The Tab Tax on Teachers | A Conversation with Jett Wolper

You know that feeling when you're clicking through seven different platforms just to send a simple grade to a parent, or maybe you're a senior leader in timetable intakes over your life for literally months. Here's the thing, those cut-off ham-ends might not actually need cutting anymore. Confused at what I just said? Well today we're talking about why school systems are built for buyers rather than users and what happens when we flip the script.

Hey everyone, I'm Shane Leaning, welcome to Education Leaders, the chart-topping leadership podcast for school leaders just like you. As an organizational coach I've helped thousands of leaders worldwide lead with greater confidence, make better decisions and create winning teams. And on this show we explore the strategies that are going to help you achieve your goals and transform your leadership. This episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association and Teaching Walkthroughs. Stay tuned to learn more.

Okay so my guest today is Jet Walther, he's founder and CEO of CC. Jet spent years working with schools on their technology systems and he has got a really fascinating take on why our systems feel so broken and what we can actually do about it. And more importantly he's thinking about how we build systems around humans rather than tech specs. Let's jump straight to it.

You know schools are built kind of as a one of those things where you have to build the plane while it's flying right. You don't have unlimited money and you can build the perfect system right. The systems kind of evolve as the school evolves. And so sometimes we make these myopic decisions when kind of building out our systems or kind of something hey we need this today we don't have the time to build the best system around this. The problem comes in where this

kind of compounds over 10, 15, 20 years and now you have kind of several different systems put together that kind of become the norm of the school just because things were built when originally the school was set up. And so what I find is that we have a lot of these systems in place that exist just for the sake of existing. They're not necessarily the best system or the system that the school needs but just because that was been the status quo for so long. There's a classic story our designer Bernice tells all the time about you know husband and wife are making the wife's famous ham and so she's preparing it and you know they season it and they're ready to put in the oven and the wife says well the most important part is we have to cut off the ends. My husband says well why do we cut off the ends? She says I'm not

sure let me call my mother so she calls her mother and she says well of course we have to cut off the ends. She says but why why do we cut off the ends mom? Mom says well I don't know let me call my mother. So she calls her mother and the mother says well my oven wasn't big enough so I had to cut off the ends right. It's like so sometimes these systems are inherited from you know how

things had to work a while ago but it's not necessarily relevant today. And so I think it's always useful to take that opportunity to kind of reflect on our systems and see how can we evolve these how can we kind of modernize some of these systems. It's funny I think schools are like such places for hams that are cut off that we don't realize why. Like there are so many things we do and because schools are I guess they're such old systems that have been around a long time and so we accumulate stuff in them and accumulate patterns or ways of being ways of working. I love that analogy.

I can't take credit designer Bernice loves telling that one but it's true and you know it's to no one's fault right. You know we can't blame anyone it's just kind of the natural growth of kind of any system or any structure is that things fall into place the way they need to be but it's important to kind of when you get to that stability point or as close to stability as you can to kind of find that time to reassess these systems and make these incremental improvements that completely transform everything in a school. Yeah you do that brilliantly with your work with Cece but I wonder from your experience what does it take for someone to get to that point where they're willing to go okay we need to make a change here. Yeah absolutely and I think the only thing about schools I find that oftentimes the things that take the most of our time are the things also we want to do the least of. No one said oh I've been spending too much time you know

