Growing Leaders (00:13.71)
Welcome back everyone. My name is Andrew McPeak and co-hosting this podcast with me is of course the incomparable Gina Watts. So folks, if you believe that schools should be more than just essays and GPAs, if you believe that EQs are just as important as IQs, and if you expect amazing things from the next generation, then you are in the right place because we believe that too.

I'm so happy that we get to do what we do, Andrew. Aren't we grateful today because like, man, this is cool. This is cool. It's honestly really great. I love sitting down and talking with you, Gina, but we also get to sit down and learn from some amazing people who are doing amazing things at schools all over the country in this field of education that we love so much. And today we're going to talk to an amazing and incredibly intelligent educator.

who's gonna talk to us about classroom device usage, which is a very controversial subject. So, but first, we gotta get to an opening question. Hey, hey, hey. Okay, so here it is. What is something that you use every single day that would completely baffle someone 50 years ago? So they move, they jump forward in time 50 years, they arrive and they're like, what the heck are you doing with that? Well, there's so many things that this could apply to. I actually...

Speaking of 50 years ago, I just taught my little cousins how to use a rotary phone. And that was fun. Something they were doing 50 years You're like, what? So yeah, so I guess, I mean, I think a lot of people would probably pick this answer, but I am gonna say smartphones because they can do so many things. It's like carrying around your life on a device. So you can take pictures. I mean, the thing we probably do the least on a smartphone is talk to people. Yeah.

traditional way. It's ironic that we call it a phone. Yeah. Primarily when that's not primarily how we use it. Yeah, it's a mini computer. Yeah. What about you? Yeah, you obviously had a great answer. That is the device I think that's worth referencing. I thought of a bunch of things like email and file sharing, but the one that sticks out to me the most, I think somebody would be like, you can do that, is like what we use for the notes that we do on this podcast, right? Shared docs, cloud docs.

Growing Leaders (02:29.122)
that update automatically. I'm like watching what you type while you type it. like Google Docs or there's lots of versions of those, but I just think that's amazing, right? And for people who I've been in the book world, book editing used to be like, I write it on a typewriter and then somebody else like scratches through it. And then somebody else got to retype and like the level of collaboration we can do now is just unbelievable. And so quickly. Yeah. quickly. Instantly. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. We are living in our grandparents wildest.

Wow, the streams. fact, I think sometimes it feels like we're doing stuff they couldn't have imagined 50 years ago, which is amazing. So we're dealing with the great parts of that. We're also dealing with some of the challenges of that, right? Not only are we dealing with the positives of what people couldn't imagine 50 years ago, we're also dealing with problems people couldn't have imagined 50 years ago. And this is especially true in schools and classrooms. So we've been seeing a hot debate. You mentioned smartphones, right? We've been seeing a hot debate on whether or not

devices like smartphones should be allowed in classrooms. And this has been going on for years and years, but it feels like in the last year or two, this has really dialed up. Some schools are starting to add new rules for smartphone usage. Others are banning them altogether or beginning that conversation. And sometimes it's, you know, getting the school board involved, the PTA involved, it's getting all dramatic. And so we really wanted to explore this as a part of season two. Season two, we're exploring technology and innovation in the classroom.

You can't really talk about technology in the classroom without talking about the most hotly debated topic in technology in the classroom, which is smartphones. So in order to get a relevant kind of take on this debate, we decided we wanted to sit down and talk with someone who is thoughtfully living this out every single day. So we had the pleasure of hearing the perspective of Josh Andrew. I really love that last name of his. That's incredible. Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

Josh Andrew is the head of school at a charter school called Atlanta Classical Academy, not far from our headquarters here in Atlanta, Georgia. Atlanta Classical was actually founded with a no cell phone policy. And their policy is that cell phones and smartwatches, all those devices are going to be turned off, not in pockets, but actually put into backpacks and set on, cannot also, can just set it on do not disturb mode. It has to actually be off.

