Episode 319: Amy Mayer: Engaging Students and Driving Inclusivity with EdTech Tools

This week, we share Chris’s interview with Amy Mayer! Amy is the founder and CEO of friEdTech (https://friedtechnology.com/), a company that provides educational technology (EdTech) professional development for educators. Amy talks about her recent book, Beyond Worksheets, which provides resources for teachers to utilize EdTech tools and to inclusively redesign education for everyone! She and Chris discuss the impact of AI on education and writing, ideas for creating meaningful professional learning experiences, and more!

Key Ideas This Episode:

🔑 AI tools can be helpful for new writers trying to get feedback about their work, including reviewing for spelling and grammar. However, having a real person read and provide feedback about your writing may provide feedback from a broader view that current AI tools can’t provide. 

🔑 Amy knows that educators often do not choose to come to a PD, but friEd Tech gets educators invested by designing learning experiences to solve problems that people actually have. Then, once people have talked about the problems they have, the group works together collaboratively to figure out how to solve those problems.

🔑 We need to have bigger conversations with students about the ethical use of AI tools. For example, some students never use AI tools because of ethical concerns, even though some AI tools could be used ethically to improve their learning.

Links:

Beyond Worksheets: Creative Ways to Engage Students https://a.co/d/6aCiqMc 

Transcript of the Episode

Please Note: This transcript was generated using speech recognition & AI tools; it may contain some grammatical and/or spelling errors.

00:00:08 Chris Bugaj
Welcome to Talking with Tech. My name is Chris Bugaj, and I'm here with Rachel Madel. Rachel, something's been plaguing me for a while, and I want to ask you all about it because I haven't heard and I need an update. So I think you're working with a student that enjoys ceiling fans, right? And I got to meet him once, and I've just been. In fact, I remember on New Year's, I went out, and it was a place that had this giant ceiling fan, and I took a picture of me with it and sent it to you to show him. How's he doing? How's he doing with his writing?

00:00:42 Rachel Madel
You know what's so funny, Chris, is that not only do you know this student, but after that podcast recording, I had other people sending me messages about fans and things like that. So I feel like he's becoming very well known on this podcast, so would love to give an update. I love this student. He's by far one of my favorites and have been working with him since he was little, since he was like a little preschooler, and now he's a teenager. So, basically, one thing that I've been really trying to work on in a different way, I haven't done this before with students. Of course, I've worked on writing and things like that because this student, you know, has, has some challenges with verbal organization. So, like, he goes to share and you can just see his brain working really hard to kind of formulate. And, of course, with, like, syntax and grammar and all those things, it becomes really challenging in real time. So I found that when I work on formulating an organization in writing, it translates to him better being able to kind of organize his thoughts when he's speaking, which has been super powerful for him. And oftentimes when I'm trying to figure out, like, how do I right now, like, he also is working on a regular past tense, so it's coming out a little wonky in his verbal speech, and so we're working on it in his writing, and now he's kind of slowing the writing process, kind of slows things down for kids, helps them kind of reflect. And I've been seeing some improvements in not only in a regular past tense with his writing, he's catching himself more, but also I'm seeing him catch himself when he's speaking. So, anyway, I've been working on writing with him for a while now, and I started doing creative writing because I was finding that I was helping to support what was happening in his classroom and his homework and all these things, which was helpful for me to see as a therapist, but it was just stuff that he didn't care about. He just wasn't interested in reading about orca whales or whatever it is that he was tasked to read about and then write about. And so I was like, what if I create some type of writing experience that gets him really excited? And so one day it was just like, you know, we're gonna write a story together. Because I knew that, like, just having him write, it was kind of like, oh. And like, it was just pulling teeth oftentimes trying to get him to write something. And so I'm like, I'm gonna start the story, and then we're gonna take turns. And so he also uses Texas speech, really helpful for him when he's formulating. Also, just like, so many other things, like, he's noticing grammar and all these other things with, we use Google, read and write. Anyway, so I start this story. I'm like, you know, it's New Year's day, and I look out my window, and I see the craziest thing, and then I'm like, okay, it's your turn. And so when we first started doing this, like, he kind of didn't really know exactly what to do, and I was having to take a lot of turns. I was like, okay. And he got really good at saying, okay, it's your turn. And I was like, okay, sure, I'll take a turn. And then I started just really, like, being as silly as possible, and we kind of set up this structure around. He's really into trains in addition to ceiling fans. So, of course I'm like, how do I incorporate trains and ceiling fans into this story? And so with a suspense element, which he started getting really excited about, so we got into this rhythm of, you know, he would start writing something, and then I would write something that kind of took the story in a different direction, and then I would wait for him to respond. And long story short, it's been so cool to see how this has really empowered him to write to the point where now I've only been doing this for a couple months, but now he is not hardly ever asking me to take a turn, which is super exciting. And when he does, he has very specific parameters around the turn. He's like, name something that's a vehicle. Like, very, very much has an idea of what he wants this story to look like. I'm like, I don't have to take a turn. You can just write. And so it's been really cool to see how excited he is. The other thing I'll share is he's so on, he's so dialed into the time. So I see him virtually, and he knows at the 50 minutes mark, which we do 50 minutes sessions in my practice. At the 50 minutes mark, he knows speech therapy is over, and we're actually working on him, not just, like, shutting the laptop and not saying goodbye. So, you know, he now knows, like, okay, like, you know, it's 450. And what's so cool, Chris, is that, like, he was always on top of the time. He's now not noticing the time. Like, he's so engaged in the writing process and getting so much joy out of this writing experience. This story is called a trip. A trip to Ecuador. And, like, it's just the most outlandish story with, you know, pigs that can fly and, you know, trains that have, you know, unicorns on them. And, you know, it's just been so cool. And I. The other session, the last session, I was like, I wonder how long I can see if he'll won't. He won't notice the time. And he made it six minutes past our session time, and I was just like. And I still. I had to, like, interrupt him. Cause I was like, I have another session. Like, I need to run to the bathroom before this next session. And so I was like, hey, like, guess what? It's time. And it's just like, it's so cool. Because now when he sees me, he's so excited. The first thing he asks is, can we keep writing? And I'm like, I'm literally just smiling so big because it's just so cool. And I already knew to follow a child's interests and passions and curiosities, make it fun, make it engaging, but it's just another great reminder that when we can create these opportunities for our students, we can really engage them in the learning process in a way that doesn't feel like I have to do this thing. I have to learn this thing. He's excited about opening the computer and starting to write out a story. And so it's just been so fun for me as a clinician. I'm like, wow, how have I not done this co writing situation before? It's such a great way to scaffold for students. And I'm also like, I've taught him how to do dialogue back and forth, and that's translating to him better, able to kind of engage in dialogue in real life with peers. So it's just, like, been so cool to see him transform.

00:07:30 Chris Bugaj
Yeah. You've got so many skills in there. Like you said, the turn taking and now using the dialogue as a model. And then you have the metric of how he started out, not really wanting to do it to now and maybe even being a little verse two writing because it had been maybe I don't know what the point of it is or I've been forced to do it in some way to now. I can make. I can generate anything I want. I have some follow up questions. Okay, so here's my first one. You mentioned using voice recording. Oh, no. Voice like speech to text. Right. The voice typing in Google Docs. Right. Has that evolved at all? Because what tends to happen is a kid, you show somebody that and then they just ramble and it just becomes this big block of text without any periods or punctuation. And then they have to learn the skill of adding those things. So I'm curious about the evolution of that if I'm spot on there or not quite yet.

