Episode 76: AI in Education, SMART Habits, & Student Engagement with Kendall Terry (Part 2)

Part Two Setup And Welcome

Principal JL 1:21

Welcome back, everybody, to part two of a two-part series of Kendall Terry. I hope you guys got a chance to listen to part one. If not, please go back to episode 75, listen to part one before moving on to part two. It will make the whole story go together for you. So hopefully you guys got an opportunity to do that. So now let's get to the conversation, or in this case, back to the conversation with Kendall Terry. Welcome back, everybody, to another exciting episode of the Educational Leadership Podcast. Today we're gonna be excited to jump right into part two with Kendall Terry. Now let's get to the conversation. I want you to think of something that if as an administrator, as a leader, what is one thing if I could redo over? What is it? What did you learn from it? And then tell me one thing up to this point as a educational leader that you're most proud of. So I like one one failure, one success as an educational leader.

Kendall Terry 2:42

I mean, the easy answer on the failure would be to listen more. There's been more than one opportunity as a as a leader that I didn't listen enough. And so I went in and made a decision that I shouldn't, I shouldn't have made because I should have listened more. And so many times that involves, you know, situations where you're talking about a staff member, you're talking about, you know, a student situation that's happened and trying to understand all of those components so that you make the right decision. I don't want to look back and and and go, man, you know, we really dropped the hammer on this situation and and maybe we shouldn't have. I want to make sure that when we look back, we can say we listened enough that we we really made the best of the best decision for our students, for our staff, for our community. And so I there's there's multiple circumstances, multiple examples

One Failure And One Success

Kendall Terry 3:36

we could talk about on that of I should have listened more. I've gotten a lot better at that. But it's one of those things I even today I remind myself when I'm in a meeting of listen to the voices in the room, listen to the experiences at the table, and take that voice to make the decision. Because there's a point for a leader that that there's there is a point that you just have to make the call, right? There's a point that you just have to say, this is how we're gonna do it. Make sure you've listened to enough voices before you make that decision, though. And I I wish I would have on a on more than one occasion at least asked one more question to get more perspective of what's gone on. And so that's biggest failure for me is is there's been times that I've made a decision that I've not listened to enough people before I've made that decision. And I wish I would have gone back and and had at least one more conversation or or looked at that per looked at that situation through a little bit different of a lens so that I could have made the right one. As far as as biggest success for me, it would be being able to sit back and watch teachers create something that maybe they wouldn't have created if they wouldn't have been given the space. And so when we talk about like the green power racing, we talk about the enable with the prosthetic, the stuff that our kids do with National History Day, the stuff that that our kids get to do with at the lower school, we with our STEM competitions or blasting off rockets at the end of fifth grade when they've they've been learning about the space race or you know, whatever, giving teachers the environment to say, I support the learning that's happening in the classroom because we're about students first. And so be creative. Like go and do something that maybe you wouldn't be able to do somewhere else. Let's do it here. What resources do you need? We recently added a new class at our high school that was a film class. And so he came to me and said, Hey, you know what? We've got some cameras and we've had one that was donated to us, and and we really need a tripod so that we can teach kids how to you know set these up and do it. And it was like, okay, let me go find the funds. Like we're gonna make that happen. That's we're gonna make sure that you get what you need. If it's tripods today, then let's do it. If it's a program or software, let's do it. And so then getting to see kids use that tripod, use the cameras, and and by the end of it, we did this showcase here in May, and we were walking around looking at the pictures that these kids had taken that they were now showing off. And I mean, it looked like professional stuff. I mean, we were going around going, man, they could they could probably sell these pictures. And the teacher had taught them how to do stuff in in fast exposures, how to do stuff with slow exposures, how to get your lighting right, how to, how to do like band uh advertisement at one point. I mean, it was all these different things, and they had all these pictures up of just what they had created. Amazing. And giving kids space to do that and seeing the excitement in the teachers when they're creating that, that's a huge success. And I would take that win any day of the week to say I was part of providing the right environment for you as a teacher to be creative so that kids could love coming to your class, kids could love learning. That that's a big win.

