In this episode, Ziz and Pam talk about innovation in education with Peter Hostrawser. He shares his outlook as an educator and entrepreneur on the changing landscape of education. The world today demands more from our younger generation and we need to allow them to step up and become design thinkers and creative problem-solvers.

Parents and educators can pave the way by helping less and empowering more. HallPass Education's Level Up Gap Year Program is an example of a program actively working with kids to help them discover their interests and purpose. Peter describes the critical role of mentorship and networking for career preparation. Our communities must also take a more active role in defining what education looks like as we change with the times.

Peter Hostrawser is the host of the podcast, Disrupt Education, highlighting journeys outside the traditional education system and educational reformers. He is also the co-founder of HallPass Education, an education think tank specializing in innovative educational solutions designed to guide people through their hallway of life.

RESOURCES:

Find Peter at PeterHostrawser.com and Disrupteducation.co, YouTube: HallPass Education with Peter Hostrawser, Audrey Boyle, and Dr. Peter James

In this episode, Ziz and Pam are discussing the connection between academia and reality with an innovative education specialist, Peter Hostrawser. On his podcast, Disrupt Education, Peter features educational reformers and their innovative approaches to education. He’s also the co-founder of HallPass Education, an educational think tank specializing in innovative educational solutions designed to guide people through their hallway of life.

As an educator, Peter’s passion is to transform people to become energetic learners through personal interest discovery. He says students in the 21st century need to learn focus management and be creative problem solvers who are adaptable to change. We need to make it okay for them to fail because that is how we learn. Enlightened teachers like Peter Hostrawser are making a difference inside and outside of the classroom!

Resources:

Peter Hostrawser

Sir Ken Robinson

Jo Boaler

Viktor Frankl

Quotes:

Peter: “We are going to be uncomfortable and we need to be uncomfortable. You’re going to need to pivot and learn some things…this is the place where we can start to shake things up.”

Pam: “What COVID did do is it highlighted the rigidity of the structure we have and how inflexible it is to adapt to the changes in the world.”

Peter: “You’re either on board with this, or you’re fighting. You can fight all you want, it’s just a lot of things that you can’t control.”

Peter: “People are starting to learn the agile way of doing things…I like to think of us not as teachers anymore. We are now becoming accountability partners. We’re becoming people who are really there for the student individually.”

Peter: “We got away from really giving students an opportunity to show what they’re pursuing, their purpose, and trying to have them figure out what their ‘why’ is and we got into checking boxes. The college realm, the AP realm… I don’t think those work for a large percentage of our kids.”

Peter: “I think people are realizing this whole thing isn’t a race. It’s really, let’s try to figure out where kids are right now and let’s try to move them.”

Peter: “I’m super excited about this year because we are forced to pivot. We have to look at things differently and we can learn more from our students.”

Peter: “You do see a lot of teachers who are the owner of knowledge starting to realize that a real win in a classroom isn’t a grade or an ACT/SAT score…So when you make it safe to fail and then you teach the learning beyond it, that’s really what makes an educator a true educator.”

In this conversation with Ai Addyson-Zhang, Ziz and Pam explore the changing landscape of education. Dr. Ai, an entrepreneur and self- described 'disruptive educator,' shares what she's learned in her transition out of the classroom to 'real world' education: Start with the heart. Listen to what students are passionate about because pursuing their interests will make learning more engaging. Start with meaning. Ask, 'who are you and what are your strengths?' It requires interest, relationship and safely. If you don't have those three components, it's not learning. It is just absorbing content. Project based learning is the best model based on the 70-20-10 rule, which suggests that 70% of what we learn is experiential, 20% is social learning, while only 10% is formal learning. For transformation to happen, people need to practice, fail and learn from their mistakes. With the skills of collaboration, adaptability, and communication, we can innovate and create the job we want.

According to Dr. Ai, the higher the GPA, the more obsessed children are with their academic performance, the less likely they are to innovate. Disruptive students own their opinions and feel good about who they are. Today, more than ever, we are seeing the need to disrupt education and redefine what it means to be educated in the 21st century.

