Episode 12- A Compelling Conversation About the Future of Education with Ryan Walters

Erin Starkey:
Welcome to Reimagining Schools, a podcast from the Edupreneur Academy. Today, I’m talking with Ryan Walters. He’s Oklahoma’s current Secretary of Education, and is also the CEO of Every Kid Counts in Oklahoma, a nonprofit organization designed to help students and families have access to schools in all locations.
Erin Starkey:
Hi Ryan, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. How are you doing?
Ryan Walters:
Absolutely. I’m doing great. Happy to be on today and getting to sit down with you and talk. I’m looking forward to it.
Erin Starkey:
Yeah, I really appreciate it. I think we got connected a couple of years ago through Ken Parker, and so we’ve worked on several different projects together. And I know you’ve got a lot going on right now, so I’m looking forward to hearing more about you. And I’d love to just start there. If you could just tell us a little bit about your background and what led you to education, and then kind of the work that you’re doing now?
Ryan Walters:
Yeah. So, my background is, I was a public school teacher in McAlester, down Southeast Oklahoma, McAlester Public Schools. That’s where I was a student. I came back as a high school teacher. I started teaching special ed classes at the high school level, and then eventually over time I got to where I taught some on level courses, some advanced placement courses and some other courses as well. So, kind of all the history, US history, world history, government, all that type of stuff. Then a few years into it, I was our district’s teacher of the year, then I was a state teacher of the year finalist. And that kind of got me more interested in kind of the broader view of education around the state and some policy matters.
Ryan Walters:
So, that kind of got my interest there. And I started working with some of the legislature and the governor’s office and things like that. And so I ended up working at a nonprofit, to help improve education. And then as time went on, I kept teaching into school. I at least taught one course every year at different high schools around the state. Then I ended up getting appointed to the governor’s cabinet as a secretary of education about a year ago. So, I got to work on all things education for the governor’s office, and really enjoyed it. I’ve always had a passion for trying to help young people.
Ryan Walters:
I had this moment, again, , I could tell it in great detail, but there was this moment when I was in high school as a sophomore, that I had this incredible US history teacher that really told us the story about Abraham Lincoln and about how he knew he would make some decisions that made him really unpopular. But, he had this kind of inner strength, inner principle that doing the right thing would pay off for people around him, and would be the right thing to do and be viewed that way in history. And it just really stuck out to me and it just really motivated me to learn more about history. And it was one of these moments where, I mean, I can remember specifically, I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to be that kind of teacher that could have that type of impact on kids. And so ever since then I’ve wanted to work with young people and try to help them in their educational experience to open up pathways for their lives.
Erin Starkey:
That’s perfect that you went there because the next question was, why are you passionate about educational change and innovation? And so it sounds like it started with that story. But, what else kind of led you to get so involved with the political side and the shaping where we are in education?
Ryan Walters:
Yeah. And I love so much of the work you’re doing because I think in education so many times we’ve got just incredible people that want to be teachers. You’ve got some great school leaders across the state. But, there’s so many times I feel like we don’t support or encourage innovation or new models. And I think a lot of it is just education has remained largely unchanged for about the last 150 years, really, since we’ve kind of set up a public education model of kind of the traditional schoolhouse. And I think that teaching will always boil down, education will always boil down to a great teacher and a student that wants to take in that information and learn. And, some parent that’s actively involved in the process as well. It’s kind of this triangle there between the three. That’s basically what education is. And it is especially boil down to that teacher student relationship.
Ryan Walters:
But, the way we deliver instruction, the way we teach concepts, those delivery methods, how we set up those exchanges and what those exchanges look like, all of that should be open to what’s best practice. How can we find better ways to do this efficiently? How can we make sure that effective models are being scaled and are being shared across the state? How do we make sure that every student is getting a great educational experience? Not just by happenstance, not just this student has a great teacher this year. That every student should have that experience. So how do we do that? And I think these are the things that make education so fascinating is that we’re always going to have room for improvement. It doesn’t matter how good our education system is. We’re always going to want to do a better job.
