Jakob Barnard: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Jimmy office hours podcast, where academics talk about academics will travel from the depths of liberal arts to the forefront of practical application. Join us as we dive into critical discussions, shaping the minds of tomorrow.
All right. On today's episode of Jimmy office hours, we have myself, Jakob Barnard Scott Lloyd, and a guest joining us today, Shane Ede. So Shane, if you want to introduce yourself real quick.
Shane Ede: Yeah. So I am a high school business teacher. I teach a little bit of. Business courses, some computer science courses, and some marketing courses.
I also am the advisor for the high school DECA chapter as well as the manager of the high school e sports team.
Jakob Barnard: Awesome. Welcome. And thanks for joining us today. One of the reasons we asked you to be on today is one of those interesting ones that always comes up. You, whether you see it on social media [00:01:00] or Scott and I, we've got students in class.
It always comes up that it's because we can pick on the high school teachers, why don't they teach the students this in high school? And it got to a little bit of a discussion and Shane, I've had chats to you before reality versus perception somebody wrote it out of the internet.
So we know it must be true that these topics aren't covered. But really brings into a broad conversation with our show here. It's really liberal arts and how that education you yourself are Many years back as well. Jimmy alum. Liberal arts is something you're familiar with.
So maybe we could just start with the question of does high school teach enough for students to be successful at a liberal arts institution?
Shane Ede: Wow starting with the hard balls. Yes and no. I think, to some degree I think we've gotten to a place and I'm maybe I'm maybe the wild card here, [00:02:00] right?
I happen to think that we spend a little too much time in high school on some of the core subjects and not a lot of enough time on some of the broader subjects. I think when I think liberal arts and a liberal arts degree in a school, I think somewhere where you're going to go to school and you want to have a really.
Broad base education. Yes, you're going for a degree in something, right? But you're also spending some time, maybe dabbling in the arts. You're maybe dabbling in Communications, you're maybe dabbling in or something along those lines. And, those are the things that I remember from my college time at at Jamestown college.
Don't kick me off for saying that. But but, I remember taking a dark room. Class from Sharon Cox great art teacher, great art professor, and, that had absolutely nothing to do with my computer science degree, [00:03:00] but it was a super fun class and I enjoyed the heck out of it, I took I played football there. So I took some athletics courses and some, three year volleyball and three year football and some of those things cause they were cool and interesting. And I think that we spend so much time at the high school level trying to focus on how are they going to do on the SAT?
How are they going to do on the ACT? How are they going to do on the. The state standardized tests and, Oh, we've got to have four years of education of English and math and science and all these things. But I also advise DECA and I teach all these elective courses. And my enrollments are down because these kids don't have a lot of time to do those other things.
And I think in some ways we're hamstringing them, right? Like they don't have a broad enough base in high school where they really should have freedom to experiment and do all these cool things. And we're not letting them do that because their schedules are so full with the required classes that they don't have the opportunity to try and experiment with some of that stuff.[00:04:00]
Scot Loyd: Shane, I think all of us would agree that across the board in the United States, teachers at any level are increasingly finding it more difficult to do their jobs. As far as remuneration pay, standards, expectations of administrators, expectations of parents. What are some of the challenges that you're facing as a teacher?
During this time with this generation of students, because Jakob and I have talked before on this program about how the students are different. We're seeing a difference in the students coming out of High school than compared with students, maybe just 10 years ago. What effect is the challenges that teachers are facing?
What effect is post pandemic? Can you talk a little bit about the challenges that you're facing and your peers are facing as high school teachers in 2024.
Shane Ede: It's something that I've tried to. [00:05:00] really, what is different? I remember it's been a while, but I remember going to high school and I remember going into classes and, and there were the same sort of cadres of kids, right?
There's the jocks over here and the nerds over there, and the chess clubs over here and, and those things all still exist. I think really one of the things that we, struggle with is just the level of access to communication that students have, once upon a time, if you needed to chat with one of your friends, you had to wait to, passing time in between classes or or even after school, you'd have to go home and give them a ring on the phone, and now I can't tell you how many times a day, cause our students currently still have access to cell phones in class. Which may be changing, but I don't know how many times a day where the kids will be like, they're over there on their phone and they're either on a video call with one of their friends or they're chatting actively on Snapchat or whatever with their [00:06:00] friends.
So they have this higher level of access to those communication devices and we're still struggling with the idea that they have that easy access. And so if one of them. Has snuck their phone in the old crib sheets, right? They can be texting their friend and getting answers to the questions or they, excuse me, or they can just be.
Totally distracted. Are they more distractible than they used to be? Maybe, you and I and Jake and everybody else, we used to be pretty comfortable with spending time alone with a book or, even playing solo video games for that matter. It seems like we need to have that fast acting Interactivity, constantly, we've gotten so used to it, and the kids are so used to that, that if they have more than five minutes of time where they don't have anything to do they don't, or they're not directed, that it suddenly becomes a big issue.
