Retaining Teachers and Designing Valuable EdTech Products: A Conversation With Adina Sullivan-Marlow

,: 2022

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[Start of recorded material: 00:00:01

Elana:

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of All Things Marketing and Education. This week I am really excited to be sitting down with Adina Sullivan Marlow, a coordinator, Teacher Effectiveness and Preparation. That's that's a long title let me backtrack. So she's a coordinator, teacher effectiveness and preparation in the San Diego County Office of Education. She does lots of cool things. She's going to talk about it. We are so excited to have her on this show today. Personally, it's one of those things when I run into Adina at every conference, I'm like, gosh, we should connect and we end up connecting but not in a deeper way. And I don't really get to get into it with her about what she's doing, what's her passion, all the things. And we're going to get into that today. So I am so excited. It's funny because Adina and I recently met in person at ISTE.

nd I think Adina, it was like: 2012

Adina:

Yeah.

Elana:

And for those of you that listened to the show notice, I bring on a lot of people that I've had friendships with. I've been lucky to have friendships with for over 10 years. And Adina is one of these beautiful people. For those of you that are just saying, what the heck is an ed camp? An ed camp is an un-conference. There's no set agenda. We all just go there and we get to decide what we want to talk about and learn about for the day. We don't hire fancy people to tell us what to do and learn.

We get to say, here's what I want to learn about, let's collaborate. There's no presenters. It's amazing. We will probably have Hadley on who is the former executive director of the Ed Camp Foundation at some point to talk to you all about that. Anyways, back to Adina, I convinced Edutopia where I spent year eight years of my career to fly myself and my colleague Betty Ray to attend this ed camp. And I was like, I don't know, this sounds like it could be groundbreaking.

I've heard about these things on the east coast because they started in Philly and we wanted to cover it. So I remember kind of almost walking down a school hallway and meeting you Adina and you were just buzzing. You were moving around. You helped organize it. You had this big smile on your face. I think you might have been even using the rule of two feet too. Where Ed campers know is a rule of two feet is where you get to leave a session because you've learned what you wanted to learn and you're curious about another session. Isn't that amazing? You let your own interests and your professional development guide you.

Adina:

Or you realize, wait, this is not what I thought it was going to be. Let me go get what I need. We should be able to do. Go get what you need.

Elana:

And no hurt feelings because everyone's doing it. It's an understand law. So anyways, I thought you were either doing that or you were coordinating or something. But long story short, we kept in touch. We ran into each other at multiple ed camps, Ed Camp San Diego's, another Ed Camp LA probably, ISTEs, ISTE when it went to San Diego and just being connected to you on Twitter. I will say that Adina, you are such an inspiring human being. Every time I'm around you exude joy and you make me smile and I am just grateful for our friendship.

I think I'm going to go ahead and add a little bit about you and your bio before we get started. But for those of you saying, "Hey, what the heck are we going to talk about today?" I think we're going to kind of meander into all things professional development in K12, new teacher development and training and retention and diversity and recruitment within that. And then just diversity and equity and education. So we've got a lot to talk about. It'll be really interesting. Adina brings a special lens to it because she's had so many roles in K-12 education. So talking about that, Adina is currently a coordinator in the teacher effectiveness and preparation unit under the Human Resource Services division in the San Diego CA County Office of Education.

Adina:

That's too long. That is too long.

Elana:

That is a lot. But she works in the Teacher effectiveness and preparation unit, so she's going to be talking a lot about that as well.

But prior to joining the San Diego Office of Education, Adina worked as a teacher. She later became a K12 education technology coordinator for a 20,000 student school district. She's also a longtime volunteer for CUE, which for those of you that maybe might be on the East coast and don't know it's the Computer Using Educators. And she even served as the board of directors, vice president. So I'm sure that experience will come through. She is one of the most tech savvy educators I know.

structure instructor. And in: 2016

Adina:

Oh my goodness, thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be here. I always love running into you. So that first ed camp I think might have been the first time that we actually got a chance to really like, "Hi, here's who I am." And really introduce to one another. And over the years of getting a chance to connect with you, whether it be at a conference or in discussions align or whatever, it's always a pleasure. And I really honored that you invited me to be here today.

