Episode 3: On Teachers

[MUSIC] You're listening to Community Crafted Education, where we explore alternatives to conventional K-12 education and their potential impacts on society and culture. I'm Eric Wairn, Director of the National Hybrid Schools Project. On this episode, we're joined by David Marshall from Auburn University. We'll talk about differences in preparing teachers for conventional schools versus community crafted education models, about core teaching principles that might be essential for teachers in any setting, and about the role of conventional teacher preparation programs in this new landscape. [MUSIC] All right, well, welcome to the podcast we have with us today, David Marshall from Auburn University, who's here to talk about teachers. So hello, David. >> Hello, Eric. How are you doing? >> Great, great. So why not just to start. Why don't we lead off with having you just tell us a little bit about yourself. And you're role at Auburn and maybe what you do regarding teachers. >> Sure, so I would say, I guess if I would give the quick rundown, I'm an associate professor in the College of Education here at Auburn University. Mainly, I teach courses related to research and statistics and I train people on how to conduct sound studies related to education. Prior to this, I was a middle high school student studies teacher in Philadelphia, I taught in both the traditional public schools and charter schools there. That was sort of my first introduction to something other than the traditional public school system, if you will. When I was working after that, when I was working on my doctorate, I had worked with the Richmond Teacher Residency Program, which was an alternative to a traditional teacher preparation program. For those who are familiar teacher resinsies, basically, it's sort of a longer extended practicum experience, where you have, you know, you'll have instead of a single student teacher placement for 12 or 16 weeks in the spring semester, which is awfully, often I feel like it is, you will have someone place in a classroom for the entire duration of a school year. So they'll see the entire, ebb and flow of the entire school year with someone who's been there and done that before. And I played a number of different roles with the teacher residency program. And again, today, currently, I'm here at Auburn University. I don't directly work with teacher preparation, but I certainly work with a number of people who do. Yeah, great. Okay. But you've been a teacher and you've worked with tons of teachers and tons of administrators. And so now we've got all these new kinds of schools, right? Like the preparation for teachers is not exactly the same at every university around the country, but it's pretty consistent in a lot of ways, right? But now we've got all these new kinds of schools where just the job of being a teacher looks really different, right? So in a micro school, instead of having whatever, five big groups over the course of the day, or one big group all day, you might have one or a couple really small groups, right? And in a hybrid school, you might have small groups and you don't even see them every day of the week, right? So what, I mean, those are some obvious ones, but what do you think are the biggest differences in preparing teachers for roles in those kinds of schools compared to preparing them for a conventional teaching job? Well, I think, as you said, there's mostly a standard sort of traditional teacher preparation program that exists within colleges and universities. And for most of history, at least the recent history, they have been training teachers for a mostly standard traditional public school system. Obviously, there's differences from one municipality to another, but by and large, there's a mostly standard system with which they're being trained to work. And I think part of the training and traditional teacher preparation programs for a long time, and understandably so, has been socializing teachers into that system and given them helpful hints, how they're navigated, what to do, what not to do, when to do it, that kind of thing. And obviously, that looks a lot different when you start introducing a lot of these emerging school models. Many of these models are not only quite different from traditional public school systems, large, they're quite different from one another. So there's not a single standard way you can't say, well, hey, I'm going to give you the micro school training, because obviously, there's such thing as a one size fits all micro school training. So I think that's the one thing. I mean, a lot of what David Tyak wants to refer to is the one best system that doesn't exist. You're no longer training people for a single way of doing teaching, if you will. So I think that's the first and biggest and most obvious way to think about this. But as you're right, yeah, there's a lot of these things are different. I mean, even things down to classroom management looks a lot different if you have a room full of 25 students who are going to be with you for 48 minutes. At a time, compared to you're dealing with three or four students in a small group or your deal with students you see on Tuesdays and Fridays only. So I think there I mean, I think there's a lot of things that I think that are similar. And certainly we can touch on those things. But I think there's there are very important differences in just the general assumptions that one would make. If they were entering the enterprise of training teachers even 10 years ago to maybe which you might see in states with the USA's today are just very different. Yeah, I mean, in some ways it's it's very different in the sense that it's like a parallel universe, right? So yeah, like you can't like you said, you can't prepare somebody to do a micro school, right? Because the curriculum at a micro