Jakob Barnard: No that's an interesting point. That's something Scott and I have talked about in the past of [00:07:00] just kids don't know how to be bored these days. I didn't argue with my son just a couple days ago on, I'm bored, dad. And the discussion got to the point where I said, go watch paint dry.
Count the cars that are passing by the house. I don't wanna do that. Great. The TV is off and you've lost your phone. So go watch the grass grow. We don't. Prior to that instant constant communication, which yes, we're old enough to experience life like that. We had those coping mechanisms where that seems to be.
These days, but we also seem to be struggling to account or integrate. That's how it is these days. That might be one of those things that we're going back. Why aren't they learning these skills in high school? Is it that you don't know how to handle them any better than we do at the college level?
This. Instant connectivity, this need and students who think they know how to learn online [00:08:00] because we're post pandemic, we've all had to do online school, but it's more of a challenge than it seems. I don't know that it's going to all seem to roll together though.
Shane Ede: Yeah I think to some degree, yes it's a, we all go to school to, to learn things right.
And the, but they. Also have access to, a world's level of knowledge. My son who just graduated, nine times out of 10, if there's something that he doesn't know how to do and he needs to know how to do it, pull his phone out and he starts searching for it or he'll YouTube it or he'll Google it or, and so those things are pretty readily accessible.
And so I think there's some degree where the kids. Kind of discount, what we do. Cause, cause yeah, can you go out and learn just about anything online these days? You absolutely can. It's the the curation of that knowledge. The, Skill in [00:09:00] taking all of these different bits and these different skills and putting them together in a package that hopefully leads them through that, that learning a little more smoothly without some of the errors and mess ups, which, when you're teaching basic HTML or something like that, not as big of a deal.
Teaching basic physics. In fact, my son just and I just had this conversation because Apple just released their new products. Was it yesterday or the day before? And the iPad has this new fancy AI embedded into it. And he's dad, he's you can go and you can you can just write out a Mathematical problem of some sort and he's and the iPad will just solve it for you and give you the steps and everything I was like, yeah, he's no he's like it'll do like physics problems No He's like I can tell it f is this and X is this and I can give it this long Subset of pre calc stuff and he's and it'll do it for me.
I was like, yeah, [00:10:00] but who's checking and he's yeah He's and that was where that conversation led was like Yes, AI can do all these cool things for you. Yes, technology is super cool, but if we don't have the human component of let's check the work of the machine so that we know that it's correct.
And I was like. Is that a huge deal if your website doesn't work properly? No, but he's going into civil engineering. I was like, now, if you take that same iPad and you do all the math to build a bridge and that bridge collapses in six months, cause you didn't check the math. Cause you just assumed it was right.
Who's in trouble. It's not the iPad, right? You've got to be able to recognize that there are certain things you have to look at that.
That AI just can't, there's a human element, there's, there are external elements that have to be put into play. And so you still have to double check those things. You can't just assume that they're going to work. AI seems to [00:11:00] think otherwise sometimes, but.
Scot Loyd: And I think you make an excellent point there, Shane, that this idea that students sometimes look at what teachers do and.
Because of the advancements in technology, they take it for granted that we're just some sort of a repository of knowledge when, in fact, that's what the computer is. That's what Google is. They can spit out facts. And of course, they don't always get it right. So you have to check it. But what we do as teachers is especially in the liberal arts is that we learn to make the connections and to show how those connections can be applied to make a better world.
So you've articulated well, some of the challenges that you're facing on the high school level. And I think that was a great illustration. The conversation that you had. With your son about ai as a high school [00:12:00] teacher, how would you approach this with your students on a daily basis? How do you communicate to them the importance of learning and making these connections?
I suppose a better way to put that question is if you could wave a magic wand. And make the classroom or make the students the way that you wanted them to be. What would that look like?
Shane Ede: I think as teachers, as professors, as teachers, what we, the reason that we do those things is because.
We really enjoy the process of learning things. We like starting at a place where, here's this thing that I'm curious about, or curious about doing, or curious how it works. And I'm gonna follow this path, and see if I can find a way to, to figure out how it works, or how to do it. We've probably, along the way, had some really excellent resources, in the form of textbooks and internet, [00:13:00] but especially teachers.
People who have led us in into that area and not necessarily in a situation where they were necessarily our teachers, but there were people who were teaching the subject. And we value that teaching student relationship from both sides. And I think in a lot of cases, if I had an ideal student, it'd be a student who comes in and recognizes that I'm there not to mete out punishment and not to.
Just take attendance and make sure you behave right. Like I'm there to really show you the way this skill can be used or this product or this tool. And, unfortunately, especially in my case, as a high school teacher high school is mandatory. We've gotten to a place where you will go to high school.
