Join us as Ray Shay, Director of Technology at Brooklyn Friends School, shares his unique journey from webmaster to overseeing auxiliary programs. Discover his insights on AI's impact on independent schools, the crucial role of data systems, and why human connection and critical thinking are more vital than ever in a tech-driven world.

• La Salle College High School Tech Experiential Learning
• Princeton Academy of the Sacred Heart - student-led creation of the local chapter of the eNable network and 3 years of “Build-a-Thons”: Video | Article
• Student-led PPE project during pandemic: Article
• Brooklyn Friends School
• Team Engagement Tools: StandOut (now powered by ADP) | 15Five
• Ray’s LinkedIn profile
• Bill’s photo of trip home from ATLIS Annual Conference
• Vendor management platform, 9ine
• ‘We Have to Really Rethink the Purpose of Education’, podcast episode from The Ezra Klein Show - education policy expert Rebecca Winthrop explores the big questions emerging for educators and parents
• The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better, book by Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop
• In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School, book by Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine

Ed, 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.

And now please welcome your host. Kristina llewellen,

hello everyone, and welcome back to

talking technology with Atlas. I'm Kristina Lewellen, the

President and CEO of the Association of Technology

Leaders in Independent Schools.

And I am Bill Stites, the Director of

Technology at Montclair Kimberly Academy in Montclair, New

Jersey,

and I'm Hiram Cuevas, the Director of

Information Systems and Academic Technology at St Christopher

school in Richmond, Virginia.

Hello, gentlemen. It is so good to see

you guys. It's been a while. This is our first gathering and

our first recording after the Atlas conference. And I have to

tell you, I think that it's been not quite a month. It's been

several weeks since the conference, and I have only

slept in my own bed a couple of nights. I have been on the road

since the Atlas conference. So I don't know if I'm still just

riding the Atlas high or what it is, but I'm still smiling. How

are you guys doing? Have you recovered?

Recovered? Maybe not. I was explaining the

misadventure we had coming home, which had us leaving nine hours

delayed, and then, you know, reroute it from Newark to

Dulles, and then driving from Dulles to Newark and blowing out

tires and vans and having tons of people, so that literally

killed me. For an entire weekend, I was like, done,

caught a cold, was in bed over the weekend after that, and then

got right back into school. And school has been running full

bore because it is May, and it feels like every minute of May

is ticking by faster and faster. So yeah, definitely not getting

any rest since I got back, definitely busy and looking

forward to things, but still feeling rejuvenated from the

conversations that we had and everything that went on at the

conference. I say it time and time again, it's one of those

must attend things for me each and every year, and I'm still

riding the high from that, regardless of how tired I am

from it as well. I'm

so sorry that you had travel woes. I know

that some people did, and there was a lot of nonsense happening

with in particular air traffic stuff. So I'm so sorry to hear

you had that, and equally sorry that you're now slogging through

the 100 days of May. I know that's always a really busy

time. How about you? Hiram, are you crazy busy right now?

Yeah, we're crazy busy as well. Fortunately,

though my travels, because I didn't have to go up to Newark,

New Jersey, we were on time and managed to get home fairly

easily. But I tell you the amount of energy that was put

forth during the 10 year anniversary of the Atlas

conference. I think I'm still tired from it, along with the

100 days of May, because there was so much activity and so many

conversations, and as a result, more phone calls to people from

the conference and more emails, etc, that I feel like I'm a bit

on a treadmill, but I have APS winding down, so I'm glad for

that. And as soon as this is over, I'm driving to Blacksburg

to pick up my baby girl, to bring her home. Year one is

done. Lots going on.

Congratulations. We

have graduation this weekend. Tomorrow, we leave

for Gettysburg because Sean is graduating from Gettysburg.

Congratulations,

Sean from the pod.

Yeah. And I just did that last weekend

myself. That's one of the many, many trips that I had, is that I

watched my daughter Morgan graduate from the University of

Mary Washington, and that was super cool. She's our first

college graduate among the four. So it's been crazy and fun. I

also, Bill almost got hung up in that New Jersey nonsense, but I

flew to Dallas and drove to my next event, which was in

Syracuse, New York. So it's been crazy, but I'm really glad to

see you guys, and I'm sure we will talk a bit about the annual

conference, because we are being joined today by someone who,

shockingly, was a first time attendee to the Atlas

conference. Because Mr. Ray Shea, I feel like you've been

around forever, sir. I can't believe you've never been to an

atlas conference. How did we let that happen? I

know it never worked in the schedule, but this year,

even with some scheduling mishaps and some Newark

craziness, I'm so glad it happened that I'm definitely

still on the high and yearning for more. I can't wait till next

year. It was such a great first year experience, and Bill's been

telling me all 10 years that I needed to be there. There, and

I'm so glad to have finally made it and meet Hiram in person and

so many other awesome members of the Atlas community.

