Dr. Jeff Dillon serves as the Superintendent for the Wilder School District in Wilder Idaho. In 2013, Dr. Dillon initiated a technology plan, in partnership with the school board, to re-engineer teaching and learning in the high poverty, rural school district. The transformation began with a successful partnership with the Apple ConnectED team and has propelled the school district into a nationally recognized as an innovative student-centered learning environment where student voice and choice is valued and the right of each student is to have a personalized learning plan that drives their competency-based learning pathway.
Dr. Michael Conner
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening and welcome to the eighth episode of Voices for Excellence. How are you? I am your host, Dr. Michael Conner, CEO and Founder of the Agile Evolutionary Group. And today’s guest has been a long time friend of mine for, I would say, at least 6 to 8 years. You know, I know specifically my work when I was the chief academic officer in Norwalk, we became really close national colleagues when I became superintendent. And now as I’m transitioning into this role, just looking at it from a really high level sense of admiration. And let me give you just a quick story, Dr. Jeff Dillon, who is considered and really is, and this is both subjectively and objectively stating that, he is the– one of the most innovative superintendents in the country. And I want to give you context behind that. So I remember it was at a conference and we were talking about, you know, who are the superintendents across the country to follow. And I remember, I was a chief academic officer and Dr. Bill Daggett, a mutual friend and mentor of Dr. Dillon and I said the most innovative school district in the country is in Idaho. So, yes, I am not going to lie. My stereotype, you know, came up about Idaho. And I’m like– I stop and I said, how could the most innovative district in the country be Idaho when it’s really only servicing one demographic. Now, again, this was outside stereotypical perception data. So I said, okay, you know, I kept it to myself because as a black superintendent, I wanted to challenge that, where are we truly looking at equity variables? You know, when we talk about, you know, the most innovative district in the country, I would expect, you know, one would say that you would see that in our urban districts because of the experimentation that goes on and the continuous looking for innovation, for equity. So I remember a year later, no two years later, Dr. Jeff Dillon was going to be at the same conference as me. And I’m like, okay, I get to ask him this question. Two years people. I waited. I get into the room and Dr. Dillon is speaking and I’m in the front. Everybody knows how I am, Jeff. I have my pen ready and Dr. Dillon opens up his speech and said, “Let me clarify something to everybody. While the school district is in Wilder, Idaho, it’s not all white.” I said, okay, that– he won me over when he said that. And when he started to unwrap the demographics of his district, and he’ll be able to elaborate more, it made me feel that much more shameful and then I went up to him, gave him a hug, and I said, “Listen, I am sorry, because there were questions that I was about ready to lambaste you with and you just answered them in the first 20 seconds of your speech.” So it is with absolute honor to have Dr. Jeff Dillon, the proud Superintendent of Wilder School District 133 in Wilder, Idaho. Dr. Dillon, how are you my friend?
Dr. Jeff Dillon
Doing great. Dr. Conner, thank you for the opportunity to join you this afternoon, this morning or this evening, wherever you’re listening from. But what an opportunity and the partnership we’ve had for several years of this, this innovative mindset that we share about serving all students in all capacities. And this push for equity for all students. And I appreciate the friendship. I do.
Dr. Michael Conner
Absolutely and Jeff, the friendship, the… I’ve been fond of your work. Actually elements of when I was a superintendent with my strategic operating plans mirrored a lot of your work, specifically my second SOP that was developed that was more aligned to that reverse engineering. A lot of those concepts around competency based models that incorporates agency of the student and moving away from the standardization of time really came from your work. So I want to truly say thank you for providing just not just a visual model of what it looks like, but also how you actually did the intricacies, the complexities of the finite work to get there. And it was really, really helpful as I constructed my district. So I truly appreciate that. But I want to now, just like you clarified… you clarified my stereotype, please for my listeners, can you just end, eradicate the misnomer about Wilder, Idaho, right before we even get into the interview.
