Barbara Cohen, Chief Information and Innovation Officer at Brandeis Marin, joins the podcast to discuss independent school technology department staffing and leadership. Cohen shares strategies for modular job design, aligning technology initiatives directly with school mission, and facilitating constructive parent dialogues regarding student device usage and social health.

Brandeis Marin — An independent K–8 Jewish day school in San Rafael, California, where Barbara Cohen serves as Chief Information and Innovation Officer.

The Anxious Generation — Book by Jonathan Haidt utilized by Brandeis Marin for community-wide reading and dialogue on youth technology use and supervision.

The Six Types of Working Genius — Team assessment framework by Patrick Lencioni referenced for identifying individual natural talents and balancing organizational team dynamics.

DISC Profile — Workplace behavior assessment tool used by technology leaders to analyze team communication preferences and working styles.

Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools — Network supporting Jewish day schools through peer cohorts, leadership development, and educational technology collaboration.

Welcome to Talk 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.

Welcome, everyone, to Talk Technology with Atlas. I am

Peter Frank, the Senior Director of Operations and Certification

at the Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools,

and I'm Hiram Cuevas, the Director of

Information Systems and Academic Technology at St. Christopher

School in Richmond, Virginia,

Kevin Warenda, TLIS: and I'm Kevin Warenda, director of

information technology services at the Hotchkiss School in

Lakeville, Connecticut.

All right. Well, we got another new combination

today for Talking Technology with ATLIS. A new combination of

hosts. How are you guys doing?

Kevin Warenda, TLIS: Doing well.

I'm in Boston right now, not in Richmond.

Oh, that's right. What are you doing in Boston,

Hiram?

I'm actually attending the Blackbaud Users

Conference. It's the first time it's been back in a number of

years, and we've got a huge attendance here over 500

educators from around the country.

Nice. Coincidentally, I was just told

that my kids' school supply list hit, and so my 11-year-old

daughter, she's of course jazzed because she's still at that age

where kids get jazzed about things like the back to school

supply list and going shopping,

the trapper keeper,

right? I'm curious. Do you both feel like, yep,

we've started next year already? Like the next year is here

already? Do you feel that way, mid July?

Kevin Warenda, TLIS: I definitely feel like I'm in it.

We have a new head of school and a new CFO that just started, so

like the onboarding process is off and running. My wife just

reminded me we're already halfway through July, so I

haven't quite gotten the school supply list yet, but I know it's

coming.

Yeah, we're already assembling the luggage

and whatnot that needs to go back to college in the

downstairs living room so that can get ready to bring our

daughter back for her junior year at Virginia Tech, but it

feels like when Fourth of July hits, summer's pretty much over.

Oh wow! Well, listen. Speaking of new

configurations of hosts and fresh voices and people on the

Talking Technology with Atlas podcast, we do have another

guest host as we've been introducing here over the

summer, it is a pleasure for me to introduce to you all a

familiar face and familiar voice to the Atlas podcast. We have

tell us for us today, Denise Musselwhite. Hi, Denise.

Hi, everybody. I'm so excited to be

here. I've been practicing my radio voice. I'm the founder of

Tech and Thrive, the moderator and facilitator of the Women in

Tech Meetup Group for Atlas, and a former Atlas board chair and

former director of technology CIO of independent schools for

more than 25 years.

It's a pleasure for us to have you here. With that,

let me hand over the reins to you, Denise.

Yeah, I'm so thrilled to host us here, and I

want to make sure that I'm not left out of the school supply

conversation. I love school supplies, even though I'm not in

middle school anymore. So that it's not just for middle

schoolers because I just went to Staples this week and picked up

some new school supplies, office supplies for myself, and it was

really fun. In all seriousness, I am thrilled to host our

special guest, Barbara Cohen. She is a veteran in our industry

and someone who I deeply admire, and I cannot wait to learn more

about her journey and to hear what she can share with the

audience. We have some ideas about what that might be, but

first, let's hear from Barbara so that she can introduce

herself.

Barbara Cohen, TLIS: Hi, everybody. I'm Barbara Cohen,

also a deep lover of office and school supplies. Staples is

terrific. I kind of miss having my kids are a little older, so I

don't get to take them on that annual summer trip for color

coordinated folders and things. So anyway, I'm Barbara. I am

currently the chief information and innovation officer at

Brandeis Marin in San Rafael, California, which is just north

of the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin County, I'm just starting

my 11th year here, but I have been in the independent school

technology world for just around 30 years. At this point, this is

my fourth independent school. I've been at small schools, big

schools, an Episcopal school, two Jewish day schools, and a

progressive school. So I've kind of seen a lot of things come and

go over the years, and I am a early charter member of the

Atlas community, having gone to the first conference and become

a member the first year. I participated during COVID in the

ALI cohort during that year, and was in the second cohort of TLIS

awardees and. And have multiple networks that I love and depend

on a lot, and hopefully we can talk about that later. But

that's a little bit about me.