Well, Ray, you were in your first year at

Brooklyn Friends School. You're the director of technology

there, and your role is expanding here in a couple of

months, where you're also going to take on auxiliary programs.

So why don't you take a moment and introduce yourself to our

listeners, sure.

So this is my 21st year in independent school

education. Prior to being the Director of Technology at

Brooklyn friends, I was the director of technology at

Princeton Academy, the Sacred Heart for the last eight years,

where I wore a number of additional hats as well,

Director of summer programs for a time, Interim Director of the

business office and assistant head of school for operations

and strategy. And like I often say, my favorite role, head

coach of the middle school speech and debate team. And

prior to being at Princeton Academy for 12 years, I was at

my alma mater, LaSalle college high school in Philadelphia. Go

birds, Bill Stites Gilbert there, I was director of web

technology, and also was the head coach of the high school

speech and debate team, and worked with a number of student

tech groups and excited in this first year. It's been fantastic,

and I'm looking forward to the extension of the role next year.

You've spent 21 years in independent schools,

and you've covered a lot of ground with the roles, but what

was your entree to this esteemed space?

Like so many other members of the plot, I love

hearing everyone's origin stories, but I never intended to

be a school tech director. I started designing websites in

middle school. My dad was actually a network consultant

for a lot of small businesses, and so the computers at home

were really locked down, like I wasn't the typical model of the

kids toying around and figuring it out for their parents, like

my dad had everything locked down, but he did not have a

design eye, and when his clients started to ask me for websites,

he had no interest in it, so I taught myself HTML. Started

working in Claris Homepage, never Microsoft front page, and

eventually working my way into Adobe Photoshop, Adobe

Dreamweaver, and went to college for that as a digital arts

major. Actually double major with communications, and I

minored in marketing. And I really thought my career was

going to be in Marcom and joined my alma mater, came back, what

really had to justify my role as the new webmaster? They couldn't

believe that they were hiring for a webmaster. Many people

didn't our principal at the time, he was very visionary, and

he said, No, no, we're definitely going to need this.

This is really important, and it was great. I taught a number of

different preps on top of redesigning the website, but in

that first year, there were some board members that were in the

Marcom space and really uplifted the role and elevated it to a

director of web technology, included it in part of our new

advancement model at that time, where we were pulling together

development and Mark com, and that's where I started. That

like straddling multiple offices where I was, I was in tech, but

I was coming to the advancement meeting. And, you know, over

those next 12 years, sometimes my direct report was in

advancement, sometimes my direct report was in it, but I always

had my feet in both parts of the school there. And

so I have to jump right to the thing that my

brain is most interested in. It sounds like you were kind of

there at the beginning of everybody needing the website,

everybody at least caring about the design of a website. And now

here we are again, at this moment of kind of technological

change. And I often equate what's going on in AI in

education to the same kind of wrestling that we were doing

with internet in education. How do you feel about that? What are

your options? Observations?

Yeah, I think it's a strong comparison, right?

