 Jason, I'm looking at you. I just want to make sure. Can you see this? I'm going to click it. Can you see a copy of the book? Okay, great. So to get us started, let me just say it is the strangest thing to launch a book from a basement. I never would have imagined doing it. Not what I expected. And I was really grateful and shocked and surprised to get folks to weigh in on it, like Chicago native Arne Duncan. And I put that there because my story of practice really goes from the schoolhouse to the White House. But the hope was to actually write something that would be supportive and helpful across that spectrum. So it felt like a good thing for me if my mom friends and teacher friends could get value from what was laid out all the way up to and through policy makers. And so as we jump in, I'll sort of preview for you. We're going to take a look at how young people today are wired differently. You all have your own anecdotes and stories about what this looks like. So I'm just giving you the research that's going to back up what you're feeling and experiencing every day. And then some conversation about the future of work, why and how it's changing and what that means for young people. Again, with this is a room full of folks who are thinking about career pathways and CTE. So I'll try just to lift up things that don't often get into the conversations that we're having. And really where we're going to spend a lot of time is where P-20 councils can be so powerful. And that is thinking about, okay, so what actually do young people need to be ready for adulthood beyond completing high school? And when are those two things the same and when are they actually quite different? And then what do we do as adults to get there? I should mention to you just a little more about my background so that you understand. I started out teaching pre-K, which was the hardest thing I ever did, and then moved to fifth grade and then eventually ran this high school for 17 to 21 year olds on a technical college campus in the St. Louis area. National work came after closing that school. It was painful and deliberate. We realized that we couldn't actually do our mission. We couldn't educate and equip young people in all of the ways that we know that we needed to to get them ready for life after high school and also satisfy the Missouri Public High School requirements with a young adult population. And so we made this decision. We took a year. We transitioned every single student really carefully and deliberately. And then we went out and made a public statement and said completion from high school is not always the same thing as readiness for life. And we need to figure out what that means. And that was my transition into national work. And so I have spent the last eight years trying to answer that question. What actually does readiness require? And then what do we who are raising and working with kids need to do to get our kids ready and to see it as a fundamental right? So that's the posture that I'm coming to you from today. And in terms of my own lived experience, I'm a GED recipient. I actually spent a lot of time thinking about high school, high school reform and innovation in my professional life, but only completed eighth grade and went to a little bit of ninth grade. So I have a very interesting perspective from from the lived piece as well. So jumping in and and again trying for brevity. So I just want to kind of anchor us in who, who are the high school students that you all are spending today thinking about and your recent grads or some folks in higher ed. So I want to look at young people, let's say 15 to 25. Right. So in the sort of peak of adolescents, older adolescents, young adulthood. In what we know kind of about them, but just to clarify, these are kids who were born in the days after 911. They started kindergarten right when smart technologies came out and Wall Street crashed. And now they're graduating thinking about graduating trying to find work and education opportunities in the middle of COVID and it's aftermath. And so the thing that's really important for us to just always have in mind is that this generation is its own generation that COVID kids have had all of the major milestones of their lives, book ended by crisis by major crisis. And then we think about the way that breaks down for particular groups of kids. One of the things that I've been thinking about a lot recently is what it would have been like to be a young brown man born in the days after 911. Muslim see can do what that how that whole experience would have been framed all the way up to and through the racial uprisings and the violence that we've experienced in the past year. And how that impacts that young man, and then you can go for so many others and think about what the actual lived experience has been. And so what that means and what is so important for us to keep in mind is that young people today, particularly those who you really focus in on those who are in high school, and in the transition into college. They are they are both disruption and digital natives. They only know a world in crisis. They only know a world shaped by disruption and volatility and rapid change. So while we as adults might have this experience of deep overwhelm and overload and we know a different. They don't really. And then there's the circumstances and context of each kid based on who he is, where he lives, what his identities are what his heritage and cultures are. So I want to show you a picture of my kids. So here's Harrison and justice Harrison we call him coa we're native Hawaiian. He's the little toothless one. And justice is the one with the Cardinals hat not cups I saw all you Chicago land folks we are die hard Cardinals here. And it would be very funny to like see people start