In this episode, we explore the future of learning with Jennie Magiera, Google’s Global Head of Education Impact. Jennie discusses the rising demand for global problem-solving skills, the changing nature of learning, and the importance of lifelong learning. She also dives into the role of technology in education, including AI-powered tools, personalized instruction, and immersive learning experiences.
Jennie emphasizes the importance of human teachers and the need to create a more hopeful narrative around the future of education. We explore the concept of “communities of learning” that extend beyond the classroom walls and connect students with experts and resources around the world.
00:01:19:22 – 00:01:46:21
Jennie Megiera
and I, faced a lot of, stereotype bias and, really challenging issues as a young kid coming up through the schools in Florida. And it wasn’t until I got to fourth grade and I had this fabulous teacher, Miss Buckman, who was the catalyst for everything I think I was going to become in my life. And I could tell she was different from the day I walked into her classroom.
00:01:46:23 – 00:02:16:16
Jennie Megiera
Being in my seat felt like magic. I remember I got mono one day and I faked being well because I didn’t want to miss school. And there was a day where I was sitting on the rug and I was reading The Hobbit, and she had recommended it to me. And I looked up and I just saw the way she was interacting with the other kids in the class, and I could just feel tangibly how, for the first time since moving to Florida in years, I felt seen and I felt valued for my whole self and I felt like I could be me.
00:02:16:17 – 00:02:38:22
Jennie Megiera
My voice felt unleashed, my being felt unlocked, and I knew I could attribute it to Miss Buckman. And I thought to myself, she’s a wizard. Like I was reading The Hobbit. I was reading about Gandalf and it felt magical. And I’m like, she’s literally doing magic. This you know? So she told us she was 108. I have no idea how old Miss Buckman was, but she’d always say she was 108.
00:02:38:22 – 00:03:01:15
Jennie Megiera
This 108 year old former nun who’s teaching me is literally working magic. I want to do magic when I grow up. I want to be a wizard, too. And I, you know how you have those, like, core memories, you know, like the movie Inside Out. Like, I have this visceral memory of sitting on this blue rug holding The Hobbit, seeing Miss Buckman and thinking, I want to be her when I grow up.
00:03:01:16 – 00:03:19:08
Jennie Megiera
So fast forward. I graduated from college. My mom kept in touch with Miss Buckman. I met her at a sweet tomatoes salad restaurant. I remember, and I told her Miss Buckman I’m going to be a teacher. When I grow up, I want to teach fourth grade. I want to be just like you. And she said to me, oh, Jennie you could never be like me.
00:03:19:10 – 00:03:36:20
Jennie Megiera
And I remember, like my heart breaking and being like, oh my God. Of course, like, what kind of hubris do I have? I could never be her. She’s so amazing. She’s literally a wizard. And she grabbed my hand. She was like, oh, honey, you shouldn’t want to be like me because you can be better than me. You shouldn’t strive to be someone else.
00:03:36:22 – 00:03:53:17
Jennie Megiera
You should strive to be the best version of you. And that was my job, to make you the best version of you. And like, I’m crying and then, like, to top it off, she pulls out this blue glass bird from her pocket that was on her desk every day of her class. I remember it like, you know, definitely in my mind’s eye.
00:03:53:19 – 00:04:10:19
Jennie Megiera
And she said, I’m retiring this year. This is my bluebird of happiness. Do you remember it? And I was like, I remember it just like talked to it. And she was mad at us like, oh, Bluebird of happiness, this class can’t get it together. Bring me some serenity. She’s like, I’m going to give this to you so you have the peace and strength to be the best teacher you can be.
00:04:10:21 – 00:04:37:15
Jennie Megiera
And so I still have that bluebird. I had it on my desk every day of my classroom when I became a district leader. I had it on my desk. I have it on my desk right now in my home office. And I think for me, staying true to that moment of nine year old Jennie on the rug in her classroom and feeling that magic and deciding I wanted to become a teacher and make many more young people feel seen and valued and heard and feel the magic I felt on her rug.
00:04:37:17 – 00:04:51:15
Jennie Megiera
I think that Bluebird reminds me of that all the time. And so no matter where I go in my career and what roles I play, that’s the value I hold. And that’s the magic feeling I want to make sure young people are feeling all around the world.
00:04:51:17 – 00:04:55:16
AJ Guttierez
It’s amazing that you’ve had experience as a teacher. How long did you teach for?
00:04:55:16 – 00:05:07:07
Jennie Megiera
So I was in the classroom for over a decade, and then I served in, public schools for many years after that. Kind of, you know, at the school leadership level, district leadership level, assistant kind of superintendent, CTO level.
