In this episode, Chris Lehmann, founding principal and CEO of Science Leadership Academy schools, shares his compelling journey from a shy English teacher to a pioneer of the "school 2.0 movement." Discover how SLA embodies an inquiry-driven pedagogy where students actively ask questions, research, collaborate, and present their learning, fostering an environment where technology is as essential and unnoticed as oxygen.

• Science Leadership Academy, inquiry-driven, project-based school in Philadelphia, PA
• Inquiry Schools, non-profit dedicated to modernizing learning experiences
• Building School 2.0: How to Create the Schools We Need, book by Chris Lehman, Zac Chase
• Practical Theory - A View From the Schoolhouse, blog from Chris Lehman
• Educon,an educational innovation conference where people can come together to discuss the future and the now of schools
• Ted Sizer (educational philosophy)
• Deborah Meier (educator)
• Ann Cook (educator)
• Understanding by Design (UbD)
• Chubbies Steaks (Roxborough, Philadelphia)
• Jim's Steaks (South Street, Philadelphia)
• D'Alessandro's Steaks (Roxborough, Philadelphia)

Nick welcome to Talking technology with Atlas,

the show that plugs you into the important topics and trends for

technology leaders all through a unique Independent School lens,

we'll hear stories from technology directors and other

special guests from the Independent School community and

provide you with focused learning and deep dive topics.

Hello and welcome again to a another episode of talking

technology with Atlas. I am Peter Frank. I'm the Senior

Director of certification and operations for Atlas.

And I am Bill Stites, the Director of

Technology at Montclair Kimberly Academy in Montclair, New

Jersey, and

I'm Hiram Cuevas, Director of Information Systems

and Academic Technology at St Christopher school in Richmond,

Virginia.

All right, so we've got another Peter takeover of

the Atlas podcast a lot sooner than we thought that was gonna

happen, guys. But you know, it's been going great, I think so

far, hasn't it? This

is where I wish I would read my emails more

clearly, because had I known, if it wasn't for our guests, I

wouldn't be here. Peter, okay, I'd be like, this is just you

and Hiram, have fun. I see.

I'll tee this up for you. Bill, go birds, go

birds.

Go birds. There you go. Wow. There you go. This is

when you got somebody from Philly. You know you're gonna

get a response. There go. Birds.

All right, nice. So we're already way off the rails,

and I didn't lose my job the first time, but after this one,

it might be over. I was thinking of wisdom, and I've heard some

pearls of wisdom that have stuck with me. We don't need to get

like deeply into it, but I'd love to hear your guys pearls of

wisdom that you've heard over the years. I'll give you two of

mine. Number one, a little heady. You know, Socrates was

quoted, and it's been interpreted many times, but

basically he said, If I don't know something, I know that, or

I know that when I don't know something, and that that was

wisdom in his mind. I always thought that was pretty

profound, and as a rather rigid, closed minded individual,

learning of that quote really helped me, actually, to open up

a bit and be more aware of what I didn't know. The second nugget

as a parent, which I know you guys will appreciate, if the

oatmeal dries on the bowl you're throwing away that bowl.

I That's

the second nugget. So what about you guys? I'd love

to pick up some new nuggets of wisdom before we get to our

guest here.

It's one that you hear often, but it's something

that I truly believe in, is that the wisdom is in the room, that

if you can get people together, if you can sit down around the

table and have a conversation about a topic, about any topic,

you're going to come out of that with more than you would have

hoped when you went into it. And I think to me, it speaks to the

reason why I appreciate what we do with the podcast. I think it

speaks to what I appreciate about a collaborative working

environment. It speaks to the way in which Atlas is kind of

organized to bring people together, because the idea that

any one person could know it all or have all the answers to

something is incredibly false. And when you have that

opportunity to thoughtfully, sit down, collaborate and to share

the wisdom of what you need, truly can come from the space

for once you are at that point, great.

I like that. I'm

gonna cheat a little bit here. The purpose of

education is to replace an empty mind with an open one, and I

cannot take credit for that line. That was by Malcolm

Forbes,

excellent. Well, our guest has been waiting

patiently now. This man, he wants to change the world. I've

done my homework here. He is the founding principal and CEO of

the Science Leadership Academy schools, which is a network of

progressive inquiry driven schools. He is the co founder of

inquiry schools, which is a nonprofit dedicated to

modernizing learning experiences. He's a pioneer of

the school 2.0 movement, a blogger, an author, a frequent

speaker. No grass grows beneath this man's feet, and we are

thrilled to have him here, though. Please welcome Mr. Chris

Lehman to the podcast here. Thanks

so much for having me. I'm really excited to

be here absolutely and it works, of course. Okay, there he is.

There you go. There you go. Bill.