Thanks, Barbara. Again, totally humbled

to be here hosting you. There's a lot of experience in this

space right now. But before we get to asking you some questions

about your career, I wanted to make sure that we gave a nod to

our missing co-host. We have Kevin here, who is a fantastic

co-host as well, but he's filling in for Bill, who

couldn't be here. And Bill wanted to make sure that he

prepped me for this experience, and he wanted me to make sure

that Kevin, that I knew that you were an Eagles fan.

Kevin Warenda, TLIS: I didn't say I wasn't a fan. I just said

I wasn't a fan of hearing it in every single podcast episode.

So he wanted me to mention that you are a

huge Eagles fan while we're on this episode because he just

needed that to happen.

Kevin Warenda, TLIS: All right, go Birds, go birds!

Oh, look at that! Look at that! Now, of note,

because I'm at this conference, and Bill's school is a Veracross

school, the number of people that have come up to me and

said, "Where is Bill? You guys are not together.

Well, speaking of being together, we,

the four of us, have been alongside Atlas for its entire

existence, and we've been alongside each other for almost

about the same amount of time. We've been on this journey

alongside one another for more than two decades, which is so

cool about this space. I came thinking about a topic that I

think Barbara, you could help us with in my work as a

professional certified coach because that's what I'm doing

full time now. One of the most persistent topics that come up

is this new multi generational workplace, and my understanding

is you happen to be on the hiring team at your school and

have quite a bit of experience in hiring new people to

independent schools. So I wonder what your thoughts are about

what someone would need to possess in order to join an

independent school to lead technology. Who are coming up

behind those of us that are going to be moving out of the

space.

Barbara Cohen, TLIS: It's a great question, Denise. I am the

hiring manager here at Brandeis Marin, which means I help

formulate the job descriptions. I post jobs in a variety of

places and then do that first round of Zoom screening

interviews before presenting them to our hiring committees

and then deciding who we want to bring to campus. I have a couple

thoughts on this. One is thinking back a couple of

positions ago, where I was going into a job that was less ed tech

and more IT, and I was feeling very insecure about the parts I

didn't know how to do going into that job. And a colleague of

mine from another school said to me, "Listen, Barbara, you are a

basically smart person, and what you don't know, you're gonna

figure it out. So just don't be held back. I think there's some

gender stuff that plays out with that. I've read where women tend

to look at a job description, and if there are things they

don't know how to do, they tend not to apply or not feel

comfortable. And this is very much with a broad paintbrush. So

I would just say, if you look at a job description with 50 bullet

points, like so many of our job descriptions have, focus on the

overall vibe of the job and can you do most of it? So don't cut

yourself off from opportunity. Would be one thing. The other

thing I would say is that fit is everything. So even if you have

years of experience in the classroom or with IT, you're

still wanting to look for an organization that you connect

with. It's not just the job you're connecting with. You're

connecting with an entire organization, so fit is

everything. Look to who are the leaders. Look and see what tech

is already in place. Find out a little bit about who you'd be

replacing, and get curious. Don't go into interviews and a

job search as a job beggar. Go into it as a curious job seeker

who's looking for that right fit. That's my first thought,

and there is a generational shift as well. So I think

organizations, schools, tech departments have to be thinking

a little bit differently when they make a hire about is this a

we're going to find our forever person because I don't think

we're hiring forever people anymore. I think we're hiring

people for the school year, and we're going to see, and then a

three-year commitment, perhaps, and then the conversation comes

up again, especially in the IT and help desk positions I've

hired and let go and had to rehire. A lot of people in those

roles over the years, because so much about fit and chemistry and

understanding the school environment. Another thing I

often wonder about is when we were looking for a makerspace

coordinator a couple of different times over my time

here. Is it better to mostly know how to be a teacher, and

you can learn the makerspace stuff later. Or is it mostly

important to come with the technical and makerspace

background, and you'll learn the school stuff later? I'm not

convinced which formula works. Again, it's chemistry, but I

think it's a lot harder to teach a non-school person how to be a

part of a school culture than it is to teach a school person the

skills they need to do the technical work. Again, big

everybody's different. Every position is different.

Every school community is different.

So, Barbara, I found it interesting that you

were talking about people perhaps shying away from certain

positions, and I think what tech leaders in general tend to

forget is we're like ER doctors. We can do a lot of different

things. It may not be our specialty, but we can do a lot

of things well, and we can also learn a lot along the way.

Which, to your other point about the makerspace question versus

the teacher, I think it's fair to say, and I'd be curious to

see how you opine on this. When you interview somebody, you

could tell almost immediately that they are a teacher at

heart, even if they're coming from a non-teaching role. You

can tell right away a good teacher, a solid teacher. They

just command a presence. They understand the content. They can

pivot really well, and I think you're spot on in wonder, you

know, which is which. But one of the things that's a blessing is

finding the right person, and all of a sudden you realize,

wow, they just have it; they have it all.