Because the internet was so impactful, and yet, how much

have we really changed education? You know, have we

just taken things and put them online? We had the advent of the

Internet, we had a pandemic where we really had to rely on

the internet to stay connected, and this was supposed to be the

thing that made us shake up education, but we really kind of

returned back to doing things the way we have, and maybe

hanging onto a tool here or there, or maybe expanding some

of our online offerings, but the full model of education hasn't

really changed, and now you have people talking about artificial

intelligence, specifically generative AI, and what impact

that's going to have, not just on schools, but on the workplace

and on our entire fabric of society. And. But I think

there's camps that are, you know, saying this is going to

change everything, and education, the whole model, is

going to be turned on its head. And then you have others who, I

think are sitting back and saying, you know, I don't know

about this, you know, we still need teachers. We still need

this math lesson and this unit, and I think it's somewhere,

probably in the middle that it is going to change things. And I

think education needs to look past just the ed tech tools that

are being sold to us, and just look at how can we change what

we fundamentally know about students and what we know isn't

working in our schools? And can we take this opportunity to

actually engage students better. And I think there's a concern

that generative AI will reduce engagement, right and reduce a

lot of critical thinking and cognitive functions. But if we

plan things correctly, if we really are collaborative, the

way I love our IT community always is, I think there's a

path where this is beneficial and transformative for not just

schooling, but the whole idea of education and being lifelong

learners. So I'm hopeful. I'm always optimistic, but I'm

hopeful that maybe this time around, things are gonna shift

and change. And

I mean, all three of you guys were at the

conference, and I'm sure you're in those rooms more so than I

am, right because I am running in a million directions. What

was the vibe of AI at Atlas, annual conference? Where do you

think we are in this journey? Ray is outlining, you know,

where it could go. Where are we right now? Just listening to

your peers and your observations in terms of what the speakers

were saying. What are your thoughts about AI coming off of

the conference? Specifically,

it's interesting because the year before, it was

really the first iteration of AI conversations for our community,

and this year, it's interesting watching that needle move

substantially in terms of the overall offerings at the

conference compared to last year. It seemed like everybody

was incorporating AI into their work in some capacity. I mean,

even in the tracks that I spent a lot of time in with CIRIS,

they were talking about leveraging ai blackbauds track

was talking about leveraging AI Toddle was talking about how

it's involved with AI and their learning management systems. I

mean, it is certainly becoming omnipresent. And I think to

Ray's point, we really need to be mindful of how we're using

it, and develop the guardrails so that the pedagogy that's

developed for our teachers can be the most fruitful for our

students, because we want them to develop good habits. We

certainly do not want them to develop poor habits, and it's

going to be really easy to develop poor habits if you just

look at how our students are responding to cell phone use and

smartphone use. So this is an opportunity that can't be

missed. And I certainly think that if our schools are not

making an effort to embrace AI in the curriculum, they're doing

their students a disservice

to hiram's point. I mean, I think you couldn't

escape AI at the conference. I mean, I think it was like in

every if it wasn't in the session title, it was definitely

in the conversations that were ongoing in those sessions. And

it's interesting. I mean, I think for as much as we're

talking about the possibilities of what we can do with it, I

think we're still also talking about the questions that come up

with it, and I think we're still walking that line. I mean, I

think back, it was now two years ago that we were out in Grand

Rapids, and we were sitting in one of the pre con workshops,

and what we were talking about and discussing there, and you

can definitely see the line arcing up, you know, in terms of

how we're doing these things. But I still think that there is

this questioning nature about how we're using it, how secure

it is. I mean, I think those things are still definitely

there, but I think it's opening up a lot more. Hiram, you

mentioned the pieces in the Cirrus track, and I think that's

a really interesting place that you and I are spending a good

deal of time. My question, actually, for you with this is

having spent time, not only on the educational side of things,

and this is one of the things, I mean, I would really love to dig

in deeply with you, because I'm curious about your experiences.

But when you were spending time working in the business office,

you've got a very interesting perspective there, and what you

talked about in terms of the way in which you worked with

advancement in those other areas. Where do you see those

conversations going in the operational areas of school

around AI, given your experiences that you've had in

both of those worlds?

Yeah, before I jump into that, I just want to add on

to the. Both of you, I agree, feels omnipresent in not just

the Atlas conference, but every TV offering that's out there.

And I think in addition to those practical questions that you're

bringing up, Bill I valued being at a quicker school this year

and the questioning and querying of environmental impact and

resource allocation and and fair labor and copyright, there's a

lot of still existential questions we need to grapple

with. And as educators, we owe it to our students to kind of

model the type of critical thinking and questioning that we

want them to do when they're faced with problems or

opportunities and then jumping back into the practical, yeah,

Bill, I think there's so much potential in streamlining

operations and helping with these synergies between offices.

So when I was interim director of the business office, a lot of

my aha moments were around like how tech has felt about capital

expenditures and how the finance office really needs to think

about capital expenditures and depreciation tables and whatnot.