You will attend. If you don't attend, there are ramifications for that. And just like any other class, I get a lot of students who, [00:14:00] I'm just here, to quote Marshawn Lynch, I'm just here so I don't get fined. I'm just here because I don't want the cops on the door or social services or whoever making my life at home rougher than it already maybe is or maybe it's just fine and I just don't want the cops or whoever's showing up, but I don't want to be at school.
And so I get a lot of students who, they show up to class and they almost instantaneously check out and they aren't paying attention. They're doing whatever they can, whether it's phone or computer or, a book I've seen, so I've seen it happen. It does happen still where kids check out of class because they're reading a book which kudos to them.
And a lot of times I'll try to stop and just Hey, what's that book about? Let's start that conversation. Cause sometimes that's part of what. Isn't there is just, they don't feel any connection to school or to the teacher or to anyone else. And so I try to help facilitate that part too, because that's part of what we miss with the Google and AI [00:15:00] and all of that is we have no interpersonal connection with those things and it's harder to learn them that way, I think.
But but yeah, if I had an ideal student, it's that student that shows up and they recognize that even if it's not something they necessarily want to learn, that it's something that's useful to them. As a tool for something else.
Jakob Barnard: No, that's a couple of really good points buried in there. But the connection being a big part of it is because even at a liberal arts college, private liberal arts college we've spent enough decades telling students they won't succeed in life if they don't go to college we still get our fair share of, I'm here because I need the class.
to graduate. And I need to graduate because I was told I have to go to college and graduate, otherwise I'm failure. So while it's a little bit more optional per se, the perception isn't always that. Particularly then we get into something like general eds. We've recruited the student to our institution, but we haven't sold them necessarily on [00:16:00] liberal arts.
And why do I need to take this class to graduate, get a degree? I'm never going to use that. So making those connections for students is definitely part of what we try to do, but making the individual connection with students. That's something that my entire late policy and all of my classes is designed around that.
If you don't talk to me. It's a pretty stiff late penalty and then I don't take work after that point. If you talk to me though, while it's infinitely flexible, I've had that taken advantage unfortunately a few times of students who just made sure they always talk to me before the deadline, but I'm like, in a way it's working.
I want you to engage with me because that's where I get the enjoyment out of teaching as well is that personal engagement. So I intro classes, one of my favorite ones I've taken over in the last year because I get so many weird questions in that class. Students fresh out of high school taking intro to computing for the first time.
I have no idea. I've never [00:17:00] thought about that like that. That way that's, I think we could probably all agree that when you stop us and make us think about something a different way, we find that enjoyable. Like Shane said that enjoying to learn is a real big part of the job description, I think.
But the the other point you had made that you've hit on a couple of times. That might be a good one to pick on a little bit is the volume of material that we're requiring students to learn that it does not seem to be getting smaller and it trends seems to be, we cut out more and more.
Extras. Are they really extra?
Shane Ede: Yes. School that I teach at, it's pretty common for freshmen, incoming freshmen, right? They're just coming out of middle school where. Middle school is still a mishmash of elementary sort of level scheduling versus high school schedule scheduling versus college level scheduling.
And what we end up seeing is a lot of our freshmen, they may have [00:18:00] been active in band and they may have been active in. Choir, and they may have been active in these other clubs and activities when they were in middle school. And when they get to looking at their schedule for high school, they end up either having to take one of their required, like a science or something, or a PE during the summer so that they can have room for.
And in most cases, they don't get to do both anymore. It's very rare that the students do both. Just because it doesn't fit into the schedule. There's too many other things. Our freshmen all of our students are saddled with an English class. I think the current state requirement is three math classes over the course of your four years.
And two sciences, and then, they just added a cybersecurity requirement. That's a full credit. So full year of cybersecurity and computer science courses, and some of that, there's some [00:19:00] flexibility, right? Some of that is, the cybersecurity requirement, it can count as a science, right?
Which is great. If you're not planning on going into pre med, you maybe don't need three years of science, right? Your basic chemistry and biology are probably okay for a general understanding of how the world works. But if you are going to pre med. I would, I
Jakob Barnard: would beg to disagree on that one.
If we use the pandemic as any sort of example society in general could use a little bit more science training. But
Shane Ede: Perhaps but yeah, so it's one of those things where, you know that there are exceptions, right? There's going to be students who are going into pre med who now have to take a full three years of science and a full year of cybersecurity and computer science.
And, and we've had that conversation too, where, you know, depending on how you define a year of computer science and cybersecurity, there's going to be a huge number of students who just don't get coding and, yes, there are [00:20:00] ways to make it so that it's easier to get. But then there are those that are like, yeah, I want to be a vet.