Elana:

Yeah, I was the first thing that came my mouth. I'm like, I want to talk to you more. Sometimes in conferences it's good to catch up in the little bits, but you never really get to go deep. And that's what I love about these podcasts is I learn so much from all of you. Speaking of which, I know a little bit about your background, but you have had a long journey in education. Your bio that I just talked to the audience about. But you've been a teacher, a district tech coordinator, you're involved with CUE, you're at the county Office of Education, you formed a nonprofit.

Just a lot of people that listen to this podcast in particular are educators that might be in similar shoes, that might have had diverse paths, but some of them are newer. And also I think we can learn so much from other people's paths in education because we all assume we go into life that I'm going to do this, this, and this and this. And it's really never the case.

Adina:

It's not how it goes.

Elana:

Because usually this weird wonky, it's a kind of combination of luck, chance, passion, all these things. So I would love to know from you just your journey, how did you get started and what was your journey to get you into the classroom to get really involved in tech. To eventually go into a district office because that is a big change. And then you got the whole nonprofit and involved in CUE. Tell me a little bit about that. I'm sure people would just be curious on what guided your choices along the way.

Adina:

Yeah, so there's the vision you have of yourself as a kid. There's my plan is to do X, Y, or Z and you kind of envision yourself and where you're going to be in these places and then the reality of life hits and that's not the way it works out. So teaching was my original plan, but I didn't get to do that right away. I had to work my way through school and that meant working often a full time plus typically also part-time jobs on top of going to school. So it was a bit of a longer journey.

And then in my early twenties I ended up needing to take care of my parents as well. They're just so much that happens. So because I wasn't able to go into teaching right away and kind of finish that part of my education, I accidentally ended up in PR and marketing. For an organization, a not for profit organization, multinational not for profit.

But one of the things that they focused on is they had a lot of child focused charities. They worked on preventional child abuse, had a nonprofit for that. We did campaigns around shaken baby syndrome, around children's hospitals. And that was something that kind of helped feed me and that need to work and support students and communities while I was doing this other work.

And at the same time I got involved with adult literacy. So I was an adult literacy tutor and then a tutor trainer around the county. And again that kind of fed that need to want to be able to teach and help others. And then more life hit. The organization I worked for was hit by a ginormous scandal. So it's not a time when you want to be working in PR for a multinational organization when your organization's on the front page of a huge newspaper because of this scandal.

Not great. And this was at the time when kind of gotcha journalism, you really expected someone to be popping out of the bushes at any time to try to catch you and ask you these scary questions. And as a part of that, I got laid off because they were closing down our office and really moving all the operations to Toronto. And so that gave me the opportunity to really go back and finish my credential.

And as part of that I kind of leaned toward tech. I went into a credential program where in the cohort I was in, we focused on STEM before we were calling it STEM, I was always kind of the person both in my work, in my work role and in school roles where I was the like, oh let's try this or hey, kind of looking into tech things and getting involved with that.

And over time I started stepping up saying, "Hey, could I help with that? Could I help lead that? Could I be involved in that?" And stepping up and speaking up really led to my role as a teacher on special assignment for the school district and then later an ed tech coordinator for that K-12 district.

And I spent over 20 years in this same school district. And then I thought it's really a time for a change and ended up getting an opportunity to pivot out of ed tech into a role for the county office of education in teacher preparation, recruitment and retention. Really not exactly understanding entirely what I was going to end up doing, but knowing that it was time for a change. And I still wanted a role supporting students and supporting communities but wanted a bit of a shift.

And that leads me to where I am now in the work I get to do. So now I get to coordinate and added authorizations for special education program, which helps special education teachers get additional authorizations in California to teach specific groups of students. And then I get to work on our educator pathways work, which helps to support folks that are interested in education careers, whether that be teaching or non-teaching with some of the routes and pathways to get there. And then some of the work we do to help our districts, all 42 districts and the charters work on their recruitment and retention.

Elana:

Interesting. And I know that we're going to talk a little bit next about retention specifically. Because I know you have some thoughts and I'd love to hear your experience around it so far. But I'd love to pause around you were 20 years in a district that is a significant amount of time. For the educators that are thinking about a shift and might be in a school district and not sure what next steps are, what career paths are happening, what were those feelings? How did you know that it was time to go? Because I think it would be nice for you to identify them because it might be very similar to what the educators listening are on like, "Oh yes, I feel that way. And oh yes, this is an option."