school could be classical, it could be some kind of really high tech project based. It could be outdoors or and so those are going to those schools are going to operate in really different ways from a teacher's perspective minute to minute. So in one way, they're in a parallel universe. And another way it takes every part of being a teacher and amplifies it, right? So so teachers are used to saying, well, you know, I do I'm a teacher, but I'm also kind of a mentor and I do administrative stuff. And I'm a, you know, I'm a janitor in some ways. But micro schools teachers and founders do all that stuff to a whole other level, right? So they might be the curriculum designer, the administrator, the accountant, the janitor. So, you know, could teacher, how could conventional teacher prep programs think about those kinds of, you know, paths for people who want to maybe go through them and get certified, but then go off into one of these other models? Well, I mean, so I think one of the ways that they could is through cultivating a type of a mindset. I think we've seen a version of this, maybe not to the extreme as you might find in some high-varrier of micro school models. But we've seen a version of this before with charter schools. I mean, it's what Plato and the SST is the mother of invention. And a lot of charter schools because of the, you know, smaller scale, you don't have a central office to do this. That or the other, you might have a seventh grade math teacher who's also an instructional coach or a second grade teacher who's helping you with analyzed data, student data or a fourth grade teacher that is also doing some clerical task, you know, at the end of the day or something. I mean, that is not uncommon at all. And a lot of charter schools, especially charter schools that don't have a CMO or charter management organization. And so we've seen a version of that recently of completed this study. I'm getting ready to write it up where I was interviewing charter school leaders and asking them about the autonomy they have and how they use it and how that's maybe different. And one of the things that a handful of those leaders told me that really struck a core with me. I asked them, I said, what's different? And one of them just looked at me and said, the only thing that's different is mindset. The things that we do that differ from the standardized setting of things are things other people could also make the choice to do. But they just don't because they see a box that they see that contains them to not do those things. We don't see those, we don't see the box. We don't see the board. So we just make decisions that make sense for us. And he was very intentional about telling them, thinking of one school leader in particular in Pennsylvania, he was very intentional about telling me that. That they intentionally select who they hire as teachers based on the mindset that they have. And if you have the mindset that, well, no, I teach seventh grade math and I want to do my five periods today. And that's it. It's like, there might be a setting for you, but it's just not going to be his school. So I think we've seen a version of this before and where you have teachers who have to have this, you know, all hands on deck kind of a mindset. And I think that's certainly prevalent in some of these emerging school models. And, you know, certainly prevalent during the pandemic, there's a lot of the research I did with those charter schools and traditional public schools in general. Just the schools that were successful were the ones that had teachers that had cultivated this mindset of, no, we're going to do whatever we need to do today to make the school run and to further the learning of these students. And I mean, I think you have to have that. And if you're going to work in one of these, you know, microschools or hybrid schools. So I think that might be something that, you know, I've talked about how, just on teacher preparation programs, socialize certain, you know, aspects of the traditional public school system in their current form. I think they also could work to socialize a mindset change as part of, you know, just from the very early on in the training that would be beneficial. I think not only for hybrid or micro schools, I think it would be beneficial for private schools, charter schools, traditional public schools or any, any type of learning setting for that matter. Yeah, so I will. And I wonder, like, you make a good point about the fact that charter schools have been kind of like pulling this out for a minute, right? Teachers needing some of these other kinds of, I don't know, mindsets or soft skills or things like that. And I was in a college of ed for a long time and I would always have students whose intention was to go work in a charter school or go work in a private school, right, not in a conventional public school. But also, I was recently working with this group of educators, they're with schools all the time. And I think I was brought on to be the hybrid and micro school guy or one of them. And lots of people in this group had never heard of hybrid and micro school, like, it was all new to them. So I wonder if you, what you think about this is, is this kind of stuff even on the radar of most teacher preparation programs or is it still kind of underground as far as their concern? - If I had to speculate without data, I would say that this is probably the latter. This is probably the underground, as you put it. I don't think that this is on the radar of many people who are involved with teacher preparation programs. In some ways, that's not crazy. If you think about it, I mean, teacher preparation programs are still by and large training individuals who are going to go into a traditional system. So it's 90 plus percent of people are still doing that. Then that's probably not