And in talking with other tech directors, some people have that

good dialog with their finance office, but I think it's a space

that needs more of that I also saw into accounting and how the

way that our accounting systems are set up, I think our business

offices could use some good jam sessions with their tech

directors to really make sure that they're set up in a way

that it's providing more visibility and serving the

institution. And I saw a lot of ways that I think I grew an

appreciation for accounting that I absolutely did not have when I

took accounting 101, in college and living through two audits,

seeing just how we can streamline those processes, I

moved us to two audits that were completely virtual. The audit

team never stepped foot on campus, and having to do that

besides just the ways that we would go paperless, it opened up

for a lot of things where my mind is now turning and thinking

about like, wow, with AI, how much can we help this process

and gain insights earlier in the year, and compile things earlier

in the year so that the audit doesn't feel like such a lift

for the finance offices at that one time of year. I also think

long range planning security, there were so many synergies

where tech directors are thinking about these topics and

finance officers are thinking about those topics, whether it's

from the insurance perspective or the purchasing perspective

and Facilities Planning, but there's a lot of great

opportunity for deep partnership there between the business

office and tech office. And I think no matter what office you

look at, like I said before, I had my foot in the advancement

office for a long time, auxiliary programs, I think

there's always ways where the tech directors can bring a

certain perspective, a certain energy, a certain problem

solving and critical thinking to problems, issues and

opportunities, like across the school landscape,

right in those areas, where do you think we

need to have conversations with them around data security and

like, What are they putting in there? Because most of our

conversations are around, what student information are you

putting in there? I mean, when you start talking about

advancement, when you start talking about fundraising, when

you start talking about the audit, when you start talking

about all these pieces, that's a lot of financial information

that is going in there. There's a lot of dollar signs associated

with those things. How do you see having the conversations

with them about using AI in these areas and even what tools

they're choosing to use, not understanding what's even

available in those areas? Personally,

you know, Bill, I've heard you talk a lot about the

vetting process of software, and I think it is more important

than ever that we have well established systems in our

schools for vetting software and programs and even taking a look

back at the ones that we're already using that are now

flavoring in AI components. I certainly don't think I have all

the answers, but I think I have been trying to really gain an

understanding of, okay, how are you using that? And, okay, hey,

I know you're using this software platform. Let me look

into these new features that are coming into it. You know, even

zoom. We had a nice conversation at the leadership level about,

hey, when you're recording your zoom meetings, keep these things

in mind, right? Is it automatically sending the

transcript, the transcript, and these AI generated transcripts,

incredible, especially for helping people process

information differently or have any type of disability that the

Zoom can assist with. But I've heard so many situations of

like, oh, we held this inner. You on Zoom, and we stuck around

to talk about it afterwards, and we didn't realize that the

transcript went out to everybody who was a part of it, and now

the transcript went to the interviewee, and it's like, Wow,

I love sharing those stories, because I don't want that to be

my school that happened that. And I think Bill to the crux of

your question, like the data security, looking at and really

reframing ourselves in the generative AI into like small

language models, and not just grabbing for the large language

models that everybody knows, but looking at what small language

model can I utilize and feel better that my data is saying

within that area, and what kind of guarantees is that company

giving me, and even from the guarantees that companies are

giving us, I'm also just not always confident that it's not

going to someday end up in a leak that, yeah, they guaranteed

us that they're keeping it secure, but What are the ways

that their system could get compromised, and that's really

hard, I think, to dig down into bill, and I've looked up to you

a lot over the years of asking those hard questions of vendors.

So

Ray, you bring up a great point, Bill and I both

use nine to help with that vetting process. I actually

asked nine to do a review of zoom for us, because I was most

interested in the use of the AI companion, and it is a

tremendous tool that can be used for a variety of different

reasons, and it satisfied NAIS vetting process. But what was

interesting, they said, here's our recommendation, and this is

to pass your own sniff test as a school, because each of us may

have a different threshold for risk in terms of our schools,

they recommend discussing before you use it emphasizing PII.

Watch what you're saying in these meetings if you're talking

about students. You never talk about student by name in there,

and you actually get accustomed to bringing up these extra

safeguards and guardrails prior to initiating the AI companion.

And it has been a godsend for many of our subcommittee board

meetings, because you can actually be attentive, as

opposed to trying to scribble down notes. And then you go

back, and you can refresh yourself with what the

conversation was. But then you remind them, please pay specific

attention to all of those hallucinations going to occur in

these transcripts. And I'm convinced zoom has a sense of

humor.

And Hiram, I love that the answer from nine, nine

included something that's so human, right, that interaction

of conversation, I think everything that we were talking

about before, with the synergy between departments tech can

solve a lot, but conversation is so important. And I know I'm

probably biased in wearing my speech and debate at here, but I

really do think that it's going to become even more important in

the AI age that those interpersonal connections, those

conversations before using a tool, those conversations and

connections with leaders at other schools that are trying to

solve the same problems that these human interactions are

going to become even more important, and that those are

really skills that we're going to need to continue to elevate

in the education system, kind of going way back to what Christina

was asking earlier, like, I think we need to double down,

and our emphasis needs to be more on Okay, the five paragraph

essay was great, but If that's not a thing anymore, can you get

up and defend this? Do you understand this to the point

where you can debate it, where you can withstand questioning

about it? And I think that's always been where deeper

learning was, and maybe this is going to push us to expanding

that for more students to get that deeper level of engagement

with material when they don't have to do that kind of surface

level of just reading, processing and creating an

output. Now that we're using the computer a little bit more for

that input and output, what are the human elements that we can

add on to that that show me deeply, actually understand this

topic and can speak to it right?

