Guiding Principles in EdTech: A Conversation with Kristina Ishmael

Elana Leoni:

Welcome everyone to our podcast, All Things Marketing and Education. I'm Elana Leoni, and I've devoted my entire career to helping education brands build their brand awareness, engagement and ultimately grow their lead. Every week my guests who range from educators to EdTech entrepreneurs to experts in the field, we'll all share tips, strategies and insight in either social media, content marketing and community building. I'm so excited to be your guide to help transform your marketing efforts into something that's truly authentic and consistently provides value for your audience. Enjoy.

Hi, everyone. You are in for such a treat for this episode. I was so lucky to sit down with my friend Kristina Ishmael. Kristina is now an education strategic advisor of her own shop, Ishmael Consulting, but was most recently the deputy director of the Office of EdTech. You might remember Kristina from our last episode where we covered the challenges and priorities of the national EdTech plan, and if you haven't listened to that, that's definitely worth a listen. We go into all of the important things, but in this episode we take a completely different turn. Kristina and I reflected on her unique journey within education and EdTech. I know many of you listening have had unique journeys yourselves, and I hear from some of you that you find hearing about these different career paths and EdTechs so inspiring, and Kristina’s is that and so much more.

Kristina opens up about the one thing that's helped guide her throughout it all, and at the end we get into some super juicy topics such as what EdTech vendors should and should not do when partnering with school districts and what truly excites her the most in EdTech. I know I said Kristina’s last episode was not to be missed, and it's not truly. You need to listen to it. It's all about the national EdTech plan, but this one makes my heart swell with pride that there are awesome human beings in the world like Kristina who throw literally their body, their heart, and their soul into improving education. And we do some soul-searching together even, and I hope that this conversation helps you do some soul-searching of your own. So please enjoy this episode, this EdTech version of what I'm calling the Chicken Soup for the Soul. Enjoy.

Welcome to the show, Kristina. I'm so excited to have you on.

Kristina Ishmael:

I'm so excited to be here.

Elana Leoni:

Well, awesome. Let's start with a little bit of trip of, I know sometimes we get into podcasts, and it's talk about this or this specific topic, but this episode I'd love people just to hear and connect with you as a person because you have a fascinating journey of what it could be like to work in education on all levels. So I'd love to hear from you of just what's your journey to date professionally and personally in education? I know that's a huge bomb, but whatever you want to do within that. There's so many listeners here that sometimes in our mind we say there's a linear path whereas people in education that might are trying to dip their toe in the water out of education and go into EdTech, there's maybe vice versa happening too.

So I want to talk a little bit about your background and where you started and where you are. We're all on the journey.

Kristina Ishmael:

That sounds great. We're all on a journey. It's true. I actually really like to start this story of my profession journey in education in particular by talking about mental health because my first degree is in business and mass communications. I had every intention to go into PR and marketing. When I got to Omaha, Nebraska, I moved from my home state of Arizona at the ripe old age of 21 and went for my first interview. After I was done with my interview, I had a very, very significant panic attack, and it was one of those moments where I was, "But I've been in school for the past four years working on this, and this is what I'm supposed to do," and my body viscerally was telling me no.

And it was that day that I went home, and I really spent some time thinking about what I was supposed to be doing. What was the universe telling me at that point? And so I looked into some post-baccalaureate programs and knew that I had always wanted to be a teacher and was like, "Maybe I go do that now." And so that's how I even crossed that bridge into education and started working at a child development center where I was a preschool teacher while I was working on my actual certification and then moved into my first school district, which is Omaha Public Schools in Omaha, Nebraska. A lot of folks think, "Okay, Midwest Omaha is small." It's actually not. Omaha Public Schools is 54,000 students, which is equivalent to the size of Boston Public Schools and San Francisco Unified, and they also recognize 115 world languages.

