Aug 30, 2022
00:00:00 Shawn
And so, I just clicked one day,
like I'm talking about games with these students all the time,
we're playing the same games. They get really motivated, they're
willing to spend all this time just grinding it out in world of
Warcraft, for example - at the time, that was really popular game;
spending hours and hours and hours on repetitive
tasks.
00:00:18 Shawn
What is it about these games
that makes that compelling, but physics homework, not so much? And
so, I had the idea to transform the way I was running my classroom
as a game by borrowing from all the games that we played and loved
and built over a weekend, basically a working prototype of an
app.
00:00:40 Christina
The workforce landscape is
rapidly changing and educators and their institutions need to keep
up. Preparing students before they enter the workforce to make our
communities and businesses stronger is at the core of getting an
education.
00:00:53 Christina
But we need to understand how to
change and adjust so that we can begin to project where things are
headed before we even get there. So, how do we begin to predict the
future?
00:01:05 Salvatrice
Hi, I'm Salvatrice Cummo, Vice
President of Economic and Workforce Development at Pasadena City
College, and host of this podcast.
00:01:14 Christina
And I'm Christina Barsi,
producer and co-host of this podcast.
00:01:17 Salvatrice
And we are starting the
conversation about the future of work. We'll explore topics like
how education can partner with industry, how to be more equitable,
and how to attain one of our highest goals; more internships and
PCC students in the workforce.
00:01:31 Salvatrice
We at Pasadena City College,
want to lead the charge in closing the gap between what our
students are learning and what the demands of the workforce will be
once they enter. This is a conversation that impacts all of us.
You, the employers, the policymakers, the educational institutions,
and the community as a whole.
00:01:51 Christina
We believe change happens when
we work together and it all starts with having a conversation. I'm
Christina Barsi.
00:01:59 Salvatrice
And I'm Salvatrice Cummo, and
this is the Future of Work.
00:02:02 Salvatrice
Hi everyone, and welcome back to
the Future of Work Podcast. I am your host, Salvatrice Cummo.
Today, we'll be talking about new methods being applied in
education and why they are important to the way students are
learning.
00:02:16 Salvatrice
We will also learn about
Classcraft, a time-tested, modern approach to education, and why it
has become so popular in the world of education. With that being
said, we are excited to welcome Shawn Young. Shawn is a co-founder
and CEO of Classcraft, an innovative platform that motivates
students using the culture and mechanics of
games.
00:02:38 Salvatrice
Since its launch, Classcraft has
gained incredible traction with educators worldwide, providing
tools to transform behavior and classroom cultures. We are excited
to learn more about Shawn and Classcraft. And with that, Shawn,
welcome.
00:02:53 Shawn
Thank you. I'm really happy to
be here. Thanks.
00:02:55 Salvatrice
Thank you. If you don't mind,
I'm going to go to my go-to first question, which is always about
my curiosity. And so, Shawn, what led you to the work in education,
and why is it of interest to you now?
00:03:09 Shawn
There's a lot of ways to answer
that one. I kind of accidentally fell into education. I was a
teacher for 10 years, but I actually majored as a physicist, and
there was just a lack of substitute teachers in my area. And I just
ended up doing it, and fell in love with the profession, which was
kind of ironic, because I was really not in love with the school. I
wasn't bad at school. I just found it quite meaningless and
boring.
00:03:31 Shawn
But when I became a teacher,
realized that there was a real opportunity here to create meaning
for students. And that was really my mission as a teacher was to
say, how can I A, respect students' time? They're forced to be
here, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't respect that they're
giving us their time and their attention, and how can I make this
meaningful?
00:03:49 Shawn
And so, so much of my career as
an educator was tied to that mission. And my first step into that
was around like how can I make really compelling experiences in the
classroom from a curriculum standpoint? So, physics, it's easy to
make teach it boring, but it's also easy to teach it super fun. It
is super hands-on. We were building like cannons and hot air
balloons and we had roller skates and all kinds of
stuff.
00:04:12 Shawn
And then I realized that this
part of making it meaningful is not just compelling, interesting
curriculum, it's also the community, the relationships. For a lot
of kids, school has a function of learning content and learning the
stuff you need to learn, but more importantly, and more emotionally
and more meaningfully for them, it's really about like who's their
community, what are the social relationships that are being built
there.
