Make It Mindful: Insights for Global Learning

Seth Fleischauer (00:00.788)
Hello everyone and welcome to Make It Mindful, Insights for Global Learning, the podcast for globally minded educators seeking thoughtful conversations about how education can adapt to an ever-changing world. I'm Seth Fleishauer, former classroom teacher turned founder of an international learning company specializing in the teaching of global learning. Together we explore the interconnectedness of people, cultures, and systems and how these relationships shape transformative ideas in education. Each episode features educational change makers,

whose insights lead to practical solutions and lasting impact. And it wasn't too long ago that we had on the podcast, Chris Brida, district administrator at Portland Public Schools. Chris, welcome back to the program.

Chris Brida (00:42.754)
Thanks for having me again. It feels great to be a recurring guest on the show.

Seth Fleischauer (00:47.124)
I gotta say, I couldn't resist, know? We've had some really thought-provoking conversations offline in between the last recording and now, and I feel like, I think we ended that one stating how much more we had to talk about even in that moment. So who knows, maybe this is only part two and we'll have to have you back again because there's just too much good stuff, Chris. Just.

Chris Brida (01:12.438)
But know, in my world, CTE especially, there is a lot of cool things happening. So I'm excited to share.

Seth Fleischauer (01:16.222)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there really is. So the last time you were here, you helped us kind of reframe career and technical education, CTE. That is an acronym we're going to be using a lot, not as this narrow idea of vocational ed of the past, but as a future ready pathway that builds durable skills, opens high wage opportunities. That high wage part of it is really big for you.

Empower students without sacrificing choice or creativity. And we explored why CTE is experiencing this resurgence right now, how strong partnerships with industry and community can fuel transformation and why schools can't work in isolation if they want to meet workforce demands. That's all in the past episode number 64. But today I want to bring you back because our ongoing conversations have been so inspiring. This time,

We'll unpack how artificial intelligence is shaping CTE and take a close look at cross-functional, a cross-functional team model that you are building in Portland, which I found to be absolutely fascinating. So brought to you by Banning Global Learning, let's make it mindful. The last time we had you on here was almost exactly six months ago, at least when we recorded. I'm wondering what has changed in the world of CTE and AI and Portland Public Schools in the last six months.

Chris Brida (02:18.957)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Brida (02:39.542)
Yeah, it's a great question. mean, I think the reality of career and technical education is that it's always changing. It's ever changing. And I think as AI especially continues to become more sophisticated, so too does the need, I suppose, for career and technical education to stay on the forefront and stay on the cutting edge of what that's going to look like. And then for me, I think it's some change because I've been

Seth Fleischauer (02:46.346)
you

Chris Brida (03:06.466)
you know, in this iterative research process for my dissertation, there's always, I think, change as I reflect on, you know, now thinking about other ways of thinking about cross-functional teams. And so I've been very interested in a leadership approach called boundary spanning leadership as a, as a sort of theoretical model in which I'm trying to ground a lot of the work that I'm doing. So some of it is about me and my thinking about career and technical education. Some of it is just the

the natural sort of treadmill that I think CTE is on connected to technology changing so fast.

Seth Fleischauer (03:43.89)
I can't resist. I'll jump it. What is bound boundary? And what did you call it?

Chris Brida (03:49.218)
Boundary spanning leadership. Boundary spanning, yeah, yes. I'll try and frame it in the idea of career and technical education especially, but boundary spanning leadership is a leadership theory essentially that talks about innovation essentially happening on the boundary between, it could be sectors, it could be departments. I think about it in terms of sectors. And so if I think about the role of career and technical education, I'm trying to think of it as a system.

Seth Fleischauer (03:51.614)
Boundary spanning leadership. right. Elevator pitch me.

Chris Brida (04:19.136)
as a systems level partner, we'll say. So instead of how do I attract a single organization to be a partner with a single program of study that I have at a specific high school, I'm trying to think about how to package all 80 of my programs as a systems level partner to face outward to industry, post-secondary, community organizations, government, our cultural institutions, what have you. And boundary spanning leadership is essentially about the idea that

sort of in the gray space between, let's say, the education system and industry, that's where innovative work happens. So that is the boundary between those sort of two entities. You could also think about it internally as well, like if you're thinking about the boundary between two departments, like how does career and technical education work at the boundary with advanced coursework, right? Or how does career and technical education work at the boundary with special ed, right? So how do we find the sort of space in between?

because that's where the most innovative work happens. the way to sort of think about it is there's the role of the boundary spanner. So the sort of person that could be leading that work and that person's role is really about the relationship building and the buffering and the protecting of, you know, like the team, those kinds of things. And then there's also the work of the infrastructure that needs to be built in order to make that sort of collaboration happen.

