Join us as we welcome Peter Antupit, CIO of Crystal Springs Upland School, to explore strategies for managing expectations, fostering relationships across departments, and navigating the evolving landscape of technology in education.

Resources

• Crystal Springs Uplands School
• ATLIS Leadership Institute
• More than 870 school technology job descriptions -- can we share? YES
• Flint, AI tool for schools

Phil, 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. Kristina Lewellen,

Hello everyone, and welcome back to

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

President and CEO of the Association of Technology

Leaders in Independent Schools.

And I am Bill Stites, the Director of

Technology at Montclair Kimberly Academy in Montclair, New

Jersey.

And I'm Hiram Cuevas, Director of Information

Systems and Academic Technology at St Christopher school in

Richmond, Virginia.

Hello, gentlemen. How are you today?

Well,

winding down my spring break here, but you know

it's

all good, yeah, tell me a little bit about

your spring breaks. So do you guys each get like, a week off,

and what did you do with it? At

MKA, the school is closed for two weeks, so all the

faculty and students are out for the two weeks, but in on the IT

side of the house. And if you're a 12 month employee, as we are

here, you have one week off and you have to work one week. So

you can pick and choose and coordinate that. And it's kind

of like our mini summers. We try to get as much done in two weeks

as possible. It's like project time. You've got stuff going on,

you're running from here to there, but it's a good time to

get stuff done, because it gets you a head start on the summer

in some cases, or allows you to pick up on areas where you've

may have missed something that you need to get to just to close

out the school year.

Yeah, sort of like a lingering To Do List

sort of thing. Yeah, 100%

that's a really interesting schedule. Do all the

local schools, in terms of athletics and whatnot, have a

similar two week hiatus in the spring? No,

it's mostly the independence, but for the

students and for the families, there's like a family week, and

then there's like a sports week or a Travel Week, where we will

do international trips or trips around the US that we might do

that relate to some of our academic programs. And then

there is an athletics week. So if you are participating in a

sport, and that sport in particular, maybe they travel

some of our teams go down your way down to Virginia, to the

Carolinas. I can remember with Sean going down to Florida for

baseball. So there are different things like that. And again,

those don't line up necessarily with the public schools in the

area. A lot of the independents are along the same line, but

most of the seasons aren't starting until everyone gets

back and we're in it, so we time it out that way. It's all part

of the calendaring process, which, as we know, calendaring

is a four letter word in most schools, and it definitely keeps

things fun and interesting Absolutely. Yeah,

there's AI tools for that. How about you?

Hiram, what do you do on spring break? We

have had years and years of my wife and I having

separate spring breaks. She works for a Catholic High

School, and so they actually have spring break when it spring

closer to Easter. So I did a staycation with my daughter,

who's back from Virginia Tech, and while she slept in, I have

been doing tons and tons and tons of yard work, which has

been fabulous because I've been catching up on some books, some

audio books, been having some fun going to the dump on a

regular basis to clear out all this winter brush that has been

left behind from all these storms. The

weather has been cooperating in Virginia. I

know that we had another Atlas board level meeting this week,

and Hiram is like, Yeah, I'm here, but I'm gardening. I'm in

my yard, so I'm gonna not be on camera. I gotta respect that

you're at least joining meetings during your spring break. So

thanks for that. Your dedication to the Atlas community. Well,

today, you guys, we are welcoming a good friend of our

community. Peter, anti pit, you are the CIO of Crystal Springs

upland school joining us from the West Coast. Peter, how are

you today?

Doing well, thanks enjoying a little bit of rain,

which is nice for us, but I already missed the sun, and it's

only been 24 hours of drizzle. Oh

my gosh, Californians, they missed the

sun after one day. I

am so spoiled. My blood is so thin,

it's bad. So what's your spring break like

out there?

We've just come off what we call a balance

break, where kids were actually off for two days. So they had a

four day weekend. We had a comment writing day, so faculty

were basically gone. Administrative staff was doing

stuff on site. Tuesday was a PD day, so we had like, this mini

break for kids. But we do, like Bill we do two weeks later on,

and we do international travel trips and things like that. And

like Hiram, my wife and I almost never get the same break. She's

also a teacher, so all the joys doing lots of projects. We're

excited for our spring break. We are renovating 100 year old

mansion that, of course, it is in the basement of as well as it

always is, yeah, usually. So we're moving over office. Is

over our spring break, so that's exciting. We'll squeeze

everything in. It's a great purge opportunity. So a little

bit like Hiram, just like getting rid of stuff. And I'm

the worst. I'm like, we're gonna need that adapter. And the guys

still look at me, like, No, we won't just get rid of the

adapters. And if we do, we'll buy it on eBay, just let it go.