Dr. Jeff Dillon
Let’s be– we are a rural community. We’re only 45 minutes from Boise, Idaho. But we are a high poverty rate community. 100% of our students that come to school here get free breakfast and free lunch. We range between 70 to 95% of our kids, depending on some of the situation with our community– our Hispanic students range from 65 to 90%. A huge data point that has driven a lot of our work is around our mobility of our students, and it’s around poverty, it’s around migrant work, it’s about a community that has a majority of homes being rental homes. We will range anywhere from 25 to 40% mobility from from a fall to fall snapshot of students. So it is not a place where you have these multigenerational families that have been here for a long time and we have a few of those, but they are are a small few.
Dr. Michael Conner
And Dr. Dillon, one thing that I admire about you is that you will hear a lot of people talk broadly about the demographic data, the demographic data points that you just listed, especially some of the economic and external variables that when you take and consider– a lot of executive leaders do not take that into consideration with the design, the design of how they have to basically flip a model to be able to accommodate to those specific demographic and economic needs or that are actually there that play a role into coming to your district. And that’s why when we get into later into the interview or to the podcast is that is just fascinating that you actually designed in accordance to the needs and the B C stage of education like 12 years ago. That’s like, that’s like me watching Back to the Future in 1985 as like hey McFly. I mean that. Seriously, I mean, we laugh about it, but that is pretty much the correlation of how you designed the district 15, 16, 17 years ago. You had this vertical competency based model, where now five or six years ago, people are saying, yeah, yeah, we’ve got a good competency base model, but you’ve been doing that ten years before that was part of the academic vernacular. So that’s why I admire you so much, Jeff, with the work that you did.
Dr. Jeff Dillon
Yeah, in our iterations through the years, it’s interesting how little value we’ve placed on the competency based innovation that was a foundation. But our iterations in our changes that we’ve made to support that individual student is so much broader than just a competency base that helped us launch this, but it took us in many, many different directions to make sure we we’re meeting the needs of every single student.
Dr. Michael Conner
This just fascinating, Dr. Dillon, and I can’t wait just to get down into the podcast, but I can say this man, you are one bad man. So and when we talk about Back to the Future, I forgot who it was, Michael J. Fox. It was the scientist, right? What was his name, come on you gotta help me.
Dr. Jeff Dillon
Emmett Brown.
Dr. Michael Conner
Yes, yes, yes. You are him, right? That was you in Back to the Future because you just saw you saw the vision, right? But you’re just well respected just in a variety of different national circles, regarded in a variety of different aspiring circles where they come in and seek advice and strategies. But when they see you, Dr. Dillon, what is your equity song that defines you? When people, when your teachers, when your principals, your board members, when they see Dr. Jeff Dillon walk in a room, what is that equity song that comes to mind?
Dr. Jeff Dillon
You know, I think the equity song, I mean, it’ll be different than probably any other song you’ve heard. And I’ll explain to you the song that comes to my mind when I talk about this equity walk we’ve made in this venture. It goes back to the sunny school days when I was a kid. Jesus Loves Me, and it was –and this song is about the whole, not about the part, but it’s about the individual, about me. Loves me. And the system needs to love every child. And I don’t… the system does not do that. It wasn’t created to do that in any capacity. And so that is the song that resonated with me when I read the question, that personalization of everything that we can do for that student is personalized because that’s the care that we put into every single student and that comes before the system.
Dr. Michael Conner
You know, when you bring up that equity song and Jesus loves me, right? My grandmother– and this is taking us back and I didn’t even think this was going to bring it back, but my grandmother and my mother used to sing this song to me. I used to hear that song in church. “I know why, that Jesus…” right? I mean, we not going to start that here on Voices for Excellence. But yes. And when you think about that. And have that to the level of what you’re saying, the theme around personalization that Jesus loves everybody individually. And when that song or that song describes you, they’re like, yup. Dr. Dillon cares for every single kid on an individual and personalized manner. You took that your heart, your purpose, your why, and you started to analyze the demographic data and say, you know what? If Jesus loves everybody individually, and that is my equity stance and song, now I’m going to design a system where Dr. Dillon loves every single student, right? So, I mean, I just need an amen from the congregation.
Dr. Jeff Dillon
And the system has to love the students.
Dr. Michael Conner
Amen.
Dr. Jeff Dillon
Because we can do that and say that individually, right? But to make sure that you as the leader, forces the system to treat the students that same way. You know how you felt right when your grandma sang that song.
Dr. Michael Conner
Absolutely.
