Doing Basic Better: Building Math Confidence and Responsible AI Leadership with Dr. Stephen Toth

Welcome to the Education Equation. The podcast where we talk with education leaders about the challenges shaping classrooms today and what it takes to create better outcomes for every student. I'm your host Dan Cox. Today's guest is Dr. Stephen Toe, Superintendent of the Tamakwa Area School District. Stephen began his career in the classroom, moved into building leadership, and spent years helping lead the district key now serves as superintendent. As his district pursues ambitious growth in math and reading, he's also thinking about the confidence that students need, the support teachers deserve, and yeah, the skills that students need in a world is driven by AI. Stephen, welcome to the Education Equation. I'm very happy to be here with you today and excited to be part of your podcast here. I'm super happy to have you. I've got to tell myself a little bit here, and this is leadership and action on your part. We tried to record this podcast a couple of times, had some tech issues, I had to work through it, and here we are. And that's just kind of the world we live in, right? We adapted move, adapted, accommodated, just let's do it. So since we talked last, a lot has changed and nothing's changed. You've been in your district for a long time. It was 12 years, is that right? 12 years in an upper administration, 18 total, 18 total. Yeah, okay. So you've been there a long time, but you've had a unique path here because you were assistant superintendent, and you were a superintendent awaiting or superintendent elect in May. But with serving in the role, and just not too long ago, you were appointed officially a superintendent. Yeah, officially took the commission on Wednesday. I'm very excited to serve our students and our community here at Demacra area, and just looking to do good things here for the students and the families. Yeah, and you've been there a long time. Why, if anything, have you noticed? Since you started as the superintendent elect, and now you are the superintendent, why has changed in your perspective as you're preparing for this new role? Well, I think that the world, obviously, from the time when I started till now, when I first started an education, you heard about the classrooms for the future grant, and that's when tech really started to get integrated into the classroom area. Now you mentioned about an AI-driven classroom, and that's some of the, I don't want to call issue in a bad way, but that's some of the issues that we're tackling inside of the classroom. Students have access to the chat GPDs, and all the other thing boxes that are out there, as well as our faculty are also using that in an appropriate way, in an appropriate manner, to help and assist with their instructional delivery. So I think that the way that the technology has morphed, and we really, I think, really jumped two feet into it with the whole COVID response, nationally. I think that really progressed a lot of the things that we see inside of the classroom. Those are certainly topics we're going to dive into. You have a lot of institutional knowledge. You've been there a long time and seen this district from all aspects. I know you have been working through the summer as superintendent, but schools, I always say schools aren't schools until the teachers and kids are there. There he is. This is true. And what do you hope your first 90 to 100 days look like? And what do you hope to learn that you didn't know about your district? Well, you know, one, I want to make sure that our culture and our foundational aspects remain and stay the same. At the same point in time, I want to make sure that our staff, our faculty, our administrators are open to any of the changes that may be prevalent and things that we need to do and integrate them into our core values. You know, we want to make sure that, you know, the instructional delivery meets the needs of our students. We want to make sure that we're preparing our students for this technology driven world that we are now quickly coming into. And, you know, supporting our teachers at every moment that we possibly can to evolve that classroom to incorporate that technology. And like I said, make sure that instructional delivery is core. And that's the key piece. We got to move the needle in student learning. Everything else is how can it support that? How are the methods we use, the tools that we have? How does that support the student learning outcomes? And I want to dive down into that just a little bit because you've talked about that the priorities in front of you are meaningful growth and mathematics. Let's start there. We know our students are more than just the test score. When you look beyond that test score, what does meaningful growth in math look like for the students in your district? So when I came on board as assistant superintendent, you know, part of that job description was being part of the federal program's piece. And, you know, the focus is on ELA and also the focus is on mathematics. You know, you're sitting in meetings with their, you know, district leaders from other school districts and inside of our intermediate unit, which we have, you know, 20 plus of in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. There really wasn't a whole lot of mathematics support. If you look at ELA, there's a conference here. There's a conference there. There's this. There's that. There's networking. And the one thing that I found was that there really wasn't that math network. And there really wasn't that robust nature that you find in the ELA communities inside of the math communities. That was one thing that I wanted to change. We started to dip our toe into the waters and started to create those things that some of the English language arts has inside their community where we have now math groups where we have, you know, our, our math teachers talking between and among not just inside of our district, but also outside of our district where we have those math groups that might talk to a local school district or might talk to a school district outside of our intermediate unit and also create those professional