presuming that schools and
teachers are magic.
On the one hand, they can be the best of us, right?
They can ameliorate problems that exist in society.
They can help fill gaps that maybe a young person doesn't have at home, like a computer
or something like that.
They can help us learn to read, which opens whole worlds, right?
To young people, imaginations, things they can't imagine from their current circumstances.
But on the other hand, they're human institutions.
And teachers are not magicians and they have them, you know, six-ish hours a day when you
figure in bathroom breaks and lunch and recess, and they're not magicians.
And so if we send them to school hungry and, you know, maybe not paid attention to in
certain ways or treasured and cherished the way children should meet treasures and cherish
right, seen as whole people, we can't fix that.
We can't expect schools to fix that.
So one of the hard things I think is pretending that there is one person to blame.
Schools, education belongs to all of us, and unless we understand that, I think as adults
as citizens, we're going to keep just wanting to point fingers.
That is not going to solve the problem.
It will not fix things that we want to fix.
Yeah.
I'd love to hear your journey in terms of how you knew you wanted to commit yourself in
your life to education.
How did that happen?
It's a laughing matter for you, I see.
The evil laugh, I call it.
I laugh because I never was one of those young people who knew what they wanted to be when
they grew up.
I'm not sure.
I even know now.
But I laugh because I needed a break after college.
I worked as an athlete, a student athlete, I worked half time and went to an academically
rigorous institution.
I was tired.
I was tired of school.
I was tired of that and growing.
I wanted a break before I either went to graduate school or went to medical school.
I took all my little tests or whatever.
At any rate, there were a couple of options that I wound up doing teach for America.
I taught in the rural south.
There were many things that I learned.
I grew up just outside of Detroit in an entering summer, but grew up in the city.
Southfield public schools are the schools that I went to.
I was pretty comfortable being in situations where I was the only white person.
Very comfortable in my class.
My high school class was a very diverse and I do mean diverse class, but I didn't realize
how much I would learn going as a Yankee, as a northerner, going to the south.
I didn't actually think that was still really a thing to tell you, honestly.
So my students, I taught ninth through twelfth grade, biology, chemistry, physics, and water
management from a grant that came to me.
You got to know when to drink water.
You got to clean it.
You got to know how to filter it.
Water management.
Big water management systems, right?
So my students were just tremendous humans.
They are still tremendous humans.
I wasn't that much older than them, right?
Some of them were 18 when I showed up in their lives as a 22-year-old first-year teacher.
And for some of them, I taught them all of the science that they ever got exposed to
in their high school experience, which let me tell you was frightening for them.
I was a chemistry major in college, so I was a much better chemistry teacher than I was
a physics teacher.
Okay.
At any rate, so it took me a long time to then ultimately decide like, oh, I'm not done
with this thing.
I'm not done facing this inequality that's in our country.
I could go be a doctor.
I thought I always wanted, you know, that I always thought that would be an interesting
thing.
I love taking care of people.
I love science.
It seemed like a good fit.
But the longer I was in the classroom and the more I realized there were levers to pull,
I could improve things for young people, the more I couldn't stop thinking about it.
And when I went to graduate school from APHT, I had no idea what graduate school even really
was.
So I was like, well, maybe I'll go back and be a principal.
Maybe I'll be a superintendent.
I don't know.
And here I am.
You know, fast forward to get real curious.
I get sucked into and I love to think, so I got sucked into all the thinking stuff and
the puzzling about the intersections of research and policy and practice, which is where all
the interesting stuff happened in my mind.
And so two decades later, here I am running this big research center and studying teaching
and working with amazing people in K-12 schools.
So it was not a linear path there and even applied to and was accepted in medical school
and finally like, okay, no, you really don't want to do that, Courtney.
But it's hard.
It's hard to figure out, I think, when you're a young person what you want to do.
What was it like for you stepping into a role where you were the minority and the students
didn't look like you had like, how did you handle the diversity of being in that situation
and what was it taught you, what did you learn from it?