Dr. Jeff Dillon
And how very focused that love was on you.
Dr. Michael Conner
Absolutely.
Dr. Jeff Dillon
Can we do that as individuals but as a system for every single student?
Dr. Michael Conner
Now, I want to underscore that because, you know, my book, it pretty much puts education in totality. And just pretty much assessing it, I would say, since separate but equal, when that language was defined, then we can go into the legislative Brown v Board of Education still to me, you know, pacified. But now this stage of education that we see. We finally say, hey, you know what, there is a separate but equal out there because guess what? It actually hit the equal. But we’re not going to get there. But the B.C State of education before COVID, before COVID. Jeff, let’s just be honest. You designed a district before it was even thought about in research papers and white papers, and you were the Lone Ranger. I know this for sure. Conversations. I’ve heard third party, I’ve heard first person from you. You were the Lone Ranger when we were talking about– you were talking about eliminating assessments when they were just adopting the No Child Left Behind policy, where there’s that level of rigidity where inequities were built in because of the standardized assessment practices. You got away with that. So this occurred, wow, years ago. But now it must have took years of planning before you even implemented it. It must have had a lot of convincing of board members back then. And we’re talking about 25 years ago, 20 years ago, where boards were still debating why should we have technology in our classrooms. You’re talking about moving away from the grading system. But how did you do that? How did you– how were you thinking AC stage of education in a BC stage model?
Dr. Jeff Dillon
So let me begin by giving a brief synopsis of my history. And surprise, surprise, I was a pastor and youth pastor for 14 years before going into public education teaching. And my first assignment was– so I come from… I had a whole different perspective of students, working with students and empowering students and thinking about students, learning and their individual pathways. And so my first assignment was a seventh grade middle school science class. And we were coming up on the time of year where we were going to let all the students in the humanities class, and I was in a school that was similar to the demographics I’m in now… The students that were in the humanities class, which just happened to be mostly white by the way, those students were able to take on a science project for learning and they were excited. It was fun, they were empowered. But the other six classes that I had that were just the opposite in the demographics, guess what those students were able to receive that quarter of learning. Here’s the book. Turn to page 75. Let’s read this together. Yeah and I sat there and as a first year teacher, I’m going, what are we doing? I watch these kids excited about learning and doing a project and thinking every child should have the same experience. And so guess what? I did my second year. Every student in my class was given the opportunity to do a science project along with all the other students in the humanities class because it was right. It was right. So my mindset in education from the very day I started to today has been equity in looking at the system structures that limit or inhibit the ability for every student to have the same learning opportunities, not just the access but the learning opportunities to move them forward. And so when I moved into this model and we used to massage the model, I really personalized it for my board. You know, where they begin to see how this would impact and benefit for their children. And they were like, wow, I get it now I understand that. And, getting them on the same page and then having conversations with parents. And it was really simple, hey, if I get personalized learning for your child, would you be okay with that? There wasn’t a parent that said no. And then what I found out having conversations with parents, guess what parents or a lot of my parents thought? That we were already personalizing learning for students in education. Oh, I felt horrible. I felt horrible that that’s the mindset of a lot of our parents.
Dr. Michael Conner
And it still exists, Dr. Dillon, it still exists.
Dr. Jeff Dillon
I know, I know. So really that was kind of that push and we took a different pathway. We don’t have a huge staff. I mean we don’t have thousands of students. We had to make a very quick shift because we couldn’t bear… we couldn’t stay in this middle very long because I’m going to tell you, Michael, from the research you’ve done before COVID, during COVID, after COVID, I’m going to tell you what we learned this time. We’re going to lose that in AC time because the traditional model of education is so powerful. It will suck those organization systems back into the BC stage.