Gotta respond. Go. Birds.

Fantastic. Chris, why don't you help us out? Just

get started. Like, how did you come to this school? 2.0 what

brought you here? What's your origin story?

The first piece is, you know, I'm the child of a

lifelong teacher and a union lawyer, so from the early. I can

remember, you know, the mantra in my house growing up was, the

purpose of life is to make the world a little bit better of a

place because you happen to live in it for a while. There's a lot

of these ideas. And my mom was this amazing educator, and she

came of age as an educator in the 70s, in the sort of, you

know that wave of the progressive schools movement,

open classroom and a lot of those ideas. So she was an

innovative educator. She likes it when I say that a lot of

these ideas are hers, just sort of more modern. So thing One was

this idea that I very much was raised by two people who saw

purpose in the teaching life, who saw purpose in making

schools better, and who believed schools could be better. So

that's a not insignificant part. I think the other thing is, is

that I as a teacher, I taught for nine years in New York City

at this wonderful, progressive public high school called

beacon. And if you were teaching in the mid 90s and early 2000s

in New York City, there was so many new schools popping up,

there were all these really cool ideas happening. You had Deborah

Meyer, Ann cook. You had all these incredible educators who

were starting new schools and creating a vision. And then for

me at Beacon, I got there when the first class were seniors,

and I worked for these two incredible educators, Ruth Lacey

and Steven Stoll, and really was part of a cohort of young

teachers who helped these really visionary educators build out

their vision of a school. And I think when you get the chance to

do that, you see the art of the possible, right? So I think for

all of us who are at Beacon in the early days of that school,

this sort of only limits put on us were like, how hard can you

work and how big can you dream? And that's a cool way to grow up

professionally, right? That what an incredible sort of entry into

the education life. And from very early on, when I was there,

people used to say to me all the time, like, you're going to

start a school someday. And my wife said to me, you're going to

start school someday. Just please God, don't do it when

we're trying to start a family, which, of course, is then

exactly what I did. And thank god, I'm married to an

incredibly patient woman. But then what happened with SLA is,

I'm from the Philly area, like I grew up outside of Philly. I

went to college in Philly. You know, I was at the World Series

parade in 1980 when the Phillies won it. I still wear number 20

because of Michael Jack Schmidt. So I'm a Philly kid at heart.

And then there was this day in like, mid 2000s I'm sure if it

was 2004 five, when the school district Philadelphia put out a

press release that got picked up by ASCD daily. And I tell all

young educators subscribe to the ASCD smart brief, because, like,

even if you don't read it every day, just browsing what's going

on in the world of education is incredibly important. And the

press release was Philadelphia to start 27 new small schools.

And I was like, oh my goodness, this is the thing I want to do.

And my wife and I were like, ready to leave New York City.

I'd always wanted to come home and help Philly schools get

better, right? And Philadelphia was not, at that moment in time,

really known for progressive education in the 70s. It was, I

mean, you had the parkways. There are the seeds of

progressive education here in some really amazing ways, but it

had kind of gone dormant. So I wrote up a white paper of what I

thought a school could be. I called it the Philadelphia

Academy of teaching and learning, which had the fabulous

acronym of paddle. Because if it's not funny, why do it? And I

started shopping it to anybody who would take a meeting with

me, and anybody who knew somebody who knew somebody who

knew somebody who was connected to Philadelphia education, I

would get on a train, get on a bus, and come and have a

conversation with them, and that was not normal for me. Like I'm

I know I have a lot of energy, but like around people, I don't

know, I'm actually pretty shy, but this was the thing I was

supposed to do. So you found it right. And the thing that I

learned is people want to help, and they don't always know how

to help. They may not have money, they may not have this,

they might not have that, but they know somebody. I always

ended the meetings by saying, Well, who should I talk to next?

And are you willing to put me in touch with them? And that was a

way people could help, and they were excited, and it allowed

them to feel part of this idea that this weird kid with an idea

and a lot of energy seemed to have. And at one of those

meetings, this woman who was, like, right out of central

casting from the school district, she has had seen

everything, done everything. She's this older woman, probably

my age, now that I think about it, but like at the time, she

said to me, You talk like the people at the Franklin

Institute. We're supposedly starting a school with them. I

don't know where the project is, but you should go talk to them.

Hang on a second. She picks up the phone, and she says, I've

got this kid here. Do you have five minutes for him? And she

gets off the phone, she says, you're gonna walk right over to

the Franklin so I was like, two blocks away. She goes, and

you're gonna go up and you're gonna go up and you're gonna

meet this woman, Carol Parson in so I walk over the museum, and I

go up to the executive offices, which are incredibly

intimidating. There's like chairs that Ben Franklin sat in.