Kevin Warenda, TLIS: I think what's so interesting about your

story, Barbara, now that you're the hiring manager, that just

seems to highlight for me just what this job of technology

leader, especially in independent schools, has become

the number of hats that we are asked to wear. I know all of us

on this call we have long enough careers that we've seen this

just grow and grow and grow. What I'm curious about here is

what you're seeing or how you feel about has this job become

almost undoable? Like, can you find candidates that are up to

the challenge because so much has been added on. This was a

lot easier to do in the early 2000s. We added these things on,

and looking back over two decades or three decades, it's

almost easy to see how we grew into it. How are you approaching

people today, knowing that that is the job? I mean, you're even

being asked to be a hiring manager. You only see that in

independent schools, based on my experience, has this job become

too much, too many hats, and how do we find people to fill those

roles? Well, I'm going to split them into three or four people.

Barbara Cohen, TLIS: It's a great question, Kevin. And my

niche, my favorite kind of school, is a small school where

you do wear many hats. So that's partly by choice. I have worked

at schools where there's been a medium to large size department

of tech staff, and I came back to a small school partly because

of my love of having my hands in a lot of pies. But I do think

there is a lot of slippage into too many hats. I know there was

a time there where a lot of technology directors, for

example, became in charge of security and school safety, or

anything that plugs in, like copiers and office equipment or

phones, suddenly they were part of our purview where they used

to be more of the front office. As things all started to have a

web portal, they all became ours. So I think constantly

going back to those job descriptions and making sure

that it's really delineated. Oh, another area that's really grown

is who is in charge of the AV and, for example, recording all

of the events for the school. Is that the tech department or is

that marketing? So I think one of the things I like to think

about is how can we make all of our jobs. I'm going to use the

word modular so that there are distinct buckets that, when the

person changes the job or the parts of the job are still

tenable. So there's like the IT piece running the network and

the wires and the server and all if there is one and all of that

stuff. There's the database and registrar and probably

integration piece. That's probably another bucket. There's

the whole ed tech piece, of course. That's a bucket, and

then some of these other pieces I've mentioned, and then of

course the big vision piece. But I think a lot of times

independent schools design job descriptions based to the person

who's currently sitting in the position, and that's partly why

I'm the hiring manager. Is because with my years of

experience, I happen to have a skill and passion for playing

chess with who's in what role and who has potential, or who we

could grow, or who we could switch, or this person would

fit, even though their resume is not typical, or this person.

Doesn't fit. I just love the chess game, so they gave it to

me because someone needed to do it, and there was a not it hot

potato piece. But it's a part of my job that could easily be

handed over to the CFO, or we could outsource to an HR

consultant. So I think all the parts of our jobs we should be

thinking about as modules that could be mixed and matched. It's

also helpful if you want to think about: Do I want to work

remotely or do I want to work part time? What parts could you

spin off? How much of it could you spin off? How big does my

department need to be?

Such a terrific insight! I love where

this conversation has led to us. So my observation here, based on

what you just said is that for directors, long-time employed

individuals in schools, you can adapt in a smaller school

environment into different roles based on your specific strengths

and talents that you develop over time. Because we understand

that at most schools, when you become the head of tech, you're

not going to get promoted into the second head of tech. There's

not like another place to go. You have to expand based on what

the school needs. And I hear you saying that the school

recognized that you had a true talent and ability to hire, so

they provided you the opportunity to add that strength

to your toolkit, and you're describing it as a modular way,

which totally makes me think about the Atlas 360 and how it

is modular, and how it divides up technology leadership into

different areas of responsibility. I want to take

us back to something that you said earlier. You said the term

"school person" as though it's some kind of persona or avatar,

and Hiram was doing a little bit of like what a school person is.

So my question here is: You've worked in a variety of sizes of

school. Is the school person different depending on the size

of the school,

that's a really interesting question. I do think

smaller schools tend to have to have folks that do more things,

mainly because they don't have the same level of resources as

some of the larger school. I mean, one of the questions I

have for you, Barbara, you know, it's sort of tangentially is, as

the HR director, did they backfill some of your other

responsibilities or modules as you coined them, so that you

could do that and also keep the majority of your other modules

in the IT area? You're a perfect example of it right here.