Seth Fleischauer (05:45.604)
And you're doing all of it, I assume, because that's how you go, right?

Chris Brida (05:49.518)
Yeah, and the way that I'm trying to think about it, I think is like, recognize my role as a boundary spanner. Part of it is just like my natural being extroverted. And so I love sort of being in relationship with folks. It's how I recharge anyways. And so that's really important. But for me, the piece that sort of changed more recently in the way that I'm thinking about it is the systems level.

That actually is the direction that I'm going to take my research as well, is how to create the conditions and structures to have systems level partnerships and really think about career and technical education as a workforce development system or as a community development system, an economic mobility system or what have you, and then how to essentially find the space in between systems and really find ways to bring those systems together. Exactly.

Seth Fleischauer (06:31.763)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (06:41.692)
Mm boundary pushing systems. Yeah, I'm reminded like the first time I learned about the Silk Road and it and how much it like mirrors evolution, right? Like you just you you get different genes together and new cool stuff happens, right? And and and of course, they're getting together at their boundaries, right? I love that idea.

Chris Brida (06:50.125)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Brida (07:01.837)
That's right.

Seth Fleischauer (07:09.71)
Let's, let's talk about AI because you and I met on an AI panel here in Portland and we meant to talk about it last time, but we never, we never got there. So, so, obviously it's on a lot of people's minds. I've had a lot of podcast episodes about this. feel like we've, I feel like we like have gotten, I forget what that curve of like tech adoption.

Chris Brida (07:15.042)
That's right.

Chris Brida (07:19.458)
We never got there.

Seth Fleischauer (07:33.394)
looks like I know there is one, but we've gotten past the initial surge and the rejection of the initial surge. And now we're at this like, okay, like, how do we how do we make this thing work? How do we how do we speak to the realities that are happening? Because this is something that is happening to us more than something that you know, we're choosing. When I wrote to you about this, I was like, Hey, AI and CT, what what's going on with that? And

you were like, okay, there's AI in CTE and there's AI for CTE and those are two different things. So let's start there. What are your two modes of thinking?

Chris Brida (08:14.958)
Well, think if we think about AI in CTE, I think what that really is talking about is AI as a skill that is going to be critical for workforce development. And so we can frame that in, there's a new national framework put out by this organization called Advanced CTE. And they are sort of the organization that...

frames what the career clusters, right? So they have these clusters and traditionally computer science or digital technology has lived at its own cluster. And so the way that we've thought about AI or technology has been like students will be on this computer science pathway, they're gonna take three years of computer science, that's gonna be the pathway. Now the way that it's framed is what they're calling a cross-cutting cluster, meaning they think that

data science and AI, software solutions, network systems and cybersecurity is actually in all of the CTE pathways. And so when we talk about AI in CTE, I think that's sort of the way that I'm thinking about it is it is going to very quickly, I think probably become ubiquitous across all CTE programs that there is a role for AI to play in all of the...

clusters. There's a role for AI to play in agriculture in the same way there is in business, in the same way there is in computer science, in the same way there is in manufacturing. And so that's when we talk about AI and CTE, that's, I think, the way that I'm thinking about it. And then AI for CTE, maybe that's my own thinking around it or my own framing around it, but that's the way that I think about the use of AI to strengthen CTE.

And this sort of goes back to the piece that I was talking about around these partnerships and the systems level partnerships, is how can AI play a role in supporting the development of partnerships and the management of those partnerships in a way that is sort of true to the idea that it's really complex to partner systems together. And so is there a way that we could use AI to support that, the management of that sort of collaboration?

Seth Fleischauer (10:28.53)
Yeah. Yeah. Kind of like, it feels like it's in the one sense, it's skill building. In the other sense, it's kind of an infrastructure play, right? Like it's the stuff that's operating in the background. So let's talk about the, the skill building first. because AI.

Chris Brida (10:37.262)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that's right.

Seth Fleischauer (10:44.97)
has the potential to just kind of fade into the background, right? Like right now it's all about like, how do we get the most out of this version of chat GBT and prompt engineering and like, let's teach people the like basics of media literacy as it pertains to AI. You can imagine a future not too far away where that stuff has been...

absorbed into society. And there are certain basic understandings of what it is, how it works, how to interact with it. Prompt engineering might kind of go away as as a necessary skill, because it's the AI is going to be able to anticipate what it is that you need. agentic AI could happen. And at that point, it's just about like, stating a need and it'll do it for you, I guess. I guess that's what it'll look like. So so what

Chris Brida (11:39.32)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (11:43.217)
Are we teaching now that we think is critical, so critical that it's across all of the cultures, or sorry, clusters, across all the clusters, what are we teaching about AI that is still going to be relevant in this rapidly changing landscape when these students get into actual careers?

