Redefining Educational Success with Kevin Stoller S10E4 (134)
🔥 Are we building schools for adults or for learners?
🔥 If innovation feels risky, what’s the cost of staying the same?
🎙️ Episode Summary
In this episode of the Learning Future Podcast, Louka speaks with Kevin Stoller, co-founder and CEO of K12, about the evolving landscape of education. They discuss the need for a shift from traditional educational models to more student-centered approaches that prioritize authentic learning experiences. Kevin shares insights on the importance of creating engaging learning environments, the role of agency in education, and the necessity of innovation in teaching practices. The conversation also touches on global perspectives on education, the significance of data in driving educational success, and the vision for a future where students are empowered to take ownership of their learning.
👤 About Kevin Stoller
Kevin Stoller is the founder and CEO of Kay‑Twelve, a national leader in designing student-centred learning environments through furniture, space design and innovation. At the same time, he hosts the Better Learning Podcast, reaching tens of thousands of school leaders, architects and changemakers with a mission to radically shift how schools design spaces that authentically reflect student-centred learning.
Kevin holds a Bachelor’s degree from Miami University and an MBA from The Ohio State University. Under his leadership, Kay-Twelve has shifted from e-commerce provider of educational furniture into a mission-driven force focused on transforming learning spaces and impacting millions of learners by 2030.
Beyond his business, Kevin is also behind organisations like the Education Leaders’ Organization and the Second Class Foundation—two initiatives aimed at supporting school leaders and driving innovation in education more broadly. He is driven by a guiding philosophy that the design of learning spaces matters deeply to how students engage, collaborate and thrive—and that the physical environment should serve the student, not constrain them.
📘 Takeaways
The current educational system is failing to meet the needs of students.
Parents are increasingly seeking more authentic and engaging learning experiences for their children.
There is a growing fragmentation in how education is delivered, especially post-COVID.
Student-centered learning is essential for fostering engagement and success.
The physical learning environment significantly impacts student engagement and learning outcomes.
Innovation in education is often resisted, but it is necessary for progress.
Lead indicators of success can help educators identify issues early on.
Building trust between educators and students is crucial for effective learning.
Conversations about education must include all stakeholders, including parents and students.
The future of education should focus on developing good humans, not just college-bound students.
🔗 Connect and Resources Mentioned
🔗 Stay Connected with Louka Parry
For the latest learning innovation follow Louka on LinkedIn
Share your thoughts by visiting www.thelearningfuture.com
Tune in to be inspired, challenged, and reminded why love truly is at the heart of learning.
[Transcript Auto-generated]
Louka Parry (00:09)
Hello everybody and welcome back to the learning future podcast. I'm your host, Luca Parry. Today we're speaking with Kevin Stoller, all the way from Arizona. He is the co-founder and CEO of K12, which is kind of a leading distributor and a bunch of thinkers around learning space solutions and how do we design spaces so that they are really enabling learners to thrive, to learn effectively and to feel connected.
He holds an MBA from the Ohio State University and he hosts the Better Learning Podcast, which bridges entrepreneurship, educational innovation and spatial design. Kevin, thanks for joining us.
Kevin Stoller (00:44)
Okay, thanks for having me. Yeah, I love I love talking to fellow podcasters because I feel like you have so many insights that I want to learn from. So thanks for having me.
Louka Parry (00:53)
I will just before we went to recording of course, Kevin, it was us in some ways sharing our love of this format and you know, what a gift it is to be able to speak with wonderful people around the world about the work that's really close to their hearts. My main inquiry of course is what's the emerging future of learning and what do we need to pay attention to? And I start with this question, which is what's something that you are learning right now that's kind of forefront of your mind?
Kevin Stoller (01:17)
Yeah, right now my big question that i'm trying to answer is is very similar to yours of like What what is required right now at the at the age 18? What do we as parents as members of society? What would we like? The kids that are becoming adults to be like what what is the most important thing?
And that that question is really driving a lot of the work and it's ventured into into a variety of different topics that that I'm working on right now, but it's really driven right back to that question that I just don't think is touched touched on enough or talked on talked about enough because we we kind of all stay in our silos of the spaces of education that that we're all a part of.
Louka Parry (01:55)
Mmm.
Tell us about the big idea, Kevin, in the inquiry, because of course there is no simple solution perhaps to that question. What's emergent for you? If you had to hypothesize, say, actually this is the graduate profile and these are the attributes that we're seeing and where would you put your flag?
Kevin Stoller (02:07)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah,
so my flag would be is that the status quo is not working.
