If you have resources in your structures why not open those up a little more freely. If we have a learning opportunity where learners build a 3d printer from scratch they are going through the entire process of putting together. Only ten are filled. Why not throw out the additional five Community Partners and bring them in, Multigenerational Community members running sidebyside so providing content, why not open the facility for shared resources, whether it is the cnc machines or laser engravers, whatever it may be, why not put structures in place where local Community Members, and those are 3 pieces of the downtown campus. The new campus we opened up which we have gone beyond the date of manufacture for learning to customizing learning and Community Revitalization leveraging Community Members for internships, mentoring and bringing those Community Members to connect. Corneal Regional Charter School and a quick snapshot. [applause] my name is nicole, the cofounder and ceo of thrive Public Schools was the topic i want to talk about his lets get personal. Why personalized learning matters more than ever for our students. Before i touch on that i want to give you a brief interview of thrive, we are located in Southern California currently serving elementary, middle and high school. What is great about thrive and the accolades i am most proud of his thrive is recognized as one of 50 organizations nationally doing innovative work around social Emotional Learning, when we talk about education, we lose sight of the fact humans are social creatures, and we have to solve problems together. Additionally in san diego we have been recognized by the state senate and named one of the top 100 schools were visiting so invite all of you to see us. We have talked about this before, essentially education hasnt changed much in the last hundred years. Classrooms used to look like this and in some places they still do. Essentially not preparing kids for the futures that lie ahead for them. That student right there is what medicine looked like when these kids were in school. The gentleman said penicillin, we invented penicillin and we should use it but that was the classroom that doctor was in, telecommunication, instagram and twitter looks like this. This could have been the bluebird driver i took from the airport to the hotel. If we teach today as we talked yesterday we rob our children of tomorrow and that is why we have come together and coming together is the core of thrive. What makes the Community Beautiful is our children come from 45 different zip codes and the one of the most diverse schools out there. 25 of the students at our campuses have a disability. A third of them english is not their first language and half of them will be the first in their family to go to college, 56 being at or below the poverty line and that makes learning hard and makes learning worthwhile. Justice Thurgood Marshall said unless our children begin to Learn Together our people will never live together, we have to come and Learn Together but as we come together we cannot assume every child is the same and as a matter of fact someone much more brilliant than me, todd rose, researcher and professor at harvard, human beings dont line up perfectly, there is no average learner. He goes on in his book to really give us some examples that this idea of average is a false concept. If you take two people, he specifically gives an example how airline fighter jet cockpits were designed. If you take two people with different measurements and body mass and design for the average the end result is it will fit neither person. What happens as we think about the average learner, we know kids that have better memory, better auditory skills, stronger writing skills, language skills, relationship skills but education for too long we have taken the average of all of those and assumed it works for each kid. That is problematic and we are now in a place where we can change that. There is an opportunity for an evolution or revolution in education, to no longer force kids to fit into the same mold and many schools are doing that and it is extremely exciting. I want to share how thrive is doing that, to offer some food for thought because what thrive is trying to do is build a Student Agency who personalized learning plans, then we of those plans and three wave, learning to learn, learning to do, learning to be, not something we came up with, unesco came up with that, for me to take any credit for it to be innovative but i want to give you some examples what that means and looks like and is something attainable by each of us and important for students. At thrive students learn to do. That means we dont just teach content knowledge but give them opportunities to apply that learning through project, the picture you see right now, fourth and fifth graders using power tools to build something and while adults are supervising network, the idea of students being trusted enough to do that is huge for them and often when you ask a child at thrive, tell me something amazing about the work you are doing, they will say they trust me with an exactonly for a power tool in getting kids to create and build something is incredibly important, more important is this idea of learning to be because at the end of the day we are not human doing, we are human beings and instilling in students a sense of connection and empathy is hugely important, arguably our society is more divided than ever and kids are faced with immense trauma. How do we help kids build connections . Kids arent born with the bias and baggage we as adults have. As a matter of fact i was working with two students the other day, one of them, sean, took andres teddy bear, a therapy teddy bear he holds because of anger management problems, and to hear this child, and anger management teddy bear and the other child takes it, throws it in the puddle and steps on it. Last year those two students would have ended up in a fight