So we had a lot of multilingual learners, we had a lot of refugees. They have a significant partnership with Lutheran Family Services and Catholic Charities, and so there was a huge EL or whatever acronym raising for the day. It was ESL at that time, it's EL. Now we're hearing multilingual learners. Majority of my students were Spanish speaking and multilingual learners themselves. I taught kindergarten, second grade. I taught in a second grade dual language Spanish classroom for a year, all content in Spanish and then was back into a regular second grade full EL inclusion classroom. Then I moved school districts and was an ELL teacher kindergarten through sixth grade. I was working on a second master's at that point in EdTech. I had started to do that statewide scan of, "What do people have access to as far as professional learning for EdTech?"

I was using it in my own classroom. I had written my own DonorsChoose, putting iPod Touches in the hands of my multilingual learners and seeing what it did for academics but also for their language acquisition. And so really wanted to look at that state perspective, making sure that others had access to things, knowing that Nebraska is a relatively rural state. Was I in the minority over here in a highly populated area in Omaha and Lincoln where I had access to things but others didn't? And while I was doing that, there was a state EdTech position that opened as the digital learning specialist. So I applied for it and then moved to the state level, so not where I thought I would be. I was classroom teacher early childhood forever and ever, and then found myself at the state level and working with all 310,000 students and the 40,000 plus teachers. Half the job was internal and working with state folks that had no idea what EdTech was.

resources, et cetera. Then in: 2016

But it really changed my life. It truly changed my life. Moving to that national perspective. I worked on a project all around open educational resources for a full year, so I bridged administrations. The Hewlett Foundation, who had funded that project, believed in the work that I was doing, and so they offered to continue funding my work, in particular on OER over at New America, which is a bank tank, an action tank as they like to call it. And I did. I got to do things that were very different for New America, which had traditionally focused on policy analysis as well as research and making all of these recommendations for policy. And I got to go over and play. I got to go and continue to lead professional learning for people across the country and really engage with educators and leaders as they were making these decisions to move away from traditional materials to OER.

o were very keen. In November: 2020

h. Fast forward to October of: 2022

. And so I left at the end of: 2023

Elana Leoni:

Thank you for sharing that journey. It's so inspiring on so many levels. I think I'll just point out on a funny level to start is when you saw me that day at Skywalker. I will never let down when Joseph wanted to see Skywalker Ranch, and I couldn't let him because the power fees were so strict and you're like, "Do you even know that this man was?" And I'm like, "I know." But Skywalker security is already side-eyeing me. If you know me and when I was at Edutopia, I love doing tours, but I had to abide by the rules, and sometimes it was very embarrassing moments for me.

But you also said in the journey that, and I know it's a through point through what helped guide your decisions and your gut and your intuition, and that's really important for me, and I have a similar story. You know when you rationalize things so much in your career, and your mind wants you to do this, but then your body says, stop with that? And it physically will stop you. And what I heard is that your path to business was like, "Stop silly, just stop.

Yes. And then I did it again, right? Where you're like, "No, you haven't been taking care of me and this is not going to help you in the long run to be who you need to be in this journey." And that is so powerful. All of you educators that are listening sometimes too, and people in EdTech that come in to make a difference in education, always have that gut check with yourself.

When I think of people that have modeled that, even though you will say and reflect back that you learned the hard way, we have to learn the hard way to be able to say, "How can we respect what our body is telling us?" I always get on myself. Sometimes it doesn't work out that way, and we just need to give ourself grace.

Absolutely. The other thing I loved is that when you got into the Office of EdTech and you had that title, you owned your own lane. Sometimes we're put in positions where here's this title, but, "Hey, here's what I do. I'm a practitioner." But it's not like you're saying, "Oh, that's a bad thing or that's less than," and for you educators that are coming into EdTech or thinking about it, the skill sets you have are different. Sometimes they are very transferable, but they are very unique and own it. And you did that. You weren't like, "Hey, I am this technology coder, but I am a practitioner, and here's why it matters." And I just wanted to underscore that for everyone listening.