Louka Parry (02:20)
Gotcha.
Kevin Stoller (02:21)
I think just starting with that and recognizing that if we're trying to protect the existing system, we're probably on the wrong side of this right now. And I come from this, you know, like not from the education world. I was one of the kids that did not really like school, but I learned how to get through it. You know, and then I came into it kind of later in my career, started working with schools. And I always say, like, to me, it all came, it all started with Michael Jordan, basketball
Louka Parry (02:46)
Cool.
Kevin Stoller (02:46)
player.
Louka Parry (02:47)
Okay.
Kevin Stoller (02:49)
I grew up in Chicago. That was like, like that was my childhood was sports pop culture of like seeing like, like how much like leadership can really drive culture, and and really the entertainment world. So I went into into like my career thinking I want to I want to tell stories I want to produce.
Louka Parry (02:51)
Huh?
Kevin Stoller (03:11)
Sports documentaries. That's really what I wanted to do and I had an opportunity to do one Michael Jordan when I was in college and and and I learned a lot from that process and From that I ventured into totally different worlds when I came back and landed back into education I Started walking through schools and it was exactly the same as it was when I had gone to school 20 years ago and I was watching
Louka Parry (03:12)
Mm.
Wow.
Kevin Stoller (03:36)
kids do the same exact things like just that that whole that whole picture of Ferris Bueller and you know kids being completely disengaged with with a teacher lecturing was still the predominant view of all these schools I was walking through in the in the United States and and and then I really had a turning point but I am curious I mean from your point of view because you have this a lot too like what what
What's your viewpoint right now? Like you've been talking to a lot of people. What are you seeing? If you were gonna put that question back to yourself.
Louka Parry (04:10)
You are a podcaster, Kevin. love it. We have a good
time. I'll, I'll be pithy if I can, pithy, but heartfelt. for me, the adjacent possible is what I'm interested in as well, which is kind of what's the emerging system that is, is there are pockets off, but isn't yet fully established. And for me, it's a more fully human education that isn't just based on academics.
But within that too, it's expanding from the focus on expertise to expertise and creative transfer. And I'm kind of paraphrasing a little bit some fantastic theorists and academics that I like to follow and their research. But I think what we fail to do still well is really give young people authentic experiences that help them make better choices across their lives. Why? Because case in point,
If I set an assignment and I'm the only person seeing that assignment as the teacher, the classroom teacher, and I'm marking it. First of all, I'm overworked. I'm working too hard. ⁓ as many teachers are, but it's also like a lost opportunity to your point. And so this whole idea that, expertise matters. think we're seeing that. Particularly with the rise of generative AI be challenged. It's not what you know, it's what you do with what you know increasingly. And so that, that I think is the interesting challenge for schools.
And I think we're seeing in the engagement slash disengagement crisis that we have at the moment, the data is not good when you look at how many students are opting out. interesting time.
Kevin Stoller (05:42)
Yeah.
Well, that's,
yeah, I mean, that's what I'm curious to see. Like I'm seeing it very clearly in the United States that the fragmentation of of how school is delivered or learning learning is being processed by by our kids right now is becoming more and more fragmented at a really high pace. We heard out of COVID if we would talk to school superintendents, you'd hear we just lost
kids, we had like, you know, like anywhere from like five to 10%, like, we just lost them. They just never came back. And when you really start digging like underneath, it's, it's, you know, like we have this movement where there's micro schools popping up and more homeschooling and more of these hybrid approaches. These experiential type of learning and all of these different things are popping up. And if you talk to parents, which to me, this is where I think
Louka Parry (06:11)
Yeah. Yeah.
They never came back. This kind of idea. Yeah, I've heard that language.
Hmm
Kevin Stoller (06:38)
the academic side of it is the parents that they talk to are the ones that are that their kids are in the system. But if you start looking and talking more to parents and saying like what do want for your kids?
A lot of them of the younger generation is looking at it and saying, I do not want my kid to go through this factory system that's in there. We want to have that more authentic, more project-based learning, more real-world learning, more focused on solving problems, collaborating, but also this idea of that, I want my kid to be a good human.
Louka Parry (07:15)
Mmm.
Kevin Stoller (07:15)
Like,
and you know, and if so, I think it's really interesting the language that I hear differently based on who I talk to and where they spend their time is if you talk to someone in like the very like traditional, like school system, they'll say, that's social emotional learning. But if you talk to anyone outside of that, they just talk about being good humans in there. And they don't put kind of this label and say, we have to have a program around this. It's more this authentic idea of just focusing on the students and the kids and focusing
Louka Parry (07:33)
Mmm.