00:04:38 Shawn
It's a place where they go to be
humans and that's how Classcraft came about, and we can talk about
that in a bit. But really was quite, quite, quite focused on making
that happen; building relationships with students, building
relationships between students, and creating ultimately, a school
environment that was conducive to that
happening.
00:04:55 Salvatrice
Was there a moment when you said
this is critical, we're missing this? What was that one moment? And
could you recall that one moment?
00:05:02 Shawn
It's interesting because I got
into teaching with no teaching experience or training, really. I
was trained as a scientist and I ended up doing a master's thesis
and a graduate program while I was a teacher. So, I got certified
in all of that, but really, started off my career with no
preconceptions, I would say, other than my own experiences and what
I wanted for school to be.
00:05:25 Shawn
And I think that ultimately, I
came into the profession believing that probably and mostly because
really that's what made any meaning of school for me. Like I wasn't
like excited to go to school to, you know-
00:05:41 Salvatrice
But yet you're a
scientist.
00:05:43 Shawn
That's right. No, I had really
good grades. Don't get me wrong, I was really good at school, it
was just boring. But the relationships that I had with the teachers
really made a big difference, like that's why I became a physicist,
was because I had a really good physics teacher.
00:05:56 Shawn
So, I think that my own personal
journey brought me there in a real way. And I mean, it's so
interesting because when you think about school today, anything
kids need to learn in school, they can really just learn on the
internet from an academic perspective. Like even high school, it's
all on Wikipedia.
00:06:14 Shawn
And so, like what becomes the
purpose of school? Well, when you think about it, an analogy that I
like to give is like music concerts. If you go to a music show,
you're getting the same piece of content. It's the same songs that
you'll get on a streaming service. And yet, we're willing to pay
hundreds of dollars to go to these concerts for the exact same
piece of content.
00:06:37 Shawn
And what's different is the
experience. And ultimately, the experience is the social one. A
concert's pretty boring if you're the only person there and
ultimately, it's all the sensory experience that is so much more
elevated than just listening to a piece of content through your
headphones. And ultimately, that's what school needs to be now
because the content is like streaming music, school needs to be
like a music concert.
00:07:03 Salvatrice
So, with that in mind, thinking
about the experience, Classcraft was created,
yes.
00:07:09 Shawn
Yep. Maybe I can jump into the
birth of Classcraft. Is that where you're going?
00:07:13 Salvatrice
Yeah, that's where I'm going.
Thank you. Thank you, host.
00:07:16 Shawn
Yeah. I'll self-host here. Oh my
God.
00:07:19 Salvatrice
Stop, go for it. Go for it.
What's Classcraft, tell us more?
00:07:22 Shawn
On my journey of like, how do I
make this meaningful, I did my master's thesis on how to use
digital platforms to create community in the classroom. I wanted to
see if kids interacting online outside of school around course
material would create community in the classroom. And of course, no
surprise it did.
00:07:39 Shawn
But another part of my
personality is I've been a gamer for all of my entire life. And I'm
also a developer. So, while I was teaching, I also had a freelance
business building websites and apps. And so, I just clicked one
day, like I'm talking about games with these students all the time,
we're playing the same games. They get really motivated. They're
willing to spend all this time just grinding it out in world of
Warcraft, for example - at the time, that was a really popular
game, spending hours and hours and hours on repetitive
tasks.
00:08:10 Shawn
What is it about these games
that makes that compelling, but physics homework, not so much? And
so, I had the idea to transform the way I was running my classroom
as a game by borrowing from all the games that we played and loved
and built over a weekend, basically, a working prototype of an app.
And it was just for me, it was never going to be what it is
today.
00:08:30 Shawn
At the inception, I was really
like I'm just going to use what's motivating in games. Kids will
have avatars, they'll level up, they'll learn points for doing
things in school. Let them experience points that have them
progress. They'll unlock real life privileges. So, in a game you
have the power to, I don't know, you can teleport yourself. Well,
what does that look like in school?