Principal JL 6:56

Awesome. Well, I appreciate you know, you kind of talking about you know, a failure and a success. I know, like for me, when it comes to listening, trying to get I gather all the data, talking to all the people so you can make a really good informed decision. Some people get irritated with me because I take a little bit of time to make decisions sometimes. And I'm like going, hey, I gotta collect all this data. I want to make sure I have everything to talk to all the people before I start making decisions. Because I've learned the same thing. If you rush into things and you don't take the time to listen to everybody, it's gonna come back to bite you. So make sure you do your due diligence and and follow up and do the things you have to do on that end. So I really appreciate you sharing that that advice for people and also the successes that you're having as an educational leader. So let's talk about smart habits and education. What inspired you to write smart habits and education?

Kendall Terry 7:57

Yeah, and I would say I'm still writing it. It's in a revision phase, but I don't know if you've ever written a book, but getting the words on the paper is the is one thing, but then there's a lot of process of every time you go back and reread it and you revise it and you rewrite it and you rewrite it and you rewrite it. And so it's currently being revised and rewritten. The it's hopefully going to come out at the end of this calendar year, so at the end of 2026, beginning of 2027. That's the goal right now. And so we in education, we are really good about setting down with groups of people and saying, okay, everybody see this target. We need to hit it. I remember as a teacher, you know, setting in the prof in the faculty meeting, and and the principal brought in ACT scores, you know, put them up on the wall of the school's average ACT scores across the board. And then we had to, as a science department, go and figure out what goals we were going to do to get that ACT score up for the school. And and you're looking at these big lofty ideas. And in education, we've adopted, I don't know if you guys use them, but a lot of people have adopted SMART goals. And so writing these big goals for us to accomplish as a school, but then also as individuals. And so here as a school, we also use SMART goals and we ask our teachers to be