Chris Brida (12:04.59)
I mean, we are still talking about the education system. we're not, we haven't quite gotten to like, we're teaching the exact mirror of what's happening in sort of real life. Of course, but you know, I think about like any, the last year, anytime I've gone to the doctor's office, like that appointment is now being recorded and essentially translated in AI to make sure the doctor doesn't miss anything. So I think to your point before, like,

Seth Fleischauer (12:07.75)
You

Seth Fleischauer (12:14.12)
Sure, there's always gonna be a delay.

Chris Brida (12:33.634)
there's a shift that's happening that it's becoming less about the, can I type into chat GPT? And it's more about like how it's showing up in the sort of day to day. I think computer science right now, especially is having this sort of reckoning that it used to be very code driven. Like we're gonna teach kids how to write code, but we know that that's changing very quickly, right? And the...

that skill is something that is becoming more accessible to anyone that doesn't know how to write code at all. And so I think there's a need in many ways to rethink or reshape the way that we've thought about, like, this is the place that AI naturally lives in a computer science pathway, but there's gonna need to be some change. So now it's more about like, how can AI serve as a buddy?

to teaching you the foundational skills so that you can always have a teacher with you. And not like I have to wait for the one teacher who's responsible for 30 kids. Now there's a way for me to have a sort of tutor almost built in to the work that I do. So I think to that end, it's moving quickly and we're having a hard time catching up, but CTE in many ways is meant to be the place that it...

What is CTE? CTE is meant to be the place where, yeah, I don't know. mean, I think we're getting to a place where the critical thinking work that's required of a lot of the career pathways that we have, that's being supported by AI.

Seth Fleischauer (14:13.908)
Hmm.

As an aside, how...

How are kids feeling about AI right now? So just today, my daughter's in this new math class and I'm super stoked because she's so good at math and she's been so frustrated by how unchallenged she's been at math, but she's in compacted math where they are applying it to STEM. And so she has to think about math in an entirely different way. And she got her first below proficient on a grade on a thing where she had to translate

a question into something that was like variable and measurable. And she was just like, like her math thinking is just so like, there's a right answer, right. And so she came home and I was like, I don't really know what your teacher meant by this either. So hold on. And I pulled out chat GPT and she's like, not everything can be answered by AI dad. Right. I was like, you're right. But there are certain things that I found myself like defending like the use of it. I was like, you know, there are

Chris Brida (14:56.322)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (15:17.968)
it's just the internet, but it's a better internet like they're like, like if you have a specific fact you need, but like if you want to like call the everything for like a general kind of anyway, she she's already annoyed with it and she's 12. I'm wondering how kids who like see the

like the entry level jobs disappearing, all this stuff that like they would be doing if not for AI, yet also AI is this place where they can like go and like have a judgment free zone where they can talk to an entity and like feel okay about the, like how, like do you catch a vibe from these kids? Like how are they feeling?

Chris Brida (15:48.791)
Yeah, yeah.

Chris Brida (15:54.336)
It's hard to say. I think it's complex. I think that the complexity is largely in the exposure because they are so exposed to it. They're one of the top users of AI. think that's what most of their research says now. It's like student-aged users are, it's like the largest group of AI users, but they're also not learning how to use it. And so they have super high exposure to the tool itself.

but not very much exposure to the application. And so I think it is like the full spectrum of students feeling like this is an incredible tool. This is a shortcut. This is a, you know, like it is all of the things or like this is, we need to avoid this at all costs. This is, it's not aligned with, you our views on the education system. And so I just think that

Seth Fleischauer (16:48.35)
Yeah.

Chris Brida (16:53.026)
there is no real sense of, I mean, one, it's like just changing so fast, right? So how it's going to be used is different every day. And two, without the literacy and the, you know, like teaching kids how to write prompts and teaching kids like, you know, how to use it for critical thinking and not how to use it to write your essay, like that part's missing. And so I think their feeling about it is,

Seth Fleischauer (17:19.337)
Hmm.

Chris Brida (17:22.7)
Like it's at, it's like the whole range. Like some kids are like, this is amazing. And some kids are like, this is awful. So I mean, it's hard to say. It's hard to say.

