Buck Crockett, Director of Technology at Almaden Country Day School, joins the podcast to discuss his unique path from wilderness therapy to EdTech leadership. The conversation explores managing Mac OS application frameworks, the philosophy of age-appropriate screen time, and the critical role of IT in campus construction. Buck also shares insights on "peeling back the layers" of support tickets to solve human problems with empathy.

• Almaden Country Day School
• Orton-Gillingham Approach
• Jamf Apple Device Management
• Sophos Cybersecurity
• Barracuda Networks
• Harmony, Inc International Convention and Contest
• Christina, Bill, and Hiram in the sparkly jackets

Dan, welcome to Talking technology with ATLIS,

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. Christina Lewellen,

Hello everyone, and welcome back to

talking technology with ATLIS. This is Christina Lewellen. I'm

the president and CEO of the Association of technology

leaders in independent schools.

And I'm 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. How are you today?

Glorious, fabulous. Well, that's good to

hear. I'm slightly fabulous myself. I know

that our podcast listeners are not going to be able to see

this. Maybe we'll have to drop this in the chat. But I was

thinking about you guys this morning, because next week, I

head off for my international competition in my barbershop

harmony singing organization,

and you need us to come. Wait, where's my ticket?

Are we on stage? Where's the bedazzle?

Okay, this went off the rails. No, you are

not on stage. There is a live stream, so maybe what I can do

is I will gift to you the live stream access so that you can

see the video. But what was interesting is, I'm getting the

packing list together. I have a million things to juggle as a

past champion. I also have to perform on the past champion

show. I sing in a chorus. I have four kids that I'm responsible

for, two of whom are my daughters and then two other

college kids who come with us to these competitions. So I'm

tracking like everybody's costumes, everybody's

everything. And I pulled out the sparkle jacket today, yes, to

make sure that I had that outfit pulled together so the sequin

jacket, she is dry cleaned and ready to go. I did my fit check

and I sent it

to time out. Yeah, you got to keep yours.

Oh, I did get to keep mine. I was the

original owner.

I'm feeling the pain. I know seriously. I mean,

it's not like we didn't put in the effort. I

have them. They're in the Atlas storage

bins here in the office in Virginia. So I mean, I have the

tuxedo sparkle jackets ready for you guys to be reinvigorated and

brought out at key moments in ATLIS future. I will never get

rid of them. It's probably the best $10 I ever spent on Amazon.

I think we all need to wear them on a podcast once.

And that's the video that we use. That would be awesome.

That's

the 100th episode. There you go. Okay.

Oh, you guys, I'll ship them. Well, in

any event, first I have to wear mine for my contest, once it's

dry cleaned, then I can wear it for the podcast.

All the best to you there and Bill, we got to get

red shoes.

I did have red shoes on those that day that

my quartet was at our annual conference. For those of you who

are completely lost, Bill and Hiram dressed up like my quartet

with the sequin tuxedo jackets and came on stage you did not

have my red shoes on. Those are my favorites. They're very

comfortable. So those will be broken out next week for round

one of the Quartet semi finals. I'll be wearing those next week

too. I like a

smaller heel, though.

I want to see Bill in pumps.

Okay, all right, so that's it on that. You

guys always have to take it that one level. I think Bill is high

on his candy corn, which is another thing we should just

mention. Last year at this time, we were talking about candy corn

and how vile it is. Last year on the podcast, no and Bill never

forgets anything. So he's been dropping into our chat, our text

chat, these vile pictures of candy corn, which is essentially

wax, sugared wax. I

love candy corn, and I must admit, it reminds me of my

mother in law, who has passed, but she used to love it as well.

And I'd have a little bowl of candy corn in the house, and I'd

come back from work and it would be gone, and she would gesture,

she'd be like, I'm sorry, edible.

I have candy corn after I have a lot of good like

tacos or things with a lot of cilantro on it

that also tastes like soap. Yeah, I'm not a big

cilantro fan. Bill, you're like, the brother,

I swear that. I just never wanted you

are always here under my skin. Brother. I love it.

And our poor guest has no idea what he's gotten

himself into.

I know poor guest.

He's like, Oh my god, am I ever going to come on

this show? What's going on?

Let's go ahead and welcome our guest,

because now we have two things that we need to address with the

guest. I feel like we need, like, some kind of a referee or

tiebreaker. Please welcome Buck Crockett to the podcast. So glad

to have you here. Sorry for these crazy guys. Guys, but

Buck, we're glad to have you here with us today. You are the

director of technology for the Almaden Country Day School out

in San Jose, California. How are you

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on and

bringing in the Halloween food spirit with your candy corn

antics. It's been fun to listen to so far.

Okay, so how do you feel about the candy

corn? That's number one.

I mean, I haven't thought about how it's made.

Sugar is a big vice for me, and I just try to pretend it doesn't

exist. If I was that kid in that room seeing that bowl of candy

corn, yet it would probably be gone by the time the person who

put it in there returned.

Love it. Thank you. And did you ever make fangs

out of them?

I mean, I did all the candy corn play with, like,

vampires and stuff? Yeah, it was a good time see what

you're missing. Christina, you're just missing

out.

I feel as if I'm missing nothing. Hiram, so

number two, buck is, are you a cilantro person? I'm one of

those people where, like, it tastes like soap, like

it's, oh yeah, I don't have that gene, thank

goodness. Yeah, it's great. It's amazing.