Growing Leaders (04:49.782)
and it's got to be stored away, backpacks, lockers, all those kinds of things. And that's from the moment the kid exits the vehicle of their parents dropping them off and they step onto campus. And so we wanted to hear about how that's gone from Josh himself. So let's hear a little bit more about Josh and his history in his role at Atlanta Classical Academy. So after college, I moved to the West side of Detroit and taught at a massive

public high school called Cody High School. It was actually the Academy for Medicine and Community Health at Cody High School. It was this kind of sprawling facility that had three separate schools located within it. I worked with a group called Teach for America. So I was a ninth and 10th grade English teacher, was earning a graduate degree at the University of Michigan at the time. So got my start there, was there for a couple of years. And then in 2016, my wife and I moved down to Atlanta. Initially had a job as a middle school English teacher.

at Atlanta Classical Academy. And then over the last nine years, I've had a bunch of different roles from teacher to dean, upper school principal, and now head of school for the last three years. So really delighted to be in the city of Atlanta doing important work. It's a public charter school. We're in our 11th year now, and we're a classical school, which is the thing that makes us most distinct. And people have different understandings of what exactly a classical education is. And I think there are a few formulations that are helpful to have in mind.

One is that we think that by the time a kid graduates from high school, there are a certain number of things that they should know about their world, which is weirdly almost counter-cultural, right? In part because our schools are obsessed with equipping students with critical thinking skills, right? Preparing them with the tools that will make them efficient, smart, analytical thinkers as they move into the adult world. But we want to move past that and also sort of address this question of what things do you actually know about reality? We think that.

much of the sort of poverty of public discourse that exists in our country can return to this idea that people don't have a shared educational foundation. We don't know the same things. We don't use the same words to mean the same things. And so when we talk about challenging subjects in particular, we talk right past each other because we don't share a vocabulary and we're incapable of having discussions from first principles. So much of the orientation of a classical education is toward grounding students in the essential texts and ideas and philosophies of the traditions,

Growing Leaders (07:10.894)
country of which they are an inheritor so that they can be contributing intelligent citizens capable of discourse. And one other note here that's relevant is that rather than that, that knowledge being an end in itself, we think of wisdom as the real end, which is sort of knowledge directed toward the right things. So we think that knowledge without virtue just makes you dangerous. And so we always couple our education with a virtue education with the aim of producing

children, young adults, human beings that are wise. One final thing that I think is a good way of thinking about it. We want to know that our students again are able to think carefully analytically. We also want to know that they love the best things. We're obsessed with love, with orienting our students' hearts and minds toward the highest things that will nourish their minds for the rest of their lives. That's sort of the project of an education.

And a job should be a consequence of that and a great job and a great family. But what do you love and how does that move you through the rest of your life? That's a principal consideration of ours. Gina, Josh has had quite the journey. Yes. First of all, starting out in Detroit with Teach for America, then moving to Atlanta, and he quickly rose to lead all of Atlanta Classical Academy. And I love how he's bringing this kind of deep philosophical approach to education. It's not just for him about what students know, but about the kind of

that they're becoming. I feel like I say this after every incredible interview that we get to do, but I really do want to be friends with him. Yes. I feel like his intelligence, the way that he leads, maybe it'll, like, jump off of him a little bit. I know, a little bit of that. A little bit. Yeah. little bit. But, yeah, it was so refreshing to hear about a school that's so focused on wisdom, virtue, and not just pumping out, like, critical thinkers. They're really being intentional.

about what they do there. One thing Josh said was, is we're obsessed with love, the orienting of their students' hearts and minds toward the highest things that will nourish their minds for the rest of their lives. I love that. I love that. They're really trying to develop the whole person. And it sounds like Atlanta Classical is more than just a school. It's a community that's shaping future leaders. Yeah, it definitely is. So shaping futures, one of the ways they're doing that is with this phone policy, right?

Growing Leaders (09:23.5)
So like I said, they started their school at the very beginning by banning phones during the school day. And I'm really kind of curious, I was curious as I talked to them about how that's played out. So I asked Josh how they arrived at this approach and how they are currently handling phones and other personal devices in the classroom. Well, we don't allow phones on campus. We don't want to see them during the school day. So they should be off and in backpacks or in lockers. Phones can come out at...