Kevin Stoller (07:42)
how do you a kid become a good adult in there? we've adopted this phrase in her coming, this radically student centered that we splash all over the place. like.
Louka Parry (07:53)
Mm. Mm.
Kevin Stoller (07:55)
Again, in the US, we've gotten to this world where the term radical is typically considered to the left or to the right, and it's got a political annotation to it. ⁓ But we have to be like the loud ones that are talking about the center and talking about like, what, like, get all the politics out of here. The end of the day, the one thing I think we all agree on is that we want every kid to have the best opportunities to succeed.
Louka Parry (08:03)
Yeah.
Certainly.
Kevin Stoller (08:20)
And I think that's a recognition that we're going to see more fragmentation and it's not the system is not going to look like the way it has worked for the last 150 years. And that to me is kind of like the.
What I keep digging into and exploring and trying to find out like what, what does that look like? Because I don't think our public systems in the U S like the traditional public systems. I don't think we, we are going to a point where they are going to get more students. I think it's just only going to continue where they lose students to these other options that are out there.
Louka Parry (08:40)
you
Yeah, there's, there's such an interesting, if we even zoom out to kind of the nation state level, Kevin, and you look at the geopolitically, know, education is kind of the prerequisite for a successfully functioning economy society.
Kevin Stoller (09:03)
Well, yeah.
It's
the most important thing and I think we're still caught in, and I'll speak from the US perspective, we're still caught up in the politics, but the parents are actually making these decisions right now that I don't think there's full awareness coming from that. mean, in Australia, do you see these dynamics working similar or is this like a distinctly unique US thing?
Louka Parry (09:33)
Well, no, it's, it's,
don't think it, I think it's a uniquely kind of Western. and I think there's a lot of interesting conversation at the moment about the decline of the West and the rise of the majority world, the global South. And we've seen these trends coming for a long period of time. you know, the rise of China, of India, the bricks more broadly.
Kevin Stoller (09:38)
Okay.
Louka Parry (09:53)
It's just a very interesting moment, especially even if you at birth rates and all these other kind of demographic aspects, you know, there's like a really interesting demographic picture, not just an economic picture, I think that kind of underpins all these these types of things. more, more specifically for education, we have also in Australia, quite a privatized school system, we have about 60 % of our young people in public schools. And then we have two sectors, the Catholic school sector, and the independent school sector. And
And they kind of educate the, I think it's, you know, it's about 60, 20, 20, you know, 65, 15, 20, something like that. Um, but you know, we have the same kind of challenge and I think I'd be really curious, Kevin, to hear from you about what you're seeing in the U S because here in Australia at this moment, especially implicates, you know, student centered versus teacher led, um, kind of pedagogy. Uh, and, know, and I would just caveat, I come a big fan of the learning sciences and I think, you know, what can we learn about?
Kevin Stoller (10:42)
you
Louka Parry (10:52)
evidence and the literal, you know, neurological, you know, neurobiological process of learning. Cool. Like pay attention to that, you know, spaced repetition, cognitive load, a whole bunch of other things, right. But I think what we've, what seems to have happened, I'm curious about is in some sectors, innovation is seen as a dirty word completely. I've seen slides with people like cross out innovation and say accountability or evidence based on
Kevin Stoller (10:58)
Guess.
you
Louka Parry (11:19)
I was just going, Oh, that's kind of curious because in any other sector in society, you'd be like, if you're not innovating, you're evaporating right now. Cause such is the changing landscape. So I think I'd say that, um, but we have this kind of movement here, which is it's, it's quite a lot of explicit instruction is becoming kind of a dominant or at least being kind of heralded as like, Oh, evidence, but good teaching is explicit teaching. And I agree with that in part, but it's like, if that's the best we've got and it's kids in rows, like.
Kevin Stoller (11:26)
Yeah.
you
Really? Okay, yeah.
Louka Parry (11:48)
You know what mean? And no wonder. And young people aren't going to put up with that stuff anymore as we're seeing, you know, what's your, what's your assessment?
Kevin Stoller (11:54)
Right. I mean, I
love that you bring this up without me bringing up because this is one of this is one of the where where I feel like I can clash with with some of my guests in here that are that are in the system. I I I very much appreciate.
the desire for evidence based and I too want to see the evidence on there. If I can wave a magic wand and say like, what is the best way for learning to happen? I would love to get that answer. But my stance is always is that we know exactly what the results are with the current system. We know what they are on there. So.