Barbara Cohen, TLIS: Yeah, and I've been really strategic about

how to get what I needed so that I could expand into some of

these more administrative roles, and I'm by the way not the HR

person. I have nothing to do with grievances or benefits or

payroll or any of that. It's really just when we have an

opening, I help find talent and bring them in, which is such a

privileged thing to be able to be the first relationship

builder with any of our incoming teachers, I love that. Yes, so

it's a complicated answer because I set up a way to

backfill while other things were happening, and all of this comes

back to the mission of your school, which I think I'd love

to get to as well. I think we're headed there, but a few years

ago we needed to make some big budget cuts, and it was post

pandemic. Our population had kind of ballooned and then right

sized back down to small again. And we were going to need to do

some stuff around staffing. And we made the difficult decision

of where are we going to cut? Are we going to have to cut some

positions? And as a school at Brandeis, we made this very

intentional decision not to cut any teaching positions, maybe

one part-time TA position, but we did not cut anything that had

to do with program. Rather, we shrunk and right-sized our

administrative team. So, where we had a middle school dean, a

lower school dean, and a dean of Jewish studies and Hebrew as a

Jewish day school, we combined all of those into a single

position. Our head of school took over advancement and

development. Our admissions person took on more

communications pieces, and I was still doing what I do. But the

way that we were able to shrink some of that programmatic

leadership was that we hired for my first time in my career the

now assistant head of school who did those three jobs together

and I now share a full time administrative assistant a

program assistant so I have I wouldn't call her a secretary

she does all the purchasing and she's right now in the library,

right there setting up iPads, and she does all the substitute

teacher stuff. But so I share her with our assistant head of

school, so I got a lot of that administrivia stuff covered. The

other thing is this all was happening simultaneously to

moving to BlackBod and having a more. Integrated and complex

database system that had been run by an operations person, but

I convinced the school to hire a three-quarter time database

person who runs all things Blackbaud for us. Be very across

at other schools and other systems, and he also does all of

our integrations and a lot of the IT and help desk thing, so I

have a staff of put them together, and it's like a person

and a quarter. So I kind of staffed up, even though we

shrank a little bit. So that was helpful, and I use an outsourced

IT outfit for when we have network related issues or are

doing a big installation or network related things.

Kevin Warenda, TLIS: What's striking to me is that talking

back to what Denise has said about like who's a school

person, it sounds like your whole school gets it that you

made the courageous decision to shrink administrative bloat

rather than you know people on the ground working with

students, being a problem solver, not a problem creator. I

think is something that you put in around show notes and like

everything you're talking about to me, that's what that is.

Administrative person that helps you programmatically in the

library, setting up iPads. That's a school person, right?

Because there's a job to be done. It doesn't matter whether

they're a tech person or an administrative assistant or

executive assistant. Like everyone's pitching in, and in a

small school, kind of as Hiram said, it's maybe not necessarily

about the size. It's about the resources you have, and that

sometimes that is correlated. The smaller schools have fewer

resources, but sometimes that's not the case. Comes down to how

much money do you have? What kind of endowment do you have?

What kind of people do you have? I'd say what you've just

described is the perfect answer to Denise's question of what

makes a school person, and that's been my experience too.

School people are people that want to be problem solvers, not

problem creators, and just roll up their sleeves and get things

done, but also part of that, I think, I know you want to get to

like the mission and culture of your school. I think this is a

good opportunity for that too, because we all do that in line

with or try to align with what is our school mission and

values. So maybe you could talk a little bit about you know your

current school. What are the mission and values, and so what

are all those school people aligning to to realize that

vision?

Barbara Cohen, TLIS: If I were to be redoing my resume today

and had to write my educational philosophy, I already know what

the opening tagline would be, and it's been that for close to

the 30 years I've been doing this. And it would be, "Know who

you and your school are, and the technology will follow, and

that's very, very deeply embedded in my philosophy. And

it came from a specific place. Well, it came from a couple

places. First of all, I've done my entire career backwards. I

started as a consultant to schools with a business partner.

We would get hired by school districts and individual schools

to show them how to use technology and set up computer

labs and all of that, and I spoke at a lot of conferences,

and then I realized I wanted more stability and income, and

just to go deep with a set of people rather than a broad come

in and out of their lives situation. So I come to this

work with a consultant's mindset, which is I think partly

how I problem solve, but when I worked for Marine Country Day

School two jobs ago, we were tasked. My tech department was

tasked with a wonderful opportunity. I don't know if

this is even an opportunity schools would get anymore. Our

head of school, who was new at the time, said to us, "I want

the three of you to go find schools where the best

technology in the country is happening, and I will pay for

you to take a trip to go observe those schools, and you come back

and tell us what you found. I mean, who gets an opportunity

like that? It was dreamy. We did a 10 day trip to Kevin, your

neck of the woods. We started in New York City, and we went to

Connecticut and Rhode Island, and ended up in Boston, where

you are, Hiram, and we visited a variety of schools, and what we

found was it really depended on the mission of the school what

technology looked like. So, for example, we went to a very small

k8 school in New Haven, Connecticut, that was physically

located right along the river in New Haven, and I'm gonna really

date myself here, but the technology they had adopted was

they were all using Palm Pilots with the students with probes to

go measure salinity and different things about the water

right there. So they spent their technology budget on this device

that grounded them in the fact that they were focused on the

environment and the river. We visited in Connecticut, in

Stamford, Connecticut, a very small Montessori school, very

cool school. And I didn't at the time know a lot about

Montessori. Their technology was largely spent on video because

they spent an enormous amount of time filming individual students

for weeks on end, so that they could edit it all down and

present to the parent. We want to show you what kind of a

learner your student is, which I guess is a very Montessori

thing. So, video was the right technology for them. I worked at

a school before Marine Country Day School, Phillips Brook

School in. In Menlo Park, California, lovely school, and

they had a very grounded in Reggio Emilia philosophy

preschool, and their number one thing is I am kind. And Reggio,

as you may know, a big part of Reggio is documenting students'

work and learning and the process of learning, and then

communicating about that. So they had a whole rotating system

with their staff, where one person in the preschool was

always cycled out to be photographing students' work,

interviewing them, writing down documentation, creating

beautiful wall displays, and really weekly emailing parents

the documentation of their students' learning and what it

meant, so that technology and the money it cost for that

staffing model fit them. So those are all early experiences

I had about technology can look really different from school to

school, but each of those schools knew who they were, and

they spent their technology dollars accordingly.