development opportunities that are out there, even though they may be a little bit more scarce, but trying to find and really assist our math people. And we've done a pretty good job of that. Again, they're not as robust, like I said, as the ELA community, but we're getting there, I think slowly and surely. I find that in talking with with educators of all walks of life, that seems to be a common theme that the support and the community for math and math instruction is just not as robust as other subjects and especially as ELA. And of course, that certainly looks different from elementary school to high school. What do you notice that are some of the challenges in supporting math instruction at the the elementary versus the high school? So the challenges with that is that there are a lot of a lot more of, even if they are two family households or single mother, single father households, that home support may not necessarily be there as as it was 25, 30 years ago. So we have tried to flip our classrooms a little bit, provide a little bit more instruction on the back end where they're taking their Chromebook home and getting a little bit of the, you know, again, students dipping their toe into the lesson. And then when they come into school, we really get down into the meat and potatoes of it all where we're talking about, you know, you know, just addition problems and making sure that, you know, the things are structured right. So visually it's appealing and they kind of get, you know, the additions and attend digits and the one digits. And we really want to make sure we bring it down to that granule level so that they are able to get the foundations on the back end when that classroom is flipped with the Chromebook at home and then kind of come in the next day ready to go to focus on the actual production of that lesson. I'm also hearing that high school teachers, they're experiencing a lot of challenges with some foundational skills. Students coming in to high school with the foundational skills that they need. How can we systemically address that challenge? Well, I think one of the things, you know, our state of Pennsylvania has a keystone exams and, you know, one of the, one of the outliers for that is that we have to make sure that everybody passes, you know, the math prompts and the English prompts and the science prompts. They have some other pathways to graduation, but we've seen a systemic reduction inside of the math scores across the state. And I think that that has to do with going back to what you said Dan before is getting it on that granule level so that it's not separated between and among the different educational levels, whether it's a K through six environment or seven through twelve environment. We need to have that connectivity between those upper level teachers and those lower level teachers at the elementary level. And make sure that we have fidelity inside of that curriculum so that each grade level builds on each other. We make sure that we're not just passing the baton. Make sure that they actually know and know the formulas and know what these things are inside of the classroom so that it's identifiable as they go and they move through. As a coach, I preach and and and believe to my core that we're all inherently capable more than we give ourselves credit for. In math specifically, confidence becomes a huge factor in student learning and student learning outcomes. And along the way, many students do lose confidence. How are you addressing the confidence issue and the students to say, well, I'm just not a math person. You and I talk about that. We both had that conversation about ourselves. Yeah, we both said that we weren't necessarily math people. You know, I was a social studies teacher coming up and through got into administration. And like I said, the thing that clicked in my head was what we talked about earlier. And you know, when I got into the federal programs aspect of it, there really wasn't that math support. And I was like, you know, this is the key cog to so many different jobs, whether it's medical, whether it's engineering, whether it's whatever you need math on a day-to-day in order to move yourself and progress yourself individually. Um, you know, the one thing that we don't want to get lost in in translation is we need to create very good habits early on and provide set success stories so that they see that math is not just this thing that happens, you know, two plus two. Okay, well, we have to build on two plus two becomes four plus four and we have to build on those things. So we have to create great habits early on so that we build on that and we, and you know, like you said, from a coaching standpoint, it's very much structured. You know, you don't just go to behind the back dribbling, you know, right away, you want to make sure that you're in your form dribbling, you don't just want to work on, you know, lay ups one way, you want to make, you know, you want to make sure that you get the foundational aspects and create those good habits. It's no different inside of the classroom. So I'm going to walk backwards on you a little bit with that. So let's talk about that confidence. Students spend anywhere from 45 minutes to 90 minutes a day in math instruction. And that's a, that's a max at 90 minutes a day probably doesn't happen. That's probably every other day on a block schedule, right? Or maybe if you have some intervention time, but 45 minutes to 90 minutes a day, then they go home and you, you discuss that barrier that home looks different. That's not good nor bad. It just is. Today's environment is different than it was with the responsibilities and needs families have to support a household. What happens when a student struggles and they're not there at school with the teacher? What are you seeing happening when a student struggles and how that affects their confidence? So obviously the support system is meaningful in that situation. What we have tried to do here in certain situations, we have talked about, you know, everybody being a former superintendent, you know, you have different budgets. Yeah. And what we have tried to do is take away from maybe that a little bit of that disciplinary