crazy to serve the 90 plus percent of the market that you're currently serving. But no, I do find it interesting is, as you know, I'm here in state of Alabama, which passed the Choose Act last January, which is going to have an educational savings account, which is going to, I know that one of the things they hope is going to spur the creation of some of these micro schools and hybrid schools as additional options for families in the state of Alabama. And I think one of the surprising things for me is that quite frankly, I don't think I ever hear about any of this unless I'm the one who starts the conversation. I mean, good, bad, or otherwise, I don't hear, I don't even hear people critique it. So it's, I don't think this is on the radar for a lot of folks. Interesting, interesting. I mean, I'm having some of the same experiences. But I wonder, we used to always say, 90-something percent of kids were going into their, assigned public schools. The number's been creeping down a little bit. In large part because of the pandemic, but not only because of that, right? Our micro school and hybrid school numbers were kind of going up before COVID. And as with, when you've done a lot of COVID work, as with so many other things in life, COVID kind of took what was happening and just kind of accelerated it, right? So all that stuff was kind of trending that way a little bit before and then it took off during COVID. But I wonder, so maybe it's not on their radar, but are there, are there principles that you think conventional teacher-protein preparation programs could kind of build into their systems now to help, like I'm talking about particular practical skills, right, that might help people prepare to be in one of these schools. I mean, probably. So I mean, I think one of the things that is true, that I, you know, I think that with a lot of the legislation and flexibility that has come about, and certainly hybrid schools, micro schools have the flexibility to most cases, higher whoever they want, they're not a bound to higher, you know, a teacher with a licensure, for example. They often do anyway though, right? They often do anyways. But I do think, so every once in a while, I hear people kind of go down the path of like, well, we don't need any of this teacher training and we're just going to hire the best chemist and the best whoever. And sometimes that works out, but I mean, a lot of times it doesn't as well. In fact, almost every conversation I've ever had with someone who first was teaching without any kind of formalized training, whatever that training might have been, whether it was a traditional program in an alternative route or whatever have you. And then talk to reflect on that after they have completed some form of training, there's not a teacher I've ever spoken to, he said, yeah, I didn't learn anything and I'm just the same teacher. They all said, oh gosh, I learned so much, no matter what it was, no matter where it was from. Because I mean, I think there's certain core principles that are consistent regardless of what setting you're teaching and if the regardless of what setting, you supposedly have some standard, some learning goals that you're attempting to achieve with your student and you're gonna have some way of either delivering that instruction or facilitating that learning and you need to make sure there's alignment between the instruction that's being delivered and the actual learning goals or standards that you're attempting to meet. And then you're gonna, in some way, shape of form, you're gonna assess student learning and you need to make sure that the ways in which you're assessing that learning are aligned to the way you are we're delivering or facilitating the learning and that they're aligned to the goals or standards that you have. So there's certain, I think there's certain overarching just principles of good teaching that exist no matter what. So I think that some of these types of things, they're gonna need to be imparted in one way, shape, or form for anyone who's gonna enter a classroom. So I mean, I think that's a long way to be saying that I do think some of the people who kind of brush off, well, we don't need, we can just get the best, this, that, or the other and put them in a classroom. I think we do need some formalized training just because I do think there are some core principles like that that are kind of necessary no matter what. - Yeah, I mean, I think, so I had some friends and I worked on a book about this recently in the past couple of years about certification and preparation and those are not exactly the same thing, right? A certification and preparation are different. So you can make two different errors, right? Like you can add a ton of pedagogy classes, right? And then you turn out a teacher who maybe has taken tons of educational psychology and things like this but hasn't read very many books, right? Or is it very good at math? You know, and that's one bad outcome. But another one is to say like from maybe often from the perspective of a hybrid or micro school, you know, we're just gonna find a person who's a good culture fit and we'll drop them in and it'll be fine, right? And sometimes that can work out okay. But what I often find is, you know, a lot of times it'll be something like, yeah, there are good culture fit and yeah, they've read a lot of books so they know a lot of math but their classroom management is a train wreck, right? Or, you know, they're writing tests and their tests are terrible or their assessment strategy overall is horrendous, right? It's too harsh or it's too light or whatever it is. So I mean, can you think of any examples of that? Like what are some things that maybe if we stripped it all away, just anybody going into any kind of school would need a couple of skill. Like I can think classroom management would be