00:05:07:07 – 00:05:44:12
AJ Guttierez
You’ve had a decade of teaching and you started to wonder in your experience as a teacher, why is it that creativity and innovation feel like a luxury and you felt that there’s an opportunity to just start to pull out the innate superpower of students, and you’re doing that through cultivating curiosity, outwitting obstacles, playing purposefully. So what are some of the lessons you learned as a teacher, and how is that shaping? What is shaping your strategic thinking in your role at Google right now?
00:05:44:18 – 00:06:09:17
Jennie Megiera
It took me a long time to to figure out that the formula for success that I believed was like the tried and true formula for me as a human being, was actually like my greatest flaw. And I grew up in a super traditional East Asian household where, you know, it was like that joke about the Asian A, the Asian F, right?
00:06:09:17 – 00:06:33:15
Jennie Megiera
Like if I came home with like a 99, my parents would be like, that’s an Asian F. Like where that one point, if I came home with a 100, they were like, where’s the extra credit? That was so metrics based, and there was like a winning formula, like get straight A’s, go to an Ivy League college and become a doctor, an engineer, and then marry a doctor, an engineer and then give birth to two children who grew up to be doctors and engineers and follow the same path.
00:06:33:17 – 00:06:56:14
Jennie Megiera
Rinse, wash, repeat. And so my whole life felt literally like an algebra problem that was like written out. Here are the variables we’re going to like set all the conditions and then go and press play. And I followed that until college when I finally, like, decided to break the mold and follow like what I wanted to do in my heart, which was be a teacher.
00:06:56:16 – 00:07:15:03
Jennie Megiera
And that was really hard for me. And when I broke that mold, my parents were less than excited. So I wanted to prove to them that I could be a huge success as an educator, and that it was worth it for me to take this risk. So then I read all the books and I was like, what’s the formula to being successful as a teacher?
00:07:15:03 – 00:07:40:19
Jennie Megiera
And I’m like, all my kids have to score the highest score on all the state exams. That’s how I be the best teacher. So I was like a drill sergeant for my first couple of years in the classroom, I, I did every single thing. I did all the test prep books. You would walk into my classroom and you would see 35 kids sitting up straight, hands folded, eyes forward, homework in on time, walking the hallways silent.
00:07:40:21 – 00:08:07:08
Jennie Megiera
My kids were always like, first to do everything. It was. It was very like military precision. My kids did score well on the state tests, but it was a joyless space and I don’t think my kids were happy. I wasn’t happy, and but I was hitting every metric. And it wasn’t until I saw Sir Ken Robinson’s Ted talk about why schools kill creativity.
00:08:07:10 – 00:08:36:08
Jennie Megiera
And I had this like, aha moment where I’m like, I, I, I’m the school that’s killing. That’s me. I’m the bad guy in the story. Here I am thinking, I’m doing this magic for all these kids, and I’m doing a disservice to Miss Buckman’s Bluebird. There’s no magic rug moment happening here. This is problematic. So I decided to go back and I threw it all out and I was like, it’s do whatever you want day.
00:08:36:10 – 00:09:23:07
Jennie Megiera
And I swung the pendulum way, the other way. And it was complete chaos and bedlam. That didn’t work. So I think like after, you know, years of like that Aha! moment iteration and a lot of like soul searching, I realized that there is this balance where allowing students to be their full selves, to have the space and agency to be creative, fully realized, human beings, while also ensuring that they’re seeing progress and growth and achieving mastery on core critical skills are not mutually exclusive, but we have to put away the formula and the paradigm that perhaps we were raised with and that we have, like this set schema.
00:09:23:07 – 00:09:36:20
Jennie Megiera
Our belief is like, this is the way you do school, and be open to the fact that maybe we need to be a little bit more like improvisational, improvisational jazz than classical music in the classroom.
00:09:36:22 – 00:10:02:07
AJ Guttierez
That’s really fascinating and it is something you explore in your book. Right? Courageous Edventures. And you provide a lot of tips to teachers, it’s agnostic to your number of years of experience. You served as a teacher and you see a lot of opportunities out there, especially with emerging technology and so from me, from your perspective, what are those opportunities for teachers and these themes you discuss, and also with technology?
00:10:02:09 – 00:10:26:10
Jennie Megiera
I mean, so the thing with technology is, I was voluntold to use technology in my classroom. it was 2010. a certain tablet had just come out to the world. There was a grant in Chicago Public schools, and I was voluntold, like, hey, don’t you think you should apply for that grant? And I was like, I think my boss is telling me I should apply for a grant, so I’m going to do it.
00:10:26:12 – 00:10:52:19
Jennie Megiera
I got the grant. I really know what it’s doing. I made up everything in the grant. I got the grant. I’m like, I don’t know what to do with these I had never held an iPad before. I didn’t know how to use one. It was like a hot mess for about three months. Created a lot of confusion. But I realized the challenge there was because I wrote the grant and because I had this like, need to excel and do everything right and do everything perfectly, I was like, well, now we’re going to use iPads for everything.