budget where people might be having after school detentions and stuff like that and draw it down from that and give tutoring opportunities to those students who may be struggling, offer some transportation to them if need be. But we try to have that after school period, whether it's built in or outside of the school day and give those opportunities for those students to stay after school or do a ninth period study hall with, with those instructors, we think that that's a meaningful way to do that. Because like you said, there are some barriers that some students face and we try to reduce them as best as we possibly get. We're not, we're not miracle workers. We try to be, but you know, at the same point in time, we want to offer opportunity. One of the challenges that I see is when a student is working through solving a mathematical problem or equation and they get stuck, they become frustrated and just quit, which affects their confidence, or they just go out and look for the answer. However they can get it, they just look for the answer, but they don't really learn how to solve the problem. And again, that affects their confidence. Can you think of an example or something of a specific student without identifying them, of course, or a strategy that you use to address that challenge? So like everybody runs away from failure. And you know, sometimes as you know, in life failure could be the greatest teacher that you may possibly have. And I think that failure sometimes in our society is a stigma that even parents face because they don't want to see their little Johnny or little Susie with the 70. They want to make sure everybody gets hundreds. They want to make sure everybody gets this and that. You know, we also have to understand that people are at different levels, even though we are equal, we are at different levels. And I think that that's sometimes what what gets missed inside of, inside of the actual instructional delivery is the struggle. It's okay to struggle sometimes. And we need to one thing that I do convey to our teachers on every level is to explain to the students that it is okay to struggle to find themselves out of a situation or a problem that they may have inside of the learning process. And that failure obviously is not necessarily acceptable. We don't necessarily like failure, but at the same point in time, if you get to that answer after struggle, you're going to feel so much better about yourself. So within failure and the struggle, there's opportunity there if you allow yourself to see it, 1,000%. Easy is not always the best way, Dan. Easy is not always the best way. I've got to tell you, I was on a run yesterday and I was listening to a podcast of Ed Mylett and John Gordon. Rather, you and I are a far cry from Ed Mylett and John Gordon, but I I aspire to be that someday, right? We'd be able to get a pretty good company if we get there. Good company for sure. But something that they talked about and John Gordon brought it up to to Ed Mylett was people are so focused on being the best. In our case, in education, we're so focused on the test score and getting to that level. Yeah. Their conversation was challenging to listen. Instead of focused on being the best, be the best at getting better. Yeah. So a little bit out of twist, I always tell my teachers do basic better. So find your basic and do that better. Do basic better. And that's something that, like I said, we preach. We want to make sure that that's not lost in the instruction. And we also, like I said, we don't accept failure, but we allow failure to let us grow. I think you just come up with a title for a book that you could write. And when you do that, we'll get you back on and talk about that. How that sounds good. You didn't know I've got to give you more work when we come on here. So I know I didn't know I didn't. But let's let's transition into we know student confidence doesn't change because the school district writes a goal, right? Our strategic plan to goals are great. They're great guideposts, but that's not what motivates a kid in the classroom. It changes their confidence changes because of the teachers that support them and work with them every day. Have the time, the tools and the care to give them what they need. You started off. You've been in your district in a long time and a lot of different capacity. You started as a teacher. Now you're in the role of superintendent. So I want to go to leadership angle for a minute. Now that you are the superintendent, how do you plan to stay connected to the classrooms and the teachers so that you can best evaluate what they need to be successful? One thing that I want to make sure that I don't lose is is every building every day. I try to make myself present, whether it's at the very beginning at the high school, you know, they're obviously earlier than the elementary schools, but we're grading students as we come in. We're walking the hallways. I could be there 15, 20 minutes stand, but visibility is a really cool thing and you know, it might be the second floor one day. It might be the third floor to the next day. It might be the first floor of the, you know, the last day. Try to rotate and make sure that we get in classrooms. I think that it's also important that the faculty sees you. They see that you're engaged in and that as well. Because you know, they're the synergistic effect between the material and the student. They mesh everything together. So them seeing you and being, you know, available for a quick conversation, hey, did you think about this? Hey, did you think about that? I think that that's absolutely important as well. If you are a leader that just stays behind the door in this day and age, I don't think that that's necessarily the best. That's just my opinion. It may work for some people in my experience. I want to show, I want to show people that I'm engaged. I want to show the community that I'm engaged. And I think that that is a distinct saying that, you know, good leaders have to be available because availability is the best ability. It's awesome, right? And it's so simple but yet so powerful of just being involved and engaged in the classrooms and having conversations. You're