Lauren Marold and Becky Barrett of Preston Hollow Presbyterian School join the show to discuss their remarkable seven-month total campus relocation. They share insights on leveraging assistive technology and native accessibility tools to empower students with learning differences, emphasizing intentionality and the creation of "technology learning profiles" to support long-term student success.

1. The PHPS Difference Podcast
2. Preston Hollow Presbyterian School
3. ATLIS Learning Institute (ALI), education and networking program designed to prepare and support technology leaders in independent schools as they grow into their positions and expand their influence
4. Technology for Leaders in Independent Schools (TLIS), ATLIS’s certification program specifically for tech leaders at independent schools
5. Learning Ally, enabling the success of of struggling readers including students with dyslexia

Matt, welcome to Talking technology with ATLIS,

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

technology leaders all through a unique Independent School lens.

We'll hear stories from technology directors and other

special guests from the Independent School community,

and provide you with focused learning and deep dive topics.

And now please welcome your host. Christina Lewellen,

Hello everyone, and welcome back to

talking technology with ATLIS. I'm Christina 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, the Director of

Information Systems and Academic Technology at St Christopher

school in Richmond, Virginia.

Hello, gentlemen, how are you glorious?

Oh, that's

a great word. I like it. I'm gonna go lose

glorious too.

Okay, I'm so glad you both are glorious

today. I'm kind of feeling glorious because this is the

first pod that we're recording after our 100th episode dropped,

and I know that we have since had a planning meeting together,

but we have not been able to publicly thank our producer

extraordinaire, Mr. Peter Frank, for putting together such a fun

100th episode. So big. Cheers for Peter.

Amazing. Absolutely amazing. Thanks.

That was a labor of love, for sure.

If you have not had a chance to listen to

it, Peter was able to take snippets and recordings from

previous episodes, and he had us respond to them and react to

them in real time. We were answering some questions from

our spouses, which was really fun. But he left a surprise at

the end that we did not know about. And I approve every

podcast, so I did not hear this until it dropped publicly, which

was the big zombie compilation. Peter labor of love is right,

like for real. How long did that take you

that's eating an elephant that is one bite at a

time. I was worried about procrastinating, but I was

pretty good about just grabbing 20 minutes here, an hour there,

just pecking away at it. I started before Thanksgiving,

just working at it and working at it. And it all came in the

last few days. It did come down to the wire a bit, but I was

still very happy with it at the end.

It was adorable.

I've listened to it multiple times. Nice. Same here.

It makes me laugh every single time, not to mention with the

background music, right?

So he grabbed every reference to

zombie and Zombie Apocalypse that we've ever said on the show

in 100 episodes, and the compilation of every single time

we've made that reference is insanely funny. I listened to it

the first time when the episode dropped, I was on the treadmill,

and I actually just stopped running because I was laughing

and I was afraid I would lose my balance, and I was just like, so

shocked by how quickly all these zombie references were coming at

us. And so this morning, I was not listening to it, but I was

back on the treadmill, and I was laughing again, thinking about

it,

there's a lot to unpack. Yeah, you can listen to

it a few times and catch new things.

I like Barry chiming in at one point with

what was going on. I mean, it was just the little cameos that

showed up in it. I thought was quite amusing as well.

Well, we certainly stuck with a theme

through the first 100 episodes. So Peter, thank you for doing

that. Thanks for that labor of love. It was really fun. Such a

wonderful collectible. If you guys haven't gone back and

listened to that, just at least, grab the last five minutes of

the 100th episode to understand what the heck we're talking

about. It is pretty fabulous. So thank you for doing that. Peter,

absolutely.

And listen to the whole episode, not just the last

five minutes. The whole episode is fantastic. Is fantastic. It's

a great sample of if you've never listened to the podcast,

or obviously, if you're listening to this, you have, but

it's a fantastic representation of what we do week in and out.

Now, Christina, I will say, I played the last five

minutes for grace. And you know grace, you've met grace. Yep.

And she just looked at me, shook her head and said, poor

Christina. Oh, having to deal with you too.

Thank you, Grace. I am poor Christina.

Thank you. See, I actually feel like listening to everything all

at once like that makes a lot of people understand why I roll my

eyes so often on this podcast, just saying, Well, we have a

couple of great guests with us today. It is time to transition

into the real work. The thing we showed up here today to do, we

are excited to welcome not one but two, awesome people and

great leaders from the Preston Hollow Presbyterian school in

Dallas, Texas. Today. We have with us Lauren Merrill, and she

is the director of innovative learning, and we also have with

her, Becky Barrett, who is the technology and library

Integration Specialist. Lauren and Becky. Thank you for joining

us today. How are you guys doing? Great.

We're good. Thank you for having us. Yeah. Thanks.

So what we'll

start with is, I'd love to give each of you

a moment to just introduce yourselves, and then we'll get

into why we asked you guys to join us today. But first, let's

make sure that everybody who's listening understands a little

bit about who you are, and if you don't mind telling us a

little bit about the school as well, that'd be great. Yeah.