Why SMART Goals Often Fail

Kendall Terry 9:09

working on individual SMART goals. We've had to go through this process of how to create good goals for them and and how to make them professional. How can we grow as professionals and and write stuff that makes sense? And then what we end up having many times is a lot of people not accomplishing that. And then you've got all of the negative side of not accomplishing this goal. And some of why they didn't accomplish that goal was because they didn't have any structure to how they were going to get there. So I've seen this over and over in education where we make a goal, but we don't provide the structure for the people that are actually responsible then for accomplishing that, which is many times it's the teacher in the classroom, right? Like as a school, we say as a school, we're gonna do this, but the teacher in the classroom is the one that's really gonna be boots on the ground to make this goal happen. And so as I was getting into it and researching it and and experimenting things as well, is the things that that cause people not to hit their goal is typically they didn't, they never created the right habits. And so we want to take that goal and we want to break that goal into small habits that a person can do to actually get to to where they want to be. And I've seen this even in my own life outside of education. I started running and and I would still not really consider myself a runner, okay? But I do run every day now. And whenever you get out there and first start, if I say, Well, I'm gonna run a 5K, I'm I'm probably gonna about kill myself to run a 5K if I don't run every day. And so I had to look at there were multiple times that I started to run, and then it would, you know, everything would fall apart and it was hard and I was sore and and didn't have the right shoes and all this. And so I had to look at what are some things I can do to make sure that I actually put myself in in line to accomplish this goal. I want to run this 5K and I want to run a 5K. I I got I entered some 5Ks and then I couldn't finish, I couldn't actually run the whole time. You know, I'd run some and then I'd walk some and run some and walk some. And I said, I want to get to this goal of actually running the entire thing and being proud of being able to accomplish this. And so I started looking at what habits I needed to have to be able to do that. And so as I've gotten into the research, there's a couple of things to make yourself successful of writing if-then statements and also making them tiny enough that you can do them. And so an easy one for me is if it's a Monday through Friday, then I'm going to get up in the morning and I'm gonna run before I go to school. So that means I have to wake up a little bit earlier, but I'm a morning person, so I can get up. And, you know, when I wake up some days, I'm like, oh, I don't know if I want to run. And I'm like, is it a Monday through Friday? If it's a Monday through Friday, I'm gonna get myself out of bed and I'm gonna go do this. And then my neighborhood, I've got, we live in East Tennessee. There's not a whole lot of flat ground, but I've got a route that I can run that's fairly flat. That on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I run that flat uh route. And on Tuesday and Thursday, I've got a route that runs through hills, some some ups and downs. And so it's like, what route am I gonna take? I'm going to take this route. If it's a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I'm gonna take this route. So I'm not having to think about that. It's creating that space to say, let's let the brain actually focus on what it needs to focus on. So in the classroom, you know, I might be trying to engage kids. Maybe I've got this big lofty goal that I want more engagement in my classroom. Well, that's great to say. And most people would go, that's a great goal to have. Let's engage kids. But what are you actually going to do when the kids show up? Because what do we know about education? Once that bell rings, there's all kinds of things that start taking all of my energy, right? You know, maybe it's it's a conversation that entered the classroom that now you have to deal with something, or you, or kids come to class, they're not prepared, they don't have the things they need, they don't have the resources, they didn't do their homework the night before, and then a fire alarm goes off. You know, and so it's all this stuff that's taking all of our mental energy. And so if you can start creating some very small, easy-to-do habits to say, I'm going to do this, I'm going to meet my kids at the door, I'm going to greet them into the classroom every day with a smile, you know, and a fist bump or high five or whatever they're comfortable with. I'm going to do this so that they have a great start to their class period. And that's going to help them be more engaged. And then when they're in the classroom, how am I going to ask questions? How am I going to finish my lesson? I'm going to set little tiny things that I can do. And I'm going to make, I'm going to push myself to do it enough that it becomes a habit. And when you do that, then you start to see the momentum change and things actually going progressing towards the goal. And so the book actually goes into how to create habits, but also how do you talk to your administrator? Maybe you're in a system where it's like the administrator isn't up, isn't about this. How can you go and have a conversation with the administrator to get them on board to help you creating to create better habits and to use them in your classroom, how to use them in PLCs, the whole thing, so that everybody can get on board with this. Because when I ask you, you know, if you say, Well, I'm going to read this new education book this year and I'm going to implement strategies, and then I come to you in two weeks and go, how's that book going? I haven't even started it. And I come to you in two weeks later, how's that book going? I I barely read the introduction, but I haven't really gotten into it. A lot of that's because you don't have a habit of when you're going to read this book. So you're never going to read it. Let's be honest. You're going to get to the end of the year and you're going to have never read it, or you're going to get the Cliff Notes version, or whatever. And so, how can you create habits that actually cause you to accomplish your goals? And the book goes into a lot of deep details on this. It's got different help steps along the way, workbook sections and stuff to do with it as well. So I'm hoping that that people read it and it helps them accomplish the goals that they have by how do we get simple things to reduce decision fatigue, to help in getting the right support and helping to write goals that are a little bit more manageable and doable. And then how can we do the steps to accomplish those goals?

Principal JL 15:17

Awesome. And that sounds like a really great book. And this is kind of what I took out of it. I'm going to there's a lot there. So we talk about our goals, like this is what we want to achieve, but the habits are what we are going to do. We're going to break that down into bite-sized pieces. We talked about getting 1% better here at Hasting Thai. And so we tell every day, what are you going to do to get better to reach that goal that you have? You have a goal, but you got to get 1% better every day to reach that goal. And so that's actually something that's said every day in our and morning announcements is be 1% better today. And that's for teachers, that's for staff, it's for everybody. Students, everybody. It's our student body that teachers the ones doing the announcements. So we we talk about that to where what are you going to do today? What habit are you going to build so you can reach the goals that you accomplished? And I really see like that's kind of what this vision of the book. So am I am I hitting that right to where your goal is, what you want to do and your habits are what you do to achieve that goal, how you break that goal down to get there.