00:10:52:19 – 00:11:21:19
Jennie Megiera
Because if the grant people come into my classroom and the boss, folks from Chicago Public Schools roll in, they need to see that I’m using this very expensive technology all day, every day. And so I was literally using technology for the sake of using technology. I remember one time in my math class, I was trying to get them to use an iPad as a protractor, and it took like 30 minutes for my fourth graders to measure, like our written angle, when they could have just like pulled out a plastic protractor and done it in like five seconds.
00:11:21:21 – 00:11:41:13
Jennie Megiera
And so like, I had to take a step back and rethink again my approach to it and be like, what is the actual purpose of this tech in my classroom? And so then that’s like the whole idea for the book was like, I had that moment of like, technology aside, what are the problems that I’ve been trying to solve in this space for the past six years?
00:11:41:13 – 00:12:08:14
Jennie Megiera
I’ve been a teacher. And those problems were like reaching each kid where they were, having every student feel like there was an individualized learning opportunity for them. allowing students differentiated ways to show what they know, giving students differentiated access to the content. Those were things that I was really struggling to do as a single educator. In a classroom of 35 to sometimes 40 students at a time.
00:12:08:16 – 00:12:33:15
Jennie Megiera
And so when I started approaching it like the challenges first or the opportunities and then saying, does the technology allow me to better tackle that challenge? And approaching it that way of a problem based approach. I found that a lot more impactful in solving problems in clearing my plate versus adding to it. And I also didn’t try and do it all all day.
00:12:33:17 – 00:12:52:23
Jennie Megiera
So when I reset, I didn’t use my iPads all day. I use them for maybe like five minutes a day at first, but then I got really good at that. Then I added, and I added, and then I added, and then it got to a point where, no, I wasn’t using them all day, every day, but I was using tech intentionally, and the power and the value add was exponential.
00:12:53:01 – 00:13:02:21
AJ Guttierez
But then you asked, you ask yourself a fundamental question like, is it better? So what do you mean by that? Like you’re asking teachers to pause and ask that question. Why is that important?
00:13:02:23 – 00:13:28:17
Jennie Megiera
Unless it’s actually tangibly improving the learning environment and the learning opportunity for students, then then really, why are we investing our time, our bandwidth, our money into it? So, fast-forward the story to a few years later. Chromebooks hit the scene and I had the opportunity to pilot Chromebooks in my classroom, and I had the opportunity to to have a do over with how I brought tech in.
00:13:28:17 – 00:13:50:06
Jennie Megiera
So like I looked at like, what was different about the Chromebook? Like it had a keyboard, it had the Google, then like it was called G suite, you know, Google Docs, the ability for them to work all the time. So I took a step back and I just instead of like being like, okay, now I know what the tech can do, let me go back to my laundry list of things that I was struggling with still as a teacher and like, what can I do?
00:13:50:06 – 00:14:11:12
Jennie Megiera
And I was like, collaboration. I have a lot of students who are really reluctant to share their voice out loud. I looped with my students every year. I had some students where I was on my second year with, and I had heard maybe like 20 words, aggregate from them in like 18 months. So I’m like, I’d love to unlock student voice.
00:14:11:14 – 00:14:40:23
Jennie Megiera
So, like the power of the keyboard versus like the virtual keyboard and Google Docs and the whole like G suite now workspace environment. Let me try this out. And so I got all the kids on Google. I put them in front of the Chromebook. And because I was so intentional with the goal and the challenge, I was trying to solve the result and the outcome and the improvement in the learning space was measurable.
00:14:41:01 – 00:15:05:12
Jennie Megiera
It was tangible. I was able to adjust and iterate my approach better, and it didn’t drain my battery like I went, I went home every day feeling like my effort in charging the devices and collecting them and plugging them back in and assigning my students logins and, you know, troubleshooting when it couldn’t, couldn’t log in, it didn’t feel like, oh my God, why am I even doing this?
00:15:05:12 – 00:15:26:22
Jennie Megiera
I’m like, I know why I’m doing this. I’m doing this because now Jaheim, for the first time in a year and a half, is like super engaged. And I’m hearing, like, what his actual voice sounds like, because here he is as a little cursor on the screen creating, you know, epic amounts of content and thought.
00:15:27:00 – 00:15:31:19
AJ Guttierez
What opportunities do you see for district leaders, like how do they navigate through the noise?
00:15:31:19 – 00:15:56:01
Jennie Megiera
If we just focus on a few powerful tools, it relieve stress for the educator and increased opportunity for the student. But it had to be a democratic experience. We had to bring the educators around the table, have the conversation, start with the opportunities. And recently I’ve tried to move from like challenge language to opportunity language because just trying to be better at positive framing.
