Dominic Salerno, IT administrator at St. Bernard's School, discusses his journey into ed tech, highlighting the value of traditional teaching methods alongside technology. He shares insights on St. Bernard's philosophy of cautious tech adoption and how his involvement with the ATLIS Leadership Institute (ALI) and Technology Leaders in Independent Schools (TLIS) certification has shaped his professional growth and confidence in the field.

Resources

• St. Bernard's School
• ATLIS Leadership Institute (ALI)
• Technology Leaders in Independent Schools (TLIS) certification
• Ruvna

Nick welcome to Talking technology with Atlas,

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

technology leaders all through a unique Independent School lens.

We'll hear stories from technology directors and other

special guests from the Independent School community,

and provide you with focused learning and deep dive topics.

Everyone this is talking technology with Atlas. My name

is Peter Frank. I'm the Senior Director of certification and

operations for Atlas.

And I am Bill Stites, the Director of

Technology at Montclair Kimberly Academy.

And I'm Hiram Cuevas, Director of Information

Systems and Academic Technology at St Christopher school in

Richmond, Virginia. Welcome

guys. So we're on a short week. We had a holiday

this week, Memorial Day. I hope you all had a good time, and we

were talking about vacation spots. Curious, do you guys have

a place you all like to go? Probably not for something like

Memorial Day. But is there like a retreat, like a thing you like

to do when it's like, Okay, I just need a break. I need to get

away. Do you have any sort of off the radar place you like to

go to get a break? I

wouldn't say off the radar, but what I would say

is off the normal track of when you would go. I like going to

shore towns, beach towns off season, when there is no one

there, or a limited number of people there, maybe there's even

limited things open. I don't really even mind that. It's

like, you want to hit those places that all the people that

live there year round go, because, you know, those are the

places that know. They know what's going on. They're there

for everybody year round. They're not just there for the

peak season. So one of the places that my wife and I

actually went last fall, late fall, was up to Algonquin main

and I say that because ogunqua is hopping in season. But when

you get into those cooler fall months and you get up to Maine,

you're definitely not sticking your feet the water, that's for

sure, right? You walk around and you know, you notice not all the

hotels are open, not all the B and Bs are open, but there's

just something about being in a place like that, where it's a

little calmer, it's a little easier. I grew up down the

Jersey Shore in the summers, and my favorite month down the

Jersey Shore is late September, early October. If you could put

me down there at any point, that's when I'm going for

me, it's anything that has to do with trails,

whether it's in the mountains or in the desert, like last summer

in Arizona, my wife and I love hiking. You put me out on

trails. As a former cross country runner, I can go for

miles and miles and miles, and I don't need to see anybody other

than my bride. And it's just a great way to reconnect with

what's important, look around and take in all of the nature

and the wonder. That's a great way to clear the mind.

Beautiful.

I love that part of the reason I ask is I don't have

a go to place like that, so I'm taking suggestions. There's

always

the at here in Virginia. It goes all the way up

from Georgia to Maine, so you can pick up a trail anywhere

along the way,

right the Appalachian Trail. Which people

do? Have you ever done the whole thing?

No, no, no, no, no, that's a major commitment.

How long

typically, what would you prepare for to do the

whole thing? I don't think I could be working. I'd have to be

retired, right? Most likely that challenges me, the no showers. I

know there's stations along the way and all that kind of stuff,

but it's not even the food or the exercise which also

challenges me. But none of it, as much as the no showers would

get to me,

especially if it's in the summertime when it's

exceptionally humid, right?

Well, our guest has been waiting patiently. We are

super happy to have him. He is the Information Technology

administrator at St Bernard school in New York City, and he

is Dominic Salerno, welcome, Dominic. How are you? Thank

you for having me here. It's been good.

Absolutely thanks for being here to just help us

get started. Dominic, we talk about how every technology

leader has their own origin story, and there are often

similar themes, but there's always unique aspects to you

know how someone became a independent school technology

leader, since there isn't really any sort of bachelor's degree or

formal program to prepare you, so what's your story of how you

became a indie school technology leader?

