Tom serves as the Director of Innovation for Future Ready SchoolsⓇ, a Project of All4Ed, located in Washington, D.C. He works alongside the US Congress, the US Senate, the White House, the US Department of Education and state departments of education, corporations, and school districts throughout the country to implement student-centered, personalized learning while helping to lead Future Ready Schools and Digital Learning Day.
Dr. Michael Conner
Welcome. Good morning. Good evening. Good afternoon. And thank you for tuning into Voices For Excellence. I’m your host, Dr Michael Connor Ceo and founder of the Agile Evolutionary Group. And today’s guest has been a longtime personal friend of mine. I’m talking about when I was chief academic Officer, when I was an assistant superintendent. When I was a superintendent, I got the honor to sit on his panels. I got the honor to be on his podcast and he is just an amazing, amazing soul. We were just talking and um you know, he’s going from Kansas to, you know, all over the United States because every he’s in demand because everybody wants to hear his message and I am just so happy to have Tom Murray on Voices for Excellence is such an honor to have him here. Tom Murray is currently the Director of Innovation for future ready schools. But you know, that work that he’s doing there is a project of the alliance um for excellent education. That work is really turning, turning teaching and learning systems, turning teaching and learning structures into futuristic uh teaching, learning organizations where our students are engaged undercovers and underpins what is exactly in the state of education. And also, I don’t know if everybody knows, but Tom Murray, he was my inspiration for my book. I remember Tom, he would personally send me hand messages his book to my house and I will never forget that I still owe you a book, Tom and I’m gonna do the same thing. So Tom, welcome to Voices for Excellence, my friend. How are you, brother.
Thomas Murray
My man, I gotta tell you in that first part of that intro, I’m thinking, um, am I the right guest on? Is he actually talking about me? Is this the guy that he means? Like, man? That’s a pretty good shout out like, wait, is that, am I in demand? Wow, that’s incredible. I appreciate that my brother. What an honor it is. It’s been an honor to, to watch your journey, the incredible work that you’ve led in districts and now that you’re doing nationally. So thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I appreciate you. Respect the work you’re doing tremendously and what an honor it is to be here. So thanks for having me.
Dr. Michael Conner
Oh man, Tom, I tell you, you know, for you just to even say it’s an honor to be on voices for excellence. I really want to stop the recording right now because that’s the mic drop. If Tom Murray says it is an honor to be on My podcast, that’s my job. Everybody but tom brother, it is so good to see you. I can’t wait to see you in person again, but let’s dig right into the questions because again, you know, my audience, right, they use this as an asynchronous function of learning that they can go back anytime that they want. And when I think of Hattie’s work, write direct instruction .
6, right, the effect size of impact on achievement. And when I think of the from andrology, right, adult learning, I look at this as where they can apply that as a method of direct instruction. So Tom, feel free anything that you need to be able to share our audience, I mean, I got to engage with you when you came and you opened up for my district when I was a superintendent and it was one of the most motivational speeches I’ve heard in a while. I mean, when I think of it, right?
I think of you, I think of Joe Di Filippo, I think of um Inky Johnson, you know, those are the individuals but to have you on here. Um Yes, my listeners are going to keep on playing this back. So let’s jump right into it. So—
Thomas Murray
Alright, no pressure, then no pressure with all that, you just try and bring some words of inspiration. That makes sense today. Then there we go, let’s go.
Dr. Michael Conner
Let’s do this. So Tom, this is a fun question, right? And I actually cannot wait to hear what your response is for this, right? But when people hear you too nationally and you are sought after nationally and when I’m sitting in the seat, right, listening to Tom Murray and you actually moved me many of times, right? But when your key noting, speaking nationally or leading a session with district level leaders, with your work for future ready schools, what song comes to mind when they see Mr Tom Murray. Now, Tom Tom, my song right is super bad by James Brown. I love it when people see me walking. I want them to think of instantly James Brown, Super bad. But what is your equity song that describes you as an educator and change agent in the A C stage of education?
Thomas Murray
It’s probably not the best. I’m gonna pull to my way because the first one to say the first thing that came to mind because it makes me want to laugh. I want to say staying alive like that’s the first thing that comes to mind, right? Crazy, crazy out there, right? Like have we seen board meetings and we’ve seen the chaos, right? And so, you know, I say that tongue in cheek just because it’s just, you know, working with so many superintendents, so many principles, just seeing the chaos of our world, you know, and everything that’s been going on. That’s kind of my first one tongue in cheek there. But I would say in all seriousness, I would say, don’t stop believing by Jimmy. I’m huge, huge believer in hope in inspiration and the need to, to recognize like all the things that we do have. You know, Mike, I, I believe that when we get up in the morning, we got to choose our lens each day. Like when I got up this morning, I could choose to see all the negativity in our world, all the chaos in our world and its plentiful. I mean, open up any news app and that’s all you’re gonna see. But when I got up this morning as well, I could have also, I can choose to see the greatness. And when I say that, I don’t mean that we, you know, ignore the nonsense that’s out. There is a lot of it really needs to be addressed. And, but what I’m saying is I think it’s important that we choose our lens. And so I am not gonna stop believing because I believe in people, I believe in the human capital that’s working in our schools. I believe in the brilliance. Um, that I get to see yesterday in Ohio, Monday, in Kansas, Wednesday and Tennessee, you know, and so for me, it’s don’t stop believing because I believe the moment that we do the moment that we throw our hands up, the moment that we lose that hope it’s kids that lose out and their future is far too valuable to allow that to happen. So don’t stop believing.
Dr. Micael Conner
Absolutely. Now, I’ll tell you, Tom, staying alive, I would have stayed, I would have stuck with that one. Right? Because I started identifying some of those key variants that flow up to the staying alive, right. The board meetings, boards, the politics, right? The politicization of education that we see now. But don’t stop believing you’re right. Because if you stop believing who are, who is going to be most mostly impact is our babies, our kids. And we have to continue to focus on greatness, right? And, and move beyond that, but we really can’t stop believing, especially now in the A C stage of education, the first typical year since 1003, 2019. But I want to start underscoring that right that day, don’t stop believing for kids for greatness with your current work, right? As the Director of Innovation for Future Ready Schools, right? And to my audience, this is a specific project and I have Tom elaborate more in depth with it, but it is a project that’s out of the alliance for excellent education, right? So Tom in its simplest form for my, for my viewers, for my audience tonight, how is Future Ready Schools? Right? And your work changing the trajectory of student outcomes across America. But more importantly, how is it now changing the mindset that we do have to do something fundamentally different. So we won’t stop believing in our kids.