Ryan Walters:
I know as a teacher every year, I mean, that’s the thing is I felt like I get better every year. But boy, every year at the end of the year, I’m always thinking about, man, I’ve got to do all this differently. I keep a notepad of like next year I need to do it this way or that way. And I think we need to be looking at education that way, holistically. Because again, we’ve got to make sure that all of our students have the best education possible. I love the conceptually the thought process of how do we improve learning for every student. I just think it’s kind of this never ending or open ended question that we should always be asking ourselves.
Erin Starkey:
Absolutely. Because the tools and the technology obviously will always change. But I think even with the pandemic, it made us see more that the connection with the teacher is something that’s always going to be very important. So, regardless of what kinds of technology we have in the future, we know that there still will always be a need and an importance for the connection with the teacher and building that social, emotional learning piece for students. And so I think that’s important to keep in mind too. And you and I came from a similar background because I taught in public schools as well. And so went that pathway. And I think that’s a helpful perspective to have, as you kind of move forward with thinking about policy and change. Because, if you haven’t been there, it’s difficult to understand what that’s like. And so I appreciate your experience in that, and that you keep that as a part of your experience. I know you continue to teach throughout what you’re doing now, and that’s definitely, I think helpful for you to be able to continue to have that perspective.
Ryan Walters:
And I think you have a great perspective on this, which is I feel like so many times you get young teachers into the profession that have great ideas, that they really want to do things differently. And there’s so many times that they don’t feel supported in that. They don’t feel encouraged to continue down that path. And so they kind of settle in, they kind of do things the way we’ve always done things. Instead of, and this is why I’m very passionate about the work you’re doing and the work others are doing across the state, to really encourage innovation. And, to really try to encourage those things that we always need these innovators in the education space that are saying, “Look, we want to try this idea. We want to help propel this idea.
Ryan Walters:
And again, I think that the best people to get these ideas from are our teachers. Our teachers are the ones that get to do this and interact with students on a daily basis where, hey, they can try a new idea and they can give us the responses on how it worked with their kids. What were the result they saw with their students? What was engagement like? And troubleshoot it. I mean, that’s my thing too, is there’s so many different things I’ve tried over the years that, hey, for the first two or three times, I try it, it’s just not working. But as I was encouraged to continue down that path, I was able to kind of flush it out, make some minor tweaks, minor changes, different supports, and then you really see students flourish in that. But again, if there’s not supports there, if you don’t feel encouraged to continue on that path, you try something once it doesn’t work out exactly how you plan and you just go back to the way of doing things. That’s where I think we’ve always got to support our innovators. We always have to encourage them to continue because that’s where you see some dynamic changes occur inside the education space.
Erin Starkey:
Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that it’s also important in that from that perspective makes a lot of sense, but we also don’t want to, and I think this happens in the public education system sometimes is that we end up sort of throwing the baby out with the bath water, right? We’re like, “This, isn’t working. Let’s just throw this all out and start over.” And so we just keep giving our teachers new things to try over and over and over again. And then they don’t work and it’s a year or two and it doesn’t at work and we try something else. And so that gets old after a while. And I think teachers learn to just kind of, “Oh, we’ll just wait until the next new thing comes along and do that for a few years.”
Ryan Walters:
That’s exactly right.
Erin Starkey:
That’s a challenge.
Ryan Walters:
That’s exactly right. I don’t know what it is that sometimes in education, I feel like we get attached to fads. That there’s the new kind of hot thing that comes out and everyone gets really obsessed with it for two or three years, and then they’ve moved on the next thing. And as a teacher, when you’re being inundated with these things that are not substantially improving student outcomes or making it easier for you to deliver instruction, you’re going, “Okay, these are just hoops and it’ll change in two years again. And so I’m changing what I’m doing and it’s not having an impact.” Teachers would love to dramatically improve what they’re doing, if that’s what this is. And I think that’s where we have to be really careful about pushing things from a top down model on teachers, rather than allowing them the supports to find things that are effective and allowing that more organically rather than the top down approach. Because, the other thing, and that’s why I love kind of the work that you’re doing and trying to connect them.