00:08:32 Rachel Madel
Yeah. So he actually, we've tried kind of the voice typing, and I think he struggles with that in a lot of ways just because the verbal component is where he gets stuck. But we do use the text to speech, so him hearing what he's typing has been really powerful. We're also working on the editing process because he used to just have three paragraphs worth of text that was one sentence. And I was like, let's talk about what a run on sentence is. And so as things have come up, I've thought, okay, I need to do more explicit teaching about run ons. So before we engage in the writing, it's like, okay, we're going to do a lesson on run on and, like, fragments. And what does that look like? And find them. Right. And so that's kind of come up, and he's gotten a lot better. Again, I'm talking about irregular past tense. And so now I'm like, we're kind of doing some lessons around that. And then we get to the writing, and I'm like, oh, like, don't forget about a regular past tense. And so he's kind of scanning the text and being like, oh, this is. I made a mistake here. So that process has really evolved for him, and it's really cool because he's actually editing and revising in real time now. It used to be like he would just put something on paper and then run away from it. And now I see him kind of going back, deleting in real time, which is super cool to see how he's progressed there. So, yeah, we're using those tools. The voice typing isn't. I think it's just hard because he does have a hard time formulating and I don't think he loves going back and editing. So I feel like he's just like, I'd rather just type in. And he's actually become a super fast typer, so that has been great because as he's typing, if he makes a mistake, he hears the mistake and he stops and he changes it.

00:10:27 Chris Bugaj
Okay, I have a thought about that. So it sounds like the evolution was from speech to text to I can just be faster with typing. Do you find that he's got this idea and then he sees that he spelled things wrong because the little red squiggly comes up or a little blue squiggly comes up and then he's got to hit the back. Back and change it. And then he goes to type some more and then there's another raid. Squiggly. So back, back. And, and then is there potential for him to forget what the next sentence was going to be, like, what he wanted to write? Do you find any consternation around that or. Not really. He's not losing his train of thought.

00:11:09 Rachel Madel
It's so interesting because I feel like attention is one of the things that I feel like he's challenged with the most, but not when he's motivated. So, like, no, like, I don't feel like he, he's totally honed in on. Like, here's what I wanna say. Here's what. Like, he's so engaged. Like, I don't lose him for a second and I feel like that's so classic ADHD, right? It's like I can focus on the things that I'm really excited and care about, but I can't focus on the things that I'm not super interested in. So when he gets to choose what he writes about, then, yes, he's super dialed in. We've also kind of been working on, he's kind of in this rhythm with kind of this story. It's usually like a light in the distance or a sound in the distance, like, what is it? And so he's really embraced this. So now I'm trying to get him kind of venturing out of that a little bit. So I'm really changing the story and I'm kind of trying to set more, more like newer structures that can be predictable and exciting. So instead of a light or a sound, it's like this character says something crazy and how do we respond to that? So that's been really interesting, too, to kind of help him evolve, because I think, like many kids he has, he loved that first experience where we did it, and now he's locked into it, and now he kind of wants to keep recreating it with a little bit of variety each time, which is totally fine, but I'm trying to get him to keep expanding and to keep growing.

00:12:42 Chris Bugaj
Do you use some sort of visual support? Like, so you mentioned the characters, for instance. So some sort of, like, here's what a character is. And so now describe the character and where they're from and what they look like and what they like and some sort of visual that maps that out. Is there stuff like that?

00:12:57 Rachel Madel
Yeah. Well, we use canva. So what usually happens, though, is we kind of create a canva image based off of his story. So I was thinking we could kind of turn that its head and do the opposite. So, like, create something and then write about it, because I feel like that's oftentimes it's like we're asking students to read something and then write about it or, you know, to kind of put more structure around it. So I could do more of that kind of pre teaching or character development because I feel like that is the next step for him. But what's super cool is that I'm using the kind of generative AI tools on canva. And, like, this kid is such a whiz at figuring out what to type in to create the image that he wants. And this was not taught. I showed it to him once, and he's like, I've got it. And he thinks it's so fun to go in there and be a pig with butterfly wings and sunglasses. And then if it doesn't come up with what he wants, he's now knowing how to layer images. So it's like, oh, the pig's flying. But he doesn't like the sunglasses, so he will find a separate set of sunglasses. The background, put it on the pig. I'm like, this is wild. I'm like, he's so good at canva, to the point where I told his mom, I was like, you need to foster more of this at home. This is a free time thing to really, I don't know that he would go to it on his own, but I think if we keep showing him how to go to it on his own and kind of walking away from it, I feel like he could spend hours on canva, creating lots of cool things and also lots of stories that he could potentially write on his own.

00:14:36 Chris Bugaj
Oh, sounds so much fun. All right, I have one last question. He sounds like he's writing the story for him and a little bit of you. Is there a plan to publish or share it with a wider audience than just the two of you, or not really. Maybe just mom and dad or family members or really, hey, the whole world. You know, my friend who, Chris, who sent you pictures of the fan, he would love to read this. Like that kind of thing.

00:15:01 Rachel Madel
It's a really good question. So I've definitely shared it with his parents. And the way that I've approached it is I will go in and highlight in red the things that I wrote just so they have a sense. And it's cool to see over time because there's less and less read in the story. So I've definitely shared it with his parents, and they're like, wow, we can't believe he's doing this. And it's exciting because every time I hop on Zoom, he's like, can we write the story? Can we write the story? He's just so excited to write the story. And his parents get to see how excited he is about writing, which is great. I do think there's an opportunity to encourage him to share and like to have conversations around that. I hadn't thought about that. Obviously, I thought about sharing it with his parents, but it's a really good idea to share with someone else. So you just gave me my idea. I'm seeing him later today, so I will report back how it went.

00:15:56 Chris Bugaj
Yeah. Even if it's anonymously. Right. That might be awesome. Or maybe it's just shared with, with my one friend first, and then there's some other place that could be posted later. But there could be other kids that benefit from reading that story, right. And practice their, their literacy skills using that story or do a fan fiction off of his story. Right. So there's, there's some more good there that can be. That can be mined. So that's so awesome, Rachel.

00:16:23 Rachel Madel
Yes. I am so excited to see him just really flourish. And it's cool, especially as students start to get older. You start thinking, like, you know, how can this translate to a career, a profession? Like, what skills can I start fostering so that he can feel confident and he can practice doing these things and hopefully turn it into a career one day. And so it's been really cool to see how much he's loved this. And also, just like, for me as a clinician, it's been cool to figure out how can I keep supporting this. How can I keep kind of targeting some of the things I feel like would be really helpful for him and make a really big impact and doing it around something that he has just come to love and be super passionate about.

00:17:13 Chris Bugaj
Yeah. And not just the writing. All those other ancillary skills that you were mentioning, like time management, like remembering that you say goodbye before you go, those are just some examples, taking turns and the dialogue, and then that translates into conversation. All of those skills layered on top of writing. Well, speaking of writing, Rachel, the interview today is with Amy Mayer, and Amy has written a book. But the way I first met Amy is that her and I were kind of put together in a situation where we got to present together and maybe be on a podcast together, I think, talking about writing. So she helps students with the writing process, but beyond that, that's just one aspect of what she does. And she's got, she had the opportunity to write a book. So we talk a little bit about that as well. So without further ado, here's my interview with Amy Mayer.

00:18:18 Rachel Madel
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00:19:01 Chris Bugaj
Welcome to the talking with tech podcast. My name is Chris Bouguet, and today I'm joined with a, I'm going to say, long time friend. It's been, gosh, a handful of years. Amy Mayer. Amy, how's it going?

00:19:12 Amy Mayer
It's going great. It's so good to see you, Chris.

00:19:14 Chris Bugaj
Good, good, good. All right, so let's talk a little bit about who you are and what you do, and then let's get into how you and I met, because I think that's an interesting story, too. But let's get everybody else on the same page as you and I with who you are and what you do.