Resources:

Viktor Frankl

Jo Boaler

Duncan Wardle

Gary Vaynerchuk

Why Happiness Should Not be the Goal for our Children

Ikigai

Seth Godin

Ivy Untold

About Dr. Ai Addyson-Zhang:

Dr. Ai is a professor turned entrepreneur. She taught in the classroom for 10+ years and has helped more than 2K students achieve career success. She produces live content multiple times a week to interview leading industry professionals and teach beyond the walls.

Watch her interview with Seth Godin who encouraged her to explore the purpose of education and what we can do to help our children become future-ready, creating successful and fulfilling lives.

FOLLOW Dr. Ai ON SOCIAL: LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Join her WhatsApp Group to stay informed.

In this episode, Ziz and Pam talk about disrupting education with Dr. Ai Addyson-Zhang. Dr. Ai shares some best practices to help future-proof the next generation.

In Classroom Without Walls, Dr. Ai offers programs for students and their parents to discover how to become engaged learners. With the right knowledge, skills, and mindset, they can create career success, regardless of the path they take. Dr. Ai also helps educators to understand social media and learn how to incorporate social media and creative technologies in the classroom to enhance student engagement and learning outcomes.

The best education happens outside the classroom! 

QUOTES

Dr. Ai: "I knew there were important life skills, emotional intelligence, lots of important links that students are not necessarily learning."

Dr. Ai: "I made two decisions. I became a practitioner and that's why I launched my live streaming show to really bridge the gap between academia and industry. I think students need to learn not only from academics but from people who are in real life, actually doing this... I became a practitioner and I became a student."

Dr. Ai: "I think the biggest part is really getting to know who I am...I feel like the struggle is more internal...I discovered the deeper we go within, the more we transform the outside. Our external environment is a mirror reflecting what is inside."

Dr. Ai: "Children don't need to wait until they have a mid-life crisis to start going within. They should start this journey much, much earlier."

Pam: "This goes back to the work of Viktor Frankl, which starts with a unique person and their contributions and you go within. But you can only go within by being challenged without, reaching out to the world. So really, self-transcendence beyond yourself is the movement. It is a movement to better the world, better humanity, which you're doing. But you have to be quiet enough to hear your conscience to tap into your higher self, your human spirit, to be able to understand where to decide."

About Dr. Ai Addyson-Zhang:

Dr. Ai is a professor turned entrepreneur. She taught in the classroom for 10+ years and has helped more than 2K students achieve career success. She produces LIVE content multiple times a week to interview leading industry professionals and teach beyond the walls. 

Watch her interview with Seth Godin who encouraged her to explore the purpose of education and what we can do to help our children become future-ready, creating successful and fulfilling lives.

FOLLOW Dr. Ai ON SOCIAL: LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Join her WhatsApp Group to stay informed.

In this episode, Ziz and Pam get to discuss the future of work with Tim Salau, the CEO and founder of Guide. His mission is to "strengthen the bonds people share through compassionate action." Tim hosts Unleashing the Future of Work (UTFOW), a live online series available on LinkedIn Live, Spotify, and Apple Podcast. Guide is a B2B learning and talent development platform that helps people to learn the skills they need to advance their careers.

Quotes:

Tim: "The future of work is constantly being molded and shaped." 

Tim: "Everything a high schooler needs to develop that career they want they can do in high school. You don't have to wait until you get to college nowadays and you don't have to wait until you get into corporate America."

Tim: "There is so much access to information, the tools, and even mentorship, online."

Tim: "My biggest advice to highschooler is, don't take this opportunity in your youth for granted."

Tim: "Colleges and universities need to stop acting as if they are the premier solution for education because the reality is that they are not anymore. They do offer value in the sense of the experience of college. I believe it's really important because you get to build relationships, you get to build a network, and professors can as act mentors, kind of a guiding light. But you also have to think about what the consumer experience is for early-career, college students. Do you think it's fair for them to be paying $50K tuition but that isn't actually leading to a longterm career path?"