Thomas Murray
Yeah, I love that. I think the key word that you just said there is mindset, right? You know, when we look at future ready, President Obama kicked it off at the White House. Back in 2014, we have about 100 superintendents there at the White House sign on to what we call the future ready pledge. And you know, we’re not naive pretending that a pledge changes things, but it was a public way to say like we believe in these core tenants, we believe that these pieces of change related to what we deem the future ready framework. And so really at its core, we’re leveraging these evidence based approaches to shift systems, shift practices by building leadership capacity, amplifying the stories, leveraging evidence and research that’s out there, maintaining an equity focus and really trying to support those that are leading the way. Now, I’m not gonna pretend that we’re doing this all by ourselves as one organization, we partner with lots of great organizations that are out there. There’s lots of great organizations doing incredible work, you know, and I believe together we’re going to be stronger for kids. We try to keep a practitioner lens. You know, dr were one of our, one of our advisors as you know, working through that as this visionary, somebody that we respected somebody doing the work on the ground. And so we want to be very practitioner focused. The last thing schools need right now is this 50,000 ft view, never having been there, never having done it, telling educators what to do. Like that’s the last thing we need. So very practitioner focused people like you, Susan Enfield, Ireland styles like folks that are just crushing it on the ground to show people here’s what works because what happens is and just having worked, you know, in systems throughout until a number of years ago to lead future ready. It’s easy to look around and start to make excuses. It’s easy to look around and just hear the echo chambers of a single cabinet or whatever it might be and say, you know, well, we can’t do that because we’re small and rural. We can’t do that because we’re in urban districts, we can’t do that because we’re all high school district, we can’t. And then we look an hour away and there’s a place with very similar demographics or even higher need that’s crushing what we’re saying we can’t do. And so part of it is to break down some of those barriers. And when we look at breaking down barriers, that’s, that’s multifaceted. It’s the barriers that are often between districts, you know, newspapers wanna pit districts against each other that border. How do we break down some of those borders? So I care just as much about the kids in the district next door is that I do about my own. So we can look at sharing professional learning, we can look at sharing best practices because they’re getting better and that can help us, we want to get better to breaking down barriers also is within departments within the district. I mean, how many times are districts, the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand doing and the departments at the curriculum, department and vice versa. And so part of that is breaking down to flatten some of those barriers because the internal struggles that we have get in the way of what we can do for kids. And of course, for me, the biggest factor set of breaking down barriers or the system, systemic inequities that we’ve had in so many different ways and so many different systems, the injustice that occurred. And so when we’re in equity focused organization, we want to prioritize those students that truly need it. Most those students that have had the least amount, you know, Arne Duncan, former secretary that used to say all the time, how zip codes can no longer predetermine the education. And so part of future ready is to amplify some of those stories in the past 2 to 3, three weeks, I’ve been in multiple districts 100% free and reduced lunch. And here’s the thing, they’ve got every excuse, every barrier out there to throw their hands up and say, you know, we don’t have enough money or our educational, the parent education levels are here. But here’s the thing, they’re not making excuses. And they’re saying we got high expectations for every kid and we’re gonna do whatever it takes. We’re gonna shift systems. We’re gonna educate parents to help educate their kids to do whatever it takes. And so they’re not making excuses and they’re looking and saying, here’s how we want to shift the system to give our kids the skills needed to leverage and break the chains of poverty to do what they can do. Because they are brilliant Children with beautiful smiles that need every opportunity that those in the suburbs have that those other ones do as well. And so future ready equity focused, leveraging the tools, the resources, lots of different things that we can to amplify stories, amplify great things that are happening to give others hope as well. And by the way, as they bipartisan nonprofit, we don’t sell anything. People are always like, what’s the catch, what’s the bottom line where you’re trying to sell us? You know, it’s about ipads this about chromebooks. No, that’s not it. We raise a lot of money to do what we do across the country. And with that, we’ve also gained a lot of trust, which is a good feeling because people know this isn’t, you know, we’ll just buy this one little system over here and you can be future ready to, you know, for 20 bucks a month, you can be future ready to, that’s not how we work. And so, you know, with that, it’s, it’s great work happening across the country. So thanks for the show.
