Summary:

Join Dr. Jim as he explores the essential topic of preparing students for the future world of work with Dr. Justin Terry, Superintendent of Forney ISD. With insights into innovative educational approaches and facility design, Dr. Terry shares how his district integrates career, college, and community learning. Discover how fluid organizational structures and strategic community partnerships can transform education, driving student success beyond traditional metrics. Whether you're an educator or student, gain valuable perspectives on fostering future-ready skills that resonate with today's evolving workforce demands.

Key Takeaways:

• Mentorship and Leadership: Dr. Terry underscores the importance of mentorship and maintaining a flat organization to nurture leadership and facilitate open communication across all levels.
• Fostering Innovation: His leadership cultivated a district-wide innovation culture, evident in Forney ISD's pioneering educational approaches and facilities designed to integrate community and career experiences.
• Experiential Learning's Importance: Emphasizing brain-compatible learning, Dr. Terry demonstrates how experiential learning plays a crucial role in transitioning school-taught knowledge to job-ready skills.
• Community and Business Partnerships: The development of multi-purpose educational facilities that also serve community and business needs highlights a unique method for enhancing educational experiences.
• Execution Over Planning: Advocating for action-oriented leadership, Dr. Terry encourages educational leaders to move beyond planning to implementation, learning through the process.

Chapters:

00:00

Equipping Graduates With Job Ready Skills in Education

01:35

Mentorship and Leadership Development in Education

07:01

Flat and Fluid Leadership in Fast-Growing School Districts

13:32

Innovative Education: Bridging Traditional Learning with Future Skills

20:28

Innovative Multi-Use Facility Integrates Education and Community Needs

23:26

Innovative Education and Community Impact in Forney

27:54

A Community Hub for Events and Engagement

28:13

Innovative Leadership and Courageous Action in Education

Connect with Dr. Jim: linkedin.com/in/drjimk

Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung

Connect with Dr. Justin Terry: https://www.forneyisd.net/

Music Credit: Shake it Up - Fesliyanstudios.com - David Renda



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So what can districts do to provide high quality education? And develop job ready skills at the same time. That's the question that we'll be tackling in today's conversation. So who's going to be guiding us through that discussion? Today we have Dr. Justin Terry, who's got more than 22 years of experience in education as a teacher, coach, and administrator.

He earned his doctorate in education from Texas A& [00:01:00] M commerce. So Justin.

[00:01:05] Dr. Jim: Yeah, I'm looking forward to this conversation. I think it's going to be pretty interesting. I think before we dive into the main part of the discussion, it's going to be important for you to share with us and the listeners a little bit more about your story than the three or four sentences that we just covered in the bio.

So one thing that I'm particularly interested in is understanding what were those key moments in your career that helped shape you as a leader. Both from a practical perspective and a philosophical perspective.

And I ended up in a doctorate program that you know it [00:02:00] really made me think differently about how we learn and the ways and types of things that we can do in classrooms that really could transform the way that you and I learned when we were growing up to where, we learned the right, really that the brain was made and to learn.

And so I've done a lot of study and research into brain compatible learning. And what we understand is that experience is one of the most important environments that we can put people in if we really want learning to occur at a high level.

And almost every environment has a different form of mentorship that exists within that environment. The thing that I'm really interested in is that oftentimes those mentorship opportunities happen purely by chance. Somebody has got to notice you and take you under their wing. [00:03:00] And what I'm curious about is when you look at that experience of mentorship in your career, how has that shaped how you mentor across your district and you take the chance out of the equation to make sure that more people are brought through that leadership pipeline?

And I had that superintendent saw something In me, I guess at the time, and then he began to introduce me to others. But one of the things that I think is vital about that, and I started in a small school district, but we're about a 20, 000 student school district now but I think there's some tenants within the organization that have to maintain.

Not just around formal mentorship programs and leadership development, but also that we maintain an extremely flat organization where that door is always open. And that I'm also out and about, and our executive team is out and about on campuses to where those relationships are first and foremost, and what we do to where that comfort and that opportunity to have that conversation, no matter what position you sit in to really grow each and every one of us, cause we're in the people development business.

What do I do in this thing? Do I have enough? Experience under my belt for all these other peers of mine who are now My my reports do I have enough [00:05:00] respect in this space? So when you look at that rapid acceleration into leadership How did you navigate all of those things that were going through your head and still build enough of a A relationship across your peer group to make sure that you were still helping them be as successful as possible

So we had a great relationship for 20 plus years now. But Yeah. Yeah. I also, I think about, one of my next assistant principal jobs. I walked into my former hometown and was blessed to go back home. And the, at that point in time I was actually stepping into a situation where I was leading those who led me.