There's pictures of dead white men everywhere, right? Like this

is an intimidating space. And I go knock on this woman's door,

and this very, very, very elegant. Older woman comes to

the door, and she looks at me over her glasses, and she says,

You have five minutes, just like that. And I had this packet that

I was shopping that had the white paper and the resume and

some clippings from what we'd done in your city. So I hand her

the packet, and the first question she opens up in the

immediate question she asked me is, what is a English teacher

doing? Wanting to start a Science High School. And

meanwhile, I am hearing the clock in my head, like I know I

have five minutes. I'm talking as fast as I can, which is

pretty fast. And I said, well, the Franklin Institute doesn't

want to start a Science High School. She said, Excuse me. I

said, you start a Science High School, you'll get great science

and math teachers, because the school will be about their

subject, but everybody else will feel like a second class

citizen, because the school is not about their ideas and their

subject. The school that the Franklin Institute wants to

start is an inquiry based High School where everything is

learned by doing hands on, figure it out, just like the way

people learn when they come to this museum. You want a school

that matches the ethos of this museum, and of course, it's

gonna have a great science program and science program.

It's affiliated with the Franklin Institute. That's the

high school you want to start. And she says, Keep talking, and

five minutes turned into two and a half hours. And two and a half

hours has turned into 20 years, and one school has turned into

three. And the other piece of this puzzle that I will tell

you, and it's something I tell kids a lot. I wasn't the first

choice of the School District of Philadelphia. I was the first

choice of Franklin, but when it finally got down to the hiring

process, there was this guy who had tons of experience. He had

worked with Ted sizer, he was a professor, he'd done all this

stuff, and I remember like he and I were the two finalists of

this crazy, long process where there was lots of people and it

was just the two of us, and I'm this kid who's never even been

an assistant principal, and he's this unbelievably accomplished

dude. And I remember sitting and going, like, well, maybe he'll

make me the assistant principal, right? Like, I'm literally

sitting in the room, like, and I liked him. He was a really

smart, good guy, but he wanted too much money, and I was

willing to take the salary. And what I tell kids all the time is

it doesn't matter how you get in the room. If you have a seat at

the table, take it and use it and do good work with it.

Because if I get was in my feelings, and if I let my ego in

my I'm not your first choice. Well, then we would have never

done this, right? So it's like, do your best, work hard. And if

they give you a seat at the table, it doesn't matter how you

got it, do good, work with it and never apologize for having

gotten there.

Sure, and such a testament. I think the passion

is such a key element. I think that's also part of why people,

like, at least, if I give them five minutes, it's gonna be a

lot of valuable like, like, this guy is clearly passionate about

what he's doing. He's bringing something to the table. So let's

figure out what it is. I've

been the happy, fun ball for 54 years. It's

true. There

you go. Well, we won't taunt you. And

you know what? I love, Chris. I love the fact

that the process of getting to where you are now, the process

of trying to sell the school, the process of going through all

of that, it models the process that you go through with

inquiry. You got to come up with an idea, you got to present the

idea. The idea will either be accepted or it won't. And you

need to go back, and you need to iterate on it. You need to go

back and work on it and sell it and develop that. It's one of

the topics that we've been talking about on the podcast,

not in those specific terms, but the idea of, how do you deal

with not achieving immediately and still pursuing those goals.

And I think it's great that you went through that, because you

can talk to that, you can talk about how you got to where you

are now, that I think will resonate with the students that

you're working with and that you're educating. I think it's a

great use case, and it's a great example, because you're truly

leading by example.

Thanks. And I think the other piece of all

that iteration is you have to listen, you know, as high score

values, inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation,

reflection. But that idea of collaboration, that idea that

your idea should interact with my idea, and that the synthesis

will be better than each of our ideas alone, is a huge part of

that inquiry process, right? It's like when you listen deeply

and really listen for how your ideas can be impacted by others

ideas, we get better. Like one of the things I say to anybody

all the time is I have the greatest job in the world. I

wake up every single day and I work in service of the best idea

I ever had with teachers and students and families who make

that idea better, right? Like the day that that gets boring,

get out of the game, right? I might eventually get too tired,

but I hope that even up to the day I retire, I'd still love the

work. Let's

get to the work. We've got SLA and inquiry

schools. Can you explain the difference? The

SLAs are three schools in Philadelphia, right?