Adina:

Yeah, it's interesting. We go into teaching and people think of teaching as I teach or I become a principal, these are my jobs, these are my job options. And those aren't all the job options. So I think number one is when you're feeling like, okay, I've reached my capacity here. I've reached the limit to what I think I can accomplish in this role. Or I'm not in a place, maybe the site you're at is not the best fit for you for whatever reason. And there's lots of different reasons, they're not always negative. Sometimes you're ready to work with a different population of students, sometimes it's time to work with a different set of people and learn more from those people. I kind of think it always go back to what is your why, what is it that brings you to this work in the first place?

What is it that really propels you forward and makes you want to try harder and do more? And when you're not getting that anymore, it's time to look around, okay, what is it that I can do? And maybe it's just changing schools, maybe it's changing the types of students you're working with. But maybe it's looking outside of there. So for me, there wasn't an ed tech position, there was no ed tech, there was nothing. There was no role to step into and go, oh that's what I want. But I started talking about what I wanted to do, which is being able to use ed tech more effectively in the classroom and support others doing it. And I volunteered for things, "Hey, I can help with that. Is that something I could do." And just asking questions? And they, as the district thought, we really want to start looking at this more, they came to me and said, "Hey, we think this is something you might be interested in. We've developed this position, would you be interested in applying for it?"

And I did. So it didn't already exist. I kind of was doing what I thought was important until the opportunity came up. And for me, I always kind of keep to keep one thing in my back pocket. So I kept going to conferences, I was sending myself and learning more. And on summer vacations or on breaks when we were year round, I would attend virtual things if I could or try to learn more so that I always had that information with me so that when opportunity did come up, I could take advantage of that opportunity.

And I would say for those folks that are like, look, just I think I'm done, I'm really done here. Maybe it's leaving that school, maybe it's leaving that district, maybe it's leaving. If you have to leave education, do you really have to leave education? Is there still something else in education you could do? I mentioned I worked in adult literacy. That's still, that's related to education. Maybe it's something in the community, maybe it's working for another non-profit or not-for-profit, doing good work in the community and helping folks but isn't exactly a school. There's other ways to do that.

Elana:

And what you were talking about of leading with your why, that really reminds... Some of the listeners might recall a conversation we had with Coach William Jeffery and he really talked about his path of just really owning and being curious and saying, am I getting fulfilled with my why? And it was just so nice to hear you all in tune there. But sometimes I will be included, I get into environments and that why gets dulled because I get so overwhelmed and I get so caught up and I get these emotions of guilt and this and that and then five years later go by.

Adina:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Elana:

It's really good advice to say, always check in with yourself, really make sure you are putting yourself in the best spot that fuels you and you deserve that. Everyone listening.

Adina:

You do. But also know that challenges are going to happen, bad times are going to happen, things are going to be difficult and they're not... Those difficulties don't disappear because you change jobs. I've had the opportunity to work in for-profit, not for profit, non-profit and public sector jobs. And there are serious challenges and difficulties and hurdles in every one of those. But sometimes you need to run into different brick walls, you need the walls you run into to look different. You need the issues to be different and know that sometimes that's the change you're making. You're not escaping difficulty, but sometimes you need to change what it looks like.

Elana:

Yes. Well said. Well let's talk a little bit about what you're doing now and pathways in particular. So recruiting and retaining folks into education careers. I'd love to hear just about your experience and your insights gained. Because a lot of the folks you might work with aren't traditional education backgrounds. And you're thinking about transitioning them into education. What have been your insights there and what have you found that have worked to retain them in the classroom?

Adina:

eople getting layoff notices?: 2007

And when you look in decades of research on this and when you look at it, there are really, really clear pieces that we can find and that say, look, here are the reasons. And part of it is that it's not an easy to understand process and it changes and it changes a lot. And in California it is definitely changed quite a bit even from the time I came into the field.