to just log off be like no not listening anymore. I gave you this toothless picture of Harrison because that is the Monday after school closed. He was supposed to be child of the week. It was his eighth birthday. He was ready for it. And he had his poster done he had colored everything. And we spent that day taking a photo in our house and then going and picking up all of his items in the black trash bag. And he that was the last time he was in school. And that completely shapes and chefs what his experience is going to be. Harrison also only knows life with life shooter drills. He told me when he was in kindergarten that he would just climb into his backpack and that was how he would hide from a bad guy. And this is his life. We live in St. Louis, my God children who spend their summers with me live in the city, they're black, they live in Ferguson, we went through the experience of the very real moment to moment concern for their safety and well being. And the kids remember that too. They don't understand aspects of it but they understand the unfairness of it. On the right you see the boys in the middle of the pandemic on all of their devices exactly where I am so they're on mom's remote work setup. And they were born in 2010 and 2012 and smart technologies came out in 2007. And what that means for for them in particular is that I told everybody I was pregnant with them on Facebook. So their, their social and digital footprint starts without their permission before they're born. This is all that they know. And we see that with high schoolers to in the book. I talk about my mom who is a substitute teacher she's been unable to work all year in the Edwardsville school district. She had a group of high school kids and she asked them what they would leave behind, or what they would grab if there was a fire. And every single one of them said their smartphone. Not photos, not family, not anything else. It is their connection to life, but it also is made up of apps that were not designed with their development and well being in mind but rather their use and their reuse in mind. And so, on the digital side you have this incredible opportunity of kids who feel fluid because they don't know life any other way than going in and out of tech. On the other side, they're engaged at such a hyper-connective level that the ability to focus and unplug and get quiet is hard. So hard in fact that some researchers think it is more intense than a crack addiction. And so you think about what does that mean in this past year. Right, so we've got these disruption natives and we have these digital natives and in case I don't get to share it later. What I want to share here is my hope. They're also increasingly diverse, increasingly inclusive, and I believe that they are poised actually to be history's greatest change makers. They know how to use the digital platforms to be active agents and to be involved and to be vocal, but those issues are completely defining and shaping everything that they are and what they see from their families and their communities. And so rightly mobilized that sort of angst and agitation and fear and concern but also incredible skill and know-how could lead to radical change. I think there's really deep hope in that. So that's who our kids are. And a big, oh, for those of you who are able to see the tech, I forgot I had this slide in here. This comes straight out of the book and really it's just telling me that I'm like full-on adulting. That my kids life is so much different than mine, but it's a little comparison if you're out for a walk and you can't see it. It's comparison of the technology I grew up with versus the technology that my kids grew up with. And as any of us who have kids know or grandkids or you're in the classroom every day, the biggest thing here is that instant gratification and that sort of information obesity. There's so much just coming at them and available to them every day. So now I want to shift us and ask the question of why, why are kids disruption and digital natives and what do we need to be thinking about. So what we know about the brain is that the brain is designed to wire based on experience and environment. And so the other thing that we know now about adolescence that we really didn't know before is I'm actually going to pause because most of you are frozen on my screen. Jason, let me pause for a second. Can you still? Okay, great. It's raining here in Edwardsville. I don't know about the rest of the state. So I was worried I was talking to myself. So the brain wires and rewires based on our experiences and our environment, which is so important to understand. And what we now know about adolescence which is kind of, you know, it's an onset of puberty until like 25 or 26. So what we're looking at a long stretch 12 to 26 sometimes is that the brain is actually developing just as much an adolescence as it does for toddlers. So tweens and teens have as much going on in their brain developmentally than toddlers do. So understand that think about your work and how hard it is to get people funders others sometimes to care about teens, tweens and young adults, but the investments in the conversations and early childhood. Now, the early childhood community would say they still need more attention, but it's easier when the kids are cuter, but the reality is there's just as much happening during this period. And as these world changes are happening. The wiring and rewiring is just sort of turned on to hyper speed for our older, our older students. So for all my career tech and career pathways folks in the room. So what I think about the future machines is tech momentum is how fast everything is happening. And then market is really where you all live in P 20, which is like what happens in life after high