Dr. Michael Conner
Tom, now, I wanted to highlight uh the work of future ready, future ready schools because one, you know, serving as a future ready advisor has just been absolutely just phenomenal, just having deep discussions around the future ready framework and full disclosure. Tom knows when I was a superintendent, my first strategic operating plan, one of my strategies in the goal of that of the strategic operating plan, it was systemically systemically aligned to the future ready framework and the elements in the core tenants in that. So we were actually building the infrastructure of our technology system. So it would be integrated into the academic context. I E what Tom highlighted about silo systems and the internal barriers that can be able to create. I like to say educational inertia, we’re now expectations are lowered because the systems are not neat and the needs of the kids. And one thing around my framework to that you highlighted Tom high expectations, right? High expectation for kids and everything. So Tom, the work that you’re doing the future ready schools, the future ready framework has really just had this cataclysmic impact and a positive context on sharing best practices in it and your example that you used, right? So we don’t have, you know, nobody in Euros can, you know, we can replicate these best practices, future ready, we’ll find them for you. And that is the best thing about it. And that connectivity to share and disseminate best practices is one thing that I marvel at the work that’s coming out of Washington with your group time. So thank you for that. I want to say, I mean, I’m not, I can’t speak for every superintendent, but when I was a superintendent, Tom, future ready, if you’re ready framework, um just having that natural conversation with superintendents across the country uh is something that I was very of future writing future ready schools. So thank you for that Tom. But Tom, let’s get into a fun question, right? And uh to my audience out there, full transparency. I remember when I started the book journey last I would say, yeah, last year about this time and I called Tom and I remember, I don’t know if you remember this conversation, Tom, but I called you up. I said, Tom, I’m thinking about writing a book. He said, he said, no, no, he said he said, do it know what was the word she said? No, he said go do it, go for it, that’s what it was, go for it. And you got me pumped up to uh to write that book. And Tom, here we are a year later, my book, I published Intentional Bold and unapologetic, a guide to transforming schools in the A C stage of education. So thank you for that. But Tom, your books, I’m trying to get, I’m trying to get to your status I wanna be like you when I grow up best selling books, not one, not two, but three times over. And I think personal and personal and authentic actually was a national bestseller, right? So the third book, I mean, that’s kind of like that lebron James like, okay Cleveland, Miami back to Cleveland. Let me get a championship in L A. But your book, stop leading professional learning. One of my favorite books learning Transformed. I love that book, Tom Personal Authentic. You blew it out of the box. Love that to all three of them time. I can’t put them on like which one I like best. But Learning Transform was more of my, that academic type. I love that. But they’ve all been bestsellers, Tom and the industry, the contributions that you’ve had to this in our industry has just been absolutely phenomenal to the ecosystem. So with regards to each of the mega themes from your books, how do you address these important elements now, if I’m a superintendent leader, but I’m in this new dimension. I E the A C stage of education post COVID. How can I use your books to be able to guide my leadership now? Or to guide me as a principal or even to guide my design as a teacher in the A C stage of education when the needs now are fundamentally different.
Thomas Murray
Yeah, I love that question and thank you so much for the shot. I appreciate that. And for learning transformed, I would say I gotta give a shout out to my buddy Eric, my co author on that. And for anybody listening, any part of learning transformed that you didn’t like. That’s the part that Eric wrote. I just need to let you know that I wrote the that I did not tell him that that is not me, brother. I still love you. So I gotta give, I gotta get my boys. Shout out, you know, and it’s interesting because sometimes people comment that, that red you kind of alluded to it to learning, transformed and personal and authentic because they’re very different books, learning transformed. We Eric and I got together, you see, we’ve been working across the country with cabinets with, you know, just admin teams and just seeing so many of the same types of issues. Yet many districts overcoming some of those issues and put our heads together and say like, what are the big themes that we’re we’re looking at? And it was a lot of research. I mean, we almost took almost two years to write that book because we were Doing all sorts of research on everything from leadership. Like what does effective leadership look like? And so we took something like leadership. That’s a word like we talk about all the time, but line up 803 principles, ask them what effective leadership looks like and watch you get 10 different responses. You’re gonna get some overlap. But we wanted to really look at like, what does leadership look like. And so one piece to that and like, I know you’re so good at this as well as looking outside of education. So we really were researching effective leadership. We started with people like Simon Sinek, John Maxwell, people who have devoted their lives to the evidence around the leadership and certainly brought it to schools as well. But really looking at like what is high quality leadership actually look like from research and then what does it look like in practice? And so for learning transformed, it was very much research to practice was our theme. What does the evidence say? What does it look like happening in schools? And then let’s spotlight a place and then the kind of the next chapter. So we really created these eight keys to designing tomorrow’s schools today. You know, first one being around leadership and culture, lay the foundation, listen, working with so many districts across the country. I have never one time walked into a district, they’re crushing it and doing amazing things and then they have lackluster leadership. I’ve never seen that, ever seen that, but I’ve walked in some of the poorest places in our country and been completely blown away by the things that are happening, the skills that kids are learning, the opportunities that they have connected to the world of work. It’s all because of the leadership and it’s about creating cultures where people want to be. And so we really focused on that, that book was really written for kind of higher level admin. I’m not surprised at all for you. That’s your connection because it was much more academic over 100 research studies that were connected to that on that. But then the flip side here too is this is like, and I connect for me because it’s really both. It’s not an either or it’s no your audience, right? Learning transformed really being that systems change the big picture. And it’s funny because there’s an author sometimes, especially when it was first released and working with a lot of districts. I have somebody say, you know, hey, Tom, you’re gonna come work with our district. I want to get a copy for, you know, all my elementary teachers and they’ve never heard this from an author, but I’m like, okay, hold on hit pause. That’s not, that’s not the audience. And they look at me like what author tells us not to buy the book. And I’m like you as an admin team, you look at it first because it’s not, here’s your tools for second grade, here’s your, it’s not your lower level stuff. And I say all that with the understanding that listen, I love my teachers, it is not knocking them at all. But this isn’t about like classroom instructional strategies how to close a lesson. Like not that at all. This is more systems changing big picture pieces. But what I really connected to as well and part of looking back at learning transformed what I didn’t do a whole lot of it was kind of the narrative in the story and more the inspirational pieces that is kind of this manuscript I know, shoutout to Randy Watson Watson, the