So Peter, tell us a little bit about your

path you are now the CIO. Let's start with your school too. In

case folks don't know about the school that you serve, tell us a

little bit about that and how long you've been there. But then

let's also talk about your journey and how you got to where

you are today. So

Crystal Springs, upland school, affectionately

known as crystal is a six to 12 school. We were one campus with

about 350 kids. We're between San Francisco and San Jose day

school, college prep, 612, and we split off into two campuses

in 2017, so got to be part of that amazing ground up

construction project of an entire campus California,

Silicon Valley land is tight, so it's nine acres. Is spacious,

nine or 10 acres. So we are squeezing about 220 kids into

our new middle school campus, and it's not really squeezed at

all. And then we now have 350 just nine to 12 kids on our

Upper School campus here in Hillsboro. It's a great school.

I love it. I've been here 12 ish years. I started in 2012 we did

a little wrap around, around, sort of our senior leaders and D

level folks. And I'm now more tenured than I ever thought I

was, but that's great. You know, a bunch of different roles here.

I am an advisor, club, mentor ish, but I actually don't do

anything except take attendance, which is the best kind of

mentoring for what they need right now. The highlight of my

job is actually advising. I've been advising ninth and 10th

graders, and this year, had the opportunity to advise co advise

11th graders, and I'll see them like through 12th grade. And

it's really great. It's such a highlight to actually be with

kids in a low stakes kind of environment, I've been out of

the classroom for 27 years, or something like that. What did

you teach? I started my journey at the landmark school at

Massachusetts, a school for dyslexics. I was there for seven

years, and I taught wood shop, I taught math, I taught English, I

even taught a social skills class. It's a residential

school. So as a residential team leader, also that was

foundational to everything that was much more valuable than

college was. I mean, that was like real life learning. It was

amazing. And I think I'd bring all of that working with neuro

diverse students to everything I do.

Yeah, I bet it's hard to leave that behind

once you know those skills and, yeah, what did you go to college

for? I mean, like, was this, like, part of a surprising

journey for you? You ended up teaching everything?

Yeah, so it wasn't. I went to school in

middle of New York State, a small school called Hobart

College. Hobart, William Smith colleges, small liberal arts

school.

I know that school I grew up in Western New

York. There you go. I went to SUNY Geneseo and Rochester

Institute of Technology for my master's degree. So I know

Hobart.

It's kind of the mud belt. I don't know what else

to call it. Yeah,

it really is. It's very gray and brown,

especially this time of year. No wonder you love the sunshine.

I'm gonna give that one to you. To be honest,

I heard that it's beautiful in the summer, but

college students were never there in the summer. So, like, I

no idea. I just have to take everyone's word for it. So I

actually went to school for psychology and teaching. I left

there with a teaching certificate. It's a very cool

program where you couldn't major in education. You had to major

in the discipline that you wanted to teach, and then you

went into, like, took extra seminars, and went into

classrooms starting your sophomore year and just doing a

couple hours a week until you built up to your student

teaching your senior year. And that was, again, sort of, I

mean, not really that alternative, but really that

deep dive into subject matter, and then learning how to teach

was really great. So

you were at landmark for a while, and you

had this like really well rounded, including some computer

science. You had a lot of experience, and kind of bounced

around to support whatever that residential school needed. So

given that you had all this different experience, why did

you end up pursuing the Director of Technology path, as

everybody falls into this job. And I've heard

you all say before. You know, nobody aspires to be a director

of technology when they're 12. The Director of Technology, I

should say, is just a computer department head at the time I

was at the Lower School campus, smaller campus, like 100 kids,

and she decided she didn't want to do anymore. It's like, Sure,

I'll do it. Whatever we were teaching logo is no big deal. We

were doing some word processing, basic stuff. And then I got kind

of interested in a little bit of the hardware part, crimping cat

three wires for Apple talk. So that's big fun. Way back.

Machine grew at the department a little bit. You know, increase

the offerings for kids, and then decide I want to go get a

master's in technology and education. So I took off and did

that, and that was another really wonderful experience. Was

able to do a practicum in some public schools, which gave me a

whole different lens to see things I'm a public school kid.

So that was really nice to be able to be back in a public

school, but then also saw the challenges there, and honestly

didn't want to deal with it. I mean, you know, there's this

sort of the level of stress and anxiety, and it didn't appeal to

me, and I knew I couldn't put my whole heart into it. Hats off to

public school folks everywhere. It's becoming more and more

difficult, as I've seen, but I found much more of a calling in

independent schools at my first job at Michelle Obama Brooks was

there for 15 years. It's a great run. Did a little teaching there

too. It was a pre K to eight. Luckily enough, my son got to go

there for a bunch of years. Ran into folks that I taught with,

most recently at NAIS, where I saw Kristina as well. Folks are

now heads of school and doing amazing things at other places.

So it's really a great place to be while I was there, and then

stuff changes, and found myself out in California

at this job, that's a pretty big culture

shift, right? Like from an East Coast school, especially

northeast to Northern California. What was that shift

like? Because it's still an independent school, and there's

certain pillars of excellence, I'm sure. You know, we're kind

of baked into both entities. But was there kind of a cultural

shift students, the programs, the parents, that kind of thing.