All right. Well, getting on to the

important topics at hand, Buck, we've invited you here today.

We're excited to talk to you a little bit about how you bring

your version of technology leadership to your school. And

you know, my understanding is that you manage a pretty diverse

and complex IT infrastructure out there in the heart of

Silicon Valley. So let's start by having you tell us a little

bit about your school, because we would love to learn a little

bit more about Almaden Country Day School. How long have you

been there? What's it like? What kind of

students are a pre K through eighth grade

school, so four to 14 independent. One thing that

makes us unique relative to a lot of other day schools is we

have a program called the Learning Center, and that's for

we call it the TLC. It's got a cool ring to that, and that's

for students with language based learning differences, and it's a

neat, integrated program. But you know, the idea for those

students is, when they graduate, they have a sense of seeing

themselves as successful as learners. So it's been neat to

see that kind of grow in the last five years. We've started

that about midway through my time here, and I'm currently on

my 11th loop around the pattern of a school year here, we've

also done a lot of commercial building in the last five years,

and then just going through the wave of the pandemic. That was

pretty intense for me professionally, as I imagine it

was for a lot of people who do what I do in schools, going

through the process of making learning online and then trying

to get everybody back on campus learning as fast as possible,

which for us, was like simulcast. So those are a mix of

people online and at school learning through Zoom video.

That's what we called simulcast. So those are some thoughts that

come to mind when I think about my time here over the last five

years, specifically, and our school in general,

that's really awesome. So the learning

center program you said that is for language based learning

differences. Can you give me some examples of what that means

for the community where you're located?

Yeah, it's been really, really good for our

school. So a lot of our students there have dyslexia. I actually

have dyslexia, so that gives me this like, deeper meaning of my

work. I feel like I'm supporting it. Just need to be on the

support side of that equation as an adult with that neuro

difference. But for those kids, specifically, there's not a lot

of programs that have this Orton Gillingham curriculum approach

west of the Mississippi there's like one in Kansas. There's a

lot on the east coast of the United States. So that's what we

do. And we also, you know, as I said, this integrated model,

those students have a one to four ratio for their, you know,

mostly literacy instructions. And I'm not an expert at this,

but I kind of know what it looks like. And then for all their

enrichments, everything else, they're with the general

population. And so what that's done for our community is it's

just increased our I don't say the word diversity, equity,

inclusion, we use belonging. That's great for our belonging.

Our community has changed for the better since we've started

that program, and it's helped with our enrollment, and it's

helped us all be better educators for the you know, I

think the employees who work here as teachers, I

love that. And how did you come into this

role? Tell us a little bit about your background. Yeah.

So my background is pretty non linear. I feel

like that is maybe common in the tech director space. There may

be now, but I, to my knowledge, when I started this, there

wasn't like a college degree, like tech director college

degree. So I did my undergrad in environmental studies, and then

I'm like a minor in geology, actually, way back when, and

when I graduated, it was like in the wake. Of the Great

Recession, and there was just no jobs there. I was already

working as, like an outdoor professional, an outdoor guide,

doing what I would say a lot of people classify as, like extreme

support, sort of guiding, like ice climbing, rock climbing,

white water kayak and stuff like that. And that translated to me

working actually wilderness therapy. And then from doing

that, I actually switched and went back to school to become

like a special education teacher, and then I got a

master's in teacher leadership. I was living in Colorado at the

time. I got those degrees at Western State Colorado

University. I taught at a couple schools in Colorado, one in

Boulder, one in Denver, Denver, south. And then I actually went

to Alaska, way out in the bush for a year, which was a wild

experience in this tiny village of 400 Yupik people called

kelseag, Alaska on the Kuskokwim River. And I was there for 10

months, and I learned a whole lot about their culture and how

different schools can look in the United States. I knew kind

of going into that year, I wanted to get into ed tech, so I

was doing a lot of self study that year, basically putting

myself through, like, a computer science degree, kind of self

study style. After that, I moved to Silicon Valley and started

taking some night classes at the community college, kind of short

my knowledge and just make sure I was like, on the right track,

and then applying to tech jobs while working as, like a private

teacher for a family up the peninsula. And then one thing

led to another.

What sparked that tech thing? Oh, that's a

great question. The trigger for that was, you

know, my first year working as a special education teacher, I

realized like I had a knack for the tech support within my

elementary school teacher community, and I enjoyed it. I

enjoyed helping other special education teachers adopt Google

Apps and learn to use Gmail, learn to use Google documents

more than I enjoyed writing an IEP. I enjoyed being a teacher

of adults on the technology side more. And by my second year, I

just kind of had this realization, like, whoa. I'm

actually not that happy doing this job, but I want to, you

know, keep my foot in the education space. It brings a lot

of meaning to me being in a community where we're working to

educate our future generations. So by October, my second year in

the classroom, I was like, Oh no, this isn't for me. I still

had like, a year left in my master's, but I realized, like,

there's this whole like, ecosystem of Ed Tech, and at

that time, I actually didn't even know Independent Schools

existed. It wasn't until I got to San Jose that I realized

that, like, there's this whole other world of how schools are

operated, and that was really neat to explore. I think I'm

very much an independent school technology leader. Do you think

the ways in which we can be successful and in the ways that

we struggle work well for my leadership style,

I'm curious you said you're very much an

independent school Ed Tech coordinator, Tech coordinator,

in what way, as compared to your time in public school. Like,

what do you see as the big differentiators there?