I'm Lauren Merrill. I am the director of

innovative learning for Preston Hollow, as Christina mentioned,

this is a relatively new title. I've been the director of

technology for the past five years here. This title change

has allowed me to incorporate library services under

technology as well, and then special projects for our schools

so broader scope, because we're a very small school, so a lot of

times we wear many, many hats. We're very excited. This is our

first year in our new campus. We have been serving Dallas for 64

years, and we were previously located in another area, and we

just opened our new campus this fall, and so that has been a

pretty all consuming experience, because we started construction

and remodeling in February of last year and opened in August.

So if you've ever done a full campus move in seven months,

it's not for the faint of heart, but we did it. I have been

working in independent schools for the past 18 years, primarily

in educational technology and technology leadership, serving K

through 12, and it's been my greatest joy, though, working

here at Preston Hollow and getting to work alongside Becky

and serve students with learning differences in the K through

sixth grade age group. And now we're expanding through seventh

and eighth in the next couple years. So a lot of change, but

really, really proud work. And I'm also a T list certification

council member, which I am very, very proud of. That work and all

that we've done in such a short amount of time as well, Bill has

been alongside and Christina, and we've really seen some major

growth in that process and experience. And then many moons

ago, I was a part of ECAD before it became Ali. Lots of amazing

work with ATLIS as well. So very grateful to this organization

for your support as I've grown in my career.

And I'm Becky Brett, and like Lauren

mentioned, I'm the Technology and library specialist. It's

only my second year here at Preston Hollow, but I've been in

education for over 18 years. I stepped away for a couple years

and got to work for Soundtrap, which was a Spotify company,

doing some podcasting. And then I also worked at another ed tech

company, the social Institute. So about a year and a half ago,

I texted Lauren, and I've said, Oh, I see you have an opening,

and my educator heart is pulling me to want to go back and work

with students. So I'm so lucky to get to work with her. We

actually crossed paths very briefly at another school, and

so although we have a really small, amazing population of

students, we get to know them all and work with them and be

really intentional with the technology that we use, whether

that's assistive technology or integration. And so I'm excited

to be here. And I also did the ALI program, but during covid,

so I feel like it was just a lot of zooming, whether it was with

students

or Yes, lots of information swirling around,

I'm sure during those years. Yes, we wanted to bring you on

because we would love to talk about not only the population

you serve, of k6 learning differences, but also assistive

technology in this realm. But first we have to stop down on

this move. Yeah, you moved campuses in seven months. And I

am certain everyone listening to us, given that we have a

primarily tech director, tech focused audience is probably

having a heart attack. Yes, can you tell us a little bit about

that? And I think that I mainly am just looking for you to tell

me it was okay to bring all of the blood pressure down.

Yes, we had an amazing group of board members

and parents that really rallied behind us and understood the

importance of saving this institution and making sure that

we had a place that would sustain us for the future and

give us the opportunity to continue serving and so we're

very grateful for that. But from the tech side, I had a master's

degree education, I would say, in how to do all of these

things, and yeah, it was an incredible process. It was

really hard. It was very grueling. It was all consuming

because we had to do it in such a short timeline. We remodeled

and renovated to 25,000 square foot buildings. We built a

ground up 6000 square foot gymnasium that also is our storm

shelter, because in the state of Texas, we are required to have a

storm shelter that withstands 250 mile an hour winds. So I got

to learn all of that code and interesting things that you

would never really want to learn about, necessarily. But we have

a really beautiful space. Place that is so unique, because I

don't think you always are given an opportunity to design a full

campus for the population you serve. And so we were able to be

really intentional and thoughtful about the types of

classrooms, way finding areas that would really serve our

learning difference population, and that was really unique and

special. And so while it was a bit of a hurricane in and of

itself, we did survive. We did make it. Learned so much about

the technology that we could put into this space and the

infrastructure that we could have to sustain us. So yes,

thank you for asking. But yeah, it's been really, really good.

Peter was very wonderful and alongside me as I was going

through this process, because we were also doing T list work, and

so he's been very supportive in following along in the journey.

But yeah, it's been good. We're really proud and have some great

spaces for these students to learn.

So did the kids continue to learn? Did you

do a big move like the cut off point over a summer or a break

like, how did you keep teaching and keep serving your student

population amidst the chaos?

Yeah, so we pretty much finished the school

year, and all of June, we packed and teachers packed up their

classrooms. They were required by the time they left school,

they had to have their classrooms packed and ready. We

finished packing as an admin team, we moved the first week of

August, all of the stuff from the old campus, 64 years worth

of things, to the new campus. And then the second week of

August, teachers came, unpacked their classrooms, set them up.

The third week we had in service, the fourth week we had

students. And so it's been amazing. I mean, you couldn't

really guarantee all of those things to happen, but it did,

and now it feels like home.

So Bill and Hiram, does this give you

anxiety? Do you have second hand anxiety?

Or I'm just jealous of the time it took them to do

it, and they were able to do it in the window of time that they

had, having just opened a renovation, right? And how long

that took to hear the timeline of this flabbergasted that they

got it done.

We had some incredible contractors. Yeah, we

had several contractors that were also really committed as

families of our students, and they had a little extra bit of

desire to get us in and moving.

The scope of this project is just immense. I mean,

having we opened up a science center, and I remember when we

had to move just the science faculty right? And what a

nightmare that was to move all of that gear and all the of the

reagents and whatnot. Yes, it just speaks so highly of your

community. Yeah, to get it done at that pace, and then to also

come back early summer in order to get it done. Kudos to you

all. That is fabulous.