So mostly because my previous Michelle Brooks is a

K to eight, and Crystal Springs is a 612 so I was like, Ah,

scary high school students, I don't know. And it wasn't scary

high school students at all. The shift was different in the

pressures, mostly that we see kids enduring to perform, to be

more than their best selves. Sometimes the whole college prep

thing is real and the stress is real, and that is ramped up over

the past decade. There's no doubt about it, that's been a

shift. Parents are still lovely. Honestly, I can't complain about

the parents. They're great. Kids are wonderful. There is a lot of

parallel between the Boston area and the San Francisco area, so I

didn't see as much as I expected, truthfully. And we

have a lot of transplants, actually, from the northeast,

working here, we could almost have an affinity space of

transplants. There are that many of us.

Both. My parents were public school teachers. It

runs in the family, the teaching gene. My parents actually came

here and spent the day with me. They wanted to see what the

school was like and the school was school was gracious enough

to let them come and spend the day and go around and see things

and observe classes. I remember my father when he left for the

day, he looked at me and he said, You'd be crazy to ever

leave that place. And I think it was because, you know, he had

heard me talking about the things that we were doing, and

then seeing it in action, between the size and just what

you can do as a teacher, what you can do from an

administrative perspective, what you can do when you've got an

independent school culture, when we think about the pipeline of

leaders in independent schools, being able to Sell the private

school, the independent school model, to people who may have

come out of just simply a public school education and don't have

that background, what did you see in that comparison that you

made as being some of the struggles and benefits of going

between the two of them? Because I think if we can identify what

those are, we can do a better job of building our own

pipelines of people when we have to have those conversations and

bridge that gap between the knowns and the unknowns. So

with the caveat that this was 27 years ago, so

things have changed, but there were some things definitely even

way back my student teaching, I remember the administrators

being kicked out of a faculty meeting because it was now time

to talk about union business, and that was like, what aren't

we all in this together? Aren't we supposed to be student

focused? And I remember my supervising teacher being told

that she shouldn't be staying past 4pm because it makes all

the other union employees look bad, and so putting in that

extra effort is discouraged. Again, that was a long time ago,

but I don't think it's probably changed that much. That's the

other thing change, if you need to implement change here, you

know, in an independent school, there's usually an avenue that

you can take that doesn't take six years. So the rapid

iteration is huge. The autonomy is huge. The support, I think

it's easier to gather allies in an independent school, because

you're tighter, you're smaller, there's not as many levels of

bureaucracy.

Peter, I had a very similar experience. I had

the. Opportunity to work with underachievers in science

education as part of a grant in state of Virginia. When I

interviewed at St Christopher's, knowing it was an all boys

school, I was like, it's so quiet. What's going on? I didn't

quite understand it. It's because there weren't any

struggles in hallways. I mean, boys were being boys, and they

were talking and conversing and being a little silly at the

middle school, but it was just a vast difference between my

public school experience and my private school experience. The

curriculum that I was able to develop and the amount of

funding I was actually able to get to help get the science

program going and then eventually the technology

program going. The three of us have quite the range of

experience. You said 27 years? Bill's over 30. I'm at 34 are we

seeing a change, not only in the students, but also the teachers

that are going into this space? Yeah, so I

did a little homework. I've been listening to

past podcasts, full disclosure, not a past listener, current

participant, but I'm instantly hooked. I'll name it. I'm like,

instantly hooked. I'm like, Why haven't I been listening to this

all along? And the gentleman who is on from the Southern

Association of Independent Schools, so hit home. Yeah. Brad

Jacobsen, I think we are seeing, how do we bring the loyalty and

the lifestyle folks together? How do we bridge that gap when

we get folks in, and it's, I think, first acknowledging that

gap, just faculty wise, where we see folks being most

instrumental, I think, is where their creativity is coming in,

and that is a factor, I think, of their lifestyle. So the newer

folks that we're bringing in, I think, are bringing this energy

that we've been missing at times where we've been sometimes

loyalty gets stuck in systems and the lifestyle can bring that

energy and innovation.

So one of the things that I like to

clarify, Peter is what your role is responsible for at your

school, because we don't ever see two job descriptions the

same. What does your day to day look like? What is your area of

responsibility? And I guess maybe part and parcel is what is

not in the technology realm falling under you. Yeah, I'm

just generally annoying. I poke myself into all

sorts of places where you wouldn't expect to see a CIO.

I mean, I think that's a good tech

director, to be honest,

because it's all relational, right? It's all

about moving the school forward and what role technology places.

We'll get to the ALI stuff, but I've learned so much from being

a part of the Ali and the early e cat stuff that I bring to my

work. So day to day will be a zoom, meeting with the tech

department, boxes and wires, going over tickets, talking

vendors, oi, vendors these days, vendors, service providers.

