From Blackboards to Flight Simulators: Transforming Education with Real-World Learning

] Dr. Jim: Thanks for joining us today. This is your friendly neighborhood talent strategy nerd, Dr. Jim. When we think about building a 21st century school in a 21st century workforce, What thoughts come to mind? I'm sure many of us lean into our full futurist mindset when we think about that as a concept as innovative and futuristic as those thoughts might be.

One of the core things that we should be thinking about is how to AI proof our education and workforce so we remain relevant into the future. If we pull that off, what does it look like at the district level when it comes to the district level, when it comes to classwork, when it comes to instruction, these are all considerations that we need to take into account as we're planning the workforce and the classroom of the future.

That's what we're going to tackle today in today's conversation.

of the school district since: 2005

In education and workforce development, she's had extensive experience at the district and state level leadership and has excelled in creating collaborative partnerships, strategic planning and systemic change in education. Donna's initiatives include developing. Innovative stem pathways in collaboration with top institutions like SUNY ESF, Syracuse University and Siemens.

Under her leadership, ESM launched the Spartan Academy, an early college high school and pioneered one of New York's first aviation career and technical education pathways. She's been recognized nationally for her work. Dr. Desiato's vision for education extends to preparing students for a rapidly evolving global workforce and her leadership has earned her a seat on the Micron community engagement community. She holds a doctorate in educational leadership from Syracuse university and is the president elect of the NYS council of school superintendents.

Donna. Welcome to the show.

[: 00:01:58

[00:01:59] Dr. Jim: Yeah, [00:02:00] I'm looking forward to this conversation and I think it's going to be a really fun discussion, especially when we look at the workforce for tomorrow and the classroom of tomorrow. But I think before we dive into the meat and potatoes of the discussion, it's going to be important for our listeners to know a little bit more about you.

And I think a good place for us to start would be for you to share with us some of those Key moments in your career that helped shaped you as a leader and even as an innovator within the space of education.

[: 00:02:32

Larry Lowry and his work on understanding brain research and how it related to learning truly impacted [00:03:00] my understanding of what we would need to do and along that particular area it made me more interested in certainly the work of Dewey, the work of Hattie and these are educational researchers that have for very seriously helped us to understand that curiosity, student engagement student hands on mind on types of learning need to be an important part of what we're doing.

The other part that was also important to me was that while the work of those researchers that I just mentioned, talk about what students know and are able to do, and that's what the learning standards speak to what do students know. And what are they able to do? We, for the most part in education, have delivered an educational system on what students know.

their learning to solving a [: 00:04:00

[00:04:00] Dr. Jim: I think one of the things that I'm interested in understanding a little bit better is when you talk about bridging the gap between what students know and what they're able to do. How does that become real in a classroom? And what were the steps that you took to bring that into the classroom level so that you're driving better learning and execution outcomes?

[: 00:04:20

In addition, we worked with John Burrell. John Burrell was a major researcher in inquiry based learning. We brought him in to do professional learning with our teachers.

ing. In addition to that, we [: 00:05:00

[00:05:39] Dr. Jim: So it's interesting that you're describing some of the things that you brought into the classroom, and when I think about it, it didn't exist when I was going through school. It was basically more aligned towards rote memorization and that sort of stuff in terms of how education was delivered.

istance from parents. In the [: 00:06:00

[00:06:19] Dr. Donna DeSiato: It's interesting, Jim, because we did initially have some of that, and particularly from parents who thought that the rigor is about getting the right answers on the test, or that the rigor is about more memorization. As in particularly our middle school really took the lead, and one of our middle school teams, as they began to really integrate this work the students became excited. amazingly engaged in the learning and their learning was resulting in their proficiencies and their accomplishments. So they began to tell the story. One, I would have parents stop me and say, Dr. Desiato, I don't know what you're doing [00:07:00] in my middle school child's classroom. I used to think I had to get a major gong to get them out of bed.