00:19:28 Amy Mayer
Okay. Well, I own a company called Fried Tech. Hopefully some of your audience has heard of it or learned with us in the past. And we are a professional development company, and we work in the education space, so we're all, I mean, I think literally, I think now every single person who works here is a former educator. So we have, we have around 20 employees, and we do professional development in person and virtually for teachers and other groups of educators across the United States. We're really well known in Google circles, so we're best known as a Google PD provider. And we also really do a lot of B. Two B work. For example, companies like, I'll use Adobe as an example, as probably our most exciting partnership in the last year. We do a lot of professional development for companies like Adobe, and then for some of the companies we work with, we create content for them. And you may be interacting with or using that content on the web and not know that it's written by, produced by. Created by us because they put their name on it. So. So we just do all kinds of stuff in the education space like that.

00:20:53 Chris Bugaj
Okay. That's awesome. And I'd be fair to say that it's very technology focused, but technology with the backdrop to good pedagogy, is that fair?

00:21:03 Amy Mayer
Yes, it is. And we're really kind of trying to, like, I think you and I have talked about this in relationship to assistive tech before, how, when I started reading your book, I had this epiphany of, oh, this is just like what every teacher either is doing or should be doing. Like, this is not a special group of people. This is not for people with a certain job title. Like, I had that moment. And we're trying to get people, we're trying to kind of trying to claw our way out of the edtech box because our perspective is like, it's 2024. There's not a teacher who's not using technology. So this is just teaching now. Like, it's not a separate, we don't stop school and do computer time, you know, now. So we're really doing a lot of work in, we are calling them, you know, like, specialized areas, but english language learners and special education students with behavioral issues. We have a ton of expertise on our team. And this is stuff like, it's like, why didn't somebody tell us this when we were teachers? Like, we needed to know this stuff. So it really is all just about teaching and how to do the job under what just become, you know, just increasingly difficult circumstances.

00:22:22 Chris Bugaj
Well, we will get into those, I think, in a second. Let me take us back to how you and I met, because I think that's an interesting story is that you and I didn't know each other. I wasn't familiar with your company. I don't think you were familiar with my work, but we were both working separately with text help, and you're using some of their products and sharing some of their products. And certainly I was in my neck of the woods, both in my local school district that I work for, but then beyond and text help connected us and said we were they doing something like some of the webinar or something? And they said, hey, we don't have spots for you, for each of you. What if you guys do it together? It's like, I don't know who that person is, but okay, I mean, if tech stump, I trust them. If they think we're going to get. And then we got along fabulously. I mean, at least I thought I did. I thought we did.

00:23:07 Amy Mayer
We did. And there's another facet to that, and I don't know if you heard this part or know this part, because I think I learned it in person, and I don't know if I ever shared it with you. And I think it's Kira from text help who saw you presenting, and she told me later that when she was watching you present, she already knew me. She was watching you present, so she's meeting you. She said to herself, I have got to introduce Amy and Chris. Like, they were going to get along so well, and she couldn't really even put her finger on why, but she knew that we needed to meet each other. She had been looking opportunity since then for us to meet each other. And then she was like, I told her, like, you're completely right. We just complete. We just have such a viewpoint. But at the same time, like, your experience has been so different from mine. I always feel like I learned something when we talk. I don't feel like we're an echo chamber. It's just different enough that we understand each other. But I learned something new from you, and I love that about our friendship that has developed.

00:24:11 Chris Bugaj
Agreed? Agreed. Same, same. I mean, we had never really had a conversation about worksheets, right? Yet we both wrote a book about it, though.

00:24:21 Rachel Madel
I know.

00:24:22 Chris Bugaj
That's exactly it. So let's get into that. Let's talk a little bit about the new book coming out. So, again, full disclosure, I got an advanced copy and wrote a little blurb for it. And you got an advanced copy of my second edition of my book to write advanced copy. So let's get that out there. But we knew we were. They were similar themes. Like you said, not an echo chamber, but certainly sibling texts, even though they're from different publishing companies and everything. So let's talk about your book. So it's called beyond worksheets.

00:24:53 Amy Mayer
Yes, exactly. Right. Beyond worksheets. And I have a fake version of it right here. So I don't know if your eventual viewers will be seeing this or just hearing it, but this is what the COVID is going to look like, Chris. So I'm excited about it. I did not know how hard it was to do that. I have even more respect for you that you work as an educator full time. And you, how many books have you written now?

00:25:19 Chris Bugaj
Well, there's chapters in some books and then full books. It's two full books, but with partners and with second edition, it's hard to. I guess there's three, but all with other people. Do you know what I mean?

00:25:32 Amy Mayer
Yeah, but it's very impressive that you have done that. I thought that it was, it was a really difficult, and I felt like you have to sort of, like, dig into your soul somehow, you know? Like you do know. I know, you know, and that's what I feel like I did. And I, I really had to go back into my memory banks, and then I had to look at things with the eyes of what I know today. And that was hard to do sometimes, too, because I felt like I, I hate reading things I don't feel are authentic. Like, I really want people, if I'm going to take the time to get in your head, then open the door all the way up, you know, like, I want to be in there. And so, you know, I had to go back into my teaching career and reflect on things I had done and what had gone horribly wrong and all that kind of stuff. And I did that and it was like emotionally draining on top of being challenging, like keeping myself on the schedule and all that.

00:26:35 Chris Bugaj
That is definitely one of the hardest parts. And we didn't use, I'm going to guess you didn't use chat GPT when you wrote it, right? This is all sort of predates this new technology, which I want to talk to you and pick your brain about that as well.

00:26:48 Amy Mayer
I have a ton to say about that. And I could have used chat GPT because for most of the time that I was writing this book, chat GPT did exist. I just finished it a couple of months ago.

00:27:00 Chris Bugaj
Oh, well, okay, then let's talk about that. Because I know when I was finishing my book, chat GPT just came out and I was, like, in that stage of wrestling, like, well, is it okay to use it? I think it's okay to use all that where I feel like a lot of that has been ironed out, or it's in the process of being ironed out, at least in my own mind. I've had come to some decisions about it. So how did you approach it and did you use it?

00:27:20 Amy Mayer
Well, it's a good question, and I absolutely did not use it. Not one word of it is written by chat GPT, and I'll tell you why. While I was in the process of writing my book, my publisher, Josie Bass, sent me a lot of advanced copies of books. And one of the books that they sent me was about AI, and it intrigued me. So I have a friend I work with, a partner company that I work with on AI, and I tell him, Jim, you're my best AI teacher. He drip feeds me information about AI every day. So I talk about AI every single day with a person who is truly an expert. I feel so, like, honored to have that education. So I. It wasn't that I didn't know anything about it, but I wanted to read this book. That is about how AI is impacting education. I'm purposefully not saying what the title of the book is. I don't even remember it. I couldn't tell you if I wanted to. I don't even remember it. So I got this book in the mail, like, didn't ask for it, didn't know I was getting it. Opened the box up, I thought, hmm, okay, this is really interesting. Like, clearly this is a subject I'm truly interested in, and I need to know about this. So I hope up the book, and I start reading the book, and I read the preface of the book, and I think that sounds like something generated by a computer, but maybe he just used it for the preference. You know, maybe he uploaded his book and then had it write the preface to the book. So I carry on to chapter one to see if it gets any better. I did not make it past chapter one because to me, it sounds like what AI would say if I went to chat GPT and said, write a book about AI and education. It did not have a soul.

00:29:02 Chris Bugaj
Yes, that's the word, right?

00:29:06 Amy Mayer
Yeah, there was no soul in it. And I really wanted my book to be soulful. I feel like teaching is such a soulful profession. It is not. There are elements of science, but it is artistic, and it is people oriented, and it is compassion and empathy. And who that wants to be a part of our profession wants to read a book that doesn't have those elements. Like, we don't want to read that. I don't want to write that. They don't want to read that. My thought about it, and after I read that preface and chapter one of that book, I vowed to myself that I would not use chat GPT, and I did not use chat GPT, but I did use, a friend of mine has a consulting company, and she has a wonderful guy who works for her named Alan. And I had an allen, and Alan is a real guy who is also an educator. He has been a teacher. And Alan worked on the book with me, and he did the things that I would have asked chat GPT to do. But as a real human being, he read every chapter. He gave me feedback on it. He said, hey, what if we add in this piece, and what if everyone's got at least this many? And what if you write another chapter and it's about this? So he did all of those things that I think people are trying to get chat GPT to do with them, that some of them, chat GPT is good at, and some of them it's not so good at. But Alan, a real human being, helped me with it in the way that I think people are trying to use the tools.