00:08:49 Shawn
Well, maybe teleport yourself is
you can go to the bathroom or you can be late to class. We'll use
this metaphor, the mechanics of the game, we'll build cooperative
collaborative dynamics, just like in these games and apply that to
the real life motions of going to school. And so, I just made
that.
00:09:06 Shawn
For three years, that was it. It
wasn't going to be a company, it was just this thing I was doing
with my students. But I was blown away just by how transformative
it was for them. Anybody who is listening can go to the website,
just type Classcraft, you'll see how beautiful it looks. But in
those days, there wasn't even any graphics. It was more like
Dungeons and Dragons than it was like a video
game.
00:09:25 Shawn
It was just completely
transformative in terms of how students were showing up, how they
were showing up for each other. Just the concept of being able to
see your own progression, getting consistent and continuous
feedback. They get points for handing in work, participating,
asking good questions, being recognized and seen for the things
you're doing as a student, meant a lot to them.
00:09:45 Shawn
And so, I made a little website
to just talk about it. And the day that website went online,
130,000 people came to the website. And started trending on Reddit
overnight. Like that's a huge amount of traffic for something that
wasn't even a company. It was just one page that said like, "Hey,
I'm doing this game, maybe you should make your own
game."
00:10:02 Shawn
And then sure enough, like
requests started coming in of, "Please, how can I download this?"
I'm like you can't, you had to code lines of code to give kids
points. Like it was really not to be scaled. But at the time, I got
together with my brother who's a designer and a creative director
and our dad is an accountant and finance person. So, we got
together and started the company.
00:10:23 Shawn
Now, we're with 10 million kids
in the platform, teachers in 165 countries, 12 languages working
with really large school systems, and also really tiny schools. So,
all over the place. But yeah, kind of all just started with that
lightning bolt moment of how can I get these kids to really care?
And the truth is the games are built and designed to make us care.
Nobody's forcing kids to play video games, they do it because they
want to.
00:10:53 Salvatrice
That's right. Are you finding
that the level of engagement is challenging sometimes or
...?
00:11:00 Shawn
You mean in Classcraft or you
mean in school?
00:11:03 Salvatrice
Within Classcraft and keeping
the students engaged. Everyone has different learning abilities,
Classcraft wants them to care, and games get us to care. What's the
continuum of that? How do we continue for them to care and stay
engaged?
00:11:18 Shawn
There's two parts to that. The
first one is that Classcraft is not a video game, so we're not
proposing kids or students to, for example play this math video
game and in doing so, I'll trick you into learning fractions,
that's not what's happening here.
00:11:36 Shawn
But we're saying is games are an
experience that is designed to be inherently intrinsically
motivating, and the truism there is that almost all kids play
games. 65% of North Americans play video games multiple times a
week across all age groups, across all genders. Candy crush counts.
It's not just shooting games and call of duty. So, it's a very
diverse medium.
00:12:00 Shawn
But ultimately, it's designed to
fulfill fundamental needs that we have. And so, when you think of
games as a cultural medium versus other cultural mediums, games are
designed explicitly to allow us to fulfill our potential within the
confines of the game. And research around motivation is super clear
on this. We're intrinsically motivated by situations that fulfill
three fundamental needs. This is called self-determination theory,
you can look it up,
00:12:29 Salvatrice
Share more about
that.
00:12:31 Shawn
So, it's the prevailing theory
and intrinsic motivation. So, two types of motivations;
extrinsic/intrinsic. Extrinsic is I don't really want to do this
thing, but I'm going to do it because I want to get to a good end
state or avoid a bad end state. So, I really want to steal
whatever's over there, but I won't do it because I don't want the
punishment, or I don't really want to do this work, but I'm going
to do it because I want the money.
00:12:55 Shawn
School is really riffed with
those types of motivators. And the reason for that, is because
they're really effective short-term control mechanisms. Intrinsic
motivation is I'm doing something because I want to. What's your
hobby, Salvatrice?
00:13:08 Salvatrice
I love to
entertain.
00:13:10 Shawn
Alright. So, you love to
entertain, nobody's paying you to do that. And in fact, you're
paying to do that.