And so we have to help reduce and remove those barriers. I know for me, my family couldn't help, we didn't have money, higher ed experience or the cultural capital to know or where to get information. So we want to help clarify that process. Where's the money? So if we can help people understand how they can pay for it, what are the scholarships or grants or types of credential programs that can help. So folks may not realize that there's more than just the traditional credential program where you finish your bachelor's and then you do credential.

At least in California it's typically a separate year that there are other ways to do it. There are apprenticeship programs, there are intern programs where you actually, after just a few pre-service courses, after your credential, you get a job, you go apply for the same kinds of jobs any other teacher can apply for and you are the teacher of record that means a paycheck, that means benefits, that means retirement while you're working on your credential.

There are combined programs where you can do both together. There are ways to do this that aren't typical, but we need to help people understand what those options are and the types of careers. So maybe someone is coming from industry, maybe they've got a marketing background, they've got a technology background, they have agriculture. There are the positions that are, we used to call them ROP positions and now they're CTE, career technical education where you don't get your credential first.

You're coming in with your experience, you are applying for a job that is helping to teach the kinds of things you're an expert in and you're getting a credential what's called the CTE credential, at least in California that fits that. And so it's not this whole big long process. There's more than one way to get there. We also need to look at what happens once someone gets into the position.

You don't want to recruit someone into a position only to have them run into really negative situations. If they're running into the same kind of microaggressions they experienced as a kid in school, the same kind of things that are keeping them from even considering the career and you finally get them there and they're still running into those, that's a problem. We really need to do some work in organizations, in schools, in districts to look at what some of those issues are.

We were going to talk a bit about retention and it's not enough to recruit people into the position. They have to want to stay there. It can't be a revolving door that's not good for the adults, it's not good for the kids, it's not good for our communities. And so there's work that schools and districts need to do and it's ongoing work. There's a lot of extra things kind of thrown on the shoulders often for educators of color.

They're often put in the role to be responsible for quote unquote those kids, whoever those kids are. Whether that be kids that are the same race or ethnicity or language background, what have you. It's like, oh, you understand those kids, those are going to be your kids. You're going to deal with them and now you're responsible for speaking up for all of them. That's not right. They're often put into disciplinary roles which can really wear you down if you're seeing the one that deals with the problem kids.

I tended to get a lot of kids where if other teachers, that was the kind of kid where they'd be sending them to the office frequently, they'd end up in my classroom because I wouldn't send them to the office. We deal with it. But if you're always in that role, that wears you down, that can't be where you get stuck. We have to look at who gets access to promotion, who gets whose voice is heard when it comes to what kind of PD do we need, what's going to be important, what's going to be valuable, what's going to be important. Even though it isn't what the majority think we need, but it's something small that maybe only a few people realize, hey this is really important for us to know as a group of educators. And listening to all those voices, if you don't have your voice heard and you're put into roles that are bringing you down, why stay?

Why would you want to stay? So we need to look at all of those in our schools and really, really work on those. So we want to help bring people in, help them to understand what their options are, how to get there, how to pay for it, and then make sure they can stay there.

We started a pilot in the spring, a community of practice, it's kind of a support group slash community of practice slash affinity group for educators of color in California. Starting with San Diego with folks that were working with our programs first and now we've expanded it out where it's a kind of place to be able to go, okay, breathe. What are the things that are challenging? How can we help each other? What are some of the strategies and resources and things that can help keep us all going? We can keep this moving and can keep making positive change in our schools and feel like we do want to stay and do want to do this work because we know it's important.

Elana:

There is a lot to unpack there. You said such great things I think to start with is really we assume there's a linear path in education and to your first comment on I'm a teacher, then I can be a principal. There's so many career options, but even backing it up, there's so many ways to get into the classroom that we kind of just say you need that bachelor's, you need that certification.

But what I'm hearing from you, and I actually didn't know this, there are lots of cool ways to get into the classroom. I'd love to follow up with you and make sure that your resources are in our show notes so educators can peruse those as well. But beyond getting into the classroom, that's just half the battle.

How do we make sure they feel heard, that they're pacing themselves and they're not be saying yes to everything and not being thrown into the hard challenging situations all of the time. That's a hard thing to navigate. I don't know. I know you're in this work because it isn't easy, it's very challenging and it's nuanced. I don't know a solution to that, but I love that you've started communities to talk about it openly and like you said, just breathe. Let's breathe, let's be honest and let's pause and think about what we do and why we're being asked to do things. And then back to your original point of what fuels you too.