I don't really. Care if I can code a program, code a robot. And I think in some ways, yeah, we're overloading what we need or what we're requiring because we see a little gap somewhere, right? On. Facebook and everywhere else all the time. Somebody they, they teach my kid how to do particle physics, but they don't teach them how to balance a checkbook.
Jakob Barnard: Yeah. That, inspired this whole conversation is frankly so our
Shane Ede: school requires a half year of a one semester course on personal finance. Either their junior or senior year before they graduate. It's a graduation requirement for our district. Here's what we find out.
So here's what we find out. We find out that a 16 year old junior in high school who has a part time job after school he doesn't need [00:21:00] life insurance, right? He hasn't been introduced to life insurance or car insurance or medical insurance Any major payroll taxes, retirement stuff is not something they're thinking about.
Cause they're getting a 200 check every two weeks, right? Like a lot of those things just aren't relevant, and so when things aren't relevant to us, they don't care. And so we can teach them, we do teach them, but at the end of the day, a lot of that stuff just rolls over their head because it's not relevant.
You can talk to me all day long about the proverbial price of fish in China, but I'm not buying fish in a Chinese market anytime soon, right? I'm much, much more concerned about, maybe the price of fish at Pike's place, right? Or the price of fish at the local grocery store.
Those things are relevant to me. I have a pretty good chance that I'm going to [00:22:00] experience those sometime soon, right? Those things that are. Nebulous out there in the future. We have to find a way to make things relevant. And so sometimes that means maybe reducing some of the required stuff so that we can introduce some of those more elective stuff.
Cause then we can do some cool stuff. Then we can look at, taking a full year marketing course, perhaps where we actually take on a local business and do a full marketing plan for that business, right? Maybe a group of students take on the roles of the marketing students and they are going to run that and do that for a year or, Maybe we take our our communications class, right?
One of the English classes, instead of being an English four, where they read Romeo and Juliet for the fourth time, maybe that's a communications class and they start doing some pre journalism sort of stuff. Or maybe they start doing copywriting, right? Maybe they're writing ad copy for [00:23:00] some of the local businesses.
And try and bring those things in. But ultimately because we've got to have that fourth year of English, and there are certain standards that apply, and it's really easy, as a teacher it's really easy to just say, This is what we've done forever. And we're going to keep doing that.
Sometimes that causes some issues too. But yeah, like we have a lot of extra stuff that we've got to squeeze in there that, because we've got all these requireds, if we could back off, we could do some electives, but that also, we have to recognize that puts a little more onus on us, right? We have to own that.
We can't just punt from the end zone and say, yep we covered this. We covered this and that's good enough to cover this. We have to get a little creative too and say, how do we make this relevant for our students? Because if all it is, constant practice of algebraic reasoning, that doesn't have any relevance.
They don't know what to do with that. [00:24:00] If it's not relevant, it's boring and they go right back to the phone, right? Or they go back to whatever and then we lose them again. And yeah. I think there's something to be said for how do we add those things so that we can teach additional things, but we also have to make them relevant or it just doesn't matter.
Scot Loyd: Shane, I want to give you an opportunity to correct a perception of mine if it's wrong, right? It may just be you know, that I'm increasingly becoming that old guy in the room and I recognize that But growing up it seemed that my parents were always Aligned with the values and the goals and the aims of the teacher and the school and the administration, but something that I think we deal with now, at least in higher ed, is this perception that the student is a consumer.
That the parents are an [00:25:00] extension of that consumer mindset. And that, with the consumer mindset goes the idea that the customer is always right. So sometimes in, in higher ed, some of the challenges that I've felt increasingly in the past few years. Is that I somehow have to cater to the desires, the demands, the wishes of the student, but certainly to the parents.
And I wonder, do you face that in high school? Is there a now What seems to be an adversarial relationship between the teacher and the parents of the students where it used to be, whatever your teacher says, that's the way it goes. You have to get in line with what your teacher says.
Or has that changed to where now administrators And even teachers are expected to cater to the needs of the desires, the wants of the student and or the parents,
Shane Ede: I'm going [00:26:00] to, I'm going to the easy answer is yes. And no. So yes, to some degree. And some of that, I, honestly, I think some of it boils down to a post pandemic thing where we see a much higher emphasis on mental health.
And we see, I think, a lot more of the pandering, for want of a better word to a student or to the student's parents, because that F is really hampering their mental health, or, they can't feel good about themselves if they're not doing well in school and, which is true, right?
We know scientifically, if you're not doing well in school, you don't feel good about yourself necessarily, right? But then they don't necessarily the flip side of that is, you still need to earn that grade, I'm lucky enough, we teach in a pretty conservative area. And so there's a pretty healthy mix of students, of parents, especially who are really supportive.
And and they will check in on their students and they'll [00:27:00] say, Oh if he's not doing the work, he gets the grade he gets. Yes, there's some that kind of turn it around and were like did he have the opportunity? Did you talk to him about this? And, and they're, I relegate that back to, they're checking on their kid, right?