4.05 PM exactly. And that minute matters. There was a time a couple years ago where we decided that we would allow phones immediately when Carpool begins. But then suddenly our beautiful campus where people are talking to each other disappeared the moment that phones came out and we sort of lost the conversation that's always happening on our campus. And so we quickly reverted in literally a month's time back to the 4.05 as the threshold where phones could come out.

And that's been true of our campus since 2014. So from the first day of opening, yet we were insistent about this idea of having conversations that were not mediated by technology. Human to human encounter, human to book encounter, right? Just you and a physical text in front of you as the best way of learning. And the adults are necessarily the leaders.

I had this really embarrassing moment last school year where I still teach at ACA. I'm the head of school, but all of our leadership teams still teach us. So I teach modern European literature and I got to the end of class and it was a particularly good class. We'd had a gripping discussion and a wave of students approached my desk and I didn't even notice them because the moment class entered, ended rather, I pulled up my phone and was checking my email because I was fearful about what might've piled up in the last 50 minutes.

I walked away from that class in true embarrassment, right? Like here I am saying to students, you're not allowed to be on your friends. You're not allowed to interact with them. And I had just lost out on what every teacher knows to be one of the best encounters during the day, which is what happens right after class, right? So those kids that pursue you because they can't let this idea go. So as a faculty, we're having an ongoing conversation about modeling what it looks like to interact with our devices. Well, we recently bought these things called bricks.

Growing Leaders (11:29.654)
They are little devices that you can sort of tap your phone to and it locks down all the applications, messages, et cetera. You can customize it so that you have access to what you need. We have like, for instance, a technology on our phones that is a security feature. So we need them to some extent, but we're always sort of in dialogue about if we're telling our kids, put their phones away, we ought to model this. Okay. So I love how Josh and his team didn't just say no phones and leave it at that, right?

They've clearly put so much thought into how phones affect the entire campus culture. I mean, the second these phones came out during the carpool, when they kind of tested with that, the whole vibe shifted and it was like instant silence. And so they knew we got to make some changes here. It's like the campus went from lively conversations to everyone staring at their screens. Like it almost happened in an instance. And the fact that they took such quick action to bring it back to a human first space.

shows how committed that they are to keeping community connected in real life and not just through screens. Yeah. And my other favorite thing that Josh shared was, course, about his own experience getting called out. Well, I guess he was technically calling himself out about grabbing his own device right after class and hopping into email and all that stuff. I just feel like, as I listen to him, that they are serious at every level about practicing what they preach to their students. It's really great and refreshing to Yeah. I loved that he made it so real.

by sharing his story as well. So with phones banned all day, it does make me curious, like what kind of impact does this have on the students? I wonder if there are changes in focus, academic performance, or even social interactions with our phones out of the picture. Something that college admissions counselors always comment on when they visit our campus is that as they approach the high school, they see dozens of students speaking to each other. And they say, we don't see this anywhere else we go.

because everyone is on their phones. But to be in a place where there are hundreds of teenagers in conversation, and oftentimes in conversation about the best things, is utterly inspiring. Our motivation in this is to create a space where students can give their attention to the very best things. We think that your attention is most fully your own. What you give your attention to will shape what you become.

Growing Leaders (13:43.744)
And so we don't always assume that human beings have the self-control to give their attention to the best things when there are other options in front of them that are more attractive. And we then look at ourselves as the first example of this, right? Here I am turning away from a beautiful student dialogue because I want to check my email, which is only going to bring terror and suffering, right? It's like, if I'm going to make the wrong decision, my students are going to make the wrong decisions.