Kendall Terry 16:18

Yeah, absolutely. It's it's the goal is the destination, right? But if I just have a destination and I never start the journey, uh then I'm never gonna get there. And so the habits are how are we gonna get there? What are we gonna do to get there? And then how can we make this to where it's easily

Building Tiny Habits That Stick

Kendall Terry 16:37

able to do again tomorrow? And we can do another step on Wednesday. And so we took this smart goal and turned it into what we call smart habits, but that's success that can be managed, adapted, repeated, and tracked. And so that's the that's the idea because there's things that you go, well, this is the step I need to take. And then you start to take that step and you go, okay, that step actually isn't gonna work. I have to adapt to this thing. So we want to make sure that we can get success that can be managed, adapted, it can be repeated tomorrow and the next day, and then we can track it to see how successful we are being.

Principal JL 17:31

Love it, I absolutely love the idea. Can't wait for the book to come out because I'm gonna have to read it. Are you gonna make it audio? Because I like audiobooks. We'll we'll see. We'll see. I'm in the car, I'm gonna hit play and listen, right? I can read, don't worry. I can read. I just I'd rather listen to it. I'm more of a audio learner than I am visual. I can read, I just get really tired and I put the book away. But if I listen to it, I get my brain going and like that's what it helps me just messing with you on the audio book. So when it comes out, that's definitely something I'll go back into this episode and I'll I'll put a link to your book as well so people can check it out. I really think that's gonna be really something valuable that we could use as school leaders. So, one thing I want to talk about is the brace framework. The brace framework talks about belonging, relevance, agency, challenge, and engage response. So what is it? What inspired you to create it? Kind of tell us what is the brace framework.

Kendall Terry 18:43

Yeah, so when you go around and you talk to a lot of school systems about what's going on in in their school, many of them right now coming out of COVID, they have they they would say they've got an engagement issue, you know, they've got an attendance problem, they've got a dropout problem. There's all kinds of things that kind of go into that, but there's an engagement uh problem. And I think when we look at that engagement crisis is not the primary primarily an attention problem. And that's we we look at, well, how can we get kids to have better attention? How can we get kids to do what we want them to do in class? So that we want them to look at us, we want them to take notes, we want them to be able to repeat that material back for a test. And when they're not doing that well, we say, well, there's an attention problem, there's an engagement problem. And those aren't really the same. You're seeing symptoms when kids are not doing what you're asking to do in class. But the real problem is that as a school, coming out of COVID, kids are looking for a place to belong. And when they go on social media, they go on, you know, they see, they see these people living lives that they would love to live, but they don't know what that's like when the camera's off, right? All they know is when the camera's on, what what kind of person they seem to be. But then they look at their world and they're trying to figure out how this comes together and and they're looking for a place of belonging. And and the other side of that, we live in a world that has actually divided everybody, right? So you