It's still, nobody loves Johnny or Sally as much as Johnny and Sally's mom and dad. And they're checking on their kid. Their kid's not doing well in school maybe or, and we don't know, we don't What sort of conversations going on with the student and the parent, and so the student goes home and says, yeah, Mr. Eat is, he's the worst teacher in the high school. He never pays any attention. He never talks to me. He never teaches me anything. He just makes us do all this extra work. And yeah, I'm getting an F cause I don't know what I'm doing, and and that's usually not true, unless they're following up, and so a lot of times they get their hackles up, right?
They get the claws out and mama bear shows up or makes a phone call and it's just super angry about how her kid is stuck in this class with this terrible teacher who does nothing and whatever. Sometimes the dice [00:28:00] set then, right? Sometimes there's no way to to. contradict what the what the student's story is.
And a lot of times you can show evidence, right? I can say, Hey here's the work they're turning in. Here's what they were required to do. Here's what we went over in class, and here's what I got. And the two are not even close and you can see that. And sometimes that's enough.
And sometimes it's not. But a lot of times I'll go back to relationships. A lot of times, that's that student who shows up, never says a word, never does anything, and if I don't go out of my way to go and talk to them once in a while you don't even know they're there, right?
And then all of a sudden, mom's calling, like, why's this kid not doing good in class? He's not really in class, he's there, but he's not there, and trying to build those relationships. And sometimes that's a parent thing too. Sometimes that's, trying to find time to notice those students who are maybe starting to struggle a little bit and, meeting with them, but also sending an [00:29:00] email to the parents, I still have the ability to do that.
I don't think in some cases you guys might or not, but we have the ability, I can call a mom and dad whenever I want. And I can say, Hey. Johnny, Sally, whatever, is, this is what I'm seeing in class, and, we need to participate, we need to do those things. Is that true around the country? Probably not. I, again, if social media is our measuring stick, certainly I see a lot of stories about, a lot of these parents who walk into high schools and assault the teacher because Johnny's failing, it's surely there's something more rational we can do about that, right?
And again, we don't know the whole story. Maybe there was some rational stuff that went on. But I think in a lot of ways, we're really quick to pass judgment on, on teachers and students and parents when really. It's more about, communicating, have that conversation. And hopefully we can come to a a good resolution [00:30:00] as to what really is going on.
How do we compromise all of those situations? Now here's the kicker. What does that take? Time, right? And the first thing that any of us will tell you is that most teachers don't have a lot of spare time. I know at the high school I've been at the high school for two years here now, and both years, I've spent a full semester on an overload, where I only have one prep hour.
And that's a lot of time, a lot of time in class where I don't have time outside of class to do a lot of that other stuff. And so that makes it a struggle. I've got to spend a lot of time. Luckily, so far, it's been in the fall semester. And so I can spend every Sunday watching football and grading papers, right?
But but yeah, as far as like those communication pieces, I don't do as much of it in the fall semester when I'm overloaded as I do in the spring semester when I'm not. And bring it back to, to, to time and effort and some of those things but yeah yeah, I don't [00:31:00] necessarily think that it's necessarily that the teachers are in a, or the, excuse me, the parents are in this weird mindset where teachers and professors are evil.
For lack of a better word, right? But I do think that, some of that mental health stuff and the post pandemic mindset is bleeding over and going to a far extreme where, maybe we can scale it back a little bit. By having some of those conversations with those students, there's always going to be some that we just can't, I think, but
Jakob Barnard: Let's see, we normally do a short break. We really got engrossed in this one, so we'll do a short break here and when we're back, I think we'll expand upon that a little bit and compare a little bit the higher ed side of that consumerism mindset that, that's got mentioned.
So we'll be right back.
.
Jakob Barnard: All right, we are back. To dig into that a little bit though right before break we talked, you'd said not as much of that adversarial sort of [00:32:00] mindset. I know I would definitely agree with Scott though. We see a little bit more of the consumerism mindset on the college level in higher ed simply You know, I've gotten the impression from the student in discussing their performance and work with the class and this is unfortunately, I've been on a couple of occasions, but the gist of what you could extract from what they're saying is I paid for this class, I deserve a great, and.
The accuracy of that is yes, you deserve a grade, but you deserve the grade you earned, but it becomes a little bit of an adversarial discussion at times of I paid for this class. I deserve the product where our product is. Are you meeting the outcomes of the classes? Hopefully the product we're generating because that's what we want.
And so we do end up seeing that a bit from time to time, that whole I'm here. I paid for it. [00:33:00] I deserve the class. And that's not the point.
Shane Ede: So I'm going to flip it around on you. I know you're generally the one asking the questions, but do you think, cause I see where it's coming from, right?