school, economically, education wise employment wise. Machines really deal with okay so what is the wrong tech shaping what's happening now and what will happen later. And the big hit here is that we need to understand that young people will continue to have this tech touch relationship or this man machine relationship, and that from a career perspective, they will need to learn how to work on tech with tech and in some cases for tech. And what we also know is that the rise of artificial intelligence means that a lot of jobs are going out, but actually new jobs are good. So one of the things I want to just kind of press into here with you all since you think about career pathways all the time is that technology is best for things that are predictable and patterned, which means that I actually would love to see us move from talking about high growth jobs to really talking about high value jobs to move from blue and white color jobs to durable or not as durable jobs. And what are the jobs that are most durable, they're the ones that work well with tech, and they're the ones that are fundamentally unpredictable and not patterned, like teachers, things that you know, you just, you just want a human who's, who's doing it but you also want to human I mean look at pandemic life, who knows how to use the tech and can use the tech well. So that's machines in the book, I give way deeper treatment to types of tech, the relationship of work and careers with technology acceleration so you can find those pieces. The most safer momentum on our call is that momentum names that things actually are changing just as fast as we feel they are changing that that is a real thing that things have sped up that acceleration and disruption continue to just catch speed. Everything is kind of open source that society itself is open source and that kids are living in this very exposed open world, and they've got to figure out how to navigate that. And the last piece are markets, and this is where I want to delineate from a book perspective in case you want to read it and read it with folks in your agency or organization or district, what this book is and what it is not. So, this year we saw as as humans ourselves as caretakers as people raising and working within caring for kids the need to actually attend to surviving and thriving at the same time. It wasn't enough just to focus on thriving and flourishing when there were real pressing basic issues going on. My friends in Virginia talk a lot about Maslow before blooms and really at some in some moments that's true another moment to its Maslow's and blooms at the same time. And, and really what I wanted to do what I saw the need for was being able to write what the research says about the messy middle that life is actually unfair and unjust in this moment. And that it's hard and complicated and challenging, and that our students deserve an accurate roadmap of how that world operates and how the world of opportunity operates in America, even as we partner with them to try and create a better world. So the problem of school leadership, the problem I experienced being an LEA representative being an administration working with the Department of Ed, was that we are operating on a contract, an understanding that was always inequitable, but is now completely out of date. And that contract that we have with ourselves said that if you just do these things, you're going to be okay. You graduate high school you get that diploma it gets you into college you get that degree then you get that job who do you want to be when you grow up. You get jobs you get better jobs you get better pay, and hopefully you retire better often your parents and you leave something for your kids. It's not, it's not real. And so I want to push you to shift your thinking from college and career readiness, expand it to what does it take to have a long and livable life. How do we go beyond college and career readiness to talk about long livable lives. What is a good life and what does that look like, because actually the way that it really works that it's working now and increasingly will work moving forward is that kids after high school, enter this super complicated chaotic marketplace, where they have to purchase opportunity. And if you tell kids, like, like me, I grew up poor I told you that I got a GED. Well if you just get that degree and you just are skilled enough you're going to be okay. You're lying, because actually it not only matters what you can do and what you can show for it, but who you know and what financial resources you have. And if you know the right people and you have enough money. It actually doesn't matter as much what you can do. Right, or if you don't have the credential and you're super skilled but the employer requires the credential. It doesn't matter how skilled you are. And if you are super talented and you did everything that the school district told you that you should. And you, you just follow directions. And you don't have the money. You're still not going to be able to get all the opportunities you need. And so what we have got to figure out is that if our goal, we, and I'm talking to you, not only with passion but deep conviction because my boys are in your schools. We want to truly live into the missions of our district and state and say actually we are preparing these young people for life after high school for college for careers and for citizenship. We all need to get really honest about what that actually requires. What that actually requires is a combination different for every single kid of competencies cash credentials and connections, what you can do, what you can show for it, who you know, and how much you can pay, and that it's fluid and depending on kid, depending on context, depending on circumstance, but