Dr. Michael Conner
I just want to just touch upon what you stated and highlight it. And then also, I, I would infer how arduous it was for you in the BC stage of education that has instruction on operational systems of the Jeffersonian model. And I’m going to say this eloquently because people used to get on me when I say this, and they’re like can’t you make it more simplistic? But batched industrialization. And that’s that era of that misconception of parents would think that they’re getting a personalized learning model for their kids. But in reality it just addresses the whole for Eurocentric students. But why don’t you– But one thing I want to just highlight. And I just want you to talk about this because it’s so relevant for new superintendents or even superintendents that are going back really utilizing the saying “using the source of the crowd.” Or, you know, the collective knowledge of the crowd, which is your most important customers. But how did you define personalized learning in the BC stage of education? Because I still hear people use the definition of personalized learning and we’re in the first year of the AC stage of education, first typical year since ‘18-’19, and we still can’t define personalized learning even when we went through the asynchronous and synchronous cycles of a new business model when we were in COVID. How did you define that? How did you define personalized learning in the BC stage of Education, and we can’t even define it correctly right now?
Dr. Michael Conner
How did you define personalized learning in the BC stage of Education, and we can’t even define it correctly right now?
Dr. Jeff Dillon
It was a lot of of sitting around with my staff. And really collaborating about the individual student. Not about groups of students, not about our whole class, but the individual student. And when you talk about here is student A and if we personalize learning for student A what system structures are in place now that would limit that student from being supported with a personalized model or tools, instruction and etc. for making progress. So so we had– and it’s amazing we don’t have to look at 30 kids, 40 kids in a classroom, 25 kids–We can look one student and you start with one student and create a model for that one student. And then… so that’s for two students in there. Would the same model work for two students, would the same model work for three students? And so that’s that’s really how we had to boil it down to one student by one student by one student.
Dr. Michael Conner
What I love about that, Dr. Dillon, is you just described a much simpler way of building a prototype. And the prototype that we’re about to move into is that competence driven model, moving away from traditional standardization to i.e. Time Carnegie Unit to now students moving through demonstration of skills through this pathway using colors, you’ll be able to articulate it, you know, in a much more clear, lucid manner. But when you say one student, two students, three students, building an individual model and incrementally growing. I look at my book moving from micro innovation to serial disruption. You were building those micro pieces for a serial disruption. The architectural piece, because you were building those micro innovative components and now you’re looking at them in a interrelated manner, you started to change the architecture, the infrastructure of the education system. So I just want to just now just want to stop there right at the architectural level, because you started to talk about it loosely, but let’s get deeper into it. You started looking at eliminating grade structures, you started now looking at personalizing 1 to 1 pedagogy, 1 to 1 instruction, and it really was that. You started to move to competency driven exercises where there were project based, problem based activities. How did you now make that so adaptive? How did you start designing for that? If I’m a superintendent or even a chief academic officer that wants to create flexible systems and structures like that, where do I start?
Dr. Jeff Dillon
You know, that’s a great question. You have to start with your why. You do because you’re going to get beat up. You’re going to get people that will call you all kinds of names. What horrible, horrible things you’re doing for kids. But your why can’t change. Your why can’t change who you are, what you do, why you do it and why you’re in this business. You know, you have an expectation and I know you, Dr. Conner. You had an expectation and when, you know, when the organization didn’t have the same expectation you had. That’s hard. This is hard stuff.
Dr. Michael Conner
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Jeff Dillon
It’s hard stuff. And I’ve been blessed to have a team that has… we’ve been able to develop over the course of time a strong why and this is crucial because we found out how deep our why went on a couple of different state reviews that came in and accreditation reviews that came in. When you meet with students groups and parent groups and teacher groups, administrative groups, boards, you will find the same narrative for our why in every single group, every stakeholder group. It’s consistent across the board, and that’s when they came out very glaring in all of our reports was that we’re on the same page and the page is centered around your why. It’s about every child and you’re going to make it happen no matter what. And so I think that was– it’s the why that really has to be in place before you can begin to take those iterative steps and your team… people buy into the leader and then the vision. John Maxwell in one of his books, I read that and it has resonated with me year after year after year, and I try to share that with all leaders. You can lead with that why, but people have to be able to buy into your leadership and believe in you as the leader and they’re going to get behind you and follow you no matter where that goes. So they’re going to believe in that. So those are two of the things that have to be in place before you begin to take those micro steps and we take the micro steps, created by your why and your team synergizes around that. You have to create your own pathway for your own organization.
Dr. Michael Conner
And you– I like to always say on the Voices for Excellence podcast series, that is an oldie but goodie. That still keeps coming up – Maxwell. I appreciate that. And now, Dr. Dillon, I want to just touch base with you on–
Dr. Jeff Dillon
Just in case you want to know what the book is. It’s right here. I keep it close to my desk.