00:15:56:03 – 00:16:11:07
Jennie Megiera
So like what are the opportunities? And then reframe that way and focus. And that takes time. And that’s hard to do, especially in the lens of everything we have to do is district leaders. But at the end of the day, the value is is and the opportunity is huge.
00:16:11:11 – 00:16:18:12
AJ Guttierez
Well, speaking of wizardry, you happen to have the Blue bird, you were talking about in your story earlier today.
00:16:18:13 – 00:16:48:09
Jennie Megiera
I do, conjure it up and, oh, yeah, here it is. So this is the bluebird of happiness, that Miss Buckman gave me. And she also gave me this little note, with it, too. So, she passed this over over the sweet tomatoes table over to me by my chicken noodle soup and shared this little story. So I , I literally look to this bluebird all the time to kind of refocus me.
00:16:48:09 – 00:17:05:00
Jennie Megiera
And sometimes I do feel like I’m getting left of center, but, it’s my North Star, so it’s really a great little reminder of like why I’m doing the work I do. And it’s really important to me, especially now as a mom of two, it’s it doubles down and why I want to do this work.
00:17:05:04 – 00:17:26:19
AJ Guttierez
I think what’s amazing about the Bluebird is very symbolic. Now to you, as in in terms of thinking about the future. And I think it gives us a great space to transition to the future of Ed Report, that you’ve been working on with Google. And so from your perspective, what can we learn from a global perspective, and what do you hoping what resources are you hoping to share at Google?
00:17:26:19 – 00:17:53:02
Jennie Megiera
At Google, we’re constantly trying to, make sure that what we’re doing is actually making the world better. And is and, you know, we say all the time at Google, like respect the user and at Google for education, the user, our educators, our students, the challenge is, is that the education space is also like a fast moving, fast evolving space, especially lately, right?
00:17:53:02 – 00:18:13:15
Jennie Megiera
Things are changing so quickly and I feel that very much. And like, you know, the almost 20 years I’ve been in education that things seem to change overnight, whereas before my first, you know, decade in or something, it was it was changing but not this rapidly. When you’re building a product, a tech product, you don’t have the idea and it comes out tomorrow, right?
00:18:13:17 – 00:18:33:10
Jennie Megiera
You have the idea. And sometimes I could take years before that idea is actually available for people to use. And in the years everything can change. So for like, I’m going to build a product that I think you need now, but it’s not going to be ready for three years. You’re going to be like, yeah, guess what? AJ three years from now is not going to need that product.
00:18:33:12 – 00:19:08:16
Jennie Megiera
So it’s really helpful for us to get, some insight and some kind of perspective about where we think the world is going to be in the next 5 to 10 years. So this research report spanned across 24 countries. We engage 94 experts about two years of desk research to really understand what are the trends that experts in education from around the world think that we’re headed as an, as, as educators, in education.
00:19:08:18 – 00:19:30:03
Jennie Megiera
And it came out with this report that’s in in the magic of threes three chapters, three reports, the three trends per report, three times three nine total trends. And it’s bucketed into kind of like the learner. The first, book is about the learner. And what are the trends around the learners then is about the school and the teaching and the systems.
00:19:30:09 – 00:19:51:19
Jennie Megiera
And then the highest is like the institutional level, like the world and the community. And I really love the report because while, you know, I always want to be open about like, why would Google do something this like transparently like we need to see where education is headed. So we build the right tools that are actually going to lift up and support learners and educators.
00:19:51:21 – 00:20:20:17
Jennie Megiera
It’s also like giving back to the space, because as an educator and I, no matter who I am, I’m always an educator in my heart and soul. I would have loved this report when I was an educator to know, like, what are the trends I should be thinking of? That’s why it’s shared openly with the world in a digestible free PDF so that education leaders, educators, parents, community members can see like what should we be considering and keeping our eyes open for as they move forward?
00:20:20:22 – 00:20:40:11
AJ Guttierez
But let’s start off with like that. That first chapter, you know, preparing for a new future. And so there’s three themes under this, this bucket here. That the rising demand for global problem solvers, change in the scale requirements for students and the shift to life long learning mindset.
00:20:40:11 – 00:21:06:13
Jennie Megiera
It really is doubling down on like what we’re focusing on in school and what are the skill sets and mindsets that we want to be investing in for our young people? A lot of the report, for me as I read it was not always like, oh my gosh, it’s mind blowing. There were points of that, but it was validating and it was stuff that I always believed but never had the data or like research to prove it.