And that is working hard following through with what you not only say, but people expect of you. And again, just, sometimes just doing the right thing for others. And if you keep people at the forefront of what you do on a daily basis with your words and actions, that respect tends to get earned.

And I don't think it's any educational opportunity I had that put me in that setting. It was, it's just about the relationships that we build. And the day to day interactions we have with people that create that respect along the way.

Those two things seem to be in contradiction with each other. At least when I hear it, like having a 20, 000 student organization, you probably [00:07:00] have a couple thousand staff. How do you keep it flat when you're dealing with really a pretty sizable organization?

We'll grow upwards of 2, 000 kids a year. And so with that come along additional staff and there's attrition that occurs on top of that. So we could be changing, 25 percent of our organization annually. And when you do that, you have to, there's an induction process that comes along with that.

There's re culturing that has to occur. And it's what we knew we were going to grow this fast, but also in the dynamic of education and understanding that it's ever changing, we structured our organization probably about seven or eight years ago to be prepared for change. And there's a book called the chaos imperative.

Also, a lot of my, organization, change approach is built on Michael Fullen's motion leadership. If you had no chance to read that, actually have a copy of that right here keep on my desk had it for years. And so we built our organizational structure. In a way that it's constantly flat, it's overlapping and collaborative.

So it's not hierarchical and isolated, but it's really circles that overlap because every need has that as a multifaceted approach to how to solve it. But also we reorganize ourselves every year. But at the center of our organization, as always, and our core principle is going to be relationships first.

[00:09:11] Dr. Jim: I like the concept of flat, but fluid, and I'm putting it in the context of. The type of growth that you're having in a district and you mentioned that, theoretically, in a given year, you could have 25 percent of your staff turnover. You have 25 percent new people coming into the staff, and I'm thinking about how those things.

Relate with each other, because if you're flat and fluid that gives you the flexibility to change, but what I'm wondering is how do you build consistency so that you're not constantly like moving from one thing to another and not making progress towards sort of those bigger goals?

But, there, there are, goals that we have in place in our school board has a pretty consistent with those. And we have strategic planning, planning opportunities where we bring, over a hundred. Of our community members and staff, and we do that every three to five years just to make sure that our north is still in the right direction.

And so they'll help make suggestions about the future of education, any opportunities that we need to improve on as a school district that's then given back to our school board. And, they set those goals in place, and they allow. I'm blessed. I think right now education gets a rough wrap and many times it's because there's conflict at the top and we've got an incredible school board that empowers the staff to do their job.

And it's, it is it's very fluid when you're growing this fast, but between the values and the foundations that we have there, and consistency in our goal setting process it's we're, We seem to be heading in a common direction. So always room for improvement, obviously, but it's been pretty successful so far.

And you've knocked off some pretty big things. When you came into the district What did you notice that informed the initiatives that you're going to take on and how did that impact your staying power within the district?

But 1 of the key components as well from our leadership succession model is there was 1 to be honest with you I came in as a deputy superintendent and the person who hired me she was hired in under a superintendent and was in the district as an assistant superintendent and, that's been a process of succession probably over the last 15 years here to where, we've had the consistency with our board, a consistency with our executive teams.

And, you can move a ship pretty fast when you understand what each and every one of the. Sailors are, believe in and you trust them and you know the direction that the ship's trying to go. And I would attribute a lot of our success, honestly, to the consistency of leadership.

So by the time, if you don't have a good three to five years, it's going to be hard to implement any kind of change or initiative or goal setting process.

Open the show. I talked about, building a future ready workforce, preparing kids for the future world of work. And that was the theme that we established early on. And you've had a pretty sustained run here. How are those two things connected to what you attribute to your staying power?

What did you observe when you first got in the district that indicated, Hey, this is the direction that we need to go when it comes to the kids within our district? Mhm.

It's pretty awesome to watch. They were the first one to one, I believe, district in Texas. And they were the, the first to have standardized dress. And went all the way to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. First to this was 20, 25 years ago. So innovation is not something new for this community.

It's something that we're proud of. And because of that, we were able to really create, a different approach to workforce development and really excited after we had a committee that came together that we've built multiple facilities around here, and they were facilities committee at the time, and they asked for a college and career center.

[00:15:00] Dr. Jim: So we'll get into the nuts and bolts of that in a second, but I want I want to hit rewind a little bit. And, we're talking about the finished product, but I'm curious, what was the process that you went through to determine, hey, these are the elements that we need to have in the next version of education delivery that we're gonna create?