going to be faced with many decisions and many things that you can do to help solve problems or provide supports. But sometimes the most the most important decision isn't what to do. It's to decide what not to do. How are you going to use that time and engage with your teachers and classrooms to help you decide what not to do? Well, I think it's having those conversations. I also think that it's it's having faith in any administrators who are underneath you or on your team. You know, they're the ones that are in the department head meetings. They're the ones that are interacting more than those 20 minutes of me walking through the hallways. You have to have faith in those building administrators to provide the information to the best of their ability and not have, you know, a slanted view on it. You know, make sure that they provide, you know, the good, the bad. If it's ugly, let us know. If it's great, awesome. Let's tout it. But at the same point in time, we need to, I need to, as well as my assistant superintendent need to have faith in those building administrators to provide us with the best information. And then if it's something that is ugly and not the best, we go talk to those teachers and say, how can we fix this? Let's get it done. In our previous segment, we talked a lot about your instructional goals and how you're approaching them and you have big goals for your district. Then we move, we move into the teacher side of that and the support that they need. What barriers exist that prevent your teachers from being as successful as they can be and provide all the support they need for students? So there's so much material that needs to be covered in a short amount of time. Our testing window got a little bit reduced. Our instructional timeline is very close to, you know, finals and the exit of the school year. And you know that sometimes provides some challenges too. The biggest thing that I think that we could do for our teachers is to provide them time. One of the first things that I had asked our administrators to do and it was led by our director of secondary education was actually check how much time down to the minute That we might be able to get professional. development for act 80 time inside of our district. And we are able to see, hey, you know, we might be able to get two more days here where we can, you know, help and assist with some professional development may not be 100% with math, but also give them opportunities to have professional development come in. You know, we talked about the possibility of doing a delayed schedule where they have an hour, you know, students come in a little bit later, but they have an hour to prep and have those inter grade level meetings or inter or between and among buildings, you know, like the seventh grade teachers and the sixth grade teachers or the fifth grade teachers and the fourth grade teachers, whatever those breaks are, that we can make sure that our curriculum is being managed and where they are actually inside of their instructional delivery. I think what you're touching on there, you're trying, you're trying to do it all right, you're trying to juggle and balance things. I'm not sure that you really can balance things equally. Some things have to take a priority over others depending on where you are and where your students are. How are we determined what to prioritize? So, you know, our district and, you know, we get graded on our test scores, you know, I'm not going to sit here and sugarcoat that, you know, how people view us, how people view our districts and not just in Pennsylvania, but in other states is, you know, one, are you graduating students? You know, what schools are they going to? Where are they going after they graduate? And what do your test scores look like? You know, those are the three things that that people really identify with having a good school district or one that might need some work. Our priorities are, you know, science, ELA math and we need to make sure that we try to do those things cross-curicularily. You know, we talked a little bit about those act 80 days like we might, you know, have, you know, some science type of literature that are going on at the same time that we're doing this project and this area. Art may come into it with, you know, a math thing with measurements and stuff like that, with graphing. So, we're trying to incorporate all of those things inside of the instructional delivery outside of those three subject areas. So, there's a little bit of mesh going on there. Yeah, I think that's really important to be able to do that and you have to say, hey, these are priorities and we have to do this and here's how we're going to do it and provide the time and the support to go along with your theme of not sugar-coding things. Education is hard. Teaching is hard. There are a lot of responsibilities and a lot of pressures on teachers. I've been very impressed. You spent your whole career, essentially, in this district and you've promoted up through the ranks there. Your teachers, you have a strong pipeline of teachers in the district and I know that's easier said than done. What are the hardest parts of recruiting, developing and retaining teachers in the current environment? So, if there is, you know, one thing that you can identify to say, hey, like over the course of, you know, that my 18 years in administration, one obviously is the tech issue and a second is the amount of teachers that are coming into school districts with emergency certificates right now. The Cyber School environment has taken a lot of our certified teachers and right now, you know, a lot of districts across their nation are having people who have graduated from college and have backgrounds in different areas but they may have the background of mathematics but they don't have the teaching certificate that talks about, you know, how to deliver content the right way. That talks about classroom behaviors. That talks about all of the things that, you know, from a gestation period, we learned in four years where a bachelor's degree and now they're kind of learning it as they go. The one thing that I had talked to my staff about and even when I was in the assistant