Ryan Walters:
I think that cohort models are so important because if I’m out on an island trying something new, it’s just me trying to think of ways to do it better. If it’s me and then someone from the Southwest part of the state or the Northeast part of the state, and we’re able to kind of work through this together and we’re able to ping pong ideas off of each other and talk back and forth as we’re having issues, we’re going to get to a much better solution so much faster in a model like that. And we’re also going to feel encouraged. We’re not going to feel isolated or out on island. So I love kind of the cohort model concept of ways to introduce new ideas as well.
Erin Starkey:
Yeah, exactly. And yeah, to your point, not just the corners of your state, but where else in the country can we look at for ideas? And we don’t necessarily need to reinvent the wheel if things are working somewhere else. Let’s reach out to each other and show ideas. I think that’s great. And I’m sure you’ve had this kind of too, because you have your public background past and mine too, that you kind of run into those teachers, those administrators, that are just having a hard time sort of wrapping their mind around change. I think a lot of educators sort of envision, when we’re talking about new school models or innovation, they’re seeing in their mind their school being boarded up and teachers being let go. And so I’ve often found that the question that I can start with is, what is it about the system currently as it is that you think we need to keep? And I think that’s a good way to start. And so I just wanted to ask you that question too and see what do you like about the current system? What should we keep?
Ryan Walters:
Yeah. I mean, I think that I agree. The thing about it is, we always want to improve our education system, but we also don’t want to over… We’re not changing for the sake of change. What we’re doing is improving what we have. And there’s core concepts that the reason why they’ve been done for so long is because they’re effective. And I think it’s really crucial to look at and maintain the relationships that teachers have with their students and the relationship that the community has with their school. And I think that that is so important that the community has input into the school, that the school is reflective of the values of its community. And, that the emphasis is the teacher building relationships with students. Teachers having knowledge, content knowledge, so that they can help improve the students understanding of the material that they’re [inaudible 00:12:08]. I mean, I know that’s never going to go away, the relationship between the teacher and student, the core knowledge of teachers.
Ryan Walters:
Now, I will tell you, there’s some studies that show what preparation for teachers is most effective and there’s a lot out there. But, there’s one thing that they, especially in the older grades find time and time again, that, of course the content subject area knowledge and expertise is shown to improve teacher quality and teacher effectiveness, especially in the higher level. So, we need teachers that are well equipped, that are very knowledgeable about their subjects. We also need teachers that are able to build relationships and rapport with their students. And, we need community involvement and community engagement into our schools. I think those are three concepts that is, we’re talking about improving things, we’ve gotten those right. You look at the way communities rally to schools. You look at that connection, that’s very important in a school success. And those aspects of the teaching profession have to be maintained.
Erin Starkey:
Right. Yeah, I completely agree. And what I often hear from teachers and administrators is that they want students to have access, right? All students to have of access to the opportunity. And so I think that’s a big one, and I think that’s an important distinction and thing for us to talk about a lot. Because, it’s important to know that we’re not talking about creating new models that restrict access. We’re talking about giving more access to students. Having more opportunities for every student that lives in every location to have choices about what works for them and their families. And so I think that’s a really great place to start that conversation instead of starting from the opposite of that, which is that we’re separate and not helping each other out. So ,if we can work together with the schools to make this happen, this would be an incredible opportunity to do that.
Ryan Walters:
Right. And to your point, it’s like just the three examples I just gave, there are many that virtual learning, they feel like is an affront on that model. When, in reality, to your point, when you talk about access, look at how access has been opened up because of the ability to do virtual learning. Where again, there is no replacement for a quality teacher in a physical classroom with your students. But, what about if your students don’t have access to a teacher who teaches a certain course, and now they do? Or, what if your teacher who’s there locally wants to connect students with folks that are outside their state, outside their country, for those kind of in-person learning experiences? There’s some amazing things going on with VR in education, too, that you can put your students in ancient Egypt. You can put them in a civil war battle. You can do these things now, that again, technology allows us to do it.