Dr. Michael Conner
There you go. Dr. Dillon, you’re always referencing some research, some book, but now I want to go deeper into what you’re researching now. And I don’t know if I’m supposed to bring this up or not, but please talk very high level because I will never forget a conversation that you and I had roughly about this is… No, this is, yeah, January. So this is probably November. And you were talking about and this is why I still admire you so much. Always will, always have and always will, is that the model that you have now is, or will be, I would say this, a great– it would be great now for the AC stage of education, because that’s what we were actually trying to do. But the conversation that we had a month ago, I don’t know if you recall, we we were talking about the, I like to say, and this is using Michael Tuschman’s work, exploitation, exploration of the existing business model. And you started to talk about Wilder 2.0. I called it Wilder 2.0. That’s how I was able to conceptualize it. And when we were talking about this, I’m like, man, we’ll be lucky if we get 10, 20% of our education models to where you’re at right now, let alone because of the draconian slides that we’ve experienced in education. How do we get to that Wilder 2.0 that we were we were discussing? Just very broadly. Without going too deep and I know that you have your team going through the work, you collected stakeholder engagement, group data and all that, just very high level because that is exactly what the emergent model in my book, Intentional, Bold, & Unapologetic calls for, that type of model that you’re building in Wilder. Can you just talk about it very broadly and abstract?
Dr. Jeff Dillon
Yeah, so hang on, because it’s actually probably not 2.0, it’s probably about 20.256 because we, we’re on a journey. We’re not trying to get to a destination. That’s our model. We know that the world of artificial intelligence is really taking over all the redundant, I can’t spit that word out, if we can write algorithm for it… Artificial intelligence or computers taking over operating that pathway. We know that artificial intelligence platforms are here and they’re going to stay. We began to go look at our students and our staff and our system and say, well, if we’re to put artificial intelligence, a platform in the hands of our kids, how would that change our pedagogy? How would that change the mindset of the classroom and the environment of the classroom and the direction the students are taking? So we we provided an open AI platform to a group of students in a middle school and a group students at high school, and literally said go cheat, go cheat. Teach us what we don’t know. Use this as much and as often as you can and do that for two months. Every class, I don’t care what it is and then present to myself and the school board what you learn. And actually, Tuesday night we had two students present to the board their personal findings of the value of an AI platform. It’s going to change how we do business in the future. We watched a young man in front of us Tuesday night who has struggled with reading his whole life. He’s a freshman. He struggles speaking and speaking in front of a bunch of people. He struggles with speech and different things. And and he took this AI platform and embraced it. Ge’s become a dynamic writer and a dynamic researcher.
Dr. Michael Conner
Amazing.
Dr. Jeff Dillon
He might not be a great writer. He’s a great writer now, but what’s happened is that writing was– that was the roadblock. If I can remove it, I don’t care if he uses AI to write. Who cares? Look what else came with that.
Dr. Michael Conner
Dr. Dillon, that’s what I like. Who cares? And that’s what we need more of in education. But what really captivates me. And as you were providing your answer and really just highlighting around the board or the you were not giving the report of the AI platform or AI integration into your model, your testing. Pretty much it’s a really good strategic design thinking strategy of experimentation that you’re doing around this platform. But you’re getting the data, the information from the students, the end user, the customer, the most important customer, which sometimes we fail to negate. So not only are you really bringing in that level of equity, not only are you bringing in that level of experimentation, but what I’m really, really, really happy about is that you basically just said it. The 56 delta skills that we know about 2030 from the McKinsey report. And it allies the four domains where you are addressing two of those critical domains that are needed in the stage of education. So that is very forward thinking but it’s also equity driven. So we have a surface level definition of what your equity stance and your definition of equity is. But Dr. Dillon, let’s just call it out. What is your definition of equity? Because I’m going to start getting into assessment practices, but I want to build the prerequisite before we actually get into how you actually demonstrate equity through assessment practices. So going back to the outset, what is your definition?
