bill invited me to speak maybe two or three weeks ago and i spent a lot of time thinking about what what angle do you take into and speaking with a group of business leaders regarding education so i've spent some time thinking about what the current reality is that we as educators need to acknowledge and then the changing nature of education because it's a different game i will tell you that right now  do different things in society so that we prepare kids for what is and then if we have time i'll get into some of the specifics related to tarp and what we're trying to do and what we will be trying to do moving forward this may or may not work it's ok it's ok anyway when you look at a start with our current reality when i think about education you see it here in the community there's a real significant demographic shift going on there amount of diversification cultural integration particularly in minnesota in the metro area and educators need to understand this and acknowledge this and i'll tell you why in a little bit and there's another piece that i think is equally important that has to do with the wired nature of the world so now we're in a essentially a global marketplace incredibly competitive and we have to be able to communicate and work with people across oceans that has some pretty incredible impacts on public education for sure you know you couple that with the career path of most individuals now and when i when i pull out statistics and things like that related to the economy and projections i'm generally using the u s department of labor spent a lot of time there trying to do some forecasting on what our kids need to do in order to be successful when they leave but you see all sorts of ranges as far as how many times people change jobs in a career span and a conservative estimate that's out there is twelve to fifteen times of someone change a job in their career and you see you see some aggressive ask them it's well into the twenty's now not only do people change jobs they completely change careers they change economic sectors all of this is going on what does this mean for education and for the skill set that these four students three students sorry but we could know we had three students that skill set that you see with these three students how that impacts what need what needs to be done in education anyway in the end those who are economically agile who can teach themselves who can be become self reliant are the ones who are going to be the most effective given our current reality economically and socially so i mean for schools that's that's what we're getting out how what is the work changed i've been in schools for close to two decades and it has the goals in the roles have changed here we go i'd say the traditional beliefs around schools and what we should be doing is teaching teaching students a background in certain disciplines so that they can effectively live in society and in an economic world that's true absolutely that still exists you can debate what type of content and that debate rages consistently but a greater emphasis is being placed given the reality the economic reality the globally competitive environment on specific skill sets that are going to translate across sectors across industries across careers across places on the global and education is focusing more so on those skill sets but there's two other pieces that i've noticed in the last decade and i think it's ben it's been forced by the changing nature of the twin cities and the two the two other pieces that now enter education have to do with helping kids find purpose and helping kids develop a mindset of success and i and i wouldn't have said this probably twenty years ago to the same degree and the reason i say this is we're seeing a greater concentration of poverty in our twin cities area and in talking with colleagues across the metro how does that influence education what does that do i've spent a lot of time thinking about the impact and studying the impact of poverty on students and what that then what are the implications for schools and there's two pieces that really jump out that schools are forced to address with poverty comes hopelessness and it's this it's this ingrained feeling that students they basically wrap their arms around and that's not the feeling you want students to wrap their own arms  and there's also a sense of fixed that this is a fixed situation it doesn't matter what i do i am fixed in this scenario so educators now have to teach concepts and content no doubt just like they always have educators today have to teach kids specific skills so that they can operate in our current reality but they also have to have to figure out a way to help kids find purpose and i think i can hear purpose in these three when they speak about their plans for the future it is for isn't it ye i can see the purpose that they've developed through their education and through their experiences schools at the pay attention to helping kids develop purpose they also have to teach kids how to develop a growth mindset and and there's a lot of business people in here are probably familiar with carol on fics mindsets and growth mindsets and if you're not do i would highly recommend reading her work as as business owners and understanding how to work in an organization anyway were not taught to do this necessarily so there's this this shifting of purpose and education and it is getting more complicated the good news is we're seeing success we're seeing so we see story i can just take part in high school for example and airplane mylene over here is a teacher he's shaking his head you can see stories of students who have shifted mindset who have found purpose who have armed themselves with certain set of skills and are changing their odds that's that's the that's the scenario in schools today particularly the twin cities and it's happening not just in urban areas this is a reality in several pockets throughout throughout minnesota