We are School District of Philadelphia schools. So I have

this bizarro title where I am the CEO of SLA schools. Even

though all three SLAs are School District of Philadelphia

schools, we're a union shop. I'm a Teamster like the whole nine

yards and. Then inquiry schools came about because Diana

Laufenberg, who is the executive director of the organization and

amazing educator in her own right, and visionary, she was a

teacher at SLA, and she's not a city kid. She grew up in rural

Wisconsin. It's where she lives. Again. She's lived most of her

life, not in cities, but she loved the idea of SLA, and she

came to visit us in the second year of the school. And when she

came to work, she was like, I'll give you an advisory cycle. Like

stranger said, I want to come here and work for two years. And

I was like, I don't want you for two years. I need you for four

because that's one full advisory cycle, which I'll get to what

advisory is in a bit. And she agreed to give me four years of

living in a city, and she loved the school and hates living in

cities. And when she left, you know, she's one of my dearest

friends in the world, and she was like, what does it look like

to like build this workout? And the first project we had was to

replicate SLA, to build SLA Beaver, which was our second

school, and we needed a nonprofit to do that work, to

help the replication process. We needed for any number of

reasons. We needed somewhere to be able to park the grants and

spend the grants, and we needed somebody who was willing to do

the work. And Diana was like, I will work with the founding

principal at SLA Bieber, Chris Johnson, who's still there, and

myself and the founding faculty to really help shape that staff

right, and it helps shape that process. And then from there, we

realized we had this amazing thing that Diana is incredible

at helping educators get better at the idea of inquiry in their

classrooms or in their schools. And so to this day, Diana works

with schools literally all over the country and sometimes all

over the world. I'm not on the board anymore, but they have a

project, I believe, in Nigeria, I think, and she can do

everything from come in and work with a faculty on like, Hey,

here's how you tweak the work to complete school redesign to

school startup, you know. And we have a number of folks that

we've worked with over the years who are incredible educators who

help her with that work. They worked with a group of schools

in Cleveland, which were some of the by test score for whatever

that were, some of the lowest performing schools in Cleveland

that were looking to transform their pedagogy. And she did

incredible work with nine schools in Cleveland. She worked

with a group of schools in Henry County, Georgia. She's like some

really big projects that I'm proud to have been there for the

genesis of it all, and then, as Diana's friend happy to watch

this amazing educator make schools all over the country

better. So Chris

for our audience, because we're predominantly all

independent schools, she works with those two. There you go.

Help our audience understand where SLA fit. It doesn't seem

like you're quite public. You're almost private. Are you

considered to be a charter school?

No, no, we are a Philly public school. I mean,

that's the kind of nifty thing. And like, we take very seriously

that we are a proof point, along with schools like MC squared in

Cleveland along like with so many of the really funky,

wonderful public schools in New York City, along with, you know,

many schools across the country that are doing amazing work

inside the public system, but we are very much a proof point that

big public systems can innovate and can do things differently.

And that's not always easy. You know, in 20 years, I think I've

had seven superintendents, so there are moments, but no, we

are not a charter school. We're not a private school. 99% of our

funding is public funding. And then the other, you know, one to

2% a year is grants we write, running educon, doing those

things, like ways that we sort of fundraise for some of the

extras, but 98 point something percent of our funding is all

just public funding. Like I said, we are a union shop. Our

teachers union is the Philadelphia Federation of

Teachers. The principals union is casa, which is part of the

Teamsters. We're a public school. And I you know, as far

as all the contract stuff, all the everything, we work within

all of that, and we make it work inside that system. And I think

that matters, because I think there's a lot of people in the

world who say you can't do this in the public system, and I'm

really proud of the fact that I think we've proven that you can.

I mean, we're on this is our 19th year now. I think

that's a wonderful story, because I grew up in

public schools as well, and so it's a testament to you know,

you have the right motivation, you have the right people in

place. You guys are doing it right.

Thank you. How

do kids come to SLA then? Because, again, if it's a

public school, I mean, I grew up right across the river. I grew

up right over the Walt Whitman, you know what I mean? And you

went to your local high school. You went to your local

elementary school. How do you get your students?

Sure, so, like a lot of big cities. Philadelphia,

public system is at the high school level, a system of choice

so kids can apply to five different high schools. We are

criterion based schools. So we do look at kids test scores and

grades. There's, I think, four tiers of criterion based schools

in the school district Philadelphia. We are the third.