that that is how opportunity works in the US, and it's not fair, and it's not equitable, but it is real. So let's talk about what that means briefly, but what I want to just flag for you is if you are interested in using the book in the book. Each of these goes into detail on what's the science, what's the research, what's happening right now, and then very specific strategies for individuals but also for districts and states so you could think about priorities and sort of conversation points. I also wrote this with parents in mind. The pandemic happened in the middle of the book, and I didn't even realize that households would become homeschools but I knew that parents are important educators and their kids live since our community members and so I wanted this to make sense for them. Okay, so now you get to see more pictures of my kids super briefly and I just want to do a time check with you all I'm going to talk for another five minutes, and then we're going to talk together for about 10 I am going to take a couple extra minutes. But if you have questions start putting them in the chat now. So competencies are the way that I think about them I've been super involved in competency based education K 12 and higher ed, and the credentialing space. I helped actually when the Illinois competency based ed pilot was getting off the ground and my school was competency based. It's a little different, just a little bit. This is what are our ways of being and doing in the world that can be learned and strengthened over time. So if you think about your physical body system. There's it's super interdependent if my heart's beating faster I'm breathing faster. We have these ways of being and doing that are exactly the same as those physical body systems. So my ability to be being and doing in the world. My ability to focus is in direct relationship to how healthy I'm feeling how rested I am my ability to be a creative thinker has to do if I can focus. So there are, there are these 10, and they're consolidated in the book but they came out of a very lengthy research project that I did called the readiness project and it looked across all of the things what do doctors say what do educators say what does the science say and what what do folks in other countries say young people need as they learn and develop and go into adulthood. So this is really helpful. If you're trying to pull together the SEL folks the deeper learning folks the CTE folks, the employers, because it's common language, and it's written in a way that anybody can understand connections. So I think about this as social health and social wealth, social capital, and it matters, and I actually think that this currency might be the most valuable of all. I think about the number of opportunities people get because somebody sponsors them socially, they vouch for them. They make them aware of the opportunity, they bring them in socially they sort of bridge them over. One thing I do want you to know is that we're not talking about. So back to the brain, adolescents, teens and tweens, and young adults, they are designed to be hyper social. It's how they actually learn and develop. So to the extent that they weren't this year, we need to be aware that some of the learning struggles that are going to crop up might actually be in relationship with social connections being limited, and the needs deliberately designed for that. So just be aware of that. So social health, social wealth, I think about three different types of relationships and dig into them in the book. So, you know, we've all heard like, if a kid just has that one caring mentor, one caring adult, they'll be okay. It's true. But man, is it so much better if they have more than one. Right, so much better. So I can point to the one counselor Christine Lewis who changed my life. The book is dedicated to her, but it wasn't only her. And so the importance of lifelines I think for this group is, is this, we are living in a time where we cannot promise young people economic stability. We can't even promise them household stability, but we can work to provide social stability. And those relationships are going to matter more than ever before. Big data point from the book that transformed how I parent and would totally change how I was leading my school if I was still in leadership. With the right resources and supports. Today's kids could actually as a rule live to be 100 years old, not the exception. That means the prospect of an 80 year work life. An entire literal lifetime of work in a time of change. Right, like I'm exhausted just even thinking about that. We have to be thinking not just about what will you do when you grow up, but what are the issues, interest and ideas that you want to go after in a number of different ways and roles. You will have to make yourself continue along a possible 80 year working life and how often that will require going back and upgrading or updating what you know and can do the sort of literal lifetime of learning and work. And at least I'm so curious what you're going to say as I talk about credentials because I know you're feeling how much the higher education world is changing. So I'll just give you the highlights here for all of you who are thinking about career planning and doing that with young people. I would love to see you actually shrink your time horizon. And instead of looking out on what do you want to do across your life or across the next couple of decades to apply a now next principle because things are happening so fast. And what is the training and credential that you need now based on what you need what you want and what you're prepared in position to do to provide and to contribute in the ways that you want. Because kids will have to go back and the thing that I don't know every that