00:21:06:14 – 00:21:38:20
Jennie Megiera
And so it was really exciting to be like, I knew it! And now I can point to a graph that says it’s true! And so like, for example, like the global problem solvers like that, that trend is really about how the problems as, as the world becomes smaller and as our connectivity becomes stronger, we’re seeing as we’re trying to solve problems in our community, the communities becoming interconnected, and thereby the problems becoming more global in nature.
00:21:38:22 – 00:22:25:03
Jennie Megiera
And so when it comes to anything from access to clean drinking water, food scarcity, you know, ability to participate in, our community and have a voice in, like, who is leading our community, voting, etc. we need our students to understand the context of that and how the entire global ecosystem affects their community. And it’s really, it’s really important that we’re doing this from a young age because it builds, again, that like that schema, that knowledge, that that conceptual understanding of like, who am I and how do I situate in the world, and how much do my decisions impact those around me?
00:22:25:05 – 00:22:56:00
Jennie Megiera
So like getting into the concepts then of social emotional learning, like having that deep, deep, human empathy, cultural empathy to understand, like when I make a decision to do something, it’s not just about me, it’s about my neighbor AJ, and someone all the way across the world who I’ve never met, who’s my global neighbor. And so understanding that responsibility for young people as well. And, and I do think that it’s possible at all ages.
00:22:56:00 – 00:23:18:07
Jennie Megiera
My daughters are five and two, and I’ve started to try and like bring some of that thinking into, you know, the classroom of my home. they both go to school outside of my home. But I think, you know, people are learning everywhere, and I’ve seen them really digest and understand it. So I think we can allow our students to have that global mindset no matter their age.
00:23:18:11 – 00:23:23:13
AJ Guttierez
Should we start really thinking about what a lifelong education system could look like?
00:23:23:16 – 00:23:48:04
Jennie Megiera
It’s it’s mindset. It’s systemic. It’s it’s access. For sure, like that that lifelong learning concept is, you know, back in like, you know, the Committee of Ten and like 100 and some years ago when, you know, the Horace Mann and concept of like, this is what school looks like, and, you know, it’s the factory model and it’s 13 years and X Y Z and we’re done.
00:23:48:06 – 00:24:10:19
Jennie Megiera
You know, that’s not that’s no longer the case. It hasn’t been the case for a while. And the beauty of it is it creates this agility for anyone of any age to really continue to grow. And like Miss Buckman said to me when I was, becoming a teacher, like, be the best versions of ourselves and always grow and learn.
00:24:10:21 – 00:24:37:08
Jennie Megiera
I’m sure folks have heard this on other podcasts and anecdotals or saw it yourself. Like the whole like pandemic anecdote of like we all had to, like, learn new skill sets during the pandemic. Like people were doing everything from growing, you know, mini farms in their backyard to like, grow their own herbs to making sourdough bread, learning how to knit, right? All on YouTube.
00:24:37:10 – 00:25:03:10
Jennie Megiera
And now folks are career changing and deciding, you know, like that was an aha! moment for me that like, I want more flexibility in my job. I want a job that does more of this and less of that. And they’re getting these micro-credentials online in really affordable, sometimes free institutions that are making them great candidates for roles that they might not have ever dreamed of before.
00:25:03:12 – 00:25:32:07
Jennie Megiera
And so I think we’re there already. We’re already living a lifelong learning, in a lifelong learning system. It’s the onus of, companies to recognize that in organizations like Google and others, to continue to, provide more higher quality, more accessible opportunities for folks to learn, throughout their entire lives.
00:25:32:09 – 00:25:56:02
AJ Guttierez
And what kind of skill sets do you think are important for students to develop? I mean, like you said, Ferrari in his book, he talks about censorship. And many years ago, censorship involved preventing access to certain types of information. Now a different form of censorship is overwhelming people with over, with information. So it’s difficult to ascertain, like what’s truth.
00:25:56:04 – 00:26:13:09
AJ Guttierez
And so now we’re talking about students who are in a world or acts that they’re seeing deep fakes. They’re seeing all kinds of new content being created to, you know, how do we help students? Like what, what do students need to navigate in, in this future world?
00:26:13:11 – 00:26:39:16
Jennie Megiera
I think that like the opportunity for AI is for us to double down on our humanity, to outsource all the rote, robotic tasks that we already do in our everyday lives, that I don’t want to do, and instead use that like time, mental bandwidth, passion and expertise to do the things that only humans do best, like create, like critical thinking, like empathy, like judgment.
00:26:39:18 – 00:27:03:11
Jennie Megiera
And in classrooms, we’re already starting to see teachers who are taking that approach to AI, where instead of saying, like, all right, I’m going to spend all my time making sure students aren’t plagiarizing essays saying, all right, maybe the five paragraph essay isn’t the best way for my students to show what they know. Maybe I should have them create a blog.