commissioner in Kansas, they used learning transforming parts of it is the roadmap for their state in education in terms of some of the core pillars that they, We wanted to put out there where I wanted to when I wrote the personal authentic, also speak to people’s hearts because here’s the reality. It’s not just the academic and the high level pieces. It’s also you’ve got to keep the people with you. And so in personal authentic, I really leverage vulnerability. You know, I, I get to probably do 80, 90 events a year. So I get to do a lot of different things. And I committed a number of years ago I was sitting, I was, I was about to lead a session and it really hit me. I was about to lead a workshop and in my workshop, I had three superintendents of the year for their state in the last like two years or so in my workshop, ready to learn from me. And I was like, what in the world am I gonna talk to these folks that they haven’t been there? Lived, it crushed it, put it out there? And they’re, they’re ready down to take some notes and I share that because it was ridiculously humbling. And what it hit me was, man, I need to come at this with extreme vulnerability, humility and recognizing you don’t have all the answers and somebody that’s going to say they’ve got all the answers, run the other direction. And so I’m personally authentic and connected to speaking. I committed that I will never stand on a stage or in a book, have myself on the back and tell people how well I did something because here’s why it’s so easy to step back and be like, well, yeah, if I had that superintendent, I could have done that too. If we had that principle, I could have done that too. If we had that funding. If we were a suburban district, if we were like, you come up with every excuse you can’t. However, here’s the flip side. What I’ve learned is when we keep it real and we’re vulnerable. And I talked about with team leaders, I was working on the cabinet just the other day. 20 cabinet members, large district, great folks. And I lead with, I know how hard the struggle can be as a leader. When you mess up. When you make the call on your cabinet team, your department’s looking at you and you totally screwed it up because when you lead with vulnerability and you lead with humility, what I recognized is people are much more able to follow because they want to because they say, you know, they look at it, this person’s being real, this person is not coming in as a know it all that just says just do it this way and it’ll be perfect, the human side matters. And so in personal authentic, I tell many more stories. And this is, you know, I’ve had superintendents to book studies on it and I’ve had kindergarten teachers do book studies on it. And as an author, that was the goal of how do you write a book that’s just as relevant for even school board members as it is for that first year kindergarten teacher, because those are vastly different audiences with different hats. And to me, the only way you can do that is speak to their heart. And so being able to leverage some vulnerability time where it was my mindset that was off that people can connect with. But then also show them here’s what’s possible, the other people, things that I’ll connect to that, that I think going back to your question about advice for leaders that i it’s really intentional in both books, especially in personal authentic, you know, personal, authentic. I have over 100 different voices that are just connected throughout the book with just these tips. Like here’s how you do it, just practical ideas, practical thoughts. But I also wanted to be very practical for teachers principals and so on. And so forth. But here’s the key is I was intentional about amplifying other people’s voices that were different than mine. When I look at the framework around personal and authentic that I had created. And one of them was around just to give you one example, here was around cultural relevance. And how do we create things that are more personal, more authentic in nature as a white male, I recognize that’s not my story to tell. I can talk about data, I can talk about high level stuff and I will support it until the day I die. Like, don’t stop believing, right? But here’s the thing I connected with. One of my close friends, Dr Rosa Perez is a an amazingly brilliant, brilliant leader, California. I’m like, Rosa, I know your story. Would you like to talk about part of your story and your thoughts as Hispanic female leader coming to the country when you did speaking no English growing up in poverty. And that’s all part of her story that she shares. I’m like, that was not my world. And I don’t have a true understanding of that. I’ll work towards it all the time. But at the end of the day when I step back, I really don’t know what it’s like to be in those shoes. And so with that, it was an opportunity to, to really amplify the voices of people that see the world differently, that understand things different because their story and the way that they share is gonna be far greater that in a way that I can talk about it because I don’t really have the experience with some of those things. You know, when I wrote the section on Equity, it’s an area that I’ve worked nationally for a long period of time. But connecting with one of my closest friends, Ken Shelton, the blackmail that worked in L A USD. We lived on opposite sides of the country, right? A very different life experiences. But together with our voices, it’s going to be much stronger than if it’s just to Marie. And so part of those pieces and I guess going back to connecting the books to advice for leaders is if you’re going at this or you’re just looking at it through your own mindset, you’re gonna fail. I don’t know how else to say it as good as you are, as experienced as you are, as brilliant as you are as a leader. If you’re not amplifying the voices of other people and seeking out people that see the world differently, whether that’s race, whether that’s religion, whether that’s just experience, whatever it might be. You are creating an environment and a vacuum where you’re gonna see and like things that are very similar to you. But let’s face it no matter who you are, the world’s a lot different than just you as an individual. And so I think that’s an area just to be totally vulnerable that I’ve grown a lot personally in the last say, even 10, 12 years, because I would vulnerably say, I think sometimes when I was a principal, I had some blinders on, there were things that I missed experiences that I missed kids that I was working with that I truly didn’t understand. And so the opportunity sometimes to step back to tap into other voices, other knowledge, other skill set. And by the way, when you do and they say something that when they disagree with you because they’re pushing back on something, don’t be mad. You asked, you want their viewpoint, let them have it right? And so I think between learning, transform personal, authentic, amplifying the stories, amplifying the voices, getting that diversity and lenses out, there will only make us stronger. So as leaders make sure you’re hearing from lots of folks, even those that descent. So if you’re about to roll something out and you know, somebody over here is like no way, worst thing in the world don’t just write them off, don’t just call them names in the cabinet meeting. Pull them in here because you know what, maybe they’ve got some pieces of advice that may save it in the long run because they’re seeing something that you’re not right. And so pulling those voices in because every voice matters and just a huge advocate of making sure that we pass the mic sometimes as well, you know, I get a lot of opportunities, a lot of stages and I recognize fully that it’s not always my story to tell and sometimes it’s my job to pass the mic amplify the voices when you have a platform and that’s important in leadership too.
Dr. Michael Conner
Yeah, Tom, thank you for that because you are right. Right. The nerdy side of me absolutely just loves learning transformed, Tom. I, I still got your book signed and tell you the truth. I got another book so I can just purposely mark up from learning transform.
Thomas Murray
Well, the only reason like that I sign it is so that you don’t go sell it on ebay and make a few bucks off the one. You know, that’s, that’s the other reason I signed, you can’t sell it. You know, you know what, it’s worth less now than it was the day you bought it. Right.