So if we want better, or if we want different, if we even want to like learn anything, we kind of have to run experiments, right? Like, like, this is how this is how we evolve is to is to run experiments. And but I also get from the ones that are in the system, they don't want to be the ones running the experiment, like that's risky for them. So these experiments are happening outside of the system.
And I what what's disappointing to me and I hope somebody is doing it is some way to like capture this. ⁓ And really analyze it and say, hey, we have this like amazing kind of research and development R &D world that's going on right now. I don't know if anyone's actually looking at this and trying to learn from it to gather some evidence in there. Or if there's anyone that would actually do it in, you know, in a
Louka Parry (13:06)
Hmm.
Kevin Stoller (13:24)
in a non biased way to find out I would love to get that answer but I you just keep coming back to is that if we're going to innovate that means we have to break the status quo and nobody wants their kid to be the one that you know experimented on but we also have some pretty good leading indicators and we also have some area where where sometimes you can just look at it and say that's better.
Louka Parry (13:50)
Yeah. Yeah.
Kevin Stoller (13:50)
And
there's a lot of examples of that where you may not be able to just like draw specific, you know, like a great, you know, like a great research project where you can, you know, apples to apples. But I can tell you the schools that I've seen that are more project based learning where they have to have like public exhibition of their work, where they have to work together, they're solving real world world problems to me, hands down, produce.
Louka Parry (14:02)
Mmm.
Kevin Stoller (14:19)
better adults. And I don't know how you do that, because I'm not like a researcher and a data person in there. But from just watching it, I would place my bet and something and something like that versus and and again, I don't want to make blanket statements. I think that's the hard part where I can clash with educators. I do think there's a level of like really up to like third or fourth grade, where where I do think there are some
Louka Parry (14:25)
Yeah. Yeah.
you
So, so.
Kevin Stoller (14:46)
we need to be able to teach people how to And I think there's a reading element where I think we're getting better and better at like figuring out, know, like the term science of reading that's out there. You know, we've tried experiments in the US that we're now learning like better ways to do it. I think we'll I think we will learn that aspect of it. But I think when it gets into the later years, our kids are very capable people. They're capable humans.
Louka Parry (14:49)
100%.
Kevin Stoller (15:14)
And I think we are just not unleashing their like, like their potential of, of things that engage them and things that they're passionate about because we just like so strictly want to have college as the end goal from the primary system. For us, it's like, you can cut through anyone's BS mission statement in a K-12 school system. The end of the day, most of them going to say we want our kids to either get into college or get into a better college.
Louka Parry (15:44)
Hmm.
Kevin Stoller (15:44)
And
to me, that's why I'm so interested in this conversation of what do you really want? What do you really want? is it, you know, is it that you want your kid to go to a prestigious university or do you want them to be a good human? And when we start having those conversations, that's when that to me is what's going to drive the systems to change, to try to produce different outcomes.
Louka Parry (16:07)
I will say I wonder too about the Include and Transcend. Because you are a good human and you know how to learn well, you can also go to college, you know, university, you know, in case of the dichotomy of like, I'm all, you know what mean? I
Kevin Stoller (16:19)
Correct. yes. Yeah. When I talk about college, it's always like, like, like, don't you think college
is good? I'm like, I think college does have its merits in there. But I but I think the downside that again, at least in the US is that it became the end result of the K-12 system. And and that's where to me, like I would, you know, I'm going to continue to challenge that and be able to bring up that conversation to say, hey, you know, like
portrait of graduate. That's really great in there, are we actually putting that into practice in there or is this did we just create a really nice poster that we're going to go hang up in the hallway?
Louka Parry (16:59)
100%. But a couple of things that I'm really interested in the idea of control at the moment, Kevin, and I'd love you to reflect on this because I think pedagogically, like as teachers, as educators, we have all these amazing tools at our disposal, right? And we're making thousands of decisions every single day in a classroom context. Do I intervene in this moment? Do I let that go? Do I, who do I speak with? know, so this is kind of why it's such complex work.
Kevin Stoller (17:06)
Hmm. Hmm.
Louka Parry (17:26)
You know, of my favorite sayings, education isn't rocket science. It's far more complex than that. Such a good saying. Do you know what I mean? It's like damn right, because it's not complicated. It's complex because it's human psychology in relationship with itself. with, so, um, I find that just so interesting, but I wonder about this control aspect and your reflection from this idea of radically student centered. Cause of course there are one thing we talk a lot about in our work is agency or what we love even more co-agency.