And so we keep cell phones and technology broadly sort of out of our classroom because we want our students to encounter the greatest ideas that have given shape to our civilization, again, unmediated by technology. There was a study that came out, or an article rather, from the Atlantic just a couple of days ago in the beginning of October, where they describe the current sort of plight that has afflicted modern academia. And they were interviewing great institutions like Berkeley and Brown and

In professor after professor was saying, none of the students who are coming into their introductory humanities classes know how to read full books. They're capable of reading excerpts, they're capable of reading brief nonfiction articles and speaking intelligently about these things. But when given a great work like the Iliad or Crime and Punishment or The Awakening, they're suddenly overwhelmed in part because they don't have the attention to sustain a kind of our multi-hour engagement with a difficult text.

which means that the kind of empathy, the deep learning, the encounter that you have with what it means to be a human being is lost because your phone is buzzing, so they don't have that skill. So our classrooms are designed around students giving their attention to the highest and best things. There's this fascinating study that came out, I think it was in 2017, that literally measured fluid intelligence and working memory.

in relation to your phone's proximity to you. So fluid intelligence is your ability to sort of work through an abstract problem that you perhaps don't have previous knowledge about, but to apply your intelligence and to work through it. Working memory is just your memory. When phones were outside of students' reaches, literally out of the room, they have the highest working memory and the highest fluid intelligence. And as the phone inched closer to them, so literally whether it was in their pocket, it was lower. And then if it was on their desk, it was lower still.

Growing Leaders (15:55.66)
So can literally sort of chart the data. The closer your phone is to you, the lower your fluid intelligence, the lower your working memory because you're constantly sort of given to distraction. One other study that I found really compelling, it's an older one from Hewlett Packard. They commissioned some researchers at Harvard early in the 2000s to measure the intelligence quotient of their workers when they were actively receiving calls and emails during the day. And they measured their IQ at literally 10 points lower when they were able to work undistracted.

versus when they were working and again, kind of be set by this barrage of interruptions. There's a 10 point IQ gap, which this is sort of funny, but it's the equivalent of a person who is like actively using marijuana or something, right? It's like, it's significant. It really has affected your brain. Another note on that, which is it always makes you laugh. There's a great documentary called The Social Dilemma on Netflix. And one of the most memorable lines there was the only companies that talk about their customers as users are drug dealers and tech companies.

Right. In those spaces, you are genuinely a user. It's crazy how Josh describes students actually talking to each other instead of staring at their phones. What a concept, right? Seriously? And his point about attention shaping who we become really hit home for me. Phones might seem harmless, but they definitely chip away at our focus.

Yeah, he makes a very convincing argument about that to me in the conversation that we had. So all those studies that he mentioned show how keeping phones out of reach actually makes kids smarter, more focused, more engaged. But of course, there's a flip side, right? The number one argument against this, some argue, is that banning phones, removing those devices, doesn't teach kids how to use the technology responsibly. When I asked Josh this question about this idea, he had a very different argument that I really appreciated.

I also just want to pay attention to human intuition, right? It's like, think about the way your own mind feels when you are scrolling on Instagram for 30 minutes. Think about the kind of like Herculean self-restraint that is required to keep your phone in your pocket when you know it's there and you know it's on. So it's like, if you're just listening to basic reason, you know that school is no place for a cell phone. And just to be clear, it's like...

Growing Leaders (18:08.684)
We are not Luddites at Atlanta Classical, right? We do use technology when it's appropriate. We offer computer science classes where students are interfacing with a laptop. And so where it's essential to our instruction, we are bringing technology into the classroom. We are equipped with Apple TV in every classroom. And so the things are there to facilitate instruction where it's absolutely necessary. One question though that we're always asking is, in what way is a technology

entering the classroom going to reshape the way that the student thinks about learning, right? And I think a lot of schools aren't really wrestling deeply with this when they're making any decision about whether or not they want to bring new tech into their classroom. Like Neil Postman is a great writer, talks about all technology having a kind of ideological bias. So the internet necessarily degrades the value of information, right? It's just like your ability to remember things, to call facts to mind.

is way less valuable than it was 20, 30, 40 years ago. So you introduce a technology, you change the way people think. You have to keep that in mind every time you introduce a new technology to your classroom because there's a new bias that you perhaps haven't assessed yet that comes along with it. And so our sort of approach to even fielding the nonstop requests from vendors that you get to buy their new technology is what's the underlying bias? And that's not to be conspiratorial, but I think it's just to be discerning about putting the best things in front of our students.