Adina:

Well yeah, because some of that same research looks at what the benefits are of having a more diverse workforce and there are measured academic benefits. Students do better academically. There are fewer discipline issues there. It's a higher graduation rates high, higher college going rates when you've got a more diverse workforce.

So that when we look at our student population, when we look at our community demographics rather. When we look at our communities and our students, they don't match the demographics of our education staff. And particularly when we look at, even at the education staff, you find people of color more likely in part-time and lower paying roles, instructional assistance, and not so much as teachers and administrators. This varies from place to place of course, but overall that's one of the issues. And so if we want students to be able to see, look, I see that there are people that come from the kinds of background I come from that look like me, that sound like me and look, they're a professional. And they're doing really good work and they like what they're doing and they care.

It helps kids to see that's a possibility for them. And when you get someone who has that, you get more staff that are more diverse, they can help influence the way schools work so that we're not giving unfair discipline. You're not disciplining one kid one way and another kid a different way for the same infraction. That we understand the why behind some of the things a student might say or why they might do things a certain way.

I had students, so I worked with classrooms that were predominantly Latinx, low socioeconomic status, Latinx students, most of whom were English learners, or transitioning out of English learner status. And I had students where, and I was really confused by this at first, who no matter what was happening, they would smile at me. They were in trouble. They had done something really, really wrong. And we were talking about it, but they'd smile at me and I didn't understand that that was not that they weren't taking it seriously for them personality wise, their own family. This was how you dealt with it.

You just keep that smile going. Right? It wasn't that they didn't care, it was just who they were. And it had to be explained to me and I'm like, okay, now I understand I can't be upset at this student for not taking this issue seriously. They were taking it seriously. They were just showing it a different way. That we had parents who weren't as involved.

Well it wasn't until we learned as a staff why. If you understand that the particular background this group of parents came from was one that where they feel that they have their job as a parent and that's at home and at school they're trusting you to be the authority there. And they were trying not to step on your toes, they were trying to make sure they were respecting you, but it wasn't being seen as respect.

And if we wanted them to be more involved, we had to help them understand how to become more involved. What are some ways they could do that and advocate for their students and become more involved and what the benefits were to that. We needed that conversation to happen. But until you have enough people on your campus who can help you understand that you're not making the connections you need to with families and with students.

Elana:

Yeah, I think there is so much we can talk around this and I'd love to have you on the show again because you're bringing up issues that we don't talk about a lot openly. And I love how you're just able to name it, and say we all don't come from the same backgrounds. The wrong things to do is to make assumptions.

The first thing to do is just be curious and say why, and learn. Because I'm always surprised and it's usually never what I think. And your story really alluded to that. I'm going to ask you a difficult question and then we're going to transition into a little ed tech, a little bit more equity things. But if you had a magic wand and you're like, I'm in charge here. I'm the new secretary of education, not that they're really in charge anyways. But if you had to say my job was to recruit and retain teachers and I love your emphasis on a diverse workforce, what are the five things, the top things that you would be like, yes, these are must haves. I know that's hard. I'm seeing her squinty face here going, oh...

You mentioned some of them, which I thought were making sure that whatever you do, the educators are heard. And that's sadly not something that happens as much as I'd like to see in K-12 education is that when they are in the workforce, how do we make their voices shine. And how do we make sure that they are heard in things that help them professionally develop? Like you said.

Adina:

I think we have to move backwards a little bit. And one of the things we have to do is do that work in two places. One of them is in our districts and schools and really start building that base of understanding around what kinds of educators we need and the reasons why. And that's not a one and done workshop. It's ongoing work.

Elana:

Can I give you a binder for that?

Adina:

Yes, I'll put it with the other binders on the shelf until I eventually clean out those binders, throw it all on the recycling bin and then give the binders away. So sure. That work needs to happen first and we need to look at what leadership looks like in our districts and at our schools and start there.

We also need to do that same work in our universities, our colleges and universities. What do the folks look like that are doing this preparation work? What are their backgrounds and how recently have they been in classrooms? Not observing in a classroom, but are we including folks that have more recent experience in the classroom?