and beyond to me that's important for you to hear as citizens vested in this community you have a large stake in what goes on at schools that's a barometer of this community's future in terms of chart high school you know we really shape our program in shape to target those four areas by looking at making sure our kids have a nice broad curriculum so that they can find purpose through access to different approach different different discipline areas and we really push rigor rigor puts our kids in a position to develop skills and thought that makes them competitive and ready for post secondary training and if we have time i'll get into the importance of the post secondary world the other piece that that's really important to us is making sure kids serve we want to provide opportunities for kids to do things beyond self as a way to to demonstrate and find purpose and i can again i'll return to these four i can hear and what they say that sense of serving others as part of their purpose so that's the angle we take when we're looking at tartan high school in our plan and how we meet those four goals that i had mentioned earlier and i just want to finish up here of condensing things quite quite a bit if you can imagine but i want to finish up talking a little bit about how that translates to post secondary bill asked me to mention post secondary and how how that fits into the current economic world in the current world of education and i'll say it's essential and i think we can all probably agree with that the the difficult part is how do you get kids to post secondary from all backgrounds schools traditionally tripoli in this area have been pretty good at preparing kids to go to for your schools if they want to go to four year schools but the gateway to a middle class lifestyle really is some sort of post secondary training the most sought after again looking at economic projections most sought after degree in the united states marketplace the next twenty years isn't a bachelor's degree it's a to your tech  given that current reality the that i discussed earlier in the increasing the increasing trends of poverty and the impact that has on students we have to be responsive as schools and get kids toward that post secondary p we were doing that there's a few different ways but one way i want to highlight that you may have heard of we've started a program called avid at target high school and north high school it's been around for twenty years nationally research base it's designed to get under represented kids or address kids primarily students in poverty toward a post secondary training program helping them see that path from that starts early in our district it starts in sixth grade starting to see that path and build that path sixth grade through twelfth grade and it pushes rigor so all the students have to take rigorous courses whether we think they're ready or not which is an interesting component and also spells out a scope and sequence of what you need to do exactly to make sure you end up in post secondary training of some sort not the high school i've seen this play out for three years this group of students of forty five eleventh graders right now this group of students has been identified as kids that would not have gone for post secondary training i don't know where they would have ended up they were identified they were interviewed they were chosen to participate in this program and it's quite likely that all forty five have their eyes on for your a four year plan out of college the it is a program that has changed the odds most definitely it's a program that has helped kids identify purpose it is help kids identify the specific pathway it's changed their mindsets it's equip them with a certain set of skills academic skills and i would say cognitive skills that's going to help them be successful in college and certainly well beyond well beyond but it's the that's a that's a piece of the puzzle of the types of things that schools have to do now in order to meet the current reality both in our marketplace in our economy but also socially so my goal today was to really spell out that current reality and how it impacts education and then how we get to post secondary and really address any questions that you may have about the education system broadly or about target high school in particular but that's where it's at so i am i'm open to any questions you have about perspective on education or your were read out one o'clock as well great question part of the curriculum in that program is specific curriculum national curriculum part of that is financing post secondary education so the kids are learning and families are learning these are all by and large first generation college attend their parents and go to college they don't necessarily understand and i shouldn't just say college postsecondary training and the parents don't necessarily know that path there that's really a large part of the curriculum particularly when they're when they're in the eleventh and no no absolutely not you know the outcomes are you know we don't have specific i will have i'll feel really good about the student outcomes five years from now when i know what happen to these forty five kids but based on my benchmarks right now this is this is a game changer for these forty five it's got to be the right slice of kids the research is built on the right slice of students the specific student profile but they are kids who likely would not have ended up in post secondary training and that's part of our job no absolutely absolutely we have we have in our district we try to make really intentional connections to work and the classroom so we have programs that make direct connections to traditional vocational trades we have programs that link to one into your certificate type programs like child care for example we have programs that link directly to four year we have programs that link directly to to your save bookkeeping slash accounting type of