Seth Fleischauer (17:26.089)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (17:31.083)
Sure. Yeah. How do you, how do you feel about a hammer? I guess it depends on how you use it. Yeah. I, I'm, as I'm, as I'm talking to you, I'm thinking about, help me work through this idea. I hear from college students. hear from like some of the, like the older high school kids that you are basically in a situation right now where you can use AI to avoid any work that you don't really want to do.

Chris Brida (17:34.86)
That's right. Yeah.

Chris Brida (17:58.275)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (17:58.431)
right? And so the only stuff that you're actually spending your like mental effort on is stuff that you're interested in. And I wonder if that's good. Right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Brida (18:09.378)
I mean, that's, that's like the rise of alpha school, right? I mean, you've seen this alpha school. It's like this two hour learning model where you just do two hours of learning on AI personalized learning in the morning. And then your entire afternoon is to work on things that you like are passionate about and are excited by. so, I mean, I think that there's a reason why that model of education is emerging and very quickly because like the way that the way that traditional education model is, it's like it.

Seth Fleischauer (18:31.508)
Yeah.

Chris Brida (18:38.708)
it hasn't changed to the place where AI is a tool, AI is a shortcut in the way that we've done education for a long time. So yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (18:46.952)
Yeah. Yeah, my advisor on this podcast, dear Jamarlo is eye rolling so high right now because she is such a fan of liberal arts education and the type of learning that can come from being forced to engage with content that you might not necessarily assume is something that you're interested in. But we'll leave that there for now. AI. Sorry.

Chris Brida (19:05.856)
No. But I think a liberal arts education is so important in the use of AI, right? I think about the people that are getting snatched up into these super high paying AI jobs, they're all researchers, right? And so for me personally, I think my ability to navigate AI has a lot to do with the fact that I try and bring a research lens to it. I try and ask the right questions. I try and write sophisticated prompts and I'm not using it as like a

Can you write this sentence for me? I'm using it as a, can you evaluate this idea for me? Give me other suggestions about how to think about this idea. What are my blind spots? And I don't have to just take all of that as like, this is right. I get to take it as like, let me interpret this. Let me sort of interrogate this idea to see if it's worth my like continuing. And so I think for me, this is sort of like, is going to dovetail us into the conversation about, you know, AI for CTE.

Seth Fleischauer (19:45.342)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (19:52.542)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (20:05.716)
Thank you. was going there.

Chris Brida (20:05.838)
I'm using it, yeah, no, it's good. The way that I'm thinking about it a lot now is as a co-pilot for partnership development. And so, mean, what do you wanna talk about? You wanna talk about the project or you wanna talk about the other work that I'm doing? What do you wanna know?

Seth Fleischauer (20:22.334)
Well, can you talk about, can you talk about that idea? Can I'm thinking that idea could dovetail into the talk of the larger partnership. So what do you mean that it can be the, the, what did you say? The, the, the partner in partner development? Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Brida (20:38.894)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think of it as a co-designer in partnership development. So, okay, so I'm, am, there's actually a few sort of applications of this, but there are two projects right now that I'm involved in, one of which I am sort of co-leading with a set of partners, and the other of which is actually happening at the state level. I'll talk about the state level project first. So,

I am co-leading the development of the state's first career and technical education pathway in clean energy. This comes from the national career cluster that I talked about before, but for the first time, energy has been called out as its own career pathway. It has for a long time lived under natural resources, but now we know that the clean energy economy is becoming a thing. so there's this work happening at the state level.

with an organization called the Oregon Clean Energy Workforce Coalition. And that group comprises of community partners, industry partners, and education partners all at the table together. And so right now, I think there are just over 100 partners that are part of this coalition. And so when we think about the development of the clean energy pathway, what we're trying to think about is how do we create

an adaptive CTE pathway in the state of Oregon, where our geographies alone sort of differentiate the need for that pathway so widely, because the need for a clean energy pathway in Eastern Oregon looks very different than it does on the coast and looks very different than it does in the metro area. And yet we are responsible for the development of a clean energy pathway for the whole state. And so we've really been

thinking about or trying to be intentional about how to build something that is flexible enough and adaptable enough so that anyone across the state could adopt it and still help students find careers in clean energy. And so if I think about AI use in that process, a lot of it has to do with almost perspective switching. Like I'm trying to evaluate the way that

Chris Brida (22:58.616)
like a coastal town might think about the use of, or might think about the development of a clean energy pathway so that I have that lens, including the in-person lens, like those folks are at the table as well, but I don't always have access to those folks. And so I'm trying to use it as a way to perspective switch to the different ways of thinking about this clean energy pathway in order to ensure that it is sort of adaptable.

and agnostic of location, school, or teacher. So that's sort of one way.