Thank you.

Yeah, super impressive.

So who are the students that you're serving?

What types of learning issues are they dealing with? Because I

think that's going to help set the context for the conversation

as a whole.

So all of our students come to us already with

a learning difference diagnosis. Mostly it's going to be language

based learning disorders such as dysgraphia, mostly dyslexia. We

do have some with dyscalculia. Everything that we do is really

intentional with providing them with what they need. Our

students will go to reading and math small groups. So while they

might be in a home room of 10, they'll be broken into

personalized reading groups of maybe four or five and as well

as math. So everything is really intentional and personalized for

them to make sure that they're successful.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that the thing that

we do so uniquely is it's targeted remediation for these

students so they can come within any time in that admissions

period, so kindergarten through sixth grade, they are welcome to

join us. But the thing that's really interesting that we do

maybe differently than other independent schools that are

serving students with learning differences is our goal is to

mainstream them back to the schools that they maybe came

from, or a school that would be more suited for them going

forward. That doesn't mean that some of them won't still need

learning, different, support and remediation past what we can

offer, but I think that that's a really, really special gift to

say these kids are capable, talented, wonderful children,

and they just need us to support them in this moment, in their

journey as learners. So we're kind of foundational education

for them, and then they go back, and we have a high success rate

of moving back into those mainstream learning

environments. And part of this new campus has afforded us the

opportunity to expand to eighth grade. We didn't have that.

Base. And if you don't know anything about the Dallas market

for independent schools, it's really interesting. We have a

ton of independent schools, and we are now on the road that is

kind of called the private school corridor. So there's a

lot of private schools that are along this area. And so there's

many, many options for our families. There are other

learning difference options as well, but we are able to

hopefully serve through that eighth grade timeframe now,

because it's hard to move at seventh grade, that's just a

hard point for life. I mean, Middle School is tough, and so

we're really excited to be able to focus in our upper grades now

on executive functioning. And it's maybe not so much about

remediation. It's about what are those skills that will allow you

to slow down a little bit, have a slower pace, have things you

need to then be high school ready. So it doesn't change our

mission. We'll still have students that'll leave at

different points, but we'll also be able to look at high school

as a different exit point, and hopefully still to those

mainstream high schools.

So you mentioned mainstreaming to the local high

schools bill, and I actually did an audit not too long ago with

the landmark School up in Massachusetts, and they were

doing something very similar. I can only imagine, in addition to

the move, the complexity of student records because of some

of the state requirements that you also probably have as well.

Can you share with us about some of the issues that you have to

deal with there?

Yeah, so it's interesting, in the state of

Texas, as an independent school, we are not necessarily beholden

to state requirements. So students can come to us. They

have to have a psycho educational evaluation in order

to be admitted to our school with a certified learning

difference. They would have to go through either a public

school and have the testing with an IEP or 504 plan, or they can

go to a private evaluator, and so we are able to accept either

but that's really the main piece of our process. There is not

other kind of state limiters. I know that some states have

different requirements around these types of programs and

students moving between public to private, but for us in the

state of Texas, that's actually not a challenge. We're not

beholden to state testing and some of those other pieces, just

because of how we're structured.

It keeps it really clean.

It does. I've worked with a couple schools now

that deal with a similar population. If you have students

that are coming from the public schools and coming to you, I'm

assuming they're coming to you because they don't have the

services to support what they need in their buildings. So are

the public schools paying a portion of the tuition for those

students? No? Oh, interesting.

Yeah, they're choosing to come to us

personally. That's a choice. A lot of times we find families

that maybe they are getting services in their public school,

and that it's just that they want that small class size we

see in our upper grades, especially that a lot of kids

might be coming with anxiety on top of their learning

difference, and so parents are seeking a smaller learning

environment that will permit the student to Just feel like they

have a little bit more space to grow at a slower pace and not

just be a part of that bigger number of students.

So we wanted to have you both on the pod,

because one of the things that I've heard a lot in the last

couple years is that when technology leaders are making

choices about technology in the classroom that may provide some

sort of assistive quality, that it doesn't just benefit the kid

that it was intended for or the kids, but that there's a broader

benefit, usually because all learners are likely to benefit

from Some of these technologies. And I've heard that enough

times, whether we're talking about name pronunciation

software or actual other more traditionally thought of as

assistive technology tools, it just always comes back to

sometimes it's more helpful for the teachers, sometimes the

parents find benefit in it. So we wanted to bring you guys on

to talk about this topic, because I do think that even if

you're not in an LD school or serving an LD population

specifically, there's a lot of benefit here. So especially for

our listeners who may be a little bit newer to this realm.

How do you all define Assistive Technology

at your school? It was interesting. We actually

had a professional development just a couple weeks ago, so we

were defining it for teachers as well. But just how can we

support them to them being the students, whether it's having

the text read aloud to them, or using their voice to type,

versus getting kind of stuck typing all the words that they

aren't sure how to? Spell. How can we make sure that what they

are demonstrating is truly what they know, not just what they're

able to produce? So when I think of all the different projects

that we have, I think of what are some ways that I can again,

make it really elevated, to enhance what the students are

learning, but not hold them back with necessarily reading hard

academic text. Maybe they listen to it or watch a video about it.