Dr. Michael Conner
But Tom, I tell you and this is why I love you to death brother because learning transformed and personal and authentic fits under the auspice of the ecosystem. But they’re two contrasting books, but they hit on pivotal points within the education ecosystem. I just love your, the fact that you said amplifying the voices of others, speak to people’s heart and leverage and lead with vulnerability. Wow. But I think that that has to be a non negotiable in the A C stage of education, right? This leadership of ensuring that we’re designing the, when I think about design thinking, the first core tenant and design thinking is what empathy and when you think of empathy, you think if you have to what design towards your customers, where your customers, your families, your parents, your students, teachers, everything right and leading with vulnerability is so important because right, when the A C stage of education time, you’re absolutely right, the human side matters and just how you went in depth with personal authentic. I knew about that with you and Ken and then on also everybody just giving you time just already just unleashed the big secret for our next episode. We will have Dr Rosa Perez Isaiah after Tom. So Tom gave you a little of the pretext to what you’re going to hear in depth in a few weeks when we release Dr Perez Isaiah’s episode with that. So
Thomas Murray
Well, Mike, you can say that I will officially go on record and say that this is the HGTV podcast, Varsity podcast. You gotta listen to Varsity Podcast is coming up next week. So Rosa, you rock my friend, love, love, love her leadership and just her as an individual, an amazing person. Like let me jump on one other piece if I could just, we just released that future Ready this Human Centered design process that we call, it’s the, it’s the, the Future Ready Learner profile. Just released it completely free tool that it, it leverages a Human centered design process. We worked with the Lumia institute, they have this looking understanding and making like these three tenants of kind of Human Centered design. Because what you just started to talk about empathy but understanding your community and all those pieces, how many times do we make decisions for people without their voices recognized? And so in this profile, what they do, you know, we can create things like the graduate profile has been around for a really long time. And when we started, we started looking at like, do we want to kind of create a future variety version? What would that look like? What are the skills necessary? And when we started to work with really innovative folks, they started to say what if you created a process to pull the core values from districts, one communities, what they value and then intersected with the framework to create these new and different ideas. And so what happens is we created this process that leverages and amplifies the voice of the entire community, all the stakeholders that you bring in doesn’t matter if you’re a board member or superintendent or a student or a business owner, bring that in to really pull down what do we value as a community? What does that look like? And here’s the other piece. Sometimes when you have something like a profile of graduate, I think it’s a great tool. It absolutely is. However, do first grade teacher see the value in themselves in that process? Quite often it is that kind of a high school thing and not knocking that at all. But what we did is create a process that could say, well, what does the future already first grader look like by the end of first grade, how do you use it? And so it’s a tool that you can use as a graduate type profile. You can use it for strategic planning. You can use it though to say, hey, by the time they leave our middle school, what do we want this to look like? And so it’s not just focused on graduation, graduation. We’ve put so much emphasis on that as like that’s the endpoint. And the kind of funny part is is that’s actually part of the beginning. So we look at it like that part of our process and some of the last steps are envisioning, okay, a graduate of our district 10 years from now is Uber successful. What does that look like? Right. What’s their job look like? What are they as a human being valuing looking like happiness, right? And so it really goes beyond. So I want to give a shout out to the new learner profile, completely free tool. There’s slide decks, there’s tools is a process that places can use, encourage places to check that out. That goes hand in hand with what you were just talking about.
Dr. Michael Conner
Absolutely. And you heard it first here on voices for excellence time just for my audience. How would they be able to retrieve the actual profile power to move forward with this? Because, you know, I haven’t and Tom, thank you because I think actually you are, I’ve had many conversations, but you’re really one of the only individuals that I’ve really uh talked to or we speak about education. And if we’re looking at, you know, the portrait of graduate, right, we always, that’s kind of like that standard. And like you said that, yes, that is the beginning. But I’ve never heard educators or collectively defining, we always say what does a graduate look like, but you just said something that I haven’t heard. What does it, what does the end of the first or if you complete first grade? What does that look like for a first grader? Right? And I think that we need to take, yeah, we, we know in 20003 years but taking that step within that and designing the profile, using it the multi adapting this for strategic plan and everything. That is so cool time. So where could my audience actually get that?
Thomas Murray
Awesome. I appreciate that. So I tell, I encourage you to check out future ready dot org slash profile and it’ll walk through that process. Lots of things. We just released it this week. We’ve got other versions that are gonna be coming up. I want to give a shout out to the Readiness Institute through Penn State. We partnered with them. They’re doing incredible, incredible work just in a leo and, and then we partnered with them on that, so, so proud of it.
Dr. Michael Conner
Tom, what I really like that you have said right with, and I think that innovation, sometimes the definition of innovation can be misconstrued. Um But one of the core, core elements of the definition of innovation is creative solutions by borrowing from different industries so that you can be able to address those persistent problem with practices within your own industry. And when you have that extensive research with our mutual friend, Eric Eric’s great shout out to Eric Scheidegger with learning transformed. But when I look at kind of like this association with my book and I’m like, wow, I didn’t realize Tom and Eric went that in depth. But when I would look at, you know, the construction of my book, you know, really looking at the premises of the theories of, you know, Clay Christians and Daniel Kahneman, uh you know, systems, one systems to think and Richard Elmore’s work being disrupted a tool. Wand Michael Tishman. I started thinking about them like, wow, that is a conglomerate of innovation to disrupt education and that is what you’re doing and that’s what future ready is doing. But moving into the next question, right, with regards to what we were kind of outlining right, innovation in education, but we know that there are mult multiple constraints, right? These constraints are multi adaptive, multi, there’s a level of multi functionality to in different aspects or variants within the systems and structures of our teaching and learning organization. So from a future ready schools standpoint, right, the re imagination of the education model in the state of education, one of the core constraints I always says that it’s a, it’s our bottleneck, right? Just to be honest is when we look at policies and local governance and I’m not saying this in a negative context, but I’m just looking at how some of the policies that are currently being underscored right now, we’re seeing districts moving towards implementing equity and excellence policies. But if you look at some of the policies that are in place at the local level, those are constraints to advance equity. I E Black and Students. I just wrote a blog uh and it’s called a Separate and Not Equal Rights. It’s a, it’s a process to strategically disrupt pathways in our high schools because roughly only about 30% as a cumulative for Black and Brown students in high schools um only get advanced Reiter, right? I E I B course is AP courses, but they represent 50% of public education, right? So when you have 50 Of public education, black and brown, 219% black students and 220% Latino students that are in advanced placement classes, I be courses. I really think that’s a policy constraint. I think that is A L E A constraint. But more importantly, we’re seeing this on a national level and this time is based off of trust is research in 210. So Tom, how could now? Right? I know you’re doing this and you’re, you’re, you’re going over time with this. I see it, Tom. But from your future writing perspective, how do we disrupt those policies that are inhibiting black and brown students who are marginalized in specific student groups in education?