00:30:41 Chris Bugaj
Yeah. Like a first reader to give you the feedback that you need to say, is this going to resonate? Or am I in my own head about this, or I'm stuck. Can you push me in a. And can I just tell you a quick story? That is exactly what happened with the new assistive tech. The first edition, I remember I was walking around the neighborhood with my wife. I had finished it. I had sent it off to the publisher, and I'm like, something's off. I go. I just. This is my second book. The first one I had written with a co author, and it just felt better and felt more connected. And there was just something off with it. And I couldn't put my. I just was too close to it. I just needed some outside help. And my publisher gave me that. Like, she took it to three peer reviewers. Two of them did the nice thing, like, oh, it's all great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But one, which was the most valuable feedback, sort of raked me over the coals. Like, I would never buy this. What did she say? Well, just. It was disjointed. It wasn't connected. The ideas are there. I see where he's going, but it doesn't have a flow to it. It needs to consider changing the order. And I was like, yes, you know, everything.

00:31:42 Amy Mayer
That's what you needed.

00:31:43 Chris Bugaj
Like, yes, that's what's missing. I knew it, but I didn't know it, you know, I mean, it was missing, but I didn't know how to fix it.

00:31:48 Amy Mayer
You had an instinct.

00:31:50 Chris Bugaj
Yes. That was. Maybe it was Alan. Maybe Alan was hired to do that.

00:31:54 Amy Mayer
Now because it was honestly. Yeah. And he was. He was super kind about it. But also, you know, like, that brutality of this doesn't make sense. And obviously, then I had an editor with the company, and then I had a peer reviewer the company hired, and I stalked her and found her on Facebook. She didn't. I did not have any way to contact her. I wasn't given her email address, but her name was in the Google Doc. And so I went and found her and thanked her because she did some of that same kind of work you're talking about where she said, I don't like how you said, this goes all over me. You know, like, oh, yeah, you're right. Okay. But I'd never thought of it from her point of view.

00:32:40 Chris Bugaj
Yeah, for sure. For sure. And those people all have souls where Chachi PT doesn't. And I know so much of your book, and my book share stories and insights from. From actual, you know, occurrences. Right. Like actual perspectives. And I don't think Chachi PT has those. You know, they could mock it up, you could fake it, but it would come off fake. Right.

00:33:01 Amy Mayer
And that's how the book I read came off. It just came off fake.

00:33:06 Chris Bugaj
Yeah. And that's why our books are not like that. Right. Would you say, let's just continuing on this AI conversation, one of the presentations you and I did together with text help was all about writing. And then we went to Iste, you and I presented together and it was about writing. So for students, would you see Chachi pt as a tool to punch up your writing, get you started when you're stuck, use it in that capacity. No biases here, because my friends, like, I gave it to my friend, I might feel judgmental and they might be judging me about this, but chat GP, these chat GPTs not. Wouldn't judge me that way. It's a non. It's a. It's. Well, I'll put it this way. It's in quotes, unbiased.

00:33:48 Amy Mayer
A biased, unbiased tool. Right.

00:33:50 Chris Bugaj
It's a biased but unbiased tool. Exactly. Because it's not biased towards me in any way. Like those two people that were, like, just going, yeah, it's great. It's great because we like Chris. Yeah. But I need the real feedback. So my point, point being is how are you thinking about it as a student use tool?

00:34:05 Amy Mayer
Well, we have an online course through our fright online portal, and it is about using AI as a teacher, you know, and we broach that subject. And what my advice would be to someone is, since the technology exists, it's the most. It's the most groundbreaking technology since Google search was invented. And it is. The potential that it has is far greater even than Google search. So it is a truly. It's probably the most profound technology that will come out in our lifetimes, most likely. So we can't just pretend it doesn't exist. And that makes us hypocrites as educators. And once you see what it can do for you as an educator, you're going to use it. You should use it. You shouldn't feel. You shouldn't feel, like, sad about it or have, like, emotional conflicts about it or whatever. If it can do the job that you need done better than you can, then you should use it. It's ridiculous not to. It's like, I know people who have a dishwasher and hand wash all their dishes and use the dishwasher to dry their. Put your dishes in there. People just put the dishes in the dishwasher and turn it on. It's what it's for. So it's like a dishwasher. And that way, dishwasher is better at washing dishes than me. I'm going to let it do its job. Yeah.

00:35:30 Chris Bugaj
And an oven might be better to cook your food on a regular basis than going outside and making a whole, you know, fire pit. You know what I mean? To cook every bit. Yeah. It's just better, right.

00:35:41 Amy Mayer
You just. It's better, and you're gonna use it for what it's right for. And along those lines, as a teacher, I really believe in being honest with students and creating a situation that is not hypocritical. So, as a teacher, I would have to. My students already know it exists, and they've already been using it because they don't suffer the same pangs of conscience, perhaps, that I do. So it's already happening. How unfair is it and how inequitable is it if my only students who don't have access to it are people who are constrained by their conscience and feel it's wrong? And I haven't had that discussion with them, but they intrinsically believe that. And so now I have just left a subset of my students who are using it. And what is happening to my colleague, Brooke. Her niece is in a prestigious school, and what she realized was, all of my classmates are using this, and I'm not. And so my grades are lower than theirs only because they're using this tool. And so we've had a lot of discussions around here at fried tech about what is ethical use of it. How do I make sure I'm being ethical? And I would, as a teacher, I hope, I think I would have those conversations with my students, and I hope I would have them doing a lot, probably even more writing than they ever did in class with me using something like Google Docs that's got the revision history. So I can see, you know, that this was organically generated text. And then I think we've got a practice. And honestly, chat GPT is better at giving feedback to a writer who's learning than I am. It's not better at writing with soul, but that feedback is amazing. And so I would have my students organically generate text and then put it into chat GPT and ask for feedback, and I would teach them how to do that. And I would get them doing it and get them revising based on what chat GPT, you know, advises them to do. And still, obviously, we still got to have human readers, we still got to have peer editors, you know, but it's amazing at that. Like, why? Why not use it?

00:37:55 Chris Bugaj
I could not agree more, of course. Well, let's just talk about some of the things you touched upon. One is the equity issue. If an educator or someone said, we're not using this tool, and then a handful of years later, you're out in the workforce and everyone has learned how to use this tool and you haven't, have you really prepared people for the future, which is really what school is about, right? Preparing people for the future. So you're kind of putting people at a disadvantage. I legit see within the year, if it's not already happening, places interviewing, saying, tell me how you use AI.

00:38:33 Amy Mayer
Absolutely it's already happening. I have one friend who recently heard her position was ended at the company that she was working at. I understand enough about what she was doing in her job to know that AI can do that job. I'm fairly certain that either they hired someone who knows how to use AI to do the job so that they can do it much faster and better, or they didn't replace that position at all, they truly rift it and they save that money. And whoever was managing her before is now using AI to do what was in her job. Is that the situation we want our students to be in, or do we want them to have many varied experiences with the technology so they really understand it and what it can do, and they're not intimidated when somebody asks them that question in an interview. It's a question I would ask somebody if I were interviewing somebody tomorrow for a position at fried tech. Do I want you struggling with a spreadsheet for a solid day to get information out of it or using chat GPT to do it, or bard or whatever? There's another one my friend Jim tells me about all the time where you can upload documents and I always forget the name of it, but all those services can do that work in five minutes, that it may literally take you hours. That would take me hours to do it. Of course I want you to use.