sitting with my students really getting deep into lesson plans it's more oh I'm spending a lot of time double data entry or putting this data things so really analyzing okay what are the things that are taking the most of our time and all these things that really have meaningful impact on ultimately the education journey the school's journey and if we kind of just write a little as simple as writing a list okay what does my day look like what am I spending the most time on I'm in checking down well this is great I'm talking to students that's something we love but oh man I have to upload data into five different systems this is something we might take a look at it's something we might update because that time could be spent better with the students building lesson plans kind of working with so kind of the first step of course is identifying of course there's a problem the classic kind of adage and then the second step is really takes a little bit of bravery it takes a little bit of boldness to say look we do need to make the change and the leap is the first hardest one but just really making incremental change it can be something as small as let me try to send all my messages through one platform or let me try to do all this in one place right just changing one little thing to see out as the impact is really really a step in the right direction you don't have to overhaul the whole school overnight right it's just making those incremental steps and identifying where you can have the biggest improvement day by day I like that and we're gonna look at some practical ways you might look at solve some of these challenges but I wonder if it's worth taking a step back and this was some of those common areas where people are spending a lot of their time for kind of limited impact absolutely I can talk from more of a data you know technical side where I see a lot of schools inputting a really concrete example is I think timetabling is one that takes an unbelievably big and large amount of time for a lot of people at the school yeah that's so true I remember being in school so working with leaders and they're like oh don't come near me because I'm timetabling and I'm gonna be in my office for months tight billing like like and it takes a leader totally away that's one it doesn't need to be like that maybe we'll talk about a bit later how AI is really kind of impacting and changing that especially CC but you know that's an example of massive data entry that we see a lot so inputting data entry but then disconnected systems I think a big one is communication receiving calls on one side emails on the other WhatsApp groups I mean that's one of the first big things that I think the school can transform that really really has an impact across everyone we see a lot of time parents are upset because they're not getting responses to their emails but you know the email sent to this old account or it's sent through this WhatsApp group and the teachers didn't realize oh I have to check the messages here and there and although so really I think centralizing communication is something that can completely transform a school overnight both from the school side from the parent side from the learner side of students side and it's it's a tough one communication right finding that time to respond all the messages get back to teachers get back to students get back to parents and three or four different places is really difficult other things we see is kind of again duplicate data entry so a student gets a grade here we have to then input it there we have to then put it over in the report card we then have to export the report card and send it to a parent just to send something like a simple grade so something like that shouldn't be taking most of our time it's really about buying the time back for the teachers to kind of spend that time with the learners with the students I agreed I'm curious do you find like links between you know it's not just about saving times or helping them spend more time doing the important things but I wonder a time in the world where there is a huge teacher attention crisis and things like I assume there's a wider cost to some of this bloating in our system I couldn't agree more I think teacher burnout as we know is really a problem right now and I think we've spoken before about how it's more of a systems problem than a person's problem right you know these inefficient systems are adding to that burnout when you know 50 60% of your time is just spent doing administrative tasks and mind you not easily doing these administrative tasks either right it's kind of in these old frameworks or old systems that really really kind of lead to that burnout and I think again updating systems can really kind of bring life back into the teachers and to the students and reinvigorate you know as we said earlier no teachers ever said oh I've spent too much time with my students today I'm just so burnt out from how much time I'm spending with my right so that's not something that we hear or see so it's really kind of helping evolve the system so that we can get more of that and we can build the systems around teachers and around humans right that's the big thing I think sometimes what we see is systems were built off a spec sheet you know a school says I need a checklist I need an admissions pipeline I need notes and these things or a spec sheet that was built by maybe a board or an SLT team that doesn't translate to the school and so it's like well here's the checklist but how does the user implement this and how is the end teacher using this it's completely disconnected and so kind of building these around the humans around the teachers around the learners is really important I just know so many listeners are going to be listening nodding at what you've just said thinking about their learner management system or whatever system that they've got ongoing I just hate using it it's like not designed for me and like it's been designed by maybe an IT person or like I think you said like it's like almost