Lowest tier. On purpose, we don't believe that this is a

elite way to teach, but we are magnet school. And then, most

importantly, though, KIDS interview, and they sit down

with an SLA adult, either a teacher or an alum and a current

SLA student, and our kids help us interview the prospective

kids and all the kids who do well in that interview, which is

the overwhelming majority of them, they go into a lottery,

and then the district runs a lottery for all of the criterion

based schools, and you get the kids, they tell you, you get so

our biggest thing that we're really looking for is like, we

ask a very simple question at the end of the interview, and

the interview is about seven minutes long. Number one, they

present a piece of their work, a project, something they did,

they're proud of, and they talk about the work, they talk about

themselves as a learner, and then we ask them a question, why

will SLA be a better school? Because you came here. We want

kids who want to be part of a community that believes we can

be better together. It's interesting in in those moments,

because kids are kids, and it's not like we don't have

discipline issues we do, right? I mean, humans are humans, but

kids are kids, and it's kind of a fun moment when a kid has done

something that they're not super proud of, and you consider them

like, Hey, do you remember that question we asked you? Like, how

are you answering that right now? And that's a really

powerful thing. But, I mean, I think the other thing that's

really important to understand, though, is that SLA Middle

School, on the other hand, is a neighborhood school. So we've

actually shown that this doesn't require criteria to work, that

all kids can learn in this way. And we really think that that's

an important thing. I think that, like I said, Philadelphia

is a choice based system. So there was a push when we started

that we needed to be a magnet school. People were actually

surprised when I set that early criteria. People were like,

don't you want to set it higher than that? Don't you want? And I

was like, No, I don't I want a wide swath of kids.

Interestingly, because of where we set our mark, we have in

addition, to be one of the most diverse in sort of classic

racial diversity, one of most diverse schools in the country.

We also have some of the greatest academic diversity in

the city of Philadelphia. We have kids across the sort of

spectrum of achievement from when they come in, and then the

growth we see of them is incredible. So for example, we

get compared to all of the time the other two sort of very,

very, very, very high achieving schools in Philadelphia, Central

and Masterman, but they have as an entrance criteria, 85th

percentile on the state tests. And we have 50, and that's 50th

percentile not on the statewide but of the city wide, which is

not quite as high as the state. And then we also have the

highest percentage of kids with IEPs and five oh fours of any

school in the district, because we think that every kid deserves

a different learning style, and so kids with IEPs here don't

feel different. So we've become a real school of choice for

families with kids who have some learning difficulties or special

needs. And those are all things that we're really proud of,

because we really do believe that the diversity in all of the

manifestations we have every zip code of the City of Philadelphia

representing the school, we have over 30 home languages spoken,

and then we talk about it intentionally, and what does it

mean to have a community that comes together like this? And

it's funny, I was literally just sitting with a couple of seniors

two days ago. They were saying their biggest concern about

college is that when they go visit places, they don't see

diverse groups of kids sitting together in the same way that

they have experienced at SLA, and they are very, very

concerned, and we've heard that for years that kids struggle to

find the intentional diversity of the SLA student body, and not

just the diversity itself, because there are plenty of

colleges that have diversity, but the fact that kids about it.

They have friends of all different races, they have

friends from different neighborhoods, they have friends

from different nationalities, and that is something that we

celebrate.

So let's talk about the schools themselves now. So

in a nutshell, Chris, as much as that's possible, let's talk

about an inquiry school, and what makes an inquiry driven

school different from the public schools. I

think the way that an inquiry driven school,

the way the SLA and I'll speak just specifically, the SLA

model, the way the SLA model differs from a traditional

school, is in two ways, right, because we've talked a lot about

inquiry, we also need to talk about the other sort of how we

care for kids. We believe deeply in the idea that kids need to

feel their own agency to ask powerful questions about the

things that they are learning. It is a far less didactic

methodology of teaching, right? So the inquiry cycle at SLA is

literally inquiry. What are the big questions we can ask?

Research? How do we find answers to those questions?

Collaboration. How do we work together to make those answers

deeper and richer presentation? How do we show what we know in

reflection? How do we step back and learn from what we've done

that iterative cycle is going on all of the time. Does that mean

that we never stand up at the front of the room and lecture

for 10 minutes? Of course, not. The mini lecture has its place,

but it also means the other piece of that puzzle is. So with

the idea of presentation, I don't believe that you manifest

your learning best by answering the questions on somebody else's

test. I believe you learn best when you create an artifact of

your learning that allows you to manifest the learning by the

thing you wrote, filmed, built, blew up, experimented on, what

have you. And again, that's not to say that quizzes don't have a

role. If you want to give a quick little quiz to dipstick on

a skill, sure, if you want to isolate a discrete skill, she'll

give a quiz. But if you really want to see what kids

understand, ask them to do something, ask them to make

something, ask them to write something. And so every unit at

SLA ends on that project that is a manifestation of, basically

the kid's answer of the essential question of the unit,

right? That they have come up with. Then there's, how do you

manifest it from the teacher life, right? So you need to have

a common language of teaching and learning. So like I said,

everything we do at SLA starts with our core values. All of the

planning we do is structured using Understanding by Design,

and every project that we give is graded on the same five

category rubric, the design of the project, the knowledge

displayed, the application of that knowledge, the presentation

of the project, and the process you followed five categories.