And our school district again, is not one to sit around and talk about things. We don't just talk about our vision statement hanging on the wall. We walk toward it every day. And we did a lot of research into brain compatible learning. Probably about 10 years ago as a district, we began that process.

I hope you guys get. The good 10 percent out of this podcast today. But really what we know about learning is when we can actually put someone in, in, in an experience and engage them in something that they enjoy doing, they're going to they're not only going to take that and absorb it into their longterm memory, but they're also going to create.

Something new from that experience and there I'm a constructivist at heart when it comes to learning. And with that foundation, we began this process of beginning to understand with our strategic planning, what our community wants what they wanted from an educational outcome.

And, they told us, yes, they want a solid reading, writing and arithmetic program, just like most school districts do. They want high academic achievement. But what we heard even louder than that was they wanted more on that. Our kids were more than that, and that the workforce was going to desire so much more than that.

So all of these skills, we were learning standards along the way that we begin to implement on our daily curriculum.

Community agreed with you in terms of what the basics are. And then they also described that they want more, but here's the thing, like you and I are probably in the same age demographic. We didn't learn that way. And I'm sure that most of the families in our communities are similar ages us. And when you start describing something that is potentially.

Very unique. It's hard bridging the gap from what you know to what the future could be. How did you sell this as a way to get them from point A to point B? Because this is a different way of thinking than what we traditionally know school to be.

Really what you, the majority of those skills are going to be learned once you get there and it's through the experience itself. But there's some foundational things which we call entrepreneurial skills, future ready skills whatever terminology use employability skills that we knew are foundational.

And We designed and created learning standards because that's what we know in education. You first have to have is a learning standard to build a curriculum around. And then from a curriculum, you have to have an implementation and what that instructional design looks like. And then there's got to even be some assessment components that go with it down the road.

[00:19:11] Dr. Jim: There's alignment between community stakeholders and the district in terms of, Okay, this is what it should look like. We know what the gaps are. How did that impact sort of your facilities conversation that it had later on?

And we heard from our community what they wanted. Our board gave us some direction and then we added a little flavor to it to where this is a new concept where what if. We actually brought the experience into our schools itself. And so at that point in time, we had the ability to design and create a 350, 000 square foot facility that could meet those needs.

We don't have a public library where a lot of people go just for Wi Fi access and just to, to collaborate and communicate with some peers. And understanding not only the educational. Ask of our community, but also some of just our structural community needs. We were able to put and meld these all together in.

And at that point in time we had the ability to design a facility that we knew had to do a few things. Number one, we worked with a futurist as as a part of this process and we had, what is the future of education going to look like down the road? It's ever changing.

And so we tried to design a facility that would be future proofed. So that as the workforce needs change, as the needs of the community change, we can change the facility with it. And then finally, if you're going to allow community in and you're going to use space differently for a facility you got to honor your taxpayers and with that, most schools are open from eight to four.

So we wanted to create a school that was actually open seven days a week from 7 a. m. till 9 p. m. at night and that learning could continue all the time and the space itself could be utilized in different ways all the time. So it had to be multi purposed and multi faceted in every square foot.

[00:21:58] Dr. Justin Terry: We actually built a, a three story [00:22:00] facility and the piece that's really has never been done anywhere in the nation that we've found and have a lot of people come to look at right now is that we basically built a mall on the first floor and it's open to the public all the time.

And then we put a two story school on top of it during school hours. So what we knew is in order for our kids to get the experiences they needed. We actually had to have some of our businesses come in. And so we actually put out something we call a an RFP, a request for partnership. And so we actually seek out businesses that can come in and give our committee that we have in place, a proposal, a business proposal, basically.

And that, our goal in this facility is that it serves every square foot of it serves career college and community needs. And so as part of their proposal they had to show us they could meet some of those needs. We obviously want this to be a win for both. One of the one of the inspirations behind this facility was the container park in Vegas of all places.

And that's how the process works. We actually tier their rent their least based on how many kids they serve, they get discounted rates. So that's been a real benefit for all of us. We get the benefit of them serving our kids. They get the benefit of a little cheaper lease.

So you have actual practical experience. How do those two things get connected with this mixed use facility? How does the stuff that's being taught in school or in the classroom make it to the real world in terms of the structure of this facility and how work is done?

We do that daily. But what makes this unique is we believe that The greatest education we can give in automotive and cosmetology and construction trades. That's awesome. But if you can't go be successful running your business down the road then you're not going to be real successful in the real world.

And so we're, we teach a parallel pathway. Of entrepreneurship or intrapreneurial skills. And so because of that, we may rotate kids through to get advertising and marketing experience, even if that's not their career path because they're going to need that. You do that daily, right?