Seth Fleischauer (23:29.226)
And how are you doing that? Because I worry about authenticity of feedback. It takes a special prompt to be able to replace a human interaction when based on actual experience.

Chris Brida (23:37.645)
Yeah.

Chris Brida (23:45.4)
Totally. And I think it's more, you know, like, I think the grounding of a CTE pathway and clean energy, let's say, like one way that we're trying to think about it is in the context of invention education. Like, how do we turn students into inventors? Because, you know, we know that invention education, plays, especially in clean energy, it plays such a significant role. There's so much entrepreneurship happening in the clean energy space. Like, what does it mean for

new buildings to have new mechanisms that make them more sustainable, right? So there's so much development happening in that space that if we can give kids the skills of invention education, what does it mean to be an inventor? Then like that. And so I think it's more about like interrogating those skills. Like would this work for a student that was trying to invent for a coastal town and less about like what does a coastal town need? You know?

Seth Fleischauer (24:37.299)
Hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (24:41.288)
Hmm, yeah.

Chris Brida (24:41.974)
I think it's more about the idea that if we're thinking about just the skills inherent that students would need to be successful and trying to find pathways into the clean energy economy, then really what it's about is trying to think about that through the lens of different contexts in our state. Maybe that's not a great example, so you can cut that whole section if you don't like it. But let's talk about the other project.

Seth Fleischauer (25:02.122)
Okay.

Seth Fleischauer (25:06.122)
Yeah, let's talk about it because you told me about this, I think it's got it's got an interesting use of AI, but the real mind blowing part is I think how you've organized the systems or how the systems are organizing, how these different organizations are working together to enact some real physical change within Portland. So, so what do you what are you doing, Chris?

Chris Brida (25:35.384)
So this is really, this project I think is born out of the idea that partnerships aren't just checkboxes. They need to be designed. They need to be intentional. And so for a long time, I've been thinking about ways to pair these cross-functional teams, which I have a hard time doing internally. And that's not the fault of the education system. It's just that most people that are in central office education come from education, right?

We were born of the education system and now we just have continued into the education system. And so there's very little differentiation between the folks that I can convene here outside of our sort of maybe diverse experiences in education. And of course we all have some experiences outside. But what I'm really interested in is how to leverage external partners expertise as the varied perspectives needed to move a project forward, but do so in a way that is created

So there's mutual beneficence to all of the partners. So I've been, you know, in the last now two years, basically have met with hundreds of partners, really trying to understand the industry landscape, the legislative landscape, the community organization landscape, and then have been trying to think about how to match those partners together to work on a project. And so really I would say last spring, maybe like late last winter, it finally came to a point that I was like, okay, I have these six partners.

that I'm really interested in working with for two reasons. One, there's like the me to them relationship. I have a relationship with some of these partners. And then two, it's my system and their system also make a good match. So I think it's sort of twofold in that way. So this project is a collaborative effort between CTE, Portland Public School of CTE, Portland State University's College of Engineering.

Albina Vision Trust, which is an organization that's supporting the urban redevelopment of the sort of land that the PPS headquarters is on, but largely in North Portland. MESA, which is an afterschool program that supports engineering. The Lemelson Foundation, which is a world's leading philanthropist in invention education. And the Center for Black Student Excellence. And so that set of partners,

Chris Brida (28:02.83)
our partners that I've built relationships with, the individuals, oftentimes the leader of those organizations, but not always in all cases. And so then what sort of clicked for me was there's an opportunity here to now think about how to pair our systems together and do so in a way that doesn't ask any one of those organizations to do anything outside of the scope of what their normal workflow is. And so it isn't like I'm asking Portland State University College of Engineering to do anything outside of

engineering academics at the post-secondary level or asking Mesa to do anything outside of their sort of after-school human-centered design model for students to become inventors through engineering. So the intention for me or the goal for me, I suppose, was to try and find a way to just build something at the boundary of all six of these organizations, right? So sort of loop back to what I was talking about before. So what that means is

Seth Fleischauer (28:56.426)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Brida (29:02.518)
something that's at the boundary of invention and philanthropy and post-secondary academics and industry and a community organization, like what is the thing that all of us could work on together? And so what we're working on developing is a project called the Albina D-Lab. And the idea behind that project is to create a space for Black engineering students in our district to

develop solutions to the redevelopment of Albina using human centered design, engineering principles and invention education. So we have support from the university from an academic standpoint of like, let's create a pipeline to a four year engineering program for our students where they're going to get all of the skills they need to be successful while they're in high school. And we can ensure that they're going to get all the skills that they need to be successful while they're in high school by being partnered with a four year university that is the next four years of an engineering.