Seems like you have a really strong

interest in this student engagement and driving things a

little deeper. And in particular, you've shared with

us that you get excited about the idea of the elements of

learning that happen on the edges of school, things like

after school programs, summer programs, especially for those

students who are interested in pushing the boundaries of

technology. So tell us a little bit about that and where that

passion comes from. And I know you've been out and active on

this front so share with us a little bit about that.

Yeah, so I've never been a traditional classroom.

Teacher. So I know bills come from that background, and I know

plenty of tech directors have but I always was teaching

electives. I always was working in after school student

programs. I always was working in summer programs. Always these

things on the periphery of school. And a few years back, I

did an action research project with the International Boys

School Coalition on how to get deeper engagement, how to

elevate student voice and choice. And I ended up talking

about these lessons from the periphery, and how our schools

could really learn from the clubs and activities or the

elective classes, the drama, The Tech student groups, and how

there was such deep learning happening there, and so much

student agency and voice and choice and all these words that

we keep talking about in education. But how much are we

actually creating the spaces and opportunities for students to

deep dive, other than on the periphery, and in part of doing

that research with IBS C, which was such a valuable experience,

we looked at student engagement, and the numbers are chilling

when you talk to students about, do they love coming to school,

right? You go through the elementary years, and it's

really, really high, and then you get to those middle school

years, and we all talk about like, oh, Middle School is

terrible, and numbers just fall off. And they get even worse as

you go through high school, and students are self identifying

that they're disengaged from school. And I was specifically

looking at boys in my research for the International Boys

School coalition. But the numbers are true for girls as

well. It's not just a single gender that this is an issue

for. It's all learners. They happen to be a steadily epidemic

for boys, as we're seeing rates really change of boys graduating

and boys going on to college. And interestingly, just

yesterday, one of my colleagues sent me a new podcast from Ezra

Klein on the disengaged teen, which I haven't listened to the

podcast, but I did check out that book recently by Jenny

Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop, because I was updating my IBS C

research. I never got to present in front of a live audience. I

was supposed to be in Barcelona and 2020, pandemic hit, and I

did it alone in a zoom like system with no live audience,

and it felt incomplete, like I never finished this two years of

work, and I never got to do it. So this year, I got to go to the

nice IBS C conference in April in Manhattan. And it was great

to update the research a little bit, but to see that we're still

asking those same questions. John Mehta and Sarah fine, they

have this great book in search of deeper learning, the quest to

remake the American high school. And I took so much from that,

and they looked at all different types of schools, schools that

are supposed to be progressive, schools, that are traditional

schools that are supposed to be the next big thing. And they

came up with, it wasn't me. They came up with the idea that, like

the deep learning was happening there on the periphery. There

was this program here, that program there that maybe was

incorporated in the day, where they saw the speech and debate

teams, the student tech interns, gaining these really valuable

lifelong learning lessons and engagement was all on the

periphery. And that got me heading down the road and

wondering why we you know, Sir Ken Robinson, how many years ago

was his TED talk on us needing to rethink schools? And we keep

hearing people, and there's still people publishing on it,

because we're not changing the way schools are. So I'm excited

to continue to expand my role and get back into the auxiliary

program space, because I see so much continuity. There so much

opportunity for engagement to extend the school day into those

after school activities, to extend into the summer, some of

the students that I had the deepest connections with when we

talk about relational learning, it's because of what happened

outside of the classroom, either as a coach or as overseeing a

tech service project, or any of these non classroom places where

they get to see you in a different light, and you get to

see them in a different light, and it expands that student

teacher relationship. So that gets me super excited to

continue to do that and hopeful that we'll continue to learn

from that and make that more part of our everyday education

experience. So

Ray It's funny how similar our backgrounds are. So

I was a summer programs director for four years. We're members of

the ibsc. Tye Campbell is also a member of the ibsc with at the

Gilman school.

I went to that conference. Love Ty. It really

is

an amazing organization and some of the

relational teaching work that they are doing, but I completely

agree with you that these courses that are on the

peripheries really do target those affective objectives. In

student learning that get them fired up for something. One

class that we taught here for many, many years was build your

own computer, and we built desktops, and then at the end,

the goal of the class was to a be your own tech support. So as

instructors, we would damage their machines in some way that

they had to then fix and figure out what was wrong with it and

create their own documentation, and then they would have a LAN

party at the end, and they would have a great time. I mean, it's

amazing, because we just had our alumni weekend, and the number

of former students that came up and talked about that particular

class is outstanding, so you're spot on. These peripheral

courses are indeed a way to a child's heart

and lots of time. That's the way the tech director

can have more student engagement right during the day. We might

not have a class, but having that group of student tech

interns, or a group that you know is really interested in 3d

printing and comes to you with an idea like, those are the

times that sometimes the tech director has that student

relationship building is only there on the periphery. Bill

you're going to start a zombie class.