The BRACE Framework For Engagement

Kendall Terry 20:10

everybody's got to be in a camp now and a political party and a feeling about this and a situation over here. And so everybody's divided and we've taken away this true sense of belonging and and community because people want to have to feel known. They want to feel safe, they want to feel valued, they want to know that when they come in and sit down the class and they go to talk, that their voice matters, right? And when the you know somebody else is talking, that they can listen and incorporate that understanding. And then they want to know why they're needing to learn what they're learning. You know, in education, we're pointing kids saying, You got you need to go to college or you know, to be successful or whatever. And they're looking at people that are on social media making millions of dollars, and they didn't go to college. So you're telling me to be successful, I need to go to college. But here's this person that I idolize. They're not in college and and they're doing really well. And so we've got to show relevance in their life. And that's that that next step of the brace framework of relevance of how does what you're telling me I need to know matter in the real world? And if we're just saying you need to know this because it's gonna be on the test at the end of the year, it's gonna be on the test next week, that's a surefire way to get them to check out because they don't care about that. They don't care about the test, they don't care about the standardized test, they don't care about they some of them care about the ACT, maybe, but for the most part, if you're teaching because of that test, they don't care. So, how does what you're asking me to learn matter in life? And sometimes that's a stretch. Sometimes you have to back up and go, I don't know how this matters. Let it let me dig into it, let me figure it out. We have to have agency for our kids. They they're learners that have a voice and they have experience. And if you're not letting the kid bring that experience into the classroom, sometimes we shy away from that. And it's like their experience, though, is what they know. This is this is who they are, this is where they come from, this is where they're growing up. And so bringing that into the classroom and saying, how can we expand upon that? And same for the educator. The educator needs agency to be able to feel like you know their voice matters as well. And then challenge kids want challenge. I I love putting books aside, putting notes aside, putting computers aside, and bringing out a challenge to say, let me see who can do this the best. I did this thing we called Barbie Bungee, where I brought a Barbie doll out in class. We hooked her to rubber bands. And I said, you know, the thing about bungee jumping, I don't know if you've ever done it, but you know, the biggest thrill is jumping from the highest place you can jump, you know, and then you survive to tell about it. And so I was like, I'm gonna give, I'm gonna give you a next week, I'm gonna give you a spot that she's gonna jump from, but you've got to figure out how to put the rubber bands, enough rubber bands in place that she doesn't die because she hits the ground, but she also actually gets the free fall for a second and it's not an immediate bounce back. And so getting kids that space to say, okay, now figure this out. I don't need to tell you a whole lot more things. You can you can figure some stuff out. Go practice this, experiment it, try to try some things out. And so we want to challenge our kids. Let's stretch what they know to be possible and make something really cool out of out of what they they can figure out. And then it's that engaged response of many times we get to the test and we we take the test and we tell the kids either what they got right or what they got wrong. And that's a box we check and we move on. An engaged response. Response is okay, they have this thing that they've done. Now we give them feedback. Let's give them some reflection time. Let's let them revise this and figure it out, see if they can figure out and learn in another in another way. And let's look for ways to make their progress visible. You know, if I'm in my house trying to do a project with my wife, we're probably going to get it wrong three or four times before we get that thing right. I remember trying to lay tile in my house. That's a process that's difficult to figure out. And you you do it wrong. And you have to take the tile up and you have to wash everything off. You have to relay it. You have to figure it out. But you can you can revise it enough to where you can probably get better at doing it. In education, many times we get to the test, boom, that's the end, and we move on. And we've got to provide an environment where they can reflect on what they've learned, they can revise, and they can go back and show, I can actually do this better. Let's do that. When you're doing those things, kids now are engaged in the learning and they're leaning in and they're they're actually wanting to come to class every day. Now, is a 16-year-old going to tell you that? No, because 16-year-olds are 16-year-olds, right? But they're going to, they're going to be excited about coming and learning and doing something new. And that's what the brace framework is all about is if we're going to do engagement, we have to give the right support, the brace. And that support matters to set this up the right way so that kids actually want to lean in and learn.

Principal JL 25:04

With the brace framework, how can educational leaders use it for our adult staff? Like you talked a lot about how teachers could use it for their students, but how can we as educational leaders use it to help our adult learner?

Kendall Terry 25:18

I think every one of those things that we just talked about, belonging, relevance, agency, challenge, and engaged response applies to our educators as well, our staff. You know, I I've been parts of systems that you didn't know whether you were valued. And so the principal taking time or the the director of school or whoever it is taking time to show that that you're a valuable person in this in this system. How can you do that? I just took time. We're on summer break, and I just took time for every one of my teachers. I wrote them a little note that we've sent them off in the mail just the other day to wish them to have a great summer. And and and I took time to write every one of those. Yeah, I could have sent an email, I could have blasted some stuff out or whatever, but I wanted them to know that like they're valued. I'm going to take time to handwrite this note and to talk to you individually and put a little sometimes a little personal thing in there. We have, we, we've had this baby boom for some reason in our in our staff. But you know, those that I knew had just recently had a baby mentioning something about that in there, making it personal that they feel valued as a member of this community and that there's connection. Obviously, relevance, they understand their job to the the bigger world, but we take time in our professional development to continue to talk about the bigger world. We look for who we can bring in from the outside to talk about why what they do matters. Because in education, we know