Tim: "Colleges have to work with private sector leaders and businesses to create new models that actually value the customer which in this case is the student."

Tim: "The community component to learning is just as crucial as the self-directed motivation."

Ziz: "At the middle of it all is relationships. That's the intersection and that might be the rub with a lot of different people."

Resources:

Big Picture Learning: It is our vision that all students live lives of their own design, supported by caring mentors and equitable opportunities to achieve their greatest potential. We move forward prepared to activate the power of schools, systems & education through student-directed, real-world learning. We are activists.

Imblaze: ImBlaze allows students to experience the power of internships, apprenticeships, community service, CTE Training Programs, Shadow Days, and College Dual Enrollment.

Esther Wojcicki: Global Moonshots in Education works to enable every child to reach their fullest potential by being fully engaged and inspired in their learning. The 21st century demands a fundamental shift in the mindset and culture of teaching today. The fundamental shift is to give students more control and agency in the classroom. To achieve this, the role of the teacher needs to change from the lecture model to the mentor/coach on the side model.  That is the teacher needs to change from the “sage on the stage” to “the guide on the side.”  The more a teacher does for a student in the learning process, the less empowered the student is.

Find GUIDE here: https://www.guideapp.co/

Mentors & Mentees

Find Tim Salau here: https://www.timsalau.com/

http://mrfutureofwork.com 

https://www.utfow.com/

In this episode, Ziz and Pam, revisit the subject of our ever-changing economy and the need for a shift in higher education. Students entering the workforce in the shrinking corporate world will also need to look for opportunities in the gig or sharing economy. This is the future of work. Most companies are outsourcing and relying on freelance workers to meet their needs. Technology is changing so fast that many degrees are being rendered obsolete. Instead, certificate programs through MOOCs or corporations are available to get people up to speed. What can schools and families do to support our children in this environment? Teach kids to be agile. Focus on soft skills and building networks. According to LinkedIn, 85% of jobs are found through networking. Teach kids how to get a job but also how to create a job. By allowing our children the opportunity to explore, experience, and find their way, we are creating the best possible environment for them to flourish.

RESOURCES

Fiverr

Upwork

Scott Galloway, NYU

60-year curriculum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRlo-K7WQYk

David Deming STEM majors

Jim Goodnight, CEO of SAS 

Western Governors University

QUOTES

Pam: "The college degree is not preparing (students) for the literal agility they need to be able to move between the different economies at different times."

Pam: "Somehow we've associated education with the school building. And that's a new construct, an industrialized construct when we were preparing for compliance and conformity, to work in factories, and to work in institutions where you had to fit in. That is no longer the case."

Pam: "This whole idea of being agile in an uncertain environment, having to figure out, having to navigate, we need to prepare our kids for that."

Pam: "That's the hindrance of a system that was built for the 20th-century institutional economy. We've shifted to this entrepreneurial networking economy and the skill sets are different. So in fact, the way we're teaching devalues the human being and their worthiness and the individual by standardizing them based on their age."

Pam: "In the past when we've gone through shifts in arrows, from agriculture to industrial and industrial to the information age, it's been a kind of a longer spread, a hundred years. Now in 20 to 30 years, boom, complete shift. It's because technology builds on technology. This whole idea of machine learning, where they can all connect and learn from each other on a greater level, completely reshaping what's happening, what we do, but also creating tremendous opportunity."

Ziz: "What we're saying is a major paradigm shift is underway. As you already know, if not: attention, attention, the paradigm shift is happening. It's happening in higher education. We have clearly identified the full-time/corporate job, gig, and sharing economy."

Ziz: "Our jobs will be found through another human being through a network. Open up your networks, figure out who's in your network. Understand who's in your network, which also means you have to understand who you are and what you have to offer."

Pam: "As community members, as parents reaching out with other parents with businesses to say, it's all our jobs to create the environments that allow these kids to explore, experience, et cetera. That is critical. We have a big job ahead of us in this next century, not in defining them, but in creating the environments that allow them to flourish." 