Couple examples from my own school experience is that at

Marine Country Day School, which is a very progressive school, it

has I don't know how many students it has now, but it had

over 100 faculty, large K through eight school, very

prominent in the Bay Area, and the spring that iPads were first

released, brand new to the world, our head of middle school

said, "Okay, before summer, I want you to buy an iPad for

every single member of our faculty, so we can send them off

for the summer with an iPad. Go, and they were impossible to

source, so we ran around to all the Apple stores, buying up all

the iPads, sent them home with them for the summer, and then

came back in August and did this training that was like the

amazing race, but it was with iPads, where teachers in teams

had to go around to different parts of the school and try a

different app, or take a camera and photo and upload it, or

record their voice, or do all these things, because that's the

kind of school it was. They wanted to be the first, and they

wanted to go deep, and they wanted it to be hands on. So

that fit there. Here at Brandeis Jewish Day School, very

intentional. We use ancient Jewish values to inform modern

ethical problems. We're very much a school that grapples with

difficult topics. When we built our makerspace a few years ago,

we didn't bring in an architect and do latest and greatest, and

hire big consultants. We took an existing classroom and iterated.

We built our own tables and tore some things out and put some

things in. It was very homespun. And as things have evolved,

we've added because we wanted to be intentional and thoughtful.

And our former head of school used to always say, "With making

3d printer, for example, just because you can print something

up, should you? What's the cost? So grappling with the technology

as embedded into what we do. One more example from Brandeis is we

have a Jewish holiday called Purim. It's a spring holiday

that happens every year in the Jewish culture. It's a little

bit Halloween, a little bit crazy carnival, a lot of

storytelling and history meaning making. But most Purim

celebrations at Jewish organizations involve a

carnival, and for years our school hired booths. We'd bring

in those like pre-made booths, and you know, pop a balloon or

fish. When our makerspace opened, we thought this was the

perfect time to hack our carnival by making it a

cardboard arcade where everybody both created a booth and

participated in each other's booths, and it became a

school-wide celebration. So that's an example of where our

technology thinking aligned with our mission. There's a lot of

examples, but know who your school is, and the technology

will follow. I just want to add something that I think goes back

to the hiring piece, Denise, which is when you're looking for

your position, know who you are, and this is the whole "Are you a

school person? thing Hiram was talking about. Know who you are,

and the right technology position will appear. So I've

tried high school. I don't like working at high schools. I know

people love it and love the higher level thinking you can do

with kids and the teachers in a high school setting. I tried it

for two years. Not my thing. I also have been in jobs that were

more IT focused. I liked it, but I like the projects and the

hands-on stuff. I've tried big. I like small, and my two best

fits have been small religious schools at the very beginning

and very end, maybe of my career, which was a small

Episcopal school and a small Jewish day school. So the

religion didn't matter, but the values focus and the identity

and community feel of the two schools fit for me. So know who

you are, and the technology role will follow. That's what I.

Think I mean when I say a school person is a school person Hiram

at your school is going to look very different than a school

person at my school, but that's why it's so much fun to be in

the hiring piece because I can do the matchmaking piece.

Yeah, and when you're at your respective

schools, you know it when you see it.

Barbara Cohen, TLIS: Yeah, and you know it when you don't see

it.

Absolutely,

that might actually be even more impactful

is knowing when you don't see it. So much of what you just

said about knowing what your school is, who you are, is so

much of the work that I'm doing every day with professionals who

are really grappling with finding that intersection

between who they are and where they work, because all of us are

looking for that sweet spot, and it's not going to be sweet all

the time, but you want it to be a lot of the time. And I also

want to say that while you were talking, I wrote down what is

your uniqueness in your school because you were talking about

going on that school journey and how all of those schools had

such a unique approach to teaching and learning, and it

became what they were known for. So I wonder for people who are

listening here, if you are someone who is looking to work

in a school or are working in a school right now and you're

struggling with finding your footing, what is your uniqueness

that you're bringing to the role that you might not be sharing

with the community in a way that is making it obvious who you are

in the school? And like Barbara said, depending on the size of

your school, it matters. I promised myself that I would

delay mentioning this topic for as long as possible, but so much

of what you said about the complexity in schools in your

last stories is really bringing up for me the present challenge

in schools that exists, and especially in your part of the

country, Barbara, where parents are pushing back against some of

what we've worked so hard to build for the last 2025 years,

so tell me what you're thinking about this really interesting

time in schools and how the community we serve is starting

to be increasingly discerning about the exposure to technology

for their students, especially in smaller schools.

Barbara Cohen, TLIS: Yeah, and I was interested to hear about the

LA Unified announcement in the late spring about how there's

going to be no screen time for K through two and three through

five, very limited. I'm not sure about the specifics of what's

going on, but I think that's a flashpoint or a fractal to the

larger environment right now. It's so interesting having come

into this work when we were first building labs and bringing

in internet, the whole goal was whether to use technology and

how to get everyone excited about it and adopting it. And

then there was a whole middle part of okay, we're using it.