Dr. Jeff Dillon
Well, my definition of — actually part of one of the questions that we’ve talked about and will talk about, I think, in the future here, is that all means all. So we have to be honest with ourselves and look at our system structures that we are– most educators are comfortable with the structure. That’s why we keep pushing this product down the road. It was easy for us. We understand it, we’re knowledgeable about it, and so we keep driving it. But the system… I’ve talked with you multiple times about this. The system was never created for equity. And if we keep trying to force equitable tools into an inequitable system, we’re going to get inequity. You’re never going to get to equity if you keep using some of the same structures you’re using. You know– What’s that?
Dr. Michael Conner
I just want to interject because you, and this is where I think the level of vulnerability and I usually do this at least once every episode, I got to– I apologize for interjecting then, but I want people to understand that this is leadership and these are the tidbits that nobody would know this about you. So that’s why I want to highlight it. Dr. Jeff Dillon has called me numerous of times and would and would have very uncomfortable conversations to the normal white educator in our sector. I might just be honest with you, because there’s only two educators, white educators, that have really continuously asked me really hard equity questions from the Black Lens, Dr. Jeff Dillon and Dr. Susan Enfield. Those are only two. Susan will call me anytime and ask me questions that I’m like, wow, you know. I’m glad that these questions are being asked. And Dr. Dillon would call me on a regular basis and ask me these hard questions that I know are hard for our partners in this equity journey. So, I mean, nobody would know that, Jeff, unless they actually just talked to you and I. But I want to just bring that out there to show the level of vulnerability and growth mindset with regard to this very, very difficult issue that we face within the ecosystem. So I apologize for interjecting, but I had to highlight you for that.
Dr. Jeff Dillon
No problem. I appreciate that because it’s a heartbeat of mine that, you know, we call ourselves equitable leaders and that I’ll look at the systems that they provide for students and I’ll think that’s not an equitable opportunity. And we do get caught up on the nuances of what we look for in equity today. And what about the black and brown students that we kind of skipped over… that group. And now we’re talking about a different group, which is disappointing. Maybe it will provide more of a lens to what we were doing inappropriately for all students that needed equity. I hope we will get to that point, but we have some horrible structures in place around the United States that really don’t care what you do. There is a structure that’s inequitable. And here’s an example. And this is one of the drivers for us. If I have a student that’s been traveling with their family, working from Texas and in New York, and then coming to Idaho to help with the hop harvest in the in the fall. The student’s going to pop into school and they’re going to be two years behind. But how can it be equitable if I put a student that is a fifth grade age student is learning maybe a third grade age reading level, third grade reading level. And I put them in a fifth grade class with fifth grade content and say, learn this. And the kids like, I can’t. How is that equitable? The student doesn’t need fifth grade content. The student needs third grade content. Now, if I pull the student out and label the student and then move them down the hallway, now it’s inequitable. Because I’m labeling kids. Why?
Dr. Michael Conner
You’re getting into history. You’re getting into history.
Dr. Jeff Dillon
I don’t apologize. I’m going to and I see it the same way no matter where I’m at. I think we have some work to do in education.
Dr. Michael Conner
That’s, Dr. Dillon, that’s why I love you and, you know, the phone calls that we’ve had. You know, I think the only thing that Dr. Dillon fails to realize sometimes is that he’s on Mountain Time. So when he’s calling me 7:00, 8:00 with a great idea after a board meeting, 9:00, it’s 11:00 over here. But it’s all right. I always will take the call. But Doc, I want to pull out one example, right? And it’s aligned to the Mackenzie study, of course, that you’ve been, you know, unwrapping and those four domains, the DEF that you’ve been familiar with, but you’re assessment practices. Because now they’re like, oh, yeah, you know, they’ve been talking about competency based learning. They’ve been talking about these really high level concepts. But I just want to just pull out one vertical system of how you moved away from traditional practices to this new innovative competency model where assessments are not just underscoring achievement. So how did you group that in your system? Obviously, you talked about the early stages of getting everybody on board around this common definition of personalized learning, 1 to 1 instruction, eliminating the misnomer that families have. But how did you do that now to support that with assessments? What did that look like in Wilder and what does it look like now?