it's just built over time and just layers have been added so it's just lost its ease of use well it's a big problem actually and the purchaser of the software is far disconnected from the user of the software often in school so the teacher isn't making the decision oftentimes on what software the school will purchase and so you can see over 20 years how a software company will develop for the buyer and a buyer will purchase what they know meets a checklist and really the end user the students the teachers don't have too much say in that product and so over 20 years we can see how we get to these systems and it's a sad thing because the fallacy kind of in education is the technology is terrible it's difficult to use it you know no one's happy but it can actually be an asset it actually can be a strength if set up the right way right oftentimes the best thing about our software schools well it works don't touch it it works right like it's no one's saying I love it you know we're not gonna love it's great we say look we've got it just good enough nobody touch it it's taking us a long time and and that shouldn't be the conversation the conversation should be wow look what this has done for us say wow look the time right it's happening all the other spaces it needs to happen in education as well so tell me then because this is the curious thing about this that so many schools have these systems and we could list off the names mentally and ahead of these systems that we hate so much that have driven me mad as a teacher and a leader and but we continue to use them so even though we don't like them what's happening is it just because we can't see an alternative what in your experience is holding the sector back from changing something that certainly from my conversation with you would be something that be quite sector changing if we embrace something different well I think so and I said not only will it be sector changing I think it has to happen now I think with the way technology is going in every other space education is really the next big one I think how it got here was it's the classic story right legacy systems that were built 20 25 years ago were created and their goal is to get in as many schools as possible you know the margins and schools aren't massive they're not getting then tack or all these other budgets so they're gonna make the cheapest and easiest product to get into schools and these are built by a lot of times pack companies not educators right not people that sit in a school and understand the deep meaningful impact these things have and so I think that's one of the first problems is how do we build a product around educators around the users right not around the buyers and so that's the first step now the beautiful thing about it is creating a product around the users ultimately makes everything work better the school the finances everything so it really is a meaningful investment a meaningful time investment sometimes we have to kind of extrapolate into exactly how is it a meaningful impact or how is it a important impact and I think an example we always go to is an admissions pipeline you know something maybe outside of the teachers space but in an administrator space I've heard many many stories of an admissions pipeline where someone inquires here then they fill out an application here then they have to pay their application fee here then have to email their application payment receipt here then they get communications to set up once they're accepted here right so we're on six or seven different platforms before we even started to get in school and a lot falls through the cracks there you know you can lose a lot of people and so it translates into now economic differences for a school of not having bad systems directly I mean that's direct economic impacts which sometimes we'd like to quantify for those admins is here's a direct number of how it could be impacting your school but that's the same system both on emotional cost you know for all users and across the whole school so it really is something that we see quantifiable both emotionally and financially here's what teachers tell me training days feel great but by Monday is faded little transfer from training room to classroom teaching walkthroughs fix this with five-step visual guides that teachers can actually use straight away confidence source because they succeed in putting techniques into action and you start building a real culture of continuous improvement I am so proud to be working with the teaching walkthroughs as a consultant because teachers genuinely love them you can check them out at walkthroughs.co.uk or using the link in the show notes this episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association the ICA have been around for 30 years now championing quality unlocking potential and improving learning in international schools and what I really love is that right at their core is the model for improving learning this is a model focused on the learning experience and they have got tons of great curriculum materials PD resources and even an accreditation pathway for schools just like yours if you're interested head to internationalcurriculum.com one of the big takeaways I'm getting already is this idea of designing systems for the buyers rather than the users and I think you can almost look at that in lots of different things in schools actually so I work maybe in the professional development space you know where schools might be buying into professional development offers but it might be the leaders who are choosing the PD for their teams rather than the teams actually generate for themselves yet we know there's better impact if it's relevant to those who are on the ground this is exactly the same so tell me then what's your vision for the future I'm curious like if we cracked this and you've got an amazing system that is obviously doing some brilliant work in this area but when you step into the future like what will good look like? That is a great question well I can start