All the things we say at my house when something is complicated and profound.
So I learned all the things.
One of the things I learned that was the most profound for me was the ways in which we can
be born into advantages that we have no idea are even advantages.
So I said before that sometimes we send children to school and they never at home get the message
that they are loved and cherished and great just the way they are.
I was loved and cherished and great just I didn't know that was an advantage.
I walked around with that advantage my whole life.
I walked around with this sin color which is an advantage in our public schools my whole
life.
So I learned a lot about the advantages that I had been given just simply by my circumstances.
They were not earned advantages they were just advantages and one of the funnest things
to learn was that when children were given the opportunity and these were the descendants
of sharecroppers for the most part.
This is the rural south and eastern North Carolina in the tobacco and cotton fields.
When those children were given the opportunity to learn they just soaked that up took every
advantage of it and thrived and flourished.
So it was amazing to me to understand the ways in which in this country which I thought
of as a much more equal society at the time when I was 22 and wide eyed and idealistic.
It was shocking to me that with some readjustment and opportunity to learn that there can be
so much flourishing it was kind of magical actually to watch and to be a part of.
The greatest compliment I got from one of my students which I can say to you 20 years
later is Tiffany Garner said to me we are doing after school tutoring and Tiffany I was talking
about you know she was let's say she was in fourth period and second period had been
struggling with something they were both chemistry classes or whatever.
I was like but you know they're getting it they're getting it I think it's going to
be fine and Tiffany said to me miss Val you think everyone can learn you think all of
us are smart yeah I do I think you can learn and I think you're smart that's actually
true so it was really fun to watch that become true and to be a part of of being able to
help them see their own potential you have to hear it you do have to hear it we all need
to hear it everybody needs to hear it yeah yeah and one thing I love about your work
is you you are international you are all over the world I'd love to get your perspective
on who's out there doing it the best who's teaching at the highest level out there at
the various levels yeah Merv I will just see you the systems are so different one country
to another so they just take Singapore as a case in point right a diverse nation in
terms of racial and ethnic backgrounds and they treat they pride themselves on being
a bilingual country one institution in the whole country trains all the teachers one
every teacher who is certified in that country goes through one institution there is one
curriculum the government tells you where exactly you will teach and I could go on it
is lined up so tightly in that system all the standards what teachers know what kids
are expected to know the allocation of teachers across schools they are drop dead serious about
that now so you say like oh and Singapore scores very high unlike Pizzo or some of these international
assessments that the OECD and some of these global organizations help countries use as
yardsticks to see where they are so you could say like oh well Singapore's got it right but
it's very hard to say like oh let's just take the Singapore saying in this you know let's
go put it into Wisconsin or no I think of it being here and I could see people resisting
that because they want to be able to choose how they learn and absolutely what they learn
and but at the same time I think of it like a franchise where if you've got everybody on
the same page and is being done the right way then it's more likely to be done the right
way so I can see it both ways yeah I can see I get right and it's a both and right you
can see why it works in one country in one way and why it works in another country the
other way what I can tell you is pasti Salberg who is a very famous author that's written
about the finish system everyone talks about the finish system and the revolution that
started in the 70s in Finland that has transformed finished education and he's written a number
of books about it but one of the things you wrote in a recent blog post is that while
we see like let's say Japan who really if you want your child to learn math son of
the Japan but while we see these different economies and countries being successful in
different ways the one there are a few things that are true across all of them one is that
they don't use high stakes accountability so I think about that as a policy person is
like carrots and sticks like here come do this thing and you have this carrot in them
on the rewards no not not from the federal government not in a sort of high stakes accountability
kind of way none of them use it like that they don't have that they do have in common
continued very steady we're not good with study in the US very steady investment in social
capital so human knowledge and capability at all levels of the system so administrators
school principals teachers etc school counselors those systems no matter how they're structured
invest in that kind of knowledge and skill development with supports for professional
learning at all levels of the system they believe professionals have to keep learning