I worked in three very different schools, and so I

realized, like, public schools are very different, but the pain

points in my second year, like, this was the biggest district in

Colorado, and I'm not going to name it by name, but I was

trying to run this software program called Alex, which is

still around so I could get this really good assessment data on

my students who you know, had specific learning disabilities

in math, and the hardware I had to run it on was so, so bad.

Remember when laptops were like, the size of, like textbooks,

when textbooks weren't online, like that big? So not like the

size of like they sit on a desk by themselves, but pretty big,

and they just couldn't run this web application. And the more I

tried to get new hardware, I felt like I was in an

oppositional relationship with my administration when I was

just trying to get computers that would work for the

students, and then the computer I was issued was in such bad

shape that I was trying to, like, do my IEP paperwork. They

just didn't have the processing power to run the web

application. The Ram wasn't there. And so I'd bring in a

personal Mac, and I would like, patch into an Ethernet port. And

so I got chewed out once for doing that, and then they

brought me in the second time, like their Ted tech person told

my boss. And they're like, if you do this again, like, we're

not going to renew you. And I was like, I'm just trying to,

like, get my job done. It was those experience that put kind

of a bad taste in my mouth. I didn't feel supported as a

teacher, and when I joined an admin team, I never forgot that

every day I come to work in this independent school, and I never

want a teacher to feel like I felt in those moments. I want

them to have the best software and hardware we can afford for

them to do their job. I'm incredibly passionate about

that. Being in an independent school environment where my boss

is the CFO, it's a lot easier of a conversation to have. We. Have

a much closer relationship. We work in the on the same campus

for the first few years. We're, like, in the same building, but

now I'm like, 32nd walk away in the larger, you know, urban

district I was in, like, I'd have to go to, like, a district

office to, like, talk to higher ups. Then I also feel really

supported by our Head of School, who's not my boss, but I could,

you know, open door policy there, like, I can go talk to

them. We're all in alignment. It's not a fight like, oh, we

need to get this for the teachers. Like they understand.

And in years where cash may not be available, it's not a

question of, like, Okay, we can't do this because it's not

available. It's like, How can I help make this possible? Like,

what do we need to do, from a business strategy perspective,

to get these tools for these teachers so that they feel

supported in the technology they're using in the classroom

to do their job. That's the difference.

That's pretty cool. Because I think

most tech directors are perceived as being the no

person, and now here you are saying that you're the yes

person, that you're trying to get it

done. Oh, absolutely, I'm very much a yes

person. I mean, there's times where it's like, yes might be

maybe, right? You know, we hire good teachers, and they make

good pitches about how this piece of technology is going to

grow their program. So I'm just giving them a tool that's going

to impute value, but I also have to do it in a way that it's

scalable, so that the care and feeding of whatever application

or piece of hardware we're giving them, if we do scale that

to our wider community, that we could do that without, you know,

having to add a lot of FTE on the support side. So those

conversations happen too, but we do our basics Well, I mean, one

technology has just changed so much from when I was a special

education teacher, close to 15 years ago. But the other piece

is we just have great technology. We're very fortunate

to have built our business around that, around making sure

teachers and students have access to that those tools. I

think you're the first guest that actually had

mentioned. You know, when we deploy an initiative or we

expand some technology, the conversations surrounding the

support of said pilot program in terms of an FTE, I tell you,

it's fascinating, and talking to schools and recognizing you

don't hear that component of the conversation, I think internally

within IT departments, they say that, but I've never actually

had anybody articulate it on the pod. So I appreciate you sharing

that with the community, because oftentimes, I think of Bill has

said this, we are a lot like the maintenance department,

facilities department. We keep things running in the

background. Nobody ever complains until it isn't

working. And you look at the number of buildings that get put

up in all these different schools, and they never

necessarily increase the facilities management side of

the house in terms of staffing. The same is true with it. We add

all of these new initiatives, but there's rarely a

conversation about, well, how much support do we now need to

support all of these new systems, or all this new

equipment that we have just deployed on our camps. I don't

know if it was intentional or not on your part, but I thank

you for sharing that. And it really struck me as we need to

be cognizant of that as an association as well, that with

growth, we need to have a commensurate conversation about

what is needed in order to support all of these systems?

Oh, absolutely. One thing I've learned related

to that topic. So this concept of, what does it take, from a

productivity standpoint, for an IT team to support a fleet of

devices, or say, 200 software licenses of this latest software

as a service app? You know, it's when you get in those, like

school wide numbers that that question is very relevant. In my

first few years, I thought that I could just go into a meeting

and show some spreadsheets and data and that people would

understand it. And what I've realized now definitely in the

last, like post pandemic years, sometimes the community as a

whole kind of has to take a shot at something that, like the

numbers say, like, maybe the numbers say you don't have the

productivity to support it, and you got to take the shot anyway,

and kind of go through that growth experience as a

community, and then realize, okay, we got to scale back this

app, or change the way we use it, or replace it with something

we can care and feed for. And then the community as a whole

goes through that learning experience, and that can be a

lot more powerful than me going into a meeting and saying, like,

Okay, here's how long it takes to do this one time in minutes.

And if we multiply that by x amount of devices or licenses,

it's going to take this many hours each school year. So we

need this much. FTE, for a leadership team that's not as

powerful in my experience, is sometimes going through that as

a community, you just grow as a community and work more

effectively after you go through those experiences.