00:39:52 Chris Bugaj
The tool, and one of the reasons you'll be better at using that tool is if you have minutes where you've practiced it, made some mistakes around it, realize that it wasn't as simple as like, uploading the spreadsheet or the PDF and giving me the answer. There's a whole conversation that I have to have with it to really get it to do or get the answer that I'm at, which is, it's a whole learning experience.

00:40:13 Amy Mayer
It's a whole job, even like prompt engineer. Like, it's become, people are joking about it, but it's not funny. It's a real thing, interacting with computers in a completely new way than any of us has ever done before.

00:40:29 Chris Bugaj
Now, from a writing going back to using it for giving feedback to your own writing. I know that my son has a girlfriend and she is in college and studying creative writing, and they are using it to do, okay, you write something on this and chat GPT will write something. And now compare and contrast so you can learn where you need to add more soul and add more human and be like, oh, I see why that doesn't. And analyzing those two is different. And looking for the hallucinations, like, again, finding out what it's good at and finding out how you can be better at it. One, so that again, you can use the tool better, but two, so that you can communicate to others why you are valuable. Know, yes, that tool exists, but I can do it even better using that tool, right?

00:41:15 Amy Mayer
Yes. Yes. I love that line of thought. And so I hope that's what I would do. You know, talking about what you would do as a teacher when you're no longer in the classroom is, you know, like, I think that if I were in the classroom right now hearing me say this, I'd be like, sure you would. Cause, you know, it's really easy to talk about what you would do in a theoretical, but I hope that that is what I would do. And I do see teachers, like, on social media who are having really good conversations with their students about AI and how to interact with it appropriately as a student.

00:41:49 Chris Bugaj
Totally, totally, totally. I mean, I work for a public school right now, and I know teachers that are having those conversations. We have. You do professional learning? I do professional learning. We have people come and say, let's just talk about AI for 45 minutes. And there's the teachers that show up. There are the ones that are passionate about it and realize the potential for it. And, yes, they're doing exactly what you say, is that they're having rich conversations with the learners that they support about how to use it in an appropriate way.

00:42:17 Amy Mayer
I love that. Thanks, teachers.

00:42:19 Chris Bugaj
All right, let me take it back to the book. Right. So beyond worksheets, an underlying theme of your book. And my book is about. And I also think this is an underlying theme of the courses that you have on your website. Right. Is sort of redesigning education from a more inclusive standpoint. You mentioned multi language learners. Right. Students with disabilities. And it's so often it's thought of as, here's my educational experience and now let me adapt it for students with disabilities. But I think the underlying theme of your book and my book and my kind of our horrible messages are overarching messages. What if we redesigned it so we didn't have to say those people come second? What if we designed it with them in mind? And that helps everybody? So with that in mind, tell us more about your book and what are some concepts about both in your book and in your work about designing for all?

00:43:17 Amy Mayer
Yes, I think we really share a passion around this. And I'll tell you a story that I think answers your question. And it's a story that at least is tangentially in the book or other stories like this. I kept having a situation when I was a teacher where I would have far more students with special education modifications than anybody else who taught the same subject that I did. So, you know, maybe they're at the high school where I taught, there were maybe five or six teachers who taught the same grade level that I did. And we all had a third period class. And I would have, like, two to three times as many students with modifications, which, you know, the paperwork and the meetings take longer. Like, it's. It's a bigger lift, not because of the kids, because of the sheer, like, workload around that. And I went and I actually talked to the counselor, and I said, I want to know why I need to understand why this is like, this is a tremendous amount of work and, you know, love the kids, want it, glad to do the work, have really struggling with the time commitment that this is. Well, my answer that I got was, well, we know that you will do the mods and the other teachers, like, we just don't think they're really doing them. So we're going to put them in your class instead. And I thought, but that's the job we have to do. You can't just not do it. So how is it okay for someone else to not do it? I had never considered not doing it. It, but I also did this. I taught a different. I created learning situations where I was not doing. I was not really doing extra work. I was creating assignments in a way that they could be differentiated by students based on what those students needed from the assignments. And that's exactly what you talked about in your book, which, I mean, I was having all those high five moments when I was reading it because, yes, the way that you're designing the work is what is creating the differentiation. Yes, I'm filling out the paperwork and turning it in on time, but those other teachers might not feel comfortable doing that because they don't know how to design the work in a different way. And so they have to make a separate set of worksheets for those students. And when they struggle, they might not really know what to do about that. And so that is what's creating the conflict. And so, and I know, like, I am the carpenter who only has a hammer, you know, the only tool I have to fix problems is professional development. And so everything's a professional development problem to me. But in education, almost everything is a professional development problem. And I really wanted to. It's part of what drove my passion to get into PD because I really wanted to be able to go into Charlotte's classroom and say, charlotte, let me. You're making this so hard. Like, it's not as hard as you think it is. What if we just approach it like this instead? And then that student who doesn't have any special education modifications is also going to get more out of it and is also going to learn more and is also going to bring more to the situation as a result of it. And so everybody's going to be better and your life is going to be easier. Like, how can that not be a story you want to listen to? But as a teacher, my colleagues did not want to invite me into their, our classrooms that were down the hallway because there's you know, there's lots of feelings everybody has about it. So I realized at some point, like, I have to leave this classroom and get a different, you know, position in order to spread that message. But it really is. The entire message of my whole career is basically like, no, just change how you're doing it, how you're approaching it a little bit instead, and. And everything will fall into place in a new way.

00:47:12 Chris Bugaj
So there's this comic strip that jumps into my mind. I wish I knew who, who illustrated it, but it's these two cave people, and one cave person is pushing a square wheel and the other one is pushed, like, coming up behind with a round wheel and being like, huh, how about this? I don't have time for that right now. I gotta push this square wheel. It's like, wait a second. No, but if you just did it differently, you wouldn't have to do that.

00:47:34 Amy Mayer
But you don't understand how hard this is to get this square up the hill, or else you would not be bothering me with your roundness. Yes, that's how I feel all the time. When people say they don't have time for technology PDF, I always feel like that, like you need it more than anyone if you think you don't have time for it.

00:47:56 Chris Bugaj
Yes, yes. Well, and a big strategy that I have found to help people is the whole concept of growth mindset, and they often apply it to kids and the words they use with kids. And then I say, like, take that camera and put it on yourself. How often have you said, oh, like, in my neck of the woods? I work with a lot of speech therapists. I'm a speech therapist. I don't really do that math stuff. I'm not a math person. No, you're not a math person yet. And actually you work with data all the time, so you are a math person, right? Same thing. I'm not a technology person. Well, you're not a technology person yet, but you are now. And we're going to give you more and more skills. You will get better if you spend some time. Just open the door a little bit, invite us in, we'll help you, we'll meet you where you at, and we'll take you to the next step.

00:48:43 Amy Mayer
That is a perfect way to describe it. And we have to stop saying things like that. And I. I have been the most guilty person in the world of saying I'm not a math person and joking about that and everything, but in reality, if you put a dollar sign on it, I turn into a math person. Like, yeah, you have to be, if.

00:49:03 Chris Bugaj
You run a business, right?

00:49:04 Amy Mayer
You have to be like, and when, when in your life do you not have technology? Like, it's in your car, it's in your refrigerator, like, it's everywhere, in everything you do. It's in your tv. Oh, you don't, you don't watch tv. Oh, when your children send you pictures of your grandchildren, you can't open them up. That's so sad. Let me help you. Of course you do. You will figure it out if it matters to you.