one, right? Assessment strategies would be one. Is there anything else like that that you think might be kind of inherent to just being like the platonic ideal of a teacher no matter what kind of setting you're in? - Well, I mean, I think that, so I mean, I was thinking about this just the other day that there's a lot of, there's something to practice, right? I mean, if you look at the best musicians in the world, I mean, I'm talking to people who are paid to be in like, Philharmonic orchestras, they practice for hours every day despite the fact that they're the best in the world and they got to be the best in the world because they practiced for thousands and thousands of hours. You think about, you know, even majorly baseball players, Aaron Judge became the all star that he is because he practiced a lot. And despite the fact that he's an all star and can hit 60 plus home runs in the season, he still takes batting practice every single game. So, I mean, there's something to practice and if you sort of take that idea and sort of translate that to teacher preparation, I think that's one of the things that we should, if there's an area, I think we could rethink is the way we do practicum experiences. I think this, we could rethink this in a way, especially in ESA states, that also conserve hybrid and micro schools particularly well. Right now, currently in your traditional teaching preparation program, as I alluded to at the beginning, you tend to have about 12 to 16 week student teaching that tends to happen in the second semester. After a teacher who has experience has set the classroom, you're walking in the so-and-inherited sort of culture that they've created for a few weeks and then you leave even for the school years done. I think that there should be multiple practicum experiences and I think there's an opportunity, especially in ESA states, to have, make sure that these practicum experiences are in different settings. And so maybe you do have one practicum experience in a traditional teacher preparation program, but maybe are in a traditional public school for that matter. But maybe your other ones in a hybrid school setting or maybe you have one in a private school and then your others in a charter school setting. I think being able to see how, so at school, what it looks like in different sectors is important. Even if you're pretty bent on the fact that, "Oh, I'm gonna work in a hybrid school." Maybe you have been socialized into that and you've decided that's where you wanna be. I think there are things you can learn. So I'm not directly answering your question in terms of naming the assessment classroom management, but I think there are those things that just naturally and organically are learned just through practice and the idea of just getting more experience under your belt. I think even if you. You are going to work in a hybrid school, having that stint in a traditional public school probably helps you in terms of a crime from an experience. And even if you want to work in the neighborhood traditional public school, I think there's things that you would learn from a micro school or hybrid school or some other type of schooling setting that would be transferable. Yeah, no, that is actually a good answer because it's like you said, it's just getting more at bats, right? And putting more work in just to practice what you're doing. And that is honestly, I won't say it's an easy thing, but it's a relatively easy thing for an existing college of ed to pull off, right? Like they've got their relationships with the local public school systems they work with. And so that ties them a little bit. And I understand there's a lot of moving parts with all that. But you're right, it's having some of these kind of pre-student teaching, practicum experiences and other places. Some kids might just want it and others who are not even thinking about it might gain something from it, right? And this is like not a hard thing for an existing college of ed to do, to kind of be creative and put themselves out there a little bit. Well, I think also you could have a situation where I mean, I'll look at my own biography to a lesser extent. I initially taught 12th grade and then I taught 7th grade and I was asked to teach 8th grade. And I'm glad I said yes and agreed to do it because what I found after all that was 8th grade was kind of a sweet spot. I really liked it. 8th grade. And I didn't know that and I wouldn't have known that had that not been an option that was put in front of me. I'm grateful it was. I think that you could certainly have people who, you know, they just want to be a teacher. Maybe they haven't even thought deeply about like these types of sectors. I mean, most people probably don't think as deeply about these things as you and I are. But then all of a sudden they're placed in a hybrid school setting for one of their practice experiences and it's like a glove. Like, oh my gosh, now I just realized what it is that I want to do. Or maybe they are and they realize this is not for me. I mean, that both are good pieces of information for someone to get, right? I think that you might find people who are surprised at where they, what they like and what they don't like once they've had a chance. Again, like you said, it's about at that. Once they've had a chance to actually have those experiences and work through some of it. So I think there's that. There's another thing I do want to say just sort of unprompted. I think that a lot of times conversations like this end up sort of training the fire at traditional teacher preparation programs and college and university based preparation programs. And I'm not sure all of that is warranted or fair. And the reason why is because there's only but so many degrees of freedom that most traditional teacher preparation programs even have. A lot of what