I love how Josh pointed out that we all know the feeling of scrolling Instagram for 30 minutes and then wondering where the time went, like what happened to our brains, right? We're in a fog. And it takes so much restraint sometimes, even for adults, to keep your phone tucked away, especially when you know it's right there. Even thinking back to his example of himself pulling it out right away. Like he did the thing and then grabbed his phone. It still presented a distraction. He missed.

the kids that were standing right in front of his face. But it's really clear that Atlanta Classical is not anti-tech. They use Apple TVs and teach computer science, but they're super mindful of how technology shapes the way students think. It's not about banning tech entirely, but about making thoughtful decisions when bringing it into the classroom. Yeah. And to me, that's where the deeper question comes in, right? What role do schools like Atlanta Classical, which banned phones,

Growing Leaders (20:21.326)
play in teaching kids how to use technology responsible, how do they actually balance that? My initial response is that my one-year-old knows how to open my iPhone and knows how to manipulate some parts of it. And my three-year-old at a much more sophisticated level, and I never taught him, they don't need to go to school for it, right? Like to manipulate an Apple device, which is just meant to be as user-friendly as humanly possible, does not require a graduate degree or even an elementary school degree. The thing is just begging for you to use it.

and to require as little of your brain as possible in that interaction. I'm not persuaded by arguments that schools are abdicating some responsibility by not teaching kids to be proficient in how they use their iPhones. Now there are just tools and skills that you do have to acquire, like learning how to type, right? Perhaps the school should teach you to do this. Learning how to interact with the Microsoft suite, right? Those are real skills that probably have a place at some point in a student's education. So I'm certainly not dismissive of some of those just

core needs as a kid is moving through high school. But my sense and my own personal experience is that kids are learning so much of that on their own and you don't get that much time with your students, right? 50 minutes, this is how long our class periods are at Atlanta Classical, goes by very quickly. And I find that when I bring technology into the classroom, things always sort of like go wrong and suddenly 10, 20 % of my class is gobbled up by like,

call the IT guy, see if we can get internet fixed. And suddenly this discussion that I feel urgent about having with my 17 year olds is diminished, right? It disappears. So just in terms of prioritizing what's really essential when there are serious opportunity costs on the table leads us frequently away from choosing to bring tech into our spaces. And another thing, and this is something that you face when you make a decision as a school leader to move away from tech is that you find that students

literally have their identity wrapped up in their device, right? This is why it is such a fraught choice to take a phone away from a child is to potentially induce a kind of withdrawal experience, which should be terrifying in and of itself and perhaps an argument for doing it. But what you then have to teach that person is to sort of develop a sense of self, develop a sense of self-esteem and self-advocacy that exists apart from this tiny little device that they carry around in their pockets.

Growing Leaders (22:36.12)
That's why it's fraught, right? I do think that schools then can't be glib and calloused in the way that they approach this. So I'm not recommending for a kind of cowboy approach where you just say, hey, you guys are all weak and we're taking away your phones and we're not talking to you about this. I have found that at Atlanta Class School, we've gone further with conversations about technology and really started to talk to kids about how they use it at home, right? It's not allowed on campus, but let's talk about your home life. And we've found that the most compelling way to approach this is to treat them as insiders.

to say, hey guys, this is what the tech companies are doing to you. And they're like, wait, what? Snapchat is doing what? Instagram is doing what? I don't want to be used, right? I don't want to be a user. And when you bring them into the conversation and you give them a kind of position of authority and power, suddenly they're the ones making choices. And when they feel that agency and that ownership, they no longer feel like they're being belittled, their hands being slapped by the adults ripping away their phones. They're part of the conversation. I love.

that Josh pointed out, the kids are practically born. It feels like knowing how to use an iPhone these days, his one-year-old, right, already knows how to move through that device really easily. It's like tech just pulls us in without us really needing much teaching, especially when we're at those malleable young ages. Mm-hmm. It's hard to argue that schools need to teach kids how to use these devices when they're mastering them at home on their own. I mean...