One of the things that you said is you want to be

the person that can say yes often. So in. Today's

environment, how do you say yes, given the amount of vetting that

we need to do, specifically with everything going on with AI and

the different ways in which these companies are using the

information and the data that we're putting into them, how do

you get to say yes often when we've now have to deal with that

vetting level that you've talked about, and as you were talking

just there about getting the community involved in

understanding those things, I'm particularly interested in that

part of it, if that comes up,

absolutely so community components, I would

say, is partnership with Parents, especially in grade

levels where Tech's at home. So there's a vetting process there.

How is this going to be managed in the home environment? And

then the partnership with the teachers, everybody on the

education team, the administration, how are they

supporting a teacher who may struggle implementing this new

technology? I'll start it from the perspective of, how do I

conceptualize this technology? And a couple weeks ago, I went

to the Bay Area Leadership Exchange, then ATLIS put that on

if you go to their website with Ed Tech recruiting, and then

software as a service company knowing technologies, it was

really neat. I had to hang out with a bunch of people who do

what I do for a day and talk shop. I actually came away from

that with a different framework. So I was thinking probably too

algorithmically about vetting apps and AI before that, and now

I'm much more thinking, Okay, well, what's my philosophy and

what does it mean for students to be a learner in an AI

environment? Are we doing things as a learning community to

cultivate that philosophy, right? Are we partnering with

students and asking them, like, hey, how do you think you should

be using Gemini or whatever new browser that can automate tasks

for you, also asking the question, how do you think we

should use it as teachers or as administrators, letting those

answers kind of guide our process a little bit, and we're

not going to deviate from our mission like that's rock solid.

So we'd have those conversations through the lens of our mission.

You know, our core values as an educational institution, that's

a philosophy framework. But there's also this other side of,

how do we keep kids safe online when we can't control the pace

of the new applications that are dropping, right? You know, I had

a parent bring this up in a conversation yesterday,

actually, who works in Internet security? I think he works at a

company like Sophos or like a firewall company. It could be

barracuda, I'm not 100% sure, but the concept was allow only

frameworks at the application level for Mac OS computers. Our

MDM right now is Jamf. We can't do that natively with them.

There are other tools out there that I want to explore, but I'm

wondering if that will be an important tool in the vetting as

we kind of tune up how we vet products in the AI landscape,

we're one to one Mac for all middle school or Chromebook.

It's on that operating system that's easier to manage at the

application level, but not as much on the Mac OS side. What

I'm seeing more is, you know, a student will give VPN software

through like an alternate account on a browser and bypass

the filter to get an AI application running on their

computer, to use it in the way they want to use it. So, you

know, thinking, Okay, what steps we need to do to stop that

before it starts? And that is, in a way, that's kind of

distracting me from the vetting process. But there's also, I

feel like we're in a spot where the apps are coming out so fast

that I'm lately, I've been playing a little bit more whack

a mole than like, Oh, hey, there's this new project. Let's

implement something form our product. Let's implement a

formal vetting process for it so we can see how we can equitably

and responsibly use it in our classrooms.

So buck, if we could take a step back for a

moment, you mentioned something that I myself am familiar with,

which is the framework issue at the firewall with respects to

Jamf. And there may be other tech people here who don't know

the answer to that question or really understand what that

means. Could you help tease that out for us to see what exactly

is the issue that you were wrestling with,

absolutely so the end goal is, you know, we want

to have complete control over a student device, and so the

Chromebooks the simple model. So imagine a Chromebook. It just

runs Chrome, and then in your Google Admin Console, you're

controlling that Chrome web browser, so that really the only

account A student can log in there with is the school

account, which is going to be like their account. And so you

can keep it a pretty safe sandbox, and you can block

things from like extensions that aren't approved from being

installed, and you can block things like the Chrome Web

Store, so you can get a lot of control over that much simpler

device. And. That simpler operating system on the Mac OS

side of things we don't have as much control with our management

software, which in this case is Jamf, and there are others out

there, but there are none to my knowledge. And this really goes

back to Apple's design of their operating system and the way

they allow companies to make management software to manage

fleets of max at scale to at the application level. So imagine

anything that's running as an application on that computer. So

that could be any other web browser, that could be any other

like, say, VPN software that could be streaming software you

know your Spotify that you can control in an allow only design.

You say only these three apps can run. For example, Chrome

GarageBand and iMovie. Those are just like three random ones,

right? That are on the Mac OS and then anything else, whether

it's being run off an SD card that's plugged into the vice

whether it's air dropped into the Downloads directory, however

it gets there, it won't run. So that's the allow only framework

at the application level in a Mac OS environment, and that's

what I'm exploring. Okay? So it's that is different than the

filtering at the firewall level, filter at the firewall level or

preventing administrative access at the computer level, right,

right? And I think this is good practice for us, and you know,

I'd recommend it for any school, really, is you keep your user

account standard so that people can't install any software they

want. But that doesn't stop people from running software

outside of the Applications folder or in another browser.

That's the other thing. Web browsers have just changed so

much in the last three years, but definitely the last five.

And you know, extensions do things that separate

applications used to do. If you've watched anybody on

YouTube, they're all showing their VPN of the week and

telling their users why they need it. And there are

legitimate uses for those. And you know, a student bypassing a

web filter is not one.