So we're trying to think about it as, is there a seven year opportunity for students who become highly interested in engineering that they could do three years while they're in PPS and four more at Portland State? And then can we have the culturally specific and relevant support from an organization like the Center for Black Student Excellence, which is designed to be supportive of our black students? And so then now we have a community organization that's involved in this process. And so then it becomes more about like,

What are the supports that we can build for these students? Are there tutoring opportunities that we can build for these students? Where are the ways that we can sort of promote or push or create black excellence in this project? And so the idea then is right to have a project that lives at the midpoint of all of our organizations. And then the way that I'm sort of using AI to support that process is that I'm

I'm using AI essentially to figure out which part of each of those systems or the individuals that are leading some of those systems need to happen in order to achieve this sort of end goal. And so some of that means like, okay, for the first project, it's me and this executive director and this executive director working on this very specific task because it has the most direct application both to our systems and to us as leaders.

Chris Brida (31:27.084)
And then how can we create a deliverable from that that gets passed on to the next sort of pair or trio or whatever it is. And so instead of convening six very busy leaders at six very large organizations all of the time, I've really been interested in trying to find ways to create a process by which they are matched to

the right task at the right time with the right other people in order to sort of move this work forward. So that like the need for us to always come together and coordinate a bunch of schedules, the burden of that is lessened by creating a system or an infrastructure in order to make this partnership work. So I think that's the way that I'm thinking about using AI for CT.

Seth Fleischauer (32:17.354)
Well, and so are you saying that you're just providing as much context as you can to chat GPT to understand where these overlaps are, who to have in the meeting, who not to have in the meeting? what, like,

Because are you just gathering as much context as you possibly can and then understanding that there is a goal here and the goal is to have these points of overlap and to create efficiency within the system and then you're just like splatting that into chat GPT? Are you building your own GPT to like make it do this where you're programming like the personas of the people involved since you're going to be like solving so many problems throughout this whole project? Like how are you doing it?

Chris Brida (33:03.448)
Great, great question. Yeah, I've trained it very specifically to do this thing. And part of that is, you know, like the advantage that I have is I have this deep research sort of base and set of knowledge that I'm thinking about in the context of how to do partnership building really well. I have the experience.

of myself trying to do this individually and the sort of learnings that I've had over the last two years, especially about how to do this successfully. And then I have this group of people who are also interested in as well. So some of it is, yes, there is some upfront information that I collected. And collected isn't even the right word. Like there's some human centered data that went into the training of the model that is really about the strengths of the individuals at the table.

about the ways that we think about collaborating with each other and then about the kinds of tasks that bring us joy at work. So I'm really interested in the design of partnerships for joy specifically. Like can I create the kinds of tasks and experiences for the partners that I'm working with that make them happy that like they love working on because it's aligned with the way that they

think best is aligned with the way that their like personal genius shows up or their or their professional joy shows up or what have you. And so really for me, this is both about how to how to boundary span at scale. Like this allows me not just to be the person that's like, hey, what would be the right thing to design for this person or what would be the right thing to design for this person? But more like how can I think about what the right thing to design for this person is?

in the context of there also there's a system behind them and there's a system behind me and there's a system behind all six of us that I'm trying to think about how to sort of match together. So some of it is there's some human centered design at the beginning that goes into it and that process is iterative. I try and continue to collect data about like did this task like make you happy? Did it make you want to keep coming back to the table? Because if it didn't,

Chris Brida (35:22.904)
then I need to design different tasks for you in the future that still continue to move this work forward towards achieving this ultimate goal. But also, I don't want this to feel like a burden to you because if it feels like a burden to you, then we're never going to accomplish this thing. So some of it is like, there's this constant iteration that I'm trying to build into the training of the model that will then inform the next set of tasks that get developed.

and who gets paired with those and sort of who gets paired on those tasks. And so like, if I know something about someone in the group that's like, this person really loves design thinking, then I need to create a task that is design thinking forward. So they get the experience of going through that and love it. But the deliverable that comes out at the end of that is actually like in service of trying to accomplish this goal, which is to develop this sort of lab.