I kind of fell into it. It wasn't like an

intentional move, sure. Maybe similar to you. Bill, like I was

an artist. I don't say I am an artist. I know some people

correct me when they're artists like, you never stop being I

feel like there was a time where it ended and I wasn't really

doing that well as an artist. And I was also working in

nonprofit, so Joe, I was doing technology for that organization

as a kind of like a side hustle. Yeah, and then as time went by,

I needed to kind of pick up my career game. I met my wife, got

married, and I'm like, I'm pretty sure she wants a husband

who could actually make a living. And one of the things

was I got into the Department of Education. They used to do

outsource and contract companies to do service at the schools,

and I was one of those guys for about less than a year, and I

had met someone during that time that was a director at an

independent school, and he offered me an opportunity for a

job. I took it, and I started working in independent schools,

and then I realized, man, I really love this gig. This is

something I want to keep doing. So I've been, pretty much since

2015 been working in independent schools, various different

schools, over the years, but currently st Bernards,

and it's st Bernard's. I said St Bernard

like the way we talk about the dog.

Yeah, they pronounced it the British way,

okay. But yet, we do have a mascot, and we call it the Saint

Bernard, yeah, figure that out. All right. And we also have an

alligator, but it's not the mascot on pictures or anything,

but there is an alligator and it's associated with the school.

Wow.

All right, that's a lot. I feel like if I let you

keep talking, it just get weirder and weirder. That's

fantastic.

We're an interesting community. It's fun.

I love them. Yeah, it sounds like it. It's

Catholic school too, right? No. Oh,

so it's Anglican. It does have religious

roots in the name, but no, we're not a religious school at all.

I'm

curious with your artist background, and as much

as we talk about technology being so ones and zeros, have

you ever had a moment in your role as a technology leader

where you thought, oh, kind of like art? Has there ever been a

moment where it's called back to that? I

kind of had an epiphany moment, maybe like a

few months back, I was talking with my director, and he was

saying, when he processes a problem, he always works from A

to B to C to D. And I told him, I do not think that way, and we

have like, a back and forth about it. I'm like, I go from A

to D to figure out how B got to C to D, right? Artists just

don't think linearly. They just, you're in a cloud, and you kind

of just bounce around till you get to where you need to be. You

know, Dominic,

one of the things that I think about is when I was

taking my art classes, couple of the areas where, again, it's

been 30 plus years, and ironically, I ran into my photo

teacher coming out of a hardware store in town from 31 years ago,

and we started chatting. It was hilarious. But the things that

were still resonate to me is like, from a tech perspective,

designing our portals, looking at how you do layout, how you

look at color choices, how you look at arranging the page. So I

mean, it's not the fine arts, it's not the painting, it's not

the drawing, which is what I'd like to focus on when I was

doing that kind of work. But I think definitely that artist's

eye, when you start looking at the way in which we present

different things, and even more so, and my team gives me grief

over when I'm trying to create the one pager for explaining

something. You know, it's never necessarily one page, but when

you're trying to simplify those things down and organize that

page so you don't have a page that scrolls forever, how do you

condense it? How do you lay it out? That's where it hits for me

when I think about that background.

Yeah, I've had my creative moments. There was

one year where they needed an associate art teacher to help

with the head of the class. And I did do that. So it was one

year in our teacher.

Oh, nice. That's fantastic.

That was a learning experience, because it

gave me some insight into the classroom structure that I

didn't really fully have from the outside as it and then I do

help with some of the classes for the technology side now,

like, I'll assist, but I'm not actually formally part of the

class.

As you said, it's the non linear thinking. Yeah,

absolutely,

there's often that serendipity, when you can

involve your interests into your job. I've been editing videos

from the conference, and my degree is in Film Video. I went

to film school, basically for college. So it's fun when I'm

doing something like that, it's one of those rare times and I'm

like, Oh, this was my major, and I'm actually using it for

something related to my work. And it's fun.

I do edit the podcast, and I'm also doing team

three from cohort 23 to 24

nice. I would love to see Bill painting in a bob,

Ross wig. First of all, I think that would be fabulous. We can

make that happen. We can make that happen. We gotta love AI.