Ryan Walters:
It is a value add for our effective teachers. It’s not replacing them. It’s got to be used as a tool to emphasize and add value to the effectiveness already of a good quality teacher, not a replacement. When used properly, I do think it brings an added value, an added scalability that’s not there. And I do get teachers concerned about that because if we’re discussing it as a real placement, I reject that. I don’t believe that. But, if we’re looking at it as a value add and opening accessibility, I think there’s some real opportunity there.
Erin Starkey:
Absolutely. Yeah. And the question I was going to ask connected to that, which you’ve answered a little bit is, as technology continues changing, how do you see the role of the teacher changing? And I think you’ve touched on that a little bit, but I think it’s maybe more to just emphasize that.
Ryan Walters:
Yeah. I mean, I just look at scalability. That’s the first thing that comes to my mind with technology is I’ve always had like a fundamental frustration with, there’s an amazing third grade teacher in a school district, okay? So just pot luck that 20 kids get that teacher and then other kids get a first year teacher who’s probably going to be a great teacher, but not there yet. And how do you determine who gets that teacher and who gets that teacher? Well, what about leveraging some technology, especially the older grades to say, listen, you can have some lessons delivered by great teacher. You can look at some lectures, you can have some interactions with this great teacher. And then everyone will have their own type of homeroom teacher that works with them as well.
Ryan Walters:
But, if you have a really good teacher, that’s very good at delivering instruction, let’s capture that. Let’s make sure everyone has access to that. Let’s make sure that when a kid’s at home and they don’t understand a concept, instead of going back to a book and trying to reread it, they could get online and maybe even do some virtual tutoring with the teacher that’s an amazing tutor. I mean, I see it as the ability to ensure that all kids have access to exceptional teachers. I also just think that over time, it’s also going to help streamline so much of what takes up a teacher’s time.
Ryan Walters:
I think we’ve got to start looking at ways to make sure that we can effectively allow teachers to develop curriculum, find good curriculum, deliver instruction. When you look at benchmarking, you look at the assessments, you look at all the type of resources that now, with the virtual content we have, we should be able to share some of these great resources and materials with teachers where a teacher shouldn’t be up all weekend making their own assessments and creating all of their own content. Now, if they want to, that’s great. But again, teachers aren’t necessarily content creator experts, right? I mean, that’s a different skill set. And some are. And again, but I think that there’s the ability now with technology to ensure that all teachers have access to this, they can streamline this.
Ryan Walters:
I mean, I still remember when I first started teaching benchmarking data, how difficult it was to collect it and put it together where we could then share as a department. And then a few years later, we have a streamline process of we’re using an online tool where when benchmarking is done, we’ve got all the spreadsheets. We have all the data collection done. I’m not sitting at home on the weekend collecting data into a spreadsheet. So again, it was a time saver for me. It was much more effective for me. And I think we can see a lot more of that moving forward.
Erin Starkey:
Yeah. And I think you’re so right, that access piece is so important that we can give more equitability to our students that live in rural districts and in all places. And if we were currently working within a system that was already equitable, we wouldn’t need to have this conversation, but that’s not the case. And so we’re looking for solutions that will make things more equitable for all students and accessible.
Ryan Walters:
That’s right.
Erin Starkey:
All right. So shifting gears, what advice would you give to educators or maybe our local business people that are sort of interested in innovating in education?