Dr. Jeff Dillon
So assessments from formative assessments and summative assessments. So former staff, since assessments provide us with some tools to help bridge the gap for kids to move forward. Every student in our in our system is truly learning at it. A zone of proximal development in all capacities. That’s where we want to live for that student academically. And we might have… this is the challenge right? But does a third grade student always have to be working at third grade age material if the student is not? Is that a problem? We pat ourselves on the back when when a third grade student is reading a fifth grade level like, that’s awesome. That’s great. But if a student a year behind, it’s like we have to label the student. We’ve got to– all these interventions have to come into place and maybe developmentally our students are not there yet, has nothing to do with what intervention was provided or lack of intervention provided or etc.. Maybe that student’s just on different pathway. Wow. And so we’re okay with that model. We’re okay with okay, let’s make sure we’re not letting the students slide farther back, but let’s continue to work that student forward and we’re all on the same pace moving forward. And really, the only… this is really hard for a lot of people to believe. The only date in our system we care about, the only date in education is graduation. We don’t care if it’s your ninth grade, first semester, second semester. We don’t care if it’s a fifth grade age or it’s starting the year, the first day of school, the last year. We don’t care about any of those dates. We only care how we prepared the student for the date of graduation.
Dr. Michael Conner
We know that when they walk in. When they walk in and then they walk out. When they walk in and when they, oh you. I tell you know, when you think about that. And I had the unique honor, the unique honor, and I say this, when you brought that phrase was that I had the honor to start the education pathway of my son. And I will never… everybody everybody says what is one monumental moment in your education, career and had nothing to do with linear metric outcomes. You and I can boast about that any time, not about any awards. Obviously it’s by the families that we serve. It’s about the students, ensuring that they are prepared for whatever pathway they choose. But one is… this other one is purely selfish is because having that opportunity to start my son educationally, because like you said, when the day they come in, then the day they leave, I was able to start that for the day that he came in and handed him off to somebody else. But obviously that’s what we wanted. And everybody asked me the question and Doc, we talk about it right now, maybe. Maybe I’m going to put the shoes back on. Maybe I will join the club again. But right now I’m having too much fun with this Doc. But last question. Last, last question. But I love that. I love that when they come in and when they come out and different pathways acknowledging that every student is not on the same pathway. But, Doc, three words. Every episode, I have failed to limit each participant or guest. Three words. I mean, we have people now up to three times 33 times 300. They just can’t limit it to three words. And when they say that they are, they don’t.
Dr. Jeff Dillon
I’ve got three words ready. I got three words.
Dr. Michael Conner
Listen, the most innovative superintendent in the country limited to three words, I don’t know, but three words that are on excellence, equity and transforming your learning organization to be culturally relevant because essentially a high, high population of transient students… A lot of those transient students, marginalized student groups, ELL students, Latino and Latina students as well. So you are able to design this model based off of your core principles of who you are and why. But how do we do that? How do we start shaping that in three words, especially with students that are coming from high poverty concentrations?
Dr. Jeff Dillon
ALL means ALL. I said before. And that’s truly– I read mission statements and vision statements of school districts talk about all students. That’s not true. When you say all students, man you better mean all students.
Dr. Michael Conner
Oh, and that’s it, your a rule follower. But you’re not a rule follower in education. Man, I tell you, that’s why Doc, I was just kind of hesitating. And I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait. Is he going to go on? And he just was like, nope, all means all. Folks, a rule follower on the Voices for Excellence podcast. But in the real world, he is not a rule follower. He doesn’t want to reschool. He doesn’t want to reschool, he wants to deschool. So, Dr. Jeff, it is such an honor, my friend, to have you on Voices for Excellence. Happy New Year. Please continue to do the work for kids and it’s obviously evident in your work, so I appreciate you being on the show today.
Dr. Jeff Dillon
Dr. Conner, thank you for our friendship, partnership and the focus that you and I both have for excellence in education for all students. So thank you.
Dr. Michael Conner
Thank you, Dr. Dillon. And on that note from Wilder, Idaho, and yes, Dr. Dillon took me white water rafting and it’s like, I’ll tell you this, too. It was scary for a brotha, not for a er but a b-r-o-t-h-a, a brotha. But, Dr. Dillon, that was something that I will always remember – white water rafting in Idaho. Oh, my friend, thank you. And thank you, everybody, thank you for attending tonight’s show. Onward and upward. Have a great day.