My question, Dominic for you, is we talk about the technology

roles, and it's interesting having two artists here.

Actually, I'm gonna say three, because Peter in the film, in

this. Three is also an artist? Can creativity be taught, or is

it innate? I

was talking with a math teacher about that

yesterday. I was talking about grading. When you have art

classes, you know you have the metrics, A, B, C, D, or 100% 90,

but how much of it is, you either have it or you don't have

it. So you really are grading on how much effort and trying there

is. But some kids don't have it, just like not every kid's an

athlete, not every child is an artist. I

think it is innate. I think it can be brought out of

people, but I don't think you can bring it out of people if

it's not there. I

think it depends on what you're focused on, too,

because I think there is a process over product type thing.

I switched out of my major for a variety of reasons, but I never

thought I was like the best artist. But I definitely was

able to think about what that process did, how I was able to

explain that process, talk to that process. And I agree with

you, Peter. I think that some of it is definitely innate. If

you're focused on the product piece of it, when you're talking

about the fine arts, I think with technology now and how you

define those artistic endeavors, you can through exposure,

through immersing yourself in certain things, you can develop

that. It might not be that natural innate ability, just

like with athletics, but it can be developed. It can be

nurtured.

Yeah, I would agree with that. I was doing the

arts since I was in high school when I was doing it. That's

where it started. I had one high school teacher, oh, man, this is

embarrassing. It's kind of funny, though. So I wasn't the

best artist, and there was this one boy in our class. He was

great. And actually, when I was in college, he was there too,

phenomenal artists. This guy could sketch beautiful art. The

teacher was comparing me and him, not to the whole class, but

just me and him and a group of our friends. And he goes, you

know, Dominic, you're a good artist. You produce a lot of

quantity of work, but such and such over here, he produces

maybe a couple of things a year, but they're very high quality.

And from that day forward, I worked very hard to produce

quality work.

It's funny, those things that stick with us, those

points, goodness gracious, turning to technology. So

Dominic, one thing I've learned about st Bernard's, there's

pride in how much the school doesn't rely on technology for

its own sake. Can you explain to us more about that, how that

works? At your school,

we have like a pen to paper style. We embrace

blackboards and chalk, and while we do have white boards and

projection, it's those traditional values of education

that kind of come through the most, and it's what makes our

community unique. One of the things that I would say, and I

don't think this was by design, but on our school emblem, we

have per gay, sad, proceed with caution, and I think that

applies very much to how we approach technology. We always

look at what innovations are happening, but we cautiously

test it and see if it applies to what we do in our school. So 3d

printing. We have 3d printers in our computer lab, no science a

computer lab, not Innovation Lab, and we'll do 3d prints. But

we don't just print, just for the sake of printing. So we have

like, a 3d design class, and the boys will come up with their

sketchups and we print that out. But sometimes I've seen this in

other schools, they'll just print for the sake of printing

3d print, for the sake of having it, instead of embracing the

educational benefits of it. Bill, you might actually get

this so you probably did your art history. So Roman Greco

architecture, right? Columns. How many times have you seen?

Oh, we're trying to do STEM. They'll have the students print

out columns. The students just grab something off the internet.

They maybe they manipulate, or maybe they create something, but

they just print out the column. Okay, we did something great.

STEM, yay. But really, you would wanna go deeper than that,

right? Are you gonna, like, break down the different parts

of the column? Are you gonna print out the different parts

and build it together to show the process of design and the

architecture we have to look at technology like that? Are we

just using it for the sake of using it, or are we actually

trying to develop something deeper that broadens and

enriches the learning right in the classroom.

I think what you're describing is the fundamental

issue that we all deal with and we all ask. Number of years ago,

I visited Hiram school, and we looked at the stem and the maker

spaces that they had in each of those areas at those. Points,

and it was a matter of seeing how those things were actually

being used, and how they were put in place, and how they

connected to the learning because a lot of times I think

technology can be seen as the bright, shiny thing, and it can

be the thing that gets the admissions team walks around and

can point to, because you can see it tangibly. You can see it.