Brutal. We feel your pain. I'm fortunate enough to be on the

senior leadership team that meets a couple times a week,

talking to folks in HR, not about HR issues, but about

onboarding and off boarding advisory a couple times a week,

working with other departments, admissions, advancement, again,

poking my nose in places, you know, where we've had some rapid

turnover in a position it's a tech adjacent position, asking

them, Should we be reevaluating what we're actually looking for

and thinking about a different way to staff this, which really

has, I have no business even talking about, but I do those

kinds of things. I'm also the ed tech guy, which is what I like

to say I do most poorly, and so I've been pushing myself to do

more of that Ed Tech work with folks, and if we touch on it,

you know, we're doing a lot more thinking about AI, which has

been great, because it's bringing the Ed Tech part

forward in our mission here. So that's part of it. I'm all over

the place. I actually had an advisee, an 11th grader, who

came down to my office. He's a new advisee of mine, said, I

didn't know you had an office. I just thought you walked around

all day with your coffee mug. That's it like, that's, I think,

the ideal tech director is you're not sitting in your

office, you're actually roaming around, and you're visible, and

you're talking to people, because that's how you find out

what's happening in a school, doing rounds. You're doing

rounds.

Yeah, and Peter, it doesn't surprise me listening to

the way in which you describe your job because the one thing I

need to thank you for, and I think a lot of people need to

thank you for, is that you started collecting job

descriptions and shared those out. I still have in like my job

descriptions folder, in the stuff that I have to manage my

team. I have a link to that folder that you put together,

because anytime I need to update that job descriptions, I need to

work through any of them, I turn to that resource, and I've

shared that resource with numerous people asking about

what those job descriptions are like. And it was interesting,

because that. Folder, and some of the descriptions were really

one of my first for as into trying to create an AI bot to

help me write descriptions. So I downloaded a bunch of them, I

dropped them in the bot, and I said, based on all this

information, help me craft the job description around this, and

it was helpful. I mean, it wasn't the final description

that I use, but it was that idea of, how can I get at those

different things. So hearing you describe, given the numbers that

you've posted up into that folder, given the numbers that

you've probably read, I'm sure you've got all sorts of ideas,

but a heartfelt thank you for even thinking to put that

together and then sharing it out, because it's been used by

me and by others numerous times. Happy

to do it. It's low hanging fruit. And it

started for that same reason. Bill, I was like, Oh, I, you

know, I know I want to hire somebody in this role. There's

got to be a posting somewhere that I can, sort of like, pull

things from before AI, right? And just like, the bullet

points, and I've gone, obviously myself in there, when hiring for

folks, what are the key things? What's fascinating to me is what

seems not relevant to what I want to hire. Just as you said,

Christina, every role is different, and so, like, I don't

need that. And I'm like, some of it is, like, what's the

curiosity as to why they even have to put that in a

job description. Yeah. Where did

that grow from? Exactly like

there's only a policy in your handbook because

something went crazy wrong, yep, and you needed to document so it

didn't happen again. So why is that in that job description?

100%

as you mentioned, you've been involved

first with what we called the ECAD program, Early Career

Technology Director, and now it's morphed into the Atlas

Leadership Institute, and you still remain a program shepherd

of that really important, critical component of the Atlas

community. How has Ali changed over the years? You've been

involved consistently for a long time. Do you think the program

is pretty similar to where it was in day one? Or do you think

that we're tackling different and more complex issues now,

which would probably be my guess,

yeah, you're spot on. You know, early on, the

first couple of cohorts, almost everybody in the cohort could

have taught the cohort. It was much more about getting that

certification, that saying that they had done the program than

actually learning anything, and there was so much learning. I

mean, I put it down as my PD days, because I was learning far

more than they were just wealth of knowledge from folks. I'm not

going to try to list people, because I'll forget somebody

really key, and I don't want to do that. But those early cohorts

were amazing, and it has shifted. We, early on, were

talking more about how to get yourself, I think, at the table,

and to help other people understand what it is you do. So

much more of the self advocacy. And I think when the pandemic

hit, it became a little bit more surfaced as to what we do,

because all of a sudden, everybody had to rely on us for

things, even though we've been doing everything invisible in

the background before. All of a sudden, the visibility

increased. I think we're focusing more now on something I

know you all have talked about, is just the relationship nature

of technology. Technology is relational and emotional, and

aspiring leaders need to know that, so we're focusing a little

bit more on the empathy, on the coming out of your silo, on not

eating lunch at your desk, on You are crazy busy, but you have

to make the time to make those connections. That's a big focus.

We're also seeing some folks now. Many schools have split and

have an ed tech and an IT department. So the crossover is

important to getting people to understand the other side of the

house, and that's also where we're more adaptable, is that

we're able, you know, Ashley just was able, to get somebody

to come in to do a deep dive into the tech side of it

switches, you know, DNS, all that good stuff. When you're one

person shop, you kind of know it all, but we've lost sight of

some of that. That's where I think it's shifted little more

dichotomous, a little bit more emphasis on relational and

empathy, yeah, and

I think that that's what we're seeing too,

just in the Atlas community in general, right? We often say

that they either come in as a former teacher and they're

comfortable with the ed tech side of the house, but maybe a

little less comfortable with cyber and student data privacy

and the IT side, or they come from that it side and they don't

necessarily know to speak the language of teachers, and that

that's a challenge, and so really, that Atlas Leadership

Institute program is meant to bridge that gap for whatever

side. And by pairing great IT people with great ed tech

people, the cohort ends up being really robust. And so it

remains, you know, one of our most popular programs, and I

think it really helps schools everywhere, because it really

shores up the other side of the house, whatever that is for. A

particular person.