Using BRACE With Adult Staff

Kendall Terry 26:50

what we do matters, but we don't hear it enough. Agency, obviously, every educator needs to have agency where they can show that they have a voice, that they have ownership in what they're doing. I talk about my teachers all the time and say they're the professionals in the room. They're the professionals at what they do. And I want to respect that. And so when I go in to do an observation or a principal goes in to do an observation, we we respect the fact that they're the professional in the room. And sometimes they're doing something that they need to do. And we don't need to knock them for it. We need to look at what it is that they're doing and then maybe ask that question why did you do it this way? Give them that agency to talk about what they're doing and why they're doing it. Uh, give them that voice, and then looking for ways to challenge them. How can you, I love that 1% better, but how can you get better as a as a teacher here? That's why we do smart goals and that's why we work on those habits, is to say, we all can be better. You know, we don't have an issue at all looking at a professional quarterback and he comes off the field. Now he's making millions of dollars to do this, and he can do it probably better than everybody else around him. And he comes off the field and he goes over, and what does he do? He sets down with probably at least a quarterback coach, a throwing coach. He sets down, you know, there's two or three assistant coaches around, they get the iPads out, they're looking at every play, they're looking at every movement, they're looking at every, and nobody questions that because they go, no, they're trying to get better. They're challenging the environment, they're trying to get better. But then in the education world, how many times do we do that? How many times do we sit down with a teacher and actually look to be better at what we're doing? And so we need those coaches, we need those, those administrators, we need those mentors, we need to to rally around each other and say, let's make everybody here on the campus better. And then I think we can get engaged responses even from our staff to say, hey, I know you tried this and I know it either it either succeeded or it failed. What kind of reflection can we have on it so that next time we do it, we can do it better?

Principal JL 29:26

Awesome. No, I love that. I love how you're able to wrap that all into our adult learners as well. Because as there's a lot of things that, you know, a lot of administrators or principals or you know, school leaders that are out there trying to do, they're trying to have a sense of belonging in the building, you know, bring in relevance. They they know their job. And I tell my staff all the time, like, I know you guys know what you're doing. I'm here to make you better and try to stretch you and grow you, and you know, don't have you know fear, failure. Try something different. You know, if you do fail, learn from it, reflect on it, move on, you know, all those different things. I can see how that all wraps into that race framework. So I really appreciate you kind of laying that out, what it looks like, uh, not for students, but also for our adult learners. I really appreciate that. So, Kendall, we've talked a lot. I mean, we've it's been a great interview. I really appreciate everything that you're bringing to the table. But before we get going here, I like to ask you what gives you hope about the future of education?

Kendall Terry 30:29

You know, whenever I talk to educators, they still care deeply about students and meaningful learning. And that gives me a lot of hope because the stuff that you see on social media, the stuff that you read in the news, the stuff that you see, you know, in various capacities, it it would be easy to think that everybody is throwing in the towel and walking away from this thing. But when you get out and actually talk to educators that they love their kids, they love what they're getting to do every day, they love turning on that light bulb of learning and making it meaningful, that gives me hope. Because if we, you know, if you go out and start talking to people and and you go to conferences and you end up with people that are just going, you know, I I don't know, I'm probably just gonna quit this and move on. And and there are people that are leaving education, but it's hearing educators that care deeply. That is that that that's exciting for me to have those conversations. I love that that, yes, AI is coming in to education. We all know that, but AI is not going to be able to replace good teachers. It's just not because innovation does not require abandoning relationships. And who builds relationships? The teacher builds the relationships. And so the, you know, the the human side of education cannot be done by a computer, it can't be done by a software or a code. That still takes a human to be able to do that. And so I'm excited about that. I'm excited about AI and its impact in education. I know we didn't really get into that, but I'm excited about that too. But it doesn't replace the human. At the point that it's replacing the human, then we're using it wrong. The human is the one that builds relationships, and the human is the one that's going to be able to care deeply about those kids in that classroom. And so I'm excited to see where this thing goes.