So my understanding buck is that you

have kind of a complicated system that you're running, and

in particular for ages four through 14, as you mentioned. So

can you tell us a little bit about the ecosystem that you

have built at your school. What is interesting to me is that

you're dealing with kids that are relatively young, and so I'm

curious how you think about technology when your focus is on

the younger grouping of kids. You know, because it's not like

you have an upper school where this tends to be more of these

conversations, I think, in terms of technology. So I'm interested

to just hear a little bit more about your ecosystem and kind of

how you think about younger learners.

So starting at the four year old level, there

are no screens for children there. It's a play based

program. It's built on multi Century learning, so when a kid

is at a station that say it's a sheet of canvas that's purple

with pockets of different colors, and each one of those

colors has a letter in it that corresponds with that color. So

the purple pocket has a P in the pocket, and the red pocket has

an R in its pocket, right? And you have to do a different fine

motor movement to open each one of those pockets. That's what

our pre K program looks like, and it's very analog as it

should be.

And kind of what age does that sort of

evolve?

The real evolution isn't for a handful

more years for neurotypical students, it's that third grade

year where they go from learning to read to reading to learn. And

that is where we introduce, you know, one to one Chromebook and

kind of start tip toeing our way into more screen time at school

for learning.

Is that the same for you guys, too, Bill and

Hiram, is that roughly the same age frame for y'all school.

At our lower school, we have a break in the

devices so but if I'm correct, you start with a Chromebook with

the younger students.

That's where our one to one starts. But we may

have a makerspace teacher or a technology teacher go and do a

push in Lesson in a first grade classroom where they're doing

like, say, a geometry activity on iPads. And so that's a little

separate from a built in regular use of screen time as part of

the curriculum. The social emotional learning is a higher

priority at that grade level, teaching kids to interact in

person. But even at our higher level, like we don't want in

middle school, like we block chess.com at school, I want kids

outside at recess. We can give them chess boards. They can play

chess in the physical realm and socialize and gain that

socialization skill set that is more important than the

analytical skill set they're going to gain from playing chess

online. Line against a player who's in their grade level

at school, we focus at primary school, which is for

us, pre K through three, we focus a lot on, like the center

activities, the handwriting stuff, all of the tactile, gross

motor type stuff that you need, as you talked about with regard

to reading, so on and so forth. But one of the things when it

comes to devices, we actually introduce iPads at that lower

level, and that has to do with their fine motor skills, with

keyboarding, with not having to think about those pieces as

much. We're one to one pre K through 12. Oh, interesting. Our

one to one model at our primary school is iPads, pre K through

three in a in school model, only when they get to fourth grade,

we issue them MacBook Airs, and at fourth grade, it's still

mostly in school. They really don't start taking them home

until fifth grade. And we build programming experience around

the different ways you can use and interact with those devices.

From that gross motor, you know what I mean? More app based just

touching different things. And then, you know, when they get to

the middle school with the laptops, the biggest thing we

have to teach them is not to touch the screen,

right? We run into that too. Man, oh, gosh,

yeah,

because they're so used to that, but it's an

interesting break. It's one we're always looking at and

considering, but it goes developmentally with the way in

which our program is structured and set up.

And back here, it's a Chris, we're one to 1k,

through 12, we're Chromebooks in our lower school, and then bring

your own model in the middle and in the Upper School, and then

we're actually making a move next year, maybe the latter part

of this year, to have iPads in K through one, mainly because the

teachers are really hoping to get more creativity moments with

the iPad than they are able to get in the Chromebook. The Yogas

are just too chunky for the little hands, and they prefer

the iPad as the tool of choice for that, and so we're going to

make that switch for them. Similarly, we are what I call a

residential Chromebook model in the Lower School, they don't

leave the classrooms. The only time that they actually left the

classroom was during covid, when we actually assigned them out to

the students so that they could do the one to one learning that

was being done at home.

I should clarify we have for the teachers in

kindergarten through first grade who want them, they can have

like a station set, so maybe six iPads in their classroom. So

saying there's zero that's not unless they were brought in for

a specific activity, isn't 100% accurate, but the use is so

minor that my theme is kind of the same in those first few

years. What I'd be curious from your guys's perspective at your

two schools, though, is, do you think having tech in those pre

reading years. Do you think that detracts from students ability

to learn, to socialize in the physical realm?

For us, it's very planned out and deliberate.

They're not just open, free to use. I mean, so if you're in a

pre K K, and you've got various center activities, if you've got

different things that they're structured learning experiences

where those tools are used in that moment. It's not just a

free for all, where kids picking and choosing when they're using

that. It's definitely based more in that learning model, that

learning philosophy that's used at that level.

Got it? Yeah, no, I'd say our kids uses in

alignment with both your schools at those grade levels.

The only other thing that I'm constantly

engaging in conversations with our teachers about is is the

digital version of the lesson that much better than, say, the

analog version of the same lesson, you know, where you're

also getting some of the tactile and some of the fine motor

skills and gross motor skills that that is needed to

manipulate mathematical manipulatives or coins or

creating groups and sets and things of that nature. I think

you do get some additional value adds to the analog component

that can't be matched in the digital realm. But by the same

token, you know, it all depends on what your objective is

so Buck it's interesting. You're where you're

located in the Silicon Valley, and probably you have some

interesting parents in your parent community. What is your

overall kind of approach or take on some AI stuff? Where do you

guys stand in that part of your journey? At the moment? How are

you thinking about AI?