You can't put your finger on all the learning that happens in a

lot of the other areas. But if you've got a big, shiny room

that you can walk people through, you can really sell

that. And the one thing I always like to say is you need to be

able to walk the walk. If you're selling that, you better be able

to show how it's impacting teaching and learning, and I

would commend you for that, because I think that that's

often not the case in MKA history, I remember we had our

distance learning room that was at our high school. We had this

big satellite dish on the roof, and we had this room that was

decked out with all these different cameras, and we were

going to bring in professor. This is before, like, all the

zoom and the Google meet and all that stuff, and we were going to

connect with all these college professors and bring them in to

teach our kids. The problem was, was that everything that we had

in that room had to match up, from a technology standpoint, to

what was going in all those other places. And if it didn't

match, you didn't connect. So we spent all this money on this

room, and it was a great place to go. Say, Oh, your kids are

going to work with, you know, professors from Boston

University, and this, that and the other thing. And it maybe

happened like once, three out of a seven day cycle, and it wasn't

really what we wanted it to be, or it really should have been,

and it never really delivered on the promise. And I think it

sounds like that's what you're doing

there. I'll throw in another example. IPads,

I don't think they're as big a deal in schools as they've been

made out to be. You can have moments where iPads are great

learning tools, right? Children are interacting with them.

You'll have setups where it's like, Let's do health and

learning. Let's show the inside of the body. And you have the

children, they're like, pointing it around the room in a space,

and they're seeing all this stuff happening. And that's

great. It's awesome. I enjoy watching it and you're using it.

But is it that much better than talking about it, having a

textbook and just delivering the information. I mean, we learned

that way. Are we any less than capable from it because we

didn't have the iPad? Those kind of things I try to think about

when rationalizing the technology use, when approaching

any innovation that's coming through at St Bernard's, we were

thinking about jot. It great product. In our case, it was an

LMS thing, so we couldn't really go deeper with it, but just the

idea of E Ink tablets, just focused on handwriting. It's a

wonderful thing, right? We care about handwriting in our school,

we give awards for it. So having that the Jada tablets, same

thing. I think they use books, which is a nice tablet in our

case. How much more is it than just handwriting in class? You

have to weigh those things, right? How meaningful is it?

It's great with this

podcast, because we always get differing views, and

sometimes completely conflicting views. So just yesterday, we did

an episode, and it was all experiential learning. It was

all about having the students experience it. And maybe that's

not conflicting with what you're saying necessarily. So

presenting this view that st Bernards has, I'm curious, what

kind of things do you experience that you think to yourself, see

this is why we do it this

way, I should preface I'm also speaking for

myself, not necessarily the school, even though we do do

those things. One example is just doing research. We're an

all boys school, so we have boys on Chromebooks, and the

Chromebooks are great, and they could do all their research

online, but a same furniture thing to do is go to the

library, grab the book off the shelf, read through it, and

reference the book. There's a tactile thing to it. I'm sure

there's a learning specialist out there that's probably like,

this helps you memorize and take in the information more those

kinds of things are like st Bernards

and Dominic. I think what you're addressing

there are the various learning modalities, how they take in

information. And if you are at a very, what I'm going to call a

generic level, on the continuum of a transformative education,

if you're using technology in the exact same way that you were

doing your teaching prior to using the tech, that's not a

transformative experience for the child. I remember back when

I was still teaching, we would actually try really hard to have

a kinesthetic approach, a visual approach and an auditory

approach, so that we were hitting all three modalities in

which a child is able to take in information and really. The goal

there was not so much to make sure that one modality was

better than another, it was to try and reach as many kids as

possible. And what I find fascinating is when you talked

about the Jot it tablet, there's some interesting pluses to that,

from the distractiveness of notifications, and I think

that's why we are seeing schools getting rid of phones. I think

there's going to be a place for that, this tablet technology

that has the eating capabilities, because we're also

an old boy school at St Christopher's, and we have heard

from our alums when they go to college that a lot of students

don't have the endurance to handwrite anymore if they're

being asked to hand write on exams and draft essays and

whatnot, if they are not allowed to use their laptops, and it's a

very different exercise to produce an essay by hand than it

is to compose on a word processor. So they're different

skills, and they're different ways of thinking. And to your

point earlier about going from A to D, handwriting requires you

to go from A to B to C to D, whereas word processing allows

you to jump around a little bit. I'm going to cut this and paste

it here, et cetera. Yeah,

it doesn't allow you to focus or refine

your thoughts as much as you probably would if you were

handwriting.