they all do that we you don't need to talk to very many teachers to know we don't do that
that's not our superpower yet yet yet I'd love to hear your thoughts on what we do well here
in Wisconsin when it comes to education to lots of things well here one of the things
I think we do well is we are not hyper reactive to national conversations some states really
love to be on the leading edge of absolutely everything regardless it's a good idea we
don't have that in us we're a little bit more circumspect that's a good thing I think
one of the things we do well here has to do I think a little bit with our midwesternists
we do tend rural suburban urban we do tend to see one another and try to show up for one
another and care about our communities and that's not to say other states don't do that as well
but as a person who has lived around the country it's been remarkable to see the ways in which
whole communities of people rally around young people and around schools here in Wisconsin
yeah and one of the things that was really fascinated about when I first met you
was this idea of this education simulator like we talked about you know they have simulators for
pilots we have simulators for people to learn how to drive we have simulators for police officers
to shoot don't shoot those sorts of things and and I don't even know if this is already in play
now but you were telling me about a simulator for education to teach teachers how exactly does
that work it's just the coolest um and I should say for audience members who you know have been
in theater or done role plays it takes that and it puts it automates some of that it uses AI
artificial intelligence to do some of that so we have it and it doesn't have to only be used
for education people so there's right now we're partnering with a company by the name of immersion
and they are working outside did you say Merv? Merv well they're not quite that cool
immersion okay I just want to make sure I had it right immersion
Merv and Merv and Merv and Merv is working with a bunch of Fortune 100 companies right now they're
training all of the Starbucks people all the way through the same simulator we're using at WCER
for teachers for teachers who are going to be certified for bilingual science right now there's
a project um I have colleagues that are working on that Mark Wilson and Mariana Castro are working
on that and my colleagues Sarah Lent, Kimber Wilkerson they are both special educators they're
working on doing it with special education teachers and what you do is you're sitting in front of a
computer the computer has the video camera on you it gets the audio there's a human in the loop so
it's not just the computer responding with pre-programmed kinds of things it's not that it's um there are
young people you could have one you could have a parent you could have another teacher if you
wanted the teachers to practice and there's a human in the loop that uses voice technology
to modulate the voice and you can change the skin colors the hair the outfits the profiles of these
people that appear on the screen and you can practice so I'll give you an example one of the
things that's very hard for beginning teachers is to ask a question and close their mouth then
and to stop talking and let the child respond and let the child respond long enough and with enough
you know phrases in a row that the teacher can come to understand what that child says so you're
saying like even as a teacher asking the students a question the teacher continues to talk kind of
thing yes so go it'll go like this so I'll say Marv will you tell me what you know about the media
and so yes on the screen Marv raises hand in the teacher the beginning teacher says okay Marv
what do you have to say and Marv gives a response like oh you know at home my dad watches Fox News
or at home my mom watches PBS or at home I just know that the media is the news on TV and then the
teacher jumps right in and says well actually there's three kinds of media that you could consider
and like then starts to explain that's a very very common pattern of question one small response
a very long explanation so we call that that they immediately start teaching the problem is the only
thing the teacher knows at that moment is that Marv knows something about television and media
that's all the teacher knows no probing questions no like oh sin more about there are there any
other kinds of media that you're familiar with because the child might Marv might actually know
five different kinds of media but just happened to start on the TV program and now the teacher
has just explained everything away so something like asking questions you can get really good at
in a simulator if we pause the simulator when the teacher starts to lecture Marv about
media and say like okay hold on try a follow up question there so there's like a little buzzer
no no no buzzers can we do that again you know you're off
second strike you're out no not that harsh no it's not that no and usually the teacher
educators are involved in it they're teachers you can get mentor teachers involved in it
and so that's like a really like a sort of benign example but a very important skill for teachers
to learn is to be able to go with the child's thinking so you can figure out what is going on
here why did that could be a math why did you just do that thing let me not presume I understand
why you just made that wrong answer let me ask enough questions and be quiet enough to learn