superintendent role was finding good people. You know, how is that that's networking that's talking to other administrators that's talking to community leaders inside of the school district that you live in to try to find those good people who are also driven. Like they have to be driven and want to do this and, you know, knock on wood, you know, we've been able to, you know, circumvent a lot of a lot of the issues that some of these other school districts in Pennsylvania, you know, are experiencing by not having some of those good people inside of those classrooms, you know, and that we hope to continue that method. But it is a challenge and it is one of the bigger challenges in education. Are you saying it's credible? I don't love what you described, but I love that you went there. And for our audience that's on here, I want everybody to know these aren't softball questions I'm throwing at Steven here. They're tough questions to address and I'm just going to keep that theme going because you're really giving us some gold that I think people need to understand. Of that challenge, you just described with the teacher recruitment. Do you see the, they're all challenges that I'm going to name off, but do you see the greater constraint being content expertise, instructional skill, or the pipeline? I would say instructional skill. You know, they, they, a lot of the people that we've hired know the content. They're, they're familiar with, you know, algebra, they understand that. But you know that there is an art behind how you deliver that. There really is an art behind that. And, you know, I'm sure I don't, you know, take the time to think about like a teacher that struck you inside of the classroom as a good instructional leader. And, you know, that person male, female, they had something that captivated you to understand. And that's an art to it. There's an art to it. And that's why that that teacher struck you inside, inside your head that this is somebody that, you can gravitate toward. They're inspirational. They, you know, are an expert on the content, but you also want it to learn from them. And so there's, like I said, that synergistic effect. Like you wanted to hear the next thing that came out of that person's mouth. And the way that they spoke and the way that they delivered it or put something on the board or shared it, you, you understood it. And, and it was meaningful enough that you, like I said, took that and understood that. And we're we're able to put it in a practice. That's how it's about being able to put it in a practice. Absolutely. And some of the, some of the best teachers and most inspiring teachers that I had the pleasure working with took what I would call non-traditional paths to teaching. And when they got there, maybe they weren't the most polished in terms of their instruction, but their care for the students and their desire to do well was it was it was extremely high. Not only do we want those type of people in education, we need those people in education. So how can we design or for a mere perspective, if you could design the ideal support system for a teacher, especially a new teacher, what would that look like on an ordinary day in your district? Well, you know, one I think that the mentor process is absolutely important. And that's twofold. That's somebody who's in the trenches with you as as as another teacher or colleague. And then also the support system from your building administrators, they have to be the ones checking in along with those mentors to provide direction to critique when need to and a receiver, you know, the person on the other end of it has to be open to those conversations. Sometimes they may be courageous conversations. You may have to say, hey, you know, you might want to think about doing it some some some way different. But I think the biggest thing is is having that communication and being open at both ends of the stick so that we come to that that mutual agreement or we come to an aha moment for that that new teacher. And that's why I said before, like it's about getting good people. Like you give me a good person, I think that we could train them very, very well. Can technology help remove some of this friction or these barriers that exist? I think effective knowledge of how to use technology reduces a lot of those barriers. You know, and that that's on the person delivering that and that's also the person receiving that. So, you know, the one thing is is one creating something that's the students and a teacher above responsible for making sure that ethically we provide, you know, the right things ethically for that instruction to take place. And then obviously we want to provide something that's effective inside a learning process that creates a good product. Like we want them to actually understand and know, even know that they may use an AI driven program that they actually know a formula or know the reason why that that this mathematics portion worked in this case. So, like I said, it's it's about the responsibility of using that technology. But what I'm hearing from you, if I'm hearing you right, for the educator, professional development or professional development, let me back up. For the educator, professional judgment has to still be at the center of any technology used. One thousand percent. And for the student critical thinking has to be at the center. Let me ask you this question and then I want to transition, but this kind of took me on a side question that I want to explore with you. One of the concerns around technology and education is it's going to take the critical thinking away from the students and the students are just going to get the answer. How important is it for the technology tools that we use to incorporate critical thinking of the core ten of the product and not simply providing the student the answer. Yeah, so I so it's awesome that you said that about the critical thing. portion of this because what we have tried to do is two things. One, we want problem-based learning. Outer problem, let's figure it out and find a way. And then that ultimately, in my opinion, my educational opinion creates this growth mindset, mindset where going back to what you said