Principal JL 32:19

But now you now you brought AI up, let's talk about AI a little bit. I mean, like for me, AI is a tool that we use for my teachers to help save time. How are we utilizing AI, you know, productively or you know, in a way that helps kids understand like, hey, this is a good way to use it. These are the ways you shouldn't use it, and here's the ways you should use it. And I always think about, you know, I ended up getting magic school AI for my staff to where they basically it's a time-saving tool for them to where it helps differentiate instruction, helps them come up with some creative things,

Hope For Education And Relationships

Principal JL 32:58

you know, that they may have not have thought about, but they also can personalize their lessons more. Had one math teacher that took get ready for state cross-country, and she was a cross-country coach as well, and so she made up cross-country problems for kids because she had a lot of cross-country kids in one of her geometry classes about solving different kinds of triangles, you know, if they run this way, they're you know, and so I thought that was really good. And she utilized that I just do AI to help her with that, and she was able to really create like three different questions about what kids like because she's like, These kids really like this, this, and this in the classroom. And she was able to create some questions that really fed into what those kids are are really liking at that time. Because I think at the time we had homecoming coming up, we had state cross country coming up, and I think we had our play coming up, and so she had three different questions based off of what's going on in the school that they could solve that is related to the content they're learning. So there's just some creative ways that that teachers are utilizing the AI platforms that are available to them. And we actually, you know, we don't want AI to do the work for you. We want AI to be a tool that you can use to help you save time, but also maybe to brainstorm lots of different ways you can use it. What are some things? What are your ideas or your thoughts on that uh when it comes to AI and education?

Kendall Terry 34:33

Yeah, my wife is uh a teacher at one of the schools across town, and and she's a reading interventionist, and she was having to do a community, you know, uh outreach for her school, and and the area was actually in math, and she works with math intervention as well. But it was a math thing that she needed these parents to come in and and be

AI As A Tool Not A Teacher

Kendall Terry 34:56

able to, you know, connect with the school and and do something fun. And it's like one of those of we can do this thing where we bring everybody in and settle them in the cafeteria and talk to them about here are our data points and here's what we're seeing happening. And you know, parents don't want to listen to that on average. And so she she used AI for this and she went to AI and was started, you know, kind of went some back and forth of what's some creative things that we could do. And she ended up creating, we as a family, we love breakout rooms. So, you know, the escape rooms, you know, we do these, we we've we've started to get a reputation of of doing all of them, and and we love we love it as a family. But she she was like, wonder if we could do like some breakout rooms with grade levels and it's some math practices, and then they learn some stuff about math along the way. And so as a as an individual, that would be hard to do to say from kindergarten through fifth grade, I want to create this and differentiate it and all that. Well, she was able to go in and use AI to come up with some ideas and bounce some different ideas back and forth and created these really cool things. It was one of the best events that they were able to do this whole year that parents were like, we had a blast, we loved it. And the they they, you know, more than one parent was frustrated and the kid came over and helped them, you know, get through the stuff. And so it was like, man, this was crazy. But that's using AI to say, I have this really good idea. I have, you know, we need to connect in this way. What's something new that we can do? What can we try? And then use the AI to help create this and and come up with ideas and and bounce back and forth. I I talk to it sometimes. I don't know. You can turn your microphone on and just have the conversation, you know, with it. And let's just get this idea out there. Let's do some brainstorming, let's see what's there. You've got to learn how to ask really good questions for AI, and you've got to learn that that AI's code is built to give you uh compliments. Okay. So every idea you have that you put into uh AI is not good, but AI might come across like it is good. So you got to learn to to figure out how to make it critique your your stuff and and think about things differently. But I love hearing those kinds of things. We we've had multiple teachers here at the school that have used it for kind of that that role-playing situation in the classroom, kind of like the Oregon Trail, you know, we all grew up, probably did the Oregon Trail, and and most of us died of something, you know, along the way, dysentery, everybody dies of dysentery. But looking at how can you know, those are hard to create just out of your own brain. You may have the ideas, you may have the standard you're trying to work on with the students, and but you need something out there to kind of get some stuff going. You that's what that's a great thing to use with AI. AI should give educators more capacity to be human because the AI can't be human, but it can give you more capacity. You don't waste all of your energy trying to create something that maybe never never actually comes about. But education has got to be more human, not less. And and if we use AI too much in there, it can be less human. But that's where the teacher comes in to make sure the humanness is still is still happening.