Maybe they're not going to write a report, but instead they're

going to create a podcast, or maybe they make something in

Minecraft instead demonstrating area and perimeter, for example.

So we just try to make sure that we provide these ways that, like

you said, Christina, that all students can be successful. So

in one classroom, it might be where one student is listening

to Pebble go about a person that they're researching, whereas

another student is going to skim it or read it, or maybe just

listen to certain words read aloud. You'd really have to

think just outside the box. What is the goal? What are we trying

to get students to do, and how can we support them?

I can remember what was considered, at least for us

at MKA, we serve a broader group of students, but we do have

student support. Things that are in place. And a lot of the

things that you were talking about 1015, 20 years ago were

accommodations that were made that eventually became just

simply part and parcel of what using technology is. So when you

talk about the voice to text, well, we're doing that on our

devices constantly. Now, the ability to have text read aloud

to you that previously was a piece of software that you would

have to buy and have simply allowing student to have a

laptop to take notes, right? Used to be one of those things.

So it's interesting how the landscape of all of this has

changed. One of my longtime friends is in Apple System

Engineering, and one of his topics that he loves to talk

about is assistive technology, specifically what comes native

to a device. So how you can help empower your students and your

families with things that they already have at the ready. So

what are the types of things, the tools that you're using or

employing with students that might be available to everyone,

versus those that might be a little bit extra or a little bit

more that you'd have to dig in and find? Yeah, I

think that's a great question. We spend a lot

of time talking about accessibility tools versus

assistive technology, because accessibility tools are what are

built in to all of your native apps, just what you're speaking

about. So, you know, Apple has their own set of accessibility.

You set up a Chromebook and it starts talking at you, your Mac

does the same thing. And so there are so many opportunities

to use those tools and make it however you want it to feel for

you, whether that is just making your font bigger on your Kindle

so that you can read it better. I feel like mine is like four

words per page because I cannot see. So that is, for me, a

really great tool. But thinking about kids and the families you

know, last year at the conference, Heather Ramsey and I

did a session on assistive technology, and Bill knows my

best friend. We stayed together a lot, but we really enjoyed

that session because it was an opportunity to talk with others

about what they're using in their space and how we are using

assistive technology and the accessibility tools. And that

was one of the biggest areas we talked about. It's just those

accessibility features that's such an easy share with

families, we have a guide that we've used where it's just like

here are all of the different platforms, whether it's Google,

whether it's your Chromebook, your Mac, your PC, everything

has it at your fingertips for voice to text. And one of the

things that Becky and I were talking about this morning that

I think is really interesting and not to get too like

academic, nerdy, but you have the different types of learning

theory. You have andragogy, which is adult learning theory,

you have pedagogy, which is child learning theory. And if

you look at the two of those, andragogy is so focused on the

learner. As an adult wants autonomy and wants to make

choice and wants to be able to be the leader of their learning.

And with students, we say it's teacher led. That's the meaning

of pedagogy. It's always about the adult making those

decisions. And so I think that when we're talking about

assistive technology, it's such an opportunity to say, if adults

are allowed to use voice to text on your text messages, or you're

allowed to change your font size, or you need this tool to

do X. Why would we not be having those conversations with

students? We're in 2026 and it just seems like a latent

conversation that we should be already having and looking at.

And that's mainstream or LD learning environments, so I just

get caught up in the fact that adults are given a lot more

leeway in what we want and need to be able to be successful. So

how can we think about our students and give them those

tools as well?

I love that, Lauren, because I often say that

we have to remind ourselves what the end goal is in sometimes in

independent schools, in your case, it might be getting them

back to their public school with confidence and scaffolding to

succeed. In some cases, our independent schools might say

that the goal is to get them into a prestigious college or a

great, specialized training program, but at the end of the

day, as we all go out into the world and become adults, many of

us, anyway, have to make money and earn a living, and we

function out in the real world. And often I bring that

perspective back into schools when I'm speaking with leaders,

because I'm like, Yeah, but you're training these kids to

come work for a CEO like me, and I think that we absolutely want

to leverage AI, leverage tools to make us work smarter, faster

and in more comprehensive ways. Like, why would you struggle

with writing if that's your Achilles heel, right? And so in

a weird way, I love what you're saying, because, you know, from

the lens of an educator, I'm sure you guys are thinking about

allowing students some autonomy and how they learn, but from the

lens of like coming out into the real world, we're all using

these tools anyway. So why wouldn't we want our kids to be

as powerful with them as early as possible? Understanding, of

course, there's fundamentals to learn, but that does allow for

us to become more human humans, I think, and that's a big part

of the conversations we're having right now. So I wonder

what you think about that. I think

it's also really interesting that we have to

remind our parents of that too, that students can listen to,

whether it's Learning Ally or audible, listen to a story that

they're reading, and that's still reading, you'll still see

in their brain the same firing of the neurons listening to a

story as if they were reading, and so educating parents on that

as well as students. And I think because we're so small, we get

to have those conversations with kids, and that way they really

are knowledgeable about what tools they can use. And that's

our goal as they move on to maybe a different middle school

or high school, making sure that they feel empowered to use what

works for them and know themselves really well as a

learner.