by telling you what I don't think good would look like okay what I think bad would look like there's this dystopian future we always talk about in schools and I may offend some people here but you know the world where the students plugged into the VR headsets and lesson plans are just dictated to them lesson for you know just plugged in right that classic dystopian thing yeah that's the future we don't want yeah you know the future we're trying to build is actually very human-centric there's a joke we always have at CC is the less you use our platform the happier we are right so we don't want you using it we want you to say it does all the things you don't want to do all those data inputs the redundant tasks it takes care of all the things you don't want to do so you have space to do all the things you do want to do Wow and so I really see this beautiful future of kind of that combination right where technology actually enhances the learning experience that doesn't take away from the teaching experience and I think they do work hand-in-hand I think that world does exist especially with AI where students can go off on their learning paths independently with AI right we've seen many different things right I might be a visual learner I get a video of the lesson plan I might be an audio learner I get a audio of the lesson plan but then we all come together and kind of more like a Socratic seminar where we have our own independent kind of journeys and come together to discuss and learn from the teacher and get feedback and kind of explore together right that's kind of the experience we want not just kind of AI written lesson plan and then an AI written homework turn in right with kind of these more holistic kind of experiences where okay all that old redundant stuff is done with now we really have time to sit and talk about things and explore things together and so I guess to put it simply our big dream at TC is eliminating all the redundancies or administrative tasks from schools is essentially making that redundant and bringing all the humanity back to it so if you ask anyone school picture what your life would look like if you had no administrative tasks that's what we want to accomplish and I think sometimes we forget oh my god this is what it's supposed to be like I'm so caught up in doing it so much I forgot that that's not the way it should be my job isn't to be an administrator it's be combat but it shouldn't be my job's a teacher and so opening that world up is kind of what we see and it's very close and I think it's very possible there's such a big difference here isn't there between a system that says I can help you do your admin to a system that's saying I don't want you to take notice of me like the less you use me the better like can you just get on with your job and let me handle that yeah that's the goal do the things you don't want to do so you can spend more time doing the things you do want to do do people get scared by that when you talk to them or like do people have concerns about how that would work for them you know I think a big thing is there's been a lot of empty promises in education as well and so I think that first fear it sounds too good to be true and we're a company or product that we're not nearly close to finished and that means we'll never be nearly close to finished right we'll be working continuously for the next hundred years if we can to continue to improve and make it better but the big thing about it for us is that first step is trying to replace the system or trying to test how can this improve is really the big first step and I think the big hesitation is it's so scary and it's been historically so painful and bad to do anything I'm even afraid to make the change in the leap but you know there's a bit of that cost fallacy in there and I think it's really gonna take a lot of bravery and kind of you know forward thinking from educators say you know what let's give it a chance let's take that step the benefit is I think we see the impact immediately from people really happy they did yeah it changes things on an emotional level it changes how schools operate and I think that's really important as we get into this new space yeah so I don't usually do this Jeff the listeners listening like this is not a sponsored episode or anything like that but I actually think it'd be really valuable to explore a little bit about CC so that the listener can really picture this because I think we're talking about something that many schools can't even envisage what we're talking about so let's get a bit concrete like how are you designing this human centric system and what specifically you were trying to achieve here great question so we really want to unify the five core elements of a school that we find are the big kind of overarching things your student information system and that kind of houses all your data your learning management system you know attendance report cards students turning in their homework doing their homework etc your communications your admissions and your tuition management and all those things kind of cover different pieces but the point is those are the big administrative burdens that we see schools have that are taking most of the time cost and energy and so kind of by taking these spaces and really finding really intuitive powerful tools that can replace all these administrative or redundant birds we can actually bring both time and cost back to schools that they can reallocate in the things that are really powerful and meaningful for them so what does that mean realistically it means really intuitive tools we find the idea of having to go to a three-month training for all this money ridiculous you know you don't pick up Instagram and take a three-month training so our users should be able to jump on the platform their first time and do about 90% of the things they need to do without any training right just really be able to so really intuitive really human-centered right around human system so not really tech yeah and then as we grow we'd like to really start bringing more of those little pieces into it where it can really essentially like we've discussed take away all those administrative tasks and essentially allow teachers to do and administrators to do the things that are important to them is this one system like the idea is just your school will just have one system is that the main idea here all do other things have to plug into it that's correct so this is the main system the main backbone but of course there's many other education tools that will plug into it as well and do plug into it right so your individual resources or things could plug right into it as well but this is kind of the backbone this is kind of the house that stores everything but everything works right through it so you have one place you go for all these things one place you message one place you pay your tuition fees one place you communicate with your teachers you turn in your homework just like that no different logins you know everything reads in and out and so really really intuitive yeah what's your experience with the school you've been working with so far like what's happened have any of them totally replaced their system by the CC system absolutely we have had some brave schools that right off the bat and we've had enough we want to change everything and so they want to do the whole overall but a more common case is you know why the school want to replace one or two systems for us to get comfortable and then truly after place the other tools and I think you know those big impact we see right away the communication centralized is really beautiful really intuitive it gets everyone engaged right away with that buy-in and then we slowly start to see these different kind of sections really having that transformation