 Boom. What's up, everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sokian, really excited to be still in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We are at the Sioux Falls School District's Instructional Planning Center, IPC, and there, this is how we develop a school district for 25,000 kids in this area of the southeast corner of South Dakota. This is my hometown, as you know, and we are sitting down with two people that are at the forefront of developing out this school district. We have both Dr. Teresa Boyson and Dr. Brian Mahur joining us. Thank you so much for coming on to the show. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Our pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. And the backgrounds are really great here. Teresa has been working in the Sioux Falls School District for 25 years. She was the principal at Harvey Dunn for 12 years, and then also taught for multiple years before that third and fourth grade. Right. And it also taught sports as well, and has had a huge track record there. Brian Mahur was at Carney prior to being superintendent here, which is in Nebraska. He was there superintendent for eight years, and now has been here three and a half years with the Sioux Falls School District as a superintendent, and Teresa's assistant superintendent. And we're really excited to talk about developing out a school district and all of the nuance that goes into this, because it is how do you mold the 25,000 minds into our world? How do you assess what's the curriculum like? What's, you know, from the national level? How do you keep up with exponential technology? Sioux Falls is burgeoning in population. So we passed the $190 million school bond. So we'll be talking about that. Really excited to unpack this with you both. Thank you again. Let's let's start even before we talk about molding 25,000 minds into our world. What sparked the fire under you to care about education and kids? And yeah, take turns. Yeah. Since I have the mic, I'll go ahead and start. Awesome. I think for me, it was really the adults in my life when I was when I was young. I grew up very poor in a small, small Nebraska town and really had some some motivators for me who were teachers and coaches who made me believe I could do more than I really thought I could. That was kind of my spark to get into education, to be able to do what they were doing. Growing up poor, when I looked at teachers, I thought, gosh, they make a pretty good living. They can they can do well. And of course, I think now our teachers are grossly underpaid. But that was that was a motivator for me to get me going and get into the field of education. That's interesting because I believe that most people that get into education have that same history. You have someone in your life that was impactful for you when you were younger with it in the school district. And I grew up in the Super Bowl School District. And so that's exciting for me, third through 12th grade here and the teachers that made an impact on my life and for me to pursue my education and come back here and to see some of those teachers again, but then those those watch the students as they go through and the impact that we can have on education in our community. It's a reoccurring theme that we've seen with all the entrepreneurs and different people we host on the show where they say that mentorship has been such an influence on their development. And it's also one of the biggest contributors to success as well as having some sort of mentors and influence that drove you to care about this. So OK, so now you see years to within these within these teacher roles and administrator roles, you've slowly been better and better understanding about, OK, thousands, tens of thousands of children. Well, I mean, we're talking, you know, billions of kids around the world need their need to be molded into society in a way that they can be fully actualized themselves, contribute to the collective. How does one even go through the process of dealing with the twenty five thousand school student school district and figuring out how to best assess with the curriculum seems super complicated and hard to to actually do? Right. Can we start? Sure. You know, I think when you look at it in that context, a very broad context, it is super hard and really tough to do. In fact, as you're asking that question, I'm on, oh, my gosh, I don't know if I'm cut out for this. I think what you what you do really is you figure out what can I do right now? Yes, as you were as you were formulating that question, one of the things that came to my mind was a came from a book that I read on John Wooden, who was a famous college basketball coach that UCLA. And one of the things in his book that he said was it's what you learn after you know it all that really matters. I think there have been several times in my life where I thought I knew it all and I've learned so much after that. Now what I've now what I think I realize is I know more today than I knew yesterday and hopefully I'll be able to say that tomorrow and next week and next month. And that's really, I think, where we are as a school district, too. What do we do? What do we know now and what are we doing now? But really, how are we developing the minds of kids to think because it's very clear now, if you look at history, that we're not we're not preparing kids for the world that I live in, just as the teachers that I had didn't develop me to live in the world that they lived in, but they did develop in me an ability to think and an ability to think critically so that I could handle those issues that came my way, whether that's society, society, politically, whatever realm those issues came in. And I think that's our charge and that's an evolving charge. So we'll ever have the answer, but hopefully we continually