Ryan Walters:
Yeah. What I would tell them is, I would encourage them to bring all these ideas into the education circle and push forward to see where that can take them. I would tell them to align with other folks that want to innovate, align with other folks that have good ideas that are encouraging, that look for solutions rather than excuses of why you can’t do things. I mean, that’s my thing is, we’ve got to continue to not say, “Oh, well, we can’t do that. We can’t do that.” If you say we can’t do that, what’s another suggestion of how we could maybe get to that point? I think aligning yourself with folks like this, make it much, much easier to actually see real change occur inside the system. And I would say, change and innovation is hard. I mean, it’s not easy. If it was easy, everybody would do this. Status quo is easy. So, what I would say is to have the courage to continue down that.
Ryan Walters:
And again, for me, education can be so stagnant and it doesn’t have to be that way. To me, education should be the most vibrant. Because again, we’re talking about, I’ve always found this just so intellectually stimulating, how do I help my kids understand a complex subject area? That’s to me exciting to me. What’s the best way to drive home difficult complex subjects so that young people can understand it and utilize that knowledge effectively? That’s exciting. I think we should always be looking at ideas on how we can do that effectively. And I think that, again, this should be a vibrant area. And so for anyone who wants to bring innovation to this area, who that’s a vision that they have, I would highly encourage them to do it. We need it.
Ryan Walters:
And most importantly, one of my biggest concerns for young people is when I go into school is you’re always going to hear about discipline problems and classroom management issues. And that is big. But the group that I think is actually bigger than that, that concerns me, is the group of apathetic students. Students that they’re there, they’re not causing a problem. They just don’t care. It just doesn’t matter to them. They’re not connected with the subject material. They don’t understand the importance of their education they’re getting. And to me, innovation and agility and changing what we do could make a tremendous difference for those students. That’s why we have to keep pushing the needle. That’s why we have to continue to try to innovate, to make sure that students are coming to classroom and getting the most vibrant education imaginable so that they are excited about school. Learning is fun.
Ryan Walters:
I’ve got a second grader at home and I’m going to keep pushing this because it frustrates me how many times kids start off excited. They’re excited about learning. Something happens. Something happens in middle school and some of that’s just developmental stuff, right? But we’ve got to keep the excitement going throughout their educational experience, because learning is exciting. We’ve got to keep that going. And I think that happens with innovation in the education space.
Erin Starkey:
Yeah. So many good points there Ryan, thank you for that. It really stood out to me too, that just the characteristics of an entrepreneur is that perseverance, right? And grit and not giving up. And you can always find a million problems and reasons to say it’s not going to work, but there are also lots of solutions out there. And we can look at other places to see those solutions or we can create our own new solutions. But I think that’s an important characteristic for entrepreneurs is just not giving up and finding a way to make it work. And I believe that we can do that. I believe we can make the system better.
Erin Starkey:
And I think you’re right about students that lose that kind of ability to want to lean, and like our young kids do. I mean, they’re just curious, right? And they lose that at some point. And sure, some of that may be developmental, but I also think that as we’re preparing students for a future that we can’t even see what that’s going to look like, we don’t know what the jobs of the future will be or what they could look like. We know that preparing students to be able to critically think and to be able to find resources and information for themselves is probably the most important thing that we could be teaching them. And that also really helps them to stay engaged. Because, instead of just wrote memorization or teaching students how to answer and memorize questions, we’re teaching them how to think for themselves and solve problems and to create their own solutions for the future.
Ryan Walters:
Absolutely. And that’s right. And that’s why it’s so important that we ensure that this innovation is occurring, that this entrepreneur spirit is encouraged in education. Because reality is, we don’t know what the jobs necessarily are going to be in the next 20 or 30 years. But, I want our young people to be able to solve the problem. And I always saw our young people, they’re the most encouraging thing to me. And that there’s so much we haven’t been able to solve. Us adults, we haven’t figured it out, okay? So I’m always encouraging them, “I want you to figure it out. I want you guys to have a good education so that all these world problems, all these societal problems, all of these issues, things can be better because you can solve them.” And to me, that’s why the education system has to be agile enough to make sure that our students, when they graduate, can enter the workforce, but also solve these complex problems.