Kristina Ishmael:

Yes, I talked a lot about that, especially I think since quarantine has ended thinking about teachers that are in complete burnout and they're like, "I've got to look at something different. I've got to take care of myself." And they're starting to think about transitioning into something else. And I said, teachers have the most incredible transferable skills. They just do. I spent a lot of my time as a deputy director dealing with bureaucracy, shocker. Y'all have dealt with bureaucracy as well as a teacher in a cool district, in any institution, being able to make multiple decisions on a daily basis. Yep, you're going to need all of these things no matter what you're doing. And so these are definitely transferable skills. And being a practitioner will lend itself to so many different avenues.

Elana Leoni:

Yes, hear, hear. I think I'll put in the episode in the show notes, we talked to a former program manager at Meta who came in directly from the classroom. We also talked to Serena Robinett who came from Soundtrap for Education and came directly from the classroom. So I'll bring that perspective in too.

Kristina Ishmael:

That's great.

Elana Leoni:

During your journey, there was one moment where you were like, "I want to apply for the state position." What gave you that confidence? Because sometimes we need that little to say, those skills are transferable and, yes, I'm going to do it even in my mind I don't think I'm going to get it. What did it take to get you there?

Kristina Ishmael:

I think I've always just been open to failure, and so I was like, "If I don't get it, I don't get it." And then I stayed doing the things that I still loved to do, but I'm thinking it was also because of the research that I was doing and making sure that my colleagues across the entire state had access to the type of professional learning that I was hoping for. I saw that there was a need, and I wanted to help meet that need, and so I was willing to go ahead and apply for it. A dear friend of mine, Tricia Parker, was the ELA director, the English Language Arts director for the state, and she was the one that had sent it to me and was like, "I think you should apply for this."

option?" And this was back in: 2012

And that, it's when people speak those words into you that you really start to own them, and it helps defeat that imposter syndrome, which I cite on a daily basis.

Elana Leoni:

And that's a really great point too is, one, you said just do it. What's the worst that could happen? And maybe we're in a state in our lives that we're expecting failure, and that's fine, but if you don't try... And then you also said, "Hey, once I got there, I had positive reinforcement. I had somebody who maybe pointed out things that I'm not willing to see yet in myself." I personally work on that on a daily basis. I'm like, "Gosh, if I could just see myself the way others see me, you know?"

Elana Leoni:

, "Hey, you're the [inaudible: 00:17:52

Kristina Ishmael:

I do want to say I also fully recognized my privilege in this moment. I am a white woman. At the time I was married, so there was a second income. Not everyone has the privilege of being able to put themselves out there. And so I do want to fully recognize that. And sometimes it may not be possible for you to do that, and I don't want to discourage anyone from trying by any means, but I'm happy to talk to anyone that wants to talk that through because it is hard, and you can't always find the people that are willing to help push you through and cheer lead you on, but I am happy to do that for anyone and everyone.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, I think that's important because even if you're not willing to make a big risk and do these things, sometimes I work with people, and maybe it's more about what are the small little things that you could do. So my friend Lily Jones, for example, she has a whole community around how to empower educators that are still in the classroom to get some extra income, be curriculum designers. We're not saying you're full-blown going to create your whole big company, we're saying start small and see if you like it, and reflect consistently and work within what you feel comfortable in the beginning doing. And I think that's such a really good point. You can't just sometimes do these big moves, but small actions over time add up just as quickly too.

Kristina Ishmael:

And I will also say some very wise advice shared with me by Kristen Swanson, the founder of EdCamp or one of the founders of EdCamp, that when you get into a position that you think is dreamy or ideal or whatever the case may be, and it ends up not being that case or maybe it might be harming your mental health or whatever the case may be, the difference between most folks is that they will stick it out, and the people that leave sooner and then take care of themselves are better off in the long run.

Did I listen to that most recently? Probably not, but I can think about that and pinpoint certain things. And so even if you do put yourself out there and try something different and you realize this isn't the right fit for me, there are still other opportunities for you.