put together an answer. And that is my title is Academic Achievement. And so within that, everything curriculum and assessment. And so in the Sioux Falls School District, when you look at we have pre K 12 twenty five thousand students. How do we assess what we're doing and make changes so the students are college and career ready? And it starts in kindergarten. It starts before kindergarten. And the challenges that our students come in with the student. We have to meet their needs at the door. Look at where every student is. If I have a classroom of twenty five students, I know I have twenty five different needs because all students are different. And that teacher has a big job of being able to build that relationship with them, know where they are academically, emotionally, socially and develop all those skills. So we have a well rounded child at the end. And then when we look at the other end, college and career ready, continually to develop pathways and look at the businesses in our local community and how we can work together to support the businesses and feed their need also, but also have that student be able to take courses that are relevant for them, but also feel so passionate. So it's a big charge, but again, continually examining what we're doing, what's working, what's not working, look for those bright spots and build on those. There was two things there that just really drove me one from each of you with just it's almost like there's a torch that's being passed on from the previous generations to us now. And then now it's our turn to figure out how to add more to the torch and figure out where to keep pushing education forward. And then also this this idea that when even when you get a classroom of students, you have a diverse population of minds and and just even dealing with not only different learning styles, but also different parental involvements in education, different socioeconomic statuses. There's so much of that of that nuance where some kids are reading already at multiple levels beyond the classroom. And there's some kids that are still a level maybe behind reading. So how do you teach as a teacher? This is extremely difficult to be able to do. So OK, so let's let's talk about the the app. How does a curriculum build? How do how do we figure out? So the torch was kind of passed with the curriculum. It's been developed over time and also how we assess. But then there's like the national standards and testing that have to happen. So we're always trying to prep for the national testing. And then but then also there's the exponential technology that we're adding into the picture. So how does that all play out? OK, so when you think about curriculum, of course, we look at the national standards and the state standards and how they feed into that. And we have a process for reviewing that curriculum and those standards and purchasing a curriculum that's going to meet the standards, meet the students' needs and provide the ability for the teachers to add their own flavor into that also to meet the diverse needs of all our students. When we look at your comment of we have students that are reading beyond our grade level or below our grade level, providing the teacher supports and avenues to be able to differentiate that learning for those students. That's really important and to be able to meet all their needs because we know that within that one classroom you have multiple levels, whether it's math, writing, reading, all of those subjects. We do have those different levels. The state assessments and the national assessments that we're required to take our curriculum when by meeting the needs, by meeting those standards, feeds into that assessment. So we're using the materials that we have purchased in the curriculum writing and the testing that we do with in-house. It does feed those very naturally. So it's a good process. We have a great team that helps. We have teacher input on all those committees and writing in-house assessments. We have district assessments that align with our curriculum, align with the state and national standards to give us benchmarks along the way. So we're not waiting till the end to see if our students make the mark. We're assessing that along the way. And so we can make changes as needed. And we know from one group to the next we do need to make changes. So it's a great process. It's a great school district that really does value the feedback of the teachers when you look at the assessments along the way to make adjustments in the curriculum to make sure we're hitting mark for our kids. So they can, you know, we have AP classes. Our ACT scores are above the state and national. And it's because we believe it's because of that process. Sure. I think it hits the mark. What we'll see. To oversimplify a meta-analysis done by John Hattie. Planning, engagement, and feedback. That's the learning cycle. Our best teachers, no matter what curriculum they're putting in front of students, no matter what content they're in charge of, no matter what age of the students that they are in charge of. Planning, engagement, and feedback. Our best teachers are great planners. They're great at engagement and they give quality feedback. If you're missing one of those pieces, the whole curriculum development, educational cycle, bogs down. And it doesn't matter if you're in charge of 50 students or 25,000 students or 125,000 students. If you can master planning, engagement, and feedback, you will be doing right by the kids that we serve. And that's our challenge every day. Yeah, as you were speaking, I was also hearing this importance of feedback and then you gave this planning, engagement, feedback cycle. And then there's all of the importance of adding in the right sort of... You have AP classes, you have these different... You have... How does one even deal