So for example, one of the universities by me, and it's the one where I got my credential, they have a program called a distinguished Teacher in residence where it's... And this it's a two year position that a teacher from a local district applies for and they become one of the professors on staff. One of the faculty on staff in the preparation program. And that voice can help bring that reality of what it looks like right now in the classroom. It's been three years, almost three years now since I have been regularly in classrooms teaching. And that makes a difference.

My experience as relevant as it is, isn't relevant enough. We need people who have really, really close experience. So working on who's in those positions in leadership at schools and districts and at universities and colleges is one of those things. I think the next is looking at how we treat new teachers.

Are they getting the classes nobody wants? Are they getting the most challenging situations? Are they getting good mentorship? Are they getting good supports? Are they getting a chance to reflect and learn with others or are we just throwing them in? Are they just being tossed in and good luck? So looking at that I think is super important.

I think looking at how we work with families and communicate with families and how we support teachers and understanding how to do that effectively, how to build those as partnerships. What does that look like and how do we support folks in doing that? I think we need to prepare teachers to be able to do that. Including how do you deal with situations like we have right now where people are storming into board meetings and being really... They're throwing hissy fits and coming really close to violence in a lot of situations or you feel like it could be violent at any time.

That's a hard thing to deal with. How are we helping teachers to understand how to deal with difficult situations even when they're not that extreme? Are we continually looking at what's coming up? We talk a lot right now about culturally responsive teaching and about equity and about critical race theory.

Are we having those conversations about what those actually mean versus what's being said about them? Are we helping teachers to understand how to handle situations with people who want to ban books, who want to remove things from your classroom, who want to have you not say or not say certain things? Are we really supporting them? Not just here's a memo but really, really standing beside them and supporting them and helping them to know what to do with those situations.

We have to do that. And then how to deal with accessibility. Are we making sure that they understand how to make all their content accessible to all students regardless of their difference in ability, whether that be documented or not documented and making sure that our content and our materials are accessible to our families as well. If you're asking a parent... Maybe that child doesn't have a particular, let's say a visual difference, maybe the parent does. Are you making sure that parents are able to access things on your website? On whatever you're using for your instructional platform. Are we making sure that we're reaching all of our students and making things accessible for our students and our families?

Elana:

You brought up such great points and I just threw a bomb at you and be like magic wand Adina. But I think for those of you listening, you all are probably nodding your head as well and you're like, yes, we are fully unprepared for all these things that Adina is talking about and if we don't talk about them, we can't move forward. So I thank you for bringing them up and the work that you do to help move the practice forward. I want to shift slightly to-

Adina:

Elana I'm going to interrupt you. I'm sorry, I realize that on some of these I may have wandered off of what you asked me. Okay. So if there's something you're like, hey seriously I need to ask you this again because that didn't make any sense, I will not be offended.

Elana:

No, I think you answered it. It was a hard question and I think you answered it. So yeah, don't worry about it. Jordan, you want to take note on that? I'm sure she is on the edit. So what I'm going to do now is shift a little bit and go back to the world of ed tech.

You have decades of experience. There is a part of our audience that listens that are deep in the ed tech world. So they're running ed tech companies, they're interested in ed tech marketing and growth in sales. And with this podcast and hopefully with social media, they're listening to educators. They're really trying to figure out how can I best support this space? And I would love for you to just reflect on what were the ed tech products that you use or still use that are the most effective characteristic wise. How can they be more effective and where do you think ed tech gets it wrong?

Adina:

Yeah, I have thoughts. So let's start with the... And I won't name specific products because products change and product change over time. I would say the best tools and the tools that I still use and still invite teachers to use and try to help them use are the ones that are really focused on supporting the teachers understanding of their students effective teaching strategies and content, in that order.

You can't buy those things but you can enhance them and no one needs one more thing. Regardless of the type of tool it is, the best ones provide a way to take those elements and make them more effective and more efficient. And when they're being marketed, whether that be in advertisements, in social media, in a booth at a conference, they should speak to how they enhance those items. So that was teachers' understanding of students effective teaching strategies and content, not how they're trying to replace them, but how they are enhancing those things.