Elana Leoni:

For context on who Kristen is and her path, I think it's fascinating because she came from an educator background, a researcher, PhD author, and then jumped into the for-profit world and to stack, and now Okta, right? She's an Okta. Talk about different vertical and lateral moves that are significant and really owning what you can bring to the table and know that the sky... We limit ourselves so much. And I love surfacing up stories like yourself because sometimes life is a little bit about timing, luck, and a little bit of privilege, but you also have to have some self-belief. You have to take some risks too. All right, so much we can talk about you. I think I would learn volumes. And what I love about people with their background is, one, people don't get to talk about it as much, and it gives me so much context of who you are and the passion you bring and then your journey going forward.

s the golden quest [inaudible: 00:22:22

Kristina Ishmael:

Right, right. I'm an elder millennial, or, as some folks like to say, the Oregon Trail generation because there's a couple of years right there where I grew up without the internet. By the time I was in high school, we had AOL. Yes. And then from there, obviously the technology has improved and proliferated, I should say. And so I think that that's an important contextual piece for even myself. I was always willing to try things. In high school, I quite honestly learned how to keyboard because I was on AOL instant messenger, and you had to keep up with the conversations. I didn't take a keyboarding class.

So I think it's also important to, again, know those types of things. I think my favorite use of EdTech is putting voice and choice in the hands of learners. And so whether it was in my early childhood classroom when I wrote my first DonorsChoose project and I got iPod touches so that we could do our center's early childhood, we were all about the station rotation and blended learning model from the very beginning. And so students were using that for a variety of purposes for reading our literacy block versus our numeracy block, our math block, seeing how they could use that for fluency and accuracy in their reading. And, again, those are the tools that helped them along the way. And so I think of that, again, that active use of technology that the national EdTech plan calls out, how can we leverage them as the tools?

Yes, there are plenty of tools out there for remediation for tutoring and helping kids get back up to certain grade-level expectations. But when I see inquiry-based or project-based instructional practices in a classroom and then the technology used to support that, that's where I get really excited because that's real learning, and it's not just going through the textbook or going through the scope and sequence, it's really putting the learning in the hands of the learners themselves and being that guide on the side. Or as Dean Tureski once said, and I love it so much, "It's the meddler in the middle." And so, how do you get to help kids in their learning journeys? And then which tools are you going to bring in along the way? Sometimes it's paper and pencil, sometimes it's paint, sometimes it's an iPad, and it just varies. So being able to see that from that classroom perspective and then to zoom out to the state perspective and you see little pockets of things happening as well.

I'll tell you that rural schools, small rural schools, are some of the most innovative schools because they are nimble and they are flexible, and they can try things and quickly iterate and then see if it's going to work or not. And then they make changes. And so that's not always something that we talk about in general. But I will always advocate for my rural schools because I worked with so many of them. When we talk about equity, we often think of our students of color and more urban-centered or even suburban, but rural definitely needs to be a part of that, as well as our title lands, for that matter. And so being able to see the technology as a tool to help them actually learn the traditional 21st Century skills, the collaboration, the communication, the creative thinking or the creativity and the critical thinking, and then throw in the problem solving as well. I think if your EdTech tool can support any of that, it is of value.

Elana Leoni:

Hear, hear. A recent podcast I had with Thor who is the CEO over at Clarity Innovation, so their team designs EdTech products and partners with EdTech to do that. And I was thinking he would be all about, all right, you got to have this bell and whistle. He talked about them last time. He was like, "Whoa, hold on. Let's talk about the pedagogy first." How does this integrate in? How does this complement what you're doing? And that is a complete shift. So if you are in EdTech listening, know that it's not just about your product, You're working within, how does this support innovative practices that you've mentioned like UDL, like PBL? How does it work? So think of that first and then use EdTech as an efficient way and almost look at the TPACK model or the SAMR model, and we could put links to what those are in the show notes. But how does it integrate in a thoughtful way? And I love how you said that.