but what the student did was remarkable and speaks to us, giving students skills to solve problems because what he came up with after he was very upset, i think the other student through my teddy bear because he was really angry and when i get angry i dont know what to do and i want to hurt people and break things. Maybe we can get him a teddy bear. So rather than going to a place of anger he went to a place of connection and compassion, we do that by starting each day in community. Every student gets an opportunity to share what is going on in their life and we try to build empathy for each other through an opportunity to tell our own story and listen to each others stories, this idea of speaking from the heart and listening from the heart is something we have long forgotten and yet we dont give kids the opportunity to do that, we usually tell kids to be quiet, to sit in the row. What would happen if in a community as diverse as our school kids learn to understand each other and rely on that sense of understanding to build connections . s idea of learning to learn, how can we give kids more of what they need . You heard me share the story which is somebody runs up to me and says so and so fell and scraped their knee, what should we do . Give them a bandaid. I usually say should we get a bandaid for everyone . No. They need the bandaid, for kindergartners it is clear we give somebody something they need and just because they need that doesnt mean we give it to everybody but all of a sudden we go to the math classroom and Everybody Needs to do fractions at the same time but not Everybody Needs the bandaid at the same time and we have an opportunity with increased technology and flexibility we have to give students more of what they need when they need it because at the end of the day it is absurd to give an entire school a bandaid because one kid needs it but it would be cool not to give that one kid a bandaid because that is what they need. In the end it is having results, people say that sound cute, but so what . At thrive students are becoming college prepared, career inspired and Community Minded but it takes time. The graph you are looking at our results in the learning model and youll see the green line is result after three years. Look at the results the first year with the students and going that is not looking good. Because academic results take time and students are so filled with trauma and challenges, think back, what is that basic level of support kids need . With time when we fill the bucket and every kid has a different amount of space in their fuel tank we need to fill before the car is ready to go, but results do come and i will end up with a take away that we learned and steps to move forward from. We found we need to make sure we provide special Education Support that every kid needs in the way they needed and to make sure there is a line to the lunar, we also learned assessments must honor student growth and not just their absolute outcomes because it can be really discouraging for a kid 3 years in a row to be reminded they are not on grade level rather than be reminded they had grown four years in the span of 24 months. And to have flexible timelines and a few of you touched on this, children dont all move and grow at the same time, those who are parents with more than one child, kids are different, some start walking when they are 12 months old, my 4yearold decided to wait until he was almost to but they all have opportunities to grow and doctor todd rose mentioned given enough time students can reach comparable outcomes, the challenge in education is we dont allow that time, we have systems and structures in place to try to push kids through in a very homogenous way so if we take the opportunity to give every child what they need and find a way to assess their learning and grow and be open to moving at their speed and not just ours we can do great things together so thanks for having me today, have a great day. Thank you. It is fascinating to learn more about your unique personalized learning and customized approach and i would like to take a couple moments to get feedback, this approach has not been widely adopted. You touched on the impediments to that, but i would also like to hear from others on whether this approach is really the general direction we should be thinking about for all students or if this is just one of a Market Basket of options students should have in their education. I think given wellrounded education, is part of it. I think i dont know why i am getting feedback here. I think that social, Emotional Learning is absolutely essential and it is and can be embedded in all of our schools, systems and programs that there is an assumption i like what you just spoke about about beddings that in the curriculum. As a plug for the arts, since we are here at the table, that the arts provide an Incredible Opportunity as a content area and an opportunity for students to learn all of the collaboration, ownership of learning, social, Emotional Learning, looking at all of this within their context as well as keeping the focus on that is a very important thing to do. I wanted to throw out a question to the Group Building on what you were talking about before, i am curious. We know has been stated that many students throughout the country do not have access to personalization and the kind of innovation you all represent and are doing a great job with. Im wondering how much of that is a federal policy, fresh opportunity, how much is state and or local problem and opportunity, how much is a narrative, what are the opportunities, telling different stories, changing the narrative, the policy change, your thoughts on that. From where we sit i think it is a bit of both, in terms of the narrative, this discussion, i love the recognition that learning is social, emotional and cognitive, not just about the academics. There is a need to change our narrative about how we define learning, what