Kevin Stoller (17:32)
That's it?
Yeah.
Louka Parry (17:53)
which is both of us have got different levels of control and different levels of ability to shape an experience or the world around us. And the role of the adult isn't to have a hundred percent control. It's actually to be sharing that control, that agency with our learners. But of course, so I think what we have sometimes finding especially is we see kind of the programmatic education coming forward. It's like, we'll just do the program. And sometimes just...
quite a lot control, you know, and the opposite of that, course, is sometimes inquiry is, is poorly held, Kevin, which is like, well, inquiry is just, okay, what's your passion project go off everybody into your passion. And there's no guided inquiry. The guided bit is what we know makes the difference. Cause that's the adult actually helping shape and arc the learning towards, you know, including motivation aspects and, you know, high expectations and other things, but.
Kevin Stoller (18:34)
Right.
Right.
Louka Parry (18:51)
What's your kind of thing? And you sort of say radically student-centered. How do you grapple with this idea of control? Who owns the learning?
Kevin Stoller (18:57)
Yeah, I think that's actually where it takes the thesis down to where that is the goal. We are trying to transfer it to the student. If the student doesn't own it, then we fail at the end on there. And I think the systems are definitely more like even the term like when we say student centered on there.
I've had some deep discussions about this of where people will challenge me on that term and be like, well, it really shouldn't be student centered. It should really be learner centered because the educator in the room is also a learner and you can, and to me, I keep coming down to is, are we building the system for people's jobs?
Which are the adults in there or are we building the system around truly the student like like like what is the best thing for the student and so some of those terms that get thrown around and get debated about of you know, like what are we doing and you know if the system is really for the adults or the teacher is really the number one aspect of it.
Louka Parry (20:02)
Mmm.
Kevin Stoller (20:02)
That
that immediately is reframing the the question to me in the wrong way because if we say like and again I'm a business person and I'm one of those people that I think business is one of the one of the best tools to drive social change It's entrepreneurship That type of mindset is if you're solving a real problem That it that is one of the things that is is going to contribute to a better world now obviously like you have all the examples of people not
Louka Parry (20:17)
Mm-hmm.
Kevin Stoller (20:33)
Not doing it that way, but at the end of it, the tool can be used for good. And if we looked at that from a business side and kind of apply similar learnings into a school system and you say like, who is your customer? At end of the day, the customer of the school is the student. And part of that is engaging the parents in there because this cannot be done in
Louka Parry (20:47)
Mmm.
Kevin Stoller (20:59)
in a silo and there can't be the lack of trust or the tension that happens between the school and the parents on there. But I really feel like it when the schools can can truly put the student at the center of the decisions, that's when the transformation starts happening, because that's what's reframing the questions into a different way. And not to get too far ahead, but that's one of my projects that I'm working on right now is how do you build
an organization wrapped around the student at the center, like truly the student at the center. And, and we're introducing a bunch of leadership tools, to help fully align that idea that student, that you're org, you're organized as a student centered organization, not as an adult centered or a job centered organization. But it, again, like all the things that we talk about it.
There are so many forces that are out there that are fighting back against that because they're all protecting their own world instead of saying what is the best thing for the student.
Louka Parry (21:55)
Mmm.
Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's really interesting. No, no, that's great. No. Well, take us into those tools though. I'm really curious. Cause you know, if it's a teacher or educators listening to this conversation, like what does that mean? Yeah.
Kevin Stoller (22:07)
So I know I just threw a lot at you there, but it's a, yeah.
Yeah, so so it actually it Yeah,
so it actually one of the tools we do talk about like this this idea of if the student is at the center What who who supports the student and there's the front line that's where the educators are that's where the educators any of the specialists anyone that's interacting on a daily basis with there and then When you go out there, then you have your site led
level leadership. if it's, know, like a one school system, it kind of ends there. You may have like a board or something that's supporting outside that, but you basically start having rings around the student and everyone's, everyone's measurements of success should be tied back to that student and looking at more of like a leading indicator of like, what are the most important things? And back to your point of this is a co-authorship.
Louka Parry (22:57)
you
Kevin Stoller (23:08)
Obviously, like when they're younger, there's not as much co-authorship, but as they get older, the whole idea is that you are now transferring more and more of that ownership and that accountability off to the student. And then the teachers are more there to support them. And to your point, it's like the adults are there to be the guides. They are there to be the guides. But it, but it does start with what we asked them to do is we asked somebody, we asked the school system or the school leader we're talking to it. Bring your org chart.