with a national assessment but also a state assessment? And I really enjoyed the way that... If you have a teacher that's doing a really good job planning, assessing, engaging, and then assessing, planning, engaging, and then getting feedback, that that process is... It does seem like a really good gold standard for education. I gave an analogy earlier, or I gave a little talk earlier about John Wooden, I'll go to another... Sport and another coach. Brian Sun is a ticker for cowboys, and you like football a lot. I did, and I still do. But I think the best coaches, there's a lot of leadership qualities that you can take for them that is generalized beyond the sport. I'll give an example of Tom Osburn growing up in Nebraska. Tom Osburn was the head football coach at the University of Nebraska for a number of years, and he talked about more than winning in one of his books. And really his point was this, that if you don't worry about winning, and I'll use the analogy there, if I don't worry about what those state and national standards are, and they're important, so I don't want to just dismiss them, but if I don't worry too much about what they are, rather I worry about blocking and tackling, I'm going to win enough. Yeah, that's interesting. I think about the fundamentals of the game of football, and I get exceedingly good at those fundamentals in football. I'm going to win a lot of football games. I make that transference to education, and I think if we do enough things right in terms of teaching kids how to think critically, and all those things that Dr. Boyce talked about in terms of developing the curriculum, all those things are necessary. But if in the end we think about, it's to think critically. Those assessments are going to take care of themselves. How we perform on our state and national standards will all take care of themselves. If we think about how we bring that individual along, it's kind of like planning engagement and feedback. It's that simple, and it's that complex. It's hard to stay focused on those little things because we're always getting the soup of the day to come in and help with reading, or help with writing, or help with math. And really what we're going to do is make sure that we're teaching kids how to think critically. Because they come to us at all different levels. You mentioned poverty. If all of our kids came to us at the same spot in terms of their development, the job would be easier. Now I would contend it would be less fun, but it would be easier. We get kids who can't nearly read at grade level, as you mentioned, and we get kids who are reading multiple years ahead of grade level in the same class. How do we teach them to read, but how do we teach them to be consumers of that information and to think critically? That's the complexity that we're dealing with. That's the challenge that we deal with every day. That part I don't think has changed since I was a kid. I don't think it will change for a long time. The technology has changed tremendously. How do we think critically so that we can consume and react to that information? That I think is our chief charge. I don't know how you assess that. As we talk about curriculum and assessment, how does a school district figure out how to stay up at the cutting edge of all the exponential technologies? You have programs like Code to the Future, which is really exciting, getting kids playing with MIT's scratch-based programming language. These are the cutting edges of getting kids involved in STEM education. You were at the STEM summit this summer in D.C. Tell us about that. That was really exciting to be a part of, number one, just the fact that it's in D.C. and the energy that goes with that. But also seeing our country saying, we're going to take a forward stance in this whole STEM conversation. That was excellent, just to be a part of that. Not only was it the folks from education there, but she had business and industry there, as well as obviously government there. Those are three entities that don't always play nicely together. We were all there under a common theme, so that was good. To your question of how do we stay on the cutting edge, I think that's a question that we always are asking ourselves. How do we stay on the cutting edge and how do we stay on the cutting edge without becoming just gimmick, just adopting something because it looks good. I'm reminded years ago of how we had some distance learning labs put together. We were very proud of this room because it looked 21st century back in the early 1990s. One of my colleagues said to me, how often do you use this room with your students? It just almost took me to my knees because we didn't use it nearly to the capacity that we could have used it. What do we do to stay on the forefront that really impacts kids? That's something that I think that we're always thinking about. So how do we do it? For us, I would say there are a couple of ways. Number one, we're the only school district in the state of South Dakota that's part of a national group called the League of Innovative Schools, Digital Promise. We are with like-minded districts around the nation twice a year trying to figure out, number one, what technology is out there, but how does that technology impact critical thinking for the students that we serve and how do we do that? I can tell you the folks here, they break into hives when I go to those meetings because I always come back with ideas that I want them to implement. But I think it's through being involved in those think tanks and getting out of the day-to-day grind, if you will, and being a part of that national movement on, how do we improve education nationally? We do it by improving education in Sioux Falls. We do it by improving education locally. Trisha, thoughts on the exponential technology? You spoke to Code to