Each category is worth 20.5 times 20 is 100 now it's a grade

that everybody understands. But now think about that. You have a

language of inputs with the core values, you have a language of

process with ubds, and then you have a language of assessment in

the rubric. Think about what it means when kids go to every

single class and it's not like you have a standardized

curriculum, it's not even close, or nothing standardized about

us, but there's so much that is common, like think about a

traditional school, public or private. Think about how much

time kids spend figuring out the adults, because every teacher

has a slightly different way they talk about the work or the

thing or the that. And then think about what it means when

kids cognitive load is spent on the work, not the adults, and

when you have a common language of teaching and learning that is

progressive, that is inquiry driven, that is asset driven and

stuff driven. Kids can shoot the moon and they know it and they

feel it and they believe it, and I think that is a very different

model than what kids usually sit in in classes all over our

country.

So Chris, one of the questions I've got focuses

on, like, what's the buzz? And the buzz seems to be around,

like stem, or some derivative of STEM, or what STEM is, right?

Listening to you talk about what you do, there is stem talked

about at SLA because having visited the school years ago for

some of the earliest the educon stuff, you know, and listening

to you talk now, it's like, in my mind, you were doing this

stuff before they were talking about this stuff, right? Do you

talk about STEM or is it just simply implicit in what you do,

in the way in which you do things? Where do you see that so

you can fit in with all the buzz worthy conversations?

That's a great question. The kids like to joke

around that, like the school is misnamed and yet not right,

because over 40% of our kids every year major in STEM or STEM

related fields. That's one of the highest percentages in the

country. We have two CTE programs. One is digital video

and the other is engineering, and both our programs are

amazing, but the engineering program is, I think, a model for

and again, both of them. And think about both of those, right

engineering and dig vid, both lend themselves to inquiry,

right? Both lends themselves to like, how do we ask a big

question? Then, how do we make something with our answers? But

our science department and our science discipline is amazing,

our math discipline is amazing. But I think the thing is this,

which is that, to your point, the overarching theme of, like,

how do we learn is really the driving piece of the school. Now

the thing is this, which is that, I think what I would argue

is that this idea of that inquiry cycle has its roots in

science. But like, tell that to a historian, and they'll tell me

that I'm wrong, and history has can make just as good a claim.

And so what our big bet was, and it goes back to the story I told

about the Franklin. What our big bet was was that this idea of

inquiry, of asking big questions, seeking out answers,

and making stuff, and then asking hard questions of

ourselves about what we learn, that that is the scientific

mind. But the thing is, it's good for poets too. It is a way

of thinking about the world that allows you to attack a problem.

And you almost go back to, like Jamie cassips, you know, great

quote, what's the problem you want to solve? And I think that

when you think about things that way, this lends itself to stem

and then we have this incredible engineering program that sort of

powers like an experience of, you know, what, a fifth of the

school every year that sort of then becomes part of this as

well. But I think that most importantly, what we are able to

show kids is that all of these lenses, math, science, all of

these lenses, become lenses for which you can question your

world. And I think that that creates a relevance. Sense and a

power and an agency in what the kids see themselves doing. That

is at root stem. And then the other piece of the puzzle, of

course, we use technology. I mean, you know, the the techs

everywhere, right? We use it all the time, and the kids just

aren't afraid of it, and they don't think they're going to

break it, and the teachers aren't afraid of telling kids,

open up your laptops and all that stuff. So I think you're

right. Like, that old question of, what is an English teacher

doing? Wanting to run a Science High School is still a fair

question. And the answer is that, like, more than a

discipline, the really important thing is, what's your pedagogy

and how does that pedagogy inform the way you teach the

disciplines?

I love the way that your teachers have that

vernacular already in place. It resonates with me frequently

when trying to emphasize Standardization has its place,

and it's really essential if you're going to try and

communicate effectively to your students, because their job is

not to try and figure out the teacher, right, and really

they're supposed to be working together. You mentioned that we

don't necessarily have stem, but we're the highest. You'll get me

in a lot of trouble if you say that. I said

we don't have STEM. We have lots of STEM. You

don't call it stem necessarily. And what's

interesting to me is our Upper School head at one point when we

were trying to figure out how to brand stem here at St

Christopher's, he's like, Well, it's stem this year it's

steamed. The next year, it's stream. The following year, why

don't we just call it school? Right? And I was like, That's

SLA. It's school. They get it. And it really honed in for me by

having inquiry base or experimental design, however you

want to call it. It crosses barriers and crosses disciplines

more often than it's isolated in an individual silo. And it's

just so great to hear your passion. And so I want to go

there.