Like I pay 300 a credit at the end of the class. I get the credit, right? I paid for that. But do you think that's structurally an issue, right? Like you're saying, I want to give you not the credit. I want to give you the product, right? I want you to leave the class having a, 70 percent or so or better knowledge of this particular skillset.
And I wonder too if some of that's in the framing, right? If you're coming in and you're saying you're gonna pay me $900 for a three credit class, I'm gonna teach you some stuff, hopefully, and if you do well enough at that, I'm gonna give you those credits. Really what we're saying is, if you do well enough, I'm gonna give you the credits [00:34:00] as a credential almost, right?
As a marker for here's here's what you learned, here's what you know. And I wonder too, if like structurally, if a change in the way that's framed would be beneficial. And maybe, and I'm totally like, I don't have any examples of anywhere where they've done this. But maybe instead you had some sort of like skill set checklist sort of thing, right?
And here's for the class, these are the skills and the things that you're going to learn. I'm really struggling not to use the word standards cause I don't. I particularly like standards myself specifications, aptitudes, whatever you want to go with. And rather than getting your degree when you get 120 credits, maybe you get your degree when you have, 1500 aptitudes, right?
And of course that's. A wholesale change. And there's a lot of things that go [00:35:00] into that, like maybe you can turn it around and say, okay, you need to have attained, instead of for general ed, it's what three credits for CS. So maybe instead of getting three credits in CS, you need to have 30 aptitudes on your transcript, right?
Maybe instead of A art class of three credits or one credit or whatever it is. Maybe instead of that, you need to have some sort of set of aptitudes for arts. I think that,
Scot Loyd: yeah. And I think that's an excellent point. And of course on for most of us, when we prepare a syllabus, we put learning objectives on there. By the end of the semester, the student will be able to. For instance, in communications, we'll be able to deliver a speech in a variety before a variety of audiences in a variety of styles by developing an outline, et cetera, et cetera. But I think your point goes [00:36:00] to the larger philosophical question.
And that is that most students in education have been conditioned that I am. Engaging in this education, or I am investing in this education to receive the diploma because the diploma is a means to the end of getting a better job, a better life, more money, etc. And so they don't see the value. In learning, they don't see the value in the education because in the United States we have been conditioned to see the value in the diploma or in the credential or in the skill or in the certification and not in the learning itself.
Jakob Barnard: And I think that's a really good point, Scott, because I was going to respond to yours, Shane, with, being held to an expectation isn't necessarily a bad thing. I, with my PhD program, I had a particular course that I was on the opposite [00:37:00] side of the fence. Yes, I was doing a PhD.
I'm teaching full time here and all of that but it was a very poor instructor scenario where I was very not happy with how the class was being conducted and my professional opinion and all of that so a little bit of that consumerism expectation did factor into my dissatisfaction with the class.
I'm required to take this class to graduate I don't believe it's going well, so on and so forth. I had expectations for the class and I did try to keep that into my mind. I'm like I'm currently railing against something that I get annoyed when people rail against that. So or could potentially be annoyed when people rail against that.
So it does factor in and it's not necessarily wrong though we should be delivering but scott made a very interesting point. What are we delivering? We're not Expecting to, in a particular course, deliver the diploma. We're delivering the outcomes that will hopefully help continue you're on your path to that.
And so [00:38:00] Shane, you might put it in a really great way in rephrasing that discussion of the steps along your path are important. You need to have an outcome in mind. Or you'll never end up there. Or like me, you'll I had an outcome in mind, but I had four or five majors. I was here an extra year. Eventually I managed to graduate.
That meandering path is not necessarily a plan, but not forgetting the steps along the way each and every one is important. And so that might be the rephrasing or the context, but I definitely agree with Scott that yes, the diploma is what is sold. The importance of everything from start to finish can get lost in the mix.
Shane Ede: And I think, yeah, Scott makes a good point in that maybe it's not necessarily wholly consumerism, right? Maybe it's just a disconnect, right? We've we have for. However many decades, we've said [00:39:00] you need to have a degree to get this job, right? You can look through the job service listings all day long and you'll see jobs that say must hold a bachelor's degree in this, must hold a graduate degree in this and ultimately if I have a bachelor's degree.
In whatever, from whatever university or college, how far do they look at that? Unless that school has really been in the headlines as a diploma mill or something, they're not going to look at the underlying classes that go into it. Because they're just looking for somebody that has that degree.
And so maybe there's partially a disconnect into what does it really mean? What does that degree represent? If you go and get a a college degree or a university degree from the university of Jamestown, what does that really mean? Does that mean that you just showed up and took a bunch of classes and paid your [00:40:00] money and got a degree?
I'd like to think not. As an alumni, I'd like to think not. That wasn't my experience there anymore. And and I know that, just from conversations I've had with you and others I know that's not the conversation or the experience that happens there. But are there colleges where that does happen?