I've had three people from MKA go through that

program, and to that point, most of them came at the job from

something other than education. I've mentioned before. My degree

is in early childhood education. So I learned the it site as it

was developing. You know, over the course of 30 years, started

out very basic, but for those that were coming in from the

other side of that, I found that the ALI program and going back

to the E cat program as being a mentor for those people, it's

been really transformative in terms of allowing them to build

that base, because it's not only the educational piece that they

get. I can remember a conversation I had with someone

we had on the pod, Alek Duba, who came from a school

background then from Veracross. But even in addition to what he

gained and others gained on that educational side, it was also

the how does the school work and function? The conversation he

had with our CFO about how things work there, so he told me

that was one of the best conversations he had as part of

the homework that he had to do as part of that program. And I

think if anything, the participation in that, what you

teach them in the work that you've done, you know, and that

you continue to do there, and the work that is assigned to

them that they need to bring back, and those relational

conversations that you're talking about really do develop

our next generation of leaders, or even some of our current

leaders, in leveling them up. It does such a good job at that.

What

I like about the homeworks is it gives permission

to poke where you wouldn't normally be welcome. And I think

that's exactly it. When does the help desk guy get to talk to the

director of advancement? You know, they don't have a deep

conversation. We always force the CFO conversation because

that's so critical, but we always ask them to do a

secondary Yeah, that's great to hear. Yeah.

I mean, it's so interesting how the benefit

is to the individual in the ALI program, but also the school

you're digging and poking around corners that maybe you don't

always participate in.

I also think it has enhanced their confidence to

be able to talk to these physicians as well, because

they're not used to it, and they're never interfacing with

those members of senior leadership in a way that is

meaningful other than perhaps being in a support position.

Yeah, agreed. That's the other thing we're

hoping to do is, you know, every group has to then present out to

the rest of the cohort several times. So we're also working on

those confidence building presentation stuff, and you can

see who's comfortable doing it and who isn't. And people

progress, they get better. One of

the things with the cohorts that I'll just mention,

I just took a trip up to Vermont with Steve France, who we had on

the podcast, again, a li graduate, who's director over at

the Pingree school here in New Jersey. And one of the things

that I've heard from him, I've heard from Alek, again, who's

gone through the program and as well as Jarrell, who, again, all

the three people here at MK, is the amount that these people,

the three of them, and Steve in particular, as well the amount

of time that they've spent with their cohort after the program

concludes, they are still getting together, they are still

talking, they are still sharing. You know, you mentioned it the

relationships. I've talked about it time and time again. You

know, it's about building that professional network and those

relationships there that make you truly successful. And I

don't think, and I don't know whether the Atlas or the ALI

participants have even tracked that level of cohesion after the

program is closed, but I can tell you straight out, at least

from those four people that I'm talking about, they're all still

in touch with that group on a regular basis,

and so many of them are becoming the new rising

stars within this community. I mean, it really is impressive to

see the level of talent that's already coming out of this

program. Let's

talk about that. Because I think that we

often talk about the first gen tech leaders, which I consider

all three of you to be, because you sort of grew up into these

positions and now they are a lot more complex. Let's start Peter.

I'd love to know what sort of trends or issues you're dealing

with as a tech leader that you really couldn't have imagined.

Forget 30 years ago? How about like 10 years

ago? The obvious, AI, is the first one, and how

that intercepts with everything we're doing, and I just don't

mean the student side. I mean employees as well. How employees

can use it with efficacy. And efficacy is critical. The

sophistication This is a horrible thing to say, but the

sophistication at which the bullying has progressed, where

technology is a vehicle, is sad, but also true. There's that part

of it as well. So I think, from the faculty side, how ubiquitous

it is, and then how reliant, which is a beautiful thing it

used to be. Do you need to give me this laptop? I'd really just

like to keep using my chalkboard. That has

significantly changed, and

now if the laptop dies, it's an emergency,

day or night, right? Oh,

my God. Such an emergency. Such an emergency. I

mean, I feel that

go back to old school. Yeah,

yesterday,

we were doing some minor updates to our firewall,

and it required the firewall to restart, and there was, like,

maybe 510, minutes of downtime, and no one's really here. So

it's again, perfect time to do it. The people that were in the

office is working. They all left because they had 10 minutes

without internet, and they were like, we can't get our work

done. You know, you tell them that it's going to be temporary

Adams, but it was like, What did you do before the computer?

They said, We're going to Starbucks. We're

out of here

exactly. Yeah, I don't think it was Starbucks to

get more work done, but they all left. Yeah,

that's what we're looking at. And of course, just

tech addiction in itself as well. And I will also say not

just for students, but helping pulling back on technology to

help folks find more balance. You know, it was supposed to be

a great relief, right? You're supposed to be able to use

technology to make your life easier. And all it did was an

over communication tool. And so how to scale back and how to

think about what we're asking of our employees, how often we're

asking them to be connected, is a whole other thing. Yeah. I

mean, it's completely relevant, right?