Now they can't wait to get to school to solve that problem, to be on that team, to be part of A hands on, mind on type of experience. Our middle school attendance in that team was consistently in the mid to high 90s. Students, we had one week in which students were never absent. That's almost unheard of in a middle school.

And what it said to us and what it said to their parents, and to the parents of students who were not on that team, is what's happening there. What is it that's making students so engaged in their learning? And from there, we began to really explore and get more in depth with the type of learning and the professional learning we would need to invest in to make this more systemic. Can't hear you.

[: 00:07:53

But if you're embedding experiential learning into it and project based learning that gives you a problem to solve in a unique way and you have better learning outcomes. So I appreciate you sharing that switching gears a little bit. I think the piece that we're missing right now is, the landscape of the district.

So tell us a little bit more about the ins and outs of your district that you feel is important for the listeners to know and understand.

[: 00:08:39

We have a suburban area. And then we have The Manoa area that borders more of the rural area of our county, so we actually are very diverse and as a result, we see the various aspects of that diversity, both in the diversity of those geographic areas, as well as diversity in our socioeconomic levels.

Of support for our families, the in addition we have operated for a very long period of time from the mid 60s forward of a full pre K that was initially half day and is now full day pre K. So we've had a very strong investment in early childhood. Most recently, and we can talk more about that in the last six years, now seven years, we added an early college high school that's in partnership with our community college.

We go through from pre K to early college high school.

[: 00:09:59

[00:10:19] Dr. Donna DeSiato: The when I became superintendent, we did not have a strategic plan, and I do have to say that our strategic plan is the cornerstone, it is the blueprint, it is the guide that has taken us We spent 1 year developing it from 2007 to 2008. We launched it in 2008 and we have had 5 year segments of that plan.

st strategic plan, we had: 1000

In addition we did a community or world cafe in starting that process, and asked five questions of the stakeholders. In doing that, we also had a community cafe for students in grades six to twelve, and we asked those same five questions. And one of the questions, again, that was a point in my career that I will never forget.

The fifth question was, what are our untapped resources? And in the student cafe, the students answered, we are. So it truly resonated and it also underscored how important it is to engage students continuously, not only in the learning, but in the process of what it is we're learning and how we're learning.

[: 00:11:44

[00:12:19] Dr. Donna DeSiato: it really boils down to really multiple factors. We have an outstanding Board of Education who truly believes that the work that we're doing is important and fosters that ability to really bring about change. We have an amazing staff that has also particularly been engaged in the design and the infrastructure.

Of our plan and a very supportive community that truly embraces why education is an important part of a child's not only early years, but their lifelong years and that it is a game changer when you put all those ingredients together. You really do breed both success and the ability to facilitate change.

And that's what was [: 00:13:00

[00:13:17] Dr. Jim: it's interesting that a lot of our conversation so far has touched on concepts of innovation and continuous improvement. Why was it important for you to bring that mindset into the classroom? And how did you build that as a cultural perspective across all the different schools in your district?

[: 00:13:34

[00:14:30] Dr. Jim: So I like how you described all the changes that are going on and communicating that to the families in the community. How did you cultivate that inbound feedback from the business community in your district that it helped informed what innovation looks like, what practical learning looks like, what application of concepts looks like in the classroom what role did the business community play in shaping that strategic plan?

[: 00:14:55

Those partnerships for learning were certainly families, but they also were business and higher ed. And what we learned very early on in the very. First five years of our strategic plan. We actually have a student led credit union. So credit union partnered with us to develop having a student led credit union in the mainframe of our high school students can do their banking and they can learn financial literacy and how to set up a checkbook or how to manage a budget right in our high school from 9 through 12th grade.

l credit union. Now it's the [: 00:16:00

[00:16:01] Dr. Jim: It's really interesting that you have that community partnership with the credit union and you're teaching high school students, financial literacy.

What other partnerships did you put together that helped Students apply more of the things that they're learning in classroom and create a potential pathways to career opportunities post graduation.