Ryan Walters:
I want them to solve problems that I can’t solve. I want them to have a better generation moving forward than we have. But I think in doing that, you have to make sure that they’re developing the skills that we’re going to need in the future. And to me, that requires an agile education that’s always looking for that entrepreneurial perspective there.
Erin Starkey:
Yeah, absolutely. And it really is a vision of mine to see sort of that teacher preparation look differently. And I think some schools are starting to do this. As I’m looking across the country, there are some universities that are pivoting to this a bit. And I think that’s just helping our teachers as they go through preparation programs, think differently. Think outside of the box. We typically prepare teachers and educators for one pathway, and that’s to teach in a traditional brick and mortar school the way that we’ve always thought of that in the past. And we could be saying, “Hey, there’s other ways to be entrepreneurial in this. Are you interested in starting a school model yourself? Are you interested in doing things a different way or helping a school district to innovate?” And I think that’s an important key for our future as well is to help our early educational professionals think about it in a different way as they start the program.
Ryan Walters:
I think teacher empowerment’s key. I think early on it’s key. Our average teacher career in Oklahoma’s five years. And I know some of that, and I talk to these folks that lead the profession. Some of it is they were excited and something happens where they’re not excited anymore. They’re being micromanaged. They’re not as effective as they wanted to be. And I think we have to get young people, again, young people with brilliant ideas and education, we need to encourage them. We need to help propel them and make sure that they’re staying in the profession to create this change.
Erin Starkey:
Yeah, absolutely. A hundred percent agree. Yep. Well, is there any… I’d just like to kind of end with a couple of things. One, I want to make sure our listeners know how to get in touch with you or find out more about you and ECKO. So would you mind just saying the website and then if there’s any other information you’d like to give?
Ryan Walters:
Yeah. So, I serve on the governor’s cabinet as a secretary of education, but I also run an education nonprofit called Every Kid Counts Oklahoma. So everykidcountsok.org is our website there. Click on that and follow the social media channels. We’ve got a Facebook, a Twitter, all that kind of stuff. So we try to keep regular updates there as well. We’re working with parents, teachers, community leaders across the state to again, try to push improvement in our education system through innovation. So happy to work with everyone there. And yeah, just all those social media channels. Again, we stay pretty active on that. So love to have you follow us there. But again, we want to encourage those that want to innovate, those that want to improve the education system to again, be collaborative in this model moving forward. So yeah, that’s my work in that space. I appreciate the shout out there for the nonprofit there.
Erin Starkey:
Of course. Yeah. And ECKO, Every Kid Counts In Oklahoma and Edupreneur Academy are working together to try to make sure we’re connecting people with the right resources to help them innovate and be successful. And so definitely want to make sure we are working together towards that great goal. And just as a final note, is there anything else that you’d like to share with other educational innovators to kind of close out?
Ryan Walters:
Yeah. I think Oklahoma is a such an exciting place to be in education right now. I think we’ve always had, you look back to our history, this kind of pioneer spirit of doing things differently, of being unique, and kind of doing it in ways that other folks haven’t. And I think that we have the same spirit in education. I think there’s been times we haven’t encouraged it. We haven’t and supported it. We haven’t promoted it. I would encourage everyone that we’ve got a great spot in Oklahoma right now that we know we need to do things better. We know we need to improve things for our students. I think that there’s an exciting potential moving forward for us to all work together, to do something truly special in the state for our kids. And so I just want to encourage folks to keep working with our students, keep working on ideas on how to improve it. And again, Oklahoma can lead here. And the coolest thing about Oklahoma leading on education is that means that opportunities are going to grow for our kids. And that’s what’s most important here, so that’s what’s most exciting for me.
Erin Starkey:
Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree, Ryan. And thank you so much for all of work that you’re doing in education and for being on the podcast today.
Ryan Walters:
Thank you, Erin. I appreciate your time. Thank you for all you’re doing.
Erin Starkey:
Thank you.