Kristina Ishmael:

Well, still, again, it's: 2024

And how do we shift some thinking, what are the supports that need to be put in place for that? And it's not just the substitution, it's really not. And if you're thinking of simply helping digitize a traditional instructional practice, you need to think bigger than that. And so, how are we actually engaging this generation of learners in different ways? I mean, the stories that I'm hearing from teachers right now, it's wild. You had mentioned SEL already. We need to be looking at that whole child because we are in a very unique position as educators to be really thinking about the learner in every part of the learner.

Elana Leoni:

There's a lot to unpack there. And it was funny enough, one of the questions I was like, "Maybe I should ask her what keeps her up at night," but that's such an intense question, and you answered it anyways. And it might have evolved slightly because we don't want to just shelve what we learned in the pandemic. And we have certainly now nuances on top of that. But there are a lot of things that keep us all up in EdTech, and it's hard to choose. But I'm glad that you answered that without me asking you.

All right, so I feel like EdTech is in a hard spot always. They are tirelessly trying to figure out, "How do I align with district and school needs?" We have long buying cycles, we want to make sure that we're actually making an impact in the industry. You've been in the schools itself as a teacher implementing technology, you've been on the state level really trying to figure out how technology plays a role and now on a national level. What have you seen work from, I'm going to call our EdTech folks professionals.

Kristina Ishmael:

Vendor.

Elana Leoni:

A vendor perspective, those types of companies that come in and just get it and they're able to really jump in and make a difference. You want to talk a little bit about characteristics on what they do?

Kristina Ishmael:

Yeah, the very first thing that comes to mind is that they have engaged educators from the beginning. And we have many EdTech folks that may come from tech specifically that remember a problem in their K-12 experience and they say, "I think that's still happening." And then they go right into the solution for that, and then they create their tool, and they have not engaged educators in the process. There is a likelihood that that is no longer a problem or there are other solutions that are already in place that are working. And so when we think about EdTech having had the conversations, is this actually a problem in K-12 today? That's a great place to start.

And then engaging the educators that are potentially going to help pilot or try things out in the classroom and give you feedback, we also need to compensate them for doing so. I know that this is a district-by-district thing, especially with different unions and all of that, but we cannot expect free labor. And if you have teachers that are taking time to use your tool, use your product, especially with students, hopefully, that we are aligned in student data privacy, all of those considerations, but that is giving you really explicit feedback, they deserve to be compensated for that. And so that would be another thing that I would strongly suggest.

And then I go back into the evidence based decision making. If you are an EdTech tool or an EdTech provider and you have not looked at your theory of change and helping develop a logic model and saying, "We really believe that if we put this tool in a classroom, we will see X growth or increase or whatever the case may be," put that in writing, put it in a logic model. You don't know what that is, Google logic model. There are plenty out there, and it's an if/then statement, and then what are the outcomes and the outputs that you want to see? Because when you can go and lead the conversation with a district saying, "We've worked with educators to co-design this," and then we've really listened to their feedback to help shape the product, and now we're going to come in and say, "We've actually put this in some classrooms and here's the evidence that we have to show," you're going to be 10 steps ahead of other EdTech companies.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, great advice. And we'll throw some resources in the show notes around logic models and theories have changed because we don't just jump into this industry because we think we can make a difference. You should come into it strategically saying, "Here's exactly how, here's what we're trying to do and here's how we're going to measure it," even if it's a dotted line. One of the inputs you are doing as a company to get these direct outputs and then maybe societal outputs of the system as a whole will measure success. And that's important because there's a lot of choices in EdTech. We're feeling like there's a bloat. People have signed on to too many EdTech products. What's truly going to differentiate you in the midst of this cutting when we see this fiscal cliff coming ahead with ESSER funding, shutting down all of the appropriated funding. So that's a really great point.