Maybe a no phone homes is like a future podcast conversation. I'm sure we'll get some lively messages for that one. I'm a low to no tech household with a six year old in it. And we haven't encountered any challenges yet, but I'm ready for it. And I'm thinking that we will. But enough about me and my household back to Josh. He does make a great point. Schools should focus on the tools that actually require learning like typing or using software like

Microsoft Office. Yeah, I think that's right. He also brought up the fact that like every time he does bring technology into the classroom, typing Microsoft Office, PowerPoint, whatever it is, he ends up with some sort of issue, right? So it's like there is this underlying challenge of bringing technology in at all, which is it can be a great helpful thing, but it can also slow things down.

Growing Leaders (24:47.276)
It can hurt us, it can distract us, all those things. So the real question is how do you balance leveraging technology while minimizing these distractions? And I think that's probably something that a lot of the educators listening to this are dealing with right now. Yeah, for schools looking to implement or refine their device policies, I'm sure Josh has some practical tips for us to strike that balance. Yeah. I think one of the first things is leading by example, right? Which is maybe a strange way to answer this and...

We actually have some experience with this at Adenoclassical because we have instituted a bunch of challenges to try to get kids to get off their phones at home. Right? So a kind of new frontier, right? You get rid of it at school. Now let's try to get rid of it at home. We started this thing last year called the February Freeze, where we had a series of challenges that went out to students that encouraged them to stay off their devices, right? To delete their social media for the whole month of February. And I, as a school leader,

in the school newspaper or our newsletter that goes out every week started publishing my own screen time. Like literally took a screenshot on Apple of my screen time that shows exactly what I'm doing with my time and just put that for everyone to read and see. And it's like grotesque. It's like, it's, it's a difficult thing to expose yourself to. And all the school leaders did this. So one thing I think is leading by example, right? You have credibility, the point at which you are obviously moderating your own use. The second thing is I think to make kids feel like insiders to that previous comment.

bring in speakers. We had a gentleman named Max Stossel, who I'd reached out to Jonathan Haidt to try to get him to come to Atlanta Classical. It was maybe a reach. And he said, I just don't really travel. And so he introduced us to Max, who's part of this group called Social Awakening. And Max came out to our school last year and gave a series of talks that were just really persuasive, met students where they were. And we had a flood of kids come up to us and say, we've deleted social media. We got rid of it. And I think having those sorts of dialogues in advance of making a sweeping change are, it's important.

The last thing, and this is just my intuition here, is that it probably does have to be total. I don't think that you would have success in saying, all right, guys, you're going to get your phones back when you go into the cafeteria. We're going to have these like phone zones and phone free zones. Like when you get it, when you leave the classroom, you give it up when you go back in. That's just going to create so much chaos and transition. I feel like the schools that I've seen do it well do go cold turkey with a lot of conversation and dialogue in advance.

Growing Leaders (27:02.988)
and have a technology like those yonder pouches where it literally, it locks your phone, you can carry it with you all day. I think it needs to be total. Just evaluate yourself. Adults have come up with so many different little ways to trick themselves into not using their phones and then use their phones. So I think you do have to basically take them. So what I love about Josh and his team at Atlanta Class School is that they are leading by example. I love this example, publishing his own screen time for all of his school to see, like that's some serious accountability.

I would be mortified to do that. He probably was too. And I just told you that I'm like a low to no tech household. And I still think it would be, that's, whoa. It's one thing to tell students to cut down on screen time, but it's a whole different level when the school leaders are showing their own struggles with it. I really appreciate that. And then those February freeze challenges, first of all, it's an alliteration. Second of all, genius, like the whole policy, the whole experience, encouraging kids to delete social media for a month.

is really a bold move. Absolutely. And the other thing I really loved is he's starting all of those conversations early, getting those students on board early and making them feel like they're in control. Like they're not just like, this is our policy, you have to follow it. But I think if we're being honest, the other really hard truth that he gave us is if a school is going to explore a no device policy, they probably should just go cold turkey, right? Because the sort of half in half out policies that we're seeing somewhere.

or some of these places, I mean, I think he's right. They're just not effective. They're distracting. They're too complicated. And it all a lot of times puts the onus on the teachers to have to navigate it and figure it out. That halfway approach just creates more chaos. completely agree. If you're going to commit, you've got to go all in and using those pouches where students can't access their phones all day. That seems like a solid solution for schools thinking about making the leap. Yeah, it does. I actually got my hands on one of those recently. They're pretty cool, this idea.