[: 00:16:22

Yeah. I know that you're doing a lot of hands on mind on work, and I'm wondering if we could partner along with bringing SUNY ESF in and create some kind of an environmental studies course right here. We began that today, it's still going on. It was it's now into its 14th year. It is [00:17:00] called surf clean water educational research facility.

Our students are going there. Each week twice a week and then also within our classroom at the high school and they're doing aquaponics. They're looking at biodiversity. They're looking at all types of environmental studies at a high school and actually at a college level. In addition to that type of partnership, we have career and technical education programs, such as automotive tech, the automotive industry embraced us and with partnerships with 1 of our local.

Businesses, we were, we are able to either rebuild or build a kit car every year and we raffle that car when it's completely built by our students right here as part of their and that's one of their after school activities, they actually have auto tech as a program that they can be engaged in and enrolled in during the day, but as an after school activity, they can actually build a car or rebuild a car and we raffle that car each year.

[: 00:17:57

How did you get funding for all of this stuff? Because this seems like it would be a pretty big lift, and we're not sure if a midsize district would have those sort of resources. So walk us toward through sort of the resourcing process. So you had the ability to create these programs and deploy them successfully.

[: 00:18:35

The other is a major, for example, grant the. The Early College High School is a 1. 25 million grant that's now been renewed. We've received the first five years. We've now had it renewed for the second five years. So that's a partnership with Onondaga Community College. Our students can graduate with a high school diploma along with a degree, a two year degree in either computer science, math science, or engineering science from Onondaga Community College.

That the aspects of that is all paid for in the grant along with the ways in which we've shifted within our district.

[: 00:19:41

What was the [00:20:00] process for determining, how you shift gears?

[: 00:20:02

In doing that, as superintendent, I found early on it was very important to give people, as I mentioned, that, for example, that middle school team that was in an advanced stage of this work, permission, support, and protection. And by that, permission to help us to understand. How will we improve our work? When you think about, for example, the aviation industry, they look into a black box to discover what are the ways that we can improve the flight so that these things are better improved. The medical profession, they look [00:21:00] into human systems. How can we improve our practice? In education, we need to be looking at our practice.

And on learning and brain research and how students learn and then improving it. So we gave permission, help us to better understand that, support Einstein said you can't solve a problem at the same level that it was created. So what's the support in either professional learning, in materials, in conferences, in collaborative synergy that might go on between education and business and industry or higher ed.

And then protection of when we're first trying something out. We're not going to allow people to come in and make the critical types of opinions that's going to deflate our staff and what they're doing. We're going to protect our staff so that they get to fully implement something and reflect on their own work and continue it. And those are key elements to bringing about this type of change.

[: 00:21:53

What's something new that we should consider? What drives that decisioning process?

[: 00:22:16

Industry in aviation is really challenged with regard to having pilots coming into the profession and would you consider they're working on a curriculum out of Maryland? And it's with the, it's 1 of the national. Pilot associations, they will talk with you, they'll give you the curriculum. We got on the phone with [00:23:00] them.

Now, this again is about 7 years ago. And they provided us with all of the curriculum. They trained our technology teacher. We asked our technology department, is this something that you are interested in? We began to look at courses that were no longer relevant. When we started our strategic plan, we were doing still keyboarding.

Our kids didn't need keyboarding. And so there were things that we could remove and other things that we could integrate. We learned Aviation 1 and then we built Aviation 2. In the meantime, American Airlines came out with a grant. We applied for that grant. We were the recipients of that grant.

license or they're prepared [: 00:24:00

And that's been approved by the New York State Education Department.

[: 00:24:08

[00:24:31] Dr. Donna DeSiato: Part of that is part of that is with our again, our strategic plan and our career. We have a school to college and career advisory. Committee and that does have an array of stakeholders that also include not only educators, but business and industry from a variety of different business and career sectors and higher education.

of the early [: 00:25:00

We go right through in our middle school and more recently with the advent of micron, we are 1 of the school districts that is received from New York state from micron and from the American Federation of teachers funding to support an advanced technology framework. And how do we. Help to develop these courses again some of that aspect of that exposure will happen in elementary But some of it will happen more intensely in middle school.