we mean by educating the whole child and with that comes policy changes. Is a great start to recognizing the fact that we need to educate the whole child, need to look at the support children need, recognizing different children come to school with different needs, different challenges so i do. It is a combination of both. Without the narrative, without changing that narrative we face a lot of challenges. The other piece as we think about this, what i havent heard is rethinking how we are educating our educators, changing this narrative seems to start with how we are educating future teachers, leaders so that they embrace the concept of embracing the whole child and not just giving lip service to this idea of social, emotional, or not. I would like to see us move away from using the phrase noncognitive as if that is less important, it is a bit of both. We typically take a supplyside approach, focus on preparing teachers, leaders or whatnot. For this work to advance and advance in a way that better engages kids we need to shift to a demand focus and that is what we are doing in economic development. We no longer focus on supply but demand, demand of business, employers, drive the proper investments including educational Sector Investment was when families demand this and equally important when teachers demand his education has become such a gloomy business and people are doing their best work when they are doing it joyfully and fluidly so when teachers start to demand this because it will make their profession more joyful than i think it will happen in a way that will not only be more likely to produce success but equally important will be more likely to sustain. We are on the edge of something that could be a leap or a joke and we have to make sure we make it a leap and not a joke and that has to be driven by our teachers, if teachers are not demanding this, families not demanding this is just a bunch of people in bubbles thinking this is the right way to go and we will perpetuate the same mistakes we have made in the past 34 years. I would say the shift towards customized learning or personalized learning is inevitable and is a matter of our educational system understanding future conditions we will find ourselves in and preparing our learners for those conditions. The interesting thing is it is not so much of a path that is bad or the next thing but the reality is our educational system needs to be constantly evolving in response to future conditions of our country and our world and Human Development and if we say this is the way, i know lindsay, we dont promote this is the way and many of the people around this table dont say this is the way, but it simply is our response to the future our learners will face so we will never be there. That is not something people are comfortable with, what is the answer and when will we have arrived, we wont have arrived because were continued to be responsive to that and i would also comment the Business World expect something different, the technology abilities we now have require change to happen. The social, emotional, what kind of human being, all of those are becoming more important and as an educational system at the federal, state and local level we have a responsibility to respond to that, it is inevitable because those pressures lead us towards a better system, preparing a more educated and prepared populist. To the original question of Different Things there are some other focal points the come of quite a bit. What is how if we look at student some are surpassing our teachers in certain areas of innovation and technology in one thing sometimes holds us back is we were Certified School is a charter being compared in the district a lot of Charter Schools are not 100 certified and the question is how do you certified professional businesspeople to come to your school and teach because a lot of the people we are looking for our not getting certified out of college or in school but decide to switch to teaching. In terms of the risk assessment, all of a sudden youre not 100 Certified School because you cant find teachers that have that content knowledge so you hire a teacher because they are certified and have to figure out a way to train them. On the federal level to put some money into the development of teachers along lines of personalized learning and focus on things relative to students such as trades, stem, computer sciences, a lot of areas around teachers, the other thing is the report card. There is a lot of discussion what direction to go with the report card. In the past it was a grade, then meeting standards, it would be nice to have framework around that because the expectation of the older parent is they expect a grade and theres a huge adjustment to that which what exactly is the standard. Having to reteach adults along the lines of getting parents involved with children, that is Something Else that could be held at the federal level and saying to the state level this is what we expect and what a model would look like. That is a step in the right direction but a lot of work can happen. I would like to echo the enthusiasm for personalized learning around the table and would like to make an observation i think im confident everyone here shares and is committed to, it is important to state which is personalized learning has to happen in the context of equity and equitable access to learning opportunities. When i started as a teacher in the 90s there were options to personalize curriculum for some students in an alternative high school, certain students on the margins and success versus dropout and in some cases personalized learning mensa computer module and i dont think that is what we are talking about but we need to know what we mean and to understand providing each student with what they need means not just giving Different Things but giving a lot more resources and opportunities to some students because they have many more needs, to recognize when