they're doing is dictated by accrediting bodies is dictated by a patchwork of legislation mandates, different regulations and mandates from State Department of Education. And so a lot of the things that I know, for example, I would probably change if you may be king for a day about teacher preparation are things that I probably couldn't change because I would need the lobby legislators or I would need to lobby people, important people of the State Department of Education or things like that. So I think that's important for us to remember that and remember where the decision points are in how we have what we have in terms of the current system. Yeah, yeah. And so that's where I think the practical idea is an interesting one, right? Because that is something they have a little bit of control over. They could be a little bit creative with it. So aside from that, is there another course that you might devise for a conventional teacher program if you were trying to kind of promote this sort of idea among their programs? Well, I think again, a lot of this kind of gives back to the whole idea of cultivating mindset. I mean, I think that things like educational entrepreneurship or things that are just not spoken of, they're not anyone's radar. I mean, even when I remember when I, you know, I'm going to get back to my point here, but to sort of your offer a second, most teachers in a traditional school district, you're paid based on two things. How many years you've been doing it and what degree you have? So if you've been teaching five years and you have a master's degree, well, you just sort of follow the little grid and that's your salary and that's it and that's all there is to it. You're never taught to even think about negotiating or talking about your salary, because it's just a given that, well, I've been doing this this my first year and I have a master. So this is what I'm going to make if I work for a fill in the blank school district. I remember my first gig at a charter school and I had to negotiate my salary. And I'm not sure I was very good at it, but I am sure that I was better at, I was, I was maybe even bad at it, but I was better than most of the people who were more bad than I was. So I think I'm fair to okay. But again, that's something that is something that most teachers are never even taught that you've been thinking those terms. I think, so I think you could have, that's just one example. I think you could have a course that focused on educational entrepreneurship that focused on, so maybe you have a course that focuses on different, the different school instructors and sort of ways that different benefits, opportunities that exist among each. I also sort of related, this is not exactly the answer to your question, but I think it, in weird way, could be, I think you should have courses that are related to using generative AI in terms of classroom practice. If you're going to be a teacher, I think I read an article in Education Week that suggested that you could save, perhaps if you were efficient at using generative AI tools, that you could save as many as like 13 hours a week in, you know, different, disperformed different tasks even from crafting lesson plans, from coming up with assessments that are probably going to be better than whatever you come up with yourself. Coming up with, you know, examples, discussion questions, things of that nature. I think that would, that would be beneficial no matter what sector you're in, but I'm actually pretty bullish about the idea that generative AI and some of these tools are actually going to make it easier for some hybrid school, microschools of flourish. I think there's a lot of people who are maybe apprehensive, for example, about, especially in, as you get into older grades, like, well, gosh, you know, maybe, I maybe feel confident in teaching third grade or how to, you know, to read and work through this novel. Maybe not as confident with, you know, ninth grade math. I don't remember, you know, this, that or the other. Well, I think a lot of generative AI tools, especially AI tutors and things like that are going to change the game. I think that that's going to actually create the opportunity and open the window for more people to get involved in these types of school and settings than previously would have without the aid and without the assistance of some of these tools. So I think I would add, I would add a course in proper AI use and in teaching. Huh, yeah, I could help homeschoolers too. Absolutely. I wonder, so something else you said made me think of two things related to the conventional colleges of Ed. One of them is the fact that, you know, imagine you're in a state with two, two, two big, you know, popular colleges of Ed and whatever state that is. And one of them says, you know what, we're going to get, we're going to step our toes into these waters and we're going to get involved in the hybrid of micro school space. And we'll do, you know, we'll do, you know, some education entrepreneurship stuff. And we'll give you some experiences in these schools. And then you're a, you're a prospective teacher. You might, you might be drawn a little bit to one of those, to that school instead. You think that might be a draw for a conventional college of Ed to add some of that stuff in just to differentiate themselves a little bit. So I answered two ways. So one, I actually thought about this because I do live in a state that has to proud of it. How is speaking, of course you were speaking hypothetically. So actually I thought about exactly this. I think the answer is potentially yes, but only if that is messaged. I think it's not the field of dreams if you build it, they will come. I mean, I think that you can add, you know, say you added an educational entrepreneurship class to program a study and you didn't tell anyone and