So I'd say my core thinking of AI is on the

philosophy side, like, what does it mean to be a learner in this

new world? My generation was like the bridge generation,

where your music was on a CD player or a tape player and

everything was a single use. Device. You look at your phone

now, and you could look at probably 10 apps that were 10

different products back then. So I saw that bridge to that new

world happen. So AI is kind of doing that. You know, for our

kids, they're the bridge generation to AI, especially

some of the older students, any kid in middle school, I'd

certainly classify as the bridge generation to AI, they will have

known a world where you are not an AI learner, and now they're

figuring out what it means to be a learner in a world where if

your teacher gives you an online test, you can open up a web

browser that will do that test for you and get you a passing

grade, probably better than what you could do if you didn't study

the material. And on the other side, that student can choose to

like use AI as a tutor to help patch holes in their own

knowledge as they study for an exam. So I think now more than

ever, as a school, you want to be teaching students to use AI

responsibly in a way that it helps them with their

educational journey and doesn't take away from their educational

experience. We're absolutely partnering with our parent

community on that.

That's interesting. Do you get pressure

from them to move faster than you want to, or are they more

concerned? You know, on a scale of, don't do it at all, I'm

super concerned to like, why aren't you guys moving faster?

Like, where do your parents generally fall? I'm sure it's a

mix

for an easy round number. So we got about 1000

parents right in around 500 different households. The

parents who come to ACDS actually, they're coming here

because we are a low stress, high opportunity environment.

And so a parent who wants us to use AI in a way that is in line

with that philosophy, we want to have a deeper conversation with

and figure out what that looks like for their child, and if we

were to expand it to a class or a grade level or curriculum, a

parent who wants us to use it to say, like, accelerate learning

in a way that it's not developmentally appropriate for

the child, they might not have a right fit for our school and our

philosophy. So, you know, I think it's a matter of keeping

the dialog open, meeting people where they're at and, you know,

kind of going on that journey together. But what doesn't

change is the school's mission and philosophy and the way we

cherish childhood.

Can you tell me a little bit about what your

day to day is like? You're the director of technology, and that

means a lot of different things at different schools, so we talk

about that a lot here on the pod, and also I know what the

follow up will be from the guys, so I might as well just step on

their toes and ask it, what does your team look like? Are you a

lone ranger, or do you have support?

So the day to day can be very different. If I'm

involved in a commercial construction project and like

have my hands in what type of cables going into the building,

or when that project gets finished by the contractor and

hand it over to it. That is very intellectually stimulating. I

like that work, and it's also probably also very stressful. At

the same time, I've had two years where I haven't done that,

but I had, like, close to four years where I was in that world,

and then we're preparing for another, like, kind of big

project that I can't go into too much detail on this in this

public of a space, but it's in the ramp up stage right now. So

that, suffice to say, like, what's going on can change.

Like, there's variety. It also there's a pattern of the school

year, right? So that, I would say, is kind of the most

predictable at this stage in my career, and there's the starting

of school year, and the end of school year is definitely my

busiest time. And those are times where, like, Yeah, I kind

of expect to work nights and weekends to make sure our level

of support for our teachers is at the level I want it to be. I

want those teachers to feel like they're ready for the start of

the school year. If they're in that sort of school year, the

Tech's not an issue for them either. That means I'm working

more than I want to be working. Summer is also now our our

busiest season, because we have a growing summer camp program,

and I want to see that in my mind, our summer camp enrollment

should be what our school year enrollment is. It shouldn't be.

You know, for parents who want their kids doing cool things in

the summer. We have a facility to support around 450 kids. We

should have around that many kids in our summer camp program,

but to build that and support it from the tech support side,

where it's, you know, each week's kind of like a new start

of the school year, because these camps are like one week

rotations. That's a lot on the support side. So that's very

busy for me, too. In those kind of non busy times, I feel like

that's where I'm like, closer to one FTE, and working more normal

hours and coming into the office. If there's any, like,

high priority tech support that I need to weigh in on or help

with, or even work on myself, I'll be doing that. I. Also work

with our facilities team, kind of hand in hand on a lot of our

our building infrastructure, building management systems. So

there could be a facilities issue that like, oh, this

building's like, HVAC system runs on a server, and we're

trying to figure out if it's a hardware software issue. I may

be involved in those kind of conversations. It's

cool that they involve you with that.

Years ago, we did some research at ATLIS that basically showed

that if construction projects happened without the tech leader

at the table, it was going to cost a minimum of 10% over the

total cost of the project in change orders. And oops, we

didn't think about that, right? And so it's kind of cool that

you're saying that sounds like it's baked into the culture at

your school with the secret project you're working on, or

that you're gearing up for, you know that you're part of these

conversations early, which is pretty fabulous and not always

the case. Yeah,

yeah. It's so critical. I'm glad you mentioned

that as a component. I would say it could be more than 10% if

you're building like we build if you're trying to make the

classroom of the future with a lot of tech. You know, a lot of

cables in the wall, a lot of infrastructure, the cost to

reopen all those walls and put all those cables in that you

didn't run, or put infrastructure in that you

didn't do when a building was going up or being remodeled.