00:49:30 Chris Bugaj
Yes. That's so true. That's so true. All right. Well, with that said, amy, so what are some, what advice would you give some? Let's say a lot of people that listen to this podcast are doing professional learning in their neck of the woods, right? They're maybe trying to teach other people about augmentative alternative communication. Maybe they're trying to teach them about inclusive design. What advice would you give to people? You work with a team of 19 other people, like, or 20 other people. What are some sort of staple strategies you use when it comes to professional learning?

00:50:05 Amy Mayer
Well, I think that the reason why the professional learning we do is effective and beloved. And so, so since I may be talking to people who don't know what we do here and have maybe even never heard of Friedtech before, I'll tell you, to kind of legitimize what I'm about to say to you, that our satisfaction ratings, and I'm talking about we train 20 to 50,000 people a year, educators a year, is 4.7 out of five. And we really try hard to get every single person who learns with us to do an evaluation. And the other piece of that puzzle that I know PD providers think about, that I think about, is that the majority of those people do not want to be doing the learning experience with us. And that's major, because the folks who are listening to your podcast most likely are not just doing professional development for who we call around here. We call them Saturday teachers. That's our word we developed. So Saturday teachers are people who attend the conference on Saturday. And that's a completely different world of professional development than PD. That happens on Monday morning. So most of our learners are Monday morning people. They did not choose to come here today. So we have extraordinary satisfaction ratings. And the reasons why we do are because we design our learning experiences to solve problems that people actually have. And so we talk to people a lot about what problems they have, and then we work collaboratively together to figure out how to solve those problems. And then we work collaboratively together again to make sure that we solve the problems and that the way that we are teaching is really nailing what the learner needs. So we do a ton of design work in the background. And honestly, you couldn't do it this way if you're in a school district, because when we are creating a learning experience, we are expecting thousands of people to participate in that learning experience at some point in the existence of that thing. And so we're spending many, many hours. You are doing a lot of shoot from the hip. You know, somebody just asks you a question and you have to give them a response right now. But I would say that when you're actually creating PD, so as opposed to solving an individual person's problem, you're creating something that is going to be delivered to a group of people. What you're doing is a lot of design work in the background to really understand the problems that the people are facing. And then you're doing a lot of design work to make sure that the way that you're delivering it is really impactful to them. So it's kind of like writing a book. Every professional development, we call them learning experiences, and we call the people who deliver them learning guides. Every learning experience delivered by a learning guide here at Fred Tech has been really carefully designed to make sure we're solving a real problem. And that's the number one piece of advice I would give.

00:53:13 Chris Bugaj
So, again, you and I are so on the same page about this kind of stuff. I think of the professional learning that I design, and when Rachel, Rachel's the podcast co host of this podcast, when we do a lot of presentations together, just like when you and I presented together, it's thinking about what's an authentic problem people really are having, so that when they leave, they go, wow, that's something I can can, that's going to change my practice for the better immediately and then long term. So this authentic problem is really good as a strategy for adults and for kids. Like, if we designed lessons around authentic, authentic problems, they show up in a different way, you know?

00:53:57 Amy Mayer
Yes.

00:53:58 Chris Bugaj
And so one quick example of that is getting back to beyond worksheets or in my, in my book, the section, the eulogy for workshops, worksheets is, I knew I wouldn't get people to come to a learning experience that says, never use a worksheet again. Why would I do that? It's not a problem I'm having. My worksheets are fine. The kids are doing fine. That's not going to get them to the door. What if it was never stand in line in a copy machine again. Okay, that's a problem. I'm.

00:54:25 Amy Mayer
Now I'm into it now I'm coming.

00:54:29 Chris Bugaj
That is a pain. And it always jams and. Oh, yes. Okay. Hey, what if you didn't use that at all? What if you did this other thing with technology? And so I kind of hide. It's not a beaten switch. It does solve the problem, but it is also solving it in a way you hadn't thought of. Right. And is that resonate with you? Is that sort of the thing you do as well?

00:54:49 Amy Mayer
Yes, absolutely, it does. I mean, I think my number one problem with worksheets is something that we've brought up several times already, and it's that it's just an inauthentic learning experience. Like, it creates this fake environment. And I really love working with teenagers, which is not something you hear a lot of people say, but I really like teenagers, and I think the thing that I like about them most is that they have a b's meter. It's never more finely tuned than when you're a teenager. And I'm a bser, so, you know, like, I can totally, totally shovel out some of that, and kids will just like, man, they can just catch the merest whiff of it, and they know, you know, like. And so I think that when I understood that about working with that age group and about how that is such a touch point for most teenagers, like, I constantly was struggling with myself to be more authentic with them, and I couldn't in good conscience put something like a worksheet in front of them when I knew it did not have any authenticity. And I felt really good one day. I felt alternately defensive and bad and also really good one day when one of my kids in anger, and he was truly frustrated with me, it was early in the school year, I think this kid was a sophomore or a junior. And he said, miss mayor, you do not do anything in here. You do not do any of the things that a teacher is supposed to do. He was really, really, like, mad at me, and it's in front of the whole class. And I asked him, like, what? What do you think a teacher is supposed to do? Like, what? What is this situation supposed to be like, in your opinion? And we were standing up and we were looking at something on a computer screen together because they were working in a team. And he says this to me. He said, you never make us any worksheets. You never bring us anything that you have copied on the copy machine and give it to us to do. Like, why can't you just give us a packet on this and we can just do it and move on? Like, I don't think you even understand how hard this is. And I thought, oh, my gosh, he's so eloquent. He's probably going out telling other people this and they're going to know I don't do any worksheets. And then I thought, why am I embarrassed about this? This kid is working so hard in english class, a subject he doesn't even care about or want to be a part of. And he is working his little fingers to the nub in here, and he's complaining about it. Like, this is all good. Like, there's. There's nothing he said just now that I actually feel bad about. Like, so I kind of laughed and I said, like, I think maybe we have a disagreement about what the job of a teacher is, you and me, and we should talk about that some more, because I don't think that what you think my job is is what I think my job is. And I think I'm doing exactly what I need to be doing. And I appreciate how hard you're working, but I am never going to make a packet out of this and give it to you. And it wouldn't work anyway. It wouldn't work if I did it. That's the problem. Yeah, well, I could spend my whole weekend making the packet. It wouldn't make any difference.

00:58:22 Chris Bugaj
It would work to the extent that he's used to, in that it's shallow learning versus deeper learning, right?

00:58:29 Amy Mayer
Yes.

00:58:30 Chris Bugaj
I memorize the stuff. I spit it out. I get an a on the test, and then I do that over again. And that's learning. That's what I see in every tv show. That's what I see in every movie when I.

00:58:39 Amy Mayer
That's what I've done in every english class I had before.

00:58:42 Chris Bugaj
Exactly.

00:58:42 Amy Mayer
Get me the packet.

00:58:43 Chris Bugaj
That's why you are challenging my concept of what a teacher is. But I love this idea, too, of reframing it because. What did you say? The 20 people you work with, they're not teachers. They're former teachers that have turned, what did you call them?

00:58:58 Amy Mayer
Learning guides.

00:58:59 Chris Bugaj
Learning guides, exactly. And that's what you're doing on the side, is I set up a problem. Problem. You and your team went to work at solving that problem, and then I'm the guide on the side that gives you a little feedback or points you in a direction or shows you a tool you didn't know existed that gives you or a strategy you didn't know that will point you where you need to go or a potential place to go to solve that problem. And that is so much more valuable because whatever that kid does, chances are he will graduate school and then he'll be working on a team solving problems, whether he is working in the gaming industry or the AI industry or if he's working in a medical field, whatever. Everything's team based now. Where most things are team based. Meant to solve problems.