Seth Fleischauer (36:15.954)
Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like that brings it right back into like the heart of CTE, right? Like CTE is there's a lot of overlap between it and SEL. It's about discovering. love that you use the word joy, but what drives people, right? Like, like what, gives them purpose? And I ideally

Chris Brida (36:28.291)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (36:33.674)
understanding from a relatively young age that there is a certain subset of careers that are going to give them more joy and more purpose than than some of those other ones so i like how you work that in yeah yeah

Chris Brida (36:45.676)
Yeah. It's like Icky Guy, know, that, you know, if you're familiar with the term Icky Guy, right? It's like this idea that like it's something that you're great at and something that you love and something that pays the bills and, you know, and it's a, and it meets, yeah, and it meets your needs, it meets the needs of society, right? And so like it is, yeah, I think CTE in many ways can, can help students find that sweet spot.

Seth Fleischauer (37:00.682)
There's one more.

Society.

Chris Brida (37:13.9)
And I think the piece that's missing here and maybe what makes it easier for like adults is I at this point in my life have a really good sense of what my aptitudes are. I just know inherently what my skills are and how to leverage those skills in order to be more successful at my job. Students don't necessarily have that. That's not data that they're sort of getting or collecting or understanding. They know their interests. They know their personality maybe, but they're inherent. Totally. Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (37:40.522)
when they're still developing their aptitudes to a certain extent, right? Yeah.

Chris Brida (37:43.746)
But their skills, right, that's the tricky piece. There is really good base of research about aptitudes that, but I think it's between age 15 and 70, your aptitudes only change 2%. And so the way that that has sort of been framed to me is like your handwriting doesn't change very much between age 15 and 70. It's a skill that you sort of have by age 15 that like the style of the way that I write isn't gonna change that much by the time I'm 70. It's gonna look pretty similar.

Seth Fleischauer (37:54.805)
Chris Brida (38:12.366)
But the way that I write with my left hand, which is not my aptitude, like could be awful for next, you know, for 55 years. so, or I could if that's what I wanted to practice. And so one of the things that we're really interested in CTE this year is like, can we get students information about their aptitudes, the things that they are just inherently good at? And then can we help them translate that into successful CTE pathways? Because then it's not just about what I like this year.

Seth Fleischauer (38:18.578)
Or could get a whole lot better in that time.

Seth Fleischauer (38:36.564)
Yeah.

Chris Brida (38:41.74)
It's actually about what I'm just good at. And so if I have aptitudes in health science, but don't know that I have aptitudes in health science, or if I have aptitudes in like manufacturing and hands-on work, but I don't know that I have those aptitudes, if I'm not exposed to that career pathway, how likely am I going to be to choose that as a CTE pathway? But now if I have this information about myself, that's like, if I went to this class and stayed in this class, I would be really successful at it because I have the skills to be successful at it.

Seth Fleischauer (38:43.647)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (38:59.423)
Yeah.

Chris Brida (39:08.864)
So yeah, it's something that we're really focused on this year for our students is helping them find their aptitudes.

Seth Fleischauer (39:15.036)
Yeah. And I'm also struck by, the idea that if you understand those aptitudes, it kind of doesn't matter what the professional landscape looks like because it's rapidly changing in a scary, scary way for a lot of people. And so if you really, really deeply understand that, then whatever careers are emerging, you understand if you're a good fit for them or not. And yeah. Yeah. Of course. Of course. Yeah. And

Chris Brida (39:34.636)
or not a good fit, which is also important, right? It's like knowing the things that aren't gonna be successful, yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (39:41.129)
And you know, talking to you about this stuff, it's clear that you found at least one of your Iki guys, right? Like this seems to like hit those intersections for you. I'm always super inspired talking to you as a closing question. I want to kind of place it in this time, which is just crazy, right? Like, like, look at the pace that things are changing technologically, the way systems are breaking in the world, and will eventually be replaced by something else. I think a lot of people have

Chris Brida (40:00.354)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (40:11.052)
a lot of like professional anxiety at a young age like once they begin to understand like the way that things are changing and I mean you were telling me that the the waitlist for the electrician program at PPS is like 1500 students long like the you know the

Chris Brida (40:26.7)
Yeah, not in PPS, but at the at the at the apprenticeship program. Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (40:30.444)
got it. Got it. Yeah. So, so, you know, the, the, the, the information's out, right? Like people, people are looking for other ways to have a career that aren't, the, the, the infrastructure that we've understood for the past few decades of like, go to college, get a white collar job. If you can, make more like that's all that's changing. Right. But my question for you is I'm a parent, I'm a student. Make me feel better.

Chris Brida (40:53.912)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (41:00.554)
Right? Like, like, give me something that makes me feel okay, even though all of this is happening.

Chris Brida (41:02.499)
Yeah.