and enjoyable our LMS with students is kind of the one we had the most fun with because we're all kind of educators form educators and former students ourselves so we knew how hard our students would be on us if it didn't look modern and cool if it didn't work more well so we're very let's say insecure about that so you know we take a lot of time to make sure you know the best thing anyone could say if the student said wow it's cool will be the happiest people I write if they could say whether they're turning in their homework is cool I don't think they use the word cool anymore jet I think you're behind on no I'm embarrassed myself well there we go well I would say that is really cool and I think having more of our systems builders thinking with those end users in mind and thinking not just about what can the system do but how invisible who can we make this system almost I think that's quite exciting yeah you know if I may I think we're entering a really really exciting place in education right now and a bit scary and I know the AI conversation has been had a thousand times so I'm not gonna have it but I think you know with that the accelerated pace is everything is changing in education and so for me it's really important to kind of build a community around shaping the future of education and so you know we're a small piece to that but I think right now you know the big thing for us is kind of how do we work with the world how do we work with communities to kind of what will this next 20 years look like what will this next 25 years look like in education and so that's something we all have to figure out together right whether it's our software or systems in schools or learning right this is kind of something the conversation that we all need to be having and thinking about no matter what we do in the school is what is this gonna look like because it is changing and it will change maybe slower than some places across the other but it's really about having these conversations about how do we shape it how do we build what's new and so when changing the systems we have the opportunity to kind of start asking those questions and it may sound scary but it's really exciting it's a fun experiment to start doing and shaping the future for ourselves for our schools and kind of for our learners so well I'm a huge advocate for question driven change I think it's good for us to be asking these questions I wonder though you said let's not go into AI but I wonder if we can kind of tickle into the AI space because I know when we did speak before we talked a little bit about this risk that AI is coming in and there's all these tools and you know I think there is a bit of a risk you maybe said before of AI adding more chaos to our currently chaotic systems well absolutely I mean I think we've seen a couple of scenarios here where you know we have five more AI systems but now that means we have to add five more platforms to our workflow so it might make this thing marginally better but the cost of having five more systems to make this one system better it's like putting a band-aid on a bigger problems like let's solve the underlying system problem first and then we can think about how do we implement AI on top of it because oftentimes you see people solving for problems that don't need to even exist in the first place right so making that change there I think is really important and kind of taking a step back and saying well where do we need a tool to solve this problem or where do we need internal system change to solve this problem and you know I think that's something we'll see a lot of in the coming years yeah it's a real foundations first mentality which you know I just think is so important we can get very excited and right now with AI like everyone there's a lot of giddiness in the air and a lot of like here's the answer and there's a million products you can already buy that are now helping you with AI but yeah you're right what do you do do you take in all of those products and have physically clogging up your systems but also just clogging up people's bandwidth all right and I think it's something you've heard maybe Rico discuss or some of our CC team discussed before but it's the tab tax you know how many tabs do we already have open on our computer how many tabs are we clicking through to go from here to there it's adding additional tabs and so the goal is how do we remove some of those tabs how do we kind of streamline some of those systems first and then we can slowly kind of take our time and layer in the AI me personally AI is gonna be here to stay so we don't have to rush into it because it's not going anywhere so there's no rush and I'm always first a foundation like you a foundation and systems thinker how do we evolve and kind of have our foundation systems and that gives us time to kind of see okay well which AI tools will work for us and how will they work for us and you know there's no rush to jump into it I don't think yeah this has been really brilliant I wonder if I could finish with a question I'm very curious what do you hope for in education that is a really good question that's the big question what do I hope for an education my big hope in education is that we can kind of get to the place that I think we've all been promised or kind of felt was promised to us kind of our whole life and historically is you know this there are say utopian idea of what education can look like you know equality in education amongst learners and teachers and kind of opportunity and it really becomes less of you know this hectic kind of scenario where it can be more or less pace of zen and peace for everyone where we come in to actively learn and passionately teach and kind of experience that together and I think we really are close to a place where that is one of the possible routes I think again we talk about this dystopian a VR headset that's my nightmare that's what keeps me up at night but there's that other world where hey a lot of the things that kind of held us back before don't need to anymore and now we can really shape a beautiful kind of human-centered space that really builds upon what we've all wanted and promised in education for a hundred years I think we're finally getting a place for that as possible so that's really really exciting coming I just loved this chat with jet that story about ham with the cuz off ends it really resonated with me I can think of so many similar stories and that's schools right there isn't it we're doing so many things because that's the way they've always been done not necessarily because they make sense anymore a few things that stuck with me really is first the idea of designing systems for users instead of bias think about your school systems right now who were they built for is it the people who are using them every day and I mean every day or people who actually sign in the check for the product second foundations first because when you add another AI platform or a tool you need to sort out your basic systems get your communication centralized stop duplications and third our goal and I think this is super relevant shouldn't be to use technology just more brilliant in fact the goal is to not have to think about the technology at all the less you notice your systems the better they're working you can find jet and his brilliant work with CC using the links in the show education leaders is hosted by me Shane leading thanks to the show editor Pete McGill production assistant Skylar O's sturman and for the original music like EMA silver and thank you so so much for tuning in today I really appreciate it and if we don't speak before I'll see you here next week if you are interested in learning more about teaching walk throughs or the International curriculum Association check out the links in the show notes