Louka Parry (23:37)
you
Kevin Stoller (23:37)
And
if you look at their org chart, you see the exact opposite. You see school leader at the top, maybe you have a board, then you have school superintendent, and then you have kind of this district level, then you have this, then you have your teachers down at the bottom. And then most of the time the students don't even make that, that list. But if you reframe it and you start saying that the students at the middle, how do you now do the support beyond there? And it really reframes the discussion to say there's no way that student can grow.
Louka Parry (23:56)
So that's a good point.
Kevin Stoller (24:07)
if these other circles around them are not growing as well. So that's the first tool that we start talking through in there. it leads into who's accountable. We call them the vitals. So everyone should have some very lead indicator vitals that they are responsible for ⁓ on there. yeah.
Louka Parry (24:11)
Beautiful.
Right. I love that. ⁓ It was
going to be my question, Kevin, tell us in this, because lead indicators, lag indicators might be new language for some of the listeners. Tell us, know, tell us about these lead indicators, why they matter. And as you call them the vitals, you know, like what questions are you asking of the young people of the adults?
Kevin Stoller (24:41)
Yes.
Yeah, so what we're looking at, and again, this is a collaboration. There's no standard template in here. This is the discussion that each school has to have for themselves. But when we've had these discussions, the vitals can range from a variety of things. It may be as simple as the teacher is responsible to make sure that the student is there on time.
Louka Parry (24:52)
Gotcha.
Kevin Stoller (25:11)
So we know if attendance isn't there, well, then that's one of those lead indicators that their performance probably is going to be there. And if you find out really early that there's a slip, like, you know, like all of a sudden this week we had, you know, only 80 % of kids were there on time. That helps you try to identify those issues very early on of like, well, is it something about transportation? Is it something about miscommunication? What, what really was it that was preventing them to do that?
Louka Parry (25:15)
Mm.
you
Mmm.
Kevin Stoller (25:40)
on there and being able to address those things early before you get to the end of the year and say, okay, these are our test scores, our standardized test scores. They went up or they went down, but either way, you know, those kids are going to move on. And, and we didn't do that. So there, there is a lot of work that goes into trying to figure out what are those lead indicators and to the point that the students are going to own them too. What are the students responsible for? They should immediately know.
Louka Parry (25:51)
you
Kevin Stoller (26:06)
what are the most important things that they are accountable for.
Louka Parry (26:10)
Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah. It's for me, it's like a change in question from, I've heard some professor guy, Clexton, who I quite like, but he says instead of, ⁓ what works the what works movement, which we've talked a bit about it's what matters first, and then you can ask and what works, because if you're not asking what matters, well, then you're being driven by data.
Kevin Stoller (26:26)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Louka Parry (26:37)
And you don't want to be drought driven. You want to be data informed, but driven by your purpose and a really clearly explicit vision and mission that you have for your learning organization. So it's just got, it's a really good reframe of like, actually what matters here on that, on that side.
Kevin Stoller (26:54)
Yeah. Yeah. Education
is not lacking data. Like if you ask anyone in there, they have tons of data. What it's lacking is, is focus on the most important data and the data that can provide action that gives them insight so that they can provide action to it.
Louka Parry (27:13)
Yeah, interesting, Kevin. I have a question, because I know you have an expertise in this, about learning environments specifically. You know, there's a, like, what do you, what do we know about a thriving learning environment? And like, if you're a school and you're a teacher, you're trying to just establish a particular type of classroom, you know, you've got your furniture. But if you're making a decision around, you know, changing a few learning environments, like, what are some of the things you really need to think about? What have you learned over?
Kevin Stoller (27:26)
Yeah.
Louka Parry (27:42)
I'll right back.
Kevin Stoller (27:42)
Yeah,
I'm going to give you just a quick story in there that helps you. So I got in when I got into this industry, I mentioned that, you know, like school looked exactly like school when I went to it everywhere I went. It was just same thing over and over again. All these schools looked alike. And I walked into one of the schools that where I lived at the time I was in Ohio and I walked in to the lobby of the school and
For some reason that day it felt completely different. There was this like electricity and this buzz coming from one side of the school. And as I was waiting for the principal to come out, I'm asking the secretary, like, what's going on? And she's like, just wait, like Mr. Gerard will come out here. And Dan Gerard comes out, he's principal, one of those that just like everyone loves. I become friends with him and he just has this big smirk on my face. I'm like, Dan, what's going on? Tell me what's going on.
and Follow him and we just stand in the doorway of this fourth grade class and I watched the teacher have kids huddled around her Explaining what they're doing. Everyone is paying attention to her and then immediately she just does break and she does a clap and almost like like a huddle in American football where they where they break out and They immediately went into groups of three or four
Louka Parry (28:55)
Ciao.