00:27:03:13 – 00:27:48:15
Jennie Megiera
And do you know a ten week blog about this unit of learning and react in real time? Or a vlog or a podcast? Maybe I should have them create art or create a graphic novel about it. Now, I’m sure as technology evolves, there’s going to be ways for AI or technology to create some things like this. But it’s those are much more challenging for a student to fake, you know, a ten week blog where they’re creating real time reactions to something or creating a video podcast or, some kind of an art installation to demonstrate their reaction to a piece of literature or, a historic event.
00:27:48:17 – 00:28:21:07
Jennie Megiera
And the educators with whom I’ve been working and talking with who are doing that, are not only finding that the students are flourishing as they rethink these, the approach to showing what, you know, and, analyzing and interacting with the learning content. But also they’re renewed and they’re more excited about their jobs. Like, I remember talking to one of my former colleagues who a year and a half ago was like, hey, Jenny, is Google hiring?
00:28:21:07 – 00:28:38:15
Jennie Megiera
I’ve got to get out of the classroom. I’m so bored. And then I talked to her a few weeks ago and she was like, girl, like, you should see what I’m doing. This is amazing. I did this, I did this, I did this like, I love my job. It’s so fun. I, I was on that thing on Saturday, like going to work on like just loving it.
00:28:38:15 – 00:29:19:04
Jennie Megiera
And we need that. Educators are traumatized after the past couple of years. The pandemic was emotionally trying, physically trying, mentally trying. Students are. So, approaching this with a positive like, how can we double down on your humanity and what brings you joy? Kind of taking this conversation full circle to like not being the school who killed creativity, but embracing it, I think AI is going to allow us to A. refocus what we’re trying to do in the classroom, but B. allow teachers to have time to do those things because we’re going to take all that, all that kind of teaching and learning that takes time and then have to clear something off of educators plates
00:29:19:09 – 00:29:22:20
Jennie Megiera
so that they can invest in these creative pursuits.
00:29:22:22 – 00:29:42:01
AJ Guttierez
And everything that you talk about just now is what chapter two is, the Future of Education report, where there’s an opportunity to reimagine learning design. And, do you actually think that’s possible to do? And you also see an opportunity for technology in this report to elevate the work of teachers.
00:29:42:03 – 00:30:22:02
Jennie Megiera
The challenge is, is systemically, are we going to support it? Are we in create space and grace for educators to try, to fail, to iterate? are we going to re-norm what we value in schools, as communities, as education leaders, as system leaders, as policy makers, so that we’re, validating and appreciating educators who are taking this risk and doubling down on what’s going to help students grow to be the best versions of themselves. The other side of it is allowing teachers the support so they have the temporal, emotional and resource bandwidth to actually do these things because it takes time.
00:30:22:02 – 00:30:51:00
Jennie Megiera
And, you know, we shouldn’t be expecting educators to stay until 6:00 at night and work on Saturdays. I mean, if they’re super stoked about something and they want to go to an Ed camp on a Saturday like, hey, snaps, but it shouldn’t be a requirement. So that’s why it’s up to institutions and organizations like Google to build the tools to clear the plate of teachers so they have job embedded time to explore these new ways of approaching teaching and learning and supporting the students.
00:30:51:02 – 00:31:13:05
Jennie Megiera
So, you know, we have like practice sets, for example, is a piece of software that uses AI that we just released that essentially it allows students to, you know, iterate on their learning to explore concepts over and over again and get real time feedback. It helps teachers create formative assessments. It suggests, like, what do we think the right answer is?
00:31:13:07 – 00:31:34:09
Jennie Megiera
Suggest resources for re-teaching. It’s all embedded in a tool. When I did that in my classroom, it was like cutting edge that I was doing it. And it took me literally from like Friday night to Sunday night to put all that together and then hours every single night to do my exit tickets, my formative assessments every single day.
00:31:34:11 – 00:31:52:16
Jennie Megiera
So I didn’t have kids back then. I was a young spring chicken teacher. I was in my 20s. I had all this energy. I had my Bluebird charging me, and I was still exhausted. I was like so burned out by the end of the year trying that out. But now, like it happens in seconds and it’s all automated through this tool.
00:31:52:17 – 00:32:07:16
Jennie Megiera
So if we can continue building things like that for educators, that takes all that automated routine stuff off their plates, then that frees up the human, the teacher, to work with students to do that through human generated content.
00:32:07:18 – 00:32:12:13
AJ Guttierez
In the intersection of AI and let’s say, tutoring and personalization. What what do you see in the future?