In this episode, Ziz and Pam discuss the shift that is happening in higher education as our economy changes and technology evolves.  As the corporate economy gives way to the gig and sharing economy, we need to better prepare our children for the future of work. The four-year degree is no longer the "golden ticket" when you consider the debt load and job outcomes upon graduation for most students.  Instead, alternative education and training models have emerged, providing students with real-world experience and lifelong learning. Our current education system is not designed to teach collaboration, creativity, agility and the soft skills employers require above all else. The result of our schools' emphasis on compliance, conformity, and rote memorization, is a generation of students who are discouraged, frustrated, and ill-equipped to handle the demands of the fourth industrial revolution. 

RESOURCES

Daniel Pink, Drive

R.E.A.D. Framework

Viktor Frankl

Napoleon Hill

Modern Parenting: The Downside of a One-sided Balance Sheet

Ep. 15: Why Soft Skills are Critical in the 21st Century

QUOTES

Pam: "We're seeing the diminishing value of the (college) degree, especially with the cost of not only money but time and emotional energy that we've taken away from these kids. But we say because it worked for us, it's going to work for our kids."

Pam: "The economy has changed. We've entered a new era. It operates globally, in smaller bites of change, so agility is required."

Pam: "In order to have meaning and discover meaning in life, you need to have freedom of choice. You need to have responsibility and agency. You need to be propelled towards something that is bigger than you and know that it's not just about you."

Pam: "The entire fundamental structures of our education system is exactly the opposite of collaboration, agility, problem-solving, critical thinking." 

Pam: "We need to help less, empower more. Allow students to go and figure it out. Embrace the uncertainty."

Ziz: "As a mentor and parent, one thing I started to do better is listen and stay curious. They are discovering themselves and it is important for me to allow that to happen."

Ziz: "If we talk about the benefits of inclusivity, it means I'm aware of the different skills and talents of individuals inside my network, outside my network, and I can bring them in to benefit my small corporation. So being racists or prejudiced isn't going to help me. It's going to hurt me in the long run."

Pam: "You can't program soft skill into somebody's brain. It is who they are and how they connect with the outside world. We are parents, educators, and communities cannot mold, shape, paint the canvas of them. We have to empower them to discover it."

Pam: "Now we have a multitude of pathways. We want our children to think, to be agile, to have soft skills. College is an 'if' and 'when' proposition. They have to know who they are and what they're interested in before we spend that kind of time and money."

In this episode, Ziz and Pam talk about the value of mentorship for today's youth. Formal or informal, mentorship is the future. As educations shifts away from the "sage on the stage" model, new pathways for experiential learning are emerging. They provide opportunities for child-directed, interest-based development. Instead of telling kids what to think, we need to teach them how to think and show them what it looks like to be creative, innovative, and collaborative. Modeling is an important part of mentorship. Helping kids understand that uncertainty is a reality prepares them for a future where their worthiness is not based on outcomes.  Fulfillment comes from discovering your meaning and answering life's call.

How to #mentorup? Volunteer, job shadow, interview people, take a part-time job.

RESOURCES:

Pam Roy Blog, What Now?

David Brooks, The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake

Jo Boaler, Youcubed.org 

Steven Leavitt, Freakonomics Season 9, Ep. 12: America's Math Curriculum Doesn't Add Up

Tim Salau, Guide

Viktor Frankl, The Tragic Triad: guilt, suffering, and death.

Tim Bilyeu, Impact Theory

David Brooks, commencement address, "The theory of maximum taste says that each person’s mind is defined by its upper limit—the best that it habitually consumes and is capable of consuming."

Jim Rohn: "You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, including yourself!"

Lenore Skenazy

Show notes here.

In this episode, Ziz and Pam talk about the importance of soft skills in the new economy, not just for getting a job, but for navigating a successful life. These are human, interpersonal, relationship skills. How are these skills developed? It's about creating experiences, relationship and mentorship opportunities, and embracing our humanness.