the Future and Code to the Future is a coding that we do with K through 8 students now and it really has helped students to think differently about what their careers could look like but what else is out there. When Dr. Maher talked about teaching students to think critically and persevere, that really, Code to the Future really has helped. Students do that. We see leaders in those classrooms who might not have been leaders before but now it's another avenue for them to shine and so that's been a great thing. Forestry Falls, avionics, robotics, all of those technologies that we have and then how do we use just our everyday Chromebooks that we have in the hands of second through 12th graders and to make sure it's not just an addition or replacing paper but how do we use it differently so they're not just a consumer of technology but a user of technology and so continually to support our instructional coaches and our instructional coaches support our teachers to look at things differently using an LMS, a learning management system within their classroom and all that platform of online learning really looking at micro-credentialing for our staff and so that's where they can do personalized staff development for them but they can do that at a time that works for them and an area that works for them that we support and we know that's good quality professional development so really looking outside the box of that traditional learning but that traditional staff development for our Sioux Falls district staff STEM is such an important field that is just exploding across every single industry so to have a focus on that and a focus on just cutting edge use of technology in the classrooms in ways that both maximize the child's ability to critically think but also minimize their distractions actually, Brian, when you were mentioning earlier the interesting analogy of playing a game of football and getting really good at the basics of whatever sport or whatever even potentially drawing or art or whatever the coding or the basics that the distractions come in as well and so to block out the distractions is so important especially with the development of a cutting edge technology because it can be used for distraction as well let's talk about the explosion of the population in Sioux Falls and how that's affecting class sizes in the schools it was so cool to read about the $190 million school bond that was passed for the Sioux Falls school district here that's gonna fund the construction of a new high school a new middle school a new elementary school a new renovations on additional educational infrastructure and that is that's so exciting to be to think about especially because there will be a it's not only that the city cares a lot about the economic development of the city as well as the minds of the children but also that it's great to see that the class sizes will hopefully decrease so that a teacher will have maybe 5 children instead of 32 or whatever so they'll have they can focus maybe more on each individual child's development so there's a lot of good that's going into this the school itself there's so much nuance that goes into this but the architecture of the new schools hopefully have more natural light coming in more of an ambiance of maybe some nature involvement in it so that's this is all really cool stuff and we're excited to learn from you about what this process has been like teach us about it sure well the first thing I'd say about a bond if you have anybody watching this and they're trying to figure out where to relocate Sioux Falls South Dakota might not jump to your list of places to be but if you have kids and you need them educated I know I'm biased better place than Sioux Falls South Dakota and I'll offer this for evidence we just asked the folks who live in this school district we asked them to raise their taxes so we asked them to spend more money and those things those votes are always 50-50 I mean they're close to if you pass it it's by the Harry or Chinny Chin Chin you know I mean it's our yes vote on that bond issue so we said will you vote yes to raise your taxes 85.46 of the voters said yes that's phenomenal I think it's unprecedented and until somebody tells me it's not I'm going to go with that that's amazing to have 85 out of 100 voters more than 85 out of 100 voters say yes do that to me that doesn't speak to to me or to us but it speaks to the commitment to education in this city and the folks in this community understand that this isn't about K-12 education this isn't about ending at the age of 18 this is about taking this city and continuing to have it grow and continuing to have a workforce that allows it to grow the fact the matter is we're preparing students like you Alan who are going to go make their mark well beyond the city of Sioux Falls as well as hopefully have their mark in the city of Sioux Falls but that's kind of my commercial but it's all based in fact I know this there isn't a better place to be a superintendent of schools than the Sioux Falls school district to have that support is incredible and then now it's a matter of now how do we make sure that the trust that was placed in us manifests itself in quality outcomes for the students of this city that's our goal that's kind of what we're talking about this is a multi-year project that's looking like till potentially three, almost four years probably four or five years before we see everything come to fruition probably three years before we actually have a new high school and a new middle school built and we're moved into them but in the meantime we're really engaging folks from the community to help us make sure that the design is what we want it to be and I don't mean just from an aesthetically pleasing perspective but from a functionally relevant perspective so that again we're trying