00:13:16 Salvatrice
Yeah, it's costing a lot of
money to entertain at the house. Yes, it does.
00:13:21 Shawn
That's right. But why do you do
that? You do it because it fulfills fundamental needs. One of the
main fundamental needs that we have is social relationships. We're
not just motivated by things we do together, we're motivated by
things that we can share with other people.
00:13:33 Shawn
So, another example of a hobby
that is more solitary, maybe is fishing. You would say, well,
that's not social relationships, but that's why they take photos
and share them and mount them so that they can share their catches
with other fishermen later and talk about it and swap stories and
all of that.
00:13:50 Shawn
So, we're motivated by
situations where there's relatability with other human beings. The
second one is we're motivated by situations that afford us control.
So, any situation where we have absolutely no decision-making power
is really demotivating.
00:14:03 Shawn
For example, entertaining, if I
were to say, "Hey, like you're going to make, I don't know,
hamburgers, and this is how you're going to make them. And in fact
here are all these terrible ingredients and that's what you're
going to serve," you would probably be a lot less motivated to do
it.
00:14:19 Shawn
Than if you are picking out "Oh,
I know these guests like this type of food and I'm going to match
these wines with this food, whatever." And so, being able to make
these decisions, have creative control over our own destiny, is
super motivating.
00:14:31 Shawn
Now, of course, we're also super
motivated. So, the third one is by situations where we feel
competency. I'm motivated by situations where I feel like I'm
really good at it. So, you're probably are a great host.
Or-
00:14:45 Salvatrice
If I do say so myself,
Shawn.
00:14:47 Shawn
There you go. I can't wait for
you to invite me, but either we're motivated by situations where
we're really good at them or we see meaningful progress. That's the
same thing that's going on in our mind. Like I don't need to be
good, but I see myself progressing.
00:15:00 Shawn
And so, think about games; games
are a made-up experience. Like my favorite example is golfing.
Golfing, when you think about like the task of golfing, completely
irrelevant to anything useful advice. Like take this ball, put it
in that hole, like Salvatrice, please do that. You wouldn't think
to take a stick and do all those things. You would probably just
pick it up, walk over, and you mission
accomplished.
00:15:23 Shawn
I'm like, great, now, do that
500 times. And then you would say, "You got to pay me to do that
because that's work." And I say, " No, wait, wait, wait, sorry,
sorry. I forgot to tell you this isn't work, it's fun. Actually,
you need to hit the ball with these sticks. They're called clubs
and they're all different ones, but you're going to be able to
choose the one you want and you know what? You don't get an
infinite number of shots. And by the way, like you need to go home
and change. You can't play this game dressed the way that you
are."
00:15:50 Shawn
And what I'm doing in doing that
is taking a meaningless task, putting conditions around it that
make it meaningful. And in doing so, people who love golfing,
different types of people are motivated to different degrees by
different types of things. But the people who love golfing, they're
paying their own money to go do this activity just like you with
hosting.
00:16:10 Shawn
It's the same with games.
Nobody's forcing these kids to play games, but we're doing it
because we are connecting to other people online. So, it's social
relationships. Games by definition give you a lot of control versus
watching movies for example, and games are really, really, really
upfront about communicating your progress and your
mastery.
00:16:32 Shawn
And you look at a game that's
super repetitive like Tetris, for example; Tetris is a game where
you just make lines and you do that until you die. And then you
start over and that's basically it; one of the most played video
games in the history of humanity, one of the most repetitive
experiences. And the reason is you're just trying to beat your own
score.
00:16:49 Shawn
So, all that to say that these
experiences are the most compelling, motivating experiences that
we've ever designed, video games. And with Classcraft what we're
saying, is let's take those things, let's take the psychology
that's behind that and let's apply it to something that is
generally not motivating. And for students, it's seen as an
arbitrary, forced task. They see school as work.
00:17:11 Shawn
Let's see if we can redefine the
rules of engagement and completely transform the way that they're
perceiving, the way that they're motivated. And so, to get all the
way back to your earlier question about, do we see engagement
drops, for example, in Classcraft, the answer is Classcraft is not
this like you're going to be super motivated for two minutes during
this day.