Because especially the generation of teachers that are

a little bit older, they went into this profession thinking

there would be balance like that was one of the payoffs, right? I

worry about that too for our teachers, because what used to

be like summers and evenings and weekends, you know, if not off,

at least maybe turned down a little bit, and now that's got

to be really, really hard, not only with the workload and all

the extra administration stuff, but then also just not being

able to really shut it off with parents and students always

needing that last minute, like, I have a quiz tomorrow and I'm

panicking and I need help or whatever, that's got to be

really hard for them.

Yes, I will say that our Head of School here has

really tried to push balance, and as simple as doing the Send

Later makes a huge difference, and not willing to implement

multiple communication platforms helps a lot. Also, when you have

too many ways to communicate, people communicate too often,

and I think that that's something we need to look at

seriously, although I'm shocked that at you know, 2am my head of

school needs an iTunes gift card. Ah, but if that happens,

that happens, you know, you

may not want to fall for that friend. And you

also mentioned, like with the role of the eyes, the thing

about the vendors. And I know that, you know, we kind of go

there a lot, but that's also a big issue in terms of just

juggling all the various tools. Do you think that teachers are

burnt out on ed tech tools and using technology. I think we're

coming back

from the pandemic. Everybody had to then

there was the everybody back to paper and pencil, and I don't

ever want to turn on another screen or look at another kid in

a little box. I think we're starting to see some benefits

past the sphere of AI yesterday during our what we call our PAC

meeting, our professional adult community meeting, our faculty

employee meeting, I was demoing something in Flint and some

folks that I know within departments that are like never,

ever, AI and I built this activity that showed this is how

They can get started to avoid blank page syndrome. And when

they come to you, they have something that started, and how

much further you can get with them in a three minute

conversation, because AI has launched them a little bit,

there was like, an aha moment, and a bunch of folks who were

like, wow, that actually could save me some time. And the idea

that at 10 o'clock at night, a kid who's going to be scared

that they don't know enough about the quiz and drop into an

AI activity and quiz themselves and then feel more confident

that they got this is huge, because we have teachers who

care, right? We all have faculty that care, and some of them are

answering email at 10 o'clock at night, when the kids emailing

and saying, I'm not sure I can take the quiz on photosynthesis.

If we give kids a vehicle which they can be more assured that

they're ready, that's huge.

Yeah, 100% you know, I have a question for

all three of you that I don't think that we've really looked

at before, and that is so AI has been on the scene for a bit.

And, you know, there's some teachers that are probably just

kind of exploring on their own. There's others that you guys

might be spoon feeding some school approved solutions, like

flint or, you know, if your school uses magic school or

whatever the tool, whatever the solution. But I find it

interesting. I was just speaking at a school recently. And I was

in front of a lot of the schools faculty, and I had this

impression that the school was probably among the more AI

forward independent schools, like really encouraging the

faculty to experiment and to use AI. They have a very clear set

of expectations for the students, and yet the faculty

was still quite mixed. You know, as I went in, I kind of went in

with this assumption, like, oh, you work here, so you must be

fairly comfortable, confident using AI more regularly than the

average teacher. Maybe it was a mixed bag. So do you find that

your faculties are still kind of all over the spectrum when it

comes to these types of tools? I'll

just speak personally to what I'm seeing

here is, I think that there is a good degree more hesitation with

AI because of some of the unknowns around it, whether it's

from is it kid using it or not? Like, how do we know? What are

the ground rules that you've set up to determine that? What are

they doing with the data? Because that's all we hear

about, is we're feeding into these larger models, and being

careful about what you feed these things and then generally,

like, what is the value? How is it going to either add to or

take away from what it is I'm trying to do, I think that there

are still more ongoing questions about it that because teachers

don't feel like they've got a set frame from which to work,

because most of the tools that we've implemented, you know,

they come in, you can train around them, you can do PD

around them. You can lay down some guidelines that you know

it's going to be contained within. And I think at least

from an AI perspective, you can lay out those guidelines, but

you've got to realize that it's moving so fast, and there's so

many different things out there, there's a greater level of

apprehension and trepidation about taking that step into it,

because you may think you've figured out how you're going to

use it or allow its use, and then the next day it could be

turned on its ear and completely different.

Yeah, I agree with you, Bill. I'm going to take

this question Kristina, and look at it from two different ways.