I already have one. Hiram. It's already running. You

can just stop them. I know Kristina wants us to stop

talking about this topic immediately.

I find if you ignore it, it goes away

faster.

One of the things I'm interested in is your

background with speech and debate, and what you were kind

of saying about the idea of having to debate your point, and

I think particularly in the area of AI where you can get the

answers, you can put in the prompt, you can get the answers,

you can present the answers. And in a traditional sense, that

might have been the end of it, but I think this ability, either

to ask deeper questions or enter into debate about it, really

gets to a way of assessing students understanding of

topics, because you're making them defend that. And I want you

to put on your master class of speech and debate right now and

tell all of us, what can we learn from someone with your

experience and expertise in this area? What can we learn from

that, from this perspective of using Speech and Debate tools to

gage student understanding for learning,

I love that question, Bill. What I'll say to start is

there's so much overlap between what we do as tech directors and

what I would teach as a speech and debate coach, we're teaching

critical thinking, whether we're working with our team or whether

we're working with our students. There's a problem that's

presented to the Help Desk, or there's something that they're

working on in their comp sci class, and we're trying to solve

that problem and apply critical thinking skills, and even before

generative AI, even at the level of search, you would put in

questions often, I would say, I'm the tech director, because

I'm better at googling things than you. I would say that to

people all the time because I didn't have the answer. But I

would go to Google, I'd get lots of responses, and I would try to

figure out what made the most sense. Are any of these working?

How do I reframe this question? Because what I got from Google

doesn't make any sense to me. It's not helping me get any

closer to the solution. So I think a lot of the things that

our librarians have taught us over the years are going to be

even more important today in the AI space, and what we can learn

from the speech and debate coaches is to make sure we don't

jump quickly to conclusions to sometimes maybe even argue the

other side of it. I am loved, and I think it's important for

tech directors to know you're already doing this. I love the

is Ed listserv, and sometimes people will come at it from two

very different perspectives. And I love that about it. I love

when a conversation as well. At our school, we do it this way,

and someone else is like at our school, we do it this way, and

whether that's the structure of the IT team, whether that's what

software platforms we're willing to deal with the risk on, like

Hiram was talking about, any of those things, there's always

room for that debate and that clash of ideas and then

ultimately rebuttals and synthesis and coming to some

truth at the end. So Ray, you've

now wrapped up, or you're about to wrap up

your first year at your school. You've had all these different

roles. What's on your mind for this summer? I know summer is

always a little bit of a reset. Sounds like you're taking on a

new role, but what's going to keep you busy this summer and

what are you looking ahead to in the fall?

So this summer, there's a number of projects, so

we're hiring for a new associate director of technology for data

systems. So we're really trying to elevate that position and

that data analysis, data visualization across. Our

campus. So that's going to be a big summer lift is onboarding a

new team member and working out what are the new

responsibilities for that role. And in doing so, we don't want

them to get bottomed down by some of the traditional

registrar roles, so we have a part time registrar, and how are

we going to move some of those things there so that some low

level data things can be taken care of and give space. Give

true space for someone to partner with every area of the

school to push further their data analysis, data

visualization, and I always say data informed decision making,

not data driven decision making, so that we give some space for

that debate about what the data actually means and what it means

we should do going forward. So that's one I think, as a tech

team last summer was really about learning what processes

were in place here, onboarding a couple other new members, myself

getting onboarded this summer. We already have started down the

route of, okay, we now know where some of our holes are.