Well, we'd love to have you. So there you go. I

think that's right, I think, and again, it is that hysterical

steam stream evolution. When everybody starts cramming it in,

we've got old words. We've got old words that have meaning and

power. And sometimes I think we rush past those old words to

find the latest and greatest acronym, and in doing so, miss

the power of the fact that we all stand on these incredible

shoulders of the educators that we can learn from, I say all the

time, like people ask me, What do you want for SLA graduates?

And I say, my North Star is very simple, thoughtful, wise,

passionate and kind, and those are old words. I want their

heads full of thought. I want them to have the wisdom to apply

those thoughts in meaningful ways. I want them to have the

passion to push through when the world tells them something

cannot be done, and damn it, I want them to be kind. That's as

far away from Ed you speak as I can imagine. Those are old

words. Those are words our grandmothers would understand.

And as a dad, those are the values I want for my children,

thoughtful. Have your heads full of thought. Be wise. Be

passionate, be kind. Again, you don't need edu speak for that.

We need good words. Maybe that's the English teacher running the

Science High School. There

you go, and that's perfect. And one of the things

you mentioned in what you just said was the technology at your

school is just everywhere. It's just there. It's like oxygen.

That's where I was going. Thank you No, but it's one of the

things that I can honestly say, that I've heard you say, I've

taken from you and I've used time and time again, that

technology should be ubiquitous, that it should be like oxygen.

It should be just there. You shouldn't notice, that you

should just be able to use it part and parcel of what you need

to work and to survive on a day to day basis. And what is great

about that is I think it encapsulates the way in which I

think we need to think about the tools that we choose to use, how

we have to work on building them into what we do to make students

successful and to achieve in those ways that an inquiry

driven school, a stem driven school, can simply do and not

have to worry about it. And it speaks to an equity issue as

well that I think is incredibly important, because it just can't

be those that can afford the tool it should be available to

everyone, so everyone has equal access to it. So I really just

want to thank you for that statement, because I think that

it helps solidify a lot of the conversations that we were

having here at our school, and the conversations I have with

other schools about their technology programs and their

technology use. So thank you,

my pleasure. I think that, you know, what's

interesting is that I still believe that right like

ubiquitous, necessary and invisible. And I think coming

out of the pandemic, we see kids have a different relationship to

their phones that they did pre pandemic. We now ask kids to

keep their phones away. We don't collect them. We don't believe

in the yonder path. Couches, but we say to kids, you shouldn't

have your phones out in class unless it's for a reason, and

that's why, no reason we don't collect them like so for

example, Matt Kay does this wonderful thing where he puts

kids in pods for discussion groups in his English class, and

he has one of them take out their phones and record it, and

then they upload the discussion as an assignment, and then he's

able to be sort of listening in on kids cover, right? Because on

kids conversations about the text, even if there's eight

conversations, right? Because one of the classic problems,

like one of the classic conundrums of the English

teacher in the classroom, is you have a choice. You can either

run, you know, I mean, I'm oversimplifying this, but you

can run the big conversation where you're able to, sort of

like, listen in and help the kids with their ideas. Or you

can run pods, you know, small groups, but then you're running

around to eight groups trying to, like, help and whatever, and

you'd miss some of the really cool ideas kids have. And Matt

found a way to solve that dilemma and like, split the

difference, which is, yep, go in your pod to have a conversation,

but then upload the conversation so I can take part in it. But I

do think that the thing we all missed is the billion dollar

industry around keeping our attention and the algorithm and

how addictive that algorithm is. We did a reboot two years ago

where we said to ourselves, all right, zero cell phones in

school. None, nobody. And we talked about why, and we read

articles. We did all those stuff we did as a school Ed thing,

teachers, too, me, too. And then we said, what did it mean when

we didn't have this thing beeping in our pockets all the

time at us? And we talked about how much easier it was to learn

together and how much more present we were. And we said,

Look, we're not going to ban them. You can have them at

lunch. You can have them in the halls. Let's keep the learning

spaces, learning spaces. But we want to help kids, and honestly,

quite frankly, help ourselves, because I'm the worst offender,

be more intentional about when we use the tools and why, and

when we use, especially these tools, which are designed to

hold our attention. And I can tell you that since we did that

two years ago, I have cut my daily cell phone use by over an

hour and a half. So I was well over four and a half hours like

when we did this. We the kids do that. We all tracked our usage.