There's research to back that up in terms of your

ability to note take or the speed factor with the pieces

when you're typing. There's definitely a speed factor there,

but there is more of a connection to the brain,

connection to the data retention that you're talking about in

terms of that writing aspect of it, and the ability to notate,

the ability to sketch note, to draw around, you know, the way

in which you can organize your thoughts with the digital ink or

a paper and pencil. So I think Dominic a lot of what you're

talking about, whether it's the iPad tablets, your example of

like augmented reality. You hold it up, you can expand it, you

can see different things going around. I think that those

tools, as Hiram pointed out, if they're enhancing the exercise,

if they're doing something that you can't do in their

traditional sense, then they're adding value. They're adding

meaning to what you're doing. When I switched majors from fine

arts, I went to early childhood Ed, so it was like, focused on

block building manipulatives. You're really focused on

developing those skills at an early age. So our technology

choices were very deliberate, because we were working on

building the foundational blocks for which all the other learning

is going to happen. And I think that approach, which is the

approach I think you're describing, is the approach that

you take that early learning approach, and you apply that

throughout the course of the time that students are in in

terms of deliberate choices that are going to bring real meaning

to the learning in ways that you can't do under a traditional

method, because there is value to what those traditional

options provide. It just

reminded me at kindergarten how, you know, we

have the interactive episodes and don't put stuff on the board

and have the digital interactions where the boys will

drag something to something else, and that's awesome. But

you know what works just as well? The pieces of construction

paper, the printouts laminated and on the magnets, and they're

just moving them across the board. It's the same learning

without the electronic component, and they do both. But

I can tell you this, when the power goes out, they're still

learning. When the smart pen goes out, they'll just grab the

whiteboard marker and keep going. And that's important,

right? They don't stop in learning. Well,

I think we're at an interesting point of

inflection here, where we're also trying to examine how much

technology should be being used within a classroom. I mean, the

whole phone conversation has really blown up to the extent

where we really don't want phones being used throughout the

school day. We're seeing some nations in the EU passing

legislation where they're saying no social media until the age of

13, or phone use at different times. And I think the same can

be said about the curriculum. We probably dove in head and feet

first the majority of schools in terms of trying to leverage

technology with the students, because we had to show an ROI,

yep. So there are two different kinds of conversations I think

that one could have regarding technology. I mean, Bill school,

for example, is an Apple Distinguished School three

times, and there's a reason why. It's not because of the shiny

apple, it's because they're doing quality work at his

school. And so it has to be intentional, right? Yeah, we

have, for instance, in our computer lab, we have backs. We

have a lab set of Macs. So when you come in purposely to do

those things, you go on those but any other time, Chromebook

go guardian, you know, all the pieces of the puzzle put in

place to protect the children from themselves. I'm curious,

in that environment. I'm sure many of

our listeners can relate. Have there been times where there was

tech that you saw value and said, hey, I can think of a

purpose. Or I have teachers saying, Hey, we have a purpose

here. Have there been times that you've brought tech and tried to

get it to the school, but the school, because of the

philosophy, the school, just resisted and said, No. Have

there been challenges like that? Anytime you've been successful,

maybe campaigning for something. The

Jada one was probably the best example. We

loved it. I love it. I think the E Ink, the handwriting, because

it would have alleviated two problems, the handwriting focus

and having Chromebooks. Because, you know, you go lock down a

Chromebook, but kids try to circumvent, and I spend half the

time trying to prevent them from, you know, sabotaging it.

So does that. And I pushed for that, but that didn't work out.

There was some stuff that went the other way, where they got it

and they ended up backing off of it, like the iPads. Another

example was, I think they used to have Kindles in the library.