I'm pretty sure there are. And I don't, I, but that disconnect happens because ultimately if a student wants to if their end goal is to get that degree, get that job and do it the human way, which is the least amount of resistance, right? We're like electricity that way. We will take the path of least resistance.
Nine times out of 10, if it's easy. And so maybe that's what it is more a leaning towards, Hey, we don't really value doing things the hard way anymore because we've got computers and we don't have to, maybe what we're looking at is more of a [00:41:00] disconnect in I'm going to do it the easy way.
Cause I can just spend some money and show up for this class once in a while, turn some stuff in ChatGPT wrote some of it for me. And and pass. And get that degree. And go get that job. I, this is a sort of strange segue, but there was a a graphic that I saw the other day that was going around, and it was talking about they'd done a survey of HR reps, right?
At these different companies. And they were talking about what do you wish the kids, these people who were applying for these jobs did well, and what did they not do well? And the number one thing on the list was they don't make eye contact. How? If you're in a classroom and you're talking, it goes back to that communication piece that, that, really knowing your students and.
They don't make movies and stories and whatever [00:42:00] about the teacher that's or the professor who's in the classroom of 200 something amphitheater, right? And comes in and does his thing and then walks out, they make movies and stories about the teacher who's in the classroom.
Even if it is the 200 student amphitheater who takes the time to make a relationship with one of those students and actually help them out a little bit, right? Maybe in some of these colleges, places, they bought into the consumerism a little bit. Maybe they actually said, okay, yeah, you want to just pay for a deal.
We'll take your money. You can get a degree. You can go get a job and do your thing. We don't care if you get any skills at the end. I'd like to think that's not the case. I know it's not in, the university's case, but Maybe it is somewhere, but it,
Jakob Barnard: It definitely is a fin The financial factor is the horrible part about it per, per se.
In order to continue to provide an educational service, which is what we do, we have to have money coming from somewhere. There, there is the give and take [00:43:00] and in a lot of places a lot of institutions that historically might have been funded by a lot of. State money rates of state funding of higher ed institutions are definitely lower than they have been.
So it's probably one of those things that has been definitely a cycle in the past. But like you were mentioning Jane the, from the HR that's one thing at least our department has gotten a lot of feedback from employers on is never been students missing out on a particular. Technical skill.
They might mention that Oh yeah, we'd really like it. If you said this, somebody who knows this or, Oh, please make sure you keep teaching this, that sort of things. The most consistent one is always been the soft skills, sending me a text when you should call me and let me know you're going to be late to work or, those sort of communication skills or be able to do technical documentation or just.[00:44:00]
writing in the area, putting together a project proposal, those sort of things, those are the things that employers always come back and mention as gaps or at least your folks can, the students that graduate can do this in those sort of things. And we've actually, Are in the process of tweaking our CS and IT majors to further embed more communications courses because that's apparently the area that our technical employers would like to see strengthened.
from our students from historical ones. Our programs have a very good reputation from the University of Jamestown. I got a, myself got a, my first job out of college was at Microsoft with a history political science degree. Now I also give prospective students the caveat that half the hiring committee being fellow alums is a stroke of luck, not a, Career plans.
Take that into account when you just take everything for fun, [00:45:00] but solid enough basis and all that, but yeah that the soft skills are things that we continually hear as well.
Scot Loyd: And I think and I think this is one place where it's good to defend a liberal arts education because a liberal arts education.
Unlike just learning a technical skill or some sort of certification gives you that, that wide range where at the very least you have to do a little bit of reading. You have to do a little bit of thinking. You have to do a little bit of a variety of disciplines. That gives you a more nuanced view of the world and it cultivates empathy, right?
So a lot of these soft skills, if we were to boil it down to one word it's being empathetic. It's having taking into consideration the perspective of our fellow human being and realizing that it's not all about us. And so I, I think. To a [00:46:00] degree, a liberal arts education will give students the opportunity to cultivate that now, whether or not they take advantage of it is a different story.
But at least they will have the opportunity. Whereas if they focus specifically on learning a skill. Or getting a certification, they're not necessarily going to emerge from their educational journey with the opportunity to develop those soft skills.
Jakob Barnard: Yeah, I like the idea of using the word empathy connection would be if I were to pick one word would be the one I would be whether that's, we're making connections between subjects or each other, that's the core.
What I've always thought is our core liberal arts focus. And in fact, I'm a part of a group of liberal arts CS faculty who we've been saying, great, this is a professional organizations curricular guidelines. Liberal arts. We feel a little bit different. We're going to start from our.
Institutional mission and values all the way [00:47:00] through and then look at guidelines and decide which ones make the sense for us. So we have the freedom that Shane you've described that you don't have at the high school level to say that's wonderful. CS folks should need that. But that's not our core focus.