Those things that are what teaching is really all about. And I think that the things that I see that I would love to see not happen is, and just because ISTE was so recent, I just think of walking down the halls of the vendor floor, walking down the aisles and seeing thing, essentially the same thing over and over and over again. One's got a cute logo, one's got this one little tiny feature. I don't care about those. Those don't equate to me. When I was in an ed tech space needing to spend more money, it's really frustrating to see that I had a drawer, a whole drawer of t-shirts, swag t-shirts from companies that no longer exist. And one of the big reasons why they no longer exist is they weren't really doing anything significant compared to what somebody else was doing. And then sales teams need to understand effective teaching strategies.

All they know are the bells and whistles. That doesn't help. Show me how it connects to good pedagogy. Understand the jargon you're saying, being able to say the words isn't the same as being knowledgeable enough to understand it. I think companies to focus on not just hiring good sales people, but really training them along with your product development team and leadership into what those good teaching strategies are and how they work. And then the last one is make sure you're including all the students. This includes my English learners, this includes my students with learning differences. Spanish isn't the only other language in schools. Accessibility is a big deal. Make sure that you're including them.

Elana:

Yeah, really interesting because we do ask other educators that question and it's making me think, because I've heard multiple answers and some people say I want one tool that's simple that does one thing really well that I don't need professional development on.

But then like you said, I don't want it to be an add-on like something else. That's something I normally wouldn't do and maybe it engages kids but it's not really in my periphery of here's how I teach and it's directly related to my teaching strategies. So now you got me thinking. And then I was like, well I don't really need it to do one simple thing because then I have a tech stack that's quite huge. And if I'm a district trying to manage all the ed tech, I can't just make room for one simple tool even though it does it beautifully. But then I don't want a tool that does crazy amounts of things. So is it like a Goldilock syndrome.

Adina:

It totally is. So there's a challenge. So coming from my ed tech role is you can't afford to buy every little tiny thing. You can't. And if I have the money this year because I have COVID funds or whatever, I'm not going to have that later. So do you really want to take all my money now and then end up in a situation where you as a company aren't getting that money anymore? That's not sustainable from a business side.

And from the teaching side, not everybody has the staff as you're saying. Other people have mentioned this, and I agree with this too, is you need something that isn't so complicated that a teacher can't figure it out or be supported once they have a little PD on it and they've got maybe an ed tech TOSA, whatever to help them. But when that person goes away, they should be able to not feel frustrated and stuck and feel foolish that they don't understand how to do it and feel like, oh my gosh, the kids know all this more than I do.

No, they don't really. They're just more comfortable with it and they're not as scared of it as we are sometimes as adults. But the tools need to... At the end, even if they do one simple thing, that one simple thing needs to be supportive of good pedagogy and not feel like you're trying to teach me a new way of teaching. For me, that's a different kind of PD. It should enhance what that good pedagogy is. Whether that's one small thing because there is a particular niche area that people need this one thing to do or something that can do a lot of things. It still needs to support what that teacher's role really is and their background and their experience and their training in good pedagogy and understanding their students.

Elana:

Yes. So ed tech folk, if you are listening to sum up it's like we really need you to be aligned with best practices in teaching. It would be best if you were fully understood on how educators would use this to really deeply embed into their current teaching practice and not just be this crazy add on. But for you to do that and talk about it eloquently, you have to understand teaching practices. You have to understand what their hierarchy of needs is and models like the SAMR model where it's really looking at, I'm not just... Do I want to just substitute or do I want to go down that and go augmentation. So those are the things I'd like you all to think about. And if you don't know, arm yourself, start partnering with educators to help educate you. There is no excuse for you not to understand the fundamentals of education and how your product fits in and hopefully compliments the teaching practice because you can't just say, "Oh it doesn't work. We're going to do it this whole new way."

And like you said, it creates so much additional professional development. So I am so sorry Adina, but we are out of time. And I'm like, this time goes by so fast and I'd love to have you on at another time to really go deep into diversity and equity. Because I know you have some great experience and thoughts around that. We didn't even get to that. But for those of you that were listening, I'd love for you to reflect on, I think Adina gave you some really good insights about her career journey. When you should move on. And like she said, it's that you're never just not going to hit challenges. But you're going to hit different types of brick walls. I love that. So think about that in your journey. And she's had a wonderful journey starting, I didn't even know, from marketing now into 20 years in the classroom into the district office, into the nonprofit world, into related organizations.