Kevin Stoller (29:00)
started working on things together as a group. The teachers kind of dancing through there through just kind of asking questions and listening and getting down at eye level with the students. ⁓ And then you see like one kid break off who just needs to focus on something like on their own. At one point, the teacher like gets the whole class's attention and like immediately this fourth grader just does like a presentation to the rest of the class. Like no preparation or anything just does it.
Louka Parry (29:10)
Hmm.
Wow.
Kevin Stoller (29:27)
⁓ they go back into the groups and then by, by the end of that session, she gets them back into this huddle and does a recap on that. And I'm like, Whoa, this is very different than everything else I had seen. And all that changed in there was the furniture. That was it. And I'm not saying that is like the go-to for every single one, but
Louka Parry (29:44)
and just.
Kevin Stoller (29:49)
Since then that was 10 that was in 2014. So I can't believe I mean that was 11 years ago. To us it's always a conversation of do you want to have rigid? Options where you do not have the option to move things around and and provide instruction in a different way where you only can have it where Where it's ⁓ it's teacher-led direct instruction or do you want to give options? on there And to me almost every time when we have this
Louka Parry (29:53)
Right. Yeah.
Kevin Stoller (30:18)
It comes back. We want to have options and some people will fight it and be like, well, what about like reading? It's better to have to I'm like, yes, it'd be great She could have lined them up in in straight rows for that But she also had the option to do exactly what she did in there. So that is that is what we see predominantly It is around the the idea that that you can rearrange things very quickly ⁓
Louka Parry (30:35)
Hmm.
Mmm.
Kevin Stoller (30:45)
based on whatever the topic is. So that's really been kind of the driving force that we have. And we always say like, it's got to start with collaboration. This is very much a culture change. If a teacher is only used to one way to teach their students, they are really going to struggle if they are not on board or part of this discussion early on before we design and implement these solutions.
Louka Parry (31:15)
Yeah, yeah, beautiful example. I can really visualize the difference between that. And you're so, you're so right. When you think about what's at the disposal of an, of an educator. yeah.
Kevin Stoller (31:25)
It's
the fastest way to drive culture change. Like, like that's what I just keep coming back to is I somehow landed like in this industry and, you know, without intent. But it is the fastest thing to culture change by by changing the spaces. We can talk about all you want. But if we are going to put teachers right back into the spaces that they've been teaching in for last 20 years and don't allow them to change it, we are not going to see any.
Louka Parry (31:28)
interesting.
Kevin Stoller (31:52)
changes in the output.
Louka Parry (31:54)
beautifully put, Kevin. I've got two final questions for you. The first is a speculative question. If you and I were chatting again in 10 years time, let's say, you know, we've talked, we've covered a little bit of crowned, crowned today. You know, what, what's the vision that you're kind of really fighting for? Like, what would you love to now be real ⁓ in the world of education?
Kevin Stoller (31:57)
Yeah.
You
Yeah.
I hope I hope we have that magic wand answer of Where we do start seeing data and we do start seeing the output of what are the best ways like What can we learn as a society because we have so many different experiments going on? Is there is there ultimately a better way or is it just that fragmentation is the way?
Louka Parry (32:24)
Mm.
Mmm.
Kevin Stoller (32:40)
Like having
a lot of different options at the disposal for parents to choose. I will say right now, parents are looking for direction from the schools. They, they feel like the schools don't have the answer. So they're defaulting to what do I think is best? And, and I hope in 10 years, we don't miss out on that opportunity to learn from all these different things that are popping up to find out, man, if we are going to craft like
the best, the best experience, the best framework from going from age zero to age 18, so that we have a society that is just like engaged, motivated, like problem solvers, good humans, like, I hope, you know, in my idealistic world that that we have learned those things that we get better and maybe AI becomes one of those tools that helps us accelerate.
Louka Parry (33:18)
Mmm.
Kevin Stoller (33:30)
Because to me, it's like the problem of our generation that we need to solve is we've had a system based on the industrial age that, know, like I feel like we've all had these discussions about it was built, you know, what we needed 150 years ago, but it's not what we need right now. And I don't know what the answers are, but I hope we are doing enough things and we're collecting enough information so that in 10 years we do have a better idea of.
Louka Parry (33:34)
Mmm.
Hmm.