00:32:12:19 – 00:32:51:01
Jennie Megiera
When I, when I first came across Saga Education and I was talking to Alan you know, the founder, your Co-Founder about it, I’m not going to lie, I was a little bit nervous, because tutoring, I think, can sometimes be a four letter word, depending on how you define tutoring. And what I was really concerned about with tutoring, at scale, was this kind of like dehumanized tutoring, like, siloed model where it’s Jennie Magiera, a first year teacher tutoring where it’s like, this is my model, and you’re going to sit here and do a thousand worksheets and no personal, you know, just like get it done.
00:32:51:03 – 00:33:20:13
Jennie Megiera
But what I’ve learned over time is like the Saga approach to tutoring and many others who are doing this high-impact tutoring is really about the human relationship with tutoring. It’s about building that like trust, rapport, the motivation, the engagement, and that trust that a student has that like, hey, I want to get better. Here’s a here’s a grown person who cares about me, another person in my life who is personally invested in my growth and my betterment.
00:33:20:15 – 00:33:38:12
Jennie Megiera
I have trust, I have faith, I feel seen by them, and they have that magic moment like I had when I was in fourth grade, where they just feel cared about by another person in a deep way. And that’s hard, especially as you grow up in schools. And the student to teacher ratio grows and grows and grows.
00:33:38:12 – 00:34:06:04
Jennie Megiera
So those tutors just like add that extra like relationship piece that is so critical for, our young adolescents and adolescents to have as they grow. I think AI comes in because we spend so much time, in, in tutoring spaces and teaching spaces, attending, attuning to like, why doesn’t the student get it? Like, did you get that problem set right?
00:34:06:04 – 00:34:31:22
Jennie Megiera
Do it again, do it again. Do it again. That there’s not always time for the relationship building. It’s sort of like how doctors, before they come into your exam room, read your chart and they like, can like come in and out in five minutes because they already know the answer. It’s giving the exam chart for the student to the tutors that instead of taking the 30 minutes on like diagnosing you, they’re like, here’s what we need, here’s how we’re going to do it.
00:34:31:22 – 00:34:35:18
Jennie Megiera
And like, like, let’s just get to know how you’re doing today and double click on that.
00:34:35:20 – 00:34:56:14
AJ Guttierez
And so you essentially see that these technologies can help elevate the work of humans and helping teachers and tutors potentially more efficient and effective. And what they do, I like to transition to, like the last chapter of the future of Education report. and in the last chapter, you talk about reimagining the learning ecosystem.
00:34:56:14 – 00:35:22:12
Jennie Megiera
There’s concepts like the communities of learning where, you know, the classroom isn’t confined to the four walls of of your actual space. It’s using your whole community to learn. So many organizations are really digging into this. Carnegie is doing some fabulous work on this right now. I remember when I was, teaching in Chicago Public, we had, you know, cities of learning where they could go to museums and libraries.
00:35:22:12 – 00:35:50:08
Jennie Megiera
But it’s also like our neighborhood, like my my five year old was doing, in pre-K at CPS, a whole unit on butterflies, and she was walking down the street and saw monarch butterfly and, like, followed into my neighbor’s yard. And the neighbor was like, we have a chrysalis. And so then she ended up being a little bit late to school because she was like, she’d spent like 45 minutes, like investigating this bush with my neighbor.
00:35:50:10 – 00:36:10:23
Jennie Megiera
but got to bring the shell of the chrysalis because the watch, the butterfly hatch. And how does that what you say emerge? But like that, she’s like, so, she’s so personally invested in science and biology now because she had this real world experience. And so that chapter is really looking at like, how can we do that intentionally?
00:36:10:23 – 00:36:47:23
Jennie Megiera
How can we create these meaningful world embedded experiences for our students that situate the content we want them to learn in the world that they live in? And how do we use technology to do that when they don’t have a neighbor with a monarch butterfly, just like down the street? And how do we create connectivity around the world to bring in, experts and resources and supports for, our learners in, in rural areas, in more remote areas, bringing urban to rural and rural to urban.
00:36:48:01 – 00:36:54:06
Jennie Megiera
And again, that idea that I named before of like the world becoming smaller and all of us becoming more connected.
00:36:54:08 – 00:37:04:19
AJ Guttierez
So just kind of summarize all three chapters, what do you feel? You know, people are not thinking about enough that like, like what’s your biggest takeaway?
00:37:05:00 – 00:37:30:11
Jennie Megiera
I think the thing that I was really struck by and I saw the raw data too, so I know that like the, folks who kind of, like, tied it all together weren’t just like putting a spin on it for putting a spin on it is how hopeful the report is like coming from public education, working in like, New York City and Chicago public schools and then, you know, working globally for the past couple of years.
00:37:30:12 – 00:38:11:20
Jennie Megiera
You know, I thought there was a non-zero chance that this report was going to come out, and it was kind of going to be fire and brimstone and cats and dogs raining. And, it it’s not at all it’s really, really hopeful. And it’s really exciting about where we can be and where we can take things. And what I love about that is I go to a lot of professional events and spaces, and the conversation is is again really deficit focused, like, this is what’s wrong and this is the risks and these are the challenges and this is why this is failing or this system is failing.