00:17:34 Shawn
Like if you were playing a game,
it's the whole school year. And so, what we're trying to do is
elevate the baseline level of engagement across everything you're
doing in school. And so, kids are getting points in the hallway at
lunch, during class. We have schools where the bus drivers are
giving them points.
00:17:52 Shawn
Yeah, it's like it becomes the
whole fabric of school. Sure, nothing is perfectly engaging for
every student all the time. But what we are doing is giving
teachers the tools and there's a whole suite of like tools they can
use to create fun and engaging moments with this backdrop of, I
have more control over my day-to-day life.
00:18:11 Shawn
Kids in Classcraft earn powers,
like being able to eat in class, hand in assignments late. So,
they're able to control their day more. They're playing on teams
and we're giving them immediate relevant feedback about what
they're doing and how they're showing up. And believe it or not,
kids don't get a lot of positive feedback in school. Most kids on
average are getting one piece of positive feedback a week,
max.
00:18:36 Salvatrice
Wow, it's
terrible
00:18:36 Shawn
It's horrible. And why is that
terrible? It's terrible because we feel bad for them, but also data
shows that positive feedback is the number one thing a teacher can
do to help kids stay motivated and on task. And it's normal. Like
kids are trying to do their best. They start off their school
career as little kids trying to fit in and do what's expected of
them. And we don't tell them that what they're doing is the right
thing. So, how are they going to know?
00:19:01 Shawn
If you were learning, for
example, karate, I wouldn't just show you videos of karate and then
let you go out. I would sit next to you and say, practice this
punch. And while you're doing it, hey, that's a perfect punch. Keep
that up, raise your elbow. I'm giving you feedback so that you can
learn and progress.
00:19:17 Shawn
And unfortunately, a lot of the
interactions teachers are having with students are negative
corrections. And not celebrating their wins, but actually say shut
up and sit down, you're off task. You didn't hand in your homework.
And in fact, most kids just try to get through school without
teachers ever seeing them. And that's a shame
00:19:36 Salvatrice
From the faculty perspective,
like do you think that's because it's just the conditioning of the
system? Do you think it's professional development? Do you think
it's their bandwidth? There's a bandwidth issue - I'd like to get
your perspective on that because that really touched home for me,
especially with two teenagers in the house.
00:19:51 Shawn
I've been thinking about this
question for a decade now and working with schools all over the
world. And I think that there's no single answer. So, my number one
answer is teaching is a risky job. And by risky, I mean you're in
front of a crowd of kids, there's 30 of them and there's one of
you. So, at any moment, the tables can turn that you literally have
no control over the room.
00:20:13 Shawn
And so, I think for a lot of
teachers, their approach to that fact is to command and control.
So, they're not thinking about how can I build the best possible
relationship with this child necessarily. They're thinking about
how can I get all these kids to shut up and listen to me? And the
problem with that, is that it's a vicious cycle. Course-correcting
works to an extent. If you over-rely on that, what happens is you
lose authority pretty quickly and you need to ratchet it
up.
00:20:44 Shawn
Like you need to raise the level
of command and control. And so, there's this dynamic that happens
where teachers are caught in this spiral where the dynamic in the
relationship ultimately, is broken between the teacher and the
students, but that's a protection mechanism.
00:21:01 Shawn
I do think that there's also
history here, unfortunately, still have a legacy of the school
system that was founded 150 years ago in which the teacher was the
boss, and they could hit with the ruler if you didn't behave. Like
that's where we started from.
00:21:18 Shawn
And I think also, there's more
and more diversity in student profiles. They're harder and harder
to manage as well. So, like the answer to all of that for me is
build relationships with your students and they will follow your
lead. Even the worst-behaved students, even the students that are
struggling the most, ultimately, they need to know that teachers
care about them if they're going to do anything for
them.
00:21:42 Shawn
So, there's a lot going on, but
it's easy to not do it. And just try to stick to the curriculum.
There's a really strong pressure being put on teachers as well,
around less now with the pandemic that we've kind of said like, oh
my God, all this mental health issues, kids are really struggling,
like focus on social, emotional learning, focus on student
wellness.