what's the story here right but it can also be in like hard to have conversations right
principles have an angry angry parent that shows up about something legitimately to be angry about
it's not fun to be in that situation for the first time with a real life person on the other
side of it so it's really good to get practice where you have to say the words that are maybe
hard for you to say as a professional and say like oh okay I haven't harmed anyone in the process
of me messing that up you can mess it up in the simulator you haven't heard anybody you haven't
traumatized a child you have it lectured a parent you write your relationships at your school
building are still intact so stimulation allows us to help professionals do the things that they
need to do so that when they get ready to go into the building they're more ready that's
I think that's fascinating ditto and what about in terms of coaching teachers in dealing with
diversity in their classrooms those sorts of things are there scenarios for that and are you using
like real types of scenarios to kind of play out yeah no real situations that you know that
people have in their classrooms all the time around often like a piece of text we can put like a
short text in front of the beginning teacher say okay an example we were just doing it the other
day is you want to help these five children identify the character traits of bindi the main character
in the story so what do you notice about bindi in the story and we can train the
interactor the person who's voicing and acting out those avatars that are on the screen we can
train them if the tasks are standardized we can train them to say things that real children say
and so we try all the tasks and test them out in the feedback loops and it also helps us do
research on how teachers learn or how professionals learn so we can do sort of give them a scenario
versus b scenario versus c and watch how they interact with those as they as teachers become
more skilled so we can learn about what does it mean to learn to teach wow and
that story there kind of answers just a little bit but i'm curious because it feels like we're
already kind of there but i'm just curious what do you think the future of teaching looks like
what is it how is it going to change and how is it going to evolve you know i think certain
things are going to stay the same and certain things will evolve i think for sure all the
online stuff is just going to keep exploding i think the big transformation we all as a society
and teachers for sure have to face is what do we do about knowledge that can is in our pockets
on our pocket computers which are our phones right are we going to continue to spend time
and how much time and in what ways to teach that knowledge knowledge is critical right
knowledge builds the infrastructure in our brains that then helps us solve problems
so it's not that it's irrelevant just because we can look it up but how are we going to spend
time on that and how are we going to spend time on the integration of knowledge and action
being in the world and problem solving these more critical higher order kinds of things
the fact that it's so easy to look things up and you can find the answer so quickly i think that
will you know 20 40 years from now we will have a different set of answers to that than we have
today but something that i think is going to stay the same is like i'm willing to learn from you
if i'm willing to learn from you that's still going to be true so our relationships with one
another are going to matter you're still going to be teaching me about a thing about journalism
or about science or about math you're going to need to know about that thing and you're going to help
to have to help guide me to learn about that thing so some of the interactions i think are
probably going to be the same they might look different maybe someone will be more online
maybe they'll be more hybrid but certain things probably are going to be a little bit different
with the computers i mean that's the biggest revolution and for sure AI as well AI teachers
in the classroom permanently ever happening i think i don't want my child there i'll say that
no i don't think so i mean think about if you think about your most profound learning experiences
there are some of them that are alone right just with the subject or maybe reading a book or
writing a poem or practicing your skills on the piano or something like that or tinkering with a
bike you learn that way so it's not that individual learning alone kind of learning with automated
information is not useful it is but it has and it has limits it has constraints on
what kinds of things it can teach you so maybe it'll be a part of the solution but i doubt i doubt
a big part i don't do this to everybody um even let me do this before but i give out these superpowers
from turn to turn it's stock bill i give you superpowers what are you doing with it
in the world of education
superpower i would be able to somehow magically because it's a magical superpower i would be able
to get people um to suspend disbelief long enough that they could listen to one another
and try to focus on common solutions and common ground because i think we have common ground
but in this divided and increasingly polarized society um it's hard for us to see what what
unites us my superpower would be to be able to bring us together and help people see what's
common and help us figure out how to work on that good stuff Dr. Courtney Bell thank you so much for
joining us on InFocusts thank you for having me