We did it together. I was well over four and a half hours a

day, and now I try to keep myself under three hours a day

where that phone is being used, and that includes ways for

driving that includes all the things. So I think that this

notion of like, Yes, we love the tools and all the things. And

obviously this doesn't change how much we use Google Docs, how

much we use Canvas, how much we use all the other tools. But

when it comes to this question of like, what does it mean to be

intentional about our attention, and how can all of us do a

better job of that. I think we've learned a ton in the last

five years. For sure,

it easily aligns what I've learned about inquiry

schools and your approach and the idea of community, and how

important the community aspect is. So you're helping the

students, you're helping yourselves. That's a key element

there. Before we let you go, I want to make sure you get a

chance. I know you hosted edu con. Yeah, just a couple months

ago, 2025 Do you want to just give our listeners some idea of

what that is, maybe something that they're interested someday,

and then we'll let Bill wrap things up here. Absolutely. So

educon is this conference we've hosted, I

think, since 2008 January. 2008 was the first one. This actually

brings us full circle to go birds, because the conference

every year is in between the NFL conference finals and the Super

Bowl, because hope springs eternal. And in the years that

we've done this twice, we won. And I mean, it really is true

that you can't do anything in Philadelphia, if the Eagles are

playing, no one will show up. So we list this conference. You

know, it used to be the last weekend in January, then the NFL

expanded their schedule, so now it's the first weekend in

February. That's really the only reason we move the weekend where

the Friday is a site visit. We open up the school to anybody

who wants to come and spend time with us. Friday night is a panel

discussion of really interesting people that serve to sort of

frame the big idea for the conference for us for the next

two days, and then the Saturday and Sunday, we turn the whole

school into a conference center. The entire conference is run by

SLA adults and kids, right? So it's me and my AP, it's a couple

of teachers, a couple of students, it's parents. And

then, like the conference itself, there's 60 SLA kids who

are helping us run it, and we invite people who are doing this

work from all over the world to come and facilitate a session.

And I say facilitate, not present, because the pedagogy of

the conference is the pedagogy of the school. We don't want

people sitting and getting we want sessions that are inquiry

driven, that are project oriented, that get people

talking and doing and making and we've been doing this now, minus

the COVID years well past 15 years, even subtracting the

COVID years where we couldn't do it, and we brought together

literally hundreds of educators every year to take apart these

ideas together. Sam sheltayne, years ago, said, like, this is

the educon tribe, and it really is this incredible. Incredible

experience every year where, like, educators, who either feel

like they're doing it alone in their building or a school in a

place that maybe doesn't have a lot of CO conspirators around

them, are able to come together and learn together and be in

community and communion with one another. And it's an amazing

experience. And every year we ask ourselves, like, is this the

last year? Are we going to stop doing this? And then every year

it ends, and we get told, you can't stop this. So we keep

doing it. This year, we're gonna try to get the word out a little

earlier. We're gonna probably open up for our call for

proposals in early in May. I've got this is the mean, like, my

big spring break job is to get ready to open us up for

proposals with the idea of like. So when everybody comes back in

early August, The sessions are up. Everybody sees what we're up

to, and they've got all the time in the world to kind of plan for

it and do it. So take a look@educom.org It's really a

special time. And I think that if you're looking to learn with

other people who are around the pedagogy, around the big idea,

it's a pretty

unique space. Great. We'll have links to all

that in the show notes. Many links here from your content and

what you've done here. So we're gonna let Bill wrap things up.

He's got a key

question, highly controversial. Okay, here we go.

All right. You ready for this? I am. Where are you going for your

cheese steak? Ah,

great question. My favorite cheese steak is the

same place I've been going since I was in college. It's Chubbies

up in Roxboro, and it's a great cheese steak, but they also

really good waffle fries. Now, this is a controversial because

Chubbies is on one side of the street and delessandros is on

the other. Oh, there you go, and d'alessandros has a very

passionate fan base. It does indeed I love Chubbies. It's my

favorite. But the cool thing about Philly, and this is what I

will say, is, unlike other cities and I like, the cool

thing about a Philly cheesesteak is, chances are yacuna Pizzeria

has a pretty good cheese steak, oh, 100% 100% every Philly

pizzeria knows the secret to a good cheese steak is good bread.

No, exactly, no. It's not so Chris, I will tell

you, growing up, I was a little skate rat. I lived on South

Street and IN LOVE Park, and I grew up underneath the fan at

Jim's shop on South Street. My father would say you'd gain five

pounds just standing underneath of that fan as it blew all the

grease off the stovetop there, as they made it I still go back.

I take my son there. You know, I'm up here in North Jersey. I

still drive down. That's where we go, and we just have a great

time with so thank you for

that, Chubbies, there is no Philadelphia without

Jim steaks. I

haven't been there since they reopened, but they

got the place next door, and have even expanded from what I

understand. Yeah, it might have finally cleaned

the grease

and then they'd lost the flavor. Why would you

do that?

Highly unlikely. Exactly. Nice, Chris, thank you.

We really appreciate you giving us your time. Thank you so much,

Chris for giving us all this great stuff we're going to give

out to our people here soon.

My pleasure, my pleasure.

This has been talking technology with Atlas,

produced by the Association of technology leaders and

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