TikTok is a new thing and social media marketing has been pretty successful for some of our businesses to allow our kids to take over for them. And it's been a great partnership because of that.

[00:25:26] Dr. Justin Terry: College career military readiness is probably the main outcome most states are looking for right now. It's a graduation requirement. Texas has a 2030 plan where, you know, 60 percent of our graduates will be college career military ready. We exceed that here in 40, but, that's a focus for this facility. Obviously, that's one of the measurable outcomes. We also have, three or four different colleges in that institution or in that facility Dallas College in Texas Tech and Indiana Wesleyan University and a few others. And so they're meeting, college readiness.

But really, the measurable outcomes we're looking for is going to be down the road. Yes, we can measure what their certification is walking out the door, how many credits they have in college. That's an awesome tool to measure. But what we're hoping for is that we're truly preparing these kids for a future that hadn't been defined yet.

And some of these soft skills that they're getting along the way, I think we haven't seen the fruits of the work there just yet. One of the other pieces that we're seeing, too, from a social experiment standpoint, honestly, is, behavioral measurements. That's a big challenge right now in schools across the nation.

And what we've seen is when we put kids in an environment, empower them, give them some responsibility they respond to it. When they've got community members, whether it's a group of pastors or business people that are meeting in a common environment as them, they respond and reflect those behaviors and those expectations.

[00:27:04] Dr. Jim: The the other thing that I'm curious about in terms of impact is from the community side of it. So this was pretty innovative as a concept. And now it's a reality. So what's been the feedback and impact on the community in terms of what you've heard?

7, 900 people in it. We're in the process right now of a December to remember. And so Santa Claus has come to town Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Friday, Saturday, and Sunday that our community is coming up to. They're coming up for trade shows and markets that we host.

We needed a space for this. So we transformed the facility to meet those needs sometimes too and add a conference room or a smaller meeting space if that's what they're desiring and we can meet that need.

What's your advice in terms of how they get started and what are the key things that they need to keep in mind to build momentum towards something like what you've built in your district?

But. There's got to be a step forward and there's a process that we use. And we talk a lot about here that we love to innovate, no doubt. And, but we never talk about in this school district, innovation outside the box. This concept George Kuros is wrote a couple of books on this and he's, he does, he talks about it from the classroom perspective and we focus on it really from a an organization and leadership perspective, but I would challenge many of our Superintendents to begin to define and understand, what the box is, what their boundaries, barriers, and constraints are.

And whatever they think they are, I promise you they're a little bit further. The statute may read differently, your attorney may tell you, you got a little flexibility. So the first step we talk a lot about is defining the box and what it is. And then understanding that we can do anything we want, and I tell our teachers this too, we can do anything we want.

I'd invite them to come in and take a look. And our team does I think a great job of explaining how we do it. But I'll tell you this my advice also is don't build what we built. Don't do what we did because that was to meet our community's needs. That was to meet the needs of our kids.

That was to meet the needs of our school board and what we desire and have here in 40 ISD. You have, every school district will have different needs visions and ideas but the concepts may translate. And you don't need a 350, 000 square foot facility to make those things happen. You just got to take step forward.

And I challenge you to be creagious and and if we can help in any way, we're an open book.

[00:30:43] Dr. Justin Terry: Yeah. Thanks for asking. You can go to the the OC. T H E O C dot net and all of our information is there about the facility as well as an opportunity to sign up. We do monthly site visits for site visit teams and we've welcomed districts all across the [00:31:00] nation and continue to do so and again, we think this is a transformative approach to education and anything we have, I think this is a transformative approach to education

There's something that you mentioned at the end of the conversation that I think is worth everybody listening to.

And that's this idea of fenced in chaos. And when you talk about innovation, there's a level of creative destruction that needs to happen within guidelines or guardrails. And this is really where. People should get started. And the reason why it's important is that whenever you're looking at innovating, people often spend too much time in the planning stage to the point where they over plan and never get to the execution side.

The key is to just get started because it's that process of starting that process of execution where the learning happens. Mike Tyson often said, everybody's got a great plan until you get punched in the face. And oftentimes that is a big problem. You got to actually be willing to take those punches because that's where the learning happens.

And if you're looking at innovating and making an impact and really changing the way things are done. Everything's going to look great on paper. You learn a lot more when you actually bring it into the real world and start executing. So I think that concept is really what's valuable about what you talked about.

I appreciate you sharing that with us. For those of you who've been listening to this conversation, we appreciate you hanging out. If you liked the discussion, make sure you leave us a review on your favorite podcast player. If you haven't already done so, make sure you join our K through 12 leadership community.