And one is how I think our administration has viewed it,

and then also how our teachers have viewed it. I think our

teachers were pretty excited about it. In some instances,

there was a continuum across that. But I'm finding that our

teachers are becoming more accepting of the use of AI,

especially for their own personal work. And then it's

been interesting this particular year for us is I'm noticing that

our our administration, has really moved the needle. I think

initially they were very cautious, and now I think

they're starting to realize that if we don't do this

appropriately with our boys, we are actually going to set them

behind, and we need to really have a good path for success, to

prepare them for the future. Actually, it's not even the

future. Prepare them for today, because that is tantamount to,

they say, Christopher's education. And we are trying

really hard to ensure that we create good leaders, that we

create men of character, or phrases, you know, boys of

promise, of men of character. So we really want to ensure that we

prepare them for this new space. What's interesting is it reminds

me of the disruptive nature of laptops when they were first

introduced to schools. The challenge is that laptops

produce such a burden, I think, on technology budgets and school

budgets, that it was able to kind of go at a pace that was at

least more reasonable. This is turn schools upside down on its

head, and it's the access that people have, the access that

students have, and really the ongoing PD that is needed, not

only for the faculty and the staff, but for our students and

our parents, because they really don't understand all that's

involved, particularly in the area of PII. That's my greatest

fear, is they're just using this tech, and they just don't

whatever it is that they want in there, and they're not

considering the implications when they throw in PII. I've

been thinking about this. We haven't surveyed

faculty in a while about their use of AI, and I was thinking,

maybe it's time to do that again. And then I realized, as

soon as we get the data, it's outdated, because everything's

changing, and teachers attitudes are changing so quickly. To

Hiram point about teaching appropriate use, and I know

that's one of the reasons we're using the tool I'll name drop

again, Flint, is because we can put those guard wheels in place.

Because if we don't give them anything to train themselves on,

it's the Wild West, and they're going to go to GPT and just say,

write my paper. But if we set up an activity in Flint that said,

behave like. A tutor and helping students generate ideas, then we

hope that they're going to use that as part of their learning

process, and not just a do for me process. I think that's where

we are with it, and when we can do the PD, we're like so

targeted. I was in the room with an English teacher, and we were

talking about AI, and, you know, the fears of AI writing a paper.

And I said, Well, what if we set up an activity that's helped me

write a thesis and tell the AI, like, straight up, do not write

the thesis, even if I submit one, don't revive like, so

specifically, like, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. And

then you could see the AI was really that tutor, which is a

great equalizer for kids access to those kinds of resources. And

it was like a light bulb went off, honestly, for the teacher,

it was like, Oh, this could really be helpful. Again. They

can have this whole brainstorming session with AI

before they come to see me, and I'm not helping them with step

one or two, I can help them dig deep and actually enhance their

learning, because they've already got something that's not

so bad, and I can teach them to make it something excellent.

Yeah, I think that one of the examples

that I sometimes use is that my daughters, who are in college, I

often encourage them to put the prompt in from the professor, to

beat the writers block, and ask the AI, basically to say, what

questions would I need to answer in order to fully explore this

prompt? And it just gives a list of questions, and then it gives

the kids something to start with, to kind of how to wrap

their brain around it. They're not asking it to outline.

They're not asking it to write for them, just simply saying,

what questions would I need to answer if I were to fully

explore this topic or this prompt? And it gives a whole

list of them, and it's a great thought starter. And you know,

that's often an example. I like yours as well, which is like,

don't give me the thesis, but walk me through it. You know,

What elements do I need to hit here? And I like that approach,

and I think that that's how a lot of kids will use it, because

we very shortly got to this era where it's like, Oh yeah, that

was written by AI. There's the telltale signs and the bullets

and the numbered lists. And so you can tell that even in the

adult world, when something was written by AI, not that there's

anything particularly wrong with it, depending on the situation,

but at least using it to get us thinking rather than to do the

writing for us is, I think, where the real power lies, at

least at the moment, with this generation of AI. So we'll see.

So with you guys being first gen tech leaders, and you've been

around for a while, you're the ones putting together cool

resources full of job descriptions and the one

speaking at the Atlas conference and presenting to the Atlas

Leadership Institute. Where do you turn Peter for your kind of

inspiration and or your PD, do you still feel like you get a

lot out of being part of the Atlas community? Because I know

that I feel that way in the association community, for sure,

but when you're the one presenting more often than the

one sitting in the sessions. Where do you kind of get your PD

from?

Definitely, Atlas. I read almost every post

that comes through is EDL as well. That's it, and the side

posts that go sideways and links, definitely Atlas is the

go to conference in my leadership. I've been going to

NAIS more often the past few years, and seeing benefit there

to get that higher view about what's happening in schools, and

then thinking about how I can support, again, that empathy,

that relational part, what everyone else is going through.

Those are my conferences right now, and I find that that's

really valuable. It's also great to see Atlas folks at NAIS that

aren't in technology anymore, division heads and such, to

Bill's point, earlier, that have moved out of the realm of

technology leaders and actually school leaders. I think you had

talked about that a little bit like, how do we get people to

look a little bit further out? I'm also fortunate enough to be

part of a cohort that Jamie Sullivan at Kesley put together

with Eric Hudson, and we're doing an AI cohort in the Bay

Area. Oh, that's cool. So I'm learning a lot from all of those

folks. That's been really great. I think there are six different

independent schools in that cohort, so we're all chatting

and talking there, and that's great. And then I'm learning

from my peers here just locally what they're talking about. I

love it. You can learn from everywhere, right? And I will be

learning more from the archive of the podcast. You're

gonna have to go back and be a day one

listener. We've had some pretty incredible conversations, to be

honest. We've gotten some great guests to come and be a part of

what we're talking about. But also, you know, just having the

regular opportunity to talk shop is kind of cool, you know, and

just keeping up with what's going on with the trends and

what you guys are dealing with, for sure.