This was before my time, but obviously they didn't go that

route. So there's like, these little bits where they, like,

they step in, proceeded, and then with caution, stepped right

back out. Sure. I'm

sure that's common at all your schools. You're

introduced new things, and you have a plan, and you think you

know how it's gonna go, and then that's not how it goes.

And you watch it all evolve at the same time.

Great example, you know, you've got the computer lab model. And

then there was, who remembers cows in schools, computers on

wheels, where you just roll the cart around the school, because

you kept laptops in there, because you moved away from the

desktop model, and then eventually you moved to a one to

one model. And now, I dare say, a lot of schools because of the

phones. You've got smart watches, you've got tablets,

you've got laptops, you've got phones, you've got each kid now

potentially having two or three devices with them at all times

you mentioned your Ali cohort, former colleague,

longtime friend, Steve France. You know, just from the

conversations I've had with Steve, the conversations I've

had with you, seeing everything, you know, it's a very tight

group that you developed with that cohort, given the school

you're at, the mindset, the conversation that we've had to

this point, how has your participation in the ALI program

shaped, redefined, molded your thinking around these things by

the interactions that you had with the group as a whole, and

then those interactions that you had within your cohort, within

that larger group. Thank you for bringing

it up, because that's a strong part of my

continuing education with technology, meeting my cohort

and then doing the capstone project with them, and all that

really got us talking, and it got us connecting. And actually,

I don't, I don't know if there's other cohorts from other years

that keep talking, but we talk like every week, whether it's

through WhatsApp or when we do our podcasts or whatnot, and we

have meetings, we'll have Google meet check ins every two weeks,

but we'll, like, commiserate together about certain things,

or, like, try to problem solve sales pitch. If I didn't go into

AI, I would have never had that, and I'm glad I had that. And the

icing on the cake is having that help get the ball rolling, to

make me feel like, okay, I could go for T list for my title,

information technology administrator. I'm not a

director, but in my cohort, there are and me having those

conversations made me feel like, you know what, I'm ready. I feel

like I'm on that level. I'm gonna go take the T list exam

and prove myself and prepare myself so I'm ready for the next

step when that time comes. That's

great. We love that. And I can tell you from

observation that the cohorts absolutely stay in touch. You're

definitely not alone there. We even saw in Atlanta at that past

conference, the latest cohort. They did the conference

together. There was this group of like 20 people that they were

together the entire conference. And I learned after a day or so,

it was like, oh, that's the latest Ali cohorts. And they

were just peas in a pod, and they just do everything

together. It's very common. That's great to hear that

absolutely the same. We met every day at the

conference, and we're already thinking about next year, right?

So let's talk about the tilas as the certification

person at ATLIS, it makes me very happy. It was one of the

reasons we wanted to have you on the pod. We've had a few people

who are in the TLS on the podcast. You told us about what

led to you deciding the confidence and having the

support of the ALI cohort, and going through all that you

decided to go for it. So talk about like, what was next? What

was your journey like to go ahead and earn it?

One was honestly soul searching, because

you have to feel ready for it. That's the mindset. I'm ready.

The next part was the T list prep program, making sure that I

got into that so I had an understanding and exam the

candidate handbook with the sample questions, so I had like

a frame of reference on how I could approach the exam, and

then just talking with my cohort, ping ponging the

questions and asking, why is this the answer, as opposed to

that? And back and forth, just to try to get an understanding.

From my perspective, it was a little bit more difficult. I

don't wanna say too difficult, but I'm in a small school, 365

kids, and the T list in this case reference like 1000

students school, 200 and something. So I faculty and

staff. So I'm like a third the size. I had to change my

thinking in preparation for the exam. That was the hurdle, how

do I think on a bigger, larger scale?

Sure, for reference for our listeners, the

technology leaders and independent school

certification, the TLS part of preparing for it, you learned

that every question on the exam is going through a certain lens

of a certain school, a school that has about 1000 students.

You should be answering the questions from the perspective

of you are the primary technology leader, so you are

leading the department, and you have about five people beneath

you that work for you and support you in your department.