So I'd love for you all for educators to think about your own journey and see if you've used your guiding light for your why around that. And then I think for ed type pros and educators, when we talk about recruitment and retention, this is an industry issue. And we're never going to get better. The system is never going to get better if we don't have diverse people that are staying in the profession too.

So nothing's going to help us if we continue to recruit diverse workforce and we don't support them along the way, and don't understand the fundamental reasons why they leave. So there's so many things that Adina talked about with that. And then ed tech products. I just want you to rewind that entire section because there's such good nuggets of wisdom in there for educators and ed tech folks.

So Adina, I would love to ask you the last question we ask all of our guests around inspiration. You are in it all of the time. You've got many hats still. You are constantly in the thick of how do I recruit and retain? What are the fundamental challenges societal wise of diversity and equity, all of these really heavy things. On your most challenging days, do you go, oh, if I can just go home and do this, this will recharge me for tomorrow. What are your things to recharge you and keep you going in this profession?

Adina:

There's really simple things. So I don't watch a lot of tv, but I love shows where people get to show off their skills that I can appreciate, but I don't have those skills. So some of those, my favorites right now are Great British Bake Off and now I'm watching Junior Bake off and I started getting into the Great Pottery Throw Down, which is the same idea, but with clay and pottery wheels.

And I love those, I love to cook, but I'm not a great baker. Too much precision for my patience level. And what I love is that unlike reality and competition shows that we generally have in the US on these shows, even though these people they really, really want to win, definitely want to win, they're also willing to step up and volunteer to help someone else if needed and support one another.

And if they're faking it, they're faking it really, really well. Sad when someone has to leave. I appreciate seeing people with great skill supporting one another. And even though they want to do well, they want to help others too. And that to me is really, it kind of helps support your feeling of there's good humanity out there and there's good things happening and let's keep doing that because it's definitely there.

Elana:

Awesome. I'm going to have to put them in my Netflix queue now. Thank you. More things to watch, but those have always intrigued me because great artistry is something that you can kind of just zone out but then also appreciate like you said.

Adina:

Yeah, absolutely.

Elana:

Well, Adina, how can people get in touch with you?

Adina:

So I personally have backed away from a lot of social media, but I am still occasionally on Twitter @AdinaSullivan. And then for the work that I'm doing for those interested or want to help others, family, neighbor, whatever, interested in education careers, you can find that work at SDCOE.net/educatorpathways. And then if you know folks that might be interested in that kind of community of practice that we have for BIPOC educators in California, you can email educator pathways SDCOE.net.

Elana:

Great. And for those of you that are on the go, know that we're going to create some show notes and we'll be putting all of those links and complimentary resources in the show notes as well. So thank you so much, Adina, for joining us. It's been a pleasure. And when you start talking, I'm like, Lord, you just have so much wealth of knowledge in the industry and I just want to pick your brain for hours.

So I thank you for spending the hour with us and for our listeners, thank you for joining us. I know you have lots of options to choose from. I hope that you walk away with one practical thing. It could be a mind shift or it could be a tip that you apply into your every day. So for the show notes, you can access the episode show notes at leoniconsultinggroup.com. That's two Gs leoniConsultinggroup.com/30 for detailed notes and all the resources. So thank you again and we will see you next time on all things marketing and education. Take care.

[End of recorded material: 00:53:00

Elana Leoni, Host

Elana Leoni has dedicated the majority of her career to improving K-12 education. Prior to founding LCG, she spent eight years leading the marketing and community strategy for the George Lucas Educational Foundation, where she grew Edutopia’s social media presence exponentially to reach over 20 million education change-makers every month.

Adina Sullivan-Marlow, Guest

Certification Instructor. In: 2016

About All Things Marketing and Education

What if marketing was judged solely by the level of value it brings to its audience? Welcome to All Things Marketing and Education, a podcast that lives at the intersection of marketing and, you guessed it, education. Each week, Elana Leoni, CEO of Leoni Consulting Group, highlights innovative social media marketing, community-building, and content marketing strategies that can significantly increase brand awareness, engagement, and revenue.

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