I'm so glad that you said that, because I

think that where I understand that there has to be the

fundamentals, I totally respect that you brought up the audible

thing, right? And so the best thing that ever happened to me,

I was a commuter in the Washington, DC area, 20 years

ago, and I spent hours in the car, and I picked up CDs at the

local library to listen to books. And something clicked in

my head way back then, which was, this is allowing me to be

well read. I was keeping up on all of the trendy books, as well

as all the business books. And then I went to do my MBA, and I

was able to supplement my reading in my car time. It was

incredible. And so, of course, it may not surprise you to know

huge consumer of podcasts. I love audio books. I mean, I'm

not just like a single platform, I'm an audible plus Spotify,

right? Plus the local library, like I have multiple audio books

at any given time, I think that it makes me a well read, well

rounded, informed human. So if we're taking this out of an

educational setting, why would that same not be true for kids?

Exactly?

Yeah, well, and it's interesting. I've told

Becky this anecdote before, but so I have dyslexia, and I was

diagnosed when I was in second grade. I stayed in a mainstream

school, but tutored three days a week, year round for seven

years. And, you know, a lot of work towards remediation. But

when I was a child, you could get a subscription. It was

called the School for the Blind at that time in Texas, and you

could get a subscription for a big cassette player, and they

would send you the cassette player, and then they would send

you your textbooks and other books that you needed to listen

to for school, so that you could actually consume that

information and have that as an assistive tool. And I just think

about it was cumbersome. It couldn't go with you. It was not

an easy tool to have. And so just thinking about having these

tools at our fingertips, and every child can have, and every

adult can have the tools that they need, that's really, really

powerful. We live in a special time. I know we're all consumed,

and I know Technology is everywhere and in every aspect

of our lives, but when we start to think about, how do we use it

as that support that's really amazing and very fortunate thing

to be in this time.

It sounds like you all have found that secret sauce

to keep your parents informed, to keep your students up to

speed on things when they go to their feeder schools. What kind

of pressure are your parents and families placing on these feeder

schools to. To allow and or augment their curricula such

that your students can continue to succeed.

We recently had Ben Kirby, who is an

administrator over at one of our high schools that a lot of our

independent schools for middle school feed into, and I think

it's having questions and conversations with him about and

other schools of what do you allow students to use? So that

way, we're not giving students tools that they aren't going to

be able to use when they go into high school, and also educating

the high schools on what works for our students. Lauren and I

are working on creating learning profiles for students. So that

way, when our eighth grader goes over to Jesuit or Bishop Lynch,

they will know everything that makes that student really

successful, kind of like what Christina was saying, focusing

on what the learning goal is. But how can we help support them

with that tool? But I was surprised to hear that even at

this very large high school, independent school, they have

30% of their students that have some sort of diagnosis, and so I

feel like our students go there really knowledgeable about what

works for them, because they've been using those tools.

You know, I go back to my third grade teacher years,

which were many, many moons ago, but still resonate very loudly,

and we're touching on the technology that you can use in

support of the work that you're doing. And I go back to, like,

thinking about, Okay, well, you need to develop your handwriting

skills. You need to be playing with block. You know what I

mean? You need to be doing, yes, those things. And some of the

schools that I've actually worked with, they to some degree

a number of years ago, let's go back a little bit. But they were

very much like, not anti technology, but they were really

not wanting to leverage the tech, because they wanted to

build those foundational pieces. Yeah, and you know, as time

changes, technology changes, as the proliferation of it, the

ubiquitous nature of it, how do you work to thread that needle,

so to speak, in terms of teaching the practical skills

that if you're on a desert island, are still going to keep

you successful, versus those ones that why make life harder?

We were saying, you know, with teachers, we assume that they

can just use all these things. Why not students? Where do you

draw that line? Thread that needle to make sure kids are

getting what they need, whether it's with or without the tech.

And we spend a lot of time talking about

intentional technology use and thinking about it from a skill

acquisition perspective. So if you are trying to teach a child

how to write, and the goal is that they are learning grammar,

and they need to be actually handwriting, and they're working

on that skill, then that's what they should be doing. And then,

if you're just trying to get a child to generate ideas, and the

goal is to get as many ideas out of their head as possible, and

the writing process is going to be arduous and slow them down,

then that's a great opportunity to use any of our number of

tools. You throw it into seesaw and do a thinking session. You

have them do voice to text into a Google Doc. So it's really

about what is the end goal, what's your purpose? What do you

want to have the students gain? And so I think the other thing

that's really important about the way our curriculum is

structured. Students have 90 minutes of reading every day,

and it is a structured reading program. They have 90 minutes of

math every day, and it is a structured math program. And so

there are areas where technology might come into those classes,

but they're also very specific curriculum programs to work

towards their remediation process. So then we have other

areas of the day where we're doing other ELA type activities

and social studies and science, and they go to technology class

as a standalone class, which I know a lot of schools have moved

away from, but for our population, it's a really

intentional and purposeful opportunity for them. And so I

think it's really deciding what the skill is, what are you

trying to teach the children and the students? And then if it is

a task, that technology kind of going into the same or idea, if

the technology is going to redefine it and it's going to

really help them grow and or if it's not at time where they need

to work that hard, they don't need to go through the struggle,

they don't need to live in their learning difference challenge at

that moment where we could see success in a different way,

that's when technology should be used.