Chris Brida (41:08.27)
I think some of the shifts that we're seeing in the education system are connected to this idea of deeper learning, right? That the way that society sort of operates is that at any moment, I'm not like calling on a specific subject for 90 minutes, right? Like I'm not, this is my math section. Like from 10 to 11.30 today at my job, I'm just gonna do like 90 minutes of math. Instead,

My job and sort of all jobs, I think, are so interdisciplinary that I'm required to call upon skills that I learned throughout my entire educational career, often at once. I think that the shifts that education is making generally and what's happening in CTE too, is that we're getting to a place that it's becoming a bit more interdisciplinary. We're getting to a place where

We're not just conflating literacy, which is often like this thing that we're going to do in English language arts. Now it's like, what does literacy look like in, in careers? What does it mean to have a literacy, you know, sort of like skillset in manufacturing? Well, it means that you're able to decode a wiring schematic or you're able to decode a blueprint. You're able to decode like the same skills that exist in the way that we learned how to read.

are the same skills that exist in doing these things in CTE. And so I think the shift that's happening and the way to maybe think about education is that it isn't siloed. The way that the world works outside of the education system isn't siloed. so CTE oftentimes ends up as being a place where students are calling upon all of their skills, their writing skills, their reading skills, their math skills, their...

their understanding of history, whatever it is. Like there's a version of the education system that is connecting all of those things together in service of, know, sort of potentially finding career paths in those spaces. I think that those shifts, like sometimes they're hard to see because especially if you're outside the system, because you're sort of like as a student hurtling through, you know, eight classes over the course of two days for 90 minutes each, like it's hard to see.

Seth Fleischauer (43:17.13)
Yeah.

Chris Brida (43:31.0)
But the conversations are happening that like, there opportunities here to connect this, you know, to connect this construction class to some very specific math, right? Like there are opportunities there where it's happening, that we're making deeper connections between all of the work. And so I think that's the direction that education is going. I think that's what higher education is talking about, that it's like there's a shift being made towards deeper learning.

Seth Fleischauer (43:45.258)
Yeah.

Chris Brida (43:59.064)
there's emerging models all over the country of schools that are just fully in on deeper learning and some districts too. And so I think that's where we're going. I don't know if that makes people feel better or not, but I think it maybe lessens the sort of fatigue that a lot of students feel of just the churn of class after class after class and feeling like there is no connection point between those classes. Yeah, I'm hopeful that that's the solution.

Seth Fleischauer (44:28.094)
Well, I feel better. And, and, and I think about the, the class that I mentioned of my daughters, right? Like the, this compacted math class went from like getting what seventh and eighth grade math combined in one year to, they're giving them seventh grade math in one class, and then it became an elective. And in that elective, they are applying math to the real world and, going through eighth grade math and they'll be teaching those concepts, but, secondary to.

Chris Brida (44:47.02)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (44:54.042)
the application like the application is the driver. And, and my daughter was like, you know, she's telling she's like, Yeah, I got my I don't know what they call it CPLP, whatever, whatever below proficiency one for the first time in her career, especially in math. And, and then she's like, and I feel a little better because like the two other like smartest math kids in the class also got the lowest grade. And I was like, perfect. I love this class. This is great. Keep going. And she's frustrated. You know, she's like, she's so used to having

Chris Brida (45:17.23)
Hmm.

Chris Brida (45:20.994)
Yep.

Seth Fleischauer (45:23.916)
like a correct answer, right? And like, and it's messy, it's gray, it's, but it opens up so much, so much more, so many more pathways, right? To use the CTE word, CTE word.

Chris Brida (45:26.446)
Totally.

Chris Brida (45:36.12)
That's right.

Seth Fleischauer (45:37.314)
well, Chris, thank you so much for being here again. I, we have not exhausted the topic, so we'll probably have you back again in five more episodes. but, truly, truly grateful for the work that you're doing and for, our conversations. really do, inspire me and make me think deeply about a lot of stuff. So, it's been, it's been great knowing you, these past six months and I, and I look forward to that continuing.

Chris Brida (45:41.198)
Thanks.

You

Seth Fleischauer (46:06.27)
Thanks so much for being here.

Chris Brida (46:07.544)
Thanks, Seth. Thanks for having me.

Seth Fleischauer (46:09.303)
For our listeners, if this conversation inspired you, please do tell a friend. Leave us a rating, a review. if, sorry, sorry Lucas, that's your first edit the entire time. Thank you as always to our editor, Lucas Salazar and to my advisor, dear Jamarlo. And remember that if you want to bring positive change to education, we must first make it mindful. See you next time.