everybody is picking up on or catching up with is that we have literally hundreds of thousands of post secondary credentials at this point, and more than half are not offered by colleges and universities. So we're in this weird tipping point right now, where organizations and companies are offering just as many post secondary credentials as universities and colleges. And I don't know who can keep up with that. And so in the book I just offer a set of questions based on super smart people, a couple of them from Chicago land about what we need to be asking and thinking about as we're helping young people to prepare. But that now next principle is important. That picture is me and three of my four brothers, only to point out that we all had very different journeys. The sunglasses guy is exactly I think what he looks like he was an artist he dropped out of school school know GED was an artist and comedian and did well because he knew the right people including like Robin Williams who he met when he was living in his car. And he was obscenely talented. Mark with the aloha shirt I mentioned being Hawaiian had an incredible internship in college he was a political science major, and he had a journalism internship. And he fell in love he was really good and the college wouldn't shift to scholarship to journalism. And so he dropped out, and he became one of the youngest producers for MPR ever. He's now back in school as an adult student because he hit a wall he couldn't go any further without an undergrad degree, even though he was so good and he knew the right people and he had the right competencies but in journalism and radio. The wall could not he could not get through it. I already told you my own story which included starting not only with the GED but starting at Community College. And then David the baby if you can see it well enough, he was about Victorian from the same high school my older brother and I dropped out of and went to Harvard. And if you knew us, you, you know, it would sort of be up to you to decide who was doing better than the other or worse than the other. So just to point out the importance of these pathways, even within a single family. Cash I just that picture is just so cute those are my God kids and my, my children and I told you I raised them together. And they're robbers right there I couldn't find a good cash picture so you just got a cute one. But we don't talk about it and it matters and oh my God if there's one thing I could come back and talk to your network about it would be how abysmal our financial literacy is in schools across the country and how non reflective are the realities that young people in their families face, and that if we're actually going to be preparing young people for college and career and citizenship. How dare we not give them a better grounding on the financial realities they're up against, and the need for us to update that and really do two things one is this past year showed us we actually need better ways of understanding how to keep kids moving forward during times of financial scarcity and crisis, because so many across income levels are experiencing it and they still need to keep moving ahead. And I put strategies in the book there are ways to keep them going, even as they are in crisis, while still being super sensitive to those realities. The poverty is a little bit different, but there are still ways if we have the education and training we need. But that financial literacy piece is just huge. So those are the four. And then the question is like what does that mean for us what does it mean for the state for school districts for higher ed. How do we actually do this work. So this is going to be my cliffhanger to you before we open up for that the 10 minutes of questions is systems will not move at the speed of change that we need for kids. And, and they will remain unfair and unjust and so we're called as the adults in the room to have this dual obligation. One is to figure out how to transform systems, whether it's dismantling disrupting or redesigning or adjusting or some combination of that which is my belief. But then the other is how do we operate within those broken spaces to still affect change for the young people we're serving and working on behalf of every day. There are some really good practices that not only we can adopt for ourselves as as workers and for many of us as parents, but that we can also prioritize in our school buildings. And there are ways that we can do it. And so the end of the book really talks about what it would look like if we were currency builders what would it look like if Illinois was, you know, adopted this belief. Listen, through the leadership of NIU and the state and so many of you Illinois is well beyond any other state in the US when it comes about thinking about workforce readiness and career readiness I know it feels isolating but you are the pioneers. This is a state positioned to really truly give that accurate picture into practice of what young people need to be ready. And for me, these pieces are where it is we have to actually adopt them as a set so I'm not going to read them to you can see them. If you can't see them this is being recorded, and I'll just sort of tease and T up that in the book it goes into the edge you speak of okay that social emotional learning that might be called deeper learning that might be called culturally responsive or anti racist education, and how maybe we would melt those together. So that is your tour to force. This is the picture Jason mentioned we went out in the rain and now I'm like what my hair is wet and out in the rain again but this was this past weekend we finally got outside in Madison County and found the book that this is where you can find me and I am transitioning next week actually to