Principal JL 38:06

I like to remind educators, AI is not gonna take your job. No, because AI can't do what you do, because people need human connection to learn. That's how they learn the best. AI is a tool that you could use to help you, but it's not gonna take your job. So I think out of all the things that people are scared of when it comes to AI, it's not gonna go really take away a teacher's job just because you know it's there, it's because there's that human connection these kids need to have. And they need people, and that's the thing, we're in people business, right? We're in, you know, education is a people business, and it's about building relationships and helping people, and and so a computer can't do that, and plus guess what? AI needs people to run it, so it's not it's gonna help make your job easier, it might help you be more creative, it helps me be more creative on some things that I do as well. And I use it, I try not to use it all the time, you know, but at the same time, I use it for things that are you know something to help me kind of wrap my brain around something, learn something, even like in my everyday life. I even when I was getting ready for the campaign, right? How do I put this distribution hitch on? And I learned a lot just by asking questions and figuring out and you know, toying with it and and trying some different things. And so it's it's useful, it's a tool, but at the same time, it's never will take away the human element that we have to have in education. I think people really need to understand that. Do you have anything to add from that?

Kendall Terry 39:45

100%. Education is still a human job, and it's humans that, yes, AI is going to be able to maybe do some of the some of the supports in learning, but we need an educator that understands humans and how humans learn so that they can help these kids grow into amazing humans. And and humans are the ones that are going to be able to do that, not a not a computer. And so it should help you be the better human, but it's not going to take your spot in the classroom.

Principal JL 40:18

I appreciate that. Well, Kendall, this has been a lot of fun. And before we go, how can listeners connect with you and follow the work we do?

Kendall Terry 40:28

Yeah. So we've got a website now, Terry Leadership Group.com. That's my last name, Terry. And then most of the stuff that I do education-wise is all on LinkedIn. And so just Kendall Terry and uh through the LinkedIn site. I post a lot here recently about the brace framework and different things on that. Getting ready to start releasing some videos on there. So that's a not fully convinced on that one yet, but I'm trying, trying to expand a little bit and and learn some some new things. So that's the LinkedIn stuff for the education is really the place to connect. Kendall Terry, you know, come follow and let's have a conversation on there. Or the website, Terry Leadership Group.com. And hopefully, you know, by the end of the year, the book will be out. And uh we we're calling right now Smart Habits in Education. But you know, when you go start going with editors, sometimes they change the title, but we'll figure out the title and and and that'll be a great thing. And then we'll see what this brace framework does in the future. Maybe it'll be a book down the road too, or just some trainings. I don't know yet, but we're gonna have some fun there in education.

Principal JL 41:30

Awesome. Well, Kendall, I really appreciate all the work you're doing and how to make education better and how you're thinking outside the box. I really appreciate it. I'll actually put your website and your LinkedIn bio. I'll put that in the show notes so people can easily find you when it comes to that. I really appreciate our time today. Is there anything you'd like to say before we go?

Kendall Terry 41:53

I just appreciate you having me on the podcast and and what you're doing in the podcast world when it comes to education is great. I've listened to several of your podcasts along the way, but I think it's great just to be able to connect educators up across the the U.S. and even the world to say we're all in this together. Let's be better.

Principal JL 42:13

And maybe next time I'm in East Tennessee, I mean we might have to go out and get some dinner sometime.

Kendall Terry 42:18

100%.

Principal JL 42:19

What a great conversation with Kendall, Terry, everybody. I hope you guys enjoyed part two of this two-part series. I really enjoyed putting this together for you guys. If you got something out of this episode, please share it with someone who needs to hear it. Also, please subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss another exciting episode like this one. Until next time, always be curious and 1% better.