earlier in the podcast about building confidence, you know, we do that in a very persistent manner so that one problem-based learning create that opportunity so that we grow and then that creates confidence because you see that finished product working. There's the balance with technology. We want to give teachers more capacity without just adding one more thing, right? And quite frankly, there's a lot of fatigue when it comes to technology. There's been a lot of promises made that this is the next best thing, but it doesn't get to the heart of the problem. Now we add in the layer of artificial intelligence. And we've got to prepare students for an AI-driven future. And there's a lot of feelings out there about AI. With a reality, it's been here longer than people realize. And I don't think it's going anywhere. You know, we will see. You and I don't have that answer. We'd be somewhere else if we did, right? Right, right, yeah. I think that, you know, you said about it's about preparing the students. It's also about preparing the faculty. You know, how do you do that? We talked a lot about professional development. You know, we, there are budgets attached to that. So we have to create opportunities contractually. So, you know, we talk about these things and our PLCs are professional learning communities. We want to focus on collaboration. You know, even though you may be a new teacher, that mentorship doesn't necessarily stop. You know, you want the teachers to co-mingle and talk about, you know, their craft outside of, of, you know, the contractual obligations. And we want best practices. Again, cliche terms, but if you're not talking about it, hey, what works, then are we really doing the right stuff inside of the classroom? You know, best practices, like I said, we want best practices, but let's talk about what actually works. So I think, I think a lot of those things, albeit cliche, I think helped tremendously. I want to explore something with AI, all right? I'm going to make fun of myself and tell myself a little bit. But what, I think there's tremendous potential for AI, and I'm going to speak in terms of mathematics. I think AI and technology has tremendous potential to help students when they do get stuck and when they're struggling, not to replace the teacher, but to help them, or to help support that teacher and help support that student, not to replace them. And critical thinking still has to be at the core. One of the concerns that I hear, and I think it's a valid concern, is that AI, instead of helping get a student unstuck, it just will simply give them the answer, and they still don't understand the problem. Here's where I'm going to make fun of myself. I turn 50 in two weeks. So I've been around a minute. When I was a student many, many, many years ago, I struggled with math. And I wish AI would have been a thing, because guess what, when I struggled, and I was completing my homework at home so I could complete the homework. I didn't understand the problem. My teacher wasn't there to support me, and my parents were working and working hard. So I didn't have anybody there to help. You know what I did, Stephen? I didn't turn AI. I turned to the back of the book, got the answer, and put it in there. And somehow, I got very good grades until I got the high school, and my algebra teacher realized I had no understanding of math whatsoever. And that jump and kept me after school. I was late for a football practice, and he helped me understand math. Okay? I tell that story because everybody's worried about AI just giving students the answer. We've always had that. Okay? Long set up to this question. With that mind, how is AI changing the conversation around teaching and learning in the district? So I think that it goes back to that ethical use that we talked about earlier. You know, it's the same same kind of scenario. The back of the book had the answers. We kind of looked at the formulas, and again, you share your story. Victim, I've done it too. You know what I mean? Urban trader. Yeah. Urban trader. Yeah. I'm guilty. Guilty is charge. There you go. So, you know, I think that what this allows students to focus on is that yeah, you may have the back of the book, but it also can tell you step by step how this formula works. Or, you know, even even if it's at the granular level and we're talking about just straight additions. And then you might have, you know, the 10th unit or something like that, you know, where it's ones when we go to tens and from tens to a hundred, you can understand the flow and how to carry a one and how to carry, you know, those those other other numbers to the top and see the flow of the actual mathematics happening. It gives you a visual representation. It helps and assists. And it's almost like having a teacher at home assessed with what you're learning. And again, it's about the ethical use of it. What are you hearing from your teachers? Are they curious, cautious or divided? So, when we started dipping our toe into this and this is not just within math, obviously, this is in other subject areas. They were extremely skeptical. All of the, you know, the buzz terminology, you know, they're worried about their job. They're worried about, you know, where they fit inside the classroom with, with using AI. And then with a lot of the professional developments that we had here at Tamakwa, they started to see how, you know, the ethical use of AI integrated into the instructional delivery makes for a better product, you know, they also have to keep under toes because, you know, technology advances faster than sometimes human humans, you know, no. And, you know, they want to make sure that the AI detectors work. They want to make sure that, you know, the student is actually learning about the process and the product and not just going to the back of the book and finding that answer, like sometimes we did. So, those were some of the things that I think that the teachers were very cognizant of, first of all, you know, second-assertive PD said, "Okay, you know, I can use this." And I could see how it would benefit the students. But then also, they understood they also have to stay on top of their craft and on top of their