Yeah, it could certainly be over a million dollars at a $10

million project level,

or even just an eyesore, right, like when

you're running those wire trackers,

oh yeah, you want things to look good, yeah,

yeah, yeah. Because after the fact, you're

like, Oops, we didn't run this thing, and then suddenly there's

these ancillary we

got ranks way, yeah, bummer. But

also, like, material science, I mean, I

could go on knowing what material the building's built

at, and then having an idea of, like, Okay, how do radio

frequencies propagate through that material? If you have an

understanding of that you can get, I would say to the 80th

percentile of what you get, or what you do get when you bring a

team in to do like a network audit, to decide where all your

access points should be in a new build or a remodel, just by

knowing the material science at a basic level, like radio

frequencies don't go through metal very easily. They go

through glass, just fine, those sorts of things and building up

from there.

So do you do all this by yourself? I was

gonna say drum roll. How big is your team?

We effectively have like, a 1.5 team. It's been

between 1.5 and two, including yourself, yeah, including

myself. So, oh, actually, I'm minimizing too much. So as our

school has grown, the people who run technology applications as a

day job has grown. So when I first started here, like I

pretty much ran our student information system, and now we

have basically a person and a half who does that, but with the

way we use the student information system is much more

complex than where we did when I started here, and our

enrollments higher. So that's, you know, you could count that

as a number member of the team, right? We have about one and a

half ft on marketing communication, so making sure

all our communication is clean, making sure our website looks as

good as we can possibly make it, and the spirit store, like all

the branded gear we sell, so that's a big tech piece, too,

but when it comes to day to day operations and the portfolio of

education apps, the portfolio business apps and tech support,

yeah, we're at about 1.5 and the way it's broken down at our

school is I'm doing the majority of the Operations Support, and

then we have someone in more wearing the Ed Tech hat, who is

managing that portfolio of Ed Tech apps and then interfacing

with teachers more directly on, you know, making sure they're

getting the value out of those. So I'm still in those

conversations, but I'm not driving it daily, and that's

where I'm just so grateful for the team I have and the people I

work with, they add a tremendous amount of value.

So I'd love to just ask you about, you know,

you've mentioned this idea that tech problems aren't always tech

problems, that sometimes do you have to kind of peel back a

couple layers to actually get to the core issue that you're

juggling. You know, with a younger student audience, then

you have the adults we always talk about on this pod, how

complicated and enterprise that can be when it comes to

technology, not like me, where I just have adults on my system.

So you guys have got a lot to juggle. So how do you sort of

unpack, you know, when you come across a technology problem or a

challenge at your school, talk us through how you think

about that. It's something I wish I would have

learned earlier, and I think I'm good at it now. I'm not an

expert, and what it is is being able to communicate with people.

Well, the metaphor I would use is like, imagine a conversation

with someone is like you're pulling on a rope back in. Forth

with two knots in it, right? If you're communicating at an

expert level, it's a two way street, and you're both trying

to untie those knots and then pull that rope in the same

direction. That's expert level communication. I would say I'm

good at communication, and depending on where you're at,

you're explaining how something works to people. It's always how

something works in a way that they can understand it at the

level they're at, right? And so you may have to, like self

assess through that conversation process where they're at. When I

was a sped teacher thinking, oh yeah, I want to get on the tech

support side, I was just 100% focused on learning all the

fundamentals of how tech works. It would work in my home lab and

like, install Linux systems and set up servers, and I would

study network infrastructure. And that really did give me a

good base on how things work at a fundamental level, on the tech

side of things, but it didn't help me in these situations

where you have something that manifests as a tech problems.

It's actually not, you know, in a school that can manifest at

any like kind of level within the community, so that can

manifest in a student, a parent, a teacher, an administrator. So

then going to kind of what you're talking about, the

peeling back the layers. And that's where I'm sure the folks

listening here do what we do in your mind. You probably have 10

examples. Let me think of one from like just ticket talk this

morning, where I meet with a person on my team and we talk

through the help desk tickets that we're trying to get closed

by end of day Friday and make these users feel supported. We

have an application that we have to get two things done to get it

working for that user the way we want it. First on the back end

of that application, we put in that user's email. They have to

click on that email. After that's done, then we can, like,

set up how they use that application. So if that user

doesn't click into that email, we can't do our job. So then we

have to make the decision, okay, what do we do? How do we use our

time? Do we go find that user? You know, maybe this has

happened three times already, and for their job, it's an

expectation that they use this software, right? But they still

haven't clicked into that email to activate it and get us to

step where we can get them the software they that next level of

like, specific software they need. So then you have to

decide, okay, do you go to their supervisor right away and say,

Hey, this person's not meeting expectations. What do you

recommend I do? Or is it more time effective to just go to

that person in their plan period, open up their laptop, do

that task for them, and then open up your laptop, get them

that software they need, open it up for them, and then go back to

your office, write up the notes, close the ticket, and then write

a quick email to the supervisor and say, Hey, this is what

happened. I just want to make you aware of it. Those are the

types of situations that problem isn't at all a tech problem,

right? But those sort of things happen at every school, and I

imagine they happen in the corporate workforce too. That's

where the communication piece comes in. You know, there could

be something going on with their user, of why they didn't open

the email that I totally don't understand. Maybe they had like

Lasik eye surgery and their eyes haven't healed yet. Or maybe

they had a dramatic life event and they're not firing at all

cylinders anymore, or for this period of time, and that's just

like manifesting as a tech issues. It's not a tech issue.