So that as our students are Coming to the high school. They have a sense of what kinds of career pathways They want to explore and go into in a more intense And comprehensive way

[: 00:25:50

I

[: 00:26:29

We've come back out of COVID and re strengthened, and I think that's a tribute to the types of learning and we have [00:27:00] actually increased our graduation rate from the 10 year mark, the 20 year mark to the 10 years ago, from the 10 years to present, throughout, so each, and we're now hovering at approximately a 91 to 92 percent, at times hitting a 93 percent Graduation rate on an annual basis and we've been able to sustain that despite the COVID impact.

Our test scores continue to demonstrate that while certainly we have areas for improvement, we continue to maintain strong strides and continuous improvement in those areas. And 1 of the reasons why I somewhat have some reservations about that is because I do think that 1 of the things that's holding us back.

was sponsored and supported [: 00:28:00

11 of our staff members throughout the district, along with. Siemens executives, along with higher ed representatives from Syracuse University on a community college. SUNY ESF joined us in taking a learning tour to two premier STEM high schools in the country. So we could take a look at what that would look like.

ognized at the White House in: 2015

Today, we are one of over 100 STEM learning ecosystems in the country. And those are only a small. Number of we have many awards and many recognitions that the district or our teachers or [00:29:00] our students have received throughout this continuum of learning and this continuum of change.

I

[: 00:29:06

So when you're talking about a midsize school district in a diverse socioeconomic environment and a diverse geographic environment that's cranking out Graduation rates that are on par with what you would see at a typical private school that speaks to some of the impact and the outcomes that that you've been able to deliver.

are the key elements from a [: 00:30:00

And put into place so that they're set up for success as they make this sort of shift to more an experiential learning district.

[: 00:30:09

We have actually, because of our business partners, they will provide resources to have people, we've offered STEM learning or learning tours, I should say, because we go beyond the STEM world now. We have so many other aspects of our district that we're strengthening. But we offer learning tours to other districts that we've had districts come from over a hundred different districts and six different countries to visit.

mportant piece in the giving [: 00:31:00

But this is not a top down agenda. This is really an engagement agenda. It's really an agenda that honors the fact that we're continuously improving, but we're also continuously recognizing we have to be part of an innovation and transformation agenda as well. Because there's things that we were not doing in the 50s, That we need to be doing in 2025 and beyond if we're going to educate today's learner.

[: 00:31:47

[00:31:55] Dr. Donna DeSiato: Certainly by my email they can ddesiato at [00:32:00] esmschools. org is probably the best way. They call us, contact us, we'll certainly follow up. We've learned a lot because of the fact That we've been able to partner with others. The other part, Jim, that I will also say, we happen to be also a Covey district.

We believe in Covey's highly effective principles. And what we've learned from Covey is that there's the continuum of dependence, independence, and interdependence. Quite often we think that we're trying to achieve with our students or with ourselves independence. But the highest level of the continuum is interdependence. And that's really what we're striving for. And that's why Moving to an interdependent type of working with, in our system and with the partnerships from our community, from our state and nationally and internationally is key because it takes us out of that being siloed and gets us into a more interdependent, higher level of functioning.

[: 00:32:55

When I think through the conversation that we had and look at key factors that helped. Set up a strong foundation for this. I think it goes back to what you were talking about in your strategic plan. You establish five pillars that were critical for you and the district team to establish, and then you build your built your continuous improvement and innovation plan on top of those key pillars.

And I think. When you look across any district and you're looking to innovate and continuously improved, it's improved. It's important to have those keystone elements that you care about. And you asked the question how do we bring this to life in our staff, our students, our communities and our businesses so that you're creating that interdependent system That helps drive that innovation and high performance.

tant. Or at least that stood [: 00:34:00

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