The rise of automation means job candidates will need these uniquely human skills. Employers are looking for agile, critical thinkers. One study found that 51% of human resource managers said that education systems have done little to help address the soft skills shortage in the workplace. As we shift from teacher/institution directed learning to learner-centered engagement, we will provide the type of environment that fosters creativity, communication, and innovation. 

Parents can advocate for their children, protect their time and space, and co-own the process with teachers and students. But it starts with the learner, honoring their individuality and humanness.

QUOTES

Ziz: "The top missing soft skills are problem-solving, critical thinking, innovation, creativity, the ability to deal with complexity and ambiguity, and--the big one--communication."

Pam: "Innovation requires so much diversity of perspective, thought culture, to be able to break out of that river of thinking. So diversity is innovation and we are not allowing that in our school system."

Ziz: "Diversity isn't necessarily about a gender or a color. It's perspective."

Pam: "Diversity is the human complexity that each of us brings to the table, based on our experiences."

Pam: "Allow kids the time to play, to be bored, to pursue things that are of interest...Encourage them to look at themselves and what they can give to the world, not what the world is going to give to them."

Pam: "We start with the human being. When you hear 'learner-centered', think 'human being centered'. That is the future of education."

Pam: "There's not one school that fits all children, or all family circumstances and needs."

Pam: "Human beings are open systems. We need to engage with others in different environments. So when we put ourselves in these closed silos, it leads to a lot of distress. We have to break down the school walls and give experiences, expand the multigenerational relationships, mentor-up as businesses and parents. We have to inspire each other to co-own the learning and education that can happen in museums, libraries, businesses, and different types of collaborative, online learning."

RESOURCES

Duncan Wardle - Diversity is Innovation

Viktor Frankl

Emerson Collectives QX Super school

Getting Smart with Tom Vander Ark

Place-Based Education

No Time to Lose: We Must Broaden Our Children’s Exposure to the Real World

Education Re-imagined - LEARNERS AT THE CENTER. #BuiltForThis

FinTech (financial technology) Nexus Degrees

In An Automated World, Our Humanness Is The Advantage

The Five C’s to Success in the New World of Work

Show notes here.

In this episode, Ziz and Pam discuss what it means to be a lifelong learner. Given the rapid pace of technological change in our world, students need to R.E.A.D. The 'R' stands for responsibility. It is the student's responsibility to upskill and continually learn new ways of doing things so that they can adapt to changing environments. The role of parents and teachers is to step back and facilitate their learning. We no longer follow the 3-part model of school, work, retire. Lifelong learning is about teaching students how to learn, not what to learn. Students need to be agile and gain the employable skills needed to withstand the test of time.

RESOURCES:

Our Children Need to R.E.A.D to Succeed in the 21st Century

R.E.A.D. Framework

David Deming - Harvard study of STEM majors and the importance of upskilling.

Jim Link, Randstad's chief human resources officer, Hiring and Developing Digital Leaders whitepaper.pdf Skills required by employers: adaptability, problem, solving creativity, influence drive, empathy, and collaboration.

Viktor Frankl: Freedom

Dr. Ai, Iceberg model - knowledge, life skills, mindset

What If No Summer Job or Internship is an Opportunity?

To Gap or Not to Gap

Tim Salau and Mike Gates GUIDES

QUOTES:

Pam: "The struggle is growth. We only grow during times when we're really struggling, struggling to push forward. And it's what propels us forward."

Pam: "You can do college in many ways now. In different places, parents, educators, and businesses are creating these environments where kids can go and explore while they're in high school and begin to get those experiences so that they don't have to take a gap year. They figure this out during their teenage years by working part-time jobs by doing internships. Particularly with disadvantaged students, we've got to mentor up, create the umbrella of mentorship and guides that they can tap into."

Pam: "I just believe so strongly in honoring the unique individual, honoring their ability to do R.E.A.D. and discover their meaning. Our job is to create diverse, multigenerational, and experiential environments that allow them to do that."