We're using like the Atlas, 360 self survey. We already have

that as a guide for how many things we need to do this

summer. And sometimes that gets daunting, but it's like such a

great resource. When you jump into a new space, be able to

say, Okay, let's see how many things we can check off, and

then let's see what months and what plan we can have to get all

of this completed, and then reviewing the things that maybe

already are in place. But now that I seen this in action for

nine months, maybe I think we might want to tweak this, or we

might want to consider how I did that at the previous school. So

that's the summer, but I'll also say this is the first time where

I've been in a school where I'm taking more time to breathe, and

I think the Quaker tradition has been good for me, and so I hope

to take some time this summer and not have too many big

projects, and give myself some time to rest and recharge for

The next year, because I know Hiram and Bill probably feel

this way. Many, many, many, many times over the last 21 years, my

summers were much harder than the school year, and I needed a

break from my summer. 100%

we definitely hear a lot of that

from our tech folks. I'm going to never hear the end of it if I

don't dig a little deeper on this role that you're creating,

because I think so many schools are really struggling in the

data and data analysis space. So I gotta back you up there. I

mean, like, how in the world did you get this where'd this idea

come from? Did you have to, like, sacrifice a goat and

convince somebody to do it, where was the energy around

this? And then, in particular, to keep it separated from the

roles that data people traditionally fill in schools.

So can you walk us through a little bit of that? If you don't

mind? I mean,

one of the biggest reasons I came to Brooklyn

friends is we have an amazing Head of School, and Chrissy is

never afraid to create a new position or a different position

than other schools are creating, right so we have on our

leadership team many roles that you won't see on other

leadership teams, and this position in partnership with

her, it just became very apparent that We needed this

institutionally. We needed someone who was going to have a

little bit more of an elevated role and could partner with me

to make sure that we were able to reach all the different data

points within the school and work on those, data integrity,

data security, integration, automation, lead scheduling, but

not be the person that has to do scheduling all by themselves, as

oftentimes that happens lead a registrar, but not have to do

all of the transcript requests and parent access requests that

typically make it that reporting and analytics and forward

thinking and visioning of data lakes and building our own

dashboards, and that gets put to the side always right, because

there's operational things, and so having someone else who can

partner with me at that intersection of vision and

strategy and operationalized experience and push us and serve

the entire school, right? And be someone who's a thought partner

in all of the different offices, it became quickly a priority.

And I have to thank Chrissy for believing, you know, this was

something I thought we needed, and she's someone already wound

for that. And by the way, also a former Speech and Debate

competitor, a debater out of Newark, New Jersey, and so I

think she can see very quickly the importance of this role

that's

really impressive. I know that schools

are starting to get interested in this and try to figure out

how to actually get it done, but to create that kind of space,

whatever you call it, to do some of this high. Level, data,

informed decision making. My last question on this is, what's

at the top of your wish list? Like, okay, you get this person

in, you get someone who's super brilliant. What is the first

path or journey you send them on? So

one thing that's been really interesting in seeing the

different resumes that come in. Or, like, what kind of like,

micro credentials do people have? Some people have degrees

in data systems, but a lot of it you're coming in with, oh, I

have this recent certification in artificial intelligence and

data systems, or I have this recent data visualization and

business systems micro credentials. So it's really

interesting to see different people coming in with different

perspectives, but also different credentialing. And some of it

has me in the back of my mind, going, Okay, if it's not this

person, I do want them to go down the path of whoever's in

this role of getting that credential, or going down the

path of doing that type of training or that type of PD to

get us to where we are. So the first step, I think, is getting

this person on board with not just our vision here at school,

but also with what's going on in industry, and not just in

education, but what else is being done where places are

putting maybe more money into data analysis and data

visualization, and kind of learn from those spaces and help craft

together what that next year plan is going to be. I want to

give space for this person to also co author with me, what are

the next things that we should be doing as a school to really

push our institution forward and have tech be serving that

mission and vision. I

mean, guys like, if you got this dropped in

your lap, Bill and Hiram, if you suddenly found yourself with a

part time Assistant Director for Data wizardry, what would be the

first thing you would ask them to do?

I think that's the other piece of this, in terms of

identifying the questions that need to be asked. Because I

think what ends up happening a lot of times is everyone's got

like, oh, I would love to see the data around this or this or

this. But is that question mission aligned? Is that

question going to answer a bigger question related to

either your strategic plan or your underlying missions or an

underlying project that's going on. So understanding how those

approvals happen in terms of where you're going to direct

that person, I think, is very interesting. But first and

foremost, the thing I'd be interested in is what is your

number one priority at the school, and get them focused on

how data can inform and help guide work in that area. So it's

not any one thing, because I think with every school it's

going to be different, but you have to really line all of those

pieces up, look at what's the one main thing and get them

going there. Otherwise they're going to get caught on all these

little side projects that are going to answer these little

questions that may help someone with this one thing, but aren't

really advancing the overall mission. And that's what I

think, is where I would focus that work and try to help define

that with them.