Thomas Murray
So the cynical side of me wants to come out like it did in that first question, give you one response answer and say vote would be the first thing. So, but I’m gonna tie further into that if I could. Like, that’s like, that’s the only, that’s the biggest thing that sits on there because let’s be real there. Absolutely. Those out there in legislatures that are completely against. I mean, when we see states and bills being put in that say, like if you use the word equity, like you can be what like, well, fine, whatever what’s going on in Wisconsin, like you see things happening in Florida, like all the nonsense that’s out there. So on one hand, I would say, let me talk about it from an individual control uncontrollables because if I focus 2000% on all those pieces, I will literally drive myself insane because they are nuts. Number two though is we can’t stick our head in the mud and pretend that there’s no problems out there. They’re very real problems out there. So we need to make sure that we’re advocating and so with that collectively, your voices are so amazingly strong. It is why I believe organizations need to rally their members, bring people together to stand up for what’s right for me at the end of the day, if I’m gonna put my head on the pillow, I need to know that. Okay. I’m not gonna just sit back and say okay, this rule over here laws over here is gonna say this. So okay, we’re not gonna just, I guess we’re not gonna do that for our students. I’m gonna say no sometimes looking at it and say okay, if that’s the box we’re in, how do we rearrange the box so we can still do the work that we need to do. Maybe we’re calling it something different. I mean, let’s be real and sometimes in some places because sometimes I’m in the Reddest areas in the country. Sometimes in the blue stairs in the country, there’s times where I’ll talk and say, listen, I know somebody have a struggle with the word equity, but I’m gonna reframe it for you. Let’s talk about access for kids an opportunity for kids. And it’s fascinating. Oh yeah. You know, we’re totally fine with that. I want to whack some people talking about.
Dr. Michael Conner
I’m sorry, I gotta interject because, and this was when I was in the process of developing the disruptive excellent framework and I had a completely different name for it. But all the, all the feedback that I got, right, it was change equity and put in excellence because this is more national now. And it took me a while to be able to really fully understand that because I’m like, well, we have to create access and opportunity for kids anyway. But they were like, equity and excellence. If you use excellence, everybody want excellence for kids. And I was like, but it shouldn’t be polarized like we know it was changing. But you’re right. Right. You’re saying the same thing, but using a different word, Tom, please continue. Thank you, brother.
Thomas Murray
Yeah. No, I appreciate that. And I love your, your segment on that. And I’m thinking about, you know, part of it’s also as well is that, you know, just even my initial like kind of vote, like it’s easy to become divisive like that real quick. But at the end of today, part of a strategy for leaders to thinking about is, you know, and I see the best superintendent, the best principles doing this is pull that other side in the best that we can. Now we’re talking like a federal law. I get it. It’s a far greater struggle. But why does that person believe so passionately what they believe? Because, you know, we can be so passionate about the things we’re talking about. There’s somebody on the other side that’s so passionate on the other side of it. And so sometimes it’s stepping back and have the humility to say okay, I’m gonna let my guard down a little bit. I’m gonna take a breath and I’m going to have a conversation. Tell me more about that. Tell me why you see it that way because a lot of times these conversations that somebody hears equity, I’m here. Somebody maybe that looks like me is hearing like what I hear and that is you’re gonna take away from me to give to somebody else, right? And that’s the first like, wow, that’s what uh no can do. And like having a conversation, I’m like, what are we really talking about? Because some of it, we also play buzzword bingo. We got buzzwords for everything in education. And so like get to the heart of like, what are we really talking about? And then let’s be real. There’s just some key differences in what people believe and how they should believe it. But as leaders advocate trying to help them understand, you know, what so much of my work right now with, with school and district leaders is really around communication and we do all these kind of fun like activities and games and really, but to point down community is hard and to get information in a way you understand into somebody else’s mind in a way they understand they can actually do something about it. I mean, that’s the heart of teaching and learning. But we have to communicate. Well, we see all the things that are happening out there. Sometimes we have to make sure that we’re talking about it at that level of understanding. Hey, maybe I’m sitting with a bunch of business owners that think what we’re talking about over here is crazy. But when we talk about, hey, we want kids in our community to have some opportunities. So when they come to you, they have the skills for your workforce. Like that’s a pretty good idea. But sometimes because if they’re getting all their ideas just from the latest news show and the bullet points from the talking show, they’re coming in with this just jaded mindset and sometimes it’s just helping to educate them, helping to understand and sometimes we just put up walls and then just pretend okay, we hope to get enough votes that they don’t matter. I don’t think that’s the way to sell it as a community because they still pay your taxes. They still have a voice in your community and it’s off and wrong. And some of them we can look at that. They are, sometimes we need to really bring them to the, the table. Have some of those. I know that’s much more of a local conversation, but I would say state and it’s interesting at all, Fred, we’re actually gonna be launching a state like State Center for legislation because what we’ve learned a lot of, you know, a lot of our state legislators are part time like they have other jobs. A lot of our state legislators have like no staff because they have very limited budgets. And so they’re voting on things that they don’t really understand. They don’t really know, they don’t one of the staff to do the research. So what we’re working on it all, Fred is creating a state policy center that creates some model legislation because what happens is and not something I knew when I was a school district leader, a piece of legislation will get introduced, let’s say in California, they’ll start to run with it. But somebody will say, give me the draft of that legislation because we want to look at it over here in Oregon or over here in whatever Connecticut. Let’s take a look. And so we’re gonna be working to create some sample legislation around some ECU areas that are, can be then replicated throughout other states to support legislatures in that. So, with that from a school and district leadership, and we’re gonna be looking for school and district leaders to be able to weigh in on that voice of opinion to spread the word about those things. And so I would say you can be using your voice to just be cynical and out there. And when we see things like on Twitter and whatnot, you’ll get those people that all they do is all they are cynical, that’s all they are. But that