it was just the existing people that you were already getting who were going to be exposed to that. I'm not sure that that, at least in the short term, is much of a game changer. Now, it could long term, longer term, it could be because you might have people who are graduate of that program that then begin to talk to people and say, oh, hold on. No, you can get these types of things from this university's program. And so I think if you were going to do that and that was going to be part of your play, then you would also need to, you even need to market that. You need to advertise the fact that, hey, we're still doing our usual and our standard teacher prep program that's going to serve, you know, the traditional school districts for most part, but we're also opening the door to these other possibilities. I think if you messaged that and you made that loud and clear, and particularly in ESA states, I think that that could make some difference, but I think you would have to do both. You couldn't just simply create the courses and then hope people found out. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So speaking of ESA states, that leads to my other point that I wanted to ask you about, which is we've got a bunch of new ESA programs popping up around the country, right? And some of them are in states like West Virginia. And to a certain extent, Alabama where you don't have this huge, like, developed ecosystem of school choice, historic. So one of the limiting factors on how big those programs can get, how popular they can get, how much they can get used is the places for the kids to go, right, the schools, the supply side, right. And a limit on that is where do teachers come from. So I think, what do you think of this? I think, you know, these schools are going to end up, these new schools that emerge because of these ESA bills are going to get people who are good fits to work in them. But they're going to be needing to look for a lot of people. And some of those are probably going to come from conventional colleges of ed just because that's where the teachers are. So I don't know what do you think this will have some kind of interaction between between the new ESA bills and these schools coming to look for people in conventional colleges of ed and then having to figure out what to do with them. Well, I mean, yes and no. So if you stop and think about it. So it used to be, you know, if you go back a few decades, it was just pretty much ubiquitous. I mean, if you wanted to be a teacher, you went to a traditional university college based teacher preparation program. And then after you graduated, you went to find employment with the traditional public school district. Period. That was basically it. But, you know, especially since the 80s, you've had a lot of alternative route programs that have come about alternative licensure pathways. And I mean, if you look at the numbers today, I think it's about one in three teachers are prepared through something other than a university based traditional teacher preparation program. So I think that you already have. To write the ones we can count are there are plenty of others who we don't count. No, I think no, I think that's true. But of the ones that we can count, you know, up to, you know, over 30% of teachers are prepared in some other fashion than a traditional public traditional teacher preparation program. So I think you already have have that that sort of trajectory is has been in place, you know, again, you know, predating the emergence of these ESA bills that have come through. But I do think that there's something to your point, you know, if you had two universities and one side they were going to grab the both of the horns and really take advantage of this and try to serve this potentially new group of teachers who are seeking out these types of educational settings in which to work. I think that that could begin if that was message, I think that could make a difference. But I think that it probably isn't coming upon universities at some point, if you know, like I said, I don't think it's how many people's radar right now, but it's going to be incumbent upon folks to put it on the radar and the start to pay attention because I think what you might see happen, especially in a state like Alabama where let's say if you're a family that wants to do something other than the traditional, you know, public school and you know, you don't otherwise see a magnet or charter school that is an option for you, which depending on where you live in the state that's possibly quite true. Then, you know, you're going to have, you're going to have these micro schools and hybrid schools that are going to, I think, be the first sort of new models and new, you know, new seats, if you will, in classrooms that are going to start to fill the void. And if I think if universities and colleges don't step up and find a way to train teachers to serve these new models, someone is. And so, and that's probably going to be another alternative route. And I think if you have legislatures that have gone so far is to pass a essay legislation, it's probably not a hopscrap in the jump before they say, okay, well, we're going to create a new pathway for teachers to go this route. So, somebody is going to serve these folks again, I'll go back to what I said before. I'm not a big believer in just sort of finding the person and putting them in the classroom. I think we need to have teachers who are trained and trained well. But if you know, someone's going to serve them, so whether that's going to be a university or a college school of education or whether that's going to be some emergent institution of some sort that is going to really seek out to serve this population, someone will. Yeah, I mean, we've been talking a lot about colleges, bad teacher preparation, but like coming