That hits home for me, as a former science teacher,

because I remember having a conversation with one of our

math teachers because he was so focused on them actually doing

the graph, constructing the graph, and making sure the axes

were a certain way. And I said, You do realize that in the real

world, most graphs don't come out nice and clean, and so my

concern was, you. Is it the art of graphing that you want, or do

you want them to recognize functions within a coordinate

plane that led us to a totally different conversation and

utilizing some graphing applications that would allow us

to actually focus on what are the functions? How are they

related? What happens when you change exponents and they could

see it, as opposed to spending all this time trying to graph,

we accomplished two things. We taught them what the function

should look like, yeah, and then we taught them how to graph so

that they knew what they actually produced was correct.

It was a really transformative time back in my former middle

school science teaching days, but I hear you. I love what you

guys are doing. Well, I

think Lauren and I both have this great unique

perspective of also having our own small children at home that

are obviously in school, and they also have learning

differences. So looking at technology from the lens of

Creation versus consumption, you know, our kids aren't just on

their devices for the sake of being online, whatever they're

doing on their device, like Lauren mentioned, is really

intentional. If you work at a elementary school right now, I'm

sure you're hearing of like brain rot and Roblox and all of

that. And that is not what our students are doing. It is

nothing like brain rot that they're creating. You know, they

are designing, they're working together, so we try to educate

our teachers on that, but also our parents, when they come in

for a tour and they are apprehensive about seeing, you

know, a first grader with an iPad in their hand, but

educating them on how they're using it, and it's not the same

way that they might use it at home.

Yeah, I would imagine that there are

some misconceptions, yes, because we just lump it all into

one bucket. So how do you guys sort of drill into that and make

sure that both the parents and maybe even some of the teachers

understand? I mean, your school is probably different, but I

think in general, sometimes you get this visceral reaction from

educators that are like, No, it's too much, right? So how do

we tackle that? Yeah, I

think that's an important question. I think to

hiram's point, we change the questions around, what are the

outcomes, what is the purpose? And you know, I think that if

you've done any kind of ed tech integration, it can go two ways,

and working with teachers, it can also be the we did the

training and then it either succeeded or flopped. And so

it's that continuous conversation. So we don't just

do a training and then move on. We are continually talking about

this. We're popping into classrooms. We're collaborating

with teachers so that the intentionality is always

achieved. And sometimes it just doesn't happen. It's okay.

Sometimes it's a flop, and that's all right. But I think

the questions are the really important part. And so I think

you gave a great example of what are we trying to do with

graphing? Is it graphing for graphing sake, just so that you

can see what a graph looks like, or are you trying to achieve

something else? And so if we're always looking at the skills

that we're trying to give the students and how they acquire

them. But the same thing I could say for faculty, what are the

skills that we're trying to give faculty so that they can then go

teach it and make it an application in their classroom?

Because it's also overwhelming, I think, for us as

technologists, we are consuming constantly, like, oh, this new

tool, this new tool. But also it can be overwhelming for teachers

if they have too many tools at their disposal. And I think

we've seen that with AI. There's all of these platforms now that

you could use anything to do the new skill you're trying to

achieve in the classroom in an AI tool, which is great and all,

but having a an understanding of what that tool does, is it going

to actually achieve what you want it to achieve, what your

schools policy about AI and the use of it in these different

places, and so there's just a lot, and it's always landing

back in intentionality.

How are you going about vetting the tools and what

gets you to a yes, but what also brings you to a no? Because a

parent could come and say, oh, you know, my kid's dealing with

this, and I was told that this would help. But if you look at

and you're like, that's not what we do,

as we've said, we're very small, and so we do

have the ability to control that in a better way than maybe other

schools, because I've worked in the big K through 12, and that's

a different beast. Of trying to control who's picking tools

teachers are using them on their own, and trying to manage all of

that is a different challenge. We're actually pretty slim. In

my five years of being here, I have tried really hard to track

use both at the student level and at the teacher level, to

just understand how you're using it. How often are you using it?

What's the purpose of the use we do this survey every year, and

then we have conversations around every tool and that data

piece I've always look at to see you know, only three people say

they're using this tool. How are they using it, and if they're

using it really, well, great. That's a tool we're keeping,

even if it's only three people. And so I think it's really about

the conversations and tracking the data. That's probably our

first area. But then Becky and I test everything before it goes

into the hands of the teachers. We try it out with a small

sample of students. If it is a tool that a parent has suggested

to us, we'll look at it and decide, like Becky had

mentioned, we also have our own data set at home. It's really

nice to have kids in this demographic of age in our own

homes, because we can try things out at home before throwing it

into the learning environment. But I think that it's really

about looking at how the tool will be used, whether or not it

will actually benefit our students, or if it just sounds

like another time that they'll just be sitting on technology,

we really try to avoid those tools where it's just a

consumption. Most of our tools, if you were to look at them, are

for evaluation, research or creation.

I'm grateful to hear that you all have a mature

vetting process for your applications. One of the things

that I know I've been struggling with as of late is the

introduction of all of these additional extensions, yes, on

browsers. Do you all have a similar process for vetting or

at least controlling and limiting the access to certain

extensions?