Then there's a few more lenses that we talk about at today

school and whatnot, and that's what Dominic's referring to. So

for some people like Dominic, if you don't have that experience

at all, or you've had it, but that's not your current

experience. You do have to shift a bit. And we understand that

that is a challenge. One

of the things about the T list, when we were talking

about the development of it, the idea was that it wasn't like a

step one, you have to do Aoi, and the step two is you have to

do tos. But I think from what you're describing with your

school, I think that Ali and that cohort and those

conversations and those discussions and being able to

hear from others in other size schools probably helps develop

the frame so that when you sit down to that, you as somebody

who's at a smaller school, given your numbers, you might be

sitting down looking at that T list exam and saying to

yourself, wow, like, I don't even know how to wrap my head

around this, because I'd never even thought about it this way.

Ali, and I think those connections and those

interactions, given the scope and the breadth of the people

that are there, require you to have those conversations,

because you need to be actively listening to what those members

in the overall cohort or in the smaller groups are talking

about, and as you have those troubleshooting, those

generative conversations, as you think about what the capstone is

going to be and how you're going to develop around that, you need

to take all those things into perspective. So whether

intentionally or not, the Ali, I don't want to put words in your

mouth, but I think it would probably provide a very good for

probably provide a very good frame for at least getting into

that mindset that you've discussed. I will

accept those words. I agree one doesn't

necessarily facilitate the other, but I think it helps on

the path when you're going through Ali and you're going

through like the monthly chats and the discussion groups and

all that, you learn different things. I learned stuff about

schools in California that I would never have occurred to me.

Being in New York. You would think all independent schools

have similar approaches in other ways, but no, they could be

drastically different, especially like org charts and

things like that. Those were the harder questions for me, because

an org chart's different for me. At my school, I could talk to my

director and then the director could talk to the CFO. That

would be the chain of command, but we're small. I can just go

ask the CFO. It's a different approach. Someone would say,

well, you're circumventing the chain of command. You going over

your director. Now I'm going for clarification. Hey, what's up?

What's going on? Blah, blah, blah. Hey, by the way, did you

know? Oh, okay, thank you for updating me. Now I know. And

then I move on to the next thing, right? That doesn't

always happen when you're in, 1000 1500 student school. As it

gets bigger now, all of a sudden you have to work your way up.

There's gonna be meetings about it. It's a month later you talk

about it. So it does change the approach when you're a smaller

school,

right? Do you need to do that translation then for

the certification? Yeah. But he just said, you seem to have

found value in seeing the other experiences.

Yeah, I took the exam, but I would ask my

cohorts, like, Hey, Steve, how do we go about such and such?