full time consulting to be able to support more folks like you on the ground. So I'll still be working with JFF but I am, I'm shifting so you know I'd love to be able to work together on this because you are the, I believe so strongly you'll see it on the website that Children's and P 20 councils are two of the most important bodies that there are right now. I believe very, very strongly in this network it's why I showed up today. So I hope that this was helpful. The next 10 minutes are only as helpful as you make them. So if you've got questions throw them in the chat, or I think that because we're in in meeting form you actually could take yourself off mute and ask your question. I have a question. So I'm really I took like three pages of notes. I'm from St. Charles School District, we're a pre K through 22 school district. And I'm really thinking about what you said about the system won't change at the rate that we need it to for our students and the questions of how are we going to dismantle the system or work within a broken system. So as we think simultaneously through those two questions. What would you recommend in terms of being the right next step and moving forward. Yeah, so I think. Okay, so I'm going to try to contextualize a little bit to this room in particular, I think that there are maybe three really important things to do for really important things to do right now. The next question is at the high school level to regularly revisit graduation requirements and to really ask, are these reflective of completing high school and reflective of what is needed for life after high school or they actually only reflective of completing high school. And if so, who needs to be in the room community leaders and employers to be informing. You know, District 214 last Lopez is on this call and he's my go to for all things like what can this look like. I think that it's really important to have the ability to touch base with your workforce boards because things are going to be changing so quickly in terms of the labor market. So that's one. The second is the sort of resurrecting and re energizing of community school partnerships because schools cannot do it alone, and households were home schools and so we're community centers. And so really thinking about how to take a young residents approach, who are the young residents in our community and what is it that they need to learn in the first quarter, the first 25 years of life, and who is everybody who is involved in that and really thinking about kind of these first quarter strategies. And then the third actually shows up Melissa in my introduction, which that radio brother had to help me with because I was in total panic. This is the role of mental health services and student supports, I believe every single school district, all the way through the federal administration needs a chief trauma officer in this year and moving forward someone who's sole job it is to understand toxic stress trauma and mental health who is at the decision making table, because there has been trauma and stress, and challenge, and grief and loss at every single level of the system. And that's going to have a huge impact so those would be my, my three sort of off the cuff that get at system and trickle down to the actual, you know, day to day interactions with our students and our educators. Thank you. Yes. Okay, let's see. Katrina, do you mind actually coming off so that people just don't have to watch me read and asking your question. Sure. Yes, can you hear me. Yes. So I'm a mom of a preteen and a teen and I'm the whole time I'm listening to you I'm like oh we need to watch this at dinner time tonight. And have them start thinking and sharing their thoughts. I'm also really cognizant and aware that adolescents right now are feeling really anxious about an uncertain future. And share your thoughts about how we support them and, you know, make them feel safe and supported but also recognizing that they're entering into a world that we have never charted before. Yeah, there's some ways that we can help them. Okay Katrina so I'm going to go total mom and social worker on you because I'm an educator and a social worker and I think that actually like basic counseling principles apply here, which is, you're right this is why I completely understand why you would be anxious about it there are so many reasons why, and we are going to do this journey together. And actually naming that there are unknowns and uncertainties and then looking for what is timeless and certain. So this is why I mentioned what I did about social stability, we need to name and be honest for kids where there is economic uncertainty financial uncertainty job uncertainty, and then really focus on the things that are certain love and support relationships, who they need to react to and count on and create a really solid core, because otherwise like what I hear from kids and have since the book came out to, they think they're crazy for feeling so anxious about it, like, am I making this up. So what everybody's going through something am I overreacting should I really feel like this, and I think it's like completely appropriate, especially at the hyper connective part of like, there's been a level of grief and loss for our tweens teens and young adults that is different from us that has affected their bodies and their brains and their futures. So that would be my, my recommendation, I would love if your kids read the book with you and you got back in touch in Edwardsville the library actually have a session where parents brought their, their adolescent kids with them into a conversation about this. That's great. Yeah, we'll we will check it out. Awesome. Okay, Jason, I'm looking at you because I could do questions all day, but we are at the hour.