Yeah, so faculty, staff and students all have to

go through a request process for adding extensions that is kind

of run through our Google Admin Portal or other administrative

management platforms. And so they would have to go through

Becky or I to discuss it, explain the need for it, and

then we determine if it's worth pushing out or not. For

instance, we do use Read and Write as a really great Google

extension. They have a fantastic, free platform that

allows you to do highlighting. It creates the kind of shadow

box that you can slide down as you're reading. You can do voice

to text. You can do text to speech. You can do just a sun

Drey of things within this one toolbar that's powerful, that's

like a magic toolbar for our kids, and so that is a value add

to their experience. And so we've pushed that out, but it

can become very unmanageable. I can imagine, especially if you

have faculty, staff and students able to download anything and

everything as a

quick follow up to that. What I find interesting,

because you have since you go up

to the sixth grade, we do, and we'll be

through eighth soon.

So Cole is going to be a real challenge, I think,

because you'll have some kids who are 13, yes, and some who

are 12, and we experienced that with our sixth grade, where he's

like, we really shouldn't be using this. And we've tried to

develop a policy that, you know, the school could serve as proxy

as part of the enrollment contracts, but it's a lot of

work, a lot of time commitment to try and get all that into

place,

it is. And we do have an opt in policy that goes

out with our student handbook every year, so we update that

constantly, and the families have to opt in no matter the age

of the children, even if they're above 13. We want parents to be

aware of the tools that we're using so that they understand

and understand how we're using student information and student

data.

Fabulous. You mentioned you know you're going

now from six to eight? Yes, because again, the transition at

eight makes more sense developmentally within the

context of schools, are you seeing more families coming to

you for this type of help, these types of support? I mean, if

you're growing, as you say you are, there's how you want to

develop school, but there's also, is there this push from

the community? Are you seeing more applications? Do you see

more people coming in for these types of supports.

Yeah, so our first seventh grade class is a

whole year out, so it's 2728 that would be our first seventh

grade, but we have always served K through six, and families have

asked for decades for us to go through eighth grade because

they know that their child still needs more time that their child

would benefit from the small learning environment. Middle

school years are hard, and the social, emotional piece is hard

on top of the academic piece. And when you put those together

in a new pod of students at a new school, that just creates a

lot more anxiety, and since kind of sometimes can send a child

backwards if they weren't ready. And so being able to give this

as an opportunity is going to hopefully be a huge gift. We

have great enrollment numbers for next year. We're excited to

see that families are very interested. We have rolling

admission so we can actually take students at many different

points. Years in the year, as they are diagnosed. And so I

think that's a unique quality as well. You don't always know when

your child is going to be flagged for learning difference

and need diagnostic testing. And so sometimes parents will start

the school year and decide mid year. You know what? This is

really not the right environment, and we need to find

somewhere else, and then they get to come to us, and the kids

are very, very happy, and make a great transition.

I want to make sure that before we wrap

up, that we talk a little bit in specifics, because I think that

you've definitely piqued everyone's interest in terms of

how you evaluate these tools, how you're thinking about them

in a really intentional way. But do you guys have your favorites?

What are some of the common tools that you use, and why

it's a big transition for our second

graders as they go into third grade, and they're going from an

iPad to using a Chromebook, and it seems so simple, but just the

voice to text feature for our third graders is huge. It's

built into their Chromebook, so it makes it really easy. Lauren

mentioned also just the read and write is huge for them as well.

So that was probably one of my favorites. But also just all of

our students have access to audio books, so that's another

one that I think is really important for them to be able to

use, whether it's on Learning Ally or audible or whatever the

platform they prefer.

Yeah, and if you don't know Learning Ally, it's a

really neat platform. You do have to have a specified

learning difference, but it's wonderful because they not only

can listen to it, but it also has the text on the screen and

it highlights as they read along. They have 1000s of books,

and it goes all the way through 12th grade, and they even have

textbooks. And it's a really, really powerful tool. Many

schools and school districts offer it even that non learning

difference environments. So I would say that's one of my

favorite for sure. And I think that if you ever walk into any

of our classrooms, you will notice that there might be like

a low murmur of children talking and vocalizing whatever it is,

and they might be doing voice to text, or they might just be

thinking out loud, but it's sort of neat, because it's not

silent, it is very much active, and kids are getting that

thinking out of their heads. And so I think voice to text is

strangely the simplest, but also the most powerful in many cases.

I love that. And just like our tech teams are

helping teachers right now navigate a really complex world

of AI and AI tools, I would assume that your roles as tech

leaders in your organization is to help the teachers walk down

the path and understand what's available to them. So is there

anything that you can share in the way of advice for tech

leaders who are hoping to make their faculty feel more

comfortable with some of these options?

Yeah, I think just being open to discussion

and talking about, going back to the piece that we've discussed

of what is the skill that you're trying to acquire for the child

or the teachers, and basing it off the skill, and then deciding

how those tools will benefit, and then going through

intentional training for the teachers, and then going into

the classroom for follow up and partnering. I think that's the

biggest thing that Becky and I try to do is that if a teacher

is nervous about applying a new tool, or they have a child that

would really benefit, and they see that this child would really

benefit from something to support their learning

difference, but they just don't know it yet, have your tech

leader come into the room. Have them come observe how the

student learns, because they will be able to make a better

suggestion based on that observation than then you just

saying, I think they could benefit from text to speech. Let

the technology person at your school, or the ed tech person at

your school, be your partner in that and have them really see

what that learner needs firsthand,

I would add, even just offering to go in and teach

the lesson or teach the tool and let the teacher sit back and

help, but also observe the teachers get anxious too about

introducing new tools and introducing a different way of

doing things. So letting them be a fly on the wall and watch how

it works as well is helpful. Takes a little bit off their

plate.