00:38:11:22 – 00:38:39:11
Jennie Megiera
I think that the report gives us an opportunity to not be naive about the problems that exist, the deep inequities in our system. recognizing that AI could be a third level digital divide, the first level being access to tech, the second level being effective and impactful use of tech, and then the third level being how does AI conflate all of that access and use of AI?
00:38:39:13 – 00:39:07:07
Jennie Megiera
There are real challenges and there are real risks, and there are real concerns systemically worldwide with education. And there’s huge opportunity for us in all sectors to come together and really raise the bar and and solve some problems. And I think the fast moving pace of tech means that we have tools at our fingertips that didn’t exist before.
00:39:07:07 – 00:39:15:18
Jennie Megiera
So some of the problems that we used to think were insurmountable might actually be approachable. And that’s my hope for folks as they read the report.
00:39:15:18 – 00:39:29:09
AJ Guttierez
And one of your talks, you talk about the shift from asking your child when they come home from school, like, what did you learn today to instead asking the question, what did you create today? So what do you mean by that, and why is that important?
00:39:29:11 – 00:39:45:10
Jennie Megiera
It’s it’s it’s like a simple shift in verbiage. But for me it’s like going from the, you know, passive to the active. And you know, you ask any kid, they go ask my five year old Lucy, what did you do today in school? Did you learn today? And they’re like, I don’t know And if you ask like, what did you create or what did you make today?
00:39:45:12 – 00:40:02:23
Jennie Megiera
It it really changes the way that they reflect on their day. Like what? What was my agency in the day, what I choose to do. And it kind of calls back to miss Buckman and like, the best version of a teacher, an educator that I always look to. And again, I try and keep her voice in mind.
00:40:02:23 – 00:40:31:22
Jennie Megiera
I’m not trying to be her, but I am inspired by her. And, you know, her classroom was constantly it was a makerspace before makerspace was a thing, right? I still have because my mom was a hoarder. All of the things I made in fourth grade, I have my little banker’s box of like, all my plastic spiral bound books that I authored and I made a Florida scrapbook about the history of Florida, which is an exciting thing
00:40:31:22 – 00:41:02:09
Jennie Megiera
if you ever want to do a podcast on that. My weather notebook, like all these things and, and I can, I can literally name off for your audience everything I created in fourth grade because it was emotionally and mentally stimulating for me. And, you know, like just calling it back to Miss Buckman and this bluebird, like this little note she wrote to me, the last line she says, here is it was my privilege to help give you roots in your education.
00:41:02:10 – 00:41:24:00
Jennie Megiera
So with this little bluebird of happiness, take wings and soar of the stars, you’re well on your way. And so the roots that I grew in education were the roots of creation and the roots of agency and the roots of having those wings to feel like I could be anything I want to be. And so when I ask students and I ask my daughters, what did you create today?
00:41:24:00 – 00:41:32:07
Jennie Megiera
It’s because I want them to have that moment that I had on the carpet where it felt like when I come to school, it’s about me and it’s about what I can do.
00:41:32:10 – 00:41:52:22
AJ Guttierez
And I love how, from this story, you were encouraged to create a new chapter for yourself. You’re doing. You did that for the students you had a chance to teach, to teach yourself, and also for you, for your family as well. And from the report from Google, it’s really clear that you know the future is something we are going to build together.
00:41:53:00 – 00:42:05:23
AJ Guttierez
And thank you so much for sharing your insights. And we’re going to, put a link to, in our our speaking notes in our video notes, to the report. So people have access to it. If people are interested in learning more, how can they do so?
00:42:06:05 – 00:42:29:21
Jennie Megiera
Yeah, if you go to edu.google.com/champions it’s our educator community and you can learn about our Google educator groups. Or we have spaces where we explore a lot of these topics. You can learn how to become a Google for education champion, which is how like our community of educators, that we kind of support, lift up, validate, celebrate your trainers, innovators, coaches there, reference schools.
00:42:30:01 – 00:42:42:05
Jennie Megiera
There’s training there where you can learn more about these concepts. And you can also find our Future of Education report on our edu.google.com site as well, if you want to dig more deeply into it. Although I know you’re going to share the link as well.
00:42:42:11 – 00:42:46:10
AJ Guttierez
Well, this has been tremendously enlightening. Thank you so much for your time, Jenny.
00:42:46:13 – 00:42:47:23
Jennie Megiera
Thank you so much for having me.
00:42:48:01 – 00:42:55:06
AJ Guttierez
Follow us for more conversations with leading experts on AI. Next time on EdHeads.
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