We got a lot to think about here. A lot. Especially this idea of balancing tech and education. He made so many great examples. He gave us ideas about how to implement this and thoughts we need to wrestle with. So big thanks to Josh for all that insight and all that inspiration. But I got a lot of information. I got TMI here. I think we need a DMI moment. Yes, I live for these insights that we don't want to miss. So let's get to it.

Growing Leaders (29:34.67)
Okay, so Gina, DMI of course stands for Don't Miss It. Gina and I both will highlight one thing from today that we think you should not miss. So Gina, let's start with you. What was the one thing you don't want our listeners to miss? What do we need to take away from today's conversation? Yeah, Josh had talked about our attention and he said, know, we think that your attention is most fully your own. What you give your attention to will shape what you become. And I think it's just really like a critical thinking.

practical way to implement self-control in a way that we don't require it anywhere else. And I think it's also a simple way for students to get on board, for families to get on board, for the teachers to get on board, to think about it in terms of what we give our attention to. That just really struck a chord with me. Yeah, I think it's great. I've heard many people say that attention is our most valuable resource in the 21st century because that's ultimately what people are trying to get from us on these online spaces. So that's a great insight. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it literally changed the school to now students talk to each other. Like, I'm gonna laugh about that for a while. Like, not because it's funny, but because... Like, you're laughing so you don't cry? Yeah, because we're just not talking to each other. So unfortunate. It is. And creating that space is just massive. Well, the other thing I thought of, my DMI, was what he said about first principles. It was kind of towards the beginning of our conversation. But I think a lot of schools, when it comes to this...

conversation around device policies and the worry that if we take all the tech out of the classroom, that then our students are going to be handicapped when it comes to technology. Right. And I just feel like he put such great words to their approach and basically said, the problem is not a student's ability to navigate the device. That was never the issue, right? They know how to navigate devices pretty well, maybe not all of them to the same degree. The problem is knowing how to use that in a wise way.

And so what they were saying is, let's address that problem, right? By going back to first principles and asking questions like, what does a virtuous life look like? What are values that I should be turning my life to? How do we turn knowledge into wisdom? Right? Some of those questions are actually equipping me with the exact skills I'm going to need in order to navigate those devices. And I just like.

Growing Leaders (31:49.728)
I love it when people go, the question you're asking is this, but what you're really asking is this deeper question. And I feel like they're addressing the deeper question with that idea of first principles. So I feel like if more schools were doing that and talking about why are we drawn to these devices? What are they for? What kind of life do we want to have? And how could these devices contribute to or take away from that? You can have that entire conversation without a phone in your pocket. And I think that's super essential. So. That's so good. This is great. This was great. Yeah.

Man, incredible conversation. We want to thank you guys for listening to this episode. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the School on a Mission podcast. So before you hit skip onto your next podcast, we've got a little challenge for you. Grab a pen, a notebook, a sticky note, or maybe even the back of your hand if you have to. And we want you to write down one action you're going to take this week. Maybe it's something you're going to do, something you're going to investigate, read more about, or perhaps it's a person you want to meet with. Got it? Perfect. Now we want you to DM us.

Andrew and Gina with your action step. We've gotten a few of those and we love it. So we cannot wait to see what awesome things you're up to. But until next time, folks, stay curious, stay bold, and keep leading your school on a mission. The School on a Mission podcast is produced by Growing Leaders, powered by the Maxwell Leadership Foundation. You can find out more about Growing Leaders at growingleaders.com. We want to especially thank Josh Andrew for joining us as a guest in today's episode.

This podcast was co-produced by Angelica Oliver and Cara Mallory. To find out more about the School on a Mission podcast, head over to schoolonamissionpodcast.com.