Are we using it well and intentionally and safely? And

now it's like just because you can ought you, and what are the

risks? And anxious generation has been a real part of the

zeitgeist. So we chose that book to read as a all faculty read

last summer. Our board of trustees read it. Then we

invited parents to read it as well. We actually had one parent

who bought a whole bunch of copies and gave them out to

parents who didn't have it. So really, our whole community dug

into that whole book's premise about we're not doing enough

supervision of the ways in which kids are using technology.

They're kind of in the wild west online and with phones and with

apps. And then on the flip side, we are over supervising them

when they're off technology and they are living in these

protected little shells. So that sort of last year became the

piece of this conversation and topic that you're mentioning

that we spent a lot of time on. So after we did the parent

community read, we had a all parent session from K through

eight, who came, and what was very interesting, it was the

head of school, the school counselor, and I. And by the

way, I think that's something that makes a school person is

someone who finds all kinds of partners throughout the school

community. So the three of us led a conversation about anxious

generation, and what we heard loud and clear from these

parents was they wanted rules and standards and to maybe adopt

wait until eight for phones and maybe cut down on the screen

time or maybe give their kids more freedom to walk to the

store, but they had no idea how to talk to the other parents

about it. They really were afraid to talk to each other. We

heard that, and it was surprising. But what they asked

for is, can we reconvene in smaller grade level groups where

you give us opportunities to talk about the specific

technology related issues in our grade levels, and maybe a

template or opportunities to practice talking to each other

and building community by grade level. Again, small school. We

combined some grades in a bigger school. I would probably do it

by one grade at a time. The school counselor and I came away

from that meeting thinking, really, they want a bunch of

meetings so we can get them to learn how to talk to each other.

And the head of school said, absolutely, this completely

aligns with what I'm hearing parents struggle with in a more

general way with this generation of parents, so that we did, and

we had four individual grade level sessions. Some were

readier to dig into this. Our sixth grade parents had a whole

separate meeting at a cafe and did a survey and decided what

everybody was already doing and came to us with a list of what

they want the school to do. So they were very squared away, and

like our middle elementary grades were like, we don't know,

we just it's too late. The kids already have devices, and we

don't know how to roll it back. And a lot of conversations about

playdates, but there was so much commonality. They all wanted

their kids to be happy, but they also wanted their kids to be

safe, and they didn't want their kids left out. So, like the

families who aren't allowing the kids to join the group chat were

clear, but the school counselor had to say yes. And you're one

of two kids in the grade who isn't allowing that, and there's

a social cost to not doing that.

So, how can you all talk to each other about what that actually

means. So I think that's the approach because we're such a

community-based school, and parents choose Brandeis because

of not just what the kids are going to get, but what the

parents are going to get in terms of community. It's

incumbent upon us to provide them with structured ways to

come together as a community to talk about technology. Well, I

think it's interesting in the chat. Denise had talked about

this idea of a trust relationship between the

technology leading a broader school community. And I don't

know about you, Denise or Kevin, but I know certainly at St.

Christopher's. I've been asked to present to parents about the

use of technology and how we tech leaders

can be a resource for our families because it

changes so much. And then on top of that, well, you happen to

have an Apple product, you happen to have an Android

product, you happen to have an Apple TV, you happen to have you

pick it, pick the flavor, and then on top of that, you've got

all the different variations within those different families,

and they're lost, and there's this thirst for support by our

families. What's the best way to support their children? I

usually start off by at least reminding them that this is the

first of many encounters you're going to have with at-risk

behaviors in the journey of your child. It starts with the tech.

This is a simple problem, you know. The lower grades, it

really, really is. Now, what do you do when you have to

introduce driving, staying up beyond curfew, alcohol, drugs,

etc. And it really is a great opportunity to include the tech

with the whole life skills and life coaching that schools can

provide throughout the years of a child's tenure,

Kevin Warenda, TLIS: Barbara, I think what's so important about

what you're highlighting here is kind of hearkens back to what

you said about the school should know what it's about, and the

employees, the staff, the faculty should know what they're

about. I hope that families are choosing schools based on that

identity and aligning themselves, because if the

school is now the place where we're all coming together as

community to try to solve these challenges, or to have the place

where we can lean, you know, I'm a parent, and if I'm not

courageous enough to say, "Well, I'm taking that phone away, it's

like I need to connect with other parents to talk about that

fear or what we're trying to accomplish. Let's do it

together. I just think that's such an important message that

you're sharing that if a school knows what its identity is and

what it's about, the people working in it know what it's

about, and we treat the families as a part of that community,

that's the best version of a school can be. And so it's a

refreshing perspective, and I'm glad you found a place where

that is true. And I hope others can take that message to their

schools. And as you said, technology leaders in particular

maybe are more inclined to want to seek out partners throughout

the school. Maybe that's just in our DNA. You know, we're always

looking for the connections. We're trying to wire things,

wire people, wire solutions. I think that's where you're

highlighting. IT directors can maybe uniquely solve that

challenge to help bring more stakeholders together

internally, but as Hiram said, then if you're also the person

being asked to connect with families and embrace that, bring

them into that community, tell them what the school is about,

and ask for them to really become a part of that. So thank

you for highlighting that important aspect of school

keeping and community building.