game to see what's out there and make sure that they, the, you know, the students don't pull it fast on. What if teachers could actually be the ones that control of how and when students use AI and determine if and how they used it to solve an equation? So, that is, that's kind of what we do. That's kind of what, and how we started dipping our tail into this. So, perfectly said, we executed that way inside of, inside of the classroom and said, "Hey, you know, take out your chromebooks, go to this. This is, this is what I want you to do. Try to come out to the thing and then let's talk about the process of this." And I think that by doing it that way, opening it up to the students inside of the classroom that way, I think shows, again, going back to what I said, it sounded like a broken record that ethical use of AI inside of that classroom. We're not running away from it. We're using it. Yeah, I love it. We're using it effectively. So, how do you, what questions are your parents and school board? What, what are they asking about AI? So, our board is very receptive to a lot of what we do inside of the classroom academically. They trust our judgment. They trust, our board has been around the majority of our board members. We have board members 25 plus years on our school board right now. And they've, they've seen the whole gamut of stuff. They are very receptive to how we operate inside of the classroom. They really don't, you know, metal and they trust our judgment as educational leaders to do that. And much like everything else technology wise, you have some parents who are right there on a cusp of what's growing and showing. And then you have some parents who give their kids and technology and say, "Hey, can you help me with this because you more, you know more about it than I do." So, we're kind of, I don't want to say out of technology crossroads, but we really have that one extreme and we have the other extreme where sometimes kids are helping their parents at home, you know, deal with some of the things that they see as commonplace. Here's some real talk. People may want to dance around this, but it's it's the reality. There are more technology solutions, education, technology, partners than a school district could ever even begin to imagine to use. How do you separate technology that really strengthens learning just from something that's new or impressive? So, you really have to trust yourself as an educator and again have those other ears and eyes on. Like if you're the only person in there in that meeting and talking to, you know, presenters and people want to sell you stuff all the time. And that's their job. But you also want to make sure that you have all of the components in the boxes checked. You want to make sure that your technology people are there to make sure that the district can support whatever they have and it works with, you know, your Chromebooks or your iPods or your app iPads and make sure that it all works well. But you also want to pay attention to the building administrators and some of your faculty to see like, is this really going to be practical inside of the classroom? You know, a lot of educational people love to dance in theory, but I'm a little bit more on the practical side of actually what works and how it could work best inside of our classrooms. What evidence do you need? Well, the best evidence is when you have sales people that come in and say, hey, I worked with so and so school district and here's what they were doing prior to, here's what they're doing after we started using this and they show you the data points. Data doesn't lie, but at the same point in time, you wanna make sure that the data that they're showing you is authentic. That means you're calling the school district that they were using and then say, hey, what were your problems? What were your obstacles? What can you assist with? Trust but verify. I heard, what I heard, you don't want a sales part, you don't want a sales person, you want a partner. 1000% yeah, I want somebody that's gonna be authentic. Yeah, I want somebody that's gonna be authentic. If you're authentic, you will win. It's that old adage, if I start referring to you as a sales person or a vendor, you're probably not getting the contract or it's gonna be a short-lived one, right? That's correct. That is correct. I mean, that is correct. That's a former soup, the current soup talk. I can say it pretty plainly now, right? And we need those partners out there. How important when it comes to AI and when it comes to technology? How important is transparency, data privacy? We've already touched on teacher control but also that in there. Yeah, the last thing that you want is your data put out there. Every school district has some obstacles that go along with that and there's always hackers out there trying to get into your system. Whether it be an email here or email there, but we want to make sure everything is under lock box. We want to make sure that we're not clicking on stuff or it doesn't lead to a way to circumvent our system and get into it. And we want to make sure that even though it's an open system, we want to make sure that the provider provides some sort of closed environment so that everything kind of stays in their network, so to speak and in our network. Sharing data is great, but we don't want those personal things that are out there. Out there. What's your vision for the most responsible use of AI to support teachers and students? It's a great question. One, obviously I want people to be knowledgeable about it. I want people to understand the reasoning behind us using it inside of our classrooms. I want the students to be extremely responsive with it but also responsible to it. And know that the process, even though it will get you answers, we want to make sure that there's an understanding that goes along with that process. I think that that is the formula for what you call responsible use. It's knowledge-based, it's communicative and you're playing into the actual process of learning. And I think if it does those three things, I think those three things are key cogs in what you're trying to produce. In terms of math, I love what you said about the