to we're going to live in this building for a long time so we don't want it just to be ready to go three years from now but how can it be relevant 30, 40, 50 years from now for educating the kids that are going to come along at that point in time thoughts, Trisha? part of that work on like Dr. Maher referenced is making that building useful now and in the future and that's that architect and the design team has really been instrumental with us and engaging us in does education what will the facilities do now but then in the future and how does it look different than a Roosevelt a Lincoln or a Washington or high school models a lot different and it has been really fun to dream big and to look at other options out there and so we really are in those initial phases with the architect and the design team to see where we can go but then how does our teaching philosophies match that also so lots of challenges exciting or challenges or opportunities to look at that education system and what's it mean for our students in terms of STEM and entrepreneurship and all of those opportunities are those pathways for kids I remember watching a video where you were discussing with some press about well there will be a certain time that we are able to deal with the architects and we getting proposals and we are also looking to find a really important name that sticks on the school that indicates that we care about the future we are thinking about all these different layouts and how the school can stay relevant over time the locations of building them this is very difficult to be able to figure out how to actually deal with the developing school district in a population that's increasing in size so what I have been then because when we were first talking I ended up writing a very little bit a blog post about how I thought it was interesting how when we were speaking that I learned from you that well shouldn't we really be thinking about what is across the street from these buildings because if there is if there are archaic sort of businesses across the street then the kids may go and eat unhealthy and they may not be as inspired as if there were maybe healthier food options other size options, art options business options, entrepreneurship options science options and that's why one of the reasons why this high school is being built next to the career tech academy and southeast tech and zeal center for entrepreneurship and up in that northwest corner so maybe speak on some of the complexity that goes on with what we were just talking about so the importance of how you are planning to develop out the areas next to the schools and how much involvement even Sioux Falls School District has in those decisions I can speak to how do we engage the career tech academy and southeast tech with the new high school because those are three of our entities that we're one of the unique school districts where the southeast technical institute is under the Sioux Falls school district or a part of the Sioux Falls school district so how can we work with that tech academy and our career tech academy to develop courses for our students where they can easily flow between the three of them and then use the zeal center for entrepreneurship that's right across the street also so really looking at those pathways you know a medical pathway we're working on that a computer cyber pathway we're working on that and both career tech academy and southeast tech play into that and that would just be a natural flow for that high school but for our other three high schools also and just opportunities for students that they hadn't thought of before so making sure we can publicize that and get that information into the family's hands but also the students hands so they can take full opportunity of that I think maybe just to extend on that too we have a great relationship with our business community that plays into that relationship with southeast technical institute with the zeal center and opportunities that we have to be nimble rather than to take years to adapt to what our community needs maybe we can take months to adapt to what our community needs whether that be from a manufacturing standpoint or whether that be from a business start-up standpoint we can be real nimble into what our community really needs that's number one the other thing I would say in terms of the development we looked at a lot of things in terms of where we would place this high school certainly the synergy that exists with the technical institute right there the career and technical education academy right there the proximity to those two facilities was a piece of it but from a very practical standpoint we had to have about 45 acres of land and so to find 45 acres of land in a developing city is sometimes difficult so there was a practical piece there and in terms of how will things develop around there I don't know what our impact will be but I think the biggest impact is the fact that we've said this is where we want an educational facility to exist so now we'll see how the area develops around certainly there will be residential there's already a lot of residential developing out in the northwest tons of residential it'll be exciting fun 25 years from now to look back to see how that did develop yeah yeah I'll just be blunt about it I really don't want to see McDonald's and a Burger King on those corners I think it's way archaic it's way overdue to have a different sort of style of corners that are developed in the suburbs of Sioux Falls it can potentially be a model corner right over there where the new high school is going to be it could be a model corner where you see healthy options for food you see a center for art you see an exercise center and when the kids everyday drive past it their brand recognition moves towards health to tech and art instead