00:22:00 Shawn
But up until 2019, teachers were
getting - you've got your core standards, you need to get through
all of them. There's common core - some states tests students on
state tests mandated twice a week. The amount of testing happening
in America takes a lot of time away from this human
dynamic.
00:22:20 Shawn
So, there's also like a dynamic
where we really care about assessment, we really care about
academics. And I think that's shifting, I think we're kind of
having a bit of a wake-up moment here in 2022 in that regard.
There's a lot, it's just a complicated question, but the data's
super clear.
00:22:38 Salvatrice
I didn't mean to put you on the
spot there.
00:22:39 Shawn
Are you kidding? As you can see,
I'm super passionate about this and it's interesting because this
is the Future of Work Podcast. And when you think about future of
work and what the workplace looks like and Gen Z workers in the
workplace, that's what they expect. They expect their employer to
build a relationship with them. They expect to be respected and
taken care of.
00:23:01 Shawn
And if they don't get that, they
walk and we're seeing a lot of young people moving a lot and
ultimately, there's a lot of factors at play there. But there is an
expectation where the best employers are the ones that are able to
build a community. And I think workplaces today and they're
morphing more and more into that, are ultimately, defined by a set
of cultured and values.
00:23:25 Shawn
It's such a big theme in how to
retain employees. Like the number one thing is culture. And
ultimately, what I'm saying is it's the same thing in schools. It's
true in work, but it is true in schools as well today. And so, I
think that there's a shift societally happening where we're
realizing that it's not productive. Just like in the workplace,
it's not productive to put super hard pressure, not care about
employees, be rude to them.
00:23:53 Shawn
They're going to leave, you're
going to get less output, you're going to have mental health
breakdowns. Like you're going to turnover, all these things that
are metrics that are actually attached to these warm and fuzzy
things that are human relationship.
00:24:05 Salvatrice
Speaking of human relationships
and the culture, that's really important. We forget that the
culture within the classroom is just as important as the culture
within the institution itself or with another employer. I got to be
honest with you; I've never heard someone say the culture in the
classroom. I mean, that's how I equated it. It's the
experience.
00:24:25 Shawn
I'm sad you've never heard
anybody say that. It means we still have evangelizing to
do.
00:24:32 Salvatrice
Yes, yes. No one really talks
about it. It's more about output, and what's being done for output
purposes, but not necessarily what we're talking about like the
generations - specifically for community colleges, we have
multi-generations within one classroom.
00:24:46 Salvatrice
I had a follow-up question, then
I asked you a tangent question. So, welcome to Salvatrice's world.
When you say the word "kids," who are you referring
to?
00:24:54 Shawn
Yeah, like young people that are
in school.
00:24:57 Salvatrice
Like high school, middle
school-
00:24:59 Shawn
Like, no, I mean we work across
kindergarten all through college. It's the same platform.
Obviously, what you get points for changes and the privileges you
get change. In elementary school, sitting in the bean bag chair is
the privilege. In late high school, it's like handing in your
homework late is a great privilege. So, that changes, but the
mechanics don't change.
00:25:19 Shawn
Like we need feedback, we need
to be positively praised. We need to be in context where peers are
helping each other out. Like in Classcraft, there's a feature where
students can give each other points; it's called Kudos. And it's
basically you write a little note, the teacher has to approve it
because otherwise, they could write "You're a jerk or whatever."
So, they write a little note, they identify a behavior and they
send it to somebody.
00:25:40 Shawn
And can you believe that
Classcraft is one of the only ways for students to publicly and in
a structured way, give each other positive feedback. It's not just
the teachers as well. We're not giving kids - and I'm saying like
learners, let's just say learners; we're not giving learners the
capacity to recognize each other either. And when you think about
culture, like wouldn't you rather be in a classroom where your
peers are looking at seeing what you do and celebrating you for
it?
00:26:12 Shawn
Like that's how you stop
bullying. You make it really cool to praise people as opposed to
make it cool to pick on people. And I think that's true for
elementary school kids. You mentioned community college, like
college classroom in a community colleges is a very diverse group,
usually, I would imagine, just like the best workplaces, and
everybody who works in a specific company has chosen that company
for the most part.