The only thing

I would add. And it really struck me, Ray, when

you said you wanted to give this position space, I was really

captivated by your use of that term, because all too often we

layer upon these new positions, lots and lots of scut, the stuff

that nobody wants to do. And we all know the phrase, it all

rolls downhill. And I think what I would do in my particular

case, if this was my baby, it would be to protect this person

to the point where I have the governance in place so that we

have the capacity to talk about survey design, to talk about

data privacy, to talk about what's the retention of the data

that we are collecting. I had a really interesting experience

last week. I had a student who's doing a capstone project who is

giving out these surveys, and he asked another IB SC school out

in Australia, and the head pushed back because he asked all

of these different questions about data. And so the faculty

sponsor reached out to me and said, Can you help with this?

And we started talking about the Australian Privacy Principles,

which are different than GDP are, which are different than

here in the States, because it's by state as opposed to a

national system. And so it's so big, what Ray's position is

essentially going to incorporate into the school that to go fast,

you got to go slow, and you really. Really need to protect

this person such that you can truly stick to what Bill would

say, What's mission critical? Does it fulfill the mission but

also satisfy all the other things that we're trying to do

with data governance, privacy, the incorporation of AI, all of

those different things, because schools are sloppy with this

stuff when you're hearing people talk about data lakes and data

warehouses, you start to realize we have these addicts that

aren't very structured and very organized, and we're having to

do a lot of cleanup, and that is going to take a tremendous

amount of time, because then you've got to deal with school

culture, because people are used to doing things a certain way,

and so I would say, go slow to go fast and focus on the data

governance and the cultural shifts that are undoubtedly

going to happen at your school.

That's so true. Hiram, thank you so much for that. You

know, one thing in like building a team I took from my previous

head is these little weekly digital check ins that can

inform our one on ones, and the platform that I used at my

previous school stand out that EDP now bought. So not sure if

small teams can use it very much anymore. But in addition to it

giving a strength of assessment so that you know everybody on

your team what their two biggest strengths are, and get kind of

like individual coaching tips on how to work with this person or

who go to for what I love, that it had a quick, you know, the

same way we'd have our students maybe do a fist to five, get a

quick pulse, you know. How are you doing today? Is it a

terrible day? Is a great day, these little two minute check

ins, what did you love this week? What did you load this

week? What are your priorities? And how can I help? And those

four things are so helpful, and I hope that with this new

position, that I'll quickly hear those things that they load and

can figure out, how do we solve those things so that we can

protect those things that they love, and that the things that

are the priorities for our school. And that's what I think

an evolution of our tech role is doing exactly that is making

sure that our team is not just structured in the best way, but

as you put it, Hiram, that they're all protected and

empowered to do the great job that we're actually hiring them

to do.

Absolutely so as we draw to a close and

we're kind of running out of time with you, Ray, I have to

bring up the fact that in 2022 you were the New Jersey Speech

and Debate lead Coach of the Year. Pretty cool. So clearly,

you're pretty awesome at that, but I read deeper into your bio,

and I recognize something that I see in myself, and that is that

you have a ton of kids, and so I would love to think that you're

just very, very skilled with the whole speech and debate, and I'm

sure you are, but I think that my speech and debate skills are

honed by the fact that I have four daughters between the ages

of 19 and 23 you have five kids and four pets. So that's a lot

of chaos. Is that why you're so good at Speech and Debate?

That might be. How old are your kids? I have 520, 1812,

10 and eight, two girls, three boys. But I would say, probably

more importantly than that, my wife is a Pennsylvania High

School Speech and Debate League Hall of Famer, so I don't have

that on my resume.

Okay, we need to get your wife on the

pod. So Ray, you lose every argument, exactly.

Debating, having another kid you've lost multiple

times.

I feel like we need to get Ray and his wife

and maybe a couple of their kids on a pod and just like, launch

them and just see what happens. Is this what your dinners are

like every night?

Oh yes, they are eventful.

Do they have a favorite category of debate?

Definitely tech time, usage

free time. That's awesome. That's very

cool. Well, Ray, I'm so glad that you were able to join us

and spend this much time with us. It's been such a pleasure to

get to know you, and I am so glad that you finally got to an

atlas conference. I hope we continue to see you every year

Absolutely. Obviously, it's a very special gathering of our

friends, and you are one of them. So I hope that you get to

join us next year we're going to be in Columbus, Ohio, so

hopefully no massive trips in and out of New York for that

one. I can't wait. Awesome. Thanks so much.

This has been talking technology with Atlas,

produced by the Association of Technology Leaders in

Independent Schools. For more information about Atlas and

Atlas membership, please visit theatlas.org if you enjoyed this

discussion, please subscribe. I. Leave a review and share this

podcast with your colleagues in the independent school

community. Thank you for listening. You.