doesn’t solve our problem. I believe you’re part of the problem. You’re part of the solution. There’s very little the ground, right. You’re either standing up or sitting down like there’s really no in between, in my opinion. And so I think advocating, helping them to understand at the end of the day, you know, we’re talking from a leadership end. You’ve got to be able to put your head on the pillow at the end of the night. And if you’re not doing what’s best for kids, you’re gonna be losing sleep. And so how do I keep kids at the heart of my decision making? Going back to other parts of your question when staying hyper focused on your, why? What’s our purpose with this? Because if I know that the policies are inhibiting it, how do I look at it and say okay, I’m gonna advocate in my state capital to change some of those policies. But I’m gonna also figure out because a lot of times we also just to be honest from a human thought and sometimes we create and then, and I don’t want to dismiss the question cause there’s very real policies out there that need to change. But sometimes we’ll look at things or we have this pre understanding of what we think that is and what we assume we can or can’t do is sometimes wrong. And so it’s hard to innovate and push some of those limits if nobody else is doing it. I’ll give you a quick example when we launched our, the so part of the reason that my original title, Fred, we also the Digital Learning Day, you know, 2100 years ago, it was trying to make the case for technology in schools now. It’s really, it’s not used technology in one day. That is not the purpose of it is to highlight the great things that are happening. But here’s the, here’s the point we created our own virtual program. This is when I was in a district, we created the program that I lead our own virtual program taught by our teachers using our content. 280 years ago, this is not a COVID conversation. So 353 years ago, like the whole COVID and I was having matched. How are we gonna do this online? I’m like, huh I think I’ve been there. So let me give you a state policy, attendance, right? And so if you look at attendance, it’s one of your most basic policies, the kids, they’re, they’re not the only thing attendance tells you in the world is, is the case, is the student on the campus on that day. That’s the only thing it tells you, tells you nothing about learning all these pieces but in a virtual environment. What does that tell you? Right? How do you monitor that? So there’s a case where I went to the State Department and I said, look like your cyber schools. That’s what they were called back in 235, your cyber schools, the way they take attendance is did the kid log in or not at that point in time. And I’m like, my dog can do that. We’re gonna do that differently. So we’re gonna create pacing guidelines. We’re gonna do this and they, we proposed it to them and said this is what we’re running with. Tell me how I’m wrong or how this is were worse than what you already have in place and I’ll gladly step back. You can yell at me for permission, you can yell at me afterwards. But this is why this is better for kids because I’m not just going to take the bottom line because I don’t believe in just saying here’s the, the basis and they then they’re like, I gotta be honest, we don’t really have a response because nobody’s challenged this with this yet. That’s okay. Well, we just did, this is how I’m doing attendance. And um, yeah, so that was a case where fight for what you need to do, what you need to and I will go on the hill of dying if I know that, hey, this is gonna be I’m not talking about doing anything illegal on that end. But a lot of times in those cases, we need to make sure that, you know, the we’re fighting for those policies, making sure that people absolutely know what it is educating those around them building some consensus as well, leveraging other districts, other leaders to continue to create a ruckus to say we need to change this for our kids because it’s what they need and it’s how we can help. And so you do what you can inside the box until you can break out of the box.
Dr. Michael Conner
Absolutely. And Tom, thanks for that because yes, vote. Right. That is so, so critical when we think about, about it. But Tom control your control the controls. Wow. I mean, that is like at a simplistic form, control, what we can control and continue to advocate and use the voice for communication, um educating stakeholders, right? That is huge. But there were two statements that was really resonating with me and this is why Tom, you know, your work is just fascinating. They were both focused on kids, what was what is best for kids and keeping kids at the core and molding consensus around children’s students at the core. I mean, Tom, when you think about changing policy, when you think about uh at the L E A level, right? The local education agency level, the state education agency level, right? If we just keep kids at the core, I think policy alignment, language implementation would be different. And what offer Ed is doing, providing best practices and anchor models, you know, we’re still speaking education language, right? Providing anchors and providing models to at the at the at the state and federal level to really look at policy different times that is definitely uh impactful work influence and uh the change, the needed change in education. And you’re right about our, our legislators, right? Um we, they educating them, right? Just given that foundational knowledge because again, you know, having that staffing is important to do the core research and to be able to really convey that in for core, I like to say Corps medal themes uh to the legislation. So they legislation so they know what they’re voting on. But they’re so short handed. I know a lot of my fraternity brothers that are in the state legislators and they just, you know, it’s just them and they’re going through a multitude of policies. So thank you for that, Tom. And now this is the purely selfish question. I wanted, I did this for my audience because I got Tom Murray here. So this is, this is me just being purely selfish because I want my audience to get at least 228-295 minutes of just what everybody knows about you. I consider you one of the best motivation or the best motivational speakers in the country. I know inky will say something different. Jody might say kid might come on and be like, Mike, what you’re talking about, but I know I’m gonna take heat for that. Okay, especially from them, Eric. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Eric. But I want my audience to actually just hear you five minutes. Of just motivation around difficult times within our leadership and personal journey. Right. I’ve been seeing so many be kind shirts, I’ve been seeing so many be kind advertisements because it is true. We don’t know what people are going through during their personal journey, they put on the mask and the leadership journey. But do we really know what’s going on in the personal journey? Do we really know the personal journey compounded by being a leader in the A C stage of education? And we know what we have to do in the A C stage of education as leaders going back to that first song, staying alive, right? So now having both of those factors being compounded, right? And our personal and leadership journey, what advice do you have for my listeners today about just being personal and authentic with themselves during an education? And if we’re experiencing personal challenges, Tom, because I know you helped me out a little bit, brother, I appreciate you. What are some strategies to push through. So we make progress.