00:26:39 Shawn
Especially in today's workplace,
a lot of jobs out there, you've decided to work there maybe because
it's convenient, maybe because you care about the mission, maybe
because it's nearby, but you picked it and everybody who's there,
no matter how different they are, they've bought into that
organization. And it's the same thing with a class in a community
college.
00:26:56 Shawn
You picked that class, you
decided to be there, you have some sort of interest in this topic,
and you live in the same neighborhoods or within a hundred-mile
radius of this place. So , although these groups are so different,
these people are so different, they do have a lot in common. And be
it you're at the same place at the same moment, and there's a huge
missed opportunity there to create community around
that.
00:27:20 Shawn
And when you look at dropout
rates in college, online MOOCs is another good example of this,
where these are these massively online courses where you can watch
a video, take a course from Stanford or whatever, but there's no
community. The drop-off rates in a MOOC are like 95% on average.
The completion rate of those courses, even if they're free, even if
they're world quality are super low, because we need to be part of
a community and feel supported as we're learning, we don't learn in
a vacuum.
00:27:53 Salvatrice
I would even go as far as saying
that that directly affects our enrollment. And so, I had like five
different things pop in my head as I'm saying this, so that's why I
paused. Enrollment, let's call it what it is; it's an issue across
the board.
00:28:07 Shawn
Just like employee retention
rates.
00:28:09 Salvatrice
Yeah, that's right. So, it's all
across the board, across all levels of education, all institutions,
all universities, all primary ... et cetera, et cetera. And we talk
a lot about how do we get more students in? How do we get more
students in, specifically within community colleges because that's
what I know. That's my frame.
00:28:25 Salvatrice
Rarely are we talking about the
experience and rarely are we talking about like how are we ensuring
that the experience that they receive is a tool for them to onboard
with us? We have services, we have resources, a plethora them. I
mean, we have an amazing menu of resources and
services.
00:28:44 Salvatrice
But for us, I think that for a
system of community colleges, I love, love the fact about how
Classcraft is initiating, guiding, cultivating this new culture
within a classroom that is all the things that you just shared
about positivity, about engagement, about how we're learning about
motivation, about fill in the blank.
00:29:06 Salvatrice
Like listening to you makes me
think if we, as a system, really wanted to have some significant
changes in the way we onboard new students and retain the students,
we really have to put a lot of focus and intention in the
experience in the classroom that we may not have had in the
past.
00:29:22 Salvatrice
I share that, putting it on the
universe that we as a system really think about the experiences in
the classroom, the resources are there, the talent is there, the
services are there.
00:29:33 Shawn
Well, in reframing our
responsibility as educators, our tagline is "Relationships are
everything." And like when I think about, I taught college for a
few years as well, I was teaching pre-service teachers how to
become educators. And it was so fascinating to me because people
were like, "Oh, I used to teach high school, it must be so
different."
00:29:55 Shawn
I'm like, you know what? It's
not different at all. They're just older by a few years, but it's
the same thing, and everything that served me in a high school
classroom of putting relationships first and making sure that ...
you're going to have bad days. There's days where you are
less-motivated, that's normal, but that in general, you want to be
in this class.
00:30:17 Shawn
Like if I can make that, I'm
going to make sure that most days, you're happy to be here, then I
can get a lot done. I can get a lot done, because then I'm not
fighting with you. And I could say, "Hey, you're having a bad day,
why don't you step out?"
00:30:30 Shawn
And then Lauren will say, "Well,
no, I really want to be here." And I'm like, "Okay, well, then make
that choice" as opposed to like, "Hey, like you're disengaged,
you're not listening to me, like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I
don't want to be here." It's really hard to do anything with
that.
00:30:43 Shawn
And when I think about college
and when I was teaching these first-year students went on to be
teachers and they're still writing me, like, "Hey, look at my
classroom." And I only taught them for one semester, but I think
that there's just a very real need.
00:30:58 Shawn
And I don't think students know,
but that's what they're looking for. They want the degree and they
want to learn stuff, but ultimately, they're going there because
they want a community. And I think it's our responsibility to
acknowledge that and make it meaningful.