of to old archaic technologies and businesses it's very possible somebody would sell you the land out there to develop that yeah I hope that someone that's watching from the Sioux Falls community will take on that initiative of wanting to develop the land next to those 45 years and take it in that direction instead of in the old incumbent directions that we see developing out on so many corners of the developing areas of Sioux Falls now this has been there's a lot that goes into developing a school district and we were only talking about really the tip of everything it's so difficult to get down to all of the glacier that's located below the water that exists in a short less than hour conversation to try and understand how a school district works super tough and we'll aim to do this again when we come back to Sioux Falls and talk to you more about what's going on do these check-ins and build out a better understanding for people about what actually goes on within a school district and how it grows last thoughts on the way out there's usually one thing that someone can recommend that is maybe most profound for students, for teachers for parents what is the one thing that you can maybe say could accelerate to turn into a habit for a student for a teacher, for a parent what is that one habit that you think could be developed that could maximize the potential of education in our world you get to go first so my reaction when I get something that's a real deep question like that I go with what just popped into my mind two things popped into my mind and I think about my own development neither of these were natural for me but both of them are commonplace for me today two things that I do on a regular basis that I think have made a tremendous difference in my life and a tremendous difference in my ability to think critically which is a theme you've heard me go back to time and time again today one is to take time to be reflective there are a number of different ways that that can happen so I'm not here to profess that there's one way that's better than any other way but I can say for me it's important and it's important daily and the second thing I'd probably pick meditation if I could only do one but the other is to read and definitely to get yourself to think by reading and to me it doesn't even really matter what you're reading whether it's self-help or fiction I don't know that it really matters but I think it's important that you read and as a as a youngster growing up I'd much rather be out shooting a basketball than reading and so reading wasn't something that was natural for me but I over time realized how important it was for me and it has become natural for me as a result of understanding its importance and I would go back to what's important and for me it's is it reflection meditation or time for exercise whatever that looks like for you but that reflection and taking time to reflect on your day and what worked what didn't work what are you going to change and look forward to and information is so readily available and making sure you research your options and if we're talking about kids listen to them take time for them show them let them have time to develop their passions and spend time with them because when you spend time with your kids or whether it's kids in your classroom it comes back to you and you develop those relationships so taking that time is really really important to develop their interests those were so good I love those we frequently talk about that just how important it is to reflect how important it is to turn off the stimuli that we're constantly taking in and just breathe and be silent and go inward for periods of time even a couple minutes a day and what that does for our development for physiology, for creativity for our gratitude that we have love and compassion and also of course just turning these things into habits of passing time with our kids and the development so so good okay last question what do you guys think is the most beautiful thing in the world? I would say love whether it's love for another person or love for your environment and it's that passion that goes with it so that would be my answer is love for each other and the world and the environment that's way too deep for me Alan so I'm going to go a whole different direction here I'm headed tonight, I'm going to get on a plane I'm going to go to Dallas Cowboys playing the playoffs tomorrow and the most beautiful thing I can see this weekend is made kicks Dallas Cowboys kicker that's the most beautiful thing in my life this weekend that's right this weekend outside of the playoffs and football probably as a grandparent maybe I think the most beautiful thing is watching the development of my own grandkids and then try to transfer that to the development that we're in charge of for the kids in the city and really to kind of see that natural evolution and the iteration that is that human development that's what I'm committed to and that's what I think is a beautiful thing so this weekend it's made kicks it's made kicks it's those long field goals even the short ones are so important even the short ones are so important wow what a pleasure this has been thank you, thank you, thank you Dr. Chris Boyson, Brian Maher thank you so much, thank you guys both so much thanks everyone for tuning in we greatly appreciate it we would love to hear from you what would you think are the big principles and points that we should be discussing around molding children into our world, educating children developing our school districts how can we best do this around the world let us know about what's going on in your communities in your districts as well and also build the future manifest your destiny into the world everyone go build create execute thank you so much for tuning in and we will see you soon bye