So we we have to find that balance between, okay, how do we

get our job done? And also not get tied into what could be an

HR issue or, like, a personnel issue. I

love that. I think that in a lot of ways,

that means that it's not just communication, but there's a

certain amount of empathy and also just making those

decisions, weighing whether or not it's worth it to dive into

it or if it's better to just solve the problem and reduce the

friction. In this particular case, I love that. That's sort

of how you think through that. And it's interesting, because I

always say to my girls when they're driving, they're young

drivers, they're in their 20s, and they'll be like, Oh, that

guy, get out of the way. And I'm like, you don't know. You don't

know if that person is on the way to a hospital or just got

fired or just lost an animal like, you don't know what

they're going through. So that kind of empathy from a tech lens

is an important reminder, I think, to our entire community,

absolutely so before we wrap up today, I want to also come back

to where we started, if I could buck, you know, you mentioned

that you started your journey down this maybe unlikely path as

someone who is kind of outdoorsy, you know, you

mentioned in passing that you were into some Extreme sports

and that you kind of began this journey in, like a wilderness,

sort of space. So I'm curious. Usually, if that's something

deep in you, it lasts and it sticks with you. So is that

still something that you do to try to unwind from these long

hours, or these stressful periods that you have at school?

Are you still. The type of person who tends to try to get

outside as much as you can. Is that a stress relief for you? A

hobby?

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a parent now. I have a

four year old,

no stress, no stress at all.

Yeah, well, I have this sacred responsibility

to like be the best father I can and husband for my kid's life,

but certainly their journey to adulthood. And so that's changed

my risk profile quite a bit. So I don't I used to, for example,

do a lot more whitewater kayaking at like, the pretty

high extreme level and danger level. I don't do that anymore,

and I used to do quite a bit of rock climbing also at that level

too, and I'm doing a little more rock climbing now, but much more

at the like this is totally safe. You're in a very safe rope

system. It's safer than driving sort of environment. I'm a very

active, fitness driven person, and I could never, I wouldn't

say never, to say never. It would be very hard for me to

work out in a gym, and those are kind of far away from where I

live. I'm fortunate to be kind of in a valley on the western

slope of the Santa Cruz Mountains. And so I'm so lucky.

Like, on Tuesday mornings, I'll wake up at five and, like, do

intervals up a 3000 foot mountain called them, and I'm

and then, like, on Thursday mornings, I'll try and run, like

a half marathon trail run, but my knee has been giving me some

trouble, so I only did like 10 miles today. Miles today, but I

just have a body where, like, I need to move and I need to,

like, do a lot of aerobic activity to feel normal. So my

normal is different than a lot of people's. And I also bike to

work. So that's like 10 miles, five miles each way, but that's

also at a very like, conversational pace. It's very

minimal workout, but still, like, gives me more time to move

my body and just connect to the environment. So yeah, in those

ways, those pieces are still a part of me. And I'm stoked to

have this job I have now where I get to turn the intellectual

problem solving gears. I really enjoy the problem solving nature

of the technology work I do. So getting to do both of those

things is pretty fun for me.

I think that's a perfect way to put the

tech stuff. I don't know about you guys, Hiram and Bill, do you

guys consider yourselves the first bullet on your job

description is problem solver? It's pretty good way to put it.

You guys pretty much do that and exercise that muscle all day,

every day,

every day.

Yeah, the muscle I'm not exercising is the one

where he's running the amount that he's running.

Because that's just absurd. We'll leave

that to Hiram, exactly. That's

what happens. You know, you get married, you have

children, frontal lobe kicks in, and self preservation follows.

Oh, totally, totally. It's like, man, most

people's frontal lobes develop by the time they're, like, in

their late 20s. I think for me it was like later 30s. So I

probably have, like, a 10 year frontal lobe development delay.

I think I'm still waiting. I know I don't

think Bill has finished this

yet, but I think I'm probably in the 80th

percentile. Now,

we typically ask, you know, what is your melee

weapon of choice in the zombie apocalypse, but given your

outdoor experience, what is your gotta have tool when you're out

and about camping? So

when I worked wilderness therapy, like we

would do, like bow drill, permanent fire making, and like,

cook all our meals with fires we made with sticks. So if I got to

have any tool in a situation like that, or, like any outdoor

situation one, I wouldn't have shoes with laces, because those

like you can make Pete cord out of and make a bow for a bow

drill, and then a Leatherman, like a Leatherman, is just an

incredible tool to kind of get into problem solving, like, you

need food and water, right? And, like, fire. With a Leatherman,

you can get to fire very, very quickly if you got shoelaces on

your boots. And then you could make, like, 100 string traps in

good weather in like a week. So you're not, like, trying to,

like, get a big animal, you're just trying to get a bunch of

small ones. So yeah, the Leatherman gets you there

faster.

I would not have picked either of those

things. I don't think I would have picked being in the woods

first and foremost, but I got it shoelaces, important,

and the Leatherman is a multi tool. It's

like a Swiss army knife with pliers.

It's a great tool. Got mine at home.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for hanging

out and chatting with us today. Buck, it's been a pleasure to

have you on the show with us. Thank you so much for sharing

your perspective. Keep us posted on how everything's going out

there with your school. It sounds like you guys are running

a really great operation.

Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure talking

with you guys today.

This has been talking technology with ATLIS,

produced by the Association of technology leaders in

independent schools. For more information about Atlas and

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