Because I'm thinking, this is the answer, but obviously it's

this other answer. Why is it that other answer? And he might

go. Well, you would never ask that person when you're in a

school this big. You would go to that person to ask about

budgeting or this and that, those kinds of things. I know

I'm a little vague, but those are the kinds of things that

come up that aren't as apparent to me being in a smaller school

and

Dominic, the one thing I want to point out is Be

wary of any advice Steve France gives you. That's all I'm going

to say. You just need to be very careful about what you take from

him, because it can be questionable. I'll

throw out another name, Cecile, because

Cecile is also very helpful, and she has a campus. And I'm not on

a campus. I'm in a small, little building on a street Upper East

Side. Actually, that's a good example. I'm not on a campus,

right? How many things come up when you're on a campus? Data

from one end to the other, trenching, all that stuff. I'll

never have to deal with that. The most is you trench out the

sidewalk, and you gotta get the permit in front of the building

to do it right. It's a little bit different. So

having earned it now, tell me about moments since

earning it that you've thought, Oh, the T list or the PREP

program, or I heard in one of my questions with the cohorts about

the T list, like this came up. One

of the things about the T list, they tell you

the percentages of how you did on the different domains. Yeah,

that was valuable to me because now it gave me confidence. I'm

like, Okay, I must know what I'm talking about, because these

domains gave me an idea of where I'm at. I guess nationally, I

should say, amongst our peers,

sure, amongst the candidates. So what Dominic's

talking about is, you receive your results immediately. It's a

pass, fail result. However you do get to see to certification

is broken down into four domains. We've broken the

technology leader role down into four domains, and each question

on the exam is tied to one of those domains. And so you see at

the end with your pass fail, the percentages correct in each of

the four domains. So Dominic, you saw in a domain, or more

than one domain, but you did particularly well, and you're

saying that boosted your confidence in

that area. Yeah, I

remember operations and professional

development were high. I was like, Okay, I know this. If

someone asked me about this, more often than not, I'm giving

good information. I'm giving a good, respectable answer. And

then the other stuff, I didn't score as high as I would have

liked. Now I know going forward, I'm going to do more, PD,

focusing on those other points so I could build myself up so

when I do go into a room and have a conversation, oh, Dominic

Salerno telis, he knows what he's talking about, and that's

the confidence that I want. I want to know when I go into a

meeting. Maybe it could be an interview for the tech director

somewhere, that when I walk in there, I can confidently speak

and feel good about myself, knowing, yes, I have the backing

that says I know what I'm doing. I know what I'm talking about,

right? That's interesting,

because you're someone that you've said that

you don't have that director title. The vast majority of

people who take the teal is have the title. So it's

it's reinforcing. And I think Peter, hearing you

say that for a lot of us that have the title, the

certification just reinforces that. I can think back when I

graduated, there wasn't an undergraduate, there weren't

even masters programs in anything as it related to

educational technology. So the Tila certification does a nice

job of the affirmation that Dominic's describing in terms of

proving your understanding and within those different domains

and relieving you of the imposter syndrome that you might

have in some cases with the work like this. But I think for

people who don't have the title, who are aspiring to the title.

You know, I think one of the things we've said all along is

it gives those people making the hires. It gives yourself the

confidence. It gives the employer that might be looking

at you or or your current employer, you know, the way in

which they're looking at you and seeing you within the context of

the organization. It gives you that level of gravitas that I've

achieved this I've proven myself to the point where I've studied,

I've taken this examination. I'm keeping up with the work to

maintain you mentioned those areas where you pass, but you

may not have scored as high well, you're doing the

professional development work. You're that lifelong learner

that we all talk about in terms of aspiring to that level, so

that you can stay current, so that you can stay abreast of

those things we talk about, our upcoming tech leaders, those

that are rising in the ranks. You know, it puts you right into

the mix at that point, because you've done the work to

demonstrate the knowledge, right? I really like

the observation about I could see where I needed to direct my

professional development. And that's something where we met

with a head of school at the conference specifically to talk

about the TLS, and he observed that that was his number two

most compelling thing about it was that when these technology

directors coming to him saying, hey, I want this professional

development. I want that professional to. Element. And he

feels like, I don't know if this is valuable to the school. I'm

kind of just like, it's all in my tech directors hands. But he

felt like, with the T list and these domains or whatnot, it

gives like a framework to direct the professional development and

just kind of reinforces where to direct those things in general.

So that's powerful. What do we got to do to get Hiram to get

the T list. I'm just gonna call him out right now. Yeah,

he just did.

Think about your confidence level. Hiram, you

could boost your confidence.

Are you gonna let some scrappy young guy like

me stop you from

rights? I mean, come on,

if I only knew some people who could help me

with the D list.

We'll talk offline about that. It's fine. So before

we wrap things up, Dominic, thanks so much for doing this.

We don't always bookend it like this, but we will today. We were

talking about getaways when we just need to get away vacation

spots like an under the radar. Others won't think of this kind

of getaway spot.

I got a good one, but it's a bad one at the

same time. No, no, no, when I say, why my favorite getaway

spot, and this is truthfully, going to my wife city in

Ukraine. I love it there. Oh, wow, with everything that's

going on, obviously that's not the spot to go to right now.

Yeah, and we were just talking about how we want to go again. I

want to go see my in laws. I have this mayor of the town

thing. When I'm there, I say hi to everybody in English, and

everybody's like, hey, like, Hey, back at you. You know,

happy to see you.

I could see it. You're not speaking English.

You're speaking new Yorkish.

My inner Bronx, I haven't noticed.

Thank you, Dominic, thanks so much for the

conversation. We appreciate

it. Thank you.

This has been talking technology with Atlas,

produced by the Association of Technology Leaders in

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