Thomas Murray
This is definitely my favorite question that you’ve asked and I’m thinking we have two hours, right? To dive into that. So, so let me start by sharing just a glimpse and I know I share this with your staff. It’s part of personal and authentic in a way that I go about helping. You know, I um one of the things when I, when I speak, I’ll put a slide up and it’s, you know, in the past 14 months, the child, you’re about to walk into your classroom or walk into your school. They’ve been absent 35 times, they’ve been tardy 20 times and I asked them to process. So, so you’re gonna get the student, the only thing that we know is there as well is the attendance information they’re coming in from out of state. You get the academic stuff the next day. But what you know, you’re looking at in the last 14 months, it’s been 55 days or absence retarded. What judgments my people make and always say it doesn’t mean you’re gonna make the judgment doesn’t mean you’re gonna do anything, but it might cross your mind a little bit about the kid about the parents. Okay, go and they’ve got about 30 seconds and I’ll bring them back and I’ve asked this question of thousands of educators. And so here’s what comes out, you know, the kids, lazy kid doesn’t care, kid doesn’t value education, probably behavior issues going to be academic gaps, lots of issues at home. Let’s go to the parents. Parents are a mess. Parents don’t care. Parents don’t value education. Parents are disconnected, parents don’t, they go on and on and on and then I pause and say, let me tell you part of the story and I go to the next slide and it’s the picture of my daughter and I say that’s my daughter and the room stops in the room like thousands of people silent. And I say, can I tell you the story? What if I told you that in every one of those 20 absences, we were two hours from our home as my child with my daughter was the first child in the northeast to undergo this new food allergy therapy because we had almost lost her multiple times. Doctors had estimated about a 30 minute window. And I go on to tell, you know what if I told you nine 15 of the 20 parties when we were just late, sorry, like sign the paperwork. But in 19 of the 20 parties, we drove two hours from our home, she drove 10,000 miles, spent 100 and 80 hours in a car. And every single time she would say like mommy or daddy, I really wish I could be in school today. And when I started to tell the journey and tell the story, what have I told you? We almost lost my little girl multiple times that because of cross contamination levels to sesame seeds. And what if I told you that little girl? Now it’s 2000 seeds a day in her daily dose to keep her safe. And I really worked through that story and it’s a little bit of a tear jerker, but it goes from, we judge so quickly. And one of the things I wrote in personal and authentic is, you know, the difference between making a judgment and having empathy. It’s understanding the story. So we want to improve our data, improve how we understand the story because then we can prove how to help somebody. And so we take a look, here’s the thing. Your brain is wired to judge. That’s an inherent thing. Your brain is wired to make connections to previous experience what it knows about the world around it. So trying to constantly figure out what’s happening. So your brain is naturally wired to judge. Inherently, it’s not a bad thing. We’ve used the word judge the bad thing inherently, it’s not a bad thing. How that judgment goes is what becomes can become bad really quickly. And so point being to your there, I just shared part of her journey and in understanding the story, the data now makes sense. And so I share all that to leverage. I call that the hidden stories within, you know, it goes to that adage of everybody like you just said, is battling something that you don’t know and whoever may have originally said that. But I talk about the hidden stories within and hidden doesn’t have to be bad. It can be a really good thing. You know, maybe you’re listening to this and you’re going on a date tonight with your spouse and your super excited, but nobody around here knows, right. But also maybe you’re struggling today here. You are leading the school district and your marriage is falling apart and here you are, you’re brilliant, but you’re crumbling right here. Right. And so with that, it’s leveraging the hidden stories within and do we choose to see the hidden stories and other people are just inside of ourselves? And that’s why I believe we have to lead with an empathy lens recommendations that I have is just get to know the stories. There’s absolutely gonna be far more stories that you’ll never know if you’re a teacher that’s listening to this. How do you get to know the stories of your kids? What does that look like if you’re a leader, how do you get to know the stories of your people? I mean, even if you take a look at it on your journey and you’ve got that person that union president sitting across from you and I shouldn’t use that as example. One example, maybe they’re the most negative person in the world. But here’s the reality. At some point in time, somebody looked across the interview table and was like, that’s the teacher I want what happened there, there’s a story there. So get to know the stories of people. Number one, number two, be vulnerable, model vulnerability yourself, stay humble. Nobody likes the person that’s full themselves and think they know all the answers. Stay humble and keep it real because here’s the reality and the teachers and admin all the time. If the people that look up to you look at you as the person that knows everything, knows every ounce of every content and every standard and every one of those pieces. If they look at you in that way, they can’t relate to you, they have no concept of what that feels like. But the moment you keep it real, you are willing to share a struggle, take their input and keep it moving forward, people will connect. And so our work is about people. This work is about loving and caring about kids. Be vulnerable. Keep it real. Get to know people’s stories because the journey is not easy, personally and professionally, but together we’re gonna be stronger for it.
Dr. Michael Conner
Absolutely. And Tom, I have to be honest with you. I had another question and I’m not even gonna ask it because I want to end on that because again, knowing the hidden stories and when you immediately brought up the 35 absences and the 28 parties, I was like, oh man, I know that for sure. I know that personal story uh for sure with you and, and, and the fight for that and the fight through that time, I tell you, I, I admire you so much, brother, I admire you so much. I just want you in three words. I want to ask the question, three words, only three words because I want that to be the Mike draw, but just three words. What three words? Do you want my audience to take away from this podcast episode?
Thomas Murray
Three words. All right, here we go. Bold, humility and story.
Dr. Michael Conner
Yes, bold humility and story and know the story because the story will lead to this level of empathy, this level of vulnerability, right? Tom Murray. Thank you so much my brother for coming all voices for excellence. I tell you, Tom, you know, this is uh this is a, I think a very, very good time. I would say an opportunity for us to really have impact in education. Obviously, it’s that, that, that, that I would like to say that tension, that creative tension between opportunity and challenge. And I think the work that’s coming out of future ready schools offer ed the work that the message that you’re conveying nationally is really going to impact education and Tom on behalf of my audience man, thank you for coming on and thank you for that free knowledge right there. The last five man, because I’m telling you, everybody’s got to hear you talk, man, you my audience. No lie time. I’m had 95% of my staff crying, including me, right? Including me. So Tom, my brother, I love you man. Appreciate you for coming on. Thank you for coming on the show today.
Thomas Murray
Absolutely much love back to you and tune in next time for an even better episode with a better guess, Dr Rosa Perez, Isaiah, love you, Rosa, my man. I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks for having me on. Always a pleasure.
Dr. Michael Conner
Absolutely. And so if Tom, so doctor listen, Dr Perez, Isaiah Varsity NBA National. Alright. If Tom says he’s JV to her, I’m middle school, middle school, I’m still learning trying to the left, the left hand layup time. And from on that note, everybody you know who our next guest is. Onward and upward have a great day.