Kevin Stoller (33:58)
of what does this look like? How about you? want to hear. I want to hear like what you have. You have so many good discussions on on yours like I don't want to miss out on my opportunity to learn from you.
Louka Parry (34:09)
look, Kevin, who knows? But I mean, the thing I'm really fighting for, I don't know what the best framing is. It kind of shifts in my own mind, but it's this idea of like a fully human education. One that I think doesn't prioritize a subset of the growth and development and expansion of what it means to be alive. And that implicates everything.
And this idea of including and transcending is a phrase that I'm using all the time at the moment. You include and transcend. Otherwise we get stuck in dichotomous conversation forever. Is it this or that rather than it was both of these in a nuanced understanding? So my hope is that in 2035, we have young people that are really discerning. They are agentic. They have a strong sense of social connection and they are exploring their, it's exploring purposefully in the world to create value.
That really, I think is the piece here and exploring rather than achieving I use deliberately. you know, I, I think there's, there's different implications about how we all live our lives and, know, education, it really is like, this is why I stepped into education and you've done the same, you know, um, for me, it's just such an incredible, incredible experience that can help us all expand.
And it doesn't end at 18. I'm, you know, older than that and I'm definitely still expanding every day. so I don't have conversation about that too. Um, but that's my hope.
Kevin Stoller (35:32)
Yeah.
Yeah, no, mean
that I agree. mean, that's a whole nother kind I feel like I really didn't own my learning until my twenties. You know, I felt like I was going through a system, but to your point, I feel like the learning that I go through right now is like accelerated at a level that is way beyond what I did as a kid.
Louka Parry (35:42)
Yeah, yeah. That's really interesting report. Yeah.
Yeah. Being
able to learn to learn. Like if you, if you are a good learner today, you pretty well will be successful. If you're not a good learner or you have a whole range of other challenges, like that's, that's just such a blocker for your life success, for your ability to create value and find purpose. So yeah. Kevin, final question. What is your take home message of everything that you're, you know, ruminating on considering noticing observing and what would you.
Kevin Stoller (36:17)
you
Yeah.
Louka Parry (36:23)
Well, let's just.
Kevin Stoller (36:26)
One, I think.
bringing Michael Jordan back into it and kind of like the power, the power of storytelling and the power of in there. There are a lot of things that are out there that I think have to prompt our conversations in our communities. Like if we are just having these, these conversations within kind of the walls of education, we're missing the broader opportunity. I'm a big fan of the what school could be community. They had that film that came out most
Louka Parry (36:29)
Nice, I'm glad you did.
Kevin Stoller (36:53)
likely to succeed about 10 years ago.
Oh, just so good. And I love the way they rolled it out. And that the only way like when it came out, you could view it was by having it in a public like you had to show it publicly and then it had a q &a around it. They just came out with another one called multiple choice. That is going to be a similar thing that so I think the power of media is really important to drive this because people need to see it, they need to have that emotional connection. But that's just a tool to get to what I think
Louka Parry (37:18)
Hmm.
Kevin Stoller (37:26)
think
it's the most important thing is these conversations. They need to happen. They need to happen. The parents and the education community, they are not sitting down and like co-creating what they really want and crafting that idea of like, what does...
what, what, why are they going to school? Are they going to school because this is, you know, essentially like a glorified daycare program or, or is this the opportunity that we, you know, that, that we can really turn that next generation into it. And I'm one of those that is like very optimistic, probably more so than I feel like that I hear from other people. I see the younger people out there and they see through this BS.
Louka Parry (38:06)
sure.
Kevin Stoller (38:10)
like they see through the BS of the school system that's in place right now.
And man, I just hope we don't miss that opportunity. They are so capable. are so like they are so much more knowledgeable. Like they are like they truly have the potential to be like the greatest generation. Honestly, if the adults would get out of the way or the adults would listen to them and and give them the guidance, but we have to build that trust between the adults and the kids right now. And we're not we're showing them crap.
Sorry, your vocabulary is way better than mine. Vocabulary is like the biggest word in my vocabulary. So sorry about the language on here, but but they see through it and it is eroding the trust that's happening between adults and kids because they're like, you created this system for us and they understand what's going on and they're craving something more.
Louka Parry (39:05)
beautifully put, Kevin. What a great chat. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us on the learning podcast.
Kevin Stoller (39:07)
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for doing what you're
doing. Great. Yeah. Great talking to you. Keep it up. Keep it up. These conversations are important. They truly are like that. To me, this is how we do it. It starts with conversations.