Yep. Let's go on the flip side. You've talked a lot about best practices on what EdTech should do and you've seen done successfully in our industry. What are some things of, please, for the love of God, don't do these things?

Kristina Ishmael:

Oh gosh, where do we start? That's a really good question. I think the way that I actually answered this last one was the first thing that comes to mind is everyone, for the most part, of course, there are always exceptions, everyone has had a K-12 experience. And so that is their frame of reference, that is their schema that they bring to all of these conversations. It does not matter if they graduated five years ago or 40 years ago. Everyone had a K-12 experience. And so what's really important to note is that, yes, the industrial model is still very common in schools, but that's not 100% saturation across the entire public school system. Or if you want to throw in private parochial charter even, it's important to, I think, go and actually look and visit schools. I think we also see that as far as EdTech solutions coming in saying, "Sure, we have your solution, and go do it," but they haven't seen it in practice, or they haven't visited classrooms in which that would actually be used. And with your own eyes, you can see, "Oh, maybe this isn't actually what they need." And so I think that's really the biggest thing.

lked the expo hall at FATC in: 2013

And you have a lot of things that are out there that continue to perpetuate inequities, whether it's through behaviorism and we're going to reward X behavior versus Y behavior. Or we have constructivism, which my favorite, these are the things that I'm interested in and I'm going to construct my knowledge on that, and here's the tool that's going to help me along the way. And so I think knowing the learning theory behind your EdTech is also really helpful in the conversations with districts and with states. If you don't know that information, you might want to look into that because people will ask these questions, and you should be prepared to answer them. And I think the other thing is continuing to just look at the relationship between EdTech and schools as very transactional, and I know that we have thousands of EdTech tools to choose from.

In fact, learn platforms report from the EdTech top 40 last year, I think it was 9,000 EdTech tools. And then, a school district, on average, is using 2,500 EdTech tools with a teacher and a student accessing anywhere between 40 and 45 of those tools on a daily basis or on a regular basis. So that's 9,000 to 2,500 to 40, 42, 43, I think. To funnel that down, where are you going to sit in all of that? I mean, that's a valid question. Where are you going to sit in all of that? And so it's more than a transaction, it's developing that relationship. It's having that co-design opportunity and having the conversations with the practitioners who are actually using it. Will this help inform the newest iteration of your product, and the relationships matter in all of this as well.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, and everything you're saying, I'm like, "Yes," and we can talk about this for hours. And, yes, did you think about this? And I'm like, "All right, calm down, Elana, because she's saying nuggets of wisdom here," right? Seriously, I think that sometimes we say things in EdTech that you may have heard before, but now you're hearing from somebody with such a deep background, from a local perspective on the ground, from a state perspective, from a national perspective, really saying, "Here's how you should approach it thoughtfully and with the most impact in mind," because that's why we're all here. So I appreciate your candid answers for my bullet questions to you of what shouldn't they do. I had you in the hot seat here.

Kristina Ishmael:

That's good.

Elana Leoni:

Thank you so much, Kristina, for sharing your thoughts, your background, your journey. I know it will inspire so many people listening today, and thank you for the insight for all of you EdTech folks that are listening, I hope it provided you some clarity and a little bit of a change. Sometimes I challenge you all to think about what's one thing you'll do differently as a result of this episode. So thank you, Christina, for sharing your time and your wisdom with all of us. I really appreciate it.

Kristina Ishmael:

Thank you, Elana. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Elana Leoni:

All right, take care. Thanks again for listening to All Things Marketing and Education. If you like what you heard and want to dive deeper, you can find more episodes at leoniconsultinggroup.com/podcast. You can also continue the conversation with us on Twitter, at Leoni Group or on LinkedIn. And don't forget, if you enjoyed today's show, make sure to subscribe to our podcast and leave a review. We're so appreciative of every single subscriber and review we get, and it helps us reach even more people that need help. So we'll see you next time on All Things Marketing and Education. Take care.