00:59:43 Amy Mayer
Yes. You know what it reminds me of when I start thinking about it is, and really, I think I reflected on this even at the time that this kid kind of, like, blew up at me. Like, you know when your kids are little and you're trying to get them to eat their peas and you do the airplane, you turn it into a game and they open their mouth and you slip it in there and you just hope they don't notice as its peas when it gets in there, you know, and they eat it anyway. Like, I thought, every. Every learning challenge you're having in front of you, somebody is, like, circling the peas and the spoon toward your open mouth and just all you have to do is just open your mouth. But learning doesn't work that way. I can't. You won't learn if I do that. Like, the struggle is the thing that the person who is doing the work is doing the learning. And one of the chapters in my book is called stop stealing the learning because. Because that's what I was doing when I was. When I had my first teaching job. I stole the learning. I spent all weekend making the worksheet packet for a year and a few months before I went, oh, no, this is actually not. This. This is not actually what I'm supposed to be doing. I don't think. You know, and the thing is, I could have done it the whole rest of my career. And honestly, I don't think anybody would have said anything about it. I really don't. I think it would have been acceptable to everyone.

01:01:04 Chris Bugaj
Well, let's talk about that for a second, because that is where I meet the most resistance is. Let's say it's a while. Remember, this is an actual story of my. Of my son. My son was in fourth grade and his fourth grade teacher. We were discussing different, you know, things he could do. Activities is not a word I like, but, you know, stuff he could do in class. Right. Anyway, one of the things, and I was giving her different options, like, you could try this or that. Try not to be that dad. But also, you know, like, I'm a professional developer who talks about this kind of stuff. Maybe I could give you some like, advice or technology trying to do that in delicate way. But her point to me back was at the end of the year, these kids are going to take a standardized test and I've, my kids have always been the highest performing, and by giving them these worksheets and they do this sort of boring, mundane, shallow stuff, it prepares them for spinning it back out on the test at the end of the year, year, which is where I get, I get my, that's where I get my. I'm. Part of my evaluation is based on that. Our school's performance is based on that. All of society seems to run around test scores, right? So I don't feel a big impetus to change when everything is designed that way. She did, she definitely changed and grew and started to add more options based on our conversations, but not, that was many years, many, many moons ago, and it's still today, the same sort of.

01:02:29 Amy Mayer
Still the same conversation. I've had it so many times.

01:02:33 Chris Bugaj
So what are some of the strategies you use to convince people that your life could actually be better if you made this change and you didn't use those? What are some things that have worked for you?

01:02:42 Amy Mayer
Well, I think that there's, I think this conversation sounds a little bit different in 2024. And because classroom management has become so challenging, it has become such a big part and where I primarily heard that argument, and I'm curious if this is the same for you. So when I worked inside a school district and I worked in technology, but I was a staff development person, so I was in charge of PD for technology, instructional technology coordinator, and we, our school district had three different areas and two of them were impoverished and one of them was wealthy. And the wealthy part of our school district is where I got that argument constantly, like, I'm not going to change because my test scores look good, parents are happy, administrators are happy. Like where, I mean, you're solving a problem I don't have. And now I am not hearing that as much because kids are not. I mean, gosh, I hate to say it like this. This is the thing I'm going to ask you to erase later, probably, but. But kids are not, they're not putting up with it anymore, right? I hate to say it like that, but kids won't do it anymore. And so at the time, like, when I was having those conversations, I was inside a school district, kids were still doing it. I subsequently left that position and went to a school district where every pretty, I mean, it was probably 90% poverty across the board, poorest school district in the state of Texas. So as a very, very poor school district, and the children themselves like their lives, they lived at home, tons of economic disadvantage. I never, I. Not one time did I ever have that conversation. So that is a conversation that comes from privilege. And I didn't answer the question that you asked me, but I want to point out to people who are listening, nobody's probably listening, who has this idea in their head in reality, but should they ever stumble across this and listen to it, you are coming from such a place of privilege that you don't even understand what you've got. Like, it just, it's not even. I don't even know if it's a conversation that people are having anymore. And so I'm gonna throw it back to you and then I will finally maybe actually answer your question. Are you still hearing people say this in 2024?

01:05:05 Chris Bugaj
Yeah, I am. That's the biggest pushback that I get. But I also wanna comment on the fact that you, what you said about kids sort of like, especially high school kids, are like, I'm just not gonna do that. I'm not sure the experience that you've designed for me, let's say this boring worksheet that I know I just have to do and get. Turn it in on time and get a grade on it. I don't know that that's really serving me. So I'm going to push back a little bit. I'm going to resist it a little bit more. You mentioned that like a B's detector, my b's detector is going way off and I don't want to be a problem, so I'm going to just do it. But I'm also going to start pushing back a little bit more with questions and resist it. And so I'm seeing a little bit more and I want even more of it. Empowering empowerment of all different learners to, to say, look, you're serving me and this is not serving my future, right? It's serving some sort of other score or some other. Some other higher power. That is not me. Let me be higher power, right.

01:06:12 Amy Mayer
I had a principal one time. He's now a superintendent. Superintendent. I just gives me a pause to even think about it. But I had a principal one time who actually called me, like, thank goodness he just said it to me. I don't think he was saying it to other people, although maybe he was. He called me a cult leader. And I was a high school english teacher, and I was clearly. I was really stunned. I mean, like, he was my boss, and I like to do a good job, and I'm a really hard worker, and I definitely cared very much about what I was doing, and I knew that what I was doing was really working for kids. And so I said, why would you call me that? And what do you mean by that? And what he meant by that was actually, I think, the polar opposite of a cult leader. He's like, you get these kids and you teach them to question everything, and then they go to their other classes and they do that. Like, I don't even know if you understand what your kids are doing when they leave your classroom. And I'm like, yeah, that's good. That's a good thing. Critical thinking. And I actually got stopped in the parking lot one day by another teacher, and he asked me. He was a super, super nice, really humble guy, been teaching a really long time, and he said. Said, your kids. I have your kids in first period, so. Okay, well, which kids? Like, I teach over 100 kids. Which kids are you talking about? I don't know. They're your kids, okay? And they would like me to start using rubrics. And I said, okay. And they attributed rubrics to me, and he said, yes. They said, that's what you use in your classroom, and it makes grading more fair for them. And they want me to start doing that. And I said, okay, like, do you want me to help you make one? And he's like, no, I think I can do it. I just. I just wanted you to know, like, here they are out there causing problems, asking for things like rubrics. Like, oh, my God, are you not happy? The kids know what a rubric is, and they want that used in their other classes. I'm a cult leader because they asked for rubric. Like, and I put the two situations together. I'm pretty sure that's what made me a cult leader. But anyway, I can't even remember what you asked me anymore, Chris.

01:08:37 Chris Bugaj
But no, no, that's awesome stories. I mean, that's. You taught kids to advocate for themselves, not just the critical thinking, but how to communicate it. Right, right. Multiple skills there. And they said specifically what they wanted. You know, it's not nebulous. Like, make it better. I don't know how to make it better. You know, I specifically am telling you, I want you to do this thing. And now, today, in today's day and age, we have chat GPT that could help us write the rubric or get us started, you know?

01:09:04 Amy Mayer
Exactly. It can make the whole thing for you. It's so much easier. But I think you asked me specific strategies, and the best thing you can do is to have your students working together collaboratively, no matter what you teach. And it really does not matter because it's the number one skill that employers need that people come to work without. They haven't done it. They've been taught that doing a worksheet packet is, you know, going to get them there, and it's just profoundly untrue. So they need to be working together. I don't mean that they're always, like, they're not always going to be doing the same, you know, the same work. Like, what word do I write next? That's not what I mean. It's that people are working in conjunction with each other. So they might not be doing exactly the same thing, but they're learning to be interdependent with other learners, and they're relying on other people besides the teacher for their learning. And the biggest question that I hope teachers would ask then is, well, how do I do the grading? And grading is always like, it's just a minefield to even go into it. But I wrote a whole chapter about it in the book. I worked with brilliant educators who taught me when I was a teacher how to give grades fairly. And I did it for years with my own students who were working in teams with each other. And it's the most profound thing that I probably know. And it's in the book, there's a whole chapter about it, fair grade. It's really, really important if you're going to have students working together in teams, and you just cannot have successful teams, especially at high school, but really at any grade level, because our human need for fairness and how we are compensated, whether the compensation is points or money, is so gigantic that we cannot get over it as people and we cannot work effectively in teams. It's one of the reasons why teachers are like, this. Group work or teamwork or whatever is terrible. I'm never trying this again. Well, your system that you created wasn't fair, and so people are not going to be able to do it. Like, it just, it just won't work without a fair system. So hopefully read the book. Read that chapter. Like, really, like, just read that chapter. If you want. I think you could just pull that chapter out. It probably kind of stands alone. But if you're thinking, if you're interested in teamwork but you don't know how to do that part of it. It's so, so important. Like don't score, skip that.