I totally echo what Hiram and Kevin said

here. Your embodiment of a relation first leader is coming

through in so much of what you've shared with us up to this

point, and I am just eating it up because I understand from so

many of the conversations that I'm privileged to have in

confidence that. That relationship part is the part

that really, really derails us sometimes, and everything that

you said talks about that relationship building part. And

one of the notes I made when you were talking about how you

addressed this really complicated time, and then Hiram

talked about like as leaders in technology, as school people,

we're being asked to present to the community. So when I think

about the persona of a school person, it also needs to be

someone who's comfortable leaning in to conflict in a

healthy and diplomatic way, and that untangling the complexity

of young people is the through line for everything that we're

doing, even if our job is technology, and that is so rich,

and that is difficult to put into a job description.

Barbara Cohen, TLIS: Yeah, like what I would like to put into a

tech director's job description are two personality traits. One

would be the ability to say I don't know, but I'm willing to

find out, and then the other one is being comfortable being

surrounded by people smarter than them, or another way of

saying that is to feel comfortable hiring your

weakness, and that's a lot about self knowledge. I mean, I was

not self aware earlier in my career to the extent I am. So

some of that is just time and service, but I think we've got a

lot of old souls out there who are new to the career who could

certainly embody that or be coached around that. But I wish

those two bullet points could be in there because the guy who

sits on the other side of my cubicle right here, he actually

comes from a project management background, so he's very much

like empty inbox end of every day. He puts dates in whenever

we have a conversation, whenever we meet, everything I said

becomes an action item, and I'm like out there, vision, idea

person, and he grounds me, and I need that person on my team. And

a lot of people hire people just like them, and then there's a

whole missing piece. So I think that's in there too.

Yeah, that's such a rich share.

I'm still struck by the feel comfortable hiring

their weakness. I think that's an amazing philosophy.

If you're building a team and it's a

school of players, we can't have everybody playing the same

position, right? So it makes perfect sense.

Kevin Warenda, TLIS: Absolutely.

Barbara Cohen, TLIS: We have a new head of school starting this

week. She's wonderful, and we're very excited. I miss my prior

head of school terribly, but I'm really excited about our new

one. And one of the things she's going to do with our team right

off the bat is we're going to do that self assessment about

locating your genius. And we did this a few years ago with a

different configuration of the team, and we found out we had

too many vision people and not enough detail people. I think

things have shifted around, but you can't. I mean, we all have

to do everything, but if you have no detail people or no

pragmatic people or no vision people, it's going to be out of

balance.

I love this assessment that you're talking

about because I'm a data informed coach. I use

assessments as the first step. Are you talking about the

Griffin Genius assessment by Pat Leezioni. Yep. Okay, I want to

mention that so that we can put it in the show notes. It's a

great assessment for those of you who are listening, who are

looking for some self-awareness tools, because it does help to

figure out where people and players should be in your

community. Powerful. Anything coming up for you, Kevin, on

some bullet that you would put into a job description.

Kevin Warenda, TLIS: I think Barbara already captured the two

that probably are most important today. Again, thinking back to

how we all started our careers, the IT director was expected to

be an expert in a very narrow field, and so maybe the benefit

of all that time now is that it's perhaps commonly understood

now that it's impossible for one person to know all that. You

have to assemble a team, but you also have to understand that

team. So I love that you've gone to diagnostic tools. With my

team, we've used the DISC assessment, which is a work

style assessment, and that's been incredibly informative for

me as a leader to see what are we missing, what are our

strengths, what are the approaches, and been encouraged

to use that tool within the school. If enough people at the

school have done it, you can go to a portal and actually put in

like, what are you working on, and and see what is the right

approach with that person to leverage their strengths and

yours. So like, using these tools is necessary now because

it's impossible for any of us to know how to do everything. It's

just too complex, and so I wouldn't add anything to what

Barbara already said. I think that the modern technology

leader needs to understand that they are not going to be the

smartest person in the room to be okay with that. To surround

yourself with people that know a diverse area of expertise, and

to highlight that, to celebrate that, and to connect with those

people, whether they're within your department or within your

school, being kind of connector in chief. I think that is the

job. So I would not add anything to what she's saying. And I know

Denise, as you said, like I love being a data informed leader in

some respect too, because it makes it easier. It doesn't

matter which one you use, probably, but find one. Find one

that works for you and your team or your organization. Align it

with your values. I think we did one as part of the ALI, the

Atlas Leader. Institute. I think we did a version of that too,

which really helped with the team dynamics.

Barbara Cohen, TLIS: We did.

Kevin Warenda, TLIS: This is a common thing for leadership

is to assess your team or yourself. You need to know

where you're starting and where you're coming from. So, everyone

on this podcast should take that to heart.