out of COVID and especially places like Florida, existing teachers have kind of bailed to go start their own things up and hang their shingle up and start their own, microschools and hybrid schools. So that's there's all kinds of opportunities for existing teachers to do kind of what they, you know, a lot of them will say, I get to do what I always wanted to do. Right. Yeah, so I think there's all kinds of space there too. Well, no, I think that's true and actually I'll give a shout out to my colleague, Andrew Pendola, who works with me here at Auburn. He did a study, was looking at, now he was looking at traditional public school teachers, but I think that his finding actually sort of could be generalized across sectors. One of the things that he was finding is that teachers who were reporting that they were thinking about leaving the classroom. The main reason that they were is wasn't because they no longer cared, it wasn't because they no longer wanted to be a teacher. It wasn't because they didn't want to help students learn. It was because the job that they envisioned was not the job that they actually did. It was having to take attendance on four forms in three different ways, having to, you know, there's another set of paperwork they have to complete that they don't see a through line to it actually helping Johnny read better. You know, there's another, you know, it's all this other stuff that was that that's not what the vision that they had for for being a teacher is this not the job is they thought it was going to be. It's all that stuff that's getting away so that was his finding from you know Alabama traditional public school teachers, but I think that's. I mean, I think that that certainly could hold true across sectors and I think you might find a lot of people. I know we've spoken with people who for whom that's true that they they're doing their own thing and it's like a breath of fresh air like, oh wow, this is what I wanted to do with my day. Yeah, I mean, it's a different world now you can you can just do things as they say right so what about okay so that this has been great I wanted to ask you one more question David, which is what do you think is the most interesting thing happening in teacher prep generally or on your work specifically right now that people involved in these new school models would like to hear about. Well, so I don't know if this is about teacher prep in particular, but I think for for me one of the things that is just it blows my mind that I hear absolutely no one talking about this is this idea of Alachart education and if I'm working with with a colleague in Florida where we're trying to a you know come up with some statistics around. So I'm sure you can appreciate that's not always the easiest thing to capture but who's using what constellation of services and so on so forth whether you're getting a course from a traditional public school and maybe another course from a private school and then you're getting tutoring and yeah this I think that's absolutely fast thing and then I've heard estimates that it could be at least a hundred thousand families that are that are using some form of like Alachart education. And in the state of Florida, you know, by virtue of their ESA law and if that's true and I have every reason to believe it is that is the biggest untold story I think that's happening right now in K-12 education. So one of the one of the things I'm working on right now is again trying to sort of capture what is the breadth of that what is the extent of that what are the constellations of services that families are gravitating towards you know do they look different whether you're you have a child with special needs versus a child that doesn't have special needs. You know what and also just not only looking at through the lens of the family and parent and that's obviously one of the one of the angles we're taking. But we're also going to be speaking with some folks at the traditional school districts or charter schools that are signing up to be providers that are signing up to deliver the Alachart courses that families might be seeking because is you know I think there's there's a world in which I think a lot of times people think of things and they're not going to be able to do that. Sometimes people think of things in zero time zero some terms like all right well if you know if you're doing this ESA then that's that's you know it's going to hurt traditional public school districts and I'm not sure that's always true or if it is is because you're you're not thinking outside of the box and you're constrained by this artificial you know constraints that that you place on yourself in your own way of thinking. I think that there's a way in which everyone can win and I think this is one of the ways that charter schools and traditional public schools might fit nicely into an ecosystem where families have a lot of choice so that yeah that's what I'm kind of working on right now I'm just trying to make sense of this because it's fascinating to me that you have this you know critical mass of people who are who are doing this and again I don't hear anyone talking about it so that's I'll be interested to see what we learn. Yeah me too Florida's ahead but other other states tend to tend to try to follow in their wake right so all right David Marshall from Auburn University thank you so much for joining us on the Community Craft Education podcast. Thank you for listening to Community Crafted Education a podcast hosted by the National Hybrid Schools Project and Kennesaw State University's Michael J. Cole's College of Business. If you have any questions about the topics we discussed on today's show or want to learn more about what we do please look up the National Hybrid Schools Project or reach out to us directly at coalscollege.com/hybrid. (upbeat music)