So Peter, you've mentioned going to NAIS so that

you can kind of get a more of a 360 view of how the school

operates, how. Helped you improve, or has it helped you

improve your relationship with your head of school? Yeah,

great question. And funny story, you know, when,

whenever was NAIS was posted conference, I was like, I'll go

if nobody else wants to go, because I feel like we should be

represented there, so I was going to be the sole person

going. And then my head of school said, I'll go too. So it

helped a relationship, because we were there together. We sat

next to each other during the sessions. We talked here and

there and just passing each other in the hallway. I'm very

fortunate. I feel like I have a really good relationship with my

head of school, so sitting through the general sessions,

then talking about the sessions we both attended, absolutely

helped that relationship, and debriefing. What we've heard,

what we saw and what we didn't hear, is also valuable. And

bring it back to the senior leadership team. I did a variety

of sessions there, which also helps bridge that relationship,

because she didn't do anything that I did. So I went to

Kristina session about boards and AI, because that's always

something that's high on the list of things that are on my

plate that she wants me to be addressing and I need to be

addressing. But then I went to a great session about student

perfectionism and what we can do to help combat that. And that's

part of, I mean, my teeny little advising hat, but such a school

wide important thing to be talking about. So going there

absolutely helps that relationship, because it also

demonstrates that I want to be if I'm not already a school

leader and I'm not siloed in this tech directors role, CIO

role,

and when you said poking your head in, like going

around and just poking yourself into different things. I think

conferences like that allow you to poke in from a perspective

where you've got some grounding. Something that said, I remember

going and presenting at case NACE with our alumni office, and

then attending those other sessions. It just helps you be

more informed with regards to the conversations that you have,

because we all know what we do really touches across all

aspects of school. Maybe at a very high level, you're not

getting deep into the weeds, but the more you can talk with a

level of fluency around these different things, you might be

invited into those conversations and not be necessarily poking

into them or injecting yourself. Oh, oh, we should bring Bill

into this, or bring Peter or Hiram into this, because we know

that they were either there or I heard them talking about this.

It just you mentioned relationships. It just helps

build all of

that. There's a funny way that I've started to

do that as well, which is when I walk the vendor Hall, I go

around, I pick up stuff, and I say, I'm picking this up for a

friend, because I'm not involved. I mean, I chaperone

trips with experiential Ed and trips, but I'm like, I'm going

to pick up all the flyers for all the experiential Ed trips

and hand those off to our person, Emily Clark, and say, I

saw these, and some of them sounded pretty cool. Again, it's

just that opening into a conversation

that's kind of brilliant. So you bring home

swag to like, open up a conversation that's fabulous.

That's a good idea,

right? And it helps. It's like, oh yeah, you

saw that person. They cold called me. Is it worth reaching

out to them? It's like, Yeah, I think so. You know, your book

company that had a slightly different way of thinking about

it. Started a conversation with somebody about yearbook and

such. So all of that stuff helps. That's awesome. So

Peter, before we finish things up and

let you go about your day, tell us a little bit about what you

do when you are not at school,

nothing,

naps and relaxation.

I am such a home buddy. My wife, like I

mentioned, is a teacher, and she works really hard, so I spend a

lot of time, not a lot of time supporting her. It sounds really

silly, but we have one kid who's off in college. Now it used to

be more around that we're doing a bit more travel now that he's

off, and so that's exciting. We're off to Italy in a couple

of months, looking forward to those types of things. We are

heavily invested in finding out what he's up to. He's a senior

in college, and so he's doing his job search and things like

that. I'm so boring. Honestly,

I think that sounds blissful trips to Italy

and like empty nesting. Oh, I love it. I think my blood

pressure just went down. Listening to you talk about how

boring your life was. Want to trade. I like the boring. I've

got one who's a senior, but I got three others who are not.

Good luck, crazy. It's a hard year. I think, to be a senior in

college, there's a lot of crazy things going on in the world. So

can be kind of a tough entry into the real world. Yeah, I

love that you've spent some time with us, and that we've been

able to get to know your background a little bit more.

And I cannot thank you enough for all the time and energy that

you put into the Atlas community. I know that my staff

and I all just think so highly of you, and we're so grateful,

and you're also just so relaxed. Reliable. You may be boring to

you, but you are heck reliable to us, so we know that we can

always reach out and get great answers from you. So thank you

so much for all that you do for the Atlas team. Love this group.

This was fun.

This has been talking technology with Atlas,

produced by the Association of Technology Leaders in

Independent Schools. For more information about Atlas and

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