01:11:28 Chris Bugaj
Thats actually, again, so similar advice or strategies that I share is one of the first things you could do when thinking about designing more inclusively is take a step back and look at your schedule and think of the percentage of time that you have, whole group versus small, group versus individual. And then after youve done that reflection, how can you maximize that small group of those buckets? Because chances are what youre going to find is many teachers still have a lot of whole group lesson. I stand up and I talk to you for 20 minutes. How can you minimize that and maximize that small group and then come in with your strategies about teamwork and working in those small groups and then how you assess kids to give them feedback and, and then the grades that come along with that. So awesome.

01:12:17 Amy Mayer
I feel like that was way more eloquent than my answer and I really appreciate it.

01:12:21 Chris Bugaj
Well, this is why we're a great team.

01:12:23 Amy Mayer
Yes, it is.

01:12:27 Chris Bugaj
All right, Amy, let me, let's ask you this sort of last question, is what we already talked about AI. So maybe AI is going to be your answer here or maybe it's something else. What has got you curious lately? What has got you is tickling your fancies, got you thinking about the future? Where is education going? Maybe it's something small. Maybe it's something big. What are you questing after right now? And as someone who's always learning, yeah.

01:12:57 Amy Mayer
I think AI is the thing that I think about the most because I'm looking at a situation where, and to kind of piggyback on what you said about how much whole group instruction there is, like AI is now giving us an opportunity to do, and I still want people to work in teams, but when you need to know something and you need to know something or you want to know something, like that's a very individual quest, even if what you're taking, you know you're going to take back to a team and you're going to talk to other people about it, you're going to do something with the information. But never before have I been able to say, I need to be able to work this math problem and I don't know how to do that. Can I get like an individual teacher with absolutely no judgment or preconceptions of my skills, no knowledge about my previous learning experiences. Nobody's going to look at me and say, well, you should have learned this last year because we spent six weeks on this. Well, guess what? I didn't. Or if I did, I don't remember it anymore. Like, now we have that opportunity to go to AI and actually, like, learn something that we in particular want to know, and nobody else in the whole world has to care about it but us. And so the thing that's got me excited is the potential for people to explore their own passions. There's nothing more powerful than understanding what an individual person is passionate about. And there is no explaining it. And what the Internet has taught us is that if you are passionate, I'll tell you what a passion I saw lately is such a great example, I think. There's a woman on Instagram, and she knits tiny things. So she makes like, your grandma is Afghan, but it's this big, and it's knitted with a little tiny knitting needle. And she has quit her job. This is her passion. She knits tiny things. I am so intrigued by her work. I look at it every day. I love it. I would probably pay to get more of it to be a subscriber. She loves that she is enthralled by, and it is a career for her now. And there are other people who have found her. And she is famous on social media for knitting tiny things. Like, we've never had a world before where we had a tool where we could find our own weird group of people and learn more on our own with no judgment and no, like, what do you want to do that for? That's not a job. Nobody's ever going to hire you or pay you to knit tiny things. Move on, learn something else, do some, something different. So, ironically, this technology that we started out kind of saying was dehumanizing is going to create a situation where we can be more human than we ever have been and where our humanity is going to matter more and where we are going to be, be able to be more individualized than we ever have been before. Because computers are finally actually going to be able to do the thing that they're good at, which is anything that is repetitive, anything that has been done before can now be reproduced without, I mean, essentially without our help. And so it is a fine time to be a human in some ways, but gotta work on the climate situation and a couple of other, like, worldwide problems. But it's a fine time to be a human because there's only one of any of you. And, and now that matters more than ever because computers can now do things that, that now matter less to human beings, beings.

01:16:43 Chris Bugaj
So well put. Yes. And tying it back to our assessment conversation, just a few minutes ago. I feel like that's where this technology can help us with individualizing those performance based assessments, is you can give feedback to people, like you said, you can then use that data to have cumulative results rather than these standardized tests. Really focus it on that. Focus in on what you really like to do. Like you said, whether it's, you know, knitting tiny, tiny little things or playing dungeons and dragons or whatever your thing is, you could use that to, to fuel your passion and get better at it and use the AI to help you get better at it.

01:17:26 Amy Mayer
Exactly. Exactly. So it's, it's just, it's just amplifying how special it is to be a unique human being. Ironically, I think that's what is going to happen. And so I think we're going to continue to see a resurgence in craftsmanship, which is a thing I love to work with kids on because you probably know, I love to sew and, and make physical things out of cloth. And like that craftsmanship is really resurging because it is like the antithesis of, of the AI, of the technology. And it's, it's going to be these unique human made things are getting more and more important. And I love that.

01:18:08 Chris Bugaj
Could not agree more. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Amy, take us out with where can people learn more about you? How do they learn, how do they find the book? How do they find your courses? Give us all the stuff.

01:18:18 Amy Mayer
Oh, my gosh. I'm going to have to look up our URL because it's so new. I don't remember it yet, but I will look it up for you and.

01:18:26 Chris Bugaj
We'Ll have it in the show notes for people to go click on.

01:18:29 Amy Mayer
Okay, great. That's awesome. Okay, well, I'll send it to you so, so they can go to our website. It's fried tech and that's a whole URL. If you must type in www.friedtechnology.com. like, if you just want to do that, you can. But fried Dot tech is a whole URL. You can type it in and you can learn a lot about our company, our vibe. We really try to make everything fun and we care about design. We, we try to never put out anything that we think looks bad or is not readable or whatever. We have a person on our team. Lauren, I don't know if you've heard of stickity.

01:19:05 Chris Bugaj
No.

01:19:06 Amy Mayer
If you have not heard of stickity, you need to check it out. So stickity is a slides and docs add on that Lauren created as her Google Innovator project. Lauren works at technology full time and also runs stickity, which is the number one education add on in the world, I believe. And she is a user experience, really designer expert. So we have courses also on user design and how teachers can use user design. But you will see her work also on our website. And I think our website is a great place to learn. And I'll send you that URL for the book so you can really learn about the book individually. But obviously, it's on Amazon and Barnes and noble and all that kind of stuff. And this is my very first. Like, this may be the first thing that comes out, actually, about the book. So thank you so much for giving me a chance to talk about it.

01:20:02 Chris Bugaj
Oh, you're very welcome. Thank you for writing it. Thank you for coming on the podcast to talk about not just the book, but everything else that we chatted about. And I know firsthand how much work it was to either get up early or stay up late and wrestle with the wording and put it into a way that can be really digestible from people who are actually, you know, doing the work. So thanks for creating it. It's. I know it was a labor of love, but I also know there was a labor.

01:20:31 Amy Mayer
It was a labor. Yes, definitely. I. Yeah, I felt like it was like, I understand why people relate it to birth. I mean, maybe not physically painful, although I think my back hurts sometimes from sitting here so long. So maybe that kind of pain, too.

01:20:47 Rachel Madel
Yeah.

01:20:49 Chris Bugaj
All right. Thanks, Amy.

01:20:50 Amy Mayer
Thank you, Chris.