00:31:13 Shawn
There's money behind it. So,
like why not? Like there's KPIs tied to that; retention rates and
turnover, like completion rates. Like metrics we care about are
directly tied to this. So, like why are we not making this a
priority?
00:31:27 Salvatrice
That's right. Well, I tell you
what, this has been a beautiful conversation. Thank you so much,
Shawn. And I have to ask you my favorite question because I ask it
at every single podcast. Are you ready for this?
00:31:38 Shawn
Yeah.
00:31:38 Salvatrice
This is the Future of Work
podcast; I need you to tell me if there's one thing - this might be
difficult, and I feel like you've already mentioned it, but I'm not
going to tell you what it was. But if there's one thing you would
like our listeners to kind of understand about what we've talked
about and how it impacts them in their future, what would that
be?
00:31:55 Shawn
Oh man, well, there's a lot, it
depends where you're sitting. But regardless, for me, and this is
true for future of work, it's true for K12. It's true for the
present day of work I think no matter where we're going. And I
think about future of work and there's like there's AI and there's
industry 4.0 and genetics. And so many million jobs are going to
disappear in the next five years and so many million more, the
upskilling reskilling problem is massive.
00:32:20 Shawn
But at the end of the day, I
really do believe that organizations, where human beings that are
evolving within organizations and regardless what our job is, and
regardless what the future of the structure of those organizations
is, the community element built into that, the culture, the
relationships at the core of that aren't going to
change.
00:32:41 Shawn
AI's going to change things, all
these self-driving cars, no more trucking. Like all these different
things are going to be coming, climate change. Like there's so much
uncertainty, but one thing that is a truism and is constant and
won't change is the importance that positive relationships have in
how we show up, are motivated individually in how we can motivate
and lead others. And I think we need to be thinking about that in
how we show up with one another.
00:33:09 Shawn
But more than that, as leaders,
we need to be thinking about what experiences are we designing for
these human beings? That's what Classcraft is doing for school.
That's what Classcraft is doing as an organization internally with
our own staff, and every organization should be thinking about what
is the experience of my employees, my stakeholders, my community,
in regards to what I'm putting out in the world.
00:33:35 Shawn
Classcraft is a B-Corp, and
that's super interesting, you can look it up. But it's a
certification that we've legally taken a commitment to not just our
shareholders, but also, our stakeholders. And that's everybody we
interact with. And I think more and more companies, even if they're
not B-Corps, need to be thinking about it from that lens; what is
your responsibility to the different stakeholders you
serve?
00:34:00 Shawn
And that doesn't mean don't go
make money. Shareholders are part of your stakeholders, but you're
out in the world doing things. There's people at the other side of
that, and we need to be keeping that first and
foremost,
00:34:10 Salvatrice
What a beautiful way to conclude
the episode. Thank you, Shawn. I really appreciate that. Thank you.
This has been lovely. And please share our gratitude to Lauren,
your co-founder as well. Classcraft is amazing. And I hope that our
listener connects with you.
00:34:25 Shawn
So, classcraft.com. You can find
out all about it. Very easy to find on LinkedIn, and that's
probably the easiest way if you want to reach me directly, but so
much more about everything I've been talking about is directly
available on our website. If you know any teachers, you can invite
them to try the platform.
00:34:40 Shawn
Number one reason for teacher
turnover right now in America is student behaviors. So, if you know
a teacher, they probably need Classcraft.
00:34:50 Salvatrice
Awesome. Thank you so
much.
00:34:53 Shawn
Thank you,
Salvatrice.
00:34:53 Salvatrice
Have a great rest of the day,
and I look forward to chatting again soon.
00:34:56 Shawn
I would love to.
Thanks.
00:34:57 Salvatrice
Thank you.
00:34:57 Salvatrice
Thank you for listening to the
Future of Work Podcast. Make sure you're subscribed on your
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every Tuesday.
00:35:08 Salvatrice
You can reach out to us by
clicking on the website link below in the show notes to
collaborate, partner, or just chat about all-things future of work.
We'd love to connect with you. All of us here at the future of work
and Pasadena City College wish you safety and
wellness.