So we're going to say that's an optional extra. We want you to make sure to take that calm class, that English class whatever we feel is going to better enhance our computer scientists coming out of our programs or it, or whatever the exact major is. At least in our institution and in a few other liberal arts computer science programs we've taken the stance and the approach that we can pick and choose a little bit to what makes sense because we want to make sure our students are empathetic connectors.
I'm sure there's more words we could slot into there, but those are both two fantastic ones where Shane you've to summarize that some of the early conversation have said that you don't have the [00:48:00] opportunity to pick and choose. It's a legal requirement that thou shalt make sure you incorporate this in your program, which some of those extras, which would make them a high school student, perhaps more prepared for anything else.
You're limited in the time or scope that you can cover that is, is that kind of a good way of summarizing that?
Shane Ede: I think so. There's a certain level because there is some flexibility, right? There is some ability to say, Oh we're going to take this class instead of this class, we have a our English department.
I, I like to pick on English cause they are the four year required classes. And typically that looks like a lot of like old plays and things like that and not a lot of real communication skills necessarily, but it's a lot of can I read something and really give it some diagnoses.
Sometimes I think we fall in the trap of if your diagnosis doesn't exactly match the one I have for that, then you're [00:49:00] wrong. But I also but our department actually I'll toot their horn a little bit, right? They've got a novel writing class, right? So instead of senior English, they can take novel writing.
And so they can take that and they do a lot of creative writing and some of those things, right? Those are really good communication skills that lend to those soft writing skills, but it's still within a very rigid framework and I, what I think I would like to see is that to open up a little bit or to provide a little more flexibility where I can say.
I'm going to teach a class on robotics, for instance, which is maybe not a good example because I actually can teach a class on robotics, but I can teach a class on, the ties between science fiction and robotics. And, maybe co teach that with one of the English teachers.
We don't have to try if we were to do that, we would have to find a course code that matched closely enough that we could code that so that they would get their credit for their [00:50:00] high school diploma and actually graduate according to the state, right? What it would be nice to do is have flexibility and say, I'm teaching a class.
It's, it's maybe a half a credit of English and a half a credit of computer science. We're going to co teach it and we just give it its own code, right? We just don't have that ability.
Jakob Barnard: Very good point. Cause that's something that I have the flexibility to do as a department chair, I decided that class.
You're going to try a new course. Great. We'll run it for one semester. Grad Audit. I signed off and said that meets the objectives. For our student learning outcomes, our program. We'll count that as an elective. I don't have to get that passed through. Now, if I want to make that class permanent, yes, I can get our faculty to pass.
But that's as far as it goes. Even state higher education systems have to get tied in to bigger changes or things like that. But I'm just realizing [00:51:00] we are about out of time. To wrap that up, it seems that we're not experiencing as big a differences in problems as the initial impression might be.
It's not necessarily that you're trying to cover everything in high school. Trying to summarize our conversation today is that you're covering so much and our connectivity has changed so much that it appears that we're wildly different. Even if we're not, because we're seeing the same things in higher ed as well.
Shane Ede: Yeah. And I think there are some, like we just alluded to this, there's some structural differences in how we're governed. And at the state level in the high school level, we're, we have some very rigid, this is what you gotta do. Whereas at a post secondary your institution still has some, this is what we got to have to graduate and get this degree, but it's a little more flexible, right?
Jakob Barnard: An [00:52:00] accreditation is accreditation is you're meeting these certain things, not necessarily your particular content.
Shane Ede: Exactly. And I think there's still some gaps there that, that we can try and close and try and minimize the adjustment. For students who, who go from having almost no, no opportunity for any sort of selective process to then they jump into a college level and they're like, Ooh, look at all the options.
Which I think is part of it too, like having just enrolled one in school, like he's got all kinds of options and, And may or may not have chose all of them. So we need to, it's the opposite. Yeah, you have all these options, but now you start, now you get the ability.
You have that opportunity to narrow things down. And
Jakob Barnard: yeah the freedom of choice or too many options That's probably a whole separate discussion we're going to have sometime because we're actually working on making some program changes due to there, there being too [00:53:00] many options and students just not taking advantage of that and that's actually becoming a complication versus a helpful tool.
Just want to say thank you, Shane for joining us today. We'll wrap things up to try to keep us at our time frame, but we'll definitely talk soon. Thank you for your time today.
Shane Ede: Thank you for having me.
Jakob Barnard: If you enjoyed this episode of the Jimmy office, our podcast, please do us a favor and be sure to like, share, subscribe, and rate our program. Let us know what you think and what you might like to hear about in the future, along with sharing the show to a colleague, prospective student, or somebody who might be interested in a liberal arts education.
And thank you all for listening until next time. This has been the Jimmy office, our podcast.