Yeah, that is really powerful. Thank you so

much, Barbara. Is there some question that we didn't ask you,

that you were wishing we would ask you. The one

Barbara Cohen, TLIS: thing I didn't give a proper shout out

to is it's not just within your team making sure that you're

well resourced and balanced, but I think it's so important for

those of us in this role, and especially newcomers. This maybe

goes back to your earlier point about advice when we pass the

torch on to the next generation: is do not be shy to build a

network with folks at other schools. Now, again, when I got

here, there was no Atlas. We were not pro. We were making

this up, and in the Bay Area, we had an amazing group that I'm

going to shout out called BaseNet. We are a list serve

with over 100 Bay Area tech folks, and every few years,

we're like, "Oh, should we move this to Discord? Should we move

this to Slack? And every time it comes back to no email works,

and we used to have like one or two meetups a year that were

basically meeting in San Francisco for a beer and burgers

and just fetching about our schools, but now we have

speakers and vendors come in, and topics, and it's a lot more

formalized. But I could not do this job without my BaseNet

people, some of whom I've known for decades now. One of our

beloved people who started BaseNet passed away last year,

and we had a whole memorial gathering at a bar for beer

because I think he started that. And there were so many of us

there; we hadn't seen each other in person in years, and it's

like having this extended department or family. So that's

the real like homespun thing. And I actually think a lot of

the early Atlas founders came out of BaseNet. Yep, come to

think of it, so very powerful to have that local network. We've

been in and out of each other's schools. We know who the person

who is an expert in Meraki is, or who knows about Veracross

versus Blackbaud, and I don't make any decisions without

running it by my basement people. And then, as a Jewish

day school person, there is a network called Prisma. It's the

umbrella organization of Jewish day schools, and we have a sub

group of ed tech folks in that. So during the pandemic, in

particular, we had weekly Zoom meetings where coming together

and saying, "How are you doing it? or "How are you dealing with

this? was hugely popular. One thing that drove me crazy in the

early days was none of them were members of Atlas. So I think I

helped make a connection between Atlas and Prisma. I know

Christina did a presentation to their heads thing on AI a few

months back, and it blew all their minds. And now we have a

more of a pipeline between the two, so that's great. And then

to watch Atlas grow and to become so pro-I mean, again, we

were making this stuff up, and now we have position papers and

salary surveys and certification and a leadership training

pipeline-it's so pro. I'm so proud of us that we now have our

Isboa and our national real organization with employees.

It's just thrilling. I want to say one more thing, just because

Denise, you are hosting this, and I know a word that you like

a lot is vulnerability, and we probably both like Brett Brown a

lot. Not every tech job is the right fit for you, and don't

take it personally. It's just a thing, and careers are long, and

you're gonna go through different parts of your life. I

came from a job where I was really demoralized. I had a

supervisor who every time anything didn't work. A

projector didn't turn on, or a microphone, or whatever. He'd

yell at me and tell me I was incompetent, and I'd go home and

cry. And it was terrible. I actually became incompetent

because I knew I was seen as incompetent. And then I moved to

a job where the head of school valued the work that we do.

And early in my tenure, and that was here at Brandeis, we had a

day where our network went down. I think there was an electrical

outage, and the email was down, and I was scrambling to try to

figure out what was going on. And I got a text thread from my

head of school who said, "I'm so sorry the network is down. I'm

so sorry this is happening to you. It must be really hard and

stressful. I'm here. What can I do?

Wow!

But that's leadership. Yeah,

that story right there reminds me of a book

called Multipliers by Liz Wiseman, and it talks about

leaders who multiply versus leaders who do the opposite of

multiplying. They detract. They demoralize. So that last story

is a leader who multiplies, and I must say, Barbara, that you

are a leader that is multiplying, and you've given us

a master class on what it is to serve in an independent school

community. I think part of my assignment here is to wrap us up

in some fun. Silly way, and I'm so fangirling over Barbara right

now that I'm having difficulty coming up with that. Hiram, help

me.

There is always in the zombie apocalypse. What is

your melee weapon of choice? Bill's about here, so I've got

to do it. In the case of you know the zombies coming across

the Golden Gay Bridge.

Okay, I know what my weapon is going to be.

Okay, go ahead.

I'm going to give them empanadas. That's my

weapon.

Kevin Warenda, TLIS: That's classic, Denise. Kill them with

food or kindness. I love it

because then they won't get me. So I'm going

to give them empanadas. So I'm going to come up with a weapon

that can make empanadas because we're abandoning reality here.

So if my weapon can be an empanada,

there you go, Mick Barber, you're up.

Kevin Warenda, TLIS: What's your melee weapon of choice?

Barbara Cohen, TLIS: Oh, what a fun question! I'm actually

wearing a bracelet that I think has it, and I wore it as a

costume to one of our, as I described, Purim days. We had to

all be superheroes, and I created a superhero with a big

hat, I could probably send you a picture, Captain Restart. So

right here, my bracelet says restart. So I'm coming up with a

melee weapon that is a restart button. It always works. That

works. There you have it.

Thank you, Barbara. This was so much fun.

I'm fangirling here. Thanks for the master class. Thank you,

Hiram. Thank you, Kevin, for joining me here and for bringing

this content to our Atlas community. I am humbled and

honored. This has been really a highlight. It's been a great

conversation.

This has been Talk Technology with Atlas, produced

by the Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools.

For more information about Atlas and Atlas membership, please

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