process of learning. In terms of math, what will AI never replace in a process of learning? We talked about the teacher. The teacher is the bridge to that information. You have the great teachers that we have are still going to be the great teachers that we have regardless if they're using a piece of chalk or a point and click on a keyboard or a touch screen. They have to get you excited about learning. They have to be able to present whatever information is that they're presenting it in a meaningful way and without the teacher. And this is why I don't get caught up in the fact that teachers will be lost in this process because if you have really, really good teachers and we do have really, really good teachers here at Tamakwa, they will not get lost in this process no matter what we use. And I'm very, very confident with that. So no matter what, what I'm hearing in Tamakwa, the teachers and the students are going to remain at the center of the learning process. Students are learning all day every day. All right, man. And these first, as you step into the superintendency, you're there. You're the guy now, no more waiting. - Yeah. - One thing about your math instruction that you most want to get right this year. I really think that we want to see our test scores grow at the same point in time. I want more exit tickets at the end of each lesson. It may not be every day, but I want to make sure that our teachers understand that what they are doing from data points with those exit tickets are working or they need to change some things up. And I want to make sure that that's done with fidelity. And again, test scores are great, but I want something almost after every lesson that says, hey, these, you know, I'm going to say 80% of our students know about this. So how do we get those other 20% to learn a little bit more? Is it extra stuff at home? Is it talking to a parent? Is it staying after school? Is it all of these things that we can help and assist? But I want a little bit more of that on a lesson by lesson standpoint. - And that's really powerful. You have a lot of leadership experience that stood out on this podcast. If you had one minute to talk to somebody just entering school leadership, what piece of advice would you give them? - Well, I think that it's important to know one that you're not on an island, create those relationships and there has always been, I'm not here where I'm at without the mentors that I had. And so I really lean on a lot of those people who helped and assisted me get to where I am. You know, these names don't mean maybe anything to you, but Ray Kinder, the former superintendent who just retired, Carol McCuda, Joe Brady, who was at my former school, Dr. McBreen, who was at my former school. Those are the people that I wanted to emulate and take a lot of their qualities and produce something that is meaningful to the students. And they all had its outstanding qualities and just learn how they navigated the system of learning and also the people of learning because without those two things, the system and the people, you can't get anymore. - I love that, form that tribe, don't go it alone. - Yeah. - I have given you some tough questions here. So finally, you're gonna get that easy question and a little bit of fun. It's important that we humanize education and educators. We're tasked with so much, whether you're in the classroom or whether you're in the superintendent's chair, we need to humanize education, we need to take care of ourselves and we need to take care of each other. When you're not leading schools and doing all this important work that you're doing, what are you doing away from your leadership role to rest, retarget and stay healthy and well? - Yeah, I'm obviously trying to work out. I golf a lot, probably a little too much, as my wife says. But I also like to do the coaching. I try to stay involved in athletics. I have, I coach my son's a travel baseball team and coach my daughters in basketball and they keep the battery charged, they keep me going and very happy to do so because like you said, you need to break from this, from this on a day to day, you need a little bit of a Steve time. And I'm sure that you know how to do yourself. - So are you Bobby and I, Bill Jackson or Steve Kerr in your coaching style? - I would probably say Steve Kerr. I would go with Steve Kerr right now. Yeah, I would go with Steve Kerr. - I don't know if I know. - Yeah, Bobby Knight is good of a coach to you. I don't know if that would fly in this day and age. - That would not fly. You'd not be in the coaching environment too. - Yeah, I know. - I couldn't use the NFL. It seems like everybody's getting into trouble over there right now. - This is true. - Stay out of that, stay out of that. - Hey, where can people continue to follow you and keep up with your work and learn more about you, your leadership and the good things you're doing in your district? - We have, all of our, well, we have a district, Twitter page, X, I guess you call it now, but TASD, underscore info. I'm on LinkedIn, it's Steven Toath. And one thing that I want to do as the superintendent, former superintendent didn't put a lot out on social media, just didn't necessarily like that. I think that that's one thing, a goal in mind that we want to grow that a little bit more with that kind of stuff. So, stay tuned on that. - Well, I will definitely get connected with you. You've given us, given us some really great nuggets here today and I hope people really take a lot away from what you shared and what's going on and the great things in your school district. So Steven, thanks for joining us and sharing how you're thinking about math confidence, teacher support, responsible AI leadership and quite frankly, just all around great instruction in your school district. And to everyone listening, thanks for joining us on the education equation. If this conversation gave you something useful to think about, share it with another education leader and follow us on the show so you don't miss the next episode. And until next time, I'm your host Dan Cox. Keep asking the questions to help build better learning for every student and keep solving the right equation. (upbeat music)