And one thing I would add to that we are really

trying is we already have learning profiles for our

students based on their learning needs, but having a technology

learning profile that runs alongside the child that goes to

each grade level so that when you move from second to third,

your third grade teacher already knows that you really benefit

from this tool, and they're not having to start from scratch.

And then maybe those tools evolve, and it becomes a bigger

tool chest, but not having to constantly assess. Six months

into the school, you're like, Oh, I think this kid would

really benefit from this. You already have that information.

So. I feel like that would be beneficial to all kids.

That's cool. Yeah, yeah, I love it. A

technology profile for each kid. Ah, I love it. That is awesome.

So guys, I don't know if you knew this bill and Hiram, but

our esteemed guests today also host a podcast. So Lauren and

Becky, you guys have the Preston hallow Presbyterian school,

PHPs, difference podcast. Why did you guys decide to do this?

And are you as stunningly fabulous with your zombie

references as my co hosts

Lauren and I both have decided that we could have

a compilation of how many times we say we're excited. We're so

excited to be here, and we're so excited to have guests, and so

we try to not use that word. So our excited is probably your

zombie.

For me, I noticed that one of the things I

do a lot is I say I love that, because I truly do. A guest will

say something, and then I'll say, I love that,

right? You want to affirm

bills is 100% but it's obviously it's a

commitment. So what was the intention in doing that?

We just really wanted to be able to bring the

conversations that we're having inside the doors of our school

about learning differences and the benefits of the different

tools we have and or the work that we're doing to our

community of parents, but also hopefully reach a greater

community, both educators and other parents. And even if

you're not in our school, there are things that we feel like we

could be teaching others and how to support learning different

children. And so it's just kind of that as we're moving into

this next chapter in our new space, and with the growth of

our campus, it's a way of extending the benefits that we

have to our learning difference community in Dallas and

hopefully beyond. So it's been fun. We're having a really good

time. We're learning a lot, as I'm sure y'all know, and it's

been a really neat experience. One thing that's really unique

that I think we're trying to be intentional with is if we have a

speaker on campus for a coffee and conversation, or parent

education pulling them for 1015, minutes afterward and asking

them some follow up questions, or sharing that information with

parents that couldn't potentially be there that

morning, it's just a great way to try to reach more families

like Lauren mentioned, whether it's our community or or the

Dallas community or beyond.

Yeah, that's really awesome. I almost just

said I love that, because I do. I do love it, all right. So

we're running out of time, but I have a question for all four of

you. By time this episode drops, we are heading into the second

half of the year. Tell me what the second half of your school

year looks like. All four of you.

Treadmill is moving fast. Treadmill is moving

real fast. So it's a matter of trying to not fall down at this

point.

Don't fall off like you're listening to a

zombie montage. Basically, it's what you're saying.

Hiram, absolutely. No, wait, 100% 100%

okay, I think it's interesting. The second half of

the year is normally me starting to prepare for the summer. And

it's interesting because I've talked about this construction

project that we have going on that we finally wrapped. I've

just gotten plans from our architect for updates, you know,

to other areas in the building that we're going to be starting

once school closes. And there's those things like we're already

talking about. All right, we need to get from here to spring

break, you know, and then from spring break to the summer. So I

am hoping in the second half, things can slow down a little

bit. You know, Christina, you're talking about running up until

the end of the year, and it's just getting crazy and crazier.

We've been running so fast for so long. I'm just hoping for a

momentary pause so that I can actually refocus on the things

that we need to do on the day to day before we start talking

about all of the new stuff that we now need to do coming into

this summer, the

pause is the Atlas conference? Yes, there you go.

It's a pause and a recharge. Is the Atlas

conference?

Yes, absolutely, yeah.

I think I'm with Bill. It's that we had such a

wild spring trying to get into the new building that I'm

excited for this spring, because it might feel kind of normal,

but I think that we will have a lot of forward momentum. We're

with planning middle school and all of the pieces that are going

to come with that we'll be wrapping up accreditation, so

that's also been happening. PS, for all of you that love

accreditation processes, and then just starting to plan for

the next school year and getting to think about all of the next

goals that we have, and Becky and are excited to plan our

spring podcast, so that'll be fun as well. So excited. Yes,

very excited. But yeah, I think it's going to hopefully be a

slower pace. But you never know

from a classroom. A technology perspective, I

always feel like the spring, kids know so much. They've

learned so much already. They have a full tool kit of tools to

use, so it's just busy with projects. And also, like Lauren

mentioned, getting ready for middle school, so getting to

teach a sixth grade elective, I'm excited about that, but

already preparing like what that's going to

look like. Well, I wish all of you a very

successful second half of the school year. I want to thank you

guys for joining us for this pod. This was super informative,

and I'm really glad that we kind of dug into these topics and

that we had you here to do them with us. So thank you so much

for joining us, and we will talk to you again very soon.

Thank you. Thank you.

This has been talking technology with ATLIS,

produced by the Association of technology leaders in

independent schools. For more information about Atlas and

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